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THE ULTIMATE SCI-FI PREVIEW JANUARY 2014 I ISSUE 214 TOTALFILM.COM

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ON-SET EXCLUSIVE

FULLYLOADED WORLDEXCLUSIVE!

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

PART MAN. PART MACHINE. ALL KICK-ASS.

PLUS

FIRST LOOK: FURY, 47 RONIN, LONE SURVIVOR ì AGENT HILL SPILLS! ì MARVEL'S LATEST ì MONEYPENNY ON BOND 24! ì 12 YEARS A SLAVE ì MOVIES TO MAKE GROWN MEN CRY

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Iconic: Naomie Harris on Mandela and more, page 94.

WorldMags.net January 2014 Issue 214

We go behind the scenes of 12 Years A Slave.

98

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Tom Hiddleston vamps it up in Only Lovers Left Alive.

TF

= ON THE COVER

65 | THE SCI-FI PREVIEW TF RoboCop heads up our sci-fi special; hot wheels (Mad Max: Fury Road), mutant reveals (X-Men: Days Of Future Past) and big heels (Godzilla).

88 | THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG On set with the scaliest dragon of them all.

94 | NAOMIE HARRIS TF From Moneypenny to Mandela, the Brit actress talks tackling icons.

98 | 12 YEARS A SLAVE Steve McQueen’s instant masterpiece.

TF

66

Man Of Steel on DVD and Blu-ray.

>Screen In cinemas

12 | ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE Loki and the Snow Queen do blood suckers in Jim Jarmusch’s latest.

26 | 60 SECOND SCREENPLAY We bring Gravity back down to Earth.

45 | Fill The Void, Fanny, Free Birds...

It’s inadvertent-innuendo month at the multiplex. Plus the Carrie remake – is it any bloody good? And not one but three one-star reviews. We’re saving you money, right?

106 | COBIE SMULDERS TF Marvel’s non-mutant heroine is far from powerless.

>Agenda Views

140 | CLASSIC SCENE Natalie Portman’s swan song in, er, Black Swan has us pirouetting with fear. Then rocking quietly.

142 | INSTANT EXPERT “Speak louder! LOUDER!” Yep, it’s time for Mumblecore.

33 | ELIZABETH OLSEN The indie darling looks forward.

38 | ALL IS LOST Robert Redford heads out to sea, faces imminent death.

40 | MICHELLE PFEIFFER the She’s a cool rider. essential movie website

totalfilm.com 6 | Total Film | January 2014

122

>Every issue

15 | CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER Cap’s back! Plus an update on all of Marvel’s movers and shakers.

110 | THERE WILL BE BLUB TF Movies it’s OK to cry at. No, really. Go right ahead.

Carrie gets reviewed.

>Buzz News

102 | THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY Could Ben Stiller’s latest be the new Eternal Sunshine?

114 | TF INTERVIEW: TOM HANKS TF From Woody to Walt Disney, Mr H muses on his CV.

46

RoboCop is back.

TF

news reviews videos trailers forum

143 | IS IT JUST ME? Why the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still is as good as the original.

And not just because Keanu’s in it.

146 | TF LOVES Naked Thomas Haden Church in Sideways.

>Lounge At home

COVER CREDIT: © 2013 COLUMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES, INC AND METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER PICTURES INC.

>This issue…

121 | Doctor Who – on set! Breaking Bad – all of it! Win an arrow that’s been stuck in Hugh Jackman!

Plus loads of big films you’ll either want for Christmas or will get NOW whether you want them or not.

FROM ONLY £1.99!

Now fully interactive on your iPad! Available on Apple Newsstand www.totalfilm.com/newsstand

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Mail, rants, theories etc...

WorldMags.net Email totalfilm@futurenet.com Write Total Film, 2 Balcombe Street, London NW1 6NW, UK totalfilm.com twitter.com/totalfilm facebook.com/totalfilm totalfilm.tumblr.com

Robo-film f only we had futuristic sci-fi inventions on Total Film. It’d certainly help if the team had a time-travel machine (extend that deadline), a Star Trek transporter (no more jet lag) and food pills (less chance of lunchtime microwave disappointments – seriously, is it supposed to be this watery?)…

There’s even more to add to our wish list with this issue’s bumper sci-fi preview featuring every futuristic flick coming your way from RoboCop to Star Wars, X-Men to Godzilla. We also went on-set of The Hobbit 2 (great snacks), giggled with Miss Moneypenny, hung out with Cobie Smulders, and used up a box of tissues bawling over weep-worthy movie moments.

Microwave aside, pretty glamorous…

JANE CROWTHER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Enjoy the issue!

I

Total Film has had one too many disappointing lunches.

totalfilm@futurenet.com

The pie

What you wrote to us about...

Inscrutable press releases

Thor blimey

I’ve never really been one to rant, but my recent trip to see Thor: The Dark World has compelled me to make an exception. My gripe? Not the film, which was incredibly entertaining. Instead, my complaint is how long it took to actually get round to seeing the film. Between the ads and trailers, the film proper didn’t begin until 38 minutes after the billed showing time. Thirty-eight minutes, meaning that the ads and trailers came in at a length over a quarter of the film’s running time. I love seeing trailers for upcoming films, and understand the importance of advertising, but it is beginning to get more than a little ridiculous now.

IAN MYERS, WINCHESTER

Up all night to get Loki

8 | Total Film | January 2014

Likeability factor

Ads: are they a load of puff?

Have you ever enjoyed them more than the movie? Are we OK with being told what to see by a pair of chocolate buttons in dentist’s gloves? Ian and everyone else with a letter printed here will receive a copy of The World’s End, out on DVD and Blu-ray on 25 Nov from Universal Pictures UK. Didn’t send an address? Email it!

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Big swinging Kubrick

I know it’s puerile but I couldn’t help but laugh at the photo on page 137 of TF213. I won’t be able to watch Barry Lyndon in the same way again.

GR ANT HADL AND, CHELMSFORD

Don’t have the foggiest what you’re getting at. It’s just a baby’s arm. It was originally holding an apple, but we photoshopped that bit out. Here’s the full version of the picture so you can see that it’s actually SFW. Although why the kid ‘s got the Arc De Triomphe on its head is anyone’s guess.

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© 2013 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

STAR LETTER

>>

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Mail, rants, theories etc...

Joseph GordonLevitt: we love him.

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What you’re saying online...

TOTALFILM.COM ON OUR WEBSITE… 50 Best Community Movie References http://bit.ly/1cFVSKD From Armageddon slow-walking to a Beetlejuice gag three years in the making, the sharpest film rifs from the supersavvy sitcom.

Thor: The Dark World Cast Interviews http://bit.ly/1a4W6dT Hemsworth, Hiddleston and co talk Age Of Ultron, Loki reshoots, workout tips and their Thor 3 wish list…

Thor: The Dark World – 50 Best Moments http://bit.ly/16S58Y6 Yet more Dark World goodness, including that bit, that bit, and not forgetting that scene where [spoilers deleted].

FACEBOOK In your review of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon (TF213), you open with the rhetorical question ‘Is there anything JG-L can’t do?’ You close the review by answering said question with ‘a resounding yes’, implying that the once and future Batman/ Robin has erred somewhere in his acting, his writing or his direction. The review itself, however, praises all of his effort in these respective disciplines, going so far as to give the film four stars. So I guess my question to you is eh?

PHIL DANIEL , HARTLEPOOL

‘I have a prop of Yellow Bastard’s severed-genitalia, as used in Sin City’ Getting Ian

Finally the day has arrived, the day when a forgotten race can rejoice and celebrate a new hero. Yes, it’s true – after years of ridicule we Iains or Ians have a big-screen hero. Behold the might of Ian Boothby in Thor: The Dark World. Thanks to shows like The Simpsons we have lived a horrible existence telling people our name through gritted teeth, but now we have a beacon of hope, and will rise from the ashes.

Thank you, Ian Boothby.

The question in question isn’t actually said rhetorical question but this one: ‘Can [JG-L] make a compelling, grown-up comedy drama about a compulsive masturbator?’ To which IAIN DICKIE, VIA EMAIL we say yes, resoundingly.

Big respect to the Boothby. But However, in our spurious news reviews he’s not the first – what about defence we’d like to point videos trailers McKellen? Holm? McShane? Or out several things JG-L can’t forum how about Ian Rush? They just made do: juggle four cats (he can only a film about him, starring – how weird is this manage three); remember if it was – Chris Hemsworth! You can’t call us on our Channing he lent the Bruce Willis Looper cine-knowledge. We’ve memorised the mask to; compulsively masturbate while entire IMDb, including which titles are listed directing, which is kind of ironic. under the keywords ‘pretending-to-use-aIll behaviour banana-as-a-phone’, ‘ugly-dog-contest’ Following on from your allocated seating and ‘fat-man-in-train-corridor’. debate, I want to say THANK F@@K for Love/hate relationship a ticket with a seat number on. I say this in I may be biased as Pirates Of The response to a vomiting episode that took Caribbean is my favourite franchise, but place during a nighttime trip to the flicks.

I do not agree that Captain Jack Sparrow is Luckily the vomiteer was many rows down ‘hateable’ at all (‘Axis Of Evil’ feature, TF212). and off to the right, but my sympathies go I know you’ve placed him close to the to the attendant who had to deal with it.

Maybe cinemas should provide vomit bags? ‘likeable’ side on your diagram, but he isn’t TC YARROW, MELBOURN E hateable, he’s loveable. Maybe you should If it’s post-pub or involves Smurfs doing have put Barbossa in his place? He’s anything other than being dead, definitely. hateable and is always stealing the Black

have your say at

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10 | Total Film | January 2014

If there’s an end-credits cameo in the Superman/Batman movie, who should it be?

“Aquaman waterskiing on the back of two killer whales while flipping the bird.” – Frankie James “Iron Man looks at both and says, Hancock-style: ‘Your head is going up his ass, and YOUR head is going up HIS ass.”

– Hashem M Ibrahim

TWITTER To celebrate the release of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2, we dished up #foodmovies… Let us tell you about our specials: The Perks Of Being A Cauliflower @sam_batty Three Men And A Babybel @gracie_wacie

OFFICE SPACED

Chatter ‘gems’ overheard in the Total Film office this month...

“Did you say ‘Angel Up The Spout’? Oh, ‘Desolation Of Smaug’” “I’d stand further away so you can capture his cake-y shape” “At age 41 there’s not many things I haven’t tried, but flicking myself with a plastic spoon is one of them.” “I couldn’t live without the arts!” “When are they going to remake Airwolf?”

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ALLSTAR

Follow-up question

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What is your prime directive?

Editor-in-Chief Jane Crowther (JC)

Added dimension

’s Sci-fi Special is on sale now!

Available in print, on iPad and iPhone. totalfilm.com/scifispecial Pearl from Sparrow when it’s actually his ship! Think about it!

LILLIE BURRUS, VIA EMAIL

OK, but Sparrow is still a pirate and pirates are always bad, whether they’re hassling Tom Hanks, making illegal wobbly copies of movies or perpetuating peg-legged, parrot-bothering, Jolly Roger-ing stereotypes. Why are pirates so annoying? They just arrrrr!

I recently went to Alton Towers, where one of the attractions was a ‘4D’ cinema showing an abridged version of Ice Age with extra effects – eg, little plastic tubes under the seat that struck your legs to give the impression of grabbing tentacles. Is mainstream cinema maybe missing a trick here? Can you imagine going to a 4D horror where something tapped you on the shoulder? Also, I’ve got a kitchen door that sounds like R2-D2 when it creaks as it’s closing. Does anyone else have any household objects that can do impersonations?

RUSSELL THOMSON, WISHAW

Would that you’d be around in the late ’50s/early ’60s, when filmmaker William Castle came up with gimmicks like floating a skeleton attached to a wire over the audience. Kids naturally pelted it with any crap in their pockets. We’ve got a shag-pile that reminds us of Martin Scorsese, not sure if that counts.

Deputy Editor Jamie Graham (JG) jamie.graham@futurenet.com @totalfilm_jamie Drink tea Managing Editor Kathryn Twyford kathryn.twyford@futurenet.com @kathryntwyford Never eat condiments Associate Editor Rosie Fletcher (RF) rosie.fletcher@futurenet.com @totalfilm_rosie Don’t torture a duckling Reviews Editor Matthew Leyland (ML) matthew.leyland@futurenet.com @totalfilm_mattl Heal The World, Make It A Better Place News Editor Matt Maytum (MMa) matt.maytum@futurenet.com @mattmaytum [Classified] Designer Louise Brock louise.brock@futurenet.com @louisebrock82 Never get caught Digital Designer Emily Ip emily.ip@futurenet.com @totalfilm_emily To eat as many Krispy Kremes as I can Senior Picture Editor Sarah Tully sarah.tully@futurenet.com @totalfilmpics Always do the washing up before bed Picture Editor Eva de Romarate eva.deromarate@futurenet.com @totalfilmpics Get. More. Pictures.

Online Editor Matt Risley matt.risley@futurenet.com @spliggle Write drunk, edit sober Deputy Online Editor Sam Ashurst sam.ashurst@futurenet.com @samashurst Autobots, roll out!

CONTRIBUTORS Hollywood Correspondent Jenny Cooney Carillo (JCC) Contributing Editors Kevin Harley (KH), James Mottram (JM), Matt Mueller (MM), Jamie Russell (JR), Neil Smith (NS), Josh Winning (JW) Contributors Richard Ayoade, George Bass (GB), Paul Bradshaw (PB), Ali Catterall (AC), Nick Chen, Emma Dibdin (ED), Nathan Ditum (ND), Matt Glasby (MG), Rob James (RJa), Stephen Jewell (SJ), Emma Johnston (EJ), Richard Jordan (RJ), Philip Kemp (PK), Simon Kinnear (SK), Andrew Lowry (AL), Joseph McCabe (JMc), Ken McIntyre (KM), Jessica Mellor (JMe), Emma Morgan (EM), Steve O’Brien (SOB), Jason Pickersgill, Libby Plummer (LP), Rob Power, Emma Simmonds (ES), Kate Stables (KS), Lizzy Thomas, Charlie Whatley-Smith (CWS), Curtis Woloschuk (CW), Alex Zane Thanks to Paul Bradshaw Whatever Works, Emma Johnston (subbing); Nick Doyle, Mark Mitchell (art), Hari Sethi (work experience) TO APPLY FOR WORK EXPERIENCE Please email your CV, covering letter and a 250-word review in the style of Total Film to tfworkexperience@futurenet.com *WE ARE FULLY BOOKED UNTIL 2014*

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Freed willy

Re: ‘the biggest film fanatic ever’ debate. I’ve only collected cinema tickets since 1997, with the first being the action classic Con Air. But, I’ve got 200-plus films across multiple media and a lot of other memorabilia – posters, autographs, etc. However, you ask about owning an actual character – will a piece of one do? I have a prop of Yellow Bastard’s severed-genitalia as used in Sin City. It’s blue in colour, due to special effects shots required for blue screen, or perhaps it’s just very cold out. But it always generates a conversation with people!

I just wanted to say how great the Jim Henson feature was in TF212. I grew up watching Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal and The Storyteller, so it was great to see all those fantastic creations. My only gripe would be that you say of the Skeksis that they are Henson’s “most iconic” creation.

That’s ludicrous – surely Kermit The Frog is his most iconic? Skeksis are cool, but they’re not very well known to the masses.

STE WART GANDY, VIA EMAIL

ROB HENSON, VIA EMAIL

How did you, um, get hold of it? Have you ever washed it? Used it as a teaspoon?

Turned it into a Christmas candle? Never, ever tell us the answers to these questions, like ever.

jane.crowther@futurenet.com @totalfilm_jane Cats are better than dogs

Frog gone

Granted, the Skeksis probably haven’t sold as many pencil cases as Kermy, but we backed the beaky freaks because they’re the scariest use of latex this side of a pack of JLS condoms.

CIRCULATION AND LICENSING Trade Marketing Manager Jonathan Beeson 020 7042 4023 International Account Manager Michael Peacock 01225 732 316 Licensing And Syndication Director Regina Erak +44 (0)1225 732 359 MARKETING Direct Marketing Manager Adam Jones 01225 732 934 Group Marketing Manager Sam Wight 020 7042 4061 Senior Marketing Executive Tilly Michell 020 7042 4077 Marketing Executive Antonella Matia 020 7042 4025 PRESS ENQUIRIES Senior Communications Executive Ben Bolton 020 7042 4034 PRINT AND PRODUCTION Prepress Future Premedia Cover Manipulation Gary Stuckey Production Co-ordinator Keely Miller Production Manager Mark Constance FUTURE PUBLISHING LTD Deputy Managing Director, Film & Games Clair Porteous Managing Director, Film & Games Nial Ferguson Creative Director Robin Abbott Editorial Director Jim Douglas All email addresses are firstname.lastname@futurenet.com

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Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT. 020 7429 4000 All information contained in this magazine is for informational purposes only and is, to the best of our knowledge, correct at the time of going to press. Future Publishing Ltd cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies that occur. Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers direct with regard to pricing. All submissions to Total Film are made on the basis of a licence to publish the submission in Total Film, its associated websites and all worldwide licensed editions of the same. Any material submitted is sent at the owner’s risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future Publishing Ltd nor its agents shall be liable for loss or damage. © Future Publishing Ltd 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher.

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January 2014 | Total Film | 11

buzz Welcome to the movies!

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EXCLUSIVE!

Re-vamped ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE | Tom Hiddleston is a new breed of bloodsucker in Jim Jarmusch’s arthouse thriller.

While Twilight made movie vampires marketable again, it’s been a while since the iconic screen monsters have had edge, something that indie director Jim Jarmusch looks set to reclaim on their behalf.

First move? Casting Tom Hiddleston. Taking Loki’s goth outsider qualities to their hipster extreme, the British thesp plays Adam, a depressed rock-star vampire losing his lust for life on Earth.

Holed up in a seedy dive in Detroit, he’s visited by his wife of centuries, Eve (played by Tilda Swinton), who brings her younger sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) along for the ride.

12 | Total Film | January 2014

Speaking to Buzz, Hiddleston describes Adam and Eve as “the quintessential outsiders.”

Gushing about Jim Jarmusch’s offbeat approach to the material, he told us: “He has such an amazing style and he’s so dry and he’s so literate and knowledgeable about so many things: art and music and books and rock’n’roll. He knows about every single artist who’s ever lived on the fringes, and he loves it.”

And it seems these particular vampires aren’t out to make high-schoolers swoon (although, that’s a likely side effect for Hiddlestoners). In fact, they’re suffering a deep-rooted ennui, having dwelled on Earth for half a millennium. “Adam lives in a dilapidated mansion in the suburb of Detroit, making music and looking at the stars, >>

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NEW FILMS! EDITED BY MATT MAYTUM

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January 2014 | Total Film | 13

buzz Welcome to the movies!

WorldMags.net Undead and loving it: Tom Hiddleston as Adam and (inset) Tilda Swinton as Eve.

What’s next for Tom Hiddleston?

Keeping Loki out of mischief in the coming months….

CORIOLANUS

14 | Total Film | January 2014

ETA | 21 FEBRUARY Only Lovers Left Alive opens next year.

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Ralph Fiennes modernised Shakespeare’s Roman general for his directorial debut, but Hiddleston’s been practising his swordplay for when he brings the role back to its roots on stage in London, from December 2013 to February 2014. It’ll also be broadcast via NT Live.

EXHIBITION Hiddleston has already filmed a short role as an estate agent in Joanna Hogg’s latest film. After starring in Hogg’s first two features – Unrelated and Archipelago – he returns for a cameo in Exhibition, which is expected to open later this year.

MUPPETS MOST WANTED

Joining a raft of cameo appearances alongside new lead Ricky Gervais, The Hidds will make an appearance in the sequel to the Muppets’ successful 2011 comeback. He’s been showing off his Kermit impression on the Thor 2 promo circuit.

THE PIRATE FAIRY Sticking with Disney after Marvel and Muppets, Hiddleston’s voicing a young Captain James Hook in this DTV CGI-animated Peter Pan spin-off. Christina Hendricks voices the titular character, Zarina.

CRIMSON PEAK

Drafted in as an 11th hour replacement for Benedict Cumberbatch (who pulled out due to scheduling conflicts), The Hidds joins Charlie Hunnam, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska in Guillermo del Toro’s chiller.

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EROTEME

because he’s fascinated by vibrating particles,” Hiddleston notes. “But that’s because he’s a vampire and he’s 500 years old.”

As you might expect from Hiddleston – who’s built an eclectic post-Thor CV working with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Terence Davies – the philosophical side of Jarmusch’s writing appealed. Twilight might have asked, ‘When you can live forever, what do you live for?’, but it’s Only Lovers Left Alive that actually tries to answer it. “When you’ve drank and devoured world culture and literature and music for 500 years, your thoughts turn to the heavens,” muses Hiddleston. “Because those stars are about the only things that might be as old as you are, if not older.”

If it all sounds a bit heavy, the surprise comes from the film’s lightness of touch. Hiddleston describes it as, “deep and romantic, in a very offbeat way. Because these are two old souls who meditate and reflect on the nature and state of the world, and the nature of human life and art and creativity and time. They have a unique perspective on this.” But what about the laughs? “The comedy

comes from the sort of... [laughs] the delivery of jokes about the passing of time, I guess. You think this might be funny, but you’re also not sure.” Indeed, Swinton, a frequent Jarmusch collaborator (their work history includes The Limits Of Control and Broken Flowers) admits she was suckered in by the “beautiful script.”

There are plenty of delicious sight gags littered throughout, from Adam’s stash of the red stuff pilfered from hospitals, to the sight of the undead feasting on plasma lollipops. And there’s a culture clash when Wasikowska’s Ava turns up. “She’s a much more traditional vampire,” according to Hiddleston. “She talks about feeding off people.

Tilda says something like, “That’s so 15th Century. [laughs] And Adam and Eve call humans ‘zombies’.

That’s their term for human beings.”

Dismissing any Edward Cullen comparisons, Hiddleston waxes lyrically about the romance inherent in the film’s script and style. “It’s analogue.

It’s not digital. It’s full of lovely detail about everything really, but ultimately it’s about love – and that’s what I love most about it. It’s about these two very refined, delicate creatures who feel as if they might be on the verge of extinction, who accept each other for their true nature. Together they are the only lovers left alive.” JC/MMa

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NEW FILMS!

NEW PICS!

Star player CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLIDER | The boy in blue returns for more shield-flinging action.

“To build a better world, sometimes you have to turn the old one down,” muses Robert Redford’s S.H.I.E.L.D. boss in the first trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, “and that makes enemies…”

MARVEL UPDATE

LOKI SPIN-OFF

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happens where Cap can’t trust anybody and he ends up having to trust a spy,” Evans says of the sparky double act. “The two of them form a very interesting connection…” JW ETA | 28 MARCH 2014 Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens next year.

SPIN-OFFS, ONE-SHOTS AND OTHER DEVELOPMENTS AT THE COMIC MOVIE STUDIO

Considering how popular Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has become with Marvel fans, it’s no surprise that a standalone spin-off is being considered for the mischievous demigod.

Marvel boss Kevin Feige has confirmed it’s a possibility, and Hiddleston’s definitely up for it: “I’d love to one day, but we’ll wait and see,” he says. “I love the character... I keep thinking up these hare-brained schemes of what else he might do.”

ETA | TBC

Packing in explosions, fist fights and the villainous Winter Soldier himself (Sebastian Stan), the teaser hints that Cap (Chris Evans) is in for a rough ride in his second solo outing. He’s also got a chum in Anthony Mackie’s The Falcon, and a fiery new playmate in Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). Could love be in the air? “Something

DAREDEVIL/ PUNISHER

AGENT CARTER

With Doctor Strange on the cards for Marvel’s Phase Three, Feige has also promised a big screen return for long-maligned Marvel characters Daredevil and Punisher – though we may be in for a bit of a wait. According to Feige, they’ll be back “at the smart time”. The Marvel exec added: “We’re trying to figure out what to do with Daredevil now”. Luckily, Ben Affleck has already decamped to DC… ETA | TBC

After successfully reprising the role of Agent Peggy Carter in short film Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter (an extra on the Iron Man 3 DVD), Hayley Atwell is keen on playing her again in a series that might function as a period spin on Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Development on the show is already underway, with Atwell saying: “It’s certainly something I would [like to] be a part of doing. I’d be interested to show different sides of Peggy.”

ETA | TBC

MANDARIN ONE-SHOT

Though the possibility of Robert Downey Jr making Iron Man 4 is still up in the air (“that’s a question we won’t have to face until after Avengers 3,” teases Feige), that hasn’t stopped Ben Kingsley potentially reprising his role as Iron Man 3 nemesis The Mandarin. The Brit actor has filmed a top secret project that’s rumoured to be another Marvel One-Shot featuring the shades-wearing terrorist.

ETA | TBC

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ANT-MAN

Edgar Wright’s search for a “normal looking” actor to play scientist-turned-superhero Henry Pym has led him to both Paul Rudd and JosephGordon-Levitt, who are current favourites for the role. Clearly Wright’s looking for somebody with both comedy and dramatic chops, but who’ll end up donning the lab coat? With filming scheduled to commence early next year, we’ll find out soon enough… HS/JW

ETA | 14 August 2015

January 2014 | Total Film | 15

buzz Welcome to the movies!

WorldMags.net The really last samurai: Keanu Reeves sets out for vengeance.

TRAILER BREAKDOWN!

Eastern promise Keanu Reeves is back in action (and a kimono) for 47 Ronin, facing down skeletal bad guys and a giant flippin’ dragon. Buzz takes a closer look…

1 Keanu Reeves plays half-Japanese, half-British hero Kai, who’s beaten to a pulp

by Japanese overlords, chucked into a hole in the ground, then banished as a filthy outcast. Pretty down on his luck, then…

2 Luckily, Kai’s also pretty handy with a sword, which is why he’s recruited by Kuranosuke Ôishi (Hiroyuki Sanada), leader of the 47 Ronin. They’re on a mission to take down Tadanobu Asano’s evil Lord Kira.

3 What’s their beef with Kira? Apart from the questionable body art, he’s also the shōgun master of ceremonies who murdered the Ronins’ master. He likes guns.

But not clothes, apparently.

4 “If we do this, there’s no coming back,” warns Kai, as he and the Ronin prepare to fight a massive army. Cue shots of villages being incinerated, shadowy figures scaling a wall and this rather imposing chap, kitted out in heavy-metal body armour.

5 “Mountains of corpses will not stand in our way!” Mizuki (Rinko Kikuchi) is 47 Ronin’s back-up baddie, a servant of Lord Kira who can make her hair go all tentacle-y, and who has a creepy, stare-y blue eye.

ETA | 26 DECEMBER 47 Ronin opens this winter.

6 As if that wasn’t enough, Mizuki can also turn herself into a dragon. She’s not the only monster in the movie, though – the trailer also serves up a giant bald brute (who spars with Reeves), a furry forest thing and a flock of weird bird-people… JW

16 | Total Film | January 2014

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FIRST WORD!

London time

With Olympus Has Fallen getting a London-set sequel based around an attack during the Prime Minister’s funeral, Buzz imagined other films that would benefit from a follow-up in our fair capital…

SLEEPLESS IN SHOREDITCH A grieving widower dodges super-stylish twentysomethings as he drowns his woes in Brick Lane curries. Fate intervenes when he meets a plucky graffiti artist, but she’s shacked up with her trendy girlfriend…

MIDNIGHT IN LONDON A discontented soap writer goes for long walks along the River Thames, where he discovers a black cab can transport him back to the punk heyday of the 1980s.

Could the mohawked rock chick he meets in a grungy pub be the girl of his dreams?

THE TOWER HAMLETS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE When staff at the Tower of London are ‘accidentally’ locked in overnight, they fall victim to a chain saw-wielding nutter who goes on a rampage while wearing the Crown Jewels.

PA PHOTOS

FEAR & LOATHING IN LEICESTER SQUARE Follows a tabloid journalist over a single, slovenly night as he embarks on a crazy bender through central London, finally blowing all of his cash at the Hippodrome.

THINGS TO DO IN DAGENHAM WHEN YOU’RE DEAD A gangster attempts to put his fingerremoving days behind him, but when his boss demands a final job, he’s forced to recruit friends from the Ford Dagenham factory to help. Wrenches ready, boys… JW ETA | London Has Fallen starts shooting in May 2014.

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You talkin’ to me?

Film quotes pose as questions. Film stars try to cope.

In the crosshairs this month: John Goodman Are you talkin’ to me?

Am I talking to you? Am I talking to you? Yeah…

Do you feel lucky, punk?

I just did a film with George Clooney [The Monuments Men], and there were so many good people on it, such a relaxed crew and everyone had so much fun – I think that could be a career highlight. He’s a great storyteller and he wants to have a great time doing it.

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

[Laughs] Too many times, darling – with the wrong shoes on.

What’s your favourite scary movie?

It used to be The Exorcist.

I stood in line for three hours and by the time we were ready to go in, they brought somebody out on a gurney.

Then they only showed 15 minutes of the film before somebody phoned in a bomb threat. I went back the next day and saw it and it scared the hell out of me.

But I showed it to my wife about five years ago and there was no reaction other than stifled yawns.

Do you like what you do for a living? These things you see?

I like what I do for a living.

The things I see are part and parcel of the baggage, I guess.

What’s the last thing that you do remember?

Hosting a concert promoting Inside Llewyn Davis with the most fantastic musicians, last

‘I don’t find it hard to get that volume on screen. I just raise my voice!’ night at the Town Hall in New York. It’s just great to be working with the Coens again.

I’m still thinking about the film – it breaks your heart.

We are the luckiest sons of bitches in the world, you know that?

It was Billy [Crystal]’s idea [to record together in the booths] for Monsters, Inc. and it really helped because the energy doubled, it exploded. Billy’s so damn funny and creative, it’s just a matter of hanging on to

Reunited: as Roland Turner in the Coens Inside Llewyn Davis.

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his tail and following him around the room.

What’s in California?

Nobody works in Hollywood any more. [Laughs] It’s all gone away to location. I miss it. I actually liked it. We shot Argo in Los Angeles. I’d like to go back and work in Hollywood again some time...

So you want to come to Hollywood, act like a big shot?

Interviews are the hardest part of the job. Sometimes you have to grit your teeth and bear it, but sometimes if I can get past my own stubbornness and get into a conversation, it turns out fine. I do have a shyness of talking to people, it’s hard to overcome at times. I don’t find it hard to get that volume on screen, though. I just raise my voice! JG ETA | 24 JANUARY Inside Llewyn Davis opens next year.

Questions taken from : Taxi Driver, Dirty Harry, Batman, Scream, Se7en, Memento, Titanic, Borat, Argo

Aaron Eckhart: he’s on his way to save our limey asses.

NEW FILMS!

January 2014 | Total Film | 17

buzz Welcome to the movies!

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‘I would like to work for a ballsy director’

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WorldMags.net Between takes

NEW FILMS!

Chill out

With Disney’s Frozen making our teeth chatter, Buzz takes the temperature of cinema’s chilliest offerings...

Kristen Bell talks Veronica Mars, Disney princesses and Tarantino…

You’re voicing an ice princess in Frozen. Who was your favourite Disney princess when you were growing up?

Actually, a combination of Ariel and Aladdin. I know Aladdin isn’t technically a princess, but I needed someone with a little more mojo, and a little less oestrogen. Ariel was more unique – she was the first redhead, she was half fish, she collected forks, she liked reggae!

ICE AGE

(2002)

THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004)

TRANSSIBERIAN (2008)

How would you say Frozen’s Anna compares?

My ‘narcissist dinger’ is going off in my head, but I’m personally so proud of how this character came out.

I brought in weird ideas and the directors allowed me to mould her around a lot of the weird things I do myself.

FROZEN (2013) DEAD SNOW (2009)

Were you nervous going into the recording booth with big Broadway voices like Idina Menzel?

Idina couldn’t be less intimidating as a human, but I mean, I was singing with Idina Menzel! Everyone who knows her name knows she is one of the best singers on the planet.

It was really exciting – like doing laps with Michael Phelps.

FOUR CHRISTMASES (2008) FROZEN RIVER (2008) LESS THAN ZERO (1987)

Should we expect any Broadway numbers in the Veronica Mars movie?

I wish. We had talked about doing a musical episode and it never happened, but we do have quite a few good cameos.

Jamie Lee Curtis and James Franco are the only ones that have been announced, but there are three or four more. If you’re even the slightest bit nerdy, you’ll flip your lid at one cameo, who was easily the most popular person on set – and that was the day we had James Franco there!

A MIDWINTER'S TALE (1995) FROST/NIXON (2008)

Are there any other directors you’d love to work with?

I would like to work for a crazy, ballsy director; people like Steve McQueen, Quentin Tarantino or Alfonso Cuarón.

I’d also love to do an action movie with someone like J.J.Abrams. Fewer explosions, more fight choreography and some humour would be great. MR

THE BIG CHILL (1983) THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY (2012)

ETA | 6 DECEMBER Frozen opens this winter.

THOR (2011)

ONE FINE DAY

Ice princess: Anna voiced by (Kristen Bell) in Frozen.

(1996)

IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER (1955)

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January 2014 | Total Film | 19

WORDS: MATT GLASBY; PICTURE CREDIT: JILL GREENBERG/CORBIS OUTLINE

COOL AS ICE (1991)

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Welcome to the movies!

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Sea power:(main) Louis Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) and Francis ‘Mac’ McNamara (Finn Wittrock) await rescue; (below) Angelia Jolie watches the scene.

FIRST LOOK!

Breaking waves UNBROKEN | Angelina Jolie drafts in serious talent for her second directing gig.

The first images from Unbroken have surfaced, showing the vast watery canvas that Jolie has to play with. While the scale and setting seem worlds apart from In The Land Of Blood And Honey, expect it to be no less harrowing or heart-wrenching. Skins star Jack O’Connell heads up the young cast as Louis Zamperini, an Italian-American Olympian turned WW2 bombardier who survived on a raft for 47 days after his plane crashed in the Pacific. That was only the beginning of his ordeal however, as upon reaching land, he was captured and placed in a Japanese internment camp as a prisoner of war.

Shooting started in October, off of the coast of Moreton Bay, Australia, with Domhnall Gleeson and Finn Wittrock also on board as Zamperini’s

20 | Total Film | January 2014

fellow survivors, while Garrett Hedlund plays another POW. The actors have been engaged in months of dieting in preparation, shedding weight for authenticity.

O’Connell has only recently bulked up from comic-book sidequel 300: Rise Of An Empire, and after saying goodbye to Skins this autumn, his movie cred looks set to soar. Having impressed in This Is England, Eden Lake and, most recently, The Liability opposite Tim Roth, Unbroken should test his range. Gleeson, meanwhile, is building up a serious filmography, with John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, and Frank (co-starring with a papier-mâchéd Michael Fassbender) all in post-production.

Wittrock might currently be better known for TV work, but he’s no slacker on the movie front, having already filmed roles in Akiva Goldsman’s Winter’s Tale, and Darren Aronofsky’s epic, Noah.

While the cast may not yet be A-listers, the crew is bolstered with heavy-hitters. The Coen brothers have reworked the screenplay, with earlier drafts turned in by William Nicholson (Les Misérables) and Richard LaGravenese (Behind The

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Candelabra). Legendary cinematographer (and frequent Coen collaborator) Roger Deakins will be on-hand to ensure the film looks incredible.

The story is based on Laura Hillenbrand’s non-fiction book of the same name (subtitled, A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption), and Jolie has been consulting with the 96-year-old Zamperini on the project.

On the challenge ahead, Jolie explained, “‘It will be hard to make a film worthy of this great man.

I am honoured to have the chance and will do all I can to bring Louie’s inspiring story to life.”

Zamperini seems confident, dubbing the actress/ director/philanthropist: “a human dynamo; I know she will tell this story in the right way.”

Given the subject matter, real-life hero and behind-the-camera talent, expect this to be an early contender for the Oscar race in 2015. MMa ETA | 16 JANUARY 2015 Unbroken opens in two years.

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PA, REX

Although her debut feature as a director (Bosnian war love story In The Land Of Blood And Honey) has yet to receive a UK release, Angelina Jolie is already hard at work on her follow-up.

WorldMags.net RED LIGHT GREEN LIGHT

What’s stopping, what’s starting in movieland…

Cedric NicolasTroyan is the new director of the Highlander reboot.

It’ll be the visual effects supervisor’s debut – he previously worked on Snow White & The Huntsman.

Chris Hemsworth for the Highlander, then?

Rosario Dawson has opted out of low-budget exorcism flick Incarnate with Aaron Eckhart. She’s not left him to fight the devil alone though, as Maria Full Of Grace star Catalina Sandino Moreno has stepped in.

Man Of Steel scribe David S. Goyer has signed a three year first-look deal with Warner Bros, which includes Batman Vs. Superman and Justice League.

We wonder if he’ll do the hat trick with Wonder Woman…

Wolverine writer Mark Bomback will give the Fifty Shades Of Grey script a polish. The film’s also added Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey.

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NEW FILMS!

My movie life The films that terrify, delight and drive onetime He-Man Dolph Lundgren really crazy…

THE FIRST MOVIE I EVER SAW I don’t really remember it well, but I think it must have been BICYCLE THIEVES. I was, maybe, six or seven at the time, but I just remember crying when I saw it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it since, but I’ve seen pieces of it, and it always brings back this really strong, early memory.

I don’t even know the story – there was a son and a father – but I just remember being really upset!

THE MOVIE I HATE THAT EVERYONE ELSE LOVES The one film I wasn’t crazy about was AVATAR. Those people… those green people or whatever they were… Maybe there was just too much CGI. My daughters love it, but it wasn’t for me. Then again, I love Working Girl and no one understands why! I saw it when I first came to New York and I think I related to the story about this person trying to make it. And the hair…

THE MOVIE THAT ALWAYS MAKES ME CRY SPARTACUS. It’s the love story between Jean Simmonds and Kirk Douglas – the way Kubrick filmed it with very little dialogue. They can’t see each other, they can’t touch each other… and then he ends up on the cross. She’s begging him to die, but he’s stronger than everyone else – and his son sees it. You realise that his dream of freedom is all for his son. It’s an amazing moment.

THE MOVIE THAT SCARES ME THE MOST I’m not really into horror movies, but I’ll always remember seeing THE EXORCIST for the first time.

I watched it again recently on TV and it’s still pretty scary. There’s something about it… the tone, the atmosphere. Those ’70s movies had very little censorship so they could be edgier. Now it’s just effects and technical stuff, but in those days it was all about the performances.

THE MOVIE I SHOULD HAVE STARRED IN ZOOLANDER. I was a model!

I’m considered the dumb blond!

It’s perfect! Stewart Granger did a movie called SCARAMOUCHE that was pretty good. The story was great – his brother gets killed by this marquis and then he realises that he was adopted and he’s in love with his sister.

Granger was a big guy and I always thought it would be fun to be in that movie.

THE REMAKE I’D LIKE TO SEE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. I haven’t heard much about it, but I was reading that Channing Tatum might be doing it. Poor guy! It was the coldest I’ve ever been! I was standing on a flying disc on the back of a truck in the middle of winter in nothing but a diaper. PB

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ETA | 26 DECEMBER Battle Of

The Damned is out on DVD and Blu-ray on Boxing Day.

January 2014 | Total Film | 21

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Welcome to the movies!

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FIRST LOOK!

Fighting spirit

Call of duty: Mark Wahlberg leads his team into action as Marcus Luttrell in Lone Survivor.

“You should go see it.

It’s fun, but leave your brain outside the theatre.” That was director Peter Berg’s advice to one journalist who was about to watch Battleship.

Most people didn’t even take their bodies to the theatre, let alone their brains – they steered clear of the board-game adap and it earned a disappointing (if not catastrophic) box office return. Also, it was rubbish.

Far from damaging Berg’s directing career beyond repair, though, Battleship gave the Friday Night Lights filmmaker the chance to make the “smaller war movie” that he’d wanted to do all along. “[Universal] were like, ‘We need Battleship,’ and I said, ‘OK, but can you guarantee we do Lone Survivor next?’” Berg tells Buzz.

Based on the book of the same name by former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, Lone Survivor finds Berg swapping aliens for the 22 | Total Film | January 2014

Taliban in a thriller that recreates true-life 2005 Navy SEAL Operation Red Wings. The mission follows Luttrell (played in the film

by Mark Wahlberg) and his comrades’ attempt to capture a Taliban leader. Berg had already spent years attempting to make the film before Battleship sailed along, even personally hounding Luttrell for the rights to his story.

Hard-hitting. Gritty. Personal. Lone Survivor could be the anti-Battleship. “Where do you go to buy back your reputation when you lose it?” Berg mused to The New York Times in August 2013. If Lone Survivor is anything to go by, you do the complete opposite. He shot the film over just 42 days, mostly in New Mexico, on a relatively modest budget of just $40m (Battleship’s budget was $200m). He spent a month in Iraq with a Navy SEAL platoon doing research. And he cast Wahlberg as his hero – an actor accustomed to balancing the hits with the misses.

For his part, Wahlberg attended a two-month boot camp alongside co-stars Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster. Berg describes their

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training as like “Tropic Thunder without any of the jokes. That’s what these guys went through.” Gym-loving Wahlberg is less fazed: “It was a difficult movie to make, but I try to have as much fun as possible.”

With a January release date primed for Oscar attention, Lone Survivor could just about banish Berg’s Battleship hiccup from the memories of audiences. The back-to-basics, reality-based approach turned out to be particularly attractive for Wahlberg (who then went on to shoot Michael Bay’s considerably bigger Transformers: Age Of Extinction).

“It was a physically demanding movie,” the actor recalls. “And we felt a lot of responsibility in making sure that we did Marcus and those guys some justice… It wasn’t like we could phone it in.” We’re sure Berg agrees. JW ETA | 31 JANUARY Lone Survivor opens early next year.

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RICHARD SAKER/THE GUARDIAN

LONE SURVIVOR | Director Peter Berg unleashes the war movie he wanted to make instead of Battleship…

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tf

tf

tf

TAKE OUR ADVICE

Can you guess the recent movies from our ‘alternative’ consumer advice?

Funny people

NEW FILMS! Name Harry Hill Job Comedian TV Fruit Fancies, Cinderella, Dick Whittington, Harry Hill’s TV Burp, You’ve Been Framed, Little Crackers Upcoming The Harry Hill Movie, I Can’t Sing!

The X Factor Musical, The Postman

Comedy heroes on what makes them laugh. This month: Harry Hill

Contains scenes of extreme dangling in an obviously-notreal-but-bloodylooks-it context.

CONTAINS MEN DOING THAT THING THEY DO ALL THE TIME BUT NEVER ADMIT TO. PLUS MARKY MARK AND THE FUNKY BUNCH. Contains a dead royal saying stuff that’s likely pure bollocks, but it’s not like she can sue or anything.

MY COMEDY PRESENT

We’re in post-production on THE HARRY HILL MOVIE. I’ve never made a film before. I had no idea what it involved. I thought it would be like making a long TV show [laughs]. Obviously it’s a bit silly, but once we got Julie Walters on board I think people saw it as a proper film rather than a straight-to-video thing!

MY FAVOURITE FUNNY MOVIE

MY FAVOURITE COMEDY MOMENT

Woody Allen’s BROADWAY DANNY ROSE. I think that’s a really funny, consistent film. It’s Woody doing what Woody does best: nerdy, uptight New Yorker.

I love the scene at the start with all the old comics sitting around talking about their agent, that’s kind of what comics do!

Well, there’s that Borat moment where he’s wrestling the naked man. That was really funny. And horrible. In equal measure. I like LAUREL AND HARDY, y’know.

In fact, I went back and looked at Laurel and Hardy while I was making this film, thinking, ‘How did they do it?’

MY FAVOURITE SIGHT GAG

MY COMEDY HERO

Contains snails.

With great big mad eyes.

Contains infrequent strong mumbling from two ’80s action relics that could be all kinds of filth, but who knows?

Answers: Gravity, Don Jon, Diana, Turbo, Escape Plan. totalfilm.com

MY COMEDY VIEWING HABITS PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE is really funny. And a lot of stuff in Wes Anderson’s films. The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore are great. Another one of my real favourites is Harold And Maude.

It’s so unusual, the way that’s played. I also like The Bed Sitting Room; it’s like an art film.

There’s one in BANANAS where Woody’s car goes ‘Bang’. He just goes, ‘That’s fine.’ Laurel and Hardy do this thing where Laurel’s taking his coat off and Hardy ends up wearing it. Also the gravestone in Tenenbaums: ‘Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Wreckage Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship.’

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It was proabably SPIKE MILLIGAN. I don’t know how old I was when I first saw his stuff, probably about 11. It wasn’t always funny, but I knew what he was trying to get at. I think he was the only true genius.

Everyone else copied him. MMa ETA | 20 DECEMBER The Harry Hill Movie opens this winter.

January 2014 | Total Film | 23

buzz Welcome to the movies!

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EXCLUSIVE!

The many faces of James Franco Blockbuster star.

Author. PhD graduate.

Arthouse director.

The multi-hyphenate introduces his many selves…

THE DIRECTOR

THE A-LISTER

Some people think actors want to direct because they want all the power or something, but it’s not really about that. It’s a collaboration. I get to choose who I work with, I get to choose the material and I get to choose the approach that will be taken. After those three things are decided – who, what and how – I look to others for contributions.

I love it, and I’ve got As I Lay Dying, Child Of God, Bukowski and other stuff coming up…

As much of it as I can do, I will.

If there’s a movie that I think is good, that justifies that kind of budget – like Spider-Man or Oz – I’ll definitely keep signing on. There are reasons that films like Spider-Man and Oz have huge budgets. They have amazing FX that just couldn’t be achieved on an indie budget – and you can’t make the world of Oz without spending some money. Would I want to be involved in something like Batman Vs. Superman?

Absolutely. I’m game for anything.

THE ARTIST

24 | Total Film | January 2014

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CAPITAL, PA

Alongside my ‘commercial’ films I have these other projects... Interior. Leather Bar. is an unusual kind of film. It was started as an artistic, experimental endeavour because I wanted to do something that engaged with William Friedkin’s film Cruising.

I wanted to explore some of the material that was controversial at the time and see what would happen if similar material was presented today – as a way to gauge how things have, or haven’t, changed.

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NEW FILMS! RED LIGHT GREEN LIGHT

THE ACTOR People think of ‘the method’ as this way of getting into character by behaving like the character behaved and experiencing things the character has experienced. I guess I do that. Especially for something like 127 Hours. When I played James Dean I read all the biographies that I could find. I read 20 biographies.

I knew more about Dean than I could ever fit into one movie. If I was a boxer [Annapolis], I would train for eight or nine months, every day.

I’d even spar a bit with professional boxers. I mean, they went easy on me, but I did what I could…

THE RENAISSANCE MAN

I act, I teach, I produce, I write, I study. I have different days for different things. I don’t like to sleep... I make sure I don’t waste time working on something I don’t like. I think who I am really revolves around this multi-faceted approach. It allows me to see things from different angles and move in different spheres. I’m actually going to perform in Of Mice And Men on Broadway after the New Year. I love theatre, it’s part of my world, but I haven’t tackled playwriting yet...

THE COMEDIAN

THE BAD GUY

I was a huge fan of Harmony Korine – we have mutual friends – and I told him I’d do anything for him. He wrote that idea for Alien in Spring Breakers, without a script, after we decided to work together. But I wasn’t trying to change anyone’s perception of me. When I do a movie as an actor I feel like I’m being creative, but I’m being creative in someone else’s vehicle... Someone else is driving the car… I’m the passenger, and I’m doing creative things as the passenger, but it’s somebody else’s car and they’re driving… and they’re telling us where they’re going…

I try to take myself out of it once I’m signed on.

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I didn’t write This Is The End. That is not what my house is like at all. I hope I wouldn’t behave that way if the world was ending… There are certain things that are said about me that I consider to be the public version of me – and that’s partly my creation. It’s this weird figure that’s grown up alongside me. It is me and it isn’t me. Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] told me that each of the other actors said to them, at some point, “I don’t want to go that far” – everyone had something that was a hang-up. Everyone except me. I think the reason is…

I genuinely don’t care. PB ETA | 9 DECEMBER Interior. Leather Bar. is available on DVD and on demand this winter.

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What’s stopping, what’s starting in movieland…

Guillermo del Toro’s haunted house flick Crimson Peak is a go!

Described by the director as “smaller” than Pacific Rim (what isn’t?), it’s an R-rated horror set in England. “The script itself is bone-chillingly terrifying,” says star Tom Hiddleston. Pacific grim?

The Mortal Kombat reboot has hit another snag – director Kevin Tancharoen has KO’d his contract with Warner Bros. “I’m moving on to other opportunities,” he tweeted.

Sam Raimi (below) is ready to direct Army Of Darkness 2. Fede Alvarez confirmed the news via Twitter – and Bruce Campbell’s keen, too.

“Ash would have to stop occasionally from chasing some deadite to catch his breath,” he joked recently.

Weird movie casting alert! Former Bane Tom Hardy has signed on to play Elton John in biopic Rocketman, a “largerthan-life musical spectacle” that will chart the rise of the Oscarwinning songwriter.

The Addams Family are getting another reunion – this time via a feature-length animation penned by The Corpse Bride scribe Pamela Pettler. Kooky. JW

January 2014 | Total Film | 25

buzz

Welcome to the movies!

WorldMags.net SPOILER ALERT!

FIRST LOOK!

Face off: Sly vs Robert...

Ring-side seat ÒIÕll probably make a fool of myself if I make another Rocky film after turning 60,Ó mused Sylvester Stallone in the wake of 2006Õs Rocky Balboa. That hasnÕt stopped the 67-year-old clambering back into the ring for GRUDGE MATCH, though.

When your sparring partner is Robert De Niro, itÕs not hard to understand the appeal. (Yes, this is Rocky vs Raging Bull.)

In Grudge Match, the action heavyweights play fierce boxing rivals whose decades-old feud is reignited when theyÕre both hired to mo-cap a videogame. ItÕs not all fistbruising, though. ÒI guess itÕs a comedy of sorts,Ó De Niro says.

And though Grudge Match and The Expendables 3 have proved that SlyÕs still keen on the action, heÕs expected to sit ring-side in Rocky spin-off Creed, which stars Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) as a young boxer and grandson to RockyÕs original nemesis Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers). Well, youÕve got to let the young people have a little funÉ JW ETA | 24 JANUARY 2014 Grudge Match opens next year.

<< FLASHBACK ISSUE 89, 2004

ON THE COVER Brad Pitt helmets up as Magneto’s great-great-great-great-great granddad in Troy.

INSIDE... Mad publicity stunts (inflatable Arnie over Times Square); Rob Schneider denied Academy membership; Sex Lives Of The Potato Men compared with ‘herpes’.

26 | Total Film | January 2014

Total Film saves you a night out every month.

This issue, Gravity gets cut down… ___ ____________ EXT. SPACE. LOTS OF IT. Astronauts Sandra Bullock and Buzz Clooneyear are ‘servicing’ the Hubble Space Telescope. Heh.

BUZZ CLOONEYEAR OK, but let me first tell another story from my romantic history…

ED HARRIS Abort smug story! Abort!

BUZZ CLOONEYEAR A cloud of shrapnel Hello, Houston. rushes in, missing the for ing Just wait the A-list actors but stop to her cinematograp killing that other guy. will showing off then Sandra goes spinning ffinitiate turning-it-o into the void and the e. and-on-again procedur film turns into that U2 video where the camera ng. cryi ts star RA SAND circles Bono’s crotch.

AR NEYE CLOO BUZZ SANDRA BULLOCK Stop it! This is the I told you it was See, r ende only awards cont g to shit. This goin all ne’s this year that anyo punishment for s God’ is likely to watch, so get Oscar just that ing winn your game face on! by putting on a blonde wig and getting up in SANDRA BULLOCK everyone’s grill! ler! trai the I’ve seen ty floa and It’s quiet BUZZ flies to the rescue. and then the special g ckin effects start atta BUZZ CLOONEYEAR me! And then I’m all Did someone call for ‘Shut up, special a smirky man with effects!’ And then— a jetpack?

BUZZ CLOONEYEAR Sandra, I’m the overconfident one on his last mission, you’re the one with the emotional baggage. Who’ll make it to the closing credits?

PAUL SHARMA Imagine how I feel! The D-list ‘third astronaut’ no one worries about!

You might as well scoop me into an urn right now!

They fly to the shuttle, but find it damaged because there’s still an hour of movie left.

BUZZ CLOONEYEAR Let’s head for that space station! We’re out of teabags, I need a number two and you’ve been wearing that spacesuit for days.

En route SANDRA deploys her emergency backstory IS HARR ED OF E VOIC while BUZZ launches gh enou ’s that t, All righ his last remaining We up. setr characte facetious quips. They the ng poki need to start become entangled, in face audience in the a non-sex way. ! with 3D space crap

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BUZZ CLOONEYEAR It’s no use, Sandra!

I’m going to have to self-sacrifice!

SANDRA BULLOCK But I’ve never carried a movie on my own before! What do I do?

BUZZ CLOONEYEAR How should I know?

I usually just turn to Brad and/or Matt and go “Finger guns! Ptchew!”

BUZZ drifts off and SANDRA gets her act together, doing action-hero stuff and boarding another faulty spacecraft.

ALFONSO CUARÓN Sandra, the CGI server’s gone down… can you sit and brood in your pants while we reboot? Thanks.

BUZZ implausibly reappears.

SANDRA BULLOCK Mayday! Mayday!

Third-act problems!

BUZZ CLOONEYEAR Don’t worry, I’m not real. [To camera] Because no one’s this handsome, right?

SANDRA makes it to Earth, relying on memories of the fire extinguisher bit in WALL.E. SANDRA BULLOCK Alive! Alive! Only one hurdle left… telling all the astrophysicists who missed the point of the movie to go blow themselves.

END

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WORDS: MATTHEW LEYLAND.

60 SECOND SCREENPLAY

WorldMags.net RED LIGHT GREEN LIGHT

Snapped up

What’s stopping, what’s starting in movieland…

Joe Cornish is tipped to direct Star Trek 3. The Attack The Block director co-wrote Ant-Man and Tintin with Edgar Wright, and could be heading for the final frontier, with J.J. Abrams still on board as producer.

18 SEPTEMBER: #Fury @thecampaignboook @LoganLerman @realmichaelpena @jonnybernthal @SonyPictures The Crew of the Fury

David Ayer

@DavidAyerMovies Guns! Tanks! Face fuzz! Director David Ayer (End Of Watch, 2012) has been tweeting from the Oxfordshire set of his latest movie, Fury, where he’s been re-staging WW2 with a little help from Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf and Michael Peña. Set in Nazi Germany, the film follows Pitt’s brilliantly-named Wardaddy, a badass soldier who drives a Sherman tank and its crew onto enemy soil for a showdown with Hitler’s army.

Also on board is Scott Eastwood, son of Clint, who proves that striking an action-hero pose runs in the family, plus Logan Lerman, no doubt as a young whippersnapper who’s about to have his battle cherry well and truly popped. Just don’t expect a generic war flick. “My goal is really nothing short of reinventing the genre,” Ayer says. “I want to make it real… Just brutal, hardcore reality.” Going by what he’s revealed so far, it looks like he’s succeeding… JW

25 SEPTEMBER: This morning. #fury

The standalone Deadpool movie might be edging closer to production, according to Ryan Reynolds, who describes the current version of the script as, “very small…

There’s minimal impact to the studio.”

Thor sidekick Jaimie Alexander (Sif) has teased that she might be up for jumping from Marvel to DC, admitting that she’s “having discussions with both companies”. “I’m a huge fan of Wonder Woman,” she adds...

Stars share photos from the front line of filmmaking.

This month: Fury

10 OCTOBER

22 OCTOBER: Day 17

1 OCTOBER: Day 2

7 OCTOBER: Day 6

REX

16 OCTOBER: Day 13

Miles Teller has been linked to the role of Reed Richards in the Fantastic Four reboot, but possible Divergent sequels could prevent him signing up.

totalfilm.com

ETA | 24 OCTOBER 2014 Fury opens next autumn.

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January 2014 | Total Film | 27

buzz Welcome to the movies!

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CITIZEN ZANE

Alex takes on Hollywood. This month: how not to start an interview.

Had the strangest start to an interview the other day. It was the press event for Captain Phillips and we’d been given a 15-minute slot with Paul Greengrass in the morning.

28 | Total Film | January 2014

‘I became aware of my producer’s eyes staring at me like an angry owl’ ask it, hope that’s OK.” This however, I did not do.

So I open with THE question “What made you decide to direct Captain Phi…” And that was as far as I got before Paul Greengrass bursts out laughing, and I don’t mean just a chuckle, he is laughing his ass off. “Sorry,” he says, “Go on.”

So, I begin again. “What made you decide…” I get less far before he’s in stitches. This goes on for five minutes, with me asking less and

less of the question each time, before he cracks up.

It’s at this point I become aware of my producer’s eyes staring straight at me like an angry owl (he doesn’t look that much like an owl but the stare was very owl-like… and he had a mouse in his beak).

We now only have 10 minutes left and he clearly wants me to take control of the situation. I am not sure how to do this, I know of no interview that’s gone well after the

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interviewer has screamed “PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER AND ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION!” I tried to think what Captain Phillips would do, but offering myself as a hostage didn’t seem appropriate.

In the end he stopped laughing and we made it through the rest of the interview. The whole experience has made me consider opening with something more dynamic for my next one, which happens to be Chris Hemsworth for Thor: The Dark World.

I’m thinking “Freud saw sibling rivalry as the outgrowth of the Oedipal complex. Discuss.” I’ll let you know how that goes.

Agree or disagree with Alex’s take on interviews? Tweet at us with your thoughts: @totalfilm

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GETTY

It was to be the first interview in a busy day; Tom Hanks was next and that afternoon Sandra Bullock and Alfonso Cuarón were popping by to talk about Gravity. I say ‘popping by’... it had been organised.

Bullock didn’t just stick her head round the door, eating a McFlurry and go “Anyone want to have a chat about my space movie?”

So Paul Greengrass comes in and I do the obligatory small talk before we start. The natural thing in these moments would be to talk about the movie but you want to save that for the interview, so it’s your standard “Busy day ahead?” or “Can you believe how cold it is?”

(It was actually very cold that day so this wasn’t a stupid thing to say).

There are similarities between an interview and a first date at this point, although even if the interview starts going well – take it from me – NEVER try and kiss them.

As we’re about to begin; Paul Greengrass asks ME a question.

“You’re not going to start with the same question I’ve been asked two hundred times are you?”

Now, here’s the thing, I was.

Not because I couldn’t think of anything clever to ask – I had a great one lined up about a potential crossover, Somali Pirates Of The Caribbean, but because it’s a fairly standard opening question and we needed it for our show. So I mumble through a response: “Well, ha ha, yeah, y’know, ha ha” In hindsight I should have said, “Yes I am, but we need it so I have to

Don’t get on the wrong side of this owl...

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30 | Total Film | January 2014

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January 2014 | Total Film | 31

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10 details for the sharper movie fan...

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EDITED BY MATT MAYTUM 1 I Olsen’s living large 2 I Paris + Woody = Magnifique 3 I Avatar comes over all Disney 4 I Sequels rock!

5 I Lance Armstrong’s on his bike 6 I Investigating film school 7 I From the catwalk to Cannes 8 I Boating with Robert Redford 9 I Michelle Pfeiffer is a hero 10 I Richard gets an email

1

The One To Watch

Elizabeth Olsen is thinking big. grew up watching Star Wars,” grins Elizabeth Olsen. “My brother’s a comic-book nerd who shoved those things down my throat, and I loved [them]. I want to be part of something that’s fun to watch and is a crazy experience.”

The 24-year-old indie favourite (up next, beat biopic Kill Your Darlings with Daniel Radcliffe) is talking about Godzilla, Gareth Edwards’ monster reboot, but she could be referring to any of the scintillating projects on her slate. Like The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, for which she’s all but confirmed to be playing Scarlet Witch. “I don’t know what she’s doing, if she’s on the inside or the outside [of the Avengers],” mused Samuel L. Jackson recently.

Before she gets handy with her hexes, Godzilla’s been responsible for whetting Olsen’s blockbuster appetite (it’s pencilled in for summer 2014), while avenging of another kind is on the cards in Oldboy, with Olsen starring opposite Josh Brolin’s hammer-wielder. As for Avengers 2, Olsen recently admitted that she’s “obsessed with teams”, citing her own close-knit family as a constant source of inspiration.

Which means we should expect all kinds of crazy if she goes up against Tony Stark and co… JW

ANDREW YEE/THE GUARDIAN

I

ETA | 6 DECEMBER 2013 Oldboy and Kill Your Darlings both open this month

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agenda 10 details for the sharper movie fan...

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The Talking Point

Disney worlds: concept art for Avatar Land.

Out of this world The Breakout

Lunar flick

MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT | Emma Stone joins an on-fire Woody Allen on the Côte d’Azur… oody Allen may be edging towards his 78th birthday (1 December, put it in the diary), but that hasn’t dented the writer-director’s relentless work ethic. With the newly-released Blue Jasmine gathering awards steam, the movie-a-year filmmaker has already started on his 49th directing gig, the poetically-titled Magic In The Moonlight. That’s despite the fact that, as he recently told Esquire, he’s still never seen the end products: “I never see a frame of anything I’ve done after I’ve done it. I don’t even remember what’s in the films... If I saw Manhattan again, I would only see the worst. I spare myself.”

Returning to France – home to his Oscar-winning highest-grosser Midnight In Paris – Allen is apparently shooting another period piece, this time near Nice on

W

4

The Fantastic Four

Follow-ups we’re flipping out over.

34 | Total Film | January 2014

the Côte d’Azur, with a first-look revealing co-stars Emma Stone and Marcia Gay Harden in summery ’20s attire. The prospect of Stone as the sassy mouthpiece for Allen’s razor-sharp dialogue is tantalising, and given the auteur’s track record for grandstanding female roles, she should probably start prepping for next year’s awards circuit.

As ever, the content of the script is top secret, but further cast members have been announced in the form of Colin Firth, Eileen Atkins, stage actors Hamish Linklater and Simon McBurney, Animal Kingdom’s Jacki Weaver and scream queen Erica Leerhsen (Wrong Turn 2). Just imagine the cast he’ll assemble for his 50th feature… EM ETA | 2014 Magic In The Moonlight opens next year.

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 22 JUMP STREET

ETA 2017 | Avatar Land is expected to open in four to five years.

ETA | 28 November 2014

ETA | 6 June 2014

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2

Building on 2011’s all-star murder-com, Christoph Waltz is set to raise hell in Horrible Bosses 2.

He’ll play an invention-stealing menace, with Chris Pine as his son and partner in crime.

Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Spacey all return, with Sean Anders (We’re The Millers) taking over behind the camera.

21 Jump Street beat the reboot curse with the crackling chemistry between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, and both are returning for the sequel. The bad cop, bad cop duo are back undercover – this time delving into the fierce world of US colleges. Things sound as kooky as usual – Tatum recently posted that his character’s become an R. Kelly lover…

Vocal additions to this high-flying CG sequel include Cate Blanchett, Djimon Hounsou and Game Of Thrones’ Kit Harington, with Dragon 2 said to be even more “emotionally engaging” than its predecessor. This time around, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) stumbles across a mysterious dragon rider with murky motives. Hot stuff.

ETA | 4 July 2014

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TED 2

ETA | 10 July 2015 Seth MacFarlane’s feature debut became the highest-grossing original R-rated comedy of all time, so it’s no surprise he’s planning to resurrect his foul-mouthed bear.

Mark Wahlberg’s already signed on, though Mila Kunis is yet to commit. Considering MacFarlane’s reputation for treading the line between offensive and hilarious, we’re expecting sparks… HS

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REX, GETTY

2

Get ready for a return trip to Pandora. Though James Cameron’s Avatar sequels are still a way off (AVATAR 2 won’t land until 2016), Disney is bringing his alien vistas to life in Disney World’s Animal Kingdom in Florida.

Concept art for ‘Avatar Land’ has promised neon-hued boat trips and the odd floating island, and Disney’s parks division chairman Tom Staggs has pledged that visitors will “discover what it feels like to soar in the sky riding a Banshee”. JW

WorldMags.net Armstrong at the movies Racing into production

5

Back-pedalling

The Spotlight

THE ARMSTRONG LIE | Alex Gibney explains how his Lance Armstrong documentary was forced to change direction. ’ve had twists and turns, but this would be the biggest,” admits Alex Gibney. He’s referring to The Armstrong Lie, his new documentary about shamed cyclist Lance Armstrong and the dramatic U-turn he had to make when the seven-time Tour de France winner saw his titles stripped in 2012 for using performance-enhancing drugs.

For years, Armstrong has denied doping – and while Gibney had his suspicions, his original film was not about the allegations. Rather, he wanted to make an “inspiring” work looking at cancer survivor Armstrong’s grand return, after four years away from the sport, to compete in the 2009 Tour de France. “To me it was a sports story,” shrugs Gibney. “Will he win?”

With Armstrong finishing third that year, then came the growing realisation that, as the United States Anti-Doping Agency report termed it, he was entangled in “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping program that sport has ever seen”. Gibney, who has dealt with numerous tricky subjects – not least Julian Assange in this year’s We Steal Secrets: The Story Of WikiLeaks – felt cheated.

“I realised, when all this detail came up, that maybe I was part of a con. So that kind of pissed me off. And I knew I had to find a way to finish the film in a way that would dig deeper into this whole question of how you manufacture a lie.” And so,

I

out of the ashes of his celebratory sports doc, the more probing The Armstrong Lie was born.

Examining the code of silence that had built up around Armstrong and his team, “It was like a crime committed in plain sight,” says Gibney. “Everybody knew all these details about the likelihood that he had doped, but chose to ignore it or they were forced to back down because Lance might sue.”

Yet while Gibney may have missed the exclusive – when Armstrong finally ’fessed up to Oprah this

‘It’s what the movie is about. We don’t know if he’s telling the truth’

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year – he did get a second chance to grill the cyclist, although he still couldn’t be sure if he was being honest. “That’s a little bit of what the movie is about.

We don’t know if Armstrong is telling the truth.”

While there are three films in the works (see sidebar) on his life, Armstrong is now facing numerous legal battles – including $100m lawsuit with the US Postal Service, his former team sponsor.

But will it destroy him? Gibney’s not so sure. “When Armstrong is in fight mode, the one thing that matters to him is winning.” JM

UNTITLED CYCLING PROJECT Already in production, Stephen Frears is adapting journalist David Walsh’s book Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit Of Lance Armstrong.

Opposite Ben Foster’s Armstrong, Chris O’Dowd plays Walsh – “the Van Helsing to Armstrong’s Dracula,” as Gibney remarks.

RED BLOODED AMERICAN

In development, with Jay Roach directing and Bradley Cooper on board as producer and possible star, this takes a different tack from the Frears project, focusing on Tyler Hamilton, Armstrong’s teammate who blew the whistle on his doping on news show 60 Minutes.

UNTITLED BAD ROBOT/ PARAMOUNT FILM J.J. Abrams, on board as producer, has the rights to Juliet Macur’s book Cycle Of Lies: The Fall Of Lance Armstrong. But with Abrams wrapped up in Star Wars: Episode VII for the foreseeable, don’t expect this any time soon.

ETA | 31 JANUARY The Armstrong Lie opens next year.

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January 2014 | Total Film | 35

agenda 10 details for the sharper movie fan...

WorldMags.net Breaking in

Four directors who took unconventional routes into film.

Gareth Edwards

He may be directing the goliath Godzilla reboot, but Warwick-born Gareth Edwards actually started out as a digital effects artist.

Though he later dabbled in directing TV, it was only after entering (and winning) a short film contest in London in 2008 that he took the plunge into feature films.

Training days

The Investigation

NFTS | Making films is a tricky business, but going from film lover to bona fide filmmaker can be even trickier…

hen Ann Darrow tried to crack the movie industry, she wound up strapped to a sacrificial totem and served to a giant ape.

Chances are the likes of Tom Hiddleston and Judi Dench avoided that sort of rigmarole on their path to stardom, but it begs a serious question: how do you actually make it in the film industry?

Unlike other, more traditional, vocations, there’s no direct route that guarantees a job. Even some of the most celebrated filmmakers – Ridley Scott, Sam Mendes, Gurinder Chadha – had entire careers in other fields before they took up the viewfinder. If you’re looking for a taste of working in the industry, though, the National Film & Television School is offering 66 film fans aged 16-19 exactly that.

Taking place between 6-17 April 2014, the BFI Film Academy Craft Residential is free (though there’s a £99 admin fee if you get a place) and now in its second year. It offers masterclasses with top film talent, plus workshops in directing, producing, cinematography and screenwriting among others.

Last year, activities included a visit to the BFI vault, a talk with Edgar Wright and even a peek inside Pinewood Studios, where the Bond films (alongside many others) are made. Students were also given the opportunity to write and direct their own short films, which were then showcased at the BFI.

W

36 | Total Film | January 2014

“Without the NFTS, I cannot see how I would have entered the film industry,” says Roger Deakins, who studied at the film school before becoming the Coen brothers’ go-to cinematographer. “It gave me a step into a professional life. I made a film in my first year, and on the basis of that, I was able to shoot 15 films in three years – a track record it would have been impossible to get elsewhere.”

Other filmmakers who have attended the film school include Nick Park, David Yates (Harry Potter) and Joanna Hogg (Archipelago), and the NFTS has even been credited with helping alumni find work.

“If I’m looking for new crew members, the NFTS is always my first port of call,” Hogg tells Agenda.

Film school, of course, may not be for everyone.

J.J. Abrams never went, storming the biz on talent alone (see right), while Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years A Slave) studied as a fine artist before he teamed up with Michael Fassbender. Still, with the British film industry currently enjoying a creative and financial upswing (Skyfall, The Woman In Black and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel helped British films take £3.5bn at the box office in 2012), it’s definitely the place to be. We’re sure Ann Darrow would agree. JW ETA | 6-17 APRIL 2014 To apply for a place on the BFI Film Academy Craft Residential, visit nfts.co.uk/bfi-film-academy

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When he was just 15, young J.J. caught the eye of Steven Spielberg.

Abrams made a film that showed at a festival in LA, and it was his passion that prompted Spielberg to invite him to repair the 8mm movies of his youth. The pair would eventually collaborate on 2011’s Super 8.

Susanne Bier

Starting out in architecture before moving on to set design, Susanne Bier (After The Wedding) decided she “should probably move on to something else” when she became obsessed with the characters who inhabited her sets. “I like how architecture is a bit technical and academic,” she says of her origins.

“I think it’s been very good for me.”

Danny Boyle

Apocalypse Now ignited Boyle’s love for film (“it eviscerated my brain”), but before he became one of our most prized directors, Boyle spent almost a decade working in theatre.

He then produced TV before landing his first feature gig, Shallow Grave.

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EMPICS, GETTY, WENN

6

J.J. Abrams

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“I don’t want to follow anybody”

7

DAVID BURTON/TRUNK ARCHIVE

The Talent

Marine Vacth is the new Brigitte Bardot.

Young and pretty. That’s the translation of Jeune Et Jolie, but like the film, there’s much more to its star than that. Playing a bored teen who turns to prostitution, the former model beguiled Cannes with her performance, drawing comparisons to the iconic actresses. “But I don’t want to follow anybody,” she explains. “If I can do what I want, that would be great.”

Were you nervous about taking on the lead role in Jeune Et Jolie?

Yes. When I read the script, I didn’t know if I would be able to hold that role. After discussing it a lot with [director] François Ozon, I was convinced – because I loved the project and the character. I was 21, but I’m not sure if I could have played the character when I was 17.

Did you have any reservations about the nudity and the sex scenes?

I wanted to know how they would be handled. It’s not just sex scenes for sex scenes. And I knew that Ozon wouldn’t degrade Isabelle.

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What are you doing next?

I’m working on a project, but when things are not sealed, I prefer not to talk about it. You never know what will happen…

Is there a dream role that you’d love to play?

I’m open to everything, all genres, even comic-book movies. It all depends on the role. But I’m not looking for something in particular.

If I don’t receive anything I like, I can stop, no matter. MMa ETA | 29 NOVEMBER Jeune Et Jolie opens this month and is reviewed on page 57.

agenda 10 details for the sharper movie fan...

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Pain sailing ALL IS LOST | Margin Call director J.C. Chandor sends Robert Redford on the voyage from hell…

R

obert Redford. Alone on a sinking yacht. In the middle of the ocean.

As far as movie premises go, All Is Lost doesn’t have to work hard to snare your interest. “I knew what I wanted the film to be,” says writer/director J.C. Chandor (Margin Call) of his sophomore effort, a near dialogue-free, one-character survival drama that casts septuagenarian superstar Robert Redford as a sailor at the mercy of the sea.

“My entire job was just getting there. And that’s a pretty safe place to be in, as opposed to trying to turn some thriller-gun-chase movie into something meaningful.”

Turning down the generic fare offered to him off the back of his debut feature’s success, 38 | Total Film | January 2014

Chandor reserved loftier ambitions for a follow-up that would be more attuned to his visual sensibilities; honed on extreme sports ‘industrials’ and commercial work.

And after bringing Margin Call to the Sundance Film Festival, Chandor didn’t have to look too far for the inspiration for his next project, happening upon the idea of casting festival founder Redford as the never-named protagonist at the centre of his next screenplay.

Chandor joyfully recounts the moment of inspiration at the Sundance filmmakers’ brunch when that voice – “it’s sort of like a voice of God” – came over a speaker system: “I knew it was going to be a really quiet film, and I thought, Redford without his voice almost isn’t Redford.”

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8

The Spotlight Turns out none of The Sting actor’s festival protégés had ever offered him a part before.

After sending him the screenplay, Chandor was summoned to LA for a meeting, though Redford spared him the bother of presenting his meticulous charts and graphs, stopping him after a matter of minutes to say: “Let’s do this”.

“I ended up meeting him once or twice more, so it wasn’t just like he was crazy and went with me,” Chandor adds. “But clearly there was something in this that had drawn him to it.”

The slim screenplay belied the complexity of the entirely water-based shoot, with Redford able to shoot and star in his own film (The Company You Keep) during the interim between that first meeting and the start date.

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“It’s pretty crazy; Robert Redford does about 95 per cent of the stunts”

J.C. Chandor

Castaway: (left) Robert Redford battles the elements and (below) director J.C. Chandor on set.

Q&A

ROBERT REDFORD

On surviving storms and getting lost at sea…

How tough was it shooting on the water?

Well, I wasn’t thirsty after the movie! That was the hardest part, actually. We’d do a scene and I’d get wet and then we’d do it again and again. That was frustrating because when you’re wet all the time, it starts to work on you. It wasn’t fun. It was very uncomfortable.

The fastidious planning of the stormy sequences took seven weeks ahead of the 30-day shoot. Shooting locations included various spots in the Pacific and Caribbean Oceans, as well as performing some of the riskier manoeuvres in the world’s largest exterior tank at Baja Studios in Mexico (custom-built by James Cameron for Titanic). With Redford engaging in the lion’s share of the stuntwork, it was predictably nerve-wracking: “If he got hurt, it was over.”

According to Chandor, the toughest challenge for 77-year-old Redford wasn’t the action, but the endurance (“it was a long haul”).

Not that the actor was a slouch when it came to the stunts. “It’s pretty crazy; he does about 95 per cent of that shit,” reveals the director.

“There are four or five shots – not scenes, literally just shots – that aren’t him. I’m quoting him here, but his ego got involved, and he’s like, ‘I’m not letting someone else do it!’” totalfilm.com

Seems Redford knew when to get involved and when to take a back seat. “He showed up on our set and never spoke about directing. He never looked at a monitor or looked at footage.

He cut himself off from his other commitments.

I now realise what a gift it was to have him at that point in his career. Because he’s a tough customer. I’m friends with him now – as bizarre as that sounds – but while shooting we didn’t get along that well… the idea of one actor and one director, every day, is a long, long chore.”

For Chandor, it all pivoted on the desperate rescue letter, narrated by Redford, that opens the film. That was the starting point for the screenplay, scribbled during his commute to the Margin Call edit. “My challenge was turning something that I thought could be meaningful or somewhat profound, into something thrilling, and in a way that’s what we did.”

Seems it was a pretty safe bet. MMa

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Are you quite comfortable at sea?

I’ve always been comfortable in the water because I grew up in Santa Monica, so I was in the ocean much of my life surfing and swimming. I swam competitively when I was young, so water and myself are very comfortable together. Being in a storm like this is another matter!

Would you have reacted in the same way as your character if you were lost at sea?

Well, you never know until you’re in it. I mean, I’ve been in situations in my life where survival came into the picture. I do have an idea about how to deal with it. When things really get rough, you have a choice. You can panic and scream or you go into a Zen mode where you can say, ‘The only way for me to get through this is for me to collect myself…’ JCC ETA | 26 DECEMBER All Is Lost opens this winter.

January 2014 | Total Film | 39

10 details for the sharper movie fan...

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9

The Hero

part of the Screen Actors Guild. I had just signed with an agent. I have no idea how my agent got me this meeting, because I didn’t know who De Niro was.

You hadn’t seen Taxi Driver or Mean Streets?

No. I was young. I hadn’t seen anything.

He doesn’t remember meeting me! I didn’t make too much of an impression.

You went on to make Scarface. What sort of reactions have you had to that over the years?

It’s interesting – very young guys come up to me. They have Scarface parties and they watch it all the time. They reference Tony Montana’s lines and they quote things from the movie. It’s surprising and interesting. I didn’t anticipate it’d have such a cult following.

What are your memories from playing Catwoman in Batman Returns?

I loved playing that part. She could be like an alley cat, crazy and demented.

You took some time away to look after your kids. Did you regret turning down any jobs?

I don’t regret it at all. There’s a saying – nobody sits on their death bed and says: “I wish I’d been at the office!”

The sultry star is older and wiser.

Michelle Pfeiffer, 55, has delivered some iconic performances in her 34-year career. Think Tony Montana’s moll in Scarface.

Catwoman in Batman Returns.

Her piano-sprawling sexy singer in The Fabulous Baker Boys. And her 5,000 year-old witch in Stardust.

Now the three-time Oscar-nominee is back in comedy The Family, co-starring with Robert De Niro.

What made you want to do The Family?

I really loved doing Married To The Mob. And I loved playing that part. I had so much fun. I’d hoped I would one day re-visit this world and that type of character. It was also something that made me a bit nervous, committing to this one, because it felt very similar and I thought ‘I don’t want to repeat myself.’

40 | Total Film | January 2014

Your character Maggie has some anger management issues. When was the last time you got mad?

I smashed my electric toothbrush the other day in a fit of rage! It was just the head! I don’t know what I was mad about, but I was stressed and having a bad day… and I just slammed it in the sink. I’m just like the Hulk!

Hot stuff: (top to bottom) Scarface (1983); Batman Returns (1992); with De Niro in The Family (2013).

Did you know your co-star Robert De Niro from Stardust?

I met him on the red carpet at the premiere – as we didn’t share any scenes. I’d met him before… for Raging Bull. I just met with him. I didn’t really audition. I was just a newbie. I was just starting out. I hadn’t worked. I had done nothing. I don’t think I was even

‘I didn’t anticipate Scarface would have such a cult following’ WorldMags.net

Are there still good parts left for older women in Hollywood?

I think that there are some good parts.

I wish there were more for all of us. But I think all actors wish there were more parts. Now, with the economy, there are fewer films being made. So it’s not just actresses that are feeling it. I know actresses in their thirties who are yelling at their agents that they’re not getting enough good scripts.

Your husband [David E. Kelley] works in TV. Are there shows you love to watch?

I just started watching Broadchurch. So good. I’m obsessed with it now. I started watching it on the way over here. That and Homeland.

What’s next for you?

I’m doing a movie called Whatever Makes You Happy with Diane Keaton and Viola Davis in March. It’s about three friends who get fed up with their sons, who they feel aren’t spending enough time with them, so they show up on their doorstep, and comedy ensues! JM ETA | 22 NOVEMBER The Family is out this month and is reviewed on page 49.

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Michelle Pfeiffer

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agenda 10 details for the sharper movie fan...

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The Furious Quandaries Of Richard Ayoade Our columnist receives an update from his agent.

I can’t believe you’re doing a new film – didn’t anyone see the last one?! But seriously, first films are hard so don’t be too rough on yourself. I’m told it definitely had its moments. This is just to say hey and best of luck and here’s hoping people want to go see this one for some reason.

Just a brief thought - does it have to be called The Double? I feel that Richard Gere and Topher Grace made a pretty interesting film called The Double back in ’11 about a retired CIA operative who’s paired with a young FBI rookie to unravel the mystery of a senator’s untimely demise. All signs point to the Ruskies and Gere’s spent his whole life going toe-to-toe with Reds. But the young punk has his own ideas about how to conduct the investigation. Frankly, it blew me away and I think it’s a little cocky, not to mention disrespectful, to give your movie the same name.

Why don’t you just call it Jaws, you fuckin illiterate?

OK, so my hot assistant just told me your film is based on a book that was apparently written ‘before’ 2011. But let me ask you this. Do you really think it’s a good idea to be basing films on books written before 2011? Don’t you want to be relevant? And do you really want to be associated with a book written by a Russian?! A Russian who didn’t even have the goddam courtesy to avoid titular overlap with a remarkable late-period movie by Richard Gere?

Also, if I’ve learned anything in Hollywood it’s Avoid Dostoevsky Like Dairy (ADLD). No one wants to wade through the ravings of some commie epileptic who, by the way, was only 5ft 2in.

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The Columnist

Richard gets a stateside missive...

ÔDo you think itÕs good to base a film on a book written before 2011?Õ Do you know how many successful films have been made out of Dostoevsky novels? How’s about NOT EVEN CLOSE TO ONE successful film? And you had to choose ONE OF HIS LEAST SUCCESSFUL NOVELS. A novel that even that seizure-throwing son of a pinsk wasn’t happy with!

Are you trying to die? Are you literally trying to die in this business?

Do you realise how hard it is to stay awake if you even say the name Dostoevesky? If I say that name out loud my eyes glaze over – it’s like seeing about 10 billion sheep gently gavotte over a breeze-blown hedge at dusk. It’s like when I started

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smoking valium. It’s like watching a silent film that isn’t The Artist.

Look – it’s up to you, but I’m betting there isn’t even one scene in that book where the hero powerslides under a mechanically closing door. And that saddens the shit out of me.

Anyway, just have a think about it and whether you want to have any work in five years’ time or if you’d rather be (distantly) remembered as the maker of a couple of curios.

See ya!

The Double is out next spring and Richard will be back next issue.

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Hey it’s your loving agent Danny DeVille hitting you up from L to the A!

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EDITED BY MATTHEW LEYLAND

Every new movie reviewed & rated WorldMags.net

+ + + + + OUTSTANDING + + + + VERY GOOD + + + GOOD + + DISAPPOINTING + RUBBISH

‘Sex, drugs, radical verse and Radcliffe... Kill Your Darlings is a live-wire lit-pic’ OF THE MONTH

> NEW RELEASES 22.11.13-13.12.13 OUT NOW Thor: The Dark World

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22 NOVEMBER Breakfast With Jonny Wilkinson Computer Chess The Family Flu Gone With The Wind Vivan Las Antipodas!

29 NOVEMBER Carrie Day Of The Flowers Dirty Wars Fanny Free Birds

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Jeune Et Jolie Leviathan Marius Saving Mr. Banks

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p49 p55 p58 p56

6 DECEMBER Floating Skyscrapers Frozen Getaway Homefront Kill Your Darlings Klown Nebraska The Patience Room Powder Room Rough Cut Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf’s

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It’s a kind of mallet: Thor: The Dark World, page 50.

January 2014 | Total Film | 45

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Carrie +++++ Out 29 November

It’s still not safe to go back to the prom…

OU WILL KNOW HER before you consider how Brian De Palma’s Name’ runs the tagline, barnstorming 1976 adap lodged images of which pretty much sums Sissy Spacek drenched in pig’s blood in the up Hollywood’s thinking public consciousness. ‘You Will Know Her over the last nine years.

Name’? Yes, we will, all of us, even those Ever since Zack Snyder’s who’d sooner gouge out their own eyeballs 2004 re-run of George Romero’s Dawn than watch a horror movie; and yet the less Of The Dead, we’ve had remakes of famous likes of Black Christmas, Mother’s just about every recognisable horror Day, Sorority Row and My Bloody Valentine movie of the ’70s and ’80s. all beat Carrie to the remake party.

Given the purity of For anyone who’s spent their Stephen King’s 1974 source life locked in a cupboard, Carrie TALKING tells of the eponymous ugly novel – an archetypal POINT revenge-of-the-nerd tale duckling (Chloë Grace Moretz); Even thoughSissy Spacek set in school, meaning bullied at school and oppressed and Piper Laurie were everyone can relate – it’s at home by her religious both Oscar-nommed for their roles in the original, astonishing we’ve had to fanatic mother (Julianne Peirce wanted to make even wait this long. And that’s Moore). Within minutes of

Y

more of the mother/daughter relationship in her remake.

46 | Total Film | January 2014

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meeting our ostracised heroine, she suffers the indignity of having her first period while showering after gym class; uncomprehending, her ordeal is made a whole lot worse by über-bitch Chris (Portia Doubleday) leading the class in a chant of “Plug it up!” while hurling tampons at Carrie’s cowering form.

Mind over matter

Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) feels guilty for her part in the group assault. To make amends, of sorts, she persuades her popular jock boyfriend Tommy (Ansel Elgort) to invite Carrie to the prom. Carrie shyly accepts, resisting the remonstrations of her mother and looking pretty in a pink, homemade dress while enjoying her first Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

WorldMags.net SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED...

CHRISTINE 1983 Another geek avenger from the pen of Stephen King. The most underrated adap of his work.

CARRIE 2002 A TV remake distinguished

by Angela Bettis’ turn as Carrie – though she was 27 at the time.

THE THING 2011 Like the new Carrie, this prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 classic (itself a remake) is decent but a little pointless.

For full reviews of these films visit totalfilm.com/ cinema_reviews

“I’m so sorry dear, I really thought you liked beige…”

dance. She at last possesses a shred of self-worth, empowerment, happiness, THRILLED and then… We’ll stop there, ENTERTAINED though chances are ‘You Will Know The Ending’.

NODDING OFF Oh, one more thing: Carrie has the gift/curse ZZZZZZZZZ... of telekinesis. It’s easy RUNNING TIME to forget, given the universality of the story, with the best and worst of human behaviour on display. (Mainly worst.) But it’s Carrie’s ability to move objects with her mind that fuels the hell-hath-no-fury finale.

Wisely, director Kimberly Peirce (whose excellent Boys Don’t Cry also deals with class, otherness and abuse) returns to King’s book to spend more time with Carrie as she experiments with her fledgling powers.

This makes sense: Carrie’s psychic abilities totalfilm.com

PREDICTED INTEREST CURVE™ Born to be wild

Mommie dearest

Detention

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Creepy Carrie Pin up

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“We’re all very sorry, Cassie”

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develop in accordance with physical changes, and what teenager can leave themselves alone at this time? But while there’s fun to be had from watching Carrie gaze out of the classroom window to set the school flag flapping, or sit upon her levitating bed like she’s just watched The Exorcist on Netflix, her newfound sovereignty presents problems. In De Palma’s picture, Carrie wreaks revenge in a fugue state; her powers

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REVIEWS

‘Carrie’s gone to the dark side… and she’s forgotten to take our sympathy with her’ whiplash like severed power cords to kill indiscriminately. In Peirce’s movie, Carrie knows exactly what she’s doing, her command apparent in her black, Photoshopped eyes and J-horror body jerks.

She’s gone to the dark side, and she’s forgotten to take our sympathy with her.

Revision quest

Shame, because Moretz overcomes her miscasting (too pretty, too confident, too Hollywood) with pained eyes, even if she does overplay the clenched, shrunken body language in an effort to camouflage her natural self-possession. A fair amount of the revision works, from Chrissy recording Carrie’s humiliation in the showers and posting it online, to Moore’s nutjob mom gouging her own legs in penance, to Peirce’s unwillingness to try to match De Palma’s pyrotechnic technique, opting instead for a naturalistic palette and less forceful cuts.

That Peirce also jettisons the overtly ’70s flourishes – split-screen, prism effects, speeded-up footage of Tommy trying on tuxes – is prudent, as is her refusal to subject her teen cast to full-frontal, slo-mo nudity in the opening set-piece.

Other tweaks are less successful: Carrie’s penchant for #Vadering her tormentors; Chris 2.0 being upgraded from petty bully to cold-blooded psycho (making the film far less easy to identify with); and a horribly lame, tame coda.

Of course, matching De Palma’s infamous hand-from-the-grave sting was never an option – not least because it was the genre’s original tag-on shock – but this half-hearted jump only draws attention to another pimple on the new Carrie: it’s just not scary. Jamie Graham

THE VERDICT One of the more solid ’70s horror remakes, but it lacks the verve and potency, romance and heartache of the original. Still, the haircuts are a vast improvement... › Certificate 15 Director Kimberly Peirce Starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde, Portia Doubleday, Judy Greer Screenplay Lawrence D. Cohen, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa Distributor Sony Running time 100 mins January 2014 | Total Film | 47

WorldMags.net “Nope, sorry dear, I’m just not going to wave at a giant rodent.”

SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED...

MARY POPPINS 1964 Disney’s classic Laaandon-set musical is quintessential Sunday teatime viewing.

FINDING NEVERLAND 2004 Johnny Depp’s J.M. Barrie struggles to bring Peter Pan to the stage in Marc Forster’s attack on the tear ducts.

MISS POTTER 2006 Renée Zellweger becomes Beatrix in kids’-author biopic dripping with niceness.

For full reviews of these films visit totalfilm.com/ cinema_reviews

Saving Mr Banks +++++ Out 29 November

TALKING POINT

L

ONG BEFORE IT OWNED Pixar, Marvel and an entire galaxy far, far away, one of Disney’s hottest properties was a flying nanny. As Mary Poppins (see Blu-ray review, p132) turns 50, the Mouse House returns to its 1964 musical for a sugary spoonful of self-penned studio history.

Opening with a vintage logo to the eye-misting strains of ‘Feed The Birds’, the tone is set for an affectionate look at the journey Mary took from the pages of P.L. Travers’ novel to the all-singing, all-dancing world of Walt Disney. Emma Thompson plays the Aussie-born British writer as a prim grande dame who, understandably, doesn’t want to see her beloved creation turned into a theme-park ride. Flown out to LA to discuss the rights with Tom Hanks’ gregarious Uncle Walt, her stuffy English

sensibilities land her right in the middle of Disneyland.

Director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) takes a few swipes at the Magic Kingdom, but he stops short of slagging off the boss. By the mid-’60s, Disney was reportedly a hot-tempered taskmaster who rode around his mansion on a miniature train, but Hanks sees him as an eccentric uncle who puts too much sugar in his tea – a kindly old Colonel Kurtz who pops up at the mid-point with a big grin and a warm handshake. Coming straight from the intensity of Captain Phillips, Hanks does a fine job, but this isn’t his film.

Forced to sell her cherished childhood stories, Travers is the tragic heroine of the story. Despite Hancock’s every attempt to paint her as Mary to Walt’s Flying high Main Bert the chimney sweep, Street her strained friendship with Disney is rooted Song and in sadness. Wringing dance every ounce of repressed heartbreak and winsome crabbiness out of the role, 90 125 Thompson gives her best

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performance in years – with a post-credits recording of the real Travers revealing just how accurate she is.

Less welcome is Colin Farrell, cast as Travers’ Aussie/Cockney/American/Irish drunk dad in annoying flashbacks that snap you right out of film. Better by half are Paul Giamatti as doughy chauffeur Ralph and B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman as the songwriting Sherman brothers. With most of its teary moments either heavy-handed, heavily signposted or both, this isn’t one for cynics. Skipping towards its dubiously happy ending, it’s a movie Poppins partisans will embrace but others may find as fluffy as a dancing penguin.

‘Thompson wrings every ounce of heartbreak out of the role’

PREDICTED INTEREST CURVE™ Hotel California

This isn’t the first time Thompson has tackled magical nannies – but she insists Nanny McPhee is unrelated to Poppins. “They couldn’t be more different,” she says, “Mary is a raging narcissist”.

Hail, Mary...

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Paul Bradshaw

THE VERDICT Hanks takes to Walt like a pair of cosy slippers, but it’s Thompson who adds layers to a classy but predictable slice of Disney schmaltz. › Certificate PG Director John Lee Hancock Starring Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, Colin Farrell Screenplay Kelly Marcel, Sue Smith Distributor Disney Running time 125 mins Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

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REVIEWS

The Family +++++ Out 22 November

Lie low and snitch…

B

Lidl’s manager was about to regret forgetting to restock the Tangfastics.

ACK IN THE 1990S, ROBERT De Niro was reportedly so incensed at being quizzed in Paris about an elite prostitution ring, he vowed never to set foot in France again. It seems he’s had a change of heart in recent years, returning to the country to head the Cannes 2011 jury and now as the star of Luc Besson’s black comedy about a mafia grass in the witness protection programme.

Looking at the results, you can’t help wishing Bob’s initial resolve had held firm.

The Family turns out to be a desperately uneven affair, uncertain if it’s a fish-out-ofwater satire, a Sopranos-style portrait of mobster-clan dynamics, or a bloody thriller about poulets coming home to roost. Yes, there are some yuks to be had watching De Niro’s bored patriarch Fred, testy wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their two kids (played by Glee’s Dianna Agron and The Wrestler’s John D’Leo) stick it to the snooty locals by terrorising a tardy plumber or destroying the village grocery. But given they’re meant to be lying low, their actions become rapidly nonsensical, not least when it alerts the very people they’re trying to hide from to their whereabouts and new identities.

Besson’s film – adapted from a novel by Tonino Benacquista, co-writer of Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped – takes an even sharper turn for the preposterous when Fred is asked by the town’s film club to ruminate on GoodFellas’ authenticity. No wonder Tommy Lee Jones looks so sour as Fred’s flummoxed handler, his pained expression becoming an apt metaphor for a picture that is treading water long before De Niro’s vengeful ex-associates catch up with him.

Besson at least rallies in the closing stages to deliver a moderately exciting finale that predictably reduces much of the sleepy Normandy setting to smouldering rubble.

But as the French might say, it’s trop peu, trop tard. Neil Smith

THE VERDICT Though it’s good to see Michelle Pfeiffer married to the mob again, she alone can’t redeem a lumbering farce that takes an unpleasantly sadistic glee in violence, murder and intimidation. › Certificate 15 Director Luc Besson Starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones, Dianna Agron, John D’Leo Screenplay Luc Besson, Michael Caleo Distributor Entertainment One Running time 111 mins

FREE BIRDS

LEVIATHAN

CINEMA PARADISO

POWDER ROOM

+++++ Out 29 November

+++++ Out 29 November

+++++ Out 13 December

+++++ Out 6 December

MORE LIKELY TO INSPIRE STUPOR than laughter, this ’toon seems to be as loaded with sleep-inducing tryptophan as its turkey heroes. Director Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears A Who!) gets off to a bad start with an unworkable premise that sees mild-mannered Reggie (Owen Wilson) taken under the US First Daughter’s (Kaitlyn Maher) wing before being enlisted by militant Jake (Woody Harrelson) to travel back in time and sabotage the inaugural Thanksgiving. Any comparisons with Chicken Run are rendered poultry by half-baked gags. Even tykes will tell it to get stuffed. Curtis Woloschuk

NAMED AFTER THE SEA MONSTER in the Book of Job, this look at life on a fishing trawler is more art installation than documentary. Bombarding the viewer with disorientating images of clanking machinery, butchered fish and whirling seagulls, filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel ask us to fill in the blanks in the absence of a PoV or voiceover. The results – achieved through small cameras clipped to nets, masts and the crew – will hook some and induce seasickness in others. Yet surrender to its rhythms and you’ll find poetry in its anthropological austerity.

Neil Smith

A 25TH-ANNIVERSARY RESTORATION of Giuseppe Tornatore’s ode to moving pictures and puppy love. Director Salvatore (Jacques Perrin) returns to his Sicily home, sparking a flashback to a childhood spent at Cinema Paradiso. It’s here that tiny ‘Toto’ (Salvatore Cascio), under the avuncular eye of projectionist Alfredo (Phillipe Noiret), develops a crush on celluloid. Before long he’s experiencing the agony of adolescent romance too, in a movie that dispenses bittersweetness, nostalgia and uplift in potent doses. (FYI, this is the ‘short’ version rather than the three-hour special edition.) Jessica Mellor

KATE NASH SNORTS COCAINE IN a toilet. Jaime Winstone pisses in the street. And Sheridan Smith’s got a red wine stain on her bum. Sex & The City this isn’t, set entirely in a grungy London nightclub where Smith’s inertia-gripped social climber Sam gets caught between the crassly loveable chums of her past (such as Winstone) and the pretentious high-flyers of her present (Nash).

First-time director MJ Delaney mixes style with big laughs, and though the film stumbles over the occasional am-dram bum note, Smith balances it all out as the likeable girl next-door.

Josh Winning

› Certificate U Running time 91 mins

› Certificate 12A Running time 87 mins

› Certificate PG Running time 120 mins

› Certificate 15 Running time 86 mins

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January 2014 | Total Film | 49

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Thor: The Dark World +++++ Out now

Asgard as it gets…

W

e all live in a postAvengers world, a fact that must surely give Marvel confidence as it strides through the second phase of its blockbuster masterplan. As the sequels mount up, though, there is a choice to be made on which way to go, a decision to reach on the right tone to take. One might even say there’s a Thork in the road.

Do you go the big and ballsy route like Iron Man 3, upping the ante – more bangs, more villains, more metal suits – to stratospheric levels? Or should you follow the sombre path forged by The Dark Knight and its ilk – more gloom, more doom and the occasional bout of tragedy?

Duh! OK, so the ‘Dark World’ tag rather gives the game away on that front.

Pleasingly, Alan Taylor’s follow-up to Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 original retains its predecessor’s sense of fun, lacing its Tolkienesque plot (evil elves plotting the Nine Realms’ destruction with the help of ancient space goo) and sober interludes

such shadings are as cosmetic as the prosthetics used to morph Christopher Eccleston into elf leader Malekith: eyecatching, but also kind of distracting.

Because try as it might to introduce elements of pain, loss and dynastic tension, Thor 2 can’t get away from Thor himself – an unvanquishable deity from outer space who wields lightning with a flying hammer.

This is not, in short, a character to be taken overly seriously, and Chris Hemsworth has played him long enough to know the balance between rock-jawed heroism and winking knowingness, even when he’s reeling from a crisis (an aerial attack on Asgard bearing unmistakable shades of 9/11) or railing against the parental dictates of Anthony Hopkins’ Odin.

Happy go Loki

In truth, Hemsworth feels a tad sidelined this time around, a bit of a passenger in his own star vehicle. Yet it could hardly be otherwise once Tom Hiddleston rejoins the party. The Brit returns to deliver all the best lines as a live-wire Loki who, having used up all his bad-guy credit in Avengers Assemble, now has a go at being Elf warning his adoptive brother’s London calling reluctant ally.

Teaser-tastic The scenes in which the squabbling siblings A mean What, no Caught time for S.H.I.E.L.D.?

Boulder over off ’gard stage a jailbreak with Greenwich the help of Thor’s pals Burn, baby, burn Brother in arms (the only meaningful 0 22 44 66 88 110 contribution made by actors Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi and Jaimie Alexander) or (a mass funeral) with some witty gags fight Malekith and his Male-kin on the (Thor takes the Tube! Stellan Skarsgård black dunes of Svartalfheim have a zip naked at Stonehenge!) and a delicious and brio that heaves the picture out of its flock of cameos (one inevitable, the second-act doldrums. Shame there’s isn’t other delightfully unexpected). half as much energy in Hemsworth’s Sure, Game Of Thrones director dealings with astrophysicist squeeze Jane Taylor adds mud, grime and glowering Foster (Natalie Portman), whose only skies, not least when the action decamps function is to a) happen upon the ‘Aether’ to rainy old London. Ultimately, however,

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Eccleston’s been after for millennia and b) give Thor grief for not calling.

Monster director Patty Jenkins wasn’t the only one to exit due to those pesky “creative differences”. Carter Burwell, Alan Taylor’s preferred composer, also left, to be replaced by Brian Tyler.

All over the place Portman, reportedly, was none too thrilled when first-choice helmer Patty Jenkins was ousted in favour of Taylor.

We bet she wasn’t too happy either when she found out her contractually enforced participation amounted to little more than being a damsel in distress, lumbered with cumbersome dialogue like “physics are going to go ballistic!”, a drippy dinner date with Chris O’Dowd, and a sarcastic assistant – Kat Dennings’ Darcy – whose every word’s a wisecrack.

It turns out that Malekith has his eyes on The Convergence, a rare alignment of the Nine Realms that will allow him to take them all out in one fell swoop. The odd thing is that there is so little else here that’s in similar sync. The film lurches from spectacular battle scene to comedic encounter to familial reconciliation with little concern for how it all adds up (evidence of re-shoots ahoy…).

The big finale, which involves Hemsworth and Eccleston pursuing each other through multiple dimensions, is a case in point: a barrage of FX that’s as exciting to watch as it’s impossible to follow. But who’s complaining? We’re already looking forward to Guardians Of The Galaxy... Neil Smith

THE VERDICT Marvel’s man with the mallet does all that’s required of him in a breakneck sequel that’s never dark for long. Next time, though, we’ll have more Loki and fewer elves. › Certificate 12A Director Alan Taylor Starring

Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Eccleston Screenplay Christopher L. Yost, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely Distributor Disney Running time 120 mins

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REVIEWS

SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED...

THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY 2001-03 Good elves as opposed to dark ones, though still handy in a fight.

ARCHIPELAGO 2010 Can’t get enough of The Hidds?

Check out this Scilly-set gem from Britain’s Joanna Hogg.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES 2011 That naval college looks familiar!

See also Skyfall, Patriot Games, Les Misérables…

For full reviews of these films visit totalfilm.com/ cinema_reviews

‘Laces its Tolkienesque plot and sober interludes with witty gags and a delicious flock of cameos’ totalfilm.com

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A good TV repairman only needs one tool.

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Frozen +++++ Out 1 November

Disney on ice...

T

Should have gone to Specsavers.

HE LAST TIME DISNEY released a Yule-themed movie, we got a CG Jim Carrey grimacing through Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol.

Four years on and the Mouse House’s latest Christmas parcel sticks with the CGI (though, notably, not mo-cap). Yet Frozen finds the studio on firmer ground, despite the film’s abundance of slippery surfaces.

Walt Disney had an abortive go at adapting The Snow Queen in the 1940s, complaining the sorceress was impossible to warm to. More than 60 years later, Wreck-It Ralph writer Jennifer Lee (who co-directs with Tarzan helmer Chris Buck) confidently hits upon a simple but effective fix-it: give the ice princess a sister.

Elsa (Idina Menzel) is the future sovereign of Arendelle, but her ability to freeze anything she touches has her locked away for years, much to the confusion of power-free sibling Anna (Kristen Bell).

Disaster strikes when Elsa accidentally puts Norway into a deep freeze, and with nary a hairdryer in sight, it’s up to plucky Anna, mountain man Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his carrot-loving, voiceless reindeer Sven and comedy snowman Olaf (Josh Gad) to defrost the world before it’s too late.

If ever there was a ‘Disney fairytale’ checklist, Frozen would tick all the boxes (feisty princess, comedy sidekick, romantic entanglements). Between its saccharine moralising and predictable resolution, there’s much for the cynical to roll eyes at.

But relief comes in the film’s modern sensibilities as, refreshingly, Elsa and Anna’s relationship outranks any tired romance.

The stage-show-esque musical numbers (courtesy of Tony-winning songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez) are another plus, particularly when Menzel juices up showstopper ‘Let It Go’. OK, so Frozen is anything but original, but the visuals are crisp and mesmerising. And in Anna, it boasts a triumphantly singleminded female role model to make past Disney princesses blush. Josh Winning

THE VERDICT Not quite up there with Tangled, but a solid addition to the canon. Catchy tunes will have you humming, but the hunt for the next The Little Mermaid continues… › Certificate 15 Director Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee

Starring Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Alan Tudyk Screenplay Jennifer Lee, Shane Morris Distributor Disney Running time TBC mins

DIRTY WARS

KLOWN

ROUGH CUT

+++++ Out 29 November

+++++ Out 6 December

+++++ Out 6 December

EXPLORING THE UNIQUE ALLURE OF New York department store Bergdorf Goodman, Matthew Miele’s sleek but scattered documentary is mostly pretty wrapping on a slim package. Packed with interviews with everyone from Karl Lagerfield to Joan Rivers, it can’t winkle anything out of them except that the place is fashion heaven. Once-upon-atime tales about Elizabeth Taylor ordering 200 pairs of mink earmuffs, or Yoko Ono’s Christmas Eve $400,000 furs-splurge, can’t compensate for a lacklustre storyline about the famously intricate Chrimbo shop windows. Kate Stables

THE JOINT SPECIAL OPERATIONS Command (JSOC) first came to attention in 2011 when it shot Osama Bin Laden. But as journalist Jeremy Scahill reveals in Rick Rowley’s doc, this covert organisation has been slipping into other countries to make “targeted killings” of terror suspects for years.

The collateral damage includes pregnant women, Americans and babies. Though awkwardly assembled, with an overemphatic voiceover, it’s chilling stuff. If the American government can sanction pre-emptive political murders anywhere in the world, what else are they capable of? Matt Glasby

DENMARK’S CHARMLESS ANSWER TO The Hangover crosses the line between gross-out and just plain gross. A lads’ weekend of canoeing, boozing and Thai whores takes an unexpected turn when Frank (Frank Hvam) and playboy Casper (Casper Christensen) are joined by Frank’s 12-year-old nephew (Marcuz Jess Petersen). It doesn’t go well. Based on a Danish TV show, this features a pearl necklace blinding, sex assaults on boys, and half-hearted anal fingering. The US remake, starring Danny McBride, will needs balls of steel to be anything less than watered-down sloppy seconds. Jamie Russell

AN INTRIGUING PEEK BEHIND THE scenes for film students, but a likely snoozefest for everybody else, this bizarre ‘meta-mentary’ feels more like a feature-length DVD extra than a film in its own right. Tracking the production of made-up ’70s exploitationer Hiker Meat, it delves into the minutiae of moviemaking as a crew of amateur filmmakers combat gnats, botched pyrotechnics and a micro-budget while shooting in the Lake District.

An experiment in form from artistturned-director Jamie Shovlin, Rough Cut has points of interest, but ultimately feels pointless. Josh Winning

› Certificate PG Running time 94 mins

› Certificate 15 Running time 86 mins

› Certificate 18 Running time 88 mins

› Certificate TBC Running time 86 mins

SCATTER MY ASHES AS BERGORF’S +++++ Out 6 December

52 | Total Film | January 2014

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DEAD POETS SOCIETY 1989 Robin Williams quotes Whitman, encourages day-seizing.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 2009 “Love’s keen sting!” OK, so Potter wasn’t all chaste. Hogwarts gets horny in chapter seven.

“Psst! I think that’s Harry Potter!”

CHRONICLE 2012 Dane DeHaan does his whole DiCaprio-gone-toseed thing in Josh Trank’s superhero teen tale.

For full reviews of these films visit totalfilm.com/ cinema_reviews

Kill Your Darlings +++++ Out 6 December

K

Burroughs (Ben Foster) in a bathtub, sucking on nitrous oxide and swaggering On The Road author to be Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston). So begins Ginsberg’s personal development, which finds parallels in Radcliffe’s on-screen development. Ginsberg’s initial reticence gives Radcliffe an excuse to retain his own natural reserve. But Radcliffe expands his range to embrace tongue sandwiches and flesh out a study of a shy young poet edging towards greatness in a story that suggests blossoming creativity and desire go hand (and willy) in hand.

Not that it’s a one-man show. Debut director Krokidas trounces recent Beat pics Howl and On The Road for kinetic energy, shaking up a jazzy, poppy soundtrack to go with his druggy, dreamy, dirty “I’m in over images. Comparisons my head” to Hogwarts fit less well than comparisons to the first flush of ’90s ‘New Queer Cinema’ (Todd Lu’s morals Haynes, Gregg Araki).

Radcliffe’s co-stars 80 100 help to bring life to the

THRILLED

“It’s complicated” Carr trouble

NODDING OFF ZZZZZZZZZ...

RUNNING TIME

0

54 | Total Film | January 2014

20

“I love complicated”

40

60

You need a montage

revolutionary literary movement; Huston struts, Foster croaks waspish remarks from the fringes and DeHaan (Chronicle) revels in charismatic ambiguity as Carr – whose involvement with clingy lover David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall) leads to lethal plot twists. Elizabeth Olsen doesn’t fare so well as Kerouac’s girlfriend, reduced to a slender subplot among plot strands – first loves, traumas, literary fumbles – that threaten to fray in the final third. But they would fray entirely without Krokidas’ confident direction, or without Radcliffe nailing his game. Broom in hand or not, he cleans up. Kevin Harley

‘Shakes up a jazzy soundtrack with druggy, dreamy, dirty images’

PREDICTED INTEREST CURVE™

Changing the world

Jesse Eisenberg was cast, but split due to similarities with his lead in The Social Network.

Krokidas then offered the role to Radcliffe. The star’s answer?

According to Krokidas: “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Rad poets society…

ILL YOUR PRECONCEPTIONS, too. It’s saying something that Daniel Radcliffe can dance with a brush and not make you wonder when he’s going to ride it into a game of Quidditch.

Here, however, a non-wizardly use for brooms isn’t the half of his separation from Hogwarts. Blow jobs behind bookshelves, legs behind ears, homicides behind counter-cultural poetry: none of these things featured in Potter’s learning arc. But they do in the education of Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet who is our eyes and ears in John Krokidas’ literary coming-of-age tale.

So do drugs, murder and wanking at the typewriter, as Radcliffe’s Ginsberg arrives at Columbia University in 1944. There, he finds attention vampire, muse and troubled lover Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) stood on a desk, reciting dirty poetry; William

ENTERTAINED

TALKING POINT

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THE VERDICT Sex, drugs, murder, radical verse and Radcliffe make persuasive bedfellows in Krokidas’ live-wire lit-pic.

It gets busy, but fizzy direction and Rad’s rigour help to keep its pulse alive. › Certificate 15 Director John Krokidas

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Michael C. Hall, Ben Foster, Elizabeth Olsen, Jack Huston Screenplay John Krokidas, Austin Bunn Distributor The Works Running time 104 mins

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REVIEWS

Homefront +++++ Out 6 December

Stath versus meth.

W

The Transporter 4 is going old school.

HATEVER YOU’RE THINKING, rethink it!” glowers Jason Statham. Homefront’s prospective viewers would be well advised to do the same. Despite starring action cinema’s most charismatic cue ball, being based on a Sylvester Stallone script, and featuring a starry supporting cast (James Franco, Winona Ryder, Kate Bosworth) playing strung-out meth-heads, Gary Fleder’s fight flick is liable to disappoint all but the least demanding of viewers.

Pedigree doesn’t always equate to quality, of course, but this first adaptation of Chuck Logan’s series of novels has a curiously passed-round-the-posts feeling.

Statham wasn’t the first actor attached – Stallone wrote it for himself 10 years ago, which is how long it’s been since Fleder had a high-profile cinema release (Runaway Jury). We begin with undercover DEA agent Phil Broker (Statham in a glorious mullet) caught up in a drug bust going south.

Then it’s Broker who’s going south, to New Orleans, to try and start over with his young daughter (Izabela Vidovic). But it’s not long before they fall foul of redneck dealer Gator (Franco) and his family, including an excellent Bosworth as a skinny addict.

Although Franco’s clearly enjoying himself, and Statham smashes faces with finesse, two warring films emerge, neither of them particularly convincing. The first is pure daddy-daughter cheese, with Broker reading his daughter bedtime stories and romancing her school counsellor (Rachel Lefevre). The second is straight-to-DVD fight-flick filler, with savage fisticuffs and soft-headed dialogue sharing equal billing.

“I want my kid’s cat back – today,” threatens Statham with an admirably straight face, “Not a hair out of place!” Frankly, it’s hard to imagine anyone who’d be satisfied with either strand, let alone both. Neither Friday-night fun, nor Sunday-night serious, Homefront short-changes its cast and its audience, while its greatest asset – the sizeable WTF? factor – soon dribbles away into boredom. Matt Glasby

THE VERDICT An unfathomably airless B-movie that betrays its USP by spreading the thrills too thinly. You can see why Stallone had second thoughts… › Certificate 15 Director Gary Fleder

Starring Jason Statham, James Franco, Kate Bosworth, Winona Ryder, Clancy Brown Screenplay Sylvester Stallone Distributor Lionsgate Running time 100 mins

FLOATING SKYSCRAPERS

MARIUS

FANNY

EXPOSED

+++++ Out 6 December

+++++ Out 29 November

+++++ Out 29 November

+++++ Out 13 December

THIS DOUR POLISH MELODRAMA wallows in sexual angst, as swimmer Kuba (Mateusz Banasiuk) finds himself and his hormones caught between his girlfriend Sylwia (Marta Nieradkiewicz) and pretty young thing Michal (Bartosz Gelner). Not helping matters: his frankly weird relationship with his overbearing mother. Stylishly shot, and reflecting Polish society’s conservatism, this is a coming-out tale riddled with pain and anguish. That said, Kuba’s barely-there personality make it hard to empathise as he strings Sylwia along while getting his rocks off with the boys at the pool.

Emma Johnston

DANIEL AUTEUIL CONTINUES HIS association with author Marcel Pagnol by directing, writing and co-starring as César in a new version of Pagnol’s lauded Marseilles trilogy. This opening instalment revolves around César’s son Marius (Raphaël Personnaz), whose love for childhood friend Fanny (Victoire Bélézy) is compromised by a secret passion. The material is a French classic, and Auteuil directs as such: this is cosy, undemanding heritage cinema. Despite its very Gallic blend of amour and ennui, it’s as if a Sunday-night British TV series had crossed the Channel. For more, see right… Simon Kinnear

THE MIDDLE FILM IN DANIEL Auteuil’s Marseilles trilogy picks up seconds after Marius. Fanny (Victoire Bélézy) faces a life-changing decision, but Auteuil is in no mood to ratchet up the tension. What was scandalous drama in Pagnol’s day is now pure soap opera. It’s best to sit back and luxuriate in the film’s unhurried pleasures: crisp Mediterranean settings, Alexandre Desplat’s mournful score and a clutch of likeable performances, especially when an exuberant Auteuil is sparring with scene-stealing veteran Jean-Pierre Darroussin. Part three, César, is currently in production… Simon Kinnear

DIRECTOR BETH B’S CELEBRATION of New York’s burlesque scene is as colourful, assured, fierce and smart as the men and women who literally bare all in the city’s clubs every night. There is, of course, the gawp factor – if you ever wanted to watch a woman pull the US flag out of her backside, this is the film for you. But most of all, this documentary is a vivid snapshot of a group of funny, creative and likeable people who regard their own complex sexualities as an art form, a means by which to express themselves politically, personally and with a whole lot of glitter. Emma Johnston

› Certificate 18 Running time 93 mins

› Certificate 12A Running time 94 mins

› Certificate PG Running time 102 mins

› Certificate TBC Running time 77 mins (tbc)

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January 2014 | Total Film | 55

WorldMags.net Bruce isn’t too proud to sing for his drinks.

GONE WITH THE WIND +++++ Out 22 November WITH 12 YEARS A SLAVE ALREADY generating serious Oscar buzz, this may prove to be a timely re-issue for David O. Selznick’s dewy-eyed romanticisation of the Old South’s controversial swan song, here granted a 4K digital restoration so sharp you’ll feel the heat of the flames when Atlanta burns. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh create their own sizzle as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in a lavish four-hour epic that juxtaposes scenes of jawdropping majesty – that aerial shot of the Confederates’ wounded, for example – with moments of elegant intimacy and playful verbal jousting. Almost 75 years on, though, Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) is still a prissy, spineless wuss.

Neil Smith

Nebraska

+++++ Out 6 December

W

The Bruce is loose...

ALK-ON ROLE IN DJANGO Unchained aside, it’s been way too long since we last saw Bruce Dern in anything of substance, so it’s good to report that the veteran actor is back in career-best form in Alexander Payne’s latest bittersweet mix of comedy and tragedy. He plays Woody Grant, a nearsenile alcoholic living in Billings, Montana, who’s convinced by a scam mail-shot that there’s $1m waiting for him in Lincoln, Nebraska. He’s not allowed to drive and his exasperated wife (June Squibb) isn’t going to take him. So his son David (Will Forte) is talked into driving the old boy across two states to pick up the non-existent loot.

But en route to Lincoln the pair detour to Woody’s home town to stay a couple of nights with his extended family, and it’s here that the barbed comedy really kicks in. Once Woody lets slip about the supposed million bucks the eyes of his kin, and of the townsfolk, light up with greed.

Nebraska is Payne’s birthplace, and he knows these desolate flatlands and crumbling little dead-end burgs from the inside. So underlying the social satire is a sense of resigned melancholia. Towns like these, we can guess, never had much going for them – and in today’s dire economic conditions, they’ve got even less.

56 | Total Film | January 2014

› Certificate PG Running time 238 mins

Shooting in widescreen black and white, Payne works fresh variations on his favourite format, the road movie (see About Schmidt, Sideways). His sense of place is as acute as ever and the casting is spot-on down to the smallest bit-part. As Woody’s sardonic wife, Squibb steals several scenes, and there’s another welcome returnee in the shape of Stacy Keach as Woody’s ex-partner with his eye on the loot.

But above all, Nebraska belongs to Dern, inhabiting his role with total conviction.

Shuffling, shambling, his white hair fluffed out like stale candy-floss, he’s a picture of dazed helplessness. But then every so often, a glimpse of that cunning sidelong glance we remember from the Dern of old makes us wonder – is Woody quite as doolally as he makes out? Phillip Kemp

THE VERDICT A pitch-perfect performance from Dern graces Alexander Payne’s latest roadmovie – another bittersweet meditation on the sad, comic futility of life. › Certificate 15 Director Alexander Payne Starring Bruce Dern, Will Forte, Bob Odenkirk, June Squibb Screenplay Bob Nelson Distributor Paramount Running time 115 mins

SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED...

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW 1971 Elegiac portrait of a dying Texas township from Peter Bogdanovich.

THE STRAIGHT STORY 1999 David Lynch’s geriatric road movie – on a motor mower...

ABOUT SCHMIDT 2002 Newly widowed Jack Nicholson hits a late-life crisis in another Payne road trip.

For full reviews of these films visit totalfilm.com/ cinema_reviews

TALKING POINT

Before Bruce Dern came on board, the role of Woody was offered to Gene Hackman, Robert Forster, Jack Nicholson and Robert Duvall.

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THE INNOCENTS +++++ Out 13 December ALONGSIDE THE HAUNTING, JACK Clayton’s 1961 adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn Of The Screw is the pinnacle of corner-of-the-screen scares. Deborah Kerr quivers with barely suppressed panic as a governess caring for two angelic siblings.

Her wobbly poise prompts the key question: are the kids haunted, or is it all in her mind? (The ‘projecting’ theory is subtly backed up the reflective surfaces on show). DoP Freddie Francis’ slyly blurred CinemaScope images, daringly suggestive scripting (by Truman Capote and William Archibald) and a supple sound mix work to immerse our imaginations in ambiguity.

The heart-stopping climax offers no answers: just the lingering unease of uncertainty. Kevin Harley

› Certificate 12A Running time 100 mins Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

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REVIEWS

Jeune Et Jolie +++++ Out 29 November

The secret diary of a call girl...

F

Insert oral gag here...

OLLOWING THE DEFT IN THE House, Jeune Et Jolie is another compelling study in youthful rebellion from director François Ozon. Like a modern-day spin on the classic Belle De Jour (1967), only this time with a teenage schoolgirl replacing Catherine Deneuve’s bored housewife, the film stars relative newcomer Marine Vacth as Isabelle, a quietly enigmatic girl who lives with her parents and younger brother Victor in a typically bourgeois Parisian household.

After a brief summertime intro, where Isabelle casually discards her virginity with a German teen during a family holiday, Ozon returns us to Paris and, without a hint of emotion, directs Isabelle towards a life in prostitution. Donning high heels, red lipstick and a confidence that belies her 16 years, Isabelle is swiftly gathering clients via a website she sets up, and servicing them in a five-star hotel which boasts the same anonymous air as she does.

There’s no violent pimp behind her, nor is there a hard-luck story. In fact, Ozon is deliberately economical here, and there’s little by way of explanation regarding Isabelle’s motives. Sexual awakening?

Adolescent anger? We’re never sure,

Starring Marine Vacth, Géraldine Pailhas, Charlotte Rampling, Frédéric Pierrot Screenplay François Ozon Distributor Lionsgate Running time 95 mins

and thankfully Ozon never tries to offer any pat lessons in psychology – even as Isabelle’s traumatised mother Sylvie (Géraldine Pailhas) drags her daughter to a shrink session.

With the film divided into four seasonal chapters, each accompanied by a different tune from Françoise Hardy, a theme of transition emerges. The spine of the story is Isabelle’s gradual shift towards womanhood, albeit in an unconventional (and potentially destructive) way.

Embodying this, Vacth is quite superb as Isabelle – adeptly moving from early scenes of cool detachment to the emotional fall-out of the final act, when one particular unforeseen encounter puts things into harsh perspective. In a film about the thorny process of maturity, she’s a talent who’s arrived fully formed. James Mottram

THE VERDICT Ozon keeps the melodrama at bay to deliver a typically subversive study of growing pains. And in Vacth he’s found a real star-in-waiting. › Certificate 18 Director François Ozon

VIVAN LAS ANTIPODAS!

TRAVELLER

GETAWAY

THE PATIENCE STONE

+++++ Out 22 November

+++++ Out TBC

+++++ Out 6 December

+++++ Out 6 December

START IN SHANGHAI, DIG A HOLE straight through the centre of the earth, and you’d come out in a tiny riverside settlement in Argentina called Entre Ríos. That’s the idea behind Russian documentarist Victor Kossakovsky’s quietly magical film. He chooses four pairs of exact antipodean spots – also Siberia and Patagonia, Hawaii and Botswana, Spain and New Zealand – and shows us the contrasts between them. No voiceover, just images and the odd snatch of overheard dialogue. Kossakovsky plays diverting sight-games, and indulges in visual puns. Lovely stuff. Philip Kemp

DAVID ESSEX’S SON BILLY COOK stars alongside his dad in an earthy thriller pitching gypsies against local gangsters and corrupt, land-grabbing officials. For a film that aims to strip away the stereotypes surrounding the travelling community, it’s surprising how many are on display; from wild-eyed fortune-tellers to dark-eyed temptresses. Plus a, er, fully-fledged Mongol horseman. In Dorset. There’s a caravan-load of good intentions here, but the poor scripting, leaden acting, and reams of quasi-mystical blarney leave viewers reeling like an old bare-knuckle boxer. Ali Catterall

IF IT HAD BEEN MADE IN 1972, Getaway would’ve probably been an amazing little B-flick. The premise has a ring of Corman-esque brilliance: a former race car driver’s (Ethan Hawke) wife (Rebecca Budig) gets kidnapped by some unseen madman in Bulgaria, who forces him to take on increasingly ridiculous high-speed missions. To win back his bride, he must rely on his wits and a hacker (Selena Gomez) who’s inexplicably along for the ride. Alas, director Courtney Solomon burns out all the cool potential, leaving us with a witless and unforgivably tame car wreck. Ken Mcintyre

IN A WAR-RAVAGED CITY A WOMAN sits and talks to her husband. He doesn’t say much, since he’s been shot and he’s in a coma. But she talks plenty – about the oppressive years of their loveless marriage, when he treated her like “a piece of meat”. Occasionally she ventures into the perilous streets, but mostly it’s just her and him. The Patience Stone is never dull, though, thanks partly to resourceful direction from Atiq Rahimi but mainly to a powerhouse performance from Golshifteh Farahani, her expressive eyes a cry of protest against a harsh patriarchal culture. Philip Kemp

› Certificate U Running time 108 mins

› Certificate 15(TBC) Running time 103 mins

› Certificate 12A Running time 90 mins

› Certificate TBC Running time 98 mins

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January 2014 | Total Film | 57

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Computer Chess +++++ Out 22 November

The dot-matrix reloaded...

A

He’d always been a draughts man himself.

T THE OUTSET, THIS LOW-FI gem from godfather of mumblecore Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation) seems to go out of its way to appear uninviting. Shot on fuzzy black-and-white video and set in the early ’80s, it’s a pseudo-documentary centred on the Annual North American Computer Chess Tournament. Our host is chess master Pat Henderson (Gerald Peary), a man spectacularly lacking in charisma.

Proceedings open with a stilted panel discussion. Excitement? Barely discernable.

But it’s not long before things heat up – in a uniquely deadpan fashion. Bujalski imposes a structure of sorts; taking place in an Austin hotel, the tournament comprises a five-round artificial-intelligence face-off, set to climax with the winning chess program taking on Henderson himself in a battle of man versus machine. But plot proves almost incidental as events sprawl in appealingly random directions. There are technical meltdowns and human tantrums, a plague of cats, a religious cult and a solitary female programmer (Robin Schwartz) who creates an unwanted stir… and all before things take a sci-fi-esque turn for the even stranger.

To populate his peculiar universe, Bujalski has assembled a cast combining (vaguely) familiar faces (Dazed And Confused’s Wiley Wiggins) with first-timers, several of whom are real-life computing professionals. Computer Chess takes place at a time before geek became chic, yet avoids easy laughs at the expense of its socially awkward characters. Though it can be classified as a comedy (just), the film is pleasingly underplayed, filtering its madness through a poker-faced prism.

One of the key characters is Michael, an independent programmer cum chancer who spends much of the movie scouring the hotel for a place to rest his head. Yours will be left refreshed – and slightly befuddled – after it’s been for a spin around these captivating corridors. Emma Simmonds

THE VERDICT A winning mix of deadpan comedy, retro stylings and escalating insanity. Too idiosyncratic for some perhaps, but this one-of-a-kind indie makes ’80s nostalgia feel new again. › Certificate 15 Director Andrew Bujalski

Starring Patrick Riester, Wiley Wiggins, Myles Paige, Gerald Peary, Jim Lewis Screenplay Andrew Bujalski Distributor Eureka Running time 91 mins

DAY OF THE FLOWERS

FLU

FILL THE VOID

+++++ Out 29 November

+++++ Out 22 November

+++++ Out 13 December

REMEMBER WHEN ENGLAND WON the Rugby World Cup? Simon Sprackling’s ramshackle but amiable adap of Chris England’s stage comedy revisits that morning via a provincial club’s bar, where punters gather to watch the big match. With its broadly drawn characters and a far-fetched story, there’s no disguising the material’s roots. Instead, Sprackling trusts to the author’s droll oneliners about sporting sub-cultures, and a cast led by Four Lions’ Nigel Lindsay, to deliver a stage- to-screen Brit-com that retains its charm.

Simon Kinnear

THIS BREEZY TALE OF FAMILY SECRETS casts ballet star Carlos Acosta as its soulful love interest, but the real romance here is between the camera and the beautiful streets of Cuba. We follow overzealous socialist Rosa (Eva Birthistle) and her underzealous, stylish sister Ailie (Charity Wakefield) as they rescue their father’s ashes from an undignified fate to scatter them on Castro’s stomping ground. As the pair bicker and get into scrapes, humour and melodrama rub along uncomfortably, but the likeable leads and gorgeous scenery make this lightweight trip fly by.

Emma Johnston

SNEEZING ITS WAY FROM SOUTH Korea, Kim Sung-su’s thriller would like to be the Asian answer to Contagion.

Instead, it comes off like a more bungedup version of Outbreak, as a killer strain of H5N1 spreads and a city goes on lockdown. Director Sung-su captures the carnage – notably a mountain of polythene-wrapped dead bodies – with some skill. However, as led by Jang Hyuk’s cocksure rescuer, the emotional impact is strictly cut-price, with the less said about the English-speaking roles in a wretched political subplot the better.

The result? Not so much World War Z as World War Zzzz. James Mottram

LIKE JANE AUSTEN IN TEL AVIV, RAMA Burshtein’s debut is a warm, watchful slant on marital mores in an ultraorthodox Jewish community. Our torn heroine is Shira (Hadas Yaron), an 18-year-old urged to wed new dad Yochay (Yiftach Klein) when his wife, Shira’s sister, dies. The resulting pickle may seem alien to many, but Yaron’s navigation of Shira’s struggles make it tangible. So does Burshtein’s vivid community portrait: a New Yorker who converted to Judaism, she illuminates the culture’s complexities with the clarity that Austen brought to her world’s relationship rituals. Kevin Harley

› Certificate TBC Running time TBC mins

› Certificate 12A Running time 100 mins

› Certificate 15 Running time 122 mins

› Certificate U Running time 91 mins

BREAKFAST WITH JONNY WILKINSON +++++ Out 22 November

58 | Total Film | January 2014

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ENDER’S GAME

Not all stars enjoy the PR game, especially when there’s controversy involved, but you have to hand it to Harrison Ford: he never once tired of not answering the Star Wars VII question.

SINCE

WEEKS OUT THERE

3

£9.7m £8.9m

3 2

£8.7m

£8.7m

1

£4.1m

£4.1m

2

£3.4m £3.1m

£6.8m £3.9m

6 5

£2.5m

£2.5m

2

£2.5m £2.4m

£2.5m £4.6m

3 6

RELEASE

THIS MONTH

£11.4m

£9.7m £8.9m

US TOP 10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

ESCAPE PLAN

Arnie’s catchphrase “You hit like a vegetarian” is one of many he’s been recreating for YouTube, such as “Get to da choppa”, and “No, of course a Twins sequel isn’t a desperate idea”

Gravity +++++ Captain Phillips ++++ Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa ++ Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 +++ Carrie +++ Ender’s Game ++++ Escape Plan +++ Last Vegas N/A Free Birds ++ The Counsellor ++++

RELEASE

WEEKS OUT THERE

JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA SINCE

Don’t miss the two end-credits scenes: Stellan Skarsgård recreating his Nymphomaniac poster; and Rocket Raccoon recreating Stellan Skarsgård’s Nymphomaniac poster.

£11.4m

THIS MONTH

THOR: THE DARK WORLD

Captain Phillips ++++ Turbo +++ Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 +++ Thor: The Dark World ++++ Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa ++ Prisoners ++++ Sunshine On Leith ++++ Ender’s Game ++++ Escape Plan +++ Blue Jasmine ++++

FILM

The pun-filled food-piece has had for breakfast many concurrent releases, including Escape Flan, Machete Grills and All Is Frosting.

POSITION

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2

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FILM

POSITION

UK TOP 10

After three weeks of the envelope-pushing Gravity at number one in the US, people decided it was time for the envelope to be retracted via Johnny Knoxville pooing up a wall.

$163.6m $219.2m 5 $82.6m $82.6m 4 $62.1m $45.6m

$62.1m 2 $106.2m 6

$32m $28m

$32m $28m

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CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

Great business for a tough film, though viewers are used to pirate-based distress thanks to 10 years of trying to work out why Johnny Depp is running down another beach screaming.

>Still out, still good…

Our pick of the movies out now GRAVITY +++++ “Sandra Bullock blends dexterity and vulnerability in what could be the performance of her career. A stunning space saga that takes off for new frontiers without leaving its humanity behind. Ground control to Major Oscar…”

DON JON ++++ “Smart, witty and more than a little melancholy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s debut as writer/director/ star is a fist-pumping success. However much of a prat Jon may be, we can’t help investing in the possibility of his redemption.”

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR +++++ “Fearless, relatable and beautiful, this is one of the year’s best. The physical boldness is matched emotionally and psychologically…

This is first love, in all its intoxicating, devastating glory. You won’t want to break free.”

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> Reviews just in!

Head to www.totalfilm.com for up-to-the-minute movie reviews They’re back: Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin, Oin, Gloin, Boing, Pork Loin and the rest in The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug (16 Dec), aka How To Brain Your Dragon. This time it’s dwarves vs spiders vs elves vs orcs vs dwarves, as seven more pages of Tolkien’s book become three hours of glorious 48fps (or

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maybe 49fps, as it’s a sequel) cine-fantasy. Spike Lee’s first UK cinema release in seven years, Oldboy (6 Dec) is an American remake of the Korean adaptation of a Japanese manga, but hopefully all the toolbox violence will still translate. Remember The Best Man (1999)? Of course you

don’t. But here’s the sequel The Best Man Holiday (29 Nov) anyway. Then there’s Black Nativity, in which Cilla + kids in tea-towel headdresses + boss-eyed donkey = comedy.

Of course not. It’s a drama with Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett and the funny chauvinist man from the Fast & Furious films.

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THE SCI-FI MOVIE PREVIEW In the future, landing at a cinema near you.

Total Film rounds up all of the robots, monsters, aliens, trolls, dinosaurs, apes, time-travellers and gun-toting raccoons coming your way...

WORDS PAUL BRADSHAW, JANE CROWTHER, ROSIE FLETCHER, JAMIE GRAHAM, STEPHEN JEWELL, JOSEPH MCCABE, JAMES MOTTRAM, MATT MUELLER, ROB POWER, NEIL SMITH & CHARLIE WHATELY-SMITH

SPACE

MONSTERS

ALTERNATE WORLDS

ALIENS

ROBOTS

TEEN TROUBLE

FUTURE

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PLAYING GOD

TIME TRAVEL

DYSTOPIA

SCI-FI PREVIEWWorldMags.net

WORDS JAMES MOTTRAM

Re-suited and rebooted, RoboCop 2013 upgrades Paul Verhoeven’s ’80s classic to tackle today’s technological fears. Expect ideas, emotion and heavy (metal) weaponry…

ROBOCOP DIRECTOR José Padilha STARRING Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish, Samuel L. Jackson, Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Ehle ETA 7 February

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arch, 2011. José Padilha is sitting in MGM’s gleaming Century City offices staring at a poster for RoboCop. The director had just seen his gritty Elite Squad: The Enemy Within become the highest-grossing film in the history of his native Brazil and now he’s in Hollywood, the studio brass hoping to pinch him for a re-working of a classic – Hercules or The Magnificent Seven. “I said, ‘You know what? All those movies – I don’t want to do them. But I want to do this one.’ And I pointed to RoboCop.” If they had 20 seconds to comply, they didn’t need it. A remake of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 classic

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sci-fi had been in development for years, with Darren Aronofsky – then hot off The Wrestler – at the helm. Aronofsky was excited. “It’s not with a studio that makes you put a guy in tights and a mask,” he told Total Film back in 2008. But, eventually, he jumped ship to make Black Swan – leaving the door ajar for Padilha.

The Brazilian had his own take on the story of Alex Murphy, the Detroit cop who, as played by Peter Weller in the original, gets pumped full of lead by a gang of thugs before mega-conglomerate OCP turn him into a robotic law-enforcer. “It’s different from the original RoboCop, but it’s ballsy in the same way,” claims Padilha. Akin to Aronofsky, he didn’t want to make just another superhero flick. “It goes in a completely different direction to, let’s say, Iron Man or Spider-Man.” Recruiting hot young scribe Joshua Zetumer (an uncredited writer on Quantum Of Solace), Padilha’s approach was radical. “There’s not even a villain in the film,” he says. “We don’t have

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a bad guy. There is no Joker in our movie.”

Which may shock fans of Verhoeven’s film, given the maniacal performance by Kurtwood Smith as the psychotic gang-leader who blows off Murphy’s hand, sanctions his death, and later becomes an OCP henchman.

Yet fast-forward two-and-a-half years and Padilha’s vision for RoboCop is looking prescient.

If Verhoeven’s film was a satiric fantasy of a dystopian future, the remake is a barbed jab at present-day politics and the hot-potato that is drone warfare. “We’re talking about where we are with drone politics at this point,” says Joel Kinnaman, the Swedish-American star of The Killing, who beat off competition from Michael Fassbender and Matthias Schoenaerts to slip on that iconic metallic visor.

With drones now controversially hitting the headlines, “you have these unmanned ships that are dropping bombs but there is still >> somebody behind them, pulling the trigger,” Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

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ROBOCOP

Lethal weapon: Joel Kinnaman as RoboCop and (above) Jackie Earle Haley as tech expert, Maddox.

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says Kinnaman. And in the future? Relocating us to 2026, Padilha’s film envisions a world of automated warfare, where drones make decisions about when to open fire – immediately removing political responsibility and moral accountability.

“And that’s a very slippery slope towards fascism,” notes Kinnaman.

So where does a trench soldier like RoboCop fit in? With OCP renamed OmniCorp, and now manufacturing drones for America to wage war across the world, the only the place they can’t be used is on home soil – with laws prohibiting such automated weaponry. Finding a loophole, OmniCorp’s chief Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) hits on putting a man inside a machine – creating a conscious cop-cyborg capable of upholding the law.

The way Padilha sees it, there’s a moral quandary at the core of RoboCop’s prime directives. “Because robots are not corruptible, do not have prejudices and biases, are not racist… there is a strong argument in favour of [using them]. And so the bad guy is not necessarily wrong in our movie. Maybe he’s right. We don’t answer that question. We just throw Alex Murphy in the middle of this debate.”

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nlike the original, Kinnaman’s Murphy survives his attack (a car bomb, this time), losing limbs but not his life. “He doesn’t die and he’s aware from the start of what he’s become,” says Kinnaman, noting how different this is to Weller’s RoboCop, who only gradually becomes alert to his life before the transformation as flashes of his past impinge upon his consciousness.

This time, Murphy’s family are very present. “They’re young, intelligent, with a gorgeous child, a happy family with a home in the suburbs,” explains Australian actress Abbie Cornish, who plays Clara, Murphy’s psychologist wife who grants

68 | Total Film | January 2014

the rights for her husband to be turned into RoboCop. “Their world is shattered by the events that unfold.”

As Padilha explains, keeping Murphy sentient “puts a philosophical question in his head: ‘Do I want to be a robot? How can I live like this? I can’t have sex with my wife, I can’t touch my son.’”

His family aside, Murphy has other tricky relationships to try and negotiate – notably with the Dr. Frankenstein-like scientist Dr. Dennett Norton, played by Gary Oldman. “He’s a brainsurgeon engineer on steroids,” laughs the British actor. “He builds the creature. So there is this father-son, creature-creator, dynamic to it.”

Until, that is, Norton comes under pressure from his paymasters at OmniCorp. “It’s realistic in that sense. We all have someone above us who we answer to, I guess!”

Then there’s Maddox, played by Watchmen star Jackie Earle Haley, an expert in robot technology out in the field. “He knows exactly what they’re going to do with any given situation or any stimuli,” says Haley. “And by putting organics into the machine, that’s like a whole other layer of computing that is worrisome for Maddox.

It’s going to create hesitation and uncertainty.

Now Maddox feels like he’s got this robot that he has no idea what it’s going to do.”

While the trailer and viral web clips hint at a reprisal for the classic ED-209 robot that opened Verhoeven’s film, what of the tone? The original is peppered with humour – notably in fake TV commercials. “It would be very disrespectful to try to copy that,” claims Kinnaman – though the inclusion of Samuel

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L. Jackson as a Fox TV-like media mogul and Jay Baruchel as OmniCorp’s marketing guru suggests it won’t be entirely po-faced.

Thankfully, Padilha confirms that the classic “I’ll buy that for a dollar” line from the original gets an airing. “I love it! Not only did we include it, but I think we got it in a fucking great place!”

Doubtless this will be a relief to Verhoeven, who went on record saying he hoped the remake “will use a little wink-wink once in a while”. Cornish, who grew up watching the original on VHS, notes, “I think José’s version does it a great honour.”

Still, the internet went ballistic when early shots surfaced of Kinnaman’s RoboCop in a skin-tight black suit. Padilha assures fans that the famous silver armour has not been ditched, rather, the restyled look is part of OmniCorp’s marketing strategy, testing various outfits for their new product. “They keep treating him like a Coca-Cola bottle, changing his look to see what sells best.”

Whatever the colour, Kinnaman shudders at the thought of the costume (designed by April Ferry). “It was very uncomfortable,” he says. “I’m not wearing much under the suit… you feel naked.

Also, when the cameras weren’t rolling, I [felt] awkward and embarrassed. It was hard to move my head and everything was making my back ache. I used that awkwardness, because that’s what Murphy would’ve felt, times a thousand.”

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PLANET

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WorldMags.net Man machine: Dr Norton (Gary Oldman) considers his creation; (opposite) Abbie Cornish as Murphy’s wife, Clara.

ROBOCOP

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

Five reasons why Mad Max 4 is going to be worth the wait…

DIRECTOR George Miller STARRING Tom Hardy, Nicholas Hoult, Charlize Theron, Mel Gibson ETA 2014 TBC It’s actually happening. At last…

After 25 years in development hell, the fourth Mad Max movie is finally in the can. Crashing into every stumbling block along the way (dwindling finances, aging actors, location problems, floods, the Iraq war), Fury Road struggled through its impossible shoot (and re-shoot) unscathed – before the Namibian government accused the production of messing up their desert…

It’s not just another remake…

Original series director George Miller is back behind the camera, “re-launching and revisiting” his own post-apocalypse-on-wheels to set a new Max story between the first and second movies.

Miller might have spent the interim making films about talking animals (Babe: Pig In The City, Happy Feet Two), but he’s been desperately trying to get Fury Road made ever since 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

‘I TRIED TO KEEP THE SPIRIT OF THE ORIGINAL… BUT TO BE DIFFERENT’ JOSÉ PADILHA Training with a SWAT team, Kinnaman also took “movement cues” from Weller’s performance. “Sometimes, he moves his head before his shoulders.

When I go in a new direction, I’ll let my head go first and my shoulders will follow.” Fans will be relieved to know that this RoboCop will not fly, as seen in 1993’s RoboCop 3 (when Robert John Burke took over from Weller). “I think RoboCop 2 and 3 are not even close,” spits Padilha.

He also dismisses the idea that making RoboCop was both “hell” and the “worst experience”; quotes that came out in an interview with his friend, fellow Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles. “I don’t know what happened there,” Padilha clarifies. “Fernando called me up and explained to me he hadn’t said that.”

Indeed, he points to a test screening held in California that scored so highly, totalfilm.com

the studio were satisfied enough not to hold another.

If anything, it seems Padilha has taken what you might call ‘the Nolan approach’ – a cocktail of action, ideas and politics played out on a grand stage. “He didn’t come out and say ‘I’m going to do to this what Chris Nolan did to the Batman franchise’ but he was approaching it from that angle,” says Oldman, who knows a thing or two about the Dark Knight.

Whether or not he’ll return for a sequel, Padilha’s unsure. “I’m not considering it right now.” But he’s happy. “I tried to keep the spirit of [Verhoeven’s film]. I tried to be different from a superhero movie. I tried to be different from a big studio film. Be way more political and philosophical than those movies usually are – and that is the ultimate tribute I can pay to the original RoboCop.” And that’s his move, creep. TF

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Tom Hardy is mad…

Mel Gibson will still be on the credits (taking a cameo role as a lone drifter), but Tom Hardy is filling his dusty biker boots as road warrior Max Rockatansky. “Imagine a hungry wolf,” says Hardy of his stripped down, post-Bane look.

“Or when you grab a cat by the throat and stuff it under the fucking water. That’s what I’m going to look like. Very hungry and very dangerous…”

Tina Turner isn’t in it…

Ruling the road in her giant war-rig as refugee leader Imperator Furiosa, Charlize Theron flanks Hardy, along with Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Zoë Kravitz. “Originally I was like, ‘Uh, I’m not going to play the fucking girl for Mad Max!’” says Charlize Theron. “Then I read it and I was like, ‘Oh, Max... I feel sorry for you…’”

It’s going to be loud…

Things might have moved on since 1979, but Miller is keen to shoot much of the petrol-head action without CGI. “These things are going to be really there,” says Hardy. “Big rigs, big explosions, big car crashes. Big violence…” And with leaked costume shots pointing to the possibility of mutant baddies, Fury Road is looking every inch the ballsy sequel we’ve been waiting (and waiting…) for. >>

SCI-FI PREVIEWWorldMags.net

UNDER THE SKIN The girl who fell to earth...

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f there’s a prize for the strangest, most striking science fiction film of the year, then it surely belongs to Under The Skin.

Based on the novel by Michael Faber, and directed by Sexy Beast’s Jonathan Glazer, it stars Scarlett Johansson as an alien creature – nominally named Laura – who drives a van around Glasgow and the surrounding Scottish countryside, picking up horny young men and luring them to their doom.

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Arguably, there hasn’t been a character so, well, alien since David Bowie beamed down in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth in 1976.

The way Glazer saw it, telling the story through her extraterrestrial point-of-view – as she experiences Earthly things, like television or chocolate cake – was “a very interesting journey to go on”. But how do you achieve that? “I wanted the alien to be alien, and to remain alien,” he says. “So the film needed to be told through sensation, sounds, colours and images.”

Particularly striking (not to mention disorientating) are the scenes where Laura leads her male conquests into what can only be described as a black void – something he and co-writer Walter Campbell spent a long time thinking about to avoid lapsing into the usual

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‘I WANTED THE ALIEN TO BE ALIEN, AND TO REMAIN ALIEN’ sci-fi clichés. “I didn’t want to make a science fiction film, so I didn’t want to deal with the hardware of science fiction, the design of science fiction,” says Glazer. “I really felt like we were committed to an alien journey. So you end up just jettisoning everything. All the ideas you have.”

Some thirteen years in development – Glazer made his Nicole Kidman-starring 2004 film Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

PACIFIC COAST NEWS

DIRECTOR Jonathan Glazer STARRING Scarlett Johansson, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Paul Brannigan, Jessica Mance, Michael Moreland ETA 14 March

WorldMags.netUNDER THE SKIN ID FOREVER: PART 1

DIRECTOR Roland Emmerich STARRING TBA ETA 3 July 2015

Roland Emmerich has long talked about a sequel to his 1996 hit Independence Day but things are now moving with Amazing Spider-Man writer James Vanderbilt onboard and Fruitvale Station’s Michael B. Jordon being wooed to star. Though Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman are expected to be back it’s not known if Will Smith will return.

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2

DIRECTOR Steve Pink STARRING Adam Scott, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Rob Corddry, Chevy Chase ETA March Clark Duke has said this second timetravelling installment will be “a bit Back To The Future 2” and while original star John Cusack isn’t getting back in the bubbles – Chevy Chase is, alongside Adam Scott (Parks And Recreation). “He’s playing [Cusack’s character Adam’s] son from 10 years in the future,” Rob Corddry explains. “His son that was conceived in 1986 on the night with Jenny Stedmeyer.”

AVATAR 2

DIRECTOR James Cameron STARRING Stephen Lang, Sam Worthington ETA December 2016 Sam Worthington revealed that shooting of the sequel to the highest grossing film of all time is expected to “begin in October 2014”.

Plot details are thin, but whispers are flying of exploding volcanos, lavish underwater digiscapes and James Cameron bragging about “not backing off the throttle of Avatar’s visual and emotional horsepower”.

THE MACHINE

Set to stun: Scarlett Johansson as alien seductress, Laura.

Birth, and a raft of seminal music videos, in the midst of trying to crack the difficult script – Johansson came on board early.

“It was a two-hander at first,” she notes.

“It was interesting because I met with Jonathan as the project took on different shapes, and I could tell that he wasn’t really committed to the idea yet himself. We would have these existential conversations that were so vague; it was like he was [still] shaping the work.”

Glazer and Campbell considerably pared back the novel, which was a more satirical piece, dealing with big business, politics and intensive farming. Instead, he went all out to craft an other-worldly experience, from casting non-professional actors and shooting scenes using hidden cameras on the streets of totalfilm.com

Glasgow, to using first-time composer Mica Levi (from the band Micachu and the Shapes) to conjure up an ethereal soundtrack. “You hope there are going to be some freaks and weirdos out there that like this!” he laughs.

Even Johansson admits she was taken aback when she saw the final result. “It was strange,” she recalls. “I remember I watched it with my assistant, who was with me for some of the filming, and the two of us left the theatre and she was like, ‘I can’t breathe!’”

Even at the European premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where it polarised reviewers, the actress sensed just how befuddled the audience was. “You could feel everybody go ‘What the fuck?’” she says. “It’s very disorientating.” JM

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DIRECTOR Caradog W. James STARRING Caity Lotz, Toby Stephens, Denis Lawson, Sam Hazeldine ETA 2014 With nods to Frankenstein, Caradog W. James’ chiller follows MOD scientist Dr. Vincent McCarthy (Toby Stephens) as he attempts to create a self-aware piece of artificial intelligence, unaware that he is secretly being manipulated by the British government, whose only desire is to create the ultimate killing machine.

“It’s quite disturbing,” attests Stephens.

TROLL HUNTER DIRECTOR Neil Marshall STARRING TBC ETA TBC

Norwegian André Øvredal’s original found footage monster movie mashed up The Blair Witch Project and Jurassic Park; now Brit cult horror director Neil Marshall has signed on for the re-do we’re expecting that, plus splat. Plot details are scant, but the format is expected to stay the same with a student film crew >> >> investigating local troll legends.

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SCI-FI PREVIEWWorldMags.net

Screenwriter Simon Kinberg talks us through the tricksy space/time continuum of X-Men: Days Of Future Past.

WORDS ROB POWER & JOSEPH MCCABE

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST DIRECTOR Bryan Singer STARRING Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan ETA 22 May

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t was definitely the hardest script I’ve ever worked on by a mile,” says Simon Kinberg, the man tasked with penning Marvel’s mutants return to the big screen next spring in X-Men: Days Of Future Past.

We’re not surprised: based on the 1980 Uncanny X-Men comic book story of the same name, Days Of Future Past is a lot of story to pack into a single feature. “You have time travel, you have robots, and you have 10 or 12 real main characters played by Oscar-, or Emmy-, or Tony-winning actors,” continues Kinberg. “They all need good

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drama to play and ideally some arcs to be able to track over the span of the movie. That was probably the biggest challenge, more than the time travel.”

With a story that jumps between a mutant unfriendly dystopian present and 1973, Days Of Future Past is a bold sideways step for the franchise to take. “After we finished First Class, Matthew Vaughn and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what we wanted the sequel to be,” says Kinberg. “There was an idea that came from Fox asking us if we would consider using Ian [McKellen] and Patrick [Stewart], initially just as the old Xavier and Magneto at the beginning and the end but not really tying them into the story.

“It was something that thematically interested us, but narratively we didn’t really know how to connect. We were thinking about it as a pure

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sequel to First Class, still in period with that cast.

As we started talking about the potential of Ian and Patrick in these small roles, I brought up to Matthew Days Of Future Past, not feeling, frankly, that it would be possible to make the movie. But he liked the idea, and I would say we kept a lot from the comic book – someone being sent into the past to save mutants of the future from Sentinels.”

That someone, of course, is Wolverine – Hugh Jackman returning to the fold fresh from his second solo outing as the adamantium-boned brawler. “We made the decision for a lot of reasons, some of them obvious and some of them more nuanced, to make it Wolverine who goes back in time,” says Kinberg. “One reason is that he is the protagonist of the franchise, and probably the most beloved character to a mass audience.

Probably the bigger reason was that when we >> Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST WorldMags.net

Powers of attraction: Michael Fassbender returns as Magneto.

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SCI-FI PREVIEWWorldMags.net Time trip: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) joins the young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) in 1973.

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whatever he’s done in the past will take hold.

The idea was that we wouldn’t be worried about every little butterfly’s flutter in 1973 turning into a tidal wave in the future.”

The real test of DOFP won’t be in the time travel details, but rather in the balancing of its enormo-cast, which includes returning First Class alumni Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy alongside the original X-crew. “The logic of the film, with the emotional structuring of it, is such that enough of the main characters feel like they’re evolving and changing over the span of the movie, and dovetailing in and out each other’s arcs,” says Kinberg. “One of the things we talked a lot about in the beginning was ‘whose movie is it’? Because as much as any ensemble movie is about all the main characters, there is a primary point of view or primary arc that you’re tracking over the span of the film.

“For us, very early on we made the decision that it was young Charles’ arc, and that really the emotional story of the movie is watching him go from the guy who’s lost his legs, lost his best friend, lost his sister

and in some ways lost his mind, to a guy who will become the all powerful benevolent Professor Xavier. So when you start the movie, McAvoy is really about as far as one can be from the Patrick Stewart that we know from X-1, and we’re really watching him take the first big step towards owning that chair and being a leader.”

But while DOFP will be a tonal shift from the ’60s playfulness of First Class, it’s not all doom and gloom. After all, giant robots and time twisting leave plenty of room for manoeuvring in a little fun. “Another part of the script was inter-cutting between the two worlds, and doing it in a way where you don’t lose the rhythm of the storytelling for each world, and can play with the surreal juxtaposition between the ’70s and a spaceship future,” says Kinberg. “We have a lot of ’70s iconography – we have disco balls, Nixon, a couple of bell bottoms, big, lush, loud shirts. The other thing that we started doing in First Class was playing secret history. So this movie has sequences that take place during the Paris Peace Accords, and there’s a sequence in Saigon as the troops are leaving. It’s fun to dip in and out of real history. It gives a sense of a grounding in reality that maybe most superhero movies or science fiction movies don’t have.” TF

‘WE WATCH CHARLES TAKE A STEP TOWARDS BEING A LEADER’ SIMON KINBERG, WRITER WorldMags.net

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WIREIMAGE

started thinking about the logistical realities of Kitty’s consciousness being sent back in time, to her younger self, as opposed to her physical body being sent back… it was impossible.

“Obviously in the book it’s Kitty that’s sent back, [but] because we cast Ellen Page in X-Men: The Last Stand, you’re talking about an actress who, in the age of Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, would have been negative 20 years old.

So we started thinking again. The first reflex response to that was a character who doesn’t age. Wolverine is the only character who would look the same in 1973 as he does in the future.”

Plot tinkering aside, the DOFP writing team – which also includes First Class scripter Jane Goldman – also had those pesky time travel paradoxes to iron out.

“That was one of Bryan Singer’s first contributions to the movie,” says Kinberg. “Initially as a producer of the film and then obviously as the director, he was really fastidious about wanting to make the time travel logic make sense.

“Bryan came up with the time travel rules being that while the person sent back in time is back there, whatever they’re doing in the past doesn’t affect the future. There’s a sort of ticking clock, [and] when Wolverine wakes up back in the future,

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST WorldMags.net EX MACHINA

DIRECTOR Alex Garland STARRING Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac, Corey Johnson ETA TBA 28 Days Later, Dredd and Sunshine scribe Alex Garland makes his directorial debut with his own script following a promising young programmer who is tricked into an experiment with a prototype robot disguised as a beautiful girl (Alicia Vikander). Filmed on location in Norway, Garland has described the film as a psychological thriller within an intense love triangle.

THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU DIRECTOR TBA STARRING TBA ETA TBA

X-RATED Uncanny X-Men comic writer Chris Claremont appraises the adaptation of his source material.

Is it tricky to adapt Days of Future Past thirty-three years after it was first published?

This is probably more than a little hubris on my part, but I don’t think the creative genesis of the story in the late ’70s, early ’80s is any more relevant or irrelevant to the film adaptation than the crafting of Romeo And Juliet by William Shakespeare was to the film by Baz Luhrmann.

Everything evolves to a certain extent. The essential story is the key; and I have every faith that’s what we’re gonna see on film.

How do you feel about the change in the story’s central protagonist from Kitty Pryde to Logan?

Well, c’mon, if you’re gonna put a character front and centre, from a cinematic standpoint, and you’ve got Hugh Jackman, you use him!

[Laughs] That is an understandable evolution of the story. I might wish for a different outcome, but I have no problem [with] why Bryan [Singer] and Simon [Kinberg] made that decision.

What are your thoughts on the rest of the ensemble cast?

Having Jennifer Lawrence back as Mystique is as delightful in its way as having Halle Berry back as Ororo. Peter Dinklage is just a brilliant actor… The thing that has always left me totally gobsmacked about this cast is how skilled and how right it is. You’ve got Ian McKellan as one vision of Magneto and you’ve got Michael totalfilm.com

Fassbender as his younger self. The same goes with Charlie. The casting skill that went into this is just breathtaking.

Are there any particular moments from the comic you’d like to see in the film?

It’s not where you look through it and say, “Oh, this is a brilliant moment and that’s a brilliant moment.” John Byrne and I basically had 38 pages to tell this story. Thirty-eight pages by today’s standards is nothing. We had to get in, say our piece, get out. The story is memorable if it’s done right. This isn’t about a person. It is about the X-Men and the human race, and how what we do today has unexpected consequences 40 years later.

Is there anything you’re nervous about seeing in the film?

Not really. [But] if you accept the parameter that Charlie has known about Logan meeting him in 1969, 1970 all his life, subsequently, that means when he recruits Logan to the X-Men, he’s known what is waiting for himself and Magneto in the future. How then do you fit that particular revelation? For all I know Simon answers the question. I’m just hypothesizing out of total ignorance. But it has the potential of changing the whole way you look at Charlie, who with this action reveals that he’s not so different from Magneto. Magneto twists the physical world, Charlie the mental world. JMc

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Leonado DiCaprio and his Appian Way production company are producing a new version of HG Wells’ much-adapted bio-horror tale (seven films and counting). Leo’s already tapped up Emmy award winning Hemlock Grove writer Brian McGreevy to mould a ‘sci-fi film with a topical ecological message’.

LEFT BEHIND

DIRECTOR Vic Armstrong STARRING Nicholas Cage, Chad Michael Murray, Jordin Sparks, Nicky Whelan ETA 2014 A reboot of 2000’s straight-to-video Christian armageddon stinker, former stuntman Armstrong’s version takes place hours after ‘the rapture’ has taken place on Earth. Writer/ producer Paul Lalonde admits it had always been his desire to make “a big-budget version” of the film “that would appeal to a wider audience.” Yet despite the film’s supposed Hollywood treatment, Lalonde insists it will retain its strong Christian themes.

PROMETHEUS 2 DIRECTOR TBA STARRING Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender ETA TBA

Although the Jack Paglen-penned script for the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2012 Alien prequel is finished, little is known about how the plot will develop. Considering the grand existential ambition of Scott’s last effort, we hope that this second outing provides a lot more answers than questions.

OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS

DIRECTOR Jon Wright STARRING Ben Kingsley, Gillian Anderson, Callan McAuliffe ETA 2014 In a future where robots are locked in a deadly war against their human creators (everyone is confined indoors or controlled by an implanted chip), a teenage boy (McAuliffe) gathers a gang together to find his long lost father. Co-written and directed

by Grabbers creator Wright, ORO could >> >> be How I Live Now meets Pacific Rim… January 2014 | Total Film | 75

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The apes are back: and this time they are angry...

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES The apes have risen, now it’s time to shine….

DIRECTOR Matt Reeves STARRING Jason Clarke, Andy Serkis, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell ETA 17 July

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he world has changed since the humans first monkeyed with nature and the apes flung their poop at us in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Now the virus that began to spread in the first film (check out the end credits, if you missed it) has ravaged the world, leaving pockets of survivors in human encampments.

“What you see in a short decade of time is the world has changed. It’s science fact not science

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fiction. We wanted the world to feel grounded like it’s a real place,” says producer Dylan Clarke.

Shot in post-Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, Dawn finds us in a landscape where nature is taking control; the apes have officially risen and Caesar (a sublimely perf’-capped Andy Serkis) is at the forefront. “The apocalypse has happened. The world changed by itself, without humans, there’s a lushness to it, a beauty to it,” Clarke confirms.

With Cloverfield’s Matt Reeves picking up directing duties from Rise’s Rupert Wyatt, Dawn promises more man vs beast post-apoc action while maintaining the intelligence and emotional resonance of the first franchise reboot.

Zero Dark Thirty’s Jason Clarke stars as defacto human leader Malcolm with Keri Russell as his

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wife and Kodi Smit-Mcphee his son, trying to forge uneasy peace with apes who have begun to evolve (at the end of Rise, Caesar speaks, remember).

Meanwhile, in the Simian camp, led by Caesar (and under the tutelage of Serkis), a new raft of acting talent has donned skin tight suits and covered themselves in luminous dots. Brit TF fave Toby Kebbell plays Koba, Caesar’s angry hench-ape and potential challenger to the throne, with Judy Greer as Caesar’s missus Cornelia, suggesting the start of a minor performance capture revolution. With Serkis’ Imaginarium studio advancing perf-cap possibilities in film, and returning ape and movement coach Terry Notary continuing to develop and teach the physical side of playing a primate, apes may indeed rise. RF Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

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TRANSCENDENCE A nightmare within a nightmare…

DIRECTOR Wally Pfister STARRING Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman ETA 25 April

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ranscendence is an “experience beyond the normal or physical level”.

Quite a title for any movie – let alone one with a rookie director. Except this is hardly Wally Pfister’s first time behind the camera; he’s taking the lead on his own project after lensing all of Christopher Nolan’s films since Memento.

Pfister’s film is the story of a scientist (Johnny Depp) who gets assassinated before his wife (Rebecca Hall) uploads his brain to the web and starts working with ‘him’ to achieve technological singularity. So, it seems that Jack Paglen’s script is a perfect match for the man whose visuals melted minds in Inception.

“He’s obviously got a great eye, so I didn’t have any question about his ability,” says Depp. “But once he got in the ring he brought so much more than I could have imagined.”

With his former director/mentor on executive producer duties, and longtime collaborators Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy joinging the cast, the sprawling, soaring sci-fi looks set to take the extended Nolan family into even deeper, twistier territory.

With one of Hollywood’s most celebrated cinematographers calling the shots, it’s a safe bet that Transcendence is going to be a looker.

But just what Pfister’s future-tech vision is going to look like is still a tightly wrapped secret. “I think it’s important to have something special for the audience,” says Pfister.

“I think it’s wonderful that people have an appetite… but I think they should really wait for the film.” PB

INTERSTELLAR Six things we know about Christopher Nolan’s new project…

PACIFIC COAST NEWS, ALLSTAR, WENN.COM

DIRECTOR Christopher Nolan STARRING Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon, Casey Affeck ETA 7 November 2014 It’s a family affair Directed by Christopher Nolan, co-written by his brother Jonathan and produced by his wife Emma Thomas – expect all the usual signatures. The only regular collaborator missing from the credits is cinematographer Wally Pfister, replaced by Hoyte van Hoytema after filming schedules clashed with Pfister’s directorial debut (see above).

No one really knows what it’s about And in true Nolan tradition, a lot of people probably never will. Sketchy synopsis leaks point to a team of totalfilm.com

spacemen adventuring through a wormhole to try and find a new food source for a dying planet – but whispers of time travel and alternate dimensions suggest the Inception director is intending to keep the totem spinning.

Expect controversy from the boffins Based on the work of theoretical astrophysicist Kip Thorne, Interstellar will forefront the concept of ‘Einstein-Rosen bridges’ – wormholes that allow travel across different plains of the spacetime continuum.

Stephen

Hawking lost a bet with Thorne when he tried to disprove his theory (owing him a year’s subscription to Penthouse), but the argument still rages on blackboards around the world.

McConaughey is taking the lead Looking gaunt after shedding pounds to play an HIV sufferer in Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey was snapped on set wearing a space suit under a baggy anorak. “There’s a lot of things to consider with a large-scope movie like this,” says McConaughey.

“But when we’re shooting the scenes, it’s like you’re on an independent. It’s a couple of takes, ‘We got it’, move on. It’s not overly precious.”

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The poster’s going to be crowded Originally attached to Spielberg, the addition of Nolan’s name has unsurprisingly attracted everyone in Hollywood. McConaughey’s ‘Cooper’ is leading the team through the wormhole, but he’s joined by the likes of Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn, David Oyelowo and John Lithgow. And Michael Caine.

It’s going to be big...

Locations have been split between Canada and Iceland – with the Nordic landscapes leading to rumours of a ruined-earth setting. Elsewhere, locals in Fort Macleod, Alberta saw McConaughey barrelling down Main Street in a truck trying to outrun a dust storm. With Nolan’s penchant for upscaling everything, expect this to be his biggest film yet. PB >> January 2014 | Total Film | 77

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Ready for action: Tom Cruise suits up.

DIRECTOR Doug Liman STARRING Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Jeremy Piven, Lara Pulver ETA 30 May

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ying is easy. Sci-fi exposition is hard.”

Edge Of Tomorrow screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie there, giving us an insight into the time-looping shenanigans which underpin Doug Liman’s upcoming mash-up of Groundhog Day, Full Metal Jacket and, oh, just about every alien invasion film ever made.

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After a crowd-pleasing appearance at Comic-Con in July, this futuristic story of an army media relations officer who, having been killed in a battle against a hostile alien force, is forced to relive the day of his death over and over again had three weeks of reshoots last August. Some pundits were muttering World War Z under their breath, but Warner Bros insisted the redos, which saw Jeremy Piven join a cast already boasting such homegrown talents as Sherlock’s Lara Pulver, Robin Hood hunk Jonas Armstrong and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, were planned from the off. The way Bill Paxton tells it, all’s fine in EOT world. “The movie’s gonna be crazy wild,” he says. “It’s super original and has great humour. They’ve changed

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the title from All You Need is Kill which we were all partial to, but it’s a PG-13 movie.’”

With Cruise and leading lady Emily Blunt sporting bulky exoskeletons in the movie that make Matt Damon’s Elysium clobber look skimpy by comparison, we’re looking forward to über-cool science-fiction mayhem with a sly subversive streak. (Cruise’s Bill Cage is no fearless hero, but a cowardly desk jockey out of his depth.)

Paxton, however, will just be hoping the good vibes on set transfer to the screen. “Tom’s a great ringleader,” he chuckles. “He really pumped me up. He’d go, ‘I saw some dailies last night.

You’re killing it, Paxton! You’re killing it!’ We had a great time…” NS Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

SCOPEFEATURES.COM, INFPHOTO.COM

EDGE OF TOMORROW Tom Cruise relives his death.

EDGE OF TOMORROW WorldMags.net

JURASSIC WORLD Beast(s) in show...

DIRECTOR Colin Trevorrow STARRING Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson ETA 12 July 2015

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

Marvel assemble another super team.

DIRECTOR James Gunn STARRING Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Benicio Del Toro, Bradley Cooper ETA 1 August

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een Thor: The Dark World? Then you’ll have seen The Collector, aka Tanaleer Tivan, the first member of Guardians’ anti-hero ensemble to make a big-screen appearance. “I had never heard of him,” reveals Benicio Del Toro, who’ll be seen rocking a dodgy wig and an even dodgier accent in his role as the universe’s foremost keeper of alien

artifacts and extra-terrestrial life forms.

“But when someone calls and says ‘I need you in my movie’, it’s exciting.”

The Collector, though, is only one piece of the puzzle in James Gunn’s sci-fi blockbuster, which also includes Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), Korath the Pursuer (Djimon Hounsou) and a gun-toting raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper. Throw in a green Zoe Saldana, a blue Michael Rooker and a baldy Karen Gillan and you have one wacky collection of reprobates. “It’s called the Marvel Universe for a reason,” shrugs studio chief Kevin Fiege.

“It encompasses everything…” NS

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

S

o what do we know about the fourth installment in the Jurassic franchise?

Well, we know the movie will take us back to Isla Nublar and that it will star Iron Man 3’s Ty Simpkins and Nick The Kings of Summer Robinson as brothers. It is unconfirmed, though, whether they’ll be joined by Josh Brolin, Bryce Dallas Howard

and David Oyelowo, three of the many names that have been linked to Colin Trevorrow’s series reboot. (The Safety Not Guaranteed helmer is keeping mum, only saying he has been “working hard to cast a Murderer’s Row of actors”.)

Similarly, Jeff Goldblum is playing it cool as to whether he’ll be back as Dr. Ian Malcolm, saying, “Whether I’m in it or not, I’ll be first in line for a ticket.”

There will be a new dinosaur hogging the limelight, mind, and Trevorrow promises JW’s star attraction will be “pretty bad-ass…”

NS

JUPITER ASCENDING Kill the toilet cleaner...

Dinobots! Dinobots! Dinobots!

DIRECTOR Michael Bay STARRING Mark Wahlberg, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci ETA 10 July

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ets on fire in Texas, attacks on set in Hong Kong: yes, it’s been an eventful few months for Michael Bay and the fourth Transformers film. Small wonder Mark Wahlberg calls the globe- trotting shoot “very intense” and the pic as a whole “as demanding a movie as I’ve ever done.”

“Michael works at a pretty fast pace so you gotta be prepared,” says the actor of his Pain & Gain collaborator.

“Once he starts working, totalfilm.com

he doesn’t like to stop. You have to understand: you’re shooting a $300m movie. You’ve got a lot going on. If you ain’t got it, you’re done.”

Dispensing with Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky altogether, Age Of Extinction casts Wahlberg as Cade, “a young single dad who’s trying to raise his daughter [and] gets thrust into this gigantic shitstorm.”

Precise details of said shitstorm are still under wraps, though with Dinobots spicing up the ongoing Autobot-Decepticon conflict, we’re already gearing up for some major robo-struction…

NS

DIRECTORS Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski STARRING Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean ETA 25 July

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e’re not very good at making small things,” says Lana Wachowski, one half of sibling directing duo. “We keep saying ‘Let’s make a small movie’, but they always end up being complex.” Latest case in point? Jupiter Ascending,

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a “sci-fi space opera” about a janitor (Mila Kunis) who finds herself on the Queen of the Universe’s hit list.

“We’re doing stuff that’s never been done before,” says Channing Tatum, who describes his character – Caine, the “splice” sent down to future Earth to kill Jupiter – as “a hybrid wolf and human” who’s also half albino.

“All the stuff is real, and it’s been hard figuring it out.” Black Swan star Kunis can testify to that herself, having been cold-cocked by her co-star during a mistimed action sequence… NS >> January 2014 | Total Film | 79

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DIVERGENT

Are the odds in favour of this latest YA adap?

DIRECTOR Neil Burger STARRING Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet ETA 4 April

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otal Film is crouching in the dark in Cinescape Studios in Chicago watching Shailene Woodley and Brit Theo James get crushed in a shrinking aluminium box. As the walls close in, the duoÕs limbs intertwine and they breathlessly scrabble to brace the suffocating space. We know how they feel. ItÕs muggy and airless in the former steel works building thanks to a gathering storm (a tornado is predicted to hit the windy city imminently) and tensions are high on-set of what could be Ôthe next The Hunger GamesÕ. Not least because that incoming weather is cutting shooting time short today and the box (the sides pushed together in a lo-tech fashion by beefy gaffers) isnÕt behaving perfectly, but also because

As beloved by fans as Twilight or The Hunger Games, Divergent boasts plenty of bone-crunching combat, fear challenges (that box being one to overcome the horror of small spaces) and dystopian war and death, but crucially, thereÕs something extra here that neither Stephenie Meyer nor Suzanne Collins offered in their stories; proper, tangible lust and sexual charge. JamesÕ Four is no swoony, blueballed vamp or district friend who doesnÕt make a move Ð heÕs sexy, sensual and the tension between him and WoodleyÕs kickass Tris should crackle. ÒI feel sweaty and sexy,Ó James purrs, keeping his American accent between takes as he joins TF to contemplate the scene the duo have just filmed. Sitting close to his co-star, finishing her sentences and constantly complimenting her, the chemistry seems to be apparent both off and on screen. SoÉ Total Film ventures gooseberry-like, is this new world hotter than The Hunger Games? ÒI think itÕs sexy because itÕs

DIVERGENT OFFERS PROPER, TAGIBLE LUST AND SEXUAL CHARGE director Neil Burger and his leads need to nail the right mix of sex and danger to make this inaugural film take off with audiences Ð and lay the way for a planned three-film franchise.

Based on the YA bestseller by Veronica Roth, Divergent is set 150 years in the apocalyptic future, where people are divided into factions according to their personality traits.

But what if 16-year-old Tris (Woodley) had the traits of all the factions and was ÔdivergentÕ? That would make her dangerous to the governing body led by duplicitous Jeanine (Winslet), who rules by a ruthless method of divide and conquerÉ

relatable,Ó smiles Woodley before quickly turning the conversation back to the action, ÒI mean, obviously itÕs an exaggerated dystopian futureÉÓ Well indeed. And one that Burger insisted was filmed on location in Chicago, just as the book detailed. Which meant Woodley and James filmed scenes on the cityÕs famous Navy Pier ferris wheel, on the overhead trains and within sight of the Willis Tower Ð all dressed to look distressed, ruined and worn. ÒThe vibe is this industrial feel,Ó says James. ÒThereÕs that essence that peppers the whole film.Ó Yeah, that and the sexual tensionÉ JC

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DIVERGENT

THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

DIRECTOR Joss Whedon STARRING Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, James Spader ETA May 2015 In their second re-group (and Marvel’s 11th outing), Iron Man, Cap, Hulk, Thor and gang find themselves redundant when the US government develops their own defensive robot, Ultron (Spader) – possibly created

by Tony Stark himself. As a superior AI and firepower ’bot it’d be no fun if Ultron stayed meek, so expect him to rebel and cause chaos.

YOUNG ONES

DIRECTOR Jake Paltrow STARRING Nicholas Hoult, Elle Fanning, Michael Shannon, Kodi Smit-McPhee ETA 2014 Gwynnie’s bro heads up a futuristic fantasy where water is a priceless commodity and a 14-year-old boy must use his wits to survive. Reputedly aesthetically similar to Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, “this is an amazing smart and visceral maverick film,” guarantees producer Tristan Orpen Lynch.

Living in a box: (main) Tris (Shailene Woodley) and Four (Theo James);(top) on set with director Neil Burger; the ruthless Jeanine Matthews (Kate Winslet).

RESIDENT EVIL 6

DIRECTOR Paul W.S. Anderson STARRING Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez ETA September The latest and seemingly last chapter (until an inevitable re-boot) of the zombie franchise sees Alice (Jovovich) continue her hunt of those culpable for the T-Virus outbreak. “[You’ll see] the destruction and loss of the world,” says Anderson, promising more of the Red Queen, Rain and The Hive. “But I can’t tell you if it’s the loss of the entire world…”

SNOWPIERCER

DIRECTOR Bong Joon-ho STARRING Chris Evans, Ed Harris, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt ETA 2014 Despite Harvey Weinstein trimming Bong’s original cut, this apocalyptic thriller still has us excited.

Set on earth amid a destructive ice age, the survivors inhabit a perpetual motion train with a cruel class system, where those treated poorly decide to rebel. It’s opened uncut in South Korea to huge acclaim, but we get a Weinstein-tinkered version. “There’s usually method to Harvey’s madness,” Evans says.

DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION DIRECTOR Scott Derrickson STARRING TBA ETA 2014

This cult game adaptation is in development, co-written by Sinister’s Derrickson and C Robert Cargill. The plot revolves around an anti-terrorist agent crime-fighting in a world where the cure for a deadly virus is rationed.

“Deus Ex is a phenomenal cyberpunk game with soul and intelligence,” says Derrickson. >> >> “[It] will make one hell of a movie.”

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January 2014 | Total Film | 81

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Mars attacks: Vincent (Liev Schreiber), Rebecca (Romola Garai) try to help Charles (Elias Koteas).

THEChances LAST DAYS ON MARS of anything coming from Mars? High.

DIRECTOR Ruairi Robinson STARRING Liev Screiber, Romola Garai, Elias Koteas, Olivia Williams ETA 2014

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t Elstree Studios, Olivia Williams, Liev Schreiber and Romola Garai are adorned in white space suits and busting into the red zone on the frantic-o-meter. Life on Mars is rapidly going pear-shaped and, as a comatose Elias Koteas lays before them in their spacecraft medical bay, potentially hosting some alien unpleasantness, they bicker about what to do next. The scenario is fraught, the shooting pace brisk, but the mood light and jocular. No one minds that Williams keeps fluffing her lines,

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and she’s quick with the quips between takes.

“Where do you want me, darling? On my knees?” she jokes to Irish director Ruairi Robinson, making his feature debut.

Adapted from a short story by British sci-fi author Sydney J. Bounds, The Last Days On Mars is an ambitious, freaky chiller about an eightstrong crew of astronauts who discover bacterial life on the Red Planet. No prizes for guessing that said life forms end up inflicting harm on their guests, turning them into raging zombies.

“It’s my first time in space,” Williams tells Total Film. “I’m not a big sci-fi aficionado but the drama and relationships are brilliantly drawn in this. It fucks with your expectations of sci-fi and messes with the conventions.” Schreiber, who’s been teasing Williams that she based her steely character on Hermione Granger, was impressed with how

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little money Robinson has needed to achieve his vision. “Nowadays, with CGI and elaborate budgets, you get overwrought films,” he says. “But this a better way to approach the genre. It has all the elements of noir, claustrophobia and anxiety.”

Robinson (his first name is pronounced raw-ree) has been building up to TLDOM for years with a string of award-winning short films.

His 2002 animated short Fifty Percent Grey was Oscar nominated; his 2011 short BlinkyTM, starring Where The Wild Things Are’s Max Records, is a smart chiller about a domestic robot gone bad. To recreate Mars’ stark landscapes, he decamped with his cast to Jordan for two weeks.

“Can you imagine running in this suit in the desert with a goldfish bowl on your head?” laughs Schreiber. “It was brutal, but hopefully it will all be worth it.” RJa Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

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GODZILLA The beauty of the beast…

DIRECTOR Neill Blomkamp STARRING Hugh Jackman, Sharlto Copley, Sigourney Weaver, Dev Patel ETA March 2015 Blomkamp’s third effort is based upon his first short Tetra Vaal, with the film set around a robot kidnapped by two criminals and adopted into a dysfunctional family. Sci-fi icon Sigourney Weaver has recently signed on to star alongside Hugh Jackman and Dev Patel as production gets underway in South Africa.

TOMORROWLAND

DIRECTOR Brad Bird STARRING George Clooney, Judy Greer, Hugh Laurie, Kathryn Hahn ETA 12 December 2014 Bird has teamed up with Damon Lindelof for an original story following a teen girl and an inventor in search of a mysterious park.

Though rumoured to be based around the ‘1952’ box of Disney blueprints, Lindelof has stressed it will not involve aliens.

THE GIVER

DIRECTOR Phillip Noyce STARRING Meryl Streep, Jeff Bridges, Alexander Skarsgård, Taylor Swift, Katie Holmes ETA TBA Based upon Lois Lowry’s bestseller about a ‘perfect’ world where ‘everyone is happy’, one boy is chosen be exposed to emotions such as pain and sadness via interaction with an old man (Bridges). Taylor Swift’s casting as Rosemary may have upset fans, but Streep and Bridges should steady the ship.

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 1 & PART 2

DIRECTOR Gareth Edwards STARRING Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Bryan Cranston ETA 16 May

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f this was just a monster movie I wouldn’t be here,” says Bryan Cranston, who chose a giant radioactive lizard as his first co-star since wrapping Breaking Bad. “It’s about harnessing power, disposing of waste and messing around with Mother Nature. Living in that milieu is this creature that emerges from the muck and mire… It’s very exciting.”

Sixty years after he made his debut in the original Japanese classic, everyone’s favourite fire-breathing iguana is set for quite a birthday party in 2014 – with a completely rebooted,

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restyled origin story. Director Gareth Edwards made his name in special effects before writing and directing 2010’s Monsters, the sublime sci-fi that earned him the Godzilla gig. With that in mind, don’t expect next summer’s towerblockbuster to be another sensory overload.

“If everything is all the way up to 11 the whole time, it might as well be at zero,” says Edwards.

“It’s all about contrast. We tried to build the rhythm of the movie. By the end of the film, hopefully it’s as powerful as it can be, but if people come out and haven’t had to stop themselves from crying, then I’ve failed.”

Not that we haven’t already started misting up at the prospect of seeing “the tallest Godzilla ever” fighting an equally weighty cast and, rumour has it, at least one other giant creature.

Trust us, this is going to be huge. PB

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DIRECTOR Francis Lawrence STARRING Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Julianne Moore ETA November 2014/November 2015

After her second go at the games, Katniss (Lawrence) finds herself reluctantly leading a rebellion against the Capitol – at great personal cost. With Julianne Moore joining the cast as ruthless President Coin and the romantic stakes raised, this finale should provide plenty of action to sate two films.

SHIVERS

DIRECTOR Rie Rasmussen STARRING TBA ETA TBA A remake of David Cronenberg’s gory body horror, Rasmussen has spoken of her desire to reinterpret the original from a modern perspective. Producer Jeff Sackman also reckons they will “push the boundaries” for audiences that now enjoy edgy horror. >> >> January 2014 | Total Film | 83

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A stitch in time: Aaron Eckhart and Yvonne Strahovski as Adam and Terra.

I, FRANKENSTEIN Aaron Eckhart is in fighting form as the Monster…

DIRECTOR Stuart Beattie STARRING Aaron Eckhart, Yvonne Strahovski, Bill Nighy, Jai Courtney, Miranda Otto ETA 24 January

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ary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster is featured in well over a hundred movies, but less than a handful present the author’s creation the way her novel describes him – scholar, philosopher… stick fighter?

“Yeah, the stick fighting was a big deal,” grins Aaron Eckhart, who studied the Filipino martial art in order to correctly play the creature (now named after his creator) in I, Frankenstein.

Not that you should expect a reverential take on Mary Shelly’s seminal novel – writer-director Stuart Beattie has in fact adapted Underworld creator Kevin Grevioux’s graphic novel, which finds the title character cast adrift in the 21st Century (though still longing for acceptance in a hostile, indifferent world).

But back to beating people with chunks of wood. “Kali stick fighting…” laughs Eckhart, shaking his head. “I trained for six months! I’ve never been in quite such good shape. That was important, for the stamina of the movie and also

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for who Frankenstein’s supposed to be. The guy’s roaming the earth, homeless, picking up scraps and surviving. I thought his body needed to represent that. Of course in this movie he’s a fighter. It’s unlike Frankenstein as we’ve seen him before. He’s always been strong, but he’s never been athletic. He’s never had forces after him like we have in this movie, with the gargoyles and the demons.”

Gargoyles? Demons? No, it most certainly isn’t Shelley’s novel. But Eckhart insists I, Frankenstein does offer audiences Shelley’s character. “Through Frankenstein’s incarnations in the movies and television, he’s become this square-headed, bolted, stiff sort of lumberjack,” he asserts. “That’s not who he was in the book.

He’s sensitive, tender, curious, literate, astute.

Picking up not only behavior, but languages and nuances. That’s been lost, unfortunately. The story of Frankenstein is more about how he isn’t able to find any warmth from society, and his search, than it is about being stitched together. The story is the quest for love, and the quest for joy in life.

That’s where we are true to the book – this is his quest for a companion, acceptance.”

One possible companion arrives in the form of Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski, playing Terra – a scientist who, like Frankenstein’s misguided creator, seeks to bring life to the dead.

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“You have the whole thing about somebody being warm to him for the first time,” says Eckhart. “Does he trust that? How can he trust that? It’s too much for him, it’s too scary. Is he being tricked? On the other hand you have the evil force that is flattering him and giving him platitudes, but he doesn’t feel right with that. So he’s gotta make decisions. It’s actually kind of a complicated little story that Stuart’s dreamt up.”

Eckhart enjoyed playing an undead creature caught in a war between gargoyles (led by Miranda Otto’s Queen Leonore) and demons (headed by Bill Nighy’s Naberius). “The good thing about that,” adds Eckhart, “is you don’t have to stand on history. I don’t have to go back and look at De Niro or Karloff. You have all those feelings inside you, all that emotion. But you have other things to think about. You’re not thinking about your awful state of being when someone’s trying to kill you all the time. You gotta protect yourself.”

We’re back to hitting people with hard objects.

“That’s when the movie becomes exciting, because he uses sticks. That’s another thing we haven’t seen in a Hollywood movie, but it’s more of an Asian martial-art movie thing. Now you’re seeing the fury of the sticks and the hits, the art of it. It’s a big part of the movie. I think the trick will be to marry the two, for people to accept the monster and accept this new world he’s inhabiting.”. JMc Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

WorldMags.netI, FRANKENSTEIN

THECorridors MAZE RUNNER of power...

DIRECTOR Wes Ball STARRING Dylan O’Brien, Will Poulter, Thomas Brodle-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario ETA 24 October

T

he young adult market shows no sign of abating.

With the wild success of Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games, it seems like producers are clamouring to discover the next YA cash-calf.

Pushed back from it’s original release spot, The Maze Runner, based on James Dashner’s bestselling novel, seems to be biding its time, avoiding competing with Divergent (4 April) and Catching Fire (out now).

“It’s a sci-fi Lord Of The Flies,” producer Wyck Godfrey tells us.

“It has more in common with Enders

Game or Divergent than Hunger Games – but there are similar themes: adults aren’t there to help you, adults have designed a brutal world that you have to make your own.” That brutal world is a maze, with walls 100ft high, that Thomas (TV Teen Wolf’s Dylan O’Brien) wakes to find himself trapped in. Surrounded by a troop of boys who’ve established their own micro-society, Thomas begins to unravel the secrets. Until a girl (Skins’ Kaya Scodelario) turns up…

“What’s interesting about this movie is that it’s the first ‘boy YA’ book series,” Godfrey considers. “It feels like everything at the moment is a girl protagonist – whether it’s Bella, or Tris or Katniss.” With plenty of violence, tension and intrigue, is this finally a film teenage boys can admit to loving? Makes Harry Potter look like a speccy nerd....RF

HER App-y ever after?

DIRECTOR Spike Jonze STARRING Joaquin Pheonix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde ETA 10 January

J

onze’s inspiration for his latest film exploring quirky human interaction came from a photographic print of a girl, her head turned away from the camera,

by Todd Hido. Bewitched by the mystery of an unknown girl and her possible interior life, the creator of Being John Malkovich and

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Adaptation began to develop a script about a lonely man, Theodore, living a disconnected life in a future Los Angeles and finding romance and companionship in his female-voiced AI operating system.

Though Jones cast Pheonix as Theodore and Samantha Morton as the voice of the OS, he decided to replace Morton with Johansson in the edit (the character still retains the name ‘Samantha’) and re-tweak the whole movie. The result, says Jonze, is a mix of futurist mood piece and heartbreaking romance. “I always wanted it to be a relationship movie,” he says, “and that was at odds with it being high-concept-y.” JC

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>> January 2014 | Total Film | 85

SCI-FI PREVIEWWorldMags.net

STAR WARS EPISODE VII No one knows what it is yet, but we do know what it isn’t…

GALACTIC EMPEROR

DIRECTOR J.J.Abrams STARRING TBA ETA 2015

Sci-fi king J.J.Abrams talks Star Wars, Star Trek and mindbending new novel S.

Do you feel the weight of the responsibility of reinventing Star Wars?

When it comes to doing something that is going to be meaningful to an audience, there is no other opportunity like this one that I can think of.

Are you looking forward to shooting in London next year?

Very much so as it’s something that I’ve always intended to do. But I’m torn because I have done everything I can to keep the production of my projects in Los Angeles, but production seems to be going elsewhere. Yet the opportunity to work with UK crews is something that has always been a dream of mine. Of course, that dream existed prior to me being married and having a family, so the reality of making a move like that for any period of time becomes much more difficult when there are other people that you desperately love and care for involved.

With its numerous narratives and footnotes, S, your debut novel with co-creator Doug Dorst, resembles a Blu-ray with lots of extras and easter eggs more than it does a straightforward cinematic experience…

Someone asked me recently why I made an old-fashioned book? Why didn’t I make it interactive? But it is an interactive book, it’s just an analogue interactive book. But 86 | Total Film | January 2014

part of the fun of the experience of S is that different people have many different approaches. Some people have read the novel first and then gone back and read the interactions while others have read it all at the same time.

Did you think that the constant online speculation about Star Trek Into Darkness villain John Harrison’s true identity inevitably spoilt the final reveal?

It might have been a mistake that instead of just saying that’s who he is and letting the story take place, the focus began to emphasise the wrong thing, where it became like a singular question as opposed to a story. I feel that the way it was withheld might have been wrong simply because it was maybe unnecessary to do it. Having said that, I would have hated it if everyone going in had known these things that the main characters don’t because then you feel like you’re an hour ahead of them.

You’re currently balancing Star Wars and Star Trek with promoting S and your producer’s duties on TV shows like Almost Human, Revolution and Person Of Interest. How do you find time to breathe?

Some of those things like S have been many years in the making and some of them, like Almost Human, came to us from people like J.H. Wyman, who had the idea and who runs the show. Some things like Star Trek will continue but my involvement on the next one will not be as director. It’s not like they all happen at once and it’s not like they’re things that I’m running and overseeing at every step.

But as to how I balance it, my family is what keeps me from being sucked into the vortex of work as it’s the thing that’s most important and real to me. SJ

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It isn’t Episode I...

Producer Kathleen Kennedy has promised more practical effects, less CG and real droids. The problem is, George Lucas is still heavily involved, just hopefully not asking for a Jar Jar comeback…

It isn’t Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull...

Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher are all expected, but the story is thought to revolve around a younger generation – with Saoirse Ronan and Ryan Gosling at the top of the rumour mill.

It isn’t over yet...

Disney’s Lucasfilm takeover would do the Empire proud – doubling production on the Star Wars saga to make Episode VII the start of an even bigger franchise. PB

TERMINATOR He said he’d be back...

DIRECTOR Alan Taylor STARRING Arnold Schwarzenegger ETA 26 June 2015

H

e said he’d be back. Although he never went away, having turned up in Rise Of The Machines and (sort of) Salvation, Arnie’s unstoppable cyborg is back again for a fifth outing.

How much of a starring role the 66-year-old will take in the fully rebooted Terminator franchise hangs on the strength of rumours of Dwayne Johnson being fitted for a metal endoskeleton.

But at least director Alan Taylor is taking his cue from the right entries in the series…

“We all love the first two. I went back and watched them and my respect level went up,” says Taylor, moving onto T5 from Thor: The Dark World. “Batman is another franchise that turned bananas... For Christopher Nolan to say ‘I respect this material so much I’m going to take it up to here’… that’s a great inspiration.” PB TF Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

PA

After the departure of Michael Arndt, you’re now going to be penning the Star Wars: Episode VII screenplay with Lawrence Kasdan, who scripted The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi. Is his experience invaluable?

Working with Larry has been one of the most surreal joys of my life. We’ve had a lot of fun working together. He’s an incredible guy and an inspiring and spectacular writer.

It isn’t Star Trek...

“They’re such different worlds,” says Abrams. “[Star Trek] is our future, much more science based in theory. Star Wars is like a fairy tale that happens to take place in space.”

L A I C E P S E I V O M I F I C S IS WORLD! WorldMags.net

IT’S OUT OF TH

ON SALE NOW!

IN PRINT. ON iPAD. ON iPHONE WorldMags.net FIND IT IN THE TOTAL FILM APP

164 PAGE SPECIAL EDITION

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ON-SET

WORDS MATTHEW LEYLAND

Bilbo’s back. And this time he’s dealing not just with dwarves but with elves, spiders and a very big dragon…

Total Film heads on to the wild New Zealand set of The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug.

88 | Total Film | January 2014

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THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG WorldMags.net

L

egolas is taking aim. Fantasy cinema’s most iconic archer (sorry Hawkeye; sorry Katniss; sorry thingamabob from Brave) has an arrow pointed right between TF’s eyes. Lucky for us, he’s on a monitor (a 3D one mind, needlesharp), so we’re safe to carry on eating our cereal bar and making notes. It’s late 2011 and we’re on the Wellington set of The Hobbit, witnessing scenes that’ll be revealed in this December’s The Desolation Of Smaug.

The film marks Orlando Bloom’s reintroduction as Legolas – in a story set decades before The Lord Of The Rings. Hang on… “Sixty years is nothing in the life of an elf,” smiles Bloom, explaining how he’s able to do the time warp and reprise his breakout role from Peter Jackson’s first Tolkien trilogy. “Elves are immortal,” adds the director himself. Bloom might not be that fortunate but, joining Jackson totalfilm.com

by the monitor, he barely seems to have aged since we last saw him in the pointy ears and platinum wig. “When I got back to New Zealand I got into my old costume, and it actually still fit!

I’m having a lot of fun, yeah…”

Though today’s order of business includes crafting a comedy moment – no spoilers, but it involves one of Middle-earth’s many beards – there’s also a serious matter at hand: big spiders.

“They’re in our territory,” says Bloom of the eightlegged freaks, “and we’re tracking them down.”

‘Our territory’ is Mirkwood, ancestral home to wood-elves and key marker of Bilbo’s (Martin Freeman) journey. It’s also cobweb central. The wispy white stuff is over everything, from the giant V-shaped tree trunk in one corner to the gaggle of dwarves – Mr Baggins’ travelling companions – huddled on the set, being poked, combed and spritzed by make-up artists between takes.

Dwarves and elves share a common foe in those outsized arachnids, but that doesn’t mean

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they’re friends – as TDOS will explore. “The dwarves don’t like the elves. They really, really don’t,” says Richard Armitage, back as company leader Thorin Oakenshield. It all goes back to when dwarf stronghold Erebor was burnt to a crisp and the elves didn’t help (as seen at the start of An Unexpected Journey). “That left a wound inside of [Thorin] that he hasn’t allowed to heal,” continues Armitage. “It’s unfinished business.”

A major player in the inter-species stand-off is Thranduil (Lee Pace). Aka The Elvenking. Aka Legolas’ dad. In expanding upon Tolkien’s text, Jackson jumped at the chance to unite two family members. “In The Lord Of The Rings, you hear people say ‘Legolas, son of Thranduil’, and in The Hobbit we meet Thranduil… so it was like, why wouldn’t we want to do scenes with the father and son together?” says Jackson.

Where the Legolas of Lord Of The Rings is a pretty straightforward action hero – albeit one >> with crazy skateboarding skills – here we’ll January 2014 | Total Film | 89

ON-SET

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Cast of many characters: (clockwise from right) Andy Serkis directs co-star Orlando Bloom; Bilbo's epic journey continues; Bilbo (Martin Freeman); Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage); Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly).

learn a bit more about what makes him tick.

“An elven father-son relationship is much more dramatic than a human one,” reckons Bloom.

“The dynamics are very, very complex – because there are so many more years!” Also, Thranduil is, as Jackson puts it, “a bit of a hard-arse father”.

“He’s not willing to give Legolas the keys to his car, I’ll tell you that! I don’t think he would take him to many softball games, either…”

The Desolation Of Smaug is shaping up to be a veritable elf farm. There’s even a new face among the Mirkwood massive – one who helps offset the novel’s gender imbalance. “We’ve created a female elf, Tauriel [played by Evangeline Lilly], because we

wanted to develop the woodland realm,” explains Jackson. “To tell that story, of Mirkwood and Legolas and Thranduil, we really needed to work in other elven characters that aren't in the book.”

A ‘young’ elf – only 600 years old – Tauriel is head of the elven guard, armed and dangerous.

TF gets to see her killer instinct in action when cameras roll on a scene in which Lilly takes on a man in a green body suit. The stunt performer will later be CGI-ed over to become a giant spider, but for now it looks like Kick-Ass picking a fight with Kate from Lost. It’s a packed sequence – there’s attacking, parrying, hurling and yanking, and some bantering with the dwarves.

Orc attack: Azog is back

90 | Total Film | January 2014

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After a few vigorous takes, Lilly bounds over for a chat, buzzing with enthusiasm. Tauriel, it turns out, is just the same. “She loves life,” Lilly says of her character. “She loves the world.” But there’s a clear generation gap between her and her king. “She’s more idealistic than Thranduil.

She has a light in her eyes where he’s lost some of that spark, that passion.”

A Tolkien fan since teenhood, Lilly “had no intentions of working right now… I was happy being a new mom!” but couldn’t resist adding such a special string to her (ornate) bow. For one thing, she’s nabbed one of the best outfits – from knee-length red hairpiece to leaf-textured tunic – nailing the right mix of martial and ethereal. “It was a very long process,” she admits. “The first fitting made me look like a stout dwarf!” But after a few more goes, success. “I went from being ‘Here we go again’ to ‘Ta-da! Here I am, Tauriel the elf!’ she beams, doing mock-jazz hands. “I felt really great, really light on my feet…”

Meanwhile, Martin Freeman has been left dangling. We’ve moved next door to a separate stretch of Mirkwood – where Bilbo is clinging to a branch by his hands and hairy feet. “I’m. Feeling.

A. Bit. Peculiar,” trembles the horizontal Hobbit, in a scene where he’s come unstuck attempting to cross a river. The camera pans from feet to face, taking in the full measure of his predicament. It’s Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG WorldMags.net

‘An elven father-son relationship is much more dramatic’ ORLANDO BLOOM

not Jackson calling the shots but TLOTR alumnus Andy Serkis, directing second unit.

“Often it’s about offering different choices,” says Serkis, as softly spoken as Gollum – his mo-capped alter ego – is raspy. “Sometimes it’s very specific – like doing some very careful matching to action Peter’s shot on the main unit, which is what we’re doing here. I feel I understand his sensibility… I’ve lived through the whole Middle-earth experience before!”

Jackson thinks Serkis’ switch from one side of the camera to the other “has given him a whole new appreciation of acting… He seems to be enjoying himself. He’s gone to the dark side!”

Elves, dwarves, Hobbits, Oscar-winning directors… not a bad haul for a set visit. But isn’t there meant to be a dragon in here somewhere? “We haven’t actually designed it yet!” says Richard Taylor, head of Weta Workshop. “We’re waiting for a meeting with Peter on that one, so if you’ve got any ideas…”

Like he needs TF’s help. Sitting in the leading FX company’s boardroom, we’re agog at glass cabinets bursting with Oscars and Baftas – as well as maquettes from TLOTR, King Kong, Superman Returns and myriad other movies to which Weta has lent its magic touch.

No one’s resting on their laurels when it >> comes to Smaug – the super-big bad at the totalfilm.com

Set adrift: (above) Peter Jackson gets to work sending his dwarves downstream; (right) Aidan Turner as dwarf Kili.

‘Tauriel is more idealistic than Thranduil. She has a light in her eyes where he’s lost that spark’ EVANGELINE LILLY INTRODUCES HER ELF ALTER EGO

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January 2014 | Total Film | 91

ON-SET

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Dragon hunters: (main) Bilbo with Thorin Oakenshield; (below) Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen).

heart of The Hobbit. “It’s an iconic character,” says Taylor. “He’s the archetype of so many dragon characters that have come after him.

He epitomises evil, he epitomises greed. You’ve got to fulfil the audience’s expectations and have them see this creepy creature in a new, refreshing light.” Jackson agrees. “You can’t create something where people are going to sit back and think, ‘oh God, another dragon!’ Our job is to create a Smaug that’s as memorable, visually distinctive and terrifying as possible…”

92 | Total Film | January 2014

“Have I seen the dragon in all his glory? Yeah, I have. He looks fantastic. Absolutely fucking enormous. Really, really good…” October 2013.

Afternoon latte with Martin Freeman in a posh London hotel. The comfort-loving Bilbo would be right at home – mind you, in this movie, he’s less pipe(weed)-and-slippers than he used to be.

“Bilbo’s not so terrified of his own shadow by the time he gets to Smaug,” Freeman says. “He’s more used to dealing with life and death situations.

He’s killed and he’s nearly been killed.” Even so,

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entering the dragon’s den is, as Ron Burgundy would say, kind of a big deal. “Whatever he thinks he’s prepared, when he sees the size of Smaug… it’s just ridiculous,” Freeman says. “But Bilbo being who he is, he gets up to speed quite quickly, and gets some spirit about him as well.”

And how did the actor himself handle it? Was he alone on a greenscreen set, talking to lights and tennis balls? “There were tennis balls,” he confirms. “But there was also a physical set. A bloody great mountain of treasure and goblets and coins; archways, fantastic tall ceilings… and greenscreen.” Though Smaug is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, there was no overlap between the Sherlock co-stars. Instead, dialect coach Leith McPherson read the dragon’s lines while Freeman focused on “made-up eyelines and different lighting states… if he was blowing fire it’d go red!” He doesn’t want to give away many secrets: “I’m all for transparency in government, but I like the magical element in films. Obviously, no one’s going to think there was a real dragon.

Actually, a seven-year-old might…”

And will said seven-year-old be spooked by Smaug? The Hobbit trilogy is more of a family affair than The Lord Of The Rings – witness the Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG WorldMags.net

STALKING AND TALKING

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Smaug follows in the footsteps of other big-name/big-beast match-ups…

Taking aim: (left) Tauriel; (below) Jackson gives a dwarf pep talk; (bottom left) filming a forest scene.

SEAN CONNERY in DRAGONHEART (1996) Rob Cohen’s fantasy is no great shakes, but the original 007 sexes it up some with sheep-flirting and one-liners (“I hope you like it well done!”).

Alas, the mantle didn’t pass to Roger Moore in Dragonheart: A New Beginning (2000).

ORSON WELLES in TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE (1986) Maybe not the swansong the director of Citizen Kane deserved – voicing a robot whose name, Unicron, sounds like heartburn syrup – but the big man still gets into rumbling lines like, “Cybertron and its moons belong to me!”

‘Bilbo’s not so terrified by the time he gets to Smaug’ MARTIN FREEMAN

food-fight slapstick and rabbit-drawn sledges of An Unexpected Journey. But with the story pressing on towards Lonely Mountain, the tone is turning. “It’s darker,” Freeman says with slight tentativeness, “though Pete’s taste is for the comic as well. But there’s probably less of that, and more action, more peril than the first one, where you were establishing the juxtaposition of Bilbo’s fustiness with this mad group of dwarves. That combination is inherently funny, but I think we’ve got over that now. The audience know that gag, so you’ve got to latch on to something else.”

Don’t expect Bilbo to go badass overnight (“He can’t suddenly start walking like John Wayne because he’s killed a few spiders”), but do look for signs of change. “There’s a lot in this totalfilm.com

film,” Freeman asserts. “What he goes through definitely alters him. But it’s gradual, like it is in life. So it should almost be invisible.” An analogy occurs to him, which he unfurls with typical self-deprecation: “This is the only time I’ll compare myself… but it’s like Michael Corleone at the beginning of the first Godfather and at the end of Part II. It’s not like halfway through Part I you go, 'he’s changed!' But that shot him of in the chair at the end of Part II… you’re like, Jesus Christ. He’s still the same person, but it’s a world away. That’s the optimum version of how change should be done. But Bilbo does have a bit of that, yeah…” TF The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug opens on 13 December.

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JEREMY IRONS in THE LION KING (1994) A year before camply menacing Bruce Willis down the blower in the third Die Hard movie, Irons gave us the real deal with a truly insidious vocal turn as king-slayer Scar – a big-cat baddie who makes Shere Khan look like a total pussy.

CHRISTOPHER LEE in ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010) Only two lines for Sir Chris as the winged fiend in Tim Burton’s Wonderland, but you know straight away who it is without having to check the IMDb. Burton wisely got Lee just to do it in his regular voice, rather than try anything fancy.

DAN AYKROYD in YOGI BEAR (2010) Even more harrowing than Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, this live-action/cartoon pile-up at least has Aykroyd doing his homework and booming out a credible imitation of the original Hanna-Barbera bear (itself inspired by actor Art Carney on ancient sitcom The Honeymooners).

January 2014 | Total Film | 93

SPOTLIGHT

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MONEY

WorldMags.net NAOMIE HARRIS

TALKS

Now a major Hollywood player, Naomie Harris is garnering awards attention as Winnie in Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom and will be back playing another icon in Bond 24. Miss Moneypenny, we’re expecting you…

WORDS JAMIE GRAHAM PHOTOGRAPHY LEE BROOMFIELD

otal Film has a bone to pick with Naomie Harris. Last September, sipping tea and quick to laugh in Claridge’s Hotel while promoting Skyfall, she didn’t so much as blink when asked if her field agent Eve would evolve into Miss Moneypenny.

“Who knows what happens to her in the end? Does she live? Does she die?” she teased.

Then, coming over all serious: “I really don’t know,” she said, adamant she’d been given no indication as to whether Eve would return in future Bonds, let alone morph into M’s flirtatious secretary.

Only it turned out she was fibbing.

“I had to deny it!” she laughs, sat in black jeans and black sweater in London’s Soho Hotel a year later, her hands flying to her mouth. “It was horrible, horrible… totalfilm.com

really horrible! I’m not a natural liar.” Really? Well somebody should give her an Oscar, because she was pretty convincing. “Was I?” She laughs delightedly.

“Oh wow. I didn’t believe myself, so that’s amazing!

Being part of Bond is unlike anything else I’ve experienced. The level of interest is quite extraordinary, and the level of secrecy. It’s a tricky one, but they [producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson] know what they’re doing. I just toe the party line.”

More on Miss Moneypenny – and Bond 24, slated for an October 2015 release date – later. For now, though, Harris is eager to talk about her no-less-iconic role as Winnie Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom.

“I didn’t know anything about Winnie Mandela when I signed up to do it,” she admits. “I was >> promoting The First Grader [a small Kenyan-set film

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January 2014 | Total Film | 95

SPOTLIGHT

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A revolutionary performance: (clockwise from main) Naomie as Winnie Mandela; with Daniel Craig in Skyfall; mystic Tia in Pirates Of The Caribbean; her big break in 28 Days Later…

in which Harris plays a school teacher], which I did with the same group of people [including director Justin Chadwick]. The producer said to me, ‘Do you want to do Mandela?’

Harris agreed, though she now admits she actually thought the movie, like so many others, would never come to fruition. Time ticked past.

And then… “I was doing Bond and I got a call saying, ‘The movie’s been greenlit. Two days after you finish, you’re going to be on a plane to South Africa, and you’ll be playing Winnie.’ I started to do my research and then I was like, ‘Oh… my… gosh, what the hell did I say yes to?’ I had no idea about her complexity, that she’s a million different people in one, about everything she’s been through and suffered. She was a powerhouse in her own right.”

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom covers Nelson Mandela’s life from his days as a brilliant young lawyer through his rise as an anti-apartheid revolutionary, his 27-year incarceration (19641990) and his election, in 1994, as South Africa’s first black president. And while a commanding 96 | Total Film | January 2014

Idris Elba is front and centre as the great man himself, it is arguably Harris who delivers the most impressive, layered performance.

T

here’s a lot to get to grips with.

Winnie married Nelson in 1958, had two children, and emerged as a leading opponent of the white minority rule during her husband’s imprisonment. Unlike Nelson, she advocated violence in order to liberate her people, and was allegedly involved in several human rights abuses. They separated in 1992, two years after Nelson’s release from jail, and divorced in 1996, their political differences compounding personal strains – Winnie had been unfaithful during her husband’s incarceration.

How to make sense of such a person, loved by so many, reviled by others? “From reading about her, I was formulating an idea of who she was.

From talking to people I was formulating another idea. My director had a very strong idea about how he wanted her to be played… I felt really

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torn, conflicted,” says Harris. Then came the big meet. “I was scared and fascinated. I thought I would finally be able to put all these pieces together. But I didn’t. You can’t, especially with someone as complex as her. I asked how she wanted to be portrayed and she said, ‘You’ve done your research, you were chosen for this role, I trust you.’ It allowed me to own it.”

Own it she did, so much so she found herself swarmed with Oscar buzz when the film debuted at Toronto. Still, given how much the Academy love a heavyweight biopic, the possibility of awards must have crossed her mind the moment she was offered the role…

“No!” she claims, rearranging her long limbs.

“The amount of films that I’ve done where I think [whispers], ‘I’m doing a really great performance…’ and then it’s cut down or you see it and think [pulls a face of shock and disgust]. There are a million things that come into play that are out of your control. It has to be about the journey, not the final product.” But now that the film is finished, she’s nailed it, and the buzz is building…

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WorldMags.net NAOMIE HARRIS “Maybe Barbara seeing The First Grader helped, and it all fed in…”

Whatever the truth(s), Harris grasped the opportunity, informing the world’s press she’d be playing a Bond ‘woman’, not ‘girl’. Indeed, her Eve made considerably more impact than Bérénice Marlohe’s curvy but one-dimensional Severine, and presumably the character will only become more fleshed out as her Moneypenny develops over the next… how many films?

“I can’t say!” she shrieks when asked the number she’s signed up for. Thankfully she’s more forthcoming, just, on the subject of whether her Moneypenny will slip behind a desk or continue to get her hands dirty. “I’d find both roles really interesting,” she answers diplomatically. “Even being in the office I’d find satisfying, but being out in the field would be…”

She grins and her voice strengthens. “I imagine they would get her back out in the field.”

LEE BROOMFIELD/CORBIS OUTLINE

G “I’d be bloody over the moon!” she bellows. “I’m not gonna be, ‘Oh no, not an Oscar nomination’.

It would be fantastic!”

An Oscar nomination would cap an amazing 11 years for Harris, since Danny Boyle cast her as co-lead (alongside fellow up-and-comer Cillian Murphy) is 28 Days Later… Before Boyle took a chance, she’d been unemployed since leaving the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. But after she wielded good machete in his bleak vision of a Britain torn apart by a raging virus – and, also in 2002, stole the nation’s heart as the plucky lead in Channel 4’s adaptation of Zadie Smith’s bestseller White Teeth – things started revving up. Harris mixed TV (The Project, Small Island) and films (Miami Vice, Street Kings), and made a splash as playful mystic Tia Dalma in the second and third instalments of the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise. Not bad for someone who never felt she fit in at Cambridge while getting a 2:1 in political and social science, and who admits to being a “clingy child” growing up in Finsbury Park with her Jamaican mum (her Trinidadian dad left before she was born).

Not bad at all. But then everything cranked up a few gears: Barbara Broccoli happened to see the small but critically lauded The First Grader at the 2010 London Film Festival; next stop, Skyfall.

Well, that’s how The First Grader director Chadwick tells it, eager to point out his small film’s role in making Naomie big. She, however, is incredulous. “That’s so funny! I credit Danny Boyle for everything. I’d left drama school, had nothing, and then Danny took a massive risk on

iven the script is being worked on at the moment, she’ll know soon enough – though not until well after Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson, Daniel Craig and director Sam Mendes, she’s quick to point out. For now, though, she’s just delighted that Craig has signed on for two more movies and that Mendes, after categorically stating he wouldn’t return, is back in the director’s chair.

“I really got on with Daniel and it would be very strange if someone else took the role,” she says. “He’s a brilliant Bond for our times. And I’m so relieved [about Mendes]. He chose me and had a vision for my character; I’d feel really weird working for someone who hadn’t chosen me and didn’t have that same vision.

I just want him to see it through. I feel like Skyfall is one part of a continuing story. It needs completing and it needs the same storyteller.”

But just how do you top Skyfall, with its universal approbation and its $1.1bn box office?

Harris expels a whistling breath. “I think you do it, first of all, by not aiming to do it. That was not the motivation behind Skyfall. It’s about telling a bloody good story, creating fascinating characters and a really interesting world in general.” She pauses, smiles.

“But that is a question I’m glad I don’t have to answer! Let other people have sleepless nights about that!”

While they’re worrying, she can enjoy her beauty sleep. After all, being a Bond girl (sorry, woman) must be a wonderful salve for any insecurities.

“No one’s ever asked me that!” she chuckles.

“I have to say, it does make me feel pretty darn good. When you get those moments when you feel, ‘Oh God, I look like such a minger today’, then you think, ‘I was cast as a Bond girl… you can’t really be that much of a minger, Naomie!’” TF

‘I had no idea about Winnie’s complexity.

She’s a powerhouse’

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me by casting me in 28 Days Later… Ten years later, he was casting Frankenstein at the National.

I’d not done theatre since leaving drama school.

He gave me the role of Elizabeth. That’s what Sam Mendes and Debbie McWilliams, who casts Bond, came to see, and as a result of that I was asked to audition.” She shakes her head then decides upon the magnanimous approach.

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Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom opens 3 January.

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Steve McQueen’s follow-up to Hunger and Shame is just as challenging and emotional – and likely to garner awards buzz. The makers of 12 Years A Slave tell Total Film about the responsibility they felt in honouring a very real past…

98 | Total Film | January 2014

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12 YEARS A SLAVE WorldMags.net

WORDS MATT MUELLER

aking a film about slavery was never going to be anything but difficult. Michael Fassbender fainted.

Chiwetel Ejiofor was strung up for an entire day, feet barely scraping the earth below. Director Steve McQueen had to steal away to compose himself in the midst of shooting one harrowing sequence. But the fact that 12 Years A Slave is based on the true memoirs of Solomon Northup – a free black man with a wife and children lured to Washington DC with the promise of a violin-playing gig, only to be drugged, shackled, stripped of his identity and sold down the river to a slave’s life in Louisiana – gave it a haunting resonance that the film’s cast and crew drank in on a daily basis. “That feeling totalfilm.com

of dancing with ghosts… It was palpable,” says Ejiofor, who plays Northup. Months after filming, he’s sitting – alert and engaged – in a suite in the swishy Conrad Hotel in NYC. In his crisp white shirt and navy blazer, Ejiofor is now a world away from playing Solomon, but like the rest of the cast and the director, this real life story still hangs heavy on his shoulders.

So why this project? Coming off a pair of acclaimed features – Hunger and Shame, about an IRA hunger striker and sex addict respectively, both played by Fassbender – McQueen was keen to apply his artistically honed eye (he’s the 1999 Turner Prize winner) to this grim historical reality. Post-Hunger, Brad Pitt sought out McQueen and told him he wanted to collaborate.

Having struggled to find the right narrative until his wife uncovered Northup’s memoirs (first

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published in 1853), McQueen approached Pitt and his Plan B production team while they were mired in the difficult making of World War Z. Zombies to slavery: that’s no small leap... Pitt’s role in 12 Years A Slave is brief, but his behindthe-scenes patronage was fundamental; without him, says McQueen, the film wouldn’t exist.

Northup’s book was a saviour, too: a ready-made template for the story McQueen wanted to tell.

“There it was in my hand, formulated already,” he marvels. “It read like Pinocchio or a Brothers Grimm tale, with a man pulled from life with his family into a dark, twisted tunnel, yet one that had a light at the end of it.”

Working with screenwriter John Ridley, the two men crafted a reverential adaptation that changes almost nothing from the source >> material, allowing the drama to come from January 2014 | Total Film | 99

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Northup’s crushing first-hand account rather than creating new scenarios or screenwriting shorthand. With a $20m budget, McQueen began shooting 12 Years A Slave at the end of June 2012, filming in Louisiana for an authentic sensory vibe (Spanish moss hanging off sycamore trees, insect clouds, fetid bayous swarming with snakes and alligators…). The swampy but lush landscape allowed McQueen and DoP Sean Bobbitt to scatter painterly images throughout the narrative.

Summer in Louisiana is oppressively humid, but the heat ended up helping the cast. Picking cotton in 108°F heat gave Ejiofor a direct conduit to slavery’s torment. And newcomer Lupita Nyong’o, who astonishes as persecuted slave and fastest cotton-picker on the plantation, Patsey, refused to seek refuge in air-conditioned trailers, preferring to endure the extreme conditions as her real-life character would have.

The dedication paid off – Solomon (renamed Platt by his brutal captors) is the role of Ejiofor’s life. He knew it as soon as McQueen first called him in LA, asking him to play this educated man who becomes, essentially, merchandise. But he still took two days before deciding to accept the role. Due to Solomon remaining intensely private, the narrative relies on the unspoken, in the finished film concentrating much of the time on Ejiofor’s eloquent, expressive eyes to tell the story.

In contemplating how to play the role, McQueen and Ejiofor discussed silent movie stars in great depth, Valentino and Buster Keaton in particular.

And for Ejiofor there would be pain, too. For a scene in which Paul Dano’s vicious overseer strings Solomon up and leaves him dangling in the sun for hours, on the brink of death as children frolic nearby, Ejiofor insists he can’t recall what was going through his mind during those long, aching hours. “By that point, we were so far down the rabbit hole,” he sighs in the thankfully air-conditioned hotel suite. “We didn’t even have a conversation about it. Sean [Bobbitt] hunched down and started shooting it. I stood there and time passed and then we packed up and we left. We all knew where we were at that point and what our hopes were for Solomon.”

On screen, Solomon’s torture lasts seven minutes; incredibly, McQueen only uses five shots.

100 | Total Film | January 2014

Harrowing times: (main) Steve McQueen shares his vision; (left) Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), Epps (Michael Fassbender) and Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) up the intensity; (top right) Epps’ rage spills over; (bottom right) McQueen and Ejiofor feel the heat on the Louisiana set.

“I couldn’t pull punches about what slavery was,” he remarks. “Either you make a film about slavery or you don’t. I had to show certain scenes to understand why people felt so terrorised.”

Ejiofor admits he needed time to adjust to McQueen’s methods, particularly working alongside Fassbender who’d already established an extraordinary rapport with the director after two intense films together. “The fear was that Steve wouldn’t be able to find that with me,” he admits. “My fear was that he would try to get me to be Michael Fassbender and I had to put my hands up and say, ‘I’m a completely different guy.’” Instead he had to “learn the dance. And then the training wheels came off…”

“I had to push to get what I wanted,” is McQueen’s take. You can well believe it: McQueen has a no-nonsense gaze and the sleeves of his black shirt are rolled up for business.

“I pushed him and he responded. Sometimes when you push, the person goes far beyond your expectations. It got to that bit at the end of the movie where he looks at the audience. All I had

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to do was roll the camera and that shit happened.

At that point, whatever he did was correct.”

As for Fassbender, despite a big grin and incredibly firm handshake on greeting, he bristles when Total Film wonders how he coped portraying someone as sadistic and reprehensible as Epps, the brutal proprietor who owns Solomon for most of his captivity and a figure so loathsome that, to this day, “don’t be an Epps” is still a saying in Louisiana. “Well, the fact that he is a human being decided that I had to find that in him,” Fassbender all but snarls. “He’s got very real, human flaws – there’s a lot of fear in Epps. It’s my job to find the seeds of his violent, psychotic behaviour. The main launching pad for the character was the fact that he’s in love with Patsey and he doesn’t have the equipment within himself to process that or deal with it.”

Fassbender also latched on to Epps’ lack of intelligence and endeavoured to lend him a buffoonish air, describing one scene in which he chases Solomon around a pig pen as “a bit Laurel and Hardy”. “It’s the unpredictability of Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

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MAKING OF

12 YEARS A SLAVE WorldMags.net

Remember her face – this Mexico-born, Kenyan-raised Yale graduate is the breakout star of 12 Years A Slave.

Epps that makes him terrifying,” he muses.

Fassbender so threw himself into the role that at the end of one take of a horrifying scene in which Epps rapes Patsey, McQueen became aware that Fassbender wasn’t moving – he had passed out.

“That’s never happened to me before,” the actor says ruefully. “I don’t know what happened – maybe I hyperventilated – but I blacked out and I came to and I was on top of Lupita thinking, ‘What the fuck?’ Then I saw the camera and the lights and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re filming’.”

At another point, Patsey is cruelly punished for a minor transgression, asking Solomon to wield the whip while Epps twists himself into a frenzy and his maliciously jealous wife (Sarah Paulson) eggs him on. Even if the blood and flesh tearing off her back were added in postproduction, it’s a sequence of devastating horror that won’t soon be forgotten. After filming such terrible moments, the actors would embrace – no harm done, we’re all professionals. And hard as it is to fathom, everyone insists that fun was had during the making of 12 Years A Slave. “That’s always the way,” smiles Fassbender. “I think it’s a defense mechanism to not allow the atmosphere to get too steeped. At lunchtime, we all sat down together and tried to switch off because the moments when we were on were so intense.”

Intense is a word to describe McQueen.

While he could be as brusque on set as he is in person (ask a question he doesn’t think is worth answering and he’ll let you know), when he did offer praise, the actors knew it was genuine. But totalfilm.com

he didn’t allow himself to become mired in melancholy. When he felt overwhelmed during Patsey’s whipping, he swiftly pulled himself together. “You’ve got to get the job done, otherwise I’m letting everyone down,” he says. “Knowing that people went through this gives you the spirit to go on. So many people died and we don’t know who they were. It’s our duty to give them a voice, to let them be heard.”

Since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, 12 Years A Slave has been lavished with critical praise that’s pointing to a one-way ticket to Oscar and other awards glory (not least for Ejiofor and Nyong’o’s phenomenal turns).

The 44-year-old British director insists it’s the furthest thing from his mind. “I’m just happy we made the movie,” says McQueen, whose own ancestors were taken as slaves to the West Indies. “That’s the truth, Ruth.”

McQueen’s movie isn’t exactly a rebuke to Django Unchained, but whereas Tarantino’s film housed its cruelty in the giddy framework of a revenge thriller, 12 Years A Slave delivers the real deal, a raw, realistic account of the slave experience. That’s something that’s going to shock, possibly change, audiences. It’s certainly been a life-changing film for Ejiofor.

“This has been the most extraordinary experience in my life,” he says. “At a certain point, I’m going to have to consign it to the past and move on. But it has transformed me. I’m not the same person I was when Steve called me in Los Angeles all that time ago...” TF

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Watching the whipping scene is beyond harrowing. How was it to shoot?

It was special! [Laughs] I’d been mentally preparing for it ever since I got the role, but I could not have imagined how it would go down. I was literally stripped naked in public, which was humiliating and heartbreaking.

My preparation was for everything until that moment and then the whipping took care of itself. It was just a matter of reacting.

Was it hard to shake off the role?

No. I loved Patsey; I thoroughly enjoyed inhabiting her and giving her life again.

I was an insomniac throughout the shoot and I called out to her spirit to guide me. But in trying to let go of it, I succeeded. I owe it to her to enjoy my freedom.

How was it working with Steve McQueen?

He is incredible. I was definitely nervous that he would call me up and say, “Lupita, I’m sorry – I’ve made a mistake. It wasn’t actually you who got the role.” You hear the names of the other actresses up for the role: everybody else was a somebody and then there was me! But then I got on set and I realised that this man who I admire so much has seen it fit to trust me with this role. And so I must trust myself.

Can he be blunt sometimes?

Oh yes. He does not mince his words. You always know where you stand. So when you get a compliment, you bag it!

12 Years A Slave opens on 10 January.

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THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY WorldMags.net

Living the dream

Ambitious and beautiful, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty imagines how it would be if the fantasies of an office drone became real.

For director/star Ben Stiller, it was quite a journey behind the camera, too…

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WORDS JAMIE GRAHAM ADDITIONAL REPORTING ROSIE FLETCHER

ife Of Pi. The Truman Show.

Forrest Gump. It’s A Wonderful Life. The Fisher King. These are film titles that are bandied around by cast and crew when describing The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, the ravishing fantasy-adventure set to dazzle families as 20th Century Fox’s big Christmas release.

Little wonder that director Ben Stiller is keen to shrink expectations. The best spectacles, after all, wrap their epic around the intimate. “Those are all big movies,” laughs Stiller, who’s himself enjoying some family time in his Hawaiian home but is happy to talk ‘work’. “Tonally, I’ve always related to Hal Ashby’s movies [Harold And Maude, Being There]. And movies like Local Hero, which has this emotional feel to it.

The Apartment. Jacques Tati’s films – the visual storytelling is so elegant.” Stiller stalls, perhaps aware that he’s only making things worse himself; much more of this and readers will be disappointed with anything other than The Greatest Movie Ever Made. “You look at a lot of films and take what you can,” he shrugs. “They infuse. But ultimately you have to say, ‘This movie is going to be it’s own thing’.”

And so we have the tale of Walter (Stiller), a fastidious, downtrodden employee on the picture desk of the magazine Life. Tyrannised by troubleshooter Ted (Adam Scott), who’s been

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brought in to downsize the company, Walter secretly moons over co-employee Cheryl (Kristen Wiig) and frequently daydreams himself into enthrallingly elaborate fantasy sequences to escape his humdrum office job, ailing mother (Shirley MacLaine) and irksome sister (Kathryn Hahn). Only Walter then finds himself forced to leave his desk and travel to Iceland in search of mysterious, damn-near mythic Life photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn).

His adventures just got real…

Stiller’s The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty is not, it should be pointed out, a slavish remake of the 1947 musical starring Danny Kaye and, er, Boris Karloff. Nor is it a reverential adaptation of James Thurber’s 1939 short story. Stiller read the story as a kid, but could only recall it being about a guy with a “cool imagination”; the movie he caught up with eight years ago, when he was sent a draft (“it was more of a straight-ahead action adventure then…”) of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. The 47-year-old director/star loved the musical with its “incredible characters”, but felt it was not something he could replicate.

Enter, in 2010, writer Steve Conrad (The Weather Man, The Pursuit Of Happyness), who decided to throw out anything and everything he damn well pleased as long as his new scenarios “related” to the original idea. Given the reimagining’s genesis actually went back to 1994, long before Stiller’s attachment, this was a sensible idea: directors Ron Howard, Chuck >> January 2014 | Total Film | 103

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WorldMags.net Where's Walter?: (main) Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) embarks on his adventures; (far right) on set with Adam Scott; (top left) Walter and Cheryl (Kristen Wiig); (bottom left) Walter gets into a scrape.

Russell, Steven Spielberg and Gore Verbinski had previously swirled the screenplay(s); Jim Carrey, Owen Wilson, Mike Myers, Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen had all been considered to star. Time to get back to basics.

“You approach it from an emotional point of view,” explains Stiller. “Why is this guy a daydreamer who’s ended up living in his head? He’s just this regular guy who happens to have inside of him this unrealised potential.”

Between them, Stiller and Conrad fashioned a story of self-discovery that is neither a broad comedy or a drama or an action film. “It’s one of those films where you can’t quite define it,” nods Stiller, who clearly believes that this is a good thing.

And so will you if you’ve seen the magical trailer. A work of art in its own right, it pulses with exquisite melancholy even as Stiller’s Mitty leaps between buildings to crash through windows or plunges from a helicopter into a raging sea. They really are some crazy-arsed action sequences.

“There are a lot of visual effects, I’m learning a lot!” says Stiller, pointing out that his previous directorial outings – Reality Bites, The Cable Guy, Zoolander, Tropic Thunder – didn’t require nearly so much CGI. Here, though, he’s had to orchestrate an extravagant chase through the teeming streets of New York, a volcano erupting in Iceland, and that aforementioned dunk in the raging ocean. It’s not easy. “The simulations

in a computer take weeks and weeks,” he sighs.

“If I give them a note saying, ‘Hey, I want to have the waves be a little bit bigger’, it takes them a couple of weeks to make that adjustment.”

The trick, Stiller says, is to blend the actual with the pixel. “On the last couple of days of shooting in Iceland we got big seas,” he says.

“We took the boat out and the helicopter out and did as much of it for real as possible. We got all the wide shots. We shot the [stunt] guy jumping out of the helicopter for real. I was in

professional longboard skater but it was important to me that we had shots of me really doing it,” he says. “I was skateboarding down, and this harness was attached to a crane that was in front of me. I was going down the mountain at 40mph with the crane, like, five feet in front of me. The harness would yank me up if I hit a bump. It was the most weirdly set up thing and probably not very smart.”

Budget notwithstanding, the action might have been crazier still. Instead, Stiller had to pare down several fantasy sequences and dump others altogether. So while the surviving sequences combine stunning landscapes, dynamic movement and vivid imagination to often jaw-plunging effect, just think of what might have been. Stiller grins. “There was this huge fantasy of Sixth Avenue where Walter and Cheryl are sitting down by this fountain and he’s talking to her and he imagines Ted riding up Sixth Avenue like the Anthony Quinn character in Lawrence Of Arabia and he’s got a phalanx of 40 horses with him. He swoops down and grabs Cheryl; Walter has to jump up onto a horse and all the horses go down into the subway and come out the other side into the desert and we have this crazy Lawrence Of Arabia-style chase…”

He chuckles. “It would have just been insanely huge but it would have probably unbalanced the movie.”

Adam Scott is a douchebag. Well, not in real life; in real life, he’s polite and engaging.

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BEN STILLER

the boat for real. We never did anything in a tank.” The CGI, here and elsewhere, was then applied to augment the sequence. And a good job too, considering Walter is attacked by a shark while flailing amid the waves... “We had a mechanical shark but it ended up being mostly CG work for that to come alive,” Stiller smiles. “And no, we didn’t call the shark Bruce...”

Mind you, this salty sequence is nothing compared to director/star having to skateboard down a mountain in Iceland. “We found this

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EYEVINE

‘I skateboarded down a mountain at 40mph attached to a crane. It was probably not very smart’

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY WorldMags.net

What dreams may come

Walter Mitty is one of cinema’s many fantasists. Here’s Total Film’s five faves…

DUMBO (1941)

Ever wondered what a pachyderm on peyote is like? Then watch a drunk Dumbo dream of shape-shifting elephants who play their trunks like trumpets. The loud noises and constantly morphing outlines perfectly capture Dumbo’s fears of being overwhelmed.

But on screen he’s a total douche. And if you thought his dickhead brother in Step Brothers (2008) or his sleazebag teacher in Veronica Mars were bad, just wait until you get a load of Ted. “I love assholes,” says Scott, chortling down the phone from New York. “I love them in real life and I love fictional ones. Impetuous, impatient children in grown up bodies are just the funniest thing. Steve Conrad wrote a great character and I immediately knew what to do with him. It all came together to create this cutting, awful figure.”

As if poor old Walter Mitty’s life isn’t crappy enough, Ted comes in to threaten his professional existence and belittle him while he does it. The guy emits arrogance and malignancy, and one glance at him is all it takes to know he’s a… well, douche. “Wardrobe, hair, everything,” agrees Scott. But best of all, which is to say worst of all, is the beard, a sculpted, ink-black monstrosity that was suggested by Stiller the first time he and Scott grabbed coffee together. “He really wanted me to have a Grecian beard!” Scott remembers, telling how Stiller’s eye for details and levels of preparation were unlike anything he’d ever encountered before. “In the '80s, in the States, there were these adverts for this dye you could put in your beard to get all the white out – the Grecian formula. There were all these dipshits with these ‘business beards’.

It was a way into the character for me.”

It is partly to escape Ted’s enmity that Walter hightails it abroad. But his decision totalfilm.com

to finally take flight, embrace life and live out his dreams also makes an impact on the object of his affection, Cheryl. “I think she likes that he leads a quieter kind of life but that he also sees something better out there,” says Kristen Wiig, softly. “Both Walter and Cheryl are leading lives that maybe they wish were a little spicier, so it’s perfect that they end up going on an unexpected adventure together.”

Wiig, who forged her own international fame by writing and starring in 2011's Bridesmaids after years of TV and support roles, feels the message of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty will chime with audiences. “It’s one of those stories that leaves you feeling like there’s a big world for you out there – and if there are things in life we really want to do, whether it’s connect with our families or travel the globe, it’s worth trying to go out and do them.”

A heartwarming, inspirational message, and one that brings to mind such cherished movies as, well, Life Of Pi, The Truman Show, Forrest Gump, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Fisher King, The Apartment and Local Hero. Not that Stiller’s about to go down that road again. Similarly, he swats away mentions of awards potential.

“Oh gosh, that would be great but it’s hard to even understand how that stuff works,” is all he’ll say. “I’m just happy the movie is what it is.”

Still, one thing he will admit to is that the ‘follow your heart’ message of the movie applies to himself taking on such an ambitious film, honing it for so many years, and then choosing to direct and star. “Yeah, I was taking a chance with it; I think that comparison’s valid,” he nods. “Directing and acting is frustrating because, as an actor, you really wish you had a director who could give you some guidance. But as an actor, I’d have been interested in being in this film even if I wasn’t directing; and as a director, there were so many cool ideas to explore. So I just had to jump in…”

If Stiller did it, and Walter did it, perhaps we can too? TF The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty opens on 26 December.

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THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)

Viewers learn a lot about what condition The Dude’s condition is in from this elaborate fantasy sequence, which includes Saddam Hussein handing out bowling shoes, Julianne Moore in Viking clobber and The Dude sliding through the legs of a troupe of beautiful dancers.

SPELLBOUND (1945)

Hitchcock teamed with Salvador Dali to map Gregory Peck’s surreal, fearful dream, which involves a scantily clad woman, a faceless man, floating eyes, sloping rooftops, melting wheels and outsized scissors.

Producer David O. Selznick cut the sequence from 20 minutes to two.

ROMY AND MICHELE’S HIGH SCHOOL REUNION (1997)

We attend the reunion, where Michele knows the formula for glue and loses her top. It’s an extended sequence that we only realise is bogus – it is, in fact, Michele’s (Lisa Kudrow) dream – when the pair grow old and are on their deathbeds.

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) Tina (Amanda Wyss) awakens to hear her name being hissed from the garden. She traipses downstairs in her nightie to investigate… We only realise it’s a dream when Wes Craven cuts back to the bed to show Tina’s body convulsing as her boyfriend watches on, horrified and helpless. JG

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SPOTLIGHT

Wonder stuff Joss’s Whedon wanted her for Wonder Woman, she has a multi-picture deal with Marvel as Agent Maria Hill and now she’s starring in Vince Vaughn comedy Delivery Man. Cobie Smulders might just be the heroine we’ve been waiting for.

WORDS ROSIE FLETCHER PORTRAIT DOVE SHORE

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WorldMags.netCOBIE SMULDERS

C

oulson!!!! Noooooo!!!

GAADDD!!! You were the greatest man I ever knew!

You will be avenged! You will be avenged! I will get The Avengers! and you will be avenged, Coulson!”

Cobie Smulders there, ham-dramming it up to hilarious effect as Maria Hill in the blooper reel from 2012’s Avengers Assemble. Dressed in a tight black leather cat suit, ubiquitous headset grazing her blood stained cheek, Smulders’ could be the perfect Marvel Agent. Beautiful, powerful, enjoys dicking around.

“I love Joss Whedon so much,” laughs Smulders. “We just had so many bits on set – because my character was all-knowing, she was so on top of everything; the joke was that she can’t handle anything. So it’d be a panic attack over everything, so like, ’there’s no more coffee!’ and she’d have a panic attack.”

Thing is, on a $220m dollar ensemble movie, the culmination of four franchise-starting blockbusters (which would go on to bag Oscar and BAFTA nods, the biggest opening weekend box office in the US ever and become the fastest film to make a billion dollars) with great dicking around comes a certain amount of responsibility.

“We were going to shoot that when it was actually happening [Agent Coulson’s death scene], but then it got too emotional, so it was like, “This is weird.’” Smulders recalls. “We had to be all jokey-jokey. But I’m actually just pretending somebody very close to me has died. It was so silly. It was just to make the crew laugh…”

It’s all about getting the balance right. After the grim grit of The Dark Knight franchise, Marvel blasted off a new era of superheroes who were fun, snarky and indeed, dicked around when they weren’t saving the world. It’s a formula that Joss Whedon perfected with Avengers Assemble and his Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D TV spinoff.

Though on screen Maria Hill is an all-action, super-organised, proper-kick-ass senior operative, off screen you can see why Smulders and Joss would get on.

Best known for her long running stint as ballsy news reporter Robin Scherbatsky in >> emsemble comedy How I Met Your Mother,

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January 2014 | Total Film | 107

SPOTLIGHT

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Canadian born Smulders (real name: Jacoba Francisca Maria Smulders – Cobie is a nickname) worked as a model before transitioning into acting, picking up one-off roles then reoccurring TV spots before bagging wise-cracking Canuck Robin for HIMYM. Not such a beer swilling commitment-phobe as Robin, perhaps (Smulders has a young daughter with actor husband Taran Killam, for a start), she’s lively company and chats voraciously in her distinctive sultry tone. Born to a British mother and Dutch father, but raised in Vancouver, she’s proud of her Canadian heritage (“I love referencing my country. I love referencing my hockey team,” she says, of Robin’s national pride in HIMYM “We actually just shot an episode. I like to think of as a love letter to Canada. It’s so Canadian.”) but admits to being something of an anglophile too having studied for a semester at acclaimed London acting school LAMDA. Smulders and Whedon had been friends for some time before the Avengers assembled – in fact he famously cited her as his first choice for the lead in his once-mooted ill-fated Wonder Woman movie. (“The project fell apart and he wrote to his online fans and said, ‘My choice for Wonder Woman would be Cobie Smulders’ and that spread,” Smulders explains.) But in the two years since the Battle of New York she’s gone from small screen pin-up to comic-book mainstay, with parts in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and The Avengers: Age Of Ultron on the horizon, plus a reoccurring role in Whedon’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. And, as if that wasn’t exciting enough, last year she even won an award in Total Film’s prestigious Hotlist for Hottest Female Newcomer, along with Whedon himself, who bagged Hottest Director, Hottest Film and Hottest Scene for Avengers Assemble.

But as the next part of her Hollywood take over, she’s starring opposite Vince Vaughn and Chris Pratt (also getting his Marvel make over as Starlord in sci-fi comic-book adap Guardians Of The Galaxy next year) in Delivery Man. A remake of Canadian comedy Starbuck (“It’s how I got the part. They’re like, ‘We need to have a Canadian in it!’” she kids), Smulders plays the pregnant girlfriend of Vaughn’s underachiever David, 108 | Total Film | January 2014

Girl in charge: (top left and main) as Agent Maria Hill with Agent Coulson in Avengers Assemble and TV’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.; (far right) with Vince Vaughn in the forthcoming Delivery Man.

who discovers that he’s fathered 533 kids via a fertility clinic, and now many of those children want to know his identity.

“She’s like a hard, tough independent woman and she’s dealing with this guy who can’t get his life together. And now he really has to because he’s going to have a baby,” Smulders explains.

“There’s a lot of frustration and there’s a lot of difficulty and a lot of anger in their relationship.

The character could get really ‘naggy’, just kind of unlikeable, so we really wanted to show how these two became a couple and what keeps them together amidst all of this craziness.”

Transposed from Montreal to New York (and French to English), Delivery Man retains the same writer/director Ken Scott. Smulders was a fan of the original which picked up a runner up People’s Choice award at the Toronto Film Festival in 2011 (third place after French/ Lebanese film Where Do We Go Now? and Oscar winner A Separation). It’s a change of pace for Vaughan, shedding his harder edge to play drifter David who, in the face of his suddenly gargantuan brood, decides he wants to locate each of the children and shower them with what appears to them random acts of kindness.

“There’s something that is so charming about him and loveable,” Smulders smiles. “It could

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get a bit sticky and it could get a little bit slapstick comedy. But I feel like this movie has so much heart in it, regarding what it means to be a parent. It’s really sweet. Even in the original I was crying.”

It’s a straighter role for Smulders too. “I never thought that I was hilarious,” she considers.

“How I Met Your Mother was the first comedy I was hired to do. Before that I was in dark dramas up in Canada. When I got How I Met Your Mother I thought it’d be a huge mistake and that I didn’t know what I was doing. But now I’ve been on this show now for eight years, which has been a great way to learn how to do it better.” The show’s now in its ninth and final season, with all 24 episodes set around Robin and Barney’s (Neil Patrick Harris) wedding weekend, where Ted (Josh Radnor) finally meets the mother of his long suffering kids. The show’s been a success, nominated for 28 Emmys, but now it’s time for Smulders to leave MacClarens bar and suit up.

“I don’t know how I’m able to get these great jobs that just keep going. I got on How I Met Your Mother and we shot for years. I landed Maria Hill and they keep asking me to do these movies. It’s a wonderful consistency in my life. But it’s also great from a creative standpoint to be able to do these projects and grow and change. Usually you Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

DOVE SHORE/CONTOUR BY GETTY, ALLSTAR

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do a character like on Delivery Man and have a great experience and it’s a fun character and it’s wonderful, but then it’s over. This way, I get to go back and do another movie with a lot of the same people and just watch the character grow.”

Captain America: The Winter Soldier stomps onto screens this March with Cap, joining forces with Black Widow to thwart a chilly Soviet agent on the rampage, against the aftermath of the Battle Of New York. If the trailer is anything to go by it could spell trouble for Hill – new threats are coming out of the woodwork and it looks like S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury, Hill’s boss, has been injured and landed himself in hospital.

“Basically, it’s chaos and you don’t know who’s on what side and it’s very dysfunctional,” Smulders enthuses. “It was very fun to play Maria Hill within that environment where it’s very chaotic and she’s all about the rules and everything being in its order and everything being in its place. It was interesting to play this like, every man for himself, a little bit, because you don’t know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy.”

Meanwhile, with The Avengers: Age Of Ultron still in pre-production, the shutters are tightly down about plot details. “I haven’t read a script. totalfilm.com

‘Wonder Woman is such an amazing character, she’s very iconic. I’m open to anything.

The Marvel world is such a wonderful, creative place to be’ I hear I’m involved. I don’t even know. I hope to be involved. I think we are possibly shooting in London, which would be fun, but that’s kind of all I know. They’re very secretive at Marvel – and rightly so, as they should be.” She circles.

“I’m sure I’ll be getting a phone call from a three-digit phone number soon to say, ‘Where can we go so you can give us your blood and we can give you a script of this movie,”’ – and I’ll get to read it and all my answers will be solved!”

But first Whedon’s dreams of Smulders as Wonder Woman are being realised. Sort of.

Smulders is providing the voice of Wonder Woman in the upcoming animation The Lego Movie, where she’ll be reunited with her Delivery Man co-star Chris Pratt, who plays an ordinary

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guy mistaken for the powerful Master Builder.

It’s a comic geek’s paradise, seeing Lego Wonder Woman finally get together with Batman, Superman and the Green Lantern, as well as Han Solo and errr, ‘1980-something Space Guy’.

So what about a full-length live-action launch for DC Comics Princess Diana of Themyscira aka Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman? With the marvel renaissance, and increasingly credible female characters like Black Widow, Hayley Atwell’s Agent Carter and Hill herself showing up, fans have been crying out for a decent super heroine. Could now be the time for Smulders to don the bracelets and jump into the invisible plane?

“Wonder Woman is such an amazing character, but she’s very iconic, so it’s scary stuff.

It’s scary stuff with big shoes.” Smulders muses.

“I’m open to everything. I think it would be awesome, but who knows. I’m happy doing these great films like Delivery Man and being Maria Hill.

If Wonder Woman comes up, I’ll think about it then.

“There’s such a fan base, it’s a world that exists for people. Even this Marvel world and this DC world, it’s such a wonderful, creative place to be and produce for people who love it this much.

Obviously I’d love to be a part of it if anything ever happened. But there’s nothing going on.

But I’m open to anything else.” Batman Vs. Superman? Could be time the girls show them how it’s done. TF Delivery Man opens on 10 January, Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens on 28 March, The Avengers: Age Of Ultron opens in 2015.

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TF LIST

SPOILER ALERT!

No one wants to admit to blubbing over Patch Adams or Marley & Me. But some movies earn their sentiment. Here are 21 movies it’s OK to cry at…

WORDS JOSH WINNING

HANKIE RATING Solitary tear

Wracked and wrecked Flowing freely Squinting and swallowing Lump in throat

TOY STORY 3

GLADIATOR

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

THE BIT WHERE… Andy has to say goodbye to his toys.

THE BIT WHERE… Maximus joins his dead family.

THE BIT WHERE… Samwise says “Don’t go where I can’t follow!”

“You are a toy!” screamed a furious Woody (Tom Hanks) in Pixar’s first ever feature film.

By the end of this third toy story, that sentiment is entirely forgotten. Andy’s ragtag collection of plastic playthings is now so full of life that Woody, Buzz, Hamm, Rex and co feel like our own flesh-and-blood friends.

Which makes the teen’s trilogy-closing farewell all the more heartbreaking. His goodbye is also ours.

By the end of Ridley Scott’s epic, Maximus (Russell Crowe) is battered and bruised… but not broken. He’s a hero’s hero. A survivor.

Which makes his death at the hands of Joaquin Phoenix’s devious Commodus beyond devastating. The real emotional sucker punch lands as Maximus’ kid races to greet him in the afterlife, and buddy Juba (Djimon Hounsou) profers a bittersweet farewell: “I will see you again... But not yet. Not yet...”

Never was there a more afecting on-screen bromance than the one between Samwise (Sean Astin) and Frodo (Elijah Wood). If ever you doubted the bond shared by these two singularly heroic hobbits, it had become plain as pipe-weed by the third LOTR film, not least in the scene in which Samwise revives Frodo from his sticky Shelob encounter with a quavering plea.

HANKIE RATING

HANKIE RATING

110 | Total Film | January 2014

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HANKIE RATING

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WorldMags.net THE SIXTH SENSE THE BIT WHERE… Toni Collette says, “Do I make her proud?”

A traffic jam. Eight-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) sits in the car with his mother Lynn (Toni Collette). There’s been a crash up ahead. The real action’s happening here, though, as Cole gives his mother a heartfelt message from her own dead ma. In a single shivering moment, two fractured relationships are elegantly repaired – Lynn finally understands her son… and puts the ghosts of her past to rest.

HANKIE RATING

TEARJERKERS

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY THE BIT WHERE… Arnie sacrifices himself with a thumbs up.

Can a robot learn to love? That’s the question at the steely heart of James Cameron’s bigger, bolder sequel as young tearaway John Connor (Edward Furlong) unwittingly moulds good ’bot the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) anew as a surrogate dad. All before he has to submerge Arnie in a vat of molten metal – from which the T-800 ofers its approval in a final, fatherly, fiery thumbs up…

HANKIE RATING

E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL THE BIT WHERE… The dog tries to get on the ship, then ET departs.

TOP GUN THE BIT WHERE… Goose dies.

Maverick (Tom Cruise) receives a lesson in humility – and mortality – when his own recklessness gets buddy Goose (Anthony Edwards) killed during a routine training programme. The sight of Goose’s broken body being airlifted is so upsetting it’s spawned a legion of YouTube tribute videos, plus an angry tirade from American radio host Jim Rome, who just can’t find it in his heart to forgive Mav’s bullheadedness. This one cuts deep.

After the bike riding, the flower reviving and all those Reese’s Pieces, E.T. takes a turn for the melancholy as the adorable space invader departs for his home rock, leaving behind a tear-streaked Elliott (Henry Thomas). It’s the final dig in the ribs after one heck of an emotional rollercoaster ride (pasty E.T., deathbed Elliott…), and something any kid who’s lost a friend, a pet or both can relate to.

HANKIE RATING

HANKIE RATING

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1

LETHAL WEAPON 2 THE BIT WHERE… There’s a bomb on the toilet.

THE BIT WHERE… Dobby dies.

“I’m gonna die on a toilet, aren’t I?” sweats Roger (Danny Glover). “Guys like you don’t die on toilets,” reassures Riggs (Mel Gibson) as writer Jefrey Boam dumps the mismatched coppers into a hilarious situation – Roger perched on an explosives-packed lav – and rinses it for laughs and sobs, often at the same time. If the look of love these guys share just before launching into action doesn’t have you choking, nothing will.

“What a beautiful place... to be with friends.” That’s our Dobby for you.

The wide-eyed house elf can’t help but look on the bright side – even when he’s dying. Harry Potter’s teleporting buddy comes a cropper during a battle with Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter), expiring on a beach, cradled in the arms of his wizard friend – the boy he died protecting.

HANKIE RATING

HANKIE RATING: totalfilm.com

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>>

January 2014 | Total Film | 111

TF LIST

WorldMags.net SPARTACUS THE BIT WHERE… Everyone says “I’m Spartacus.”

Break his spirit? You can try. Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) discovers there is honour in dishonour as he leads an army of slave rebels against Crassus’ (Laurence Olivier) Roman forces. In the ensuing carnage, Spartacus’ meagre troop fights for its right to a free Rome. Even when bested in battle, the troop protects the identity of its courageous leader by individually pronouncing “I’m Spartacus!” Never was war more beautiful.

HANKIE RATING

ROCKY THE BIT WHERE… Adrian enters the ring.

Trapped in the ring with Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) falters. He flails. Lover Adrian (Talia Shire) watches from the sidelines as her beau is beaten black and blue. Then, as the result of the fight is announced in a scrum of cameras and elbows, Adrian pushes her way into the ring to profess her love for the runner-up. Rocky may not have won the bout, but he’s landed the biggest prize.

HANKIE RATING

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES THE BIT WHERE… Michael Caine blubs.

In just one of the many emotionallyintense scenes from Chris Nolan’s trilogy closer, Alfred (Michael Caine) finally reveals that Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal) wrote a letter to Bruce (Christian Bale) before her death, choosing Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) over him. Alfred’s attempt to convince Bruce to give up his Bat dream, though, backfires, and Alfred ends up leaving Bruce alone in a manor filled with ghosts...

HANKIE RATING

THE BIT WHERE… Laura contemplates topping herself.

“I want to die…” opines housewife Laura (Celia Johnson), faced with the imminent departure of Alec (Trevor Howard), the doctor she’s been having a torrid (but terribly polite) afair with. When Alec boards his train, destined for Africa, Laura’s gripped with a terrible, desperate, suicidal impulse and goes to dash herself in front of an oncoming steam engine, only to miss it by a whisker…

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE THE BIT WHERE… Indy Sr calls Indy Jr ‘Indiana’ for the first time.

STAR TREK II: WRATH OF KHAN

Indy (Harrison Ford) is clinging at the edge of a flaming fissure, about to be swallowed by the earth as he struggles to reach the Holy Grail. Even his father’s (Sean Connery) pleas can’t make him see sense. Until, that is, Indy Sr finally quits the “Junior” rubbish and calls his son by his full name.

“Indiana… let it go.” In an instant, Indy Jr snaps to, realising there’s more to life than trinkets…

THE BIT WHERE… Spock dies.

HANKIE RATING

HANKIE RATING

It was the biggest thing to happen in Star Trek before J.J. Abrams beamed up. Faced with the destruction of the Mutara Nebula – plus, more importantly, the Starship Enterprise – Spock (Leonard Nimoy) sacrifices himself by exposing himself to deadly levels of radiation to fix the ship’s broken warp drive. “Don’t grieve, General,” he solemnly tells Kirk (William Shatner). “I have been, and always shall be, your friend…”

HANKIE RATING

112 | Total Film | January 2014

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TEARJERKERS

STAND BY ME

PLATOON

THE BIT WHERE… River Phoenix disappears.

THE BIT WHERE… Willem Dafoe snuffs it.

For 80 minutes we’ve followed this grubbyfaced squadron of smalltown outcasts, from encounters with snapping dogs and ball-sucking leeches to a run-in with a flick knife-wielding Kiefer Sutherland. It all comes to a sob-inducing head, though, when the middle-aged Gordie (Richard Dreyfuss) narrates the future of the fumbling foursome – including the death of Chris Chambers (River Phoenix). The actor’s fade out of the frame was lent a terrible poignancy when Phoenix died just seven years later, aged 23.

Long before it was used to tear-tugging efect in Amélie, Samuel Barber’s gorgeous Adagio for Strings had us snifing into our tissues during Oliver Stone’s Vietnam opus. Barber’s mournful composition heightens the tragedy and injustice as Elias (Willem Dafoe) is tracked down by Vietnamese soldiers and riddled with bullets, all while his comrades watch helplessly from the air…

HANKIE RATING

HANKIE RATING

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST THE BIT WHERE… Chief Bromden escapes.

A Native American runs into a darkening sky. Christopher Lloyd whoops… Chief Bromden’s (Will Sampson) tormented dash for freedom is as bittersweet as they come. Sure, he’s just (compassionately) sufocated braindead friend McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), but he’s also fulfilled his last wish – to use a hydrotherapy console to bust his way out into the free world.

HANKIE RATING

GOOD WILL HUNTING THE BIT WHERE… “It’s not your fault.”

Twenty-year-old genius Will (Matt Damon) is spiralling into the final stretch of Gus Van Sant’s Oscar-winning drama. He’s pushed Skylar (Minnie Driver) away and finally admitted that his father abused him as a child. It’s Dr Sean Maguire (Robin Williams) who finally catches him and sets the wunderkind back on his feet. “It’s not your fault,” the doc murmurs. “I know,” grunts Will. “Listen to me son. It’s not your fault,” presses Maguire.

“It’s not your fault…”

HANKIE RATING

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

ALLSTAR, KOBAL

THE BIT WHERE… Andy Dufresne escapes.

THE BIT WHERE… An angel gets its wings.

Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is a wronged man, and we’ve experienced every one of his anguished, angry resentments alongside him. We’ve never wanted somebody to break out of imprisonment more than this guy, and when Dufresne’s arduous, painstakinglyexecuted escape plan is finally put into action, it’s a moment of orchestral euphoria. We can feel the rain washing all of that anguish into the gutter.

Few men have been dragged through the dirt to quite the same extent as George Bailey (James Stewart), whose sufering causes him to contemplate suicide until a trainee angel shows him what the world would be like without him in it. When George returns home for Christmas, a bell on the tree tinkles, and his daughter tells him that every time a bell rings, an angel earns its wings.

HANKIE RATING

HANKIE RATING totalfilm.com

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TF

January 2014 | Total Film | 113

THE

INTERVIEW WORDS JENNY COONEY ADDITIONAL REPORTING MATT GLASBY PORTRAIT FRANCOIS BERTHIER WorldMags.net

He’s the funny guy who became a Hollywood heavyweight, and now he’s courting a third Best Actor Oscar with real-life portrayals of Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks and a kidnapped seaman in Captain Phillips. Meet Tom Hanks, cinema’s Mr Nice Guy. “I’m decent,” he says, “but I ain’t no pussy…”

T

here are film stars who seem familiar, and film stars you feel like you know. Eschewing dramatic fireworks and facial ticks – save the odd modest moustache or shaky shellshocked hand – Tom Hanks is always, at least a little bit, himself: unguarded, unshowy, honourable, the average Joe Versus The Volcano.

His Twitter bio reads: “I’m that actor in some of the movies you liked and some you didn’t.”

Quite an understatement for a man whose films have earned $8.5bn at the box office. With two Oscar-botherers currently in multiplexes – Saving Mr Banks, in which he plays Walt Disney to Emma Thompson’s P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins, and high-seas hijack drama Captain Phillips – that figure’s only going north.

When Total Film sits down with the 57-year-old at the Four Seasons hotel, Beverly Hills, he’s jovial, interested, avuncular – your favourite teacher with a twinkle, the one that pushed you in the right direction, but not too hard. His films have that quality as well. There’s always “saving” going on, whether it’s Private Ryan, Mr Banks or, in Captain Phillips, simply himself. It might be mantelpiece space he needs to save next. In addition to his two Best Actor statuettes, which he won consecutively for 1993’s Philadelphia and 1994’s Forrest Gump (a feat only previously achieved by Spencer Tracey in 1938 and ’39), an American Film Institute Life Achievement award (which, at 45, he was the

114 | Total Film | January 2014

youngest person to ever receive), and Forbes’ Most Trusted Celebrity 2006, there are murmurs of two more Oscar noms this year. Frankly, you wouldn’t bet against it – though he might.

Born in Concord, California, on 9 July 1956, Thomas Jeffrey Hanks grew up in a “fractured” family. He was “horribly, painfully, terribly shy” at school, and gravitated towards theatre, studying at California State University before taking an apprenticeship at the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland. His first big-screen role, in 1980 slasher He Knows You’re Alone, barely made any waves, but a guest spot on Happy Days lead to a film that did: 1984’s mermaid-themed Splash, directed by Ritchie Cunningham himself, Ron Howard. High-concept comedies such as The Money Pit, Turner & Hooch and Big followed, as did a few bumps (The ’Burbs, The Bonfire Of The Vanities), before Hanks started making films that “focused on people’s relationships... unlike, say, The Money Pit, where the story is really about a guy and his house.”

Keeping those relatable relationships front and centre, Sleepless In Seattle (1993) marked the beginning of Hanks’ ascendance, before high-profile projects such as Apollo 13, Toy Story and Cast Away – along with those aforementioned Oscar winners Philadelphia and Forrest Gump – made him the Hollywood heavyweight we know today. Or think we know. For all his lack of artifice, Hanks wears his many hats – director (1996’s That Thing You Do!, TV’s Band Of Brothers, 2011’s Larry Crowne), producer (2002’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2006’s Starter For 10), box-office

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billionaire – lightly, without giving up that everyman touch. Perhaps real variety is giving people what they want, but in slightly different doses. And perhaps real staying power is the ability to be lost in space, at sea, amid the fog of war or under Uncle Walt’s ‘tache, without ever losing sight of yourself...

What does the name Walt Disney evoke for you?

Well, he was as ubiquitous to my growing up as Elvis Presley and Smokey the Bear. We watched him every Sunday at 7pm – Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color. If you knew anybody with a colour TV you were at their house on Sunday so you could watch it. The best episodes were when he was talking about what was going on in Disneyland: “Let me show you what we’re working on for the new Tomorrowland exhibit...”

That was like “Oh my god, I’ve died and gone to heaven. We get to see backstage at Disneyland!”

Did you have access to the Disney archive and the letters between Walt and P.L. Travers?

I did not see the correspondence from P.L. Travers but Diane Disney Miller gave me complete access to the family museum. I was there twice and the second time was a day it was closed – they just opened up everything for me.

I was there for about six hours and I saw every piece of video, every exhibit, every artifact that was on display, studied them, read. There’s a lot of personal anecdotal information. I did not see any of the correspondence between [Disney and Travers] but Richard Sherman [songwriter on Disney’s live-action musicals] was there and he >> was a constant font of how much of a bitch Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

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TOM HANKS

THE

INTERVIEW WorldMags.net

P.L. Travers was, how much they hated her, how much she hated them, how much misery there really was, and how confounded Walt was by this being the first person probably in 20 years who ever gave him any static about being Walt Disney.

How did you go about playing him?

We had a lot of discussions. Mostly we were working with the hair and the make-up team and wardrobe. There was a certain posture; there was a certain cadence to how he spoke. But that’s just grunt work. I worked with Jessica Drake, a dialect coach that I’ve worked with many times. We did Catch Me If You Can, The Green Mile and Forrest Gump together. It’s mind-numbing exercises that you have to do but that’s the only way you can do it. She found out particular vocal signatures that I would incorporate. After that, I just put it on and pretended. That’s all I can do.

Walt Disney suffered from ADD. It’s something you have in common…

Well, I don’t know if I have clinical Attention Deficit Disorder. If I do, I’ve turned it into a lucrative living and I recommend it! You know, I was never a problem child. But I was always waiting to be fascinated by something and something usually came on about every 10 minutes that always got my enthusiasm.

Everybody from Picasso to Einstein… Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer... I don’t know, there are probably a lot of people who have this thing in which their concentrative powers are shot up at very specific times. For me, that was just what living was like. I might have benefited from psychotropic drugs. I know I do now [laughs].

Did you have to sugarcoat your portrayal of Disney?

He was a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer, but you don’t see him smoking in the movie…

Under seige: as a kidnapped seaman in Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips.

‘I’ve worked with some great directors and they’re all very different. Steven Spielberg is very, very fast, instinctive.’

I may be wrong but I believe that, in a motion picture, if you show anybody smoking a cigarette it’s automatically an R rating, and I don’t think you’re going to make a movie about the making of Mary Poppins and have an R rating! Essentially the law came down by way of the MPAA: you could not put a cigarette in your mouth and light it up. These are the hoops we have to jump through. But I always had a pack of cigarettes in my pocket, filterless, king size, and in between takes I would play around with them. Walt Disney smoked probably three packs a day, all of his life, and there are plenty of photographs, in the early days, where he’s got a cigarette in every photograph. There was no stigma attached to it.

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Saving Mr Banks and Captain Phillips are coming out close together. Do you worry about competing with yourself?

Oh, no. I don’t think you could ask for better reactions to Captain Phillips. That came out nice.

It’s a very different movie. And Saving Mr Banks is really Emma’s [Thompson, playing P.L. Travers] movie. I’m in it. Look, I just hope that they’re independently viewed and can warrant enough business so they’ll ask me to do this again.

You recently talked up about having diabetes.

Will that affect the roles you’re willing to take on?

Get your blood sugars checked! You know, it’s funny… I was in France, they don’t even know what diabetes is over there because they don’t eat the same food as Americans [laughs]. Well, I’ll

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never gain a lot of weight again for a job. That’s a young man’s game anyway. I don’t think my knees could take it, much less my liver and kidneys! You know, the weight loss thing is not so bad. That can make you healthy. But gaining 40, 50 pounds for a role? I think you can do that when you’re in your thirties or maybe in your early forties, but when you’re almost sixty, like I am? I am not going to put my body through that.

Also, I don’t want to be that jowly ever again.

You’re still obviously prepared to take on challenging roles, though. How was it filming on the lifeboat in Captain Phillips?

It’s a tiny little place that is very ugly and it smells bad and there’s no ventilation. The actual filming took place on a set, on a gimbal with a lifeboat that was almost exactly the same dimensions in every way to the actual lifeboat. We were on there all day long for a few weeks. They’d rig it up and you’d load in and then they’d close all the doors and then they’d lift it up and they’d start rocking it around. But when we climbed out there was some coffee and tea right there, so it’s not as bad as it could have been.

So you didn’t take to the high seas at all?

There was one day that we were shooting on the open sea in Malta. We were getting a couple of shots in the actual lifeboat. That was miserable Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

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for everybody. Horrible. Barry [Ackroyd, DoP] vomited, the camera operator vomited, the sound guy vomited. The only reason I didn’t was because I got to sit in my seat with my eyes closed; if I had had to actually work and do stuff like they have to do, I would have puked all over the floor. That was a very, very tough day!

How did you dredge up those tears in the final scene?

Well, look… I’m a sappy guy. I cry over the way my grandkids can make me laugh. But the work in the movie really does have to come from the movie itself. The emotion that you have is not connected to something outside the story we’re telling; it’s actually completely rooted inside the story that we’re telling.

The opening of the film shows the desperation of life in Somalia. Was it important to flesh out motives and not just make the hijackers ‘bad guys’?

At the end of the day, [Captain Phillips] wasn’t thinking ‘hey, these poor guys, they must have reasons for robbing my…’ The guys were thugs; they were mean guys and, I think, one in particular was extremely dangerous. They were willing to kill a number of people if they had to.

Now the thing that Paul [Greengrass, director] and I talked about from the get-go is, “Well, is that enough?” Somalia is a place that is run by chaos and there’s famine and corruption and I don’t totalfilm.com

think you have to go very far down the imaginary line to say, “Well, what if I was Somali, you know? What if I had no opportunities?” I don’t think, by and large, that every Somali with a gun looks forward to going out in a speedboat and hijacking. I think they probably end up doing that out of hopelessness.

Why do the cargo ships not carry weapons to defend themselves against pirates?

Interesting. At the point that this happened, no big freighter had been boarded by hijackers because they were too fast and too tall. There were also laws on the books that said you are not allowed to bring weapons into foreign ports. And there was also a degree of common sense that said, you know, your average crew of deckhands… maybe it’s not a good idea that we allow them to bring guns onboard because they might start solving problems on movie night with a gun!

Now there are security teams with snipers and there’s big razor wire around the holds of all these ships.

Let’s talk about your directing. You’ve made two features. Any plans to go for a third?

I am still absolutely fascinated by the process.

There are things in my head. I am flabbergasted by the process, however. As an actor everything I get to do is instinctive and completely personal.

I don’t even have to talk to anybody about what’s going on in my head. As a director, it’s the complete opposite – you have to tell everybody what you’re thinking. I think that my storytelling ability is natural when I’m an actor; when I am a director it is an unnatural craft, an unnatural talent that I have not fully developed. I have to learn and, unfortunately, people who are rattled with ADD, as I am… the only way to learn is by getting your ass kicked. As a director I don’t want to get my ass kicked quite so much anymore, so when the time comes that I actually do feel confident enough and I have done probably six times the work that I have done previously in preparation as a director, I hope to be able to direct again.

What kind of direction do you like to receive?

Sometimes the best director comes up and says, “Man, you got to do something because that was really terrible.” [Laughs] That’s a very effective direction: “Do something else.” I’ve worked with some great directors and they’re all very different.

Steven Spielberg [Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal] is very, very fast, instinctive. He trusts you as an actor to have shown up. Nora Ephron [Sleepless In Seattle, You’ve Got Mail] tapes out a set and you rehearse it for three weeks with the script. Bob Zemeckis [Forrest Gump, Cast Away] gets everyone together around a table, two weeks prior to making the movie. We talk about everything – each other’s roles, this scene, what this means... Ron Howard [Splash, Apollo 13] listens to everything that everybody says. We work on the script. He’s got Post-Its all over and he shows up with a shot list.

I work with them as often as I do because I show up on time. You’d be amazed at how few people show up on time. If you don’t, you might not be >> working with that director again.

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TOM HANKS

Five star turns Hanks’ heavy hitters… #1

BIG 1988 ++++

#2

FORREST GUMP

#3

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN 1998 ++++

A guest appearance on Happy Days alongside Splash director Ron Howard led to the start of Hanks’ comedy period. But it wasn’t until Penny Marshall’s body swap button-pusher that Hanks won his first classic role and Oscar nom. A tragic fable disguised as a farce, Hanks remembers it as his first “genuinely good movie”.

1994 ++++ Swapping romcoms for tearjerkers, Hanks spent the ’90s balancing Meg Ryan weepies with Best Actor roles.

Back to back Oscars came for Philadelphia and Robert Zemeckis’ epic. Reflecting the American century through the eyes of a “stupid” man, FG was “gruelling and physically demanding.”

“We won the war because of guys who did the right thing at the right time,” says Hanks. “I just didn’t want to drop the mantle.” The actor was the perfect fit for Steven Spielberg’s savage WW2 actioner, and Hanks’ crumbling visage as Captain Miller put an end to his romcom days for good. Meg Ryan would run a mile…

#4

CAST AWAY 2000 ++++

Prepping his survival skills with 1995’s Apollo 13, Hanks took on the ultimate challenge with Robert Zemeckis’s modern day Robinson Crusoe: sharing 143 minutes with nothing but a beachball. “It was formidable,” says Hanks, who lost 55lbs. “You have to power yourself through it by meditation. It’s not glamorous.”

#5

TOY STORY 3 2010 +++++

With a voice as recognisable as Mickey Mouse, none of Hanks’ characters are quite as iconic as Woody: the cowboy hero of Pixar’s CG opus. “We care so deeply about this,” says Hanks. “The connection we have right back to the original Toy Story is still there – it will always be the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen.” PB

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THE

INTERVIEW WorldMags.net

When you directed, did you ‘borrow’ from those guys?

Did I ever. But I’ve worked with other people that were writers who became directors, actors who became directors, so my pursuit of telling a story is really “let me get it up – I will make sure that it sounds and looks like it’s real, then I will turn around to my trusted staff of artists and advisers to see how we make that happen.” I don’t have instincts as a director beyond those I have as an actor. People like Bob Zemeckis and Ronnie Howard, Steven Spielberg… those guys are all pure directors. All they wanted to do was direct movies from the moment they had a conscious thought.

Something you were born to do, it seems, is voice Woody in the Toy Story movies. Is it true that you were never shown a script for Toy Story 3?

None of the actors saw a script. What we saw instead was the actual movie presented in animatic form. Wisely, John Lasseter invited us. Estelle [Harris, Mrs Potato Head] was there, Don Rickles [Mr Potato Head] was there, I was there, Tim [Allen, Buzz Lightyear] was there, Michael [Keaton, Ken] was there, and we sat in a theatre and saw the rough sketches assembled with music, sound effects and temporary voices. It was the entire movie minus some big action sequences. That’s how we saw Toy Story 3 for the first time. It was

You know, it’s interesting because it actually removed some aspect of the suspension of disbelief.

Because it’s my voice, it ends up being this thing that I did and I don’t think they like [the movies].

They appreciate them but I don’t think they really take to them with as much free imagination as they do, say, WALL.E or Finding Nemo. It’s just dad’s job.

Have you seen Woody work his magic on other kids?

It packs a big, big, massive wallop. I was out doing something in town and a family said, “Mr. Hanks, could we get a picture with my kids?” We went ahead and did it. Their daughter was eight and I said, “Hi, how are you?” The parents were making a big deal: “That’s Woody, that’s Woody, that’s Woody!” And the kid was looking at me, going [pulls incredulous face]. I’m wearing cargo shorts and a t-shirt. I said, “no, really, I’m Tom, I’m the voice of Woody. Here I’ll prove it to you. Close your eyes.” She closed her eyes like this and I said, “Hey, everybody, we got to get back to Andy’s room” and she went “oh!” [pulls delighted face]. It’s this truly magical thing.

Lotso the evil bear is cuddly on the outside. Did he remind you of any Hollywood agents or execs?

Oh my, let’s – hang on, let’s have a list. Have you

brilliant; we couldn’t believe it. Tim said, “You should show this. Put this out in the theatre.

I’d pay to see this…”

So did that mean you couldn’t improvise?

Very little. The way it works is you go into a room. You go in there and Lee [Unkrich], the director, is right there in front of you, and you have the lines in front of you and you just keep working the line and the scene and the beat as many times as necessary. You might change it a little bit. You might put it in your own words but there’s no whole hog improvisation because they’ve already done that. They’ve been in rooms at Pixar with 20 or 30 of their 900 people and pounded it into the shape. There’s no improvisation per se.

Did your kids feel a special affinity with Woody and the Toy Story movies, growing up?

ifeine 118 | Total Film | January 2014

1956 Thomas Jeffrey Hanks born in Concord, California. He tries acting to combat shyness.

ever done any movies with Miramax? You ever promoted any of their films? [Laughs] You meet [producer] Scott Rudin ever? I’m joking. They’re all just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. Showbusiness operates from fear and everybody is just trying to maintain their job and get the job done and hope that you won’t squish them or, you know, hope that you’ll show up on time, so everybody, by and large, is trying to get something out of somebody and they’re all very friendly and lo and behold, what a surprise it is to find out that they’re assholes [laughs]. On occasion it happens.

Not all the time.

You’re renowned as a nice guy. What are your thoughts on this public perception of you?

Well, I’m a pretty decent guy. But I am not a lightweight. I’m not a sucker. Hey, I’m not a pussy. I ain’t no pussy [laughs]. And I don’t

1980s Appears in slasher flick He Knows You’re Alone before earning starring roles in comedies.

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mean that in a pejorative or a sexist sense.

I mean that as, you know, a cowardly dude.

But you do think of yourself as a decent guy?

There’s no substitution for absolute, complete honesty. There are people out there that lie very easily; they don’t think anything about it and they say, “Well, this is all part of living, man, you got to accept the lie.” I refuse to accept that. If you lie to me, you’re going to be in big trouble. I think I am a good-natured man and I give everybody a fair shake but if someone takes advantage of that good nature, well, then you’re going to suffer the wrath of a lover scorned. It’s funny, I remember the movie Catch Me If You Can and Frank Abagnale…

He made an interesting point: when we were younger, we were actually taught ethics in school and those ethics came from all the principles of great thinkers, from Sophocles to the Old

1990 Stars in Joe Versus The Volcano, the first of three romcom collaborations with Meg Ryan.

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FRANCOIS BERTHIER/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES, ALLSTAR, KOBAL, REX

‘I think I’m a good-natured man, but if someone takes advantage well then you’re going to suffer my wrath.’

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Disney world: with Emma Thompson in Saving Mr Banks.

Testament and the New Testament. And every place you worked, in the employee meeting room was a code of ethics that you, as an employee, were expected to live by. Well, that’s gone now.

So there are less good guys around these days?

Now, it seems, if you follow ethics you’re a sucker.

And I refuse to believe that. I live by a code of ethics. I try to instill that in the people that I love.

You’re either ethical or you aren’t, and if you aren’t, I don’t like you.

It must be easy to stay ethical when you’re related to Abraham Lincoln…

Yes, I am! I don’t know how we discovered it, it’s not like we got a certified letter or anything.

We just always knew.

How does it feel?

How do I feel that I’m related to him? I feel sensational [laughs]. I was just thinking that the

1993-94 Philadelphia and Forrest Gump win Hanks consecutive Academy Awards.

totalfilm.com

other day as I was taking a shower… ‘Damn, I’m related to Abraham Lincoln!’ His mother’s name was Nancy Hanks so we’re either in-laws or cousins or poor relations…

Fame and riches never went to your head. Did the fact you were not an overnight success help you to stay grounded?

I bounced around. Work begot more work.

I distinctly remember there was one period of time in the fair city of Los Angeles where I wondered if I was just going to lose everything, you know? My TV show had been cancelled.

Nothing else had gone anywhere. Some alliances I had made had petered out. I was looking at a year ahead of me in which there was no work on the horizon, the phone wasn’t ringing and I had two kids [with Samantha Lewes, who Hanks was married to between 1978-1987. He’s been with actress

1996 Directs That Thing You Do!, stars in Toy Story and Saving Private Ryan.

Rita Wilson since 1988, and has had two more children]. I didn’t know if I would be able to live in my house in Studio City. I’ve certainly have moments like that.

What are the pitfalls that actors face as they forge a career?

There are a lot of things that can get in the way: money, celebrity, chasing a version of yourself at 25… When you’re 57, that can take a lot of work; you better give up, because you ain’t gonna look like that. I’ve been very lucky. When I was 25, I played people who were 25. When I was 36, I played people who were 36. I’m 57 now and I pretty much play guys who are 57!

You often play decent characters on screen.

Would you ever play an out-and-out villain?

No. Look, playing bad – I am not interested, ever. I don’t want to see bad guys who are just bad, you know? Why are they bad? There are evil villains out there like, I don’t know, Iago, that are intriguing to play. But bad guys do not look bad – they look like you or me. You could have a knife in your shoe, you know?

When you choose a part, do you visualize a role as you read the script?

There is an instinctive thing that occurs. When I read a script, I do see a version of it. I know the direction that I would like to start going and then usually there are moments of mystery where we’ll just have to figure that out. But it is not just about the character that I will be playing, it’s also very much about the theme that the film is examining.

Almost every film portends to be about something important. Even The Avengers or whatnot have characters that are conflicted.

You’re an actor who’s been in a lot of cherished movies. But what are your favourites?

2001: A Space Odyssey I’ve seen hundreds of times. The Best Years Of Our Lives, by William Wyler – how come a movie made in 1949 seems like it’s made today? The other thing that really got me was Taxi Driver by Scorsese. I saw those at very impressionable ages.

Are you aware that your movies – even before Captain Phillips and Saving Mr Banks – have taken $8.5bn. Could you have dreamt that as a kid?

I was going for 12bn as a kid [laughs]. No, I was just a kid that was running around looking for a good time. When I was in school and I saw somebody do the high school play, I thought ‘this counts? You can come to school and do this?

You get credit for doing this? I want in.’ But I never thought I’d make any living at doing what I’m doing, much less it be in an industry that can put up those kind of numbers. TF Captain Phillips is out now. Saving Mr Banks opens 29 November and is reviewed on page 48

2002 Becomes the youngest recipient of the AFI Lifetime Achievement award; stars in Catch Me If You CanandRoadToPerdition.

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TOM HANKS

2013 Plays a hostage in Captain Phillips and Walt Disney in Saving Mr Banks.

January 2014 | Total Film | 119

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EDITED BY MATTHEW LEYLAND

The Total Film home entertainment bible

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+ + + + + Stands apart + + + + It’s a crack-er + + + Half and half + + Sunder-whelming + Let’s agree to disagree

ILLUSTRATION BY LIZZY THOMAS

How Man Of Steel split audiences down the middle

Cape divide DISC OF THE MONTH

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Swing time: Despicable Me 2, page 125.

January 2014 | Total Film | 121

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Divide and conquer

Not perfect, far from pants. Superman’s return survives split intentions...

Superman from under-powered near-misses (Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns) and televised over-familiarity (Lois & Clark, Smallville). Snyder and writer David S. Goyer don’t always soar, but they tackle both issues with brio. Right off the bat, we’re plunged into a space opera featuring Crowe getting his (well-spoken) gladiator on. Head-butting the opposition? Marlon Brando missed that trick.

MAN OF STEEL 12 Film +++++ Extras +++++ OUT 2 DECEMBER DVD, BD, 3D BD T’S ALL VERY WELL dispatching Kal-El to be a “bridge between two worlds”, to quote his birth-dad (Russell Crowe’s Jor-El). But how about fixing this summer’s mass opinion-splitting?

Rarely has a battery of big-hitters divided audiences so much. Iron Man 3 kicked Superman’s butt at the box office, but some relished the Mandarin’s makeover more than others. Plenty devoured the rush of Star Trek Into Darkness, but many mourned the loss of cerebral sci-fi. Lots of punters enjoyed the thump of Pacific Rim, but others missed the lyrical Guillermo del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth.

I

122 | Total Film | January 2014

If Man Of Steel proved equally divisive, it’s no surprise. Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No and no. But it is several films in one.

Boy wonder Its heavyweight brooding is borrowed from Saved from the dying Krypton, Kal-El is producer Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight re-imagined as a boy who fell to earth in movies. The pumping action is of director brash but effective broad strokes. Shots Zack Snyder’s CV. Along the way, it flits of wafting laundry and cooing between prog-rock fantasy, whales put an otherworldly, Malick-ian stranger-in-aTALKING Clark’s-eye slant on Earth’s strange-land drama, firstPOINT beauty. His X-ray vision is contact fable, alien-invasion Man Of Steel cherry-picks from played seriously. Underwear actioner and disaster movie. fine comic-book sources: the gags are pleasingly absent. His The juggling act is vision of Krypton draws on well-known arc is refreshed ambitious, but it fits with John Byrne’s ’80s run, while Jor-El’s speech lifts from Grant via bite-sized flashbacks and the masterplan of reclaiming Morrison’s All-Star Superman.

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‘It flits between prog-rock fantasy, Malick-ian drama, first contact fable, alien-invasion actioner and disaster movie’ slamming set-pieces (arranged in non-linear fashion, à la Batman Begins). Fiery oil rigs, sinking school buses… the action is laid on thick, but Snyder doesn’t dawdle over well-worn story beats.

The bullet-point plotting sometimes sets characters at arm’s length. But smart casting humanises scattered storytelling. As Kal-El/ Clark/Supes, Henry Cavill gives good jawline and exudes the zen calm of someone holding himself in check. Kevin Costner and Diane Lane make soulful work of Clark’s adoptive parents. And Amy Adams is a nicely matter-of-fact Lois Lane, ditching Margot Kidder’s dizziness for a brisk professionalism as she investigates alien artifacts.

This first-contact thread restores a little wonder to Superman. Jor-El’s animated history-of-Krypton lecture makes exposition extraordinary. Lois’ meetings with Superman range from a creepy close encounter with his heat-ray eyes to a playful interview where totalfilm.com

the ‘S’ we thought we knew gets remixed (it’s “hope” in Kryptonian). Even in a replay of the old chestnut of Supes rushing to save Lois from a fall, the stakes shift: Lois plummets from outer space here, not a skyscraper.

The science-fiction set-up serves as a smooth segue into an alien-attack strand, where Zod’s (Michael Shannon) Avatar-inreverse assault on Earth boosts the violence.

Shannon’s full-blooded readings of Goyer’s often undercooked dialogue is priceless: his iron stare and relentless bark sell even clunkers like “Release the world engine.”

The Krypton factor: Russell Crowe as Jor-El, below.

Urban warfare

But the thunderous machismo turns top-heavy for the climax, where the spectacle of characters bashing both each other and a city senseless pulverises viewer engagement and splits the film once more. Never mind the contentious

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resolution of the final Superman/Zod showdown. The big problem here is the decision to follow the decimation of Metropolis with a cheeky quip about Clark’s new job. An angsty Superman is fine, but trying to square that notion with cheery shout-outs to the big Boy Scout of old proves decidedly dicey.

That tension stretches to the disc extras, where a goofball piece on Krypton presented by Dylan Sprayberry (who plays young Clark) shares space with two solid behind-the-scenes features (commentary unavailable), in which a full haul of cast and crew wax loftily about the “responsibility” of souping-up Superman.

Crowe talks about eco concerns, Shannon mumbles about recently discovered planet Kepler-22B... DC has often provided a serious, searching flipside to Marvel’s primary-coloured playground, but please: give these guys a whoopee cushion.

A report on how the cast got in shape is equally strenuous, but Antje Traue (Zod’s right-hand woman Faora) and Cavill make light work of discussing the heavy lifting.

Similarly, Man Of Steel keeps offering pluses to offset its minuses. Welcome flashes of levity include Superman’s thrilling practice flights and his revenge on a loudmouth trucker. Bluster is offset with beauty, bombast with bravura flourishes such as Superman adopting a horizontal pose to attack Zod. The OTT destruction of the climactic dust-up aside, there are firm foundations for the sequel to build on here.

True, Ben Affleck’s casting in 2015’s Batman/ Superman movie has already split hasty fan votes. But at its brash, bold best, Man Of Steel serves hope that Superman might yet unite viewers. Kevin Harley

EXTRAS

> Commentary (BD) > Featurettes > Animated short January 2014 | Total Film | 123

The Total Film home entertainment bible

WorldMags.net Hollywood has craft services, Britain has Jager bombs .

Q&A

EDGAR WRIGHT

The World’s End’s director talks improv, Gandalf and Letchworth…

It’s a packed Blu-ray…

We’ve got three commentaries; I’m on two of them and then there’s one with Simon, Nick and Paddy, where they rip into me and you get Paddy’s amazing Gandalf impression!

Only one deleted scene?

But we do have lots of alternative takes; Simon and Martin are so good at putting diferent spins on dialogue.

Crawl intentions Pegg and co go pubbing. Drink it in…

The Cornettos in the Cornetto

THE WORLD’S END 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++ OUT 25 NOVEMBER DVD, BD

C

ALLING TIME ON THE Cornetto Trilogy with one last hurrah, Edgar Wright’s small-town sci-fi comedy is a lagersplashed triumph. It features a great cast of Brit stalwarts – Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman – a glorious soundtrack of melon-twisting early ’90s indie and a gripping set-up that the filmmakers subvert with witty genre nods.

Unrepentant hedonist Gary King (Pegg) and his unwilling accomplices head back to their hometown of Newton Haven to complete the legendary ‘Golden Mile’, a suicidal 12-pub crawl they tried – and failed – to complete as teenagers. It’s a terrible idea: the town’s a graveyard, the pubs are

124 | Total Film | January 2014

TALKING POINT

awful and these former friends have nothing in common but the ghosts of piss-ups past. Pegg and Wright are underappreciated as penmen, but their screenplay’s biggest strength is that you’d be happy to watch Gary and co’s story play out straight, even without any otherworldly interference. Each character has something they need to run from, or recapture, and each gets a moment of pathos such as when Stephen Prince (Considine) drunkenly declares his love for local hotty Sam (Rosamund Pike), or when Peter Page (Marsan) meets his childhood bully.

The writing’s so intricate that every seemingly irrelevant detail pays off as effortlessly as Wright’s whizzy direction. The characters’ surnames

denote Trilogy have been carefully colour-coded. Red (denoting their blood) for Shaun Of The ranks in Dead; blue (police) for Hot the group Fuzz; and green (watch and see…) for The World’s End. hierarchy (King, Knightley, Prince, Chamberlain, Page), and the names of the pubs nod to what happens there. It also benefits from brilliant action scenes, numerous belly laughs and a generosity of spirit reflected in the extras (buy Blu for the full works).

These include cast, tech and writers’ commentaries, plus out-takes, FX featurettes, rehearsal footage, alternate edits… There’s some overlap, but both access and insight are ace.

But what’s most surprising isn’t the laughter, it’s the sadness. Gary King is a man-child trapped in self-mythology, and his hell-raising hides a genuine problem – he can’t bear to admit the party’s over. Frankly, neither will you. TWE isn’t just the end of a great trilogy, it’s the end of an era, and by the coda, you’ll be begging for one last lock-in. Matt Glasby

EXTRAS › Commentaries › Making Of › Featurettes › Deleted scene › Gag reel › Trivia track › Stills

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Was there much improvisation on set?

When we were doing the press tour, every night someone would ask what percentage of the film is improvised. The answer is zero. I think people assume all modern comedies are improvised – probably because of Judd Apatow’s movies.

Would you ever do an improv-heavy comedy?

Maybe, but I think there’s enough of them. I’m not against them because they can be really funny, but I like coming to work knowing what I’m doing!

Favourite Cornetto Trilogy memories?

I’m really proud of doing three movies in the UK that are genre pieces showing locations you don’t tend to see. I can’t tell you what a trip it was to show The World’s End in Hollywood and see Letchworth on the big screen!

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DVD & BLU-RAY NEW WorldMags.net Jackman was fed up waiting for the cross trainer.

Blu news

Small big-screen stuff and big small-screen stuff.

THE LONE RANGER 12

Film +++++ Extras +++++

OUT 2 DECEMBER DVD, BD PLAYING LIKE AN UNEASY MARRIAGE between director Gore Verbinski’s sharp, soulful animation Rango and his bloated Pirates sequels, this much-maligned updated take on masked vigilante John Reid suffers chiefly from not knowing who its hero is. Johnny Depp’s warrior Tonto is too enigmatic to be the leading man, but the focus on him undermines Armie Hammer’s already bland Reid. But there are moments of real ingenuity and fun here, if you can pick them out amid the mess of convoluted plot strands. It’s baggy, confused and downright wrong-headed at times, but The Lone Ranger fails in more interesting ways than many blockbusters succeed. Slim extras. Emma Dibdin EXTRAS › Featurettes › Deleted scene › Gag reel

Seeing red

More for X-fans to get their claws into…

THE WOLVERINE: UNLEASHED EXTENDED EDITION 12

Finishing movies With all the big, selfimportant blockbusters safely on the shelves by mid-December, the end of the month is when smaller films emerge like shy reindeer. True, ‘small’ isn’t the first word you’d associate with a Michael Bay movie starring The Rock, but pecs ‘n’ drugs caper Pain & Gain (23 Dec) is pretty ‘indie’ by their standards (ie no cities get utterly destroyed).

Similarly, Elysium (26 Dec) was one that got lost in the Iron Rim/Fast & Despicable summer shuffle. Meanwhile 2006 Vin-Diesel-with-hair mafia drama Find Me Guilty finally arrives (23 Dec), and there’s more basedon-a-true-story-ness in Lovelace (23 Dec).

Film +++++ Extras +++++ OUT NOW DVD, BD, 3D BD

D

ISAPPOINTED THAT THE latest big-screen outing for Marvel’s adamantium-clawed antihero felt a little blunted? “There were some trims we made to secure a PG-13 rating,” concedes director James Mangold on the commentary for The Wolverine’s ‘Unleashed Extended Edition’ (exclusive to 3D Blu-ray). “In this cut, there’s a little more violence...”

Though the 12 extra minutes don’t add much in story terms to Logan’s (Hugh Jackman) jaunt to Japan, they undoubtedly restore a harder edge to what is arguably the X-Men movieverse’s most character-focused and mature entry to date. The standout

‘Arguably the most character-focused, mature entry to date’ totalfilm.com

temple-fight set-piece benefits the most; with Wolverine’s unique brand of rage-fuelled hack-and-slash now accompanied by flourishes of arterial spray and squelchy sound effects.

Coming out of a summer season that gave us Pacific Rim and Man Of Steel’s VFX-stuffed mayhem, it’s still refreshing to see a studio tentpole whose major action beats rely on, as Mangold puts it, “eye contact, sweat and muscle”. And though The Wolverine inevitably (and frustratingly) veers into generic territory with a CG-fuelled final act, even here the film’s not afraid to take some risks, presenting Bryan Singer with an interesting challenge for Days Of Future Past. It’s also 90 per cent less ridiculous than anything in 2009’s X-Men Origins… Richard Jordan

EXTRAS › Extended cut (3D BD) › Commentary (BD, 3D BD) › Alternate ending (BD, 3D BD) › Featurette

DESPICABLE ME 2 U

Film +++++ Extras +++++

OUT 25 NOVEMBER DVD, BD THE FIRST DESPICABLE ME NAILED ITS baddie-to-daddy arc so neatly, there’s little left for this sequel to say. Instead, it’s alive with the sound of Minions, whose giggly gibberish and fail-safe slapstick lift the movie out of any number of plot holes, as ex-supervillain Gru (Steve Carell) makes a dull go of being an undercover agent (while falling for Kristen Wiig’s not-as-funny-asshe-should-be Lucy). Forget his three adoptive sprogs – the movie swiftly does, investing all its ideas-energy in a Gremlinslike twist that brings back some of the old naughtiness. Extras lean in a predictable direction: three Mini-Movies, The Making Of The Mini-Movies… Matthew Leyland EXTRAS › Commentary › Featurettes › Mini-Movies (BD) › Deleted scenes (BD)

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Best in shows If none of the above have a hope of claiming your Christmas vouchers, you might be more interested in the top telly heading to Blu-ray soon-ish. The big one is Game Of Thrones: Season 3 (24 Feb); and when we say big, we mean Amazonexclusive-limited-edition dragon packaging big.

Honestly, it’s like something you could bury the whole family under in a cemetery.

There’s also the season 1 of Bates Motel (3 Feb) – Twin Peaks meets Crossroads – and undercover-Cold-Warcouple saga The Americans: Season 1 (27 Jan). Also up is non-RDJ/Cumberbatch Sherlock show Elementary: Season 1 (23 Dec).

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Skit parade

He’s not just a face for radio…

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++

OUT 12 DECEMBER DVD, BD

A

Shaking off Rob Brydon was proving trickier than he thought…

LAN PARTRIDGE HAS BEEN a leading light of British character comedy for more than two decades, so a big-screen jaunt was inevitable. After all these years, it may have been less a case of creative urgency than a gap in the filmmakers’ crowded diaries that spurred it into motion. But who cares when the results are this entertaining?

Steve Coogan is as magical as ever as small-minded but weirdly loveable Norfolk DJ Partridge, firing off one-liners worthy of the character’s other greatest hits (from The Day Today to Mid Morning Matters). The role fits him like a particularly fine pair of driving gloves, and there’s a palpable sense of joy in seeing a character who’s tackled every other medium, from online to printed page, appear on his largest canvas yet.

Sure, Alpha Papa isn’t perfect; it hits a stumbling block typical of Brit-coms derived from the small screen, being

THE HANGOVER PART III WE’RE THE MILLERS 15 15 (TBC)

Film +++++ Extras +++++ OUT 2 DEC DVD, BD THE FORMULA MIGHT HAVE BEEN freshened up (this time it’s more of a road-trip-cum-heist caper), but the end result is stale. Zach Galifianakis’ oddball Alan is still central; Ken Jeong is still screeching the same frat-boy phrases and Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Justin Bartha look like they’d rather be elsewhere. Marginally less offensive to Asians, women, homosexuals and paying moviegoers than Part II, Todd Phillips’ bullish dick flick brings the franchise to a close with what’s basically an expensive bad joke. Paul Bradshaw EXTRAS › Featurettes › Deleted scenes › Gag reel 126 | Total Film | January 2014

Film +++++ Extras +++++

more a series of skits tied to a crisis (in this case, a siege led by Colm Meaney’s disgruntled DJ Pat) rather than a coherent narrative. Meaney is a formidable antagonist, but this is Coogan’s show, and he knows it. You don’t create a character that will probably be on your tombstone without knowing exactly what you’re doing; and such is the finesse and – after all this time – freshness of his performance that all criticisms go under the carpet.

Extras run to a multitude of deleted scenes it was a pity to ditch from the main event – they give almost every sequence more room to breathe, and a lot of decent lines were lost to the cutting room floor.

Stronger still is an unusually thorough Making Of, which stresses the lengths to which Coogan went to perfect every Partridge-ism. Andrew Lowry

EXTRAS › Making Of › Deleted scenes › Gag reel

THE CONJURING 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++

CAESAR MUST DIE 12 Film +++++ Extras +++++

OUT 16 DEC DVD, BD

OUT 9 DEC DVD, BD

OUT 25 NOV DVD

SLACKER DOPE DEALER DAVID (JASON Sudeikis) owes his supplier (Ed Helms), so he agrees to smuggle drugs out of Mexico. His cover? A fake family comprising a street urchin (Emma Roberts), his dimwit neighbour (Will Poulter) and a stripper (Jennifer Aniston). WTM milks bawdy laughs from bullseye performances. Sudeikis’ knowing look to camera during Aniston’s gratuitous strip and Poulter’s TLC rap are highlights of talented comedians creating magic with meagre means. The extras show how much fun they had doing it. Jane Crowther EXTRAS › Featurettes › Deleted scenes › Outtakes

DIRECTOR JAMES WAN’S FOLLOW-UP to Insidious is so familiar it may as well be a sequel. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play Ed and Lorraine Warren, paranormal investigators who lock their supernatural spoils away in a room (like the collectors in the ’80s Friday The 13th TV series). Wan’s been in there too, it seems, as his haunted-house flick uses every cliché to unnerve, from creepy dolls to creaky doors, scoring an admirable success rate. Despite solid performances, the result is less a great horror movie than an effective remix of all the horror movies. Matt Glasby EXTRAS › Featurettes

THE TRAGIC MACHINATIONS OF Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar are given additional potency in this Golden Bear winner, a fierce fusion of real life and drama that explores how a behind-bars staging of the play impacts on the psychological make-up of an Italian prison’s inmates. Spotting parallels with their own pasts in the characters they are playing, the jailbirds enjoy a temporary release through their brush with art. The result is not only one of the best recent takes on the Bard, but also a highbrow cousin of sorts to The Shawshank Redemption. Neil Smith EXTRAS › Interviews

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DVD & BLU-RAY NEW WorldMags.net

The round-up Fantasy film, kid films and films about films.

RED 2 12 Film +++++ Extras +++++

THE HEAT 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++

2 GUNS 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++

OUT 25 NOV DVD, BD

OUT 25 NOV DVD, BD

OUT 9 DEC DVD, BD

TOO BADASS FOR THE BEST EXOTIC Marigold Hotel? Not quite badass enough for The Expendables? Then sign up for this obligatory sequel to 2010’s action spoof centred on a group of semi-retired spies.

Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren all return, joined here by the likes of Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones. This time out there’s less novelty factor to distract from the sprawling plot, as the gang head off to Moscow to try and stop the Cold War heating up again. The set-pieces are well past their use-by date, but at least some of the fun the cast seem to be having rubs off on the viewer. Paul Bradshaw

SWAPPING GENDER ROLES SHOULDN’T make a tired genre any less tired, yet Paul Feig’s lady-led buddy cop comedy feels like a breath of fresh air despite its adherence to every cliché. Mismatched personalities?

Check: Sandra Bullock’s killjoy detective butts heads with Melissa McCarthy’s loose cannon beat cop in precisely the ways you expect. Drunken bonding moment? Check.

Third-act action blowout? Check. But Bullock and McCarthy’s edgy chemistry and loose, naturalistic delivery works wonders, while Parks & Recreation vet Kate Dippold’s script is laced with sharp character beats and devoid of obligatory romance. Emma Dibdin

A MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL, DEA, CIA, Navy… every man and his mutt is after a missing stash of cash ($43.125m, to be precise) in an action-comedy that’s at times hard to follow and never settles on a tone. 2 Guns has one big idea – that bad guy partners Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are both actually undercover good guys, with neither knowing the other’s true identity. The film’s at its best when they share the frame (there are large spells when they’re apart), squabbling and squawking like they’ve wandered into the gunfights from a ’30s screwball romcom. Jamie Graham

EXTRAS › Featurettes › Deleted scenes › Gag reel

EXTRAS › Commentaries › Featurette

THE ACT OF KILLING 15

LOOKING FOR HORTENSE 12

Film +++++ Extras NA

OUT 25 NOV DVD, BD SURREAL, BRACING AND UNNERVING, Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary takes us deep into Indonesia and face to face with some of those responsible for the wave of mass killings in the mid-1960s.

Asked to re-enact their crimes in the genres of their choice (western, gangster, musical…), the now-elderly killers betray no shame or teary reluctance, just a gleeful pride as they recreate the gruesome horror like schoolboys with a video camera.

Oppenheimer’s film is a sometimes agonising journey into the heart of darkness that cosies you up to true evil in a way that’s hard to shake off. Steve O’Brien

EXTRAS › Commentary › Interviews › Deleted scenes › Masterclass (BD) totalfilm.com

Film +++++ Extras +++++ OUT 2 DEC DVD

EXTRAS › Commentary › Making Of › Featurettes › Deleted scenes

ONLY GOD FORGIVES 18 Film +++++ Extras +++++

Some planes have a race, and that’s about it, in Disney’s Planes (above, ++, out 2 Dec, DVD/BD), a flat, sub-Cars spin-off that fails to soar. Colourful globe-hopping can’t make up for interchangeable characters and a peril-free plot. Locate the exit…

Parodists Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (Date Movie, Epic Movie et al) strike (out) again with The Starving Games (+, out 11 Nov, DVD/BD), in which ‘Kantmiss Evershot’ runs the tiresome gauntlet of first-base film references.

Not quite as unwanted, but highly under-anticipated, is fantasy sequel Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters (++, out 9 Dec, DVD/ BD/3D BD), which at least whelms on a par with its 2010 predecessor.

Love, Marilyn (below, +++, out now, DVD) re-tells a familiar story via famous people slightly overdoing it as they read out letters and whatnot. Still strikes an emotional chord, though, and there’s a load of archive material.

OUT 2 DEC DVD, BD

WHEN IVA (KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS) asks husband Damien (Jean-Pierre Bacri) to beg a favour of his estranged father, it prises open their own differences in Pascal Bonitzer’s French comedy-drama. This is an enjoyably affable affair: a mid-life crisis flecked with farce and magic realism. At its best, the plot recalls the downward spiral of A Serious Man, and Bacri’s performance is a hangdog delight. Unfortunately, Bonitzer’s attempts to provide a tidy resolution result in an uneven mix of coincidences and dead ends. His hands prove too heavy to deliver the required lightness of touch. Simon Kinnear

RYAN GOSLING PLAYED A STRONG, SILENT dreamboat in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, but he was positively chatty compared to his boxing-club owner-cumdrug dealer here. Revelling in extreme kills, castration metaphors and karaoke, Refn’s Bangkok revenge drama stretches Drive’s stripped-back style and savagery to the limit. At best, its sickly opulence, stealthy slow-burn and moody abstraction marry the influence of Lynch and Kubrick. But Refn’s transgressive chic also rings humourless and hollow – and a bit more boring than a film starring Kristin Scott Thomas as a demonic mob mum has any right to be. Kevin Harley

EXTRAS › None

EXTRAS › Commentary › Featurettes › Poster concepts

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Milius (+++, 18 Nov, DVD) also moves – perhaps surprisingly, given it’s a doc about the Über-macho auteur (John Milius) of Conan The Barbarian and Red Dawn…

Fibbing sleeve alert!

Animation Thor: Tales Of Asgard (+++, out now, DVD) is about teens and swords, not the hammer-wielding Hemsworth pictured.

But the Avengers pop in for the extras, which is nice.

January 2014 | Total Film | 127

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WorldMags.net Outfit chosen

by Prince.

competition WIN! Kick-Ass 2 on Blu-ray and an exclusive collector’s edition bean bag!

Have-another-go heroes…

KICK-ASS 2 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++ OUT 9 DECEMBER DVD, BD

I

T’S BEEN THREE YEARS SINCE wetsuit-wearing teen vigilante Kick-Ass busted the superhero genre wide open in Matthew Vaughn’s visceral stab at Mark Millar’s ultra-violent comic book. At the very least, a sequel had to up the ante – which is exactly what Kick-Ass 2 tries oh-so-hard to do. More swearing, more violence, more heroes, more villains – there isn’t much that incoming writer-director Jeff Wadlow doesn’t do more of. Except maybe subtlety…

The ‘bigger, louder, lewder’ principle serves up mixed results, as Dave Lizewski’s (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) ski-suited street fighter gets chummy with a group of like-minded vigilantes, headed by Jim Carrey’s ex-mobster Colonel Stars And Stripes. Meanwhile, Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), still itching to avenge the climactic events of the first film, re-brands as fetish-wearing super-criminal The

‘You can’t help feel this sequel kicks less ass than it should’ 128 | Total Film | January 2014

Mother Fucker, forms an evil army and builds a man-cave (brilliantly conceived by production designer Russell De Rozario).

Still, any genius strokes are undone by two factors. First: Carrey is wasted.

Second: the Mean Girls-lite subplot involving Kick-Ass’ cohort Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) going all hormonal in high-school. Gross-out gags are no real substitute for the heart that Nicolas Cage brought to the original as Hit-Girl’s father (the so-so extras include storyboards from a Big Daddy dream sequence that didn’t make it to a soundstage).

Despite Moretz adding another c-bomb to her repertoire, this time round her profanities pack less shock (though there is a nice swear-jar joke early on).

Likewise, the endless scenes of bloodshed and dismemberment: Wadlow has a feel for action – and one speeding van shoot-out (also anatomised in the extras) is a stunner.

But you can’t help feeling this sequel kicks less ass than it should.

SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED...

THE MASK 1994 Jim Carrey’s earliest comic-book role, playing another do-gooder loony.

NEVER BACK DOWN 2008 K-A2 director Jeff Wadlow lays the feet and fisticuffs on thick.

FRIGHT NIGHT 2011 Christopher Mintz-Plasse sinks his teeth into villainy.

In which city are the Kick-Ass films set?

A New York B Los Angeles C Chicago Enter online at www.futurecompetitions.com

For full reviews of these films visit totalfilm.com/ cinema_reviews

James Mottram EXTRAS › Commentary › Featurettes › Extended scenes › Storyboards

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TERMS AND CONDITIONS

You can enter this competition at any time between 22 November and 19 December 2013. By taking part in the competition you agree to the competition rules, which can be viewed in full at www.futurenet.com/ futureonline.competitionrules.asp.

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©2013 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Bruise control

Watching cool movies at home is all very well, but you need something equally cool to sit on. And frankly, that boring old floral sofa just won’t do anymore. Luckily, help is at hand – or at bottom, rather – with our great competition. To celebrate the release of Kick-Ass 2 on Blu-ray and DVD, we’ve teamed up with Universal Pictures UK to offer you the chance to win an exclusive collector’s edition oversized bean bag featuring original artwork from John Romita Jr. courtesy of made.com.

Five lucky souls will win a bean bag, along with a copy of Kick-Ass 2 on Blu-ray.

Five runners-up will receive a copy of the Blu-ray.

For a chance to get your hand on these goodies, simply answer the following question:

DVD & BLU-RAY ARCHIVE WorldMags.net

Grand design An epic fail restored to glory…

HEAVEN’S GATE 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++

1980 OUT 25 NOVEMBER Blu-ray

I

Nobody’s taking Christopher Walken’s bench.

T’S HARD TO SHAKE OFF three decades of preconceptions, but Heaven’s Gate might be the best ‘worst’ film ever made. You’ve probably heard its toxic reputation. How Michael Cimino frittered away his post-Deer Hunter goodwill with an extravagant, exorbitant western, virtually bankrupted United Artists and effectively ended the golden age of American auteur cinema.

All pretty much true… but wow!

Restored on Blu-ray to something like Cimino’s original intentions, it’s now looks like a magnificent monument to pre-CG filmmaking and the lost art of doing it for real. The results of the wild overspending are jaw-dropping, from ecstatic set-pieces involving waltzing students and rollerskating violinists to the remorseless finale.

The story is equally audacious: a novelistic account of racism and greed in an immigrant community in 1890 Wyoming.

Full of texture and ambiguity, it strikes a downbeat note that turned off audiences.

Even the romance is a brittle love triangle between Kris Kristofferson’s sheriff, Isabelle Huppert’s brothel madam and Christopher Walken’s hired gun. Yet given the freedom to map it out, Cimino prefigures Deadwood in extending the genre’s frontiers.

A misunderstood masterpiece, then?

It’s not perfect: even at 216 minutes some characters are half-formed. Yet the complaints have more to do with commerce than art. While co-star Jeff Bridges and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond fight Cimino’s corner in new interviews, a gossipy Making Of shows UA execs still baffled and bruised by what happened. Like the sign says outside the skating rink that gives the film its title, it’s “a moral and exhilarating experience”. Simon Kinnear

EXTRAS › Interviews › Making Of

THE LONG GOODBYE 18 TBC THE WIND IN LOVE ACTUALLY: 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++ THE WILLOWS U Film +++++ Extras +++++

2003 OUT NOW BD

1973 OUT 2 DECEMBER BD

IF THE REACTION TO THIS YEAR’S About Time proved anything, it was just how divisive Richard Curtis’ brand of Brit-com has become. Those with a low tolerance for self-deprecating schmaltz and middle-class archetypes won’t want to revisit Love Actually’s multi-stranded mistletoe narrative.

But for all its sillier excesses, this is big-hearted stuff populated by well-drawn figures – from Liam Neeson’s grieving dad to Emma Thompson’s wronged wife, via Hugh Grant’s affable PM. Emma Dibdin

EVER THE ICONOCLAST, ROBERT Altman took Raymond Chandler’s novel and updated it to ’70s LA – neurotic, narcissistic and (thanks to Vilmos Zsigmond’s beguiling lensing) soft-edged and faded. The woozy images reflect P.I. Philip Marlowe’s general air of discombobulation, as he stumbles through murder, suicide and blackmail. Elliott Gould offers a flipside to Bogart, but Marlowe’s code of honour is constant. Don’t be surprised if Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming Inherent Vice is made of similar stuff. Jamie Graham

EXTRAS › Commentary › Deleted scenes

EXTRAS › Documentary › Featurettes › Radio spots

totalfilm.com

Film +++++ Extras +++++

DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS PG

Film +++++ Extras +++++

1983 OUT NOW DVD, BD

1989 OUT 2 DECEMBER BD

THIS STOP-MOTION ADAPTATION of Kenneth Grahame’s children’s classic has fair claim to be the story’s definitive screen version. While its lovingly detailed visuals are an obvious influence on Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox, the tone avoids modern humour to keep fidelity to Grahame’s laidback rhythms. Such bucolic charm was nostalgic in 1983; today, its rich, handmade textures evoke not only England’s past but the pleasures of a simpler age of animation. Simon Kinnear

MICHAEL CAINE CLAIMS HE TOOK this job so he could spend a summer next door to best friend Roger Moore; unlike some of his ’80s decisions, this one worked out well for everyone.

Caine is the urbane foil to fellow conman Steve Martin (at his most gloriously goofy), as they attempt to outdo one another to ensnare Glenne Headly’s gullible heiress. Caine is in his element while Martin bumbles brilliantly for director Frank Oz, and the Ruprecht scenes have aged like fine Provençal wine. Emma Morgan

EXTRAS › None

EXTRAS › Commentary

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Ryan’s gigs

Catching up with Tom Clancy’s man of many faces… the novel’s basic storyline had some quality to it. Why, then, has nearly every aspect of the book been tossed away?”)

Films +++++/+++++/+++++ Extras +++++ Harrison Ford – whom Clancy felt was too old to convince as Jack Ryan, the dogged CIA 1990-1994 OUT NOW DVD analyst turned President around whom much of his fiction revolves – admits he had a “complicated” relationship with the novelist.

12 “He was never terribly happy with [us] for Film +++++ Extras +++++ making the necessary adjustments to turn the books into films so they would be a popular 2002 OUT NOW Blu-ray success,” the actor said recently.

According to producer Mace Neufeld, only HE LATE TOM CLANCY “a disaster”, and that the script for Clear The Hunt For Red October (1990) met the didn’t mince his words about And Present Danger (1994) must have author’s exacting standards, the having his novels adapted for been “crafted by a panel of result leaving him both “thrilled” TALKING and “pleased as punch”. But had the screen, memorably opining maniacs”. (“Clear And Present POINT that “giving your book to Danger was the number one you asked Clancy himself, you Ryan isn’t alone in changing.

Hollywood is like turning your daughter over best-selling novel of the would have got a more Gates McFadden, Anne Archer to a pimp.” Nor did he refrain from publicly 1980s,” he wrote in one reserved response, conceding and Bridget Moynahan have all slating attempts to meddle with his prose, typically prickly memo. grudgingly that “they didn’t been his partner, Cathy. Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber have declaring Patriot Games (1992) would be “One might conclude that screw it up too much”.

JACK RYAN: 3 MOVIE COLLECTION 15 THE SUM OF ALL FEARS

played CIA spook John Clark.

130 | Total Film | January 2014

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ALLSTAR

T

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‘Clancy declared the script for Clear And Present Danger must have been “crafted by a panel of maniacs”’ The irony, of course, is that when Thomas Leo Clancy passed away in October at the age of 66, his obituaries unanimously defined him as the man behind the very films that had so disappointed him. Did the author have an inkling this might be the case? If so, it might explain his resistance to how his novels were retooled – novels, it must be said, that have long ceased to command the same hold on the public imagination they could claim in their creator’s Reagan-era heyday.

Role reversal

That this three-film Jack Ryan boxset – with 2002’s The Sum Of All Fears available separately – should be released so soon after Clancy’s death initially looks like opportunism; it’s more likely, though, that the discs are to tie in with the upcoming arrival of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, a big-budget reboot that will see Star Trek captain Chris Pine go where Ford, Alec Baldwin and Ben totalfilm.com

Affleck have gone before. Outside the worlds of Bond and Batman, few franchises have turned their lead role into such a revolving door. Small wonder the character has more often than not been defined by the qualities of the actor playing him. Their individual characteristics and quirks help offset the rather anonymous and amorphous persona that may be one of the reasons Clancy’s works have been so hard to translate intact.

Baldwin was ideally cast in October as a foil to Sean Connery’s Marko Ramius, a Russian sub captain whose gruffly implacable exterior needed his co-star’s easy-going charm to defrost it. Come Patriot Games, a different Ryan was called for: a loving family guy turned reluctant man of action capable of holding his own

Harrison Ford gives his interpretation of Clancy’s CIA action man.

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against a rogue IRA terrorist (Sean Bean).

Ford fits the bill in both that flick and Danger, a film whose exploration of suspicious goings-on in Washington’s upper echelons give the actor free rein to essay his trademark brand of jaw-clenched moral righteousness.

The Sum Of All Fears, in contrast, needed Affleck’s younger, brasher JR: a hotheaded newbie prepared to go off the reservation in defiance of his stuffy Langley superiors when a nuclear strike seems imminent.

Adult entertainment

Put all that together and you have one of the more unwieldy action series in recent years, not to mention one whose underlying certainties – a faith in surveillance and technology, America as the world’s policeman – seem markedly less certain than they might have done when Clancy and his ghost writers first put digit to keyboard.

Still, as a character, Ryan’s inherent malleability and all-purpose resourcefulness leaves him perfectly placed to face whatever threat to Uncle Sam’s security (Colombian drug lords in Danger, clandestine neo-Nazis in Fears) comes along. There’s surely a gap too for the kind of adult, sophisticated thrillers that make up the franchise, a genre that – the Bourne movies notwithstanding – hasn’t been too prevalent of late. “Jack Ryan is an interesting and fascinating character,” says Ford. “He isn’t age dependent and his experiences are chockablock full of recipes for good, engaging movies.”

Should Shadow Recruit prove successful at reviving that character, expect to be engaged for some years to come. Neil Smith

EXTRAS JACK RYAN COLLECTION:

> Commentary (THFRO) > Featurettes THE SUM OF ALL FEARS:

> Commentaries > Featurettes January 2014 | Total Film | 131

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The spore thing Classic pod shocker. Still a scream.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++

1978 OUT NOW BD

I

“You’ve definitely overdone it on the sunbed this time, love.”

RED RIVER U Film +++++ Extras +++++ 1948 OUT NOW BD HOWARD HAWKS’ GENIUS FOR casually smart entertainment is writ large in his first western. John Wayne lends his paunchy swagger new layers as Dunson, ranging from mentor (to Montgomery Clift’s Matt) to tyrant over several years on an epic cattle trail.

Dimitri Tiomkin’s lush score and Russell Harlan’s moody cinematography provide majestic backdrops for this sweeping survey of morality in flux.

And Hawks weaves in such tense and thrilling set-pieces, you hardly notice the climax is a bit pat. Kevin Harley EXTRAS › Radio adaptation › Interview › Music-and-effects track › Booklet 132 | Total Film | January 2014

T’S GOT NO DETAIL, NO character, it’s unformed,” mumbles Jeff Goldblum of a gestating pod-person in Philip Kaufman’s alien-takeover fable. He could be talking about slick-but-empty remakes from 2008’s The Day The Earth Stood Still to 2013’s Evil Dead, but Kaufman’s re-imagining remains a test-case in how to respect and re-fertilise source material.

A sly, backwards-glancing segue sees a cameo-ing Kevin McCarthy pick up where he finished in the 1956 original, a harried everyman still fleeing pod-folks. But contemporary ’70s relevance is also well seeded. MASH vet Donald Sutherland plays the jaded hero, Star Trek logician Leonard Nimoy a suspect self-help guru. Between them, the two embody a slide from ’60s counter-cultural idealism to ’70s cynicism and, perhaps, predict ’80s self-obsession.

Add the post-Watergate jitters and you get

MARY POPPINS: 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION U Film +++++ Extras +++++ 1964 OUT NOW BD NO, IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE LONDON and yes, Dick Van Dyke has a dodgy accent – but there’s no better family musical this side of Oz. Re-released to tie in with Saving Mr Banks, Mary’s 50th birthday and a winter full of rainy days, Disney’s sparkling classic is still practically perfect in every way. The new ‘Mary-oke’ karaoke game and Saving Mr Banks plug aside, extras are mostly holdovers from the last re-release, but the real prize is the supercalifragilistic Blu restoration.

Paul Bradshaw EXTRAS › Making Of › Featurettes › Mary-oke option

a prescient ’70s conspiracy chiller-cumsatire, where corruption looms.

Ben Burtt’s eerie sound and DoP Michael Chapman’s shadows generate unease long before the ET spores spread and the icky prosthetics ooze into view. The best effects innovation, though, is a noise: an alien scream so weird, its climactic use justifies endless 100 Scariest Moments revisits.

Since Jack Finney’s subtext-rich 1955 source novel also bears re-reads, Kaufman and scriptwriter WD Richter had plenty to work with. But to see how well they nurtured old soil, look at Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2007 re-re-remake (after Abel Ferrara’s solid 1993 stab): a film so “unformed”, it’s scary. Extras include a round table with filmmakers Ben Wheatley and Norman J. Warren and critic Kim Newman. Kevin Harley

EXTRAS › Commentary › Interviews › Making Of › Featurettes › Booklet

ROBIN REDBREAST 12 Film +++++ Extras +++++

8 ½ 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++

1970 OUT NOW DVD

1963 OUT NOW BD

FROM THE BBC’s PLAY FOR TODAY strand comes this insidiously creepy rural horror. Norah (Anna Cropper), a London script editor, moves to a remote country cottage to rebuild her life after a break-up. The locals seem friendly if a bit odd. But odd turns to sinister and when Norah gets pregnant by a hunky gamekeeper (Andy Bradford), paranoia starts closing in fast… Directed by ’60s Brit-TV mainstay James MacTaggart, this was originally made in colour, but only the black-and-white 16mm version survives. Luckily, it doesn’t detract from the chills. Philip Kemp EXTRAS › Short › Interview › Booklet

STYLISH AND FAINTLY GROTESQUE, Federico Fellini’s masterpiece remains the ultimate account of director’s block.

As Guido, Marcello Mastroianni nimbly leads his impatient crew and posse of long-suffering women a merry dance through some of cinema’s most striking monochrome settings. Pearly whites and inky blacks glow on Blu-ray, from the whitewashed harem to the twilight circus parade. On the extras, a search for ‘the lost ending’ finds only photos and memories. As Fellini put it: “This isn’t a film that should be understood.

It should be felt.” Kate Stables EXTRAS › Documentary › Featurettes

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DVD & BLU-RAY ARCHIVE WorldMags.net

The round-up From Steelbooks to sleeve-steals...

POLICE ACADEMY: THE DAREDEVIL 15 COMPLETE COLLECTION 15 Film +++++ Extras +++++ Film +++++ Extras N/A

HERCULES U Film +++++ Extras +++++

2003 OUT NOW BD

1997 OUT NOW BD

IN SPITE OF – OR MAYBE BECAUSE OF – the sheer number of movies in its arsenal (that’s seven), the Police Academy series is well remembered but not particularly well loved. Unlike other similarly lowbrow franchises, it never learned when to say ‘no more’, and so it just kept chugging on regardless until 1994, when Mission To Moscow’s dismal box office eventually killed it. You’ll need a strong constitution to get through an entire boxset: the 1984 original is still worth a gander, but the series takes a screaming nosedive when Steve Guttenberg and Bobcat Goldthwait see sense and scoot after part four, Citizens On Patrol. Steve O’Brien EXTRAS › TBC

REPACKAGED IN A STEELBOOK THAT drains the colour from Ben Affleck’s red, pointy-eared suit, this re-release of his first superhero outing seems more about cashing in on the ‘Batfleck’ news than offering much new. Still, if you haven’t seen this Director’s Cut of Mark Steven Johnson’s Marvel adap, it’s worth a shot. With much of the cheesy romance with Jennifer Garner’s Elektra wisely nixed, Affleck’s Matt Murdock (sight-impaired lawyer by day; super-sensed vigilante by night) gets room to breathe – as do the fights, including a brutal and properly climactic smackdown with the late Michael Clarke Duncan’s imposing Kingpin. Richard Jordan EXTRAS › Commentary › Making Of › Featurettes › Screen tests › Trivia track › Music videos

DISNEY DURING ITS DIFFICULT MID-’90S phase. Directors John Musker and Ron Clements had led the ’toon resurgence with The Little Mermaid and Aladdin earlier, but Hercules shows definite signs of creative fatigue. The animation is halfway bold, a classical Greek-influenced look sadly blemished by bland touches, while James Woods’ Hollywood agent-esque Hades is both the best thing in the movie and a safe retread of Robin Williams’ revelatory Genie. It’s a product of crisis – while Pixar was changing animation forever, the lack of ideas here weighs heavy. Paltry extras, too: A Making Of and Ricky Martin music video are all you get.

Nathan Ditum EXTRAS › Making Of › Music video

BETTY BLUE 18

CLOCKERS 18

MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET U

1984-94 OUT NOW BD

Film +++++ Extras +++++

Film +++++ Extras +++++

1986 OUT 25 NOV BD

1995 OUT NOW BD

A KEY EXAMPLE OF TRENDY ’80S FRENCH movement ‘cinema du look’, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s overheated study of obsessive love involves layabout Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade), his newfound wild-child girlfriend Betty (Béatrice Dalle) and one hell of a lot of nude rutting. Pouting, sexually insatiable, increasingly out of control, descending via vandalism, arson and violent assault into howling insanity, Betty is pure (or impure) adolescent male fantasy. Dalle, in her screen debut, hurls herself into the role with uninhibited zeal. This two-discer gives us both the two-hour original version and three-hour Director’s Cut. Philip Kemp EXTRAS › Director’s Cut › Making Of › Documentary

A MID-PERIOD, MID-QUALITY SPIKE LEE joint. After the fury of Do The Right Thing, and the overt politics of his weighty Malcolm X biopic, Clockers seems minor league: the story of a Brooklyn murder and two brothers, one straight-living (Isaiah Washington) and the other involved with gangs (Mekhi Phifer), who fall under suspicion. It touches on recurring Lee themes with an urgency only he can muster – life in the projects, the seductive ease of crime and the trials of honest living. But shifting between tones and story threads, it never matches DTRT’s simmering build to righteous eruption.

Nathan Ditum EXTRAS › None

Screen tests

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Films +++++/ +++++ Extras +++++

Before there was the Tim Minchin musical, there was Matilda (+++, 1996, out 11 Nov, BD) the movie, Danny DeVito’s faithful (if US-set) adap of Roald Dahl’s heartfelt hymn to literacy.

Mara Wilson (who later quit movies to go to college) is believable as the prodigy raised by philistines…

Studio Ghibli’s animes are now more beautiful on the outside due to a quartet of Steelbook re-issues. All released on 25 Nov on dual format, take your pick from green-fingered fable Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind (++++, 1984), cat-bus classic My Neighbour Totoro (+++++, 1988), the gorgeously galumphing Howl’s Moving Castle (++++, 2005) and Little Mermaid-meets-The Impossible adventure Ponyo (++++, 2008)…

Also hitting Steelbook, it’s Arnie’s breakout Conan The Barbarian (++++, 1982, out 2 Dec, BD), an unabashed bloke’s-own power fantasy that kicks sand – hell, the whole beach – into the face of the remake…

1947/1994 OUT NOW BD available seperately TWO TAKES ON THE TALE OF KRIS KRINGLE, the department-store Santa put on trial for claiming to be the real deal. The 1994 remake has become better known, but it’s a mere stocking filler beside the 1947 original. Clever writing, footage in Macy’s flagship store and Edmund Gwenn’s Oscar-winning performance give the fantasy an edge of post-war realism: it’s film noir for kids. The cosy ’94 version smothers ambiguity. Worse, with Macy’s refusing to get involved, there isn’t a 34th St, let alone a miracle. Simon Kinnear EXTRAS › 1947: Commentary › 1994: TBC

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Like Conan, Battle Royale (++++, 2000, out now, DVD) has hit home-ent a squillion times.

This version is one they’ve all but called The Hunger Games Edition, given the DVD sleeve’s shamelessly cheeky flaming-emblemon-black design, copycat font and oh yes, the words ‘The Hunger Games’ in BIG BRIGHT LETTERS.

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TV

Celebration time

On set with Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special, The Day Of The Doctor...

NDER OMINOUS SKIES IN Trafalgar Square, April 2013, the sharp intakes of breath from massed observers are almost loud enough to drown out the whirr of wind machines. Just feet away, departing 11th Doctor Matt Smith – due to regenerate into Peter Capaldi at Christmas – seems to be risking an early adieu as a crane hoists his TARDIS up above Nelson’s Column, the gangly star dangling beneath. Harness or not, it looks terrifying. And TALKING just a bit thrilling, as Smith POINT confirms from the BBC’s The Zygons’ only other TV Cardiff base a week later. story is 1975’s ‘Terror Of The “I loved it,” he gushes, Zygons’, though Moffat-era namechecks in ‘The Pandorica before jovially correcting Opens’ and ‘The Power Of rumours his stunt double Three’ honour the aliens’ went higher. “People have lasting appeal. reported that I didn’t go the whole way up. FYI! Ninety feet!”

U

134 | Total Film | January 2014

If something about ‘Smith going out on a high’ pops to mind, so do hopes that Doctor Who will rocket above and beyond the call of duty for the show’s 50th anniversary special, ‘The Day Of The Doctor’. Previous anniversary celebrations have ranged from multi-Doctor runarounds to rubbish-but-charitable EastEnders crossovers.

For his special, though, show boss Steven Moffat is raising the bar: the stunts are giddy, the story sounds ambitious and the guest stars are so plentiful, they’re gonna need an even bigger-on-the-inside TARDIS. If ‘vintage’ Doctors are appearing, Moffat isn’t letting on. “With the three dead ones?” he jokes. “There would be some appalling gaps in that conversation and some very tasteless decisions!” But David Tennant,

Billie Piper, John Hurt and Joanna Page will join Smith and companion Jenna Coleman.

Seeing double

The buzz of seeing Tennant’s in-costume 10th Doctor parry with Smith’s suited 11th is a lovely appetite-whetter. Even off-set, the duo finish each other’s sentences. “I describe

‘The intent was to ensure that there’s going to be a 100th anniversary’

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it as having Stan Laurel and Stan Laurel and not Hardy anywhere,” says Smith of the two trim, tousle-haired Doctors meeting.

“They’re slightly combative, slightly competitive,” says Tennant. “But they enjoy being in each other’s presence…” “It’s like Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs

WorldMags.net wonderful and great to squeeze. That big head of latex! Yeah, sink your teeth into it!”

Yet the special, reckons Tennant, offers more to chomp on than nostalgia. “What works is that the script is very story-led, rather than being full of things that make people go, ‘Oh, it’s a special anniversary thing’. That stuff is there, but what Steven has come up with is a way of moving the story along and changing the Doctor’s very journey. And that’s not necessarily what you might expect.”

TELEVISION

Broadcast news...

All the big events in tellyland on air, and off.

Hurt’s so good

The Doctors will see you now: Smith, Tennant and Hurt on the Who set; (below) hanging around Trafalgar Square.

two brothers who are evenly matched fencing,” parries Smith. “Or a conversation with your own conscience,” Tennant stabs.

Smith: “Our brains tick at quite similar speeds…” Tennant: “We’ve been finding where they quite enjoy having the same thought…” “Or a completely opposite thought,” goes Smith’s opposing thought.

Time Lord bromance? Sorted. But, as Smith adds, “There’s also a great, big alien plot in the middle.” “It slips in and out of the script effortlessly,” Tennant teases. “You have those fun moments and then it’ll go somewhere grander and scarier.”

There are the Daleks and ’70s nightmares the Zygons, whose resurrection drives Tennant to lusty fan-boy ecstasies.

Fight or fondle them? He can’t decide.

“They’re a design classic, aren’t they? Just totalfilm.com

SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED...

DOCTOR WHO: TIME CRASH 2007 Tennant and fifth Doctor Peter Davison jostle for TARDIS space in Moffat’s ‘minisode’.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE 2012 Joss Whedon’s Marvel dream-team jaunt revels in its clash of personalities.

SKYFALL 2012 Sam Mendes celebrates Bond’s 50th with nostalgic tingles and a big, fat franchise-reset.

Keeping it unexpected is central to Moffat’s designs. As he leads/drags Total Film away from production designer Michael Pickwoad’s beautiful TARDIS interior to sets built for the special, he keeps the plot close to his chest, but does reveal this: a barn and a very big room feature. Lushly lit and equipped with unnerving implements (“Slightly alien things,” teases Moffat), the space barn continues the Who tradition of the mundane meeting the weird.

Next up is a huge storage room.

“A touch Raiders [Of The Lost Ark],” Moffat suggests of shelves that brim with boxes containing the special’s secrets, and the risk of melted faces for anyone who dares leak them.

One such secret involves a previously unknown war-like Doctor, a battle-grizzled bomb lobbed by Moffat into this year’s series finale. And not just any bomb; a John Hurt-shaped one.

“One thing we wanted with the 50th was to say, let’s have acting royalty in the show,” praises Moffat. “Let’s have an actor who represents the stature of Doctor Who. So to have John Hurt and to have him be so enthusiastic and so nice, it’s thrilling. He’s amazing!”

He’s a star big enough to provoke seismic shifts in the Doctor’s trajectory, too. Moffat often uses time-travel paradoxes to drive his plots, so it’s no shock that his special is about the future rather than the past. “My intent was to move the show forward and ensure there’s going to be a 100th anniversary.” But it’s the nature of that future-proofing shake-up that tantalises.

“What I’m aiming for is about what would be the Doctor’s most important day,” says Moffat. “That would change him forever, alter the course of his life. That’s what’s big enough for the 50th.” And just the high bar the Doctor ordered. Kevin Harley

> Doctor Who: The Day Of The Doctor will be shown

GET CARTER

In the wake of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., top rumour for more Marvel TV is Captain America’s Peggy Carter. “There are going to be more stories that we need to tell,” says Louis D’Esposito, director of the Agent Carter short. Could a Carter series be part of the 60-episode multi-series VOD package Marvel is rumoured to be assembling?

SAUL POINTS

It’s not airing till autumn 2014, and the buzz is already off the charts for Breaking Bad prequel spin-off Better Call Saul, which will focus on slimy lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk).

Creator Vince Gilligan says Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul will probably appear: “I’d have a hard time resisting putting all these guys in for a cameo or two every now and then.”

WICKED IDEA

We’ve had Broadway musicals and Sam Raimi movies, but it seems there’s no end to the ways in which The Wizard Of Oz can be mined.

Lifetime have announced Red Brick Road, a series promising to look at the “dark side” of Oz. It’s being written by Dexter’s Tim Schlattmann.

MAN OF STEELE

Daft ’80s detective show Remington Steele isn’t remembered kindly – its biggest claim to fame is that it prevented Pierce Brosnan from being Bond until his contract was up. But NBC are considering a reboot, focusing on Olivia Holt, the daughter of original stars Steele and Laura Holt, as she reopens her parents’ agency.

on BBC ONE on 23 November.

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TV

Crystal maze A matter of life and meth…

Show +++++ Extras N/A 2008-2013 OUT 25 NOVEMBER DVD, BD

I

T’S NO COINCIDENCE THAT Bryan Cranston’s Walter White – milquetoast-turned-drug lord and new yardstick for the modern anti-hero – is a chemistry teacher. This, after all, is a man whose story becomes worth telling only when he begins to radically alter himself on a seemingly molecular level.

“Technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change…” he tells a high school class in the pilot episode, quietly foreshadowing the character study that’s about to unfold. A terminal lung cancer diagnosis is the catalyst 136 | Total Film | January 2014

driving Walt’s transformation –afraid of leaving his family bankrupt, he sees an opportunity for fast cash in the drug trade, and starts manufacturing pure crystal meth.

As the stakes get higher and Walt’s decisions get darker, it becomes clear that this is far from the short-term solution he first envisaged.

“It’s all for my family,” is his repeated and increasingly empty rationale, and yet family is indeed front and centre in Breaking Bad as a litmus test for Walt’s corrosive influence. His increasingly compromised wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), his dogged DEA agent brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris), and his partner-in-crime turned surrogate son Jesse (Aaron Paul) are all

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hollowed out and hardened beyond recognition by the season finale. (The closing eight episodes are also available separately – but unlike the Complete Series, they don’t come packaged in a collectible replica barrel with memorabilia and a two-hour documentary – sadly unavailable for review – on top of all previously released extras.)

Moral combat

It’s the Walt/Jesse relationship that becomes the show’s dark, twisted heart. Cranston and Paul’s extraordinary chemistry segues from odd-couple banter to a fascinating, painful dynamic that marries tenderness with cruelty.

Paul, whose remarkable turn should by all rights lay the groundwork for a long and varied career, evolves into a second lead rather than a supporting player. As Walt gets darker and darker, his soul quietly corroding, the fundamentally good-hearted Jesse becomes a vital compass and counterpoint.

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REX

BREAKING BAD: THE COMPLETE SERIES 18 TBC

DVD & BLU-RAY TV WorldMags.net

‘It’s the Walt/Jesse relationship which becomes the show’s dark twisted heart’

Cranston’s performance astounds not only for its fervour, shrewdness and emotional potency, but for the way he makes it impossible to identify a turning point in Walt’s moral decay. There is no single point of no return. Instead, creator Vince Gilligan and his writers map out a series of moments in time – some small, some colossal – that add up to the story of a man undone by his own ego, a story that reflects something different in every viewer.

There are missteps: Season 2’s ending feels too high concept for a grounded show, while the undeniably spectacular Season 4 finale – in which Walt and Jesse have a final showdown with one of their greatest nemeses – relies too heavily on off-screen shortcuts. But the

Shoot to kill: (below) Hank (Dean Norris) unwittingly on the hunt for Walt, his brother-in-law.

journey is so relentlessly gripping – veering from thrills to distress and back again – that by the time the final season rolls around you can barely look away. There is no way this tale can end well, and yet these characters have taken root in your psyche and won’t allow you to disengage.

Deliberate pacing defines much of Breaking Bad’s simmering power, but unremitting is the watchword for the final eight episodes, as Walt’s secrets unravel and his empire threatens to crumble violently to dust. These episodes capitalise on the unique landscape of New Mexico: the uneasy combination of gaping desert and looming mountains that became such a psychological touchstone for the show’s particular poetry.

Grace under pressure There hasn’t been a bleaker, more elegant hour of TV this decade than the aptly titled ‘Ozymandias’, which guts the show and lets it bleed out in wrenching, ugly detail. And after the despair, Gilligan pivots at the eleventh hour and delivers a finale that’s as compassionate and cathartic as fans could have hoped for.

Redemption was never on the cards for Walter White, but ‘Felina’ allows him the novelty of grace and love and self-awareness, and Cranston has never been more mesmerising.

Few writing teams have ever balanced heart-stopping action against lyrical, slow-burn storytelling with this much finesse.

Nothing is incidental; plot threads you assume are forgotten come back into play seasons later. But more haunting than the ‘how’ remains the ‘why’, the question that will fuel pub debate for years to come: was it for his family, or for himself? Did circumstance make Walt a monster, or was he always one?

Blackly comic, ethically nuanced, emotionally devastating, Breaking Bad is the best argument yet for the idea that TV is the optimum medium for character-study drama. There is simply no way this story, with this depth and breadth of character writing and this emphasis on slow transformation, could have been told in any other format. Rigorous, outlandish, fearless… the golden age of television is not over, but there’s no denying that Breaking Bad leaves a void. Come for the action and the shock factor; stay for the heartfelt, meticulously crafted tragedy. Emma Dibdin

EXTRAS

> Commentaries > Documentary > Featurettes > Alternate ending > Documentary > Gag reel > Deleted scenes /extended scenes

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Q&A

VINCE GILLIGAN

Breaking Bad’s creator on pacing, casting and the kitchen sink…

Did you worry that viewers might turn on Walt?

In the early days, I worried about Walt being sympathetic, but I relaxed as the show progressed.

We had a stroke of luck in casting Bryan Cranston, and I recognised his range and his innate humanity.

I’m happy as long as Walt is interesting and his decisionmaking process remains relatable; he does the things he does out of pride, ego and weakness.

How did you nail the balance of slow-burn storytelling/ adrenalised moments?

My philosophy is to do as little as possible, while doing just enough to keep the audience interested.

I was nervous in the first season that people would not find the show interesting or fast-paced enough, because we only had a nine-episode order.

How did you originally plan to end that order?

I was gonna have huge plot twists and escalations, but fate took a hand [the 2007 writers’ strike] – and saved me from myself!

Tell us about the development of the Walt/Jesse dynamic…

It transformed itself in a way that wasn’t planned. I envisioned Jesse would be killed of early on, and the guilt would fuel Walt to descend further into the criminal world.

Clearly you had a change of heart…

We hired Aaron Paul! This is what I love about TV, it’s a collaborative medium. If I was given a thousand years in a room by myself, I would never have come up with some of the best moments and ideas.

January 2014 | Total Film | 137

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WorldMags.net Hot detectives: Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005).

MISS CONGENIALITY PG

+++++ 2000 FROM 22 NOVEMBER

Available on Lovefilm

Sandra Bullock has many gifts, but chief among them is convincing us that the funniest job in the world is being an FBI agent (see The Heat, p127). Here, she’s the scruffy rookie that goes undercover at a terrorist-targeted beauty pageant. Bullock makes every pratfall count – and there’s a lot of them. Also on Lovefilm is 2005 sequel MC2: Armed & Fabulous (+++) – a rare womance among Holly-comedies.

BAD BOYS

15 ++++ 1995 FROM 1 NOVEMBER

Available on Virgin Movies

The gloss! The guy talk! The gratuitousness!

Aside from a few ads/Meat Loaf videos, Michael Bay begins right here – and with super-slick, mildly obnoxious swagger fully formed. Will Smith makes his blockbuster breakout, doing the odd bit of police work in between swapping zingers with partner-pal Martin Lawrence. Shamefully enjoyable and one of the shiniest movies ever: Smith’s pecs glisten like a post-car wash Optimus Prime.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL PG

FESTIVE DECEMBER

On demand

+++++ 2011 FROM 1 DECEMBER

Our pick of the films and shows to download or stream.

W

E LOVE CHRISTMAS. YOU love Christmas. Shane Black loves Christmas so much that Christmas is thinking of taking out a restraining order against him.

Six of the crack wordsmith’s movies are Santa-centric, including such family favourites as Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and his directorial bow, the clever-clever Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Virgin Movies, 2005, from 1 Dec, ++++) – a film that does for detective flicks what Scream did for slashers, albeit with more of a showing-off face.

Virgin also has Nazi-zombie lark Dead Snow (2009, from 1 Dec, +++); not a Christmas movie per se but covered in the white stuff and a bit panto-like – as is costume-ball-on-crack Mirror Mirror (2012, from 1 Dec, +++), which doesn’t star Lovejoy as a dwarf (that’s last year’s other Snow White movie).

Talking of fairytales, on Lovefilm there’s Disney’s Rapunzel redux Tangled (2010, from 23 Dec, ++++) and Red Riding Hood (2011, from 1 December, +++), featuring Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman and all the girl-on-girl titillation missing from the Grimm Brothers original. And on Sky 138 | Total Film | January 2014

Movies we have Sam Raimi’s Oz The Great And Powerful (2013, from 20 December, +++), which is thankfully more Army Of Darkness than Alice In Wonderland (the Tim Burton version); plus slapstick, puns and chunky jumpers in Aardman’s Arthur Christmas (2011, from 28 Nov, +++).

Netflix has Steven Spielberg’s War Horse (2011, from 8 Dec, ++++) – a WW1 winter warmer with less carnage than Home Alone – and Cuba Gooding Jr. racing caper Snow Dogs (2002, available now, +++), which probably is just for Christmas.

Blinkbox, meanwhile, has rounded up some of the surliest men you’ll see this Yule outside of an Argos waiting area.

Choose from the brotherly feuding of Fred Claus (2007, +++); Jim Carrey riding a rocket-powered bell just as Dickens intended in Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009, +++); Carrey again, giving his colourful all in The Grinch (2000, ++++); the shrunken-head horror of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, ++++) and most cynical – and best – of the lot, Billy Bob Thornton kicking political correctness in the baubles in Bad Santa (2003, ++++).

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Available on Netflix

While some franchises enforce a house style on whoever’s in charge, the M:I films flaunt their director’s signatures. Here, Pixar vet Brad Bird combines The Incredibles’ group interplay with far-fetched ideas. As ever, Tom Cruise goes the extra mile, scaling the world’s tallest building in pursuit of set-piece excellence.

MUNICH

15 +++++ 2005 FROM 2 DECEMBER

Available on Netflix

Although it features much too much of Eric Bana’s sex face, this is one of Spielberg’s best of the last decade. Tracking a Mossad squad’s mission to avenge the massacre of Israeli athletes at the ’72 Olympics, it’s a cycle-ofviolence drama rich in period detail (Daniel Craig’s wardrobe for one) but brimming with post-9/11 pertinence. The ’Berg called this ‘the bitter herbs’ ahead of Indy IV’s ‘sweet dessert’, but we know which left a sour taste…

SPRING BREAKERS 18 +++++ 2012 FROM 1 DECEMBER

Available on Virgin Movies

It’s been a good year for rampaging women in balaclavas (see Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer) and an even better one for James Franco as a supporting sleazebag (see The Iceman, Lovelace et al). Both trends sensationally collide in Harmony Korine’s Disney-girls-gonewild, smart-stupid button-pusher. Love or loathe it, it remains 2013’s most quoted movie in the TF office (specifically Franco’s “look at mah sheeyit”) monologue.

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DVD & BLU-RAY EXTRAS WorldMags.net competition

EXTRAS

The other stuff we’re excited about this month…

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE OST

WIN!

For a chance to win, send a text message to 87474 with the keyword of your answer, eg LOGAN A

SOUNDTRACK OUT NOW For her victory tour, Katniss gets more music from the quality end of the “from and inspired by” district. True, opening acts Coldplay and Of Monsters And Men threaten to induce crescendo fatigue early.

But there’s too much class and control elsewhere to dismiss: the elegant slump of The National, the angelic Antony And The Johnsons, The Weekend’s melting lament, Phantogram’s electro glint and Patti Smith’s burnished campfire cry are clear victors.

X-ROCKER BLUETOOTH MULTIMEDIA CHAIR

VIEWING CHAIR OUT NOW This reclining, padded “leather-like” throne is the ideal place to settle in for a back-to-back Bondathon or for a Breaking Bad marathon. It hooks up to most TVs, smartphones or gaming consoles and sports full surround sound and a powered subwoofer for all your bass-laden movie soundtracks.

OUTTO OWNNOW!

AMOVIEPROP,BLU-RAY PLAYERANDDISCS WITHTHEWOLVERINE! Ninjas, mutants, samurai, his own inner demons… everyone’s favourite X-Man faces threats from all sides in The Wolverine. With Hugh Jackman on furious form in his signature role, the film sees the superhero head to modern-day Japan for his most intense adventure yet. Before it’s over, the man with the killer claws will be changed forever…

Directed by James Mangold (Knight And Day, Walk The Line), The Wolverine comes home on 18 November on DVD, Blu-ray, digital download and a three-disc 3D Blu-ray Unleashed Extended Edition. The latter offers the first extended cut of any film in the whole X-Men franchise, alongside special features including director’s commentary, alternative ending, the Wolverine Second Screen app (unlocking exclusive videos and more) and a sneak peek at next year’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past. To celebrate, we’ve teamed up with Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment to offer a one-of-a-kind prize: a prop arrow from the movie. The lucky winner will also receive a Blu-ray player and set of Wolverine/X-Men Blu-rays. Five runners-up will receive Blu-rays. For a chance to win, text the answer to this question, or enter online…

FILM IN FIVE SECONDS

BOOK OUT NOW We’re big fans of words here at Lounge, but there’s nothing wrong with a book made out of images. Especially when they’re pictograms of movies that tell you the whole story in a few cunning graphics. The minimalist style is snazzy and there’s an app that sets some of the image-puzzles in motion.

BATMAN: ARKHAM ORIGINS

GAME OUT NOW This second sequel to Arkham Asylum is actually a prequel – which means an inconsequential plot, reserving the unwritten future of Batman for a sequel on a next-gen console. But this is still a quality product: the open-world space of Gotham has doubled, and the rogues’ gallery is like a spilled deck of Bat-villain Top Trumps.

In which publication did Iron Man first appear in 1963?

A The Uncanny X-Men LOGAN A B The Amazing Spider-Man LOGAN B C The Incredible Hulk LOGAN C

TO ENTER ONLINE HEAD TO WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/COMPETITIONS TERMS & CONDITIONS You can enter this competition at any time between 22 November 2013 and 19 December 2013 by either: (a) texting your answer to 87474 ; or (b) entering online at www.futurecompetitions.com/TF213. By taking part in the competition you agree to the Competition Rules which are summarised below but can be viewed in full at http://www.futurenet.com/futureonline/competitionrules.asp. By entering you confirm you are happy to receive details of future offers and promotions from Future Publishing Ltd and carefully selected third parties. If you do not want to receive information relating to future offers and promotions, please include the word STOP at the end of your text message or follow the instructions online.

Each text received will be charged at £1 plus your usual text message cost. Remember to get permission from the person who pays the bill before you text. Late or incomplete entries will be disqualified. Entries must be submitted by an individual (not via any agency or similar) and, unless otherwise stated, are limited to one per household. The Company reserves the right in its sole discretion to substitute any prize with cash or a prize of comparable value. Unless otherwise stated, the Competition is open to all GB residents of 18 years and over, except employees of Future Publishing (including freelancers) and any party involved in the competition or their households. By entering a Competition you give permission to use your name, likeness and personal information in connection with the Competition and for promotional purposes. If you are a winner, you may have to provide additional information. Details of winners will be available on request within three months of the closing date. If you are a winner, receipt by you of any prize is conditional upon you complying with (amongst other things) the Competition Rules. You acknowledge and agree that neither the Company nor any associated third parties shall have any liability to you in connection with your use and/or possession of your prize.

GUESS THE MOVIE

APP OUT NOW A free film quiz for iOS and Android that bucks the trend set by scores of me-too spam apps by not being completely rubbish. Rather than a pile of straight-up questions, Guess The Movie challenges players to identify a decent mix of blockbusters and classics using the app’s custom-made bank of stylishly stripped-down posters. A short burst of diverting fun.

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January 2014 | Total Film | 139

The Total Film home entertainment bible

WorldMags.net Shake your tail feather: Natalie Portman fits the bill as the Black Swan.

THE CHOREOGRAPHER In the movie’s take on Swan Lake, the Prince is played by Ben Millepied, lead dancer at the NYC ballet and the film’s choreographer. He and Portman married in 2012.

“I’m really happy because I was really close to the dancers, and when they breathed they sounded like horses.”

Vincent Cassell, actor

Stormy features

BLACK SWAN | Natalie Portman turns to the dark side. And again. And again...

D

ARREN ARONOFSKY’S 2010 EROTICALLY charged psychodrama is a film about becoming. Natalie Portman won a muchdeserved Best Actress Oscar turning herself into Nina, a fragile ballerina preparing for her big break in Swan Lake. But Nina is becoming something too, and this tour-de-force finale shows us – spectacularly – what. Perfectly cast as the virginal Swan Queen, but struggling with inner demons when she attempts to play the Black Swan too, Nina is transfixed and tormented by her rival Lily (Mila Kunis), whom she stabs before heading out on stage and dancing like a woman possessed. Perhaps she is, too: goose flesh creeps across her skin, black feathers blossom on her arms, and she shivers in orgasmic abandon.

As she spins and spins and spins, fiction bleeds beautifully into reality, until she’s more bird than ballerina. Exiting to rapturous applause, Nina kisses doubting Thomas (Vincent Cassell), before returning to the stage to take a bow. The audience doesn’t suspect a thing, but something in Nina has changed forever... MG Black Swan is available now on DVD and Blu-ray.

SETTING THE SCENE O Intrigued by Dostoevsky’s The Double, and inspired by a production of Swan Lake, Aronofsky decided to combine the two. He also grew up with a ballet-dancer sister, “so that sort of influenced me”.

O Aronofsky took The Understudy, a script by Andres Heinz about rivalry in an off-Broadway show, and enlisted writer John J. McLaughlin, then Mark Heyman, to transform it into Black Swan.

O Ten years in gestation, the film finally started shooting on a tight schedule with a tiny $13m budget – much less than originally envisaged. This included 300 visual FX shots.

THE LOCATION Purchase College’s Concert Hall in New York provided the setting, but Portman and the cast performed to an empty auditorium. The audience and orchestra were added in later.

“A swan’s wings are gorgeous and Natalie was so beautiful, you didn’t really need more than that. In Nina’s mind it’s a beautiful thing that’s happening to her.” Dan Shrecker, FX 140 | Total Film | January 2014

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“Pointe shoes are torture devices.

I mean, ballerinas get used to it... but they feel very medieval.”

Natalie Portman, actor

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THE CONTROVERSY Lane complained that her input was downplayed so Portman would get an Oscar. Aronofsky and Millepied disagreed.

“Honestly, 85 per cent of that movie is Natalie,” said the latter.

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THE FEATHERS The US Fish and Wildlife Service emailed the FX team scans of swan feathers. Their digital creations are individually animated so they move convincingly en masse.

THE TRAINING For six months beforehand, Portman did five hours of ballet and cross-training a day to prepare for the role and guard against injury.

She dislocated a rib during shooting.

THE RASH The make-up team applied a mould to Portman’s skin which peeled off, leaving a series of raised bumps. The VFX team then animated them, so they seem to move and spread.

“It was the most intense training I’ve ever had in my life.

I went down to 95 pounds... I looked like Gollum.” Mila Kunis, actor totalfilm.com

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“I didn’t realise how tall an order it was – asking Natalie Portman to become a prima ballerina in a year. That was crazy.

It takes 20 years.”

Darren Aronofsky, director

ILLUSTRATION BY JASON PICKERSGILL/ACUTE GRAPHICS

THE STAND-IN The complicated dance moves were actually performed by Portman’s stand-in, Sarah Lane. Portman’s face was digitally grafted onto Lane’s in postproduction.

January 2014 | Total Film | 141

Indie kid: Justin Rice as musician Alan in Mutual Appreciation.

The Total Film home entertainment bible

WorldMags.net Key movies

REALLY INSTANT EXPERT

INSTANT EXPERT

Mumblecore Nutshell...

The new breed of American indie: Dogmeinfluenced, low-budget, baggy… and yes, a little bit mumbly.

T

HERE HAVE BEEN FEW movements in film history as divisive as mumblecore. To its detractors, a mumblecore flick is White People Problems: The Movie, a doodle on the existential horror of being a white twentysomething searching for a job in the creative industries. But hey, Woody Allen built a career on that.

Ten years ago, American indie cinema was on the retreat after the glory years of the Miramax ’90s.

Harvey Weinstein seemed more interested in Oscar-magnet prestige pictures, and young filmmakers downshifted expectations – instead of aspiring to follow the Tarantino route to riches, the cool thing to do was to grab the cheapest camera they could find and film their mates. Inspired by the improvised feel of John Cassavetes’ 142 | Total Film | January 2014

cinema, the lo-fi aesthetic of Dogme 95 and Richard Linklater’s examinations of slackerdom, a generation was able to use newly cheap digital means of filmmaking to paint a self-portrait, warts and all. The films usually focus on the kind of twat you don’t want to sit next to at dinner, but let’s face it – a lot of American filmmakers are privileged white people, so it follows that they shoot what they know.

Andrew Bujalski’s justly lauded Funny Ha Ha set the template. Made in 2002 but released in 2005, it’s the story of an aimless recent college graduate drinking her way around Boston, searching for a job and a boyfriend.

Near plotless but awkwardly hilarious and carrying the tinge of real, lived experience, it was a sign something was in the air. Things came to a head at Sundance 2005, where Bujalski’s second film Mutual Appreciation, Joe Swanberg’s Kissing On The Mouth and Jay and Mark Duplass’ The Puffy Chair were all shown. For excitable critics, four films are enough to constitute a movement, and this movement quickly gained a name – mumblecore, derived from an exasperated sound mixer’s complaint at the movies’ audio quality.

> A new generation of American filmmakers is raised on John Cassavetes, Richard Linklater and Dogme 95É > …before Joe Swanberg, the Duplass brothers and Andrew Bujalski are packaged as a movement in Sundance 2005. > Budgets and production values are kept low, and a string of critical indie hits followÉ > …before movie stars and the mainstream beckon, with Cyrus, Jeff Who Lives At Home and Drinking Buddies.

FUNNY HA HA 2002 +++++

Setting the template of a post-college woman who’s into booze and slacker dudes, this lo-fi treat manages to prompt belly laughs without sacrificing subtlety. Great ending, too.

HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS 2007 +++++

Directed by Joe Swanberg, this features every scene luminary going. Naturally, it’s about a college grad, and sees Greta Gerwig play the trumpet in the bath.

Almost immediately, naysayers dismissed the self-obsession and inconsequentiality of the films, especially as the directors became irritatingly pally and began appearing in one another’s work. Still, decent movies did flow, and major talents like Lynn Shelton arrived on the scene, with amateur-porno comedy Humpday.

However, Hollywood soon came calling, the Duplass brothers leading the way by casting Jonah Hill in 2010’s Cyrus, with even low-budget holdout Joe Swanberg casting Olivia Wilde and Anna Kendrick in this year’s Drinking Buddies. The mumblecore generation is getting absorbed by the mainstream, be it in Shelton shooting an episode of Mad Men or the fact the whole bunch seem to be scruffy John the Baptists to Lena Dunham’s hipster Jesus.

That said, the story doesn’t seem to be over – nobody from Sundance 2005 is likely to have meetings at Marvel any time soon. After its commercial boom in the ’90s, American independent film has returned to its position of offering a real alternative to the majors – and one suspects that’s where Swanberg, Shelton, Bujalski et al are happiest.

Andrew Lowry

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HUMPDAY

2009 +++++

Lynn Shelton’s dramedy is one of the most fun, with a strong comic premise.

Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard are straight pals who agree to make a gay porn as an ‘art project’.

DRINKING BUDDIES

2013 +++++

With terrific chemistry between leads Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson, there’s a real understanding here of the hurt everyday interactions can cause.

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OPINION

Two Days: (left) Keanu Reeves as alien Klaatu in the 2008 remake; (below) the 1951 original.

RANT

Is it just me? …Or is the Day The Earth Stood Still remake equal to the original? asks Paul Bradshaw

A

NOTHER DAY, ANOTHER remake… Until someone decides to reboot Casablanca with Channing Tatum and Megan Fox, it’s hard to imagine an easier target than the Keanu Reeves-starring 2008 rejig of seminal sci-fi The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951).

Accused of desecrating the memory of a bona fide classic, it surely only avoided cleaning up at the 2009 Razzies because it was up against The Hottie & The Nottie and The Happening (for the record, it was beaten to Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off Or Sequel by Indy IV).

Nothing will ever dim the impact of the original – a bold, brave genre touchstone which elevated the B-movie – but critics need to get off the Keanu-bashing bandwagon. The stories are basically the same – a stony-faced E.T. lands on Earth with a giant, silent henchman in tow. He warns us that we’re messing up the planet, threatens everyone with his big robot and leaves… but not until he’s learned lessons about life, love and humanity.

A film designed to shock a frightened world into action over the threat of nuclear

armament, Day ’51 was directed by Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound Of Music) with cautious economy. By contrast, Scott Derrickson’s big-bucks remake is all glitzy FX and bankable A-listers. It’s all too easy to paint this as a conflict between old-fashioned American filmmaking on the one hand and overblown brainlessness on the other. But Day ’08 is only as dumb and bombastic as Day ’51 is cheap and a bit tacky. A Washington set becomes a densely populated New York, a tall guy in a Lycra suit becomes a robotic behemoth – and garbled Cold War polemics become warnings about environmental destruction. The lack of obvious political subtext makes Derrickson’s film look like it’s lowering the highbrow tone that Wise did so well to raise out of the genre’s pulpy roots.

But yesterday’s arms race is today’s climate change; arguably, deforestation and ravaged natural resources pose as much as of a threat to the planet as nukes ever did.

Though he’s made some great films, from Point Break to The Matrix, Keanu Reeves is not a great actor. But

‘Fifty years is more than enough time to set the two apart’

totalfilm.com

he’s perfect for alien emissary Klaatu. He might make a half-decent time-travelling stoner and a passable karate-chopping computer hacker, but this was surely the role he was born to play.

Day ’08 whips up an epic, stormy tone where the original’s budget could only give us some empty soundstages and whitewashed backlots. Derrickson’s one-man invasion might be heavy on the CG, but it’s actually highly impressive; here, Klaatu’s intergalactic warning reaches more than a few deserted streets.

What’s more, it seems a damn sight more believable that a skyscraper-sized Transformer could lay waste to the planet than a lanky member of Daft Punk in tin-foil over-pants.

Remakes always start out in the shadow of their predecessors, and rightly so, but 50 years is more than enough to set two Days apart. There’s plenty of room for a remake that’s as much timely allegory as it is sci-fi spectacle – and fares better on both fronts than the original.

Or is it just me?

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Agree or disagree? Have your say at totalfilm.com and a selection will be printed next issue.

In Total Film 213, Jane Crowther argued that a bad wig can ruin a movie.

Readers respond…

DAN ROBOTIC I so agree with this, bad wig be gone!

STEFAN KRZYSIAK Mark Strong’s wig ruined Zero Dark Thirty for me.

HADOUKEN76 It depends on the strength of the material and performances.

Same with Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. Having said that, Bruce Willis has been known to throw off a movie with a dodgy syrup.

BOBBYTWOTIMES I can’t say I’ve ever noticed this in any film I’ve watched over the last 30 years...

ALAZAR KEIREDIN Ask Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage.

Oh, right... That is Cage’s real hair.

DIGGERDENS Totally agree, there is nothing more distracting, other than a bad script!

FIZZGIGG It isn’t just wigs, it can be real hair too Just look at Javier Bardem’s barnets!

January 2014 | Total Film | 143

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loves...

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Sideways’ naked motel confession

xxxxx

Drinking buddies let it all hang out…

M

ILES IS ASLEEP. EITHER that or he’s pissed – this is, after all, a tour of wine country, and Miles is an English teacher with a drink problem. The stag week he organised for buddy Jack had a cunning double agenda: try and teach the over-the-hill actor the ways

capable of charging golf-hole trespassers, bellowing like Tarzan. Miles (Paul Giamatti) is his opposite in many ways, but an equally volatile mix: a divorced neurotic desperate to be a writer who prides himself on etiquette, but drunk-dials his ex and thinks nothing of rifling through his mum’s cash tin. In one glorious moment in Miles and Jack’s motel room, karma catches up with them.

Jack being compromised mid-shag is as inevitable as Miles finally drinking his prized 1961 Château Cheval Blanc. At the start of the film, as soon as Jack has turned out of his fiancée’s driveway, he’s in rutting-stag mode, determined to get his end away before exchanging vows. Soon enough,

The tone is bittersweet; we’re only allowed to feel sorry for a character for so long before chaos intervenes of the vineyard, and get tanked up.

Unfortunately, their evening meal came to a halt when Jack recognised his waitress as a fan, leaving Miles to go back to the motel alone. The grumpy academic won’t have peace for long, though, and responding to a frantic knock at the door he’s confronted by Jack, shivering, wearing only his wristwatch.

The shock of nude Jack is just one example of how Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004) plays with the comedy-drama formula. The tone is bittersweet; we’re only allowed to feel sorry for a character for so long before chaos intervenes. Earlier we’d seen Jack (Thomas Haden Church) unable to tell his fiancée he’s scared of settling down, but perfectly

But

he’s hooking up with Stephanie (Sandra Oh), a free-spirited wine clerk to whom he swears undying love… only to later have his nose broken by her when she rumbles that he’s getting married. Meanwhile, Miles is making a hash of reading signals from Stephanie’s waitress friend Maya (Virginia Madsen), who might just be his salvation.

But in the motel, it’s Miles’ job to be saviour. He ushers Jack indoors and calms him down with Vicodin, listening to his friend recount his evening in breathless, terrified chunks: caught playing Buckaroo with the waitress, he was chased out of her house by a raging husband, forced to run five kilometres home including a shortcut through an ostrich farm. Miles can’t help it – he cracks up. Jack’s plight’s made all the more hilarious by the thought the whole thing occurred in the nude (Church fought to cast aside the scripted underpants).

And then comes that beautiful shifting in tone that Sideways does so well: Jack left his engraved wedding rings in the waitress’ house. Miles says they can be replaced but Jack won’t have it; he knows how precious those rings are to his fiancée, how precious she is to him, how much his behaviour points to something dark inside himself.

“I know I fucked up. I know I’m a bad person. You gotta help me Miles, please…”

In three minutes, Giamatti and Church give us a masterclass in male psychology.

The high of dangerous sex, the loneliness of no sex, the correct way to hold your nuts and the accepting of responsibility – it’s all there inside this everyday motel room, just two blokes, one naked, one knackered, no music, a desk lamp and a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. While Sideways features well-written female characters, it’s the friendship-cumfriction between its starring men that carries, and it never gets better than this short exchange. In terms of finding insight in hotel rooms, it gives the Gideon Bible a run for its money. George Bass

doesn’t love...

The hotel scene in The Hangover Part II

The aftermath of a disaster, animal-related farce, male nudity… Though there are similarities with our Sideways scene, H2’s morningafter set-piece strains for laughs – worse, it’s the moment you realise Todd Phillips’ sequel is on course to be a sour rehash: room with a déjà vu.

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