star trek into darkness

EXCLUSIVE: STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS & PACIFIC RIM GIANT POSTERS INSIDE!
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
JJ ABRAMS UP CLOSE & PERSONAL WITH THE GEEK GOD THE HANGOVER III THIS REALLY IS THE END!
IRON MAN 3 IS THIS THE END? OBLIVION TOM CRUISE BATTLES TO SAVE MANKIND... AGAIN! EPIC A MAGICAL
MINIATURE UNIVERSE JUDGMENT DAY SINGAPORE FACES AN APOCALYPSE PETER JACKSON SELLS
THE HOBBIT DVD INTERGALACTIC ROGUES 10 COOLEST SCI-FI VILLAINS
ISSUE 39
Contents
Foreword
04
S&M
06
The Editor Actually Talks
Stars & Madhatters
News & Events 08
1ST Looks 15
72
24
We Talk Films
22
Oblivion 24
- Director Joseph Kosinski
The Hangover Part III 28
- Director Todd Phillips
Star Trek Into Darkness 32
- Director Jj Abrams
Star Trek Into Darkness 40
- The Key Personnel
Epic 44
- Art Director Michael Knapps
Iron Man 3 48
- Director Shane Black
A Song Sung Green 54
- The Plight Of Visual Effects Artists
Trance 56
- Ryan Reynolds
2nd French Animated 60
Film Festival
Judgment Day 62
- Director Ong Kuo Sin
That Girl In Pinafore 66
- Director Chai Yee Wei
El Gris Perfecto 70
- Edwin Ho’s Short Film
Goes To Cannes
Conspirators
76 G.I. Joe: Retaliation
28
78 I Give It A Year
79 In The House
80 Ip Man: The Final Fight 32
81
Lay The Favourite
82Masquerade
83 Midnight’s Children
44
84 Saving General Yang
86 The Host
87 The Place Beyond The Pines
48
88 Also Opening This Month
90
56
FML
For My Lust
92 The Hobbit Dvd Interview Peter Jackson &
Martin Freeman
96 Game Of Thrones Dvd Interview Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
62
98 Dvds
106 Games - Bioshock Infinite
107 Sexy Playthings
66
108 Promos + Subscription
110 Back Issues 2 F*** APRIL 2013
74 Broken City
75
Top 10 Intergalactic Rogues 18
WTF
R(A)
Reviews Anonymous
112 Lust Page
70
F*** CONTENTS
APRIL 2013 F*** 3
“Frick” – that’s what our
magazine title became in
comments and chats on
numerous film blogs and fansites
after we posted an early image
of our April cover, which went
viral online. All due to the wonders of modern text-
Cover Image:
© United International Pictures.
All Rights Reserved.
Back Cover Image:
© Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved.
censoring technology, but we’re glad pictures speak louder than
words.
In case you’re wondering, F*** is pronounced as ‘F’, or whatever you feel like calling it. And
we hope you’re as ‘frickingly’ excited by the cover of our April issue as we are – this worldexclusive image of Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto) and new antagonist
John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) has us even more excited for Star Trek Into
Darkness, which hits Singapore shores on 16 May 2013.
As you can see from our cover, this issue is jam-packed – as always – with the latest and
most exclusive movie news and reviews. First and foremost, director and geek god JJ Abrams
tells F*** about making a movie that would please fans and neophytes alike.
We also snagged an exclusive interview with Todd Phillips, director of the world’s biggest
R-rated comedy franchise. Phillips tells us about what the trilogy has meant to him and
confirms that The Hangover III (sobering up in cinemas on 30 May 2013) really will be the
final adventure for the Wolf Pack.
Still hungry for more? We spoke to director Joseph Kosinski about working with Tom Cruise
on Oblivion, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi blockbuster that he’s been thinking about for eight
years. We also chatted with director Shane Black about reuniting with Robert Downey Jr
for Iron Man 3; and director Danny Boyle for Trance, a hypnotic thriller that’s taking the
cinematic world by storm
This issue also shines a spotlight on a few upcoming local movies, all of which represent a
departure from the norm in their own ways. Veteran television director Ong Kuo Sin gave us
an exclusive first interview about his debut feature film Judgment Day, which brings the end
of the world to the Lion City… and shows us Henry Thia as you’ve never seen him before.
Anyone who loves Singapore folk music – or ‘xinyao’ – should also check out our interview
with Chai Yee Wei, who’s bringing That Girl In Pinafore, a love story about our collective
musical heritage, to the big screen in August 2013. We also talk to up-and-coming short
film-maker Edwin Ho, whose final-year project was selected to participate in this year’s
Cannes Film Festival.
(Now you know why we’ve been informally calling #39 the Director’s Issue around the
office…! )
Enjoy, and see you at the movies!
Royston Loh
Editor-in-Chief
For Editorial matters, email us at [email protected]
For Sales & Marketing enquiries, email us at
[email protected].
To express your opinions, email us at [email protected]
Publisher/Editor-in-Chief
Deputy Editor Senior Writer
Writer
Contributors
Art Director Senior Designer Managing Director Deputy Director Business Development Royston LOH
Shawne WANG
Raphael LIM
Jedd JONG
Mikey FLORES
Raymond TAN
mKwan
j SIN
Wendy CHUA
JS LOH
Cornelius (Colin) LOH
STERNE & LEARS GLOBAL
F*** is published by Sterne & Lears Global Pte Ltd
71 Ayer Rajah Crescent, #07-18. Singapore 139951
Email : [email protected]
Company Registration No : 200923639Z
MICA No: MICA (P) 114/01/2010
Distributed by Circulation Department,
Singapore Press Holdings.
Printed by Toppan Security Printing Pte. Ltd.
Press No: L017/10/2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced in any form or by any means without written
permission of the publisher. The views and opinions
expressed or implied in F*** are those of the authors or
contributors and do not necessary reflect those of the
publisher.
All names, trademarks, illustrations and images used,
with or without attribution, are copyrights of their
respective owners.
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4 F*** APRIL 2013
APRIL 2013 F*** 5
Stars & Madhatters
6 F*** APRIL 2013
S&M
Stars & Madhatters
Stallone headhunts
Jackie Chan
Marvel superheroes
unite on stage
More Horrible Bosses
on the way
Danny Boyle
makes a Porno
Star Wars: Return of
the Jedis
Batman becomes
Birdman
Ken Watanabe gets
squished by Godzilla
Rocketman takes flight
Robert Redford to
meet Captain America?
and more...
INTERGALACTIC
ROGUES
YES, MR. VADER IS A SHOO-IN! CHECK OUT
WHO ELSE MADE THE LIST OF OUR TOP TEN
COOLEST SCI-FI VILLAINS
APRIL 2013 F*** 7
Stallone headhunts Jackie
Chan
Love it or hate it, the Expendables franchise –
featuring its motley bunch of grizzled action
veterans – looks like it’s here to stay. There have
been unconfirmed rumours that mastermind
Sylvester Stallone might have scored the likes
of Nicolas Cage and Bill Clinton (!!), but we
do know for sure that Jackie Chan is a very
definite possibility for Expendables 3. He told
F*** in an exclusive interview last year that
he’s waiting for a script from Stallone – so let’s
hope Rocky brings his writing mojo to the
table! In the meantime, Stallone will next be
seen alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in The
Tomb, which opens in September.
Mad Man has 24 hours to enter Pompeii
Paul WS Anderson's Pompeii may still be in the midst of erupting, but things are getting
a lot hotter for the historical disaster movie, with Mad Men's Jared Harris and 24’s Kiefer
Sutherland signing on to co-star. Set in 79 AD, the movie will take place during the eruption
of Mount Vesuvius, with Kit Harington from Game Of Thrones staring as Milo, a gladiator
who attempts to save his true love Flavia (Emily Browning) from the disaster. Harris will play
Lucretius, Flavia's conservative dad, and Sutherland is the nasty Roman senator who enslaved
Milo’s village in the first place.
Jane Got A Gun… and no leading man
We’ve seen plenty of drama up on screen, but
how about some incredibly dramatic musical
chairs behind the scenes? We last reported
that Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman and
Joel Edgerton had signed on as a romantic
triangle in director Lynne Ramsay’s indie
Western Jane Got A Gun. A few weeks ago,
however, Fassbender departed the production,
reportedly due to creative differences with
Ramsay. Jude Law subsequently took over
the part… except now he’s picked up sticks
too, after Ramsay failed to turn up on set
for the first day of shooting. Producer Scott
Steindorff has called Ramsay “irresponsible” for
disappointing the film’s 150-strong crew. Gavin
O’Connor (Warrior) has been hastily drafted
in on directorial duties, and there’s been talk
that Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire and… uh,
Jeff Bridges are being considered to take Law’s
place. We’re just impressed that Portman hasn’t
bailed yet!
Marvel superheroes unite on
stage
They may not be belting out the hits from Les
Miserables, but the news still has us stoked.
Marvel's owner Disney has greenlit a live action
show involving Marvel Comics' vast collection of
characters. Because of complicated movie rights
issues, characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men and
the Fantastic Four won’t be able to cross over to
meet the Avengers – in the cinema. But no such
rights issues apply to live tours, so do expect some
truly epic team-ups. Marvel Universe Live will
launch in July 2014 with an estimated budget of
over $10 million. Plans are in the works for an 85city North American tour before the production
heads overseas.
8 F*** APRIL 2013
APRIL 2013 F*** 9
Sofia Vergara may feel the Heat
There are a lot of movies named Heat – and there’ll be another one soon
starring the ubiquitous Jason Statham. This upcoming movie is a remake
of a 1986 cult action thriller starring Burt Reynolds as a bodyguard-forhire who gets tangled up with the mob after they nearly beat his female
friend to death. The incredibly sexy Vergara (of TV’s Modern Family
fame) is in talks to sex up the screen with Statham. Simon West will
serve as director, and author William Goldman will re-work the script
from his source novel – a job he took on for the 1986 version too.
Drew Barrymore reunites with
Adam Sandler
Third time’s the charm! Drew Barrymore, Adam Sandler's partnerin-crime for romantic comedies The Wedding Singer and 50 First
Dates, has been confirmed as his co-star for his latest project, an asyet untitled new film for Warner Bros. Sandler and Barrymore will
play a couple who are stuck together at a family resort after going
out on a disastrous blind date – trouble is, they’re stuck there with
their respective kids from previous marriages. Awkward…
Spielberg: Work Horse
Winslet, Woodley and Q diverging from beaten path
Talk about being a workaholic. In early
March 2013, the ever-busy Steven Spielberg
stopped over in Mumbai to promote
Lincoln, but also took the time to announce
a new DreamWorks film that would be set
locally i.e., on the India-Pakistan border.
Dreamworks is also developing a biopic of
famed American civil rights activist Martin
Luther King Jr. Spielberg himself is still reworking Robopocalypse and has announced
plans to release the Tintin sequel come
Christmas 2015. We’re tired just writing
about it!
The cast for the upcoming cinematic adaptation of Veronica Roth’s young-adult sci-fi novel
Divergent just keeps getting better and better. Rising star Shailene Woodley, who impressed
the industry with her performance in The Descendants, is set to play Beatrice, who must decide
whether to accept or change her destiny in a world divided into factions based on different moral
values. (For the record, she’s in Abnegation: the tribe of selflessness.) Oscar winner Kate Winslet
is on board as Jeanine Matthews, leader of the Erudite faction (valuing intelligence). Maggie Q
will play the hawk-tattooed Tori (of the Dauntless faction), with Jai Courtney and Zoe Kravitz
also in the cast. Aaron Eckhart is currently in talks to join up too. Under the directorship of Neil
Burger (Limitless), the film is set to start shooting in April 2013 in Chicago, in time for a March
2014 release.
Star Wars: Return of the Jedis
That's right, guys, it looks like the old gang is back for Star Wars: Episode
VII, to be helmed by geek god JJ Abrams. George Lucas has let slip that
Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford will be returning for
the next installment in the franchise, confirming what they’ve all been
telling the press anyway. Now we just need Chewbacca back on board.
C'mon, you wookie!
10 F*** APRIL 2013
Jane Fonda leaves you
For those of you with
abandonment issues…
we're just kidding!
Actually, it looks like
Jane Fonda might be
joining Tina Fey, Jason
Bateman and Corey
Stoll in This is Where I
Leave You, an upcoming
dysfunctional family
comedy directed by
Shawn Levy. The film
finds Bateman, Fey and Stoll playing siblings
who have to fulfil their father’s final wish:
enduring seven days under the same roof.
Fonda is in talks to take on the role of their
mother.
Kate Winslet brings A Little
Chaos to Alan Rickman's
directing gig
It's been a
decade and a
half since Alan
Rickman took
the director's seat
with The Winter’s
Guest, but things
are shaping up
well enough for
Professor Severus
Snape's second
project behind
the camera. Kate
Winslet has
joined Rickman and Belgian actor Matthias
Schoenaerts on A Little Chaos, a historical
dramedy about two garden designers (Winslet
and Schoenaerts) who are locked in a bitter
rivalry for the patronage of Louis XIV
(Rickman). The prize? Getting to design a
fountain in the grounds of the famed Palace
of Versailles.
Seth Rogen directs The
Interview
Seth Rogen already lost his megaphone
virginity with apocalypse-com This Is The
End, but he’s clearly acquired a taste for
telling people what to do on a film set.
He’s locked down a deal to co-direct The
Interview with This Is The End collaborator
Evan Goldberg. Rogen's close friend
James Franco is tentatively lined up to star
as a charismatic talk show host and his
producer (Rogen), who get caught up in a
plot to assassinate the North Korean prime
minister.
Keri Russell lands on
the Planet of the Apes
It looks like Keri Russell will
be enlisted in the simian wars
brewing in Dawn Of The Planet Of
The Apes, alongside Jason Clarke,
Kodi Smit-McPhee and Gary
Oldman. Director Matt Reeve's
sequel to Rise Of The Planet Of
The Apes will take place 15 years
after the original movie, and
finds humanity struggling against
a simian onslaught as well as a
rampant virus.
Batman becomes… Birdman
Talk about art imitating life. Michael Keaton
has signed on for Alejandro Gonzalez
Inarritu’s upcoming black comedy Birdman,
playing a washed-up actor who’s struggling
to reignite his career by mounting a new play
– while trying to distance himself from an
iconic superhero role that’s firmly associated
with him. Edward Norton, no stranger
himself to behind-the-scenes dust-ups with
his directors, has signed on to co-star as an
egotistical actor in the play. Naomi Watts
and Andrea Riseborough are also in the play
within the movie, while Zach Galifianakis,
Emma Stone and Amy Ryan are on board
as – respectively – a conniving producer and
Keaton’s daughter and ex-wife.
Dwayne Johnson gets allies for Hercules
It looks like Hercules is getting some stellar back-up in his quest to beat up the baddies.
Director Brett Ratner already has Dwayne Johnson on board to star as a re-imagined Hercules
(think extraordinary mortal in charge of a band of mercenaries rather than formidable
demigod), and he's now also enlisted the help of Rufus Sewell, Ian McShane, Joseph Fiennes
and Rebecca Hall. The film is due for release in August 2014.
Oldman reunites with Hardy
for Child 44
They may not be facing off in as spectacular
a fashion as in The Dark Knight Rises, but it
looks like Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman will
be reigniting their rivalry – this time in 1950s
Russia. Hardy has signed on to play a member
of the Soviet military police investigating a
series of child murders in thriller Child 44.
Oldman will be playing the head of police,
who begins to suspect Hardy's character is a
perpetrator rather than an investigator of the
crime. Noomi Rapace will play Hardy’s wife,
who has secrets of her own.
APRIL 2013 F*** 11
Christina Applegate on Vacation with Ed Helms
Christina Applegate's already signed on for loopy comedy Anchorman:
The Legend Continues, and looks likely to remain on the comedy circuit
with a remake/sequel of National Lampoon’s Vacation. Ed Helms plays
a grown-up Rusty Griswold taking his family on a crazy road trip, much
as his dad Clark did in the original film. Applegate will play his wife
if she signs on. Horrible Bosses team John Francis Daley and Jonathan
M. Goldstein will be the comedy reboot’s main scribes, and possibly its
directors as well. Vacation will commence shooting in the summer.
Ken Watanabe gets squished by Godzilla
We're just speculating at this point, but given Watanabe-san's
track record with his onscreen characters, there's a high chance
that whoever he's playing will meet a grisly end on the wrong side
of Godzilla's size 20,000 shoes. The new version of Godzilla has
started shooting under the direction
of Monsters' Gareth Edwards, and
Watanabe will be joining a surprisingly
great cast including Aaron TaylorJohnson, Juliette Binoche, David
Strathairn,Bryan Cranston and
Elizabeth Olsen.
Cruise may play Guy Ritchie's U.N.C.L.E.
Espionage is the name of the game for Tom Cruise, and the mission
in this case is to save The Man From U.N.C.L.E. from production
purgatory. Guy Ritchie's already stepped in as director, and Cruise
is currently in early talks
to star in the film based
on the iconic 1960s
television series, although
it’s unclear if he’ll be
playing Napoleon Solo or
Illya Kuryakin – the two
heroic spies who battle
evil under the United
Network Command for
Law Enforcement.
Rocketman takes flight
It looks like the long-gestating Elton John biopic has finally scored
a director, with Michael Gracey crocodile-rocking his way into the
director's chair. Rocketman will be an unconventional retelling of Sir
Elton's life, with fantastical elements relayed in a non-linear, hypervisual manner. More details as we get them!
Bill Murray to play St Vincent
Well, not an actual canonical saint – but he’s set to headline a new
dramedy, St Vincent De Van Nuys, which will see him playing the cranky
older neighbour to Melissa McCarthy’s single mom. For some reason,
McCarthy’s character decides
that this older gentleman –
despite his bad attitude and
habits – is the ideal person to
help take care of her 12-year-old
son. We would have called Social
Services, except apparently
the old man bonds with the
young boy in unexpected ways.
Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids)
is currently in talks to play a
Catholic priest astounded by the
positive influence the kid has on
Murray’s character.
12 F*** APRIL 2013
Escape from New York gets prequel?
It's unlikely that Kurt Russell will be reprising his role as the badass,
one-eyed Snake Plissken, but that hasn't deterred Joel Silver and
StudioCanal from taking a crack at an Escape From New York remake.
Len Wiseman’s earlier attempt to remake the film – with Gerard Butler
attached to star – disappeared without a trace, so we’re not holding our
breath just yet. But fans of Taken should keep a look-out: Liam Neeson
is reportedly being considered to take the role of Snake.
Melissa McCarthy’s Tammy hits the road
America’s newest comedy queen Melissa McCarthy is hard at
work on her new comedy Tammy, which she co-wrote with her
husband Ben Falcone. The couple will also serve as directors for
the film, after original director Beth McCarthy-Miller departed the
production. McCarthy will star as the titular Tammy, who loses her
job and discovers her husband is a lying cheat all in one day. To get
away from her problems, she takes to the road with her drunken,
foul-mouthed grandmother (Shirley MacLaine was in talks to play
the role but hasn’t signed on yet). Susan Sarandon is reportedly
negotiating a part as Grandma’s lesbian friend, who helps out the
pair in some dire moments. Mark Duplass will be playing a man
with whom Tammy develops a strange relationship while on her
journey of self-recovery.
Robert Redford to meet Captain America?
Here’s a bit of unexpected casting news: cinematic legend Robert
Redford is contemplating a role in Captain America: The Winter
Soldier. If he does sign on to the Marvel blockbuster, he’s expected
to play someone in a senior leadership role at S.H.I.E.L.D. – perhaps
someone equal (or superior) to Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. If this
happens, and given Marvel’s track record of cross-populating its cast
across all its franchise movies, we might soon see Redford going
toe-to-toe with Robert Downey Jr. Yes, please! The film is set to hit
cinemas in April 2014.
Ladies’ Night for Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron’s has spent much of her career trying to prove that
there’s so much more to her than her icy blonde beauty. After winning
an Oscar for her efforts in Monster, it looks like she plans to cut loose
with comedy Ladies’ Night, playing a woman who – frustrated by her
long-time boyfriend’s inability to commit – decides to have one last
night on the town with her girlfriends before uprooting her life and
moving to New York. Fred Savage – that adorable kid on The Wonder
Years – is set to direct, and the film will start production in early 2014.
We’ll see Hugh Jackman in Six Years
Cameron Diaz is The Other Woman
The cast is slowly getting
locked down for The
Other Woman, a comedy
starring Cameron Diaz
in the title role – in
the film, her character
discovers that her
boyfriend already has a
wife. Game Of Thrones’
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
and This Is 40’s Leslie
Mann are both in talks to
co-star. Nick Cassavetes
is set to call action on
the film later this year in
New York.
No, he’s not taking a sabbatical from his
acting career – he’s actually signed on to
star in the movie adaptation of Harlan
Coben’s new novel Six Years, which only
just hit the shelves in mid-March 2013.
Jackman will play Jake Fisher, a man
who loses the love of his life, Natalie, to
another man, but is forced to question
everything about what he knows when he
attends the other man’s funeral in six years’
time… and discovers that the widow
in mourning isn’t Natalie. Expect this
project to steam ahead quickly once
Jackman has wrapped kidnapping
drama Prisoners and X-Men: Days Of
Future Past.
APRIL 2013 F*** 13
Joel Kinnaman Runs with
Liam Neeson
Robert Duvall judging Robert
Downey
Liam Neeson sure has the market cornered
in aging action hero movies. His next
thriller – which recently swopped its
original title Run All Night for All Nighter
(which makes it sound like he’s studying
for an exam) – will see him play an aging
hit-man who takes on a brutal crime lord
to protect his family. Joel Kinnaman (The
Killing, the Robocop remake) has signed on
to play Neeson’s estranged son. When will
the bad guys learn not to mess with a guy
who punches wolves in the nose?
It seems Robert Downey Jr is trading in his
high-tech armour for a less cumbersome set of
threads, as he suits up for The Judge. He’ll be
playing a successful lawyer who returns to his
small-town home for his mom's funeral, only
to discover that his town judge dad (Robert
Duvall) is the prime suspect in her murder.
Vincent D’Onofrio is on board to play Downey
Jr’s brother, and Vera Farmiga has just signed
on as a waitress who’s never left their collective
hometown.
More Horrible Bosses on the way
How could anyone not want to watch an adult comedy with a character named Motherf**ker
Jones? That seems to be the logic at Warner Bros. anyway, which just concluded a six-month
negotiation with original stars Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day to reprise their
roles as hassled employees in Horrible Bosses 2. Jamie Foxx, who played the delightfully-named
Motherf**ker, is in talks to return as well to work under director Seth Gordon’s leadership. The
movie is tentatively due to start shooting this summer.
Danny Boyle makes a Porno
Gotcha! He's not really switching over
to the porn industry, but the real story is
almost as cool. Acclaimed British director
Danny Boyle has set a working horizon for
a Trainspotting sequel, which he wants to
get made by 2016. The film will be based
on Irvine Welsh's novel Porno, itself a
sequel to Trainspotting. Boyle has hinted
that the original cast – including Ewan
McGregor as Renton and Robert Carlyle as
Begbie – are back on board this train too.
14 F*** APRIL 2013
Every actor ever cast in X-Men: Days Of Future Past…
We’re kidding, of course, but with all the casting news emerging in the past few weeks, it sure
seems that way. Director Bryan Singer is clearly returning to the X-Men franchise with plans
to make it bigger – and hopefully better – than ever.
Just take a look at all the actors he’s signed for the upcoming X-Men: Days Of Future
Past, which will merge the young cast of the First Class incarnation of Marvel’s favourite
superhero team (McAvoy, Fassbender, Lawrence) with veterans from the original X-Men
movie trilogy (Jackman, Stewart, McKellen). Singer has even signed Game Of Thrones’ Peter
Dinklage to play a villain, not to mention new-comers like French comedian Omar Sy (The
Intouchables) and China’s Fan Bingbing.
Ridley Scott planning Exodus
with Christian Bale
In the interests of strict accuracy, Ridley Scott
isn’t planning to leave anytime soon – but he
is working on Exodus, a movie with decidedly
biblical origins. Scott and 20th Century Fox
are apparently in the very early stages of
negotiating with Christian Bale to lead the
mass emigration. They’re clearly hoping to get
everything sorted before Warner Bros.’ epic
based on the life of Moses – Gods And Kings –
gets up off the ground, where Steven Spielberg
left it after deciding not to take up directing
duties. Warner Bros. is currently looking in
the direction of Ang Lee to get Gods And Kings
ready for the big screen.
In the comics, the hugely popular Days Of Future Past storyline introduced the idea of
alternate timelines for Marvel’s mutants, pivoting on the survival of an important American
senator – if he dies, the entire Marvel universe heads down an apocalyptic route in which all
mutants are hunted by giant killing robots known as the Sentinels. Singer will no doubt have
a ball using his enormous cast to tell this particular chapter in the history of the X-Men.
Check out the cast as it stands below. Are you as boggled – and excited – as we are?
X-Men: Days Of Future Past will be released in July 2014.
FIRST L
K
THE AMAZING
SPIDER-MAN 2
Here’s the very first picture from the set
of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, tweeted by
none other than director Marc Webb. It’s a
picture of the sinister Ravencroft Institute
– or, to give it its full name, the Ravencroft
Institute For The Criminally Insane.
Anyone who’s up on their Spidey comicbook lore will know it’s the maximumsecurity facility that’s housed Spider-Man’s
evilest opponents. We’re currently taking
no bets on whether the lightning-charged
Electro – who’ll be played by Jamie Foxx in
the upcoming sequel – will be smashing his
way out of the Institute.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens in May 2014.
APRIL 2013 F*** 15
FIRST L
PACIFIC RIM
Want to know what happens when a giant sea creature emerges from the deep and
takes a dump on your house? Well, wonder no more. In anticipation of the July
2013 release of Guillermo Del Toro’s monsters-versus-aliens blockbuster Pacific
Rim, Warner Bros. has released some early images showing the monstrous Kaiju
living – and dying – on Earth.
There’s the vaguely funny, mostly disgusting photograph depicting a huge,
steaming pile of Kaiju excrement… and there’s aerial footage too of a Kaiju
who’s died and left his skeleton behind amidst a handful of unfinished concrete
buildings.
We’re not sure whether to be amused or horrified – which we suspect is precisely
the effect Del Toro is going for.
Pacific Rim opens in July 2013.
PERCY JACKSON AND THE SEA
OF MONSTERS
Anyone who’s read the original novels by young-adult fantasy novelist Rick
Riordan would agree that the first movie really didn’t live up to its full potential.
But we’re eternal optimists – and it certainly looks like modern-day Greek
demigod Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) and his best friends Annabeth
(Alexandra Daddario) and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) have quite a lot of
exciting stuff to contend with in this sequel to 2010’s Percy Jackson And The
Lightning Thief.
In order to safely embark upon this monster mash of a marine voyage, the franchise did some spring-cleaning of its own. Better-known
character actors Stanley Tucci and Nathan Fillion have been brought in to replace Luke Camilleri and Dylan Neal as Greek gods
Dionysus and Hermes respectively, while Pierce Brosnan has bowed out as centaur teacher Chiron in favour of Anthony Stewart Head
(who’ll switch from Watching a vampire slayer in favour of babysitting demigods).
Here’s hoping the mini-reboot will help resurrect this adaptation. Bon voyage!
Percy Jackson And The Sea Of Monsters opens in August 2013.
EVIL DEAD
Gruesome is as gruesome does. Evil Dead
– Fede Alvarez’s remake of Sam Raimi’s
1981 cult classic – is lurching into cinemas
soon, dragging with it a group of five
friends who head for a cabin in the woods
and uncover a demonic evil that starts
possessing them one by one. As you can
see from these new promotional images,
the remake isn’t going to skimp on grossout gore… so people with particularly
delicate constitutions should watch what
they eat before they head into the cinema!
Evil Dead opens in cinemas on 9 May 2013.
16 F*** APRIL 2013
K
FIRST L
K
THE WOLVERINE
If we hadn’t already figured it out from all
the moody blue lighting in promo stills for
The Wolverine, these new posters would
make it pretty darn clear that our favourite
adamantium-laced hero is going to be
pretty angry – and angsty – in his solo
adventure in Tokyo. In fact, Hugh Jackman
looks almost as if he’s going to burst angrily
into song, just like he did in Les Miserables.
Can’t you just see him on his knees, singing
to the rafters: “Who am I? Who am I? TWO
FOUR SIX OH ONE!!”
The Wolverine opens in July 2013.
WORLD WAR Z
In a world infested with zombies, normal humans just want to get to safety – as
very arrestingly depicted in this stunning new poster for Brad Pitt’s World War
Z. There’s nothing more terrifying than a literal mountain of people climbing
over one another in a desperate attempt to grab hold of anything that could
mean their freedom and survival. Or… even more chilling, are those zombies
climbing over one another to drag the human survivors in the helicopter down
to their level?
Whatever the case, we’ll be eagerly anticipating the arrival of World War Z in cinemas in June 2013…
ENDER’S GAME
The first poster for director Gavin Hood’s adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s
beloved sci-fi classic about a young genius – Andrew ‘Ender’ Wiggin (Asa Scott
Butterfield) – who’s sent away to Battle School to help create an army who can
save the world from an imminent alien invasion. The poster gives us a first
glimpse of the Battle Room, where Ender hones his military skills.
Ender’s Game hits cinemas in November 2013.
APRIL 2013 F*** 17
Intergalactic
Rogues
With Benedict Cumberbatch playing the new nemesis in the
Star Trek franchise, F*** gives you the lowdown on the top ten
coolest sci-fi villains in movie history
By Raphael Lim
We love science fiction. I mean, the genre teaches us so
much about relative morality and the outer reaches of
the human imagination, as Carl Sagan once said…
Okay, fine! We don’t love sci-fi themes because of
all that philosophy schtick. We love it because it
has friggin’ awesome bad guys! They cruise around
in big-assed starships, enslave lesser species, and
terrorise heroes for fun and profit. F*** brings to you
the Intergalactic Rogue’s Gallery, featuring the most
dastardly villains from across the cosmos.
They may not all be strictly from sci-fi films, but we
had problems keeping some of these blackguards off
the list. I mean, have you tried saying no to an entity
who eats planets for breakfast?
18 F*** APRIL 2013
Ming The Merciless
Movie: Flash Gordon
Location Coordinates: The Planet Mongo
Claim to Awesomeness: Primary adversary of a cultural icon
Weapon of Choice: His own Evil Genius. Also, spiking you with that beard!
Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin in the upcoming Iron Man 3 may have stolen his
wardrobe, but we’ll always remember Ming as the archetypal bald, prong-bearded
evil genius.
He’s got the Beast-Men of Mongo, the Lizard-Women, his hot daughter Princess
Aura, and a gigantic war rocket called Ajax. If you’re looking to marry into the dark
side, suffice to say that Ming The Merciless would make a great father-in-law.
Nero
Movie: Star Trek
Location Coordinates: Romulus, alternate
realities
Claim to Awesomeness: Responsible for a
rupture in the space-time continuum
Weapon of Choice: The Narada
We love Nero because he’s the embodiment
of the rags-to-riches story. With enough hard
work and evil genius, you too can rise from
your humble origins as a Romulan miner to
threaten the stability of the known galaxy. Not
many villains have such an impressive resume:
time-traveling to create an alternate reality,
the almost-annihilation of an entire race, and
giving the USS Enterprise one hell of a fight.
Predator
Movie: Predator
Location Coordinates: Right behind you
Claim to Awesomeness: Made Arnold
Schwarzenegger cry for his momma
Weapon of Choice: Thermal Vision,
camouflage, big-assed weapons.
Okay fine, it didn’t really make the Governator
cry for his momma, but that doesn’t detract
from the fact that the Predator was pretty
much one of the few known beings that could
give Arnie a run for his money, decimating his
crack squad of veterans to boot. Dreadlocks,
mandibles, active camouflage and thermal
vision… now there’s a dude who knows how
to hunt in style.
The Alien
Movie: Alien
Location Coordinates: Deep space, where no
one can hear you scream.
Claim to Awesomeness: Leaves its babies in
your chest cavity
Weapon of Choice: Big teeth
It’s not so much a thinking villain rather
than a giant, ravening, exoskeleton-plated
machine of death, but hey, let’s not split hairs
on what constitutes true evil. Ridley Scott’s
Alien remains one of the icons of sci-fi horror,
spawning spin-offs, sequels and speculations
that have literally lasted decades.
To be completely honest though, we find the
chestburster and facehugger aliens a whole lot
creepier than the fully grown version…
APRIL 2013 F*** 19
The Seeker
Movie: The Host
Location Coordinates: Earth
Claim to Awesomeness: Brain warping
mojo… and they make your eyes glow blue.
Weapon of Choice: Zombification
The Host may not be all that spectacular
compared to some of the sci-fi epics on this
list, but you’ve gotta admit that the premise is
interesting and pretty eerie. Kinda like Diane
Kruger’s performance as the Seeker, the movie’s
chief antagonist.
The aliens featured in these movie are
benevolent-looking, luminous organisms that
resemble sea anemones… but then they enter
your body and essentially turn you into their
walking zombie servant. And you thought your
partner was overly clingy!
Agent Smith
Movie: The Matrix
Location Coordinates: In your mind
Claim to Awesomeness: Can spawn infinite
numbers of himself, all suited up.
Weapon of choice: Termination of Keanu
Reeves with Extreme Prejudice
If you think that Trojan virus on your laptop
is annoying, you probably aren’t The One to
deal with Agent Smith. I mean, that guy can
corrupt a computer simulacrum the size of the
world, self-replicates at insane speeds, dodges
bullets and periodically beats up post-modern
messiahs for a living. Can your computer virus
do all that?
Agent Smith was such a memorable role
for Hugo Weaving that, when we saw him
onscreen as Elrond in Lord of The Rings, we
were half-expecting him to turn to Frodo and
drawl the words ‘Mr Baggins’, complete with
Agent Smith’s trademark sneer.
Darth Vader
Movie: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Location Coordinates: The Death Star
Claim to Awesomeness: Has the most
awesome villain voice ever. Eat your heart out,
Bane!
Weapon of choice: Lightsaber, telling you that
he’s your daddy.
You probably saw this entry coming from light
years away. After all, Mr Vader epitomises
the sci-fi villain par excellence: he’s the
embodiment of Sith power and a force for
stable tyranny against those disruptive rebels.
You may have noticed that we omitted the
Storm Troopers from Darth Vader’s Weapons
of Choice, our reasoning being: have you
seen those inept space monkeys actually hit
anything?
20 F*** APRIL 2013
The Terminator
Movie: The Terminator
Location Coordinates: Earth, 2029
Claim to Awesomeness: ‘Hasta La Vista, baby!’
Weapon of Choice: Guns, laconic Austrian
attitude
He may have sold out and become a good guy
in the sequel, but that does little to tarnish
T-800’s stellar pedigree as the cyborg assassin
programmed to assassinate Sarah Connor in
the 1984 original.
As an aside, we’d love to see the original T-800
have a three-way face off with the Predator and
the Alien. Make it happen, Hollywood!
The Borg
Movie: Star Trek: First Contact
Location Coordinates: Delta Quadrant
Claim to Awesomeness: Quintessential hivemind aliens
Weapon of Choice: Evangelism, mandatory
conversion
This being our Star Trek issue, we thought it
apt to bring you a villainous blast from the
past. Way before The Zerg, the original hive
mind was the Borg Collective, a cybernetic,
enhanced species of aliens that forced other
species into their collective, erasing the
individuality of their victims. In other words,
they’re like the intergalactic version of a college
fraternity.
Besides being able to assimilate everyone,
including Jean-Luc Picard (albeit temporarily),
the Borg also have the catchiest motto in the
known universe. Who wouldn’t want to have a
hoodie emblazoned with the words: ‘resistance
is futile’?
Galactus
Movie: Fantastic 4: Rise of The Silver Surfer
Location Coordinates: Roams around the
universe and s**t
Claim to Awesomeness: Dude, he eats planets.
Weapon of choice: Dude... HE EATS
PLANETS.
He may not have the bling of Thanos or
the attractive charisma of Erik ‘Magneto’
Lehnsherr, but in terms of sheer stopping
power, Galactus is a force to be reckoned with.
I mean, the guy literally eats planets.
He’s not so much a sci-fi villain as a staple
antagonist of galaxy wayfaring superheroes
like the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer,
but his sheer awesomeness makes us partial
enough to him to warrant some flexibility
in genre-hopping. That, and we’re hoping he
turns up again in a future Marvel movie in a
much cooler form. Let’s face it, the whole cloud
manifestation in Rise of The Silver Surfer just
didn’t do him justice. Avengers 3, anyone?
APRIL 2013 F*** 21
We Talk Films
22 F*** APRIL 2013
WTF
We Talk Films
JJ ABRAMS
UP CLOSE & PERSONAL
WITH THE GEEK GOD
THE HANGOVER III
THIS REALLY IS THE END!
IRON MAN 3
IS THIS THE END?
EPIC
A MAGICAL MINIATURE
UNIVERSE
JUDGMENT DAY
SINGAPORE FACES
AN APOCALYPSE
OBLIVION
TOM CRUISE BATTLES TO
SAVE MANKIND... AGAIN!
A SONG SUNG BLUE
(& GREEN)
THE PLIGHT OF
THE VFX ARTIST
STATE
OF
TRANCE
DIRECTOR DANNY BOYLE GETS IN OUR HEADS WITH
TRANCE, A HYPNOTIC THRILLER THAT’S TAKING THE
CINEMATIC WORLD BY STORM
APRIL 2013 F*** 23
CRUISING
24 F*** APRIL 2013
INTO OBLIVION
Director Joseph Kosinski tells F*** about working with
Tom Cruise on OBLIVION,
a movie he came up with eight years ago
APRIL 2013 F*** 25
Travel with us, if you will,
to Earth in the year 2077.
It’s no longer the planet
we know – it has evolved
beyond recognition,
bruised and battered
by decades of war with
a terrifying alien threat.
Most of the survivors
have been evacuated to,
quite literally, the moon,
establishing a colony safe
from the ravages of their
home planet.
Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, a security
repairman still stationed on an empty Earth.
He’s part of a massive operation to extract
vital resources from the planet and his mission
is almost complete. In two weeks, he will be
heading to the lunar colony himself. But,
one day, he rescues a beautiful stranger (Olga
Kurylenko) from a downed spacecraft. Her
arrival forces him to question everything he
thought he knew, setting him on a journey of
redemption and discovery that will see him rise
above himself in a fight to save mankind.
Director Joseph Kosinski, of Tron:Legacy fame,
has had this story in mind for ages – eight years,
to be precise. He’s adapted his own graphic
novel version of the tale for the big screen, and
talks to F*** about getting the film made and
working with Cruise.
When did you first come up with the idea for
this movie?
I came up with the idea for this movie about
eight years ago. I had just moved to Los Angeles
and was having no luck in getting work. In
order to keep myself from going crazy, I wrote
this short story for a very small, contained and
sort of character-driven film about the last man
on Earth.
How did that initial story develop into
Oblivion?
I worked on the story and even some of the
images for the movie, but then I got pulled into
Tron: Legacy for three years. At that time, I was
still fleshing out Oblivion as well. By the time I
finished Tron, I had developed Oblivion as an
illustrated novel for Radical Comics and had a
nice package of the imagery of the world, which
I used to go around town pitching it as a film.
How did Tom Cruise get involved in the
project?
Tom Cruise got wind of what I was working
on and attached himself to the project because
he just loved the story. The main character was
kind of built for him from the beginning, which
is one of the reasons why the movie was such a
good match for him.
Did Tom Cruise help you create the main role
of Jack Harper?
26 F*** APRIL 2013
Yes, it was fantastic to be able to use Tom’s ideas
for the character. It’s always great to be able to
work with the person playing the role before
you start filming. Oblivion fits Tom like a glove.
I think it’s the kind of movie people will like to
see him in. He was intrigued from the start and
I was very lucky to have him in the film.
traveller crash-lands on our planet and her
arrival starts an incredible journey for him.
Tell us more about Jack Harper.
Julia brings to light interesting facts and gives
Jack answers to questions that he has. Then,
she goes with him on a journey in which they
uncover some secrets. There are a lot of twists
and turns in this story.
Jack Harper is basically a repair man, a bluecollar worker whose job is to fix drones during
the day in an effort to gather up resources to
leave our planet that has been destroyed in
a massive war. Jack is essentially the last man
left on Earth to say goodbye. That feeling of
loneliness is very profound and also a great
backdrop for the story.
Yet, Jack Harper still has a special connection
to our dying world, doesn’t he?
Yes, he has a connection to these ruins of Earth
he can’t quite explain. One day, a mysterious
The mysterious traveller is Julia, played by
Ukrainian-born actress Olga Kurylenko. How
does Julia’s arrival help Jack piece together
who he really is?
What can you say about Victoria, the other
key woman in Jack Harper’s life, embodied on
the screen by Andrea Riseborough?
Victoria is a very by-the-book follower who
believes in the system and does as she is told.
Victoria and Julia are both powerful female
roles, even though they are very different.
What is the heart of this story?
I think that Oblivion is, at its heart, a very
romantic story about the endurance of true love.
How was the experience of working with Tom
Cruise?
Working with Tom was an incredible experience.
He has worked with so many fantastic directors
that I look up to, such as Stanley Kubrick, Steven
Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and Michael Mann. I
learned a tremendous amount from Tom and
also, through him, from all the people he has
worked with in the past.
What surprised you the most about Tom
Cruise?
Getting to watch them was a pretty incredible
experience because they have so much respect
for each other. It was also interesting to have
some up-and-comers like Andrea and Olga
next to these pros.
How would you describe the look of Oblivion?
The look of the film came very early on in the
process for me. I would describe Oblivion as a
daylight science fiction film. So, its look is an
interesting combination of high-tech with this
kind of grittiness you can get from real-world
locations.
Which locations are you referring to?
This is your second science fiction film. What
do you like about the genre?
I like the fact that the science fiction genre has
no limits. Science fiction enables you to tell
familiar stories in a way people haven’t seen
before. It allows you to create a world that
can really transport you away. You can also
ask profound questions and stimulate people’s
minds in a way that only this genre can. It
makes us feel very small in the big scope of
things, which is interesting.
What are the questions that Oblivion asks?
I was struck by how hardworking, dedicated
and enthusiastic Tom is about the whole moviemaking process. After having had an amazing
career like he has had, I can imagine that most
people would be slowing down and taking it
easy, but not Tom, who still continues to work as
hard as ever. He takes nothing for granted and
inspires the crew to do their best work, too. He
did all of his stunts himself. That gives the film
an authenticity you just can’t fake, even though
it meant that he had to suffer some bumps and
bruises along the way. They were all in service
of making the best film and delivering the best
experience possible. Tom works harder than
anyone I have ever worked with before.
We shot in Iceland in some spectacular locations
on top of mountains, in black sand deserts and
even underground!
Can one man make a difference? Is there a hero
inside of us just waiting to come out? What is it
that makes us truly who we are? I like movies
that ask profound questions but also don’t feel
the need to answer everything.
What technology did you use to shoot the
film?
Which science fiction films have influenced
you as a filmmaker?
We used the latest generation digital camera
that shoots with four times the resolution of
a standard digital camera. That allowed me to
capture the details of the landscapes in Iceland
in the wide shots and then also the reflection of
everything in the actor’s eyes during the closeups. It’s a spectacular camera system that just
looks fantastic when blown up to the big screen.
2001: A Space Odyssey is my all-time favourite
film because it asks profound questions, both
intellectually and emotionally. As I grew up
in the age of Star Wars, I also love big-screen
entertainment. For me, Oblivion combines
both.
You also have an actor of the calibre of Morgan
Freeman in an important role. What can you
say about him?
We will also have the opportunity to see the
movie in IMAX. What do you believe that will
add to it all?
When we finished the script, Tom and I talked
about how great it would be to get Morgan to
play the role of Beech. Then, we sent him the
script and, to my delight, he said he loved it and
that he had always wanted to work with Tom.
Now I have them together in a movie for the
first time. They were both very excited about it.
Well, I’m really excited because I’m doing the
IMAX version of the film in a different aspect
ratio, which will enable the people to see more
of the image on the top and bottom of the
screen. If you like the big movie experience,
IMAX is the way to see Oblivion.
Oblivion is an original story with some good
twists and turns that, like all good mysteries,
engages and requires you to pay attention. In
the end, it is a very hopeful movie. Oblivion
was hard work with challenges always around
the corner, but I had a blast making it. I’m very
proud of the film and excited for people to see it.
What should we expect from Oblivion then?
Oblivion opens on 11 April 2013.
APRIL 2013 F*** 27
28 F*** APRIL 2013
HUNGOVER
NO MORE
Todd Phillips, director of the world’s biggest
R-rated comedy franchise, tells F*** about the end of
THE HANGOVER. Yes, it really, truly is The End.
By Shawne Wang
APRIL 2013 F*** 29
Have you watched the
trailer for The Hangover
Part III? If you haven’t,
do yourself a favour and
check it out right away.
Whatever you thought
of the second movie in
the franchise, it looks like
the Wolf Pack – including
Bradley Cooper as Phil,
Ed Helms as Stu and
Zach Galifianakis as Alan
– intend to go out with a
bang.
And a giraffe.
We had the opportunity to speak exclusively
to the very amiable Todd Phillips about the
comedy franchise that’s taken the global
box office by storm – and he had quite a few
interesting things to reveal about what’s in
store for us.
This time round, for instance, there’ll be no
epic hangover, no forgotten night: in fact, it’s a
coming-of-age film for Alan, the memorably
oddball character who provided most of the
comic relief in the first two movies.
Phillips also tells us about the showdown
between Alan and Mr Chow (Ken Jeong),
what Las Vegas means to him, and the end of a
franchise that’s been a huge part of his life for
the past six years.
Plot details for Part Three have so far been
pretty scarce. What can you tell us about this
movie?
The movie is actually about Alan – the Zach
Galifianakis character – finally coming to
terms with being an adult. Remember how in
Part II he described himself as a stay-at-home
son? He’s the one character who’s never really
changed. He’s always been equally spoiled and
horrible in his behaviour in all the movies.
Finally, this is a chance for him to change, and
it happens because he’s going through a crisis
in the beginning of this movie with the death
of his father. He stops taking his medications,
and the other guys all step in to help him out.
At the same time, Mr Chow has broken out of
the prison where we left him in Hangover II
and he’s headed to the West Coast to take care
of something else that has nothing to do with
our guys, but their worlds collide.
It’s not really following the template of the
first two films then.
It’s not following the template at all, because
there’s no forgotten night, there’s no drinking,
there’s no black-out – there’s none of that.
But there’s an animal – you’ve had a tiger and
a monkey, and now there’s a giraffe…
30 F*** APRIL 2013
Well, there’s a giraffe, sure. [laughs]
Yes, there is.
You’ve got a couple of great new additions to
the cast – John Goodman, for one. Can you
tell us a little about his role in the film?
John Goodman plays a crime boss. What’s
fun about writing this movie is tying it into
Hangover I and Hangover II. There’s a moment
in the first film, if you go back and watch it,
where a character mentions this guy Marshall
in Las Vegas – and Marshall is who John
Goodman plays. We finally meet Marshall,
and we even flashback to it from Hangover I
where the character mentions him. It was an
interesting movie to write, to do all that reverse
engineering. It was really fun and challenging.
How about Ken Jeong’s character? The teaser
poster kind of riffs a little bit on Harry Potter
– as if pitting Alan against Mr Chow in a
Harry versus Voldemort showdown.
That was sort of a joke, yes, of course. As you
probably know if you’ve seen the movies,
Mr Chow is actually a horrible person – he’s
evil but Alan loves him and gets a kick out of
him, and he uses Alan in a way that Alan is
unaware of. It really fucks everything up for
the guys and makes everything very difficult.
Essentially, as much as this movie is Alan’s
story, it’s Mr Chow’s too, and culminates in –
like you said – a showdown between the two.
Did you know when you first did The
Hangover that it would go on to be such a big
success?
That’s a good question. No, we didn’t know
we were going to make three of these. But
sometimes, you just have these happy little
accidents and you think back and you go,
‘Ooh, we want to introduce a new character
and we want him to have something to do with
that’ and ‘Remember that part in No. 1 when
somebody says that? Let’s explore who that
character is.’ And that’s how it’s worked out [for
the Hangover movies].
But this is definitely the last film in the
franchise – the end, as it were.
For sure – when you see the movie, you’ll
understand that this is very much the end.
The first two movies together have grossed
over a billion dollars at the international box
office. So are you feeling a little pressure for
this third film?
There’s always pressure when you put a movie
out. But it’s exciting to know that people want
to see the movie, so those expectations are
actually – to me – the exciting part, knowing
that there’s an audience and now you just
have to do your job and make a good movie
and I think we did that. So it’s not as much
pressure as you might think, it actually makes
it exciting.
What are some of your favourite memories
from working on the Hangover movies?
For me, this particular movie had us going
back to Las Vegas, where it all began. Las
Vegas was such a huge character, if you will,
in the first movie, that I thought it was really
important to wind up the trilogy there.
As far as all the three movies go, I think if you
spoke to any of the guys, me included, our best
memories probably have to do with being in
Bangkok together. We just had the best time
shooting a movie there.
Now that the franchise is coming to an end,
can you tell us what The Hangover has meant
to you – both in terms of your career, and
personally?
Professionally, of course, it’s meant a lot to me
and all the actors.
I’ve made some of my best friends while
making it – Bradley Cooper and myself have
become really, really close.
It’s just been a huge part of my life for the last
six years. It’s bittersweet, in a way, to see it end,
but I think we’re ending it on a great note and
I think people are going to love it, so we’re
excited for everyone to see it.
The Hangover Part III opens on 30 May 2013.
Check out next month’s issue for our exclusive
interviews with the cast!
APRIL 2013 F*** 31
DARKNESS
FALLS
Director J.J. Abrams tells F*** how he made
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS despite (a) not being a fan of the
franchise and (b) disliking 3D movies
32 F*** APRIL 2013
APRIL 2013 F*** 33
Walking back out on to
The Bridge of the
Starship Enterprise
– a vast, spectacular
set constructed on
a Hollywood studio
soundstage – for Star
Trek Into Darkness was
a special moment for
director J.J. Abrams.
It felt, he says, like
coming home.
“I remember walking on to the set for the first
movie and that really was a magical moment,”
he says. “And this time we had an even bigger
set and it was the same feeling when I first
walked on to The Bridge of the Enterprise.
“It’s a magical feeling and it’s almost like there’s
some power coming from that set and all of
the people on it. It was like returning to your
favourite place – a place that you hadn’t been
to for a few years.”
It has indeed been four years, in fact, since Star
Trek, Abrams’ first film in the series, reinvigorated one of the most popular franchises in
pop culture and met with huge critical acclaim.
Now comes the sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness,
and Abrams has certainly not rested on his
laurels. He promises that his new film will be
a stand-alone action thriller that will appeal to
both die-hard Trekkies and audiences experiencing Star Trek for the very first time.
Abrams doesn’t take anything for granted.
“A lot of sequels, I think, fall into the trap of
assuming that you care about the characters
and assume you love them and are connected
to them.
“Sometimes I see a sequel and it assumes that
I’ve just watched the other movie. So we tried
to come at this from a stand-alone point of
view. You don’t have to have seen the other film
but if you did, great and you’ll understand how
they all came together, but you don’t need to.”
The first film was an origin story introducing
the cast of characters, including Captain James
T. Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Bones and the rest, and
the young actors who play them, to a new
generation.
Abrams is keenly aware that his audience needs
to care about the characters and their relationships with each other. “The spirit of the movie
is that it’s about a group of characters that I
hope you like, that make you laugh and that
you cheer for.
“If you are going to a place as intense as some
of this stuff is in our movie, I think you need
balance. There are moments that are pretty
dark and crazy but those sequences won’t matter to you, and you won’t care about them, if
you haven’t been laughing along the way and
rooting for these characters who you feel for.”
34 F*** APRIL 2013
At the heart of the story is the friendship
between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary
Quinto), polar opposites and yet somehow, as
a partnership, they complete each other. Kirk
is impulsive, brave bordering on the foolhardy,
whilst Spock, the Vulcan, is calculating, always
rational but lacking in human emotions.
people, to each other and to the movie.
“The key to this one was not just how do we
introduce them again to the audience, but how
do we give them moments so that the story
couldn’t take place unless they were all there?
“Part of the multi-layered process of developing the script was making sure that every single
character had not just their moment, but their
thread, their storyline.”
SHOT
One of the strengths of Star Trek’s enduring
appeal is that the Enterprise is crewed by such
memorable characters – including Uhura (Zoe
Saldana), Bones (Karl Urban), Chekov (Anton
Yelchin), Sulu (John Cho) and Scotty (Simon
Pegg). Each one has a vital part to play in the
new film, just as they did in Abrams’ first Star
Trek movie.
“If you take out any one of them it would fold
like a house of cards,” he explains. “We knew
that in the first film, when we introduced these
great characters to the audience. They each had
their part to play. The first movie was easier in
a way because it was introducing all of these
On screen and off, the cast bonded and forged
close friendships. Those relationships – Abrams
describes the Enterprise crew as a family –
ramp up the stakes for the second film, he says,
because they care for each other and each and
every one of them is in peril.
“These characters have grown to love each
other and that means the stakes are immediately higher and in Star Trek Into Darkness they
are up against a formidable adversary,” he says.
“It’s often said that your hero is defined by your
villain. Well, in that case we have one hell of a
hero because we have a brilliant villain.”
Abrams choose fast-rising British star Benedict
Cumberbatch, best known in the UK for the
acclaimed BBC series Sherlock, to play John
Harrison, a terrorist who wages psychological
warfare on Kirk and his crew and threatens to
cause destruction on Earth.
Although Abrams is keen to keep the details
of the story under wraps and not spoil the surprise for the audience, we do know that Harrison strikes from within Star Fleet command.
“People have asked me why I chose Benedict
for this and I would answer that by saying,
‘Why not Benedict for everything?’ He is so
crazy good. I loved working with him,” says the
director.
“He brings exactly the respect and intelligence
and depth and also humour to every scene as I
was hoping he would. When I saw his work in
Sherlock, like so many others I was impressed
by his seemingly effortless dexterity and his
ability.
“It was almost like watching an Olympic gymnast go from incredible position to incredible
position. He really is an exceptional talent and
in addition to being the great actor he is, he
was an absolute joy to spend some time with.”
British actors have often vividly portrayed villains in previous big-budget Hollywood movies
but Abrams had no reservations at all about
using another talented Brit. Cumberbatch’s
nationality is irrelevant, he says, and it’s his
considerable ability that counts.
“I didn’t have qualms about any nationality
but I had qualms about not having the best
possible actor. He just elevated everything and
while you don’t want the classic, clichéd British
villain, which we’ve all seen a million times, my
guess is that we’ve seen just as many American
villains.
“I think Benedict is one of the best actors alive.
So the real question is ‘Why did he accept the
movie?’ I think he is so good and seeing him in
Sherlock just blew my mind and I had that feeling that he would be great for almost anything.
And he exceeded all my expectations.”
The action sequences will be spectacular,
enhanced by the latest 3D technology, and
the film will also be shown on IMAX screens.
Abrams reveals that at first he was reluctant to
use 3D.
“Frankly the decision to do it in 3D was made
for me,” he says. “The studio said, ‘If you want
to do this movie, we have to do it in 3D’ and I
was against it because I was not really a fan of
3D.
APRIL 2013 F*** 35
“But then, I was also never really a fan of Star
Trek to begin with, so the idea of working on
something that is not necessarily your favourite
thing or your forte can actually help because it
forces you to engage with something in a way
that an outsider can appreciate.
“But my initial feeling was that I didn’t like 3D.
But it was very helpful in some ways because
we worked with the 3D crew in a way that
didn’t assume that we loved the technology.
“I have trouble with 3D sometimes – I can’t
see it quite right, I get a headache, I hate the
glasses and it annoys me. So I approached it
cynically. And the fact is that we have been
using techniques that haven’t been used in 3D
before. And they have made enough movies
in 3D now that they can understand ways to
eliminate some of these problems.
“We shot the movie with an anamorphic lens
so it had the same look and feel as the first
movie, but, because we were converting it to
3D later, we have so many more creative opportunities and ability to push certain things
and limit other things.
“It actually allows you to be able to fine-tune
it and the audience gets to see something that
is I think really fun and dynamic. The key for
me overall is I got to make my 2D movie, that
36 F*** APRIL 2013
I really wanted to make, just the way I wanted
to, and it gets to be augmented in 3D, but it
doesn’t detract from the 2D.”
He points out too, that when he was first approached to direct Star Trek, he wasn’t really a
fan of the franchise.
“I never cared about Star Trek in the same
way that some of my friends did. So I didn’t
have that sense of reverence for this story. And
when they asked if I wanted to be involved in
it and I heard myself say ‘Yes’ I thought, ‘This
is so curious because I never really cared about
this group…’
“But it helped me in part to tell the story from
the point of view of a movie-goer, not a Star
Trek fan. For me, the question was always,
‘How do we tell a story that, if you’re not a Star
Trek fan, you will love and, if you are a Star
Trek fan, you’ll love it too?’
“Our ambition with this movie is that, if
you are a Star Trek fan, you are going to be
very happy because, in a big way, the movie
acknowledges what’s come before. It was
important to us that we acknowledged the
importance of the existing fans and the existing
series because we wouldn’t be doing this if it
weren’t for them and for what Gene Roddenberry created.
“But if, like myself, you are not a life-long Star
Trek fan, I hope that you will also have a great
time and you will be moved and you will be
shrieking and laughing and crying and all of
that stuff, in a way that perhaps you wouldn’t
expect from a Star Trek movie.”
Star Trek Into Darkness is, then, a stand-alone
adventure with vividly drawn characters placed
at the very heart of the story. “This is a far
bigger film than the last one in every way,” says
Abrams.
“The story was paramount for me. It’s full of
intrigue, incredibly dramatic and wonderfully
complex.
“And the moral dilemma is ‘how far are you
willing to go to protect the ones you love?’ And
that’s something that’s being played out on
both sides.
“This movie is definitely an action adventure
thriller movie. It’s romantic and funny and as
scary and as unexpected as any movie that I
love. So for me, it’s got all the ingredients that
made me want to make movies when I was a
kid.”
Star Trek Into Darkness opens on 16 May 2013.
APRIL 2013 F*** 37
ALL HANDS ON
HOLODECK
The key personnel of Star Trek Into Darkness report for duty
By Jedd Jong
What good is a ship without its crew? Not very much. Yes, even the sleek and shiny Constitutionclass USS Enterprise NCC-1701 wouldn’t be able to get a lot done in the name of the Federation
with an empty bridge (or an empty engineering section, transporter room, sickbay and so on, for
that matter). F*** takes a look at the men, women and aliens who get stuff done aboard the ship –
plus the new villain they’re taking on, and the man who’s at the helm behind the scenes.
38 F*** APRIL 2013
APRIL 2013 F*** 39
CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK
Played by Chris Pine
One of the most iconic characters in science
fiction history, the role was originated by the
inimitable William Shatner. As the younger
iteration, Chris Pine had his work cut out for
him. In Star Trek (2009), we bear witness to
Kirk’s beginnings, from his birth aboard a
medical shuttle in the midst of a space battle
(in which his father bravely sacrifices his own
life) to his rebellious childhood and even
more rebellious young adulthood, until the
responsibility of captaining a starship is thrust
upon him. Kirk is brash and headstrong, but is
dedicated to his post and to his ship and will
eventually become a father to his men.
On Kirk’s role in the new film, co-star Karl
Urban comments, “in the first movie, Kirk
earns his captaincy; in this movie, he has to
own it”. It looks like Kirk won’t be allowed to
get too comfy in that nice big chair of his after
all.
Pine explains that “Kirk really has to face
his self-worth in this film. If he’s capable or
not of leading, and it’s a big, big transition
[from the first film, at least] and gives him
a lot of different places to go. I think he
experiences absolute evil in this film and a lot
of that is related to his deep fear and sense of
vulnerability.”
40 F*** APRIL 2013
COMMANDER SPOCK
Played by Zachary Quinto
The rational, cool-headed, half-human half-Vulcan science officer of
the Enterprise has always been the perfect foil to Captain Kirk. The
original Spock was memorably portrayed by Leonard Nimoy – the
actor was initially uncomfortable with the pop culture icon status the
character had taken on and wanted to distance himself from it, but
grew to embrace it and eventually appeared as the older Prime Universe
counterpart of Spock alongside Quinto in Star Trek. Nimoy was
impressed with Quinto’s take on Spock and the two have since become
friends.
A key action sequence in Into Darkness will see Spock descending into
a volcano in an attempt to neutralise it before it ends up destroying
a planet. Kirk and Spock’s relationship started out in a similarly
volatile fashion in the first film, with Kirk cheating on the supposedly
‘unwinnable’ Kobayashi Maru test programmed by Spock. As a result,
Spock took an immediate dislike to the Captain who would eventually
become his best friend. According to Quinto, their bond will grow
stronger in this film. “Kirk really earns his leadership; Spock really earns
an understanding of friendship.”
A brief section of the Japanese trailer for the film has led fans to wonder
if Spock might face a fate similar to the one in Star Trek II: The Wrath
of Khan. So, will Spock be able to live long and prosper past this one?
On his Twitter account, Quinto says “Simmer down kids. Rumours are
rumours for a reason… Let’s let the second movie come out before we
talk about a third...”
APRIL 2013 F*** 41
JOHN HARRISON
Played by Benedict Cumberbatch
So, what – or who – is the “absolute evil” Pine refers to? Speculation is
rife as to the true identity of “John Harrison”, the villain against whom
the crew of the Enterprise will be pitted in Into Darkness. Is he Khan? Is
he Gary Mitchell? A Klingon in disguise? Everyone is intent on keeping
mum, but from the trailers we do know that this formidable foe is an
ex-Starfleet member turned brilliant extremist hell-bent on revenge.
British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, best known as the eccentric
Sherlock Holmes in the BBC version of Sherlock, describes the character
as having “a real Hannibal Lecter quality to him” and promises his
portrayal will be “genuinely intense and scary”.
“He’s an incredible actor – if you’ve ever seen Sherlock, he’s
unbelievable,” director JJ Abrams enthuses. “And he’s someone whom
I think just brings an entirely new and intense energy and yes, he’s
angry in certain moments, but he’s also remarkably rational and wildly,
insidiously brilliant and part of the fun of this bad guy is he’s not just a
raving lunatic, he’s someone whom you can have conversations with and
can get seduced by.”
Whereas Eric Bana’s Nero in Star Trek was a more primal, rage-filled
tyrant, it seems that John Harrison will be a cerebral, manipulative
mastermind to be reckoned with. Pine sums it up thusly: “He is
just as intelligent and logical as Spock, but he is also one very bad
mother***er.” Yikes.
42 F*** APRIL 2013
However, it seems that not too much emphasis will be placed on
the potential romance. “There’s much flirting and there’s definitely a
connection there but what I would say is that this film is so big and the
plot moves so fast and there’s so much action to be had that there’s not
really much time to explore [the relationship]”. According to him, Carol
Marcus is “a hyper-intelligent doctor and it’s her scientific knowledge
that really plays a key role in this film.”
Carol’s father Admiral Marcus will also appear in the film, played by
Peter Weller (aka RoboCop).
LT. NYOTA UHURA
Played by Zoë Saldaña
As the Enterprise’s communications officer, Uhura is an expert in
Xenolinguistics with a keen ear for alien languages. The part was
originally played by Nichelle Nichols in what was considered a landmark
achievement for women of colour on television. Nichols was personally
affirmed by Martin Luther King Jr., a big fan of the original Star Trek
series who felt Uhura served as an important role model for AfricanAmerican women and children across the United States. Nichols
graciously said of Zoë Saldaña, “Not only is she one of the most beautiful
women on the planet, she’s an incredible actress. When I met her, it just
clicked.”
Star Trek officially made a romantic pairing out of Uhura and Spock,
something which fans either hated or decided to roll with. Saldaña hints
that the relationship may not be proceeding all that smoothly. “Whether
they’re together or not in this movie, that will remain to be seen.”
Commenting on the dynamics between the two, JJ Abrams remarks, “It’s
a challenge, I think, to be a modern, strong-willed intelligent woman
dating a Vulcan who is, above all, logical and rational. While he may be
reliable and loyal and intelligent and true, he’s also someone for whom
logic might get in the way of other things, and so many things are tested
in this movie; so is their relationship.”
Saldaña adds that there’s “a lot of humanity” that she provides Spock in
this film, warming up their relationship; just as there’s “a lot of precision”
that Spock provides to Uhura. “Kirk and I are in the same position
where we learn the same lessons from Spock and we’re also able to teach
him the same lessons, which is ‘loosen up man, loosen up a little bit!’”
DR. CAROL MARCUS
Played by Alice Eve
New to the team
is English actress
Alice Eve as Dr
Carol Marcus. The
character previously
appeared in Star
Trek II: The Wrath
of Khan, played by
Bibi Besch. In that
film, she was among
the Federation’s
foremost molecular
biologists, working
on the ambitious
Project Genesis that
was central to the
film’s plot. Marcus
was romantically
involved with Kirk
and bore his son,
David.
“Kirk loves his
blonde women,”
Chris Pine observes.
JJ ABRAMS
The Director
Jeffrey Jacob Abrams returns to the director’s chair after resurrecting the
Star Trek franchise with the 2009 film. Pretty much cementing his status
as a modern-day geek god, he’ll also be taking on Star Wars Episode
VII, which might force fans from both sides of the galaxy to sit around
campfire and begrudgingly sing “Kumbaya”. It remains to be seen if it’s
too much power for one Hollywood super-nerd – but odds are JJ will do
just fine. After all, he has admitted to growing up a Star Wars fan, not a
Star Trek one.
Speaking about reconciling the scope of the sequel with the smaller
character dynamics, Abrams says “this movie is infinitely bigger than
anything I’ve been involved [with], this feels like everything I’ve done
before times ten, rolled into one. The biggest challenge in doing this
movie was figuring out how to do it because the script was so big, but
the thing that made me want to do it was how intimate it was; it was a
simultaneously huge thing in scope and then a small thing in terms of
emotionality and interactions and relationships.”
The director is not about to get on a high horse – far from it. “The
original series… is still the platform we stand on and the shadow we
stand under. We are respectful of it and see it as something to aspire
to. But at the same time we don’t just want to be a great impersonation
of what has gone before.” He also hints that audiences should expect
the unexpected. “In the first film we find our own separate offshoot
timeline and anything can happen here without ever affecting [the Prime
Universe], so the fate of these characters is much more in flux.”
While some Trek purists may turn up their noses at the reboot, there’s no
denying that, under Abrams’ guidance, the franchise has become a lot
more accessible to the public at large, and it can be said that he’s made
Star Trek cool again. Maybe the needs of the many do outweigh the
needs of the few after all.
Also returning are Karl Urban and Dr Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy,
Simon Pegg as chief engineer Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott, John Cho as
helmsman Hikaru Sulu, Anton Yelchin as Ensign Pavel Chekov and
Bruce Greenwood as former Captain of the Enterprise, Christopher
Pike.
And yes, we know the Holodeck originated with Star Trek: The Next
Generation.
APRIL 2013 F*** 43
With hits that range from
the Ice Age series to
Robots and Rio, Chris
Wedge and the team
at Blue Sky Studios are
renowned for their work,
creating fantastical worlds
with pioneering computer
animation technology. But
the forest universe they
bring to life in Epic is nothing
short of remarkable.
44 F*** APRIL 2013
Inspired by William Joyce’s 1996 book The Leaf
Men And The Brave Good Bugs, Epic revolves
around a human heroine, Mary Katherine
(MK) (Amanda Seyfried), a teenager who is
told by her father, “just because you haven’t
seen something doesn’t mean it’s not there”.
by two-inch tall warriors who protect the life
of the forest: Leaf Men. They are battling the
forces of evil, the Boggans, who are intent
on destroying the forest by spreading decay.
Visually breathtaking, the detail that infuses
this soaring adventure is exquisite.
“MK’s father, Professor Bomba (Jason
Sudeikis), is an eccentric scientist who believes
there is another world out there in the woods.
MK is cynical and doesn’t understand what she
views as his obsession; but then she gets drawn
into the very world she doesn’t believe in,” says
art director Michael Knapp. “And she discovers
that there is a huge war going on between the
Leaf Men and the Boggans.”
The film began its three-and-a-half-year
journey when director Chris Wedge, along
with Knapp and other key members of the Blue
Sky team, went exploring in the woods.
This wondrous woodland world is populated
“We noticed when we were trudging through
the woods that we take a lot of things for
granted in nature,” says Knapp. “We set out in
Epic to depict a world that is out there, but in a
way that we have never looked at it before. We
are used to looking at flowers from above, but
EPIC
Art director Michael Knapp reveals to F***
the inspiration for the magical,
miniature universe hidden in the forests of EPIC
what do they look like from below? If you were
walking through the forest you might have Jinn
(tiny forest people) all around, but you would
never know it because all you’d see would be
flowers and pine cones. But if you were down
on the forest floor, you would discover that the
flowers are actually hats providing camouflage
for the tiny beings that are hiding under that
bed of daisies. My hope is that when people
watch the film, they will see the world in a
different way.”
Knapp began his career as an illustrator and
commercial storyboard artist but he always
had a passion for film and animation. At Blue
Sky Studios, he began designing sets and
characters, working on Robots, Ice Age: The
Meltdown, and Horton Hears A Who. He was
the art director on the Oscar-nominated short
No Time For Nuts (starring the animated Ice
Age character Scrat) and again on Ice Age 3:
Dawn Of The Dinosaurs. Knapp was the book
designer, co-producer and story contributor
on the anthologies Out Of Picture Volumes 1
and 2.
Knapp sat down for the following interview at
Blue Sky Studios.
What is unique about EPIC?
The film examines how we are all connected.
We often take for granted that our actions
might affect people close to us and people
that we don’t know. The story is about how
important it is not to take those things for
granted and to come to an appreciation of
the connections between people. I also love
the idea that there are two parallel worlds in
existence: our world in human scale and the
Leaf Men world that also exists out there. We
might not even be aware that it is going on all
around us. But their stories and their battles
can affect us without us even knowing it and
we see evidence of their existence throughout
the forest. Our actions can affect their world
too, as we find out in the story.
How did you create this highly imaginative
world?
I did a lot of drawing and painting and fleshed
out the look of the story, and I was surrounded
by incredibly talented artists. I really had a
APRIL 2013 F*** 45
lot of fun. The studio is close to some lovely
parkland but also some specifically beautiful
private properties such as the Steinhardt Estate
[51 acres in Bedford, New York]. It is owned
by the Steinhardt family and it is huge with
an amazing menagerie and lots of fantastic
imported trees and plants. It is landscaped
gorgeously. We went on a trip there with Chris
Wedge, some of the story artists and some of us
from the design department as well as a couple
of the producers. It was very inspiring seeing
all the different plants of varying scales.
Epic was actually green-lit in the autumn of
2009 and all the leaves were falling off the
trees. Winter was coming. Chris took me and
a few other artists along with Greg Couch,
the production designer [together with Bill
Joyce, who is also the author of the book], to
the estate. Then we went out into the Bedford
Woods and wandered around talking about the
natural life in the woods. We needed to do that
quickly before all the leaves fell off the trees.
We were looking at everything and noticing
details. Chris shared his thoughts with us and it
became an evolving conversation as we looked
at nature. We began making mental notes on
what we would focus on the following spring.
We also looked at a lot of Victorian paintings
and illustrations.
Can you share the nature of those initial
discussions?
One of the big notions is that the Leaf Men
world is not actually tiny, it is enormous, even
bigger than the world we live in. Think about
walking through somewhere like New York
City and imagine the Empire State Building
as being the trunk of a tree. That is the scale
of a maple tree to the Leaf Men. The entire
world feels that grand and enormous to them.
There are so many levels of detail. The stems
of daisies can feel like lampposts along the
street. We think of a path as being relatively
flat, but when you are two inches tall, moss is
suddenly knee-high grass and there are very
few flat areas. The creatures in this tiny world
in Epic can leap around like grasshoppers, so
walking around finding a good, flat trail is not
necessarily their top priority. But there are
also falling branches and leaves which create
little walkways that can take you on circuitous
routes around the forest floor. We looked for
46 F*** APRIL 2013
scale cues that we as humans can relate to and
understand, things that when you are tiny
make the world seem that much bigger.
It sounds like an enormous task getting
engrossed in this magical world?
It was wonderful. When you look, you see
colours in rocks that you never noticed before
and all the little bugs that are crawling around.
For the Leaf Men armour, for instance, we took
the idea of a beetle shell. They use beetle shell
inlay for the decorative motif for their armour.
They see patterns in a different way. With
patterns on clothing, we [humans] might use
a flower and repeat that flower all over a shirt.
When you look at a Leaf Man, you do not see
the whole flower, you see the pattern that is
on the individual petal and that pattern means
something. That is what is familiar to them. So
we started looking at how things would appear
to them with their scale and how that relates
to what we see as big human beings. They
see the minutia: the cell make-up of a flower
petal or the veins in a leaf. That is what they
pay attention to rather than the shape of a leaf
itself.
Is there anything that stood out to you
during your research?
We were observing bugs on the surface of a
pond, those water skimmers that hover over
the water. We talked about what would happen
if we had a battle on the surface of the water.
We realised it could be a lot of fun; it would
be like walking across a waterbed where the
surface of the water undulates under your feet.
We found some video footage of a little gecko
in the rain on the surface of some water. The
raindrops hit the stream and he was tossed
up into the air. It was really violent. The little
gecko doesn’t get wet because his skin doesn’t
absorb water.
So we asked ourselves, “If we had Boggans out
there on the water, what would happen?” We
explored that notion and used it in the film.
We also looked at duckweed that you find in
lily ponds, the tiny green leaves. We asked,
“What if those leaves were drawn like a magnet
to Queen Tara (Beyoncé), so that when she
steps onto the water they coalesce under her
feet and form a green carpet and walkway?”
In the film, you will see that they provide an
elegant, magical way for her to walk across the
water, across the surface of the pond. So she
has a lovely green carpet that forms and then
dissipates behind her.
Can you talk about any specific characters
that were interesting to bring to life?
Nim Galuu has six arms and four legs. He is
an enormous glowing caterpillar. He is the
scroll-keeper in the woods, voiced by Steven
Tyler. Our characters go to find him because
they are led to believe that he has information
they need that will help them on their quest.
Nim is a larger-than-life character. One thing
that really defines him visually is his great,
colourful coat. It is a silky velvety smoking
jacket. When we were designing Nim’s coat, we
took a lot of inspiration from butterfly wings. If
we see a butterfly, we might say, “oh, that one is
pretty, its wings have spots on them”. But when
you get down really close, you will see that
those spots break down into a much broader
range of colours, like mosaic tiles. And those
colours are actually living on thousands of
individual plates on a tiny scale that make up
the wing. Because they are separate plates, they
shimmer and look iridescent. They also move
in the wind and then the light hits the colours;
they are beautiful. Those are qualities we
wanted in Nim’s coat and those are the types of
detail that you see when you are that tiny.
How did you create Queen Tara’s look and
attire?
From the waist down, Queen Tara’s dress is
made of iris petals and the train is made of
daisy petals and honeysuckle. The iris petals
wrap around and segue into the train. Tara’s
bodice and sleeves are made of the stem
material from the flower. It is as though you
could take that outer wrapping of a flower stem
and put your arm into it and it would work
as a sleeve. The sleeve is somewhat sheer with
piping because of the stem’s vertical veins. So
the idea with the clothing is that the natural
materials resemble fabrics we would use in our
own clothing. We wanted an appearance that
you could almost take for granted. The details
come from nature but when you step back, the
dress looks like couture, like something you
could put on and wear. We wanted to stay away
from things that were too cute and familiar to
audiences from other projects.
Can you discuss the look of some of the other
characters?
For Mary Katherine, it was more about finding
her attitude. She is an urban girl wearing a
hoodie over leggings and a skirt and combat
boots. She is dressed for comfort, for going out
exploring in the woods.
Ronin (Colin Farrell) is the Leaf Men General.
Ronin and the Leaf Men wear helmets inspired
by the beak of a hummingbird that comes
down for the nose guard. The helmet goes
from a hummingbird shape into the shape
of a gingko leaf. We wanted to tie together
the image of the bird and the leaf. When you
look at samurai warriors, their generals wore
helmets that had larger crests so the soldiers
could see them up on the hill. We used the
same idea with the Leaf Men. So Ronin has a
helmet with a hummingbird crest on it. Their
beetle shell armour picks up an abstraction of
leaf veins which forms the decorative motifs
on the chest plates. Every pattern on them is
derived from a natural pattern.
What about Nod, voiced by Josh Hutcherson?
The first time we see Nod, he is dressed as a
Leaf Man. Later we see him in civilian clothes.
His pants are woollen but his shirt was inspired
by a wood moth’s wing. It is a tan shirt with
brown and white veins; it almost has a tie-dye
effect. It looked like something people might
really wear but we found the pattern on a moth
wing.
What about the Boggans, the “bad guys” led
by Mandrake (Christoph Waltz)?
The Boggans are inspired by creepy crawlies
you find in dead logs and under rocks. When
you pull up a rock, you see these creatures
skitter away. The Boggans are barbaric. The
Leaf Men and the Jinn are an artisan culture,
they make things and they are creative, they
better the world around them. But the Boggans
use stuff they have picked up off the forest
floor such as bones or nutshells. These guys
have no skill and no culture. They are not
that bright! They are very primal. Mandrake
and his son Dagda (Blake Anderson) are a bit
more evolved. They have the closest things to
clothing that any Boggans have. Mandrake
wears a bat cowl (what is left of a bat) on
his head and it drapes down. The bat wings
create a cape. He has strips of hide for his skirt
covering and chunks of beetle shell as his chest
armour. They ride around on bats and grackles,
which are striking little birds that look like
miniature crows. Their tail feathers tend to
look like feather dusters that have been run
through a lawnmower. They seemed to fit the
character of the Boggans because they are a
little rough around the edges.
It is interesting that the story is set in nature
but you are using state-of-the-art digital
technology to bring the world to life.
The computers are great at creating clean crisp
images. So creating an organic world is a real
trick. The Leaf Men world is the antithesis
of technology. Nature is chaos, so emulating
chaos is a really tricky thing. We had to design
elements that could be used in multiple ways
and put together in chaotic combinations and
then we had to refine everything. We had to
find out how we could make a mess and then
convert it into something that feels organic. We
have the best artists and engineers working on
this film and they created a great mess for the
forest floor with lots of dead leaves, pine cones
and rocks. We had to layer in the plants and
render millions of leaves within a shot. Those
were some of the challenges we tackled.
Do you have a favourite moment in the film?
When we were at the Steinhardt Estate I shot
a ton of photographs of light pouring through
the canopy of a tree. The light coming through
the leaves created dappled shadows across the
branches. It was just luminous and beautiful.
There is a sequence in the movie that is so
simple. I was looking at it today. It’s not one of
the big battle sequences or one of the grandest
sets or anything, but it is lovely. You get a sense
that you are flying through trees with these
guys. The light is exactly as I shot it in those
photographs. All the different departments
did such a fantastic job, from modelling to fur,
who put the leaves on the trees, to assembly
who made the forest out of the trees and put
the textures on everything. Then the lighting
department ultimately pulled it all together
into the images we see. Everything started from
these ideas that were initiated years before in
some photographs. Now I look at the scene
and say, “Hey I’ve seen that before.” It has all
come to fruition. That is so special to me. It
is mind-blowing. It’s been a long production,
over three-and-a-half years. Just when you are
feeling tired, you see what everyone after you
has done with the seeds you planted and you
are re-energised. It is very rewarding.
As an artist, did you have to take yourself
back to your childhood in a way and imagine
that the Leaf Men world does exist?
Absolutely, that is how it all starts to make
sense in your head. If it exists for you, then
everyone else can invest in this world. I
imagine what the Leaf Men would be doing
under that group of ferns. Would they have a
rodeo? Are they riding birds or grasshoppers?
What do the Jinn do all day?
You are the father of small children, did that
help when it came to visualising this world?
Yes, that was great because it is so easy to forget
how simple and fun things can be. You are
always trying to get back in touch with that
exuberance children feel when you are working
on material like this. Also, while boys will love
this film, it is great that we have such strong
heroines too. That is wonderful for me as the
father of two girls.
Finally, what do audiences have in store with
Epic? What will they discover?
The 3D experience is extremely immersive and
you will feel like you are experiencing things
differently. I think it makes the world much
more tangible. Hopefully, after seeing Epic,
people will not take playing outside for granted
but will have fun and imagine all these great
adventures that could be taking place out there.
I hope people will be drawn into an experience
that is fresh and fun and surprising. We want
it to be transformative, so that you will never
look at nature in the same way again.
APRIL 2013 F*** 47
BLACK–
48 F*** APRIL 2013
–SMITH
Shane Black explains to F*** how he had to up his game to play
in the big leagues with Robert Downey Jr. and IRON MAN 3
APRIL 2013 F*** 49
Iron Man fans around the world were
concerned when Jon Favreau, the director of
the first two films in the franchise, announced
that he wouldn’t be taking up the reins again
for the third film. But Marvel has surprised
us before with its unusual directorial choices
– including Favreau himself and primarily
television-based Joss Whedon for The Avengers
– and is clearly intending to do so again with
Iron Man 3.
For this first film following the blockbuster
success of The Avengers, Marvel decided to
go with Shane Black, a screen-writer turned
director. Black has a list of impressive screenwriting credits to his name in the action
genre – he made his breakthrough at the age
of 26 when he wrote the screenplay for Lethal
Weapon in 1987. He also wrote the screenplays
for Lethal Weapon 2, The Last Boy Scout, Last
Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodnight,
before writing and directing the criticallyacclaimed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starring Robert
Downey Jr.
Black tells us about raising his game to work
with Downey Jr. and what appealed to him
about Tony Stark and the Iron Man franchise.
What was your impression of the first Iron
Man movie as an outsider/friend of the actor
and not as a filmmaker?
I was very happy for Robert [Downey Jr.]
when I found out he was going to be Iron Man.
It’s one of those why-didn’t-I-think-of-that
situations where you have certain actors that
when you hire them, you get what you pay for.
With Robert, you never quite know what you’re
getting but he always seems to elevate the
material and that’s what’s great about him.
Robert came to me early on with Jon [Favreau].
They had a version but they were looking for
some ideas. I like to think I contributed very
little. I just sat and talked with them about the
movie. I was impressed just how gung-ho they
were to do this thing in kind of a realistic style
and make a real-world film, not just a comic
book film.
Robert elevates anything he takes on. He is
one of those people who is very personal about
it. He’s very passionate and intense about not
just giving you a performance you recognise
from his last performance. I think he’s one of
our great actors and the idea that he can do
something that is as intimate and wonderful as
Chaplin and then also do Iron Man and not be
cynical about it, is remarkable. But Robert is
Iron Man; he really committed to it.
What was it like as a director working with
an actor like Downey Jr., who’s so involved in
the film-making process?
Robert shows up to play ball, and you’ve got
to be pretty alert in the morning, which I’m
not generally. I remember standing outside his
trailer, jumping up and down a couple times,
gulping down coffee because I knew I had to
go in and face this guy. No matter where you
go in the room, he’s going to be two inches
away from your face. He has his ideas and we
collaborate, and we’ve done it before, but he’s a
force of nature to be reckoned with.
He’s an adult. He’s a child. He’s a genius. He
can be the most hyperactive, kinetic guy
who’s limitless in his energy. Basically he’s a
50 F*** APRIL 2013
phenomenon. He’s remarkable to work with,
and he shows up to play. You’ve got to be on
your game, because when he walks in, it’s not
about chewing the fat and drinking coffee. He
wants to go. And so, that was our challenge
— just to be ready on set for him. When he
walked in, we had to be up to it.
Does he motivate your filmmaking process?
Yes. When you want someone to trust you, you
can’t be lazy and you can’t slack and when you
want someone to trust you as much as I wanted
Robert to trust me, it forced me to perform at
a certain level. I didn’t want to disappoint. I
didn’t want him to see me as unwilling to do
something I was asking him to do. So I had
to step up. Robert is the kind of actor that
challenges you in a way that’s not antagonistic;
it’s exciting. I’ve always said that it’s probably
better to hang around people you admire
instead of people who admire you.
It keeps you on your toes and it keeps things
fresh, and hanging around Robert keeps me
on my toes. It’s just a really challenging and
invigorating kind of creative relationship. I feel
he brings out my best because he has the grace
to believe in me.
What attracted you to Tony Stark/Iron Man?
My initial exposure to Iron Man was probably
[the] early sixties [stuff]. I was addicted to
those old superheroes, especially the Hulk
and Iron Man, but more so Iron Man because
he was high-tech and cooler. I also had this
love of robots. I love robots that look like Iron
Man and that sort of meld in like cyborgs. I
loved the Six-Million Dollar Man or what it
could have been. So there’s always this sort of
Michael Crichton high-tech love I’ve had for
that sort of superhero.
Tony Stark has so many troubles, so many
foibles, but only later on did I come to
appreciate that. That’s what makes the
character such a tight fit with Robert and
it’s what I respond to now. Once you have
everything, what do you really have? As you
sit there sipping your champagne, looking
out the huge plate-glass window at the world
you essentially own, what’s really going on in
your head? All the firepower in the world at
your disposal and you’re hanging with chicks
getting drunk. It’s a level of fantasy that I think
people really respond to because here’s a guy
who maintains a conscience even though he
essentially has the ability to be a robber baron.
He comes around and he says, “No, I still have
the responsibility to do the right thing.”
Tony Stark is grounded in reality and that’s
what makes his character so relatable to the
audience, correct?
I think so. One of the great rules of screenwriting that I learned a long time ago was
people tend to respond to not just folks who
do their job pretty well, but the people who
are the best at what they do. They want to
watch people who are the best at what they
do and when they see a guy who is so driven
and whose mind works so quickly that he’s
already three steps ahead all the time, they are
intrigued by just that degree of obsessiveness.
But it’s burning within him; this intensity to
unconsciously, almost effortlessly, be the best at
what he does.
In what direction did you take the Tony Stark
character in Iron Man 3?
In The Avengers, there’s a bit of an otherworldly
element. There’s kind of a fantasy element and
it gets very big and almost flamboyant in its
sci-fi aspect. There was an idea to back off a
little from that with Iron Man 3 and say that
this is a standalone movie. We’re not saying
that this is not the same Avengers universe.
We’re saying, “Okay, he did that last summer
but this summer maybe he’s concerned with
APRIL 2013 F*** 51
something a little less extraterrestrial.” But, at
the same time, to make it a thriller that has
that pulp element to it, it still has to be framed
in terms of the comic book. I think we have
a creepy type of menace in this one that is
sort of outlandish and comic-book but also
backed up against a real world environment
of international war, international arms and
international terror.
In terms of pacing, is it up-against-the-wall/
ticking clock timing we’ll be seeing in Iron
Man 3?
This movie is sort of a crisis movie, which
means there’s an inciting event. You see
some swirling around and pieces that you’re
introduced to and you don’t know quite
what they mean or how they’re going to fall
together, but once the inciting event draws
them together, you’re shot off and you rocket
along towards the finale. It’s probably about
52 F*** APRIL 2013
48 hours or maybe three days for the whole
thing, and it’s sort of a headlong rush and in
the midst of it I’d like to think that the ‘crucible
element’ is that we take Tony Stark and we sort
of break him down and we put him through
the wringer. There are parts in this movie
where he’s not so much in the Iron Man suit
and that’s a lot of fun too, when you see him
do some action stuff, not as Iron Man, but as
Tony. It’s part of him being broken and having
to reassess things, and then stand back up and
reclaim what’s his by the end of the movie.
But that journey and that crucible is what’s
going to be fun because we’re going to see Tony
Stark, within the course of just a few days, put
through the paces. And Robert’s just the one to
bring that sort of thing to life.
How far did you go with the Iron Man suit?
How many are there?
At the beginning of this movie, there are 42
suits. The newest one is based on a technology
that was sort of hinted at in the comics, but we
do it a slightly different way. Tony has basically
put little outlets subcutaneously beneath his
exterior layer of skin that can draw the suit to
him when he wants it, so it’s still rock-solid,
still protects him from bullets, but it’s also
flexible enough so that he could just throw
the suit off him at someone else. I remember
Drew Pearce, my co-writer, and I went sort of
hog-wild when we were told that there should
be extra suits.
Talk about bio-tech and how you pushed the
technology in this movie.
The thing about the Extremis armour that
always interested me in the comic books was
that you had the sense that Tony Stark puts
on an iron suit and hides inside it in a way. He
wouldn’t call it that but that’s sort of the case.
But, with the Extremis people, you always get
the sense that they’re burning up from inside.
So one of them could actually say to Tony for
instance, “You drive a car; I am the car.”
I like that notion, so rather than give the
biotech to Tony, I thought it might be
interesting to toy with giving it to some of the
villains and make them more frightening.
How did you interpret the Mandarin, Tony
Stark’s greatest foe from the comic books?
From the very beginning, we were all about a
real-world interpretation of the Mandarin. I
hate to break it to you, but he’s not from space
and the [power] rings are [just] rings. There
is showmanship. There are accoutrements
— paraphernalia from warfare that he sort of
drapes himself with. He studies insurgency
tactics; he surrounds himself with dragons and
symbols of warlords and Chinese iconography
because he wants to represent this sort of
prototypical terrorist. So he’s the ultimate
terrorist, but he’s also savvy; he’s been in the
intelligence world, he knows how to use the
media. He is the terrorist that represents all
terrorists. And taking it to a real-world level
like that was a lot of fun for us.
Can you talk about creating the style of
this film and merging sci-fi and fantastical
elements?
At the same time as it feels a little fantastical,
it doesn’t feel unsophisticated and that’s the
thing. The task becomes to generate a sci-fi
plot that actually does feel real-world and fits
within the rest of the structure. The actual
race to the finish is based on a kind of thriller
format. We went for the structure of a thriller,
the bigness of a comic book action movie,
coupled with the reality and the sophisticated
chill of a villain that’s frightening in today’s
world.
This is a huge tent-pole movie to direct.
What was different for you compared to
doing a movie like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang?
This was more difficult. There were just more
factors, more elements, and more departments
to deal with. I learned a lot and I was led sort
of by the hand through a process I’d not been
familiar with, of pre-visualising enormous
action scenes with artists and animators. You
have a scene where the house falls down and
you can’t just show up at the house and go,
“Okay, knock out that beam, would ya?” On
this film, everything is planned in advance.
Iron Man 3 opens on 26 April 2013.
APRIL 2013 F*** 53
A SONG
SUNG BLUE
(AND GREEN):
THE PLIGHT OF THE VFX ARTIST
By Jedd Jong
54 F*** APRIL 2013
colour most often used in digital chroma key
compositing. Without the work of visual effects
artists, most blockbusters would appear as a
sea of green, instead of an alien landscape,
a vast open ocean, a magical forest or 19thcentury Paris.
Oscar night has come and gone, and there was
the usual buzz about the winners, the excited
discussion over who took home the night’s
biggest awards, chatter about the glamourous
red carpet outfits, and debate over whether
the host was funny or just plain offensive.
As usual, those who emerged triumphant in
categories deemed “minor” or “miscellaneous”
by many went largely unnoticed. It’s certainly
understandable, as audiences at large love the
movies for that sheen of glitz and escapism, not
for those who slave tirelessly behind the scenes.
However, some have begun to pay heed to a
cry in the dark from those in the visual effects
industry.
Bill Westenhofer,
Guillaume
Rocheron, ErikJan de Boer and
Donald R. Elliott
were honoured
with the Best
Achievement in Visual Effects Oscar at the
85th Academy Awards for Life of Pi. However,
just two weeks before the ceremony, Rhythm
& Hues Studios – the visual effects house that
helped to create the incredibly life-like Bengal
tiger in the film, among many other effects
– filed for bankruptcy and laid off over 250
employees. Just a few blocks away from the
opulent Dolby Theatre where the ceremony
was being held, hundreds of current and
former Rhythm & Hues employees pounded
the pavement in protest, wondering what
happened to their “piece of the Pi”.
Inside
the Dolby
Theatre,
Westenhofer
attempted
to draw
attention to
the situation,
saying “Sadly, Rhythm & Hues is suffering
severe financial difficulties right now, and I
urge you all to remember...” It was all he could
manage before his microphone was cut off
and he and the other recipients of the award
were chased unceremoniously off the Oscar
stage with John Williams’ ominous theme
from Jaws. The Oscar producers claimed that
the speech had run over time, at 44.5 seconds
long. However, the next recipient (Life of Pi
cinematographer Claudio Miranda) spoke
for 60 seconds without being played off.
Something was amiss.
It was a moment that was probably quickly
forgotten by most in the theatre that night,
but not by visual effects artists everywhere.
Many turned their profile pictures on social
media sites into a solid green square in a show
of solidarity, as green (along with blue) is the
Computer-generated effects are used in
practically every film and television show
these days, and many times the impact
isn’t as noticeable as in films like Life of
Pi, The Avengers or The Hobbit, but it’s no
less integral. Techniques like background
replacement can seamlessly make a scene
appear as it if was shot on location, instead of
on a soundstage or the studio lot, cutting down
on potential logistical issues for the production
crew. The visual effects community feels underappreciated at a time when the industry is
becoming more and more centred around the
work they produce, and it has become clear
that visual effects have never been as important
to Hollywood, as popular with the filmgoers,
or as uncertain a business as they are today.
“What I was trying to say up there is that
it’s at a time when visual effects movies are
dominating the box office, but that visual
effects companies are struggling,” Westenhofer
said later that night. “I wanted to point out
that we aren’t technicians. Visual effects is not
just a commodity that’s being done by people
pushing buttons. We’re artists, and if we don’t
find a way to fix the business model, we start
to lose the artistry. If anything, Life of Pi shows
that we’re artists and not just technicians.”
The bankruptcy filing came after a prospective
buyer, India-based Prime Focus, failed to come
up with the financing required to purchase
Rhythm & Hues. The budgets for visual
effects in major movies are not as large as they
appear - and the ones who suffer most from
the pressure placed on said budgets are the
artists, who will regularly not be paid overtime,
even when clocking in 15-hour work days and
weekends. There is also the notable absence
of a visual effects union in Hollywood, when
every other film trade has one – but it will hard
to establish one in the midst of the financial
difficulties faced by the industry. It has also
become easier and more cost-efficient for
studios to outsource the production of visual
effects to foreign countries.
Rhythm & Hues is far from the only casualty:
major industry player Digital Domain filed
for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in
September 2012 and was acquired by a joint
venture between China-based company
Galloping Horse and India-based Reliance
MediaWorks. Asylum and Café FX number
among the California-based visual effects
companies that have shut down in the past few
years. Eric Roth, director of the Visual Effects
Society, said he hopes that “the understanding
that something is wrong has potentially
reached a critical mass” and warns that if a
couple more VFX vendors like Rhythm &
Hues find themselves in trouble in the next
few years, “that would make it difficult for the
studios to get what they want”.
We at F*** Magazine tip our hats to the men
and women working in visual effects, for
without them, Bruce Banner wouldn’t be able
to Hulk out, the T-Rex would be unable to
pursue Dr Alan Grant and company through
Jurassic Park, Optimus Prime would never
transform, Neo and Agent Smith would never
tangle in bullet time and yes, Richard Parker
would never roar.
Here are some photos from the tumblr
“beforevfx”, revealing what some movies look
like before visual effects artists work their
magic.
Hugo
The Avengers
The Matrix
Alice in Wonderland
Prometheus
Iron Man 2
APRIL 2013 F*** 55
EN-TRANCE-D
Danny Boyle gets in our heads with TRANCE, a hypnotic thriller
that’s taking the cinematic world by storm
56 F*** APRIL 2013
APRIL 2013 F*** 57
After intriguing the world
by helming the London
Olympics last year,
acclaimed film-maker
Danny Boyle is heading
into the world of a trippy
noir thriller, one that drags
the carpet out from
underneath the feet of its
characters – as well as
its audience.
Trance tells the story of a fine art auctioneer
who gets mixed up with a gang and joins
forces with a hypnotherapist to recover a
lost painting. As boundaries between desire,
reality and hypnotic suggestion begin to blur,
the stakes rise faster than anyone could have
anticipated.
It stars James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and
Vincent Cassel, based on a screenplay written
by John Hodge and Joe Ahearne.
Boyle talks to F*** about what he wanted to
accomplish with Trance and how he was glad
to do it as a smaller-budget production.
How much did Trance change from the point
when you first decided that this is what you
wanted to do and the finished film?
It’s always difficult to assess that journey that
they go on. People, other people, are better at
analysing that. On a day-to-day level, because
you’re changing it the whole time, you don’t
notice the way you’ve kind of repainted it.
You kind of can’t see what was there. Other
people say “blimey!” Like I was just talking to
Rosario, who watched it again last night at the
premiere, and she was saying how much it had
changed. I can’t judge that. Although it’s based
on an original script [by Joe Ahearne], it’s very
much John [Hodge]’s version of this story. But
it’s very, very different in the way it emerged.
There are a couple of things that remained the
same, like the central female character, which
is one of the reasons why we wanted to make
the film in the first place. But it just twists and
changes off that so much.
It’s difficult to tell, it’s difficult to unravel, you
know, what it was before to what it is now. I
can’t really tell. It’s always a strange one. It’s
like when people say discover you offered
it first of all to another actor and they’ll say,
“What would it have been like if Hugh Grant
had been in it?” And you don’t know. And
you can never do that. Even though you may
have approached him first, which we didn’t
for this one by the way… You can never kind
of imagine it other than the actor you did cast
because they become it and you can never
imagine anyone else playing the part.
The nature of the plot means we don’t get the
usual backstories for each of the characters,
a sense of their motivation. What kind
of a challenge does that pose to you as a
filmmaker actually?
58 F*** APRIL 2013
Oh, I loved that. That was one of the reasons
to do the film. It’s why it kind of resembles
Shallow Grave a bit, which is that you have
a central threesome, all of whom are not
what they seem. And you can’t do that with
a big-budget movie because all the studios
are ever interested in is “Who are we rooting
for?” That’s all they want to know. But if you
can answer that question, you’re off. Then it’s
a question of “let’s cast him”. So it’s lovely to
be able to make a film where you don’t abide
by that rule particularly, which is becoming
increasingly fixed in cinema. It is something
you can defy. Or not even defy. Deliberately
toy with.
Obviously James McAvoy, at the beginning,
is classically set up to be the guy to root
for. I mean, he seems personable, funny,
knowledgeable, and successful; he’s got a
voiceover, he even looks directly into the
camera like your guide, warning you. Then he
gets hit by this French guy, and it’s like, “Oh,
poor old James”. Of course, it doesn’t turn out
quite like that. If you continue to think that,
you’ll get lost. That was one of the central
premises to the film. And it was nice to be able
to cast Vincent [Cassel] as a French gangster;
it’s an identity we’ve seen him play before. He
obviously is very good at doing it, but by the
end of the film he’s basically like a lovelorn
teenager. And then you get Rosario. You have a
part that within its construction is the classical
femme fatale part. Yet you don’t want to cast
an icy blonde. I didn’t want to do that because
the story is not that. It’s actually got pain in it.
Eventually there’s emotion in it, which is more,
which is richer than that the cold, cynical
behaviour of just behaving worse than men in
order to be able to get something out of them.
Was making your leads three different
nationalities a deliberate choice?
We were going to shoot in Manhattan
originally, with an English girl. It was always
deliberate that she, Elizabeth, should not be
from that country. We wanted her to feel a
long way from home, so that she didn’t have
anybody she could turn to. She felt like a
stranger in a strange land in some way. We
switched it to London, because of the Olympic
Games thing, and we looked for the girl in
France and Spain but principally in America.
Vincent was an accident really. He just
suddenly became available, and interested,
and if that happens then you just jump. So
Christian Colson (producer) and I got on the
train to Paris and met with Vincent for half an
hour - I love him as an actor. He is one of the
world’s greatest actors. He’s not acting in his
own language, which is obviously a limitation
on him. So you turn your nose up at that, at
your peril. We were delighted to be able to
cast him. Which made it feel a little bit more
international than we originally intended,
but I’m delighted to be able to do that. And
[French co-producers] Pathé were squealing
with delight. He has that bizarre job now
where he has to go to Paris to dub himself into
French. Which is a bizarre hall of mirrors, isn’t
it? Especially on a film like this.
Do you ever watch audiences watching your
films?
The time that you get to do that is during the
test screenings. I know a lot of filmmakers hate
test screenings, but I really like them. The film’s
not finished yet, but there’s no other time when
you have that purity of response where people
know literally nothing. I mean you’re not even
fully convinced about what the film’s about
yet, because you haven’t finished it. I love those
screenings. Afterwards, people talking can be
a bit painful, it can get a bit difficult, especially
with the studio, if it doesn’t get high enough
marks. But I find the process, the rhythm of
watching the film with an audience hugely
helpful. One thing I’ve learnt about my films is
the film bursts into the room at the beginning.
It’s unapologetic and it’s just like careering
at you at the beginning, you don’t have to do
any work because it’s like woooosh — there’s
the beginning for you. I love that kind of
beginning. Film should be communal. That
sort of communal experience of watching a
film together.
How do you find American audiences,
who always want to know everything that’s
happening, responding to Trance, where
things are more ambiguous?
I remember there were some guys in the test
screeningss who were amazing, the way they
spoke about it afterwards. They didn’t want
to know what was going to happen. And they
liked it for that reason. We have a tendency
in Europe to dumb down America. They are
very sophisticated film-goers. They like a
particular kind of film sometimes, but actually
they’re very sophisticated. They love films in a
way that we don’t. I mean the French do and
India does, those countries I know, and the
Americans do in a way we don’t and other
European countries don’t. Certainly Britain. I
don’t think we have it in our blood in the way
they do. So I’m always very wary of people
easily dumbing down America and going,
“Oh these dumb Americans ruining your
movie”. You know they’re a very sophisticated
audience, with a slightly different sensibility.
They’re much more into sentiment, they’re
much more accessible to sentiment, much
more positive about sentiment and about an
emotional rollercoaster. They’re much freer
and let that be much more accessible. I think
that’s a national sentiment they hold about
their movies, which we’re slightly more wary
of, I guess. But again I don’t think the general
public in Britain is. I think it’s the intelligentsia.
Are there still genres you would like to
explore?
You tend to talk in genres when you’re doing
publicity, though you don’t really think about
that… For instance, we’re working at the
moment on two period-piece movies, which is
not a genre that we’ve picked. It is a genre, but
we’ve not really picked it. I’ve never done one
before, so you think we have deliberately gone
there. It’s not that — they sort of just emerge.
I mean I would still love to do a musical,
having said all that. The problem with that is
you really have to let that emerge. We’ve done
one film that could have been a musical, which
was Millions. It should have been a musical
and Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer, and I,
we talked about it, and we didn’t quite have
enough confidence at the time to kind of pull
it off really. That kind of film — which is two
lovely boys and they would sing. And you
wouldn’t question why they’re singing and then
that would let the adults sing and everybody
would be happy. And then you can dance. As
soon as you sing, you can dance. And there’s
not a problem, there’s no barrier. But you have
to let that vehicle emerge, you can’t create that
vehicle because this is an original musical, it’s
not an adaptation of a stage play or a remake of
another musical. It’s actually trying to make an
original musical story with original music.
You mentioned in the past that you felt
Rosario Dawson’s talents hadn’t been fully
exploited. What do you do to draw out those
performances from those actors that other
directors don’t?
You watch actors all the time, and you’re
collecting a kind of library of people that you
think are capable of things. I met Rosario a
few years ago on a film, and I was going to cast
her in it, then the film fell apart. But I watched
her subsequently, and I always thought she
was capable of playing good roles but you very
rarely get an Ocean’s Eleven for women, where
you know there are multiple parts; there’s one
role usually. So there are only so many of them
that get to play it. And it’s nice to be able to
give the role to someone who is unexpected in
the part. I like that feeling, that extra frisson of
discovery. Although she’s well known anyway.
As I said, all the time you collect the
knowledge of people you think that can do it. I
come from the theatre so I’m very comfortable
with actors and I like them to act. I don’t want
them to do nothing. I mean some actors do
nothing, just do nothing and it works. I like
the actors to act really, and I push it if I can.
And I’ll do a take where they do nothing if
that’s their taste, and then I’ll say “I’ve got that,
but can we go a bit further?” If you look at my
films, they are acted.
One of the problems coming from here
[Britain] is social realism. It’s a wonderful
tradition, but it’s also a hindrance. And I like
to lift it off. Stretch it a bit tighter and make it
hum a bit. The reason for that is you can then
break it. And we always try to have that kind
of surreal element in it where people burst into
song, which I haven’t quite done yet, properly.
Or you know, somebody’s head gets taken
half off, and yet they’re talking to you. Or
somebody goes down a toilet. Whatever it is,
the surreal thing. And in a film like this, you’re
always trying to lay the ground for that. So in
this film you have the painting by Goya, who
is a surrealist, and that picture is surreal. He’s
got male witches hovering above his head and
he’s incapable of seeing them. It’s a symbol of
Simon but it also introduces a kind of slightly
surreal element into the film to prepare you
subconsciously for what is to come.
hell! If you’ve got £700,000, that could be
yours. That was his starting point. And you’re
like this thinking ooooooh. But it ended up
going for £2.4 million. So there you go. But it
was very beautiful to look at. To imagine it was
there, and the original hand had drawn it. That
was very entrancing.
Are you an art lover?
Is it true you’re adapting Porno, the sequel to
Trainspotting, for release in 2016?
Yeah — we try to have a kind of bible of
images at the beginning of a film for everyone
to look at and share, which are just visual
instincts. Sometimes they appear in the film;
sometimes they’re just kind of a mood. But
they always feel like they should be there. And
it’s something that you can look at, because a
script is obviously literary and communication
is all verbal-based. So it’s nice to have a visual
thing you use to communicate as well.
Are there any other artistic influences on
Trance apart from Goya?
Not in particular, but we tried to make
every decision in the film part of a sort of an
induction. It was to try and seduce you into
the film, so everything – like the casting, the
clothes, the places that they lived, the colours,
the music — everything’s trying to induct you.
Literally entrance you. Because eventually
you’re going to end up in a series of trances.
That’s the idea of the film. So for Elizabeth it’s
a not a realistic place where a hypnotherapist
would live. It’s this orange-mirrored world
that’s slightly bizarre. You could do a realistic
place where it looks fine. But there’s an extra
thing you get where you lure people in by using
reflective surfaces, because obviously your
story is that that person isn’t quite what they
seem. There are other things going on. There’s
all sorts of things. That’s the idea of the film.
And art is a part of that for sure.
Can art actually put you into a trance?
Well, it does with me. We went to this Sotheby’s
auction. So the guy who’s the senior auctioneer
at the beginning of the film, Mark Poltimore,
he’s a senior art auctioneer at Sotheby’s. He
took us around. And he took us into a serious
auction, like serious auction, where they’re
spending hundreds of millions of dollars. And
there was this Sehgal painting there. Oh my
god! It was so beautiful! And you think bloody
We’re trying to, seriously. This is not a tease.
We are trying to go back to Trainspotting. We’re
trying to make a Trainspotting 2: T2. Obviously
it was a very successful film so you think, well,
a sequel is something you know you can make.
We thought about it ten years ago, but the
actors just looked the same. So we made lots of
jokes about how actors, you know they imply
they’re dangerous, kind of rebellious creatures.
But actually, they look after their skin better
than any of us! They’ve got cucumbers on at
the weekend and stuff like that.
Now, twenty years later, or certainly 2016, the
idea would be to look at the same guys playing
the same parts, and what’s happened to them
in that time. It would have its own aesthetics,
and its own reason to be. It wouldn’t be a
repeat necessarily of the style of the original
film, or the appeal of the film because of the
time that’s passed. What’s happened to them?
Do they stay in the same town? Do they stay
bonded together? Have they loved? Have they
lost? That’s the world that you would want to
explore. It won’t be a very close adaptation of
[Irvine Welsh’s novel] Porno, no. But then the
first one wasn’t a very close adaptation of the
book. The book was a huge inspiration, as it’s
a masterpiece I think. But it wasn’t very close.
John [Hodge] was very free with the adaptation
of it. And I think we will be on this one as well.
Have all the actors committed to it?
Well, they won’t commit until we’ve got a
script, and rightly so. That’s a kind of a quality
threshold that they’ll all pass judgment on
and rightly so. I don’t think anybody will want
to do it and disappoint people with a second
iteration of it.
Trance opens on 1 May 2013.
APRIL 2013 F*** 59
VIVE
L’ANIMATION!
Book your calendar for the
2nd French Animation Film Festival from 12-14 April 2013…
By Shawne Wang
The French are well-known for their handsome men (bonjour, Jean
Dujardin!), their gamine actresses (merci, Audrey Tautou!) and their
daring, provocative films about the politics of sex, gender and control
(comme Belle De Jour and La Pianiste).
What is perhaps less known is that France’s history in the animation
industry is one of the longest in the world. The earliest French
animated films date back to the late 1800s, and it was French science
teacher Émile Reynaud who created the praxinoscope – the very first
projector that could play animated films of up to 16 frames. On 28
October 1892, he screened Pauvre Pierrot in Paris with the help of his
invention, the first time an animated film had ever been shown
in public.
To celebrate France’s rich tradition in animated films, Alliance Française
is reviving the French Animated Film Festival for a second run in April
2013. Five of the most exciting animated movies made in recent years
will be screened during the festival – we’ve provided a sampler of what
you can look forward to in the following pages.
Venue: Alliance Française Theatre (1 Sarkies Road, Singapore 258130)
Prices (excluding Sistic fees): $7 (Alliance Française members and
students); $9 (general public); $25 (festival pass covering all five films)
KIRIKOU ET LES HOMMES ET
LES FEMMES
(Kirikou And The Men And The Women)
2012, 108 mins
Date/Time: 12 April 2013, 5pm & 14 April 2013, 11am
Director: Michel Ocelot
Cast: Romann Berrux, Awa Sène Sarr
In 1998, Ocelot released Kirikou Et La Sorcière (Kirikou and
the Sorceress), an animated film based on elements of West
African folk tales and which tells the story of a newborn
boy who saves his village from the evil witch Karaba. The
first film was so successful that a sequel and even a stage
musical have followed in its footsteps. Kirikou Et Les
Hommes Et Les Femmes is the third movie in the series,
focusing on the brave and intelligent Kirikou’s continuing
adventures as he helps the people in his village. Along the
way, he discovers the secret of a mysterious blue monster
and the magical power of music.
60 F*** APRIL 2013
LE TABLEAU
COULEUR DE PEAU: MIEL
Date/Time: 13 April 2013, 11am
Director: Jean-François Laguionie
Cast: Jessica Monceau, Adrien Larmande, Thierry Jahn, Julien
Bouanich, Céline Ronté
Date/Time: 13 April 2013, 4pm
Directors: Laurent Boileau, Jung Henin
Cast: Jung Henin, Cathy Boquet, Mahé Collet, Christelle Cornil,
William Coryn, David Macaluso
In the home of a
Painter hangs The
Painting – a world
unto itself filled with
flowering gardens, a
threatening forest and a
chateau that its creator
has left, unfortunately,
incomplete. Three
kinds of characters
populate this
unfinished world:
the Toupins, who are
completely drawn;
the Pafinis, who lack
a few colours; and the
Reufs, who are merely
sketches. Considering
themselves superior,
the Toupins seize
power, eject the
Pafinis from the
chateau, and enslave
the Reufs. Convinced that only the Painter can restore harmony by
completing the painting, a band of misfits – Ramo (Toupin), Lola
(Pafini) and Plume (Reuf) – sets out to look for him. Along the way,
they encounter one question after another: What has become of the
Painter? Why did he abandon them? Why did he begin destroying
some of his paintings? Will they know the Painter’s secret one day?
200,000 Korean children
have been dispersed
throughout the world
since the end of the
Korean War. Jung, born
in 1965 in Seoul and
adopted in 1971 by a
Belgian family, is one
such child. Adapted from
Jung’s own graphic novel,
Couleur De Peau: Miel
recounts the events that
have led Jung to accept the
contradictions of his own
existence and identity. A
ground-breaking mix of
live-action and animation,
this autobiographical
documentary touches
on issues of identity,
integration, maternal love,
and the reconstitution
of a family as it follows
Jung from his childhood in the orphanage through to his troubled
adolescence in his new home in Belgium.
LE MAGASIN DES SUICIDES
MIA ET LE MIGOU
Date/Time: 13 April 2013, 6pm
Director: Patrice Leconte
Cast: Bernard Alane, Isabelle Spade, Kecey Motett Klein, Laurent
Gendron, Eric Metayer, Pierre François, Jacques Mathou
Date/Time: 13 April 2013, 6pm
Director: Jacques-Rémy Girerd
Cast: Dany Boon, Jean-Pierre Coffe, Yolande Moreau, Romain Bouteille,
Jean-François Derec, Pierre Richard
(The Painting)
2011, 76 mins
(Approved For Adoption)
2012, 75 mins
(The Suicide Shop)
2012, 85 mins
Imagine a postapocalyptic city ravaged
by the vicissitudes of
severe climate change,
where people no
longer have a taste
for anything… to the
point that the shop
that does the best
business in town is
the one that makes it
easier for anyone to
take their own life. The
rot has completely set
in. But, one day, the
store-owners give birth
to a child who is joy
incarnate. The film is
based on the novel of
the same name by Jean
Teule.
(Mia And The Migoo)
2008, 91 mins
After her mother’s death,
eight-year-old Mia leaves
her home village to search
for her father across a
treacherous landscape of
mountains and landslides
– a journey that will also
see her encountering the
extraordinary Migoo.
Mia Et Le Migou won the
European Film Award for
Best Animated Feature at
the 2009 European Film
Awards.
APRIL 2013 F*** 61
62 F*** APRIL 2013
APOCALYPSE
NOW
Ong Kuo Sin speaks exclusively to F*** about pushing boundaries
in his edgy new drama JUDGMENT DAY, a local movie quite unlike
any you’ve seen before
By Shawne Wang
APRIL 2013 F*** 63
It’s an unwritten rule in the local movie industry that Singaporean films
have to be comedies. Apparently, it just makes more financial sense,
because Singaporeans only want to watch movies about themselves that
will make them laugh – not ones that will make them cry or, heaven
forbid, think.
That’s why it was so refreshing for us to sit down with director Ong
Kuo Sin one afternoon earlier this year to talk about his new movie
Judgment Day (世界末日), an upcoming local film that we’re pretty sure
is completely unlike anything you’ve seen before.
The concept is intriguing and it’s most certainly not a comedy. Here
goes: imagine that you’re told the world is going to end in 72 hours. How
would you react?
Ong observes, “Singapore is unique – it’s probably the one place where
everyone wouldn’t know what to do. We don’t have it in our DNA to
do something nonsensical” in response to a cataclysmic, life-changing
event.
Regardless, Ong’s film – which he wrote while sequestered in lock-down
mode in Taiwan – tries to answer that question with four inter-twined
stories of some Singaporeans who actually do dare to say what they
want. Whether they’re committing adultery or have always secretly
wanted to have a sex change operation, they pluck up the courage with a
meteor hurtling towards Earth, and go for their hearts’ desire.
Sounds interesting? That alone would provide the basis for a fascinating
movie. But Ong is even more ambitious than that. We don’t think this
really counts as a spoiler, because Ong assures us that it happens half
an hour into the film: the meteor disintegrates, and thereafter, the
characters in the movie must find a way to live with the choices they
made in moments of reckless abandon, when they thought they were
running out of time.
As you can probably tell, this is no run-of-the-mill local movie. It
asks some pretty big questions about our priorities in life and love:
What would you do if you knew the world was ending? What is most
important to you in the whole world? If you forgive someone because
you’re going to die, what happens when you get a new lease on life?
Ong has had his share of difficulties in getting Judgment Day onto the
big screen. He’s had to take up arms against cinema distributors and
potential investors alike who were bored, found it too serious, or just
didn’t get the concept.
He had actually even approached a local television station as far back as
2011, proposing that a television series be made out of the concept. If he
had received the green light, the series would have been produced just in
time to coincide with the rampant doomsday speculation that went on
towards the end of 2012. (Spoiler alert: the Mayans, as we all now know,
were clearly mistaken about the end of the world.)
When the television series didn’t work out, he decided to make a movie
instead, and thereafter encountered another set of problems. Local films,
he was told by many people in the movie industry, have to be funny…
and relatively short. Conventional wisdom suggests that local audiences
have neither the stomach nor patience for anything that’s long, dramatic,
and broody if it’s set in Singapore.
As a result, Ong has had to whittle his film down considerably to get its
running time below the two-hour mark. “My own cut would have been
64 F*** APRIL 2013
comfortably been two hours long,” he tells us. “It’s a shame to lose some
of the footage I have, not because it’s bad but because of time constraints.
It’s such a waste.”
These constraints haven’t deterred Ong though, because he believes
firmly in his story and the starry cast he has assembled, including a host
of Singapore’s veteran television actors – from Guo Liang as the man
whose wife confesses her adultery to him; to Chua Enlai and Rebecca
Lim as a couple who break up when the apocalypse is immiment; and
Wang Yuqing and Mark Lee as policemen worrying about a corruption
scandal that was swept under the carpet twenty years ago. Adrian Pang
even has a cameo as the Prime Minister of Singapore.
In fact, one member of Ong’s cast is playing a role you’d never associate
with him in a million years. Better remembered as a scene-stealing
sidekick in comedies big and small, Henry Thia is tackling the role of
a man who confesses to his wife and two children that he has always
wanted to be a woman.
It didn’t take a lot of convincing to get Thia to play the part – Ong notes
that Thia “totally loved” it, unlike the other actor who was up for the
role (and shall go unnamed for the purposes of this article) but was too
“scared” of what it would mean for his manly, dashing image.
Throughout filming, Ong coached Thia relentlessly to ensure that
the performance was a quieter, more subtle one than Thia was used
to delivering. In Ong’s opinion, the outcome speaks for itself. He has
presented his colleagues with rough cuts of the film, and the unanimous
response is that Thia’s story is the best and most interesting one.
Ong has no qualms admitting that his film is “a gamble” – he praises
main investor and executive producer Lee in particular for daring
to take a chance on a first-time movie director. (Judgment Day is coproduced by Lee’s Galaxy Entertainment and mm2 Entertainment on a
budget of S$1 million.) “I really respect Mark a lot for trusting that this
film can find an audience. He’s very brave.”
To Ong’s credit, he’s got plenty of experience under his belt as a director
– he’s been plying his trade for twelve years, working for various
television production houses in both English and Mandarin.
But that’s the main reason he also felt the need for a change, to take a
chance on a movie that doesn’t fit any of the accepted notions of what a
local film should be. “Everything we keep doing is the same. It doesn’t
push any boundaries or limits.” If Judgment Day succeeds, he hopes that
this will help “break open another market” for everyone working with
him, which will in turn reward him with more creative control in future.
When asked to boil his concept down to its bare bones for our readers,
Ong pauses and thinks. He doesn’t want the movie to come across as too
“philosophical”, as something only a subset of people will get.
In the final analysis, he concludes that the story is really all about
love. “Whatever mistakes you make, in the end, it’s love that solves
everything.”
And that’s something everyone everywhere will understand.
Judgment Day opens on 18 April 2013.
APRIL 2013 F*** 65
THE SOUNDTRACK
OF OUR LIVES
Chai Yee Wei talks to F*** exclusively about
THAT GIRL IN PINAFORE, his upcoming musical movie
about an important element of
our Singapore heritage: the ‘xinyao’ movement
By Shawne Wang
Photos: Darren Soh
66 F*** APRIL 2013
APRIL 2013 F*** 67
“I really have to thank Ocean Butterflies. I wanted them to treat these
songs not as old songs, but as new ones, and they really breathed new
life into them… After the songs were re-arranged, some people didn’t
even realise that the songs have been around for over twenty years!”
Chai’s film also boasts a cast of fresh young faces, including Project
Superstar 2 winner Daren Tan, Mediacorp actress Julie Tan and popular
identical-twin bloggers Jayley and Hayley Woo. To get them ready to
sing for the camera, the entire ensemble of actors was thrown together
for the first time in an acting/singing boot-camp.
“I was very happy to work with such a young cast – they were so full of
infectious energy and optimism that when I got on set, I felt that I had
become younger myself by ten years!”
It’s been 31 years since the term ‘xinyao’ was first coined in reference to
the brand of local folk music that ruled the airwaves in the 1980s and
early 1990s. The songs have now passed into our cultural history. Some
of them are so popular and evergreen – and have travelled so far beyond
Singapore’s shores – that you’d be forgiven if you thought they were
written by Taiwanese singers.
For director Chai Yee Wei, who’s making a switch away from horror
movies (Blood Ties), ‘xinyao’ formed the very soundtrack to his life.
“Everyone’s fondest memories are of the time they were studying in
school, and for me, those memories were accompanied by ‘xinyao’.”
His upcoming movie, That Girl In Pinafore (我的朋友我的同學我愛過
的一切), is a tribute to that era and the life-long friends he made while
growing up in what felt like a very different Singapore.
“One of my closest friends – we went to the exact same school all the
way from pre-primary through to college in the States – is now living
and working in Australia. He told me, ‘You know what? Singapore
doesn’t feel like the Singapore I loved back in the days when I was in
secondary school. If you ask me whether I’m patriotic today, I don’t
know what I’d be patriotic about.’”
Chai kept his friend’s words in the back of his mind while making the
movie. He says it’s one of the reasons why he really wanted to “rekindle
that relationship [he used to have] with Singapore” in the film. “These
[songs] belong to us, they are our heritage, and we can’t just leave
everything behind because of economic progress.”
Set in 1993, That Girl In Pinafore is the story of a group of friends who
are trying desperately to save a local music café from going out of
business. Along the way, they fall in love with one another and sing – a
lot.
The soundtrack of the film, which will be released in June, contains
twelve re-arranged tracks, including some of the most popular ‘xinyao’
songs – such as Liang Wenfu’s liltingly beautiful ode to friendship, The
Narrow Stream Flows For A Long Time (細水長流).
It was actually trickier, Chai tells us, to figure out which songs could be
left out of the movie. “I want it to feel as if the song was written for the
film, as opposed to the other way around.”
As a result, Chai wound up selecting a few songs that haven’t received as
much airplay on the radio. “Some of these songs are actually better than
the ones everyone knows! One of them (麻雀銜竹枝) was even banned
from being played on the radio because [it contained some] dialect. It’s a
very patriotic song about a person who leaves Singapore but eventually
wants to come home, and it actually perfectly encapsulates the spirit of
the movie.”
Chai admits that it wasn’t easy for him to find financial backers for the
film at first. “A lot of people I spoke to were sceptical about a ‘xinyao’
movie’s prospects for success – they thought ‘xinyao’ wasn’t particularly
hip and wouldn’t sell.”
But he persevered, eventually having the music serve as the backdrop to
his story rather than the sole focus of the film. Re-arranging the music
in a fresh, interesting way was also a big help in convincing his investors
to sign on to the project.
68 F*** APRIL 2013
He was even inspired to change the script and tailor it more to his actors.
After the Woo sisters were cast, the characters they play went from
being best friends to twins. He recalls also that Kelvin Mun’s character
originally got bullied a lot. “But Kelvin isn’t like that personally, so I
changed it and now he has a little of that ‘don’t mess with me!’ vibe
onscreen too.”
There’s no doubt that this film is a passion project – a very personal one
– for Chai. He confesses that he had the idea for it long before he made
his debut with horror movie Blood Ties. But it was a tough project to sell
as his first film, so he had to put it on the back-burner for a while.
When he returned to the concept, he was worried about whether he
could live up to the challenge of making a film that was neither short nor
a horror movie. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to shoot something a little
more romantic, a film that would touch people’s hearts.”
In the end, however, he just decided to go for it: to make a movie that’s
not simply about love, but also one about “love of country”. When it
comes down to it, That Girl In Pinafore is as much a tribute to the songs
of his youth as it is a celebration of what counts as home and where one’s
fondest memories are made. “The film is not strictly autobiographical,
but every character in it contains the stories of me and my friends –
something I think a lot of people of my generation would identify with.”
That Girl In Pinafore opens in August 2013. The film’s official trailer and
soundtrack will be released in June.
APRIL 2013 F*** 69
TO SPAIN
WITH LOVE
F*** talks to Edwin Ho about his short film EL GRIS PERFECTO, which has
been selected to participate in this year’s Cannes Film Festival
By Raphael Lim
Cannes Film Festival, baby! No, we haven’t
come down with a weird form of Tourette’s
Syndrome that has us spontaneously uttering
the names of prestigious film events… we’re
just elated that a handful of young talents from
Singapore have clinched a spot in the Cannes
Short Film Corner for this year’s Cannes Film
Festival.
of El Gris Perfecto, what exactly he finds
compelling about the color grey, and his take
on various aspects of the local film industry.
Shot entirely in Barcelona, the film – El Gris
Perfecto – is an international co-production
between Singapore and Spain, a human
drama that explores the ambiguous emotions
of a Singaporean-Spanish boy who learns to
deal with loss, solitude and friendship. The
film was written and directed by Edwin Ho
and produced by Trixie Yap, Felicia Ang and
Grace Thia, a group of students from the NTU
Wee Kim Wee School of Information and
Communication for their Final Year Project
(FYP).
I was living in Barcelona for about 8 months
and I was inspired by the city, so I decided to
seize the opportunity to work on a film set
in Barcelona. This ultimately became El Gris
Perfecto. Of course I fell in love with the city
and I wanted to tell a story there.
We sit down with Ho to discuss the making
70 F*** APRIL 2013
Just remember, you heard his name here first,
guys!
How was El Gris Perfecto first conceived?
All of us on the team have an international
outlook as we’ve lived in Sweden, Hong Kong,
Japan, Spain and Mexico, so we were really
inspired by a combination of our overseas
experiences, and the idea of working on
something on an international scale with a
cross-section of cultures.
In a sense, it was a perfect combination of
timing and opportunity.
Why did you decide to shoot the film in
Spain, as compared to Singapore?
As a Singaporean filmmaker myself, I strongly
believe [international] co-productions are of
high value as I think they’re essential in today’s
film market to promote film as an art and craft.
Films are also becoming more globalised with
highly intercultural themes that appeal to the
audiences today. Therefore, due to our overseas
experiences and Singapore being such an
international and cosmopolitan city made us
wanted to co-produce internationally.
[In terms of locating the film specifically in
Spain:] Barcelona is a city with a magical
charm. It’s also a very transient city where
everyone from around the world comes and
goes. I got to hear a lot of interesting stories of
how people from all over the world got there,
This being a school project, were there any
budget constraints or difficulties finding
funding?
and even Australia. It was like everyone from
around the globe was in one location at that
moment to realise a single vision.
As El Gris Perfecto is also a student FYP, it was
perhaps more difficult to convince people to
put in the money or work with us. We were
all prepared to put in our own money and we
were not even sure if we would break even.
There were many unsuccessful attempts to get
funding; we sent out more than 100 proposals
and only a few got back to us. Most of the time,
we were totally ignored or rejected, and we did
get pretty dejected after a while.
There’s a pretty risqué ménage a trois depicted
in El Gris Perfecto. Do you perceive local
issues of censorship regarding sexuality, and
other iffy topics like race/religion? Does that
affect your work in any way?
In the end, we found collaborating partners
who believed in the work we were doing, like
Studio MB, various SMEs, our FYP supervisor
and other organisations like Singapore Film
Commission, Wee Kim Wee Legacy Fund and
the Catalan Tourism Board.
What made you want to explore the theme of
ambiguity in El Gris Perfecto?
Firstly, it’s because of my philosophy and
attitude to life. I believe that nothing is
absolute and that there’s always a grey area in
relationships. I want audiences to go beyond
the perception of how everything should be in
clear black-and-white terms after watching the
film.
fell in love and decided to stay… or maybe they
just got stuck and couldn’t leave. This quality
really helped me conceptualise the story as part
of a journey of a young man.
Besides that, the Spaniards generally have this
passionate aura around them, they’re really
passionate about things and life. There is a lot
of freedom of expression, experimentation and
sexuality. I guess, because of such liberty and
the Spanish culture thing, it feels really alive
in the city and also highly sexually charged.
I was a little taken aback, but was really
impressed with its collective sense of liberty
and openness.
Coming from Singapore, we tend to have a
strong collective sense of what’s right and
wrong, whereas in Barcelona, lines seemed
to be blurred, and that leads to an interesting
clash of values.
Did you expect El Gris Perfecto to be selected
for the Cannes Film Festival? What are your
hopes for the film?
We didn’t really expect it to be selected for
the Short Film Corner in the Cannes Film
Festival, as most films that have successfully
entered Cannes have been made by seasoned
filmmakers. I was just feeling hopeful about
it when we entered. I’m definitely happy and
excited about it, but also a little nervous as well,
like a small fish swimming in a big ocean.
I also wanted to focus on life’s grey areas,
where people are in situations of ambiguity and
unsure about which step to take, and yet be
comfortable in that “greyness”.
Do you think of creating (i.e., directing/
script-writing) as an autobiographical
process, and how much autobiography do
you personally put into your films?
As a fairly new director and scriptwriter,
I think the amount of autobiography you
put into your films comes a lot from sights
and sounds and the personal experiences of
what one has been through. As a filmmaker,
you definitely need a certain amount of life
experience to be able to tell stories.
Different life experiences create who you are,
and being in these different moments of life
allows you to create the stories that you want
to create.
As I mentioned earlier, Singapore is a very
‘black and white’ society, and I grew up with
a strong sense of what’s right or wrong. Then
I experienced a clash of culture of living in
Barcelona, where lines seemed to be blurred...
If I did not grow up [the way I did], I wouldn’t
have perceived this as an interesting idea to
work on.
What was the best learning experience you
had from creating El Gris Perfecto?
We’re hoping for El Gris Perfecto to travel
around for a while more on the film festival
circuit, since a film usually has about 2 years
in its festival life cycle. Besides Cannes, it’s also
going to other places like Ukraine and Hong
Kong for now.
I think the best learning experience would be
working with the actors. This being fairly new
and also my first really major piece of work
with professional actors, it’s a learning process
for me. I got to see how actors work with their
characters and emotions while I try to direct
them to work towards my vision.
We also hope that there’ll be opportunities for
local screenings, so that Singaporean audiences
can see the work of younger filmmakers.
Another really great learning experience would
be working with a pretty big crew of people
from around the world: Singapore, Spain, UK
Censorship works both ways, there’s the state
but there is also the audience. As audiences
become more open-minded and are able to
think independently and critically about what
we receive from the media, gradually there
won’t be a need for censorship.
I think the issue of censorship is becoming
less significant compared to the past. Right
now with social media, it’s impossible to
censor everything. I think we also have a new
generation of Singaporeans who think very
differently, and have become more exposed to
the world.
In what ways do you see the local film
industry evolving?
We’re still at a pretty young stage so we still
need time to grow and mature but I do think
that international collaborations and big coproductions like HBO Asia’s Serangoon Road
and Mister John show our growing potential.
I believe Singapore makes a good ground for
co-productions to be initiated, and I hope that
we get more involved in them.
As filmmakers, we need space to grow
artistically and as a person, so it is very
important for us to create that kind of
environment. There’s a lot of social pressure
surrounding us, due to the collective idea of
what constitutes a successful person in our
society, with the arts not being considered an
ideal option.
I also hope that there’ll be more support for
student films as that’s where every filmmaker
gets his own start.
If budget weren’t an issue, what sort of films
would you like to make?
I still think I’ll be making drama but I might
work on something set in the future. I like very
stylistic visuals in terms of production design,
wardrobe and cinematography so I think
something set in the future would be really
cool to work on.
Will you be exploring a similar theme in
future films?
Abbas Kiarostami once said that, essentially,
all filmmakers only make one film in their
lifetime. The rest of the films are just an
extension of that one film. I think that’s really
true; most filmmakers are intrigued by a single
theme that would always be recurring in his/
her films.
I’m personally intrigued by the complexities
of human relationships and in these complex
realities, there’s always this grey area and
we can’t see everything in black and white.
Exploring this notion of human relationships is
something that’s very close to my heart.
APRIL 2013 F*** 71
Reviews Anonymous
72 F*** APRIL 2013
R(A)
Reviews Anonymous
BROKEN CITY
CONSPIRATORS
GI JOE:
RETALIATION
I GIVE IT A YEAR
IN THE HOUSE
IP MAN –
THE FINAL FIGHT
LAY THE FAVOURITE
MASQUERADE
MIDNIGHT’S
CHILDREN
THE HOST
THE PLACE
BEYOND THE PINES
AND MORE...
SAVING
GENERAL
YANG
DIRECTOR RONNY YU’S CAST IS AN IMPRESSIVE
GATHERING OF TESTOSTERONE,
AND THEY ALL VALIANTLY IMBUE THEIR
CHARACTERS WITH STONY-FACED GRAVITAS
APRIL 2013 F*** 73
Broken City
Genre: Drama
Run time: 109 mins
Director: Allen Hughes
Cast: Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mark Wahlberg
Opens: 18 April 2013
Rating: TBA
RATING
Broken City is, quite simply, a B-grade movie with an A-list cast on display. That’s not
necessarily a bad thing; it’s a big, noir, police procedural potboiler of a movie that’s
actually good fun if you aren’t going to nitpick at its logical inadequacies and generic
script.
Wahlberg plays Billy Taggart, hardboiled street cop turned private eye, who ends up
becoming the pawn of some lethal behind-the-scenes political manoeuvring, thanks
to Nick Hostetler (Crowe), the obviously corrupt mayor of the city. Nick’s convinced
that his wife (the ageless Zeta-Jones) is playing him for a cuckold and ruining his
election chances, and hires Billy to investigate. A dead chief of staff is the first of
many plot twists that Broken City has in store.
Broken City has a messy, overproduced charm to its proceedings, like something
out of a popular paperback novel. The characters are ludicrous, the deus ex machina
are predictable, and for a hardboiled detective, Billy is so inept it borders on the
farcical. Crowe as the smarmy mayor is disconcerting to watch at first – particularly
given his lack of stubble and blonde hairdo – but he puts in a solid performance as
the conventionally corrupt politician. As a whole, the cast manage to overcome the
deficits of a by-the-numbers script that occasionally borders on the cliche, except for
Wahlberg, who seems to be phoning this one in.
Nonetheless, the cinematography is agreeably flashy, and Broken City has an edge
of grit to its narrative that’ll keep audiences happily distracted, a perfect example of
‘fake it till you make it’ cinema. For a movie that’s surprisingly light on action, the
moments available are undeniably engaging. Let it never be said that director Allen
Hughes can’t shoot a good car chase sequence.
Broken City is a passably entertaining, by-the-numbers drama that gets muddier,
bloodier and more tangly as its plot progresses. It may lack finesse, but it certainly
doesn’t lack conviction.
Summary: A split vote for the potential candidate
74 F*** APRIL 2013
Raphael Lim
Conspirators (Mandarin)
Genre: Thriller, Suspense
Run time: 104 mins
Director: Oxide Pang
Cast: Aaron Kwok, Nick Cheung
Opens: 11 April 2013
Rating: TBA
RATING
To say that The Pang Brothers make hit-or-miss movies would be like making the same
claim about a one-eyed cowboy with a submachine gun. On the one hand, there’s the
undoubtedly solid horror movie The Eye… on the other, there’s Bangkok Dangerous
starring Nicolas Cage. Conspirators, directed by the more eccentrically-named half of
the Pang Brothers, is most assuredly a miss.
Conspirators is the third story in a crime-thriller trilogy, centring on detective Chan
Tam (Kwok), although you won’t have to watch the first two installations for this one to
bore you witless. The movie opens with Chan Tam arriving in Malaysia to investigate
the death of his parents, only to find his path blocked by hidden forces… which
actually translates to paper-thin characters spouting inane banalities. Along the way,
Chan Tam finds an ally in a local private investigator named Cheng (Cheung), who is
himself linked to the mystery by family bonds.
Given the amount of acting talent possessed by the movie’s leading men, it’s a shame
that the movie’s biggest flaw is its plodding pace, lacklustre dialogue, and an ammo
crate worth of illogical moments. The movie has its lead characters lurching from
episode to episode like headless chickens, with a tendency towards exposition to link
each scene. Kwok tries to inject some intensity into the proceedings, but the sheer
deficiency of the script makes his attempts look tragically farcical, rather than tragic.
Being a crime thriller, Conspirators’ incoherent plot would have been forgivable if the
film had packed satisfying action sequences into the mix. Unfortunately, the obligatory
car chase scene - which starts 20 minutes into the movie - is a mishmash of nauseainducing shaky cam work and frenetic jump cuts. The only remotely entertaining thing
to be noted about the action sequences is that Nick Cheung does an asthmatic Ip Man
impersonation... and we’re not even being sarcastic when we make that observation.
For the sake of balance, we’re trying to find something nice to say about the film, but
the only point we could come up with is that you’ll get to see Malaysian celebrity Aniu
toting a rifle instead of an acoustic guitar, but that alone is hardly worth the price of
admission.
Summary: It’s supposedly a crime thriller, but ‘disaster flick’ would have been more apt.
Raphael Lim
APRIL 2013 F*** 75
G.I. Joe: Retaliation
Rating: PG13 (Violence)
RATING
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Run Time: 110 mins
Director: Jon M. Chu
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, D. J. Cotrona, Byung-hun Lee, Adrianne Palicki, Ray Park, Jonathan Pryce, RZA, Ray Stevenson, Channing Tatum, Bruce Willis
Opens: 28 March 2013
Don’t call them dolls. They may be made in China and primarily out of ABS plastic,
but that won’t change the fact that G.I. Joes are real American heroes. For many, these
action figures are articulated nostalgia incarnate, the cartoons and comics adding to
the fond childhood memories. When that nostalgia was made flesh in 2009’s G.I. Joe:
The Rise of Cobra, however, most fans weren’t pleased and there were all the Razzie
nominations the film garnered to show for it. But that didn’t stop a sequel from being
made.
At the end of the first film, it was revealed that the President of the United States
(Pryce) had been replaced by the villainous impostor Zartan (Arnold Vosloo as his
“default appearance”). In this one, the “President” orders that the G.I. Joes be wiped
out. Roadblock (Johnson), Flint (Cotrona) and Lady Jaye (Palicki) manage to evade
the attack, and must go about stopping the villainous machinations of Zartan’s
superior, Cobra Commander (Luke Bracey, voiced by Robert Baker). Joining the
three are silent ninja Snake Eyes (Ray Park), his apprentice Jinx (Elodie Yung) and
the original G.I. Joe, General Joe Colton (Willis). Cobra forces, including saboteur
Firefly (Ray Stevenson) and Snake Eyes’ arch-nemesis Storm Shadow (Lee Byunghun), stand in their way.
This movie was meant to be released in June 2012, but was delayed owing to a 3D
post-conversion job and reshoots to increase Channing Tatum’s screen time. Toys
had already hit the shelves and the film earned the distinction of being the only
movie to have been advertised during two consecutive Super Bowls. The decision
drew much flak and probably killed a fair amount of interest for the sequel.
It’s a good thing then that this isn’t all that bad – in fact, it’s probably better than
the first one. The film is not a straight-up sequel to the first, and while there are
continuity nods and several returning characters, the style has shifted noticeably
from plasticky, cartoony bombast to slightly more straight-faced action. Case in
point: instead of a vast subterranean base beneath the Sahara desert, the Joes in this
film operate from a derelict gym. That’s not to say Retaliation is less fun. And while
this one is still silly, it’s not as aggressively so.
76 F*** APRIL 2013
stronghold high on a mountaintop and take on
scores of redshirts on a cliff face is something
to behold and is almost balletic. The film’s
scripting duties are handled by Rhett Reese
and Paul Wernick, best-known for penning the
horror-comedy Zombieland. The duo lends the
film a self-aware edge without it ever plunging
into self-parody, which is a laudable balancing
act.
Let’s address the two reasons the movie was
pushed back. First, the 3D. It’s a surprisingly
decent conversion and though this reviewer
experienced a little eyestrain, there’s a good
feeling of depth and it does enliven the action
sequences, the afore-mentioned cliff face
skirmish in particular. Second, the Channing
Tatum – he was a dull protagonist in the first
film and rest assured, even with his additional
scenes, he doesn’t play a huge role in this one
and shares better chemistry with Johnson
than he did with Marlon Wayans (we’re glad
Ripcord isn’t back for this one).
Replacing Stephen Sommers in the director’s
chair is Jon M. Chu, who is probably best
known as “that guy who did the Justin
Bieber movie”. Chu proves he can film action
sequences as competently as he films dance
numbers; the movie’s signature set piece in
which Snake Eyes and Jinx infiltrate a Cobra
Speaking of Johnson, the guy fits into the
G.I. Joe universe perfectly. He’s quite possibly
the closest thing this generation has to the
larger-than-life action hero likes of Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme
and with his bulging biceps and towering
frame, looks right at home in a movie based
on a line of toys. Cotrona and Palicki aren’t
particularly interesting as Flint and Lady Jaye
respectively (coincidentally, Cotrona was set to
play Superman in the Justice League film that
never happened and Palicki played Wonder
Woman in the TV pilot that wasn’t picked
up) – but they put in serviceable supporting
performances.
Willis’ appearance as the retired general
whose main “GI” of concern is likely to be
his glycaemic index is pretty fun if not very
consequential; it might be an even better nod
to his iconic action hero status than his role
in the Expendables films was. In the villain’s
corner, former Bond adversary Pryce is clearly
enjoying himself in dual roles as Zartan-asthe-president and the actual president held
captive by Cobra troops. A scene that sets
up the film’s climax, in which the impostor
President gathers the leaders of the world and
threatens them with Cobra’s orbital weapons
system Zeus, is decidedly Dr Strangelove-esque.
Cobra Commander is not given a large role in
the film, and while he doesn’t have Chris Latta’s
shrill, raspy voice, his design is a nice homage
to the cartoon. In addition, the ladies dragged
along to see this can enjoy more Lee Byunghun with his shirt off.
Even though it’s less cartoony than its
predecessor, Retaliation’s plot isn’t believable
for a second – but the movie knows it’s a
fun piece of escapist entertainment, and it
can get away with the jingoism and a degree
of ridiculousness by dint of being a G.I. Joe
movie. As far as sequels based on Hasbro films
go, you can rest assured that this isn’t the G.I.
Joe equivalent of Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen. And that’s worth a hearty “hooah!”
SUMMARY: Despite getting its release date
pushed back, this sequel’s thrills and sheer
escapist entertainment value, plus the fact that
it’s not as dumb as the first go-round, make it
worth getting excited about.
Jedd Jong
APRIL 2013 F*** 77
I Give It A Year
Director: Dan Mazer
Cast: Rafe Spall, Rose Byrne, Simon Baker, Anna Faris
Genre: Comedy
Run Time: 97 Mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual References and Nudity)
Opens: 11 April 2013
Much as we’ve been told not to, it’s human nature to jump to
conclusions. There’s just a lot of satisfaction in yelling out “called it!”
when events unfold just as one has predicted. For example, it’s easy
to look at a film and write it off based on its genre – and there have
indeed been numerous stinkers from the chick flick bunch. Along
comes I Give It a Year to stab the institution of marriage in its side.
The film tells the story of corporate high-flyer Nat (Byrne) and
struggling novelist Josh (Spall), who marry after a whirlwind sevenmonth-long courtship. Nat’s older sister Naomi (Minnie Driver),
herself stuck in an unhappy marriage, reckons that Nat and Josh
will stay married for a year at the longest – hence the title. The lead
couple’s union is tested by Josh’s ex-girlfriend Chloe (Faris) and
Nat’s business client Guy (Baker), both of whom seem to be better
matches for Josh and Nat respectively. “If you can make it through
the first year of marriage, you can make it through anything,” Josh’s
father reassures him. But once they’re over that twelve-month
hurdle, it’s plain sailing. Right?
I Give It a Year is writer-director Dan Mazer’s feature film directing
debut. He’s best known for co-writing Ali G Indahouse, Borat:
Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of
Kazakhstan and Brüno with Sacha Baron Cohen – as such, one can
expect a romantic comedy with a fair bit more bite. The film isn’t
aiming to be a feel-good date movie, but it is aiming at the funny
bone and more often than not, hits a bull’s-eye. A film about marital
trials and tribulations could have easily become a little heavy, but
Mazer keeps the gags flying thick and fast.
The film seems to exist in a world where nobody has much tact,
and there is a fair bit of cringe comedy in store. Comedian Stephen
Merchant, as Josh’s friend Dan, starts the ball rolling with a very
78 F*** APRIL 2013
RATING
inappropriate best man’s speech at the wedding. The movie goes on to
offer up doves flying into ceiling fans, an awkward game of charades, an
inept marriage counsellor preoccupied with her anatomically-correct
dolls, a look at the myriad logistical challenges of having a threesome
and arguments about misheard song lyrics. Not all the jokes work, but
there are just so many of them that, by the end, a good amount of laughs
will have been generated. While several of the gags are indeed pretty
raunchy, they’re never over-the-top vulgar or (too) tasteless.
The film attempts to shirk rom-com conventions by presenting
audiences with a central couple whose relationship is not meant to be
really compelling, and that’s a gamble that doesn’t fully pay off. Spall
and Byrne don’t generate a lot of chemistry and aren’t all that likeable,
but then again that might be the point. That’s not to say they don’t put
in good performances – Spall in particular appears to relish the chance
to goof off with some drunken dancing. Once Chloe and Guy enter
the scene, it becomes harder to root for Nat and Josh to stay together,
which means Faris and Baker do their jobs well. The film’s third act takes
a dip into more dramatic territory, but Mazer always keep an eye on
the laughs, so there are no jarring tonal shifts. The film also gets a little
cluttered with supporting characters and side gags at times.
I Give It a Year’s biggest strength is that it manages to strike a decent
balance between the cynical humour, relationship drama and big
comedic set-pieces. It’s definitely on the acerbic side, but the British film
manages to retain a small amount of charm and, while it borders on
mean, it’s never alienating. Above all, it does draw out the laughs.
SUMMARY: A contemporary look at early married life dosed with the
comedic stylings of Borat’s partner in crime – it works for those who have
been jaded by mawkish rom-coms and could do with a little edge in their
chick flicks.
Jedd Jong
In The House
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Run Time: 105 mins
Director: François Ozon
Cast: Fabrice Luchini, Ernst Umhauer, Kristin Scott Thomas
Opens: 4 April 2013
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scene)
RATING
Regardless of their merits, movies about teachers tend to fall into
two broad categories: the sentimentally inspirational, as in Dead
Poets Society; or the sort of adult comedy one finds in recent
Hollywood offerings, as in Bad Teacher. The fact that In The House
manages to find a completely new angle on the tired teaching
premise is highly refreshing, to say the least.
who could either be guilelessly wayward or deeply disturbed.
Germain (Luchini) is a tired old codger of a high school lit teacher:
his students write insipid reportage that range from the banal to
the inept. Naturally, things start to change when Germain takes
notice of an essay written by Claude Garcia (Umhauer), a quiet boy
with a natural talent for writing… as well as a tendency towards the
subversive.
Summary: A dark comedy that will provoke as many questions as it does
sardonic grins.
Raphael Lim
In The House is an intelligent tale of voyeurism that delivers drama and
dark humour in equal doses. Moral ambiguity may not be to everyone’s
tastes, but if you dig that sort of film, In The House is unlikely to
disappoint.
Through his weekly essays, Claude narrates to us and Germain his
slow, almost voyeuristic infiltration of his best friend’s family. This
gives rise to a progression of events, ranging from the amusing
to the downright disturbing. The film’s developments are not so
much plot twists rather than small, unexpected bends, but it’s
the ambiguous motivations of the characters that drive the film
forward.
In The House’s primary charm lies in this ambiguity: what exactly
motivates Claude? Does Germain’s encouragement of his star
pupil’s writing make him complicit in his student’s mischief? Does
the enjoyment of a good yarn make us similar accomplices? It’s an
intriguing set of questions centred on the literary and cinematic
forms, and Francois Ozon’s masterful script poses these queries in a
subtle manner, with an ever-present edge of knowing irony.
Aptly enough, the visuals of In The House are deliberately drab; the
emotional undercurrent comes primarily from composer Phillipe
Rombi, who provides a score that ranges from the enigmatic to
the frantically poignant. Luchini puts in a solid performance as
the frustrated, slightly ineffectual schoolteacher, but it’s newcomer
Umhaeur who carries the film with his riveting portrayal of a boy
APRIL 2013 F*** 79
Ip Man: The Final Fight (Mandarin)
Genre: Action, Drama, Martial Arts
Run Time: 102 mins
Director: Herman Yau
Cast: Anthony Wong, Jordan Chan, Eric Tsang
Opens: 28 March 2013
Rating: PG (Some Violence)
If you’re like us, chances are that you may have a film-related
illness by now. The disease is widely known as Ip Man-initis, and
symptoms include heart palpitations and breaking into a rash
every time you see the legendary Wing Chun master in yet another
onscreen depiction of his storied legacy. Sarcasm aside though,
it’s only fair to state that Ip Man: The Final Fight is a solid entry in
what’s becoming a faddish sub-genre of kung fu movies.
Set during the latter stages of the Wing Chun grandmaster’s life,
Ip Man: The Final Fight is set in post-war Hong Kong, and centres
on Ip Man’s (Anthony Wong) growing role as a teacher of Wing
Chun. As his school grows in fame and size, some of his students
start to garner the wrong sort of attention from both rival schools
and gangster bosses, forcing Ip Man to intervene in the titular ‘final
fight’.
Production wise, Ip Man: The Final Fight channels a quaint, OldWorld aesthetic that gives it the veneer of a vintage documentary
piece. The visuals are charming enough in the film’s placid
moments, although it doesn’t quite have the stylistic sparks of the
renditions by Wong Kar-Wai or Wilson Yip. Likewise, this version
of Ip Man comes across as benign but not infallible, and far less
mythic than earlier portrayals of the character, with veteran actor
Wong exuding a quiet charisma in the role. There’s a glossed over,
slightly scandalous romance between Ip Man and a young stage
singer (Zhou Chuchu) whom he saves, which serves to humanise a
man often portrayed as beyond rebuke in his morality.
While the fight sequences are less frequent than in other Ip Man
films, they are vigorously choreographed, and shot with a refreshing
lack of stylistic swooping and panning from the camera. A
particularly memorable scene takes place in the slums of Kowloon,
80 F*** APRIL 2013
RATING
between an underworld pugilist’s gang and Ip Man and his students.
For all its strengths however, Ip Man: The Final Fight does possess some
significant flaws. The film’s screenplay sags around the middle, packed
with too many incidents and forgettable characters, with Chan’s cop
being one of the few memorable members of Ip Man’s student cadre.
Likewise, certain scenes in the film seem tacked on to set the historical
record straight, rather than to add to the film as a whole, such as the
real-life Ip Man’s purported use of opium, and his relationship with his
most famous student, Bruce Lee.
Ip Man: The Final Fight is a solid addition to the overly saturated subgenre of ‘Ip-Mania’ films. Let’s just hope that it really delivers on what
its title promises, and that the venerable grandmaster will be given the
chance to retire before tedium sets in for audiences.
Summary: A fitting conclusion (we hope) to Ip Man’s story.
Raphael Lim
Lay The Favourite
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Run Time: 94 mins
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Rebecca Hall, Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vince Vaughn
Opens: 4 April 2013
Rating: TBA
If anyone had been asked to bet on Lay The Favourite’s chances at
the box office, the film might have racked up some pretty favourable
odds. After all, it features big stars like Bruce Willis and Catherine
Zeta-Jones and is directed by Stephen Frears, who’s turned out
smart, intelligent dramas (The Queen) and edgy, fun comedies
(High Fidelity). Tragically, anyone betting on the film’s success
would have lost pretty spectacularly: Lay The Favourite barely
made US$21,000 in America and has raked in just a twentieth of its
US$20 million budget internationally. That’s not to say the film is
terrible, however - it’s just not particularly good.
Rebecca Hall plays Beth, a flighty girl whose greatest ambition
in life is to be a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas - where she meets
charming, volatile book-maker Dink (Willis). Dink takes her under
his wing, grooms her and introduces her to other denizens of the
sports gambling community, including the remarkably slimy Rosie.
Soon, Beth discovers that she has a head for numbers and eyes for
Dink - a fact that greatly upsets his jealous wife Tulip (Zeta-Jones).
RATING
Perhaps the best way to approach Lay The Favourite is to treat it as
a biopic of Beth Raymer, whose memoir serves as the basis of the
film. In that context, it would be a little less frustrating to follow her
misadventures as she constantly stumbles, falls and picks herself up
again. Otherwise, it would be too easy to spend most of the movie
trying to puzzle out just what it’s trying (and failing) to be.
Basically: Don’t bet on this movie to win - not when it barely knows what
it wants to be.
Shawne Wang
If Lay The Favourite had chosen a genre and stuck with it, it might
have been a better film. Instead, it meanders between being a limp
romantic comedy and a gambling movie, and winds up being
mediocre on both counts. The blooming affection between Beth
and Dink feels rather fake, and the characters only settle down into
being real people in the second half, when Beth tries to strike out
on her own.
At least there’s a little fun to be had with the performances in the
film. Anyone who’s seen Hall in another movie would be impressed
by her seamless transformation into the bubbly, incredibly selfcentred Beth - everyone else might just find her plain annoying.
Willis doesn’t seem to be working too hard, but he radiates enough
charm to keep his scenes interesting. Zeta-Jones probably comes off
the best of the three, finding reservoirs of pain, hurt and insecurity
in a supporting role that could easily have been a write-off for an
actress of her calibre.
APRIL 2013 F*** 81
Masquerade (Korean)
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Run Time: 131 mins
Director: Choo Chang-min
Cast: Lee Byung-hun, Ryu Seung-Ryong, Han Hyo-joo
Opens: 13 April 2013
Masquerade involves a regal identity-swap between king and
commoner, a premise that bears close resemblance to Mark Twain’s
The Prince and The Pauper and Alexandre Dumas’ Man In The Iron
Mask.
In this case, the monarch in question is Gwang Hae (Lee Byunghun), fifteenth king of the Joseon dynasty, and his body double is a
courtesan house performer named Ha-Seon (also played by Lee).
Naturally, the rascal is petrified by the prospect of being the king’s
body double, as Gwang Hae’s autocratic rule has made him the
target of assassination attempts.
It may not be the freshest of premises, but Masquerade possesses an
eccentric charm that makes it compelling. The plot only kicks off
around the half-hour mark, when Ha-Seon finds himself thrust into
the role of emperor, with all the culture shock and responsibility
that the role entails. Once it gets started though, the film serves up a
generally compelling blend of drama and earthy humour.
For a movie about courtly intrigue, there’s a fair bit of levity in
Masquerade, although its occasional scatological jokes border on
the low-brow. Director Choo Chang-min manages to manoeuvre
between dramatic tension and comedic episodes with relative ease,
and the film’s period visuals are rich and immersive without ever
becoming a distraction. The same, however, cannot be said for
its soundtrack, which has a cloyingly obvious quality during its
dramatic moments.
Masquerade’s pacing meanders at times, but watching the character
of Ha-Seon grow into his kingly role proves to be entertaining even
during its more leisurely moments. This is largely thanks to Lee
Byung-hun, who puts in a bravura, over-the-top performance as
82 F*** APRIL 2013
RATING
the king’s good-natured body double, alternating between imperious
and comedically out-of-depth. The rest of the cast, while slightly
overshadowed, put in solid, understated performances.
It doesn’t have the epic scope often associated with a period drama, but
those who like a large dose of lowbrow levity mixed in with their courtly
intrigue will find Masquerade a pleasing diversion.
Summary: Verily, we are quite amused.
Raphael Lim
Midnight’s Children
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Run Time: 146 mins
Director: Deepa Mehta
Cast: Satya Bhabha, Shahana Gowsami, Rajat Kapoor
Rating: NC16 (Some Nudity & Violence)
Opens: 28 March 2013
RATING
Celebrated American author William Faulkner was once quoted as
saying ‘In writing, you must kill all your darlings’. Unfortunately,
celebrated British-Indian author Salman Rushdie may not have
taken that advice to heart when he decided to screen-write and
adapt his novel Midnight’s Children for the big screen. The result is
a film that has all the narrative density of the novel, but none of its
emotional depth.
voiceover, a conceit that’s charming at first, but grows cloying as the plot
progresses.
A run-time of 148 mins is completely insufficient to cover the
labyrinthine mesh of plot lines that characterise a work by Rushdie.
A paragraph’s worth of synopsis is vastly more inadequate. Suffice
to say that the film centres on Saleem (Satya Bahba), a young man
who was born into poverty but swapped at birth with Shiva (Purav
Bhandare), a child born to a richer family. Born during the historic
moment of India’s independence, Saleem and the rest of Midnight’s
Children have mystical powers, their young lives entwined with the
historical trajectory of a fledgling India.
Sadly, the same cannot be said for the cast, whose performances range
from the static to the unconvincing. Satya Bathe puts in a performance
that is enthusiastic but never compelling, and the midnight séances
involving the titular Midnight’s Children come across as amateurishly
overplayed. The rest of the players flit on and off screen too erratically to
leave any lasting impact.
As executive producer, narrator, screenwriter and an advisor in
the casting process, Rushdie ascertained that Midnight’s Children
hewed as closely to the novel as possible. Unfortunately, when said
novel is more unfilmable than other ambitious literary adaptations
such as Cloud Atlas or Life of Pi, the result is a film that inevitably
collapses under its own narrative density. To illustrate, the film, like
the novel, begins with the courtship of Saleem’s grandmother by
his grandfather… which is perhaps too much family history for any
movie to cover effectively.
For what it’s worth, Midnight’s Children is undeniably a visually
beautiful film. Director Deepa Metha presents audiences with densely
packed scenes that channel both authenticity and a vibrant, painterly
aesthetic.
As sacrilegious as it may sound to fellow Rushdie fans, Midnight’s
Children is a film that would have benefited from a judicious trimming,
and a screenwriter less invested in preserving the sprawling entirety of
the novel.
Summary: For a film that centres on the theme of identity, Midnight’s
Children lacks a coherent one of its own.
Raphael Lim
While evidently a labour of love, Midnight’s Children suffers from
its creators’ inability to transmute the essence of the original into
a holistic work of cinema. The film captures the magnitude of
Rushdie’s frenetic storytelling, but neither the poetic impact of his
words, nor the spirit of the novel. It jumps from episode to episode,
touching on the surface acts of its legion of characters, without
ever exploring their motivations or inner workingd. Rushdie
himself presents the narrative thread of the movie in the form of a
APRIL 2013 F*** 83
Saving General Yang 忠烈楊家將 (Mandarin)
Genre: Action, Drama
Run Time: 101 mins
Director: Ronny Yu
Cast: Adam Cheng, Ekin Cheng, Xu Fan, Vic Chou, Wu Chun, Raymond Lam
Opens: 4 April 2013
Rating: NC16 (Violence)
Hollywood has Saving Private Ryan, and now Asian film buffs have Saving General
Yang. The two films operate on the same general concept - a group of brave fighters
head into enemy territory to bring one person back to safety. Curiously, Ronny Yu's
action blockbuster never quite manages to grab hold of the heart the way Steven
Spielberg does when he sends Tom Hanks out looking for Matt Damon, even though
his story is about a set of seven sons intent on rescuing their father from certain
death. But Yu does at least make up for the lack of emotional connection by packing
his film with several fantastically choreographed action sequences.
General Yang (Adam Cheng), a righteous, experienced military strategist, suffers
a setback in the court of his Emperor due to his sixth son's (Wu Chun) ill-fated
decision to fight for the love of the princess. Thereafter, General Yang is sent to the
frontlines of a battle with the encroaching Khitan clan. When he's trapped there by
his vengeful opponent Yelu Yuan (Shao Bing), his devoted wife (Xu Fan) dispatches
his seven sons - led by Eldest Brother (Ekin Cheng) - to fetch him home.
The stakes are clearly huge for the entire Yang clan - and yet, the emotional weight of
their predicament never quite feels real, largely because character development tends
to get swept away in favour of spectacle. Only three (or so) of the seven brothers
display characteristics that differentiate them from the rest of the pack. Even then, it's
not their personalities that set them apart so much as a weapon (the quiver of arrows
belonging to Vic Chou's Third Brother) or a particular skill (the medical expertise of
Raymond Lam's Fifth Brother) they possess.
Yu's cast is an impressive gathering of testosterone, and they all valiantly imbue
their characters with stony-faced gravitas. Both Adam and Ekin Cheng come off
well, father and son burdened by a responsibility to the name they all bear. With the
film pivoting around his character's romantic exploits, Wu proves more impressive
as the narrative progresses - his final fight is bruising, devastating, and wonderfully
choreographed for maximum impact.
84 F*** APRIL 2013
RATING
In fact, Saving General Yang is largely saved by its fantastic action sequences. Working with
veteran action choreographer Dong Wei, Yu lines up climactic showdown after climactic
showdown, whether it's entire armies charging at each other, or just two men engaging in a noholds-barred sword fight. Almost every one of the main characters gets a moment to shine in
battle, but it's Chou who tumbles away with the most impressive scene, a balletic confrontation
between two master archers in a golden wheat field.
Yu has been missing from the movie scene for seven years, after taking an unfortunate tenyear detour into Hollywood slasher flicks (think Bride Of Chucky) and making the moderately
successful Fearless with Jet Li way back in 2006. It's good to see him back on form - kind of – with
Saving General Yang, which is a solid, grounded, good movie, if not a particularly heartfelt one.
Summary: Oddly, this movie about seven sons setting out to save their patriarch isn't as heartrending
as it should be, but it's still solidly put together and a really rather good action movie.
Shawne Wang
APRIL 2013 F*** 85
The Host
Genre: Sci-Fi, Romance
Run Time: 125 mins
Director: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel, Diane Kruger
Opens: 28 March 2013
Rating: PG (Some Violence)
Author Stephenie Meyer has forever changed the word ‘twilight’
for movie buffs. The word is now shorthand for a tremendous
movie franchise with sci-fi/fantasy elements that features at its
heart a passionately touching love triangle (if you’re a fan), or a
grossly soggy romance (if you’re not). No doubt both camps would
be bringing their own expectations to The Host, Andrew Niccol’s
adaptation of Meyer’s novel about a girl whose body is taken over
by a parasitic alien soul. The good news? Fans will be deeply pleased
by the love triangle (maybe that should be love square) in the film...
and while the romance of it all can prove deeply annoying at times
for non-believers, it actually doesn’t detract too much from the very
cool sci-fi premise upon which the film rests.
In the days after Earth has been colonised by an alien race, Melanie
(Ronan) is one of the few remaining humans left on the planet.
She’s on the way to a rebel hideout with her almost-boyfriend Jared
(Irons) and younger brother Jamie (Chandler Canterbury) when
she’s ambushed, captured, and implanted with a Soul bearing the
name of Wanderer. Refusing to give up without a fight, Melanie
has soon convinced - or coerced - Wanderer into helping her make
the dangerous journey back to her family. But with Wanderer in
control of her body, can Melanie convince everyone in the hideout,
including the suspicious Ian O’Shea (Jake Abel), that she’s still alive?
The Host is a tough movie to get right - after all, one of its main
characters can only live in the form of a voiceover, a problem
created by the novel’s basic concept. Fortunately, writer-director
Niccol (Gattaca, In Time) has had some experience with figuring
out tricky sci-fi puzzles for the big screen. Here, the voiceover
mostly works, due in no small part to Ronan’s ability to allow
internal conflict to play out beautifully on her expressive face.
86 F*** APRIL 2013
RATING
The film also takes a good stab at creating the shattered environment
in which Melanie and her family must fight for their humanity.
Interestingly, the Souls - led most outstandingly by the icy-blonde
Kruger as a determined Seeker - are not presented as monolithically
antagonistic. In fact, there are elements of their society and interaction
that would seem almost admirable, if they hadn’t taken over an entire
world in the process. Along the way, The Host throws up some pretty
interesting ideas about identity, control, trust and what it means to be
human, most of which are best explored in the fascinating, tentative
friendship that springs up between Wanderer - christened Wanda by
Melanie’s uncle Jeb (William Hurt) - and Ian.
It’s a pity that the romantic sub-plots Meyer has built into her story
come very close to undoing the promise of the rest of the film. The
moments between Melanie, Jared, Wanda and Ian aren’t confusing so
much as awkward and, on a couple of occasions, unintentionally funny.
The film almost sinks beneath the weight of its pair of mawkish love
stories - a flaw mitigated only by the fact that both Melanie and Wanda
are far more appealing, independent-minded protagonists than their
predecessor Bella Swan.
To Niccol’s credit, he does manage to pull most of it off by the end.
Even with its share of cringeworthy moments, The Host creates a web of
relationships and characters that are considerably more sympathetic and
believable than their Twilight counterparts - tying everything up with an
ending that packs a surprising emotional punch.
Basically: A pretty good sci-fi movie weighed down by a somewhat less
successful love story.
Shawne Wang
The Place Beyond The Pines
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 140 mins
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes
Opens: 4 April 2013
The Place Beyond The Pines is about fathers, consequences and
male identity. To spill too much about its thematic premise would
do a disservice to the film, which owes much of its pleasure to the
subversion of its audience’s expectations.
It’s tough to summarise the going-ons of a movie like The Place
Beyond The Pines; the film is separated into three arcs, interrelated
but not always intertwining. The first arc focuses on Luke (Gosling),
a stunt motorcycle rider with all the trappings of a tough guy, who
makes a fateful decision to commit a crime to support his child. The
second arc moves on to Aaron (Cooper), a law enforcer linked to
Luke through his criminal activity, while the third arc explores the
consequences of their interactions over the course of fifteen years.
RATING
and 140-minute run time may further serve to alienate less patient
viewers.
Thankfully, these are hardly fatal flaws for a film that rivets for much
of its run time. The Place Beyond the Pines is a psychologically dense
drama that warrants repeated viewing.
Summary: Psychologically dense character drama, and a lot more than
just Drive on a motorcycle.
Raphael Lim
Under Cianfrance’s masterful hand, The Place Beyond The Pines
exudes an atmospheric tension that never lets up. We get a growing
sense of the past and its consequences catching up to the film’s
characters, but never really find comfortable footing in being
able to predict what precisely will befall them. The ambience of
the soundtrack by Faith No More’s Mike Patton underscores the
hypnotic grittiness of Cianfrance’s naturalistic style.
Gosling and Cooper put in spectacular performances as young
men who have to navigate identities of fatherhood on both ends,
and the duality portrayed by both actors is crucial to the film and
mesmerising to behold. There’s never a climax to The Place Beyond
The Pines, as the film is a distillation of dense moments, with its
leading characters caught firmly in the midst of it all.
Despite its significant merits, The Place Beyond The Pines does
have several noticeable flaws. Cianfrance occasionally takes
melodramatic risks, not all of which pay off, and the contrivances of
the third act may seem implausible to certain audiences in the same
manner as 2004’s Crash. It’s the last segment, in fact, which causes
The Place Beyond The Pines to lose the momentum that drives it
through the earlier two-thirds of the film. The triptych structure
APRIL 2013 F*** 87
Also Opening This Month, April 2013
Olympus Has Fallen
Guilty of Romance (Japanese)
Welcome To The Punch
Opens: 4 April 2013 Genre: Drama, Horror Director: Sion
Sono Cast: Miki Mizuno, Makoto Togashi, Megumi Kagurazaka
Opens: 4 April 2013 Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime
Director: Eran Creevy Cast: James McAvoy, Mark Strong,
Andrea Riseborough
A woman is found dead – killed in a grisly
murder – in a love-hotel district in Tokyo.
Whilst the police investigate, the story
interweaves with that of Izumi (Megumi
Kagurazaka), the wife of a famous romantic
novelist whose life is a boring routine with next
to no romance. To break out of the monotony,
she accepts a job as a nude model enacting sex
in front of the camera. Soon, she starts selling
her body to strangers, whilst at home she hides
behind the facade that she’s still the good,
dutiful wife she is supposed to be.
Former criminal Jacob Sternwood is forced to
return to London from his Icelandic hideaway
when his son is involved in a heist gone wrong.
This gives detective Max Lewinsky one last
chance to catch the man he has always been
after. As they face off, they start to uncover a
deeper conspiracy they both need to solve in
order to survive.
Dead Man Down
The Hunt
Opens: 4 April 2013 Genre: Drama Director: Thomas
Vinterberg Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Anne
Louise Hassing, Susse Wold, Lars Ranthe
A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while
struggling over custody of his son. His life
slowly gets better as he finds love and receives
good news from his son, but his new luck is
about to be brutally shattered by an innocent
little lie.
Opens: 11 April 2013 Genre: Crime, Thriller Duration: 95
mins Director: Niels Arden Oplev Cast: Colin Farrell, Noomi
Rapace, Dominic Cooper, Terrence Howard, Isabelle Huppert,
Armand Assante, Franky G
A powerful New York criminal (Farrell) is
seduced and blackmailed by a vengeful crime
victim (Rapace). The pair establish a passionate
and intense relationship, and soon embark on a
mission for revenge.
Don’t Cry, Mommy (Korean)
The Last Exorcism Part II
Opens: 4 April 2013 Rated: PG13 Genre: Horror Duration:
89 mins Director: Ed Gass-Donnelly Cast: Ashley Bell,
Spencer Treat Clark, Andrew Sensenig
As Nell (Bell) tries to build a new life after the
events of The Last Exorcism, the evil force that
once possessed her returns with an even more
horrific plan.
88 F*** APRIL 2013
Opens: 11 April 2013 Rated: NC16 Coarse Language and
Some Sexual Violence Genre: Drama, Thriller Duration: 91
mins Director: Kim Yong-Han Cast: Dong Ho, Hyeon-sang
Kwon, Bo-ra Nam
The story of vengeful mother You-lim, whose
only daughter Eun-ah commits suicide after
being raped by a group of male students, all of
whom escape punishment by the law because
they’re minors.
Opens: 11 April 2013 Genre: Action, Thriller Director:
Antoine Fuqua Cast: Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Ashley
Judd, Melissa Leo, Robert Forster, Dylan McDermott, Radha
Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Rick Yune
When the White House (Secret Service
Code: “Olympus”) is captured by a terrorist
mastermind and the President is kidnapped,
disgraced former presidential guard Mike
Banning finds himself trapped within the
building. As the national security team
scrambles to respond, they are forced to rely on
Banning¹s inside knowledge to help retake the
White House, save the President and avert an
even bigger crisis.
The Gatekeepers (Hebrew)
Opens: 14 March 2013 Genre: Documentary Duration: 97
mins Director: Dror Moreh Cast: Ami Ayalon, Yuval Diskin,
Yaakov Peri, Avi Dichter, Carmi Gillon, Avraham Shalom
Charged with overseeing Israel’s war on terror
- both Palestinian and Jewish - the head of the
Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service is present at
the crossroads of every decision made. For the
first time ever, six former heads of the agency
agree to share their insights and reflect publicly
on their actions and decisions, and advocate
a conciliatory approach toward their enemies
based on a two-state solution.
Scary Movie 5
Opens: 11 April 2013 Genre: Comedy Director: Malcolm
D. Lee Cast: Ashley Tisdale, Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen,
Terry Crews, Kate Walsh, Heather Locklear, Molly Shannon,
Mike Tyson
A couple begin to experience some unusual
activity after bringing their newborn son home
from the hospital. With the help of homesurveillance cameras and a team of experts,
they learn they’re being stalked by a nefarious
demon.
resources and under scrutiny by the despot’s
minions, Saavedra and his team devise an
audacious plan to win the election and set
Chile free.
Dark Skies
Opens: 18 April 2013 Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Duration: 97 mins Director: Scott Stewart Cast: Keri
Russell, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, Kadan Rockett, Josh
Stamberg, LJ Benet, J.K. Simmons
A young family living in the suburbs witness a
growing series of disturbing events that suggest
they are being targeted by an unimaginably
terrifying and deadly force. Parents Daniel
(Hamilton) and Lacey (Russell) must take
matters into their own hands to solve the
mystery of what’s after their family.
Admission
Opens: 25 April 2013 Genre: Comedy, Drama Duration: 90
mins Director: Paul Weitz Cast: Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Michael
Sheen, Wallace Shawn, Gloria Reuben
Straight-laced Princeton University admissions
officer Portia Nathan (Fey) is caught off-guard
when her former college classmate, the freewheeling John Pressman (Rudd), suggests that
one of his students Jeremiah (Wolff) might
well be the son that Portia secretly gave up for
adoption many years ago. Soon, Portia finds
herself bending the rules for Jeremiah, putting
at risk the life she thought she always wanted.
Opens: 11 April 2013 Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Duration: 125 mins Director: Joseph Kosinski Cast: Tom
Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough
On a dystopian future Earth that has evolved
beyond recognition, drone-whisperer Jack
Harper (Cruise) happens upon a woman (Olga
Kurylenko) in a downed survival pod that
causes him to question everything he has ever
known.
Drug War (Mandarin)
Opens: 18 April 2013 Genre: Suspense, Thriller Director:
Johnnie To Cast: Sun Honglei, Louis Koo, Huang Yi, Wallace
Chung, Lam Ka Tung, Michelle Ye
When Mainland Chinese Inspector Zhang
runs into Hong-Konger Cai at the hospital,
who has been in a car accident due to chemical
poisoning, he immediately senses something
fishy about him. It turns out Cai is indeed
a drug manufacturer closely linked to the
notorious drug lord Li. To save his own neck,
Cai agrees to help pass Zhang off as a buyer in
order to lure Li into a drug deal. Right before
this undercover operation is about to succeed,
Zhang realises all too late that the relationship
between Cai and Li is not what it seems, and
instead of having played Cai as a pawn in a
battle of wits, he himself has been a pawn in
Cai’s own game all along.
Oblivion
AV Idol (Japanese)
Opens: 25 April 2013 Genre: Comedy Duration: 100 mins
Director: Hideo Jojo Cast: Yui Tatsmi, Yeo Min-jeong
AV goddess Ryoko, who captivates Asian men’s
hearts, is getting tired of filming AV. When she
accidentally meets Yuna, a wannabe idol star,
Ryoko lies to Yuna against her will and brings
her to the AV film set. Meanwhile, the AV film
director is fascinated by Yuna’s freshness and
casts her as the leading actress right away and
plans a new ‘AV film’ starring Yuna.
Judgment Day (Mandarin)
Opens: 18 April 2013 Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family
Director: Ong Kuo Sin Cast: Mark Lee, Henry Thia, Chua En
Lai, Rebecca Lim, Guo Liang, Edwin Goh, Julie Tan, Sebastian
Tan, Tender Huang, Alice Ko
No (Spanish)
Opens: 18 April 2013 Genre: Drama Director: Pablo Larraín
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zegers, Luis
Gnecco, Nestor Cantillana
In 1988, Chilean military dictator Augusto
Pinochet – under international duress – is
forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency.
The country will vote YES or NO to Pinochet
extending his rule for another eight years.
Opposition leaders in favour of NO persuade
a brash young advertising executive, Rene
Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal), to spearhead
their campaign. Against all odds, with scant
Iron Man 3 (3D)
Opens: 26 April 2013 Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Director: Shane Black Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Guy Pearce,
Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Kingsley
Life is not settling down for brash-but-brilliant
billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Downey
Jr) after the events of The Avengers. In fact,
he finds himself and girlfriend Pepper Potts
(Paltrow) tangled up in the machinations of
arrogant geneticist Aldrich Killian (Pearce) and
uber-villain The Mandarin (Kingsley).
Judgment Day centres on several characters,
from all works of life, as they decide to
share their deepest secrets when it’s believed
that doomsday will happen in 72 hours. A
corrupted cop confesses to his subordinate
that he had previously accepted a bribe. A
married man tells his family his greatest wish
is to become a woman. A wife reveals to her
husband that she is actually secretly in love
with her superior at work. A distraught young
lady decides to run away from Singapore and
heads for Cambodia, in the process; she breaks
up with her fiancé. But miraculously, everyone
survives Judgment Day. While the whole
world rejoices, for those who made irreversible
decisions, it is the end of the world as they
knew it…
APRIL 2013 F*** 89
90 F*** APRIL 2013
FML
For My Lust
DVDS/
BLU-RAYS
SEXY
PLAYTHINGS
NEW PLAYGROUND
COOL
SUBSCRIPTION
GIFTS
ANPETER
UNEXPECTED
JOURNEY
JACKSON & MARTIN FREEMAN GIVE US INSIDE
INFORMATION ABOUT THE RELEASE OF THE
HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY ON DVD
APRIL 2013 F*** 91
INSIDE
INFORMATION
Peter Jackson gives F*** the lowdown on
making movies he really wants to see himself
– like THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
92 F*** APRIL 2013
This time around, what were the new challenges for you?
We were shooting in 3D with high frame rates. The technical side of it is a challenge. But if I was
going to say what the real challenge was, it’s the same on every movie, which is to tell a good story
and make an entertaining film. The hardest part of any film is the scriptwriting, to get the script
into shape and have the character development and the emotional journey for the audience. That is
always more of a challenge than anything to do with the technical side.
What would you say is your responsibility? Do you feel a responsibility toward the very devoted
fans? Not only of the book but of the franchise that you’ve created?
Yeah. I’m very aware [of] that. We’re making a trilogy on The Hobbit, which means that one day
people will have six films on their shelves – the three Hobbit movies and the three Lord of the Rings
films. I do want the heavy unity in that story so that people who might want to watch them all in a
row can [have] that journey make sense, make it feel like it’s the same storyteller in the same world
– even though the two trilogies were shot 10 years apart.
To the small minority out there who haven’t seen any of these films, or maybe new generations
coming into it that may not necessarily be fans of the genre, what’s your pitch to them to say,
“Come see my movie?”
Well, I don’t really think that because it’s a fantasy film it has to be any less emotional or involving
than any other film. I mean I think the best fantasy to me is played very real. We have terrific
performances. We have actors playing characters who are totally believing the world that they’re
in. The fantasy that I don’t really like is where nothing is realistic and nothing feels particularly
real. I find it hard to connect to those sorts of films. My belief and certainly the way that I shoot
these movies is that you’re in a fantastic escapist adventure, but there’s a lot of humanity and a lot
of emotion.
Did you feel, at any point in this process, or do you continue to feel that you have a muse
coming to you from Middle Earth? Is it Tolkien speaking to you? Or Bilbo Baggins?
No. I mean there’s just always a voice in my head, which is trying to make the film that I’d like to
see. That’s the voice that I listen to, really. I can’t second-guess what anyone else would think of the
movie. Whether it’s the audience or Professor Tolkien himself. So I’m always focused on saying,
‘Okay, if I get a little sentimental and watch The Hobbit, [I want to] watch the movie that I’d like to
see.’ And that’s the film I try to make.
When you go to the cinema, what do you enjoy watching other than your own films?
I tend to choose escapist movies. Because those are the films that I like to watch, the films I make
actually. I don’t want anything too heavy, too intense. I like to have a bit of entertainment when I
go to the movies.
And what is your preferred venue? Where do you see most of your movies?
On the big screen. I’ve tried to go to a cinema as much as I can. I much prefer the environment of
a theatre. There’s something really magical about that moment of walking into a huge dark room
with strangers and sitting there and having a shared entertainment experience. It’s what I grew up
with. It transports you away from the real world.
APRIL 2013 F*** 93
BILBO’S
BAGGINS
OF TRICKS
Martin Freeman answers F***’s riddles
in the dark in time for the release of
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY on DVD
Now that you’ve seen the finished product, what’s your favourite sequence of the film?
There’s a few. I really like when the dwarves first come into Bag End, because I like the chaos of that. The fact that Bilbo is
completely freaked out that there is chaos in his house caused by these people he doesn’t know. I like the stone giants. When
they’re escaping up that mountain and they come to life, start throwing rocks at each other – that’s magnificent. I like the
Gollum scene in the cave. The ‘Riddles In The Dark’ sequence I think is really nice.
How closely did you work with Andy Serkis [who plays Gollum] in those scenes?
Very closely. Everything you see in the scene is Andy so I didn’t have to imagine anything. All the blocking of the scene was
done live. I didn’t have to act with a tennis ball. It was all Andy. So for me, there was no difference between doing that scene
and doing a scene with Gandalf. Well, actually it was a lot more straightforward than doing a scene with Gandalf. Because
of the size difference between Bilbo and Gandalf, very often Ian [McKellen] and I had to be in a different room. Or, if we
were working together, I would have to be looking at the top of his head and he’d having to be looking at my sternum. So
me and Andy could actually look in each other’s eyes, which is of course what every actor wants to be able to do.
You mentioned imagination. How were you informed of what was going to end up on the screen to enable you to act?
Was it in the script?
Sometimes it wouldn’t just be the script. Pete [Jackson] would show us design drawings of what the CG around us was going
to look like. So if we just had a pathway and the rest of it was CG or just a throne and the rest of it was CG, we had to know
obviously what the rest of it was going to be like; if we were on the precipice of something, so we could look over, or how
far up the room went, if it was a room, or what was in the background of the sky. So he would be quite conscious of really
going through what’s over there, what’s down there, so we had a proper image of it. Otherwise you might be looking down,
and there’s nothing down there. Or you might not look down there and then the audience wonders, ‘Why he isn’t looking
at that great shot coming up?’
When you saw the film, did it look familiar to you at all? Or was it completely alien in the finished product?
It did look familiar, but it just looked very impressively familiar. It was like what we had done, but just more impressively so.
I mean, even when I was looping some dialogue a few months ago in England, some of the CG stuff was very unfinished.
It looked very, very rudimentary. And that’s only a couple of months ago. When I saw it in Wellington, in this finished
bright shiny product, this end result, I couldn’t believe how quickly it happened and just how skillfully it’s rendered. It’s a
thing of beauty.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is now available on Blu-ray & DVD.
94 F*** APRIL 2013
APRIL 2013 F*** 95
OF KING(SLAYER)S
AND QUEENS
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau tells F*** about playing the dangerously charming
Jaime Lannister on HBO’s GAME OF THRONES
Tell us about your character.
Jaime Lannister is the son of Tywin Lannister
and he has two siblings –Cersei, his twin
sister, and Tyrion. The Lannister family is the
wealthiest, the most powerful family in the
seven kingdoms. Jaime is a member of the
Kingsguard, an elite bodyguard for the king.
He’s also known, though not to his face, as the
‘Kingslayer’ because he also served under the
previous king, the Mad King Aerys Targaryen,
and he assassinated him. The Mad King was a
dictator; he would make Hitler look like Mother
Teresa or something… so you would have
thought that people would be grateful that he
was gone, but still Jaime didn’t receive that kind
96 F*** APRIL 2013
of gratitude. People were offended that he broke
his oath and that kind of p**ses him off.
What motivates Jaime?
He has a line in the first episode where he
says, “The things I do, I do for love” and love is
very much what dictates his life when we first
meet him - the love of his sister Cersei more
specifically. It’s a very complicated relationship
but it has dominated his world in the past. It’s
also why he entered the Kingsguard in the
first place. Once you become a member of the
Kingsguard, you forsake a normal life. You can’t
marry, you can’t have kids - but it enabled him
to be close to the queen, his sister.
How deeply have you been sucked in to all the
mythology, the names and the history?
I would not want to sit down with the hardcore
fans and go through a test! I would fail miserably.
But that doesn’t affect my ability to play him, I
don’t think. I guess in a way it’s like looking at
yourself: I know my family history. I could go
back maybe 100 years, maybe, but the fact that I
know who my great great grandfather is doesn’t
necessarily affect my everyday life.
What attracted you to Game Of Thrones?
I thought the writing was really good and I
thought Jaime Lannister was really intriguing.
The fact that you have a character who starts
out in the first episode doing something which
is so horrible and horrendous means you kind
of go, “How could you ever like or care for this
man?” But then, actually, you find out that, as it
so happens, he had really, really good reasons
for doing what he did – I won’t give it away - and
he actually does redeem himself.
Indeed, one of the things about Game Of
Thrones is that every character seems morally
ambiguous – there are no goodies or baddies.
Take Ned [or Eddard Stark, played by Sean Bean].
Ned is the hero, right, he’s the honourable man?
But what about that first thing you actually see
him do? He’s presented with this kid who’s run
away from the war, because he’s scared s**tless
and so he has deserted. He’s captured and he’s
done nothing wrong, he’s telling the truth, he’s
trying to warn them about something terrible
he’s seen and the only thing that Ned Stark does
is, “Well, off with his head”.
But of course, Ned Stark is an honourable man…
that’s what’s great about all the characters, is that
it’s all in the eyes of the beholder. It’s the same
with Jaime’s action - it is a horrible thing he
does, but he has just cause. Later on, you find
out what that cause is. I want people to believe
that Jaime is just a horrible, evil man because
I know that they’ll have to reconsider at some
point.
How important was it to be acting in a world
that was believable?
Very. When you did the scenes, from the word
“Action” to “Cut” it was fantastic because you
look around, everyone’s in costume and the
craftsmanship, the set design, everything, it was
just amazing. But then, of course, in between set
ups you stand around having a coffee and you
look over, Mark Addy’s having a roll-up, some
girl’s holding up his dress or whatever. So it
could be ridiculous too.
Were there any particular sets or moments
where you were astounded by what you saw?
Oh absolutely. When I walked in on the set of
the Throne Room, wow! That was built in the
Paint Hall in Belfast. They call it the Paint Hall
because that’s where they painted the Titanic,
so it’s huge. Usually when you build a set, you
build maybe two walls or a corner and then you
add on bits later but here they built everything,
the whole room. It was so detailed, it was just
exquisite and that really blew my mind.
And does that help in your performance?
Oh yeah absolutely. I have a scene there when
Sean Bean’s character arrives at the court and
my character is waiting for him in this room.
It’s a room that has a lot of significance in their
mutual history, but that was pretty cool for
me to sit there waiting for Ned Stark to walk
through. They have these doors, huge double
doors that made this amazing noise when they
opened. It was cool.
Did you get to do lots of sword fighting?
Absolutely. There was a scene in Malta. We shot
in this little town called Medina in a square and
I had another scene with Ned Stark, a bit of a
showdown. I’m riding on this beautiful white
horse… it felt pretty cool, I have to say.
How is your swordsmanship?
It’s pretty good really but there was a lot of
training for this. It’s like you’re learning a
dance. You just repeat and repeat and repeat
and eventually we got it. It was the same with
the horseback riding. I’d done riding before but
I did train quite a bit for this because Jaime is
supposed to be the very best horseman – so you
don’t want any hint of hesitation in your moves.
It sounds like it might have got a little
competitive between you and Sean Bean.
Were there any egos in there? Did you think,
“I could show Bean a thing or two”?
Absolutely! But it was good fun, it really was.
Clearly he’s done a lot of that kind of thing on
Lord Of The Rings. But I reckon I could take
him. I’m Danish – of course I could!
Tell us about your costume. You have a very
particular leather jacket that is by far the
coolest item in the piece.
Absolutely, I always have a clause in my contract
stipulating that I get the best clothes! That jacket
is heavy. It was made for me. That’s the thing
about Game Of Thrones, everything was made
for the characters, everything was made from
scratch. It is a beautiful jacket and I think they
have four of them because they get bashed
about.
then we were supposed to be shooting spring
later on and it was covered in white – winter
was coming!
I have to say, coming from Denmark where we
have a bit more winter – we’re used at least to
the idea that, in the winter, you put on winter
tyres on your cars. In Britain, when we were
filming, people were just leaving their cars on
the motorway. I couldn’t believe it. I was like,
“So you’ll just walk away?” They did. It was
laughable ‘cause there was this much snow and
it was just, “Okay we’re gonna have to close”. The
airport was closed. Everything was closed.
Did it feel like an epic production while you
were making it?
Huge, it felt huge, compared to anything I’ve
done before. I remember years ago I did a film
called Black Hawk Down. That was really big,
because there were so many extras. But this
was even bigger - because there are so many
characters, the costume department is insane
and it was for such a long period of time. So it
felt huge all the way through.
What would mark this out as a success to you?
I hope you’re going to get one to take home.
If someone said to me, “There’s a new fantasy
show”, I wouldn’t be that interested. Hopefully,
we will get people like me interested in this
because I think if by fantasy you expect hobbits
and elves and weird stuff then yeah I understand
why you don’t want to see it – but this has
nothing to do with that. This is about human
beings, power struggles and politics.
Exactly! Well, [writer] David Benioff says he’s
going to steal one and walk around New York –
which would just be wrong.
You’ve said you’re a man who likes football.
If the game was Stark v Lannister which team
would you back?
When you found out you’d been cast, did you
quickly run out and buy the books to find out
what happens to your character?
Oh Lannister. Because we are cleverer, funnier
and stronger.
Yeah. I’d go down to the bookstore and you just
flick through the pages - looking for the name
Jaime, Jaime, Jaime. Actually, now you can just
go into one of those fan sites and they have
everything, all the knowledge you would ever
want.
The first season of Games of Thrones is now out
on DVD.
Are the hordes of obsessive fans a little scary?
I don’t think it’s scary. It means there is this
whole very engaged group of people – before
this even became a show. Because they just love
these books. Which is great. Now what seems
a little absurd for me is the discussions that
they can have over the smallest of small details,
but fair enough, I understand – you have a
passion and you’re passionate about it. I know
sometimes I’m with mates and we’ll discuss the
latest Barcelona game, we’ll discuss a move that
Messi did and we can keep talking about it for
hours. For people that don’t like football, it’s just
ridiculous for grown men to discuss football in
that manner. But if that’s your thing, that’s your
thing and I guess if the fans do like it and they
support the show, it’s great for us and HBO.
What was the toughest moment in filming?
We had some days that just went on and on
because for some reason it started snowing in
Northern Ireland. Which was ironic because
the whole of August and September, they were
shooting snow scenes with fake snow and
APRIL 2013 F*** 97
CZ12
Bully
Jackie Chan isn’t retiring just yet… but CZ12 might well be his
last epic action blockbuster. There’s only so much punishment
his almost sixty-year-old body can take, after all. It’s a shame,
though, because this film – which doubles as Chan’s campaign
for national heritage items to be returned to their countries of
origin – is a little too bloated, featuring a script that’s mostly
banal and on occasion very random. Chan plays JC, a treasurehunter of indiscriminate morals who’s put on the trail of twelve
priceless bronze heads modelled on the Chinese zodiac. He
enlists the earnest preservation expert Coco (Yao Xingtong) to
help him in his misguided trek across the globe, and he finds
his conscience increasingly pricked by her presence.
There are
several
moments in this
documentary
that will break
your heart –
understandably
so, since it tells
the stories of
several kids
who have been
the victims
of bullying in
school, some of whom suffer until they hit
breaking point. We meet Alex, who’s reviled for
being ‘weird’; and Kelby, who is shunned for
coming out as gay. Then there’s Ja’Meya, who
commits an unthinkable crime to get away
from her oppressors, and winds up ruining
her own future. Director Lee Hirsch also
interviews parents whose children have chosen
to die rather than live under the weight of
scorn and emotional abuse.
If you’re not a fan of Chan to begin with, there isn’t much that’s new in the film that would tide
you over its rather interminable two-hour running time. Subtlety has never been his strong
suit, whether as an actor or a director, so CZ12 was hardly ever going to be a weighty, complex
treatment of the subject matter at hand. But, on the whole, the film isn’t terrible. It mostly trundles
along serviceably well due to Chan’s indefatigable charm and readiness to put himself in harm’s
way. Getting to watch him do what he does best also makes the film go by more quickly – whether
it’s strapping skates to every limb he’s got and shooting down mountain roads, or trying to escape
from slavering guard dogs with a parachute on his back while trapped in a topiary-enhanced
maze. It’s these moments that underscore how sad it is that Chan won’t be making such huge
movies anymore, because no one else would be crazy enough to make or be in them.
Extras: Three featurettes amounting to fifteen minutes of behind-the scenes footage (including Chan
railing at the Parisian sky for not cooperating with him), highlights from the Singapore gala premiere,
trailers, a photo gallery and a free Chinese zodiac forecast DVD featuring insights from Grand Master Tan Khoon Yong.
For what it is, Bully does a good job of setting
up a complex issue, showing just how difficult
it is for parents and teachers to save children
from the kind of casual playground violence
that goes on every day. The only trouble is that
it’s pretty one-sided: this is clearly the victim’s
story, with Hirsch splicing his footage together
to elicit a particular emotional response from
his viewers. There’s very little here in the way
of explaining the film’s own title: the ‘bully’
remains a mysterious, unexplored figure who
lurks in playgrounds and on school buses,
which unfortunately leaves about half of
this complicated social equation completely
unanswered.
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98 F*** APRIL 2013
The Perks Of
Being A
Wallflower
Author Stephen Chbosky adapted
his own novel for the silver screen
and directed it – a pretty rare
occurrence in Hollywood. On
the strength of this smart, sweet,
emotionally powerful film about
fitting in and finding friends, that
should happen far more often
than it does. Logan Lerman plays
Charlie, a sweet, troubled loner of a kid who dreads starting high school
after spending some time away in hospital. But then he meets kooky free
spirit Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his charmingly screwed-up, adorable
stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Thereafter, Charlie is inducted into the
Wallflowers, and the story of his life begins to intertwine with theirs.
For the most part, Wallflower is a rich, moving gem of a film about the
difficulties of growing up, the tragedy that is high school, and the power
of friendship to get you through it all. The trio of complicated, broken,
very real kids at the heart of the film are a big reason for its success, with
Miller in particular stealing every scene he waltzes through. This helps
a great deal in papering over the moments in the film that meander,
or which don’t have as strong an emotional impact as Chbosky was
probably going for.
Chasing Mavericks
Anyone who watches a sports movie
would be willing to forgive a cliché or
two… or twenty. Chasing Mavericks
has them all: sixteen-year-old surfer
Jay Moriarity (Jonny Weston) wants
to conquer Mavericks, an enormous,
near-mythic wave off the coast of
Northern California, and can only do
so with the help of local surfing legend
Frosty (Gerard Butler). The better
sports movies succeed almost in spite
of themselves – there’s a spark, a hint
of originality or soul that prevents
them from falling into the dungeon of
mediocrity.
Sadly, Chasing Mavericks is not one of
those movies. There are some gorgeous, heart-racing moments in this
film, mainly when Jay and Frosty take to the ocean and try to ride the
very waves that could kill them at any minute. But the script is bland,
complete with portentous voiceovers and one-note minor villains
serving as forgettable antagonists for Jay. Surfing scenes aside, much of
the rest of the film is trite. If the sun, sea and surf call to your heart the
way it takes ahold of Jay and Frosty’s souls, you might find something to
enjoy in this film. Otherwise, it’s not too late to bail and stay safe and
dry onshore.
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APRIL 2013 F*** 99
The Hobbit:
An Unexpected
Journey
Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is
the titular hobbit who had always
thought himself happy to stay warm
and comfortable in the safety of his
lovely home. But, at the behest of the
wonderfully manipulative Gandalf
the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo signs
on as the fourteenth member of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield
(Richard Armitage), a deposed dwarf prince intent on reclaiming his lost
kingdom of Erebor from the treasure-hungry dragon Smaug.
Here’s the thing about this first installment in The Hobbit trilogy: by
anyone else’s standards, An Unexpected Journey is close to every bit
as beautiful and lovingly crafted as its predecessors, featuring much
the same glorious mix of world-building, character development, and
respect for Tolkien’s story and universe. Freeman, Armitage, McKellen
and the Riddles In The Dark sequence are – unreservedly – brilliant.
The trouble is that Jackson has ensured that he’s a tough act to follow.
The film definitely suffers from his efforts to beef up a far slighter story,
its tone see-sawing between cartoonish and deadly serious as he tries
to balance the more kiddy-friendly elements of The Hobbit with his
efforts to inject gravitas and continuity into the entire enterprise. As a
result, emotional engagement with the characters and their plights is
something that happens almost in retrospect rather than in the cinema.
An Unexpected Journey boasts everything we love about the Lord Of The
Rings franchise, but with just a little less wonder, a little less magic, and
a little less tonal coherency. It’s still a wonderful, sweeping rollercoaster
ride of fantasy and high drama, and it’s a far, far better film than most
blockbuster movies you’ll find clogging up cineplexes these days. But,
well… it simply isn’t as good as its predecessors.
Extras: The standard trailers and photo gallery, as well as a video extolling
New Zealand’s virtues as a filming location. The highlight? Jackson’s ten
video blogs covering the entire process: from pre-production through to
filming, publicity, and roll-out. It’s deliciously detailed and, as an extras
package, would warrant five stars if it were attached to any other movie.
But, again, Jackson’s raised the bar with his earlier DVD releases for the
Lord Of The Rings franchise and he just barely clears it this time. One can’t
help but wonder if the out-takes, commentaries and deleted scenes are
being kept for a special-edition DVD.
Lola Versus
What happens when your life doesn’t
go the way you were expecting it to?
Who can you rely on? How do you
treat the people around you? Lola
(Greta Gerwig) is forced to answer
these questions when, on the way
to her happy ending, she’s unceremoniously dumped by her bad-boy
fiancé Luke (Joel Kinnaman). At first,
she takes refuge with her friends
Alice (Zoe Lister Jones) and Henry
(Hamish Linklater), but her troubled
emotional journey soon ends up leading her away from the people she loves the most.
The problem with Lola Versus isn’t its cast, but its characters. The
quartet of actors anchoring the film try as hard as they can with what
they’re given, but they are, frankly, playing characters who aren’t
particularly likeable or sympathetic. This is especially true of poor
Lola, who destroys all her relationships even as she keeps fretting
about the end of a marriage that never even begun. Luke is a similarly
frustrating character, burdened by motivations so opaque as to be
incomprehensible. Only Jones and Linklater manage to throw a little
oddball spark into their supporting roles. By the end, it’s not so much
Lola versus Luke, or Lola versus herself – it’s Lola versus the audience.
And we won’t bet on Lola winning us over.
Extras: Outtakes featuring the entire cast.
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100 F*** APRIL 2013
Triad
William (William Chan), Edward (Edward Tsui) and Derek (Derek Tsang)
are three friends from school who get
caught up in the Mongkok triads after a
scuffle with a gang member from a rival
society. There’s a romantic subplot with
William’s boss’ (Patrick Tam) daughter
Michelle (Michelle Wai), betrayals and
bloodletting… but then again, that’s
to be expected from a movie from the
Asian gangster genre.
Triad is a semi-competent take on
the Hong Kong triad genre that’s engaging enough, despite a flat
performance from its lead actor, former boy band star Chan. It’s a
generic bloodbath of a movie that bears resemblance to, but never quite
surpasses, Andrew Lau’s Young and Dangerous series, arguably the
touchstone of the genre.
Here Comes
The Boom
The fact that director Frank Coraci
helmed 2011’s odious Zookeeper
doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Thankfully, Here Comes The Boom
is marginally better, although that
merely means that it hovers around
the standard of Coraci staples like
The Waterboy. It’s the vaguely ugly
love child of Rocky and Bad Teacher,
with copious bodily expulsion jokes
thrown in for bad measure.
Kevin James makes this flick a lot more likable than it should be, and
there’s a good-hearted message in its mediocre script, but that probably
won’t stop you from throwing in the towel before you hear the boom.
Extras: An excellent selection of ring-side seats in this one, with a line-up
of deleted scenes, a gag reel, an interview with the cast, and behind-thescenes footage, including a UFC section uncovering Kevin James’ surprisingly extended martial arts background.
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APRIL 2013 F*** 101
Lake Placid:
The Final
Chapter
Since the creation of Jaws, marine
predators have been getting pretty
bad reps when it comes to movies.
Lake Placid’s focus is on crocodiles
of gigantic proportions, a high
school swim team and your generic
assortment of crazed baddies. No
prizes for guessing who gets to nom
on whom.
All of Lake Placid: The Final Chapter’s promise is to be found in its title.
We love trashy gore movies as much as the next reviewer, but there’s
something distinctly dull about this giant croc flick. The acting borders
on the painful, the story is slapdash, and the film borrows a trick from
The Piranha series playbook with its nubile young teens. Trust us when
we say that the last factor won’t do much to distract you from this
toothless gore flick’s obvious failings.
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Ruby Sparks
Meet Calvin (Paul Dano), talented
young novelist with a profound case
of writer’s block. His solution? Write a
beautiful, fictive young woman called
Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan) into literal
existence, and engage in a tumultuous
romance with her.
Ruby Sparks is one of the very best
romantic comedies this reviewer
has ever seen. It almost defiantly
breaks free of the mould of gratingly
commercial ‘chick flicks’, instead
serving up some rather deep ideas
cloaked in a ‘what if?’ comedy. It’s artfully lensed and brought to vivid
life by its very capable leads. Just as Ruby leaps off the page and into
Calvin’s life, so this film will very likely leap off the screen and into the
hearts of many a viewer.
Extras: The theatrical trailer, and a handful of behind-the-scenes
interviews focusing on the plot and the influence of the creators’
relationships on the movie. Solid but not inspired.
Naked Soldier
Phoenix (Jennifer Tse) is a trained
killer in a sinister organisation owned
by drug cartel mistress Madam Rose
(Ellen Chan). Unbeknownst to her,
Phoenix is actually the daughter
of Interpol investigator CK Long
(Sammo Hung), who foiled a billiondollar transaction undertaken by
Rose’s organisation 15 years ago.
Will Long and Phoenix reunite? Will
Phoenix obey Madam Rose or side
with her father? Do we even care?
As you may have expected from the title, Naked Soldier delivers
the kind of groan-worthy, ‘so bad it’s almost good’ schtick that’s fast
becoming a trademark of writer Wong Jing. The premise is thin, the
fight choreography run-of-the-mill, and the script so bad it’s literally
laughable. For a movie that’s about sultry femme fatale assassins, it’s sad
to say that Sammo Hung’s fight scenes are the only thing remotely sexy
about Naked Soldier.
Extras: A nearly naked extras section, with a photo gallery and a
collection of trailers.
EXTRAS
EXTRAS
FILM
FILM
102 F*** APRIL 2013
Wreck-It Ralph
Meet Wreck-It Ralph (voiced by John
C. Reilly): he’s a baddie who’s really
soft on the inside, a guy who’s been
pretty depressed of late. His talent for
smashing stuff goes unappreciated,
considering that he’s the villain in his
own video-game, a Donkey Kongesque platformer called Fix-It Felix
Jr. When villain peer support groups
with Zangief and Bowser just don’t
cut it anymore, Ralph decides to
game-jump his way to acceptance.
Wreck-It Ralph is a savvy homage to video games, a sweet-hearted story
about outcasts, and an action-packed animated film to boot. It’s a feelgood film that’s bound to entertain kids, their caretakers, and those of
us who have fond childhood memories of countless hours spent in the
arcade. Retro for the win!
Extras: Alternate and deleted scenes, an in-depth making-of-sequence,
short ‘commercials’ of the video games featured in the movie, and the
beautifully animated short film Paperman.
Code Name:
Geronimo
Code Name: Geronimo shares the
same concept as Zero Dark Thirty:
revolving around the US military
operation to execute Osama Bin
Laden. The film focuses on the same
Seal Team Six, as well as the CIA
investigation and lead-up to the
operation.
This ain’t no Zero Dark Thirty, folks.
Sure, they may bear resemblances, but comparing the quality of the
films is like comparing a 19th-century Baker Rifle to a fully automatic
submachine gun. It’s undeniably serviceable as an action thriller,
but the characters come across as flat and uncompelling, and the
proceedings have as much complexity as a game of Where’s Wally. The
shoot-em up bits are passably intense though.
EXTRAS
EXTRAS
FILM
FILM
APRIL 2013 F*** 103
Skyfall
In Skyfall, Bond (Daniel Craig)
is asked what his hobby is.
“Resurrection” is his reply – and
this is resurrection of the most
glorious kind. Skyfall sets right many
perceived problems viewers had with
the previous instalment in the Bond
franchise.
Bond’s latest caper has his loyalty to
M (Judi Dench) tested as her past
returns to haunt her. An assignment
is botched, agents around the
world exposed, and MI6 agents
compromised, leaving Bond as the only one who can take on a shadowy
villain who has more in common with 007 than he expects.
With Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes at the helm, this is a very
stylish, good-looking film; nine-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer
Roger Deakins serves up startlingly gorgeous imagery. Many wrote off
the first two Craig-starring Bond films, Quantum Of Solace in particular,
as vainly aping the Bourne movies. Well, that’s definitely no longer the
case (even though Bourne alumnus Albert Finney is in this too), as
Skyfall’s tone strikes a near-perfect balance between the tough and gritty
and glamourous and smooth, with a strong emotional current running
through it all.
Extras: Director and producer commentaries, sixty minutes of behindthe-scenes footage, including director and cast interviews and making-of
sequences, and footage from the Skyfall premiere in London.
Hotel
Transylvania
If Monsters Inc and Twilight had
a child, it would probably look a
lot like Hotel Transylvania, with
its reversed world where classic
monsters are ‘just like us’ and serve
as adorable protagonists, crossbred
with its ‘forbidden romance’
storyline.
In this fantasy world, Dracula is
the owner of a ‘five-stake’ resort (the puns and jokes are that obvious)
called Hotel Transylvania; a place where monsters and their families
go to escape from those annoying humans. To celebrate his daughter’s
118th birthday, Dracula has invited a number of A-list monsters. What
he doesn’t know is that a nosy (and slightly horny) human teenager will
unexpectedly arrive on his doorstep, and the over-protective father will
do anything to prevent an inter-species romance of Twilight proportions.
Hotel Transylvania does not deliver much to anyone older than 12; it’s a
fun, harmless family film that, despite its stellar voice cast, hasn’t set the
international box office on fire, and therefore is unlikely to generate the
franchise that it was clearly intended to launch.
Extras: Director’s commentary, a charming animated short, three deleted
scenes, interview with the voice actors, and a short making-of sequence.
EXTRAS
EXTRAS
FILM
FILM
104 F*** APRIL 2013
Taken 2
Guess who’s back, guys? Yup, it’s
Liam ‘Punch That Wolf In The Nose’
Neeson, returning as Bryan Mills,
an ex-CIA operative who – this time
around – finds himself taken hostage
along with his wife. It’s alright to feel
bad for the kidnappers.
Most moviegoers, upon hearing
news of a Taken sequel being made,
probably had the same thought – “the
first one was cool, but do we need a
second?” Taken seemed like the kind
of film that would receive a shoddy
direct-to-video sequel featuring a completely different cast with the
exact same premise, so perhaps it can be considered good news that
Neeson and co. are back for a proper part deux, with Luc Besson and
Robert Mark Kamen also returning to script the movie.
The filmmakers take advantage of Istanbul’s potential as an action movie
location and there’s a series of foot and vehicular chases through the
back alleys and across the rooftops of the Turkish capital. Thing is, we
really have seen it all before – and done a smidge better – in the original
Taken.
Extras: Five deleted scenes, an alternate ending, a black ops field menu
feature which plays the movie while showing vital stats and character
profiles, a breakdown of the equipment used by Bryan Mills, and an
interview section with Neeson.
The Watch
Aliens attack the small town of
Glenview, Ohio. Unfortunately
for its residents, their only line of
defense are four civic-minded (read:
psychologically disturbed) individuals
who form the Neighbourhood Watch.
The Watch panders to the lowest
common denominator in the
extreme, quickly degenerating into
an unending flood of off-colour
unfunniness, whatever impact the
profane language or outrageous fratboy humour might have had completely eroded away by the time the
finale rolls around at last.
Instead of a jaunty sci-fi action-adventure comedy, we got a stale,
bloated and almost unbearably crass film, in effect a gathering of four
comedians who spend most of the running time hanging around
making bodily function jokes. Even the usual likability of Ben Stiller is
drowned out by the coarseness that surrounds him.
Extras: A large handful of deleted scenes, a decent gag reel, and behindthe-scenes interviews with the cast and creators of the film on what they’d
do in the event of a real alien invasion.
EXTRAS
EXTRAS
FILM
FILM
APRIL 2013 F*** 105
Games: BioShock Infinite
Welcome to BioShock Infinite, the half-amazing, half-confusing,
thoroughly exciting... what? It’s hard to explain what exactly the game
is, because it does so many things so well. A steampunk-meets-fantasymeets-horror first-person shooter (fps) game, it’s a non-stop thrill ride, a
mind-bending existentialist treatise, and a profoundly moving story on
one man’s and one woman’s search for freedom. But if one were to sum it
up neatly, one word would suffice: WHOA.
Set in 1912, the player’s character, Booker DeWitt, is sent to the huge sky
city of Columbia to find a young woman, Elizabeth, who has been held
captive there for the last twelve years. The player’s character is branded a
false prophet, the antichrist of Columbia (its patriarch is lovingly termed
the Prophet by many of its inhabitants), so the journey is of course
fraught with danger and action, the situation made even more dire when
he finds himself stuck in the middle of a civil war between the jingoistic
Founders, who are white American supremacists; and the Vox Populi,
champions of the common folk.
Right from the get-go, I was impressed by how immersive the
environment is. Upon entering Columbia, the sights are a feast for the
eyes: towering, majestic statues float from the skies; retro-chic airships
transport citizens from one sky platform to another; birds dance. But the
utopian veneer soon takes a turn towards the dark: Columbia is more
a dystopia than a utopia, and the bleak visions of a city torn apart by
internal strife, petty conflict, and blind hatred are simultaneously wowinducing and chilling.
Like the first two BioShock games, BioShock Infinite starts out with the
player in a state of befuddlement. You don’t know anything about your
character or Columbia, but the more conscientious you are in engaging
with the environment, such as interacting with mini projection booths
around Columbia, the more and the quicker you will learn about the
mysterious city. Much of the history of Columbia and its “Prophet”
is told through short video clips played in these projection booths,
and these little segments are a beautiful tribute to the great American
106 F*** APRIL 2013
silent films of the 1910s and 1920s. (Game developer Ken Levine has a
background in film, and it shows here.)
If you have played either of the first two installments, you’ll know that
the very limited choices you get to make in the game – it’s not an RPG
after all - will affect which ending you get. It’s my one beef with the
series, since I am not a fan of such an over-determined approach to
story-telling. Unlike some other fps role-playing games (like the Mass
Effect series) that have a stunning variety of possible conclusions, the
first two BioShock games have only three endings, and I’m assuming
that’s the case here as well. There’s a very strict course of “morality”
that the player must follow in order to get the happy ending, and some
of these choices I don’t even think can be considered truly “bad”, so to
speak.
That’s a personal quibble though, and I feel that the developers of
BioShock Infinite – Irrational Games and 2K Marin - have otherwise
taken a great risk and aimed for the stars. The two central ideas here
- free will versus determinism (the over-determined endings kind of
undermines this somewhat, though), and anarchy versus fascism – are
explored in a way that’s engaging and lively and entertaining. In other
words, they’ve come up with a deep, smart, profoundly affecting game
without sacrificing any of its kick-ass elements.
The last stretch of the game is long on both muscle-clenching action,
as well as mind-teasing conundrums to ponder over, and it’s likely to
provoke lots of debate on game forums. It’s been hours since I completed
the game, and I still can’t get it out of my head – the sheer amount of
WTF moments in the story makes it difficult to do so. Bioshock Infinite’s
world is one I fell in love with and want to revisit, and I think you will
too.
RATING
Raymond Tan
Sexy Playthings...
Live Long and
Prosper… and get
some bling!
What better way to celebrate the upcoming
Star Trek sequel than to get one of these
babies? The Starfleet Academy Class Ring is a
1:1 scale, screen-accurate replica of the actual
prop, made of a high-strength, scratch-resistant
metal alloy for your rougher outer-space
expeditions. Talk about fashion accessories
that’ll help you stay tight with your crew!
Price: USD 19.90 at http://shop.startrek.com/
Cathay personalises
your 3D movie
experience
Sony delivers Extra
Bass
Every day we’re shuffling… yeah, we know The
Harlem Shake’s the new ‘in’ thing. Fads come and
go, auditory excellence stays timeless. Sony has
expanded its Extra Bass headphone series with
the MDR-XB920 and MDR-XB610, combining
powerful bass with hip new colours and super sleek
metallic designs.
Movie fans looking to bring home a slice of 3D movies
will be happy to hear that Cathay Cineplexes are now
selling movie-themed RealD 3D glasses, inspired by
popular movie franchises such as Tranformers, The
Avengers, Cars and Star Wars.
The MDR-XB920’s huge 50mm drive units
faithfully reproduce notes from the deepest bass
to highest treble, available in silver with black and
silver with red, while the MDR-XB610 boasts tight,
punchy bass and superb sound, and come in silver
with white and silver with orange.
Available from 28 March 2013, the basic RealD 3D
glasses will come in Adult, Kids and Clip-on sizes, and
will be reusable up to 20 times. Movie-goers can look
forward to designs inspired by the widely-anticipated
sequels Despicable Me 2, Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into
Darkness, with prices starting as low as $5.
Movie-goers bringing along their own pair of reusable
3D glasses will be able to enjoy savings of up to $2 on
the price of 3D Movie tickets.
NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD
No, they haven’t become a sponsor for Nick Fury, but this development
is almost as cool. Nvidia’s funky-looking Project SHIELD unleashes
some state-of-the-art mobile gaming, with a custom 72-core NVIDIA
GeForce GPU, a full-size controller and multi-touch, 5-inch display.The
NVIDIA project shield also comes stocked with the latest Android Jelly
Bean operating system and seamless Wi-Fi connectivity.
Price: TBA
APRIL 2013 F*** 107
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Consisting of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey DVD, Electronic Devices Sticker Sheet, Luggage Tag, Dwarves Journal, Distressed Cap & T-Shirt
Synopsis: The first in a trilogy of films based on the enduring masterpiece The
Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey follows title character
Bilbo Baggins, who – along with the Wizard Gandalf and 13 Dwarves, led by Thorin
Oakenshield – is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor
from the fearsome Dragon Smaug. Their journey will take them into the Wild, through
treacherous lands inhabited by Goblins, Orcs and deadly Wargs, as well as a mysterious
and sinister fi gure known only as the Necromancer. Along the path, the unassuming
Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths of ingenuity and courage that surprise even
himself, he also gains possession of a “precious” ring tied to the fate of all Middle-earth
in ways he cannot begin to imagine.
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY and THE HOBBIT, names of the
characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks of The Saul Zaentz
Company d/b/a/ Middle-earth Enterprises under license to New Line Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved. © 2013 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.
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Synopsis: Marvel’s “Iron Man 3” pits brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark/Iron
Man against an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Stark finds his personal
world destroyed at his enemy’s hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those
responsible. This journey, at every turn, will test his mettle. With his back against the
wall, Stark is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts
to protect those closest to him. As he fights his way back, Stark discovers the answer to
the question that has secretly haunted him: does the man make the suit or does the suit
make the man?
facebook.com/ironmansg
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• Subscriptions is non-refundable and non-transferable
• Subscription promotion valid till end of this month
• All entries are the property of Sterne & Lears Global Pte Ltd and may be
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• All gift(s) are given while stocks last and are based on a first-come-first-
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APRIL 2013 F*** 109
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Movie Hamper
Consisting of 3D Character Card Standee, Holographic Sticker, Character Figurine, Sticker Dispenser, Shopper Bag & T-shirt
Synopsis: EPIC is a 3D animated fantasy adventure that reveals a hidden world unlike any other. From the creators of
ICE AGE and RIO, EPIC tells the story of an ongoing battle deep in the forest between the forces of good who keep the
natural world alive and the forces of evil who wish to destroy it. When a teen age girl finds herself magically transported
into this secret universe, she must band together with a rag-tag team of fun and whimsical characters in order to save
their world…and ours.
Cast : Beyoncé Knowles, Colin Farrell, Steven Tyler, Josh Hutcherson, Amanda Seyfried, Christoph Waltz, Aziz Ansari,
Jason Sudeikis and Pitbull
EPIC TM & © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.
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Terms & Conditions
• No official receipt will be issued for payment made by cheque
• F*** will replace your collectible with the next preferred choice when
your choice item is not available
• Please allow four to six weeks for delivery of your first issue
• Subscriptions is non-refundable and non-transferable
• Subscription promotion valid till end of this month
• All entries are the property of Sterne & Lears Global Pte Ltd and may be
used for future marketing purposes
• Notification will be sent via email for collection of subscription gift(s)
• All gift(s) are given while stocks last and are based on a first-come-first-
serve basis
• The management reserves the right to replace any gift(s) of up to
equal value
• The gift must be accepted as it is; no exchange will be allowed
• Subscription offer applicable to readers in Singapore only
• Subscription hotline: 6778 3088
• Other terms & conditions apply.
APRIL 2013 F*** 111
Lust Page
READY
- AIM - FIRE!!
Director Robert Rodriguez loves some grindhouse - and is bringing the
seriously sexy Sofia Vergara and her, uh, assets on board for Machete
Kills, his sequel to his spin-off from the mock trailer he made for his
grindhouse double bill with Quentin Tarantino. Phew! Confused? Never
fear... just feast your eyes on Sofia and her... uh... assets until the film
is released in September 2013!
112 F*** APRIL 2013
EXCLUSIVE: STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS & PACIFIC RIM GIANT POSTERS INSIDE!
IS THIS THE END?
THE HANGOVER III DIRECTOR TODD PHILLIPS SOBERS UP JJ ABRAMS UP CLOSE & PERSONAL WITH THE GEEK
GOD OBLIVION TOM CRUISE BATTLES TO SAVE MANKIND... AGAIN! IRON MAN 3 SHANE BLACK REUNITES WITH
TONY STARK EPIC A MAGICAL MINIATURE UNIVERSE JUDGMENT DAY SINGAPORE FACES AN APOCALYPSE PETER
JACKSON SELLS THE HOBBIT DVD INTERGALACTIC ROGUES 10 COOLEST SCI-FI VILLAINS
ISSUE 39