Thursday, January 30, 2014

Gravity starring... Arnold Schwarzenegger

What if Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced Sandra Bullock in Gravity? Here's the frighteningly convincing answer:

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

For the Star Wars Fan with Everything #31

For those Star Wars-obsessed parents with toddlers... how about investing in a Tauntuan rocking horse for their next birthday?

Thursday, January 23, 2014

The Raid 2 Obliterates Sundance Crowd

...and with those few eloquent words, you pretty much have the gist of overwhelmingly orgasmic reactions to Gareth Evan's The Raid 2 which premiered at Sundance yesterday.
Due here on March 28, the sequel to the 2011 bone-crunching Indonesian actioner has generated plenty of buzz among fans, and if the tweets last night are anything to go by, then Evans has really delivered the goods, and then some. Here's a sampling of those tweets:
Comparisons to Kubrick AND Kurosawa? Holy shit! There HAVE been a few more "balanced" reviews -- like this Indiewire one, and this dude who almost vomited -- and I still do have concerns over the film's 148-minute length. But damn, I'm so ready to be broken by this movie. Click below for the latest trailer: And if you haven't seen the first one, rent it here!

Friday, January 17, 2014

The Nominees are...

Best Motion Picture of the Year 
(Don't know anything about these films? Vulture's primer is worth reading!)
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Christian Bale for American Hustle
Bruce Dern for Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf of Wall Street 
Chiwetel Ejiofor for 12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club 
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Amy Adams for American Hustle
Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock for Gravity
Judi Dench for Philomena
Meryl Streep for August: Osage County
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role 
Barkhad Abdi for Captain Phillips
Bradley Cooper for American Hustle
Jonah Hill for The Wolf of Wall Street
Michael Fassbender for 12 Years a Slave
Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Sally Hawkins for Blue Jasmine
Julia Roberts for August: Osage County
Lupita Nyong'o for 12 Years a Slave
Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle
June Squibb for Nebraska

Best Achievement in Directing 
Alfonso CuarĂ³n for Gravity 
Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave
David O. Russell for American Hustle
Martin Scorsese for The Wolf of Wall Street
Alexander Payne for Nebraska
Best Animated Feature Film of the Year 
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Ernest and Celestine
Frozen
The Wind Rises

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year 
The Broken Circle Breakdown: Felix Van Groeningen (Belgium)
The Missing Picture: Rithy Panh (Cambodia)
Jagten: Thomas Vinterberg (Denmark)
The Great Beauty: Paolo Sorrentin (Italy)
Omar: Hany Abu-Assad (Palestine)

For all the nominations, head over to IMDB.

Or if you'd prefer watching Thor announce the nominees, watch this:

Famous Movie Quotes as Charts

FlowingData converted American Film Institute's 100 most memorable quotes from American cinema into charts and the results are pretty dang cool. Click here for the complete list.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Devil Baby Attack!

This viral marketing vid for the forthcoming horror movie Devil's Due is awesome, and hilarious.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The 2014 Golden Globes... in GIFs

The great thing about Tumblr and awards shows: if you don't have the attention span to sit through three hours of cringey Hollywood back-patting, the gif-making wizards of Tumblr will capture the best, most essential moments for you. Here's a selection from the 2014 Golden Globes:
Check out the full list of winners here (our Awards section is slightly bung at the mo, it's on the list of things to fix soon).

Thursday, January 9, 2014

R.I.P. Sir Run Run Shaw

Legendary film producer/media giant Sir Run Run Shaw died on Tuesday at the incredible age of 106; I won't attempt a career-spanning obit right now but if you need a quick catch-up on who this guy was, the New York Times has a pretty good one, or try the AV Club. The long and short of it is, this man, and his brothers, who went under the production banner of Shaw Brothers, produced hundreds of kick-ass kung fu films in their lifetime.

But here's a little bit of recent history pertaining to the Shaws and DVD... Back when DVD was in its relative infancy, circa 2002, Celestial Pictures, the rights-holder to 760 Shaw Brothers films, announced that they would be digitally remastering them for the format. For film geeks everywhere, this was amazing news, since the majority of these films were extremely hard to see in any shape or form on home video. They would be subtitled in English and presented in their original aspect ratios. Although the martial arts films were Shaws' bread-and-butter, these releases also included a range of comedies, horrors, romances, musicals, thrillers, dramas and exploitation films.
A smattering of them made it here too, via now-defunct distributor Siren, and we picked up most, if not all of them for our library. So if you're remotely curious about Shaw Brothers movies or want to rewatch a few classics in memoriam, there's a bunch sitting on our shelves right now (the ones tagged with ** are essential):
All Men Are Brothers
The Assassin
Challenge of the Masters
Death Duel
Dragon Swamp
Duel of Fists
Heroes of the East** 
Heroes Two
The Heroic Ones
Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan**
Invincible Shaolin
The Lizard
My Young Auntie
The One-Armed Swordsman**
The Shadow Boxing
The Shadow Whip
Shaolin Hand Lock
Shaolin Prince
The Spiritual Boxer
36th Chamber of Shaolin**
Trail of the Broken Blade
The Twelve Gold Medallions
The Water Margin
The Web of Death

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

What Happened to Movie Posters?

Ever wonder why today's movie posters all seem so samey and uninspired? It's because they ARE. Here's a great little video breaking down the design trends and elements (floating giant heads!) that pop up time and time again, and compares them to the more visually exciting and imaginative posters of yesteryear: