Continue reading »]]>

Deal Me Some Death, Baby: Kate Beckinsale does even more of what she does in UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING.

The UNDERWORLD franchise’s relentless, death-dealing vampire, Selene (Kate Beckinsale), goes under ice at the beginning of UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING, and so does most of the series’ political intrigue, swapping out the power struggles from the previous entries in favor of even more chases, gunplay, and explosions — lots and lots of explosions. Awakened into a (nominally) future world where humanity has decimated the vampire covens and their natural enemy, the werewolf-like lycans, Selene finds herself protecting the fate of the young vamp/lycan hybrid Eve (India Eisley), and on the run from a sinister pharmaceutical corporation, all in glorious 3D. You will believe a metal-barbed whip can poke your eye out.

Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski and Dan Persons set their logic centers to neutral and debate what’s fun (i.e. Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight leather) and what’s not (plot) in this fourth installment, and whether there’s any future to UNDERWORLD’s future. They also discuss their gut-reactions to the latest crop of genre trailers, and Steve talks a little about a safe-driving film with a surprising production credit. Plus: What’s coming in theaters.

GOING TO SEE THE WICKER TREE THIS WEEKEND?
TWEET YOUR #WalkAwayReview TO @cfqspotlight
(Please don’t tweet during the movie!)

Continue reading »]]>

You Can't Go Home Again - Worst-Case Scenario: Patton Oswalt and Charlize Theron in YOUNG ADULT.

Bless screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman their twisted, little hearts. In a season rife with people bettering themselves through moody introspection, they introduce us to Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), author of young adult novels and a woman who looks within and comes away with all the wrong lessons.

YOUNG ADULT, isn’t season-specific, but it does serve as a healthy counterbalance to all that holiday growth and belonging. In it, Mavis — who generally lives on a diet of Diet Coke breakfasts and hard-liquor suppers — decides on a whim to go back to her hometown, to the bemusement of former high school nerd Matt (Patton Oswalt) and the befuddlement of her one-time sweetheart (Patrick Wilson), for whom she has returned to rekindle their romance, despite the fact that he’s now happily married and recently become a father. It’s going to take more than an Andy Williams holiday marathon to smooth out this homecoming.

Click on the player to hear the Jason Reitman press conference.

YOUNG ADULT
Trailer

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Official Website:
www.youngadultmovie.com

Continue reading »]]>

The Great Bird Has Landed: Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett in a candid moment from TREK NATION.

A son goes in search of the father he never quite knew, and the CFQ crew gets introspective enough to take a nostalgic trip back to explore one of the formative influences on their sense of wonder, Gene Roddenberry’s STAR TREK.

Come join our special guest, theofantastique.com’s John W. Morehead, as he joins Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they discuss TREK NATION, the documentary by Roddenberry’s son, Eugene, that delves not only into the landmark show, its follow-ups, and its eternal fandom, but also the man behind the trek, his strengths and his flaws. Lasting influences will be identified, favorite episodes will be discussed, lives will be lived long, and prosperity will be… uh… prospered.

Also: What’s coming in theaters.

Guaranteed: 100% “Keep on Trekkin’” Free.

Continue reading »]]>

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

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Official Website:
www.tinkertailorsoldierspy.com

Continue reading »]]>

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

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

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

Continue reading »]]>

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

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Official Website:
adangerousmethodfilm.com

Continue reading »]]>

Strike a Pose Before Striking Your Enemy: Henry Cavill (right) wages decorous war in IMMORTALS.

It’s a good week for lush, exquisite cinematography and vividly stylized worlds; maybe not so good a week for compelling narratives. In IMMORTALS, director Tarsem Singh Dhandwar uses Greek mythology as the raw material upon which to invest his skill with staging beautiful, beautiful actors in elaborate tableaux, all in the service of the tale of a lowly peasant (Henry Cavil) who, with the blessings of the gods (including former Apollo Luke Evans), rallies the bedraggled forces of Greece against a sadistic warlord (Mickey Rourke, and are you surprised?). Come join Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they admire the scenery and debate whether anything exists past the pretty facade.

Then, Larry and Dan briefly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Lars von Trier’s elegant science fiction drama, MELANCHOLIA, in which a despondent Kirsten Dunst must cope with her own sense of inertia and the threat of a rogue planet on a collision course with Earth. Plus: What’s coming in theaters.

Continue reading »]]>

The Blank Generation Gets Filled In: NOFX's Fat Mike confronts the responsibilities of fatherhood in THE OTHER F WORD.

It’s a curious path that takes one from rock outcast to full fatherhood, yet many of the practitioners of that most confrontational of  musical forms, punk, find themselves following it. In THE OTHER F WORD, filmmakers Andrea Blaugrund Nevins and Cristan Reilly have tracked down the men who built lives upon artistic rebellion — prime amongst them their main subject, Pennywise’s Jim Lindberg, but also Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath, Blink-182′s Mark Hoppus, Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Flea, Everclear’s Art Alexakis, and Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, among others — and explored the effort that goes into reconciling one’s creative soul with shopping for school supplies.

The final result is a fascinating and occasionally moving exploration of men who confront not only careers that demand increasing amounts of time away from home just when it’s least advantageous, but who also have to face how their own rebellious and sometimes tortured youths might affect how they approach their responsibilities as fathers.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Nevins and Reilly.

THE OTHER F WORD
Trailer

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

OFFICIAL WEBSITE
theotherfwordmovie.com

Continue reading »]]>

Street Tougher: Adult Swim's BLACK DYNAMITE.

Come 2012, Adult Swim is going to get bad-ass. In honor of the grand and sometimes delirious world of blaxploitation, they’ve latched onto the 2009 feature satire, BLACK DYNAMITE, and are bringing it to the video screen as half-hour, animated series.

With the film’s Michael Jai White and Byron Minns continuing their roles as producers, writers, and stars — White as ex-CIA agent Black Dynamite; Minns as compatriot Bull Horn — plus the feature’s director Scott Sanders helming the episodes and THE BOONDOCKS’ Carl Jones backing them up as exec producer, the show promises to carry forward with the movie’s vision of a world where the hair is big, the lapels are wide and the action is nonstop.

Adult Swim brought in White, Minns, Jones, and Sanders — plus Kim Whitley, who plays Honey Bee — for their roundtables, and we got to speak with all of them. Click on the player to hear the show.

Continue reading »]]> You never forget your first Roger Corman film. Mine was THE TERROR, which I admittedly was drawn to out of a combined curiosity over a film that was shot in two days on leftover sets, and that featured a young Jack Nicholson before he became THE Jack Nicholson. But whether it was the cheap-ass drive-in fare with unforgettable titles like ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS or the surprisingly trenchant horror-comedy cheapies like LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS or the lush Poe adaptations that essentially defined Vincent Price for the balance of his career, or the first shots he gave to directors like Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich (TARGETS, yeah!) and Joe Dante, or BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, the STAR WARS knock-off that was more entertaining than any of the official prequels, the man has placed his indelible stamp in the minds of countless genre film fans.

Corman was at the con to sign autographs and promote the new, career-spanning documentary, CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL, and took a few minutes to talk with us.