June, 2009

A Michael Jackson-related scene has been hurriedly edited out of Sacha Baron Cohen’s upcoming blockbuster-to-be Bruno in time for its LA premiere, which transpired hours after the pop singer’s unexpected death on Thursday (U.S. time). The sketch consists of an interview between Cohen’s titular character, a flamboyantly gay 37-year-old Austrian fashion reporter, and LaToya Jackson, [...]

Jeff Goldblum is now one of very few people who can recite Mark Twain’s classic quip “the report of my death was an exaggeration” and mean it. This morning amid the frenzy of reports lamenting the late pop star Michael Jackson and, to a far lesser extent, the passing of original Charlie’s Angels actor Farrah [...]

Richard Kelly shot to cult film notoriety as the acclaimed first-time director of the creepy 2001 indie hit Donnie Darko. Luckily for him his reputation in the cinema-going public (less so the studios) remained intact despite a disastrous follow-up feature, Southland Tales, an ambitious but deeply flawed futuristic wannabe epic starring Dwayne Johnson (aka The [...]

Jack Black and Michael Cera play, well, Jack Black and Michael Cera in this giddily anachronistic tale of two BC boneheads who coast through a series of biblical but not comedy sketches. Year One’s trying-awfully-hard succession of largely puerile punch lines come curtsey of veteran director Harold Ramis, whose benchmark work – the 1993 masterpiece [...]

A batch of tantalising stills have surfaced of Tim Burton’s Alice and Wonderland reimagining and they all look gloriously psychotropic – none more so than the first character shot of a borderline unrecognisable Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter (pictured left, click to enlarge). Other character pics (below) include Helen Bonham Carter as the Red [...]

The end of the world is getting so, well, old, especially if your name is Roland Emmerich. Emmerich is the brain-mulching, explosion-addicted, eyeball-crunching Bay-esque bigshot director who has built a profitable career on destroying mankind’s landmarks. In The Day After Tomorrow it was the Hollywood sign. In Independence Day, the White House. In Godzilla, the [...]

Bastardy captures the beggared and destitute recent years in the life of prolific Indigenous actor Jack Charles, who is credited with founding the first Aboriginal theatre company in the early 70s and collaborating over the decades with a long list of Australians actors and filmmakers. Though he’s worked predominantly in theatre, Charles’s films include significant [...]

French-born Australian director Philippe Mora will helm a $20 million 3D biopic on the life of surrealist artist Salvador Dali. The as yet untitled film will star Spanish flamenco dancer Rafael Amargo as Dali, who reportedly signed after the producers failed to lure Hollywood star Johnny Depp. Most of the special effects work will be [...]

Yesterday I discovered a rather wonderful game on Twitter called #nicerfilmtitles. No instructions are necessary: you simply take a film’s title and make it, well, nicer. Here are a few examples I read from other people: @ruminski – The Empire Writes A Strongly Worded Letter @terminaljeremy – Dr No Thank You Very Much @terminaljeremy – [...]

To mark the DVD release of Son of a Lion, the widely acclaimed film from director Benjamin Gilmour, Cinetology gives readers the chance to win one of two Son of a Lion packs. Each pack includes a copy of the DVD and the book Warrior Poets, a behind-the-scenes account of how the film was made. [...]

Last weekend the teaser trailer for Michael Moore’s as yet untitled documentary about the global financial crisis debuted in cinemas in the U.S. There’s nothing particularly memorable about it, expect perhaps the trailer (watch it below) is unusually lacklustre – consisting only of a direct to camera spiel in which Moore implores the audience (sarcastically [...]

Some good news on the Melbourne International Film Festival front: today MIFF confirmed that its 2009 program will include some of the biggest drawcards from this year’s Cannes Film Festival. These include Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Park Chan-wook’s Thirst and Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist. Says festival director Richard Moore via press release: “Love it or [...]

Last week I reported the spectacular tanking of Land of the Lost at the U.S box office, describing it as a movie “snubbed by audiences and smoked by the critics.” What I didn’t report – and what I could only deduce by actually, god forbid, watching it – was that while Will Ferrell’s tongue in [...]

There are groan-inducing trailers and then there are trailers as vomit-in-your-lap toxic as the trailer (watch it below) for Eric Bana’s upcoming romantic drama The Time Traveller’s Wife, which, based on a novel by Audrey Niffenegger, follows Clare (Rachel McAdams) and her life-long romance with Henry (Bana). Henry drifts uncontrollably through time (cue unintended laughter) [...]

The first official trailer for Marty Scorsese’s latest, Shutter Island, was unveiled online today and it’s a good ‘un. Tantalisingly creepy, the trailer (watch it below) shows off gorgeously shot snippets of Scorsese’s detour into the stranded-in-a-scary-location genre ala The Shining and 1408. The film is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (Gone, Baby [...]

It’s Dude Where’s My Car? meets Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in director Todd Phillip’s low brow blokey comedy about three men who wake up in a plush Sin City hotel suite nursing king hell hangovers and, bleary-eyed and memory-deprived, slowly piece together the debaucheries details of what transpired the night before. Unexpectedly romping [...]