End-of-Week News Round-up

Bits and pieces from the past week or so in case you missed them:

GENERAL NEWS 

Lindsay Lohan with co-(porn)-star James Deen in The Canyons

• Walking celeb trainwreck Lindsay Lohan has completed filming the low-budget, partially crowd-funded (and non-Sundance-accepted) noir The Canyons with director Paul Schrader (Affliction), and if you've ever wondered to yourself, "Hmm what would it be like to work with Lohan on a film? Is she that bad?", then this amazing New York Times Magazine piece by Stephen Rodrick should answer all your questions (and then some). A truly eye-opening, compulsively entertaining read.
• I generally hate doing Year-in-Review lists but I ended up doing a few for Flicks.co.nz. See here for my favourite films of the year.
• Kathryn Bigelow's Osama Bin Laden manhunt movie Zero Dark Thirty is stirring a storm of controversy over its portrayal of torture lately, with lines divided between those who think it endorses torture and those who think depiction does not = endorsement. The director's now written a response to her critics in the LA Times, which you can read here. Also for more Bigelow-related reading, check out AV Club's unpacking of her "fascinating, elusive" filmography.
• Awards season is in full swing. The Golden Globes happened and Oscar nominees were announced.  

• Acclaimed Austrian director Michael Haneke (Amour) addresses the (hilarious) parody Twitter account under his name, and says he doesn't really care for it.
• A few reviews of Arnie's new action flick The Last Stand are starting to surface, with the most glowing coming from Slant Magazine.

CLIPS 

• Jodie Foster receives Life Time Achievement Award and comes out to the world:
• A full-length shot-for-shot recreation of Toy Story using Toy Story toys. Holy crap.  
• And MORE Tarantino shenanigans. Can't get enough of hearing this guy speak, especially when he's telling you he's "shutting your butt down!":

DVD NEWS

• Delays: Vendetta Films's releases of Safety Not Guaranteed and Hit and Run have been delayed until Jan 25. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is now coming out Jan 24, and Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden pushed back to March 13.
• Looking ahead to March, several cool Madman titles to keep an eye out for: Arbitrage, Searching for Sugar Man (one of last year's best docos!), Monsieur Lahzar, Turn Me On Dammit!, Elena, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present.

End-of-Week News Round-up

It's been another too-busy-to-blog week so here are a few items and news of interest:

GENERAL NEWS

• Way back in April when I last did this round-up, I featured the first look of Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock. Now's here the first look of the poster for the film. Looks fantastic.
• Resident Fatso film geek Steve is currently in the US enjoying the glorious feast-of-film that is the Fantastic Fest, and he'll covering his experience over at Flicks - here's the first entry with his cinema-hopping-partner-in-crime Andrew Todd.
• There won't be a NZ Film Awards this year, but The Moas will be happening, a "Sorta Unofficial" celebration of the year in NZ film. More details here.
• James Gunn, director of Slither and Super, has been hired to write and direct Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm not at all familiar with these characters (superhero raccoons?) but it'll definitely be interesting to see Gunn's transition from his dark indie roots to something more blockbuster-y.

CLIPS

• Cinema Ninjas - One of the odder developments in cinema-going recently, London's Prince Charles Cinema have hired to people to dress up in bodysuits to go round shhhing punters who're being noisy etc. It looks like a prank or something, but it doesn't seem to be. Watch the vid below:

• P.T. Anderson's new flick The Master is getting a lot of coverage around the place lately, here's a brief clip of him talking about it and shooting on 65mm film:
 

• This movie looks kinda embarrassing and cringe but if you're a fan of late singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley, you might to want to check this trailer for Greetings from Tim Buckley:

End-of-Week News Round-up

Time for another one of these compendium posts.... cool/interesting film/entertainment stuff that's popped up in the past week which I haven't had the time to post about until now.

GENERAL NEWS

• Here's the first look at Anthony Hopkins as as the Master of Suspense in Sacha Gervasi's forthcoming biopic Hitchcock. Verdict? I love the fatsuit. The shape of Hitchcock's head looks perfect, and can't wait to see what Hopkins does with this role.
• After initially having an exciting wishlist of slightly off-centre directors for The Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire (David Cronenberg, Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro González Iñárritu), Lionsgate have settling a much less exciting director helm the project: Francis Lawrence, the dude behind Constantine and I Am Legend who is not related at all to star Jennifer Lawrence.
• Cannes 2012 line-up have been announced and in competition are new films by Ken Loach, Michael Haneke, John Hillcoat, Jacques Audiard, Andrew Dominik and more. For full list, click here. 

CLIPS

• Trailer: Cosmopolis - hard to tell exactly what the film is about from the trailer, though from what I've cautiously read around the place, it's about billionaire Robert Pattinson trying to get across Manhattan for a haircut, or something. Can tell you this though: it looks awesomely sleek, sensual, futuristic, and certainly more vintage-feeling Cronenberg than his last few films have been.
• Viral Vid: Happy Birthday David - Michael Fassbender in creepy life-like android mode for this cute little marketing vid for Prometheus.
• Parody: Donald Duck - A Dogme Film - possibly the funniest thing I've seen this week. Imagine a live action Donald Duck film directed by Lars von Trier. Works better than you'd think.

End-of-Week News Round-up

Howdy, it's been kinda hectic being back at work, hence the lack of blogging action lately, so I think it's time for another End-of-Week News Round-up post... some interesting film-related bits and pieces from the past week in case you missed 'em.

GENERAL NEWS

• In a recent interview with Men's Journal, Mark Wahlberg said he could've stopped 9/11: "If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did." The actor has since apologised for his "irresponsible" comments.
• The upcoming The Expendables sequel will be rated PG-13 because that's the way Chuck Norris wants it. I didn't care for the first film (which was rated R18 for graphic violence here) but still, really lame.
• Quentin Tarantino's revealed his best and worst films of 2011. As usual there are some pretty weird, crappy, WTF choices (The Three Musketeers? Green Hornet??) along with the year's favourites (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Midnight in Paris).
• A massive (and hilarious) technical flub ruined a screening of Scorsese's Hugo, forcing patrons to watch the movie with ads playing on top of the film... more here.

CLIPS

• Trailer: Side by Side - documentary produced by Keanu Reeves investigating "the history, process and workflow of both digital and photochemical film creation." Looking forward to hear filmmakers like James Cameron, Steven Soderbergh and Christopher Nolan discussing the medium and where it's heading.
• Mash-up: "Hello" - Lionel Ritchie's hit ballad sung like you've never heard before.

DVD RELEASES

• A few Universal titles that were meant to come in Feb have now been delayed until March: Midnight in Paris, The Art of Getting By, Another Earth. I'm hoping Midnight will get a Blu-ray release, the initial order form showed no sign of this.
• Two of David Lynch's best films are coming to Blu-ray from Madman: Lost Highway, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
• TV watchers take note: acclaimed HBO series Game of Thrones and mini-series Mildred Pierce - just watch them and thank me later! 

End-of-Week News Round-up

Sorry it's been a bit of a mad week so haven't had a chance to post anything! Here's a quick round-up of interesting/topical news and stuff from the past week split into easy-to-digest categories:

DEATHS 

• Steve Jobs, visionary former CEO of Apple, passed away at 56. While he gave us MacBooks, iPhones, etc and revolutionised personal computing, we should remember he was also a crucial player in jump-starting Pixar. See also: amazing, powerful tribute image from a 19-year-old graphic designer in Hong Kong, and a typically great Onion piece here.
• Also RIP Charles Napier, a legend in his own right, a classic "Hey, it's that guy!" character actor who specialised in playing tough authority figures like cops and military dudes. You may not know his name, but you will have seen his face: 

CASTING

• Looks like Kurt Russell is stepping in to replace Kevin Costner in Quentin Tarantino's due-in-2012 spaghetti western Django Unchained. I would've loved to have seen Costner in the role but absolutely not complaining about Russell. 
• The weirdest, and most awesome casting news of the week has to be Werner Herzog playing a villain in Tom Cruise's next thriller One Shot, based on Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels.  
• I'm also excited to hear Steve Carrell will be tackling a non-comedic role in Foxcatcher, which, based on the subject matter, sounds like it could be a great true crime film.

TV 

• Much-missed sitcom Arrested Development is returning for a fourth season after going off-air in 2006 and a movie will follow.

DVD RELEASES 

• Magna Pacific have pulled They Call Her Cleopatra Wong and The One Armed Executioner from their October schedule, citing "high rating costs" (both titles were going to be R18). A real bummer, I was very much looking forward to having these in our library.
• Horror fan-fave Hellraiser and its sequel are on the way from Vendetta next month. Strangely these have never been on DVD here, though we've had III and IV on our site for a while now.

THE REST 

• No stranger to making big bold statements (that often get him in trouble), Danish auteur Lars von Trier has now vowed never to give interviews ever again.
• Before They Were Stars: Young Ryan Gosling belting it out on the Mickey Mouse Club (must-see!).
• It's hard to excited about anything Tom Cruise-movie-related anymore but when it's Cruise in real life doing/say weird stuff, sure: TMZ have posted a clip of Cruise doing a dance battle at billionaire movie producer David Ellison's wedding.