Do you know your wife's blood type? To be quite honest, I do not even know my own blood type, much less anyone else's. But it is questions like that which will plague Ben Affleck's character Nick Dunne in Gone Girl, the much anticipated film from David Fincher that will finally come to theatres October 3.
Time for more full disclosure: when I first heard about Alejandro González Iñárritu's new film Birdman, I thought it sounded pretty cool. Michael Keaton as a slightly unhinged former superhero star trying to make a comeback via the Broadway stage? Yes, please. As buzz has built for the film, it began to look better and better, with critics lauding Keaton's performance as one of the best he's done in a very long time. Now more trailers, clips, and TV spots have begun hitting the Internet in advance of Birdman's limited release on October 17, and my interest in the film has gone from casual to "dear God, I must see this movie!"
Back before he was responsible for Captain America: The First Avenger, director Joe Johnston was behind another tale of fantasy and unlikely potential: The Pagemaster. The film featured Macauley Culkin as a cowardly boy who becomes an illustration and must overcome obstacles from classic books if he's ever to return to reality. The family film was a bit of a dud and Johnston moved on, but it seems not everyone has forgotten his interest in family-friendly tales of being sucked into bookish magical worlds. TNT has tapped Johnston to direct the pilot of their new series Lumen, which bears some resemblance to The Pagemaster in both plot and subject matter.
We live in an age where anticipating the release of a trailer is almost as exciting as anticipating the release of a film. Certainly Avengers: Age of Ultron has had no difficulty in drumming up excitement, even with the release date still quite far away. While we still haven't seen any footage from it just yet, the very first trailer for the highly anticipated sequel might be surfacing within the next few months.
True confession time: you can keep your gravelly-voiced Christian Bales and your nipple-suited George Clooneys - my favorite Batman will always be Michael Keaton. In fact, Keaton raises the bar in just about every good, bad, or indifferent role he's ever played. In his latest film, Birdman, from director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, it looks like the actor might finally be getting his critical due.
Well, it has finally happened: an entire country has rejected Nicolas Cage. OK, that's probably not what's going on, but strange things are afoot concerning Cage's latest film Outcast, which was set for a release in China today. Without any apparent reason, Chinese distributors have called off the release of Outcast, a co-production starring Cage and Hayden Christensen.
I make no secret of the fact that I cannot stand three-quarters of Christopher Nolan's films. He's very often an over-indulgent director, more interested in twists and turns than in actual cohesive storytelling. Yet for all that, I still give him the benefit of the doubt with almost every film he's released. So I go into the increasing hype surrounding Interstellar with both hope and trepidation...especially after hearing how long this movie will go on for.
As Hollywood looks with fear and suspicion at anything remotely resembling an original idea, yet another classic falls into the remake (or rather: re-adaptation) vortex. A new version of the harrowing World War I saga All Quiet on the Western Front will come to the big screen from the hands of The November Man director Roger Donaldson.
It's difficult not to like John Cusack. Sure, the guy has not made the best cinematic choices over the past few years, but I do not think it's for want of trying. Cusack still manages to bring an easy-going charm to the screen, regardless of whether he's playing a hero or a villain; and boy, he's been playing a lot of villains recently. In a new clip from his most recent role in Drive Hard, Cusack reminds us that even as a villain, he can still be very amusing on screen.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was one of the first literary mash-ups, and probably the only one that successfully accomplished what it set out to do: namely, put monsters into otherwise non-monstrous literary classics. It was only a matter of time before the book was adapted into a film, and I'm actually surprised that it took this long. But now the Jane Austen/zombie narrative is getting its own movie, and has added a few Game of Thrones stars to the cast.
