Empire States: Secret Cinema: What Films Should They Do?
Posted on Monday September 6, 2010, 17:51 by Nick de Semlyen in Empire States
On Friday night, I had my second Secret Cinema experience. The first had been the Blade Runner event in June, which took place in a huge warehouse near Canary Wharf re-decorated to evoke Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece. There were tattooed strippers writhing around a seedy mini-club, giant neon screens everywhere, street vendors draped in (real) snakes, Asian men selling noodles and a climax that involved actors dressed like Deckard and Batty duelling on wires next to the big screen on which the same action was unfolding. To put it simply, it was the closest you could get to LA circa 2019 without dropping a lot of acid. And ridiculous quantities of fun.
Announced in advance, the dress code for this latest venture — “Bedouin” — made it easier than usual to guess the film: Lawrence Of Arabia (okay, it could been another Omar Sharif starrer, Hidalgo, but that would have been a leftfield choice). And the choice of the 1... Continue reading... Comment Now (13 comments)
Back To TopComic-Con 2010: Panel Report: Drive Angry, Skyline & Super
Posted on Saturday July 24, 2010, 08:15 by Nick de Semlyen in Comic-Con 2010
 After Thursday’s procession of hyped-up heavy-hitters, from Scott Pilgrim to The Expendables, Friday morning saw three less well-known projects flaunt their wares in Hall H. First up, Drive Angry. It may be Nicolas Cage’s first 3D movie, but otherwise this looks like business as usual for the Czar of Zany. In fact, seeing as it’s the tale of a supernatural avenger driving a car around at breakneck speeds, it appears to be positioned exactly equidistant between Gone In 60 Seconds and Ghost Rider. Cage plays a man whose daughter has been murdered and grandchild kidnapped. He’s on a mission to get bloody payback – and he’s not going to let the fact that he’s dead put him off. As he flees Hell in a classic ’69 Charger, he has to contend not only with twisted criminals but a demonic foe known as The Accountant (William Fichtner), who’s been sent by Satan to drag him back to the netherworld.
The footage we’re shown is a pretty even mix of... Continue reading... Comment Now (2 comments)
Back To TopSmall Screen: New Jack City - A First Look At 24 Season 8
Posted on Friday January 15, 2010, 17:38 by Nick de Semlyen in Small Screen
May 20, 2015. That is the date on which the events of 24: Season 8 occur, the real-time thriller serial’s timeline having gradually skipped ahead of the real world’s. So with the action moving to New York* and CTU getting resurrected in a glitzy new HQ, are we in for thrills of a more sci-fi nature than usual? Well, yes and no… Empire was among a select few invited to attend yesterday’s premiere of the Season 8 premiere, at the Skirball Center in New York’s Greenwich Village. In a private screening room (security grading: blue), we were handed a bottle of special 24 water with Jack Bauer’s face on the label (not only refreshing, but handy for bludgeoning terrorists with in close-combat situations) and seated next to the show’s creators and stars. A slideshow of the actors’ faces rotated by on the screen before the episode began, which prompted some of them (including Annie Wersching and Freddie Prinze Jr) to pose for grinning camera-phone photos of th... Continue reading... Comment Now (10 comments)
Back To TopComic-Con Diaries: Panel Report: Sherlock Holmes, Jonah Hex, Wild Things, Book Of Eli and more...
Posted on Friday July 24, 2009, 18:30 by Nick de Semlyen in Comic-Con Diaries
Day 2 of Comic-Con and time for Warner Bros to unveil their wares in the cavernous Hall H. First up was Spike Jonze’s much talked-about Where The Wild Thing Are. In a short video, Maurice Sendak and Spike Jonze talk about turning the classic children’s book into a movie. “There will be controversy about this,” promises Sendak. “It feels dangerous, in a great way.” He extolls Jonze’s vision, which retains the edginess of the book while bringing real emotion, and says that various filmmakers approached him over the past 18 years, but only the Being John Malkovich director managed to win him over. Jonze wasn’t able to make it to the Con, but child star Max Records, who plays Max, was on hand to introduce three extended clips. In the first, Max gets guided around the monsters’ exotic island by Carol (James Gandolfini). “You’re the kingdom of this world,” says Carol. “Everything you see is... Continue reading... Comment Now (2 comments)
Back To TopComic-Con Diaries: A Night With Peter Jackson
Posted on Friday July 24, 2009, 09:56 by Nick de Semlyen in Comic-Con Diaries
 James Cameron may have owned this afternoon with his grand unveiling of Avatar, but today was also the day that Peter Jackson came out to play at Comic-Con – and he brought a few friends along for the ride. First Empire bumped into foghorn-voiced bigiature bigshot Richard Taylor and a crew from Weta in the queue for the Avatar screening (mystifyingly, he had two Fraggle Rock toys sticking out of his breast pocket). Then, at a world-first screening of District 9 introduced by Jackson, we sat just in front of two real-life Hobbits, Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan (disappointingly, they shared a tub of popcorn rather than lambas bread).
Jackson has produced District 9, a pulpy sci-fi thriller set in alien-infested South African slums, and introduced director Neill Blomkamp and star Sharlto Copley – both from Johannesberg – to the crowd with some sparky banter about the relative merits of their home countries. Jackson: “The New Zealand accent is much easier to understand &nda... Continue reading... Comment Now (10 comments)
Back To TopEmpire States: What Do Your Movie Posters Say About You?
Posted on Friday May 29, 2009, 13:37 by Nick de Semlyen in Empire States
Most mornings, the first thing I see when I open my eyes — other than tall stacks of unpaid utility bills — is the poster for Chinatown, hanging on the wall. Which got me contemplating the question: what is it about this vintage 70cm x 100cm print that makes it such a pleasure to gaze at? And why did I buy this and not – say – the poster for the just-as-awesome Terminator 2: Judgment Day? So I thought I’d do a quick run-down of the movie posters I own, then find out which ones you all cherish. After all, it’s about time to retire that Raiders one-sheet in the lounge…
CHINATOWN
Okay, so it’s one of my very favourite movies of all time, so chances are I would have bought the poster even if it just featured Jack Nicholson eating dim sum. But this particular design (by Jim Pearsall) really is, to quote Alan Partridge, “prem... Continue reading... Comment Now (117 comments)
Back To TopEmpire States: Who Ya Gonna Call?
Posted on Tuesday March 24, 2009, 17:46 by Nick de Semlyen in Empire States
 Like it or not, a new Ghostbusters movie is marching towards us like a giant, sailor-suited mallow-bastard from another dimension. At this point, all we have to go on is hearsay, rumours and evidence drawn from ouija-board seances, but it seems likely that GB3 will see the old gang training youngsters in the ways of the proton pack. “A big element is passing the torch onto a new generation of Ghostbusters,” Dan Aykroyd said recently. “It’s going to be Harold and me and Billy and Ernie training the new ones.”
This got me thinking. Who, if I had similar supernatural powers to Viggo (scourge of Carpathia, sorrow of Moldavia) and could manipulate the mind of Aykroyd and co., would I pick to fill the roles of this “new generation”? Here are my ideas; if you think I’ve got it completely wrong or have overlooked the perfect potential ‘Buster, leave a comment below. No this-man-has-no-dick insults, if you please.
Tracy MorganContinue reading... Comment Now (97 comments)
Back To TopEmpire States: The Most Annoying Character Ever?
Posted on Monday January 5, 2009, 11:40 by Nick de Semlyen in Empire States
 In between the usual Christmas pastimes (inept gift-wrapping, constant eating, wondering how starved of entertainment you’d have to be to tune into The World’s Strongest Man), I watched a stack of Blu-rays. These included Speed Racer (underrated — and awesome in high-def), Band Of Brothers, WALL-E and a few early Bonds. Then, on New Year’s Day, Empire’s John Hitchcox proffered an idea which seemed harmless, if not inspired, at the time: a viewing of the whole Spider-Man trilogy on Blu-ray in one go.
It started well — we oohed and aahed at intricately detailed radioactive-spider webs, high-fived shots of Spidey swinging through a glittering Manhattan, and shuddered at the sight of Kirsten Dunst’s snaggly fangs in 1080p. But over the course of the following 6+ hours, it dawned on me that the experience wasn’t going to be nearly as fun as I’d hoped. Why? Because of the lingering, malignant presence of one character. One so irritating, so odious, ... Continue reading... Comment Now (186 comments)
Back To TopEmpire States: My Cult Characters #4: The Cowboy In Mulholland Drive
Posted on Monday October 6, 2008, 16:19 by Nick de Semlyen in Empire States
Greetings, dear readers, and welcome to another episode of My Cult Characters. First, apologies for this blog’s long absence. I’d like to tell you I’ve been busy on a mission to return a gifted mountain gorilla to her birthplace near the ruins of Zinj, but I haven’t — that’s the plot of the film Congo.
Anyhow, on with the show. I won’t sugarcoat it — my next pick is a freak, even by David Lynch’s standards. He appears in Mulholland Drive, the film I love the most out of Lynch’s freaky filmography, and while he could easily be snipped out of the film without making much of a difference, for me he’s the icing on this curious-tasting cake. I am referring to The Cowboy. A Wild West-styled creep so out-there he’s known to his friends as The Lone Deranger, this chap turns up at several points in the splintered narrative, mostly hovering malignantly in the background of crowd shots. But his moment in the limelight, and the reason... Continue reading... Comment Now (5 comments)
Back To TopEmpire States: My Cult Characters #3: The Truck Nazi in Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Posted on Monday April 14, 2008, 11:16 by Nick de Semlyen in Empire States
 Of all the many magnificent set-pieces in the Indiana Jones series to date, my personal favourite is the horse/truck/car/motorcycle-and-sidecart chase in the third act of Raiders. It’s heartpounding class all the way, from Indy’s ‘screw the odds’ gallop down a sheer slope towards the Nazi convoy transporting the Ark, to his cheeky grin as he twists the hijacked truck’s steering wheel and nudges the motorbike off a cliff.
But amid all the dusty mayhem and genius gags — check out the panicked fruit-picker falling onto the windscreen — there’s one element of the sequence that stands out. I’m talking about the daredevilry of one particular German officer, and how damn close he gets to despatching our hero for good.
The Nazi, more genial-looking than your average movie henchvillain, sits in the rear of the truck with the rest of his unit, all of them charged with guarding the crated Ark at any cost. He appears to be the leader, judging... Continue reading... Comment Now (37 comments)
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