Netflix created an excellent series with “House of Cards” and season 2 will hit on February 14, 2014. Kate Mara (picture above) was excellent as reporter Zoe Barnes, as was the rest of the cast led by Kevin Spacey as congressman Frank Underwood. The battle lines will be drawn between them in the upcoming season. This hit has shaken up the TV world as we now have Netflix as a new competitor to the cable companies for excellent TV dramas.
Check out the trailer for the new season below.
The movies often make for strange companions, if not actual bedfellows. So it was that a bunch of entertainment writers at the junket for the genre-blending martial-arts western fantasy, “The Warrior’s Way,” met with a pair of actors with a definite air of beauty-and-the-beast about them.
Kate Bosworth is, oddly enough, the beauty of the pair. Perhaps best known as Lois Lane in the unfairly maligned “Superman Returns,” Bosworth has appeared in a number of films, including a solid appearance as Sandra Dee in Kevin Spacey‘s offbeat Bobby Darin biopic, “Beyond the Sea.” She also played porn star John Holmes’ teenage girlfriend in the fact-based “Wonderland” and was the female lead in the gambling-themed hit, “21.” Bosworth launched her career starring in the short-lived “Dawson’s Creek” spin-off, “Young Americans,” which wrapped in 2000 and followed that up with the lead role in the surfing-themed “Blue Crush” in 2002.
Danny Huston is often cast in the role of beastly types and authority figures, and usually a combination of both. He was the leader of the cold weather vampires in “30 Days of Night,” a memorably creepy power broker in “Children of Men,” and the mutant hating Col. William Stryker in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” He was also the despicably ultra-vicious desperado/gangleader brother of Guy Pearce in the 2005 mega-grime Australian western, “The Proposition.”
It’s also mandatory that I mention that Huston is about as “Hollywood royalty” as people get, being the son of acting and directing great John Huston, whose best remembered acting role remains as the deeply evil Noah Cross of “Chinatown” and whose iconic films included “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” and, still going strong decades later, “Wise Blood” and “Prizzi’s Honor.” That additionally means that Danny Huston’s grandfather was the early Hollywood star and character actor Walter Huston and his half-sister is Oscar-winner Angelica Huston. Still in his forties, he also was a director early on in his career, helming 1988’s “Mr. North.”
Bosworth and Huston were there to promote their roles in “The Warrior’s Way,” which was released this last weekend in a modest wide release. In the film, the first English language starring vehicle for Korean superstar Jang Dong-gun, Bosworth plays Lynne, a knife-thrower in training bent on revenge against the man who killed her family and attacked her. Naturally, that man is the Colonel (Huston), a mask-wearing evildoer who was badly disfigured by Lynne as a young girl, so it’s clear these two just aren’t going to get along.
Off screen, however, the two got along just fine as they sang the praises of the film which none of us entertainment journalist types had actually seen. About 10-15 minutes worth of clips had been shown to us the night before, prior to a very pleasant reception with some really delicious sushi and yakitori treats. The next day we got more American style fare at the Beverly Hilton. Did I mention that the food is often the best part of a press day?
The conversation started around some of the costumes used in the film. One journalist asked Kate Bosworth if she enjoyed the costuming aspect of movie-making. This might have turned into a very interesting piece if she’d said, “God, no, I hate it!” But, of course, that’s not how she feels.
I was hoping to be able to post something silly and Halloween-themed this morning, but a very sad reality got in the way with the passing yesterday of a really good filmmaker, much too young. The news, which I learned via The Playlist, was broken by the Denver Post.
Best known for two outstanding, possibly great, documentaries “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” codirected with Fax Bahr, and “Mayor of the Sunset Strip,” as well as for directing the original short film with Billy Bob Thornton that formed the basis for “Sling Blade,” the prolific independent director George Hickenlooper apparently died in his sleep in his Denver hotel room. He was there getting ready to promote his latest foray into dramatic feature filmmaking, “Casino Jack” starring Kevin Spacey as jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, at a film festival in the city where his cousin, John Hickenlooper is the mayor. The two cousins had only met for the first time in 1991 when he came to the city to promote “Hearts of Darkness.” The mayor became the focus of Hickenlooper’s film about the 2008 Democratic convention, “‘Hick’ Town.” He was 47.
I never got to meet Mr. Hickenlooper, who had better luck with documentaries than dramatic films, but I had brushes with friends-of-friends over the years. He was part of a group of St. Louis-bred creatives that also includes writer-director James Gunn (“Slither“). It’s pretty clear this is a huge shock to everyone and my sincere condolences to everyone.
Below are some brief moments from Hickenlooper’s signature films.
UPDATE: As usual in these situations, David Hudson at MUBI has more.
Not to be confused with Alex Gibney‘s documentary, “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” also about the jailed conservative lobbyist Jack Abramoff, this new trailer for “Casino Jack” is slicker than ones I’ve seen before.
Something still feels off here to me, for all the snazzy editorial work. The only joke that’s actually funny is Kevin Spacey‘s spot-on Al Pacino impersonation, though even the choice of Spacey feels off. Perhaps I’m being too literal minded, but Abramoff was younger and more jockish and athletic when all of this was going down. On the other hand, the movie-obsession is correct. Abramoff is a movie buff who even co-produced an actual action film or two, including the Dolph Lundgren vehicle, “Red Scorpion.”
Still, I’m keeping an open mind. He hasn’t had gigantic luck with fiction features so far, but director George Hickenlooper (“The Big Brass Ring”) has been involved with probably two of the best all-time documentaries about outrageous show business figures, the Francis Ford Coppola-centric “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse” and the even better “Mayor of the Sunset Strip” about DJ and ultimate scenester Rodney Bingenheimer. I’m sure there’s a bit more here than meets the eye, at least I hope so
Another Labor Day inspired clip.
It’s rare that a movie about something you’ve personally experienced actually gets something right, but then one thing a lot (but by no means all) filmmakers know well is the movie business. I never worked for directly anyone quite as powerful or as mean-spirited as Buddy Ackerman, but what I did experience was close enough. This (ironically NSFW) scene from George Huang’s “Swimming with Sharks” definitely brings up the old unpleasant goosebumps. Feel free to skip to 00:20.
Yeah, sure, Kevin Spacey is great at this sort of thing, but I tell you that no actor in the world does scared better than Frank “Check Out the Big Brain on Brad” Whaley.
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