Starring: Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling [full cast list under the ‘Cast’ tab]
Directed By: Ruben Fleischer
Screenplay By: Will Beall
Release Date: To be determined 2012
Genres: Drama, crime
Running Time: To be determined
MPAA Rating: Not yet rated
Official Synopsis: Los Angeles, 1949. Ruthless, Brooklyn-born mob king Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) runs the show in this town, reaping the ill-gotten gains from the drugs, the guns, the prostitutes and—if he has his way—every wire bet placed west of Chicago. And he does it all with the protection of not only his own paid goons, but also the police and the politicians who are under his control. It’s enough to intimidate even the bravest, street-hardened cop…except, perhaps, for the small, secret crew of LAPD outsiders led by Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) and Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), who come together to try to tear Cohen’s world apart.
[tabs style=”default” title=”‘The Gangster Squad’ Resources”] [tab title=”Cast”]
Sean Penn – ‘Mickey Cohen’
Josh Brolin – ‘Sgt John O’Mara’
Jerry Wooters – ‘Ryan Gosling’
Emma Stone – ‘Grace Faraday’
Robert Patrick – ‘Officer Max Kennard’
Michael Peña – ‘Navidad Ramirez’
Giovanni Ribisi – ‘Conway Keeler’
Anthony Mackie – ‘Coleman Harris’
[/tab]
[tab title=”Trailer”]Not Yet Released[/tab]
[tab title=”Photos and Poster”]Coming Soon[/tab] [/tabs]
Sam Worthington (Clash of the Titans, Avatar) leaves action behind for a more dramatic turn in The Debt directed by John Madden (Proof, Shakespeare in Love) and co-starring Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds. The film flip flops between the 1960s and the 1990s, with Worthington, Chastain, and Csokas playing the younger versions of Hinds, Mirren, and Wilkinson as the story of a top-secret mission to capture a Nazi war criminal unfolds.
In this interview video, Worthington discusses the story, his character, the rehearsal process, playing a younger Ciaran Hinds, working with Marton Csokas and Jessica Chastain, and being directed by John Madden.
The Plot: A former Mossad agent (Helen Mirren), who was part of a 30-year-old secret Israeli mission to capture and bring to trial a notorious Nazi war criminal, must go back to Eastern Europe to relive the trauma of those events and uncover the truth, ultimately confronting the debt she has incurred.
If you aren’t yet aware of who Tom Hardy is – or you only know of him because he’s playing Bane in the next Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises – that’s likely to change as Warrior will be putting Hardy on everyone’s radar. And in this clip supplied by Lionsgate Films (who’ll hopefully be pushing this movie come Oscar time), Hardy shows he’s fully capable of handling action scenes.
The Plot: An ex-Marine haunted by a tragic past, Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy) returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh and enlists his father, a recovered alcoholic and his former coach, to train him for an MMA tournament awarding the biggest purse in the history of the sport. As Tommy blazes a violent path towards the title prize, his brother, Brendan, (Joel Edgerton) a former MMA fighter unable to make ends meet as a public school teacher, returns to the amateur ring to provide for his family after being suspended from his day job. Even though years have passed, recriminations and betrayals keep Brendan bitterly estranged from both Tommy and his father.
But when Brendan’s unlikely rise as an underdog sets him on a collision course with Tommy, the two brothers must finally confront the forces that tore them apart, all the while waging the most intense, winner-takes-all battle of their lives.
Filmmaker Kevin Smith’s comic shop Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash will be the setting of an unscripted TV series set up at AMC. Smith will be executive producing Secret Stash along with Charlie Corwin (Storm Chasers) and Elsye Seiden (Smith’s Red State).
Secret Stash will have six 1-hour episodes on AMC in early 2012.
Commenting on the show, Smith stated, “Draper. Meth. Zombies. This show couldn’t be on a better network. AMC is to television what Miramax was to cinema back when I first got in the game: they’re the premier destination for any story-teller looking to spin an offbeat yarn that no other outlet has the stones to touch. And as if I didn’t love them enough, now they’re putting my friends on TV!
I’m ecstatic, proud, and extremely lucky to be in bed with a network I watch religiously anyway. And if they’d pushed just a little harder in the negotiations, I’d have done this show for no payment beyond early access to every episode of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Walking Dead.”
“AMC has a strong commitment to quality storytelling and we’re excited to help further shape this legacy,” said producer Corwin. “Kevin and I developed this series to create a story for fanboys by fanboyism and we are determined to reveal to audiences the insular yet colorful fanboy world.”
“The comic book store is, in many ways, the corner bar for comic book fans. It is still this place where everybody knows your name, and you can go and geek out with like-minded people. If I lived closer, I’d want to hang out at here. It’s got great energy, great personality, and is a perfect portal into the world of comic book culture,” said Joel Stillerman, AMC’s SVP of original programming, production and digital content.
The Plot of Secret Stash (Working Title):
“The Secret Stash is a one hour series that captures the world of the local comic book store. Way before comic book culture went mainstream, the comic store has not only been a place for people to buy, sell, or trade for cool stuff; but also to hang out and be part of a community that just loves comics. Secret Stash will capture both of these aspects of comic store life.
It will document the daily banter of The Secret Stash and it’s employees and devoted customers; and it will capture the fun and emotion of buying and selling collectibles and comic memorabilia that happens in comic book stores all across the country and in mega-venues like Comic-Con.”
Emile Hirsch and Matthew McConaughey in 'Killer Joe' - Photo: Voltage Pictures
Matthew McConaughey and Emile Hirsch lead the cast of the drama Killer Joe, directed by William Friedkin. The film finds Hirsch playing a man who goes to extraordinary lengths to make some quick cash.
Official Synopsis: When 22-year-old drug dealer Chris (Emile Hirsch) has his stash of drugs stolen from him by his mother, he has to come up with six-thousand dollars quickly, or he’s dead. Desperate, he goes to the trailer park to see his father, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), and he lays out the plan. Chris’s mother, who everyone hates, has a life insurance policy that would clear up his debt and make them all rich. The problem is that Chris’ mother is very much alive.
Enter Detective “Killer” Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a hired hitman with the manners of a Southern gentleman, who will do the job – for an upfront fee that Chris and Ansel can’t pay. Just as Joe is about to leave, he spots Dottie (Juno Temple), Chris’ innocent younger sister. Joe makes Chris an offer, he’ll keep Dottie as sexual collateral until the money is collected and his fee can be paid. Chris reluctantly puts his debt ahead of his sister and agrees to Joe’s demand.
As the days pass, Chris watches Joe with Dottie, and he regrets his decision. He asks Joe to call the whole thing off, but it’s too late – the job is already done. Feeling like it’s almost over, Chris giddily attends the meeting with the lawyer to discuss the insurance payments. When he realizes that his mother’s boyfriend is the sole beneficiary and not Dottie, Chris knows he’s been duped.
When Joe comes to collect and discovers there’s no money, he uses his detective skills to get to the bloody bottom and everyone pays the price.
Harry Lloyd as Viserys Targaryen in Game of Thrones - HBO
Harry Lloyd, best known for playing Viserys Targaryen in season one of Game of Thrones, has been cast in director Nae Caranfil’s Closer to the Moon. Lloyd joins Vera Farmiga and Mark Strong in the period drama set to begin filming this fall, reports Deadline.
Closer to the Moon takes place in Bucharest in 1959 and follows a group of Jewish former anti-Nazi revolutionaries. After being arrested for robbing a bank and sentenced to death, they’re forced to reenact the robbery for a propaganda film. Lloyd will play the propaganda film’s cameraman who falls in love with Farmiga’s character. Strong plays one of the men sentenced to die and the father of Farmiga’s child.
No spoilers here for those who haven’t seen the first season of Game of Thrones, but let’s just say Lloyd’s character was involved in one of the most memorable scenes of the entire season.
27 year old Lloyd will next be seen playing the young Denis Thatcher in The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep as former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Joe Cocker 'Hard Knocks' - 429 Records Joe Cocker’s finishing up work on his 21st album, Hard Knocks, which is now set for release on November 22, 2011. Cocker’s new album will feature 9 brand new songs plus a cover of the Dixie Chicks’ “I Hope.” Hard Knocks was recorded at Matt Serletic’s Emblem Studios in Los Angeles with Ray Parker Jr., Tim Pierce and Joel Shearer on guitar, Josh Freese, Matt Chamberlain and Dorian Crozier on drums, Chris Chaney on bass and Jamie Muhoberac on keyboards, says Cocker’s label, 429 Records.
Former American Idol judge Kara Dioguardi and Marc Broussard contributed songs to Hard Knocks.
“I don’t really know what you would call this album: ‘rock/pop’? It’s a little more pop than I’ve been into for quite a while so it would scare me sometimes,” Cocker said in a press release. “I would do the basic tracks and then Matt would go away and do some of these overdubs and he had all these electronic things on there. It was sometimes like ‘Oh, my god!’. But I wanted to work with Matt very much. And I always knew what kind of record we would be making.”
Hard Knocks Track List
– Hard Knocks
– Get On
– Unforgiven
– The Fall
– So It Goes
– Runaway Train
– Stay The Same
– Thankful
– So
– I Hope
Getting a midweek jump on its cinematic competition, The Debt is yet another recent foreign film to be remade for English-speaking-only countries.
Based on the 2007 Israeli film, Ha-Hov, the story concerns a trio of Mossad agents tasked with bringing a Nazi war criminal back to Israel to stand trial for crimes committed during the Holocaust. It flitters back and forth between 1966 and 1997, weaving a tale of espionage and secrets that will feel a bit predictable to fans of the genre but is sure to surprise more casual filmgoers.
What works best, and worst, for The Debt is its cast. Jessica Chastain (coming off a terrific performance in The Tree of Life), Martin Csokas, and Sam Worthington play the younger versions of Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Ciarán Hinds (respectively). All of them are terrific actors and perform their parts quite well. What makes this also the worst element then? Let’s play a little game, shall we?
Close your eyes – wait … bad idea for a text-based review. Look at the following pictures:
If you were going to match up the actors to play the same character but at different ages, which way would you go?
A. Worthington – Wilkinson, Csokas – Hinds
B. Worthington – Hinds, Csokas – Wilkinson
C. Who cares? Get on with the review.
D. Who cares? It’s called suspension of disbelief.
As long as you didn’t answer “B,” you can postpone that eye exam another month. In all seriousness, it was extremely distracting to keep reminding myself which actors matched up because it went against their physical appearances. This is made more baffling by how obvious it should have been to switch Wilkinson and Hinds’ casting. Both are superb actors who can easily play either character. Unless there was some intense pre-casting game of rock-paper-scissors that’s going to make the DVD extras, this choice made very little sense.
Aside from that, the film unfolds as one might expect. Director John Madden (no, not the guy who rode a bus to NFL games coast to coast) chose to start the film with a pivotal scene and build back up to it, all while shuffling past and present scenes as is de rigueur these days. It’s a stylistic choice and will work fine for part of the audience while seeming off-putting to the rest (read: me). Madden could just have easily told the story linearly but hey, what do I know? I’m a film critic.
One casualty of going back and forth in time is a more difficult ability to gauge whether the film is coming to an end or not. While the runtime is not egregious, at 1 hour, 54 minutes, the last act seems to come right about when it would feel right to run the credits and makes those movie seats just that much more noticeably uncomfortable.
Overall, the film does what it sets out to do. It very much feels a bit like Munich mashed up with an episode of The Unit but the strength of the actors makes the ride more than palatable. Of course, because the original is only 4 years old, The Debt still falls into the category of ‘why in the hell are you remaking this – oh wait, that’s right, Americans won’t read subtitles,’ but like bad 3D conversions, I doubt this trend will be stopping anytime soon.
Grade: C+
The Debt hit theaters on August 31, 2011 and is rated R for some violence and language.
Al Pacino delivers one of the most quoted lines in movie history in Brian De Palma’s 1983 gangster film, Scarface, and he didn’t even get nominated for an Academy Award for his performance (but don’t feel bad for him – he’s been nominated 8 times with 1 win). Even if you’ve never watched Scarface, chances are you’ve heard Pacino’s line: “Say hello to my little friend.” And now, thanks to the release of the Scarface Special Limited Edition Blu-Ray, we can watch Pacino as Tony Montana trying to get the line just right.
Watch the Scarface outtakes:
The Scarface Special Limited Edition Blu-Ray hits stores on September 6, 2011.
The Bonus Features:
· The Scarface Phenomenon— This all-new documentary presents Scarface as a unique phenomenon in cinema history. It explores how a film plagued by controversy leading up to its release has become a Hollywood classic, influencing a whole new generation of filmmakers and leaving a lasting imprint on popular culture.
· Deleted Scenes
· The World of Tony Montana —Experience the world of the ultimate gangster and hear from experts on the real world violence, fear and paranoia that surrounds a drug lord.
· The Rebirth —Director Brian De Palma, producer Martin Bregman, actor Al Pacino, and screenwriter Oliver Stone revisit the history of Scarface, from the inspiration of the original Howard Hawks classic to the evolution of the script.
· The Acting — Join the filmmakers, Al Pacino and Steven Bauer to discover how each of the roles was cast and how Brian De Palma worked with his actors to get unforgettable performances.
· The Creating — A fascinating, controversial and definitive journey through the making of the film, which began with the production being forced to leave its initial location in Florida. Discover how the chainsaw scene was filmed, learn about the production design, the photography, and the struggle to get the film an “R” rating.
· Scarface: The TV Version—A revealing and hilarious montage of film clips comparing the theatrical version to the network television version of Scarface.
· The Making of Scarface: The Video Game: Immerse yourself in the world of Scarface in this behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the video game.
· U-CONTROL FEATURES ON THIS BLU-RAY DISC:
· Scarface Scoreboard—Watch Scarface like never before. Keep track of the number of times the “F” word is used and monitor the bullets fired!
· Picture in Picture—Access interview footage of Brian De Palma, Al Pacino, Screenwriter Oliver Stone, and others without interruption to the movie experience. Also featured is a scene comparison between the 1983 version of Scarface and Howard Hawks’ original film.
· BD-LIVE™—Access the BD-Live™ Center through your Internet-connected player to get even more content, watch the latest trailers and more.
· pocket BLU™ app— USHE’s groundbreaking pocket BLU™ app uses iPhone™, iPad™, iPod® touch, Smartphone, Android™, PC and Macintosh to work seamlessly with a network-connected Blu-ray™ player and offers advanced features such as:
· Advanced Remote Control: A sleek, elegant new way to operate your Blu-ray™ player. Users can navigate through menus, playback and BD-Live™ functions with ease.
· Video Timeline: Users can easily bring up the video timeline, allowing them to instantly access any point in the movie.
· Mobile-To-Go: Users can unlock a selection of bonus content with their Blu-ray™ discs to save to mobile devices or to stream from anywhere there’s a Wi-Fi network, enabling them to enjoy exclusive content on the go, anytime, anywhere.
· Keyboard: Enter data into a Blu-ray™ player with your device’s easy and intuitive keyboard to facilitate such Blu-ray™ features as chatting with friends and sending messages.
Starz released a little more info today on their upcoming drama Magic City, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Losers, Watchmen) and Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace), and revealed they’ll be showing never before seen footage at MIPCOM in Cannes, France this October. The original series will debut in the US in April 2012.
Writer/director/producer Mitch Glazer created the show which is set in 1959 in Miami Beach.
The Plot:
As Frank Sinatra rings in a new year in the grand ballroom of Miami Beach’s most luxurious dream palace – the Miramar Playa – its visionary leader, Ike Evans, must deal with the mob, his complicated family and a city in the midst of dramatic change as Fidel Castro takes control of Cuba, just 200 miles offshore. By day the hotel at the center of “Magic City” is all diving clown acts and cha-cha lessons by the pool, but at night Miami Beach reveals a darker truth.
Morgan plays Ike Evans, “the cool, visionary force behind Miami Beach’s newest hotel and a man with dangerous secrets.” Olga Kurylenko is his former showgirl wife, Vera. Danny Huston – so good at playing the villain – is Ben Diamond, “Miami’s most dangerous mobster.” Jessica Marais is Ben’s wife, Steven Strait is Ike’s oldest son, and Christian Cooke plays Ike’s hard-working younger son.
The cast also includes Kelly Lynch, Michael Rispoli, Seymour Cassel, and Yul Vazquez.
