Charles Bramesco
Hans Zimmer Shredded Hot Licks From ‘Inception’ at Coachella This Weekend
This past weekend saw the Coachella Music Festival descend on the deserts of Indio, California for a multi-day celebration of artistic expression, obscenely expensive designer drugs, and that thing where white women dress up in traditional Native American garb. Among such Top 40 stalwarts and tastemaker-blog darlings as Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead and Lady Gaga, an unexpected name claimed the mainstage: German composer of film scores Hans Zimmer, bringing his touring act to new highs for the festival attendees. Above, you’ll find the most complete, cleanly-recorded account of Zimmer’s massive live show to date, in which the multiple Academy Award-winner shreds with the best of them.
An R-Rated Animated ‘Watchmen’ Adaptation May Be in the Works
If Zack Snyder if the filmmaking equivalent of a supervillain, and that’s precisely what he is, then his dark origin story came in 2009. He had earned a lot of admirers for his adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300, rendering the account of the Spartan warriors’ doomed last stand with visual panache and lots of sexy slow-mo. In 2009, he tackled an even more dense and beloved graphic novel with Watchmen and began his long, illustrious career in mangling things comic book nerds love. His Watchmen was literal, goofy, dim-witted, and dull, slavishly faithful to the source material without for a moment understanding what makes it work. It is history best overwritten.
Sam Jackson Drops A Whole Lot of Mother-F-Bombs in ‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard’ Trailer
Much in the same way that I have always wondered who delivers mail to mailmen (if they live in their own district, are they allowed to deliver mail to themselves? is that a conflict of interest?), the writers of the new action-comedy The Hitman’s Bodyguard ponder who a career killer goes to when he finds himself a mark. Even professional assassins need a little muscle from time to time, and when one especially ill-tempered sunuvagun hires a body guard with a short fuse, violent egos clash with nose-crushing results.
Bill Condon Poised to Reanimate ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ in Connected-Universe Remake
Having successfully shepherded the Emma Watson-led Beauty and the Beast remake to a billion-dollar worldwide gross, Bill Condon now has the world in his palm. An Academy Award winner with blockbuster bona fides, he’s pretty much free to take whatever project he’d like. Today brings news of what his next big endeavor might be, and it looks like he’s going to make a lateral move to stick with big budget studio work. Condon chronicled the life of British filmmaker James Whale with the celebrated Of Gods and Monsters, now he’s poised to tackle Whale’s work head-on.
Timothy Olyphant Was This Close to Playing Dom Toretto in the ‘Fast and Furious’ Franchise
Fambly. Chances are you just read that word in the gravel-voiced growl of babyfaced colossus Vin Diesel, the star of the Fast and Furious franchise that turned those two syllables into a catchphrase, and then into a way of life. In no small way, Diesel is the series, and not just because his name makes him sound like he’s already a character in one of these movies. As noble-hearted car jacker Dom Toretto, he helped shape the tone, themes, and overall outlook of all films fast and furious. But he was this close to missing it all, and going through life primarily identified as “the guy in the xXx movies I always tell my wife I was trying to Google.”
Seat-Kicking Incident Leads to Stabbing at Los Angeles Movie Theater
A few years ago, I wrote up a brief item about an incident taking place at Los Angeles’ AFI Film Festival wherein an irate woman maced a man in the face for having the gall to ask her to turn off her cell phone during a screening of Mike Leigh’s J.M.W. Turner biopic Mr. Turner. “Wow, being at the movies sure makes people do crazy things!” I thought to myself. “I wonder how long it’ll be until the next time I get to write about a violent movie theater conflict over petty nonsense.” That day has come at last, and this time [beat to let the moment breathe] the stakes are even higher.
New ‘Baby Driver’ Trailer Kicks the Heist-Musical Into High Gear
Valued readers of ScreenCrush: I had the good fortune of catching an early screening of Edgar Wright’s new picture Baby Driver just last night, and while I have been sworn to semi-secrecy, I can safely and gladly echo the sentiments of my esteemed colleague Britt and affirm that holy biscuits is it good. It is a damn fine moving picture. I won’t say much more than that, and luckily, I don‘t have to because today brings the arrival of a new trailer for the high-octane crime thriller. Comin’ in hot, wheels skidding in a perfectly narrow drift, the trailer arrives with the hyperkinetic editing and blazing soundtrack cuts that make this movie such an unfettered joy.
Per Christopher Nolan, Harry Styles Beat Out ‘Thousands’ for ‘Dunkirk’ Role
Christopher Nolan might just be the most bankable Hollywood director this side of James Cameron. Whether shepherding the most successful comic book franchise DC has ever seen or trying his hand at dizzyingly high-concept original projects, Nolan has always met with a monster windfall at the box office. It’s almost as if his films never go out of style. That‘s supposed to be a joke about the song Taylor Swift wrote about Harry Styles. Who is in Christopher Nolan‘s new movie. This is very clearly not my wheelhouse, so let’s just push right ahead as if that never happened.
Happy Friday, Joe Manganiello Wrote a ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ Movie
It’s been a long week — for you, me, ScreenCrush, America, and Earth. It’s nice to be able to take a moment on Friday to enjoy some more uplifting news, and today has happily obliged us with the announcement that Joe Manganiello went right ahead and wrote a Dungeons & Dragons screenplay. The man I assume must be the most ripped D&D nerd on the planet recently made a guest appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he informed host Josh Horowitz that he had co-authored a script based on the popular table-top roleplaying game with a “playwright friend from Carnegie Mellon” last year. Somewhere in the great dork beyond, Gary Gygax is looking down on Manganiello and smiling.
Chris Evans Suggests Robert Downey Jr. May ‘Walk Away’ From Marvel Before Him
No bubble can last forever — it must eventually pop, as is the nature of bubbles. Marvel has built a vast media empire on the strength of such stars as Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, and Chris Hemsworth, but no actor would be content with playing and re-playing the same role forever. All good (and obscenely lucrative) things must come to an end, and Evans has begun the long and painful process of consciously uncoupling from Captain America’s star-spangled shield and cowl. But a new quote from the actor suggests that he may not be the first big name to make a departure from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Paramount Blames ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Box Office Flop on Whitewashing Controversy
Kyle Davies, the President of Domestic Distribution for Paramount Pictures, is not having a great week. The early eruption of a backlash to his studio’s newest release (the generously-budgeted Ghost in the Shell remake) and its whitewashed casting was cause for concern. But up until recently, he could assuage his shareholders’ worries by clinging to the notion that hackle-raising on the Internet would not have any tangible effects on the box-office receipts. That changed after this past weekend, when the Scarlett Johansson vehicle mustered a piteous $19 million in wide release. Left to answer for the film’s commercial failure, Davies has placed the blame on the controversy over tapping confirmed white woman Johansson to portray an Asian role, to which the whole of the Internet will now respond with a hearty “DA-DOY.”
Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell All Want In on Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney Biopic
Adam McKay’s establishing a reputation as Hollywood’s foremost chronicler of the biggest hot-button issues... of ten years ago. He made blackly satirical mince meat of the subprime lending crisis with The Big Short, stepping back into our recent past to expose the avarice still at play in the world of macroeconomics today. And for his next project, he’s going to take aim at a West Wing political player loathed and feared by liberals as a power-mad despot intent on destroying America. No, not him, we’re referring to a different wannabe fascist with the public graces of Darth Vader. To be specific, Dick Cheney.