Like many directors, Michael Mann mulls over many projects before settling on the one that will be his “next” film at any given time. In this case his next picture is a currently untitled “cyber-crime” thriller, which leaves quite a few other possible films in the lurch.
One of those other potential efforts was Gold, a film that follows a 1993 mining scandal, featuring a prospector who found “one of the largest gold mines in the world in the Indonesian jungle.” It has been likened to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but in what respects beyond the simple prospector angle, we don’t know for certain.
Mann may have moved on, but Gold still lives. Spike Lee is now attached to direct the film, based on the script by Patrick Massett and John Zinman. Read More »
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Posted on Friday, May 17th, 2013 by Angie Han
David O. Russell‘s got a knack for attracting great actors, but his next project could come with prominent A-listers already attached. Russell will reportedly write and direct the JFK assassination pic Legacy of Secrecy, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook star Robert De Niro. The conspiracy drama posits that mafioso Carlos Marcello was behind the murder. Hit the jump for more details.
DiCaprio has been set to produce and star in the pic since 2010, while De Niro is a more recent addition. Based on the book of the same title by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, Legacy of Secrets hinges on mob kingpin Marcello’s confession to FBI informant Jack van Laningham that he was the one to order the killing.
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I was very moved by Ryan Coogler‘s film Fruitvale Station when it played Sundance under the title Fruitvale. Michael B. Jordan stars as Oscar, a young man detailed by police at an Oakland, CA BART station after a brawl on a train early on New Year’s Day. The night ended in tragedy, and the cell phone cameras carried by many witnesses documented an almost inexplicable display of police force.
The film succeeds by drawing a portrait of Oscar as a troubled young man with ambitions rather than pretending he was a saint. Jordan’s performance is impressive and he displays an incredible ability to express himself in bursts of energy without going outside the tone that Coogler generally strives to maintain. This first trailer gives you a good look at all of Oscar’s characteristics, from his serious problems to his best moments. It comes right up to the line of showing precisely how the night ended, and is a good primer for the film. Read More »
Left to his own devices Lee Daniels makes films that are eccentric and sometimes just way the hell out there. (The Paperboy) But he has called his newest film, The Butler, “a big compromise” and explained that the film might be “the closest I will come to as a work-for-hire.” Does that mean that, on the relative scale of whackadoo films, The Butler will be far closer to “normal” than anything else he’s made?
Hard to say at this point, but the first trailer suggests that there’s some weird stuff going on here. There’s the parade of cameo players appearing as a string of US Presidents. Among them is John Cusack‘s turn as Richard Nixon, which is… interesting. Then there’s Alex Pettyfer playing an uber-douchebag cotton farm overseer, and the digital effects and makeup that shave a few decades off lead Forest Whitaker in some scenes.
Whitaker plays Cecil Gaines, who served several different President as the White House butler, and the trailer suggests the film traces his entire life story, using it to frame the sweep of the civil rights movement. It’s a good story, but this trailer looks a lot like a parody that might show up on SNL. So we’ll see — maybe The Butler will be just as crazy as the rest of Daniels’ work. Read More »
One word comes to mind watching the first trailer for Paul Greengrass‘ latest film Captain Phillips: Intense. Few filmmakers are better at creating incredible tension and drama out of real world situations, and it appears the director of United 93, Bloody Sunday and two Bourne movies has done it again. This time he’s joined by Oscar-winner Tom Hanks, who plays the title character in the true story of an unarmed American freighter ship hijacked by Somali pirates.
The film, which co-stars Catherine Keener, John Magaro and others, will but out October 11. Check out the trailer below. Read More »
Each time Andrew Garfield‘s name comes up for a project these days, it’s seemingly bigger and more impressive than the last thing. He was crucial to David Fincher’s The Social Network, he re-imagined your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and now arguably the greatest living filmmaker has tapped him to star in his new project.
Martin Scorsese has cast Garfield as the lead in in Silence, based on an Shusaku Endo novel about Jesuits who attempt to spread Christianity in 17th century Japan. He’ll be joined by Ken Watanabe and filming is set to start Summer 2014. Garfield will play Father Rodrigues, who travels to Japan with a priest and Watanabe will play the priest’s interpreter. Read More »
The new film from Hayao Miyazaki is Kaze Tachinu (aka The Wind Rises, or The Wind is Rising), based on the manga of the same name about Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the famous Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane. The fighter was extensively used by Japan during World War II, and Miyazaki’s interest in flight is well-documented, making this project seem like a natural choice for the director.
The film will be released in Japan on July 20 of this year, and a trailer should air on Japanese television this week. We’ll have that trailer when it arrives, but in the meantime we can give you three new images from the film, which will be used as posters in cinemas later this spring. They’re pretty tiny, but you can compare one of them to the original manga art seen above to get a sense of how Miyzaki has translated the visual style. Read More »
The first trailer for Steven Soderbergh‘s Liberace biography Behind the Candelabra, airing on HBO later this month, didn’t show us much of the work Michael Douglas did to bring the late entertainer back to life. This long featurette on the making of the film gives us a lot more to look at, while also introducing quite a few other elements of the film.
You’ll see some of Dan Aykroyd‘s work — he looks great — and there are some shots of other actors such as Rob Lowe and Debbie Reynolds. There’s a puff piece aspect to this featurette, which is pretty common for promo pieces like this, but for those curious about Soderbergh’s film there’s some good info. For those who don’t know much about Liberace there’s a brief encapsulation of the pianist’s life and an explanation of his place in entertainment and popular culture. One person who doesn’t have any real voice here is Soderbergh, who is seen working, but doesn’t give an interview. Read More »
