We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free advance screening of A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as war journalist Marie Colvin.
SYNOPSIS: In a world where journalism is under attack, Marie Colvin (Academy Award nominee Rosamund Pike) is one of the most celebrated war correspondents of our time. Colvin is an utterly fearless and rebellious spirit, driven to the frontlines of conflicts across the globe to give voice to the voiceless, while constantly testing the limits between bravery and bravado. After being hit by a grenade in Sri Lanka, she wears a distinctive eye patch and is still as comfortable sipping martinis with London’s elite as she is confronting dictators. Colvin sacrifices loving relationships, and over time, her personal life starts to unravel as the trauma she’s witnessed takes its toll. Yet, her mission to show the true cost of war leads her along with renowned war photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan) to embark on the most dangerous assignment of their lives in the besieged Syrian city of Homs. Based on the extraordinary life of Marie Colvin, A PRIVATE WAR is brought to the screen by Academy Award-nominee and critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman in his pulse-pounding narrative feature debut. The screening takes place tomorrow, Monday November 5th at 7:00pm at AMC Mazza Gallerie. If you’d like to attend, register at the Gofobo ticketing site here. Please remember all screenings are first come first served and you will need to arrive early to ensure receiving a seat. Enjoy the show!
Let’s not forget that James Cameron has not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR Avatar sequels on the way. Excited yet? If not after all of these years of waiting then chances are you’ll never be, and learning the titles of each sequel isn’t going to help. Well, here they are anyway, courtesy of BBC News who allegedly got their hands on some internal docs. I hope they’re kidding and these titles are a joke because they’re pretty lame.
The first film, opening on December 28th 2020, is titled Avatar: The Way of Water, which makes sense considering all that we’ve heard about the film taking place underwater. That should give the filmmaker a chance to deploy some of that new-fangled tech he’s been developing all of these years, and indulge a little bit in his love of diving.
The next titles won’t mean a thing. December 2021 brings Avatar: The Seed Bearer, followed in December 2024 by Avatar: The Tulkun Rider, and a year later comes the finale, Avatar: The Quest for Eywa. What’s a Tulkun Rider? No idea. Who or what is an Eywa? You got me. Guess we’ll all find out together!
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free advance screening of The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story, starring Claire Foy as hacktivist Lisbeth Salander.
SYNOPSIS: Fired from the National Security Agency, Frans Balder recruits hacker Lisbeth Salander to steal FireWall, a computer program that can access codes for nuclear weapons worldwide. The download soon draws attention from an NSA agent who traces the activity to Stockholm. Further problems arise when Russian thugs take Lisbeth’s laptop and kidnap a math whiz who can make FireWall work. Now, Lisbeth and an unlikely ally must race against time to save the boy and recover the codes to avert disaster.
The screening takes place on Monday, November 5th at 7:00pm at AMC Tysons Corner. If you’d like to attend, simply go to the Sony Pictures screening site here. Please remember that having passes does not guarantee entry and you will need to arrive early to ensure receiving a seat. Enjoy the show!
Look, spare me your emails and comments about another lame Hollywood remake. Any movie that can give me the combined talents of Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus is okay by me, even if it’s an English-language redo of 2014’s terrific Swedish dramedy, Force Majeure.
Titled Downhill, the film will star Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfuss, but intriguingly it will be directed by Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, best known for directing The Way Way Back and co-writing The Descendants. Penned by Four Lions writer Jesse Armstrong, the film centers on a family who sees their lives thrown into a chaos while at a ski resort after they narrowly missed being killed by an avalanche. There’s a lot more to the story than that, but if you haven’t seen Force Majeure it’s best to stay unspoiled. I’ll just say the husband does something that should be very funny as played by Ferrell.
I hesitate to say Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus are an odd fit for Force Majeure’s subtle but biting humor. Both are incredible actors even when not doing broad comedy and I think they can pretty much handle anything.
Filming on Downhill begins early next year! [Deadline]
Viper Club follows Helen Sterling (Susan Sarandon) who is just a normal person – she works a steady job as an ER nurse, enjoys her at-home aerobic exercises, and is a loving mother to her son Andy (Julian Moris) who is a journalist. When Andy gets sent to the Middle East to cover a story, Helen isn’t thrilled about the assignment, hoping that Andy would take on stories with less risk. Then the unthinkable happens and Andy gets taken hostage, turning Helen’s life upside down. Helen works tirelessly with different government agencies, including the State Department and FBI, to try and get her son home. These agencies tell her that she must keep the situation a secret and that any publicity may further jeopardize Andy’s life. Having to go about living her ordinary life while pretending everything is fine seems unimaginable, but Helen falls in line and goes about business as usual.
As months go by, Helen continues to feel more helpless and frustrated that these government agencies have strict protocol and aren’t doing anything in her mind. Helen goes to their offices frequently, calls for updates constantly, and keeps getting avoided. Helen decides that she must do more. One day, Helen gets approached with contact information for a woman named Charlotte (Edie Falco) – who is part of an underground community known as the Viper Club. Viper Club is made up of other journalists, their loved ones, and trusted colleagues who may be more proactive in getting her son home. Helen must make the difficult choice of whether to continue to follow the government’s strategy or put her trust in this group of people who may or may not have her and Andy’s best interests at heart.
Sarandon’s performance is what drives Viper Club. She does a masterful job of showing the pure fear, anguish, and frustration that a mother would be going through in this awful situation. This was a very difficult role, and numerous parts of the film are just Sarandon alone with her emotions, and she did a masterful job. Unfortunately, her performance isn’t enough to elevate the entire film. Viper Club is missing a general aura of unease and dread around it. This is such a high stakes situation and the film doesn’t successfully portray that. A central point of the film was to show the dichotomy between a mother’s personal ties to the situation involving her son and the almost cold, uncaring, and detached mindset that the government and official agencies have. The film was successful at showing this sense of apathy, but it may have been too successful – jeopardizing the film by removing a great deal of tension that should have been present. Writer/director Maryam Keshavarz and writer Jonathan Mastro do their best to show the relationship between Helen and Andy through flashbacks which also serve to build an emotional connection with the audience, but they are not powerful enough to leave a lasting impression. When the dust settles, Viper Club shows itself to not be revolutionary in any way, but Sarandon’s performance is worth a matinee watch or at the very least a Redbox rental.
Antoine Fuqua is known for directing a couple of different types of movies; either action films or hard-hitting crime dramas, all with a realistic edge. He’s about to do something a little different for his next film, as it will take him into the realm of sci-fi with characters that can be described as superheroic.
Fuqua will direct Infinite, about a team of near-immortal beings reincarnated after centuries. Known as “the Infinite”, the group must rely on a schizophrenic man and his vivid dreams of their past lives to defeat an evil mastermind with plans to destroy the world. The script was penned by Ian Shorr.
This should scratch the superhero itch Fuqua has had for a while, or it could steer him into taking on a film for one of the larger companies like Marvel or Warner Bros. Infinite is being set up at Paramount with Transformers‘ Lorenzo di Bonaventura producing, so expect this one to be pretty big on its own. Maybe, given Fuqua’s frequent partnerships with Denzel Washington on Training Day, two Equalizer films, and The Magnificent Seven, they can team up on this, too? [THR]
It’s almost strange to imagine a world without comic book
movies these days, I mean where would studios make their summer dollars without
a few guys and gals in tights swooping in to save the day? The truth, as us
older folks vividly remember, is that the wide cultural acceptance and
celebration of the comic-book medium is barely a decade old. There had been
smatterings of greatness and small pockets of worldwide geekery, like the 89-95
period kicked off by Tim Burton’s Batman
and put to bed by Joel Schumacher’s Batman
and Robin, but until very recently it never felt like more than a fad. The
foundation for our current top-tier status was first lain by Blade in 1996, then elevated by X-Men in 2000 and carried through by
Sam Rami’s Spider-Man trilogy (ok,
just the first two) this, of course, resulted in a huge influx of comic flicks,
great news right? Well, yes and no…you see the formula for success wasn’t understood
at that time. Studios thought that if you bought the rights to a cool property,
hired a high-profile actor/actress and mixed it in a bowl with too much CGI you
could make a million dollars. Therein laid the problem, it was ALL about the
money. I know that’s cliché to say but it’s a solid fact that if filmmakers are
passionate, or at a minimum understand, the project they’re working on the
result will be infinitely better. The simple fact was that, although they were
enjoyed by all, comic book films were still viewed as immature, unartistic,
entertainment for kids. That all changed in 2008 when two movies were released
that changed the way we looked at these films, both critically and
commercially. Of course I’m talking about The
Dark Knight and Iron Man. The
one-two punch of the most artistically accepted and commercially loved films,
one of which started an empire, opened the eyes of filmgoers around the world
to the possibilities of this genre when it’s taken seriously and done right.
The Dark Knight
is the film that destroyed the train of thought that superhero flicks were solely
about action and adventure entertainment and not artistic performance with two
of its stars earning Oscar nominations, one of which actually winning (Heath
Ledger’s posthumous win for his take on the Joker). While its predecessor, Batman Begins did it first TDK solidified
the ‘Dark and Gritty’ landscape of superhero films which remains pervasive
today, with Marvels sun and fun landscapes being the only brand to successfully
work outside of that theme. I think the biggest mark Christopher Nolan’s film
left on the world is the idea that the ‘Superhero’ of it all doesn’t have to be
the main focus. You can have a noir crime drama that just happens to involve a
guy dressed as a bat and a psychotic clown, if the story is good you can pretty
much do whatever you want. I think perhaps the most overlooked impact this
flick had on the world was its viral marketing. It’s tough to remember now but
the pre-release marketing of The Dark
Knight was an adventure in itself. There were mysterious and cryptic websites,
scavenger hunts, and campaign rallies for Harvey Dent among a myriad of other
genius moves. The whole thing stretched over an almost 18-month period prior to
the film and created this intensely fun journey for the fans who participated
right until opening day. Nothing on that scope has been attempted since but its
influence can be felt in the lead up to any big movie these days.
From dark and gritty to just plain fun we move to Iron Man, the movie that launched the
MCU. There are SO many reasons that this shouldn’t have worked when looking at
it through the prism of 2007. Iron Man himself was a C level hero who had
nowhere near the name recognition of a Batman or a Superman, really no Marvel
heroes outside of Spider-Man stood up with DC pre-2008. Jon Favreau was, at the
time, a director known for funny and conversation heavy films who’s only experience
in action was Zathura: A Space Adventure.
Robert Downey Jr., the biggest and highest paid movie star on the planet? Well
he was still clawing his way back from the hit his reputation took as a result
of his drug addiction, to call him less than a sure thing at the time would
have been an understatement. There was one person that could see the forest
through the trees, a man that is now destined to go down as one of Hollywood’s
greatest visionaries, Kevin Feige. This was a time when a comic-book film wasn’t
guaranteed a sequel, much less a franchise, yet Feige had the foresight to envision
an interconnected universe of different franchises that would stand on their
own but come together for event movies every few years. It may seem like an
obvious direction, mostly because Feige makes it look easy, but prior to this
cross-overs were a novelty that never worked on any real level. The whole MCU
was kicked off in a 30 second stinger clip that played in the middle of credits
after Iron Man ended, the famed “Marvel
Post-Credit” scene. This was nothing new at the time and had been done, mostly
for bloopers, in plenty of movies beforehand, but Samuel L. Jackson walking in
as Nick Fury and telling Tony Stark about the Avengers Initiative made the
practice a standard. As for the movie itself, all of those unlikely pieces I
mentioned earlier? They combined to create the perfect storm of awesome.
Favreau quickly proved himself as a director able to masterfully construct
action scenes and RDJ became a Phoenix personified, rising from the ashes of
his personal troubles and immediately becoming a favorite actor in the industry
by showcasing just how awesome it can be when you pair the right character with
the right actor. In the middle of the dark and gritty renaissance that was
happening Iron Man decided to do its
own thing and bring us a world that felt like our own with just enough of the
fantastic thrown in. It nailed every aspect it aimed for and raised a bar that
would only be met by its fellow Marvel Studios films.
To say these are the only influential aspects of these two
landmark films would be a lie, the honest truth is that I’m well aware of how
longwinded I am and I value your time, dear reader. The geeks have been
ascending to the pop culture thrown slowly since 2000 and finally took their
seat on the throne in 2008, in large part because of The Dark Knight and Iron Man,
since that time their take-over of all things theatrical, for better or worse
depending on who you are, has become complete. Every other week you hear
someone else talking about “Superhero Fatigue” but as long as filmmakers keep
adjusting and redefining what a comic-book movie is we will all gladly keep
showing up at theaters. We are now entering into a new era where these films
will begin to break from the action/adventure genre where they live, with films
like Thor: Ragnarok being as much a
comedy as an action flick, and the upcoming The New Mutants seeming pretty well entrenched in the horror realm.
The next step is filmmakers realizing that ‘Superhero’ isn’t a genre in itself,
but rather an archetype that can be applied to a film of any genre. I’ll check
back with you in 2028 when I recap the two movies that made that change happen!
Following his success on the horror film Mama, director Andy Muschietti was suddenly getting named to new projects on an almost-daily basis. He had a Dracula film, a Houdini film, Tom Cruise’s reboot of The Mummy was once his, and so was Sandra Bullock’s upcoming thriller, Bird Box before he left both projects. Muschietti is more sought after than ever following It‘s massive box office, and he continues to add new films at a crazy clip. Just days after attaching himself to a live-action Attack on Titan, Muschietti has added an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic, The Time Machine.
Muschietti will direct a new take on The Time Machine, based on a script he co-wrote with his sister Barbara. Leonardo DiCaprio is on board as a producer through his Appian Way banner. Wells’ novel followed an English inventor who builds a time machine and ventures into the far-flung future, witnessing a grim existence for humanity.
The book has been the source for numerous adaptations, including a lousy 2002 version that starred Guy Pearce and was directed by Wells’ great-grandson, Simon Wells.
Next up for Muschietti is sequel It: Chapter 2, and he has a live-action Robotech movie in the works. [Deadline]
Spike Lee’s 2006 film Inside Man remains the most successful of his career, earning $184M worldwide. Starring a Murderer’s Row cast of Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Christopher Plummer, and Willem Dafoe, the crime film was so well-received Lee and his stars agreed to return for a sequel, but in 2011 the project was canceled supposedly over a lack of funding. Well, after all of these years Inside Man 2 is finally happening, but not in the way it was originally conceived. Not by a long shot.
Deadline reports Inside Man 2 is currently shooting in Cape Town, but nobody from the original movie will be involved. Leading the cast will be Aml Ameen, who may be known to some for his roles in The Maze Runner, Sense8, and Idris Elba’s directorial debut, Yardie. Production Weekly lists veteran actor Akshay Kumar as being in the cast, as well. Behind the camera will be MJ Bassett, who has been at the helm for episodes of Iron Fist, Power, and the film Silent Hill: Revelation. Brian Brightly wrote the script, and here is the logline, followed by a more insightful synopsis:
The U.S. Federal Reserve is robbed by a highly organized and cleverly orchestrated team of crooks. With dozens of tourists held hostage during a 10-hour siege, an NYPD hostage negotiator (Ameen) and a federal agent join forces to rescue the hostages and foil the heist.
“A scrappy NYPD hostage negotiator (Remy) and a buttoned up federal agent (Brynn), join forces on the day the New York Federal Reserve Bank– home to millions of dollars of Nazi gold bars–is robbed by a highly organized, cleverly orchestrated team of robbers. With 41 tourists held hostage during a six hour siege, both Brynn and Remy agree that saving the hostages is their first priority, but beyond that, their m.o.’s are frequently at odds.”
Sounds pretty basic, and not having connection to the prior movie is a real letdown. Maybe this unexpected sequel will turn out to be surprisingly good, but it’s being produced by Universal’s home entertainment wing which suggests it will be a straight-to-VOD release.
Check out some set photos from the director’s Instagram below:
Over the years Bad Boy 3 has had its share of ups and downs. Directors and writers came and went, release dates were set then pulled, frequently, including just last year when Sony dropped it from the schedule then reset it for January 17th 2020. But no matter how many things happened around the long-awaited sequel nothing could be deemed even remotely official until Will Smith and Martin Lawrence BOTH agreed to return. And now that has finally happened.
Smith and Lawrence took to Instagram to enthusiastically announce that Bad Boys 3 aka Bad Boys for Life “is happening, it’s official.”
A post shared by Will Smith (@willsmith) on Nov 1, 2018 at 10:48am PDT
This is a big step forward because it was just last year that Lawrence openly stated he didn’t think the film would happen, partly due to Smith’s busy slate of projects. But it looks as if both stars have inked their deals because they look like two guys who just signed on to make a bunch of money. Those are $$$ smiles.
On board to direct are Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, best known for the FX series Snowfall. Production should begin next January, working from a script by Chris Bremner. The first two Bad Boys movies were released in 1995 and 2003, combining for $414M worldwide and turning Will Smith into an international superstar. While Michael Bay won’t be involved with this film, series producer Jerry Bruckheimer is back in the same capacity.
