You’re a procrastinator. You waited until the last moment to figure out your Halloween costume, and now you need ideas, fast — preferably ones that will impress your fellow movie nerds. Fear not! Here are 9 easy-ish cinephile-ready costumes inspired by some of this year’s most memorable films… CLOUD ATLAS What do six interconnected characters in six time periods spanning from the 19th century Pacific to the future where Tom Hanks speaks the true-true have in common, despite wildly divergent costumes and fake noses and whatnot? THAT BIRTHMARK. Draw on your own Cloud Atlas comet mark of the Chosen One anywhere – your shoulder, the back of your head, your left butt cheek — and you’re set. The best part: You can literally look like anyone and it still works. Just whatever you do, do not attempt futuristic Asianface . PITCH PERFECT Here’s a group costume for you and 5-6 of your multi-culti friends: Dress campus casual and walk around in a pack all night singing pop songs a cappella and challenging random strangers to riff-offs while shouting Pitch Perfect -isms like “Aca-awesome!” SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS To channel Colin Farrell or any of his eccentric cast mates in Martin McDonagh ‘s madcap crime comedy, all you really need is one key accessory: A Shih Tzu. Carry the pooch around all night and you’re set. Bonus if you do it in a Christopher Walken accent . If you happen to resemble Tom Waits , a white bunny is a lot less costly to procure. THE MASTER Joaquin Phoenix ‘s hunched, feral Freddie Quell can be achieved with just the right attire, posture, and off-kilter touch of insanity. Start with a button-down shirt tucked into pants pulled up to an Ed Grimley-level and slouch your shoulders forward. Carry a few makeshift beakers and jars with you and wherever you go, mix a batch of your special potions from assorted household liquids while pacing and licking windows. And voila ! SKYFALL If you’re a dapper dan who happens to have a Tom Ford fitted suit pressed and hanging in the closet, Halloween’s a cinch: Dress to the nines, grab a Heineken, and spend the evening fixing your cufflink like a boss . PROMETHEUS Don’t have a futuristic space suit lying around the house? No worries, ladies. Strip down to a white bandeau bra and panties, spatter yourself with black creature goop and run around screaming as if there’s a giant space monster right behind you. Lug around a decapitated mannequin head for extra emphasis. You might be cold, but you’ll be the baddest lady in the universe. MAGIC MIKE Fellas can get in on the scantily-clad action too, although the women of the world may prefer it if you have Channing Tatum’s abs and sense of rhythm. Maybe a speedo-vest-cowboy hat combination, a la Matthew McConaughey? Or a g-string, for those who dare? Bring along a boombox and have Ginuwine’s “Pony” queued up. You might even make some cash in the process. THE COMEDY Don your trust-fund hipster polo and boat shoes and walk around making a joke of everything a la Tim Heidecker (of Tim and Eric fame) in the new pic The Comedy ; singing the infectious mantra “No no tip” will really tie the outfit together, although anyone who hasn’t yet seen the movie will just think you’re a giant douche. THE GREY Fish a dirty long-sleeved thermal out of the laundry, smear a few smudges of fake blood on your face, and tape broken minibar bottles to your fists and you’re prepped for action, Liam Neeson-style . Plus: You get to drink the contents of those minibar bottles first, and you’ll be ready for any wolves that may cross your path. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Given the kind of vampire that’s dominated pop culture in recent years – hunky, as down in Bon Temps, or sparkly, like the eternal teens of Twilight — it’s no surprise that some folks may long for the bloodsucker of olde. Well, count Johnny Depp among the ranks of the traditionalists. His latest collaboration with director Tim Burton, an adaptation of the 1970s supernatural soap Dark Shadows , sees Depp in ghostly make-up and fangs as undead hero Barnabas Collins in what he describes as a counterpoint to movies about “vampires that look like underwear models.” And underwear models are the last things Depp brings to mind as Collins: Freed after centuries of imprisonment, the 18th century New England vampire returns to his ancestral home only to find himself — pasty white (via theatrical make-up), with long pointy vampire fingers, chompers, and a wardrobe like a Goth Liberace’s – a fish out of water in the groovy ’70s. So why the reactionary vampirism? Depp and Burton were both fans of the original Dark Shadows series as kids, as they told press last week in Los Angeles. (Co-star Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays Collins family descendant and matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, was the only other cast member who was also a previous fan of the show — so much so that she called her Batman Returns director Burton to lobby for a part.) But the idea to make a film adaptation from the cult series didn’t strike until the two were on the set of another film. “I think it was during Sweeney Todd where I just blurted out in mid conversation, ‘God, we should do a vampire movie together,’” Depp recalled, “’where you actually have a vampire that looks like a vampire.’” Depp says he’s always been fascinated by monsters, and the erotic nature of bloodsuckers adds “a darkness, this mystery, this intrigue.” But of course, Dark Shadows is a family-friendly comedy-actioner to boot. “It was a real challenge, more for Tim than me, to make that guy, that vampire, fit back into this odd society and this dysfunctional family,” he said. “I think he did it seamlessly.” In addition to wearing finger-extending vampire nails that required delicate treatment between scenes, Depp donned other vampire accoutrements. “When I had the fangs, you had to be careful that you didn’t actually pierce the jugular,” he explained. “Kind of like my experience shaving Alan Rickman — which, by the way, neither of us wants to do again.” As for Barnabas Collins’s stilted, out-of-the-past mannerisms, Depp and Burton agreed: They had to include some measure of original series actor Jonathan Frid in the performance. “It just had to be this sort of classic monster, like Fangoria Magazine or that kind of thing,” Depp said. “In terms of that Jonathan did have a rigidity to him, this elegance. It was always there.” “Tim and I talked early on,” he continued. “I did believe that a vampire should look like a vampire.” He paused. “It was a kind of rebellion against vampires that look like underwear models.” Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
At a few West Coast theaters this Friday, Diane Keaton’s dog weepie Darling Companion and the documentary Chimpanzee will make room in the theatrical line-up for one more animal movie, the docufiction Otter 501 . That’s right. While the rest of the world was distracted by the latest superhero shawarma scandal , the rapidly growing field of wildlife documentaries produced a transmedia movie in a genre you might have never heard of. About otters. And in a few weeks, this spring’s primates, canines, and water weasels will migrate to the DVD shelf, replaced by their summer counterparts in Madagascar 3, Ice Age: Continental Drift, and Piranha 3DD . There will, in other words, always be a creature feature at the movie theater. Animals have always been celluloid stars: the Lumière brothers exhibited short films of horses and cats years before the first feature-length film. But the last few years have seen a flood (or is that an ark?) of animal movies. The wildlife doc, for example, is the industry’s newest success story. For example, Disneynature, founded only in 2008, has released four of the top ten highest-grossing documentaries of all time. The interest in looking at animals certainly seems limitless: the popularity of pet videos on YouTube, cable channels like Animal Planet and National Geographic, high-profile docs like March of the Penguins and Project Nim , and the 101 talking animal movies Hollywood released last year certainly attests to that. But while many of the animals on smaller-scale media like television and Internet videos are simply recorded and presented as they exist, the narrative requirements of feature films — a three-act story spanning 90-120 minutes — force movie animals to relate to humans so that we can identify with them as characters, or at least as narrative props. Thus, most animal movies are really about people in one of these five ways: Type #1: Animals are people, but with cuter exteriors. Recent examples : Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Happy Feet 2, Puss in Boots Explanation : Typically animated and aimed at children, movies about wisecracking animals are perennial favorites. Though they may retain some of their species’ quirks, the characters are basically humans in animal form — probably because lions and zebras tend to make for cuter merchandise than anatomically confusing dolls. (To watch animals in human form — i.e., people treated as pets — watch the first half of Fantastic Planet .) The feuding felines in Puss in Boots love milk and hate each other like any self-adoring real-life cat, but they also wear hats, run on two feet, duel with swords, flirt with human women, and flamenco-fight. Type #2: Animals in the wild are also people. Recent examples : Chimpanzee, To the Arctic Explanation : Wildlife docs should be the exception to animal anthropomorphism, but filmmakers seem intent on telling familiar tales about parent-child relationships. Many mammals and birds undoubtedly spend an inordinate amount of effort protecting their young, but these films’ focus on the family is likely a result of feature-length nature docs forming a booming niche in family programming. This lushly shot excerpt from Chimpanzee doesn’t just showcase animals using tools, but subtle conservative moralizing as well. Tim Allen’s dumb caveman whooping, the mention of one male chimpanzee named “Freddy,” and descriptions of the rocks as “hammers,” “heavy equipment,” and “power tools” unnecessarily and unscientifically suggest that tool use is an exclusively male activity. Type #3: People are (mostly) good. Recent examples : Darling Companion, Big Miracle, We Bought a Zoo Explanation : Humans are essentially good creatures who need occasional reminders of their better natures from innocent, helpless creatures. (Children can’t do all the heavy lifting.) In these films, animals are litmus tests for human morality: Characters who like animals are kind and stalwart, while characters who don’t are morally suspect. (Very few are neutral.) One character always resists falling in love with the dog/dolphin/donkey, but of course they fall the hardest in the end. In We Bought a Zoo , recent widower and animal newbie Matt Damon is faulted by humans and animals alike for failing to show his new wards respect. When Damon casually swaggers into the porcupines’ space, they respond with shrieks and threats, broadly signaling to their new keeper that he needs to be more mindful of their boundaries. (Damon apparently disagrees.) Type #4: People are (mostly) bad. Recent examples : War Horse, Rise of the Planet of the Apes Explanation : Philosophically irreconcilable with the previous type, the misanthropic films of this category illustrate the reality that people harm animals, even with the best of intentions. There are very few movies of this type, since they propose the radical beliefs that human beings are destructive creatures that mindlessly destroy animals’ lives, that the rest of the animal kingdom would thrive without our existence, even that animals have the right to exterminate us as a dangerous, rival species. Even before Caesar the chimpanzee (Andy Serkis) is imprisoned and cruelly experimented on, Rise of the Planet of the Apes suggests that humans are morally lacking creatures. James Franco’s scientist character is too self-absorbed to help his senile father (John Lithgow) use a fork correctly, and their screaming neighbor lacks total sympathy for Lithgow’s clearly mentally impaired character. No wonder Caesar yearns for a home elsewhere. (Clip starts at 00:42). Type #5: Animals are bad and want to kill you (so you better kill them first). Recent examples : The Grey, Shark Night 3D Explanation : In this category, animals are the Grim Reaper. Death might constitute a character’s comeuppance, illustrate the frailty of human life against the brute forces of nature, or suggest the cold randomness of bad luck. But no matter the rationale, the end (by animal bite) is inescapable. When a character dies from a critter attack, it feels like nature’s machines turning its gears. When he survives — because, let’s face it, those scenarios tend to involve macho, macho men — we can all breathe a sigh of relief, comforted by the illusion that we can fight for another day. In The Grey , Liam Neeson, a wolf-killer by trade, attempts to outrun a pack of wolves after a plane crash leaves him stranded in the Alaskan wilderness. By the film’s final scenes, however, the pack has caught up to him, and has him struggling to die with dignity. Because Neeson is the main character, the wolf pack considerately allows him to browse through his wallet pictures one last time to soft, sad music before they rip him to tiny, little pieces. Death, be not lupine. Inkoo Kang is a Boston-based film journalist and regular contributor to BoxOffice Magazine whose work has appeared in Pop Matters and Screen Junkies. She reviews stuff she hates, likes, and hate-likes on her blog THINK-O-VISION .
If you enjoyed watching Liam Neeson battle territorial wolves in Joe Carnahan’s The Grey — and plenty of moviegoers have — then you’d be well-advised to look into Lee Tamahori’s 1997 thriller The Edge . Starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin and perhaps best characterized by screenwriter David Mamet’s trademark clipped dialogue, the film is an unusually strong entry in the survival-story tradition — and one to which The Grey owes at least a spiritual debt (if not more). This genre is certainly well-trod territory, and perhaps for good reason: Dramatically speaking, it’s pretty hard to get it wrong. You strand characters in the harsh wilderness. They experience hardship. Eventually they learn to face mortality with some measure of grace. They make it out, or they don’t. The Grey is the more genre-typical of the two films and draws more readily from those aspects that are common to all stories of its type, with the added attraction of some great camera work and a strong performance from Liam Neeson. The Edge , however, transcends those trappings to offer a more philosophical, character-centered naturalist meditation. Don’t let the overcranked trailer fool you: The difference between the two films is all the more striking if only because their plot points are so remarkably similar, even for a genre that necessarily has to hit a few key points. In both, a plane crashes in a forest, and the survivors are forced to fend for themselves against the elements and wild beasts. While in The Grey , we see a marauding pack of arctic wolves randomly picking off crash survivors one by one, The Edge features an equally bloodthirsty grizzly bear. Both films have leaders emerge in the forms of Neeson’s Ottway and Hopkins’s Charles Morse, who each tries to save his respective group from starvation and creeping despair. And in each film there is a character who vocalizes the direness of the situation at every turn, a stock role that should probably be known as the “Game over!” guy, after Bill Paxton’s panicky emergency-narrator from Aliens . Thematically, both films juxtapose the behavior of modern men with the untamed wild, showing that the safety of civilization can be blinding to what is essentially human. The Grey is a lot harder-nosed, preoccupied with the endurance of man as an animal; The Edge , meanwhile, focuses on the ingenuity of man as a thinking being. And while the latter film’s emphasis on reason ultimately makes it the stronger of the two, that isn’t to say that The Edge is all profound rumination. There is still a ravenous bear to be faced, a lot of great action and one of the greatest motivational speeches in film history: The idea that being stranded in the wild eventually amounts to a spiritual boon for those stranded — even as they are exposed to all sorts of peril and privation — is present in almost every survival story. But this theme comes off especially well in The Edge , because as a survivalist, Morse understands that mere survival is not enough. He’s more than just a Robinson Crusoe-figure, whose main goal is to persevere by taming the wilderness. Instead, Morse allows himself to be changed. He doesn’t feel the loneliness of, say, Tom Hanks’s character in Cast Away , or the alienation of the protagonist of Into the Wild — both of whom experience a character arc that could have happened in a different setting. With Morse, Nature itself, and his right relationship with it, is the point. His communion with Nature doesn’t have an ulterior motive, which achieves a strong personalization of a universal idea: Getting right with the material world and, in the process, regaining his own humanity. Nathan Pensky is an associate editor at PopMatters and a contributor at Forbes , among various other outlets. He can be found on Tumblr and Twitter as well.
Two supernatural thrillers joined a pair of spooky holdovers in the top five of this weekend’s box office, where one of the world’s biggest stars was no match for the low-budget telepathic shenanigans of Team Chronicle . And, er, what happened to Drew Barrymore? Your Weekend Receipts are here. 1. Chronicle Gross: $22,000,000 (new) Screens: 2,907 (PSA $7,568) Weeks: 1 The found-footage phenomenon continues! It’s only a matter of time before Martin Scorsese is inspired to legitimize the genre with the story of a boy who lives in a train station and unearths the secret identity of an old toy-seller with the help of obscure archival film thought lost to the ages. Oh, wait. 2. The Woman in Black Gross: $21,000,000 (new) Screens: 2,855 (PSA $7,356) Weeks: 1 “What did they see?” indeed. Daniel Radcliffe’s strong post- Harry Potter debut indicated as much about his smart choices as they did about his loyal fan base. I still don’t understand how that Allen Ginsberg role is going to work, but at least he’s on the board as bankable beyond the Hogwarts bubble. 3. The Grey Gross: $9,500,000 ($34,756,000) Screens: 3,208 (PSA $2,961) Weeks: 2 (Change: -51.7%) Yikes. For all the credit I gave Neeson last week, it’s worth noting that The Grey sustained an unusually high week-two drop — nearly three times higher than Taken in 2009, and well above even last year’s Unknown . What gives, America? That’s just mean. 4. Big Miracle Gross: $8,500,000 (new) Screens: 2,129 (PSA $3,992) Weeks: 1 Cue the “Who’s going to free Drew Barrymore’s career from the thickening, encroaching arctic ice ?” lines in 3…2… OK, forget it. 5. Underworld: Awakening Gross: $5,600,000 ($54,353,000) Screens: 2,636 (PSA $2,124) Weeks: 3 (Change: -54.7%) More like Underworld: Sleepening ! Seriously, folks, I’ve got nothing. [Figures via Box Office Mojo ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
It’s so hard to find a reasonably enjoyable thriller these days that anything with a marginally intriguing premise and fewer than 10 plot holes has come to seem like a minor miracle. Man on a Ledge might have been that kind of modest miracle: Sam Worthington stars as Nick Cassidy, a pissed-off ex-cop who’s been convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Somehow – and the whole of Man on a Ledge deals with the whys and wherefores of that somehow – he springs himself from Sing Sing, suits up in some phenomenally nice-looking threads, and checks himself (under an assumed name) into a room on one of the upper floors of a midtown Manhattan luxury hotel. After a room-service breakfast of champagne, lobster and French fries, he creeps out onto the ledge and greets the cops who respond to the call with some very specific demands. Chief among those requirements is that he’ll speak with only one NYPD psychologist, Lydia Spencer (Elizabeth Banks). Spencer has been having a rough time on the force of late: When we first see her, she’s barely able to rouse herself from her bed – she’s having some sort of killer morning after, and her messy tumble of blond hair makes her look like a discarded Barbie doll. Cassidy, of course, has specific reasons for wanting to speak with Spencer. And even if he makes her day tougher than it was at the beginning, it’s clear from the way her superiors order her around – they include a sarcastic nutbuster played by Edward Burns and Titus Welliver as an overly caricatured, gum-chewing NYPD bossy-pants – that they don’t take her as seriously as Cassidy does. Somewhere in there, Jamie Bell and Genesis Rodriguez sneak around as part of a carefully orchestrated plan to… well, to tell you too much would give the game away, but it involves a giant honker of a diamond that Cassidy supposedly stole from a loathsome Donald Trump type (played with great relish by Ed Harris, who usually gets to portray only principled guys). Meanwhile, Cassidy’s close friend and former partner (played by Anthony Mackie), frets about Cassidy’s fate. Because Cassidy is, after all, clinging somewhat daintily to a narrow strip of stone some 20 stories off the ground: This is a guy who doesn’t care if he lives or dies as long as he ultimately proves his innocence. And as you watch Man on a Ledge , you’ll have good cause to wonder why he’s going to such extremes. Director Asger Leth (son of Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth and also the director of the 2006 documentary Ghosts of Cit
Joe Carnahan ’s thriller The Grey , currently receiving kudos for its blend of red-blooded action and considered existentialism, tells the fictional tale of a group of oilrig workers who survive a plane crash only to be hunted by wolves in the wild. Among the ragtag band of comrades facing off against nature under Liam Neeson ’s steady leadership is Dermot Mulroney’s Talget, who, like the others, learns to shed his protective layers and confront his own fears when forced to face off directly with Mother Nature. For Mulroney, The Grey represents a kind of muscular, male-driven pic that no longer gets made often enough. In a conversation ranging from the film’s throwback sense of masculinity to his reasons for joining Carnahan & Co. on the unusually brutal shoot (the cast and crew filmed in snowy, sub-zero conditions for months in Canada), Mulroney spoke candidly about how much the landscape has changed for him as an actor since he burst on the scene in the ‘80s, why he was happy to be in a film with no women, and how his first time on the other side of the camera (directing last year’s Love, Wedding, Marriage , which he describes as “a badly made movie”) turned him away from directing, at least for the time being. Liam Neeson aside, you’re probably the most recognizable cast member in The Grey even though you’ve been hidden under layers of clothing and those glasses. How much consideration went into the conception of how your character looks ? I can’t say that wasn’t deliberate but that wasn’t necessarily my idea. It was in conjunction discussing it with the director, Joe [Carnahan], who saw my character as someone who has kind of receded under his protective layers whether it’s the hat and the glasses and the beard and the scarf and all this, and then slowly as the movie progresses some of those layers come off. I hope that we pulled that off. That was his goal; he was so specific with character. What appealed to you about joining this ensemble pic and working with Joe Carnahan? But even from his screenplay, really, is what hooked me, and obviously the opportunity to work with him and Liam. You know, I love to work – I still love to work – and I’d go anywhere for something good like this. It turns out I was going to northern British Colombia in sub-zero temperatures and blizzard conditions… It seems like it was an unusually extreme scenario for a film shoot! But your cast mates have described Joe as having picked a disparate group of actors who somehow shared a specific quality, a like-mindedness about the project, that made it all worthwhile . Very much so. I don’t know what it is that Joe has to be able to do that, but my understanding is that he’s done that with all of his films – he’s handpicked people that have something, as you say, other than the fact that they were right for the part. They’re also the right man that he wants to have on the experience. He wants to experience . What Joe Carnahan loves to do more than anything at all is shoot a movie, so he wants to do it with people that are also going to enjoy it and make it more enjoyable for him. So he’s not just picking actors, he’s kind of picking future friends. Were you acquainted before the film? I’d never met him before! I walk in to audition and I can tell he’s a helluva guy and that I would enjoy his company – but I think he’s actually casting for that as well. He’s casting not only for the film, but for the steak dinners after work, you know? In a way, he was. And really what I’m describing is his ability to intuitively “get” what people would have to offer, and the thing that he was determined to achieve was to get guys who were willing and able. You know, as actors we’re of course all willing, but I don’t think all of them would’ve been able to take on those extreme conditions. I couldn’t believe that you all went into those freezing climes to shoot; word is Joe got frostbite out there at one point. I know Dallas [Roberts] got frostbit on the nose, and I think Joe Anderson got some fingertips… this is, like, angry cold. This is all-the-way cold! But as an actor, your body – your fingertips, your nose – is your livelihood! That seems like a risk to take for a film. Oh, I hadn’t even thought of that! I didn’t suffer any ill effects from the cold. [Laughs] I have good circulation, so… and everybody else handled it great, too. It certainly was never life-threatening, but it never occurred to me that it might somehow affect my ability to make a living. So when you signed on to The Grey , you were signing on not only to a film but to having an extraordinary experience . We were signing on not only to an extraordinary experience but to risk, but a lot of guys would have. These were parts that a lot of people wanted, for the quality, for the personnel, for the content, but also the same as Joe – for the experience of getting to do something like this. I’ve done a lot of movies on stages, and sets, in a house, around a dining room table, sitting in a thing, going to the dance, all that – wonderful. But how often does somebody say, ‘Hey – do you want to go up further than you’ve ever been and stand around in the cold with me for a couple of months?’ For me, I had just come from a movie called Big Miracle which comes out next month where there, too, we were shooting in Anchorage, Alaska and it was cold and dark. I’m guessing Drew Barrymore did not get frostbite on her nose. She did not get frostbite, but she did get in freezing cold water! In a wetsuit, for real – she did it all. Nobody complained and nobody got hurt, and even Kristen Bell, who’s as big as this, pulled off standing around all day in zero degree temperatures. Looking at the themes in The Grey , we’re in an era where metrosexuality has become a thing and more masculine stories and themes are something of another generation. The characters, not just Liam’s but all of them, are different shades of… Grey? Yes, in many respects. But moreso these guys seem to represent a spectrum of what it means to be a man, or to come to terms with your own masculinity and mortality, when faced with this kind of life or death situation. I think that’s a wonderful diagram of the film. I hadn’t quite tapped into that myself. If I were to try to get to the bottom of what character I was playing, my idea for Talget was that he’s the mother of the group. He’s the little old lady with the babushka and the thing and ‘Come on,’ because they already have a natural leader or father type, they already have a hotheaded adolescent with Diaz, and they have a knowledgeable wise grandparent type with Henrik. Where’s the mother? So I kind of filled that slot. That doesn’t answer your masculinity question because I’d much rather be accused of being testosterone-fueled than being a little old lady, but by the same token if you’re looking at each of these characters as a facet of what manhood is, then part of what manhood is, is your mother. But that’s okay! It’s only when these guys strip away their machismo that they are able to be emotionally honest with each other. Right. [Pause] There a couple of scenes in Jaws when the shark goes out of the movie, and you don’t really get a great look at that shark anyhow, much like this movie. But then they’re sitting in that boat and they’re just talking, and Shaw goes into this whole thing about the Indianapolis and it’s this incredible moment, an historical moment in the history of our cinema. So you say this movie has some throwback qualities, or some old school manly-man qualities; that’s intentional. That’s the kind of movie Joe wants to make. Joe is one of those guys. So, guilty as charged on that; if that’s something that needs to be brought back, then let’s bring it back. It seems like people are responding to that about this movie and to my mind there haven’t been enough of them. The pendulum swung the other way since I started in this business and there were men’s movies like whatever those Tom Cruise movies… The meaty ‘80s, yes. Yeah. And then all of a sudden Sigourney Weaver comes in the Alien and we have strong women, we have Working Girl , we have all this, we have Best Friend’s Wedding , and before you know it, all the fucking movies are about the girls! Do you really think so? I do! I do. The ones that I was asked to be in, for certain. All of them. So that’s kind of what I did for a while, and every once in a while I’d get this sweet relief of being in a movie like [ The Grey ], where there are no girls in it, there are no women in it – Nobody vying for your affections… Nobody’s vying for anybody’s affections in this movie, that’s right. [Laughs] That’s one relief right there. Aren’t we kind of tired of the vying for affection in the American cinema? Well, let me ask you this — [Laughs] I know, it’s tough because “wry” doesn’t really come across in print, but you put that on the website and we’ll see how that flies. “Too many ladies in the movies for a while there.” No! I think it’s interesting you say this, given your directorial debut, Love, Wedding, Marriage . Yeah, and it couldn’t be a more womanly movie, right? Let’s skip it. Change the topic. I am interested in your directing impulses… I’m not, so much. Did you get it all out in that one film? No, it just didn’t go very well. If I ever tried again I’d do it alarmingly differently. Why so? I don’t even want to talk about that movie, to be honest with you. I don’t think it’s a very clean segue, either, from masculine guy in The Grey to director of a badly made movie. It’s only that the types of movies that they are, are interesting in juxtaposition. I like movies like The Grey to view and to act in a lot more than I like movies like that. The Grey is in theaters Friday. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
If Yoda shilling for cup noodles made your skin crawl and your soul cry “Nooooo,” get ready to feel the Force sell-out even harder, and weirder, with a recent spate of George Lucas -approved shameless Star Wars marketing tie-ins. First, there’s Darth Maul and Yoda stumping for Lipton iced tea . Embarrassing, but that’s nothing compared to the super disgusting idea of a Darth Vader-themed hamburger featuring black-dyed buns. Blech. These are not the burgers you’re looking for, at least not to eat. The Vader burger is offered at French-Belgian fast food chain Quick, along with two other new sandwiches, the Dark Burger on dyed red buns a la Darth Maul, and the Jedi Burger, topped with diced mozzarella cheese cubes. The special Star Wars fare will be available for a limited time from January 31 to March 1, though the Vader burger, which is comprised of “two minced beef patties topped with one slice of melted pepper Cheddar cheese, pepper sauce, endives and rings of red pepper all between black-colored buns sprinkled with black pepper and poppy seeds” and is inexplicably spelled “Vador” burger in this Quick ad, will get an extended run through March 5. You can thank the upcoming 2012 release of Star Wars Episode I — The Phantom Menace 3D for the upsurge in shameless cross-branding, which is fine and a part of the business, especially when reintroducing a film to newer audiences and older fans who are now old enough to drink iced tea and order gross burgers at the drive-through. Still, that doesn’t excuse Lucas from the real problem: These burgers look completely disgusting. Who in their right mind will be ordering the Vader burger? French diehard Star Wars fans, I’m sure, and the kind of perversely curious fast foodies who thought the Double Down sounded intriguing. Oh, and maybe the members of the International Church of Jediism , followers of a new faith whose quest for recognition was immortalized this week by the Taiwanese animators at NME. According to the NME news video, these real life Jedis hang out drinking Mountain Dew and eating Doritos. Substitute the Quick Jedi Burger for Communion bread and everybody wins, no? [ MintinBox , Topless Robot , International Business Times ]
“Smokin’” Joe Carnahan ( Narc , Smokin’ Aces , The A-Team ) has endured his fair share of ill-fated projects and setbacks, but his passion project Killing Pablo remains a priority. And while the fate of White Jazz remains opaque, Carnahan shared optimism for his long-gestating Pablo Escobar biopic while promoting his existential survival pic The Grey last weekend in Los Angeles. If all goes well and the Liam Neeson-led The Grey takes off upon release later this month, he says he hopes to make Pablo his next project. The characteristically candid Carnahan, who recently dropped out of the director’s chair on Umbra , expressed hope that a successful debut for The Grey will allow him to finally bring Killing Pablo to the screen after years of research. “I feel like Pablo ’s the undernourished orphan that I’ve been looking after for years,” he said. “I’ve got to get this kid a meal. Yes, [ Killing Pablo ] would be, in a perfect world, the film that I’d want to make next. I still think it’s the best script I’ve written and I see these other kinds of things ramping up, and I just can’t get beat by these other movies.” Adapted from Mark Bowden’s book of the same name, Killing Pablo chronicles the efforts of the United States and Colombian governments to wage war against drug lord Escobar, who was killed by Colombian forces in 1993. Escobar’s legend, and a lingering fascination with his death, kept Carnahan fixated on making the film even through years of development hell that saw his creative struggle mirrored on HBO’s Entourage . “As much as The Grey is about attrition and going out and earning it, you know, I’ve been to Colombia three times, Medellin and Bogotá, I’ve done all this research,” Carnahan said. “I think what kind of crystallized it for me is I went to Los Olivos where he was killed, in Medellin, which is kind of a very modest middle-class neighborhood, and I was interviewing this 78-year-old man through an interpreter.” “I was talking to him, because Pablo was killed December 2, 1993,” he continued. “I said to him, ‘Can you tell me about that day?’ Because I’d gone up on the roof where he was killed and it was very undramatic, where he wound up dying; it was like a terra cotta box that he died in. And the guy said to me, and I’ll never forget this: ‘The day it happened I thought it was an early winter thunderstorm,’ because the level of gunfire was so constant he could not discern individual shots. And I thought, ‘Fuck me, I’ve got to make this movie.’” As for Carnahan’s career, which has traversed a range of projects from the modest, well-received Narc to the high-octane Smokin’ Aces , the big-budgeted A-Team , the cop drama Pride and Glory (which he co-wrote) and the sci-fi pic The Fourth Kind (which he produced), he sees no need to take a turn for the serious, necessarily, despite the philosophical and even metaphysical themes in the otherwise action-oriented The Grey . Doing the mainstream studio flick, The A-Team , for example, allowed Carnahan to scratch a certain itch while giving him the platform to make more personal films like The Grey , which he’s called his best film to date. “I realized, especially after A-Team , ‘Wait a minute — am I being viewed as a schmuck?’” he recalled. “Because my reasons for doing A-Team … there were a number of reasons, not the least was which I couldn’t make this or White Jazz or Killing Pablo . I couldn’t make those movies. And after Mission Impossible III , which again I left before I was fired, I had unfinished business. With The A-Team it was like, ‘Alright I’m going to do a big popcorn movie and see how that feels.’” If all goes well Pablo might finally come to fruition, but in the meantime Carnahan’s currently at work on a project at Fox called Continue , which the filmmaker describes as “ Groundhog Day as an action movie.” “As much as I love Antonioni films, I love the Three Stooges,” he explained. “I think [ Continue ] is funny as shit. It’s completely, from DNA to bone structure, different from The Grey but that doesn’t mean it’s something I wouldn’t do because now [I’ve] got to make serious films. I think I made this film to kind of prove to myself and whatever people are going to hire me in the future and the public at large that there’s a lot of different things I can do. If I can do a romantic comedy with women, that’s Everest to me.” The Grey is in theaters January 27. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Last time we saw Liam Neeson in a trailer for the upcoming survival drama The Grey , he was preparing to battle a few angry wolves. In the new kickass preview for Joe Carnahan’s wilderness adventure, Neeson is not only preparing to wage a full-scale attack on all of the wolves that stand between him and civilization, but he heroically maintains the morale among a group of fellow stranded plane crash survivors on their long walk home.
