4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 56th birthday to one of our favorite filmmakers, Darren Aronofsky! When we first started this site, we were eagerly awaiting the release of Black Swan. Now, ten years alter, we’re eagerly awaiting the release of Aronofsky’s next film, whatever it may be.
In honor of the birthday of a true visionary director, here are….
4 Shots From 4 Darren Aronofsky Films
Requiem for a Dream (2000, dir by Darren Aronofsky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
The Wrestler (2008, dir by Darren Aronofsky, DP: Maryse Alberti)
Black Swan (2010, dir by Darren Aronosfky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
mother! (2017, dir by Darren Aronofsky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films. I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.
Today, we take a look at 2017!
4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: 2017
Get Out (2017, dir by Jordan Peele, DP: Toby Oliver)
It (2017, dir by Andy Muschietti, DP: Chung-hoon Chung)
mother! (2017, dir by Darren Aronofsky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
Twin Peaks: The Return Part 18 (2017, dir by David Lynch, DP: Peter Deming)
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films. I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.
Today, we take a look at 2008, 2009, and 2010!
6 Shots From 6 Horror Movies: 2008 — 2010
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008, dir by Guillermo del Toro, DP: Guillermo Navarro)
Drag Me To Hell (2009, dir by Sam Raimi, DP: Peter Deming)
The House of the Devil (2009, dir by Ti West, DP: Eliot Rockett)
The Ward (2010, dir by John Carpenter, DP: Yaron Orbach)
The Mask of Medusa (2010, dir by Jean Rollin)
Black Swan (2010, dir by Darren Aronosfky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 52nd birthday to one of our favorite filmmakers, Darren Aronofsky! When we first started this site, we were eagerly awaiting the release of Black Swan. Now, ten years alter, we’re eagerly awaiting the release of Aronofsky’s next film, whatever it may be.
In honor of the birthday of a true visionary director, here are….
6 Shots From 6 Films
Pi (1998, dir by Darren Aronofsky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
Requiem for a Dream (2000, dir by Darren Aronofsky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
The Wrestler (2008, dir by Darren Aronofsky, DP: Maryse Alberti)
Black Swan (2010, dir by Darren Aronosfky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
Noah (2014, dir by Darren Aronofsky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
mother! (2017, dir by Darren Aronofsky, DP: Matthew Libatique)
Yesterday, the Washington D.C. Film Critics announced their nominees for the best of 2018. While the big three contenders — Roma, Star is Born, and Green Book — are all present and accounted for, the D.C. Film Critics did take the time to nominate Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan for their work on Black Panther. They also nominated The Favourite for Best Picture, which isn’t unexpected but The Favourite, like Black Panther, can use all the support it can get to prevent being overshadowed by the big three contenders.
(Before anyone asks what I’m basing my analysis on, allow me to point out that I’m not the first film blogger to pretend to be an Oscar expert and I’m sure I won’t be the last….)
Best Film:
The Favourite
Green Book
If Beale Street Could Talk
Roma
A Star Is Born
Best Director:
Ryan Coogler (Black Panther)
Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born)
Alfonso Cuarón (Roma)
Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite)
Best Actor:
Christian Bale (Vice)
Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born)
Ethan Hawke (First Reformed)
Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Viggo Mortensen (Green Book)
Best Actress:
Glenn Close (The Wife)
Toni Collette (Hereditary)
Olivia Colman (The Favourite)
Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born)
Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)
Best Supporting Actor:
Mahershala Ali (Green Book)
Timothée Chalamet (Beautiful Boy)
Sam Elliott (A Star Is Born)
Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)
Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther)
Best Supporting Actress:
Cynthia Erivo (Bad Times at the El Royale)
Nicole Kidman (Boy Erased)
Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Emma Stone (The Favourite)
Rachel Weisz (The Favourite)
Best Acting Ensemble: Black Panther
The Favourite
If Beale Street Could Talk
Vice
Widows
Best Youth Performance:
Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade)
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Leave No Trace)
Milly Shapiro (Hereditary)
Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place)
Amandla Stenberg (The Hate U Give)
Best Voice Performance:
Bryan Cranston (Isle of Dogs)
Holly Hunter (Incredibles 2)
Shameik Moore (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)
Sarah Silverman (Ralph Breaks the Internet)
Ben Whishaw (Paddington 2)
Best Original Screenplay:
Bo Burnham (Eighth Grade)
Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara (The Favourite)
Paul Schrader (First Reformed)
Nick Vallelonga & Brian Currie & Peter Farrelly (Green Book)
Alfonso Cuarón (Roma)
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman)
Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole (Black Panther)
Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)
Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Eric Roth and Bradley Cooper & Will Fetters (A Star Is Born)
Best Animated Feature:
Incredibles 2
Isle of Dogs
Mirai
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Best Documentary:
Free Solo
RBG
Science Fair
Three Identical Strangers
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Best Foreign Language Film:
Burning
Capernaum
Cold War
Roma
Shoplifters
Best Production Design:
Production Designer: Hannah Beachler; Set Decorator: Jay Hart (Black Panther)
Production Designer: Fiona Crombie; Set Decorator: Alice Felton (The Favourite)
Production Designer: Nathan Crowley; Set Decorator: Kathy Lucas (First Man)
Production Designer: John Myhre; Set Decorator: Gordon Sim (Mary Poppins Returns)
Production Designer: Eugenio Caballero; Set Decorator: Bárbara Enríquez (Roma)
Best Cinematography:
Robbie Ryan, BSC (The Favourite)
Linus Sandgren, FSF (First Man)
James Laxton (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Alfonso Cuarón (Roma)
Matthew Libatique, ASC (A Star Is Born)
Best Editing:
Yorgos Mavropsaridis, ACE (The Favourite)
Tom Cross, ACE (First Man)
Alfonso Cuarón, Adam Gough (Roma)
Jay Cassidy, ACE (A Star Is Born)
Joe Walker, ACE (Widows)
Best Original Score:
Ludwig Göransson (Black Panther)
Justin Hurwitz (First Man)
Nicholas Britell (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Thom Yorke (Suspiria)
Hans Zimmer (Widows)
The Joe Barber Award for Best Portrayal of Washington, DC:
The Front Runner
RBG
Vice
Awards season has just begun, which means that it’s time for the International Press Academy to announce their nominees for the 23rd Satellite Awards. If you’ve never heard of the Satellite Awards, they’re like the Golden Globes, just with even less credibility. For instance, the Satellite people are the one who nominated The Wolf of Wall Street for best picture, despite having not seen the film.
That said, the Satellite nominations are good way to gauge which films are currently getting awards buzz. Let’s put it like this: getting a Satellite nomination is not going to automatically translate into Oscar recognition. But it doesn’t hurt.
Below are the film nominations. (In the interest of space, I’m only posting the film nominations. If you want to see which tv shows picked up nominations, click here.)
Film
Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama Major, Independent or International
Yalitza Aparicio, “Roma”
Glenn Close, “The Wife”
Viola Davis, “Widows”
Nicole Kidman, “Destroyer”
Melissa McCarthy, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
Rosamund Pike, “Private War”
Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama Major, Independent or International
About 20 years ago, a friend and I walked out of a movie theatre for some pizza. On the way to the Pizzeria, I raved about the movie we just watched. The effects were awesome, and the main character was bad ass. My friend didn’t share the same sentiment, and over the dinner, he went on to explain everything that was wrong with the film. Bad CGI (for its time), 2 Dimensional Characters, and a pretty simplistic plot. By the end of my dinner, all of my joy was sucked away. I wanted to believe, deep down that I walked into a quality production, but there was so much room for improvement.
That film was Mark Dippe’s Spawn.
I mention this because after seeing Ruben Fleischer’s Venom, Spawn was the first film that came to mind. That makes sense, given that a lot of Venom’s genesis is from artist Todd McFarlane, who also created Spawn (and gave Spider-Man some of the best webbing I’ve ever known). There are parts of Venom I truly enjoyed, and I can say that there isn’t much of a problem with the acting on anyone’s side. However, the levels of boredom in the film’s first hour will have you wanting to bring in a highly caffeinated drink to sip on, just to stay awake. The lady next to me yawned, which made me yawn and it just cycled through the audience. The good sequences are already visible in the trailers.
Here’s a clip of Venom from the Ultimate Spider-Man Video Game (easily recommended) to give you a rough idea of how he is.
From a plot standpoint, Venom does a good job in giving us a story for how Eddie Brock and his Symbiote meet without factoring in Spider-Man at all. Comic readers remember the Secret Wars, where Spider-Man lost his suit and picked up a symbiote replacement. When the Symbiote proved dangerous, Peter Parker got rid of it and it fell into the hands of his former Daily Bugle nemesis, Eddie Brock. Together, they formed Venom, a beast with all of Spider-Man’s powers and Brock’s hatred of Parker. Venom plagued Spider-Man, who was incredibly dangerous because he was one of the few villains that didn’t set of Parker’s Spidey Sense. He could sneak up on him at any time, assume the likenesses of other people, and Parker would never see him coming.
The Sony Spider-Man series changed this up in Spider-Man 3, replacing the Secret Wars with more of a Blob-like story. Symbiote crashes to Earth, finds Parker. Parker decides to rip it off and it finds Brock. In this new version of Venom, symbiotes already exist in space, and a corporation lead by Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) are trying to bring them to Earth to intermingle with humans. When investigative reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) stumbles on the corporation’s evil plans, he accidentally joins with a symbiote and finds himself with a near insatiable hunger for the living.
You have the best 2 in 1 team up since Leigh Wannell’s Upgrade. I would not be opposed to a sequel for this if they tightened up the writing. Maybe that’s my problem. Both Upgrade and Venom are similar, but only one had an interesting character that looked like Tom Hardy (sorry, but Logan Marshall-Green does bear a resemblance).
Ruben Fleischer’s (Zombieland, Gangster Squad) direction is okay here. With Cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Iron Man, Black Swan) at his side, Venom doesn’t have many problems there. With the exception of the final confrontation, the shots aren’t too blurry or hard to track when the action starts. Even though Venom is a visibly dark character, I couldn’t complain that scenes weren’t well-lit.
For me, the problem with Venom is that at an hour and 52 minutes, it feels like the first hour is just waiting for that symbiosis to occur. Eddie Brock doesn’t really become interesting until Venom appears (also voiced by Hardy), and that’s a rough thing to say, given the cast involved. We’ve both seen Hardy, Ahmed and Michelle Williams in better roles, but they really aren’t given any real meat here. The dialog is a little shaky in some places. Hardy pushes himself hard here, and you see how disjointed Brock gets as he adjusts to the changes. Brock as a character, however, doesn’t really have a lot going for him. Neither did Peter Parker or maybe even Steve Rogers, but there were elements about who they were that helped you to appreciate who they be became as superheroes. Steve Rogers was a weakling with a good spirit, which made him a better Captain America. Peter Parker was a chemical whiz kid and came up with his own web-fluid. Brock just…well, reports. There’s a lot of boredom in that first hour. The best scenes are the interactions between Venom and Brock, full of cute banter. It’s like having an unwelcome guest wanting to meet your parents. It just took so long to get to that point. When it does, however, the movie improves. They do manage to get a lot right about what Venom can do.
The CGI in Venom is definitely good in some places. It stands as the best argument for another remake of The Blob. The symbiotes are creepy in their design and motion, slithering up walls and making their way through vents. Venom, in all it’s glory, is quite a sight to behold, towering over humans. It goes a little overboard over the last 3rd of the film. I can’t say I knew for sure what it was I was looking at, but that’s to be expected with some superhero films.
If you see the film, stay for the mid-credits scene, which teases a future character. Also stay for a near 5 minute sneak peek into Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.
Overall, if you feel you have to see it in a theatre, by all means, do so. If you can wait for it to come out on Digital, that may be the best route.
Growing up during the 1980’s meant popular music was divided between rock and pop. Yes, there were the non-friendly music genres that hundreds of millions also listened to but were seen as music of the outsider (heavy metal, punk). Yet, something happened in the latter half of the 80’s.
Rap has always been part of the music landscape since it’s early days during the 1970’s. The genre was either about partying or pushing a social awareness agenda that kept it out of mainstream audiences (with the exception of Run DMC and the Beastie Boys). Then a rap group out of South Central L.A. released an album titled Straight Outta Compton which took the world by storm.
Gangsta rap has broken through that wall which has kept most of rap from mainstream popularity.
The latest film from F. Gary Gray will tell the story of the beginnings of the group N.W.A. right up to the tumultuous events of the Rodney King riots. As most biopic go this one may just be a major hit just for the fact that N.W.A. has had such a huge impact on pop culture and the music industry that their music and influence still remain relevant today.
Straight Outta Compton is set for an August 14, 2015 release date.
Earlier today, the American Film Institute announced their picks for the top 11 movies and top 10 television shows of 2014! As much as it pains me to admit it, Sasha “You Know Who I Am” Stone of Awards Daily actually makes a valid point when she says that the AFI picks are actually a pretty good guide to what the Academy voters are responding to. While Oscar watchers like me might get excited when Tom Hardy wins at LAFCA, the AFI is actually probably a better precursor to what actually will be nominated.
(Of course, immediately after making that point, she starts in on her usual “it’s all about me” nonsense because that’s what she does, after all.)
So, with all that in mind, here are the AFI’s picks:
AFI MOVIES OF THE YEAR
“American Sniper”
“Birdman (Or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
“Boyhood”
“Foxcatcher”
“The Imitation Game”
“Interstellar”
“Into the Woods”
“Nightcrawler”
“Selma”
“Unbroken”
“Whiplash”
AFI TV PROGRAMS OF THE YEAR
“The Americans”
“Fargo”
“Game of Thrones”
“How to Get Away With Murder”
“Jane the Virgin”
“The Knick”
“Mad Men”
“Orange Is the New Black”
“Silicon Valley”
“Transparent”
And, here are the names of the 20 members of the AFI jury:
Noah is Darren Aronofsky’s follow-up to his critically-acclaimed film Black Swan(which was reviewed by Lisa Marie Bowman herself) and he looks to tell the tale of Noah’s Ark from the Book of Genesis.
When news first came out that Aronofsky would follow-up Black Swan with a biblical epic that retold the Flood and Noah’s role in saving those not corrupted according to Heaven was a sort of headscratcher. The teasers and trailers that has come out about the film hasn’t really fired up the masses. Some think it as another sword-and-sandals epic that’s late to that particular subgenre’s resurgence. Some think too much fantasy elements has been added.
One thing I’m sure of is that Aronofsky will not make an uninteresting film.