With the Venice Film Festival gearing up, we have been getting some good looks at films that will premiere there this year. One of the more exciting titles to hit Venice will be She's Funny That Way, starring Owen Wilson, Imogen Poots, and Jennifer Aniston. It's the first feature film that Peter Bogdanovich has directed in over a decade, which in itself should be cause for some anticipation.
Rumors of the death of Studio Ghibli have been greatly exaggerated. That in itself should be cause for celebration, given the weeping and gnashing of teeth that went on over the weekend. The full translations from an interview with Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki had not yet been released, and his comments actually reveal a more complex picture of Studio Ghibli's future in the wake of creator Hayao Miyazaki's retirement.
Blumhouse Productions and Paramount Pictures have quite a cash cow in the form of the Paranormal Activity franchise. Despite diminishing returns, the films continue to make enough money to justify the longevity of the franchise, especially given how cheap they are to make. The producers have been facing a touch of difficulty with the release of Paranormal Activity 5, however, which was initially slated to be released in October 2014 and then wound up being bumped all the way to 2016. Now it sounds like Blumhouse and Paramount are trying to make up the difference and get the film ready for an October 2015 release date.
I may have been one of the few people to feel underwhelmed by the first Mad Max: Fury Road trailer to come from Warner Brothers in the past week. But I am still willing to give the reboot (or is it a sequel?) a fighting chance, especially with Tom Hardy in the lead role and original franchise director George Miller firmly at the helm. The latest images from Mad Max: Fury Road to hit the Internet give me a bit more hope than the trailer did - and at the moment I will take anything I can get.
Now here is an interesting piece of indie film news. Haifaa Al-Mansour, the first female director to come out of Saudi Arabia, has plans to direct Elle Fanning as the writer Mary Shelley in A Storm in the Stars. Just take a moment and let that sink in.
If you have read any of my news articles, you will probably be aware that the consistency of reboots, remakes, and sequels coming out of Hollywood has irked me, as it has irked many of us in recent years. But what I think is most annoying about all of these reboots is how seriously they seem to take themselves. There's just no fun in the movies any more. Well, if Con Air director Simon West has his way, Con Air 2 could bring some fun back to the movies by launching a bunch of criminals into space.
Teenagers in dystopian worlds have become pretty standard fare in both books and films. This has been true ever since Lord of the Flies examined the breakdown of society via schoolboys trapped alone on an island, and carries through to the present day in the form of The Hunger Games franchise, among others. Now we have yet another similar scenario with director Wes Ball's The Maze Runner, based on the novel by James Dashner.
Love him, hate him, or feel massively indifferent towards him, you must admit that Quentin Tarantino often gives his fans exactly what they want. Promising to begin shooting The Hateful Eight early in 2015 - despite that whole "I'm not going to make The Hateful Eight" debacle earlier - Tarantino has also taken steps, more or less, to release Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair in theaters next year.
A trailer is important to the marketing of a film. It establishes tone, characterization, mis-en-scene, maybe offers some salient plot details and character relationships. It is often the first point of departure for those who are as yet undecided about a film; it is the place where fans are drawn in or pushed away. A bad trailer might not make or break a film, but it can give viewers pause about whether or not they open their wallets for this particular feature. So when I see a poorly made trailer for a film that I'm otherwise excited for, as the case in the most recent one for Mad Max: Fury Road, I am a trifle heartsick.
Director Bryan Singer has some cause for celebration. The X-Men: Days of Future Past director has been dismissed from a UK sex abuse lawsuit filed by an anonymous British actor.
