When we ran the first five minutes of Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire, starring Gina Carano, a few people mentioned something interesting in the comments. Those who’ve followed Carano’s MMA career said that her voice, as heard in the clip from the film, didn’t sound much at all like Carano.
Turns out there’s a reason. We know that Steven Soderbergh was taken enough with Carano’s physical presence to build a film around her. Some of that appeal may have been that she’s an unknown quantity on film. And it seems that Soderbergh wanted to emphasize every possible difference between Gina Carano and the character she plays on screen, so with Carano’s participation he did some work to alter her voice for the film. Read More »
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Sadly, this one is for US residents only, because it uses a Hulu embed. Eventually I imagine this will end up on YouTube, but for now everyone outside the States will have to be patient.
One of Steven Soderbergh‘s last films (he’s planning to retire after shooting two more, The Side Effects and Behind the Candelabra), Haywire features MMA star Gina Carano and opens on January 20. You can see the first five minutes of the movie below.
The scene is one that you’ll see in much shorter form in various trailers for the film, but this full presentation of a confrontation between Gina Carano and Channing Tatum should really give you a good idea of what sort of fight scenes Haywire has to offer. This fight is serious. Read More »
On a weekend like this, even your grandmother knows what’s going to be the big winner at the box office. Various experts are all predicting The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 will soar over $100 million and maybe even reach $150 million, putting it somewhere between second and fourth all time. (The Dark Knight at $158 million is second and The Twilight Saga: New Moon at $142 million is fourth.) With around $30 million from midnight shows alone, Bella and Edward are well on their way.
When a movie so dominates the box office like that, it means collateral damage: sold out shows and people clamoring for other films. For the family’s there’s Happy Feet Two and, for the men, there’s last weekend’s surprise box office champion, Tarsem Singh’s sword and sandal action film Immortals. The team behind that movie created a very targeted commercial urging men to check out their film over the vamps and you can see it after the jump. Read More »
Posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 by Angie Han
After months of hearing all about Tarsem Singh‘s “sickeningly kiddie” Snow White project Mirror, Mirror and glimpsing the bright, colorful images from the set, we finally have our first look at some actual footage from the film. The very first official trailer has now hit the web, and it looks… well, see for yourself.
Mirror, Mirror features Lily Collins as the classic fairy tale princess, with Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen, Sean Bean as the King, Armie Hammer as the handsome prince, and Nathan Lane as some guy named Brighton that I don’t remember from my childhood storybooks. Watch the video after the jump.
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Immortals is a flagrantly artificial, insanely violent film. ‘Insanely’ violent because minutes at a time pass where the frame is filled with nothing but graphically split bodies and crushingly brutal combat, with no point beyond the arresting visual of digital viscera in slow motion. But the director of Immortals, Tarsem, who also made The Cell and The Fall, is talented at fooling us into thinking that looking cool is good enough, and so I drank in the gory violence like spring water at an oasis.
The movie is as dumb as it is gory and pretty. It is, on one hand, imaginative enough to present a creepy and ugly reworking of the myth of the Minotaur. But on the other it is so blind to all but the self-indulgence of beautiful design that all concerns are subverted to the cause of presenting weird and beautiful things. It sets up potentially provocative conflicts, like the virgin oracle who really wants to get laid, but will lose her powers if she does, and then abandons them.
Tarsem is a cinematic Prometheus, who steals ideas from others in order to make them available to everyone, but there’s no arguing that the guy knows what catches the eye, and he is adept at putting a certain sort of energy on screen. I might not want to make it a regular practice, but I had a good time watching his weird little Grand Guignol of the Titans. Read More »
Relativity Media unveiled Steven Soderbergh‘s action movie Haywire this past weekend at the AFI Fest, to mixed/positive reviews. The idea behind the movie is that Soderberg saw MMA fighter Gina Carano in action, and wanted to build a movie around her. He and screenwriter Lem Dobbs (The Limey) came up with a story about a betrayed covert ops specialist out for revenge, dropped Carano in the middle and surrounded her with actors like Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Michael Douglas and Michael Fassbender.
The trailers we’ve seen so far tried to balance action, dialogue, tension and character, but this new trailer basically goes all out for action. Consequently it looks great. Read More »
Odds are when you first saw the trailer for Haywire, Steven Soderbergh‘s action film starring MMA fighter Gina Carano, you thought, “Why is a Steven Soderbergh movie starring Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum and Antonio Banderas coming out in January?” January is an odd movie month as it’s generally a place studios can release films they’re unsure about. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad, just without obvious award or blockbuster potential and such is the case with Haywire. It’s an understated, down-the-middle action/spy film elevated by Soderbergh’s direction. Haywire basically comes off as an exercise to watch an attractive woman beat the crap out of a bunch of famous guys.
The film had its world premiere in Grauman’s Chinese Theater Sunday night as part of the 25th annual AFI Fest Presented by Audi. Read some thoughts after the jump. Read More »
Posted on Friday, November 4th, 2011 by Angie Han
After months and months of being referred to as “Relativity Media’s untitled Snow White project,” Tarsem Singh‘s take on the classic fairy tale finally has a title. The name they’re going with is Mirror, Mirror, which seems like a pretty obvious pick in retrospect.
Interestingly, the news comes just a few days after director Singh said in an interview that if it were up to him, he’d simply call it Snow. At the time, he said the decision wasn’t his to make, and that one of the reasons the movie took so long to get a title had to do with “legal stuff being sorted out.” In the same conversation, he described his own film as “sickeningly kiddie” and explained why his interest in creating a children’s film isn’t so surprising after all. Read more after the jump.
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