Movieblaze

The trailer for Fantastic Mr. Fox has gone live on Yahoo, and while it’s a big grainy it’s our first real taster of what we can expect from the stop-motion adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl’s children’s book. And our initial reaction? The voice work’s great; the rest may take a little getting used to.

The book sees Mr Fox butt heads (not literally) with three local farmers, the nasty Boggis, Bunce and Bean, who are determined to catch him but only end up blowing his tail off. As the farmers try to dig up the Foxs’ burrow, Mr Fox and his family lead a motley band of tunnelling animals after the farmers’ food supply.

By the looks of this trailer, the movie’s story has changed things up somewhat for the screen, but George Clooney’s Mr Fox still seems like the confident, devil-may-care character we all remember. The rest of the voice cast includes Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Willem Dafoe, so you can bet it sounds good, while the animation has a very retro feel that we suspect we might get to like about 10 or 15 minutes after the film starts.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is out on October 23 in the UK, but to read more between now and then pick up the new issue of Empire magazine, which profiles the film in more depth.

Above you will find a quintet of red eyes Vampires, known in the Twilight Saga: New Moon as the Volturi. For those unfamiliar with the ridiculously popular series of books they are basically the royalty of the Vamp world, suffice to say you may (or may not) recognise two of them as Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning, someting which pleases me greatly, if there was something Twilight lacked it was some good old thesping!

Having read the books I can’t say the look convinces me though in this tiny scale it is hard to tell for sure, one thing I do know is that neither Sheen nor Fanning are ever bad despite the film, not that New Moon is looking to be anything less than thoroughly entertaining. Anyway to tell you more about the characters would be to rob you of some of the surprise of the film but suffice to say they won’t be in it all that much, making a much more prominant appearance in later books….and films we can only expect!

Variety’s story is more concerned that the screenplay is being written by Jon Spaihts, but the headline and the one-line explanation are enough to make me run around the room with glee: Ridley Scott is now attached to Alien 5 as director.

Commercials director Carl Erik Rinsch was originally reported to be the Scott Brothers’ choice to helm, with their Scott Free Productions, well, producing. But there’s no mention of Rinsch this morning. Were Fox unconvinced? Or did Ridley start getting more interested the more involved he became?

Whatever the circumstances, what does seem to be officially confirmed now (rather than just rumoured and hoped for) is that the film is a prequel to the 1979 original, presumably dealing with the events that led the elephant-faced Space Jockey and his croissant-shaped ship to crash on Giger World. 

Spaihts’ pitch to Fox and Scott Free was apparently enthusiastically received. Well clearly, since he got the job.  I’d hope Fox and the Scotts reaction wasn’t “meh, that’ll do”. Prolifically busy all of a sudden, Spaihts is also involved with Shadow 19, Passengers,The Darkest Hour, Children of Mars, and George and the Dragon. But the Alien prequel will be his highest profile gig yet.

Hard to imagine a higher, really…

Hot on the heels of news of the just confirmed news that Fantastic Mr. Fox‘s world premiere will be at the Times London Film Festival comes another look at the furry fellow in action, courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

The pic, which shows George Clooney’s Mr. Fox with Kylie, a pugnacious possum voiced by Simpsons producer Wallace Wolodarsky, joins last week’s USA Today images in giving a unusually comprehensive look at the subterranean world Wes Anderson has created from Roald Dahl’s classic tale.

Head over to The Playlist meanwhile for a clutch of others, including a glimpse at nasty farmers Boggins, Bunce and Bean scheming to excavate the troublesome fox and his family.

“[Fantastic Mr. Fox] was the first book I ever owned,” Anderson told USA Today. “My brothers and I loved Mr. Fox and all the digging. We were obsessed with underground forts and tunnels.” He’s certainly put his heart and soul into the project, at one point even staying at Dahl’s Buckinghamshire house and working on the screenplay in the shed where Dahl wrote his most famous books.

In case you’re wondering why all the good guys are voiced by Americans (George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson,  Bill Murray, Adrien Brody et al) and Brits play the villains (okay, Dubliner Michael Gambon voices Bean), blame Gorgeous George. “It started with George,” producer Allison Abbate told The Times. “We didn’t want him to do an English accent.”

OK, you can probably blame Don Cheadle too for exposing Clooney to that British accent.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is out in the UK on October 26.

Jon Hamm and Rebecca Hall have joined Ben Affleck in Boston-set crime thriller/romance The Town. The Mad Men actor will play an FBI agent hot on the heels of blue-collar bank robber Doug MacRay (Affleck), who uses Hall’s bank clerk as bait to snare his man.

The Town, Affleck’s second stint behind the camera after Gone Baby Gone, is based on Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince Of Thieves. Hogan has adapted his own book for the screen, aided and abetted by Peter King and with a polish from Affleck, for whom The Town marks a return to home soil.

The Town‘s producer Graham King has a similarly impressive Boston-based crime pedigree, with his mantlepiece boasting an Oscar for The Departed.

Hall, one of last year’s Orange BAFTA Rising Star nominees, has the challenge of swapping her English accent for the New England version, although if her turn as Frost/Nixon’s socialite Caroline Cushing is anything to go by, she won’t have much trouble.

If she and Affleck can produce anything like the smouldering Clooney/Lopez chemistry of Out Of Sight, and Affleck proves as handy directing himself as he was his brother in Gone Baby Gone, we could be in for a treat. At the very least, we’ll get to see the FBI-ed Hamm in more sharp suits.

Filming on The Town is scheduled to start in the Boston suburb of Charlestown in late August.

Starring:Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, Luis Guzman, James Gandolfini

Director:Tony Scott

Writer(s):Brian Helgeland, John Godey

Cinematography:Tobias A-Schliessler

Original Score:Harry Gregson-Williams

Running Time:121 Mins.

Much has been made of The Taking of Pelham 123(2009) not being as good as the original film based upon John Godey’s novel, that 1974 version starred Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw respectively as train controller and criminal. Well, that must be one hell of a good film because I’m happy to report that next to Star Trek this is THE film of the summer, unless G.I. Joe miraculously turns out to be a cinematic marvel, well we can hope!

It’s a pretty simple premise, criminal Ryder (Travolta) takes over a train (the titular 123) and holds its 18 passengers hostage with demands for $10 million dollars in precisely one hour, should this not happen a hostage will die every minute thereafter. Conducting the hostage negotiation is Garber, an unwittingly involved train controller. Pretty run of the mill plot wise you will likely agree and that, I think, is the beauty of the film, its simplicity is key to its success.

The pairing of director Tony Scott with star Denzel Washington is a fruitful combo, this being their fourth time of working together and it might just be the best yet, their last two efforts (Deja Vu and Man On Fire) were both great in thier own ways, at once very original yet sharing Scott’s now iconic style, the former taking it to extremes with the jumpy editing and panning camera swoops giving of a jittery and tense air. This is evident once more with The Taking of Pelham 123 but has been toned down to allow the characters more time to breathe and grow.

In their exchanges, which incidentally are the films highlights, Washington and Travolta excel, yes Travolta is a tad ott but is that not why we love to watch this guy work his magic (if he isn’t dancing at least), and Washington exudes an air of humanity rarely seen in a Hollywood production this big, he truly is one of our greatest actors and there is more excitement to be found in their dialogue than in any number of Transformer’s or Terminator’s, there’s something to be said for good old fashioned acting! 

Despite the inevitable marketing of Pelham 123 as an action film, it really does contain very little in the way of actual action, in terms of car chases or gunfights, yes there are crashes and yes guns are fired but usually each bullet or smash has a consequence not often conveyed in action films of late.

As ever Scott has a way of surrounding his leads with a great support and here he has assembled James Gandolfini and John Turturro as Mayor (reluctant Mayor at that) and hostage negotiator, Turturro is as toned down in his mannerisms as I have ever seen and he works all the better for it, there is, as with Washington, a real human quality to his character, a sincerity that furthermore engrosses you in the plot.

Half the plot is measured in real time as a scramble is made to get the money together, its tense and measured meaning you are aware of the time passing as you watch the film, a risky device and one that can all too often be a hindrance in terms of clock watching, especially in terms of a films misgivings, no such problems here however and as it is pacey you keep wanting time to slow, not only for the hostages sake but so you can spend time with these great actors, no, characters.

On its denouement where many films of this sort fall apart, The Taking of Pelham 123 takes a measured path to a thoroughly satisfying end, not cheesy or crass like so many films this year you are left both satisfied and 100% entertained, and I for one can’t wait for the next Scott/Washington collaboration (said to be another train based thriller, Unstoppable).

VERDICT

The Taking of Pelham 123 might just be the most enjoyable blockbuster film of the summer, engrossing and “action packed” yet not in the traditional sense of the word, testament to the skill of both star and director, I can’t recommend it enough.

Mila Kunis has joined Darren Aronofsky’s supernatural drama Black Swan, currently in pre-production and ready to start shooting in New York this autumn.

Kunis will play Lilly, a dancer with the New York City Ballet who torments rival Natalie Portman as a big performance draws nearer. But is she real or just a figment of Portman’s imagination?

As intriguing – and well-cast – as Black Swan sounds, it does leave Aronofsky’s even more intriguing RoboCop reboot on the backburner. The Hollywood Reporter suggests that MGM has started looking for a new director for the return of the cyborg law enforcer.

No such problems for the versatile and rather stunning Kunis, meanwhile, who’s juggling a variety of projects, with upcoming roles in Mike Judge’s Extract, as Denzel Washington’s assassin-turned-ally in The Book Of Eli and alongside Tina Fey and Steve Carell in comedy romance Date Night.

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Director: Lars Von Trier

Writer: Lars Von Trier

Cinematography: Anthony Dodd Mantle

Original Score: N/A

Running Time: 109 Mins. (uncut)

It is always difficult in considering how you should review a film because in truth any film could be looked at in one of a number of ways, for example most films are made to entertain, some and made to inform, yet these are invariably also made to entertain in some way whether it be through shock or spectacle, then you have those films that are seemingly made as pieces of high art, there to provoke thought and very rarely actually intended to “entertain” in the traditional sense of the word. Those films that fall into this particular category are also known by another name, Art-house.

I have to confess I am not a big fan of the Art-house scene, and my love of the form of film stems largely from the enjoyment I derive from them, their entertainment value if you will, which is how I have always rated past films, entertainment value and the achievements that film makes whether it be in acting, script, direction or cinematography. So it was with trepidation I approached Lars Von Trier’s Anti Christ.

Shrouded in controversy, as Von triers films always have been, Anti Christ is already most famous not for any filmic achievements it makes but for the shocking acts found within, heck the BBFC classification comments are going to pull all the wrong people in and surely printing it so large on the poster this is nothing more than a marketing ploy, I foresee walkouts! So “contains real sex and explicit torture and gore”, yes it sounds like Hostel 3, but far from it, these scenes amount to little more than mere minutes, even seconds, of screen time and yes they impact, but not in the torture porn way that Hostel et al implore, we aren’t expected to revel in this torture, in fact quite the opposite. The whole film is designed as a harrowing delve into the human psyche.

Grief, pain and despair, the chapters by which Anti Christ is segregated and they sure don’t get much more accurate than that. Following a couple known simply as man (Dafoe) and woman (Gainsbourg) we see in the epilogue a beautifully shot scene of the couple having sex cut against their son falling to his death in the snow, its black and white and as visually stunning a scene as you will see all year, kudos to Dodd Mantle for following up Slumdog Millionaire with something so different yet as stimulating on the eye.

In attempt to help his wife deal with the boys death her husband takes her to the ironically named Eden, a cabin in the woods where things go from bad to worse and the woman continues in her descent to a total emotional meltdown, to say much more would be to rob the film of its abundant emotional heft. The script itself is not particularly great but the way in which it is delivered by the excellent coupling of Dafoe and Gainsbourg is nothing less than convincing, making the ordeal all the more disturbing to watch.

Exploring themes of womanhood, nature, and the devil it is certainly a film experience that remains with you and it was in Von Triers visuals that I found to of the greatest effect, deer carrying its dead foetus, dead birds adn a fox that baarks “chaos reigns” may sound ridiculous on paper but they certainly left a lasting mark on me, these are the srts of image that were found in the greatest horror films, Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist being the obvious example.

And it is in harking back to the seemingly lost iconography of the types of horror film that used to be made, those that actually did as they were meant to, getting inside your head and screwing around a little bit, getting you thinking and searing the most disturbing of images into your head. On that count Von Trier has succeeded, it’s true, Anti Christ wont be for everyone but if you can want a real horror film then look no further because nothing will get under your skin like this does.

Which brings me full circle to my initial point, that in rating Anti Christ I have looked beyond the normal boundaries of simple entertainment and rated it simply on its merits as a filmic experience designed to do all that I have just explained, and on that basis I can’t reccommend it highly enough, providing you want to be truly disturbed.

VERDICT

Anti Christ transcends the boundaries of genre, and whilst a far from enjoyable or entertaining experience, in the traditional sense of the word, it is the first proper horror film in quite some time and will undoubtedly affect those who can and wish to stomach its psychological delving and scorching imagery.

Not content with getting down with Julie Delphy Before Sunrise, now Ethan Hawke is taking on some vamps in distopian bloodsucker flick Daybreakers.

Check out the Daybreakers trailer here because Vampires are, you know, the in thing at the moment.

Directed by Undead’s Peter and Michael Spierig, the film, set in 2019, follows Hawke’s character Edward Dalton, a haematology researcher who lives within a world where virtually all of the population have been turned into vampires by a plague. But the vampires are in serious need as their human blood source comes close to complete extinction. So Dalton is tasked with creating a synthetic substitute, unless the human race can be saved. 

The trailer is part Blade (the good ones), part I Am Legend - and very exciting. They have crossbows and everything!  

The film co-stars the ever-scary Willem Dafoe playing against type as a good guy human, the usually nice-as-Australian-pie Sam Neill as intimidating leader of the vampires, Claudia Karvan, Michael Dorman, Vince Colosimo and Isabel Lucas.

Daybreakers hits cinemas on January 8 2010 and has officially shot to the top end of my must-see movies of 2010 list.

It’s more a showreel and FX test than a proper trailer, but here’s our first look at exactly how Tron 2 (now called Tron: Legacy) is going to pan out visually.

All the iconic stuff is here: an extended bike chase on that famous grid; the frizbee; the suits; and a couple of glimpses of The Dude himself Jeff Bridges, both at his true age and in his de-aged version, which, at least in brief here, looks completely convincing.

This is top stuff. If the story is as good as the visuals, you can colour me very excited indeed.