Samuel Goldwyn Films Takes U.S. On Un Certain Regard Picture ‘Renoir’
* Renoir is known for his taste in young nubile hotties - often seducing his muses/models. The movie will at least guarantee Christa Theret is topless. But what about sex scenes. After the disappointing Emily Browning's Sleeping Beauty in which the gang-bang of Emily by old farts never materialises, really looking forward for another May-December romance. The French usually don't let us down when it comes to graphic sex and Christa have shown before she have no problem going au naturel and getting it on with much older dudes. Imagine 86-years old Michel Bouquet gently pummeling 20-years old Christa as she rests in belly-down position......maybe a body double for Monsieur Bouquet?
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Trailer For Wong Jing-Produced NAKED SOLDIER Is Sexy Yet Dangerous
What's old is new again. Exactly two decades ago, notorious filmmaker Wong Jing produced Naked Killer, a "Girls With Guns" film that became a Hong Kong cult classic due to its graphic violence and explicit sexual nature. He then followed it up a decade later with Naked Weapon, an unrelated film but containing similar themes. Now he's at it once again in this decade with Naked Soldier and while times have changed, the level of sex and violence continues to stay the same. The director is Marco Mak with Corey Yuen serving as action director. In the cast is Jenn Tse, Sammo Hung, Anthony Wong, Philip Ng, Ankie Beilke, Lena Lin, Andy On, Luxia Jiang and Ellen Chan.
Interpol agent CK Long busted a billion-dollar drug deal fifteen years ago. The cartel has avenged itself by hiring Madame Rose's organization of assassins to kill CK Long's entire family. Long himself survives, and believes his young daughter is still alive. In fact, for these fifteen years, the girl has been kidnapped by Madame Rose, brainwashed and trained into a beautiful, sexy killer Phoenix....The theatrical release date is July 26th.
Phoenix has now become the top-ranked killer in Madame Rose's organization. She is skilled in combat, and always completes her missions. Thanks to her band of killers, Madame Rose has expanded her criminal organization, and now assigns missions in many parts of the world. CK Long has never imagined that he would one day become the target of his own daughter's mission.
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Cannes Review: Tits, Teeth, and Rutger Hauer in Dario Argento’s ‘Dracula 3D’
Sitting in a theater watching a fair few people walk out in protest at the poor quality of Dracula 3D, you have to wonder whether they knew anything about horror legend Dario Argento, and if so what exactly they expected from the director whose name alone guarantees an audience. Because Argento has a certain set of skills, which aren’t necessarily reconcilable with what is great about film these days, but to give due credit, he hasn’t really deviated from the same tracks for decades, and the result is generally an entertaining affair all the same.This time out he’s taken the iconic Dracula story on, giving horror’s most famous character (played here by Thomas Kretschmann) his first 3D treatment, and adding a few other brand new touches to the iconic story of how the Count tricked Jonathan Harker (Unax Ugalde) into working for him in order to take his wife Mina (Marta Gastini) for his own. Along the familiar path we meet jealous and mostly naked vampire Tanja (Miriam Giovanelli), the infamous Dracula servant Renfield (Giovanni Franzoni), and the various pawns in the game, both victims and servants of the Dark Lord, with the prominent role of Lucy going to the director’s daughter Asia Argento. And of course, in the final third we are invited to enjoy the many pleasures of Rutger Hauer as Abraham Van Helsing.
Despite the fact that the story is about as famous as they come, Argento’s script, which he adapted from Bram Stoker‘s original text with the help of three other writers is painfully bad. Dialogue is clunky and in some cases downright garbage (enough to leave the audience laughing on more than one occasion), and there are some “interesting” story inclusions, including inexplicably a giant bug that just plain make no sense. And that’s not to mention the plot holes, and the ridiculous way everything unravels into a final thirty minutes of multiple faux-gruesome deaths and jaw-dropping silliness. But then, of course, that is the point.
Somewhat expectedly, the acting is universally poor, and it says something about your production when Rutger Hauer is far and away the most accomplished of the entire thing (and he’s only on screen for about fifteen minutes in total). Everyone else acts like they’re aspiring for the poorest day-time soap operas, obviously under the impression that terrible dialogue can be given more impact by whispering furtively and adding pregnant pauses where no sane person would ever dare.
As a result Thomas Kretschmann’s Dracula lacks majesty, coming off like he’s watched Taken and Unknown on loop for years, and sees Liam Neeson in action hero mode as the ideal role-model for speech delivery. An iconic performance this is decidedly not.
The production values are surprisingly high, considering this would be no more than straight to DVD fare if it weren’t for the director, with the 3D looking good for the most part. Some scenes, in which Argento has obviously attempted to show off his eye for composition and creating a visual spectacle fail miserable however, and the quality of the atmospheric CGI lets down his intentions badly. It’s plainly too difficult to ignore when you can see the seams this obviously, and when the provocatively poor moments are probably supposed to be warmly laughed at, those sort of fundamental distractions (or the unintentionally bad scenes) drag the whole perversely entertaining experience down.
There are some other technical problems that hamper the cult style enjoyment – the dubbing of certain actor’s speech is ludicrously bad (to the point that it must surely have been intended as such), and both the visual effects and prosthetics are not even up to B-Movie level. It’s hard to tell whether it’s not all done with tongue planted firmly in cheek, but you get the feeling that Argento didn’t quite intend so much to be so bad.
But then Argento doesn’t usually play by conventional or commercial filmmaking rules, even including nude scenes for his daughter (and almost every other female character to excess) in amongst the provocatively kitsch horror moments and downright ludicrous story elements.
In short, it’s shit, but that doesn’t mean people won’t still love it. Because some people do know what to expect from Dario Argento.
The Upside: It’s catnip for Argento fans, who will no doubt flock to it. And the 3D is actually not terrible.
The Downside: No matter how you dress it up, the film is terrible. But then again, that’s sort of the point.
Dracula 3D Official Trailer #1 (2012) - Dario Argento, Rutger Hauer Move HD
Dario Argento's DRACULA 3D leaked teaser trailer with temp FX and score
* Looks like campy fun. Superhot Miriam Giovanelli bares her Spanish pinatas. Cult status is assured (for me at least) if Morgane Slemp goes full frontal.
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'30 Rock' Star Katrina Bowden on the Sex and Splatter Comedy of 'Piranha 3DD'
Piranha 3DD (due in theaters and on VOD on June 1st). Find out what Bowden had to say about shooting the film's most hilarious scene, in which a Piranha, er, "exits" her character's body, to her boyfriend's horror, during a rather intimate moment between the two.
AfterTucker and Dale vs. Evil, Piranha 3DD is the second horror comedy in which you've appeared. Do you prefer horror comedy to straight-up horror?
Yeah, I guess. Because I love comedy. I like it when it's done well. It's hard to do it well, but when it's done well, it's really entertaining. And straight-up horror… I've always been kind of afraid of horror movies. Actually really afraid of horror movies. I'll see one and then I'll think about it for years and years and be so afraid of it. I've never been very good at watching them. But the comedy-horror genre is a little bit easier for me to handle.
What's the most frightening horror film you've seen?
The list of them that I've seen is not very impressive. [Laughs.] Every time I tell anybody about the ones that really freaked me out it always gets kind of a weird reaction. But the last one that I saw was Amityville Horror. I had my eyes closed for half the movie. That one freaked me out. Then I saw this movie called Darkness Falls. It was about a tooth fairy that kills people. That one freaked me out for a long time. [Laughs.] But I haven't really seen many. I could say The Silence of the Lambs, but that's more freaky than straight-up horror.
In Piranha 3DD, you have what will probably be the film's most talked about scene; and certainly its most outrageous gag. Can you talk about that?
That scene was kind of crazy. It was one of those scenes that I read in a script and thought, "How are we going to shoot this scene? This is insane. What have I gotten myself into?" But it's probably one of the most memorable parts of the movie. There were a lot of prosthetics involved, a little bit of CGI.
There must have been a lot of laughter while you were shooting that.
For me personally, I was extremely uncomfortable the entire time. [Laughs.] I get very uncomfortable doing any kind of love or romantic scenes. But especially this one. Everything we had to do in it… I had to have a seizure and have all this gross stuff come out of my mouth. There was blood squirting up at me… It was not my particular idea of fun. [Laughs.] But I think it turned out really, really well, and it's definitely pretty shocking and kind of crazy. But I was trying to keep a straight face. Because the actor who plays my boyfriend in the movie, he has to wear this weird prosthetic and he felt uncomfortable too. So I think it was just this giant uncomfortable moment until that scene was finished.
What really came out of your mouth?
That was Alka-Seltzer and some food coloring. It was basically Alka-Seltzer that was activated with a couple of drops of water that I had to keep in my mouth. I don't know what they did to it, or maybe this is just how Alka-Seltzer works, but it foams up so much, so quickly that you can't really control it. [Laughs.] It was pretty gross. I just lay there with it drying all over my face. Then the scene where I had to throw up at the camera? That was pretty gross too. I guess I had a lot of gross things-coming-out-of-my-mouth moments. [Laughs.]
Before you throw up, you utter the funniest line in the movie. Because you quite clearly, rationally, truthfully summarize the insane events that have just occurred.
When I saw a screening of the movie, that was the general reaction of people in the audience. [Laughs.] They were just shocked, yet found it absolutely hysterical. When we were about to shoot it, I was wondering how I should deliver [the line]. Should I be frantic or upset? I didn't know if it would be funny or if it would sound too serious. But I think the tone of the movie is such that everything is played realistically; it just ends up coming off really funny and silly. That makes it better I think. So yeah, that was a line where I was like, "Is this going to be really dramatic or ridiculous?" I think it came out exactly as I was hoping it would.
Piranha 3DD was kind of exhausting. We shot that scene in the lake for the entire night. I think I was in the water for almost ten hours straight. I got out once in a while, but it was kind of hard to get out, because it got so cold if you got out that it was just easier to stay in the water. By the end of that night, we wrapped at like six in the morning, and I didn't really know what was going on – what day it was. It was a pretty tough night. But that's kind of the fun part of the job too.
What can you tell us about Nurse 3D? Will it be a straight-up horror film, or is humor mixed with the horror as it was for you in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and Piranha 3DD?
It's not a horror comedy at all. It's probably my first movie where there's absolutely no comedy aspect to it involving me at all. It's kind of a psychological thriller. It's like Wild Things meets Single White Female.
Paz de la Huerta plays a nurse who becomes obsessed with me; and I'm a young nurse who's fresh out of nursing school. She's a psychopathic serial killer. She becomes obsessed with me and tries to lure me into her web of craziness. I slowly discover who she really is, and I become the hero of the movie, who tries to stop what she's doing. So it's very, very different for me; which was really fun to do.
Did you encounter less gore than you did in Tucker and Dale and Piranha 3DD?
No, it was pretty up there. There's quite a lot of gore in the peak scenes of the movie. There's a monumental scene where everything comes to a culmination, and there's quite a bit of gore. [Laughs.] It was more strenuous for me, and the first time I've ever had to do a lot of stunt work. It was physically exhausting by the end of it. But that was kind of fun about it too.
Besides Nurse 3D, what's next for you?
Right now I'm kind of taking a little bit of a break. We just finished a season of 30 Rock, and I've been promoting the movies I did last summer. And I got a new dog, so I'm taking care of him. I don't know what else is up for me in the summer yet, but I think I have a little bit of time to figure that out.
It was just announced that next season will be the last season of 30 Rock. Is there anything you haven't had a chance to do yet with your character that you'd like to do before the show ends its run?
There's nothing really specific that I think needs to be done. I guess what I really want for next season is that I hope they give every character a proper ending. You know what I mean? Make sure to tie everybody into the final ending. I think that's gonna be important. Because it's such an ensemble cast and it's hard to [include everyone] sometimes, but we've all been together for six years now. So they really need to find a good way to wrap it up and make the fans happy, even though it's ending. So that's what I really hope for next season.
One last question – what's your greatest fear?
My God, I have so many. It's hard to choose. It's such a hard question… My greatest fear, if I had to put myself in a scary horror-movie situation, is to be alone on a street and find out that someone's following me. Something like that… Or if I woke up and found someone's in my room and about to kill me. Or in the closet. I'm always afraid of someone hiding in the closet… That's three of them. I'm sorry – I gave you too many.
Not at all. It's nice to a have an assortment. And they're all entirely understandable. [Laughs.]
Yeah. [Laughs.]
Thank you so much for your time, Katrina.
Thank you very much!
AfterTucker and Dale vs. Evil, Piranha 3DD is the second horror comedy in which you've appeared. Do you prefer horror comedy to straight-up horror?
Yeah, I guess. Because I love comedy. I like it when it's done well. It's hard to do it well, but when it's done well, it's really entertaining. And straight-up horror… I've always been kind of afraid of horror movies. Actually really afraid of horror movies. I'll see one and then I'll think about it for years and years and be so afraid of it. I've never been very good at watching them. But the comedy-horror genre is a little bit easier for me to handle.
What's the most frightening horror film you've seen?
The list of them that I've seen is not very impressive. [Laughs.] Every time I tell anybody about the ones that really freaked me out it always gets kind of a weird reaction. But the last one that I saw was Amityville Horror. I had my eyes closed for half the movie. That one freaked me out. Then I saw this movie called Darkness Falls. It was about a tooth fairy that kills people. That one freaked me out for a long time. [Laughs.] But I haven't really seen many. I could say The Silence of the Lambs, but that's more freaky than straight-up horror.
In Piranha 3DD, you have what will probably be the film's most talked about scene; and certainly its most outrageous gag. Can you talk about that?
That scene was kind of crazy. It was one of those scenes that I read in a script and thought, "How are we going to shoot this scene? This is insane. What have I gotten myself into?" But it's probably one of the most memorable parts of the movie. There were a lot of prosthetics involved, a little bit of CGI.
There must have been a lot of laughter while you were shooting that.
For me personally, I was extremely uncomfortable the entire time. [Laughs.] I get very uncomfortable doing any kind of love or romantic scenes. But especially this one. Everything we had to do in it… I had to have a seizure and have all this gross stuff come out of my mouth. There was blood squirting up at me… It was not my particular idea of fun. [Laughs.] But I think it turned out really, really well, and it's definitely pretty shocking and kind of crazy. But I was trying to keep a straight face. Because the actor who plays my boyfriend in the movie, he has to wear this weird prosthetic and he felt uncomfortable too. So I think it was just this giant uncomfortable moment until that scene was finished.
What really came out of your mouth?
That was Alka-Seltzer and some food coloring. It was basically Alka-Seltzer that was activated with a couple of drops of water that I had to keep in my mouth. I don't know what they did to it, or maybe this is just how Alka-Seltzer works, but it foams up so much, so quickly that you can't really control it. [Laughs.] It was pretty gross. I just lay there with it drying all over my face. Then the scene where I had to throw up at the camera? That was pretty gross too. I guess I had a lot of gross things-coming-out-of-my-mouth moments. [Laughs.]
Before you throw up, you utter the funniest line in the movie. Because you quite clearly, rationally, truthfully summarize the insane events that have just occurred.
When I saw a screening of the movie, that was the general reaction of people in the audience. [Laughs.] They were just shocked, yet found it absolutely hysterical. When we were about to shoot it, I was wondering how I should deliver [the line]. Should I be frantic or upset? I didn't know if it would be funny or if it would sound too serious. But I think the tone of the movie is such that everything is played realistically; it just ends up coming off really funny and silly. That makes it better I think. So yeah, that was a line where I was like, "Is this going to be really dramatic or ridiculous?" I think it came out exactly as I was hoping it would.
Piranha 3DD was kind of exhausting. We shot that scene in the lake for the entire night. I think I was in the water for almost ten hours straight. I got out once in a while, but it was kind of hard to get out, because it got so cold if you got out that it was just easier to stay in the water. By the end of that night, we wrapped at like six in the morning, and I didn't really know what was going on – what day it was. It was a pretty tough night. But that's kind of the fun part of the job too.
What can you tell us about Nurse 3D? Will it be a straight-up horror film, or is humor mixed with the horror as it was for you in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and Piranha 3DD?
It's not a horror comedy at all. It's probably my first movie where there's absolutely no comedy aspect to it involving me at all. It's kind of a psychological thriller. It's like Wild Things meets Single White Female.
Paz de la Huerta plays a nurse who becomes obsessed with me; and I'm a young nurse who's fresh out of nursing school. She's a psychopathic serial killer. She becomes obsessed with me and tries to lure me into her web of craziness. I slowly discover who she really is, and I become the hero of the movie, who tries to stop what she's doing. So it's very, very different for me; which was really fun to do.
Did you encounter less gore than you did in Tucker and Dale and Piranha 3DD?
No, it was pretty up there. There's quite a lot of gore in the peak scenes of the movie. There's a monumental scene where everything comes to a culmination, and there's quite a bit of gore. [Laughs.] It was more strenuous for me, and the first time I've ever had to do a lot of stunt work. It was physically exhausting by the end of it. But that was kind of fun about it too.
Besides Nurse 3D, what's next for you?
Right now I'm kind of taking a little bit of a break. We just finished a season of 30 Rock, and I've been promoting the movies I did last summer. And I got a new dog, so I'm taking care of him. I don't know what else is up for me in the summer yet, but I think I have a little bit of time to figure that out.
It was just announced that next season will be the last season of 30 Rock. Is there anything you haven't had a chance to do yet with your character that you'd like to do before the show ends its run?
There's nothing really specific that I think needs to be done. I guess what I really want for next season is that I hope they give every character a proper ending. You know what I mean? Make sure to tie everybody into the final ending. I think that's gonna be important. Because it's such an ensemble cast and it's hard to [include everyone] sometimes, but we've all been together for six years now. So they really need to find a good way to wrap it up and make the fans happy, even though it's ending. So that's what I really hope for next season.
One last question – what's your greatest fear?
My God, I have so many. It's hard to choose. It's such a hard question… My greatest fear, if I had to put myself in a scary horror-movie situation, is to be alone on a street and find out that someone's following me. Something like that… Or if I woke up and found someone's in my room and about to kill me. Or in the closet. I'm always afraid of someone hiding in the closet… That's three of them. I'm sorry – I gave you too many.
Not at all. It's nice to a have an assortment. And they're all entirely understandable. [Laughs.]
Yeah. [Laughs.]
Thank you so much for your time, Katrina.
Thank you very much!
Spartacus: Vengeance and Game of Thrones the Deadliest Shows
May 21, 2012
Funeralwise.com Releases Results of First-Ever TV Body Count Study
CHICAGO, May 21, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- A Funeralwise.com study counted dead bodies on television shows to measure the role of death in popular culture. The STARZ series Spartacus: Vengeance topped all shows with an average of 25 dead bodies per episode, followed by HBO's Game of Thrones, with 14 dead bodies per episode. The 40 TV series analyzed averaged 132 dead bodies, in total, during a single week for an average of more than 3 dead bodies per episode.
The body count study was conceived by Funeralwise's managing partner, Rick Paskin, when he noticed the large number of killings occurring weekly on a popular television crime show. Seeking to better understand the public's acceptance of death as entertainment, he decided to commission the study. A network of "watchers" was assigned to count the number of dead bodies in 40 separate primetime programs on both broadcast and cable networks.
"We did not find a direct correlation between the body count and viewership, but these programs are definitely popular with the viewing audience," Paskin said. "As a funeral resource, the role of death in modern society is an interesting subject to Funeralwise. We know how difficult it is to get people to proactively plan for their funeral. There is a clear disconnect between the acceptance of death in popular culture and the acceptance of it in reality."
Key findings were:
The deadliest show was the STARZ series Spartacus: Vengeance, with an average of 25 dead bodies per episode. HBO's Game of Thrones was the next deadliest, with 14 dead bodies per episode.
The deadliest broadcast network show was The CW's Nikita, with 9 dead bodies per episode. The CBS series NCIS: Los Angeles was second deadliest, with an average of 6 dead bodies per episode.
CBS was the deadliest network due to having 11 shows selected for the study, by far the most of any network. Five (5) CBS shows were among the top 10 deadliest.
Deadliest shows for non-human creatures were The CW's The Vampire Diaries, with 18 dead vampires per episode, and AMC's The Walking Dead, with 16 dead zombies per episode.
The "safest" shows for humans and other creatures were ABC's Revenge, TNT's Leverage and USA's White Collar, all of which had no dead bodies in the 8 episodes analyzed.
Very few funerals were shown during the programs analyzed.
The body count study was conducted during the first 4 months of 2012 and included 8 recently aired episodes of each series selected for analysis. Funeralwise emphasizes that the study was not statistically based. The shows selected for the study were judged to have content that regularly included the presence of dead bodies. Accordingly, the number of shows in the study varied from network to network. A full report of the study results is available on the Funeralwise.com website at http://www.funeralwise.com/tv-body-count-study-results .
