It wouldn’t be Bond if the production didn’t jet all over the world (although always coming back to its UK base, of course), and Skyfall is doing just that, with a new set video just released from the film’s Shanghai location shoot. The movie will hit cinemas on October 26th, but whet your appetite with the latest behind the scene look.
Magic Mike Trailer – Tatum, Pettyfer, Bomer and McConaughey get their stripper on!
I think it’s safe to say that a lot of women and gay men are looking forward to Magic Mike, if only because Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew Bomer, Matthew McConaughey and more play strippers! The trailer suggests there’s some sort of romance type plot too, but I don’t think anyone actually cares about that, or that much admired director Steven Soderbergh is behind the camera. Nope, they just want the buff blokes to get their kit off! Partly based on Tatum’s experiences as a young male stripper, the film sees him mentoring a newbie (Pettyfer) and apparently having romantic problems. The film hits UK cinemas July 13th.
Lifeboat (Blu-ray) – Hitchock’s ocean-bound classic gets an HD upgrade
Lifeboat is one of those movies a lot of people have heard about, but relatively few have seen. While it came before most of Hitchcock’s most famous movies although after his Best Picture Oscar-winning Rebecca it’s a classic that’s worth visiting. After a German U-boat torpedoes an allied ship, a group of disparate survivors gather on a lifeboat. Told completely from within the confines of the boat, the men and women aboard realise their predicament is a hairy one and that their best chance of survival is to make for Bermuda.
The problem is that none of them know where Bermuda is. However there’s one person on board who does appear to be able to navigate, a German U-boat survivor who might have been the captain of the vessel. But can they trust him?
Hitchcock was always fascinated by playing with the cinematic form, and as with his later Rope and Rear Window, here he experiments with whether you can make a succesful movie set in a single, contained location, without boring the audience. If you watch nearly any of the films that were remakes of or inspired by Lifeboat, of which there are quite a few, you’d think the answer is that you can’t make a successful single-location movie, but Hitchcock proves you can. Indeed his mastery of the form is such that after a while you completely forget that you’re just looking a few people in a small boat from different angles.
Hitch was also smart enough to know that if you’re going to experiment, you need characters and a well-written screenplay that make sense for the unusual form. For Lifeboat he commissioned none other than John Steinbeck to come up with the story, who produced an unpublished novella from which the script was written.
This ensures that there’s plenty going on in Lifeboat beyond a bunch of people in a boat, with characters who feel real and yet represent types the truth seeker, the socialist, the capitalist etc. The main crux of the film revolves around their reaction to the supposed common enemy, the German. The film actually got into trouble with some critics and commentators on its 1944 release, for not making its Nazi a snarling, moustache-twirling bad guys with the word Evil’ tattooed on his forehead. Hitchcock certainly doesn’t make him a good guy he was rabidly pro-allies and spent much of the war making propaganda movies but he does question the idea of demonising the entire German population, how people’s ideas can change in stressful situations, as well as both the strengths and weaknesses of group, us vs. them thinking.
But like most Hitchcock movies, while there’s a lot going on under the surface, it’s mainly just an entertaining and easy watch that magnificently overcomes any issues the limited setup may have caused.
This release offers both DVD and Blu-ray versions of the film. While the HD edition is definitely a step up from the DVD, you can definitely still see the film’s age, with a fair amount of grain and a picture that’s occasionally rather soft. However for a 68-year-old movie, it doesn’t look bad at all, and it’s obvious plenty of care has been taken to ensure this is the best presentation possible of the aging movie.
There are also some worthwhile extras, including a very interesting making of ’ featurette in which Hitch’s granddaughter and various experts talk about the making of the movie, from the injuries people received being tossed around in the boat to the involvement of Steinbeck. A bit more behind-the-scenes info is provided by Hitch himself in a 12-minute extract from the famed Hitchcock-Truffaut interviews, during which he talks about Lifeboat.
Most interesting for fans of the master director are two French-language shorts that Hitchcock made as wartime propaganda directly before Lifeboat. Neither are particularly brilliant, although for propaganda movies they’re quite fun and wonderful little nuggets of film history. With this Masters Of Cinema release also including a 32 page booklet crammed with info, it’s a great little package for a great little film.
Overall Verdict: It may not be one of Hitchcock’s most watched movies, but it’s a great little film in which the director wonderfully manipulates the single setting to create a film that never gets dull.
Special Features:
DVD & Blu-ray versions
Bon Voyage’ Hitchcock Short Film
Aventure Malgache’ Hitchcock Short Film
Making Of Lifeboat’ Featurette
Hitchcock-Trufaut Excerpt On Lifeboat
Booklet
Reviewer: Tim Isaac
Prometheus Viral – Happy Birthday David – Take a look at Michael Fassbender’s artificial human
Fox must be spending a fortune promoting Prometheus, although as the poster below shows, they’re getting a bit of help from product placement, in this case Prometheus. However there’s still a lot of cash involved, as while most virals are just helped my a bit of cheap marketing and word of mouth, Fox has actually taken out newspaper adverts in the US to point people towards their viral efforts for David, Michael Fassbender’s artificial human. Ridley Scott’s semi-Alien prequel hits cinemas June 1st, but take a look below for the new poster and ace viral vid.
Tash Force (DVD) – Dealing with Hooligans in the new Brit comedy
Tash McDermott (Mark Woodward) is the head of Lancashire Constabulary’s Football Intelligence Unit, who’s dedicated to preventing hooliganism. He agrees to allow a documentary crew to follow him around, showing off what he believes is his great skill, but what the world can see as his bungling incompetence.
He’s on the trail of the elusive football firm bad guy Nightmare, but it’s going to be tough to find him, especially as Tash has taken programmes like The Sweeney to heart and seems incapable of moving towards a more modern style of policing, much to the chagrin of his superiors.
Tash Force is the sort of low budget film that tries to make strengths out of its financial limitations, such as using the mockumentary form and largely featuring just two characters Tash himself and the journalist following him. This latter trick would certainly have made things cheaper and easier, but it’s a potentially dangerous gambit. After all, it puts the entire movie on Tash’s shoulders, with little else to help with the burden. It means that if you don’t immediately take to Tash, the whole movie fails, as quite a lot of the film is a bit of a one-man comedy show.
He’s undoubtedly a bit of a Marmite character, whose comedy will be a bit too broad and obvious for many, while others will no doubt be amused by his antics. When I first saw the ridiculous wig he wears, I feared the worst and that this would be cheap, lazy, lowest common denominator rubbish. It isn’t that, but neither is it a comic tour de force. I eventually realised that the wig was actually quite a good barometer of whether you should watch the film or not. If you look at the pic of Tash above and smile, you’ll probably enjoy the movie, but if you just think he looks stupid, this probably isn’t your kind of film.
Although Tash Force attempts a bit of depth and character development, it doesn’t really succeed, and Tash’s rather episodic capers are undoubtedly a bit hit and miss. To be honest it wasn’t really my kind of film, but I can certainly see a lot of people enjoying it. I didn’t think it was bad, just that it didn’t particularly tickle my funny bone. It’s a film that comes out of a long heritage of Northern comedy the likes of Cannon & Ball and Dave Spikey sprang to mind while I was watching it so if you like that kind of thing, you’ll probably enjoy Tash Force.
Overall Verdict: It won’t be to everyone’s taste and it’s definitely a bit hit and miss, but if you look at Tash and his wig makes you smile, you’ll probably like it.
Special Features:
Viral – Baddest Bastards – Tash runs through his captured hooligans
Viral – Boardroom Extra – Tash and Terry have a boardroom spat
John Robb TV Interview
Tash’s Christmas Message 2011
Tash’s webcam
Tash Force Trailer
Tash McDermott Hardcore Drinker – a featurette
Reviewer: Tim Isaac
Storage 24 Trailer – Noel Clarke is being hunted down by a predator!
The first trailer and poster have arrived for Storage 24, which is bidding to be this year’s breakout Brit sci-fi flick. The film stars BAFTA award winner Noel Clarke (Kidulthood, 4.3.2.1) – who also wrote the movie – Antonia Campbell Hughes (Bright Star) Laura Haddock (The Inbetweeners Movie) and Colin O’Donoghue (The Rite), and is directed by Johannes Roberts (F, When Evil Calls). Here’s the synopsis: ‘London is in chaos. A military cargo plane has crashed leaving its highly classified contents strewn across the city. Completely unaware London is in lockdown, Charlie (Noel Clarke) and Shelley (Antonia Campbell-Hughes), accompanied by best friends Mark (Colin O’Donoghue) and Nikki (Laura Haddock), are at Storage 24 dividing up their possessions after a recent break-up. Suddenly, the power goes off. Trapped in a dark maze of endless corridors, a mystery predator is hunting them one by one. In a place designed to keep things in, how do you get out?’ The film hits cinemas June 29th.
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