After breaking up street fights and saving British journalists from oncoming New York taxicab s, it’s time for Ryan Gosling to take his hero act global. The actor has teamed with activist/author John Prendergast to further raise awareness of the ongoing human rights crisis in Congo, helping produce a series of videos documenting “amazing lives in a place the world has left for dead.” And perhaps the best part, according to Gosling and Prendergast? “[W]e’re not in it.” The actor and activist share the background today at Huffington Post : On our second trip together to Africa last Thanksgiving, we decided to go to the place where the deadliest war in the world was occurring: the Congo. The entire time we were there, we traveled with an extraordinary Congolese guy named Fidel Bafilemba. His video profile is the first in a new video series being launched by the Enough Project, called I Am Congo . Most of the stories we hear about Congo are of rape, conflict, and exploitation. Those stories are real and we saw plenty of evidence of them. But that’s not the whole story of Congo. Watching our friend Fidel’s video profile helps expand the story of Congo beyond its pain, and highlights what Congolese people all over are doing to create a better future for their country. Enjoy said video profile below, and check out more from I Am Congo here . [ Huffington Post ]
It’s hard to say whether Sound of My Voice is a wholly bogus and pretentious indie enterprise or a weirdly compelling bit of low-budget storytelling. Probably it’s a little of both – this is the kind of picture that may often make you snort audibly, even as you’re wondering how the heck it’s going to resolve itself. And ultimately, even if the payoff isn’t quite what it should be, the picture leaves a faint chill in its wake. You probably won’t feel totally shafted for sticking with it – maybe just a little punk’d. Snuggly couple Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) have set out to make a documentary about cults, hoping to infiltrate one mysterious group in particular. The gang’s meeting place is a top-secret basement location; the faithful are ferried to and fro in a van, but they’re not allowed to see where they’re going. Once the loyal subjects have gathered, decked out in aggressively peaceful looking white yoga clothes, a mysterious creature appears in their midst. Her name is Maggie — she’s played by indie darling Brit Marling , who also co-wrote the script – and she greets her followers while hooked up to an oxygen supply. You see, Maggie is a refugee from the future – 2054, to be exact – and she’s come back to show the human beings she loves how to prepare for what lies ahead. To do this, she wears white leggings and swaths her long blond tresses in a white scarf. Because she’s allergic to modern food, she grows her own fruit in the basement. Also, she’s wearing massively chipped dark nail polish, the kind of WTF touch that makes you stop and wonder – WTF? Actually, Sound of My Voice relies heavily on just that kind of WTF-ness. Is Maggie a con artist, a master manipulator, as Peter and Lorna at first believe her to be? But when she appears to have read bits of Peter’s past as if they were tealeaves, doubt begins to creep in, driving the couple apart. Maggie certainly knows how to challenge her followers, urging them to eat apples tainted with something that causes them to throw up (the fruit is a metaphor for logic, you see) and serving them a post-fast repast straight out of Fear Factor (I won’t tell you what it consists of, but she seems to carry a supply of it around in a baggie). There’s also lots of sharing and hugging, Esalen-style, as Maggie probes the psyches of those in her midst, testing them to see if they’re worthy of the wisdom she’s carrying around in her futuristic noggin. Director Zal Batmanglij – also Marling’s co-writer — doesn’t attempt too many fancy tricks, other than dividing his movie into convenient, bite-sized chapters. He and Marling infuse the story with just enough slackerish suspense: You may not care much about the rather aimless lead characters, but you do want to know what this Maggie shaman is all about. That’s partly thanks to Marling’s off-kilter charisma, which appears to be equal parts nerd-girl intensity and beach-babe shrug. Marling garnered heaps of attention last year for Another Earth , a movie she both cowrote and starred in, and it’s clear to see she knows how to do a lot with a little. The question of whether it’s enough depends on your expectations, and it’s possible that people have taken Marling too seriously too soon, which in turn has led her to take herself too seriously. She certainly digs right into this enigmatic role, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find her weirdly fascinating, with her heavy eyebrows and serene, pillowy half-smile. Still, a bit of skepticism is a good thing when dealing with either cults or alleged wunderkinds. At one point in Sound of My Voice , Maggie’s followers urge her to sing a song from the future, and she obliges, reluctantly, with an a capella version of a sweet little ditty about life changing all around us. A guy named Lem is banished from the circle forever after he points out that, far from being a song from the future, the tune Maggie just warbled is actually a Cranberries hit from the ’90s. Lem just may be the hero of the movie. Similarly, the jury is still out on just what it is, exactly, Marling is trying to sell us. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘I still want so much more, and there’s so much more to get,’ he tells Mixtape Daily of Savage Journey to the American Dream. By Rob Markman, with reporting by Ade Mangum Stalley Photo: Getty Images Main Pick Headliners : Stalley Representing : Massillon, Ohio Mixtape : Savage Journey to the American Dream Real Spit : The road to the riches is no doubt a bumpy one, but now that Massillon, Ohio, MC Stalley is riding with the Maybach Music Group, his trip should be a bit smoother — or so you’d think. On March 30, the bearded Maybach spitter dropped Savage Journey to the American Dream. “I named it Savage Journey to the American Dream because that’s just what I’ve been through,” Stalley told Mixtape Daily. “I’ve been searching for that American dream, and I’ve been on a savage hunt for it for the past year.” Stalley first began making a name for himself in 2009 when he dropped MadStalley: The Autobiography, a mixtape he released with Mickey Factz’s GFC camp, on which he rhymed over classic Madlib productions. It was a subtle yet effective shot that would help Stalley make a name for himself in quite a few influential rap circles. After linking with Damon Dash’s DD172 outfit and recording alongside guys like Mos Def and Curren$y, the Ohio native found his lane and released Lincoln Way Nights in 2011. It was his most notable release and helped him get noticed by Rick Ross . “One of my goals was to be a signed artist, and now I’m with MMG and Warner Bros.,” he said. “I thought that things would calm down and I would kinda be satisfied with that, but I still want so much more and there’s so much more to get.” On Savage Journey, Stalley navigates through the pitfalls that await young rappers. “Lane to lane switchin’, keep these lames and dames at distance/ Eight-cylinder pistons, it’s money talkin’, listen/ And it’s tellin’ me go get it, and I’ve been on my way,” he spits on the moody “Route 21.” Curren$y shows up on the car-themed “Hammers & Vogues,” and on “Lover’s Lane,” Stalley makes a pit stop after getting sidetracked by some overzealous females. Stalley gets props, holding down most of the mixtape by himself, but he of course gets help from his MMG family. Rozay and Meek Mill show up for the Block Beattaz-produced “BCGMMG,” and Wale lends a helping hand on “Home to You.” Whether Stalley will ultimately see his dream fulfilled remains to be seen, but with his underground rep already solidified, there’s nowhere to go but up. Joints to Check For
Radcliffe’s portrayal of Allen Ginsberg in upcoming indie flick will ‘put to bed so many doubting minds,’ Ben Foster tells MTV News. By Kevin P. Sullivan Daniel Radcliffe Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images The list of characters in “Kill Your Darlings” is enough to immediately draw attention. The upcoming film counts literary icons like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac among its players, but the young cast attached to fill out the roles is truly something to behold. The indie production made waves in Hollywood by landing Daniel Radcliffe in the role of Ginsberg. With so many people paying attention to Radcliffe’s post-“Potter” career moves, “Kill Your Darlings” became the project to watch. Radcliffe’s name joined a list of some of Hollywood’s hottest young talent, including Elizabeth Olsen , “Chronicle” star Dane DeHaan , “Boardwalk Empire” actor Jack Huston and Ben Foster . MTV News spoke with Foster about working as part of such a talented young cast and how Radcliffe will “shock” audiences come next year. “What’s most exciting about the script is that these are before they were giants. These lions of literature are still in development,” Foster said. “Working with these actors is a gas. You can’t live up to the hero. You can live up the child. That’s what we’re honoring.” Of all the cast members, it’s likely that Radcliffe has the most to prove. As only his second film role after ending the “Harry Potter” series, the film could be a crossroads of sorts for his career. Foster spoke to Radcliffe’s ability and predicted audience reactions when the film finally hits. “In terms of Daniel Radcliffe, I admire him so much. He is a tremendously courageous human, great mind,” Foster said. “He’s done some work in this film which I think is going to shock and impress and put to bed so many doubting minds. Everyone seems to be ready to cut the man down, and he’s going to prove them wrong. He’s a hell of a talent.” “Kill Your Darlings” is due out in theaters next year. For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: Daniel Radcliffe Related Photos The Evolution Of: Daniel Radcliffe
Critics agree the Snow White adaptation is ‘not the fairest of them all.’ By Fallon Prinzivalli Lily Collins in “Mirror, Mirror” Photo: Relativity Media Before it even hit the box office, “Mirror Mirror” was viewed with a critical eye as two Snow White adaptations had announced their release dates a month apart. But with the release of the trailers, it was clear that the two movies were very different. The Tarsem Singh film is a quirky comedy from the vantage point of the Evil Queen ( Julia Roberts ) over the traditional Snow White ( Lily Collins ), while “Snow White and the Huntsman” is about the epic battle Snow White ( Kristen Stewart ) must fight for her life. Unfortunately for those involved in the former, as the reviews pour in, it’s obvious the movie is making critics grumpy. The Story ” ‘Mirror Mirror’ begins with an impressively animated recap of Snow White’s predicament: Banished to her castle by a wicked stepmother after her father the king disappears, and being played by such a vacantly pretty ingenue as Lily Collins. Collins conveys a properly Audrey Hepburn princess look and the acting range of a runway model. The damsel’s role is always distressed. The queen has run the kingdom into the ground, funding a lavish lifestyle with escalating taxes. After sneaking out for a tour of the squalor, Snow sides with the other 99 percent. Their relationship is further strained with the arrival of handsome Prince Alcott.” — Steve Persall, Tampa Bay Times The Laughs ” ‘Mirror Mirror’ is unfair to people expecting more than a few good laughs. Scenes proceed lethargically, with pauses after punch lines where Tarsem must hope for audience laughter. Anachronistic gags (as when the Prince tells Snow White that he has to be the hero because ‘it’s been focus-grouped — it works’) break whatever luscious spell the art direction and costumery might create. On their first meeting in the woods, the Prince tells the dwarfs, ‘You’re short, and it’s funny.’ Well, the film is shortish (106 mins.) but it’s also epically unfunny. The producers should have handed the script to an actual clever person like Paul Rudnick (‘In & Out,’ ‘Jeffrey’) and told him to send it back in a week, with solid jokes and a buoyant spirit.” — Richard Corliss, Time Julia Roberts “Roberts has had exactly one high point (‘Duplicity’) since winning her Oscar in 2000, and she acts here as if simply appearing in a floofy dress is high hilarity. Her ‘playfulness’ seems like work and her cartoony maliciousness is dull. (Charlize Theron, who plays the queen in this summer’s more serious ‘Snow White and the Huntsman,’ needn’t fret.)” — Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News The Visuals “Singh, whose eye-popping tribute to the Silent Era, ‘The Fall,’ was several years ahead of ‘The Artist’/’Hugo’ curve, never lets his attention waver from the production design — those beautiful, snowy, birch tree forests; the parapets; cliffs; and opulent palace digs. He lets his stars deliver their lines — some with more flourish and wit than others (among the dwarfs, Jordan Prentice and Danny Woodburn get off the best) — but his eye is mostly on the gilt and the silk, the CG-ed skies, and the eerie, iced-over lake that separates the castle from the town.” — Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer The Final Word “The whole thing lacks tonal cohesion, lurching from Tim Burton-style comic grotesquerie to underpowered action set pieces to a gratuitously self-referential Bollywood production number on the end credits. The impression is that of a director constantly fighting to put his stamp on material that’s foreign to him, and unable to figure out what that stamp should be.” — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter “Not the fairest of them all.” — Matt Stevens, E! Online Check out everything we’ve got on “Mirror Mirror.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Mirror Mirror’
Move over, Prometheus : David Cronenberg and Robert Pattinson are here with a 30-second foreign teaser for Cosmopolis , their adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel about a young billionaire’s dark, demented and all-around catastrophic 24-hour Manhattan odyssey. And it looks amazing. In fairness, it’s basically only 30 NSFW seconds of hyper-edited visuals, but what visuals: Times Square overrun with dinosaurs, Pattinson’s Eric Packer shooting a hole through his hand, limousine trysts and pee breaks, and all the quintessentially Cronenbergian glimpses of the perverse in the quotidian. Niftier still is the dialogue introducing the teaser, clipped in DeLillo’s own trademark staccato, hinting at a spiritual fidelity to the flawed but sui generis source material. It just looks and feels right . We’ll see how the other 100 minutes or so can compare later this spring, when Cosmopolis presumably debuts (and lands an American distributor) at Cannes. [via Movies.com ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
There’s no script, no budget and no confirmed Charles Grodin to complement the “buddy” part of the “buddy comedy” formula that worked so well 24 years ago, but that’s not stopping the zeitgeist from panicking over the current state of Midnight Run 2 . To wit, Brett Ratner is now linked up as the director. Like we’ve never heard that before . Everybody calm down! Not that it doesn’t get somewhat worse, as Mike Fleming reports at Deadline: The studio and [De Niro’s production company] Tribeca put the wheels in motion on the sequel early last year, when they hired Tim Dowling to write a draft. [David] Elliot & [Paul] Lovett, who were writers on G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra , and are working on the sequel to Four Brothers (which they also scripted) will continue the storyline of Walsh, the ex-Chicago cop who, when last seen, set free the turncoat mob accountant The Duke at LAX and walked away with a wad of cash he’d use to open a coffee shop. So, yeah: Still early. Anyway, to recap, De Niro played bounty hunter Walsh and Grodin played Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas in the 1988 film, which was written with such profane, caustic fervor by George Gallo and directed by Martin Brest in his follow-up to Beverly Hills Cop . All of which raises a few questions: Would the retired Grodin reprise his role? (He’s said he’s open to it, but he’s also 77 next month and doesn’t exactly need the paycheck.) What is it with Ratner wanting sequels to Brest classics? (If it’s not Beverly Hills Cop 4 , then it’s Midnight Run 2 . Just give him Son of Gigli already and let’s be done with it!) And can Elliot and Lovett find a place for Yaphet Kotto to return as well? Because there is no Midnight Run 2 without perpetually vexed FBI agent Alonso Mosley delivering some serious comeuppance. [ Deadline ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Despite the late addition of “Redemption” to the title of The Raid , there’s little to no atonement to be had in this stripped-down action movie. These characters are not here to have some kind of emotional journey, they’re here to kick ass. And so much ass is kicked over The Raid ‘s 100 minutes that viewers may feel a little bruised themselves upon exiting, for the most part in a good way — this is a film that serves as a remind of just how wonderfully cinematic violence can be. Written and directed by the Welsh Gareth Evans but set in and populated with actors from Indonesia, The Raid takes place, with the exception of an introductory sequence, entirely inside a decrepit 15-story apartment building in Jakarta. It’s owned by Tama (Ray Sahetapy), an underworld boss who’s set up the structure as a safe house for criminals and drug addicts who rent rooms there when they need to hide out — the cops won’t go near it. That suggests the mission on which our hero Rama (Iko Uwais) and the rest of his elite police force have been sent has more to it than just clean-up — though when the question is asked of why now, it’s quickly dismissed. Armed and under the command of the no-nonsense Jaka (Joe Taslim), the team methodically makes its way up from floor to floor, cuffing room occupants and securing each level, until they’re spotting by a kid who sounds the alarm, and all hell breaks loose. Tama, flanked by his two lieutenants Andi (Doni Alamsyah) and Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian), gets on the intercom to tell his tenants they’ll have free rent for life if they take care of the invaders. Guys with guns spring out of the apartments lining each long hall, and the film becomes a maelstrom of automatic weapons, machetes and elbows to the face. Uwais, whom Evans discovered while shooting a documentary about the indigenous Indonesian martial art pencak silat , is handsome and stolid and unlikely to win any major acting awards in the near future. But he does have a certain screen charisma and, once he gets moving, he’s an impossible and impressive blur of motion. Many of the fight sequences showcase the brisk efficiency of Uwais’s deadliness, as he works his way along a whole hallway full of men trying to kill him, leaving them battered or lifeless with some well-placed blows to the kneecaps or head. After the initial culling of the cops via sniper rifles and machine guns, The Raid: Redemption sets aside firearms in favor of fists and blades and lets fight scenes play out rather than chopping them to bits in the annoying recent style of shooting action. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Evans has actual trained martial artists at his disposal and doesn’t have to cut around actors who are replaced at key moments by stunt doubles. And they’re not all of the same school — Taslim, for instance, is a Judo medalist. While Uwais, whose character is devout and incorruptible and has a pregnant wife at home and another family member in the wind, is unquestionably the star, Ruhian, as his most deadly antagonist, steals the show. His character’s introduced as a bloodthirsty enforcer, but is noticeably smaller than everyone else on screen. It’s not until he orders Jaka into a secluded room in order to kill him in hand-to-hand combat (he puts the gun away, saying “these take away the rush”) that we get to see him in action, and he doesn’t seem constrained by normal forces of gravity. The movie takes a discernible pleasure in his two big fight scenes, letting them play out at almost decadent but fully deserved lengths. There’s a sliver of a plot to The Raid , but it’s really not worth going over — when the characters pause to talk, which is rare, it does tend to kill the film’s momentum. That’s not to say it’s all hallway battles and fire fights; one of the cleverest bits has two characters hiding in a tight crawlspace while a baddie idly jabs his machete through the thin wall, and another involves the men breaking through the battered floor of an apartment to get away from gunmen at the door. Set to a score from Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda, The Raid ‘s wall-to-wall action eventually gets a little repetitive — watching guys get their heads slammed into walls does start to lose its impact, no pun intended — but the film’s use of its space is never dull. It gets an entertaining element out of the juxtaposition of shabby domesticity with outrageous action, with one escape depending on an explosive inside a refrigerator. Staircases, elevators, atriums — the film may be set in one location, but it appears to make use of every nook and cranny of that setting. And while there’s a video-game quality to the way it proceeds in stages, leveling up, retreating and acquiring new objectives, at its heart The Raid is strictly old school, a film that gets a lot of glee out of the physical capabilities of its cast and their capacity to wreak havoc. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Finally, Dr. Uwe Boll is making a movie America actually wants to see! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Boll will start filming in April on Bailout , his 27th film — a feature-length thriller that follows an everyman New Yorker “who loses everything in the wake of the 2008 Wall Street financial crisis, and who strikes back by killing investment bankers.” I don’t know about you, but I think this one’s got a shot at gaining the cultural foothold that Ollie Stone missed with Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps , nein ? [ THR ]
If Stephen Dorff’s career never soared as high as he might have liked, the fact that it’s getting more interesting all the time must be some consolation. For someone who might not be considered a big movie star, Dorff has the distinct movie-star habit of seeming to play himself, even when he’s playing a big movie star. In Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere and now in Brake , he appears to be the same flannel- and faded jeans-clad heartbreaker from the Aerosmith years. Dorff had the persona in place from the start; it’s the pictures that got small. Maybe never smaller than Brake , a claustrophobic thriller set almost entirely in a clear plastic box. But small finally feels big for Dorff, who plays a government agent named Jeremy and has both the film and its coffin-like quarters to himself. Director Gabe Torres, working from a script by first-time feature writer Timothy Mannion, opens the film with a mystery: Jeremy doesn’t know where he is, why he’s there, or what the meaning of the digital clock that keeps counting down and resetting in front of him might be. We react with Dorff, who is bathed in the deep red glow of the clock, for the first 10 minutes of the film: Is this a dream? Existential art film? Kidnapping melodrama? Elaborate torture-fetish flick? A little bit of all of those, actually, though Jeremy’s sharp distrust of a second victim he communicates with through a conveniently supplied CB radio makes it plain that he’s some kind of government agent and has become embroiled in a terrorist plot. It does not give too much away to say that he is being tortured to forfeit the location of the president’s emergency bunker, and dude is not about to crack. Within the first half hour he’s branded with a cigarette lighter (turns out he’s in the trunk of a vehicle), shot in the leg during a police stop, and swarmed by bees. Dorff, whose pug boyishness never quite wore off, is often shot from between his knees or up his nose; at times ours feels like the vantage of a trusty canine sidekick — alert but helpless, searching our hero for a sign of what will happen next. If we’re never drawn in far enough to wonder what we might do in a Plexiglass box at the end of the world, Dorff can sell stock action-hero lines (“Somebody’s fucking with us” he tells his co-victim. Why? “That’s what I’m going to find out”) with enough moody grit to hold our attention. Torres sets himself a trap with this conceit, one he only half outwits. The sense of confinement is never overwhelming but neither is it particularly well-defined. The direction is clear and assured but instead of notching upwards, once it is established the intrigue of the situation begins to wane. When Jeremy gains access to a cell phone a pattern develops: Calls are made — to his estranged wife, fellow agents, a 911 operator — and then cut off, often after a plea is made for Jeremy to just tell the terrorists what they want to know. By the time he’s shouting about having taken a government oath the central dramatic tension — will he or won’t he? — has been fully wrung out. As it becomes clear that a horrific, systematic attack is unfolding just outside of the box, the story’s organic tensions get mixed up with its allusions, which sometimes — specifically the desperate, doomed 911 conversations — feel a little cheap. A national security breach playing out like a personal security nightmare is a great premise with lots of places to go. Confining them to a Lucite casket might have concentrated the themes into a higher potency, but Mannion’s script doesn’t feel quite up to the task. Although we can practically smell Jeremy, and Dorff’s vague, faded diva vibe works well for him as the long-suffering hostage, as written the character is too distant and unresolved to make such an intimate story work — never moreso than when Jeremy’s personal life is invoked. Instead of dazzling, the twisty double ending sets the slight but ultimately critical emotional detachment of the preceding ninety minutes into greater relief. It wouldn’t go so far as to say it feels like you went through Jeremy’s ordeal for nothing, but I did wish I had come to know as much about Dorff’s character as I did about the size and shape of his nostrils. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
