Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i Empire Australasia

THOSE WITH WEAK stomachs — or overly full ones — should think twice before going to see Julia Ducournau’s debut feature Raw, about a young woman who becomes a compulsive cannibal: at its screening at the Toronto Film Festival last month, several audience members barfed during the more grotesque scenes, which include ultra-realistic torn flesh, bite marks and gaping wounds. But it’s more than just gore-porn: Raw won the FIPRESCI Prize (aka the International Federation of Film Critics) at the Cannes Film Festival; it’s being touted as a feminist parable, a searing insight into sexuality, body image, identity and conformity. If you can avoid puking on yourself. Raw follows 16-year-old Justine (played by Garance Marillier), a lifelong vegetarian from a family of vegetarians. A brilliant student, Justine is starting veterinary…

IN 1969, WHEN Luc Besson was just an enfant, he saw something that changed his life. Thumbing his way through a copy of Pilote magazine, he excitedly devoured the Asterix and Tintin cartoons. Then he got to something he’d never seen before: a comic strip called Valérian And Laureline, about a guy and a girl solving mysteries in space in the 28th century. “It was totally unusual,” he remembers. “With Marvel there is always a superhero who is wondering if he should be a superhero, then a villain to fight. But this was very human, in a world which isn’t human at all. As soon as I saw it, I got hooked.” Almost five decades later, the director behind The Fifth Element, Leon and Lucy is in post-production on a…

IS IT RENEWED? Netflix has confirmed a second season of nine eps. “We’ve been talking about Harry Potter, even though it’s weird to compare it,” co-creator Matt Duffer tells Empire. “I like that you’re revisiting these characters and watching them grow up on a year-to-year basis.” SO WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Real time will have passed for the now-rescued Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) and his friends, so it will be set in 1984 and reflect the films of that year — especially Temple Of Doom, apparently. WHERE IS ELEVEN? Where did Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) go? Sheriff Hopper (David Harbour) was last seen leaving her favourite food in the woods. “We like the idea of potentially putting her and Hopper together,” Matt told Variety . AND WHAT ABOUT BARB? Twitter…

OUT NOW RATED M / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Peter Berg CAST Mark Wahlberg, Dylan O’Brien, Kate Hudson, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Ethan Suplee, Justin Burkhamer, J.D. Evermore PLOT Based on the true story of a heroic band of oil rig workers on Deepwater Horizon, the submersible offshore drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico that exploded in 2010, this follows the dramatic events that followed as the workers desperately fought to stay alive in the aftermath of the worst oil spill in US history. MARK WAHLBERG AND Peter Berg’s last movie together as an actor-director pairing took the unusual step of spoiling itself with its title: Lone Survivor. There are no such spoilers in the title of their next movie together, just a matter-of-fact statement of intent. Deepwater…

OUT 13 OCTOBER RATED M / 99 MINS DIRECTOR Pedro Almodóvar CAST Emma Suárez, Adriana Ugarte, Daniel Grao, Darío Grandinetti, Rossy de Palma PLOT Julieta (Suárez) plans to move out of Madrid with her boyfriend, but stays when she hears news of her daughter Antía, whom she hasn’t seen in years. As Julieta searches for her, flashbacks show how young Julieta (Ugarte) met Antía’s father. LOVE, LOSS, MELODRAMA and a dash of camp: Julieta is unmistakably the work of iconic Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Although not as crazy and frenetic as the likes of 1988’s Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown — the film that made his name on the international scene — it’s instead closer in spirit to 1999’s All About My Mother, centred around maternity and…

S BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH dashed down Manhattan’s East 32nd Street in his last scene as surgeon-turned-sorcerer Doctor Strange, he couldn’t help but notice the JHU Comic Books shop. Once the shot was in the bag, still in his full blue-and-red regalia, he decided to pop in. “I thought, ‘You are literally ending where this began,’” Cumberbatch recalls. “The loop of serendipity was too much to not go in and acknowledge it. I wanted to see the look on their faces.” Photographs of the Sorceror Supreme in the comic book shop went viral, but an experience the day before may be even more revealing. Cumberbatch, again in costume, took a quick coffee break with his wife and some friends. With typical New York nonchalance, most of the customers glanced up and immediately…

1 JAN “IT TAKES PLACE in the future, but hopefully it’s timeless,” says Chris Pratt of his latest foray into science fiction. Passengers is set aboard a luxury spaceship on a one-way, 120-year journey to Homestead Colony, a trip made possible by that sci-fi staple: hibernation pods. Things get interesting when two pods open several decades early, belonging to steerage-class mechanic Jim Preston (Pratt) and upper-class writer Aurora Dunn (Jennifer Lawrence). Their relationship, alone on a perilous voyage, is the film’s focus. “I like to say this is Titanic meets Gravity, in that the relationship is so strong and the visuals are so amazing,” claims producer Neal H Moritz. “Even though it’s set in the future, we want to have a relatability to it. Deep down it’s a story about…

08 DEC WHEN DIRECTORS JOSH Gordon and Will Speck (Blades Of Glory, The Switch) pitched their new movie, everyone had ideas for them. “When you say you’re making a movie about office Christmas parties people come out of the woodwork and start giving you material,” says Gordon. “We pitched it to DreamWorks,” adds Speck, “and I think because Spielberg had a lot of office parties back when he was at Amblin we were off and running. It’s a night rife with danger; you’re always one drink away from ruining the rest of your life.” They built a story about a company led by Jennifer Aniston’s CEO, who plans on shutting down her brother’s (TJ Miller) division. But if Miller’s staff can snag a key client with one great holiday bash,…

12 JAN DIRECTOR ZHANG YIMOU’S (House Of Flying Daggers, Hero) action-fantasy epic The Great Wall may be the most expensive film to ever be entirely shot in China (budget: $135 million) and features one of Hollywood’s top leading men in the form of Matt Damon, but it turns out that the film’s biggest drawcard — at least for Chinese teenagers — may be the inclusion of 26-year-old Chinese pop star and actor Luhan. “It’s a little overwhelming when someone like Luhan shows up,” laughs Damon. “The first night before shooting I think something like 400 flower arrangements came to the hotel and took up the entire hallway. I was pretty sure they weren’t for me.” Essentially a massive monster movie set in 15th-century China, The Great Wall is Yimou’s first…

FROM NOW / RATED TBC / SHOWRUNNERS JONATHAN NOLAN, LISA JOY / CAST ANTHONY HOPKINS, ED HARRIS, THANDIE NEWTON, EVAN RACHEL WOOD, JEFFREY WRIGHT “THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS have violent ends,” warns Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores Abernathy at various points during Westworld. This Shakespearean quote (Romeo And Juliet, Act 2, Scene 6, Bard-fans!) lies at the heart of the JJ Abrams-produced reboot of Michael Crichton’s 1973 theme-park-goes-ape-shit classic. On one level, Westworld 2016 offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of indulging human whim and the ways technology upscales sin. And on another, it’s about pistol-packing androids. For the uninitiated, Westworld is Jurassic Park in chaps. The John Hammond here is Dr Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), the creator of an entire Wild Westverse populated with artificial beings (or ‘hosts’, in the…

WIN ! ONE LUCKY WINNER WILL HAVE THEIR FUNNY BONES TICKLED BY RICHARD PRYOR AND THE LATE GREAT GENE WILDER IN STIR CRAZY, THE TOY & SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVILON BLU-RAY! Write a funny caption to the pic above from Why Him? starring James Franco, Bryan Cranston and Zoey Deutch and there’ll be fun times ahead. As long as you don’t arrive at the door with an unsuitable partner, that is. WHY HIM? IS IN CINEMAS FROM 26 DECEMBER AUGUST WINNER “When fishing for dragons, the right bait is important.”…

WITH HIS ROTHCO messenger bag, “Dammit!” catchphrase and ability to stay up all night without so much as a sip of a Monster Energy, terrorist-battling hero Jack Bauer is synonymous with 24. So when Kiefer Sutherland decided to hang up Bauer’s gun after nine seasons and a TV movie, you may have thought the show had run out of time. Think again. “We felt real-time as a narrative engine was something that still had life in it,” says executive producer Howard Gordon. “It was a matter of finding a really interesting new character to put at the show’s centre.” That character is Eric Carter (Corey Hawkins), a Special Forces soldier who, while serving in the Middle East, was part of a top-secret mission to assassinate a terrorist chief. When 24:…

1 The show is based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 techno-thriller, in which a theme park full of robot cowboys goes awry. Executive producer JJ Abrams met with Crichton in the ’90s about a possible film remake. That fell through, but Abrams kept pondering the concept’s potential. Eventually he turned to Jonathan Nolan (yes, brother of Christopher) and Nolan’s wife Lisa Joy to oversee this series for HBO. “There were more ideas to unpack than you had room for in a film,” says Nolan, who has figured out a multi-season plan. 2 While it’s still a Western/sci-fi mash-up, don’t expect this to hit the same beats as the ’73 film. “I’ve always felt in adaptation you have to be a bit of a heretic,” Nolan explains. “What we keep is the…

NO ACTIVITY OUT TBC 2016 WORLD POVERTY AND a death in the family. That’s what Harriet Dyer thinks about when she’s trying not to corpse. Unfortunately for the young actress, she is on the set of the second season of No Activity, the Jungleboysproduced laugh riot, streamed on Stan, which follows the inane lives of two cops, two criminals and two girls in dispatch. Dyer plays April, one of the dispatchers opposite Carol, played by Genevieve Morris. “Oh my God,” exclaims a smiling Dyer. “I had a sheet of notes at my desk, to make it look like I was doing work, but I was writing things down like ‘everyone is dead’, ‘if you laugh one more time you will get cancer’. I was just writing the most horrific things…

IF YOU’VE BEEN anywhere near the internet within the last 12 months, then you’ve seen viral sensation Activewear, a parody that takes the piss out of women who wear their exercise gear regardless of location or activity (“Activewear, activewear, buying groceries in my activewear”) that has clocked 30 million hits worldwide (“We thought we’d be lucky if it got 100,000 views,” admits co-creator Adele Vuko). The brains behind the video are a Sydney-based comedy trio consisting of Vuko, Sarah Bishop and Greta Lee Jackson — collectively known as Skit Box— and they’ve just completed Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am, a 6 x 30 minute sketch series. Although Skit Box have been creating short films and live shows together for the past three years, Wham Bam has given the trio the…

DEEP WATER OUT OCTOBER 5 “I’LL BE SHOCKED, amazed and thrilled if I’m still standing,” exclaims Aussie actress Yael Stone on the set of SBS’s latest venture into high drama storytelling. “It’s been a marathon!” Best known as Morello on Netflix’s insanely popular Orange Is The New Black, Stone is back on home soil to take the lead role in Deep Water, a multi-platform whodunnit inspired by a little known true story that shook the city’s most famous surf community. The show was conceived by producer Miranda Dear and her producing partner Darren Dale, the pair behind Redfern Now and Mabo. Sitting with EmpireTV outside the police station set, deep in the beachside community of Malabar in South Sydney, Dear explains all. “A couple of years ago there was a…

IN HIS STRIDE after three seasons of his all-conquering dramedy Please Like Me, Josh Thomas remains delightfully unaffected by his success as he chats with EmpireTV… You’ve just finished shooting Season 4… Yeah, it went fine I think. It’s our fourth one so we sort of know what we’re doing. I think. If something’s broken I don’t get panicked because we’ve had things like this before and we just fix them. It’s just been good, stress-free. Do you get fans coming up to you asking what will happen next to their favourite character? Yeah, sometimes. The people that talk to me only care about the boys, the cute boys. That’s all anybody ever talks to me about. I think just because the type of people that use that corner of…

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE OUT 30 MARCH, 2017 THE NINTH SOLO Batman film is a little different from the ones that have come before. All the familiar elements are present and correct: Batcave, gadgets, industrial levels of angst. But this time the Caped Crusader (Will Arnett) is not only the guardian of Gotham City, but a choking hazard for young children. For this is LEGO Batman, getting his own spin-off after stealing the show in 2014’s The LEGO Movie. Expect the silliest exploits since Adam West busted out the Shark-Repellent Bat Spray. “Just the idea of Batman is absurd,” chuckles director Chris McKay, such an ardent fan he has a Catwoman tattoo. “A guy who learns karate and dresses up at night to beat people up is ridiculous. We get…

MONSTER TRUCKS OUT 12 JANUARY, 2017 GIVEN THE TITLE, you might expect hulking vehicles with moon-sized tyres and hordes of howling blokes. Monster Trucks, however, is a much more surreal prospect, featuring a monster in a truck. Chris Wedge (Ice Age) is the director behind the $100 million action-comedy, which sees an oil-drilling accident unearth a species of subterranean alien — one which escapes into a Midwest town and under the hood of a vehicle owned by Tripp (Lucas Till). Cue creature merging with machine, an inter-species buddy-up and a race to get the beast back underground. It’s basically ‘ET: The Extra-Tyre-Estrial’, or Free Willy on wheels. Yet it was another movie that proved the inspiration. “Chris gave me Romancing The Stone to watch,” says Till between takes in Surrey,…

LIKE MANY KIDS with a robust imagination, Charlie Hunnam grew up “carving sticks into swords” and having imaginary duels down the local woods. Movies such as The Scarlet Pimpernel and Excalibur, he insists, gave him the “idea of becoming an actor”. Especially the latter, John Boorman’s operatic 1981 adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. “I must have watched it 40 times over an 18-month period,” says the Geordie star of Pacific Rim and Sons Of Anarchy. “It’s a childhood dream come true to play King Arthur.” That said, Hunnam is the first to admit that, thanks to director Guy Ritchie, this take on the legendary monarch won’t be someone you’ll recognise from the Arthurian epics of yore. He’s introduced in this origin yarn, subtitled Legend Of The Sword,…

OUT 20 OCTOBER RATED TBC / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Woody Allen CAST Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively, Corey Stoll PLOT 1930s Hollywood. New Yorker Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) arrives seeking employment from his uncle Phil Stern (Steve Carell), a film agent. Working in the mailroom, he falls under the spell of Stern’s secretary, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), and they grow closer. Problem is, Vonnie’s already seeing someone. CAFÉ SOCIETY HAS enough charm, smarts and jokes to initially fool you it’s another of Woody Allen’s trademark returns to form. The truth is it falls far short of his ’70s and ’80s highs, so it’s perhaps best we compare it to the more recent Allen canon. So: it doesn’t hit the heights of Midnight In Paris or Blue Jasmine, but…

OUT 10 NOVEMBER RATED TBC / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Tom Ford CAST Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Isla Fisher, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Armie Hammer PLOT Middle-aged LA art dealer Susan (Adams) lives a privileged but unfulfilling life in a loveless marriage. When a manuscript written by ex-husband Edward (Gyllenhaal) arrives, Susan’s reading of it stirs more than just memories of their relationship. Edward’s brutal tale reveals deeply uncomfortable truths about each of them. AT FIRST GLANCE, Tom Ford’s shiny second feature is giving us more of the same. That is, another achingly beautiful, artfully directed drama with thematic echoes of his much-celebrated 2009 debut A Single Man. But that’s only part of the story. How thrilling it is to find that, not long into Nocturnal Animals’ running time, Ford is…

OUT NOW RATED M / 133 MINS. DIRECTOR Antoine Fuqua CAST Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Peter Sarsgaard PLOT Rose Creek, 1887. Terrorised by robber baron Bartholomew Bogue (Sarsgaard), the townspeople send newly widowed Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) to find a band of men crazy enough to tackle him. Enter dead-eyed bounty hunter Sam Chisolm (Washington), chirpy gunslinger Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt) and five more lethal recruits. IF REMAKING ONE classic is tough, remaking two at the same time feels like an impossible mission. So it proves with Antoine Fuqua’s heavy-handed retread of the team-up yarn that birthed both John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven and Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Lacking the froth and fun of the former, and the humanist joys of…

STEVE DITKO IS a comic-book legend, but hasn’t been interviewed or photographed by the press since the 1960s. “It’s not what I’m like that counts; it’s what I did and how well it was done,” the artist said in one of his last on-the-record conversations, a 1968 article that billed him as “The Man Of Mystery”. Hating attention as much as Stan Lee loves it, he has never been involved in a Spider-Man movie, nor did he have a hand in this year’s Doctor Strange. “Ditko’s like JD Salinger,” says Scott Derrickson, director of the latter. “He’s a famous recluse. I don’t know why I would be the one to change his mind!” Ditko began drawing comic books in 1953. Two years later he teamed with Lee on Marvel’s precursor,…

TOM CRUISE HAS A RULE: it’s Mission: Impossible, he doesn’t do sequels. Throughout his 35-year career, without fail he has left every iconic role behind except super-spy Ethan Hunt. There is no Jerry Maguire 2. No Born On The Fifth Of July. No Rain Men. That changes next month with Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, in which Cruise once more fills the shoes of Lee Child’s nomadic hero, last seen in 2012’s no-frills thriller Jack Reacher. So how did this character, an ex-military policeman who wanders across America, righting wrongs with his fists and smarts, succeed where the likes of Cole Trickle, John Anderton or even Les Grossman failed, by burrowing into Cruise’s subconscious and demanding to be taken for a second spin? “He’s such a fascinating character to me,”…

1 DEC FILMMAKER MIRA NAIR calls Queen Of Katwe “the first Disney movie made in Africa not to feature any animals — except perhaps the occasional chicken.” Nor does the film include princesses, though it does have plenty of kings and queens. Little wooden ones. It’s the story of Phiona Mutesi, a girl from a Ugandan slum who one day wandered into a chess club mostly, as Nair puts it, “because they were offering free porridge”, and discovered a gift for the game that would bring her international fame and change her life. The Indian-American Nair, who has lived in Uganda for years (her husband is a Ugandan academic), was attracted to the project for any number of reasons. “If we don’t tell our stories, no-one else will,” she says.…

26 DEC WHEN JOHN MUSKER and Ron Clements made The Little Mermaid in 1989, they brought Little Shop Of Horrors’ Alan Menken and Howard Ashman aboard to give the tunes some edge. Repeating the trick for Moana, they’ve recruited Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda is the most sought-after composer in the world right now after creating Hamilton, a wildly successful hip-hop musical about one of America’s founding fathers. But Musker and Clements could offer an inducement that few could match: their leading man, The Rock. “Lin is a big Dwayne Johnson and wrestling fan,” laughs Clements. Johnson plays Maui, the demi-god who helps Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) on her quest to save the South Pacific. With Miranda aboard and, we’re assured, Johnson and Cravalho’s good singing voices, expect the music to take root…

26 JAN IMAGINE A COMBINATION of Groot and Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla with a gruff, no-nonsense manner, and you’re in the ballpark for Liam Neeson’s Monster in Juan Antonio Bayona’s latest. He’s an impossibly ancient tree creature that wades into the life of Lewis MacDougall’s Connor after his mother (Felicity Jones) is diagnosed with cancer. Patrick Ness’s screenplay, adapted from his own brilliant bestselling book, sketches the relationship between the brooding, angry Connor and the gruff, unforgiving Monster as a dark, complex, mature affair. Empire met the Monster — sort of — on a bitterly cold January night at the Parc Audiovisual de Catalunya. The former TB hospital on the outskirts of Barcelona has been temporarily transformed into a typically English back garden. There’s green patio furniture, a swing, and a…

01 DEC “SHE’S GOT A little psycho in her,” says Anna Kendrick of Poppy, her perky pink character in DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls. Inspired by the collectable ’90s toys with the crazy hair — now spun into wildly colourful characters and an entirely new plot — Trolls sees Poppy attempting to rescue kidnapped friends. Her quest involves singing and — in a kids’ animation first — passing through the digestive tracts of several large beasts. Whereas Poppy operates on the happier end of the spectrum, Justin Timberlake says his character Branch is “the complete opposite.” But that doesn’t mean we won’t see — or at least hear — the sweeter side of Timberlake in the film: he’s the executive producer for the music in Trolls, and his track especially written for…

Julie Cole (Veruca Salt): I met Gene before filming started. I remember writing home to my mum saying I didn’t think he was at all as you’d imagine Mr Wonka to be. But he was lovely and kind and a very sweet man. Michael Bollner (Augustus Gloop): He was far away from me as a shy kid at that time, but he talked to me! How exciting! Cole: He would hang around on the set, so we saw a lot of him: there was no, “Mr Wilder is in his dressing room,” or any of that. He was very sweet to me particularly, I think, because I didn’t have any family with me [in Munich]. I was on my own for three months with a chaperone. Bollner: One of the…

FROM NOW / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTORS Various / CAST Bianca Bradey, Emily Wheaton, Rosie Keogh CUT TOGETHER TO celebrate the tenth year of the Sydney-based horror film festival aptly named A Night Of Horror, this collection of short scary stories in turn chills, repulses and befuddles, all tied together by Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead’s Bianca Bradey strolling bloodied around a grotesque art gallery in The Tunnel director Enzo Tedeschi’s Life Imitates. It’s the nature of the beast that with numerous directors with different styles, the project often lacks cohesion and plays more like a terrifying afternoon at Tropfest than a bona fide motion picture experience. There is still much to enjoy though, and gore-hounds and horror heads will have their blood-lust sated with a new punchline every 10…

FROM OCTOBER 12 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTORS Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone / CAST Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, Sarah Silverman THE SPIRIT OF This Is Spinal Tap looms large over the latest comedy from the Lonely Island crew. Like Rob Reiner’s masterpiece, it’s a mockumentary following three likeable idiots as they navigate the choppy waters of the music biz. There is even an update of Tap’s ‘Shit Sandwich’ scene, as Conner4Real (Andy Samberg) checks out reviews of his new album: rather than a star rating, Rolling Stone awards it the poop emoji. Happily, rather than coming off as a pale imitation, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping squeezes laughs out of its tale like juice from a plum. If the music industry was silly back in the ’80s,…

OUT NOW / FORMATS PC, XB1 DIRECTORS Mark Pacini, Masahiro Yasuma CAST / Erika Soto, Connor Trinneer, Harry Shum Jr RECORE’S INGREDIENTS ARE comfortingly familiar. Squint and you’d be forgiven for mistaking protagonist Joule (Soto) for Star Wars newcomer Rey: both women are of a similar age and share both a style (brown, sweeping headscarf; forehead-mounted goggles), a vocation (scavenger of scrapped technology) and a love of mechanical companions. Joule’s planet, Far Eden, is as sandblasted and sweltering as Jakku, pocked with Zelda-esque dungeons, each of which must, as in Miyamoto’s classic adventure series, be salvaged and solved, usually before a final face-off with a towering boss. Joule’s weapon niggles at foes like a Gears Of War machine gun, while her trusty robot dog, Mack, can be ordered to sniff,…

1982 / RATED M / DIRECTOR JOHN CARPENTER CAST KURT RUSSELL, WILFORD BRIMLEY, KEITH DAVID JUNE 25, 1982: a date that should go down in history as the greatest “sorry guys, I guess we got it really wrong” day in cinematic history. To wit: two films with a sci-fi bent shared that particular release date — Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and John Carpenter’s The Thing — and both of them tanked at the box office… only to be justly reappraised several years later as straight-up masterpieces. Sometimes it takes audiences (and critics) a while to catch up. The latter film’s failure was opined by some to be the fault of another 1982 flick that featured a far cuddlier alien — Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Whereas that made alien visitation look…

“One of the most important scenes for me, that I always reference when making movies, is at the beginning of Raiders Of The Lost Ark ,” says Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn. “The moment for me is not the ball rolling, it’s after all that when Indiana Jones gets into the plane and sees a snake. It made me realise that after I’ve seen this guy be a hero and do everything, he’s flawed. It’s funny, and you can relate to him. That was a big lesson for me.” EXT. JUNGLE — DAY Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) leaps out of the temple, falls down a hill, and sits upright to find Hovito natives pointing spears at him. Jones’s gaze falls on Barranca (Vic Tablian),…

BRYAN FULLER FIRST read Neil Gaiman’s epic 2001 novel American Gods back in 2003 when he was working on the pilot for dark comedy-drama show Dead Like Me. “I loved the world almost more than the [plot] because it was such a glorious toy box,” Fuller tells EmpireTV. “It felt like the first step in so many great stories.” The story of American Gods follows ex-con Shadow (The 100’s Ricky Whittle), released from prison early when his wife (Emily Browning) is killed in a car accident. With all his hopes for a happy reunion destroyed, the desolate Shadow accepts a job offer from the mysterious Mr Wednesday (Ian McShane). Gradually, he learns that ancient gods live around the US, brought to the New World with their believers but abandoned to…

WITH SEVERAL FILMS on the horizon (Rogue One, Episode VIII and the Han Solo spin-off, for those who’ve been in a pop culture coma), San Francisco’s Lucasfilm HQ is a hive not of scum and villainy, but high activity. Dave Filoni, Executive Producer for the Star Wars Rebels animated series, is also hard at work on Season 3 of the popular show (“It’s Star Wars from morning, noon to night, so it’s all good,” he says with the tone of man whose job satisfaction levels are understandably off the charts). Filoni’s fatigued eyes may or not be red, but the big star of Season 3’s peepers are certifiably more crimson than Snoop Dogg in Amsterdam for the weekend: Grand Admiral Thrawn. For those not familiar, the blue-skinned Imperial Navy officer…

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 OUT 27 APRIL, 2017 WHAT AWAITS MARVEL’S band of cosmic scallywags in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, the sequel to the 2014 smash hit? Well, for one thing, some serious bickering. “You’re going to see these characters having to endure the realities of being in a family,” says Chris Pratt, whose blowhard hero Star-Lord will learn he’s the son of an entity named Ego the Living Planet. “You’re talking about a guy who’s been longing to know who his father is for a long time. He’ll discover if that person lives up to the expectations he has in his head.” When casting an actor to play a living planet, director James Gunn really only had one option: living legend Kurt Russell. “Hey, if…

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE: SEASON 2 FROM 16 DECEMBER “WELCOME TO THE Nazi nibbles,” grins Rufus Sewell. Empire is on location for Season 2 of The Man In The High Castle, the Amazon show that spins Philip K Dick’s dystopian what-if-the-fascists-won-World-War-II novel to serial length. We expected sinister overlords; we didn’t expect them to be tucking into sponge cake and dainty sandwiches. Still, as the actors sit on the manicured lawn of Obergruppenführer John Smith (Sewell) in Nazi New York — actually a sleepy suburb in Vancouver — the tone is tense. This is due to the presence of Reich-resister Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos), the show’s heroine, who has ditched the comparative safety of Japan-controlled San Francisco to infiltrate the belly of the beast. “Why is she here?…

YES JONATHAN PILE THERE’S A POPULAR narrative currently doing the rounds in the Empire office (mostly peddled by James Dyer), and it’s this: that I didn’t like Netflix’s Stranger Things. While it’s true I didn’t think it was perfect, I watched all eight episodes in a weekend, gave it three stars (still a recommendation) in the TV issue and enjoyed the majority of the ’80s-style trappings, right down to the girl who looks like 1986 Wil Wheaton. But, for me, that nostalgia overload didn’t mask the show’s failings — most notably that it blew its mysteries too early, so by the time the characters worked out what was going on, we’d known for a couple of episodes or more. Whatever twists or surprises it had didn’t have the impact they…

OUT 27 OCTOBER RATED TBC / 102 MINS DIRECTOR David Mackenzie CAST Ben Foster, Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges, William Sterchi, Gil Birmingham PLOT With their mother recently deceased and their family’s West Texas farm facing foreclosure, two brothers — ex-con Tanner (Foster) and divorced dad Toby (Pine) — embark on an audacious bank-robbing spree to raise some cash. The only thing in their way? A wily Texas Ranger (Bridges) and his put-upon partner. MIDWAY THROUGH HELL Or High Water there’s a shot of a Stetson-wearing cowpoke unhitching his horse at a gas station as a lime-green abomination straight out of Pimp My Ride rolls into view. It’s a throwaway moment and you could argue that it’s as subtle as, well, a tricked-out muscle car, but that juxtaposition of old…

OUT 20 OCTOBER RATED M / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Nicholas Verso CAST Toby Wallace, Gulliver McGrath, Mitzi Ruhlmann, Justin Holborow PLOT The Australian ’burbs, Halloween, 1997. On their final day of high school, Corey (Wallace), thug Jango (Holborow) and their skater gang The Gromits run wild. When bullied schoolmate Jonah (McGrath) convinces Corey to walk him home, the pair step into a supernatural world that brings dark secrets from the past to light. THE DIFFICULT TO classify Boys In The Trees is a combination of several compelling ingredients — a teen coming-of-age tale; a supernatural morality fable; a 1990s period piece with requisite killer soundtrack; a rumination of the psychological damage caused by bullying — but mostly it’s the first film to come along from an Australian that reflects what…

OUT 3 NOVEMBER RATED TBC / 163 MINS DIRECTOR Andrea Arnold CAST Sasha Lane, Shia LaBeouf, Riley Keough, Arielle Holmes PLOT Teenager Star (Lane) leaves home to travel around the US with a group of hard-partying young salespeople led by Krystal (Keough) and Jake (LaBeouf), but must earn her place in the crew. DIRECTOR ANDREA ARNOLD is now cinema’s foremost chronicler of youthful passion. Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights and this new road movie focus on characters on the brink of adulthood, throwing themselves headlong after love and life. They appear heedless, but the common thread between Arnold’s heroines is they’re already familiar with life’s cruelties, and risk everything to find a place of safety. Semi-improvised on a route across the Midwest, a young woman called Star (newcomer Lane) leaves an…

OUT NOW RATED TBC / 127 MINS DIRECTOR Tim Burton CAST Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Samuel L Jackson, Ella Purnell, Chris O’Dowd, Terence Stamp PLOT Confused by the mysterious murder of his grandfather, Jake (Butterfield) travels from Florida to Wales in search of answers. There, he finds a time loop that takes him from 2016 to 1943, and a school populated by extraordinary children — and their extraordinary headteacher. WE KNOW TIM Burton’s Batman. We came very close to seeing his Superman. And if you ever wanted to know what Burton’s X-Men would look like, here’s your chance. For not only does Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children come from Fox, the studio that owns Marvel’s mighty mutants, and is written by Jane Goldman, who was responsible for one of…

WELCOME TO HELL. The air is heavy with acrid smoke. Mosquitoes buzz hungrily searching for the next vein to tap. Silhouettes of burnt out trees and barbed wire pierce through the pungent haze. The scorched earth is littered with limbs, severed heads and shattered corpses. Mel Gibson stands next to a rotting dead body, purveying the carnage surrounding him like Apocalypse Now’s Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore. Every crease of his weathered face muddied with dust and fake blood. This is Hacksaw Ridge. Empire is visiting the war torn set as the crew prepares to shoot some of the epic battle scenes that the director of Braveheart and Apocalypto is renowned for. We have arrived in the small New South Wales town of Bringelly, now playing the part of Japanese Island Okinawa,…

17 NOV THERE ARE PLENTY of reasons why an actor would sign up to star in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. There’s the opportunity to wander the magical world of JK Rowling. There are the majestic sets designed by Harry Potter veteran Stuart Craig. There are bills to pay. But above all, we suspect, there’s the chance they might get to swish a wand around. “Nothing could cut into the excitement I got when the prop department said to me, ‘Here’s a wand you can take back to your hotel room to practise,’” says Colin Farrell, who plays Percival Graves, a kind of magical G-man on the hunt for hero Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne). “I took that little wooden thing home and had a little fiddle around with…

26 DEC NO ONE WAS more surprised by the huge takings of 2011’s Red Dog than director Kriv Stenders. Then a stalwart of the Aussie indie scene after a succession of lo-fi triumphs like Blacktown and Boxing Day, the true tale of Red Dog, a red kelpie who hitch-hiked across WA searching for his master, earned $21 million in Australia. A follow-up was inevitable, but how it could be done was less obvious. “When the first film popped we threw around a few sequel ideas but we really didn’t want to rush into it,” Stenders explains. “We wanted to do it the right way for the right reasons. To do it hot on the heels seemed a little mercenary. Then when I was filming Kill Me Three Times, Dan [Taplitz],…

26 DEC FACED WITH THE question of how to follow the massively acclaimed Whiplash, Damien Chazelle knew his answer at once. A musical! “I’d been working on La La Land since 2010,” he explains to Empire. “I was toying with the script while my friend Justin Hurwitz came up with musical ideas. It was hard to get off the ground, but Whiplash allowed it to happen — much to the horror of some of the executives we brought it to. It was a tough sell, but they took the gamble.” La La Land stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone (with support from Whiplash star JK Simmons) as a jazz pianist and an actress falling in love in Los Angeles. But Chazelle wanted to keep it real and avoid too much…

24 NOV IF 2003’S BAD Santa was the feel-bad seasonal comedy of the century, we might expect the sequel to be feel-worse. But, promises director Mark Waters, the curmudgeonly sequel — like the first — is far from un-festive. “The first one is a lot of people’s favourite holiday movie,” he laughs. “It just kind of snuck up on people and there’s real heart at its centre.” Not usually one to repeat himself, Billy Bob Thornton was keen to reprise Willie Soke once the right concept appeared. This new story introduces Kathy Bates as Willie’s “awful” mother, bringing him in on a job intended to rob a Chicago charity of its Yuletide proceeds. Bates is only eight years older than Thornton, but the film finesses the issue by suggesting…

IPAD PRO PRICE / 9.7-INCH FROM $849; 12.9-INCH FROM $1149 www.apple.com When you’re not out on the road watching movies on the stunning screen, the iPad Pro can use Airplay to stream video wirelessly to your TV via an Apple TV or Chromecast — get the optional Smart Keyboard and you might not need a home PC at all. Available in two sizes, the 12.9-inch version packs an impressive 2732 x 2048 pixels into its screen for the ultimate in clarity. The 9.7-inch version doesn’t lose out though, with a similarly impressive 2048 x 1536 screen — that’s better than most PC displays twice the size. The screen uses ambient light sensors to automatically adjust the image to perfectly match your current lighting conditions, which also helps give it a…

The first Independence Day was made twenty years ago. Did you ever you imagine sitting here talking about a sequel? No… that’s because it is rarely done. You know, that’s a trippy and glorious and I’m wildly appreciative and shocked. Why did you want to make another Independence Day film? Well, working with [director] Roland [Emmerich] again, I think he’s a brilliant director and a lovely guy — I’ve stayed friends with him. So that was almost enough for me anyway! But then he and Dean Devlin, with whom he created the first one, called me up a few years ago and before I read anything they told me the story, even though the story went through a few different things in the last few years, and I loved it!…

FROM NOW / RATED PG / DIRECTOR Barry Levinson / CAST Robert Redford, Wilford Brimley, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger FOR AMERICANS OF a certain age, and especially for baseball fans, The Natural is a cultural artefact in itself, as well as a paean to a simpler age, where pro sports were tarnished only by dapper gamblers, not by meatheads on steroids or ugly rape accusations. (There’s no mention of race or segregation — The Natural is set entirely before Jackie Robinson broke through baseball’s “colour line” in the 1940s and sidesteps the issue altogether.) For those without a nostalgic lens to view it, the film’s symbolism and mythology can seem a bit heavy-handed; main character Roy Hobbs is a heroic Galahad, complete with his own Excalibur — his…

BEFORE THE STATH. Before The Rock. Before Arnie, Sly, and possibly the creation of the universe, there was The Chuck. Unleashed in an action era that got its kicks from cars and guns, Chuck didn’t need weapons. A former six-time Professional Middleweight Karate Champion, he was the weapon: the lightning bolt that birthed the macho, muscley, one-man-army badass. Chuck’s evolution as action icon started with an almighty pasting at the hands of Bruce Lee, his former sparring partner. Beard-free, with Weetbix sideburns, Chuck rocks up late in The Way Of The Dragon (1972), an end-of-level boss hired by Mafia goons to eradicate Lee. Staged inside Rome’s Colosseum, the 10-minute death-match — sparse, wordless, wide-framed — is breathstealingly brutal. Lee breaks Chuck’s arm, his leg, rips out his chest hair and…

ON 19 JULY 2015 at 10.38pm, Ryan Reynolds tweeted the following via his @VancityReynolds account: “The ‘upside down Spider-Man kiss’ is pretty embarrassing when the rope’s 2 feet longer than planned. You should see my Dad’s face.” It is testament to the staying power of Spider-Man’s upended smooch some 13 years after its release. After saving Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) from muggers, Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) disappears, then surprises MJ by appearing upside down in front of her. After some flirty in-jokery (“You are AMAZING!”), MJ pulls down his mask to reveal Peter Parker’s lips and leans in for a passionate kiss. It’s a moment that skirts the line between corny and heartfelt, and adds a rare moment of sexiness into the mostly sexless superhero genre — partly because of…

FROM NOW / RATED MA15+ / SHOWRUNNER Cheo Hodari Coker / CAST Mike Colter, Mahershala Ali, Alfre Woodard, Simone Missick, Theo Rossi, Frank Whaley THE THIRD OF Netflix’s Marvel superhero shows, following Daredevil and Jessica Jones, is barely superhero-y at all. Special abilities rarely figure for more than a few minutes per episode, but it’s powerful in other ways. Its strength is in the ‘real’ stuff. If you watched Jessica Jones you will have met Luke Cage (Colter) already, rattling the leading lady’s bedposts and bruising her heart before disappearing into the night. His solo series picks up several months later, with Cage now working in a barbershop in Harlem, where he’s trying not to let the local community know that he possesses super-strength and skin you couldn’t pierce with…

WIN! GOLDSTONE ON BLU-RAY A CONTROVERSIAL investigation into a murder in a corrupt town in rural Australia… Just another day at the office for Detective Jay Swan in this faux sequel to Ivan Sen’s Mystery Road! Enter now to get yourself one of 10 Blu-ray copies of this new Aussie flick. TO ENTER, TELL US WHO YOUR FAVOURITE MOVIE DETECTIVE IS, AND WHY. WIN! OUR KIND OF TRAITOR ON DVD WHEN A RUSSIAN mobster approaches you in a bar, chances are you can trust them… or not… well maybe… but you can’t be sure… eh, who really knows. However, you can trust us when we suggest you enter below, to win yourself one of 10 DVD copies. TO ENTER, TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE MOB MOVIE IS, AND WHY. WIN!…

1 Bruce Campbell just wanted some lines “No one ever heard Ash talk,” says Bruce Campbell. “In the first three movies, he probably has fifteen lines. But this is television, Ash talks his face off and we get to know him better. Ash has a speech that he gives at one point to the town. That has to be one of the most awkward acceptance speeches you ever hear. Nothing can be normal on the show. It’s a good opportunity for comedy, you can play like you normally shouldn’t play.” 2 … and Campbell writes his own dialogue (sometimes) “I come up to the script supervisor in the morning and I put my iPad in front of her and I show her what I’m gonna say that day,” laughs Campbell.…

IT’S NOT A great shock that AMC has commissioned a third season of Fear The Walking Dead: in the US, it’s the second-highest rating show on cable — behind only, yep, The Walking Dead — and the seventh highest-rating show on American TV overall. “Watching Los Angeles crumble through the eyes of our characters and seeing [them] try to figure out the rules of their new world — it’s fresh, eerie and compelling and we’re all in for the ride,” says Charlie Collier, president of AMC. “As Victor Strand observed, ‘The only way to survive a mad world is to embrace the madness.’” Whether Victor Strand does survive the mad world isn’t entirely clear, because at time of writing, AMC hadn’t confirmed which actors were contracted for the 2017 series;…