Archive for the ‘Focus Features’ Category
Filed under: Fandom, Focus Features, Newsstand, Contests
Wouldn’t you like to have your very own piece of memorabilia from a Coen Brothers’ film? Variety Children’s Charity of Southern California and Focus Features are offering fans of the Coens’ most recent film, A Serious Man, the opportunity to bid to win the 1966 Dogde Coronet driven by Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) in the Academy Award-nominated movie.
The auction begins on Monday, February 22, and ends on Thursday, March 4, and you can bid on the classic car here. Bidding will start at less than the $20,000 value of the car, which is not a bad deal for a driveable piece of minor movie history. It may not be as immediately iconic as the motorcycle from Raising Arizona or Josh Brolin’s pick-up truck in No Country for Old Men, but it’s still a sweet ride, and it’s for a great cause.
Founded in 1941, Variety raises funds to “support a full range of services encompassing medical, health, recreational, and social services; and provide a wide array of therapeutic, literacy, and mental health programs not traditionally funded by other private or public sources.”
Filed under: Action, Independent, Thrillers, Casting, Focus Features, Newsstand
I’m very intrigued by Hanna, Joe Wright’s hitgirl film that starts his steely-eyed Atonement star, Saoirse Ronan. Even if it’s a bit of a Leon / Kick-Ass story, Wright hasn’t really let me down yet (though I never did see The Soloist — maybe I speak too blindly), and Ronan is a force to be reckoned with. Now she’s landed a brooding hunk of a costar, as Heat Vision reports that Eric Bana is in line to play her nemesis and father.
Hanna centers around a 14-year-old Eastern European girl who is groomed by her father to be a cold-blooded killing machine. She finds a loving connection with an ordinary French family, but is dragged kicking and screaming (I imagine that’s no hyperbole) back to her father’s brutal world. She then discovers that she’s one of many such killer children, born and bred in a CIA training camp. If she wants to be free, she’s going to have to fight her way out. Cue the blood and brutality, I hope.
An actor who has never quite made it huge on this side of the Pacific, Bana seems to be destined for darker roles in Hollywood films. He’s capable of very funny and very nuanced work. (Have you seen Romulus, My Father? If not, go rent it now.) I can’t imagine Wright is going to give us a one-sided bad guy, and will let Bana play someone who is loving and cruel. Given the way he’s bolstered so many British careers, maybe Wright and Hanna will be the film that launches Bana into a more respected stratosphere.
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense, Sony, Sony Classics, Warner Brothers, Focus Features, Cinematical Seven, Lists, Miramax, Paramount Vantage
I guess it’s a moderate spoiler to admit that tonight’s Cinematical Seven was intended to correspond with today’s home video release of the Sam Rockwell sci-fi drama, Moon, but even if I’ve tipped you off as to what the movie reveals within twenty minutes, I hope that not knowing the exact how’s and why’s of his situation intrigue you enough to still check it out. The reason I and others were so high on it was because Rockwell gave such a uniquely multi-layered performance as his lonely astronaut that I wanted to celebrate other notable dual performances by a single actor.
For the record, I’ve left off David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers because, well, I haven’t seen it yet — nor Multiplicity, while we’re being honest here — and I opted to exclude split-personality performances, similarly impressive though they may be (after some reluctance, I just had to take A History of Violence out of the running before all sorts of Jekyll/Hyde-esque condemnations came my way (Viggo’s great in that all the same)).
As usual, your comments/suggestions are welcome, and as usual, we didn’t snub anyone or anything on purpose. Except for the Eddie Murphy romps. They’ll probably get their own Cine 7 someday.
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense, Sony, Sony Classics, Warner Brothers, Focus Features, Cinematical Seven, Lists, Miramax, Paramount Vantage
I guess it’s a moderate spoiler to admit that tonight’s Cinematical Seven was intended to correspond with today’s home video release of the Sam Rockwell sci-fi drama, Moon, but even if I’ve tipped you off as to what the movie reveals within twenty minutes, I hope that not knowing the exact how’s and why’s of his situation intrigue you enough to still check it out. The reason I and others were so high on it was because Rockwell gave such a uniquely multi-layered performance as his lonely astronaut that I wanted to celebrate other notable dual performances by a single actor.
For the record, I’ve left off David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers because, well, I haven’t seen it yet — nor Multiplicity, while we’re being honest here — and I opted to exclude split-personality performances, similarly impressive though they may be (after some reluctance, I just had to take A History of Violence out of the running before all sorts of Jekyll/Hyde-esque condemnations came my way (Viggo’s great in that all the same)).
As usual, your comments/suggestions are welcome, and as usual, we didn’t snub anyone or anything on purpose. Except for the Eddie Murphy romps. They’ll probably get their own Cine 7 someday.
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense, Sony, Sony Classics, Warner Brothers, Focus Features, Cinematical Seven, Lists, Miramax, Paramount Vantage
I guess it’s a moderate spoiler to admit that tonight’s Cinematical Seven was intended to correspond with today’s home video release of the Sam Rockwell sci-fi drama, Moon, but even if I’ve tipped you off as to what the movie reveals within twenty minutes, I hope that not knowing the exact how’s and why’s of his situation intrigue you enough to still check it out. The reason I and others were so high on it was because Rockwell gave such a uniquely multi-layered performance as his lonely astronaut that I wanted to celebrate other notable dual performances by a single actor.
For the record, I’ve left off David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers because, well, I haven’t seen it yet — nor Multiplicity, while we’re being honest here — and I opted to exclude split-personality performances, similarly impressive though they may be (after some reluctance, I just had to take A History of Violence out of the running before all sorts of Jekyll/Hyde-esque condemnations came my way (Viggo’s great in that all the same)).
As usual, your comments/suggestions are welcome, and as usual, we didn’t snub anyone or anything on purpose. Except for the Eddie Murphy romps. They’ll probably get their own Cine 7 someday.
Filed under: Action, Drama, Independent, Thrillers, Casting, Focus Features, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand
The one thing I enjoyed about The Lovely Bones was Saoirse Ronan’s performance. I hesitate to say that she’s destined for greatness simply because that seems so loaded with disappointment or danger. But she’s certainly a talented and lovely actress, and I’m eager to see what she does next. Her next role may be the one that really makes her a force to be reckoned with as The Hollywood Reporter says she’ll be taking the lead in Hanna.
Directed by Joe Wright (who is clearly loyal to his leading ladies), Hanna is the tale of an Eastern European teenager who is being trained as an assassin by her own father. As she suffers her training and growing pains, she becomes friendly with a French family and connects with their teenage daughter. But duty calls, and she’s dragged back into her lethal life where she discovers she was bred in a CIA prison camp simply to be a killing machine. If she wants freedom, she’ll have to fight for it.
The similarities to Kick-Ass and Leon have already been noted, though Focus Features is selling Seth Lochhead and David Farr’s script as something more in line with La Femme Nikita and the Bourne films. It may sound derivative, but assassin movies inevitably are no matter if they center on a teenage girl, a hardbitten agent, or an adamantium-laced mutant. The hook here is Wright’s lush visuals, and Ronan cutting loose as an action heroine. There’s nothing about that combination that’s yawn inducing, and I’ll take teenage hitgirls over Hanna Montana any day.
Filed under: Documentary, Critical Thought, Focus Features, Movie Marketing
About a month ago, my esteemed Cinematical colleague William Goss wrote, “[Babies] just looks like an excuse for people to pay ten dollars to coo audibly in public, alongside anyone else willing to do the same.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid to admit I might be one of those people. Last week the trailer for Babies played before the movie I was seeing, and, well, I’m not sure I cooed per se, but I did giggle and maybe I pointed my finger a little at the screen and nudged my friend when one baby bit the other. And then when the goat drank the baby’s bathwater? Remember that? “This is like the CuteOverload.com of movies,” my friend whispered to me.
Of course, I’ve been a longtime reader of CuteOverload.com for several years now; I had a particularly frustrating day job and a little hit of cuteness in the form of a disapproving bunny or bizarre Japanese dwarf flying squirrels would be just enough to make it through until our afternoon coffee run.
However, according to Vanity Fair’s Jim Windolf, this insidious cuteness is ruining American culture. No, really. That’s what the tagline for his article in the December 2009 issue states on the cover: “HOW GRANDMAS AND 12-YEAR-OLD GIRLS ARE CORRUPTING AMERICAN CULTURE.” You know that issue, the one with RPatz on the cover and comments like, “i love this one he seems like hes in such deep thought…i wish he was thinkin of me!!!!!!!!!” on the site?
Filed under: Documentary, Critical Thought, Focus Features, Movie Marketing
About a month ago, my esteemed Cinematical colleague William Goss wrote, “[Babies] just looks like an excuse for people to pay ten dollars to coo audibly in public, alongside anyone else willing to do the same.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid to admit I might be one of those people. Last week the trailer for Babies played before the movie I was seeing, and, well, I’m not sure I cooed per se, but I did giggle and maybe I pointed my finger a little at the screen and nudged my friend when one baby bit the other. And then when the goat drank the baby’s bathwater? Remember that? “This is like the CuteOverload.com of movies,” my friend whispered to me.
Of course, I’ve been a longtime reader of CuteOverload.com for several years now; I had a particularly frustrating day job and a little hit of cuteness in the form of a disapproving bunny or bizarre Japanese dwarf flying squirrels would be just enough to make it through until our afternoon coffee run.
However, according to Vanity Fair’s Jim Windolf, this insidious cuteness is ruining American culture. No, really. That’s what the tagline for his article in the December 2009 issue states on the cover: “HOW GRANDMAS AND 12-YEAR-OLD GIRLS ARE CORRUPTING AMERICAN CULTURE.” You know that issue, the one with RPatz on the cover and comments like, “i love this one he seems like hes in such deep thought…i wish he was thinkin of me!!!!!!!!!” on the site?
Filed under: Action, Foreign Language, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Disney, Lionsgate Films, Magnolia, New Line, Paramount, Sony, Sony Classics, Universal, Warner Brothers, Focus Features, 20th Century Fox, Dreamworks, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Johnny Depp, Peter Jackson, James Bond, Lists, Miramax, Best/Worst, War, Daniel Craig
Cinematical is about to launch into our best-of-the-’00s series, with a different writer tackling a different genre over these last few weeks of the aughts (or whatever it was we decided to call this decade). Yours truly has been tasked with sifting out the most exciting action flicks these years have had to offer, and in the list-making equivalent of flinching, I’ve decided to divide them up by superlative instead of ranking them in order of awesomeness.
Oh, and before you comment away about what’s missing (which we do want), I have left off The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2, X2: X-Men United and The Incredibles, so they may be included in any superhero or animated list to come. If those movies are left off those lists, then by all means, give them hell. I might even join you.
Filed under: Action, Foreign Language, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Disney, Lionsgate Films, Magnolia, New Line, Paramount, Sony, Sony Classics, Universal, Warner Brothers, Focus Features, 20th Century Fox, Dreamworks, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Johnny Depp, Peter Jackson, James Bond, Lists, Miramax, War, Daniel Craig
Cinematical is about to launch into our best-of-the-’00s series, with a different writer tackling a different genre over these last few weeks of the aughts (or whatever it was we decided to call this decade). Yours truly has been tasked with sifting out the most exciting action flicks these years have had to offer, and in the list-making equivalent of flinching, I’ve decided to divide them up by superlative instead of ranking them in order of awesomeness.
Oh, and before you comment away about what’s missing (which we do want), I have left off The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2, X2: X-Men United and The Incredibles, so they may be included in any superhero or animated list to come. If those movies are left off those lists, then by all means, give them hell. I might even join you.
