The Martha Marcy May Marlene camp notches another chilling character study in the AFI Fest selection Simon Killer , an unsettling look at a young American’s dark descent in Paris directed by Borderline Films ‘ Antonio Campos ( Afterschool ). Glimpse what lies in store with the film’s hauntingly gorgeous, Kubrickian poster design, exclusively on Movieline. Brady Corbet stars as Simon, a college grad traveling abroad who meets a Parisian prostitute (Mati Diop) and takes up with her, entrenching himself in her life in the shadowy streets of the Pigalle. Entrancing and provocative, Simon Killer constructs a sensory cinematic study around Simon’s psyche as he’s revealed to be more complex, and more dangerous, than what he seems. The visual parallel to 2001: A Space Odyssey ‘s famous “eye” poster is an intriguing comparison point to draw; Simon Killer is quite a trip in itself, a portrait of an affable twentysomething’s innocuous-enough wanderings through Paris that takes unexpected turns, forcing the audience to re-examine their perceptions of, and sympathy to, its protagonist. (The poster design is by Brandon Schaefer of Seek & Speak.) Simon Killer is set for release via IFC in April of 2013; it screens today, November 5 and again on November 7 at AFI Fest , which is a great opportunity to see one of the boldest and most provocative films we’ll see in the coming year. Read more on Simon Killer here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Eat your heart out, Strasberg: Actor Sam Worthington ( Avatar , Clash of the Titans ), in Atlanta filming Ten with Arnold Schwarzenegger , was pepper-sprayed by a doorman after allegedly becoming disruptive on Saturday, then was handcuffed and arrested for disorderly conduct — and still managed to remain in character! Kinda . Per TMZ : Cops say the “Avatar” star was at Vortex, a restaurant in Atlanta, when he was refused entrance because people at the door felt he was too intoxicated … this after he got into an argument because he didn’t have the ID required to get inside the club. According to the police report, a witness told cops Worthington became disorderly. He allegedly pushed the doorman twice and the doorman responded by pepper spraying him and putting him in cuffs until the cops arrived. And then… AND THEN (!): The bouncer — Jerry Link — tells TMZ, he maced Worthington when the actor went belligerent outside the bar … and Worthington screamed, “I’m a DEA agent! You f**ked up now!” For what it’s worth, the charge against Worthington was dropped. Worthington stars opposite Schwarzenegger, Josh Holloway, Terrence Howard, Joe Mangianello, and more in the David Ayer -directed Ten , about a team of DEA agents whose members are slowly offed after stealing millions from a cartel house. [ TMZ ]
Happens to the best of us: “‘At the beginning people [say], “You’re going to be going to the Oscars ,” and you’re like, “Whatever, doesn’t matter, don’t think so.” But after a while it does penetrate. After a while you’re like, “Anyway, so I’m going to the Oscars…”‘ He laughs. ‘And you start to believe it. And I did. I thought I was going. And then I found out I wasn’t and I was upset. I was very upset by it. The first reaction was “What the fuck…?”‘ He sounds frustrated that he had let himself get sucked in. ‘It’s a vanity thing. It does become important to you. And it shouldn’t.’ On reflection, he decided that he had learned something about misplaced priorities. ‘A good little lesson.'” [ GQ ]
Also in Tuesday morning’s Biz Break: Horizon Movies picks up an ode to ’70s and ’80s thrillers, Martin Scorsese is driving a new Rolls Royce pic, movies are top for consumers, and more… Thunder Run Gets Go Ahead Ahead of Cannes, Freedom Films has partnered with Paradox Entertainment in a “substantial” domestic P&A financing arrangement for the CG 3-D action thriller Thunder Run . Matthew McConaughey, Sam Worthington and Gerard Butler are attached. The story centers on the bloody capture of Baghdad by American forces at the onset of the Iraq War, when three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of five million, igniting a three-day blitzkrieg, which military professionals often refer to as a lightning strike. Hyde Park International is handling sales at the Cannes Market. Horizon Movies Takes North American Rights to Mr. Hush Kino Lorber’s Horizon Movies label picked up the film, described as an ode to the horror movies of the ’70s and ’80s. Set in an idyllic Pennsylvania town, the film tells the story of Holland Price, a devoted husband and loving father, who, unbeknownst to him, becomes the target of evil and dark forces. Around the ‘net… Consumers Are Pleased with Movies; Other Media Not So Much Respondents to an American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) gave motion pictures a score of 76 on a 100-point scale, up from 73 in 2011. Movies scored over broadcast and cable TV news programs, subscription TV and more, Deadline reports . Bully Director: Mitt Romney Apology ‘Fell Short’ Last week the Washington Post reported that while a student at Michigan’s elite Cranbrook Academy, the future presidential candidate and a group of friends confronted a classmate they suspected of being gay and pinned him down to cut off his long hair. “This could be a true presidential moment for Mitt Romney,” Hirsch told THR . “My hope is that he would recognize that we are past framing bullying as horse play or pranking around. We need our leaders to call it as it is.” Martin Scorsese Driving Rolls Royce Pic Martin Scorsese is teaming with Lord Richard Attenborough and Anthony Haas to produce Silver Ghost , a drama based on the true story of the founding of Rolls Royce that will be a co-production between Scorsese’s Sikelia Productions and Zuma Productions, Variety reports . Career Watch: The Commodification of Johnny Depp Johnny Depp’s career has been set on cruise control for years, and it’s worked splendidly. He’s Hollywood’s highest-paid actor along with Will Smith, received not one but two Golden Globe nominations in 2011 (for two of his worst films) and is happy getting paid stupid amounts of money even though he agrees it’s ridiculous and does not find it stimulating, Thompson on Hollywood reports .
Maybe you’re the kind of person who wakes up in the morning and says, “What can I learn today about the psychological effects of blood feuds in contemporary Albania?” But I doubt it. Who even thinks about these things, or cares about them? The strange miracle of Joshua Marston’s modest, well-constructed drama The Forgiveness of Blood — which really is about blood feuds in contemporary Albania — is that once you’ve watched it, you might find that you actually do care. It’s the kind of movie that makes the world feel like a smaller place, suggesting that the similarities connecting us across continents and cultures are more resonant than the things that divide us. The Forgiveness of Blood is set in northern Albania — it was also filmed there, using local, nonprofessional actors. Eighteen-year-old Nik (Tristan Halilaj) is a senior in high school, with his eye on the prettiest classmate and ambitions to open his own Internet café. But one day his father, Mark (Refet Abazi), becomes involved in a land dispute: Mark makes a living for himself and his family by delivering bread to local homes and businesses — his mode of transport is a horse-drawn cart — and he habitually takes a shortcut across land that used to belong to his grandfather. The current owners take umbrage, and an altercation breaks out in which one of them is stabbed to death; implicated in the murder, Mark immediately goes into hiding. But according to codes of law that have been in place for centuries, the aggrieved family is entitled to take the life of a male from the aggressor’s family. Nik is forced into a kind of house arrest, along with his younger brother and two sisters. But because the female members of the household aren’t in danger, Nik’s younger sister, Rudina (Sindi Laçej), must leave school and temporarily take over her father’s business, just to keep the family afloat. This is a vivid, tough little story that enfolds lots of dramatic subthreads: Nik and Rudina live, as most of us do, in a world of cell phones and satellite TV, yet they find themselves bound by antiquated rules of conduct. Nik is just learning his way around the adult world — he preens in front of the mirror, Tony Manero-style, hoping to look good for the girl he’s set his sights on — only to be imprisoned at home, as if grounded by an especially strict parent. It’s a particularly painful kind of cultural emasculation, and he lashes out. And Rudina, a bright girl who seems to enjoy school (it’s hinted that she may have a future outside this rather restrictive community), suddenly has to play the role of the male breadwinner. She’d rather go shoe-shopping with her friends, of course, but the point is that her very sex both protects her and makes her life harder: Her life is of lesser value under the arcane rules governing the blood feud, which means that when the males in her family are compromised, she has to step up to the plate and act like a man. She seems to have the worst of both worlds. Marston’s gift as a filmmaker — he also co-wrote the script with Albanian screenwriter Andamion Murataj — is that he makes us care about these characters without forcing us to eat the knobby, dirt-encrusted root vegetables of cross-cultural awareness. You know what I’m talking about: The world of independent filmmaking is full of movies designed to congratulate well-informed, literate liberals on how well-informed and literate they are — we watch as peasants and otherwise “compromised” people, who live in countries outside North America (or even the poorer communities within it), suffer through their daily lives. Then we’re allowed to pat ourselves on the back for allowing our eyes to be opened to their plight. Marston doesn’t play that game here, and he didn’t play it in his first feature, Maria Full of Grace , either: That picture told the story of a young Colombian woman who becomes a drug mule to raise money for her family. The picture could have been a pile-up of the most tense horrors imaginable, but Marston has the rare gift of knowing when to ease up on the clutch: He focuses on individuals, on their faces and their feelings, sometimes at the expense of your garden-variety dramatic buildup. His movies have their own kind of narrative intensity, but they’re not thrillers masquerading as human-interest stories. With Marston, the interest is all human. That’s especially true in The Forgiveness of Blood . In the movie’s early moments, when I saw that horse-drawn bread cart rambling across a scrubby-yet-beautiful semi-rural landscape, I groaned. Was this going to be one of those good-for-you movies that’s pure punishment to watch? The picture does have its unnerving moments, points at which you find yourself inside the head of a particular character and you’re not sure you want to be there. But Marston doesn’t overreach dramatically. Mostly, he simply trusts the faces of his actors: Halilaj’s Nik has a gawky-charming teen-scarecrow look — he’s all long limbs and awkward pauses, particularly when he’s in the presence of that pretty classmate. And even though Rudina isn’t really the movie’s main character, as Laçej plays her, she’s its quiet, somber soul. Rudina observes the proceedings around her with resigned exasperation: Just when her life should be moving forward, it’s being pulled backward through hundreds of years of tradition. That tension is gentle but potent, and it’s what keeps The Forgiveness of Blood coursing along. By the end, you’ll care more about Albanian blood feuds than you ever thought you could. Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Forget John Carter ‘s controversial budget woes and terrible tracking for a minute; Wrath of the Titans has been threatening to be the first big biff of 2012 since it was announced, thanks largely to its poorly received predecessor, Clash of the Titans . The sequel’s initial Marilyn Manson-themed trailer didn’t help, either, but Warner Bros. have thankfully tightened things (and stopped lingering on Sam Worthington’s Kenny Powers ‘do) for a new trailer that actually promises some fantastic CG creature work. Bring on the lava monster thingy! Wrath of the Titans picks up ten years after the events of Clash , with Perseus (Worthington) tapped once again by Zeus to save the world, this time from the nefarious Titans and Olympian plotters we glimpsed in Immortals . (Thanks for that primer, Tarsem!) This time around Rosamund Pike is along for the ride as the warrior queen Andromeda, as well as folks like Toby Kebbell and Bill Nighy. This trailer tightens things up a bit, explaining the set up (Liam Neeson’s Zeus is under attack!) and packing a ton of CG creature looks into the span of a minute and a half. Honestly, that’s shaping up to be the draw of this Jonathan Liebesman-helmed sequel. All I want to see is some believable lava smoke monster giant action. The movies never get those guys quite right. Wrath of the Titans will debut March 30. [via ComingSoon ]
You know how when you’re browsing around online, and you arrive at a news site or some other ad-supported publication that digs into your Web history for the most appropriate display ads to show you on your visit? Except they’re not appropriate, like, at all ? Try this recent combo found by a Movieline reader in Australia: I mean, sure! Sydney restaurateur survives 25-meter fall from balcony + your desirable age/economic demographic + Sam Worthington’s slow career suicide new film opening soon = Marketing genius . If only we’d had a guy plunge eight stories in one of our bigger American metropolises! This movie might have made some money . Anyway, can’t wait to see Titanic 3-D ads automatically show up on every story about the Costa Concordia for the next two months. You’re welcome, James Cameron. [ Sydney Morning Herald ]
After premiering this past weekend before Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows screenings, the latest official trailer for The Dark Knight Rises has hit the Internet today. Depicting a Gotham City eight years after the events in 2008’s The Dark Knight , the trailer teases societal upheaval, (literally) explosive football plays and best of all, two new villains: Anne Hathaway ‘s Catwoman (or at least, Selina Kyle) and Tom Hardy ‘s mysterious, mumbling Bane. Let’s parse the trailer the only way we know how: By the numbers.
The first trailer for the action sequel Wrath of the Titans just hit, and — what’s that? You forgot this movie existed entirely? And you’re tired of replaying the new Dark Knight Rises trailer over and over again just to make out Bane’s muffled dialogue? I’m pretty sure he’s growling something along the lines of, “Geez, didja see the new Wrath of the Titans trailer? They really did a number on poor Sam Worthington’s hair, amirite?” Holy Greek demigods, people — he’s like Kenny Powers in sandals. Curls will rise, and then some. Watch the CG spectacular after the jump.
Like the killer in a Texan massacre tale, this Jessica Chastain person keeps coming back! In every possible supporting role! With the new movie Texas Killing Fields , the Tree of Life lumberjill co-stars alongside Sam Worthington (who looks a lot like Nathan from The Real World: Seattle these days, in case you were wondering) and Chloe Moretz in a tale of serial murder and Southern accents. Director Ami Canaan Mann is Michael Mann’s daughter, which officially makes this film a hotbed for a new school of talent. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan is like the principal of that school.
