Ryan Gosling is graduating from actor/coloring book muse to writer-director with his directorial debut, How To Catch A Monster, from his own script – and he’s recruited Drive co-star Christina Hendricks to play the lead. So what’s the Baby Goose’s first foray behind the camera about?
Described as a “modern day fairytale” with elements of “fantasy, noir, and suspense,” Monster sounds like a cousin of sorts to Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive, which followed Gosling’s coiled-up Driver in a seedy tour through Los Angeles.
Hendricks co-starred in Drive as Blanche, the pouty femme fatale who gets wrapped up in a job gone wrong before taking a memorable powder in a motel bathroom. Monster, produced by Marc Platt and Adam Siegel (two of the producers on Drive), will be courting buyers at the Toronto Film Festival next month, with filming to start next spring.
Per press release, via Indiewire:
“How To Catch a Monster weaves elements of fantasy, noir, and suspense into a modern day fairytale. Set against the surreal dreamscape of a vanishing city, Billy, a single mother of two, is swept into a macabre and dark fantasy underworld while her teenage son discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town. Both Billy and Bones must dive deep into the mystery, if their family is to survive.”
With a year to go before Pacific Rim hits theaters, Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) hit Comic-Con with stars Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman, Rinko Kikuchi and Charlie Day to preview the giant robot-monster movie, inspired by the Japanese sci-fi pics he watched as a kid. His vision for the film? Dirty, epic, and realistic — so much so that Del Toro and his crew built functioning, practical robots and entire sets with hydraulics (“a huge engineering feat!”), putting his actors in the thick of the action rather than go the CG route. Del Toro called the experience “the best I’ve had on any film set in all my life.” Day remembered it slightly differently: “You tortured the f*** out of us!”
Developed with writer Travis Beacham, Pacific Rim is set years into a war between humans, piloting massive robots called Jaegers, and giant monsters from the sea that threaten to wipe out civilization. When his passion project At the Mountains of Madness folded, Del Toro turned his attentions to Pacific Rim, channeling an outsized amount of energy into making it his most ambitious project to date.
Given the Japanese sci-fi flicks that inspired the film — not to mention the upcoming Godzilla reboot bringing kaiju culture back into the mainstream — it’s easy to guess that genre aficionado Del Toro has crafted in Pacific Rim a love letter to said films. That love is abundant, but he insists that the pic will be forging its own path rather than referencing what’s come before.
“I wouldn’t compare it to a Godzilla film,” said Del Toro. “[I told my crew] we should not reference other movies. We should not go and re-watch Gamera or re-watch…
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In the immortal words of Blue Oyster Cult’s Buck Dharma, “history shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.” He was singing about Godzilla and we’re speaking about him, too, as Hollywood has decided to lay another bet on the city-stompin’ monster from the Far East.
Yes, Godzilla, pop culture’s most famous advocate for nuclear non-proliferation is emerging from the seas once more.
There’s been no secret that Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. have been planning a remake of Godzilla (or Gojira if you’re nasty) with British make-a-movie-on-your-iMac whiz Gareth Edwards at the helm. However, Latino Review broke the scoop that the Japanese lizard will be making a surprise appearance at San Diego Comic-Con.
LR has a great track record of being right on this sort of thing — indeed, their announcement that Marvel’s gap on their upcoming slate will be filled with a Guardians of the Galaxy film has been all-but-confirmed. (Although just a few weeks back they swore it would be Black Panther.)
The important thing to consider is this: the San Diego Convention Center’s Hall H is massive (over 6000 seats! so many T-shirts!) and the sound system is so state of the art it makes clips from Jonah Hex seem really impressive. I doubt there will be any finer geek moment of triumph when the lights dim and Godzilla’s trademarked screech erupts.
By the way, when I say trademarked, I mean trademarked. When you have an iconic sound like that – the MGM Lion, R2-D2’s blips or, I dunno, Fran Drescher’s laugh – you protect it. The Godzilla roar, if you’d like a bit of trivia, was actually created by rubbing a leather glove covered in resin across the loosened strings of a…
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My Pet Monster! Earlier this week, Adidas pulled their Jeremy Scott shackle sneakers, because some people looked at those fugly ass things and screamed “SLAVERY! RACISM! SOME KUNTA KINTE SHIT!” When I first looked at those vomit shoes, the word “slavery” didn’t hit my head at first, but I did see several layers of ugly and I prepared myself for the heaves I’d make while seeing stupid shits stroll around with those prisoners of fug sneakers on their feet (I’m talking to you, Justin Bieber). Jeremy Scott said that slavery didn’t even cross his mind while designing those sneakers. Jeremy says he was inspired by the Khloe Kardashian of 80s toys: My Pet Monster! To which I say, My Pet Monster deserves better than those ugly ass shoes.
My Pet Monster was a toy from the 80s and everything you see is basically everything you got. I didn’t have one, but a couple of my friends did and we used to take turns handcuffing each other with those orange cuffs. Then we’d beat on each other. I was kind of weird in a “50 Shades of Inappropriate” kind of way, but that was the 80s! There was also a direct-to-VHS movie and you don’t have to press play on the trailer to know that it was a mess.
Oh, the 80s, when a toy maker’s acid trips became reality….and later a direct-to-VHS shit show.
With his round, bearded face and gentle voice, John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) is an unassuming monster — it takes a while to spot the terrible danger within him. In Justin Kurzel’s The Snowtown Murders, based on an actual series of gruesome crimes that took place in South Australia in the mid ’90s, he’s the deceptive mastermind behind a string of serial killings, the leader of a group initially, at least in their own heads, bound together by a desire to enact vigilante justice.
The Snowtown Murders is the latest and bleakest in a string of Australian crime films showing flashes of virtuoso talent, and has more than a little in common with David Michôd’s 2010 hit Animal Kingdom, including a near-feral group of characters and a teenage boy whose eyes are the windows through which we see terrible things. But Jamie Vlassakis (Lucas Pittaway) isn’t just a witness, he’s an eventual participant, and The Snowtown Murders builds into a multipronged horror effort in which the torture and murder on-screen are matched by the psychologically convincing disintegration of a previously sympathetic protagonist.
Snowtown, which is located between Adelaide and Perth, is portrayed in the film as a shabby suburb, its downtrodden ugliness in contrast to the giant sky and empty landscapes outside that the camera occasionally pulls back to appreciate. Elizabeth (Louise Harris) is dating a guy who lives across the way, and leaves her boys, including Jamie, in his care. He uses the opportunity to take photos of them in their underwear, a request to which they acquiesce with a defeated air that becomes the film’s overarching sentiment. He’s out on bail in a day. Later, another character is raped by someone in his own family: He struggles, but eventually surrenders, lying still like the runt of a litter being forced to submit, the camera observing dispassionately from…
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Patty Jenkins, the acclaimed Monster filmmaker who less than two months ago was announced as Marvel’s surprise choice to direct Thor 2, is reported to have left the project. The cause of the split is said to be the age-old classic “creative differences,” but they can figure that out later. In the meantime, a certain Asgardian strongman needs a helmer — and fast. Who should it be?
The sequel has a release date set for November 2013; preproduction rolls on while Don Payne finishes the script. Deadline’s Mike Fleming writes that Marvel and Jenkins may yet work together again on one of the studio’s origin stories, which obviously worked out well for the first Thor’s director Kenneth Branagh.
In any case, which director should inherit Jenkins’s gig? Two words come immediately to mind: The Daldry.
[via Deadline]
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Ralph Fiennes’s sweeping Coriolanus arrives this weekend. See that shit. Fiennes whips up a batch of thundering personal conflict, the kind that made Quiz Show so awesome, and Vanessa Redgrave gives a supporting performance far worthier of an Oscar than her work in Julia. She is angst and fury. She’s like Coriolanus Morissette up there. But if Shakespearean seriousness isn’t your thing, please circle back to 2001 when Mekhi Phifer, Julia Stiles and Josh Hartnett served up a Shakespearean telenovela in O, based on Othello. Hope you like hip-hop, opera and Josh Hartnett’s “evil” face, because this movie is a green-eyed monster that’s trying so hard not to be funny.
Famously, O was filmed in 1999 but not released until 2001; the Columbine shootings made high school violence an unsavory topic for a couple years. Fact is, we could’ve used the chuckle that O provides. It is such an unyielding, self-serious melodrama that I deemed it appropriate to laugh randomly as the scenes progressed. It’s like reading a high school sophomore’s handwritten summary of Othello, one he wrote while listening to his favorite 2Pac album and doing his darnedest not to transcribe some of the lyrics on accident. In this retelling, Othello is a star basketball player named Odin or “O” (Mekhi Phifer), the only black student at his southern high school. He loves his girlfriend Desi (Julia Stiles), but his envious teammate Hugo (Josh Hartnett) starts to manipulate him into believing she’s duplicitous. You know Othello. Jealousy takes over, O loses control, and the story ends in tragedy. Fine, great. But the torrid basketballing has to be seen to be believed.
Like all Bad Movies We Love, O breaks down into five lovable attributes. Let’s count ‘em…
Full Story »After writer-director Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar) debuts her latest film, this December’s moody Tilda Swinton-Ezra Miller pic We Need to Talk About Kevin, she’ll set her sights on more classic fare: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick… only, set in space. “We’re taking the premise into the realm of the galaxy; it’s creating a whole new world, and a new alien, a very psychological piece” Ramsay told Radio 5 Live’s Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo. “Mainly taking place in the ship, a bit like Das Boot, so it’s quite claustrophobic. It’s another monster movie, in a way, ‘cause the monster’s Ahab.” Stick around for more happenings in today’s Buzz Break.
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[Radio 5 Live via The Guardian]
• If you caught (and loved) Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene last weekend, you may be delighted to hear that her other Sundance ‘11 picture, the one-take horror remake Silent House, will be in theaters next March. [Cinema Blend]
• Dark Tower’s not all the way dead yet, says Brian Grazer, who told MTV that they’d shaved $45 million off the original budget and are moving forward by partnering with HBO. [MTV]
• You can be one of the first to see six minutes of The Dark Knight Rises this December! But only in front of showings of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol on proper 70mm IMAX screens. [Slashfilm]
• Happy Halloween week! Get in the spirit via Guillermo del Toro, who recently recounted his real-life ghost encounters, one of which was so spooky he had to cleanse by watching The Wire. [Toronto Star]
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