In 2008’s B-movie hit Taken, Liam Neeson cracked skulls across Europe in search of his kidnapped daughter. In October’s Taken 2, director Olivier Megaton and producer/co-writer Luc Besson set out to achieve something rare — An actual continuation of story! Multi-film character development! Unexpected moral examinations! — a proper sequel, in other words, as evidenced by the first trailer viewable after the jump.
The concept for Taken 2 was already promising on paper: The daughter Neeson saved in the first movie (Maggie Grace) must now help save her parents from the vengeance-seeking gangster father (Rade Šerbedžija) of the baddies Neeson murdered in his fatherly rage. The film’s new trailer delivers on this front, demonstrating what few sequels or reboots or re-jiggered whatchamacalits these days bother to do properly: Expand on their predecessors in new and interesting ways.
Neeson’s ex-operative Bryan Mills seems to be the same guy he was in Taken, but the plot turns his righteous actions in the first film on their head; another father out there is mourning, and wants bloody revenge. Who’s to say Šerbedžija’s paternal pain doesn’t warrant its own reckoning? Is this a mindless action sequel or a meditation on the cycle of vengeance and a parent’s drive to protect their children at any moral cost?
Meanwhile, Grace (whom Besson attempted to turn into an action star earlier this year in the Guy Pearce vehicle Lockout) has the opportunity to morph her victimized daughter character into a heroine. Look at the way she leaps over rooftops like a lady Jason Bourne! Turning Kim into an action hero not only makes up for how wimpy and naive she seemed (a perception magnified by my residual resentment of Grace’s turn as the useless Shannon on LOST, I’ll…
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Also in this week-capping edition of Biz Break: Frank Langella to be honored at Nantucket, Harvey Weinstein scores laurels from UCLA, Ken Loach’s latest lands Stateside, another Tribeca premiere finds a distributor, and more…
Frank Langella, Alexander Payne Among 2012 Nantucket Film Fest Draws
Frank Langella will receive the Nantucket Film Festival’s 2012 Compass Rose Acting Award, described by fest organizers as “a unique honor that recognizes an outstanding performer whose contribution to the world of acting has been profound.” Screenwriting duo Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt, Sideways) will also be showcased with a reading of their newest script The Lost Cause; the festival plans to announce the reading cast in the coming weeks.
Payne, Harvey Weinstein Honored at UCLA Fest
The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT) Film Festival has announced Alexander Payne as its Filmmaker of the Year Award honoree, while Harvey Weinstein is set to pick up TFT’s prestigious Champion Spirit Award. Both will receive their prizes at the Directors Guild on Thursday, June 14 during the Directors Showcase. The festival runs Friday, June 8 through Thursday, June 14.
Revenge For Jolly! Scores With SWAG
Sony Worldwide Acquisitions Group has acquired the U.S. and Canadian rights to Revenge for Jolly!, director Chadd Harbold’s dark comedy “that examines the moral ambiguity of revenge.” The film recently premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival; the acquisition marks the first for the newly-formed affiliate company of Charles Roven’s Atlas Entertainment.
Luc Besson Pacts With Relativity For a Pair
Relativity Media has struck a co-production and co-financing deal with Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp on the upcoming films Malavita and Three Days to Kill. Besson will direct Malavita, a “darkly comedic actioner” starring Robert De Niro and adapted by…
There’s something immobile at the center of The Lady, a kind of Botoxed biopic with an unlikely director — Luc Besson — manning the syringe. Technically, that something is the figure of Aung San Suu Kyi: Here the Burmese activist is played by Michelle Yeoh, who gets the already wearisome Shepard Fairey treatment on the film’s poster, and seems to have attended the special edition stamp school of acting in preparation for the role. Almost to a scene, Yeoh is so still and serene she’s practically submerged, her dialogue seeming to rise like beatific air bubbles that burst into tiny, untroubled smiles at the surface. Rather than ripple out — and risk the suggestion of any small mercy of movement whatever — Yeoh’s performance forms a kind of undertow that pulls the surrounding story and characters into the hagiographic shallows, where they float like sea monkeys with better set dressing, blooping away about Burmese democracy.
Besson begins The Lady with an X-ray of the origin story that opens his last producing project, Colombiana: A young girl bidding farewell to her about-to-be martyred father. Here it is Suu Kyi being kissed good-bye in 1947 by her dad, Burma’s interim prime minister and founder of its independent army, before he is killed in a coup. From there we move to Oxford in 1998, where Suu Kyi’s husband, Michael (David Thewlis), has just been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. Michael’s twin brother (also Thewlis) shows up to offer some words of comfort, and we learn that his wife has been stuck in Burma for almost a decade, and he hasn’t seen her in three years.
This little info drop is the first of several pieces of rather pressing news that are revealed, if not dully, then with a distinct lack of dramatic…
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There’s something immobile at the center of The Lady, a kind of Botoxed biopic with an unlikely director — Luc Besson — manning the syringe. Technically, that something is the figure of Aung San Suu Kyi: Here the Burmese activist is played by Michelle Yeoh, who gets the already wearisome Shepard Fairey treatment on the film’s poster, and seems to have attended the special edition stamp school of acting in preparation for the role. Almost to a scene, Yeoh is so still and serene she’s practically submerged, her dialogue seeming to rise like beatific air bubbles that burst into tiny, untroubled smiles at the surface. Rather than ripple out — and risk the suggestion of any small mercy of movement whatever — Yeoh’s performance forms a kind of undertow that pulls the surrounding story and characters into the hagiographic shallows, where they float like sea monkeys with better set dressing, blooping away about Burmese democracy.
Besson begins The Lady with an X-ray of the origin story that opens his last producing project, Colombiana: A young girl bidding farewell to her about-to-be martyred father. Here it is Suu Kyi being kissed good-bye in 1947 by her dad, Burma’s interim prime minister and founder of its independent army, before he is killed in a coup. From there we move to Oxford in 1998, where Suu Kyi’s husband, Michael (David Thewlis), has just been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. Michael’s twin brother (also Thewlis) shows up to offer some words of comfort, and we…
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Let’s cut to the chase: Michelle Yeoh looks simply amazing in the first full trailer for Luc Besson’s The Lady, the story of Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi and the two decades she spent as a political prisoner in her own country. The film played Toronto last month but doesn’t yet have a U.S. release date, which is too bad because after glimpsing the uncharacteristically restrained (and gorgeously shot) work here by Besson, it’s one of the more intriguing upcoming releases on my radar.
Well, there are two close-range murder shots in the trailer alone, not to mention a few uber-vilified military figures on hand, making Besson’s moral stance even clearer while he adds some action-oriented flair. But what makes the trailer for The Lady compelling is, again, Yeoh. She’s supported by David Thewlis as Suu Kyi’s husband Michael Aris, who was only able to visit his wife in Burma a handful of times between her 1989 arrest and his death in 1999.
One question: What’s up the vaguely Batman Begins-sounding music playing underneath the otherwise seriousface trailer? Regardless, I’m in.
Verdict: Both ladies have me hooked — Suu Kyi and Yeoh.
[via Yahoo!]
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Happy Thursday! Also in today’s edition of The Broadsheet: A flurry of deals descend on Toronto, including the latest from Luc Besson and Lynn Shelton… Snoop Dogg is set to play a pimping bluesman… Your next Hollywood culture war may be brewing… and more.
· Everybody loves to pretend they weren’t paying attention to the news when they are nominated for awards. But Kate Winslet, nominated for an Emmy this year for Mildred Pierce, has a story I admire too much to disbelieve: “I was in England, and I was doing some really great daylong cookery classes with my best friend,” Winslet told reporters this week during a satellite interview for Contagion. “And my best friend and I, that particular day, we happened to be doing a butchery class. And, literally, as the e-mail came through telling me that I had been nominated and that we had received 21 nominations overall — I am not kidding you — I was hacking up a chicken. Isn’t that great? I just love that story.” [AP]
· In the first of a flurry of U.S distribution deals to hit the Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday, Andrea Arnold’s spotty adaptation of Wuthering Heights was acquired by Oscilloscope Laboratories. [Press release]
· And then later on in the day, Lynn Shelton’s dramedy Your Sister’s Sister, featuring Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt, went to IFC Films. [Press release]
· And then later in the day, Luc Besson’s biopic The Lady, featuring what is said to be an Oscar-caliber performance from Michelle Yeoh as imprisoned Burmese pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, went to Cohen Media Group. [Deadline]
· Snoop Dogg is…
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Of all the features set to premiere at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, only one production resulted in the deportation of its lead. That film is Luc Besson’s biopic The Lady, which stars Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actress and Burmese deportee Michelle Yeoh as Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize winner and Burmese government protester. Finally, a teaser trailer for this controversial picture has surfaced.
Besson’s The Lady has been described as an epic love story about how an extraordinary couple and family sacrifice their happiness at great human cost for a higher cause. As previously mentioned, Yeoh stars as Kyi — who was sentenced to over a decade under house arrest because of her political actions — and David Thewlis as her loyal husband Michael Aris. During production, it was reported that Kyi’s house arrest was lifted and Yeoh was able to meet the woman she was portraying onscreen.
While The Lady will enjoy a world premiere at this fall’s TIFF, the biopic still does not have a release date.
VERDICT: Speech! Speech!
[via Yahoo!]
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