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Stanley Kubrick''s 1980 horror film The Shining is one that some viewers have seen so many times that its principal location, a haunted Colorado hotel called The Overlook, is practically a second home. Kubrick''s camera spends a good deal of time prowling The Overlook''s weirdly carpeted hallways and exploring its seemingly infinite rooms, making the isolated mountaintop resort seem eerily real and all-encompassing. Many a nightmare has been set in The Gold Room, The Colorado Lounge, or the infamous Room 237. Die-hard fans of the film must wonder what it might be like to explore this famous and foreboding space on their own. An experimental 30-minute video called 'Shining 360' offers some clues. Spoiler: It''s pretty damned disturbing, even without 'Dies Irae' on the soundtrack.
The video, which uses YouTube''s still-novel 360-degree feature, is the work of digital artist Claire Hentschker, who has used the ...
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'All my vague cartoon ambitions suddenly fused into one crystal clear goal: to draw dramatic, emotionally-charged, energized scenes of power, grandeur, and intensity. It was like movie-making on paper, and you were the writer, designer, and director.'—Dave Stevens, creator of The Rocketeer
'I''ve bought a ticket in a lottery, the grand prize of which amounts to this: being read in 1935.'—Stendhal
We open on a black screen, as the Copland-esque Americana of James Horner''s score (rightly described by Jessica Ritchey as 'the best John Williams never did') plays under the deco-style lettering of the movie''s credits. After 'The Rocketeer' appears (with lightning bolt edges on its 'R' and 'E's), the screen and the title suddenly splits in two, as if what we''re seeing is a curtain, and there''s another screen behind it, waiting to burst into view. Silhouettes push 'Rock' and 'Eteer' and the black backdrop to either side of the frame, as dewy light reveals a prop plane on the yellow gravel of a runway, green trees and a slightly overcast blue sky a bit blurry on the horizon. We''re seeing all this from the perspective inside the hanger, and even as the cut to the next shot reveals another plane (the yellow, snub-nosed 'Gee Bee Model R') being rolled out, the framing remains masked at its 2.35:1 edges, as if pitched between an older, Depression-era framing of literal 'squareness' and the broader spectacles of late 20th century Hollywood.
Before we know who these silhouettes on the screen are, before a word is spoken—indeed, before we know anything about the story at all—'The Rocketeer' has given us all of its pertinent information. This is going to be a film full of both reverence for a period past and a playful deconstruction of that era''s movie tropes; it will use theatrical slight of hand to create a hyper-real vision of the 1930s; and not despite but because of this 'split personality' of style, period, and image, it will fly.
Released 25 years ago this month, 'The Rocketeer'—director Joe Johnston and screenwriters Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo''s adaptation of Dave Stevens'' acclaimed indie comic—was pitched as Disney''s second attempt (after the previous year''s equally stylized, period-set 'Dick Tracy') to compete with 'Batman,' after that film stormed theaters in 1989. It had rising stars like Bill Campbell (making his film debut after gaining good notices for work on TV shows like 'Crime Story' and 'Dynasty') and Jennifer Connelly; a marvelous villain portrayed by the most recent-James Bond, Timothy Dalton; well-regarded character actors like Alan Arkin, Paul Sorvino and William Sanderson in key supporting roles; a screenwriting team who''d just show-run a well-received adaptation of 'The Flash' for CBS; and a director coming off the surprise hit of 'Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.' The gorgeous, painted Art Deco poster captured the look of Stevens'' comic brilliantly for longtime fans, while grabbing the eyes of those (like 18-year old me), who''d never heard of the Rocketeer in 1991, but were certainly curious t
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Big, brawny man stands next to tiny, shouting man. Hilarity ensues. Ever since the box office success of Twins (okay, well, probably before that), the formula has been recycled by Hollywood again and again. These days, Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart seem to be the big man/little man pairing du jour, with multiple projects hoping to tap into the endless laughter supply that is their difference in stature. Before they head to the jungle for the planned Jumanji reboot, the duo co-star in this summer''s Central Intelligence, a new comedy from We''re The Millers director Rawson Marshall Thurber. The plot''s not immediately clear from the trailers thus far, but one thing is: A tall guy and a short guy hanging out is always funny.
Central Intelligence opens nationwide on June 17, but The A.V. Club and Warner Bros. Pictures have an opportunity for you to ...
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Joe Mantello and Finn Wittrock will also star in Tennessee Williams''s 1944 drama, which will be directed by Sam Gold and start showing on Feb. 14.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows—the sequel to the 2014 movie that boldly reimagined the popular pizza-loving chelonians as nightmarish monstrosities with nostrils, lips, and the physique of golden-age Muscle Beach bodybuilder Chuck Ahrens—topped the domestic box office this weekend with $35.3 million. That''s a lot less than its predecessor''s $65.5 million opening weekend, a steep drop that could be chalked up to today''s smartphone-addled youth no longer being able to relate to the experience of projecting human emotions on to the glassy stare of a pet turtle. (That, or the fact that that a large portion of its potential audience has seen the previous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and isn''t looking for a repeat.)
That put fellow 'comic-book-based franchise entry with a cheerless subtitle' X-Men: Apocalypse in the No. 2 spot with an estimated $22.3 million; the ...
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There's
something novel happening at Bucharest Film Studios, Romania's top production
facility and home to the new picture "Octave," featuring veteran stage and
screen star Marcel Iures on a trip through memory and time to reexamine the
formative experiences of his youth. Helmed by a progressive international
production team of artists with multiple agendas—narrative, social and
personal—"Octave" is a marked thematic departure from, or perhaps reinvention
of, contemporary Romanian cinema.
When
aging Octave (Iures) returns to the Romanian countryside to sell his childhood
family home, he faces a personal reckoning of his unresolved adolescence. You
can't go home again, the adage says, and for Octave, a flood of unresolved
events resurface, including a stint as a World War II soldier, the traumatic
death of his mother and fateful separation from his first love. Nostalgia, as
they say, can be a wonderful and horrible thing.
"Octave"—a
universal movie about making peace with past to understand the present—is an
independent production helmed by first-time feature director Serge Ioan Celebidachi ("Taming
the Apex"), shot by famed cinematographer Blasco Giurato ("Cinema Paradiso")
and scored by Cesar-winning composer Vladimir Cosma ("Diva").
It
is also a film that its production team believes will transcend what it is
commonly known as a "Romanian picture," often charting the spoils of the
country's Communist-steeped era in dark excursions like Cristian Mungiu's harrowing
2007 drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days."
Co-written
by Celebidachi and British screenwriter James Olivier, "Octave," by contrast,
is a departure from such gritty affairs both in narrative and aesthetic, a
movie that also looks back at another era—personal, not political—with a delicate
romanticism that often accompanies childhood introspection.
It
is also a movie that longtime friends and collaborators Celebidachi and Olivier
nursed together for decades, the first draft penned nearly 30 years ago. "We
started writing the film when we were 18 years old," said Olivier, "and
as we grew older and matured, the themes did as well."
Added
Celebidachi, "We had originally written the film in French; the Romanian part
came later. We translated it into English
and once thought we would do it in America. But put into the context of this
country, it is more interesting because during almost 50 years of communism,
Octave did not have access to the house, and his visit now immediately sends
him back to his childhood."
Though
64-year-old star Iures—a veteran of stage and screen best known to
Western audiences for such action fare as "Mission: Impossible," "The
Peacemaker" and "Layer Cake"—has been aged two decades to play octogenarian
Octave, he does not see the role so much as a summation of his long career, but
rather as a "beautiful gift." He explained, "It's not a summation, but just the
beginning of a new wave. And for me, it was love at first sight. It's about me
in the next decades; about you; about everybody."
Award-winning
DP Giurato is no stranger to nostalgic memory pieces, having lensed one of the
most moving final sequences in movie history for Giuseppe Torna
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