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The 2009 Black List Revealed

11 December 2009 10:04 AM, PST | Collider.com | See recent Collider.com news »

Since 2004, Franklin Leonard releases The Black List every December.  It’s a list of best read scripts that’s complied from the suggestions of agents assistants, managers, film executives, and whoever else he gets to contribute.  While last year had 260 people contribute, this year’s had 97 scripts from 311 contributors.  Most of the scripts on the list are in some stage of development in the studio system, and it’s been said that a high listing can help move your project forward.  What I’m trying to say is, the list is very important in Hollywood and many people try extremely hard to land in the top ten.

So now that you’re curious, hit the jump to check out the top ten on the 2009 Black List:

Of course big thanks to Entertainment Weekly for posting the list.  If you can, hit the link to show some appreciation. And for more on The Black List, »

- Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub

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Exclusive: 'The Black List' -- Top 11 unproduced screenplays of 2009

11 December 2009 8:30 AM, PST | EW - Hollywood Insider.com | See recent EW.com - Hollywood Insider news »

Last December, we introduced you to Franklin Leonard and The Black List, the list of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. Since then, Leonard has been named by The Hollywood Reporter as one of the top 35 executives under 35 working in Hollywood and his list has gained even more prominence. This year's list consists of 97 scripts with 311 people contributing to the ranking -- up from 260 in 2008. The top 10 (actually, 11, thanks to a tie in 10th place) is filled with mostly up-and-comers, with the exception of Aaron Sorkin and David Scarpa. All of the scripts are in some stage of development around Hollywood, »

- Nicole Sperling

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David Bowie's son Duncan Jones wins two BIFAs for directorial debut

6 December 2009 2:27 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Moon scoops best film and Jones best debut director at British independent film awards

As a child, he was called Zowie Bowie. These days it's the far more sensible Duncan Jones, and tonight he emerged triumphantly from the very large shadow of his father when he picked up two prizes at the British independent film awards.

Forty years after the first Moon landing and 40 years after his dad, David Bowie, released Space Oddity, Jones's retro sci-fi film Moon was named best picture at a ceremony in central London while Jones himself won best debut director.

His film stars Sam Rockwell as the solitary caretaker of a helium-3 mining plant on the Moon with his only companion, it seems, a talking computer system called Gerty, voiced by Kevin Spacey.

Jones, 38, has always been determined to make a successful career by himself. He went to the London film school and honed his »

- Mark Brown

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Junkfood Cinema: Eye of the Tiger

4 December 2009 12:30 PM, PST | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »

Editor's Note: We hope you enjoy this new Friday afternoon column, Junkfood Cinema, by Brian Salisbury. It celebrates movies that are so bad, even though they are also sometimes so good. For more (coming each and every Friday), stay tuned to the Junkfood Cinema Archive. Also, please feel free to let us know what you think of this new weekly feature in the comment section below. Uh oh!  Hide the carrot sticks and fruit wedges of Hollywood, because it's once again time to gorge ourselves on Junkfood Cinema.  If you're the kind of person that demands the highest level of quality from your films, then I can happily direct you to any number of our other columns.  For me, there is nothing like the empty cinematic calories of a deliciously bad movie.  And this week's entry is a caramel-covered, chocolate-filled schlock burger...wrapped in a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.  Run, don't walk to your local video store and »

- Brian Salisbury

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Law Abiding Citizen | Film review

28 November 2009 4:05 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Failed by the American justice system after he witnesses the death of his wife and baby daughter during a burglary, Gerard Butler dishes out his own brand of revenge on high-achieving, sharp-dressing lawyer Jamie Foxx and tries to take most of Philadelphia down with him.

Butler, the beefy Scottish actor who has shot somewhat inexplicably up the rungs of the Hollywood ladder, wreaks his revenge from the bowels of a jail, declaring war on a system he calls "this whole broken thing, a diseased corrupt temple". He outdoes even Tarantino in getting medieval on the world's ass, claiming his revenge is "gonna be biblical".

F Gary Gray's relentlessly silly film is part Saw, part Death Wish and part Shawshank Redemption, pretending to examine the nature of justice, test the parameters of law and probe the relationship between good and evil. But really it's just intent on blowing shit up. »

- Jason Solomons

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Birthday Suits, An Oscar For Ed!

28 November 2009 6:20 AM, PST | FilmExperience | See recent FilmExperience news »

Each day we're celebriting the birth of various cinematic persons. Can someone in Hollywood please give their Oscar to Ed Harris today? I mean, my god how long does he have to wait for that damn thing? The rest of today's Sagittarians are less easy to shop for. What could we give Jon Stewart, for example, that he doesn't already have?

Ed, Laura and Jon

1896 Lilia Skala, Oscar nominated actress (Lilies of the Field)

1923 Gloria Grahame, Oscar winner (The Bad the Beautiful)

933 Hope Lange, Oscar nominated actress (Peyton Place, The Young Lions, Death Wish)

1941 Laura Antonelli, Italian actress, sex symbol

1946 Joe Dante He'll always have Gremlins, such a great 80s picture.

1949 Alexander Godunov, like Baryshnikov, he was a Russian ballet star who defected to America and co-starred in movies. It didn't go quite as well. He never achieved anything close to Misha's level of fame though he made for a memorable screen presence (Witness, »

- NATHANIEL R

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The Wire: taking sociology forwards? | Steve Busfield

27 November 2009 7:19 AM, PST | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »

Steve Busfield reports from a conference exploring Us TV series The Wire as social-science fiction

How many sociologists does it take to change a lightbulb? Five. One to change the lightbulb and four to examine The Wire.

Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson believes that The Wire has done more "to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life, and the problems of urban inequality, than any other media event or scholarly publication". But here at The Wire as Social Science Fiction? conference in Leeds, what do academics from around the world think?

Christophe Ringer of Vanderbilt University argued that Baltimore has become "the archetypal urban city for American sociologists". It could have been any city in which a project as ambitious as The Wire had been set. But is it the real city Ringer is talking about, or the one depicted in The Wire? Terry Austrin of the University »

- Steve Busfield

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Guy Pearce Jumps Like a Hungry Rabbit

26 November 2009 5:46 AM, PST | ReelLoop.com | See recent Reel Loop news »

You know who we don’t really see enough of? Guy Pearce.

The Guy is proven talent, from Ravenous to Memento to The Hurt Locker, but for some reason has never really been given his chance to shine as a leading man in the public eye since the lackluster Time Machine remake.

The good news is that we’ll be seeing him again very soon, in Roger Donaldson’s The Hungry Rabbit Jumps. You may remember Donaldson from The Bank Job and The World’s Fastest Indian. Pearce is joining the film alongside Nicolas Cage and Mad Men’s January Jones, while no other casting details have been revealed.

The film, which will center around “a man (presumably Cage) who becomes entangled with an underground vigilante organization after his wife (Jones) is the victim of a brutal crime” has been scripted by unproven screenwriter Robert Tannen. It sounds remarkably similar »

- John Cooper

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Payback is making a comeback

20 November 2009 4:15 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Why does recession bring with it a thirst for dumb revenge dramas?

Law Abiding Citizen, which I should say at the outset is a terrible, terrible movie – either the stupidest of the year so far or the most unintentionally funny – takes the urban revenge movie and grafts on to it certain depressing innovations from other genres, including the serial killer-as-genius trope from The Silence Of The Lambs, and the post-Saw/Hostel enthusiasm for torture-porn and mega bloodshed. Let's just say it doesn't tell us much except that the revenge movie is back with, um, a vengeance.

Gerard Butler plays a man who takes complicated, detailed and violent revenge against the killers who raped and murdered his wife and daughter. Thing is, he's already in jail when most of the killings occur (cue evil genius!), which doesn't stop one victim from being surgically deprived of various extremities, up to and including his Johnson (hello, »

- John Patterson

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The Stepfather (DVD Review)

16 November 2009 10:14 PM, PST | Fangoria | See recent Fangoria news »

The Stepfather is a cult classic from the 80’s that has the American Family Ideal battling itself from within.  Terry O’Quinn (TV’s Lost), takes to task defending Norman Rockwell’s American status quo killing anyone (homebuyers, psychiatrists, stepdaughters) in his way that detracts or questions his vision.  He is most frightening because he stands in plain view as a family man and local house salesman promoting family life.  The opening scene sets the tone as O’Quinn leaves his house for work, whistling all the while, even tidying up the hallway outside a silent, bloody corpse filled family living room, the film’s goriest scene.  We see him change appearances, dump his old identity, and head off to find another family.  The audience waits in suspense for this “ticking time bomb” to snap when the new family doesn’t stand up to his idyllic measure.

This film was »

- no-reply@fangoria.com (Andy Perez)

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Michael Winner: 'The only purpose of life is to avoid boredom'

16 November 2009 1:37 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

The notorious film director on cheating death, the awfulness of restaurants – and how he can't stand boring people

It is with a mixture of fear and exhilaration that I approach Michael Winner's large house – he likes to describe it as a mansion – in London's fashionable Holland Park. God knows how much it's worth – £25m maybe. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin lives next door, in an even bigger house. An attractive, slightly forbidding young woman answers the door – I later discover she is a resting actress called Ruby – and she shows me into Winner's private cinema, filled with memorabilia from half a lifetime of movie-making and an entire lifetime of trouble-making.

There are seats for 30 people, a bar, a director's chair with Winner's name on it, the Winner puppet from Spitting Image, a signed photograph of Marilyn Monroe, pictures of some scantily clad starlets, and hundreds of photographs of stars »

- Stephen Moss

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Liff 09: Review of Brit revenge thriller Harry Brown

15 November 2009 11:44 AM, PST | QuietEarth.us | See recent QuietEarth news »

Year: 2009

Directors: Daniel Barber

Writers: Gary Young

IMDb: link

Trailer: link

Review by: projectcyclops

Rating: 7 out of 10

Michael Caine stars as the titular character in Daniel Barber’s fast paced and slick revenge flick, which is centered on the equally awesome and ridiculous premise of an old age pensioner who takes justice into his own hands on a rough London council estate. The film begins with a very brutal hand-held camera introduction of a gang initiation, in which a youth is forced to take crack and then shoot a young mother in a park, before crashing his scooter, and dying horribly – setting the scene for the deeply unpleasant and dangerous world we’re about to enter.

Harry lives on the estate, visiting his comatose wife daily, but having to detour around the dark underpass that leads to the hospital for fear of the gang of kids who hang around and cause trouble. »

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Harry Brown | Film review

14 November 2009 4:07 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Michael Caine does his diamond-geezer, heart-of-gold cockney bit as Harry Brown, a recently widowed, former Royal Marine driven to despair by the young thugs terrorising the sink estate he lives on in south London.

The last straw comes when his elderly best mate is beaten to death by vicious, unemployed teenagers high on drugs. Before you can say Asbo or Bronson, Harry has acquired a little arsenal and proceeds to get medieval on the asses of the neighbourhood tearaways, whom he thinks worse than the terrorists he confronted in the services. This is a vigilante movie, impure and simple, with lip-licking bloodbaths and unconcealed contempt for law and order. It's better than any of the five Death Wish films, mainly because Caine is a very good actor and he pulls off some fine moments, especially when confronting earnest Detective Inspector Emily Mortimer.

Michael CainePhilip French

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News »

- Philip French

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Harry Brown – Alex’s Review

11 November 2009 9:18 AM, PST | FilmShaft.com | See recent FilmShaft.com news »

Recently it seems every time we open a newspaper we are confronted with the words “Broken Britain”. Knife crime runs rampant throughout our streets and young faces stare up at us from the pages.

Teens are being murdered by their peers and neighbourhoods are being terrified by huge groups of adolescents that deal drugs and are armed to the teeth. This is very much a problem in modern Britain and it is within this world that Harry Brown is set.

I guess it can be said that these youngsters feel they have nothing to live for and the same is true of our title character here. When we first meet Harry he is essentially coasting through towards his own death. His beloved wife is dying in hospital and he spends his days playing chess with his best friend Len.

He lives on a crumbling, decaying London estate and is fully »

- Alex Wagner

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Grimmupnorth 09: Review of The Horseman

4 November 2009 12:09 PM, PST | QuietEarth.us | See recent QuietEarth news »

Year: 2009

Directors: Steven Kastrissios

Writers: Steven Kastrissios

IMDb: link

Trailer: link (We're quoted!)

Review by: projectcyclops

Rating: 7 out of 10

Steven Kastrissios’ brutal revenge film The Horseman kicks off with a two men beating the living daylights out of each other, until one man is crippled, doused with petrol and roasted alive. The survivor calmly cleans himself up, changes clothes and drives off in his pest control van. This is Christian (played to the hilt by Peter Marshall), and through flash-backs we learn that his daughter was found dead after a porno shoot for a sleazy adult film company, run from the aptly named “BloodSports Gym”. He’s pretty pissed.

This Aussie film has a vibe very similar to the Liam Neeson action/revenge flick, ‘Taken’. Both are fast-cut, very violent, slickly directed and are almost unbelievable in the punishment the protagonists give and receive. Think Death Wish for the 2000’s. »

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Birthday Suit: Dolph 'the biggest one' Lundgren

3 November 2009 7:06 PM, PST | FilmExperience | See recent FilmExperience news »

Thought I'd goof around with a little b-day series. In case it's yours! Could be shortlived. Or maybe it'll go on forever. You never know.

Hal Hartley , Paprika Steen and Charles Bronson

Today's Birthdays, November 3rd ...some of them at any rate. For those who are prone to celebrating the lives of the filmic and famous. And if you aren't, you're not having enough fun.

1921 Charles Bronson had a Death Wish, five of them actually, and he had them before "franchise" was a daily spoken word in movie discussions.1930 Lois Smith, sweet character actress, is now 79 years old. I once saw her in a train station. It's true. Weren't you shocked when she died on the first season of True Blood? I sure was.

1931 Monica Vitti, breathtaking Italian goddess

1953 Kate Capshaw aka Mrs. Spielberg. Did she sing or was she dubbed for that awesome "Anything Goes" opening number in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom »

- NATHANIEL R

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The Exterminator

31 October 2009 10:28 PM, PDT | Latemag.com/film | See recent LateFilmFull news »

John Eastman (Robert Ginty) is a Vietnam Vet (aren’t all the best revenge movie / vigilante hero’s?) and when his best friend, Michael Jefferson (Steve James,) who saved his life out in The 'Nam is attacked and left paralysed by a gang of vicious street punks, Eastman decides to even the score.

The film starts off with its heroes fighting the Vietcong in the Vietnam war. After a vicious gun battle, Eastman, Jefferson and another comrade are captured and taken for interrogation. During the interrogation the 3rd comrade has his head hacked off in a surprisingly gory film moment, Eastman is next up for the chop, luckily Jefferson gets the drop on his guards and takes them down, machine gun blazing.

Back in New York, Eastman and Jefferson are honest Joe’s making a living from blue-collar factory jobs. An encounter with some thieves at the factory sets off »

- Leigh

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Terrifyingly Gnarly #18 – House Of The Devil’s A.J. Bowen

28 October 2009 5:38 PM, PDT | Fangoria | See recent Fangoria news »

To me, it’s fitting that in our lengthy conversation, actor A.J. Bowen tells me he was close to answering the phone with Tom Atkins’ famous line, “Thrill Me.” With his phenomenal facial hair (which I open the interview with) and true talent showcased in our beloved genre, I can see him attaining the heights of that classic ’80s hero. This Friday, Ti West’s much anticipated House Of The Devil reaches theaters (you can currently check it out on VOD, and you should!) where you can see Bowen in a relatively small but integral and very fun role. Punch drunk in love with the film since I saw it earlier this year at Tribeca and a huge admirer of Bowen’s excellent work in The Signal, I knew I’d have to get him talking about it all. So read on, and get excited about the lumberjack resembling future of horror, »

- no-reply@fangoria.com (Sam Zimmerman)

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October 16: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings

16 October 2009 12:58 PM, PDT | www.flickfilosopher.com | See recent FlickFilosopher news »

We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, but there’s all this vengeance to be doled out and all those injustices to be put right. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection of the right DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, “Hey, did you see Law Abiding Citizen this weekend?” you can reply, “No, I indulged in the long history of vigilante cinema and checked out the long history of extralegal fantasy ass kicking.” Instead Of: Law Abiding Citizen, the vigilante action flick about grieving, angry husband and father Gerard Butler taking vengeance against Da Jamie Foxx for setting free the man who murdered his family... Watch: The granddaddy of vigilante flicks, 1974’s Death Wish, in which Charles Bronson goes all badass on bad guys who done bad. Just as the Vietnam War spawned the »

- MaryAnn Johanson

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Review: ‘Law Abiding Citizen’

16 October 2009 12:15 PM, PDT | The Flickcast | See recent The Flickcast news »

Well, I’m  humbled and a little embarrassed to admit how much I enjoyed this movie. You see, before I actually started reviewing movies, this is exactly the type of film that would cause me to turn up my nose. I’ve made an earnest attempt to go outside my comfort zone, and damned if I am not pleasantly surprised every once and a while. All I knew about this film was that it starred Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. I’m not exactly a big fan of either.

Law Abiding Citizen is a bloody, sick, and twisted tale of revenge. What if you crossed a gruesome revenge movie like I Spit on Your Grave with a implausible, tech-savy caper like Mission Impossible? Why, you would get something like this film.  Suspend your logic and enjoy the ride. Wholly original, Law Abiding Citizen had me on pins and needles, and »

- Shannon Hood

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2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2004 | 2003 | 2001

1-20 of 65 articles from 2009   « Prev | Next »

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