With the festival season fast approaching (Coachella is just around the corner) one of the most dynamic festivals of the year is kicking off. SXSW in Austin comprises of Film, Music and Interactive conferences. Growing in popularity each year the Film part of the festival has become renowned for premiering the hottest new independent films (last year’s festival screened 250 films – 54 of those being world premieres).
One of the focuses this year (although not showing) has been the Robert Rodriguez produced Predators – a follow up to John McTiernan’s Predator. Directed by Armored’s Nimrod Antal the film looks likely to far surpass the dismal Alien vs. Predator series we’ve had to endure in recent years. At the screening of trailers and a scene from the movie, the new Predator head was also revealed – which apparently was the highlight of the whole promotion. With a cast that includes Adrien Brody, Danny Trejo and Laurence Fishburne, maybe it can even live up to the original. Check out a sneak peek above, and Rodriguez discussing the project at SXSW below.
The concept for the upcoming film Machete (to be released on April 16) has been around for a while now. In fact, ever since Danny Trejo appeared in Desperado, Robert Rodriguez has believed he should be the Mexican Jean-Claude Van Damme. In fact, Rodriguez wrote the Machete screenplay in 1993 — around the time of Desperado — and has pulled many sequences from that script for his recent films. Now the project has finally come to fruition, with Trejo cast perfectly.
The film looks typical of both its producer (Quentin Tarantino) and director. Trejo plays the assassin Machete, a Mexican ex-federale who’s hired to kill a corrupt Senator selling illegal immigrants in the United States. The trailer — simultaneously bloodthirsty and funny — speaks for itself, but what it fails to show is the stellar cast behind Trejo, which includes Robert De Niro, Steven Segal, Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba, Rose McGowan and Cheech Marin. Take a look at the trailer above for what is sure to be a Rodriguez classic.
Since the moment it was announced Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin were to host this year’s Academy Awards, I had a feeling it would be a good year for the Oscars – and it most certainly was. In terms of numbers, it had the largest audience in five years- since Million Dollar Baby scooped the top prize, but it was more than the ratings that made last night a success. The shadow that had overcast the evening for me was the fear that Avatar would win Best Picture. Yes it was a wildly successful and visually spectacular movie – but best film of the last year? Absolutely not. As soon as Kathryn Bigelow was announced as Best Director for the Hurt Locker I was convinced that was it – Avatar had to win a major prize and all that remained was Best Picture. Well thankfully I was wrong and the Hurt Locker did pick up Best Picture. In fact indie films dominated the awards last night – receiving twelve statues compared to the nine that films from major studios collected.
As for the rest of the ceremony itself, the hosts were funny – though maybe they could have pushed the envelope a little further – and there was an incredibly touching tribute to John Hughes. The real scene stealer though was Ben Stiller, who presented the award for Best Makeup in character as a Na’vi from Avatar (Avatar was not nominated in this category). Take a look at the video above to watch him garner more laughs than all the other presenters put together.
Over the years I have spent a lot of time in London, and over the years I’ve watched street artist Banksy tag almost every street at one time or another. The first I saw of his art were the rats. Day by day I would notice a new painted rat; then, over time, the rats started doing things: listening to stereos, sweeping in French-maid outfits, spilling radioactive liquid. Eventually they began to proclaim “Your time will come.” Shortly thereafter came the gorillas. The same image on every wall, road and sidewalk in Soho: a hunched gorilla bearing a placard that read “Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge.” It made me laugh, and at the time I had no idea the fame the artist behind it would amass.
Now, of course, you’d be hard-pressed to find many who don’t know about Banksy. If you saw one of his images on a wall and managed somehow to take that part of the wall (I have seen this done), the profits you could make would have you living quite comfortably for a few years. How this least commercial artist’s work has become the source of quarrels over money and celebrity auctions I don’t quite know, but now Banksy is bringing focus back to the art.
At the recent Sundance Film Festival, he premiered Exit Through the Gift Shop. The film was as elusive as Banksy himself; it wasn’t even announced in the Sundance schedule. It chronicles Banksy taking on Los Angeles (anyone remember the Guantánamo prisoner on the Disneyland ride?), and the man he chose to shoot it was Thierry Guetta. Guetta had a camera (which he had been using to film other graffiti artists for years), a giant ladder and an encyclopedic knowledge of the best walls to tag in L.A: in short, he was Banksy’s perfect accomplice. The film Guetta ended up giving to Banksy, Life Remote Control, fell far below Banksy’s expectations; he began to think of Guetta less as a filmmaker and more as “maybe just someone with mental problems who happened to have a video camera.” So Banksy re-cut the film himself. Despite documenting the relationship of the artist and the arguably disturbed “filmmaker,” the movie’s essential point remains: The art is the focus, and that’s exactly as it should be.
So the trailer for Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps has just been released. I’m pretty sure everyone I know has seen the first movie; it was a pretty seminal ’80s film. I had always hoped Oliver Stone would make a second — who could honestly ever have enough Gordon Gekko? I know sequels have a tendency to fall short of their predecessors, but that seems mainly to be the case when a studio rushes out the second film as quickly as possible in order to replicate the money made by a box-office smash.
In this case, enough time has passed that the story ought to work — it makes sense, with Gekko coming out of jail. Shia LaBeouf has been cast as the young stockbroker (with luck he’ll have more chance to shine than he did in that travesty Transformers), and Frank Langella is also in the film — I’d take any excuse to watch him in action! Check out the brand-new trailer above.
Spider-Man 4 has officially been scrapped. Well, at least in terms of its original cast, director, script — everything, basically. The trilogy — which has made an astounding $2 billion worldwide — is being revamped due to director Sam Raimi’s decision to pull out of the fourth installment. Spider-Man without the original cast will never have the same buzz for me; Willem Defoe and Alfred Molina were two of the best villains I’ve ever seen (though no one will ever best Alan Rickman in my eyes!). Raimi’s decision to withdraw was based, apparently, on Sony Pictures’ pushing for a summer release date. Raimi felt that to get the film out by then would have compromised its “artistic integrity.” I’m not sure how much artistic integrity was left in the series by the third film, but given that Sony is now moving the revamped movie’s release date to 2012 anyway, surely the studio could have accommodated Raimi?
There’s talk already that James Cameron might take charge, which I hope against hope is not true. Yes, he’ll make a great 3D movie with incredible effects — but there are many, many directors out there who are much better at plot development. Today, Tobey Maguire released the following statement: “I am so proud of what we accomplished with the Spider-Man franchise over the last decade. Beyond the films themselves, I have formed some deep and lasting friendships. I am excited to see the next chapter unfold in this incredible story.” The Spider-Man films were fantastic. Let’s hope that whatever Sony does next can live up to them. (more…)
