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11 articles
Voicing Celebrity Concerns
20 hours ago
Movie stars sell movie tickets, but do they also sell video games? The latest title to put this question to the test is "Brütal Legend," a new action-adventure title set in a heavy-metal land of mythic creatures and crushing tunes that stars Tenacious D frontman and "School of Rock" maestro Jack Black as the voice (and likeness) of its head-banging hero Eddie Riggs.
Developed by acclaimed designer Tim Schafer (of "Grim Fandango," "Psychonauts") with Black's creative input, "Brütal Legend" is a heavily hyped game that's invested a lot in the popularity of Black, who's not only touted in ads as the lead but who even has shown up on red carpets dressed as Riggs. More so than any other recent game, "Brütal Legend" has pinned its retail hopes on players' fondness for its lead voice actor, a decision that says a lot about the industry's desire to market their games around recognizable voice talent. »
- Nick Schager
Lukas Moodysson's Mammoth Undertaking
22 hours ago
Sweden's Lukas Moodysson burst onto the international film scene with 1998's "Fucking Åmål" (or, as it was cowardly renamed in English-speaking countries, "Show Me Love"), a carefree, naturalistic drama about a reluctant romance between two small-town teenage girls. Just as ebullient is his 2000 period satire and popular favorite "Together," which focuses on the dysfunctional relationships and values of '70s left-wingers living in a commune, after which Moodysson began pursuing darker, moodier fare. 2002's critical darling "Lilya 4-ever" couldn't get much bleaker, tracing a Russian girl's journey from drop-out to prostitute to kidnapped sex slave. Following that were two avant-garde experiments: 2004's shockingly explicit take on amateur porn, "A Hole in My Heart," and his 2006 stream-of-consciousness curiosity, "Container."
Though American actress Jena Malone provided narration to that last film, Moodysson's new drama is also his first English-language production, mostly. "Mammoth" splits between three related storylines in New York, the Philippines and Thailand. »
- Aaron Hillis
Seven More "Remakes" We'd Love Werner Herzog To Direct
19 November 2009 4:50 PM, PST
Controversy has followed Werner Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" right from the start. When word got to director Abel Ferrara that his original "Bad Lieutenant" film was being remade by Herzog and star Nicolas Cage, the outspoken director wished the other outspoken director would "die in hell." Herzog's response? "I have no idea who Abel Ferrara is. But let him fight the windmills, like Don Quixote." To which Ferrara shot back, "I'd rather chase windmills than steal other people's ideas. It's lame."
Ferrara's protectiveness is understandable, but his outrage is a little excessive, particularly given that, as Herzog's insisted all along, the new film is a remake in title only. The central premise may belong to Ferrara; this particular execution, with its sweaty atmosphere and iguana hallucinations, is all Herzog. The result is like watching a jazz musician riff on someone else's composition. You appreciate both »
- Matt Singer
Breaking Down Pedro Almodóvar
19 November 2009 9:08 AM, PST
The pop art films of Spain's Pedro Almodóvar have certain trademark qualities (a vibrant, glossy look, melodrama blended with irreverent comedy and high camp, queer-friendly hedonism) that have made him an international critics' darling for over two decades. His filmography is peppered with modern arthouse classics like "Law of Desire," "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," "All About My Mother," "Talk to Her" and "Bad Education," but, even having turned 60 this year, Almodóvar has no intention of slowing down.
A follow-up to 2006's "Volver," his fourth collaboration with Penélope Cruz is "Broken Embraces," a romantic, neo-noirish drama that flashes forward and back between the '90s and today. Lluís Homar stars as a middle-aged screenwriter who gave up his career as a filmmaker once a car accident rendered him blind. Through an outrageous series of recalled memories and time-fractured reveals, the shaggy tale of his affair with Cruz's »
- Aaron Hillis
Dystopian Visions
18 November 2009 7:11 PM, PST
On our last day in Denmark, a few of us in the Cph:dox American contingent stopped by Christiania, Copenhagen's hippie paradise and self-proclaimed autonomous zone. In stark contrast to the cobblestones and slick Scandinavian design of the main city, Christiania is dirt paths and Diy housing, a neighborhood based around abandoned military barracks that were taken over by squatters in the early '70s.
It was too early for much to be going on, but on the main drag the cannabis market that's made the area a favorite for backpackers and a constant source of controversy was already open, with stalls displaying giant blocks of hash for sale, while a few nearby stands offered rasta wear. A dog trotted by, and a few dreadlocked Danes warmed their hands over a trashcan fire.
"Maybe it's just me, but this all seems incredibly 'Children of Men,'" I said.
Or maybe »
- Alison Willmore
Dancing Souls
18 November 2009 5:57 AM, PST
Envy me, because Werner Herzog's "The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" is more fun to write about than it is to watch, and it is barrel-of-monkeys fun to watch. Everything about it is wrong, so wrong that categorizing it that way is meaningless, but wrong nonetheless, down to its title (that awkward "the" on the film's opening title card, that anachronistic and irrelevant "port of call," the subtitle itself, erroneously suggesting sequel-hood, etc.).
Of course, the film has no relation to the 1992 Abel Ferrara film, except it involves a police detective who is "bad," insofar as he dopes, gambles and isn't very effective as a cop. In the first film, the character's self-immolation was an existential passion; here it's... I don't know what it is. Herzog was brought on as a director-for-hire (which is very wrong, in the grand cultural scheme of things), after screenwriter William Finkelstein ("Doogie Howser, »
- Michael Atkinson
Bad Boys Grow Up
17 November 2009 6:00 AM, PST
Let's start with a few images: A psycho jive artist dancing around as he cuts a man's ear off. A retired bullfighter slumped in front of a television set, masturbating furiously to slasher movies. Scenes like those, from Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" and Pedro Almodóvar's "Matador," pretty much secured the bad-boy reputations of their creators. Tarantino came to be regarded as a hyped-up pop culture junkie spritzing bloodshed and movie references in equal measure. And Almodóvar was thought of as something like the post-Franco John Waters, mixing '50s Hollywood-style melodrama with cheerful hedonism awash in sex and drugs.
But at this year's New York Film Festival, it was Almodóvar's latest, "Broken Embraces," that was chosen for the stately closing night slot. And about a month or so before the festival, Tarantino's latest film, the epic World War II adventure "Inglourious Basterds," became the unlikeliest hit of the year. »
- Charles Taylor
Out of Exile
17 November 2009 2:18 AM, PST
The first vampire film to ever win a prize at Cannes, Park Chan-wook's "Thirst" places the ethical questions of human-community parasitism front and center, as you'd expect from a man whose most famous films are slow-pig-sticking ordeals of retribution and moral poisoning. Park's resume is also notorious for its merciless pop-movie extremism, and at times (as in the still rather spectacular "Oldboy") you can't help noticing a basic conflict between his Chandleresque exploration of life-or-death moral justice and his lurid sensationalism.
Going all genre in "Thirst" has obvious advantages for Park; the built-in conflicts are both familiar and as old as the hills. Still, few vampire narratives outside of, say, John Hayes' "Grave of the Vampire" (1974) expressly take on the responsibility of the predator to the prey as Park does -- his hero (Mr. Korean new wave Song Kang-ho) is an earnest priest who volunteers for an experiment with »
- Michael Atkinson
The John Wooniverse
16 November 2009 4:10 PM, PST
After a less-than-stellar run in the U.S., director John Woo heads to China for "Red Cliff," a period war epic starring Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Chang Cheng and others in what's the most expensive Asian production to date.
On this week's IFC News podcast, we look at Woo's career and his signature stylings, at the immensely influential run of Hong Kong crime dramas that spawned the "heroic bloodshed" genre, and at his hits and misses stateside.
Download: MP3, 48:21 minutes, 44.3 Mb
Subscribe to the podcast: [iTunes] [Xml]
This week's keyword game prizes come courtesy of "Anvil! The Story of Anvil," now available on DVD. »
- Alison Willmore
When Viral Marketing Goes Wrong
16 November 2009 9:56 AM, PST
"2012" may have destroyed the box office this weekend, but it also did plenty of damage to Nasa, who received thousands of letters and phone calls from concerned citizens that the world was going to end in just over two years -- so much so that Nasa set up a site to specifically debunk their fears. Roland Emmerich's latest disaster flick would've inevitably inspired some to panic regardless, but these calls got an assist from Sony's viral marketing campaign for the film, which included a web site devoted to The Institute for Human Continuity that, among other things, offers visitors an opportunity to register for a lottery to increase their chance of survival when the apocalypse strikes. The move inspired some, like Stuart McGurk at the Guardian to look at the ways viral marketing "can go bad." I'd like to add to the pile four more risky movie marketing maneuvers that bombed, »
- Stephen Saito
Twilight of the Bad Lieutenant
16 November 2009 6:36 AM, PST
Holiday festivities are about to kick into full gear, but you wouldn't know it looking at this angst-ridden release slate, since the closest we come to Christmas is Nicolas Cage's "Bad Lieutenant" doing a lot of "snow." Instead, planets are discovered, new moons rise and suns set.
Download this in audio form (MP3: 18:21 minutes, 16.8 Mb)
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"Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans"
Ever since Nicolas Cage was shown clinging to his "lucky crackpipe," cinephiles have been jonesing for Werner Herzog's re-imagining of Abel Ferrara's arthouse cop thriller. After months of backbiting between Ferrara, who suggested that the film's producers "burn in hell," and Herzog's admission that he had never seen the original film, audiences will finally see Cage in the shoes of Terence McDonagh, the hopped-up, hopelessly bent detective who shakes down suspects and random pedestrians on the trail »
- Neil Pedley
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