Apparently it’s Michael Fassbender Day (again!) here at I Need My Fix. I’m not complaining, are you? (lalalala I can’t heaaaaar youuuu).
Something that may have escaped all but the most savvy of movie/entertainment watchers, is that last year amidst all of the hullabaloo surrounding Shame, not to mention, A Dangerous Method, Haywire, X-Men: First Class, Jane Eyre (did I miss any?), Michael Fassbender also appeared, along with his friend Liam Cunningham (currently appearing in A Game of Thrones as Ser Davos Seaworth ) with whom he starred in Steve McQueen’s Hunger, made an award winning short with filmmaker John Maclean.
Pitch Black Heist, which won the BAFTA for Best Short Film, will screen at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival and we have (via EW) have a preview for you. The film centers on a couple of thieves whose next job will require them to pull it off in complete darkness. Maclean told EW, “One of my favorite films is Rififi, this 1950s heist film where there’s a stretch where they can’t make a sound. When I watched it a few years ago I thought it would be good to do it pitch black with sound. Plus it’s cheap”.
I'm hoping the whole thing comes online at some point, otherwise, very few of us will ever get to see it. Fassbender and Maclean previously worked together on another short, Man On A Motorcyle, and are reportedly working on a feature film as well.
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We have yet another example of a brilliant move on the part of those behind the marketing campaign for Sir Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
Late last month we showed you a little snippet of an ad for the Weyland Corporation for their artificial intelligence market with Fassbender as a newly minted android, in the form of a viral video that was mere seconds long and yet still packed a powerful punch thanks to a voice-over by Fassbender (and that eerie movement at the end.) Today we have the full length version of that ad wherein Fassbender’s David answers an unseen interviewer’s questions about his abilities and his usefulness, adding that he’s not only capable of thought, but of performing duties that we mere mortals might find “distressing” or even “unethical”. How clever of Weyland to design a robot capable of comprehending ethics! When the interviewer asks him when he feels “sad”, he replies when he thinks about “war, poverty, cruelty, unnecessary violence." He sheds a tear as he explains that he “understands emotion” even though he isn’t capable of it.” If he were a human, he’d be considered a sociopath. Good thing he’s one of the good guys!
Everything released in connection with this movie has been steadily amping up the anticipation, and revealing very little in terms of the plot along the way. Prometheus, with Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Idris Elba, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall and Guy Pearce opens 1st June in the UK and June 8 in the US. 7 ½ weeks! (But who’s counting?)
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Jason Statham brought his manly-muscled head, along with that chiseled jaw with the audacious underbite and that tiny little mouth with the Cheshire cat grin…where was I? Oh yeah,The Stath and his director Boaz Yakin premiered their new movie Safe in New York last night, April 16 at the Chelsea Clearview Cinema. It was only fitting that Safe should bow in The City, since it was filmed and is set there.
Also pictured are the film’s costars, Catherine Chan, (looking so grownup compared to the trailers and stills from the film that I have to wonder how long ago it was made) and Robert John Burke. Where was Anson Mount, I must ask? Jason also brought along his stick-figure…oops sorry I mean his clichéd arm-candy…what’s wrong with me? *Meow* I mean his lovely and delicate example of feminine pulchritude, Rosie Huntington-Whitely.
Safe opens in the US on April 27 and 4th May in the UK.
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There are two big films new on dvd this week and two you may have never heard of. Regardless, this is one of the best things about dvd, catching up on what you missed.
First up, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, with Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton. We spent a lot of time talking about this one prior to its theatrical release so I’m sure you know what it’s about. This was easily the best of the series, and it was the first film that I can remember ever recommending anyone spend the bucks to see in IMAX. I’m just not sure how well it’s going to play on the small screen.
As Cruise's Ethan Hunt goes rogue across Eastern Europe and the Middle East — accompanied by a team that includes a wisecracking tech expert (Pegg), a sexy super-agent (Patton) and a ‘data analyst’ (Renner) — director Brad Bird (in his live-action debut) has put together one breathtaking action sequence after another, always making sure that they advance the main plot. What we end up with is an action movie that's smart, tense, witty and sincere.
Special Features:
-51 minutes of "Impossible Missions," which can be watched either as individual making-of featurettes ("The Sandstorm," "Dubai Car Crash") or as one long documentary.
Another film we devoted a lot of “ink” to is Steve McQueen’s Shame with that game-changing performance by Michael Fassbender. There are a lot of reasons to watch Shame, most of which don’t even involve the infamous Fassbender body parts. Shame isn’t about sex. It’s about pain and one man’s personal form of self-medication. Like a lot of people, he becomes addicted to his “painkiller”.
Fassbender’s Brandon is a single, successful New Yorker who tries to compensate for the emptiness inside by compulsively pursuing impersonal sexual encounters. Although Shame has been pigeon-holed as a movie about sex addiction, but that's not entirely apt. Brandon avoids all emotional entanglements including the cries for help from younger sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan). Shame is much less about sex and more about a deeply damaged person trying to lose himself in the anonymity of the city and endless variety of random sexual encounters it offers. Fassbender’s performance is raw and powerful and well worth watching. We know how I feel about his lack of an Academy Award nomination for his efforts. I won’t belabor the point here.)
Special Features:
-The included featurettes all feel as if they are essentially extended promos for the movie, all running about several minutes each. Although individually they leave something to be desired, as a whole, they add up to something insightful and informative. “Fox Movie Channel presents: In Character with Michael Fassbender” is the best of the lot, as Fassbender provides the audience some revealing tidbits about his preparation for the role and his process on set.
-The featurette “A Shared Vision” explores the creative partnership of McQueen and Fassbender, which has now spanned two films, and may find them becoming the next great actor-director pairing.
-The Story of Shame stands out, as it includes the Oscar-nominated Mulligan discussing working as a creative team with Fassbender and McQueen.
Here’s a great “making of” video narrated by one of the producers, Ian Canning:
The Divide is a happy little film we mentioned before its December opening (after which it promptly disappeared) concerning the survivors of a nuclear attack who are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.
The two tag lines – • To survive the end of the world you must first survive each other. • The lucky ones died in the blast – probably tell us more than that brief synopsis.
Storyline: A group of nine tenants (including Michael Biehn, Rosanna Arquette, Milo Ventimiglia and Lauren German) in a New York high-rise barricade themselves in the basement to survive a nuclear attack, slowly descending into madness when help never comes.
Special Features:
-commentary by the director and actors Biehn, Ventimiglia and Michael Eklund.
7 Below is asupernatural thriller that plays like The Ring meets The Grudge about a group of strangers who must ride out a storm while stranded in a foreboding house where they encounter an evil presence.
In the midst of a hurricane in 1910, a 10 year-old boy named Sean brutally murdered his mother, father, aunt and two little sisters. Now, Adam (Matt Barr) his brother Isaac (Luke Goss) along with four strangers, McCormick (Val Kilmer) and his wife Brooklyn (Bonnie Somerville), a young Doctor (Christian Baha) and a local girl (Rebecca Da Costa) find themselves trapped in the same home where the murders occurred one hundred years later, after a tour bus accident has left them stranded. Their host, a mysterious loner named Jack (Ving Rhames), has his own personal reasons for wanting the group to remain in his home. As the storm rages outside, strange and horrifying things begin to happen inside! This cinematic thrill ride will keep you on the edge of your seat from the stunning opening to the shocking conclusion!
Unfortunately, no bonus features of note on either the DVD or Blu-ray.
Here’s something new and different. The Tribeca Film Festival opens tomorrow, Wednesday April 17, but three of the fest's entries will be available for attendees and non-attendees alike starting toda via VOD. Those movies are: Death of a Superhero, a melancholy coming-of-age drama about a teenage cancer patient (Thomas Brodie-Sangster – Love, Actually) who is just coming to terms with his own mortality when he falls in love with a rebellious classmate (Aisling Loftus); The Giant Mechanical Man, a low-key romantic comedy that we’ve talked about, with Chris Messina as a starving artist who connects with a directionless sad sack (Jenna Fischer); and Sleepless Night, a French thriller about a well-meaning cop (Tomer Sisley) who makes a bad choice and ends up on the run from the police and the mob while trying to retrieve his kidnapped son from a drug dealer.
None of these are filler, they're quality films, representing the variety of genres and styles that Tribeca is known for. And if enough home viewers take advantage of this opportunity, this may well be the future of festivals, opening them up to people who can't travel to New York or other locations. Woo hoo!
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A brand new trailer, representing our third look, has come online for something I’m pretty excited about: HBO’s Hemingway & Gelhorn with Clive Owen as Ernest Hemingway and Nicole Kidman as his second wife, journalist Martha Gelhorn. I think I’m on record as being a bit of a Clive Owen fan and I am definitely looking forward to seeing him play a romantic lead again. (I guess you could say the last time was Duplicity with Julia Roberts in 2009, otherwise you’d have to go back to 2007 and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Either way, it’s been awhile.) I’m not overly fond of Kidman, but I like what she’s done with her voice here and it does appear she and Owen have chemistry. I’m hopeful.
Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff, Henry and June) directs a story by writers Jerry Stahl (Permanent Midnight) and Barbara Turner (Pollack) that revolves around the passionate and tempestuous romance between Hemingway and WWII correspondent Gellhorn, during the Spanish Civil War and beyond. Their relationship became Hemingway's inspiration for “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.
As witnesses to history, they covered all the great conflicts of their time; but the war they couldn't survive was the war between themselves.
The supporting cast of this movie includes Robert Duvall, Molly Parker, David Strathairn, Rodrigo Santoro, Tony Shaloub, Brooke Adams, Joan Chen, Jeffrey Jones, Parker Posey, Peter Coyote, Diane Baker and Lars Ulrich. (Yes, that Lars Ulrich. The Metallica drummer has appeared in other films, like Get Him to the Greek, as himself, but this is essentially his acting debut.) Hemingway & Gelhorn will premiere on HBO May 28.
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Happy Monday cats and kittens! Our favorite party animal, Gerard Butler, was doing his thing at Coachella again yesterday and we have the pics! (Although admittedly not the ones I wish we had, but I guess the man does deserve some privacy…just sayin’.)
As much as I love seeing G out and about, healthy and happy, enjoying the ongoing carnival that is his life, I wish he’d get back to work. Given Machine Gun Preacher’s ridiculous, almost non-existent release and Coriolanus’ understandably limited one, for a lot of folks out there, it has been a long time between movies.
Thunder Run (with Sam Worthington and Matthew McConaughey) is reportedly gearing up to shoot this Spring/Summer, Robert Luketic’s Brilliant may still get off the ground this Fall. Supposedly now that Antoine Fuqua is on board as director Olympus Has Fallen will move fairly quickly but all of this feels very vague and very far away. We were promised Playing the Field this Spring, now we have to wait til December. I won’t even go into that Farrelly Brothers comedy.
*Taps vein – See Name of Site* C'mon G…gimme somethin'!
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Back on April 1st we showed you a first look at always adorable Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg and Dave Franco in Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me about a group of magicians, who also happen to be accomplished bank robbers, and the FBI agent, played by Mark Ruffalo, on their trail.
Today we have some images from recent shooting in Las Vegas, as well as a video from Entertainment Tonight (via AOL) and some caps of the vid (courtesy of Collider.)
We also have the official synopsis:
The Four Horsemen, a magic super-group led by the charismatic ATLAS (Jesse Eisenberg), perform a pair of high-tech magic shows, first astonishing audiences by robbing a bank on another continent, and then exposing a white-collar criminal and funneling his millions into the audience members’ bank accounts.
FBI Special Agent DYLAN (Mark Ruffalo) is determined to make the magicians pay for their crimes—and to stop them before they pull off what promises to be an even more audacious heist. But he’s forced to partner with ALMA (Melanie Laurent), an Interpol detective about whom he is instantly suspicious. Out of desperation he turns to THADDEUS (Morgan Freeman), a famed magic debunker, who claims the bank heist was accomplished using disguises and video trickery. One thing Dylan and Alma agree on is that the Horsemen must have an outside point person, and that finding him (or her) is key to ending the magicians’ crime spree. Could it be Thaddeus? Or Alma? Or could it really be…magic?
As pressure mounts and the world awaits the Horsemen’s spectacular final trick, Dylan and Alma race to find an answer. But it soon becomes painfully clear that staying one step ahead of these masters of illusion is beyond the skills of any one man—or woman.
Despite the phenomenal leading cast, here’s what makes me nervous about this. Leterrier is best known for the universally derided Clash of the Titans (which nevertheless made enough money to warrant a sequel), The Incredible Hulk (the one with Edward Norton) and a couple of Transporter flicks. None of that inspires a lot of confidence but someone keeps giving him money with which to make movies. (In this case its Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Another thing that makes me nervous is that there are no less than five credited writers on this thing. None of whom have anything to recommend them other than that they have had scripts produced. I guess that’s something. Finally, the release date has been announced as January 13, 2013. January. Unless you’re an award contender just opening wide after the holidays, a January release date still has a lot of stigma attached. Why purposefully book a film that is still in production into January right off the bat? We’ll see.
Also in the cast: Michael Caine, Melanie Laurent, Morgan Freeman, Common and Michael Kelly. Now You See Me is slated for release in the US on January 13 and in the UK on 1st February 2013. Enjoy!
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Here’s a first look at Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as George and Serena Pemberton in Susanne Bier’s Serena, currently filming in Prague.
In Depression-era North Carolina, the future of George Pemberton's timber empire becomes complicated when it is learned the his wife, Serena, cannot bear children.
Based on a novel by Ron Rash, the film follows newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton who travel from Boston to the mountains of North Carolina where they begin to build a timber empire in 1929. But when Serena learns that she can never bear a child, she sets out to murder the woman who bore George a son before his marriage. And when she starts to suspect that George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons' intense marriage begins to unravel.
I’m a fan of the Danish director Bier’s work including In a Better World (winner of last year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language), Brothers with Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire and Things We Lost in the Fire with Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro. Serena has a screenplay by Christopher Kyle best known for Alexander, K-19: The Widowmaker and The Weight of Water.
Lawrence and Cooper will first be seen together onscreen in David O. Russell’s The Silver Linings Playbook, due out later this year. Serena also stars Toby Jones, Rhys Ifans, Sam Reid (Anonymous, also with Ifans) and Raymond Waring (Intruders). No release dates yet other than 2013.
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