Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster are together again

The Metro posted this excellent photo. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster recreate a scene from The Silence Of The Lambs as part of a 20th anniversary issue of Empire magazine guest edited by Steven Spielberg.

Thanks to Alan S for pointing it out to me.

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The Wolfman - Review from a Test Screening

Check out the LFF review of the final cut of the film.

AICN had a few reviews of The Wolfman starring Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving and Anthony Hopkins. I'm looking forward to this film as I love all the old black and white creature features. Here is one of the reviews (lots of spoilers so if you don't want to know, don't read it)

A WOLFMAN preview screening review...

I was able to get into a screening of THE WOLFMAN tonight in Albequerque. Going in, I expected this to be another in the ‘reimagining’ of famous monster movies into more action-y popcorn fare like DRACULA, THE MUMMY or SLEEPY HOLLOW and indeed it is but I felt like this one was a cut above because the movie had a real sense of respect for it’s story: no camp, no clever one liners. Just good old fashioned suspense and sense of dread as to what’s around that foggy corner. And P.S…scary as hell!!!

So yes, I was a fan of this. To start, its cast is great – Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving. All serious actors here who actually ‘act’ and not simply ‘react’ to effects (ah, Dracula anyone?)

After a fun, gory (this is a deliciously hard ‘R’ for gore) hunting scene where a man gets his in a gloomy forest via wolf, we are introduced to Del Toro’s Lawrence Tuthill – an actor in the midst of playing HAMLET ( a role he doesn’t realize he is to play throughout the movie ). He is on his way home for his brother’s funeral (the man who was murdered in the opening). The amount of gravitas and detail that Del Toro and the other actors bring to their role is definitely worth mentioning. This is a thinking man’s monster movie. Really, truly one for the diehards and I really appreciated the way this standard was maintained throughout the entire piece. Will 16 yard olds who dig Mark Wahlberg movies like it? Who knows but its suspenseful as hell and had this unnerving sense of dread that reminded me of the miniseries based on King’s SALEM’S LOT back in the ‘80’s.

Anyway, once Del Toro gets home he meets his dead brother’s fiancée EMILY BLUNT who (big surprise) becomes attracted to him and his estranged father ANTHONY HOPKINS. From here the movie becomes a bit of a whodunit as to who killed his brother.

Unfortunately, Del Toro goes to the nearby gypsy colony himself to uncover the murder and gets involved in an attack by the Wolfman himself. This sequence by the way is fantastic – a bloody cat and mouse around the camp that results in Del Toro himself being attacked (but not fatally) by the monster. Well, once bitten and you know the rest…or do you? The plot actually starts to delve into this GASLIGHT kind of uncertainty where Del Toro can’t be sure if he’s a wolfman or dreaming it. And Johnson actually does a credible job of arguing that whether or not you actually become a werewolf on a full moon, if you THINK you will you are just as dangerous.

No surprise that the 3rd act becomes this fast paced wolf hunt with torches but I really loved this Beauty and the Beast sequence where the wolfman enters a costume ball (with several animal masks ) and makes it all the way to the stage where a blind soprano sings to him face to face without realizing he’s a monster (another fun aspect: visual references aplenty)

Obviously, I quite liked this film. Perhaps they could tighten it here and there (I think it ran like 1 hour 50 mins) but I was surprised at its ‘brain over braun’ approach and really hope that it finds its deserved audience this coming Summer.

I regard great old films as just important pieces of art as great novels or paintings so it is with great pleasure that I send this review of what I thought was a high minded, tremendous and incredibly SCARY work to you tonight. (seriously, people were shrieking during the last scene!)

Regards,

WOLFIE

There are a couple more reviews over at AICN if your want to check them out, but all in all it is sounding rather good. Are you looking forward to seeing it?

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King Lear is dead...Long live King Lear

A Hollywood adaptation of Shakespearean tragedy King Lear has been cancelled after reportedly falling victim to the current global economic crisis.

The film was due to star Sir Anthony Hopkins in the title role alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, Keira Knightly and Naomi Watts as the monarch's three daughters.

The $36 million (£25 million) production was announced at last year's Cannes Film Festival in France but has now been scrapped.

The decision was reportedly made after movie bosses found it difficult to secure the required investment.

A spokeswoman for Ruby Films, the production company behind the film, says, "Ruby are no longer doing it - the film will no longer go ahead. It has not really been announced."

The move now clears the way for a rival production from director Michael Radford, starring Al Pacino, which will still go ahead.

Who would you rather see as King Lear? Pacino or Hopkins?

Source: WENN

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Discuss: Batman 3 rumours - Who could play the bad guys?

Bearing in mind Christopher Nolan has not yet signed up for the third Batman film, no story has been decided, no script has been written, no casting has been made and no characters have been chosen, the old casting rumours keep on coming.

Remember all of this is basically the internet throwing up whatever it can think of, but it does get the old brain juices flowing.

Nolan has made a point of saying he wouldn't have any super powers in his Batman films so people have been saying things will stay realistic. However Nolan did set up the fact that things keep escalating once the Batman hit the scene so it could go a little madder now that the Joker and Two-Face have appeared in Gotham. The great thing about Batman's bad guys is that most of them have no powers they are just disfigured freaks.

The Riddler keeps getting mentioned and we have had Johnny Depp mentioned for that. Now I have heard that Eddie Murphy could play him, as Axel Foley said "Get the fuck out of here!" springs to mind with that rumour. If they do use The Riddler I hope they have him as a buttoned up obsessive kind of criminal who out thinks the Bat. Depp would be cool in the part, but Crispin Glover could bring a weirdness to the part. Guy Ritchie could be another interesting choice and his work with Nolan on Memento shows he can play the obsessive rather well.

Catwoman is another one that many people think will be in the next film. If she is I'd like to see her as the thief she is and not as the big bad. Maybe a cameo or just in the background. Although if they do use her she'll probably end up as the love interest in the film. Rumours as to who would play her have included Cher, Maggie Gyllenhall, Angelina Jolie and most recently Rachel Weisz. Basically, any actress people can think of but I would like to see Carla Gugino take the part of Selina Kyle.

The Penguin. In the comics he has recently been portrayed as an arms dealer, criminal kingpin and a go to kind of guy for illegal goods. All of these would be okay for the next film and again, he wouldn't necessarily have to be the main villian. Philip Seymour Hoffman is the main rumour for this one and I can't really think of anyone better for the part.

The Ventriloquist. Not one of the most well known of Batman's adversaries but a good one none the less. Like many of the villains in Gotham he has major mental problems. Basically it is an old bloke with a dummy called Scarface. The old bloke is totally unassuming and the dummy is the one running things and treated as if he is a real person. Anthony Hopkins would be great in the role and he has previous experience with ventriloquist dummies controlling people in the film Magic.

Ice Man. Now we are getting into the realms of the super power although his ice gun could be explained as advance technology. Maybe stolen from Wayne's company or he was working on it for Wayne when the accident happened. Only person I can see in this part is Patrick Stewart who would be amazing.

Robin. I think there would be a massive outpouring of rage if it was announced that Robin was to be in the next film which is a shame. If done right Robin is a great character and works really well. Unfortunately the memories of Robin in the old TV series reins supreme. Shia Labeouf is the one rumoured for this part but they are missing the point on the old rumour mill. Robin should only be a young teenager or slightly younger, who loses his parents and is taken under Bruce's wing and is eventually adopted by him as his son. Maybe the kid out of The Spiderwick Chronicles would be good in the role.

There are many other characters in the Batverse - Bane, Black Mask, Poison Ivy, Firefly, Clayface, Harley Quinn to name a few more so Christopher Nolan will be spoilt for choice when he eventually sits down to write the next film.

Everything above is just a rumour. Let me know who you would want to see in the next Batman film and who could play them.
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Slipstream, 2007 - Movie Review

Director: Anthony Hopkins
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Christian Slater, Monica Garcia
Running Time: 96 minutes
Score: 7 / 10

This review by Andy D.

This movie will no doubt draw a line in the sand for movie watchers. Many will not cross that line and claim it is a jumbled mess, a confusing brew of hectically edited scenes in a deliberately confusing screen play, lacking direction, clear story line or conclusion. These people might be lacking in empathy for the older generations and will probably prefer “movies on a plate “ ™ with hand-holding narratives in nice step-by step chewable plastic scripts. Others will take this film to heart and immerse themselves in what Anthony Hopkins wants us to experience which is to go along with Felix for the ride into dementia and experience with him the gradual loss of his mental faculties in a colourful and sometimes explosive storm in a mental tea cup.

Beware of the spoilers lurking within this review. If you’re interested in giving this movie a chance on the back of my opening paragraph, then just do it! And do it with open arms for this is a very brave debut by Hopkins as writer/director. I would guess that he is tackling a topic that is probably very important to him. If you’ve read poor reviews of this movie and you’re not totally sold on it and yet, you are still curious, then please have a read of my take on this film. I will try and describe what I liked about it.

Slipstream explores the lucid dream like state of a mind gripped by the effects of early dementia which I suspect is probably Alzheimer’s Disease. Our protagonist, Felix struggles in the last days of his career to make sense of the script he is working on. He struggles to comprehend the events of reality around him as his dementia blurs his fictional world with his real world. Anthony Hopkins drags us into Felix’s mind as he struggles with many of the classic dementia problems including the break down of attentiveness, the break down of abstract thinking, an onset of total apathy, the loss of recognition of perceptions, and finally, delusional symptoms. Near the end we experience the start of the breakdown of motor skills and coordination as Felix stumbles around in the hard shoulder of a busy highway.

Hopkins demonstrates the confusion experienced by Felix from a mainly internal point of view but now and again we see it from an external point of view too. The most memorable example of this is probably the traffic shooting incident… Felix is impassive and watches numbly as though he is experiencing a scene from a movie being played out in front of him as a road rage incident degenerates into a shooting tragedy. He is numb to its reality even when a shot is fired directly towards him by the road rage psycho. The shot narrowly misses Felix and leaves a bullet hole in the windscreen. At the time we wonder whether the fracas actually happened or was it in Felix’s mind, yet the persistence of the bullet hole throughout the rest of the movie tells us it was real. A later scene showing the shooting event on TV reinforces this to us, that it really did happen and that Felix had almost been killed that day. Felix’s dementia it seems almost cost him his life early on in this movie. It is almost certainly a deliberate direct repeat of the theme of this shooting scene that is used at the conclusion of the movie where Felix meets his final fate. Indeed it’s almost the exact same location on the highway and once again it is his dementia which places him in harms way.

There are constant ripples of reoccurring elements in the movie reminiscent of the ripples on the surface of a pond reflecting back on themselves from the edges. The SUV driven by the bar tender in which he gets shot by the fictional Christian Slater Villain is the same SUV that hits Felix at the very end of the movie. In this scene the bar tender is no longer the driver of the SUV but he is the highway cop along with Christian Slater as his side kick who had pulled Felix over just before Felix staggers onto the busy highway lane in front of the SUV. The first meeting of this SUV, in which the bar tender is shot in the head by Christian Slater, appears to be part of Felix’s film and we get then a familiar vibe to the shooting incident on the highway, which might go to explain Felix’s inaction at that time.

The deliberately confused blurring of fiction-dream with reality are smoothly transitioned and the two states are not delineated in any way. We aren’t given any clues like David Lynches red curtains or ‘zoom through holes’ to when we’re moving from reality into dream world or back again. This is the reality of dementia, there are no signals or boundaries and yes, it must be very confusing…. confusing to the point of mental breakdown as the disease takes more of the mind. We are constantly asking who is real and who isn’t in the film and what roles do people really play. This is what Felix is mainly struggling with. We get hints during a scene where Felix is dreaming of his fictional characters as though they live inside his computer, staring out at him. But alongside his fictional characters in this dream he places his very real Producer. His producer is ‘real’ in Felix’s reality that is, but he acts in quite a surreal way. He is barely in touch with reality himself. This, I take it, is a jab at some real producers that Anthony Hopkins has had to deal with over the years but also the surrealness of the character works to dislodge Felix’s mental state even further.

This film moved me. I knew what to expect with its style so I didn’t try and follow it like I tried very hard to follow Inland Empire (somewhat unsuccessfully I might add!). I let it wash over me in a very passive way and I think this is the approach that Anthony Hopkins would want us to watch it. He wants us to experience ourselves what it is like to suffer from senile dementia. In a way he is preparing us for what is very likely to happen to many of us as we age into our twilight years. How many of us have suffered the pain of watching loved ones lose their minds due to Alzheimer’s Disease? Certainly, at least, all of us have seen or will see our parents age into frail OAPs, and, eventually they will be gone forever. Slipstream offers us a glimpse of what it is like on the other side of the degenerating mind. It offers us an idea of what we will likely become ourselves and helps us to understand those of us in our society who are already living in a world of senile dementia.

7/10 A brave debut

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