Movie Make-out

I’m really not sure what to make of this trailer. On the one hand, it’s a comedy about a bunch of would-be suicide bombers, which I’m inclined to find morally repellent. On the other, they’re jaw-droppingly shitty suicide bombers, and it’s freakin’ hilarious.

Nominally “illuminating the radicalized British jihad and undermines the folly of western culture’s attempts to alienate them,” Chris Morris’s Four Lions premiered at the Sundance Film Festival back in January, where it was short-listed for the World Cinema Narrative prize. The film will premiere in the UK at the Bradford International Film Festival next week, followed by a national release in May.

There is no US release date set, and… just hazarding a guess based on the fact that the movie’s a comedy about a quartet of terrorists… don’t hold your breath for one.

Every time Michael Caine stars in a movie, there has to be some blurb saying it’s his finest performance ever.

Every time a revenge thriller comes out, there’s a blurb saying it’s gripping and intense, and blah blah blah.

It also gets very old after a while. So let me just say that despite a been-there, done-that premise (a man is “forced to take the law into his own hands after a gang of local teenagers brutally kills his best friend”), this looks sublimely well-executed; shut up; and get out of the way.

The official synopsis goes like this:

Set in modern day Britain, Harry Brown follows one man’s journey through a chaotic world where teenage violence runs rampant. As a modest, law abiding citizen, Brown lives alone. His only companion is his best friend Leonard. When Leonard is killed, Brown reaches his breaking point. Harry Brown is a powerful, character driven thriller starring two-time Academy Award® winner Michael Caine in a tour-de-force performance.

There’s red band trailer over at the official site. The film, which was directed by Daniel Barber (the Oscar-nominated short film The Tonto Woman), hits theaters April 30, 2010.

Related Post: Review: 2008 Oscar-nominated Live Action Short Films

The Muppets are coming back into the spotlight in a big way.

According to an exclusive at The Hollywood Reporter, Jason Segel (I Love You Man, Bad Teacher) has signed onto the project to star as the main human character, presumably opposite the usual cast of felt critters. He will also be working as producer on the project, alongside David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman (The Proposal).

It seems only natural that Segel is signed on, as he wrote the script (the plot of which is still secret) alongside Nicholas Stoller (Get Him to the Greek).

The film will be directed by James Bobin, who has up to this point worked primarily in television, including The Flight of the Conchords and Da Ali G Show.

Related Posts: Quick Cuts: Disney reveals info on Rapunzel, Tron, Muppet movie

In an exclusive report, Borys Kit wrote in The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog that New Zealand actors Taika Waititi and Temuera Morrison would be joining the cast of Green Lantern, currently filming in New Orleans, LA.

Waititi is best known for writing and directing Eagle vs. Shark, an indie film about two misfits who try and connect with each other. Also a comedian and an actor, Waititi would be playing Hal Jordan’s best friend, Tom Kalmaku (who is supposed to be an Inuit).

Morrison is best known as Jango Fett from Episodes 2 and 3 of Star Wars, but he’s also appeared in a variety of films including the poorly adapted Blueberry (aka Renegade in the U.S. because only one volume of the original comic is available here) and Six Days, Seven Nights. He will be playing Abin Sur, the Green Lantern who ends up choosing Hal Jordan to be his successor.

Related Posts: Blake Lively set to star as Carol Ferris in Green Lantern, Ryan Reynolds beats Justin Timberlake, Bradley Cooper for Green Lantern’s ring (updated)

I’m writing this from a secret location–no, not SXSW–to let you know that producer Robert Rodriguez showed off a sneak peek of some footage from his Predators movie at the festival this past weekend:

Starring such actors as Academy award winner Adrien Brody, Academy Award nominee Lawrence Fishburne, Topher Grace, and Alice Braga (I Am Legend, Repo Man), Predators is directed by an American named Nimród Antal whose major work has been in Hungarian music videos and TV commercials. However, he did release a film in 2003 called Kontroll which won the Award of the Youth at the Cannes Film Festival that year, so it’s not like Rodriguez picked a no-name to direct this set of actors.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the script (of which Rodriguez wrote a first draft) by Alex Litvak and Mike Finch concerns a group of mercenaries and convicts who get lured to an alien planet/game preserve. From the preview, it looks like the movie is doing everything correctly when it comes to making another installment in a long franchise including taking the story back to its roots (group of martially trained fighters runs a-foul of a predator hunting party) and then amping up the excitement factor (introducing new breeds or races of predators).

As I’ve briefly mentioned before, the thing I liked about the first Aliens Versus Predator Dark Horse comic and its novel adaptation was that the predator in question became the co-protagonist of the story because you learned about its motivations and the culture of the predators through the human protagonist Machiko Noguchi. Time will tell if this new movie will do any of the same, but I highly doubt it.

Related Posts: Robert Rodriguez to bring Predators, Machete to the big screen