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Gaze Upon 'The Losers' and 'Jonah Hex'!
Filed under: Action, Warner Brothers, Fandom, Newsstand, Movie Marketing, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Images, Western
At last, some comic book news that isn't centered around Batman or Spider-Man! Omelete got their hands on some official images from two of Warner Bros' upcoming comic flicks, Jonah Hex and The Losers.
We've seen paparazzi glimpses from the Hex set of Megan Fox and Josh Brolin, but there's nothing like a well-lit and spooky shot, especially when your actor looks good enough to have walked off the page. If you're a fan of the haunted gunslinger and are unconvinced, you might be comforted by the sight of his Confederate gray and mangled lip. I can't say how excited I am for this film. Jonah Hex is a character who has more in common with High Plains Drifter than the capes and superpower crowd, and I think that will surprise and delight a lot of "newbies" who still equate DC Comics with Batman.
Next up, we have our first official look at The Losers! Aren't they a handsome bunch? This is based not on the DC war squad from the 1970s, but on the Vertigo spinoff by Andy Diggle. The Losers are a Special Forces team abandoned and left to die by their mysterious commander, Max. They regroup, vow revenge, and let the bullets fly. I have hopes that this one will be a solid action flick, the kind we all long for from the 1980s. The cast is certainly a lovely one: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Columbus Short, Idris Elba, and Oscar Jaenada are our fine Losers, and Jason Patric will be the villainous Max. You can see the whole line-up of them here, along a very sexy shot of Saldana. Even I can appreciate a lovely lady when she's packing guns. Now, if they'll just release a photo of Morgan to match ...
The photos are below in our gallery. Spend your Turkey Day geeking out.
Free Flick of the Day: Hang 'Em High
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Western
After nominating For a Few Dollars More and The Good the Bad and the Ugly for Free Flick of the Day, I'm going to sound like a very old and tired drum by nominating Hang 'Em High. But hey, you need something to watch today and it's just sitting there, waiting for someone to notice it.Hang 'Em High isn't a great film by any means, and it's not a very remarkable Western. It's full of missed opportunities, and the end hints that there may have been plans for a franchise centered around Marshall Jed Cooper. It's notable because it was the first film Clint Eastwood produced with his Malpaso shingle, which he would obviously go onto do great things with. (Would there be an Unforgiven without Hang 'Em High? Probably, but who knows!) It's also his first post-Sergio Leone Western, and one of the first attempts to bring Leone's style to America. It doesn't succeed in doing that very well, though a lot of the Man with No Name's trademarks remained. I think Eastwood sold himself a bit short by relying on that cigar so much, particularly since this is a character who is miles away from the cold bounty hunter of the Leone flicks. Jed Cooper is a man who is genuinely trying to do the right thing in life, and gets screwed over again and again.
However, this film entertaining enough, and is worth watching just for the whole hanging sequence. I've already mentioned this film as the probable inspiration for Lt. Aldo Raine's hanging scar and while I'm still not sure if that's true or not, you can watch it and pretend Cooper is Raine's grandfather.
Watch Hang 'Em High for free on SlashControl
Robert Pattinson Talks 'Breaking Dawn' & 'Unbound Captives'
Filed under: Action, Drama, Independent, Romance, New Releases, RumorMonger, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels, Western
Good news, Twilight fans. You have the first official news for the fourth Twilight installment, courtesy of our own Jen Yamato, FearNet and the New Moon junket.* The magically-coiffed Robert Pattinson has confirmed that Breaking Dawn will begin filming in Fall 2010, and that it's penciled into his schedule for next year.Of course, Dawn remains unconfirmed by Summit. The most controversial installment of the Twilight series, rumors swirl that the studio is hesitant to take it to the big screen. If it is made, it seems likely that it could be split into two films a'la Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Personally, I don't see Summit risking the money they'd make on #4, and they'll find a way to steer around the gorier aspects of the book. But now you know when to look for it, though you still have the madness of Eclipse pre-production to get through.
Pattinson also dished on the movie I want to mark on my calender (Sorry, I dig boots and spurs more than vampires), a Western called Unbound Captives. The directorial debut of Madeleine Stowe, it stars Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, and Pattinson. The young heartthrob revealed that it's tenatively scheduled to begin shooting in early 2010, and he sounds enthusiastic for a role that'll be miles away from Edward Cullen. "I'm playing a kid who is kidnapped by Comanches when he was four years old, and he is brought up by them. His mother spends her entire life trying to find me and my sister. When she finds us, we can't remember who she is and can't remember anything about the Western culture she grew up in. I speak Comanche the whole movie. You can't really speak more differently from Edward."
[Special thanks also goes to Collider who apparently pried the Breaking Dawn date out of Mr. Pattinson]
Free Flick of the Day: For A Few Dollars More
Filed under: Classics, Quentin Tarantino, Home Entertainment, Western
I think the mania for Sergio Leone is stronger than it's ever been. It's undoubtedly due to the championing of Quentin Tarantino, and films like Sukiyaki Western Django and The Good, the Bad and the Weird, which are driving fans to seek out where they borrowed their serapes and squints from. There also seems to simply be a hunger for good adventure stories and rugged antiheroes, and there's no better place to get sated than Leone's films. If you feel like spending two hours in the broiling sun with a man who'll shoot you as soon as look at you, then you'll love today's free flick: For A Few Dollars More.For A Few Dollars More might be my favorite of the Dollars Trilogy. I love them all on their own merits, but this installment stands on its own (I hate saying it, but Fistful is decidedly less cool after multiple viewings of Yojimbo), and is less operatic than The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. More also tips the balance thanks to the way it adds a little to the Man with No Name. Here, he's dubbed Monco (Spanish / Italian for maimed) due to the way he keeps his right hand hidden, and he doesn't just ride quietly out of the dust. Now he has a trail in a score of bloody newspaper clippings which suggests he could afford more than one serape. Ennio Morricone fans will also appreciate the little flourish he gave to Monco's gun hand
Even if you hate Westerns, you should watch it. Leone called his films "fairy tales for adults," and that's really what they are. They feel like every genre rolled in one, and have been borrowed from 1965 onward. Fans of everything from Tarantino to Pirates of the Caribbean will see something they recognize here.
Watch For A Few Dollars More on SlashControl!
Josh Brolin and Matt Damon to Star in Coen's 'True Grit' Remake
Filed under: Action, Classics, Drama, Casting, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels, Western
It's impossible to top an icon like John Wayne, but the Coen Bros' True Grit is shaping up to have a better supporting cast than the original did. (Hey, Wayne supposedly didn't like Kim Darby either.) Variety has just announced that Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are in talks to join Jeff Bridges in the Coens' remake. Bridges will play Rooster Cogburn, while Damon is in talks to play La Boeuf, the Texas Ranger who pairs up with Cogburn and Mattie. I'll probably anger the Glen Campbell fans out there, but I think this is a vast improvement over the original casting. I can actually buy Damon as a Texas Ranger.
Brolin will be taking a walk on the nasty side, as he'll be playing Tom Chaney, the man who gunned Mattie's father down for the gold he had in his saddlebag. While Chaney wasn't the most pleasant fellow in the original, there's no doubt that Brolin will increase the menace and nastiness. I think we can all agree Brolin has done no wrong since his No Country For Old Men comeback, and this is the kind of role that'll be delicious to watch him tear into. The film is set to go into production in March 2010, and the Coens won't waste any time in the editing room as it's slated to be released in late 2010.
Bring 'Lucky Luke' Stateside!
Filed under: Action, Foreign Language, Movie Marketing, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Western, Trailers and Clips
As you've probably noticed by now, I'm a sucker for Westerns. It took me awhile to warm up to the genre. I live on the high plains and have one gig giving Old West tours in petticoats to my credit, so they were hardly escapism. Of course, now that I finally like them, there's just not that many being made. Lately, there's stirs of a re-imagining going on. Filmmakers and audiences are realizing Westerns can be fun again and in a repeat of the 1960s, the charge is coming from overseas. Film fans already know about Asia's madcap forays into the genre with The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, Sukiyaki Western Django, and the upcoming The Warrior's Way. But now France is getting in on the draw with Lucky Luke, and TwitchFilm has nabbed a trailer for it.
Lucky Luke is based on a French comic series, which (as per Wikipedia) was equal parts satire and good old fashioned Western. He's your typical lone gunslinger, wandering the borders in search of injustice, a heavy burden weighing on his shoulders, a deep characterization that's a bit at odds with its simplistic art. (He looks a bit like Woody from Toy Story.) How it spawned this crazy, stylish, bullet-ridden feature is a mystery, but it did, and I'm thankful. I'm desperate to see this, and to be better acquainted with Jean Dujardin. Ooh la la.
The trailer is embedded below the jump. Watch it, and join Twitchfilm, CHUD, and Cinematical in demanding a stateside release. You know you want to spend more time in this vision of the Old West.
[via CHUD]
Villains We Love: Angel Eyes
Filed under: Quentin Tarantino, Western, Scenes We Love
Great villains are scattered throughout the Westerns, but some of the most memorably savage come from the films of Sergio Leone. While Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West gets a lot of props for the way he mows down the McBain family (including its youngest and most adorable moppet), it was nothing that Lee Van Cleef hadn't already done in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Angel Eyes seems to be dismissed as something akin to Leone fan fiction, and it's his relation (or lack of) to Van Cleef's Col. Mortimer in A Few Dollars More that people find to be more interesting than his villainy.
But he's a great villain, mostly because he's absent for much for so much of the film. Leone gives him a ruthless introduction (a scene Quentin Tarantino mirrored perfectly with Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds) and promptly yanks him out of the narrative. As Tuco and Blondie torture each other for an hour, Angel Eyes is doing his own thing and it's a wonderful shock when he shows up running a Civil War prison camp. In today's cinema, no one could resist giving Angel Eyes a prequel and a spin-off relating the trail of bodies that led to that alias and that prison camp. But Leone allowed a squint to speak for itself, and told you everything you needed to know by the way men like Blondie and Tuco squirm around him. Considering that no one in this film is exactly good, and they're all a little bit ugly, it takes a lot to convince us that a man is worse than all the others. Van Cleef and Leone did that, and few villains can match his nastiness even when they've got double the screen time.
Go below the jump -- they don't call him Angel Eyes in here!
Our Favorite Montages: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Filed under: Classics, Comedy, 20th Century Fox, Western, Trailers and Clips
You learn something new about your movie tastes when you're writing about them every single day. I'm realizing that most of my favorite montages don't come from the 1980s, but are historical recreations of one kind or another. (Even now, there's one hovering in my bookmarks because I can't decide whether it's a montage or a credits report. You'll see it eventually, I'm sure.) Today's montage is from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and has to be one of the most unusual because it's done entirely through still sepia photographs. It's a wonderful sequence, and the photos of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Katharine Ross would look at home in your western history museum. For a bunch of photos, it feels incredibly animated by the endless fun Butch and Sundance are having, clearly enjoying the fact that they're wanted men who can go unnoticed in a crowd as they party their way to Bolivia. Try looking at it through the lens of our celebrity drenched culture, because it really seems to hint at a future when Butch and Sundance would have been as obsessively photographed as Brangelina. The clothes might be outdated and the color might be sepia, but any one of these shots would look at home on Just Jared or Perez Hilton.
The best thing about this sequence is that it was created out of accident and necessity. Director George Roy Hill assumed that when it came time to film the New York sequences, he'd be able to use the sets from Hello, Dolly! as it was filming right next door. But 20th Century Fox denied them permission as they wanted to keep the sets a secret. So Hill just photographed the actors posing on set, and spliced them together with hundreds of historical photos. The result was much more interesting than just having them wander around a sound stage, don't you think?
'Ghost Rider 2' Gets a Fuel Injection with David S. Goyer
Filed under: Action, Deals, Sony, RumorMonger, Scripts, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels, Western
Most of us didn't ask the Studio Powers That Be for a Ghost Rider 2, but it doesn't matter, because we'll be getting one. Back in January, the whispers began at Bloody-Disgusting that Columbia was gearing up another Ghost Rider run, and today it has come true. Variety reports that the studio is talking to none other than David S. Goyer to pen a new installment. Nicolas Cage is expected to return as Johnny Blaze, and former Marvel Studios' head Avi Arad will be producing. Goyer was quick to say (via a spokesperson) that he wasn't officially signed, but that talks were underway to base Ghost Rider 2 on a script he did many years ago. If you'd like to know a little something about that script, you can read a review IGN did of it in 2000. Nothing ever dies thanks to the Internet and if nothing else, you can laugh at the rumors we once believed a decade ago. (Johnny Depp as Ghost Rider!)
At such early stages of fiery fuel injection, there's not much else to say. Since Mark Steven Johnson penned and directed the last one, it's probably safe to assume that if they want new writers, they'll probably want a new director. Variety hints that Columbia is keeping the property alive in order to retain its rights from Marvel, but it doesn't say whether or not they were up against a deadline. So, I'll quit talking and hand it over to the true Ghost Rider fans. Is there any hope for this one if Goyer gets involved? Anything you want to see from a particular Ghost Rider run? Speak up now, and maybe you can influence its pre-production.
Directors We Love: John Ford
Filed under: New on DVD, Home Entertainment, Western
On the comprehensive movie list site, They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, John Ford currently ranks #4 on the list of the all-time 100 greatest film directors (with Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Federico Fellini ahead of him), though he has placed more films than anyone else, 18, on the list of the all-time top 1000. I think the reason he doesn't rank higher is that he was one of the few great film directors to be fully appreciated in his own time. He won the Best Director Oscar four times -- still a record -- and took home an additional two Oscars for his wartime documentaries.
Welles was once asked whose films he studied when he made Citizen Kane in 1941, and he replied: "the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford and John Ford." Of course, even by the time he was an "old master," Ford would continue to make films like They Were Expendable, My Darling Clementine, The Quiet Man, The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It's no fun, when making lists, to mention people who are already so well covered.
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Directors We Love: Jim Jarmusch
Indie Roundup: 'Sweetgrass,' 'Clarkworld,' 'Broken Embraces'
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