Glad to see these gentlemen have our backs. The Avengers opens in 3D and IMAX on May 4th.

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 2:28pm.

By Joe Bendel. Serial killers love killing teenagers. That is about the only convention upheld in a new horror mash-up that gleefully defies all the laws of nature and constraints of logic. Nothing will be allowed to suppress the body count in Joseph Kahn’s amazingly frenetic and kinetic Detention (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Man, where do you start with this? Possibly with arrogant cheerleader Taylor Fisher, who used to rule Grizzly Lake High, until she was murdered by a serial killer apparently inspired by Cinderhella, the horror-movie-within-the-horror-movie franchise character. Her place at the top of the status totem pole is filled by Ione Willis, who has been slumming with Clapton Davis, the childhood guy-friend misfit-mascot Riley Jones carries a massive torch for. She is having a bad high school career. Socially shunned and hobbling about on a walking cast, she was contemplating suicide until Cinderhella started stalking her. Unfortunately, everyone dismisses her claims as a pathetic plea for attention.

That is about the first five minutes of Detention. From there, Kahn steps on the gas, spinning out into outrageous territory. Teenagers will be hacked up, Jones will be humiliated several times over, the space-time continuum will be jeopardized, and audiences will witness a truly wicked send-up of The Breakfast Club.

From "Detention."

Kahn is like a postmodern hipster Mel Brooks, launching an incredible barrage of jokes at the audience, which are rather clever, more often than not. Indeed, it is truly impressive how consistently he maintains the sheer breakneck pace of the madness. Viewers will leave Detention with their heads spinning like Regan MacNeil, but in a good way. Khan really has an unusual flair for visuals and a keen sense of pop culture. There is one extended scene marking the passage of time at Grizzly Lake through emblematic songs of years past that approaches outright brilliance.

Frankly, his ensemble cast deserves kudos just for keeping up the amped-up lunacy. They are all quite game, including Spencer Locke as Willis, which turns out to be a rather more complicated part than we might expect. Even Dane Cook is quite funny as Principal Verge, perhaps even redeeming himself for the mess that is Answers to Nothing. However, it is some of the supporting players who really bring the mojo, like rapper Dumboundead as Toshiba the exchange student and Walter Perez as Elliot Fink, a character beyond explanation in this limited space.

Detention is like Scream on a heart-bursting dose of speed. Just watching it careen by is a riotous trip. Largely self-financed by Kahn, Detention is quite an enterprising and idiosyncratic accomplishment. Enthusiastically recommended for horror fans not susceptible to seizures, it opens this Friday (4/13) in New York at the AMC Empire and in San Francisco at the AMC Metreon.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on April 11th, 2012 at 9:09am.

Marvel’s highly anticipated The Avengers has its world premiere in Hollywood tonight, and more clips are now coming out from the film. In the scene above, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) confronts Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in Stark’s swanky New York City apartment over an invading alien horde Loki will be leading against Earth.

It’s amazing how many such hordes are attacking Earth these days – you’d think they’d have something better to do. Like help Lamar Odom resurrect his career.

Also: if you haven’t already read it, feel free to check out our LFM interview with Marvel’s Stan Lee from this year’s Slamdance Film Festival.

Posted on April 11th, 2012 at 9:08am.

Colin Farrell in the new "Total Recall."

By Patricia Ducey. Now that the trailer for the remake of Total Recall is out, I thought about Colin Farrell and the trajectory of his career – how the actor once more famous for his partying than his acting climbed his way back to blockbuster status again, now reprising Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic role. How did he get from Alexander to Quaid? [See Colin Farrell discuss the new Total Recall here.]

Farrell’s international career ignited when he, a Dublin native and actor in both Ireland and on the BBC, was cast by Joel Schumacher in Tigerland (2000) as Bozz, an edgy Texan army recruit. His smoldering good looks and credible Texas twang in the film made Hollywood sit up and take notice. With his Irish charm, his reputation for four letter words, and rebelliousness — plus his nudity in Tigerland — Farrell soon became known as much for his off-screen antics as for his roles, and for a while he was the enfant terrible of the film world. A blur of big roles followed Tigerland: he co-starred opposite Bruce Willis in Hart’s War, played Jesse James in American Outlaws, and worked with Steven Spielberg on Minority Report. He shot to the top of the acting world, and landed the cover of Vanity Fair — all before he was 25.

Colin Farrell in "Tigerland."

Then Farrell donned that platinum blond wig (but kept his Irish accent) for the title role in Oliver Stone’s unfortunate Alexander in 2004. Nominated for six Razzies, the movie was rejected by critics and moviegoers alike. He quickly went to work on a remake of Miami Vice, then collapsed at the wrap party and checked into rehab. Miami Vice collapsed, too.

Farrell had offended the lords of fame and cinema: his movies bombed, and his x–rated exploits felt, well, exploitative. He didn’t work much. And although many Hollywood notables who burn the flame at both ends never make it back (like Stone himself, still wandering in the desert after Alexander), Farrell did. In a series of small but memorable roles over the past five to six years, Farrell worked steadily and garnered attention for all the right reasons. By honing his affecting acting skills and leaving the bad-boy persona behind, he moved forward.

In four roles, especially — John Smith in The New World, Ray in In Bruges, Valka in The Way Back, and as Bobby Pellitt in Horrible Bosses — Farrell played against his good looks and roguish charm (and his much ballyhooed craic-loving ways) to create indelible characters instead.

When he read the script to In Bruges, for instance, he loved it. But he warned Martin McDonagh, the director, “I don’t think you should hire me. I come with a certain amount of baggage that has been well earned through the years and this piece is so pure, I would love the audience to not have too much of a relationship with any of the actors.” Luckily, McDonagh disagreed and hired him. The result is the character of Ray, a hit man who violates his own moral code by killing an innocent and who spends the rest of the film trying to expiate his guilt. Strangely, and thanks to Farrell’s portrayal, we root for him to do just that.

After Bruges Farrell played Valka, a Russian gangster in The Way Back (a film often written about here at Libertas, see here and here), another “minor” character with a believable, multifaceted identity. Valka admires toughness and demands it of others. With a tattoo of Stalin on his chest to honor one of Russia’s “tough men,” he eschews self-pity — “grateful is for dogs” — and doesn’t quit until he reaches the border. Turns out he is not so tough after all, though. At the border he realizes he can’t leave Russia, his beloved homeland -  and as for freedom, he “wouldn’t know what to do with it.” Another deftly created character with just the right touch of saint and sinner.

Farrell in "The New World."

On the comedic side, in Horrible Bosses Farrell undergoes a complete physical transformation as Bobby Pellitt, the obnoxious son of the boss. Vanity be damned, Farrell morphs into one of the most comically unlikable characters ever, yet the fierceness of Bobby’s lust for power (plus an almost heroically bad comb-over) earn our admiration.

But the first I saw of Farrell after his burnout was his role as Captain John Smith in Terrence Malick’s The New World. I was frankly surprised by the seriousness of his work – and his willingness to subsume himself into Malick’s ensemble – instead of dominating the screen. This was definitely not a star turn. In New World Farrell captures us without speaking — dialogue is always sparse in a Malick film — first as the rebel explorer, and then as Smith the man in love. I sought out Farrell’s films after that, and the string of memorable portrayals continued.

I’ve enjoyed him so much in these “supporting” roles that I almost hate to see him in the lead – of a blockbuster, no less – once again. Almost. By now he’s tucked the baggage away and earned his standing as a leading man. In the new trailer we can guess that his Total Recall is going to be different, with a vulnerability and emotional depth as evident as in his previous work. There’s a soul, not a cyborg, behind those eyes — and somehow I don’t think the stardust will blind him this time.

Posted on April 3rd, 2012 at 2:26pm.

UPDATE: According to Deadline Hollywood, since the posting of this video the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has blinked and invited ‘The Dictator’ to attend The Oscars.

Posted on February 24th, 2012 at 3:28pm.

This comes to us today courtesy of Vimeo via The Huffington Post.

LFM’s Govindini Murty recently conducted a 2-part interview with Herzog (see Part I, Part II). No chickens were harmed during the interview.

Posted on February 8th, 2012 at 12:44pm.

Director Werner Herzog.

[Editor's Note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. In Part I of my interview with Werner Herzog, we discussed his new movie Into the Abyss and its searing exploration of evil in human society. Now in Part II we turn to the world of nature, which Herzog sees as even more dangerous. In Les Blanks’ documentary Burden of Dreams, Herzog famously spoke out on the “obscenity” of the jungle, its “harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.” In Herzog’s documentary Encounters at the End of the World, he expressed skepticism toward “tree huggers and whale huggers,” while in Grizzly Man, he documented the fate of a man literally killed by his unhealthy obsession with wild nature. Herzog has even criticized the romanticizing of nature in Avatar, calling the film “an abomination because of its New Age schlock and bullshit.”

Obviously Werner Herzog has strong feelings about the proper relationship between humanity and nature. One sees this, for example, in Herzog’s stunning documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, released this week on DVD. Cave of Forgotten Dreams offers an extraordinary look at the 30,000 – 32,000 year-old Paleolithic cave paintings inside the Chauvet Cave in southern France – currently considered to be the oldest cave paintings in the world. As Herzog told me in Part I of our discussion on the concept of “the abyss,” “I’ve always tried to look deep inside of what we are – deep into the recesses of our existence, of our prehistory – like in Cave of Forgotten Dreams. So it is some sort of a theme that runs through quite a few of my films.”

The Paleolithic cave paintings of Chauvet.

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Herzog speaks eloquently of the Paleolithic cave paintings of Chauvet and their relationship to the surrounding landscape:

“These images are memories of long-forgotten dreams. Is this their heartbeat, or ours? Will we ever be able to understand the vision of the artists across such an abyss of time? [Camera shows a massive natural stone arch in the landscape.] There is an aura of melodrama in this landscape. It could be straight out of a Wagner opera or a painting of German Romanticists. Could this be our connection to them? This staging of a landscape as an operatic event does not belong to the Romanticists alone. Stone Age man might have had a similar sense of inner landscapes …”

And yet despite these poetic sentiments, Herzog vehemently denies being a Romantic; rather, he defines his approach to nature as being similar to that of the artists of the late Middle Ages.

Ultimately, if one were to search for a theme that unites Werner Herzog’s diverse body of work, it would be that respect for human life and its limits is what holds us back from the brutality of amoral nature – the abyss into which humanity’s natural instincts might otherwise plunge. As Herzog told me, he is concerned above all with civilizational breakdown – with how humanity can abandon its own heights to descend into unfathomable depths of madness and annihilation. Equally importantly though, Herzog’s love of art, of literature, of joyful exploration of the world and its peoples points to a hopeful way out of the abyss and into the light of day.

Klaus Kinski treks into the Amazon in Herzog's "Aguirre: The Wrath of God."

Thus, in Part II of this interview, we tackle such colorful subjects as Herzog’s anti-romantic views on nature, why he can’t help ranting about Avatar, his excitement over his Rogue Film School (in which he teaches such crucial skills as “lock picking” and “neutralizing bureaucracy”), and his belief that Wrestlemania and reality TV offer vital clues to understanding civilization. The interview has been edited for length.

GM: There is this sense in all of your films, whether they’re historical dramas or contemporary documentaries, that you wish to explore the extremes. You go from examining the molecular world in scenes from Encounters at the End of the World to these broad vistas of Antarctica or the desert or the Himalayas in your other documentaries. Do you feel that you’re part of what could be termed the German Romantic tradition in terms of having this approach to nature – seeing it both as a place of danger and a place of inspiration?

WH: I think that’s a common misconception [that] I had an affinity to romantic culture – no I don’t. I do not feel much affinity with it. I don’t feel at home with it. I’m much closer to poets like Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Büchner who wrote Woyzeck – in the early 1820s he wrote literature that belonged to the early 20th century, that was almost like Expressionism. Or Hölderlin the poet, and he’s not a Romantic poet either. He’s somewhere completely unique. He’s like a continent of his own – not really comparable to other Romantic writers of his time…

And when you look at how I depict nature – wild nature for example in Grizzly Man, it’s quite evident that it’s a completely anti-Romantic view. Timothy Treadwell who was protecting bears and who was killed and eaten by a grizzly bear together with his girlfriend, he has this kind of watered down Romanticism … that’s what I’m completely against. I would stop the course of the film even and in my comment I would have an ongoing argument with Treadwell: “Here I differ from Treadwell.” I do not see wild nature as something benign and beautiful and the bears fluffy like little pets. No, they are dangerous and aggressive and nature itself looks rather chaotic and hostile. You look at the universe – it’s very, very hostile out there.

For example in Les Blanks’ Burden of Dreams I deliver a speech/rant about the jungle and you’ll never see anything so clearly against Romanticism and the romanticizing of landscapes, romanticizing of wild nature. … It’s funny because being a German everyone immediately thinks yeah yeah he must have an affinity with Romantic culture. No, I don’t.

GM: I think I see multiple sides to Romanticism. It’s such a complex movement. What I was thinking of was not so much the warm, romantic with a small ‘r’ approach to nature but the approach that sees it as terrifying and overwhelming. For example, even going back into 16th century German art I think of Albrecht Altdorfer with his landscapes towering over very small figures, or of Bruegel’s Landscape With the Fall of Icarus with the human figures very small in the distance, on through Caspar David-Friedrich’s work [in the early 19th century] where you have the two extremes – you either have humanity dwarfed by nature, as in The Monk on the Seashore or you have humanity standing titanic over nature, as in The Wanderer over the Sea of Clouds. So it was in that sense I was asking about nature. Your quote was very striking [in Burden of Dreams] where you mention the jungle as being “full of obscenity … nature here is vile and base.”

From Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo": Kinski in nature.

WH: Yeah. Obscenity – that was because Kinski kept saying everything is erotic. And he would hug a tree and fornicate with it. [Laughs] Which is really against my inner convictions.

GM: But this comment about the ‘harmony of overwhelming and collective murder’ – setting aside Kinski’s comments, is that how you would see that particular jungle, or nature in general?

WH: No, you would have to be a little bit cautious. It’s a rant ‘against’ the jungle, but it came at a time of enormous strain on me – weeks and weeks and weeks where there was every single day a major disaster. And when I speak of major disaster I mean disasters like two plane crashes. Two consecutive plane crashes, and on and on and on. So, yes you have to see it in the context. But otherwise, thinking about the jungle, it’s not completely wrong what I said. But the ferocity of the rant is in a way a result of enormous pressure of disasters one after the other. … And it’s OK, I still like my rant.

GM: It’s achieved a cult status on-line. People enjoy it a great deal.

Continue reading »

By Jason Apuzzo. We like to periodically put a spotlight on short films here at Libertas, and this recent short film above called “The Arab Spring” caught my eye over at Vimeo. The film is essentially an abstract representation of the historic events of the Arab Spring, and is quite polished in terms of its graphic design and sound. Take a look. We wish filmmaker Raoul Marks the best with it.

[UPDATE: The filmmaker has made the decision to remove the film from Vimeo. See the comments from filmmaker Raoul Marks in the comments section below.]

[UPDATE #2: The film is now back up, with a minor alteration.]

Posted on November 30th, 2011 at 11:40am.

By Joe Bendel. If the Taliban mullahs want to call you something heavy, they will probably label you a “miscreant” (a villainous heretic). Unfortunately, for entertainment-starved Pakistanis, just about everyone involved in artistic endeavors is automatically considered a “miscreant,” most definitely including actors and filmmakers. Ironically though, the cottage Pashto film industry was largely based in the Taliban stronghold of Peshawar, which is where Australian filmmaker-artist George Gittoes took his camera for an up-close and personal look at militant intolerance in The Miscreants of Taliwood (see a 6-minute preview above), which screens during Anthology Film Archives’s upcoming retrospective of Gittoes gonzo-ish filmmaking.

If truth be told, Gittoes was probably fortunate to live through the first thirty seconds of Miscreants. Fortunately, he was only roughed up a bit while filming Islamists building a bonfire of CDs and DVDs in Islamabad, a city that Gittoes reminds viewers contains nuclear weapons. However, as Gittoes pursues his story, he becomes increasingly a part of his own film, at considerably further risk to his own well being.

While it is ordinarily annoying to see filmmakers inject themselves into their own documentaries, Gittoes was hardly motivated by self-aggrandizement. To gain access to the world of Pashto filmmaking, he became an actor himself, forming a fast friendship with his co-star Javed Musazai. When the Taliban terrorized Taliwood into submission, Gittoes financed two films on his own in order to keep the documentary going. Though hardly well-heeled, Gittoes is able to scrape together seven grand, sufficient funds for two Pashto films.

George Gittoes & Javed Musazai in "The Miscreants of Taliwood."

Continue reading »

Model/athlete Anya Major.

By Jason Apuzzo. As a brief tribute to Steve Jobs and his remarkable legacy, I thought we’d take a look back at Apple’s famous 1984 ad introducing the Macintosh, an ad directed by Ridley Scott. It was this ad, run only once – during 1984’s Super Bowl – that introduced the Macintosh to the world.

The ad is, of course, a succinct and marvelously effective little riff on George Orwell’s original 1984 – although somehow I don’t remember any busty blonde athletes in that novel, do you? (Jobs & Co. really knew how to sell.)

In any case, enjoy it, reminisce, and perhaps even learn something from it. The ad very much captures Jobs’ innovative spirit, which we’ll certainly miss.

Posted on October 7th, 2011 at 12:43pm.

By Joe Bendel. As far as Section 20 is concerned, the only good terrorist is a terrorist getting renditioned to within an inch of their lives. As a result, disgraced former U.S. Delta Force soldier Damien Scott finds he fits in rather well in the double-secret British counter-terrorism unit in Strike Back, which has its series debut tonight on Cinemax.

Like 24 in its Surnow heyday, viewers should not get too attached to reoccurring characters, including John Porter (a lead protagonist from Strike Back’s pre-Cinemax first season on British Sky TV). Captured while investigating a large scale operation code-named Project Dawn, Porter has been captured by terrorists loyal to the Islamist mastermind, “Latif.” Aside from Porter, only his former American counterpart from the early days of Iraq can identify the mysterious Latif. That of course would be Scott, whom Section 20’s Sgt. Stonebridge finds drinking, whoring, and pit-fighting his way through a Southeast Asian redlight district.

Naturally, there is major friction between the Yank and the Brit, but they are all business when the bullets start flying. If the first four installments are representative of the entire season, Strike Back’s wider overarching storyline will be advanced by a succession of two episode mini-arcs. On the micro-level, the show is a breath of fresh air, featuring terrorists who are not simply misguided, but horrifically evil. For instance, Scott spends the balance of episode two protecting an innocent young girl from Islamic terrorists (who are explicitly identified as such), only taking occasional breaks to bed the beautiful women of the hotel taken hostage by the terrorist thugs. Seriously, that’s an apt description.

However, on the macro level, Strike Back’s shadowy meta-conspiracy threatens to be a real buzz kill. Supposedly, Scott was unceremoniously mustered out of service because he caught wind of a plan to plant the WMD stockpiles that would “justify” Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those infamous weapons are now at loose ends, doggedly pursued by Latif for his nefarious purposes. This sort of potential demonization of the American military and intelligence services is exactly what we do not need any more of on television.

It would be a shame if Strike Back’s macro themes continue in this direction, because they could spoil some genuinely rip-rousing television entertainment. As Scott, Sullivan Stapleton is an undeniably likable and engaging hard-nosed bad-attitude protagonist. Though the relatively by-the-book Stonebridge is probably not as fun to play, Philip Winchester displays plenty of square jawed action cred. There are also plenty of James Bond worthy women, like Karen David (sort of geek-famous for Scorpion King 2) as the barmaid Scott protects when the terrorists break up their hook-up. Likewise, the villains are truly villainous, such as the workaholic Liam Cunningham (The Guard, Outcasts, etc), chewing the scenery with relish as IRA enforcer turned mercenary Daniel Connolly.

From "Strike Back" on Cinemax.

At least in episodes one through four, the Indian and South African settings are quite cinematic, while the stunt work and effects are all first class. Scott and Stonebridge deliver quite a bit of vicarious satisfaction, administering on the spot justice to Islamist fanatics and their craven accomplices that should be well worth returning for throughout the show’s run. Yet, if it loses sight of who the real bad guys are, sliding into the sort of moral equivalency frequently peddled by Hollywood, the show will alienate its core viewership – while those sharing such a hostile view of American and British military and intelligence personnel will likely be put off by the Jack Bauer tactics gleefully indulged in throughout each episode.

Strike Back could be flat-out great, so let’s hope it minimizes the clichéd conspiracy themes and plays to its strengths. This week, the totally entertaining first episode is definitely recommended when it debuts tonight (8/12) on Cinemax.

Posted on August 12th, 2011 at 12:06pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. Last summer we posted about a then-forthcoming web series called The Mercury Men. The Mercury Men (see the trailer above) is a retro-, 1940s-style adventure serial about a lowly government office drone, who finds himself trapped when deadly alien visitors from the planet Mercury seize his office building and use it as a staging ground for a nefarious plot. Aided by a daring aerospace engineer from a mysterious organization known as “The League,” the office drone must stop the invaders and their doomsday device, the Gravity Engine.

The Mercury Men received a fair amount of buzz last year, including an appearance in Sci Fi Magazine (right next to a feature about Libertas Contributor Steve Greaves) and at Comic-Con. I lost track of The Mercury Men, though, until Libertas commenter Vince (to whom I tip my hat) notified me that the series had finally been completed and picked up by The SyFy Channel as a web program. The series is currently 7 episodes in (at about 7 minutes per episode), with 3 more to go – and all episodes will be available on-line at the Syfy Channel website by the end of this week.

Since we’ve been talking a lot here lately about both superheroes and alien invasion sci-fi, this seemed like a good moment to remind everyone about this series.

Dodging an attack by The Mercury Men.

It’s important to keep an eye on the indie/low-budget world, not just because there’s a lot of creativity in that arena – but because tomorrow’s big-time directors are regularly emerging from these humble projects. For example, Joe Cornish, whose debut feature Attack the Block we just reviewed last week, is already getting buzz as the possible next director for the Die Hard series. And Gareth Edwards, director of the low-budget indie sci-fi film Monsters (see our review here), has already been tapped to direct the Godzilla reboot.

As I mentioned previously, I love the creativity of what director Chris Preksta did with The Mercury Men to evoke the atmosphere of the old adventure serials, so many of which were based around a charismatic American hero (Superman, Batman, The Green Hornet, Captain America, etc.) fighting some sort of fascist invader. It’s also quite remarkable how far low-budget VFX have come in terms of their ability to fill out the otherwise constricted universe of indie filmmaking; it’s a classic case of technology freeing up storytellers’ imaginations. Beyond that, though, I like the pizzaz the filmmakers brought to this simple project, and its old-fashioned humanistic spirit – exemplified by the great speech given by ‘Dr. Tomorrow’ in the “Men of Tomorrow” episode.  And of course it’s also interesting, once again, to see the ‘invasion of America’ theme recurring, which we’re seeing everywhere these days.

So once again, best wishes to the team behind The Mercury Men, and I hope LFM readers take time to check out this fun little series.

Posted on August 2nd, 2011 at 5:45pm.