Archive for the ‘Noir’ Category
Filed under: Action, Deals, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Sony, Celebrities and Controversy, Scripts, 20th Century Fox, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Politics, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels
Once Sam Raimi was unceremoniously booted from Spider-Man 4 along with the cast and crew, speculation was rampant as to what he would direct next. World of Warcraft? What about The Shadow? He’s wanted to do that for a long, long time and as of last January, it was chugging along quite nicely. Whatever he picked, we were rooting for him. But now The Shadow has vanished into the darkness, as Variety reports that Sony has let the rights lapse. It’s hard not to read into this and see it as evidence of bad blood between Sony and Raimi. I don’t want to jump to gossipy conclusions, but if things were good, wouldn’t you at least agree to be friends and make The Shadow together?
Raimi’s reps at CAA are now shopping The Shadow rights around town, and Raimi is still attached as a producer. So at least he gets to keep his pet pulp, even if it’s standing on shaky ground. Not only does it delay a possible film, but it could all land in some uncompromising hands. One of the interested parties is 20th Century Fox. Latino Review says they’ve already purchased The Shadow and may have set David Slade to direct, while Variety is merely reporting Fox as “interested.”
Slade and Raimi go way back (30 Days of Night) so it makes sense that Raimi would offer the chair to an old friend. But I was hoping he’d step into the director’s chair for a little noir before heading into Warcraft. At least we know that’s likely to be his next director’s outing by sheer default. Start casting your Night Elves now!
Filed under: Drama, Independent, Noir, Home Entertainment, Cinematical Indie, Trailers and Clips
What happens when two longtime artists make their first film together? David McDermott and Peter McGough have worked together for 30 years, and their latest project is Mean to Me, a 12-minute film that debuted at a special screening in New York a few days ago. The film is being touted as the acting debut of Agyness Deyn, 27, a British model who shot to fame in the fashion world in 2006. But for classic movie fans, Mean to Me sounds like 12 minutes of heaven.
Set in the 1930s, Mean to Me, “chronicles the disastrous end of an affair,” according to The New York Times. Deyn plays a woman scorned by her playboy lover, played by Linus Roache. Roache, currently appearing on TV’s Law and Order, made for a memorable, stylish Thomas Wayne (Bruce’s dad) in Batman Begins, and he looks like a perfect scoundrel. “Period-perfect down to its wallpaper, telephone and radio, McGough’s Art Deco Manhattan apartment provided the set. Deyn’s costumes, by Zac Posen, might as well be of that vintage.” A report in The Huffington Post describes it as a “studiously detailed, 13-minute love letter to the Deco era: deep, rich, film noir lighting; ornate period opening titles; a dark Stravinsky score.”
Mean to Me will be screening on March 4 at the Cheim & Read gallery in New York, and then is headed for the international film festival circuit. Until then, take a peek at the very cool trailer. Watching it makes me feel like donning a tuxedo and sipping champagne.
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Filed under: Drama, Noir, Disney, Tom Cruise, Remakes and Sequels
Every once in awhile, Hollywood seems bent on eradicating a certain talent’s film career via remakes of all that person’s work. We’ve seen it happen to John Carpenter, who is being made all but obsolete with released or reported plans for rehashes of at least seven of his movies. And we could see it occur with Andrew McCarthy, who’ll be replaced in eventual redos of Weekend at Bernie’s and Mannequin (and in all likelihood, one day, Pretty in Pink). This week, with the latest trailer for The Karate Kid and an update on The Sitter, I’m reminded that Elisabeth Shue is the latest victim. So, there might as well also be a remake of Cocktail.
In my attempt to think back 22 years, I honestly can’t recall what it was that made Roger Donaldson’s 1988 glorification of bartending appealing, let alone such a huge box office success. All I remember is Tom Cruise and Shue making love under a waterfall and a bunch of flashy juggling tricks that inspired many a dude to waste liters of alcohol trying to impress girls with bottle-tossing skills he didn’t have. Oh, and that terrible soundtrack I’m embarrassed to say I enjoyed at the age of 11, which introduced many of us to “Kokomo” and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
Filed under: Classics, Drama, Thrillers, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Celebrities and Controversy
With news that Roman Polanski has won the best director award at the Berlin Film Festival for The Ghost Writer, a film he did post-production on while “in jail,” according to star Pierce Brosnan in an interview with CNN (whom I also interviewed for The Ghost Writer), my own mixed feelings about the director are coming to a head. I’ve seen The Ghost Writer and I liked the movie very much, especially the more I thought about it. I’d like to see it again. I like Polanski’s other movies quite a bit as well, especially as I’ve gotten older and revisited them.
But as a feminist, I have a hard time reconciling that someone I consider an extremely gifted writer and director also pleaded guilty to “unlawful sex with a minor.” (You can read the transcripts of the grand jury testimony on The Smoking Gun, if you have the stomach for it, because it’s not a matter of the girl simply being underage, but of him drugging and raping her despite her repeatedly telling him no and asking her to take him home.)
In fact, the real crime he’s wanted for is fleeing sentencing. It’s entirely possible that what seems like a slap on the wrist for such a crime these days was viewed as overly harsh in the ’70s, when no didn’t always mean no even when uttered by a drugged minor. And I’ve seen Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, and despite the SNAFU of his sentencing process, I still think, Christ, couldn’t he just have done the time? I’ve read Hollywood Babylon and its follow-up, and I am no naïf. I don’t excuse his behavior at all, but I also don’t think it’s uncommon, obviously. Not in Hollywood, and not among “real” people. I’m not an apologist, not for Polanski nor for others who commit similar crimes. His comment that “Everyone wants to f- young girls!” is disturbing, to say the least.
Filed under: Drama, Thrillers, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Celebrities and Controversy, New in Theaters, Interviews, James Bond
February is about to get really interesting for Pierce Brosnan. A mere week after his debut as a self-proclaimed “horse’s ass” (aka Chiron) in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief on February 12, a much smaller and much more controversial thriller he’s in will be hitting art house screens in New York and Los Angeles. Brosnan is one of the heavy-hitting stars in Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, the movie Polanski was doing post-production on when he was arrested in Switzerland on an outstanding warrant from 1978, when he fled the US before being sentenced for having sex with a minor. (Polanski finished the film while under house arrest.) Pierce Brosnan, who plays ex-Prime Minister Adam Lang, is part of an impressive ensemble; Olivia Williams is Lang’s intensely intelligent wife Ruth, while Ewan McGregor is the titular writer who reluctantly signs on to help Lang with his memoirs after the first writer turns up dead.
Brosnan spoke to Cinematical about working with the legendary figure on The Ghost Writer, as well as Percy Jackson, dealing with Robert Pattinson’s screaming fans on the set of Remember Me, and much more.
Continue reading Interview: Pierce Brosnan on Polanski, Percy, and R-Patz
Filed under: Classics, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love
Over the weekend, Netflix finally delivered me a copy of This Gun For Hire, which is a pretty cool noir. (Trivia nerds probably know it’s the film Lynn Bracken and one of her clients are “reenacting” when Bud White shows up.) If you’ve never seen it, it’s worth a watch for Alan Ladd’s icy assassin, who makes many of our modern killers seem weak in comparison. It also features one of the quirkiest heroines ever in Ellen Graham. Graham is a spy for the U.S. government, a nightclub singer (did down-on-their-luck singers ever look better than they did in the 1940s?), and a magician. I’m not kidding! Lake even gets two song-and-dance numbers where she performs a string of illusions that Gob Bluth would kill to know the secrets to, and her magic tricks end up saving her life later on.
Nowadays, a spy-singer-magician would be laughed off the screen. But in the good old days, it not only worked, but it reeked of cool sexiness thanks to Lake. Check out the scene below.
Filed under: Action, Classics, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Scenes We Love
It’s also good timing, as this week we finally get to see a glimpse of Pearce in The Road. It’s another one of those maddening cameos he likes to tease us with (no spoiler intended, it’s just a fact), and I constantly wish he’d take bigger and more high profile roles. A Bedtime Stories is all well and good, and I have great hopes for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, but I long for him to land another role like Lt. Ed Exley.
Go below the jump for the scene
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Casting, Deals, Noir, Scripts, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek
Few of us have had the chance to read Rick Remender’s upcoming series, The Last Days of American Crime, but it’s already tapped for the big-screen treatment. To sweeten the deal, American Crime already has a face. An Australian one. Mania is reporting that Sam Worthington has signed on to play the series’ star criminal, Graham Brick.
American Crime is set in a near-future where the government has found a way to kill the criminal impulse in its citizens. That’s good for everyone but the criminals, and chaos erupts as the unsavory element goes mad trying to get in one last job. One of these men is Graham Brick, who is in the midst of planning a big heist, and gets to watch all his best laid plans fall apart in a bloody fashion. I read the preview Radical handed out at Comic-Con this year, and like all previews, it was too short to really get a handle on the story. But the art was incredible, it was ridiculously violent, and it had that slimy feeling of Sin City. You can check out three pages here, and Radical has 15 pages up on MySpace. The first issue is scheduled to hit stands in December.
Remender will be penning the screenplay himself, and Radical will be producing it under their film shingle. We’ll supposedly be getting a studio, a director, and more cast-members very soon, but it’s tough to get excited without having read issue #1. Still, if this is really the mix of James Ellroy and David Mamet’s Heist that Remender promises, Crime will be something to look out for.
Filed under: Classics, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Scenes We Love
The film has a level of tension I don’t think the Coens matched until No Country For Old Men. Tom’s white-knuckle walk into Miller’s Crossing is probably my favorite scene (actually, it’s difficult to pick just one), but it doesn’t appear to be on YouTube. So, here’s another moment of violence that just doesn’t go the way you think it will, and features the best use of Danny Boy in history. I really want to believe that the gramophone is a nod to Sean Connery’s death scene in The Untouchables, but I suspect it’s a noir standard that ushered many a mobster and cop into his grave.
Filed under: Classics, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Scenes We Love
The film has a level of tension I don’t think the Coens matched until No Country For Old Men. Tom’s white-knuckle walk into Miller’s Crossing is probably my favorite scene (actually, it’s difficult to pick just one), but it doesn’t appear to be on YouTube. So, here’s another moment of violence that just doesn’t go the way you think it will, and features the best use of Danny Boy in history. I really want to believe that the gramophone is a nod to Sean Connery’s death scene in The Untouchables, but I suspect it’s a noir standard that ushered many a mobster and cop into his grave.
