Category: Cinema

12 Years a Sith | Brienne of Darth.

As shook the fandom interwebs ten days ago, the mostly male Star Wars VII cast gets a much-needed XX infusion with the additions of Lupita Nyong’o and Gwendoline Christie (best known for 12 Years a Slave and Game of Thrones respectively) to the cast. Now we’re cooking — Please, JJ, don’t waste all this talent. (*cough Into Darkness.)

Space is a Flat Circle.


“We’re not meant to save the world. We’re meant to leave it.” Matthew McConaughey & co. set sail on an ocean of stars to find an uncorrupted planet in the first full trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, also with Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, John Lithgow, David Gyasi, Wes Bentley, and David Oyelowo. (The teaser was here.)

Well I definitely agree with the sentiments being expressed, tho’ this trailer is a mite schmaltzy. Some observant commenters at Vulture noted that, given McConaughey’s insistence he will be returning (and I’m not sure how that’s going to work out given his apparent traveling at relativistic speeds), Jessica Chastain is probably the older version of Murphy the teenage redhead. Prompting someone else to say this: “In other words, they get older, he stays the same age.” Ten points for Gryffindor.

Conjurer of Nightmares.

“A thread running through Mr. Giger’s work was the uneasy meshing of machines and biology, in a highly idiosyncratic blend of science fiction and surrealism…He kept a notepad next to his bed so he could sketch the terrors that rocked his uneasy sleep — nightmarish forms that could as easily have lumbered from prehistory as arrived from Mars.”

R.I.P. Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger, best known as the creator of the Lovecraftian Xenomorph from Alien (which, along with The Shining twins, Freddy Krueger, and the final shot from Carrie, is responsible for a goodly percentage of my nightmares over the years), 1940-2014. “My paintings seem to make the strongest impression on people who are, well, who are crazy. A good many people think as I do. If they like my work they are creative…or they are crazy.”

Batfleck Begins.

With production gearing up, Zack Snyder tweets out our first look at Ben Affleck as Batman, and it’s heavy on the Frank Miller. (Close-up below.) I wasn’t sold at all on Man of Steel, and I expect this second installment will be completely overstuffed. Still, that’s an impressive rendering of the Dark Knight, and no mistake.

Paths of Terry.

“Not quite an epiphany, but there was ‘Paths of Glory.’…It was two things: first here was technology that I’d never been aware of, the tracking shots through the trenches which of course I copied in ‘Brazil,’ but I’d never been aware of the camera before that film and the second thing was that you talk about injustice in the film, you could talk about big themes, ideas.”

As part of series over at IndieWire, Terry Gilliam discusses his life in eight movies. “That was my problem at a certain age…I still believed in movies in those days. I don’t anymore. Give me a drive-in now any day.”

Maximum Bob.

“You don’t end up with a face like this if you’re hard, do ya? This comes from having too much mouth and nothing to back it up with. The nose has been broken so many times.” R.I.P. Bob Hoskins, the tough guy with a heart of gold, 1942–2014.

Best known for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Long Good Friday, and Mona Lisa (also featuring a young Clarke Peters) stateside, Hoskins had a number of memorable supporting turns over the years — Pink’s manager in The Wall, J. Edgar Hoover in Nixon; Jet Li’s handler in Unleashed, and one of the two Central Services guys in Brazil — and was always a touch of class in a production, even in drek like Super Mario and Snow White and the Huntsman. He will be missed.

Return of the Force?

“‘We are so excited to finally share the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII. It is both thrilling and surreal to watch the beloved original cast and these brilliant new performers come together to bring this world to life, once again. We start shooting in a couple of weeks, and everyone is doing their best to make the fans proud.'”

The Star Wars Episode 7 cast is announced, and, give credit where due, this is pretty auspicious (although heavily male) bunch. Along with all of the original gang — minus Lando — and the previously-rumored Adam Driver, Episode VII also includes John Boyega (the break-out star of Attack the Block), Daisy Ridley (don’t know her), Oscar Isaac(!, a.k.a. King John/Llewyn Davis), Andy Serkis(!, mutant master of CGI), Domhnall Gleeson (increasingly ubiquitous son of Brendan, late of About Time and Anna Karenina), and the venerable Max Von Sydow(!!! Needs no introduction, and it is a rush in itself to see him get his place next to Cushing, Guinness, Jones, and Lee.)

With all the usual caveats — Into Darkness, lens flares, etc. etc. — that’s a damned exciting cast. (Ok, so was MacGregor, Neeson, Portman, Jackson, and Stamp fifteen years ago, but let’s not talk about that.) Now how ’bout getting Frances McDormand, Saiorse Ronan, Viola Davis or somesuch in for additional support?

Update: Could well be damage control, but late word is there’s more to come. “Several sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that director J.J. Abrams has another substantial role to fill — and it’s a female part. No further details are known.”

Gone with the Whiskey.

“The memo..[is] candid in its assessment of the writers’ strengths and weakness. Of William Faulkner, who had written a few screenplays in the early 1930s, the anonymous memo author notes that he was now living in Mississippi but ‘can fly anywhere in his own plane.’ On the downside, Faulkner was ‘not very reliable in his plane nor his habits.'”

But has he taken a stab at the rasslin’ form? Rebecca Onion of Slate birddogs this memo to David O. Selznick on possible Gone with the Wind screenwriters. The quip above reminded me of Mencken’s review of Lewis’s Elmer Gantry, from the dissertation: As good as Babbit “except the last 30,000 words, which you wrote in a state of liquor.”