May, 2010

Last year Clint Eastwood fashioned an entire film around the concept of a cranky old codger telling young punks to keep the hell offa his lawn. Unfazed by the prospect of death, which in any event couldn’t be too far away, Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) in Gran Torino was not your average tea and biscuit pensioner. He [...]

Dennis Hopper died today, aged 74. The grizzled star passed away at his home in Venice, California, reportedly due to complications that arose from prostate cancer. Hopper led a tumultuous career in Hollywood that spanned more than half a century, beginning alongside James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and culminating in yet to [...]

Check out the striking use of pink in this elegant but bold one-sheet (left, click to enlarge) for director Luca Guadagnino’s acclaimed drama I Am Love. The film stars Tilda Swinton, whose frosty glares and phlegmatic performance style have made her one of cinema’s most commanding ice queens. How appropriate that she played the White [...]

A new Planet of the Apes prequel titled Rise of the Apes is shaping up to be one of 2011′s big marquee Hollywood titles and maybe just maybe one of its biggest turkeys – but we will, of course, reserve judgement until those damned-to-hell apes return to the big screen to pilfer Earth’s bananas and [...]

Just when you thought Nick Giannopoulos and his brand of “look at me I’m Greek!” humour had disappeared forever, hurled into the waste bucket of popular culture like the last scraps from a Saturday night souvlaki run, back the once sort-of star comes to whack audiences with his patented wog shtick once again in this [...]

Director Samuel Bayer’s remake of Wes Craven’s gnarly 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street heralds the return of cinema’s preeminent scissor fingered nasty pastie. His name is Krueger, Freddy Krueger, the jumper-clad wretchedly disfigured man-ghoul who works round the clock taunting, haunting and slashing teenagers in their dreams. Krueger’s tireless work ethic raises certain [...]

New York, I Love You is a collection of 10 short films themed around the Big Apple – not the city per se but rather its meandering motor mouth inhabitants, who coast through the Five Boroughs in search of new conversational victims. Each film has a different writer, director and cast. One marks Natalie Portman’s [...]

There are dopey chick flicks and then there are chick flicks so incredibly imbecilic they form their own sub genre: the chick-idiot flick, aka the chidiot. J-Lo’s latest cinematic sledgehammer to the senses is The Back-up Plan, an alleged  romantic “comedy” about a woman who meets the man of her dreams on the day she [...]

First it was his grizzled mug at the centre of an unlikely advertising deal between Universal and Australia Post that caught my attention; then his bland central performance in a dull as ditchwater blockbuster; and now – for my third and final Russell Crowe related blog post this month (promise) – it’s a badly bungled [...]

Here’s a slice of sequel-related news that’s actually pretty darn enticing, particularly for fans of 1982′s brooding LSD infused puppet movie The Dark Crystal. Rumours have been sporadically surfacing for years that a follow-up to the creepy cult hit may be in the works, and last week official confirmation arrived. The Power of the Dark [...]

Director Matthew Vaughn’s pulse pounding superhero flick Kick Ass is a wild ride – the kind of fiercely edgy and innovative genre pic destined to make comic book geeks froth from the mouth. It is also tirelessly postmodern, regularly drawing attention to the manner with which these sorts of stories are constructed. The movie exists [...]

Call me daft, but I never knew space on Australian postage stamps could be bought by companies and used to advertise their products. In this case, a movie distributor spruiking an upcoming blockbuster. Director Ridley Scott’s invariably action packed take on the Robin Hood legend, starring Australia’s own Russell Crowe (well he was actually born [...]

A good teaser trailer is all about tantalising the audience, giving ‘em something to squawk about. An overview of story, characters and actors is best left for the theatrical trailer. It’s been a while since I can remember a teaser as effective as the enticing first peek at Buried (watch it below), a new thriller [...]