Given that two of this month's most highly anticipated movies - Les Miserables and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, didn't quite resonate with the critics as much audiences might've hoped, the attention has turned to Quentin Tarantino's spaghetti western homage Django Unchained to pick up the pieces. And given that Tarantino movies aren't for everyone, it was expected that this particularly bloody tale of violent revenge - one that deals with America's dark past with slavery by taking a hammer to it - would undoubtably divide the critics, given the subject matter.
In what is rumored to be Steven Soderbergh's last movie for a while (before he decides to unretire again), Side Effects looks be taking its cues from Hitchcock, Polanski and the works of Nabokov, and also Channing Tatum has landed a role because that means the film will actually make money. While we've already been treated to some stills of Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Channing Tatum, the first poster for the upcoming psychological thriller has been unveiled - and it's a doozy. Check it out below.
Keeping things totally relevant and not at all taking a huge financial risk given that we probably won't even be using mobile phones in 2016 (we're predicting futuristic brain transceivers), the creative geniuses over at Angry Birds have announced a feature film adaptation for just around then.
Comedy is probably the hardest genre to get right. You never know just how people are going to take joke, despite the fact that it sounds hilarious on paper. Many films try admirably to have audiences rolling in the aisles, only for them to snigger occasionally and fake guffaw purely because they feel bad for the filmmakers or actors they like. Because writing funny jokes on paper and then hiring actors who can deliver said jokes exactly as intended - enough to make audiences believe as thought that's the first time the joke has ever been said - is freakin' tough.
Just last week Matt Damon spoke out about the unlikelihood of him returning to the Bourne franchise, given that Jeremy Renner went in there with a sledgehammer and messed up the Universe. Now, however, Damon has spoken out about the potential of another installment, one that he'd be happy to make if Paul Greengrass (who expertly directed both The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum) would consider joining in on the fun. Here's what Jason Bourne himself had to say on the matter:
Having presumably held his obligatory "jean short auditions" to find the most appropriate candidate to be objectified by his camera, Michael Bay has chosen Nicola Peltz, a 17-year-old actress who you might know from The Last Airbender, to take the role of Mark Wahlberg's daughter for the next entry in his robot smash franchise, Transformers 4: Transformier.
Whilst the AFI have just unveiled their own list of the best films of 2012, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who also have things to say about what deserves some recognition these days, thank-you very much, have released their very own picks. And they've decided that Michael Haneke's Amour is the best film you might possibly see this year, proving that this particular Film Critics Association are, like, unafraid to pick a foreign title as Best Picture. "I didn't even notice it had subtitles," said somebody in the Association who voted for it (presumably).
Now the year is almost up, the American Film Institute (or the AFI, as it's known by far more cultured folk) have divulged their picks for the best movies and TV shows to grace our presence these past 365 days, a list which choses to recognise Django Unchained and Les Miserables, though we haven't seen them yet, and Girls, because that's what's cool now. “AFI Awards celebrates America’s storytellers as collaborators," said AFI president Bob Gazzales. “We are honored to bring together artists as a community, without competition, to acknowledge the gifts they have given the world in 2012.”
Being a man of old-world sensibilities and traditional standing, Terry Gilliam has evoked to send his pal Johnny Depp - who whisked his friend's dream project out from under his feet, despite the fact that he's been trying to make it for over a decade - a letter regarding his plans to mount a Don Quixote film at Disney. 'Cause, like, hey, Johnny, weren't you supposed to be making that movie together?
As a fan of both Les Miserables and its song "The Confrontation", there's nothing I'd want to see less than two Australians having a go at murdering the thing within confines of a New York pub on a drunken Saturday night. Well, unless those two Australians happen to be Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, of course, who play Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert respectively in Tom Hooper's upcoming adaptation of the famous musical.
