Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2018 i Empire Australasia

THERE WAS ALWAYS a political edge to Harry Potter, even with all the dragons and broomsticks; Voldemort was nothing if not a fascist. However, the way producer David Heyman talks about The Crimes Of Grindelwald, the sequel to 2016’s Fantastic Beasts, makes it sound like we might be leaping into a political thriller. “It’s about the dangers of absolutism and fundamentalism,” says Heyman. “We see that in Grindelwald.” To recap, he was the dark wizard arrested at the end of the last film, revealed to be Johnny Depp in a Colin Farrell disguise. A year on, he’s on the brink of escaping prison and trying to unite the magically powered to crush the merely human. His means to achieving this, unlike those of Potter’s Voldemort, are not just fire and…

SMOOTH-TALKING SMUGGLER Lando Calrissian is pansexual — or so Solo: A Star Wars Story co-writer Jonathan Kasdan tells us anyway. There may not be any clear-cut evidence in the film to suggest that’s the case for Donald Glover’s character in the Star Wars prequel, but inclusion’s inclusion and we queer fans should be grateful, right? Well, no. Not really. There comes a time when writers, directors and studio executives have to stop saying they would have loved to have included a more explicitly LGBTQ character in their movie (just like Kasdan did in his recent Huffington Post interview) and actually put their money where their mouths are. It’s time. It was time yesterday. Yet characters are still being given retconned sexualities, rather than being given their own space to be…

DIRECTOR BART LAYTON was sold from the start. Reading about an absurd art heist by four Kentucky college students who didn’t know what the hell they were doing, he immediately wanted to tell their tale — and immediately wanted to start playing with notions of truth. Layton has a documentary background — his previous feature was 2012 conman documentary The Imposter — and has long been fascinated with perceptions of reality. Corresponding with the culprits, he based much of his American Animals screenplay on these letters — then decided to put the actual guys in the film, interjecting alongside the dramatised versions of events, sometimes even appearing in scenes with their Hollywood counterparts. “I wanted to pull the curtain back on the process of how stories get fictionalised,” Layton tells…

OUT 23 AUGUST RATED TBC / TBC MINS DIRECTOR Mark Joffe CAST Jimmy Barnes, Jane Barnes, Ian Moss, Don Walker PLOT A cinematic rendering of Barnes’ Working Class Boy autobiography that traces the story of how the boy born James Swan overcame incredible adversity and a harrowing upbringing to become the man we all know today as Jimmy Barnes. MUCH LIKE THE spoken word stage adaptation of Working Class Boy — the first instalment of Jimmy Barnes’ two-book autobiography — this film is a multi-layered experience. Ostensibly a documentary about the Cold Chisel singer’s life growing up in Glasgow and then Adelaide, his family having immigrated here in 1962, the film also incorporates beautifully shot musical performances, as well as snippets of his spoken-word show, captured in Sydney and Glasgow.…

OUT NOW / 102 MINS RATED M DIRECTOR Rawson Marshall Thurber CAST Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell PLOT Former FBI agent and amputee Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) is hired as security consultant for a state-of-the-art Hong Kong skyscraper called The Pearl. But when this “mile-high Fort Knox” is attacked by terrorists, Will’s family are trapped above a blazing fire on the 96th floor, with Will himself framed for the raid. IS IT POSSIBLE to get Rock fatigue? Can one’s enthusiasm for Dwayne ever wane? How much you enjoy Skyscraper — the one-time Brahma Bull’s fifth movie since spring last year (on top of another series of Ballers, no less) — will depend largely on your answer to that question. Rawson Marshall Thurber’s Die Hard/ Towering Inferno cut-and-shut tests how much you…

IF YOU DIDN’T stay in your seat to the bitter end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom — fair play, there was the World Cup/MasterChef (delete where applicable) to watch — you would have missed out on a post-credits sting: a group of pterosaurs circling around an Eiffel-like tower. Don’t worry, the dinos haven’t reached Paris (yet). Instead, the winged creatures have arrived in Las Vegas (be careful on the slots, boys); a pertinent reminder that — ESTAs/visas be damned — these dinosaurs can now go anywhere. By making the Park extinct, J.A. Bayona’s sequel to Colin Trevorrow’s follow-on from Steven Spielberg’s/Joe Johnston’s original trilogy has ripped up the Jurassic rule book. After that bit with the volcano and that bit in the old house, the prehistoric critters leg it to…

THEY ARE THE HITCHCOCK AND STEWART OF BLOWING SHIT UP. A blue-collar Burton and Depp. Scorsese and De Niro with less pasta sauce and more testosterone. Over a trilogy of blisteringly recreated true-life tales — 2013’s Lone Survivor, about Navy SEALs under attack in Afghanistan; 2016’s Deepwater Horizon, about the crisis on an oil rig nicknamed ‘The Well From Hell’; and the same year’s Patriots Day, about the Boston Marathon bombing — director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg have solidified a working relationship, and friendship, of an intensity unusual in Hollywood. This summer sees the arrival of their fourth collaboration, a rocket-ride action movie called Mile 22 that casts Wahlberg as a CIA agent trying to exfiltrate a witness from an unnamed, far-flung country. This one’s not based on…

ACTING IN FILM , Michael Caine’s revered 1990 tutorial book for wannabe thesps, contains such hot tips as, “Less is more,” “Don’t blink,” and, “Don’t dribble butter down your chin or trail your trouser bottoms in the mud.” Another piece of advice he could have added is, “Pick scripts where you get to say at least one memorable line.” Over his 62-year career, Caine has delivered dialogue so deftly that it has become eternally lodged in the pop-culture zeitgeist. He’s also manfully struggled with words that should never have been uttered by a human being (yes, in Jaws: The Revenge he really does say, “When I come back, remind me to tell you about the time I took 100 nuns to Nairobi”). We asked him to reminisce about his…

JULIAN DENNISON: “When Thor first meets Korg, I love that scene. It’s really funny. Taika [Waititi] plays Korg, and and it’s got a bit of Kiwi humour in there because of Taika. I love the way Korg talks. Our local library, our sister works at, and she knows people who talk like Korg.” INT. SAKAAR PRISONERS’ QUARTERS — DAY Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been taken prisoner and is thrown onto the ground of a circular corridor. Guards shut the door behind him. He picks himself up and bangs on the door. A large blue being, Korg (Taika Waititi), sitting against a wall, speaks to him. KORG: Hey hey hey! Hey, take it easy, man! Thor turns round. He sees the blue being sitting next to a smaller creature wielding blades.…

MATT GROENING IS already responsible for two of the biggest animated series in history. The Simpsons, obviously, is the biggest animated series in history, but Futurama is no slouch, with seven seasons and every chance of one day being revived. His third show, then, comes with assumptions of success. “To have two pretty big shows behind us is confidence-boosting but also daunting,” says Groening, as he prepares for the launch of his Netflix series, Disenchantment. “I’ve seen a lot of animated shows with great ideas misfire. But I think we’ve done a pretty great job.” Disenchantment is a very Groening idea, in that it upends something we’ve seen a thousand times before — in this case, the princess fantasy saga. Set in the world of Dreamland, Disenchantment follows Princess Bean…

1__ LEAVE IT FOR A FEW YEARS Andy Nyman: “One of the things that made the play work as well as it did was the clichés of horror films on stage — we hadn’t seen that before. What felt complicated to us was taking things that had come from horror films and putting them back into a film without feeling like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen that before.’” Jeremy Dyson: “We wanted some distance from it. We deliberately said: ‘Let’s park it for a bit.” 2__ KEEP THE PRODUCTION AS BRITISH AS THE FILMS THAT INSPIRED IT Dyson: “We came of age at the dawn of VHS and Friday night horror double bills on BBC Two: old ’40s films, Hammer and Amicus, all the great early ’70s British horror films. That wonderful…

1 __ WILL WE SEE LUKE SKYWALKER AGAIN? His life force having drained away by the effort of projecting his image across the galaxy for one last, spectacular show of power, Luke Skywalker is dead. Of course, death is no barrier to a Jedi, so a Force Ghost Luke could still see the return of Mark Hamill. His demise doesn’t bring an end to the Skywalker saga, though. As long as Leia’s son still lives, there is another. 2 __ WHAT HAPPENS TO LEIA? Kathleen Kennedy has (so far) ruled out a CG Carrie Fisher, so it’s likely Leia’s fate will now be handled off screen. Leia may suffer an untimely demise, but it seems more likely that her story will simply diverge from the main narrative, seeing her retire…

OUT NOW / 121 MINS RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Antoine Fuqua STARRING Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo PLOT With his mysterious past still haunting him, Robert McCall (Washington) has chosen a new career path as an undercover cab-driving vigilante. When someone close to him is killed, however, it gets personal and he wreaks his bloodthirsty vengeance. WHEN DENZEL WASHINGTON starred in the first cinematic adaptation of ’80s TV crime drama The Equalizer, the result was a stylish, ultra-violent thriller that saw the Oscar-winning thespian ably taking on the role that gave Edward Woodward’s career a new lease of life. Playing Robert McCall, a retired intelligence agent with a mysterious past, Washington got to show off his special set of skills to save Chloë Grace Moretz’s hooker with a…

OUT NOW RATED PG / 118 MINS DIRECTOR Peyton Reed CAST Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfieffer PLOT Two years after backing Cap in Civil War, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is house-arrested and trying to balance fatherhood with running his security firm. But Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) need his help once more, wrangling with a ghost from their past — as well as a troublesome Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) in their present. AFTER THANOS CLICKED his fingers and delivered that gut-punch of an ending to Infinity War, it feels strange to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe bounce back up off the mat, fighting fit, eager and willing to please with another frisky caper. Especially as it’s the sequel to the series’…

OUT 9 AUGUST RATED TBC / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Dominic Cooke CAST Saoirse Ronan, Billy Howle, Emily Watson, Anne-Marie Duff, Samuel West PLOT It’s 1962, and Edward (Howle) and Florence (Ronan) have just got married. Spending their first night together in a hotel on Dorset’s Chesil Beach, their nerves build as they prepare to have sex for the first time. IN 1963, A ‘youthquake’ hit Britain. A revolution in art, fashion, politics and music saw young people become a cultural force, and presence, for arguably the first time. But for those coming of age in 1962, it was a very different story — the decade was not yet swinging. Adapted for screen by Ian McEwan from his 2007 novella, this debut feature from four-time Olivier Award-winning theatre director Dominic Cooke…

SHOWCASE / OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED 1-7 CREATED BY Marti Noxon CAST Amy Adams, April Brinson, Eliza Scanlen, Patricia Clarkson, Matt Craven PLOT Chicago-based journalist Camille Preaker (Adams) returns to her hometown to report on a murder. But as the present triggers memories from her past, she finds it difficult to overcome her inner demons. SHARP OBJECTS HAS all the ingredients for a classic ‘whodunnit’ — a grisly, suspicious death, a small town chock-full of sinful secrets, and a big-city reporter sent in to cover the crime. But, as hinted at in the show’s first episode (“This isn’t going to be exploitative; more like a think piece on how something like this can affect a town,” says the newspaper’s editor), it plays out rather differently on screen. This…

A blushing vision descends from the sky as actors Boyd Holbrook and Trevante Rhodes look on, dumbstruck. A helicopter, pink as a baboon’s arse, whips through the air to settle in a field next to them, a grinning Keegan-Michael Key waving manically from the lilac interior. On the vehicle’s rosy fuselage, the silhouette of a naked woman reclines suggestively, the words “My Secret” and ”Heaven Sent” wrapped around her curves in flowery script. ”Well, that’s fancy,” observes Olivia Munn, as she, Rhodes and Holbrook shoulder weapons, grab their gear and get to the chopper — albeit one that appears to have been jacked from a sex-toy expo. “What did you expect?” says Rhodes, grinning at his ride between takes. “This is a Shane Black movie, man.” In the early ’90s,…

1. MONSTROUS MONSTER A company called Boss Film was originally tasked with creating the Predator suit, then a more organic design, and housing none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme. It was a disaster from the start. “Steve Johnson from Boss Film was not happy about that creature at all,” says Steve Wang, who was there as a sculptor. “He kept complaining about how it was a terrible design, but he was forced to build it because the design came directly from the studio. The biggest problem everyone saw right from day one was the fact he had this leg extension, and the technology for it back then wasn’t far along — people couldn’t really walk in it, and not being able to walk on that terrain in the middle of…

00:01:05 ANYONE GOT A LIGHT? __ Director and screenplay co-writer Wadlow had a fiery idea in mind when cooking up Truth Or Dare’s first scene, where someone quite literally cooks up. “When Jason Blum pitched me Truth Or Dare he had nothing besides the title,” says Wadlow. “I immediately pitched out the idea of this opening scene. He asked me if I had anything else, I said, ‘not yet, I’m just riffing… but let’s get started.’” 00:13:36 THE GAME __ “When I signed on to write and direct I contacted Chris Roach, who wrote Non-Stop for me,” says Wadlow. “He asked if Jill Jacobs could jump in as well. Given the number of characters, I figured the more the merrier. It also helps that Jill is incredibly smart and wickedly…

THERE ARE MORE Easter eggs in Ready Player One than on your average supermarket shelf in the week after Christmas. Hardly surprising, given Ernest Cline’s source novel was drenched in pop culture references, but watching Steven Spielberg layer scenes with nods to both obscure and obvious was quite the treat. So we tried to list every single reference in the movie, with a little help from Cline and his co-screenwriter, Zak Penn. WADE’S VAN 1. Wade’s van boasts Q*bert stickers. 2. And Gremlins stickers. 3. And a Garfield sticker. 4. And Garbage Pail Kids stickers. 5. And a Watchmen smiley face. 6. Plus A Nightmare On Elm Street poster. 7. And a Labyrinth one-sheet. 8. Not to mention a He-Man lunchbox. 9. And a Transformers lunch box. How much lunch…

GUILLERMO DEL TORO was attached to the 2017 Disney Beauty And The Beast, eventually directed by Bill Condon. Given the Mexican auteur once called Jean Cocteau’s La Belle Et La Bête (1946) the “most perfect cinematic fable ever told”, he might have just been plain old intimidated. Intoxicating, poetic and immensely moving, the film was made as an escape for a war-ravaged France and has survived to become the definitive version of Beauty And The Beast. Del Toro didn’t abandon the idea completely: The Shape Of Water is nothing if not La Belle Et La Bête with gills. This film’s magical charm is encapsulated in the stunning moment Beast (Jean Marais) carries Belle (Josette Day), who has fainted at the sight of the creature, through his enchanted castle. The scene…

I love reading Empire and this month I was on an emotional rollercoaster reading Olly Richards’ ‘The Agenda’ (issue #208). One minute I was laughing, the next muttering “If one more person says that to me...” The number of times I have rolled my eyes as someone has shouted “Spoiler Alert!” as a scene from a movie trailer is mentioned... Please tell me it’s safe to say that Ant-Man is in Ant-Man And The Wasp? Sorry! “Spoiler Alert”. Have there been times where I have seen/ heard more info than I’d hoped? Yes, but as Olly suggests, that’s on me, I should have done a digital detox or seen the movie on opening day! I will definitely be applying the ‘Don’t Be A Dick’ rule when discussing the latest MCU…

You have Indigenous Australian rapper, comedy writer, and actor Adam Briggs on the Disenchantment writing team. How did you get him on board? Josh Weinstein who developed the show with me and is the showrunner, he knew Briggs from Twitter. He invited Briggs to visit the office and he was so funny and he had such a different perspective, so we asked him if he wanted to be a writer [on the show], and he did and he wrote one of the best episodes of the series so far, as well as contributing to all of the other episodes. He’s fantastic. And it didn’t hurt that he had a Simpsons tattoo. Briggs is probably most well known here in Australia as being a rapper… I know…

ANDY SERKIS HAS been working on his directorial debut for a very long time. So long, in fact, that it’s no longer his directorial debut. In the five years since taking on screenwriter Callie Kloves’ adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, he’s made and released an entire other movie (last year’s true-life drama Breathe). The delay was, in no small part, down to Disney rushing out its own Jungle Book in 2016. A movie from which his, Serkis is keen to establish, differs considerably. “It’s all about the positioning of the film now,” he tells us just after the first trailer for Mowgli, as it is now titled, has broken. “Allowing people to know that it is a darker film, so they’re not too shocked. So they’re not expecting…

FROM A DISTANCE, Mile 22 looks like Mark Wahlberg/Peter Berg business as usual. Another tense-as-hell thriller with fireballs, gunfire, things going south and Wahlberg in the middle of it all, trying to make them go north again. But there’s a major difference. Unlike Lone Survivor, Patriot’s Day and Deepwater Horizon, this is not based on a real-life crisis. A fact which has allowed the fourth-time collaborators to cut loose and go wild. “The idea was to get away from the true stories and just have some fun,” says Wahlberg. “This is pure fiction,” adds Berg. “Everything’s different. There’s a certain type of pressure that we don’t experience when we’re making something up.” Mile 22, then, is the director-star duo letting off steam with a pumped-up action movie. Shot in…

WHEN DIRECTOR STEVE McQueen won the Best Picture Oscar for 12 Years A Slave, the question was: what’s next? The unexpected answer: a big-screen version of an early ’80s Lynda La Plante ITV series. Adapted by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, this is an honest-to-goodness thriller that sees the widows of a criminal gang follow in their deceased husbands’ footsteps, after the men’s initial heist goes fatally wrong. Here, the four leading ladies introduce us to their characters. VIOLA DAVIS AS VERONICA It won’t come as a surprise to learn that Oscar winner Davis is head of the widows, the outwardly tough but inwardly devastated Veronica. “For me it’s a game-changer,” says Davis. “I would not readily have thought of me for this role, and I don’t know why. Me,…

OUT NOW RATED M / 147 MINS DIRECTOR Christopher McQuarrie CAST Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Basset PLOT An Impossible Mission Force mission goes wrong, so that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team must protect the world from a fresh nuclear threat. But with the CIA’s Agent Walker (Henry Cavill) sent to keep an eye on him, Ethan will face an uphill battle to show that he can still save the day. THE KEY WORD for this franchise is not “impossible”. Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his team always find a way. It’s “mission” because these films are all about the job. Ethan Hunt barely ever pauses to let his love life interfere with his work, nor does he take time to swot…

OUT 16 AUGUST RATED MA15+ 135 MINS DIRECTOR Spike Lee STARRING John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold PLOT African American undercover detective Ron Stallworth (Washington) attempts to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan by posing on the phone as a racist white man, his Jewish work colleague Flip Zimmerman (Driver) playing “Ron” during increasingly risky meetings with the KKK. AS OVER THE TOP as the dramatic conceit that drives BlacKkKlansman may appear to be — that being an African American undercover detective becoming welcomed into the Ku Klux Klan with open arms via his posing as a racist white man on the telephone — this is, as director Spike Lee highlights at the commencement of the film via subtitle, “Some fo’ real shit.” Based on retired police detective…

RATED M OUT NOW / 128 MINS DIRECTOR J.A. Bayona CAST Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, James Cromwell, Jeff Goldblum, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda PLOT When Isla Nublar’s volcanic foundations become active again, Jurassic World’s former manager Claire Dearing (Howard), now a dinosaur rights activist, reunites with Owen Grady (Pratt) for a rescue mission. “DO YOU REMEMBER the first time you saw a dinosaur?” asks Claire Dearing (Howard) in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. We do. When Steven Spielberg’s photoreal prehistoric predators hit multiplexes in 1993, they changed cinema forever. And they were terrifying. But in the three films since, the original’s perfectly tuned moments of pure suspense (the tapping velociraptor claw, the water rippling in a T-Rex footprint) haven’t been matched. Enter The Orphanage director J.A. Bayona. But…

NETFLIX / OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED ALL CREATED BY Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch CAST Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, Sydelle Noel, Britney Young, Marc Maron PLOT After a long time trying to grapple a women’s wrestling show into shape, the Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling now have their own little-watched cable series. They’re going to do all they can to make it a hit, while contending with equally punishing dramas off screen. EVERYTHING HITS HARDER in GLOW’s second season. The storylines are punchier; the performances are better; the scripts are funnier; even the fake wrestling moves are more elaborate. What was formerly a good show is now a great one. Season 1 did a great job laying the foundations of a story with endless potential: a group of women who want to…

NETFLIX / OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED 1-4 CREATED BY Vikramaditya Motwane CAST Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte, Jatin Sarna PLOT In modern-day Mumbai, honest but under-performing cop Sartaj Singh (Khan) receives a call from gangster Ganesh Gaitonde (Siddiqui), missing for 16 years. After Gaitonde tells him he has 25 days to save the city from an unspecified calamity, Singh sets out to solve the mystery. BASED ON A 2006 crime epic by Vikram Chanda, Netflix’s first Indian Original is an unflinching roll through the grit of Mumbai (and its former incarnation Bombay), which offers a bloody contrast to the crisp, bright cinematic India we’ve become used to via Bollywood’s typically glammy output. This is an eight-part cops-and-gangsters thriller with a vicious streak and against-the-clock propulsion, whose two strands…

On holiday in a sunny spot in Southern Europe, actor Laura Harrier, best known for playing Peter Parker’s super-smart crush in Spider-Man: Homecoming, reluctantly reached over for her buzzing cell phone. “I hear, ‘Laura, this is Spike Lee!’” she recalls. “He asked me to meet him. I told him I was on an island in Greece, and he was like, ‘No, that’s not gonna work for me. I need to see you Thursday.’ And I’m like, ‘Spike, it’s Tuesday and I’m in Greece,’ and he’s like,‘No, see you Thursday — vacation is over. Bye.’ And then he hung up.” Lee’s urgency was palpable. Gifted a script by Get Out filmmaker Jordan Peele, Lee had a project so zeitgeist-y it needed instant action. With bigots in positions of power going right…

RAW PLOT HAS, in recent years, become the mortal enemy of pop cinema. Like Japanese knotweed it coils under its foundations, growing uncontrolled and at a ferocious rate, choking off all life. Great fibrous clods of indigestible narrative have sunk the Pirates Of The Caribbean. Indiscriminate backstory and drive-by lore have fatally constipated Ridley Scott’s once narratively svelte Alien and left James Cameron’s formerly single-minded Terminator bewildered and terminally on the fritz. It’s pleasingly ironic, then, that the era that birthed this tsunami of story gave us at its very beginning a film that can be taken as an enthusiastic jeremiad against the centrality of, or even need for, conventional, coherent, yarn-spinning. David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, his finest film and still, 17 years later, a contender for the greatest of…