RSS Feed for The Empire Blog
Note: Content for this RSS feed is provided as a text alternative to inline RSS feeds that may not display on all browsers.
The Empire Blog
Rants, raves and randomness from the Empire office
- Metropolis: It's Great, But Is It Good?
This week sees the reissue of the remastered, restored, spiffed up and super-duper Metropolis. If you like to call yourself a movie fan, you should go see it. If you like science fiction, you owe it to yourself to go meet one of Star Wars, and Avatar's, and Blade Runner's, ancestors. Since I am both a movie lover and a sci-fi nut and since, to my shame, I'd never seen it, I took the opportunity to go along last Friday to a press screening - and I have a few quick warnings for those of you headed to Metropolis.First and foremost, this is two and a half hours long. Don't do what I did and blithely assure your website creative director that, "It's old; I'll be back in 90 mintes". An epic failure to check the press release on my part? Certainly. Still, I have visions of people making the same mistake. People with dinner reservations.&n... - Venice 2010: 13 Assassins
A quick word about Sergio Corbucci here. When I heard that Quentin Tarantino was heading the jury in Venice, my first thought was that the festival had a plan to honour this very underrated director with what would have been his first (I think) major retrospective. How wrong I was! This year, the retrospective was dedicated instead to Italian comedy, and I must confess that I haven't seen a single one of 'em, largely because the festival doesn't really sell its retrospectives very well. Perhaps as a belated realisation that they had missed an opportunity, the organisers subsequently decided to show a very basic tribute to Corbucci in the form of two midnight screenings; one of Corbucci's 1964 breakthrough (I think) Minnesota Clay and another of his 1967 film The Hellbenders. Annoyingly, I missed Minnesota Clay and opted instead for The Hellbenders, which, although a great movie, didn't come, as Minnesota Clay did, with a short speech from Tarantino to mark the 20th anniversary of Corbucci's death. <br /... - Why Is Found Footage So Scary?
The Last Exorcism is the latest in an increasingly long line of ‘found footage’ horror films, a film fad kicked off (in its modern form) by The Blair Witch Project and kept alive by the likes of Romero’s Diary Of The Dead, the excellent Spanish zombie series [REC] and more recently the bed-shaking Paranormal Activity, the ooglie-booglie Cloverfield and the little green men-filled ‘documentary’ The Fourth Kind.But what is it exactly that makes the found footage phenomenon so damn scary, even now? For a fad, it’s been around for a good while, and with the success of The Last Exorcism ($33 million plus so far in the US), it’s definitely still got legs. So what is it about it that still makes us shake in our seats? And though I’m no Kim Newman (and I’m really, really not), here are my two cents. Ready? Here goes:1. Lack of horror sign posting. By-the-book horrors can be read like a map – you just know when the blo... - Venice 2010: The Town, Plus The Venice Story So Far...
The festival has been on for a week now, and, looking back, it's been a solid if not especially amazing festival. Surprisingly, nothing has done much to dethrone Black Swan as the most broadly admired film so far, but Potiche was well received, as, apparently, was Alex De Iglesias' Sad Ballad Of The Trumpet. For my part, I was moved and unnerved by Pablo Larrain's grim Chilean coup d'etat elegy Post Mortem, a much more serious film than his debut, Tony Manero, led me to expect. Meek's Cutoff was, quite frankly, boring as hell, with Bruce Greenwood leading a heritage-farm production in which some US settlers rolled across the prairies in 19th century Oregon. And of the three period chop-socky films, John Woo and Su Chao-Pin's Reign Of Assassins is the best so far (Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins screens tonight). Starring Michelle Yeoh, it plays like a role-reversed History Of Violence until a sneaky switcheroo turns it into a version of a similarly themed film that I won't name for fear of spoilers. Tsui Hark's ... - Venice 2010 Photocall
Click through for a selection of the stars in and around Venice - Ben Affleck and Rebecca Hall arriving at the festival, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere premiere and photocall and John Woo receiving The Golden Lion For Lifetime Achievement award.{Venice Photocall 3}... - Sons Of Anarchy: Season Three Rides In
Apologies to anyone seething in the UK, where the second season has only just finished, but the bikes of SAMCRO roared back on to America's airwaves on Tuesday night, which can only mean one thing: Sons of Anarchy has returned.Kurt Sutter’s blacktop Shakespeare tale of a motorcycle gang and the various shifting allegiances as they smuggle drugs, run weapons and rule their small California town has grown into one of the best dramas to come out of the US. The emotions run high, the violence is brutal but the characterisation is sharp and this is the most charismatic bunch of criminals since The Sopranos left the air. Even if they can’t swear like them…I came late to the Anarchy party. After sampling the pilot and one or two episodes of the first season, I decided I simply couldn’t connect with these lawless bikers. But sheer pressure from people whose opinions I respect led me back this summer, and I binged on both seasons in a fortnight’s marathon. I&rsquo...