Trailer: Olympus Has Fallen

Hollywood's knack for producing two movies in the same year with similar-sounding plots returns with Olympus Has Fallen, one of two "Die Hard in the White House"-type blockbusters coming to a theatre near you soon (the other one is White House Down from Roland Emmerich). Directed by competent-enough go-to action-hack Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), it looks like a big, dumb hunk o' cheese, featuring Gerard Butler doing his best Jack Bauer impression, a cast of typecast familiars (Morgan Freeman and Aaron Eckhart in authority roles) and some ropey CGI effects. I'm half-there.

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.

They see me DeLoreanin', they hatin'...

Trailer: Upstream Color

For a while there (nearly 10 years!), it seemed that Shane Carruth, writer/director of the exceptional, mind-bending 2004 sci-fi indie Primer (sadly out-of-print here) would go by way of Charles Laughton (Night of the Hunter) and Barbara Loden (Wanda) as a filmmaker who would only end up making one film in their entire career. But that spell is now - rather excitingly - broken: Carruth's long, LONG-awaited follow-up, Upstream Color, is coming out this year and the full trailer's just popped up online. Based on its cryptic imagery and synopsis ("A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism"), it's clear Carruth hasn't gone down the route of easy-to-digest conventions again and the film could be something genuinely transcendent and original. Or maybe sophomoric, pretentious sub-Malick-ian twaddle. Colour me intrigued either way.

More Celebrities Read Tweets About Themselves

Those Larry King tweets: Ouch, and hilarious.

For the Star Wars Fan with Everything #24

How about an R2-D2 yarn bomb?

More Tarantino/Django Unchained Bits

I'm probably risking Tarantino/Django Unchained fatigue on this blog after the last post, but what the heck, it's a new year, and Tarantino may not be making movies anymore very soon so let's just bask in this stuff while we can. Also, next week we're giving away tickets to see the movie, so in the spirit of generating buzz, here are some clips for your viewing pleasure:

• QT on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - he tells us what he thinks of Prometheus and talks about kids movies.
• Interview with Jake Hamilton - if you don't have time to watch the whole thing, fast forward to around 13:57 for the best segment of the interview.
• Every Pop Culture Reference from Tarantino Movies in Chronological order - 'nuff said.