Mystery & Suspense »
Interview: Pierce Brosnan on Polanski, Percy, and R-Patz
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.
SXSW Exclusive: 'Red, White & Blue' Teaser Trailer
Filed under: Drama, Thrillers, SXSW, Mystery & Suspense, Trailers and Clips
"In Austin Texas, the lives of three young people "Erica, Franki and Nate" intertwine in a fateful, tragic way and head down a rocky and violent road to heart-rending oblivion."Going off the above description from the official SXSW program guide, Red, White & Blue reads like it could be a number of different films, but two names attached to the production hint at what kind of "heart-rending oblivion" it'll be. First off, this is the latest film from The Living and the Dead director Simon Rumley, so we can begin to rule RW&B out as, say, a Havoc-type melodrama about teenagers dipping their toes into life on the other side of the tracks and winding up in over their heads. Second, its roster of producers includes Tim League, which should give anyone familiar with the cinematic tastes of both Fantastic Fest and the Alamo Drafthouse (League is a co-founder of both) an idea of what kind of genre brew will be coming to SXSW in a few weeks time.
But even with those two nuggets, nothing gives as good an idea of what's in store than seeing the beast in motion. And with that, Cinematical is proud to offer you the premiere of Red, White & Blue's first teaser trailer, starring Noah Tyler, Amanda Fuller and Marc Senter.
Be warned, the below teaser is most definitely Not Safe For Work. Nudity and sexual explicitness abound, so keep that in mind before you click on.
TOLDJA! Hollywood Looks to Blogs for TV and Film Projects
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense, Dreamworks, Home Entertainment
"It's only a matter of time before the 2010s do for blogging what the 1930s did for newspapers." That's what I wrote yesterday in a Pitch of the Day post, and I didn't realize how immediately prophetic it was. Only hours later The Hollywood Reporter announced a new HBO series in the works centered on a character who is ... a blogger. Specifically the show, titled Tilda, will be about a "no-holds-barred" entertainment journalist who works online. And she's female, so she's being compared to real-life Hollywood bloggers Nikki Finke, Sharon Waxman and Anne Thompson.Given the clear Finke connection, I just had to use her signature "TOLDJA!" in the headline, but in all honesty I had no idea anything like this was on the way, nor did I truly want it to be. It might be interesting, though, given that I can't imagine it resembling my own bloggery life at all. Coming from wrier/director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls; Gods and Monsters -- which would be a fitting title for a show about bloggers, IMHO) and writer/producer Cynthia Mort (The Brave One; HBO series Tell Me You Love Me), I expect something a little more glamorous than is the reality for most entertainment bloggers.
Fan Made: Hitchcock-Themed Dioramas
Filed under: Mystery & Suspense, Fandom
"Master of suspense" filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock has inspired any number of directors ... and it turns out he's inspired some artists too. Over on Flickr, you can find a set of photos of dioramas based on Hitchcock movies. The dioramas were created for an auction at Bird Dog Video, an independent video store in Calgary, last year ... not recent, but Hitchcock art doesn't grow stale.The Flickr set is called "Frenzy" but a number of Hitchcock's films are represented by the dioramas. The one for North by Northwest is fairly straightforward. The Birds was a popular choice -- this one is my favorite representation of the film. Of course the Bates family home is represented, from Psycho, as shown on the right (look in the windows!). But the diorama I like best is the one that re-creates part of the Salvador Dali-designed dream sequence in Spellbound, it's quite striking. I'm not sure I'd want it in my house all the time, though. Which ones are your favorites, and which movies do you wish were included? I would have enjoyed something stylish from Notorious, myself, or perhaps the berths from the train sequence in North by Northwest.
[via the cinetrix]
Scenes We Love: This Gun For Hire
Filed under: Classics, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love
My obsession with all things L.A. Confidential has extended to the real life Veronica Lake. I think she may have been the epitome of the 1940s -- the hair, the sassy line delivery, the glamor. She's also the epitome of Hollywood's dark side too, as she went from great success to a penniless and tragic end.
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.
Free Flick of the Day: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Filed under: Mystery & Suspense
Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) is his personal Magnificent Ambersons. It was taken away and edited without his supervision or approval, and the excised footage is currently thought to be lost. He apparently hated the version that was eventually released, but it's still a very enjoyable movie, full of typically bracing Billy Wilder humor (co-written, of course, with I.A.L. Diamond). The film was originally supposed to contain four unrelated stories and now contains only two. In the first one, Holmes pretends to be in a gay relationship with Watson to avoid the unwanted attentions of a female suitor. In the second, main section, he searches for a missing husband, and the search includes a visit from his brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee, a former Sherlock himself) and an encounter with the Loch Ness Monster.
This is the movie in which Holmes falls in love and -- unlike in the earlier Basil Rathbone films -- drugs are mentioned. Stage actor Robert Stephens gives us a sly, funny Holmes, Colin Blakely is Watson, and Genevieve Page is the woman who melts Holmes' heart. Those who have seen Robert Downey Jr's badass new version of Holmes will probably find this one a bit on the slow and/or stagnant side, but it was an important step in the evolution of Holmes between Rathbone and Downey, and it's definitely an underrated Wilder gem.
The movie is afoot over at SlashControl.
Review: Edge of Darkness
Filed under: Action, Drama, Thrillers, New Releases, Mystery & Suspense, Warner Brothers, Theatrical Reviews
Bodies bob to the surface of a deserted river. A playful little girl is captured on home video. A troubled man waits for his daughter. Edge of Darkness, a powerhouse dramatic thriller directed by Martin Campbell, tends a bed of smoldering embers that occasionally, unexpectedly, explodes into a raging fire.
The largest ember is Craven, a Boston police detective. As played by Mel Gibson, Craven becomes a man on a mission only after his daughter is shot dead in front of his eyes. Before that, his life is a blank slate, more notable for the things that are missing rather than any sense of purpose. Unresolved questions follow him around like a lost puppy: why didn't he visit his only daughter? Why did he demonstrate so little interest in her career or her friends? What happened to his wife, evidently long gone from the scene? Why doesn't he have any friends? What kind of police detective is he?
From the evidence presented, Craven is a haunted loner with deep reserves of seething anger and brutal competence. The death of his daughter destroys him, as though he himself had absorbed the shotgun blast to the gut, but there's never any question that his own brand of justice will be served. First, though, he has to figure out who was trying to kill him.
Watch This: UK Trailer for 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'
Filed under: Foreign Language, New Releases, Mystery & Suspense, Fandom, Newsstand, Movie Marketing, Trailers and Clips
Momentum Pictures and Yellow Bird Films have released an English-language UK trailer for Niels Arden Oplev's upcoming thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on the best-selling novel by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. (Fun fact: Its Swedish title translates to Men Who Hate Women.) So what are you waiting for, book nerds? Get your first glimpse of the Swedish trilogy-starter, about a disgraced journalist and a cyberpunk chick who team up to investigate a decades-old murder in the dark and snowy climes of modern-day Scandinavia!
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is based on the It book du jour by the late author Stieg Larsson, in which journalist Mikael Blomkvist is enlisted to investigate a mysterious possible murder that may or may not have taken place decades ago in a small Swedish town. Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) joins forces with a brilliant hacker, the titular Lisbeth Salander, played by striking Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, who Cinematical's Peter Hall compares to "a Suicide Girl version of Kristen Bell."
More on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the UK trailer below.
Their Best Role: Mel Gibson in 'Ransom'
Filed under: Action, Drama, Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense, Fandom, Remakes and Sequels
I was initially fearful for selecting Mel Gibson for Their Best Role; as we all well know, if there's an opinion to be had on the Internet, there's someone else perfectly willing to be unhappy about it. But in this particular case, the fact that there are several worthy performances to choose from speaks to this actor's popularity and range. Despite his notorious off-screen behavior, or at least prior to it, Mel has been the go-to guy for roguish charm for over thirty years and forty films.
So, try not to hold it against me when I decide that his vengeful side (as seen in the Mad Max films, Payback, The Patriot and this weekend's Edge of Darkness), his charm (What Women Want, Chicken Run) and his vulnerability (the first Lethal Weapon, Signs) meshed best in Ron Howard's 1996 thriller, Ransom.
(Besides, he's got two Oscars to comfort him for Braveheart's absence here.)
Watch This: Individual 'Red Riding' Trilogy Trailers
Filed under: Drama, Independent, Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense, IFC, Distribution, Cinematical Indie, Trailers and Clips
One of my favorite moviegoing experiences of last year was spending an entire day with the Red Riding trilogy. Three British films, each from a different director, each shot in a different film or video format, each set in a different year and each terrific as a stand-alone work -- though the last installment does function as a conclusive wrap-up, as well. Red Riding: 1974, Red Riding: 1980 and Red Riding: 1983 present the intertwining stories of multiple characters involved in ongoing cases of murder, child abduction and police corruption in West Yorkshire, England. All were adapted from a series of novels from David Peace (The Damned United) by occasional Terry Gilliam collaborator Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).IFC will release the trilogy, originally presented as a TV miniseries in the UK, in marathon form for one week only beginning February 5th at NYC's IFC Center -- before the films screen separately in both New York and Los Angeles on February 12. A nationwide expansion comes another week later, on February 19. If you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to see the three films back to back, I implore you to watch them as I did. To further convince you, check out Eugene's review of the trilogy from Telluride.
To offer some visual encouragement, Moviefone has just debuted trailers for each installment, which you can check out after the jump alongside a rundown of each segment.
Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams Reunite for 'Mission Impossible 4'
'Big Top Pee-Wee': The Original Benicio Del Toro Wolfman
Spin-ematical: New on DVD and Blu-ray for 2/9
Watch This: Brilliant Oscar-Nominated Short 'Logorama'
Chris Nolan to Lead 'Superman' Reboot!?
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