New Superman Logo for “Man of Steel” has just been released

Warner Bros. has just released the official new Superman logo for the upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel, starring Henry Cavill (yes, a British actor fighting for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”) and releasing on June 14th, 2013.

Looks very organic.

On one hand, I don’t like all this tinkering around with established icons.

On the other hand, I find it very exciting and of course, it generates lots of buzz and interest among the fanboys.

The movie is directed by Zack Snyder, who ranks up there with Tarsem Singh as the most visually inventive Hollywood director today. You may not like his storytelling style, but you can’t ignore the eye-popping visuals of movies like 300, Watchmen and Sucker Punch.

Check out the full press release and the logo visual here on the Darkhorizons website.

Great Food Movies

“10 Best Food Movies” as blogged by ‘At the Pass’ in Jan 2010. Most of the film choices matched mine, so I thought I would reblog it.

I would add Ang Lee’s Eat, Drink, Man, Woman to this list as well as the Finland-set Japanese movie Kamome Diner.

At the Pass

By Monsieur Anton

Food and movies go together like, well, popcorn and movies.  Since food is one of the central themes of life, it stands to reason that it would make a good theme for the cinema, and there have been some great movies based on life’s gastronomic pleasures.

Obviously, since everyone eats every day, there are bound to be scenes in most every movie in which the characters will indulge; but that is not what this is about.  I’ve seen many lists of food movies that include flicks that may have a great food scene or two.  Movies such as Diner, Mystic Pizza, Eating Raoul and even 9 ½ Weeks often show up on lists of food movies.  While they may include food in them, they are not centered on it.  To me, to be a true food movie, the film should embody the same trait that makes for…

View original post 1,286 more words

Chloe Moretz signs up to play Carrie in Stephen King remake

One of the most engaging characters in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated Hugo is Isabelle, the goddaughter to Ben Kingsley’s Georges Melies character. In a story that features a distraught orphan, a grim shop owner, and an obsessive station inspector, it is Isabelle who stands out for her sincere, girl-next-door personality and ends up becoming the glue that binds the characters together. She reminded me of the spunky schoolgirl heroines from Enid Blyton books, full of good cheer and endless optimism.

When I watched Hugo a few weeks ago, I hadn’t realized that Isabelle was played by Chloe Grace Moretz, the actress who created a stir among casting agents in 2010 with her portrayal of the vampire Abby in Let Me In, the acclaimed English language remake of the even more acclaimed Swedish romantic horror film Let the Right One In.

I then realized I had also seen her in a supporting role in the excellent romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, in which she played the very grown up kid-sister of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character.

Anyway, it has just been announced that Chloe Moretz has been selected to play the lead role in the remake of Stephen King’s prom-thriller Carrie. Stephen King’s debut novel has been adapted to screen four times, most famously in 1976 by Brian De Palma when it secured Oscar nominations for Sissy Spacek (Carrie) and Piper Laurie (her mother), besides launching John Travolta’s film career.

As I said, the casting agents are working overtime with this 15 year old actress who has 6 movies lined up in the next 15 months alone, not including Carrie.

For starters, she will be playing Michelle Pfeiffer’s rebellious teenage daughter in Tim Burton’s next film Dark Shadows, an over-the-top remake of the 1960’s gothic soap opera, being released in May this year, featuring Johnny Depp.

In the space of 3 years, Chloe Moretz has played good-natured, mature-for-their-years pre-teens in Hugo, (500) Days of Summer and Diary of a Wimpy Kid – and at the other end of the spectrum, she has played an emotionally challenged pre-pubescent vampire in Let Me In, a ruthless young vigilante in Kick-Ass, and now in Carrie, a high school misfit whose awakening sexuality is mirrored in her fast developing telekinetic powers.

Chloe Moretz continues the trend of remarkable young actresses emerging from Hollywood in the last decade – Dakota Fanning (War of the Worlds) and her younger sister Elle Fanning (Super8), Abigail Breslin (Oscar nom for Little Miss Sunshine), Ellen Page (Oscar nom for Juno) and Hailee Steinfeld (Oscar nom for True Grit). What is interesting is that they get fantastic roles as kids, but once they grow up, Hollywood doesn’t seem to know how to get the best out of them – case in point is Kristen Stewart who was outstanding as Jodie Foster’s asthmatic daughter in David Fincher’s Panic Room in 2002 and magnetic in her brief supporting role as Tracy Tatro in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild in 2007, but who has now been reduced to knitting her eyebrows as an excuse for acting, in the Twilight movies. And of course, let us hope that none of them go the way of Lindsay Lohan who promised so much as a 12 year old in The Parent Trap in 1998 and as a teenager in Freaky Friday in 2003…

Meanwhile, one can look forward to great roles from Chloe Moretz and her sisters-in-arms over the next couple of years, before they hit the late-teen ‘danger years’.

Malaysian Philharmonic’s Tribute to the Beatles

It is nearly 50 years since the Beatles released their debut album Please Please Me.

This weekend, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Mark Fitz-Gerald is performing The Beatles’ greatest hits. It was a sold out show and right from the opening double-shot of Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, it was an almost religious experience. For both these songs, as well as for Yesterday and Hey Jude, I had a lump in my throat or was nearly close to tears. The absence of lyrics actually put the focus on the amazing quality of their musicianship. All credit also to the arrangements, which were very cinematic. There were a couple of songs, where the horn section actually had me thinking I was listening to an early Bond theme. There were others arranged to sound like a ’70s TV show or something composed by Burt Bacharach.

Before every song, Mark Fitz-Gerald would say a short note about the song or the circumstances under which the song was written.

The giant screen in the background displayed an outstanding collection of photographs and album covers. A couple of the pictures, showing the four running down the street capture the energy and spirit of four young men on the cusp of stardom.

At the end of the performance, there were a several encores with the highlight being Twist and Shout, which had some members of the audience twisting in the aisles (we were told before the song that we had ‘special permission’ from the MPO management to break with the normal house rules of decorum!). Mark Fitz-Gerald was fully into the swing of things himself with a great physical performance on stage. The audience were also encouraged to clap and sing the chorus for songs like Yellow Submarine and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

I must drop into MPO and pick up the CD of the performance which is on sale, I believe. It was quite a unique experience, very different from listening to the actual songs, so well worth having.

19th Masters title for Federer

Great performance by Roger Federer yesterday, with a 7-6, 6-3 win over towering John Isner to win the Indian Wells ATP 1000 tournament.

In the space of 2 days, Federer has beaten the only 2 players who have defeated him since September 2011. I missed the opening set, but when I woke up and saw that Fed had won it 7-6, I was encouraged to switch on the TV and watch the demolition in the 2nd set. Federer lost just one point on serve in that set and he out-aced Isner, the ace king.

In the next few days, they will all be back on court at the Miami Masters. These 2 ‘mini-Slams’ are the hardest back to back tournaments to win in tennis (other than the French-Wimbledon double), because they each have a 96 player field and have just a 3 day gap between them.

Should be interesting to see how the Top 4 fare in the next one week.

For the moment, Federer must be feeling great, having won 6 of his last 8 tournaments and now looking forward to a chance to overtake Nadal as #2 in Miami, if Federer wins there and Nadal has a bad tournament.

Indian Wells Masters final: Federer vs. Isner? What happened to Djokovic vs. Nadal?

I missed the semi-final action at Indian Wells ATP 1000 tournament this morning.

Djokovic vs. Isner happened too early. I woke up at 430am and checked the ATP Score Update App on my iPad to see that Isner was taking the 3rd set against Djokovic into a tie-break. Shut the iPad but couldn’t sleep. A few minutes later, opened it again and there it was – Isner beats Djokovic 7-6, 3-6, 7-6. Amazingly, Djokovic actually won more points than Isner in the match – 117 vs. 106. But Isner used his serve to win the 2 critical tie-breaks. Very happy for Isner…have been following him since he broke through at the relatively late age of 22 years.

Then came a rain delay followed by Federer vs. Nadal. I didn’t have the courage to watch that. I checked the score online to see that Federer had broken for a 3-0 lead only to lose the break. That was enough for me; I decided I was better off doing the weekend grocery shopping. Came back nearly an hour later to see that Federer was on match point and play had been halted due to rain! Unbearable! But a few seconds later, he served an ace and was through to the final.

The press will refer to this as a revenge final, since Isner famously upset Federer on clay in Switzerland in their Davis Cup tie last month. Should be an interesting match, but I will probably be too tense to watch…

New Prometheus trailer and Ridley Scott interview

The new Prometheus full length trailer is a beaut.

Everyone who has seen the trailer agrees the last minute of the trailer is very intense, with superb use of a variation of the ‘siren’ audio effect from the original 1979 Alien trailer.

Added bonus is this Q&A with Ridley Scott.

Releases in early June. Can’t wait.

Go Hamilton, Go!

Very happy to see Lewis Hamilton in pole position for tomorrow’s Australian GP. All the winter testing speculation has now come to an end and we get to know what the real race pace is. Or rather, we will know the real race pace tomorrow and there have been occasions in the past when qualifying pace hasn’t translated to race performance. But safe to say that McLaren are in the lead pack and so is Mr. Schumacher, starting from #4 in his Mercedes. This year Mercedes will genuinely challenge for the title I think.

Nevertheless it is surprising to see Red Bull down in 5th and 6th. Vettel will certainly squeeze something more out of the car during the race.

Less surprising was the fact that Ferrari didn’t make it into the final round of qualifying…Massa didn’t make it past Q1 and Alonso put his car into the gravel in Q2. The fact that they were struggling was already evident during early practice. It will take a few races for them to get their act together, if at all.

But what on earth is Romain Grosjean and his Lotus-Renault doing in 3rd position? And if he is up there, then clearly the car is very good and although teammate Kimi Raikkonen doing down in 18th, it will only be a matter of time before Kimi shakes off the rust and starts to unlock the potential of the car in the next couple of races.

The Toro Rosso’s are showing some surprising pace and start from 10th and 11th with rookie drivers Ricciardo and Vergne. What a thrill it must be for them.

Am expecting the winner tomorrow to be either a McLaren, Mercedes or Red Bull. I’ll be rooting for McLaren and Hamilton, as usual!

Daniel Craig and the Girl with the Weird Hair

Ok, you know I am referring to David Fincher’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s immensely popular 2005 crime novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Actually the original Swedish title of the book is Män som hatar kvinnor, which translates to ‘Men who hate women’. For those of who you have not read the book, nor watched either the original Swedish movie adaptation or Fincher’s version, that should tell you all you really need to know about the storyline.

Larsson’s book is an excellently written page-turner which exposes the dark underbelly of Swedish society, encompassing incest, prostitution, murder, the role of government in social care, corruption in big business and a general attitude of misogyny. Now surely, these descriptions can apply to many societies (India comes to mind), but also it would be unfair to paint an entire population on the basis of one story. However, the fact that Larsson was a journalist does keep you thinking “this sort of thing must be really happening in Sweden” while reading the book.

I read the trilogy a year ago – actually I read Part 2 first, for some reason – and I literally couldn’t put them down, violence and disturbing subject matter notwithstanding. In the books, the two protagonists, the journalist Mikael Blomqvist and the antisocial hacker Lisbeth Salander get almost equal ‘page time’. Once the books were re-titled in English and became global hits, the focus of public attention shifted to Lisbeth Salander…many reviews tacked on ‘lesbian’ in their description of Salander, although in fact, that aspect of her personality, in my opinion, isn’t that significant a part of the story.

In the 2009 Swedish film adaptation, Salander was played by Noomi Rapace, the charismatic Swedish actress who has used the role to launch a Hollywood career – she was the gypsy girl in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and will be seen later this summer in Ridley Scott’s scifi epic Prometheus. In my view, Rapace’s interpretation of the character has now become an integral part of Larsson’s creation, just as much as Daniel Radcliffe has become the visual bookmark for Harry Potter’s character. At least, I believe, this would be the case for European audiences who have seen the movie. Of course, because of the marketing muscle and global footprint that Hollywood enjoys, it is most likely David Fincher’s version that will eventually get more viewers than the Swedish version. But even so, there is no doubt that Rapace’s performance has created the template for Rooney Mara’s interpretation of Salander’s character and for any other movie adaptations that may follow.

Which brings me to the title of this posting. David Fincher’s version seems to give more screen time and importance to Daniel Craig and Mikael Blomqvist’s character. One would argue that this is the sensible thing to do when you have the current James Bond acting the lead male role in your movie. But even so, I really felt that Salander’s character was relegated to a supporting role in the film, not helped by the fact that Rooney Mara, in spite of being is a very good actress, just doesn’t have the screen presence to compete with Mr. Craig. And that strange mini-fringe (or baby bangs, as they are referred to in the US) hairstyle actually makes her look a bit comical. Her famous dragon and wasp tattoos, which are such an integral part of her character in the books are only incidental in the movie.

David Fincher is considered to be one of the great modern American directors. His directing style is effortless and calls very little attention to itself, relying instead of great camera work and seamless editing. However, the subject matter he picks for his movies usually have limited emotional scope and therefore his films end up feeling a bit impersonal. The one big exception is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which I think will be considered one of the masterpieces of his career. But all the rest, like The Social Network, The Panic Room, Zodiac and The Game tend to fade away from memory soon after viewing and rarely pop up in ‘my favourite movie of all time’ lists.

I think that will end up being the case with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as well. As usual with a Hollywood production of this pedigree, the production design, cinematography, locations and editing are outstanding. The list of supporting actors is impressive, as are their respective performances. Special call out for Christopher Plummer who plays the ageing billionaire Henrik Vangar, the man who hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist to solve a 40 year old mystery. Mr. Plummer, who most of us know as Captain von Trapp from The Sound of Music, is having some of the best years of his professional life in his ’80s. He won the Oscar this year for his portrayal of a gay dad in Beginners and was nominated for his portrayal of Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station a couple of years ago. Another great performance was by Joely Richardson, with her limited screen time as one of the members of the vast and weird Vangar family.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, but would still rate it below the book and the Swedish film adaptation.

A Dangerous Method – Sexual Hijinks mark the Dawn of Psychoanalysis

David Cronenberg is one of a trio of contemporary directors – the other two are Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson – whose early work I cannot watch. The reason is that all three started their career writing and directing horror movies…not just your garden variety horror thrillers, rather the blood and splatter types which I have no stomach for.

Happily, all three of them ‘turned the corner’ and have gone on to become directors of great acclaim. Raimi and Jackson helmed the Spider-Man and Lord of the Rings trilogies respectively to critical and commercial success. Cronenberg, on the other hand, while moving away from horror (usually depicted as a result of science gone out of control), continues to explore the physical, psychological and sexual underbelly of humanity and therefore has never gone completely mainstream. His last few films, however, have been critically acclaimed, especially in Europe. My favourites (and the most accessible – although that is a relative term) are A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, both featuring Viggo Mortensen.

So, I eagerly awaited his latest release A Dangerous Method. This is his first historical film and is based on the relationship between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), his patient/ mistress/ fellow psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) and his mentor, Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) in the early 20^th century.

This is a handsomely mounted film, lensed by 70 year old (yes, you read that right) cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, Cronenberg’s DP on all his films since the late ‘80s. Incidentally, Mr. Suschitzky forever has a soft spot in my heart as the man behind the camera of Star Wars: Ep V – The Empire Strikes Back.

The film is based on a 1993 non-fiction book A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein by John Kerr. Keira Knightley plays one of the best roles of her career so far, as the Russian Sabina Spielrein, who is brought to Jung’s Swiss clinic to be treated for hysteria. Jung applies the still nascent theories of psychoanalysis to cure her and then encourages her to study it herself. Meanwhile, Jung’s theoretical and clinical work has come to the notice of Sigmund Freud in Vienna; Jung travels to Vienna to meet with the father of psychoanalysis and Freud soon anoints Jung as his intellectual heir. Soon after, Jung in the course of helping Spielrein with her studies, begins an affair with her against his own better judgement.

The film features several interesting discussions and debates on the emerging theories of psychoanalysis, between Jung and Freud, Jung and Spielrein, Jung and Otto Gross (an ‘anarchist psychologist’ and champion of sexual liberation) and between Spielrein and Freud.

Freud and Jung eventually break their collaboration as neither man can come to terms with the other’s dogma and attachment to their respective pet theories. Freud insists that all forms of neuroses have a sexual basis and that patients fundamentally cannot be cured, but can only be made aware of their malady. Jung on the other hand, believes that patients can be cured and is willing to explore telepathy and Eastern mysticism, topics abhorred by Freud. Spielrein herself comes across as a woman of extremely sharp intellect who was forming her own radical theories on psychoanalysis. She however gets caught up in the politics between the two men and one gets the impression that her theories were probably suppressed by the weight of Jung’s and Freud’s intellects and personalities.

I loved the scenes between Jung and Freud, as much for the insight into the foundations of modern psychoanalysis, as for the chance to see these two great actors occupy the same screen space. Jung particularly, is a tortured soul, struggling to free himself of his sexual obsession with Spielrein and the intellectual stranglehold of Freud. At one point, he says of himself, “Only the wounded physician can hope to heal.” Freud appears to agree as he says, “Experiences like this, however painful, unnecessary and inevitable, without them, how can we know life?”.

Otto Gross, played by French actor Vincent Cassel also gets some choice bits of dialogue. When Jung complains to him about Freud’s insistence on linking all behavior to sexuality, Gross says, “I think Freud’s obsession with sex probably has a great deal to do with the fact that he never gets any.” On another occasion when he is asked if he is not a believer in monogamy, he responds with great feeling, “For a neurotic like myself, I can’t possibly imagine a more stressful concept.”

Overall, A Dangerous Game is a finely acted film which tells the story of the dawn of psychoanalysis with documentary-like detachment and European precision. Not to be watched with children in the room, though.