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1-20 of 42 articles from 2009 « Prev | Next »
Top 25 Movies of 2009: Honorable Mentions and Movies #21 - 25
28 December 2009 10:31 AM, PST
| Rope of Silicon
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Top 25 Movies of 2009
Introduction, Honorable Mentions and Movies #21 - 25
What's your overall opinion of the movies of 2009? I ask because moving into December I would have called it a downer year, and if you base your opinion of a year's worth of movies on the blockbusters of the year you may be a bit mixed. While films such as Star Trek, District 9 and Avatar found fans all around the world, films such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Terminator Salvation, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, Angels and Demons and Watchmen were met with mixed-to-highly-negative reviews from critics and filmgoers alike. A lot of money was made, but I think we all know money doesn't always translate to quality.
There were some out of the blue surprises such as The Hangover and Paranormal Activity and Pixar again impressed us all with Up. Personally, it's the smaller to mid-level films
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- Brad Brevet
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John Woo to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award
23 December 2009 8:20 AM, PST
| Cinematical
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He couldn't have done it without his specially-trained slow-motion doves. The BBC is reporting that John Woo -- whose last Us film was the appropriately titled Paycheck -- will be receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award at 2010's Venice Film Festival.
All kidding aside, it's hard to argue with the festival organizers: "The acknowledgment recognizes a filmmaker who in recent decades, with his revolutionary conception of staging and editing, has renewed action movies to the core, introducing an extreme stylisation close to visual art, both in Asia and in Hollywood."
Woo first gained international attention with the action films The Killer and Hard-Boiled, and translated that success to English audiences by directing a number of high-profile American studio films like Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2. I like to believe that all of those movies starred the same doves. His impact on the action genre -- not just films, but video
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- John Gholson
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The Notable Films of 2010: Part One
15 December 2009 7:47 AM, PST
| Dark Horizons
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After such success with this last year, today comes the first in a multi-chapter look at the various cinematic releases hitting the U.S. in 2010.
Each 'Volume' contains brief descriptions and editorial opinion/analysis of around 25-30 films, and at present it's looking to run around nine volumes in length.
Expect the remaining ones to go up between now and the first official weekend of releases on January 8th.
13
Opens: 2010
Cast: Jason Statham, Alexander Skarsgard, Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone, 50 Cent
Director: Géla Babluani
Summary: A remake of 2005 French thriller "13 (Tzameti)". A naive young man assumes a dead man's identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence, and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men.
Analysis: Remakes are very common, the same director remaking his own film in English is rarer but still not unheard of ("Funny Games," "Bangkok Dangerous," "The
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- Garth Franklin
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The Notable Films of 2010: Part One
15 December 2009 7:47 AM, PST
| Dark Horizons
| See recent Dark Horizons news
»
After such success with this last year, today comes the first in a multi-chapter look at the various cinematic releases hitting the U.S. in 2010.
Each 'Volume' contains brief descriptions and editorial opinion/analysis of around 25-30 films, and at present it's looking to run around nine volumes in length.
Expect the remaining ones to go up between now and the first official weekend of releases on January 8th.
13
Opens: 2010
Cast: Jason Statham, Alexander Skarsgard, Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone, 50 Cent
Director: Géla Babluani
Summary: A remake of 2005 French thriller "13 (Tzameti)". A naive young man assumes a dead man's identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence, and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men.
Analysis: Remakes are very common, the same director remaking his own film in English is rarer but still not unheard of ("Funny Games," "Bangkok Dangerous," "The
»
- Garth Franklin
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Interview: John Woo
6 December 2009 6:02 PM, PST
| Cinematical
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When I was in college in the 90s in Austin, Texas, I used to frequent a video store called "I Luv VIdeo." The locals all called it "I Heart Video," though, because of their distinctive sign. They had an amazing array of video tapes from all over the world, including a huge section of Asian cult hits. This is where I was introduced to John Woo and his movies like Hard Boiled, The Killer, and Bullet in the Head. The man is an amazing director, but since moving to Hollywood his work has been erratic. For every Mission: Impossible 2, there's a Windtalkers. For every Face/Off, there's a Paycheck.
Red Cliff is his first film since Paycheck, and it's a triumphant change for Woo as he moves into epic storytelling with a film so large it had to be split into two parts. Unfortunately, American audiences only received a cut-down version of both films,
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- Kevin Kelly
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John Woo's Return to Asia: They Have Confidence in Me, Unlike Hollywood
25 November 2009 4:38 PM, PST
| JustPressPlay.net
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"I'd never get used to the meetings. I hate talk. I don't know how to talk."
John Woo was describing the difference between working in Asia and in Hollywood when he made a point to laugh at his own inability to adapt. It's not an alien trait in creative types, who are typically more adept at invention than negotiation. Though he seemed reluctant to criticize the American film industry, Woo had nothing good to say about it, either. One only had to look at the dip in quality in the director's filmography to suspect that he never fully adjusted.
Now having taken a productive six-year respite, he returns to America with a film called Red Cliff, brought back from his Chinese sojourn. It shouldn't surprise any of his fans that it shows a long-awaited return to form.
Seventeen years ago, John Woo was king of his genre. After a string
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- Arya Ponto
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'Red Cliff' is John Woo's Best Action Epic in Over a Decade
24 November 2009 9:05 PM, PST
| CinemaSpy
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Film geeks still slaver over the early output of John Woo such as Hard Boiled and The Killer for their devotion to style and fantastic action sequences. However, the mid-90s and early aughts brought disappointment in the director for his less-than-stellar fare including Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Hard Target, the shockingly bad Mission: Impossible II, and the forgettable Philip K. Dick adaptation Paycheck. But with exhilarating, epic action reminiscent of both Braveheart and Hero, the ancient Chinese war film Red Cliff restores Woo to the hall of the hallowed. It has the director's trademark style in spades, but it never skimps on story or character development.
Red Cliff is the most expensive movie in Asian cinema history, and it's easy to see where the money went. Countless actors in period costumes, numerous special effects shots, and impeccable sound all contribute to a masterfully created film that matches Hollywood's high standards with its impressive visuals.
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Movie Review: Red Cliff (2009)
20 November 2009 12:36 PM, PST
| Rope of Silicon
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Photo: Magnet Releasing
In searching for a way to describe John Woo's Red Cliff the best I can come up with is to call it exactly what it is, a beautifully rendered 208 A.D. Chinese epic living in the world of a John Woo blockbuster popcorn feature. However, such a description seems almost contradictory, but nonetheless as accurate as I can get when referring to this equally playful, romantic and violent war story loosely based on the 14th-century Chinese novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms."
I wish I was more familiar with the early work of director John Woo, but other than his highly acclaimed Hard Boiled, I'm afraid my knowledge is limited to his mixed bag of Hollywood features with Face/Off being my favorite of the bunch. However, I guess I'm not entirely at a loss as Woo has commissioned one of his Hard Boiled stars in
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- Brad Brevet
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The view: John Woo's departure from Hollywood is a loss to us all
20 November 2009 9:30 AM, PST
| The Guardian - Film News
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Once hailed as the man to shake up Hollywood, the maestro of dizzying, exquisitely choreographed action movies has returned to the far east
Let's say from the start that the life of a major league film-maker, with a thriving career in several corners of the globe, is not one to be sniffed at. That said, it's hard not to feel some small twinge of fellow feeling for John Woo, Hong Kong's onetime bullet-spraying master of the action genre. You may not have heard his name for some time but he was, in the early years of this soon to be ex-decade, still being spoken of as the dominant force of the film industry's future. "The most influential director making movies today," The New York Times called him back in 2002, adding, "Woo embodies the globalising forces that have shaped motion pictures in the last two decades."
Which makes it all the
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- Danny Leigh
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Film: Review:Red Cliff
19 November 2009 12:02 PM, PST
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Financed for $80 million, the most money ever allotted to a Chinese production, the immense period action epic Red Cliff is John Woo’s first film in the six years since Paycheck ended—for the time being, anyway—his rocky sojourn in Hollywood. From the looks of it, the cultural exchange cut both ways: Woo’s flair for slo-mo theatrics has become a common visual stamp for Hollywood actioners, while his longtime interest in Western themes found a natural home in America, even though the blockbuster conventions of movies like Mission: Impossible II often eclipsed those themes. Bringing all his
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Interview: John Woo On Red Cliff And Wanting To Make A Musical
19 November 2009 8:56 AM, PST
| cinemablend.com
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John Woo is a master of action movies, of guns and explosions and hardened criminals and the things that defined 90s male-centric filmmaking. So what happens when he goes back to a past without handguns? Red Cliff, Woo's immense epic recounting a famous event in Chinese history, a David and Goliath story played out across thousands of warships, fireballs, and one very well-timed tea ceremony.
We talked to Woo at a roundtable interview a while back, in which he graciously talked about all the reasons he's returned to make films in China (his last English-language film was 2003's Paycheck), working again with Tony Leung, and how what he really wants to make is a musical. Yes, a musical. Even several decades into his career, John Woo is clearly still full of surprises. You can see one of them in Red Cliff, in theaters now.
Are there any other genres you
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cinemadaily | Back in Action: John Woo’s “Red Cliff”
18 November 2009 10:49 AM, PST
| IndieWIRE
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From international action auteur (breakout hit “Hard Boiled”) to Hollywood hack (2003’s widely panned “Paycheck”), John Woo’s career has ridden a critical rollercoaster. “Now he’s back, in two senses: back making movies in Asia and back in theaters with ‘Red Cliff,’ a nearly two-and-a-half-hour historical epic set in the third century A.D. that reunites him with Tony Leung, one of the stars of ‘Hard Boiled,’” writes Mike Hale in the New …
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Tuesday Morning Foreign Blu-ray disc Report: "Red Cliff" and "Red Cliff 2" (John Woo, 2008)
17 November 2009 8:07 AM, PST
| The Auteurs
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A critic and enthusiast as old as myself was feeling bad for director John Woo a few years back. The American-produced 2002 World War II epic Windtalkers, concerning Native American code-breakers, was both widely misunderstood and unfairly subject to Private Ryan fatigue. It threw one-time cinephile cult-favorite Woo's already tentative Hollywood career into a tailspin; or at least that's how it looked to both his American claque and the detractors who felt his highly personal style of action-movie direction created too much friction with Tinseltown convention. His next picture, the indifferent, star-driven P.K. Dick adaptation Paycheck, provided a ready-made punchline concerning its ambitions and executions with its very title.
So rather than force the issue, Woo and longtime producing partner Terence Chang headed East once more, to embark on the most ambitious project of their long on-hold Asian careers: a massive two-part historical epic budgeted at $80 million—the biggest Asian-movie budget in history,
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Tom Cruise Not Attached to John Woo's 'Flying Tigers' ... Yet
9 November 2009 1:32 PM, PST
| Cinematical
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Is John Woo going to work with Tom Cruise again? Quite possibly, and in a World War II setting to boot. Woo has been in a hold pattern over Hollywood ever since Paycheck came out, although he's recently struck gold with both audiences and the box office overseas with Red Cliff, which hits American shores on November 20th. Now he's circling Flying Tigers, a project about the first American volunteer group in the Chinese Air Force during WWII.
We spoke to Woo recently about Red Cliff, and you can read the full interview with him later this week. However, we couldn't resist sneaking in a question about Cruise, and you can read what we got after the break.
Filed under: RumorMonger, Tom Cruise
Continue reading Tom Cruise Not Attached to John Woo's 'Flying Tigers' ... Yet
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- Kevin Kelly
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Exclusive Clip From John Woo's 'Red Cliff'!
22 October 2009 11:32 AM, PDT
| Cinematical
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John Woo's Red Cliff isn't just the most expensive Asian movie ever made, it's also an epic testament to history and actual wars that were waged on both land and sea. In China the film was four hours long and split into two parts, but American audiences are getting a 2.5 hour version that (unfortunately) has a lot trimmed out of it. There are massive battles, martial arts, trickery, and of course, doves. It is a John Woo film, after all. It is also awesome, and enough to make you forget that he directed Paycheck.
Check out the exclusive clip after the jump which features the initiation of the climactic clash between Cao Cao and Zhou Yu's forces. This is just one of three massive battles in the film which is available today on VOD, Amazon, and the Xbox, and will appear in theaters on November 18th. This movie marks
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- Kevin Kelly
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John Woo: 'After Paycheck, I Couldn't Get Better Scripts'
13 October 2009 7:15 AM, PDT
| Movieline
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After building a trailblazing career as an action director in Asia, John Woo left for Hollywood over fifteen years ago to make megabudget films like Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II. Still, the director always intended to return to his home country and bring his blockbuster knowledge to bear on a Chinese production, and he's done just that with Red Cliff, a massive war epic taken from Chinese history. The film was such a success in China that it outgrossed Titanic there; it'll have its Stateside debut next Friday through video-on-demand services before opening in theaters November 20th.
I sat down with Woo last week to talk about Red Cliff, his career, and his departure from Hollywood after directing the Ben Affleck thriller Paycheck. Part of our conversation (about what two English-language films might lure Woo back to the States) was published on Movieline last Wednesday; here's the rest.
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Woo's Le Samourai?
8 October 2009 3:29 PM, PDT
| JoBlo.com
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When it comes to major influences, you'll see the name of French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville pretty high on the lists of craftsmen such as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and mayhem maestro John Woo.
While it's been a number of years since Woo's last Hollywood attempt (um, Paycheck), he tells Movieline that he's not yet finished with Tinseltown. In fact, he says he's interested in doing an American remake of Melville's 1967 crime noir masterpiece Le Samourai (one of my own all-time
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- Dave Davis
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John Woo Update: A Remake of ‘Le Samourai?’
8 October 2009 2:04 PM, PDT
| ScreenRant.com
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Since 2003’s much-panned Paycheck, American audiences haven’t heard much from the often-imitated action auteur, John Woo. But he hasn’t been resting on his laurels. In fact, he’s been adding feathers to his cap. His latest film, Red Cliff, is an over four-hour-long historical epic that broke the record for the highest-grossing film in China (a title once held by Titanic).
However, Red Cliff, like Woo’s next project, Jianyu Jianghu (The Swordsman’s World), is in Chinese. And we all know that subtitles - especially on an action film that won’t play with the art-house types - dooms a film to limited release in America. So when Will the director return to American screens with an English language film?
IMDb lists a slew of projects in development, but the two Woo is most excited about haven’t been announced till now. One is a remake of
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- Brian Gresko
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Mill Valley Film Festival '09: Honorary Guests and Must-Sees
8 October 2009 1:48 PM, PDT
| JustPressPlay.net
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The Mill Valley Film Festival opens tonight, filling the next 10 days with some of the most anticipated films of the rest of the year, as well as a selection of international films making its way to the Bay Area. In addition, the festival will also host the awarding of talents such as Woody Harrelson, Clive Owen, Uma Thurman, Jason Reitman and screen legend Anna Karina.
We'll have reviews coming in for the festival soon, but for the moment, here's a brief preview of what to look for.
Clive Owen gets a spotlight for bringing his latest work, the patriarchal drama The Boys Are Back, which opens the festival tonight. Owen plays a father who has to raise his two sons on his own after his wife's sudden death. As part of the program is a screening of Owen's breakout role in the gambling thriller Croupier.
Paired with fatherhood is Motherhood,
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- Arya Ponto
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John Woo Wants to Remake 'Le Samourai'?
8 October 2009 10:47 AM, PDT
| Rope of Silicon
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Movieline has posted a few snippets from their interview with Red Cliff director John Woo, whose new film is the first feature length film he has released since 2003's abysmal Paycheck. It's his return to Chinese language films, but as he tells Movieline's Kyle Buchanan, "It doesn't mean I have given up on Hollywood."
Nope, instead he has a pair of films he would like to make, the first being an English-language remake of John-Pierre Melville's outstanding 1967 feature Le Samourai, a film Buchanan says Woo already touched upon so much with his Chow Yun-Fat starrer The Killer, that he has nearly remade the film already. I haven't seen that film, but the idea of someone trying to get Le Samourai remade now seems impossible. Woo says, "I want to make it into a modern film," but the quiet nature of Melville's film simply isn't a feature that can be brought
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- Brad Brevet
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