Inglourious Basterds - Cool Italian Poster

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UPDATED:Inglourious Basterds - Cannes Press Conference video and photos

Jeffrey Wells posted these photos and video footage from the opening of the Inglourious Basterds press conference at the Cannes Film Festival. Above is Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth and Brad Pitt.

Below is Diane Kruger and Quentin Tarantino.
Below is Mélanie Laurent.

UPDATE: Pat mentioned in the comments this better bit of video from the Press conference below. Thanks Pat

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Centurion - Michael Fassbender on the run

Neil Marshall's latest film is Centurion, currently shooting in Surrey, and Empire have a new picture from the film, with star Michael Fassbender (300, Hunger) on the run from some savage Picts.

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First look at a battle in Neil Marshall's Centurion

I am looking forward to seeing Doomsday director Neil Marshall's upcoming Roman combat picture Centurion. There was the excellent behind the scenes featurette a few days ago. Now Quiet Earth had this fiery battle photo from the shoot and it does look pretty cool. A hint of Gladiator, some David Gemmell Drenai stuff and just general coolness.

I cannot wait.

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Neil Marshall's Centurion On-Set Featurette

Actor Dominic West and director Neil Marshall explain in the video the backstory behind the historical events and what Centurion is supposed to be about, so if you're curious to know more, just start there. But as a recap, Centurion is an epic action adventure film set in 117 AD about a group of Roman soldiers who must fight for their lives behind enemy lines after their legion is decimated in a devastating guerrilla attack. It also stars Michael Fassbender, Olga Kurylenko, Noel Clarke, and David Morrisey

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Olga Kurylenko in Neil Marshall's Centurion

Centurion is an action adventure film set in 117 AD about a group of Roman soldiers who must fight for their lives behind enemy lines after their legion is decimated in a devastating guerrilla attack. Empire had this photo of Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace, Hitman) as the character Etain, described as "a savage-looking Pict warrior woman."
It also stars Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Noel Clarke, and David Morrisey.

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Hunger DVD Release - Trailer

Trailer for upcoming DVD release of Steve McQueen’s raw feature, winner of Camera D’Or Cannes 2008. Story of the last six weeks of the life of the Irish republican hunger striker Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender).

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Hunger - Interview with director Steve McQueen

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Centurion - Noel Clarke joins Neil Marshall's sword and sandals brigade

Writer-director-actor Noel Clarke (Dr Who, Kidulthood, Adulthood) has joined the cast of Neil Marshall's (The Descent, Dog Soldiers, Doomsday - he's now moved back up the alphabet one letter!) sword-and-sandals pic Centurion, being repped by Pathe International at the European Film Market.

Clarke, who recently starred in his own directorial debut, Adulthood, joins Michael Fassbender (300, Eden Lake, Hunger), Dominic West (300, The Wire, Punisher: War Zone) and Bond girl Olga Kurylenko in the cast. The movie is due to shoot at the end of Feburary in Scotland and London.

The movie, set during the Roman invasion of Britain in 117 AD, tells the story of Quintus Dias, sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort, who marches north with General Virilus' famed Ninth Legion under orders to wipe the Picts from the face of the Earth and destroy their leader, Gorlacon.

"Slumdog Millionaire" producer Christian Colson of Celador Films will produce with French-owned, U.K.-based Pathe Distribution.

Source: THR

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Danny Boyle cleans up at the 11th British Independent Film Awards. Could Slumdog Millionaire win him an Oscar?

After Trainspotting and zombies, a teaboy millionaire is tipped to win Boyle an Oscar: Happy-Go-Lucky and Hunger are big winners at independent film awards

In Bruges Best screenplay

Slumdog Millionaire Best film, best director, most promising newcomer

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Best actress

An uplifting yet grimly realistic tale of a young chai-wallah scraping a life out of poverty was last night being talked of as an Oscar contender after it took three awards at the British independent film awards (BIFAs).

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, the story of a Mumbai teenage boy who astounds all around him by doing well on the Indian Who Wants To Be a Millionaire quiz show, won best film, best director and best newcomer for its British lead.

In a night when honours were spread about, there were also three wins for Hunger, Steve McQueen's unflinching portrait of Bobby Sands and the hunger strikes; two for Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky; and one for In Bruges, Martin McDonagh's comedy about two Irish assassins sent to Belgium.

But Boyle was the talk of the night. The former artistic director of the Royal Court theatre is already on many pundits' Oscar prediction lists after a film career which has seen him happily flip genres: from Edinburgh heroin addicts in Trainspotting to Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach to zombies in 28 Days Later.

Last night he was named best director at the BIFAs and Slumdog Millionaire was best film. The film's young lead, Harrow-born Dev Patel - best known to British audiences as Anwar in E4's Skins - won best newcomer.

Slumdog Millionaire, written by The Full Monty's Simon Beaufoy, tells the story of a Mumbai street child. As he does well on the quiz show, flashbacks chronicle his life, the realities of which Boyle does not flinch from showing.

Boyle's film, a third of which is spoken in Hindi, opens in the UK on January 9 but has already gone down well on the festival circuit and opened to fantastic reviews in the US.

A Rolling Stone critic said: "What I feel for this movie isn't just admiration, it's mad love."

USA Today was similarly won over: "The beautifully rendered and energetic tale celebrates resilience, the power of knowledge and the vitality of human experience. Horrifying, humorous and life-affirming, it is, above all, unforgettable." The Los Angeles Times declared it "the best old-fashioned audience picture of the year".

The Turner prize-winning artist Steve McQueen, who represents the UK at next year's Venice Biennale, won the best debut director award for Hunger and the film's cinematographer Sean Bobbit, won best technical achievement. Leading man Michael Fassbender won best actor for his astonishing - not least in the 33lbs of weight he had to lose - performance as Sands.

Hunger is not a film for a cheery romantic night out. It shows the reality of the dirty protests in the Maze prison in stomach-churning detail. Nothing from the Sands story is stepped away from: the brutality, the torture and the alarming effects starvation has on a man's body.

At the other end of the movie spectrum, Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, which follows a relentlessly cheerful London teacher called Poppy, won two acting awards. Eddie Marsan won best supporting actor for his role as the crazed racist driving instructor, and Alexis Zegerman won best supporting actress as Poppy's best mate, Zoe.

The well-fancied In Bruges, featuring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as a pair of chalk-and-cheese killers sent by their psychotic boss (Ralph Fiennes) to Bruges, came away with the best screenplay award for its writer and director Martin McDonagh. It was the playwright's film debut.

Vera Farmiga won best actress for her role in concentration camp drama The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas, while the Israeli animation Waltz With Bashir won best foreign film.

At the ceremony in Old Billingsgate Market, London, special awards were also given out. The actor David Thewlis was rewarded for his outstanding contribution to British film, while Michael Sheen - best known for being able to pass himself off as Kenneth Williams, Tony Blair and David Frost - was given the Variety award.

It was the 11th BIFA ceremony, with the awards seeming to grow in stature each year. Co-directors Johanna von Fischer and Tessa Collinson, said: "It's been another stellar year for independent film in Britain, as represented by the diverse spread of nominations across the board.

Source: The Guardian

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Eden Lake, 2008 - Movie Review

Director: James Watkins
Starring: Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender
Running time: 91 minutes

Score: 8/10

This review by Alex Chambers. May contain spoilers.

Rarely does a film manage to anger me in such a myriad of ways as Eden Lake did.

The film's premise is that of a couple spending a romantic weekend at a disused quarry before it is built over for apartments. Whilst enjoying the sites of the beautiful Eden Lake, they run into a gang of loutish youths. What begins as thuggish behaviour, slowly escalates into the couple being more and more pushed by the kids until the crescendo is reached and the couples car is stolen (by the kids, as seen in a later scene.) Our 'protagonist' asks for his keys back as the kids, amused, profess innocence. As the intensity increases, knifes are suddenly pulled out and during a struggle, the groups dog is killed. Thus starts an extreme, horrific, and infuriating ride that is Eden Lake.

I said at the start that this film enraged me, and to begin with it was for all the wrong reasons. Yet again, I thought I was about to endure a stereotypical classification of young chavs as poor, stupid, and one track minded - thugs of society that have no respect for anything. And to begin with this is what we get, a classic case of the good vs evil, an innocent couple plagued by a younger generation with no morals.

And then the film flips itself around with a monumental scene following the aftermath of the dogs death. Before, the group were all enraged by this act against them during the night, but then as the camera follows the girlfriend towards noise in the coming day, we see Steve tied up, beaten severely and bleeding profusely. The scene that follows is impeccably done, just enough realistic, cold barbarity with reason as the leader forces the doubters into cutting the man so that they are all 'in on it' - a horrifying extremity of the weapon that is peer pressure, all whilst being videoed by the girl of the group. It is here that the characters come to life, the ones that follow the larger, goaded in by acceptance into a group, ones that do not mind laughing when nothing is at stake but humiliation. However, once the reality of excessive force is shoved in their face, and the situation is starting to unfold into an all too real nightmare, their morality comes calling and the plead to take it no further, here we see the main thug (played very well by the young actor) for what he is, a 'headcase' as one of his friends puts it.

Yet, this glimmer of rationality dissipates, and they fold to fear and act, cutting the innocent man that lies before them where the others have done so before them. Then starts the chase of the girlfriend. The cinematography is stunning, the level of grime upon the character of Jenny growing as the darkness of the film broods.

Up until this point, we still had the good vs evil, the plagued woman trying to escape her brutal assailants, and this is where the genius of the film escalates with a simple yet harrowing scene. She breaks the glass of a nature reserve stand in order to retrieve a map, sees the glass and, after hesitating, rips some of her dress off to wrap around the slither of glass - a weapon has been made. On comes one of the younger boys that was so hesitant before. He approaches cautiously, and with the look in his eyes it is apparent he wishes her to escape so the nightmare can be over for him just as much her. She whips round and stabs him straight in the neck, a shocking scene as she has become the feral monsters she tried to escape from, eye for an eye, revenge being the only driving factor. Slowly it dawns on her what she done to the young boy and he slowly dies in her arms as she screams in horror of what she has become, what she feels she was pushed to do.

THIS is where the real conflict and message of the films is placed for me. Do we act on revenge? Is an eye for an eye a motto to live by, and is that acceptable? She aimed for the neck, she aimed to kill, and in the aftermath, we find ourselves feeling sympathy for the dead child, an innocent victim of youth culture. Or is he? Along with another child that dies later on, are these children truly innocent? They did wish it to escalate yet they did nothing, they protested meekly but did not stand up as a group. Later, the girl who videoed everything runs away, she has had enough. Jenny sees her in the road, hit the accelerator and mows her down with no sympathy.

This is a film that highlights and is commenting on the worrying state of today's troubled British youth, and how often it only takes one to start off a chain of events which escalates out of control. Yes, this situation is an extremity, but it is not too far-fetched, you only need to take a glance at the amount of youth stabbings in the last year to realise this.

We only need to pick up a paper to hear about yet another stabbing or act of warrant destruction. This film gives depth to those characters and does not display them as simply mindless dregs. Yes it is extreme, but that is the point, to highlight a stark extremity with horrifying plausibility.
Perhaps the film is so powerful because of its stark reality. There is no boogeyman, alien, or ghost here - these are children, children tainted by those with troubles (end of the film hints at why, brilliant) and it is in that horrific plausibility, that we find the truly gripping and infuriating anger at the injustice of it all.

Have you seen it? Do you agree or disagree with the review?
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We're The Sweeney son, and we haven't had any dinner, so unless you want a kickin'...

Fox Searchlight has halted production on "The Sweeney", a film adaptation of the classic British series, fearing the film will disentergare upon release everywhere but the U.K due to the lack of an A-list star.

Though the studio were circling Ray Winstone ("The Departed") and the up-and-coming Michael Fassbender ("Inglorious Bastards") for the lead roles, they quickly came to the realization that a bigger name was going to be needed if they wanted the film to actually last more than a week in theaters.

Rather than continue with pre-production in the hopes of nabbing a big name at the last minute, the powers-that-be mutually agreed to step back and wait. They are still hoping to go into production next year. Cult writer-director Nick Love remains attached to direct.
Variety has more

From Moviehole.

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