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The 20th Century Fox produced Prometheus, is a return to the sci-fi genre for director Ridley Scott (with ties to the Alien series). It stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Patrick Wilson and also Guy Pearce. The movie is scheduled for release on US in June 08, 2012.

Poster:

Official synopsis:

Visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returns to the genre he helped define, creating an original science fiction epic set in the most dangerous corners of the universe. The film takes a team of scientists and explorers on a thrilling journey that will test their physical and mental limits and strand them on a distant world, where they will discover the answers to our most profound questions and to life’s ultimate mystery.

Trailer:

Story:

A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

Stills:

For comparison, here’s the original 1979 trailer for Scott’s “Alien”:

Still, with the apparent mission in Hollywood to remake every movie released in the 1980s, there remains a possibility, however slim, that Beverly Hills Cop might join the parade. This is something I would prefer not to happen. I mean, I’m not climbing the walls in existential dread and hissing jeremiads in Latin at passersby (that’s Wednesday night) but it is a fear. In the interests of making the best of a bad situation, I propose that rather than try—and fail—to recapture the original’s perfection as pop, that we go a different direction. As the good doctor said, “When the going gets tough, the tough get weird.” In that vein, here is Beverly Hills Cop as remade by five international directors of varying degrees of renown:

Catherine Breillat’s Beverly Hills Cop (international title: Un baise cochon va a Californie), dir. Catherine Breillat

Rocco Siffredi stars as a Marseille gendarme who pursues the murderer of a criminal pal to Beverly Hills. He talks only with his dick, which is a metaphor for his gun, which is in turn reciprocally a metaphor for his dick. His pursuit of the villains, punctuated by frequent unsimulated sex, serves as a critique of the male gaze. All the Americans are played by French people doing American accents (a la Heavy Rain). Ends up having almost nothing to do with the original, but hey. Hire an auteur, get an auteur picture.

Beverly Hills Cop, dir. Lars von Trier

In a massive surprise, a shot-for-shot remake of the original with the same music, same script (with all Eddie’s ad-libbing transcribed and created precisely down to the syllable), but with the one inexplicable choice of having Charlotte Gainsbourg play Axel Foley, with none of the gender pronouns changed. Lars will be Lars.

बेवर्ली हिल्स के एक पुलिस: हीट पर फिर से है. (trans. Beverly Hills Cop: The Heat Is On Again) dir. Farhan Akhtar

Having remade Don (and done a sequel of that remake), Shahrukh Khan goes “fuck this, if I can remake an Amitabh Bachchan movie, Eddie Murphy ain’t a thing.” After deciding against (and thus deeply wounding) Karan Johar as director, Shahrukh hires Don: The Chase Begins Again helmer Farhan Akhtar to lend it that snazzy, pizazzy, slick Hollywood feel. Arjun Rampal is cast in the Steven Berkoff role because one of the little-known pieces of cinematic wisdom, in the West at any rate, is that any movie that climaxes with Shahrukh Khan and Arjun Rampal beating the shit out of each other is going to be good. In spite of the jokes about all Bollywood movies being three-plus hours long, this is not the longest remake of the five (more on that in a bit, and the Bollywood overlength jokes are dated anyway), though there are plenty of songs; in a massive coup, SRK lands Beyonce for an item song, which leads America as one to embrace Bollywood. SRK then promptly converts to Scientology and fucks everything up. But, in spite of that, we’ll always have this movie, where he pulls off his usual “How the fuck is this guy going to own? Whoa . . . holy shit, he does kind of own. Damn, he actually really owns. Wonders never cease” three-act high-wire act.

Az élet egy amerikai rendőr (trans. The life of an American police officer) dir. Béla Tarr.

The longest of the bunch, consisting of one eight-hour single take of Axel Foley (played by Donald Glover, thus making Tarr, bizarrely, the only director who thought to make the picture with a 20-something black comedian) at his desk, doing paperwork and making phone calls, for a whole shift; when Axel gets up to take a piss or get a cup of coffee, Tarr’s camera stays on his desk, speaking to the grim nature of day-to-day reality as a policeman. The business of the dead friend and the Beverly Hills police investigation of Victor Maitland is handled entirely over the phone, with Axel’s side of the conversation the only one we get to observe. The film ends with Axel receiving one final call from BHPD from which one can either infer that they’ll be investigating Maitland or that they’re just humoring Axel. The credits roll in silence.

Laurel Canyon Cop, dir. Lisa Cholodenko

Still smarting from the eight or nine years it took her to get financing for her third feature, 2010′s The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko accepts a massive goddamn pile of money from Paramount to direct a Beverly Hills Cop remake. After a careful series of negotiations that end with her getting final cut, Cholodenko raises the “fuck you” flag to full mast and casts Gina Gershon as Axel Foley, turning the original’s gay subtext (a byproduct of the perfect storm of Eddie’s “the lady doth protest too much”ism on The Gay and the fact that they had to cut the fuck scene between him and Jenny Summers because a black guy couldn’t shtup a white lady in a move in 1984, one of the thousands of reasons you can blow 80s nostalgia out your fuckin ass) into text.

So, basically, what we’re talking about here is a leisurely-paced (maybe a little too leisurely-paced, but hey, ya can’t win ‘em all) movie where Gina Gershon flies in from Detroit and swaggers around in a leather jacket owning bad guys and having sex with Jenny Summers (Carla Gugino). And, although everyone spends an hour laughing their asses off at how dumb it is, they keep in the line “I wish they all could be California girls,” uttered by Gina immediately before going to town on Carla Gugino. This picture ends up grossing a billion dollars, sweeping the Oscars, and ushering in an era of world peace.

I don’t believe in jinxes, so if you see in Variety that they’ve announced a Beverly Hills Cop remake, don’t blame me. Just repost the shit out of this so I can walk around with my zipper down fulminating about how fuckin prescient I am. Which I do anyway, but it’s always nice to have supporting texts. Now let’s all do the Neutron Dance.

http://moviesbybowes.blogspot.com/2011/12/5-directors-remake-beverly-hills-cop.html

With a star cast led by universally loved Kevin Spacey, Margin Call is a thriller of a completely different kind. Its a thriller where the audience gets the thrill completely knowing what is about to happen. There isn’t any mystery element but the chills the audience will get is because of the importance of whats happening in the film.

Margin call is loosely based on the Lehmann brothers debacle in the 2008 recession. Its a film which tells how and why it all began. However, despite being a movie rich in the financial mathematics quotient, the director has taken ample measures for any common man to understand whats happening and get the gravity of the situation.

*****Light spoilers*****

Another fascinating aspect about this film is that, it doesn’t limit itself to any one particular point of view..In one of the scenes, the conversation actually moves towards how perfectly normal and sense making it is, that world economy goes through depressions time and again and how everyone and not just the finance guys are responsible for it.

****Spoilers end****

Kevin Spacey delivers another remarkable performance. He portrays the smart, powerful yet growing emotional with age BOSS very convincingly.  Zachary Qunito does a very nice job for his part. Paul Bettany is very likable and performs really well. Simon Baker, Demi Moore and Stanley tucci do a great job as well.

For a debut movie, J.C. chandor hits the ball out of the park and gives the viewers what maximum they could have asked for, from such a movie. The screenplay keeps you hooked and the performances just keep getting better with every scene.

All in all Margin Call is not the one to be missed.

Margin Call

Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, Simon Baker

Screenplay and Direction : J.C, Chandor

Rating: 8-8.5 on 10

I would like to state in the beginning that I am not a big scorsese fan. Having said that, I simply loved his last feature- “Shutter Island”. In my opinion, it was the best film last year. This huge hangover of Shutter Island was the driving force in pushing me to the theater to watch HUGO.I had seen the trailers on TV and it looked like a typical kid movie. However, I was intrigued in finding out what is Scorsese doing with a kids 3D film at this stage of his career.

Review:

I am not a big fan of the 3D format as we have to wear big glasses and by the end of most films, I end up saying–was it even worth a 3D. However, with Hugo, I’d like to say- I am glad it was a 3D film. Its probably the bets use of 3D I have seen in a long time. This is however, the only thing which I found worth a kid’s watch in the movie.

I was blown away by the richness of the script and the amazing turn of narration in HUGO. In no time, the audience will realize, its not a kids film..but something much much more that that. Using kids as the premise and protagonists, Scorsese goes on to tell a fantastic palatable tale of how “it” all started. I would not like to throw any movie spoilers in here, but just say that the writing and screenplay of Hugo is something that cannot be helped but loved. The performances by the kids and Ben kingsley is just fantastic. The way Scorsese goes takes care in every little aspect of the tale, it shows that even he was loving it while directing it. For those who are passionate about something or the other, it will compel you to look at it in a more loving way.

The biggest star of the film is its script and Scorsese’s direction. Even though Hugo being a slow paced, no histrionics kind of a film, it still manages to make you smile every now and then and make you curious, relieved and excited at times.

Epilogue

My doubts of whether the kids (one of the prime target audience ,who may have enjoyed the trailer) will like it or not, were answered when at the end of the movie, various kids at different places in the theater gave it a big applause and cheer. I realized when there’s something lovely about an artwork, everyone, and I mean everyone sees that.

Hugo

Rating: 8-8.5 on 10

While trying to visit a Chinese activist, Christian Bale is attacked by government guards—even though he’s starring in a movie partly funded by the Chinese government.

 

The incident, which took place in Chen’s hardscrabble village of Dongshigu in Shandong province, heaped fresh controversy upon Bale’s visit. Even before he was punched and chased by menacing Chinese guards manning a cordon around Chen’s home, The Flowers of War had been criticized for demonizing Japanese soldiers in its depiction of wartime atrocities committed by Japanese troops who occupied Nanjing in 1937.

 

Christian Bale at the Beijing premiere of "The Flowers of War" on Dec. 12

 

Often called “the rape of Nanking,” this traumatic wartime incident evokes visceral nationalist sentiments among many Chinese. The film, directed by Zhang Yimou, opened this week in China; in a press event after the Sunday premiere Bale called it a “historical piece” and brushed off as “a bit of a knee-jerk reaction” accusations that the movie is overly propagandistic. (In the film, Bale plays an American posing as a priest who tries to protect Chinese women from Japanese invaders. It premieres Dec. 23 in the U.S. and Europe.)

 

Now Bale’s manhandling near Chen’s home—filmed by a CNN camera crew that accompanied him—threatens to sabotage what China’s culture czars had hoped to be a soft-power coup for Beijing. On the CNN tape, Bale is shown being punched and pushed by Chinese men in bulky green padded coats. Even after Bale withdrew and his vehicle was driving away from the scene, it was pursued for more than half an hour by a gray van. Bale told CNN that all he really wanted to do was “to meet the man, shake his hand, and say what an inspiration he is.”

 

Bale is just the latest, and the most famous, of many admirers, rights advocates, journalists, and diplomats who’ve been roughed up or beaten (often worse than Bale was) and turned away from Chen’s home by government-supported guards. Chen, along with his wife and child, has been illegally confined to his residence since September 2010, when he was released after serving a four-and-a-half-year prison term.

 

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Now, without even making a cameo appearance, he has become the unseen star in the dramatic film of Bale’s manhandling by stereotypical Chinese thugs—footage that may tarnish China’s image nearly as much as The Flowers of War was intended to burnish it.

Read full article here:

www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/16/christian-bale-filmed-being-attacked-by-chinese-guards.html

 

 

From Steven Spielberg to Terence Malick and Christopher Nolan, Bale has won the hearts and minds of many top directors.

1) Steven Spielberg

Bale was 12 when Steven Spielberg cast him in Empire of the Sun, beating out 4,000 kids who also auditioned. Amy Irving, who was then married to the director, had recommended Bale after starring with him in the TV movie Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna.

2) Jane Campion

Bale played Edward Rosier in Campion’s 1996 period pic The Portrait of a Lady, one of several films in which Bale portrayed a mild-mannered character, including the role of Laurie in Little Women.

3) Todd Haynes

Bale has starred in two of the director’s films, Velvet Goldmine in 1998 and a decade later in I’m Not There, which also reunited Bale with Batman co-star Heath Ledger.

With the Batman franchise wrapped, Bale is making his next two movies with Terrence Malick, Lawless and Knight of Cups. The two first worked together on The New World in 2005.

5) Christopher Nolan

When casting Bale in Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan said he had just the right balance of “darkness and light.” In between the two Batman movies, Bale made Nolan’s The Prestige.

6) Zhang Yimou

Directed by the legendary Zhang Yimou, the Oscar winner is the first major Westerner to play a lead role in the Chinese movie with the historical Rape of Nanking epic “The Flowers of War.” Steven Spielberg, who had cast Bale in Empire of the Sun years earlier, recommended the actor to his friend Zhang Yimou.

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/christian-bale-directors-posse-6-267602