The Evil Dead Red Band trailer has arrived, and it turns out to be the same one that had audiences at NY Comic-Con screaming in their seats (and, apparently, leaking it on the web) . If you can stomach it, make sure to hang tight for the tongue-slicing scene at the end. It will make you talk funny for hours. I’ve also posted the trailer to Sam Raimi’s original 1981 film, The Evil Dead , so that you can compare elements of the first film with Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez’s remake . As with most contemporary reboots, Alvarez’s moves a lot faster. (He’s even lost the ‘The’ in the title for a more streamlined effect.) That said, the new trailer suggests that his Evil Dead will borrow some of Raimi’s filmmaking flourishes, particularly the way in which the camera would take the perspective of the evil spirit that infects the unfortunate cabin dwellers. Like the original, Alvarez’s version also has scenes involving evil vines and dismemberment by power tools, including what looks like a chain saw. Despite these similarities, when I interviewed Bruce Campbell at NY Comic-Con , he told me that the new Evil Dead, which opens early next year, will actually be quite different. For one thing, Campbell — who starred in the original trilogy and is a producer of the remake — said Alvarez’s version will be “dead serious” and won’t feature an Ash, the character he played. “There are no similar characters whatsoever. And we wanted that. That was intentional,” Campbell explained. “We didn’t want anything compared to anything. We didn’t want to put any burden on any actor to act like Ash or to imitate him.” Related Story: Read Movieline’s interview with Bruce Campbell. Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/14/bruce-campbell-interview-evil-dead-remake-fede-alvarez-jane-levy-sam-raimi/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
If you’d like Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to be a total surprise when it opens on Dec. 14, then, by all means, skip to another post on this page. You won’t want to read my reference to a very in-depth — and whimsically illustrated — piece on the secrets of the first installment of the Hobbit trilogy. The piece, entitled “Massive Secrets of The Hobbit － Revealed!” was written and drawn by Lauren Davis after a visit to the set of The Hobbit in Wellington, New Zealand this past spring. Since cameras were forbidden, Davis drew the illustrations that accompany her report, which provides the back stories of dwarves, secrets of Thorin’s sword and behind-the-scenes look at the Hobbit homeland, Hobbiton, where the female of the species dress in the style of 18th-Century Sardinian women. Jackson also explains that because the first Hobbit adventure is meant to be a tad lighter than The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Ring’s effects on Bilbo will be noticeable but not as dark as they were in the first films. Jackson says moviegoers will see some of the Shadow World when Bilbo slips on the Ring, “but it won’t be so nightmarish,” he explains in Davis’ report because, “It’s in its infancy, before attracting the Eye of Sauron.” Similarly, costume designer Bob Buck explains that the Hobbit homeland, Hobbiton, will also be depicted as a much more colorful place because the ring has not been there to “suck the life out ” of the place. Which can happen, too, if you read too many spoilers. Just sayin’, Precious. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
RZA ‘s anticipated Quentin Tarantino-approved martial arts epic The Man With The Iron Fists already blends hip hop with kung fu and Eastern cinematic tradition with the rapper-turned-filmmaker’s unique sensibilities, and a new animated prequel is here to add to the buzz machine ahead of its November 2 debut. [ GALLERY: Eye-Popping Images From The Man With The Iron Fists ] Watch the “prelude,” courtesy of Machinima, in which RZA narrates the story of his Man With The Iron Fists character The Blacksmith – a gorgeous Chinese ink drawing-style tale of the Blacksmith’s early encounter with some of the film’s fearsome foes. Stay tuned this week as we bring you more on The Man With The Iron Fists , starting with our exclusive chat with Bobby Digital himself, RZA. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
When Entertainment Weekly posted an exclusive photo of actor Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin, the super-villain who rocks Tony Stark’s world in the upcoming Iron Man 3 , it resurrected a thorny question around the virtual office here. In the Marvel universe, the Mandarin is the son of one of pre-Revolutionary China’s wealthiest men and an English noblewoman, as well as a descendant of Ghengis Khan. So, why, as Executive Editor Jen Yamato wondered when news broke that Ben Kingsley would play him, did the job go to a half-Indian, half-English actor? The answer, according to Marvel Studios Kevin Feige , appears near the bottom of the EW post. As a villain, it turns out, the Mandarin is kind of a mutt. According to EW, Feige says Marvel “wanted to blur the background” of the Mandarin portrayed in Iron Man 3 . “It’s less about his specific ethnicity than the symbolism of various cultures and iconography that he perverts for his own end,” Feige explained. ” As EW further explained: “From his samurai hair, to his royal robe, to his bin Laden-esque beard, and the AK-47 he keeps at his side, Kingsley’s interpretation is a hodgepodge of various warrior motifs. That way, I guess no single ethnicity, particularly one with a population of 1.3 billion, can be offended by Kingsley’s portrayal or his character’s evil doing. Please feel free to weigh in on the debate. Or, if you just want to look at pretty pictures. USA Today also posted some exclusive shots from the film. Here are a couple: Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
With the first Iron Man 3 trailer premiering on Tuesday, Disney whet franchise fans’ appetites by releasing a 17-second teaser trailer and poster for the latest installment of the metallic Marvel superhero saga. The trailer is one of those blink-and-you-miss-it deals that raises more questions than it answers, but, based on the movie-trailer-foreshadowing course I took in college, Pepper Potts ( Gwyneth Paltrow ) will be in some definite danger come May. Next to Downey, Potts’ character gets even more attention than what appears to be a from-the-rear shot of super-villain Mandarin, who will be played by Ben Kingsley . The weird thing is that when I first saw the Potts scene, I thought Paltrow was laughing. I figured this was trailer shorthand for establishing Potts/Paltrow as such a heart-lifting force in cynical Tony Stark’s life that, well, something bad has to happen to her. Turns out the teaser trailer is way more direct than that. Judging from Paltrow’s sweaty appearance and confinement in some weird restraining device that looks like it was borrowed from a Six Flags roller coaster, Pepper’s in a world of pain. Could it be [cue ominous music]…torture at the hands of the dastardly Mandarin? (More about him in a later post.) Either that, or maybe Paltrow’s character is undergoing some kind of state-of-the-art psychological treatment in which she’s just learned that Goop was seriously jank idea. Regardless of the interpretation of Gwynnie’s facial expression, my conclusion remains the same: She’s going to be in harm’s way in Iron Man 3 , which jibes with the this-time-it’s-personal synopsis that Disney released on Thursday. In case you’ve forgotten: Marvel Studios’ “Iron Man 3” pits brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark/Iron Man against an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Stark finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy’s hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible. This journey, at every turn, will test his mettle. With his back against the wall, Stark is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts to protect those closest to him. As he fights his way back, Stark discovers the answer to the question that has secretly haunted him: does the man make the suit or does the suit make the man? Here’s the teaser trailer. I hope tomorrow’s longer version reveals more. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
RZA is feeling good about his directorial debut, The Man with the Iron Fists . In this Behind-the-scenes featurette, the Wu-Tang Clan leader says he didn’t think he could top his musical work with the hip-hop group (or as a solo artist), which, he explains, led “to some of the greatest climaxes of my life.” Okay! But after teaming up with “my boy Quentin Tarantino” and Hostel director Eli Roth to ” make a fat joint of my own,” RZA proudly proclaims “I have topped it.” Related Story: Check out Movieline’s gallery of more than 20 images from The Man with the Iron Fists . The 43-year-old first-time filmmaker explains that The Man with the Iron Fists is the result of a fascination with kung-fu movies that began when he was 11 years old, and it sounds like he’s got a lot more ideas where this movie came from. He also explains that the movie’s soundtrack of hip hop and classic soul is meant to be integral to moviegoers’ enjoyment of the picture. You can just sit back, smoke one — if you smoke — and let the music flow. Here’s a preview of what to expect below. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Over the weekend, I heard Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me cite a study by Japanese scientists that determined that workers who watch kittens and other cute baby animals on the Internet are “more focused and productive the rest of the day.” So, in the interest of strengthening the coffers of corporations everywhere, I think you should take the next half hour off and watch these very funny — I mean, cute — Seven Psychopaths parody trailers, PsychoCats , that feature cats instead of the cast, which includes Christopher Walken , Sam Rockwell , Colin Farrell , Woody Harrelson and Tom Waits . The deservedly anticipated film by Martin McDonagh opens on Friday. Click Here to Check out Movieline’s Seven Psychopaths photo gallery featuring Sam Rockwell. The PsychoCats trailers were directed by Adult Swim alumnus Jim Tozzi, who co-created and produced the cartoon network’s late, lamented Xavier: Renegade Angel. Tozzi studied film and illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design (which sounds impressive until you remember that this guy is making parody videos starring cats.) He’s directed music videos for Mercury Rev and Moby and created the award winning retro “Twip” campaign for TV Land. As part of the art collective PFFR, Tozzi has also esigned animation characters and puppets for the underground hit MTV show, Wondershowzen . Embedding for the Red Band trailer has been disabled for some reason, perhaps because little kids shouldn’t be watching cats drop the f-bomb, but here’s a link to the clip . As Tom Waits says in movie, “Dandy!” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
If you can’t get enough photos of Johnny Depp with a dead bird on his head, well, saunter over here and take a gander. On Tuesday, Disney released a new batch of stills and the teaser poster to Pirates of the Caribbean pardners, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski’s take on The Lone Ranger . Depp plays the masked lawman’s oddly attired Native American sidekick Tonto, and, according to Disney, “recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid”( Armie Hammer ) into the Lone Ranger.” Disney plans to release the movie on July 3, 2013. The Lone Ranger cast also includes Helena Bonham Carter, William Fichtner, Tom Wilkinson and Barry Pepper. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Missing mothers, lost wives, abusive and indifferent father substitutes — Looper may be a movie powered by time travel, but its emotional fuel is abandonment. The new film from Brick director Rian Johnson is a clever, clever contraption about trading in your future to feed your present, and the lost boys and regretful men who willingly embrace such a bargain already believe they have nothing to live for or look forward to. Thirty years of kicking around with a lot of cash in your pocket looks like a pretty good bargain when you’re gazing down at it from in front of all that time, but when those last few days are running out, you might not be so ready to go. Looper may not have the bell-ringing resonance of Chris Marker’s La Jetée , one of its touchstones, but it’s a jaunty match-up of genre and character drama that’s far smarter and more finely wrought than almost anything else in the multiplexes. The film’s set a few decades in the future, where technology’s a little better and life in general is worse, at least in the Kansas metropolis in which Joe ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) lives. Looper ‘s setting of a midlevel Midwestern city and the ragged, lived-in feeling of its 2044 are a pleasingly off-kilter approach to its sci-fi premise. We don’t know what the government’s like in this year, or what the larger world’s become because it’s not so important to Joe, a young man who’s building up cash reserves and easing his off-hours with drugs until he’s free to move to France. Joe’s a looper, a job he explains with a matter-of-fact lack of curiosity: when time travel is invented a few years from his present, it’s instantly outlawed and used only by organized crime for assassinations. Murders will have become so hard to hide that it’s easier to send targets back to Joe’s era, where they can be neatly offed and disposed of by eager young men like our hero, guys who have accepted their own disposability. Joe’s self-interest is central to both the film’s premise and the way it avoids most of the tougher theoretical questions about time travel, paradoxes, how the technology works and whether people are using it for more ambitious purposes. He doesn’t care. He started out on the streets, and looping has provided him with a nice apartment and enough money to get high and to buy time with his favorite working girl Suzie (Piper Perabo). Like the town in which he lives, Joe’s nowhere near the top of the food chain, and has no interest in climbing. He’s just waiting on his big payout that will come once he closes his loop by killing off his future self — part of the devil’s bargain that all loopers make. Looper is built around our buying Bruce Willis as Joe’s future self, a feat that rests more on a wry impersonation by a prosthetics-aided (and very good) Gordon-Levitt than on the older actor. When the tougher and more world-weary Old Joe is sent back in time to die, he arrives with a mission in mind, but his younger self has no desire to hear it. The scenes in which the two Joes confront each other at a diner are among the film’s best. Youth and experience are unable to relate — even though they’re technically the same person — because their priorities are completely different. It’s an amusing and dishearteningly well-articulated take on how useless it would be to be able to offer your younger self advice when your younger self isn’t ready to hear it. While it’s no looper contract, we do trade in our future for present enjoyment in small ways all the time (by, for instance, taking up smoking or by spending money instead of saving it). Looper offers an even-handed look at both perspectives, even as it sends Old Joe off to make a terrible exchange on behalf of the future and follows younger Joe as he goes on the run and ends up taking shelter on a farm on which a woman named Sara (Emily Blunt) lives with her young son Cid (Pierce Gagnon). After a stylishly noir first half that’s simultaneously futuristic and retro — “20th-century affectation,” Joe’s boss Abe (Jeff Daniels) sneers at his employee’s preference for ties — Looper becomes more thoughtful and a little more jumbled in its second section, as it slows down for Joe to find some human connection for the first time in his adult life. With touches of The Terminator , the aforementioned Marker film and the inspired-by-it 12 Monkeys , a classic episode of The Twilight Zone and more, Looper is aware of its sci-fi legacy, but manages plenty of unique touches all its own. The depiction of Kansas is one, combining future tech and a farming lifestyle unchanged by the advance in time. A sequence in which Joe’s colleague Seth (Paul Dano) meets an unfortunate fate is innovative in its horror. But despite the fleet-footed flash of its storytelling, what’s most impressive about Johnson’s movie is its dark-edged faith in people being able to change despite the path on which they’ve been set. If all we’ll ever be is a product of the circumstances in which we grew up, then time travel’s almost unnecessary — the future’s predetermined. It’s choosing something new that may be as clear a sign as we ever get of a soul. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Although the above photo of Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska calls to mind a Lana Del Rey music video, it’s actually a still from something much more exciting: Vengeance trilogy director Park Chan-Wook’s upcoming horror thriller Stoker. Despite the title, which refers to the surname of the core characters, the tense, stylish trailer for the Fox Searchlight film, which you can find after the jump, does not look like a vampire tale. Rather, creepy, craven humans look like the monsters of this movie. In one scene, Kidman’s character Evie Stoker icily tells her daughter India (Wasikowska): “I can’t wait to watch life tear you apart.” In another, weird Uncle Charle Stoker (Matthew Goode) tells Kidman, “She’s of age,” presumably referring to India. “She’s of age for what?” replies Kidman with a disgusted look on her face. “You have no idea,” responds Goode in a tone that made my skin crawl. Those who’ve come to know and expect a certain level of creative, Grand Guignol bloodshed in Park’s pictures will have to wait and see, but there are a few promising indications in the trailer. When India is taunted by a classmate at school, she stabs him with a sharp pencil. There are also scenes of Wasikowska hefting what looks like a high-powered rifle. If you haven’t seen Park’s Vengeance trilogy — Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance — you might want to bone up before Stoker is released March 1, 2013. In addition to being one of Korea’s most popular filmmakers, Park’s fans include Django Unchained director Quentin Tarantino. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
