Sunday, 31 July 2011

Competition: Hobo With a Shotgun T-Shirts


To celebrate the 1st August UK DVD and Blu-ray release of Hobo With A Shotgun starring the legendary Rutger Hauer we have extremely limited edition t-shirts to give away! Specially created and not available to buy we have three t-shirts to give away but before we tell you how you can win them please do stop by the official FanHub website for the film - www.cult-labs.com/hobo - click on ‘Win!’ and there you'll get the chance to win yourself drawn into the Hobo With a Shotgun poster!


To be in with a chance of winning one of these exclusive T-shirts, please answer the following question;

 In which 1989 film did Rutger Hauer participate in the sport of "Jugging"?

Send an email to wayfarer2007@sky.com . Please put "Hobo Competition" in the title, and provide us with your name and mailing details. All entries must be received by 15th August 2011. Winners will be chosen at random .All decisions are final. UK participants only.

Hobo With a Shotgun is available from all good stockists online and offline. A review will be up on Flash-Bang Movie Reviews very soon.


Sunday, 17 July 2011

Movie News: Tom Cruise IS Jack Reacher

Tom Cruise has been confirmed as taking on the role of Jack Reacher in the film version of the 9th Lee Child novel about the ex-military policeman. In case you needed a reminder of the plot;

Lee Child's Jack Reacher thrillers always have remarkably inventive setups, and One Shot is true to form. A sniper, Barr, kills five people with six shots and leaves a clear trail of evidence; arrested, he asks for Reacher. When Reacher was a military policeman, politics stopped him pursuing Barr--he cannot understand why Barr would ask for him and Barr has been beaten in jail until he cannot remember himself. Yet, for Reacher, the loner who looks at things differently from civilians, the story does not add up--Barr should not have got himself caught, should not even have fired from where he did. 

I'm going to guess that they'll fill the screenplay with some Reacher background info. The Director is scheduled to be Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun). Having had plenty of screenplay writing experience, having recently worked on screenplays for The Wolverine and Jack the Giant Killer, McQuarrie is more than capable of enhancing teh given screenplay to fit Cruise.

Movie Preview: A Lonely Place To Die

In Cinemas 9th September 2011

Directed by
Julian Gilbey (Rise of the Footsoldier)

Starring
Melissa George (Triangle, 30 Days of Night), Ed Speleers (Eragon), Eamonn Walker (Unbreakable), Karel Roden (RocknRolla), Sean Harris (Harry Brown),
and Kate Magowan (Stardust).

A group of five mountaineers lead by Alison (Melissa George) are hiking and climbing in the Scottish Highlands practising for a more dangerous ascent of the Eiger later in the year. 

On the second day of their trek one of the climbers in the group, Ed (Ed Speleers) hears a noise. The group follow the sound and discover an air-pipe sticking out of the ground. They can hear the cries of a person from beneath the earth and soon discover an eight year old girl buried in a small chamber. She is terrified, dehydrated, half-starved and can’t speak a word of English. The group decide to rescue the girl and in their efforts to get her to safety they find themselves being pursued by the girl’s kidnappers, ruthless killers who will stop at nothing to take back the girl. 
An adrenaline fuelled chase ensues, set against the backdrop of the most remote wilderness, amongst the wildest river rapids and on the rock faces of the most terrifying terrain. Every one of the group is going to have to fight for their lives if they want to make it out alive.  Frightening, uncompromising and brutally realistic: this is the ultimate British pursuit thriller.

An original feature from Carnaby Films and co-producer Eigerwand Media, A Lonely Place To Die is the Closing Night film at FrightFest and is released in cinemas on 9th September 2011 by Kaleidoscope Entertainment.




Hobo With a Shotgun: Q&A with Rutger Hauer

Tarantino and Rodriguez have a lot to answer for ;o)

Here we have the genre legend that is Rutger Hauer starring in a faithful recreation of exploitation flicks from the 70s and 80s, and it works very well.

From the press blurb:

It began as an award winning “fake” Grindhouse trailer that embodied the genre far more successfully than anything produced by Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof) and Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror) and became an internet sensation via YouTube. Now, Hobo With A Shotgun, director Jason Eisener’s affectionate and remarkably authentic tribute to the exploitation movies of the 1970s and 80s, is a full-on, no-holds-barred, kick-ass movie that has led DreadCentral.com to proclaim, “given all of the over-the-top gore, buckets and buckets of blood, bouncing boobies, and a fair amount of laughs, you cannot go wrong checking this one out.”



INTERVIEW WITH RUTGER HAUER

Q: The reaction to Hobo With A Shotgun has been nothing short of phenomenal – and rightly so.
RUTGER HAUER: I’m pleasantly shocked at how well the film’s been received, because I really didn’t see that coming. I knew that there was quite a following, but the fact that part of the [movie] establishment also came on board and were so friendly, rather than being upset and pissed off, is great. I guess the film is very clear about what it promises to tell you.
You know, not since the first test screening of The Hitcher in 1985 have I seen [one of my movies] get such a great audience reaction as Hobo’ has. It’s the only time that I’ve experienced watching a film with an audience where they know exactly what it is, and what you’re doing, and they know how to appreciate it – it was lovely.

Q: Hobo With A Shotgun doesn’t seem like a project that many established actors would voluntarily sign on to. How did you get involved with it, and what attracted you to the project?
RH. I’d say that about one third of my work involves projects I think I should gamble with, and the more I do them, the more pleasure I get out of them, because you discover things. The script [for Hobo With A Shotgun] was a bit loud and flat, so I wasn’t sure if there was more to tell, or if maybe I hadn’t read it correctly. But once I connected with the director [Jason Eisener] on Skype for an hour – I was shooting a film in Cape Town [South Africa] and he was in Halifax [USA] – I knew I had to work with him because it would be fun. Going into it, I felt like I was making a dirty, naughty film, with no holding back: I understood what the game was and I enjoyed it.
The first thing in our discussion was that we needed to try and layer the characters so we could add more depth to them.

Q. So you did have input into the Hobo character and the script?
RH. Yeah. Jason [Eisener] had very specific ideas about the character, because the whole story was based on Dave Brunt, who is a real person walking around in Halifax with his own story – he was the inspiration. Jason wanted me to hang on to that, so my task was to see if I could bring the real character into my movie character. So I studied Dave. He was there [on set] most of the time, and he was very supportive of me playing him. He was very proud that I was pretending to be him.

Q: What is Dave Brunt’s story?
RH. He’s a damaged person basically, because he was disabled when a truck drove into him. He settled for a couple of thousand dollars or something, but a big part of his life was ruined. So he became somewhat of an outcast I would think; but he’s also a very pure character who loves nature and knows all about any wild animal you can think of.

Q: The movie is extremely violent, but also totally over-the-top ridiculous. Did you have trouble playing it ‘straight’?
RH. Jason felt that I shouldn’t play it for jokes; that I should be deadly serious and try and deal with the simplicity of his [the Hobo’s] own mind, his sense of pride and honour and purpose. My task was to be deadly serious, because Dave [Brunt] is also very serious about this stuff: you can’t fool around with honour and pride, and sensibility.

Q: Because things get so crazy, did you find it hard keeping a straight face during the really insane scenes?
RH. Every scene became such an over-the-top soap opera that it was a pure joy to see how everything developed into such ridiculous, crazy stuff – but of course it was my job to stay in character. Naturally though, after Jason said ‘cut’ you would piss yourself, because of all that had happened during the scene. It’s hard, sure, but I had a lot of fun shooting this movie because it was so wild, so creative, and everyone involved has a love for making movies.

Q: You’ve played some very extreme characters during your career. But were there ever moments while filming particularly insane scenes in Hobo’ when you actually questioned if it was too crazy even for you?
RH. Not really. I just thought that I had to pick my own moments of craziness, so it doesn’t repeat itself, so that it becomes part of the acceleration of shit, so to speak. In a story, you can only burn and kill so many people before it gets boring – you have to be creative. I think that’s what the audience was expecting also. We had to make a movie out of the original trailer and top it, because the expectations were so very high.


Hobo With A Shotgun was released at the flicks on Friday 15th July 2011.

Thursday, 7 July 2011

Blu-Ray Review: Don't Look Now

Directed By Nic Roeg
 
Starring Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason
 
 
Synopsis:
The tale deals of a married couple, John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and Laura (Julie Christie), whose daughter Christine recently drowned in a lake near their house. They decide to travel to Venice during the off-season when John gets a contract to restore an old church. They hope that the opportunity will help them deal with what has happened.
While in Venice , John starts to believe that he might have psychic abilities, based upon the fact that he was able to sense that something was happening wrong with his daughter before it was too late. At a restaurant they meet two elderly sisters; one of them, Heather (Hilary Mason), is blind and psychic and tells Laura that she sees Christine and that she is happy. These events help to put the couple on a dangerous path.
 
Review:
Optimum do it again with this Blu-Ray release of one of British cinema’s greatest achievements; Nic Roeg’s spooky film, Don’t Look Now. Starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in the adaptation of a Daphne Du Maurier story, this new release captures the spirit of the movie like no other previous release.
 
It’s story is mournful and tragic and Venice in it’s off season serves as a great backdrop for this film. The atmosphere of the place is almost a character in its own right. The movie patiently builds up with the use of imagery, and score. Similarly to Roeg’s feature The Man Who Fell to Earth, the look of the movie is very dream-like. Roeg uses many devices in maintaining the atmosphere of the movie. The actors punch through the Roeg-dreamscape with very real performances that help punctuate the humanity in the storytelling, drawing the viewer deeper in. The much described chemistry between Christie and Sutherland helps greatly to endear themselves to the audience. For once a s*x scene actually works in a movie, where it serves to show the bond between the characters and juxtaposes against the tragedy. For the reason, the movie is quite depressing and should be avoided if feeling a little delicate. Otherwise, it’s a great movie for emotion and emoting. It’s challenging and all the better for it.
 
The movie has been digitally restored, the process of which was both supervised and approved by the Director. The better picture quality helps emphasise the attention to detail that Roeg gave to the film, especially with the colours in the movie. Not surprisingly the colour red is very important in the story and helps forewarn the audience of the impending final moments. the cinematography alone is worth double dipping on, or even triple dipping if you’re a fan and have had the movie from its VHS release onwards. You’ll notice the age of the movie even with this print, but Don’t Look Now has never looked as good as this.
 
The Blu-Ray has had all the extra features ported over from the DVD special edition. I hope this practice continues as my only real criticism of Optimum releases has been the lack of extras on their catalogue Blu-Rays.
 
Summary
A welcome re-issue to appeal to new viewers and those of us who already own older DVDs.

Score: 8/10

This edition was released on Monday 4th July 2011 and available from all good outlets