Posts tagged ‘Lindsay Lohan’

Carrie, The Bling Ring, The Great Gatsby, The Purge, and more. A mega ‘MOVIES COMING SOON’ post.

Let’s start with ‘The Bling Ring’. Look at all these new stills from the film! I am so excited. HERMIONE’S GOT A GUN, Y’ALL!

FINALLY THERE IS A TRAILER!

Okay, so watching the trailer, I can’t wait for this to come out because I’ve been dying to see this since I first heard about it last year. I love Chloe and Julianne and I have no doubt in my mind that they will be excellent in this. With that being said, am I the only one who was a little surprised that they decided to set the remake in the present, rather than in the 70′s like the original novel/film? I mean, it’s not that I have a problem with it, necessarily, I guess I was just expecting it to be set in the same era as the novel because I feel like it worked so well for the original film?

Then again, with bullying being such a hot topic these days and technology being such a prominent part of that, I’m interested to see how they work all of that into what was already a great story, and it gives the remake something original to bring to the table, rather than just doing a scene-for-scene remake.

Also, I think it’s interesting that they decided to take out all the nudity from the bathroom scene when you can pretty much guarantee that this will be way, way more violent than the original film. I mean, I don’t really care one way or another, but it seems obvious to me that they made that choice to try to avoid the dreaded NC-17 rating in the States, when it’s like, what do you think is more likely to scar your children: Watching people get torn to shreds, decapitated and blown the fuck up, or a couple of shots of tits and minge? You should watch this really interesting documentary called ‘This Film is Not Yet Rated’ that I saw recently that is all about the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and how they choose to rate films these days. Here’s part one, the rest is on YouTube as well:

There is yet another trailer for ‘The Great Gatsby’ and it’s no secret that the wait for this film is ACTUALLY KILLING ME. This one features Beyonce’s cover of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, as well as new Lana Del Rey and Florence + the Machine.

KILLING. ME.

I can already tell that I will be purchasing and loving the shit out of this soundtrack the second it is released, even if that is before the film is released. It already sounds like it’s going to be this generation’s ‘Romeo + Juliet’ soundtrack and let’s be honest, every single person on earth should own that because it’s basically one of the most iconic soundtracks of all time, right?

Here’s an interview with Baz Luhrmann about the soundtrack and directing the film:

Life+Times: The most interesting things about the film is the tension between the novel, (set in the New York aristocracy of the ’20s), your modern cinematic eye, and the music JAY Z has placed in it. How did you balance all these references?
The inspiration to weave these references together came from F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, because, although we did very accurate research on NYC in the 1920s and all the imagery and expression of the city in the 1920s is accurate in the film (even the rubber zebras in the pool), we knew we had to unlock for the audience a way of letting them feel what it was like to read Fitzgerald’s book in the 1920s – to be in New York City at that time. And one of the things Fitzgerald did very successfully was take all things new and modern, take pop-culture and put those in his novel. Particularly he utilized the then new African-American street music – jazz, which was called a “fad” by many, and placed it in the novel, to help tell story. To do something similar for today’s audience was our challenge. And I am a great fan of jazz. But it is a bit rarified today. So it was a natural fit to translate the African-American music that came from the streets called hip-hop, and weave it into a jazz language. When you are talking hip-hop, collaboration, and storytelling, the first person I think of is JAY Z, and this is where it seemed serendipitous that Leo [DiCaprio] and I found ourselves with Jay on the night he was recording “No Church in the Wild” in New York.

L+T: Being a sacred, widely-read book, did you feel that you had to stay close to the source material, or did you give yourself license in the adaptation?
Our real focus was to reveal the book. There were a number of steps we took to do so. First of all, Craig Pearce and I went through the book and said, ”What scenes are absolutely fundamental to the story? What scenes must be in our film? And what scenes can we do with out, even if we love them?” We know for a fact that if you read the whole book or perform it that it takes seven hours – there has recently been a brilliant stage production of the whole book. But we did not have a seven-hour movie in mind. We had to do it in two. So we had to make choices and we chose to stay very focused on the linear plot of the book. Second, one of the big devices in the book is that the story is told from inside the mind of Nick Carraway (who in our interpretation is very much like F. Scott himself). He is “within and without,” a watcher of and a participator in the story. In fact, in the novel, Fitzgerald very deftly alludes to the fact that Nick is writing a book about Jay Gatsby in the book, this fascinating character Nick met – “Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book” – “Reading over what I have written so far…” So Craig and I were looking for a way that we could show, rather than just have disembodied voiceover throughout the whole film, show Nick actually dealing with the writing, dealing with his experience of Gatsby, as he does in the novel. How we do really is the one big difference in the film. I won’t say how. I will let the audience discover that for themselves…

L+T: What in 2013 makes this adaptation of the film especially poignant?
The Great Gatsby has managed to be relevant in all times. But it is particularly relevant today because, although Fitzgerald published the novel in 1925, in it he more-or-less predicts the crash that is coming in 1929. The ’20s was a time, because of the shared national hypocrisy of Prohibition (people were railing against alcohol one minute and demanding wine at their table the next), that a slight rubbery morality was allowed to flourish, that there was confusion in the national moral dials so to speak. 1920s New York City was flush with money and booze, the stocks went ever-higher, skyscrapers vaulted to new peaks, and so it seemed that man-kind could only go up. But Fitzgerald – and I think you can see and read this in Gatsby and in much of Fitzgerald’s work – he can see that something is corrupt morally in society and it is going to come crashing down. And I think to a certain extent we have gone through that ourselves recently. Since 9/11 there has been an added slight moral rubberiness in our world, and we all know that things came crashing down. And it is this that makes the Gatsby story especially relevant today.

L+T: With the film’s release pushed back from its original date, how have you continued to evolve the film, and how much has it changed from the film since you initially shot it?
With everything I make, I set out with a very clear plan. We pursue that plan. But of course there will be deus ex machina, acts of God, and in this case it was the weather. As we were shooting, Sydney was being drenched day in and day out by La Nina, some of the wettest weather on record, and so we had to shut down shooting and then resume shooting the following year. But this had a silver lining. I had just begun to connect with JAY Z, and both of us connected over the idea of doing what Fitzgerald did – using popular music, the music of the streets, a blend, jazz, hip-hop and popular music throughout the film. In our thinking it became clear to us both, especially given the variety of artists we were working with, that this was no ordinary soundtrack and no ordinary music collaboration. And the extra time allowed us to spend more time together, to include some more of Jay’s great collaborators, including Jeymes Samuel, who, in my estimation, is the king of popular cultural references and has a true musical spirit that uplifted the project. All of this also made the project a greater joy, as I was able to go further in the collaboration as we had more time.

L+T: How did the soundtrack influence the film’s overall tone?
Actually they speak to each other. Like musical instruments they have to work in concert. But there is no doubt that popular music played such a fundamental part in the art of Fitzgerald. So music and popular culture had to play a part in the telling of this story. For example, Fitzgerald was a lover of all things modern, of cinema. And that is why I wanted to take the leap into 3D. Not to have things whooshing at the audience, but because I had the privilege of seeing Hitchcock’s first 3D drama Dial M for Murder (1954) on the original projectors. I saw actors (in this case Grace Kelly) moving on sets, where camera wasn’t moving, but they were simply acting in a space. Much like the theatre. And it occurred to me that our real special affect could be seeing a group of some of the finest actors of this generation go at each other in intensely dramatic scenes in the 3D idiom. Now, in 3D, when you take music, you also almost have to think about it in 3D too, the layering of the music. There is one scene in the speakeasy, for example, where we go in a very short time from JAY Z rapping over a contemporary track, “100$ Dolla Bills,” into a jazz version of that contemporary track, into a piece of score, back to the contemporary track, back into traditional jazz by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra, and then end the scene with a new contemporary track that is jazz influenced. So what we are saying is, although our story may be set in the 1920s, to quote one of Jay’s rhymes “history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.” What I get from that is just that the universal truth moves through time and geography. There was a Jay Gatsby in 1922; there is a Jay Gatsby today. And we all know one.

L+T: What do you want people to take away from this adaption of The Great Gatsby?
In the end, as Jay said when he first saw it, the book is very aspirational. The idea being that in America you can pursue a dream. Of course, Gatsby is meant to end tragically because he has such an absolute ideal in his mind, an absolute dream, and he will not let reality rewrite the script of that dream. This makes him an inspirational character for us less-romantic types, but it also means he is headed for a tragic conclusion. Apart from the attractiveness of the decadence of this time, which JAY Z’s ”No Church in the Wild” evokes early on in the film, you can recognize in the story that Nick begins by giving up his dream, his love and desire to write, and instead goes to make money on Wall Street, and ends by beginning his life afresh and anew, realizing that he must reveal himself to himself, he must find his own journey. As it turns out for Nick that journey is a creative one, and the first step in that creativity is writing a book about a guy he met once who everyone wrote off as a gangster but really was much more than that. I thought JAY Z, when he first saw the rough cut, put it very succinctly. He turned to me and said “It is not really about whether Gatsby made his money illegally or not, it is about whether he was a good person or not.” And I think that is the big idea in the book. It is about finding a personal moral compass, not a perceived moral compass.

 

Moving on, let’s watch the trailer for ‘The Purge’:

Although I’m not the biggest fan of the ‘Paranormal Activity’ series, I liked ‘Sinister’ and this looks like it could be scary as fuck, so I’m into it.

And finally, some bits and pieces from around the Internet:

Also James Franco:

Review:

When Sam Raimi made “Evil Dead” in 1981, there was nothing like it.

With its over-the-top gross out moments, Bruce Campbell’s performance as Ash and the director’s signature camera angles, the movie has become a cult classic — spawning two sequels that are also treasured in the annals of horror.

But in the past 32 years, the formula has become tired.

The “Friday the 13th” franchise and movies like “Cabin Fever,”“Wrong Turn” and countless others have all plopped beautiful teens in the middle of the forest, only to kill them off one by one.

And last year, the amazing “The Cabin In the Woods” skewered them all in a smart, new way. And if you still haven’t seen that movie, order it On Demand, now!

In short: The remake of “Evil Dead” had a lot going against it.

But, in a post-”Cabin In the Woods” world, the new movie still manages to breathe new life into the genre.

This time around, “Suburgatory” star Jane Levy plays Mia, a drug addict whose friends take her to her family’s cabin as she goes through detox.

The scenario creates a believable reason why the group would travel far from civilization … and helps cultivate an environment of paranoia and doubt when all hell breaks loose.

And boy does it break loose.

Soon enough, bloody vomit starts to pour, faces are completely sliced off, limbs get amputated and poor Mia gets violated by a naughty tree vine. This isn’t a movie you bring mom to … unless she’s a gore hound who secretly loves watching people burn alive.

Clearly, this flick is brutal and definitely isn’t for the faint of heart. But those who love the horror genre will relish in all the nasty things happening to these pretty people. It’s extreme — but in a ridiculous, darkly comical way.

This may be the only movie that had me cracking up while also shielding my eyes from the atrocities onscreen.

And when it comes to these gross-out scenes, I have to also applaud director Fede Alvarez for relying on practical effects, and not CGI. Take note: Just because you can use computers, doesn’t mean you should!

Sure, the movie isn’t perfect. While Levy and costar Lou Taylor Pucci do great jobs bringing their two characters to life, Jessica Lucas, Shiloh Fernandez and Elizabeth Blackmore’s characters are all one-note.

Fans of the “Evil Dead” franchise also shouldn’t go in expecting the level of slapstick in “Evil Dead II.” This just isn’t that kind of movie.

But with its relentless pace, awesome finale and a post-credits scene you should probably stick around for, the “Evil Dead” is worth seeing with a rowdy group in theaters.

With a sequel almost guaranteed, I’m interested in seeing where this franchise will go next — and fingers crossed this film’s survivor and Ash eventually cross paths!

- Brian Particelli

 

So what do you think, PCP? What films are you excited for this year?

Related posts:

Watch the trailers for ‘The Conjuring’.

Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Bling Ring’ looks incredible, watch the teaser trailer here.

Watch the trailer for Spring Breakers, finally.

Check out the first photos of Chloë Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore in Carrie.

Paranormal Activity 4. This time it’s webcams.