The aptly named British teen drama Skins has hit Netflix, bringing with it a cavalcade of English Tea&A and a side of full frontal. Also out is the Bruce Willis action flick Fire with Fire (2012), which might have been non-nude if Hall-of-Famer Rosario Dawson had not managed to slip a nip at the one-hour, 23-minute mark. Finally, there’s a trio of skinstant classics with foreign film fur from Asun Ortega in Nude Nuns with Big Guns (2011), Roxane Mesquida in Sex Is Comedy (2002), and Monica Bellucci in Mal
There’s a lot to look at in this international trailer for G.I. Joe: Retaliation : Explosions. The muscled forms of Channing Tatum and Dwayne Johnson . More explosions. Masked men engaging in ninja sword fights while suspended from a snowy mountain. Avalanche! Jonathan Pryce appearing to reprise his role as the Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies. Bruce Willis making cracks about his cholesterol after a near-death experience. Wait! What? Isn’t that what John McClane does in the Die Hard movies — like A Good Day to Die Hard , which hits movie theaters a month and a half before the G.I. Joe sequel? Okay, so no one plays a smirking, self-deprecating hard-ass better than Willis. Which is why you should learn how to tell them apart: In A Good Day to Die Hard , he’s John. In G.I. Joe Retaliation , he’s Joe. Simpler movie, simpler name. Got it? Good. Now, watch some explosions. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Maybe it’s my hairline, but I’ve always been partial to John McClane’s brand of bald (and smirky) heroism. So, it’s good to see my favorite hairless hard-ass Bruce Willis shooting up Russia with his cinematic son Jai Courtney ( Spartacus ) in the latest trailer for A Good Day to Die Hard . I’m not sure how I feel about Courtney as a potential heir to the McClane Yippie Ki Yay legacy. (For one thing, the kid has got way too much hair.) Then again, I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep over this because a Die Hard movie without Willis is not a movie I want to see. No pressure, John McClane Jr., though I give Courtney props for his delivery of the punch line to this mayhem-heavy trailer set to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” (I’m not going to spoil the fun. Check it out below.) A Good Day To Die Hard finds Willis’ unflappable former NYC policeman fighting terrorists with his estranged son in Russia. John Moore ( Behind Enemy Lines and Max Payne ) directed the script by Skip Woods ( Hitman ). The film opens on Valentine’s Day 2013, which is pretty savvy logic on distributor 20th Century Fox’s part: A Good Day to Die Hard sounds like it could work as both a cuddly date movie and entertainment for single guys who want a whole bunch of explosions and one-liners to help them forget that they’re incredibly alone in this world. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Look, I’m sure this Jai Courtney dude from Spartacus playing John McClane’s beefy son/action heir is great and all, but there’s just one reason to watch any Die Hard movie, and his name is Bruce MF’ing Willis . So check out the first trailer for A Good Day To Die Hard even though it takes a full 30 seconds of overly edited shots of warehouses and ambiguously visible bad men with guns to get to Bruno’s familiar smirk and the explosion-y goodness that follows. A Good Day To Die Hard catches up with Willis’s McClane as he and his estranged son (Courtney) fight terrorists in Russia, or something. John Moore of Behind Enemy Lines and Max Payne fame directs from a script by Skip Woods, of Swordfish and Hitman fame, so we’ll see how this one goes. The film hits theaters February 4, 2013. [via Yahoo ]
Explosive teaser for the fifth entry in the series finds Detective John McClane kicking ass on a whole new continent. By Kevin P. Sullivan Bruce Willis in “Good Day To Die Hard” Photo: 20th Century Fox
Ending nearly a year of speculation, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced two replacements for long-serving Program Director Richard Peña, who is set to step down at the end of 2012 after serving 25 years in the post. Kent Jones will be the new Director of Programming for the annual New York Film Festival , while Robert Koehler will serve as Director of Programming, Year Round. The Film Society of Lincoln Center said that appointing two directors to the programming team will allow the organization, which not only produces the annual NYFF but a host of other programs throughout the year, to “better serve the needs of an organization that has recently expanded its operations with the opening of the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film.” Jones began in programming with Bruce Goldstein at Film Forum, and served as the American representative for the International Film Festival Rotterdam from 1996 to 1998. He was an assumed heir to Peña, serving as Associate Director of Programming at The Film Society of Lincoln Center, and from 2002 to 2009, including the New York Film Festival selection committee from 1998 to 2009 after departing under the organization’s previous Executive Director, Mara Manus. He has also served on juries at film festivals around the world, including Rotterdam, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Venice and Cannes. In 2009, he was named Executive Director of The World Cinema Foundation. Koehler is a film critic and festival programmer and has served as an instructor and programmer for UCLA Extension’s Sneak Preview program from 2003 to 2007. In 2003, he developed the innovative film program, “The Films That Got Away,” an ongoing series presenting significant recent work that has previously not screened in Los Angeles. Institutions with which the series has collaborated include UCLA Film Archive, the American Cinematheque and the Los Angeles Film Festival. In 2009, he was appointed director of programming at AFI Fest Los Angeles, where he helped create a new and focused competition section titled “New Lights,” as part of AFI Fest’s programming concept as a festival-of-festivals. “Richard Peña has played a fundamental role in defining our organization and its commitment to discovering and supporting the best and most important cinema in the world,” FSLC Executive Director Rose Kuo said. “Kent Jones and Bob Koehler, whose thinking and writing about cinema I deeply respect, are the perfect team to build upon Richard’s vision and carry it forward.” “The New York Film Festival has always been a beacon to me – when I was young and pouring over the yearly schedule in the Sunday Times, when I moved to New York in my 20s and started to actually attend the festival, and later when I served on the selection committee” said Kent Jones in a statement. “It means a lot to me to be entrusted with its stewardship after Richard Peña, to whom I owe a lot – I’m far from alone on that count. I’m excited to be working with Rose Kuo, with Bob Koehler, with Scott Foundas, with Gavin Smith, with Marian Masone, and with the whole team at the Film Society, many of whom are old friends and work colleagues. We’ll be working together to keep our part of cinema culture alive and thriving.” Added Robert Koehler, “I’m delighted and honored to join the country’s finest cinema presentation organization. Especially at a time when it is embarking on a new, exciting and innovative chapter in its history.” Richard Peña will continue his involvement with the Film Society of Lincoln Center after departing his duties as Programming Director at the end of the year, helping to design and organize a new educational initiative. The 50th edition of the New York Film Festival will take place September 28 – October 14.
Lionsgate is doing its damnedest to make “Lethal Geezers” into a film genre. Yahoo! just posted the trailer to Stand Up Guys , which the studio will release on Jan. 11, 2013. The Fisher Stevens-directed film stars Al Pacino as Val, a gangster of a certain age who’s released from prison and reunites with his former partners in crime, Doc ( Christopher Walken ) and Hirsch ( Alan Arkin ). Judging from the trailer, the men reminisce, take their hypertension meds and make up for lost crime while Walken struggles with an order from on high to cap his friend. Hoo-ah! The film should make a complementary double feature with the highly entertaining Red , which Lions Gate-owned Summit Entertainment released in 2010. That film, an adaptation of the DC Comics series of the same name — an acronym that stood for Retired, Extremely Dangerous — starred Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren , John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman as decommissioned spies of a certain age who prove that they can still kick ass. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Sylvester Stallone spoke out about the death of a stuntman while filming his latest action sequel The Expendables 2 , which opens this weekend in the U.S., saying the incident was “very hard.” Kum Liu died last October while the pic was in production in Bulgaria, while another stuntman Nuo Sun was seriously injured. “The stunt team took it very, very hard and shut down for quite a while,” the 66-year-old told reporters while promoting the movie in London, the BBC said . “It’s happened twice before on films I’ve been on and it’s never easy.” The accident took place during the filming of an explosion on an inflatable boat on Lake Ognyanova in Bulgaria. Stallone’s promotion of Expendables 2 comes on the heels of the tragic death of his son Sage in July at 36. Kun Liu’s parents are currently seeking to reap an unspecified amount from the feature’s production companies Millennium Films and Nu Image as well as stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski. Also starring Arnold Schwarzenegger , Bruce Willis, Liam Hemsworth and Dolph Lundgren, Expendables 2 , the pic centers on a revenge mission when one of the Expendables is murdered in what should have been an easy job. They head into enemy territory against a back drop of an unexpected threat. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays the villain. Now back to full-time film star, Arnold Schwarzenegger said the previous installment of Expendables , in which he made a short appearance while still serving as governor of California when it came out in 2010, was “impossible to top” but the latest is in fact, “bigger and better.” [ Source: BBC ]
Some time after turning down a role in 2010’s Expendables (the part he was offered lacked substance, legend has it) Jean-Claude Van Damme thought better of opting out of the Sylvester Stallone throwback, which went onto become a hit. But perhaps things worked out for the best: In this week’s Expendables 2 , Van Damme steals away with the spotlight as the eccentric and hilariously disdainful uber-villain Jean Vilain (yes, really) with an over-the-top performance that called for full commitment to character on set. At least, Van Damme believed his turn as Vilain required cultivating an icy rapport with his fellow action veterans on set. And so as Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger , Bruce Willis and Co. chummed it up during filming , the Muscles from Brussels stayed in character so well he only made nice after the bulk of filming wrapped. “I said to [Sylvester] Stallone, ‘How do you want me as a villain? Do you want me, like, an extravagant villain, or do you want a guy who’s completely serious and believes in what he’s doing and why he’s doing that,'” Van Damme recalled to journalists recently in Los Angeles. “Then I said, ‘By the way — why am I doing that?’ and he said, ‘Because you love money.’ I said, ‘Fine.’ So, I became that type of villain.” So committed was Van Damme to Vilain’s persona, he even found himself sneering at the crew. “When I saw all those cameras around me, I said, ‘Who are those bunch of clowns looking at us with those lenses and the lights and everything?’ I was really into the atmosphere of Expendables .” When it came to treating his peers and personal heroes like enemies, Van Damme didn’t hold back. “I’ll tell you what, those guys were like role models for me, because we have to be honest, we need to look at something to have a goal,” he recalled. “I saw Rambo . I saw Rocky . I saw Conan . I saw Die Hard . So to me, they were like heroes. I was back in Belgium watching them on the screen, buying tickets and dreaming of becoming like them. I wanted to be an actor since I was eleven, twelve years old, and now here I am and they’re chasing me.” Van Damme credits his acting skills to having worked with directors like Ringo Lam ( City on Fire ), who directed him in Maximum Risk (1996), Replicant (2001), and In Hell (2003). He counts Kirk Douglas and Charles Bronson among his screen idols and emphasizes the importance of finding truth within a scene, though his proclivity for doing something different in each take gave producer Stallone and director Simon West a challenge and a boon in the editing room. “If you do a good take,” Van Damme said, “you cannot repeat the same one.” His chilly treatment of his on-screen rivals was an extension of that truth-seeking imperative. “When I came on the set I didn’t talk to nobody,” Van Damme remembered. “I didn’t want to see them because, you know, Arnold is like bop, bop, bop and I was talking more to Stallone about the part than anything else. So, I believe, and I felt when I was looking at them, it was like, ‘Who are you?’ Nothing [in] the eyes. I felt like I didn’t like them. I took it very seriously.” “Of course, when the movie was finished I was like, ‘Hey, guys, I really admire you, but I didn’t talk to you in the beginning because I wanted to have that type atmosphere, that type of tension.’ I think you can see that when you look at the lens, when I look at all them and I’m like, ‘Go down to the floor, guys, bark all of you like dogs.’ It’s hard for me to say that to my heroes, but it was the only way, and then when the movie was going to end, that’s when I started to knock on trailers and say hello to everybody. ‘Hey, Chuck [Norris], how are you?’” Stay tuned for more from The Expendables 2 , which hits theaters Friday. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Set your DVRs this spring to Reelz Channel for a Dolph Lundgren -hosted reality competition show called Race to the Scene , which might be the most potentially dangerous but too awesome not to watch TV show idea ever dreamed up: ” Race to the Scene will feature pairs of contestants who race to and from actual movie locations as they compete in challenges and stunts inspired by memorable movie moments… [producer Justin Hochberg] and his partner Charlie Ebersol began talking to the network about the project a little over a year ago, and have since spent time selecting iconic scenes —think Bruce Willis jumping off Nakatomi Tower in Die Hard — for which to recreate.” Can’t wait for the barefoot 50-yard dash over broken glass! What could go wrong? [ THR ]
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