There’s no good way to approach A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (henceforth referred to as Charles Swan for brevity’s sake). In large part, that’s a byproduct of the film being a complete disaster, but an alluring, charming sort of disaster, and this is where Charles Swan becomes a complicated beast. I’m not sure what else could reasonably be expected about a Roman Coppola film starring Charlie Sheen that’s so firmly about Charlie Sheen; at best that’s a recipe for rampant weirdness, and at worst for catastrophic cinematic failure. Somehow Coppola’s aim lands Charles Swan squarely in between, and what we’re left with is a bizarre Sheen…
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Ohhh, Look…First '42' Poster Slides Into Home
I’ve felt for a very, very long time that poster-making has become something of a lost art, particularly when it concerns big studio movies or star-driven movies. Seeing even the slightest amount of effort put into the creation of a movie poster tends to pique my interest, so it stands to reason that when somebody really knocks it out of the park with a one-sheet, I get a little bit giddy inside. Which brings us to this poster for 42, the upcoming Jackie Robinson biopic hailing from Legendary Pictures. It’s kind of spectacular. It’s also slightly reminiscent of the Skyfall poster from last year, but there’s so much more that’s special about…
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Henry Selick's 'The Shadow King' Finally Getting Made (Again)
Any news about upcoming Henry Selick projects is good news. Except when it’s bad news. Like the news yesterday that his latest film– The Shadow King— came to a halt after it lost funding not once, but twice, and from two entirely separate sources. That’s pretty much the definition of a “king bummer” right there, at least if you ask me. The one-two punch started first when Disney yanked its funding from The Shadow King after deeming it “too dark” for their liking, even though production had already commenced, and continued when Laika– the studio Selick parted ways with in 2009 to work with Disney in the first place– offered…
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'Warm Bodies' and the 'Twilight' Factor
We’ve passed the point where adapting young adult novels has become a simple trend in cinema, so pointing out the increase in proliferation of YA movie adaptations since 2008 is something of a pointless exercise. Of course YA has won its own cinematic categorization and earned the boon of increased cultural prominence; the success of Twilight alone justifies its ascendance, which started as a slow burn before recently erupting with a massive slate of releases for 2013 (notably: Beautiful Creatures, The Mortal Instruments, The Host, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Percy Jackson & the Sea of Monsters) and beyond (Vampire Academy, The Night Circus, Matched, and of course further installments in…
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Chris Pratt Leaving Seal Team Six, Joining the Guardians of the Galaxy
We’ve been running around casting rumors about Guardians of the Galaxy for over a month now, and while we have an idea of who may (or, of course, may not) be filling out secondary roles, no progress has been made in casting the film’s lead— until now. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a warm welcome and a round of applause to Chris Pratt, our new Star Lord. Reading that sentence fills me with a sense of bemusement even more than the idea that Jim Carrey and/or Adam Sandler might be involved with a James Gunn-directed superhero picture. Andy Dwyer? Star Lord? If you asked Dwyer himself whether or not he’d want…
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G-S-T Trailer Round-Up: Super Bowl Spots!
I’m not much of a sports fan. In fact, I’d go so far as to call myself a sports apostate; I live in New England and yet my interest in football and hockey is next to nil and my interest in basketball and baseball is mild at best. (Though I do like baseball. Frankly, I think that’s New England’s true favored regional sport, or at least Boston’s, but I may be the minority on both counts.) So it might not surprise you to learn that I tend to watch the Super Bowl only for trailer spots if I watch it at all. This year, I only bothered to catch the…
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Ohhh, Look…Behind the Scenes Photos For 'The Raid 2'
Gareth Evans has been planning his sequel to The Raid: Redemption for a while now, so here’s some good news: production on the film began just this week. I’m not sure if he’s sticking with The Raid 2: Berandal (which roughly translates to something like “bully” or “ruffian” in English) or if Sony will end up slapping Retaliation on it, but who cares? The Raid stands out as one of 2012’s best genre surprises and one of the tightest, most accomplished action films of the new decade. That we’re getting a sequel at all is nothing short of exciting, to say nothing of the fact that it’s already underway. To kick off shooting on the…
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G-S-T Review…The Taste of Money
Did you know about the corrupting influence money can have on a person, or several persons? Were you aware that the pleasures of the high life come at a dark price? The Taste of Money has both of these big, obvious questions on its mind among many others, and the film– the seventh to come from controversial South Korean filmmaker Sang-soo Im– tackles these ideas with melodramatic zeal, never once shooting for anything resembling graceful subtlety in its portrait of South Korea’s wealthy ruling class. Frankly, the film scarcely even seems interested in dealing with reality, instead engaging in brash, lurid mythmaking ripped straight from headlines chronicling the battle between…
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Duncan Jones to Explore the World…of Warcraft
Since 2010, Legendary Pictures has been fostering the idea of taking a cinematic jaunt into the Warcraft video game universe– a fantasy world in the truest sense of the phrase, one inhabited by the usual genre suspects (humans, orcs, elves, dwarves, trolls, minotaurs) and characterized by multiple dimensional planes, demonic landscapes, and outer space. (Really.) Originally, the studio had Sam Raimi circling the director’s chair for the project, but we learned last year that Raimi had to bow out to work on Oz the Great and Powerful, leaving the film without a helmsman and, perhaps, a future. Until last night. Legendary scored a pretty serious win by acquiring the services…
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Sweet International Trailer…'Journey to the West'
AKA A Chinese Odyssey. AKA one of the Four Great Classical Novels. Full disclosure: I watched the trailer for Journey to the West at least a half a dozen times this morning and I’m still not totally sure what I saw with every repeat viewing. Somehow, Stephen Chow and timeless, massively influential Chinese literature seems like a really odd mix, but that’s exactly why I pay the price of admission to see his films in the first place. I’m sure this will make slightly more sense once I’ve actually seen the whole film, though I’m willing to pick up some supplemental reading if it’ll help me attain understanding of the…