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Weekend Box-Office: Brad Pitt Brings The ‘Fury’; ‘Birdman’ Takes Flight In Limited Release
8 hours ago | The Playlist | See recent The Playlist news »
As projected, Sony’s WWII drama “Fury” won the box-office weekend thanks to solid reviews (not from us though) and of course the presence of Brad Pitt and, to a lesser extent, Shia Labeouf doing the mea culpa rounds on the talk shows, talking about his 2014 arrest and all his crazy antics on the set of David Ayer’s WWII movie. But projections were far off ($30 million and up) and “Fury” could only rake up $23 million in its opening weekend. It’s a good figure for a 2014 drama released in October, but for Brad Pitt, it’s not even in the top 10 of his best openings. International numbers have not yet hit for “Fury.” Continuing its remarkable hold was 20th Century Fox’s “Gone Girl” which fell to the number two slot, but only with a incredibly low 32.6% drop from its previous weekend. David Fincher's pulpy, skewering satire crossed »
- Rodrigo Perez
Afternoon Smackdown: Pre-Vis’ing a Fight Scene
11 hours ago | Filmmaker Magazine - Blog | See recent Filmmaker Magazine news »
Action cinematographer Lawrence Ribeiro forwards this short video of an afternoon’s work — literally. Below, he explains how, with a camera and two top stuntmen, he can mock-up a dynamic fight scene. From Ribeiro: Here’s a chase and fight sequence we shot, in five hours, using two top stunt professionals and one camera. In 2nd unit, we’d consider this type of shooting a level above pre-visualization (previs). Previs is a critical tool for designing action sequences. Sometimes all a script will say is, “…and they fight.” So videos like this allow us to experiment with choreography, and save time and […] »
- Scott Macaulay
Daily | Scorsese, Renoir, Lertxundi
13 hours ago | Keyframe | See recent Keyframe news »
We have three pieces on Martin Scorsese in today's roundup of news and views. Tom Shone has a new book on him, Eric Hynes revisits Gangs of New York, and Mark Singer's profile is one of six the New Yorker's revived from its archive. The other five are on Mira Nair, Jean-Luc Godard, Quentin Tarantino, John Carpenter and Woody Allen. Meantime, Arnaud Desplechin remembers Misty Upham, who appeared in his 2013 film, Jimmy P. Katie Bradshaw interviews Laida Lertxundi. Jonathan Rosenbaum's posted his 1976 review of four books on Jean Renoir. And more. » - David Hudson »
Where the Action Is: Justified Men
14 hours ago | Keyframe | See recent Keyframe news »
The action movie offers a consistent and under-acknowledged pleasure. If most of these films concern restoration of status quo, and they do, then there’s the thrill offered by the existence of the order itself, unperturbed as its own state of being, in addition to the obvious thrill of the choreographed chaos that ensues once said order is imperiled. Order has become a point of fetish in contemporary action cinema, perhaps to an unprecedented degree. A pivotal part of the action film’s appeal to audiences resides in the first act, in which we’re presented with its stylized version of the quotidian. It’s this first portion, which usually lasts twenty or thirty minutes, that establishes a fantasy that audiences are reluctant to abandon, and this reluctance fosters an empathy with the heroes, who’re scrambling to reinstate paradise after bad guys steal a plane or someone’s important daughter. »
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