Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2015 i Empire Australasia

MOMENT One time I had Paul McCartney call my name out in a room. I was like, “Is this really happening? Is he calling my name?” That was here in LA, around 2002. I went over and talked to him — it was cool. My first scene on The Usual Suspects. I had a line, and I was going to mumble it. I panicked and went to my trailer and said my lines out loud, without what I had planned to do. It just sounded worse, so I said, “I gotta do my Fenster thing.” PIECE OF DIRECTION Christopher Walken gave me a note one time. He said, “If you don’t know what you’re doing in the scene, don’t do anything.” I was doing a scene once, and I was…

IN 2016, WE MAY SEE AN Oscar ceremony in which one of the front runners has been seen in cinemas by only a handful of people, and not because it’s small and arty and about something depressing, but because it just isn’t in cinemas. Beasts Of No Nation, the new film from Cary Fukunaga, director of True Detective’s first season (the really good one), is the flag-bearer in a whole new era for film.Netflix, which has already upended the traditional TV model, is looking to reinvent how and where we watch film. It used to be that going straight to the small screen was a sign of a very bad movie, or a movie with very low ambition, but now that most people do the majority of their film viewing…

1 Christopher Lloyd in A Million Ways To Die In The West (2014) A genius sight gag in Seth MacFarlane’s genius-lite comedy Western. A white-haired man sheepishly covers a DeLorean with a sheet. “What’s that?” asks Seth Mac. “A weather experiment,” says Lloyd, as Doc Brown in all but name. It’s not only a nod to the Western-set Back To The Future: Part III, but to BTTF itself, in which he uses the same line on a suspicious 1955 cop. WORD UP Lloyd has also Doc Browned foradverts, theme-park rides and a 1990 US TVspecial for Earth Day. 2 Sean Connery in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (1991) “I will not allow this wedding to prosheed,” says Sir Sean, in a last-minute…

THE CREATORS OF BATMAN V Superman: Dawn Of Justice do not refer to their new movie as a sequel, or an episode, or the next phase. They call it an expansion. There had never been any doubt that Man Of Steel was the start of something. Did you spot those cunningly placed Easter eggs? Logos for LexCorp and Wayne Industries, the acknowledgement of a world far bigger than simply Smallville and Metropolis. But when it came to it, sitting down to imagine where their newly rebooted and suited Superman franchise might go next… Well, this happened. Think of this as our pre-credits sequence. A boardroom. Day. Possibly the very boardroom where Empire is currently sitting opposite director Zack Snyder. The Synder brain trust is deep into a meeting about…

THE INSIDE OF GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S MIND IS exactly what you might expect: dense, layered, cluttered and packed to the brim with astonishing, haunting imagery. But it isn’t where you might expect. It’s erupted out of his head, onto a soundstage at Pinewood Toronto, where it’s taken the form of Allerdale Hall, a crumbling English mansion built on a clay mine, that plays host to the key action of his new film, Crimson Peak. Three storeys high, virtually self-contained (only a couple of rooms are absent, located slightly off the main hulk), with a level of art design that boggles the brain, it’s an incredibly, intricately detailed nightmare-scape that might just be the most astonishingly complete set upon which we’ve ever set foot. It’s the sort of place you wouldn’t…

FROM NOW / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR PAUL FEIG / CAST MELISSA MCCARTHY, JUDE LAW, JASON STATHAM, ROSE BYRNE THE SPYING GAME BEFORE STRAPPING on the Ghostbusters proton packs, Melissa McCarthy and director Paul Feig team up for this amiable Bond spoof. CIA analyst Susan Cooper (McCarthy) is the eyes and ears for Law... Jude... (sorry, agent Bradley Fine) — agile, debonair, smug. That is, until things go south, and only McCarthy can possibly infiltrate the sanctum of slippery Russian arms dealer, Rayna Boyanov (a terrific Byrne). After a sluggish start, Spy is redeemed by McCarthy’s endearing willingness to exploit her size and loud mouth for comedy. Pratfalls abound, and they mostly deliver decent laughs. As Susan goes full method into her kick-ass agent role, the violence (and McCarthy’s vulgar,…

1959 — 1972 / FROM NOW / RATED R18+ / DIRECTORS WILLIAM CASTLE, UBALDO B. RAGONA, ROGER CORMAN, MICHAEL REEVES, ROBERT FUEST THE PRICE IS RIGHT IN THE ’60S, THE name Vincent Price was synonymous with spine-tingling terror. Like his fellow gentlemen of the genre Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, no matter what he did to persuade audiences there was more to him than his devilish velvety tones, he was always brought screaming back to terror. This nine film box-set is an almost perfect summation of the great man’s career, dipping into some of his greatest collaborations and most chilling and complex characters. House On Haunted Hill was Price’s first film with the great showman William Castle (The Tingler), here playing a millionaire who challenges five people to stay in…

AUTHOR MARC FENNELL / OUT OCTOBER 19 IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD FOR HIS SECOND BOOK Planet According To The Movies, Australian film critic Marc Fennell (Triple J’s That Movie Guy and host of SBS’s The Feed, amongst a bunch of other things) has chosen the (pun not intended) novel approach of viewing the world through the lens of a film camera and deciphering planet Earth via the medium of movies. If civilisation as we know it was wiped out and all that future generations had were films to understand us as many varied nations, they would be forgiven for assuming the lot of us were completely and utterly insane. The book (subtitled Awesome, Weird And Wonderful Flicks From Four Corners Of The Globe) presents itself as part-collection of…

The Night Before CAST SETH ROGEN, LIZZY CAPLAN, JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT, ANTHONY MACKIE / DIRECTOR JONATHAN LEVINE CAPTION THE PICTURE ABOVE AND WIN SOME SWAG! JINGLE BELLS! SETH ROGEN, JOSEPH Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Mackie have made a Christmas movie but it doesn’t look like they will be getting any presents. Playing three lifelong friends whose lives have taken different paths, they get together for one last Christmas Eve bender that will definitely get them on Santa’s naughty list. This month’s winner will get the complete Volume 1. of Empire’s awesome Greatest Movie Posters four-book set ($59.99 in all good book stores November 1). Yes, putting it together nearly killed us. THE NIGHT BEFORE IS OUT DECEMBER 3. SEPTEMBER 2015 WINNER Congratulations Jarrod Wood! You win the Indiana Jones Quadrilogy,…

WHAT Happened, Miss Simone?, a new documentary from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus (Killing In The Name, Bobby Fischer Against The World) and currently streaming on Netflix, charts the remarkable, turbulent life of Nina Simone — jazz singer, songwriter, classically trained musician, firebrand civil rights activist and notorious diva who died in 2003. “In my view,” says Garbus, explaining the project’s appeal, “Simone is one of the great artists of the 20th century. But, especially in the States, she’s not appreciated as such.” In telling Simone’s story, which she does with riveting archive footage and interviews with friends and family, Garbus makes giant steps towards rectifying that. “In America,” she says, “Nina’s been buried to a certain degree, due to her radicalism, to her being effectively blacklisted here and because…

E-IMAGINE TOLSTOY, and they will come — “they”, of course, being the cream of Australia’s acting crop. Taking elements from the Russian author’s revered Anna Karenina and reinterpreting them for a middle-class Melbourne setting, The Beautiful Lie boasts a cast that includes Sarah Snook as Anna (the surname being “Ivin” in this iteration) and Benedict Samuel as Skeet, Anna’s lover and the man that helps set off a series of events that cause her life to unravel (the sizable cast also includes Sophie Lowe as Skeet’s fraught fiancée Kitty, plus Rodger Corser, Catherine McClements, Celia Pacquola, Daniel Henshall, Alexander England, Dan Wyllie, Gina Riley and Robert Menzies). “It was all about getting the central trio of Anna, Skeet and Kitty right,” says producer Imogen Banks. “We knew that once we…

STEPPING THROUGH the doors of the Cartoon Network’s Burbank HQ, you’re met by pretty much what you’d expect from the hippest animation studio around — sunlit, airy lobby featuring swathes of scrubbed brick and acres of honey-hued hardwood. There’s the immaculate retro pool table and framed posters of the network’s hit shows, shelves crowded with action figures, vintage board games (Rock’em Sock’em Robots and Buckeroo rather than Ludo or Sorry) and pop-culture knick knacks. Adorning the bright white walls are paintings and prints of various CN characters, a dazzling collage of works by various artists in unbidden tribute to their favourite shows. And there’s plenty to inspire artistically inclined fans, from venerable oldies like Johnny Bravo, Cow And Chicken and Powerpuff Girls to the new crop of favourites: Adventure Time,…

RICK GRIMES AND HIS stubbornly holding-on-to-life companions are doomed anyway, but before they fall victim to the deathly virus cruising in their veins, they’re going to shoot another season or two… or 10. Since Halloween of 2010, every spring, millions of people glue their eyeballs to whatever screen is at hand for another bloody serving of zombie — sorry, walkers — induced mayhem. It may have already been said thousands of times before, but the success of The Walking Dead rests upon its intentionally low-key magnitude as it scales down the global apocalypse from macro to micro, making it, for the lack of a better word, personal. To make even a rough sketch of complex character portraits of a bunch of people involved in the end of the world, 145…

800 Words CREATORS JAMES GRIFFIN, MAXINE FLEMING / CAST ERIK THOMSON, BRIDIE CARTER MELINA VIDLER, BENSON JACK ANTHONY / CATCH-UP CHANNEL SEVEN, PLUS7, ITUNES (TBC) / FROM SEPTEMBER Packed To The Rafters’ Erik Thomson stars as new widower George Turner who packs his kids up for a Trans-Tasman sea change leaving Sydney as a popular newspaper columnist for the relative obscurity of a quaint New Zealand coastal town. Feel-good Australian / New Zealand co-production vying to be the next Rafters. A Very Murray Christmas CREATORS SOFIA COPPOLA, BILL MURRAY, MITCH GLAZER / CAST BILL MURRAY, GEORGE CLOONEY, AMY POEHLER, MILEY CYRUS / CATCH-UP NETFLIX / FROM DECEMBER TBC The “Murray Christmas” meme becomes a reality in this ode to classic variety shows with Bill Murray as host, hoping that a…

IT’S LEONARDO DA VINCI — but not as we know it. For those of you who enjoyed the fun, frolics and, let’s face it, foolishness of the first two seasons of this colourful ‘historical’ romp, visions of a long white-haired and bearded old man were brushed aside for a vibrant, young swashbuckling fighter. It’s classic Starz TV nonsense with hocus-pocus, Vatican secrets and sinister societies, but entertaining, nonetheless, and S3 is just as outlandish as ever. You’ll recall, no doubt, our hero searching for the mysterious Book Of Leaves, which may or may not contain the answers to life, the universe and everything. At the same time, he is looking for his missing mother who seems somehow connected with all of this. The Pope was discovered to be an imposter,…

“IT’S BONKERS,” exclaims an ever enthusiastic Robert Rodriguez as he discusses the final episode of Season 2 of From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, the TV version of his 1996 fright fusion, co-scripted by Quentin Tarantino, that about turned a hard-boiled crime flick into a bloodthirsty vampire romp. “The band is playing a song onstage during the big kill and it’s a seven-minute sequence,” the director continues. “I wrote the music, the band sync it out, and I choreograph the action to it. I then edit it together so it looks like an MGM musical, an action musical. It was so much fun,” he boasts. “I like to take my inspiration from classics like Dirty Harry and Mad Max, but then go off on my own riff.” The first season…

IF YOU’VE EVER WONDERED what it’s like to portray a mixed marital arts fighter on a hit TV show — and who among us hasn’t? — Matt Lauria sums it up succinctly. “It’s brutal,” he says, talking to EmpireTV on the set of Kingdom , FX’s bare-knuckled drama set in the world of MMA. “It’s fucking torture.” On the show, which is gearing up for its second season this Spring, Lauria plays Ryan Wheeler, a one-time champion fighter trailing a dark past and carrying some very heavy baggage indeed. The first season opened with Wheeler returning to the Navy St. Gym in Venice, California, and to the coach who trained him for superstardom. “He’s a broken man,” says Lauria. “He’s come out of…

TERRORIST CONSPIRACIES ARE GOOD for TV business. But this new action-drama from producers Joshua Safran and Jake Coburn — starring Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra as an FBI recruit framed for a devastating terrorist attack in New York (and named for the Feds’ training facility) –— nods to that most sensitive tragedy in modern American: 9-11. The producers like asking questions of the audience. The show’s been described as ‘Grey’s Anatomy meets Homeland’ and from early footage that looks reasonably apt. Jake Coburn: We’re flattered to be compared to two enormous hits and we have incredible respect for both of those shows. There are some similarities, but we’re creating a show that’s exciting and different. Joshua Safran: I pitched it as Grey’s Anatomy meets Homeland to the network! Themes of the…

The “Dog” SPOT, HOMO SAPIENS “Designing Spot was more than tough. To believe that this character was not going to make ‘human’ decisions, you really had to sell his animal behaviour. It was all about trying to find the behaviour of a dog — you know, like the classic is the sideways head-nod — you can capitalise on, in terms of, ‘Oh, this animal is trying to think about something.’ Even the simple idea of my eyes locking onto you: humans do that a lot, but animals do not. Spot has all these little gestures that keep him animal, so that when Arlo is reacting to him it’s not on this ‘human to human’ level. That sincere little connection, and how that could grow, really charged me. It’s not like…

Just another horror film, eh? No. The Nightmare is a documentary. But it may also be the scariest film of 2015. How come? It’s about sleep paralysis, a phenomenon in which people become ‘frozen’ while falling asleep or waking. Doesn’t sound so scary. Well, sufferers have reported having terrifying hallucinations, often of dark figures, while they’re paralysed. Ulp. And Rodney Ascher, who directed Room 237, recreates some hallucinations in dark, disturbing scenes that have reportedly caused audiences to cry out. So it is a horror film? Of sorts. But it’s also a fascinating look at a disorder. Please, don’t have nightmares. Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. THE NIGHTMARE IS OUT ON HOME FORMATS OCTOBER 29.…

RELEASED: March 24 DIRECTOR: Zack Snyder STARRING: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Adams, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Jason Momoa STORY: After the destruction of half of Metropolis, planet Earth isn’t sure about Superman (Cavill). Is he a friend or a threat? To seasoned Gotham vigilante Batman (Affleck), he’s the latter. One which needs to be neutralised, fast. WHAT ABOUT THE JUSTICE LEAGUE? Not so fast. This movie sets the stage for the DC Universe superteam (clue’s in the title), but that’s a few movies away yet.…

1 “I have done two iconic things in my career. There was Godzilla [for Roland Emmerich in 1998], which wasn’t very well received. Hopefully, people will like the Batmobile better. It was the first thing I designed. I mean, I am not going to start with Lois’s apartment. I did some sketches, which placed it in the Batcave. There were two or three designs afterwards, but in the end my first sketch was the Batmobile we used…” 2 “It is truly an emotional process — it’s about what feels right. I showed Zack and Zack said, ‘Cool.’ Sometimes it just clicks. These films are very grounded. There will be tons of CG, but also a lot of real stuff — especially with Batman. Of course, building a car from scratch…

CHAPTER 1 0:18 “My name is Max.” Most of Tom Hardy’s lines come at the start of the movie. “We wanted to see if we could do it silently, with no voice-over,” explains Miller. “But when I saw it, we just didn’t have enough. We had to get inside his head.” CHAPTER 1 1:07 This Is Max A fan theory posits that this Max wasn’t Max Rockatansky at all, but the Feral Child from Mad Max 2 , all grown up. “No,” refutes Miller. “The Feral Child grew up to be the leader of the Great Northern Tribe, and an old man. He couldn’t be Max.” CHAPTER 2 1:58 Angel Interceptor In an interesting move, Max only gets to drive his iconic V8 Interceptor for 30 seconds.…

FROM NOW / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR DOUG ELLIN / CAST ADRIAN GRENIER, JEREMY PIVEN, HALEY JOEL OSMENT, KEVIN CONNOLLY, KEVIN DILLON, JERRY FERRARA BOOGIE KNIGHTS? AS THE GAGGLE OF celebrity exposés on American TV can attest, the Caligulan decadence of Hollywood excess makes for compulsive viewing. It was as part-parody, part-exploit of this that Doug Ellin wrote 2004’s Entourage for HBO, a half-hour series about a vacuous A-list movie star and his close-knit circle of friends-cum-hangers-on. The Player cut with a line of Swingers and snorted through a rolled up Playboy. The show ran for eight years but there’s little catching up required. Box office darling Vincent Chase (Grenier) spends time off-camera with less successful older brother, Drama (Dillon); driver, Turtle (Ferrara); and manager, E. (Connolly), all of whom…

1986 / FROM NOW / RATED PG / DIRECTOR J. LEE THOMPSON / CAST CHUCK NORRIS, LOUIS GOSSETT JR., MELODY ANDERSON CHUCK WALK WITH ME A SPIRITUAL changeling to King Solomon’s Mines, this Cannon Films plonker also features khaki clad fortune hunters (here ’80s videotape legends Norris and Gossett Jr.) and a plucky blonde (Flash Gordon’s Anderson) seeking ancient gold in a jungle thick with restless indigenes (this time Native Americans and/or Mayans, as personified by Predator’s Sonny Landham); is again directed by J. Lee Thompson and — again — John Rhys-Davies makes an ill-advised cameo. But, this Raiders Of The Cost Cut at least has a sense of self-deprecation and the chemistry between LGJr and the Chuck elicit moments of mirth. Yet it’s a slog, with more sparks from…

AS MYSTERIES GO, IT’S A veritable three-piper: how did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar go from basketball legend to author of a book about Sherlock Holmes’s brother? “That’s been the fun part of it: people going, ‘What?!’” chuckles the seven-foot-plus former NBA star. “When I was a boy, I watched the Basil Rathbone movies every Saturday. Then, when I was 22 and starting off in professional basketball, someone gave me a compilation of all the stories. I grabbed it as I was going out on a trip, and I was hooked.” Employing Holmes’s tricks on the court — “I found you could make deductions, little things that helped you anticipate someone’s next move” — wasn’t enough. So a few years ago Abdul-Jabbar retreated to his mind palace to plot out his own tribute…

“I AM YOUR FATHER.” SETTING THE SCENE Rob Bowman’s post-apocalyptic fantasy flick is notable for three things: 1) Its excellent poster, with dragons and helicopter gunships duking it out above Big Ben, a sight that isn’t in the actual film. 2) Matthew McConaughey’s mega-macho character name: Denton Van Zan. 3) This scene, in which two of our heroes recreate the end of The Empire Strikes Back . There are no cinemas in the future, after all. INT. NORTHUMBERLAND CASTLE — NIGHT Hunkered down in a candlelit keep to stay out of sight of marauding dragons, a community of survivors have gathered for the evening’s entertainment. Ranks of children watch, enthralled, as Quinn (Christian Bale) and Creedy (Gerard Butler) re-enact a classic work of drama. Quinn: “Join me!”…

14TH CENTURY WALES looks as decidedly grim as the show’s title. The Bastard Executioner, set during the reign of King Edward III, is the latest offering from Kurt Sutter (Sons Of Anarchy). Its titular character is Wilkin Brattle, a warrior knight eager to relinquish his life in battle, only to be forced into one arguably worse when a divine messenger commands him to take on the role of executioner. Today on a rainy afternoon outside Baron Ventris Castle, north west of Cardiff, Episode 5 (Piss Prophet) of Season 1 is filming. Knee-deep in mud stands the executioner himself, previously unknown Aussie actor Lee Jones, preparing for a fight with a stunt man soon to be replaced by Stephen Moyer (True Blood) who plays Milus Corbett, Brattle’s nemesis and a manipulative…

“I USED TO THINK THE cost of my soul was $50 million,” former producer of The Bachelor Sarah Gertrude Shapiro says. “Like, what would it cost me to torture another woman? Turns out it was $1500 a week without benefits.” But rather than complain that she’d “sold her soul to the devil”, Shapiro began storing ideas for her own scripted drama. The result is runaway hit UnREAL, a show set behind the scenes of a suspiciously Bachelor-like show called Everlasting. A feminist, Shapiro never felt right producing a show that pitched women against each other. And the only thing worse than working somewhere that conflicted with her morals was discovering it may just have been her calling. “It was really hard that I was so good at [manipulation]... that made…

FOR FIVE SEASONS, ANSON Mount has been carving a path across 1860s America as Hell On Wheels’ gunslinging railway foreman Cullen Bohannon. With the end in sight, he looks back at a character who traded destruction for construction. How does it feel to be on the last season? Bittersweet. I’ve been jokingly telling people it’s like the final semester of senior year — there’s a tremendous sense of upcoming nostalgia coming down the pike. What’s great is that everybody is really soaking it up. We’re just trying to make the most of our time together. Your favourite moments on the show? My last episode with Common was terribly sad. He was a hard dude to say goodbye to — we became really good friends and enjoyed…

MAY, 2015. EMPIRETV is deep somewhere in the unseasonably warm Melbourne ’burbs, idling inside the catering tent at an on location shoot for Season 3 of Josh Thomas’s lauded dramedy series Please Like Me. As cast and crew come streaming in for their fill of grub, the atmosphere is collegial and abundant with bonhomie: everyone seems to be smiling (Thomas for good reason — his producer has just gifted him with two tickets to Mark Ronson for his birthday); even more so when Thomas’s terminally chill 8-year-old Cavoodle, John, weaves his way through the crowd like the beloved team mascot he’s become. If first impressions are anything to go by, this is one big, happy family — and at the centre of it are a couple of old friends turned…

A FAMILIAR FACE to fans of Game Of Thrones , in which he played sexed-up super-warrior Oberyn Martell (aka The Red Viper), Pedro Pascal changes his game with the Netflix original series Narcos . Pascal, born in Chile but raised in the United States after his parents fled the Pinochet regime in 1975, plays Javier Peña, one of two DEA agents dispatched to Columbia to head up the US investigation of cocaine baron Pablo Escobar. “Having blown up a commercial airliner, he’d been declared an enemy of the state,” says Pascal. “Their mission was to capture him, or to kill him.” An engrossing drama that pulls no punches, Narcos is riddled with the violence and ruthless…

TV reboots are big again in Hollywood. Why do you think we’re mining the past and resurrecting these ideas? There’s an obvious attraction that studios and networks have to marketing titles which have a pre-existing awareness in the potential audience. It helps them break through the clutter of everything in the marketplace vying for our attention. But, ultimately, the strength of the reboot concept is most important. That’s what gets you the green light. Because, while it’s nice to have pre-existing awareness, that also comes with pre-existing expectations for excellence. So, nobody is under the illusion that a pre-existing title is enough to attract and retain viewers. The show has to rock on its own merits — it’s as simple as that. And, by the way, it does. How did…

The Flash: S2 CREATORS GREG BERLANTI, ANDREW KREISBERG, GEOFF JOHNS / CAST GRANT GUSTIN, TOM CAVANAGH, KEIYNAN LONSDALE, JESSIE L. MARTIN / CATCH-UP FOX 8, FOXTEL GO, FOXTEL PLAY, ITUNES [TBC] / FROM OCTOBER 7 After making an, er, flash in Season 1, the superhero quicker than lightning (Grant Gustin) comes into his own this season, said to be bigger, bolder and faster than ever. He’ll need to be with the emergence of super villain Atom Smasher, played by former WWE wrestler Adam “Edge” Copeland. The Good Wife: S7 CREATORS MICHELLE AND ROBERT KING / CAST JULIANNA MARGULIES, MATT CZUCHRY, CHRISTINE BARANSKI, CHRIS NOTH / CATCH-UP CHANNEL TEN, TENPLAY, ITUNES [TBC] / FROM OCTOBER 4 US [TEN TO CONFIRM DATE] One of the best dramas on the box, never afraid…

YOU KNOW YOU ARE on to a winner when the entire crew of a comedy show cannot last through a single take without stifling laughter. EmpireTV is on the set of production company Jungleboys latest comedy No Activity and a cursory glance around at the smirking team behind the camera reveals they are on to a good thing. The comedy team are here making the first Aussie production for new streamers on the block Stan, after tickling funny bones with A Very Moody Christmas and the follow-up The Moodys for the ABC. The premise is simple: there are three set ups. Two criminals, played by David Field and Dan Wyllie, are holed up waiting for a package. Two police detectives, Patrick Brammall and Darren Gilshenan, are sitting in a car…

WE HAVE THE same team, we love what we do and it gets rather intense...” David O. Russell is snatching a few minutes away from editing to talk to Empire about his latest genre-slaloming comedy-drama kind-of-but-not-really-biopic, Joy. Just as American Hustle started out as the true-life tale of con artist Melvin Weinberg and morphed into a fictionalised caper, so Joy began life as the real story of businesswoman Joy Mangano — written by Bridesmaids co-writer Annie Mumolo — and evolved at Russell’s keyboard into a more wide-reaching, family epic, inspired by other women in Russell’s life, including his mother. “It’s an ambitious one that covers over 30 years and goes deep into the soul of my first woman protagonist,” he says. “I mean, Jennifer is a very strong presence —…

1 After the script leaked, Tarantino secretly continued to work on it. “I pretty much knew after I did the live script-reading in LA that I was probably gonna do it as a movie. I was already working on another draft of it anyway, because I was planning on publishing that, at the very least. And then once I got the actors I wanted and went up there and did it, and it played so well, I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll stop being a jerk and I’ll do it.’” 2 The poster you saw in Empire was a start-of-shoot announcement. “We had that image of a wagon haemorrhaging blood and it was a really neat look. That was one of the concepts that they came up with for a pre-sales…

MICHAEL GAMBON is holding court in a snug Yorkshire boozer made even cosier by the veritable Buckingham Palace of British acting royalty crammed inside it. The cast of Dad’s Army are today under the timbers of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard platoon’s local, The Royal Oak, for a big third-act reveal. Between takes, Gambon and Bill Paterson deliver a stirring rendition of the Russian national anthem. “Michael just said, ‘Sounds like a lot of fun, let’s do it,” says director Oliver Parker of Gambon. “And this was before he’d even read the script.” The pressures of recreating the beloved BBC comedy for the big screen don’t seem to be telling. “If I look at Michael or Bill, it’s impossible to keep a straight face,” says Blake Harrison. “But then if I…

On a scale from one to 10, how famous are you? A two. Because half the world has never seen my movies — and never will. I would be put to death in half the countries in this world if they saw my movies. [Laughs] Not only would I not get good reviews, I’d be put to death! Who were you in your first school play? The Little Engine That Could. It’s about a train that keeps saying, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…” I’ve never thought about it before but that’s exactly what I’ve turned into a career! You think it sounds a bit like self-help? I believe in self-help — what do you think all my books are? Have you ever kept…

AT DAWN ON AUGUST 7, 1974, amid the hubbub surrounding Richard Nixon’s fall from grace, French performance artist Philippe Petit made his first tentative step on a high wire strung between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. The cable was suspended 408 metres above the early-morning traffic and Petit had only a pole for balance. Yet once he reached the other side, rather than taking the plaudits of the slowly amassing crowd below, he decided to turn around and walk back. He traversed the wire some eight times over the next 45 minutes, walking, crouching, even lying on the line, before the Feds arrested him, frogmarching him downstairs past cheering construction workers. “It was a ballet on a razor’s edge,” says Robert Zemeckis, who is recreating Petit’s…

When Fatal Attraction was released in 1987 it was an immediate sensation, a box-office smash that found itself dubbed everything from a metaphor for AIDS to an attack on feminism, and which was later nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture. It also popularised the term ‘bunny boiler’. Directed by British ad man-turned-Hollywood hit-maker Adrian Lyne (Flashdance), Fatal Attraction concerns a happily married lawyer, Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), who engages in a spot of hanky panky with book editor Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), then finds his family threatened when Alex wants more than a one-night stand and won’t take no for an answer. As the opening title credit “written by James Dearden based on his original screenplay” hints, Fatal Attraction began life as a short film called Diversion, written and…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR DAN FOGELMAN / CAST AL PACINO, ANNETTE BENING, JENNIFER GARNER, CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER, BOBBY CANNAVALE PACINO ROCKS IT WE THOUGHT WE’D seen it all when it came to Al Pacino. And now he comes out singing. Danny Collins is far more comedic than most musician-searching-for-redemption tales and a vindication for Pacino, for so many years now given to eccentric and florid excess. Playing a rock star with fame and riches and the obligatory hot, young girlfriend may not be a huge stretch, but it’s wonderful to see he still has the craft to dial it down from 11 in some beautifully low-key moments. He summons empathy and enormous charm in Danny’s determination to recapture everything he pissed away. He’s also hilarious. It helps, and…

FROM OCTOBER 21 / RATED M / DIRECTOR GIL KENAN / CAST SAM ROCKWELL, ROSEMARIE DEWITT, KENNEDI CLEMENTS THEY’RE HERE. AGAIN. BE CAREFUL WHAT you wish for: director Gil Kenan made a lively debut with the Steven Spielberg-produced Monster House, which lovingly resurrected the PG-horror vibe of the 1980s, but almost a decade later finds himself spinning his wheels with this flavourless remake of one of that era’s genuine classics. Competent but wholly unnecessary, Kenan’s Poltergeist does nothing to distinguish itself from Spielberg and Tobe Hooper’s original, consigning itself to the junkpile of countless cynical remakes in the process. Opening with a clever-enough spin on its predecessor’s famous intro — the camera pulling back from an iPad instead of a TV — 2015’s Poltergeist has potential, with its suburban family…

1976 / FROM NOW / RATED R18+ / DIRECTOR JOHN CARPENTER / CAST AUSTIN STOKER, DARWIN JOSTON, LAURIE ZIMMER UNLUCKY FOR NONE JOHN CARPENTER’S tightly wound suspense classic fuses the Howard Hawks western Rio Bravo with George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead and adds ‘70s urban minimalism while cranking up the unhinged claustrophobia. The siege set-up is simple: cops and prisoners trapped in a police precinct that is closing down; heavily armed gang members outside trying to free their incarcerated comrade. It’s a slow burn, greatly assisted by Carpenter’s throbbing electro soundtrack, brooding camera work (looking great in this cracking new high-def transfer), a forceful turn by Blaxploitation star Austin Stoker and that shocking ice-cream scene. Vanilla twist, anyone? EXTRAS John Carpenter commentary, interviews, isolated score, trailers and the…

1945 / OUT NOW / RATED PG ART AND SOUL EVEN TAKING HARRY LIME’S POINT ABOUT the greatest art often emerging from the harshest portions of history, Les Enfants Du Paradis is something close to a miracle. Standing alongside La Règle Du Jeu as perhaps France’s greatest film and, at the time, definitely its most expensive, this sumptous historical epic was made under the watchful eye of the Gestapo, had extras so malnourished they stole food from its period banquet tables, saw its vast Nice sets destroyed by a storm, and was finally forced to decamp north to Paris. The shoot was delayed by not one but two invasions. One of its cast was sentenced to death as a collaborator. Never mind France’s Gone With The Wind: this was The…

NEED TO KNOW After Matt Murdock waved a smelly cheese at Tony Hayers, Netflix has given Daredevil a second season, which will stream next year. Fighting In the Netflix show, Matt Murdock trained under sensei Stick for his whole adolescence. For the rest of us, learning to fight like a ninja is a lifetime’s work. British Ninjutsu Grand Master Gary Stone achieved 8th Dan last year, after more than 40 years of study. Showrunner Steven S. DeKnight says, “We wanted him to have a classic boxing training and some jiu-jitsu and martial arts, and mix it up into one very dirty technique.” Powers Matt Murdock’s visual disability has enhanced his other senses. Neuroscientist Dr. François Champoux of Montreal University says that “enhanced tactile abilities can be developed as early as…

Shades Of Blue PLAYERS: Jennifer Lopez, Ray Liotta, Drea de Matteo PLOT: Lopez is a cop torn between the safety of her own family and loyalty to her police family when she finds herself unwittingly becoming a police informant. PITCH: J-Lo’s first foray as the star of a series sees her surrounding herself with experienced talent (Ray Liotta is the patriarchal figure in her police department, and Sopranos vet Drea de Matteo provides excellent back-up). PAYOFF: It’s not the first time we’ve seen conflict and divided loyalties in a police department but J-Lo should bring viewers who will enjoy the fact that her character is relatively low-key-looking (no glam American Idol-style blowouts here) and part of an impressive ensemble. Wicked City PLAYERS: Ed Westwick, Erika Christensen, Taissa Farmiga, Gabriel Luna,…

He was born Paul Benjamin Mendelsohn, but to Australia’s film-going Generation X he is simply “Mendo”. Not typically handsome but with a puckish gleam and authenticity to burn, he seemed an unlikely leading man in the bronzed Australia post-Crocodile Dundee, but his rumpled ambiguity and mercurial larrikin charm came to embody versions of Australian masculinity that actually meant something to a generation coming of age in the late 1980s. In The Year My Voice Broke, The Big Steal, Metal Skin, Idiot Box, Mullet and more, Ben Mendelsohn was the face of Australia cinema in the 1990s. Then, in the new millennium… not much. While dozens of Australian actors — his peers and friends — began claiming Hollywood as their own with what became a seemingly unique Antipodean blend of talent,…

WHILE traditionally the superhero genre aims for a pan-generational appeal, Jessica Jones is definitely one for the grown-ups. Krysten Ritter (Breaking Bad) plays the titular role in this upcoming Marvel Universe series about the former superhero who was jettisoned from her elite gang of immortal colleagues. And now, leaving her day job as superhero behind her, she’s the boss of her own private detective agency. “Jessica doesn’t know where else to use her particular skill set and these abilities are at her fingertips,” explains Ritter of her alter-ego’s new profession. But it seems for Jones, her status as ‘bad girl’ has its advantages in myriad ways. “She gets to have sex with this beautiful man, Luke Cage [Mike Colter], my ideal Marvel man. It’s a strong female character and it’s…

AS TV ACTION GETS EVER MORE cinematic, higher value stunts and bigger set-pieces gather speed, even on free-to-air. If the trailer is to be believed, The Player, starring Wesley Snipes, Philip Winchester and Charity Wakefield, will ratchet up the kapow to Schumacherian levels. Creator/ Showrunner John Rogers confirms a big ballistic ballet awaits. You’ve said you were going for ‘pulp’ when it comes to the feel of the show. How so? Very high concept, high drama, big characters, clean plots with good, solid structural twists, and, in particular, the pacing. The classic pulps pulled you through the story, we want to try to mimic that relentless pacing. It’s very difficult across the commercial breaks in broadcast television, but we’ll give it a go. The stars were game to do their…

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE, I HATE IT, it’s evil, it’s astonishing,” scowled Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor, somewhat sexily, in the first trailer for Series 9. “I want to kiss it to death.” Kiss what now? Life? Death? Some sort of cryogenic spider? As ever, the Doctor’s a tease, which is exactly what he should be, every viewing grabbing us by our hair and flinging us somewhere unexpected. Other than an admirable array of unspecified monsters, the high-octane trailer, first unveiled at Comic-Con, at least revealed that Missy (Michelle Gomez), our current incarnation of the Doctor’s über-nemesis The Master, is already back to vex him, despite being disintegrated last time we saw her. Also, we have Maisie Williams, playing a Mysterious Woman From The Doctor’s Past (there’s always one), whose reference to him…

TAKING ON A REBEL fleet single-handedly, setting fire to a settlement of people and almost making teenage hero Ezra behead himself with his own lightsaber: just a selection of the villainous badassery unleashed by Darth Vader in the Star Wars Rebels S2 movie-length opener The Siege Of Lothal. And while Sith does indeed get real, series showrunner Dave Filoni says audiences should only expect to see the masked menace sporadically: “I’m very cautious because he’s a character you don’t want to overplay and make common. He’s pivotal to Star Wars, so you want to make sure you don’t put him in a light that would diminish him in any way. That’s why we wanted him to come across as so powerful — not just physically, but in a strategic way…