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Descending Into the Depths: Neil Maskell (left) and Michael Smiley get in over their heads in KILL LIST.

What starts out as common, garden-variety crime thriller turns… bizarre, and then frightening, in director Ben Wheatley’s twisty new film, KILL LIST. The tale of middle class hit-man Jay (Neil Maskell), who with colleague Gal (Michael Smiley) goes out for one more job and discovers blood oaths, strange rites, and disturbingly grateful targets have been thrown into the bargain, the film allows Wheatley to hook the rough-edged shooting style he explored in his debut effort, DOWN TERRACE, to a world that has room for both examinations of a tempestuous home life and the graphic shocks of classic horror. Think IN BRUGES meets THE WICKER MAN, then forget about all that and prepare to get righteously freaked-out.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Wheatley.

UNFORTUNATE TECHNICAL NOTE: Our usual podcast host has started giving us agita, apparently because we are just that popular, so we’ve temporarily switched to another service and had to downgrade our audio quality as a result. We’ll get this snag patched up and be back to the rich, beautiful sound you expect from MMP as soon as possible.

KILL LIST
Trailer

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Facebook Page
www.facebook.com/KillList

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Embrace the Po: Hong Kong action is celebrated in KUNG FU PANDA 2.

So, there, that’s one New Years resolution out of the way for me. A few months after the theatrical release of KUNG FU PANDA 2, I was able to score an interview with its director, Jennifer Yuh Nelson. With the home video release of the film (in just about every format available, including Amazon Instant Video and a Blu-ray boxed set that also includes the first KFP and a new short film, SECRETS OF THE MASTER), I felt it was time to raise some attention for this beautifully mounted, entertaining sequel.

KFP2 was, I felt, unjustly maligned in its original release. Thing is, what most critics seemed to feel was its greatest flaw — not enough focus on lovable doofus panda Po (Jack Black) — I saw as its greatest strength. Instead of the first film’s fish-out-of-water scenario, the sequel uses Po’s elevation to kung fu master to engage in a full embrace of Hong Kong action, casting him into a story that sees the panda facing off against a megalomaniacal peacock who has developed a weapon that may render martial arts obsolete: the cannon. It’s Jackie Chan enhanced with a lush, animation style — bridging over numerous formats, including 2D and shadow puppets — and highlighted with exquisitely choreographed battle scenes; exciting, funny, and a dazzling visual feast. For the love of martial arts, or pure, bravura animation, you need to see this.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Nelson.

KUNG FU PANDA 2
Trailer

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Official Website:
www.kungfupanda.com

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There Can Be Only One: World Champion Judah Friedlander.

You’ve got to admire the man who, having reached the highest pinnacles of human achievement, still finds it within himself to make the occasional descent and spend time with us lesser mortals. God knows, comedian and actor Judah Friedlander doesn’t need to bother with our petty activities; as universally acknowledged World Champion, he exists on a more exalted plane. Yet he has deigned this year to once again make regular day trips out to Queens, New York, where he graces the set of NBC’s 30 ROCK in his role as sketch writer (and trucker hat model) Frank Rossitano. One can only hope his cast-mates appreciate the effort.

So when my sponsor, Samsung, began their own quest for excellence with their Stage competition, I knew that I had to find out, for the sake of the contestants, what life is like when one is bestowed with the highest of accolades. Judah was gracious enough to give me a glimpse into his illustrious life, as well as discuss how it led to the creation of his book, How to Beat Up Anybody. Click on the player to hear the interview.

MEET JUDAH FRIEDLANDER: WORLD CHAMPION

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THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE WORLD CHAMPION
BUT YOU CAN HELP TALENTED HOPEFULS ACHIEVE
THEIR OWN DREAMS
VOTE NOW AT SAMSUNG STAGE!

CHECK THE VIDEO!

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Spies spying on spies spying on spies: Gary Oldman explores an elaborate conspiracy in TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY.

Long for the heady, Cold War days of espionage, when spies were spies, ideologies were economics-based, and there wasn’t all this religious brouhaha muddying up the motivations? (Enhanced interrogation, though, was still pretty much the same thing.) Well, director Tomas Alfredson (LET THE RIGHT ONE IN) takes us back to that furtive, paranoia-laced era in TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY, the big-screen adaptation of John le Carré’s celebrated novel.

Set in the early 70′s and centered on the search for a mole in Britain’s MI6, otherwise known as the Circus, Alfredson rallies a stellar cast — including Gary Oldman as le Carré’s canny spy George Smiley, John Hurt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, and Tom Hardy — to tell a tale deception and conspiracy, where friends may not be what they seem and secret masterminds may not be as secret as you might expect. It’s dark, it’s tense, it makes James Bond look like Maxwell Smart’s less-incisive brother.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Alfredson.

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY
Trailer

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Official Website:
www.tinkertailorsoldierspy.com

Continue reading »]]> I know the past can come back to haunt you, but who knew that my childhood icons would be making guest appearances at this late date? Hanna-Barbera’s classic cartoon character, Yogi Bear, had his debut some fifty-three years ago, yet when my sponsor, Müller, built an epic commercial around a whole host of pop culture personages, there was Yogi — along with another, somewhat more junior HB creation, Muttley — holding front-and-center in the crowd, clearly the leader of the gang. (You can check out the ad itself and a neat making-of video below.)

That piqued my interest: How does an affable, animated rapscallion born pre-Camelot manage to be beloved by generations who weren’t even glimmers in their parents’ eyes when he was created? I decided the only way to find out was to reach out to the man who knows: Jerry Beck, animation historian and operator of the respected news and history site, cartoonbrew.com.

We had a good, wide-ranging conversation — hear it by clicking the player above.

“Müller Wünderful Stuff”

“The Making of Müller Wünderful Stuff”

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Dream Come True: Emily Browning enters a strange world of erotic desire in SLEEPING BEAUTY.

Award-winning novelist Julia Leigh makes a hell of a directorial debut with her quiet fantasia, SLEEPING BEAUTY, the story of a young college student (Emily Browning) who becomes immersed in a strange world of desire when she signs on as employee of a service that drugs women and allows men — frequently much older — to do whatever they wish with the inert bodies (with the strict proviso that there be no penetration or damage).

Dark, provocative, erotic, the film inspires a multitude of responses, frequently within the same second of footage. And once you get past the tale’s elegant mise en scene and sensuous atmosphere, don’t be surprised to discover Leigh has posed some intriguing questions on love, death, and all the impulses that drive our species. Sex is 99% brain, after all.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Leigh.

SLEEPING BEAUTY
Trailer

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Official Website:
www.ifcfilms.com/films/sleeping-beauty

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Nowhere Near a Gilded Cage: Mikhail Khodorkovsky in custody in KHODORKOVSKY.

“World’s richest political prisoner,” now there’s a term you don’t hear much. And while OWS can make a case that there are select representatives of the 1% that deserve to see the inside of jail cell, in the case of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now serving time in his home country for charges of tax evasion and embezzlement (both trumped-up, in the opinion of many), the argument is not so clear.

In the new documentary, KHODORKOVSKY, filmmaker Cyril Tuschi incorporates interviews, stark, stylized animation, and his own personal journey to explore the story of a man who went from committed socialist to successful capitalist to political pariah. In the process, the film explores the paradoxes not just of Khodorkovsky’s own rise — a narrative that incorporates canny leveraging of a still-nascent financial system, a high-profile flaunting of his good fortune, and an ill-advised face-off with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin — but of a financial system that, in transitioning from communist to capitalist, wound up a Frankensteinian combination of both.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Tuschi.

KHODORKOVSKY
Trailer

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Official Website:
kinolorber.com/khodorkovsky

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A double agent was pivotal in the success of D-Day in GARBO THE SPY

Of all the film clips director Edmon Roch uses to compose his WW II documentary, GARBO THE SPY — and they include such eclectic sources as documentaries, dramas, both Allied and Nazi propaganda, and cartoons — the ones that he seems to rely on most come from Carol Reed’s OUR MAN IN HAVANA, the film where Alec Guinness snookers the British Secret Service by fabricating a network of Cuban-based spies under his control. Turns out that the story’s original author, Graham Greene, didn’t come up with that idea from whole cloth — during the war, a mysterious Spaniard operating in Great Britain was able to convince the Nazis that the D-day landing at Normandy was just a diversion for the actual invasion, all thanks to information provided by his own network of equally fictional informants.

GARBO THE SPY explores both the history of that spy, Juan Pujol Garcia — known to the Germans as Alaric, “Man of Trust,” and to the British as Garbo for his skill at assuming a convincing role — and how the story of his pivotal role in the war was uncovered by a group of journalists, writers, and scholars. Roch brings a wry outlook to the story — fitting, given Pujol’s rather unusual background — that turns this into an entertaining tale of high-stakes deception.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Roch.

GARBO THE SPY
Trailer

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
firstrunfeatures.com/garbothespy

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Professional Behavior: Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender take their relationship outside of the office in A DANGEROUS METHOD.

David Cronenberg is no stranger to exploring how people undo themselves by venturing into the boundaries of human sexuality. In A DANGEROUS METHOD, though, he delves into the historical figures who helped set those boundaries, and creates a drama where intellect and science are pitted against human passion and sexual politics.

The story — as adapted by screenwriter Christopher Hampton from his stage play, The Talking Cure, which in turn was based on John Kerr’s book, A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein — spins off the actual relationship between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), one of the fathers (and we use that term guardedly) of modern psychoanalysis, and Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a young woman who starts out as the doctor’s patient and eventually becomes his colleague and, as rumor has it, mistress. As Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortenson) is drawn into their orbits, the film becomes an intelligent and moving tale of people striving for the betterment of humanity, frequently against the pull of their own frailties.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Christopher Hampton.

A DANGEROUS METHOD
Trailer

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Official Website:
adangerousmethodfilm.com

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Wagner Moura in ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN.

Like DIRTY HARRY with a social conscience, the Brazilian film ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN manages to kick all kinds of righteous ass while delving into the pernicious effect of corruption on those allegedly pledged with looking after the public welfare. The follow-up to 2007′s ELITE SQUAD, ENEMY WITHIN picks up Rio de Janeiro’s hard-line Special Operations Captain Nascimento as he’s kicked upstairs to become the city’s Sub-Secretary of Intelligence and committed to upending the city’s cycle of crime by waging all-out war on the gangs who rule the slums.  Problem is: the war is too successful, and Nascimento finds his victory has released a wave of official corruption that puts him into conflict with his own colleagues.

Director José Padilha built his reputation with the incredible hostage documentary BUS 174, and here demonstrates that the skills that turned news footage into riveting drama are well suited to telling a fictional story that delves into the dark corners of Brazilian society while keeping the audience riveted with intense action.

Click on the player to hear my conversation with Padilha.

ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN
Trailer

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