It’s almost a crime that most people only know the music of Big Star through the theme song for That ’70s Show. Many viewers probably never realized the song is a re-recording of ‘In the Street‘ from Big Star’s first album ‘#1 Record.’ (The show initially used a cover of the song by Todd Griffin, but for seven of the eight seasons opened with a cover by Cheap Trick.)
That first album by Big Star is, in a word, glorious. Songwriters Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, who as teens saw the Beatles perform in Memphis, wrote the album in a back and forth fashion that honed the twelve tracks into brilliant pop gems. The record was never distributed well, and so despite widespread acclaim, it became one of those artifacts that music enthusiasts revere and the public at large missed. The band (without Bell) made two more albums, both of which are also excellent, but they never really made it.
Some of those enthusiasts are now in the position to make films, and so we have the doc Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me. The film charts the formation of the band, and its fate as a near-obscurity, with a redeptive final chapter that has taken almost 20 years to play out as more and more people finally hear the record that everyone should have had in 1972. Read More »
.
Please Recommend /Film on Facebook
I liked the original V/H/S because it was a small, weird collection of shorts. The sequel, V/H/S/2, is bigger and much more bold than the first, with bigger scope and some ideas that are far more weird. It doesn’t have quite the same sense of intimate disquiet, but it has some much more monstrous action. The chapter co-directed by The Raid director Gareth Evans is worth the price of admission alone.
We saw a red-band trailer not long ago, and now there’s an all-ages look at the film. This one is good for those who don’t want to see too much of the film’s gore before sitting down to the actual movie. The beats in this trailer are pretty similar, but because it can’t go all-out with the nasty stuff, there’s a restraint with respect to spoilers. If you just want to get a basic idea about the film, this one is the way to go. Read More »
The indie Europa Report features Sharlto Copley (District 9, Elysium) and Michael Nyqvist (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) as members of a crew in space. The film has been fairly under the radar until now, with only a couple images, a poster, and some teaser footage to give us an idea of what to expect.
Now a trailer introduces the crew that is making a voyage to Jupiter’s moon Europa, and starts to give away glimpses of just how things go wrong as the crew is millions of miles from Earth. The found-footage aesthetic appears to be used to good effect, and there’s a final shot in this trailer that is just chilling — just as much so as anything in the trailer for Gravity. Europa Report has also been said to be very quiet and low-key, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this trailer makes the film look like a more conventional bit of found-footage horror in order to get audiences into the theaters. Read More »
Lars von Trier may have been banned (or “banned”) from Cannes two years ago for statements made while promoting Melancholia, but that hasn’t stopped him from having a presence at the fest this year. His new film(s), the two-part Nymphomaniac, weren’t finished in time for the fest, but the release of a new image (above) and a press release are keeping Trier in the global cinema conversation as Cannes kicks off this year.
Click the pic above for a larger version and you’ll be able to see actors such as Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Udo Kier, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Stellan Skarsgård, Christian Slater, and star Charlotte Gainsbourg, as well as the director. And hit the jump for a press release from Trier’s producer, announcing a Christmas Day opening in Denmark. Magnolia has the film in the US, and hasn’t announced a release date yet. Read More »
The horror anthology V/H/S did well enough that a sequel went into production pretty fast, and you can already see the red-band trailer for V/H/S/2 from Magnet. Now another Magnet-released anthology, The ABCs of Death, is also going to be followed by a sequel.
The hook for The ABCs of Death was that the film featured 25 directors (and a 26th crowd-sourced entry) making short films based around a single letter. The sequel will take the same approach, and as with the first film the hook isn’t the concept, but the people bringing it to life. The new crew includes animator Bill Plympton, Day of the Beast and The Last Circus director Álex de la Iglesia, and Room 237 director Rodney Ascher. More participants in the gruesome sequel are listed below. Read More »
Posted on Monday, March 11th, 2013 by Angie Han
Who exactly is G.I. Joe: Retaliation‘s Cobra Commander? Find out after the jump. Also:
- Expect the cast to return for Oz The Great and Powerful 2
- Josh Duhamel will make a cameo in Transformers 4
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt talks Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
- Don’t hold your breath for a Simpsons Movie sequel
- A Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance stuntman is suing Sony
- V/H/S 2 gets a release date and some new images
- See images and video from the Star Trek scoring studio
- Just what is in that new Star Trek Into Darkness teaser?
Read More »
Posted on Friday, March 8th, 2013 by Angie Han
“Prolific” isn’t a word you would’ve associated with Terrence Malick for the first forty years of his career, which yielded just five films. But it’s coming to define the next stage of it. Since 2011′s Tree of Life he’s been on a roll, with some four films due out in the next few years.
The first of those will be To the Wonder, which hits next month. The dreamy romantic drama stars Ben Affleck as Neil, a man caught between two loves: the French Marina (Olga Kurylenko), who moves with him to Oklahoma, and the all-American Jane (Rachel McAdams), who was his childhood sweetheart. Javier Bardem also stars, a priest suffering a crisis of faith. Hit the jump to check out the latest trailer.
Read More »
Lars von Trier‘s new film, Nymphomaniac, isn’t being shown at the Berlinale this week, but a sizzle reel is being displayed to potential distributors, just as Trier did with Melancholia a couple years ago.
Magnolia, the same company that handled Trier’s last film in North America, is now the front-runner to acquire the new movie, which depicts the full sexual life of a woman played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. The film also features actors such as Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, and Stacy Martin, and has been assumed to be a Cannes debut despite the fact that the festival banned Trier a couple years ago.
Magnolia is reportedly ready to pony up $2m for the film, which seems like a lot for a picture that will have niche interest. But then remember that it is being crafted in hardcore and softcore versions, and we can guess that the company sees a good marketing angle. After the break, a new still from the film shows us what one of the movie’s sexual encounters is going to be. Read More »
