Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2014

At Movie Mezzanine: Movies and Mass Shooting

Taxi Driver is considered one of the classics of Martin Scorsese’s filmography, but when that title is mentioned most don’t think of the film, they recall John Hinckley Jr. and his attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. That association has undoubtedly been permanently seared into the reputation of Taxi Driver , but it will never tarnish that picture. Such claims that cinema could be at fault for the actions of a person with mental illness are odd, but they pop up just as often as the shootings themselves. Read more at Movie Mezzanine

Review: Chef

One for the studio and one for you. That's the mantra for actors/writers/directors who want to achieve some modicum of success while maintaining artistic credibility. The idea is intriguing yet the execution rarely works as described. Should the "one for Hollywood" succeed, sequels are greenlit, franchises are spawned and then one turns to three or four. Jon Favreau made his one for Hollywood, it was titled Iron Man . Two years later the sequel was met with much less fanfare.

Review: X-Men Days of Future Past

Bryan Singer's homecoming to the franchise he built is a welcome on. The X-Men series was stagnant after his departure to take over Superman Returns and it wasn't until he and Matthew Vaughn made X-Men: First Class that Marvel's famous mutants got their swagger back. James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence added a spark to the origins of Professor Xavier, Magneto and Raven/Mystique, so it made perfect sense to use that bright spot now to combine casts for one of the best graphic novels that featured Xavier and his team.

Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

  Vampires get a bad rap as far as their depiction in pop culture goes. They are portrayed as predators endlessly stalking humans to quench their thirst. In reality, they would much rather finish that song they have spent decades working on. Feeding on humans is a Fifteenth Century problem, with sources in medicine to sell them blood, vampires focus on other pursuits such as music and literature now.

Gordon Willis (1931-2014)

Cinema lost a true great when it was announced that legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis passed away. Gordon Willis was responsible for some of the greatest looking pictures of all-time over the course of his 31 year career. His trademark shadow-play is instantly recognizable, even if movie watchers aren’t aware of his the man behind the camera, they know the works of Gordon Willis. In what must be considered one of the greatest runs ever in the history of cinema, from 1971 to 1977 Willis worked on Klute , The Godfather , The Parallax View , The Godfather Part II , All the President’s Men and Annie Hall . Those films accumulated 39 Oscar nominations between them, with three of them winning Best Picture — The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974) and Annie Hall (1977) — yet Willis himself was not nominated for any of his work on those films. Shockingly, he never won an Academy Award for his cinematography, but in 2009 Willis received an honorary Academy Award

Review: Godzilla

Toho's greatest creation came to the U.S. in 1998 and promptly crashed and burned with the assistance of Roland Emmerich. The film did poorly for the reason most of Roland Emmerich's recent films haven't done well; Emmerich has an eye for the explosions, but not of the stakes. Making matters worse was Godzilla really wasn't Godzilla, just an over-sized dinosaur scurrying about New York City.

TWIX Bites Giveaway

To promote the addition of TWIX Bites, TWIX would like to know who you would share your TWIX Bites with and they'll give you a TWIX Bites Movie Prize Pack. Prize pack includes a $15 Fandango gift card, 2 sharable bags and a large resealable bag of TWIX Bites, to award one lucky reader! To enter, log-on to Twitter reply to @nevermindpop with whom you would “share your bites with” and add the hastag #twixbites. All giveaways entries should be sent in by May 30th. Winners will be announced the following day.

Batsuit Revealed from 'Man of Steel' Sequel

Hoping to avoid being scooped by the paparazzi with the tentatively titled Batman vs. Superman due to start filming soon, director Zack Snyder released a snap of the new batmobile. Snyder hinted this was coming yesterday when he tweeted a partially obscured image of the batmobile, but not many were expecting a first look at the new bat-suit. Thoughts?

At Movie Mezzanine: Seven Deadly Sins

Kevin Spacey’s immortal turn as the sin-obsessed John Doe took Seven and launched it into the stratosphere of crime classic. The way he dispatched with sinners so heartlessly and with conviction lead me to ponder what others movie characters would have drawn his ire and scorn. Movies are, for better or worse, a medium that revels in sin of all sorts. It’s why teenagers line the block to see the latest scare-fest, or why 50 Shades of Grey is being made. Audiences love watching characters being bad and there is no shortage of actors and actresses willing to delve into those deep, dark recesses of humanity. Read more at Movie Mezzanine

Hannibal Renewed for Third Season

NBC announced this afternoon that Hannibal  would be renewed for a third season! For those of you not watching, please start. In less happy news, Community will not be brought back for a sixth season. NBC giveth and NBC taketh away.

New Look at Matthew McConaughey in 'Interstellar'

Entertainment Weekly provides us all with the very first look at Christopher Nolan’s winter release, Interstellar . A one-sheet for the film was released yesterday, but this is the first capture from the film which features Matthew McConaughey holding a Lunar Lander and lost in the space of his own mind. The new material does not reveal a lot into the film beyond worm holes and space travel, but none of that is a surprise given the notoriously secretive Nolan is at the helm. Fortunately, EW also had a brief interview with producer Emma Thomas to further speculate what the tagline for yesterday’s poster means. “The trailer highlights a line of dialogue from the film; ‘Mankind was born on Earth; it was never meant to die here.’” She added, “It emphasizes…mankind’s destiny in the universe.” Source: Movie Mezzanine

Second 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' Trailer Rocks

"The newest chapter in the Apes vs Man saga takes place after a human created virus made the apes more intelligent, but also decimated man-kind. Although the apes have begun adjusting to their new lives, the remaining humans are not ready to co-exist with the primates." The first trailer for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was enough for me to book July 11th, but this new trailer suggests that the sequel could surpass even the high expectations fans of the last film have.  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes  hits theatres July 11th.

'Interstellar' Poster Hits the Web

A one-sheet for Christopher Nolan's Interstellar  has finally been released and upon a close inspection it looks a little like the artwork for  Close Encounters of the Third Kind . Steven Spielberg was attached to direct the film for some time, so this may be a nod to the maestro from Nolan himself. Should this not whet your appetite, keep in mind a new trailer will be attached to Godzilla next week. Interstellar  hits theatres and IMAX  November 7th.