Having just completed the highly anticipated feature film Suicide Kids hitting cinemas on the 10th of June and made for the very modest sum of £120,000, UK writer/director Arjun Rose has already signed up for his next film Swift.
Swift is a coming of age story set in East London during the run up to the London Olympics. The The Wire's Idris Elba is signed up to play Max, a disgraced sports agent.
"After witnessing the murder of his father as a child in a drug related shooting, Corey Johnson or 'Swift' as he is known on the streets of East London, is destined for a life of crime.... That is until a chance meeting with Max (Idris Elba) a troubled, washed-up sports agent shows him that there is another path... Recognising Swift’s uncanny ability to run, Max has high hopes of training him to compete at the London Olympics, but Swift’s world won’t let him go without a fight…" Swift is both a humorous and heartfelt coming of age story as well as the tale of a disgraced sports agent’s last chance for success and redemption….
The film begins shooting in July 2011 and is to be released in the Spring of 2012 - the year of London’s Olympic games.
Arjun Rose said, "Suicide Kids was a 3 week shoot with just 2 weeks of preparation and we made a really good film with some of the best young actors in the UK. We have more money this time round and I'm very excited about what we can do."
I WILL FOLLOW DEBUTS TO STRONG INDIE BOX-OFFICE AND EXPANDS TO 22 SCREENS IN 15 CITIES FOR SECOND WEEK
Marks First-Ever Simultaneous National Theatrical Release Powered Solely By Grassroots Organizations
Los Angeles, CA (March 15, 2011) –The critically-acclaimed drama I Will Follow, hailed by Roger Ebert as "one of the best films I've seen about the loss of a loved one," tallied the third highest reported grosses among the weekend’s ten new independent specialty releases with a $11,428 per screen average. The film was distributed on five screens in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Seattle by the new African-American film distribution collective, AFFRM, in concert with AMC Independent. Chronicling a day in the life of a black woman at a personal crossroads, I Will Follow doubled the reported per-screen average of the sole studio offering with an African-American cast this year to date, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son.
AFFRM will capitalize on the success of the film's opening weekend with an aggressive expansion from five screens in five cities to 22 screens in 15 cities beginning Friday, March 18. The additional cities include Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, Oakland, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Charlotte and Jersey City. The initial five markets will continue into second week.
"The success of AFFRM's first theatrical release is a victory for those who believe in the necessity of diverse cinematic images," explained I Will Follow director and AFFRM founder Ava DuVernay. "I Will Follow marks the first-ever simultaneous national theatrical release by grassroots organizations, and I’m proud to stand with our partners at BronzeLens in Atlanta, Imagenation and Urbanworld in New York, ReelBlack in Philadelphia and Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival in Seattle as we celebrate this milestone in black film."
An official selection of AFI Fest and Chicago International Film Festival and winner of Urbanworld, Pan-African and BronzeLens Film Festivals, I Will Follow stars Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Omari Hardwick, Michole White and Dijon Talton, with Blair Underwood and Beverly Todd. In addition to a "thumbs up" from Roger Ebert, the film has garnered praise from critics at Village Voice, LA Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, Philadelphia Inquirer, Seattle Times, BET, New York Daily News and more.
After shifting to both a more traditional event venue (L.A. Live) and evening time slot last year, Film Independent returned their annual celebration of independent film, the Independent Spirit Awards, back to its rightful daytime home of a tent on Santa Monica beach for their 26th edition. The winners were as follows:
Best Feature Black Swan - Scott Franklin, Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Brian Oliver, producers
Best Screenplay The Kids Are All Right - Stuart Blumberg & Lisa Cholodenko
Best First Feature Get Low - Aaron Schneider, director; David Gundlach, Dean Zanuck, producers
Best First Screenplay Tiny Furniture - Lena Dunham
John Cassavetes Award (for best feature made under $500,000) Daddy Longlegs - Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie, writers/directors; Casey Neistat, Tom Scott, producers
Best Cinematography Black Swan - Matthew Libatique
Best Foreign Film The King’s Speech - Tom Hooper, director
Best Documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop - Banksy, director
But as with every year (at least every one taking place on the beach), the awards are only a small part of the larger story, which is the casual scene and atmosphere in and around the event space.
And my favorite celebrity moment of the day...
two major movie stars, one enduring friendship.
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As with many, my initial reaction to Kevin Smith's decision to self-distribute his long-gestating horror film Red State was surprise--but not in the same way most (rather exaggeratedly outraged) observers have expressed. No, my surprise comes in that just about no one ever had the faintest suspicion Smith would follow such a route, especially within the context of his long history of challenging, breaking, and/or redefining traditional boundaries--whether embracing filmmaker/fan interaction long before the advent of social networking over at his official site; or running his own film and entertainment news outlet for a few years; or building a public speaking side career so successful so as to spawn a DVD franchise and, in recent years, a veritable network of podcasts that has grown to invite live audiences. Taking all that into consideration, theatrical self-distribution--piggybacked on his established drawing power as a live speaker--seems not so much insanity than an organic brand extension, albeit his boldest and riskiest. Whatever the outcome, undoubtedly it'll certainly be fascinating and instructive (from all angles, positively and negatively) to watch the situation play out in the coming months.
While Hollywood studios dabbling in Indian film production has become a far from unusual thing in recent years, leave it to Disney to go the extra mile. While most studios have been pursuing the more widely seen "Bollywood" (read: Hindi language) dollar, starting with Sony Pictures' Saawariya in 2007 and subsequently followed by Disney themselves (2008's Roadside Romeo), then Warner Bros. (2009's Chandni Chowk to China), and then most successfully last year with Fox's My Name Is Khan, leave it to Mouse to leave no stone unturned and no potential market untapped by having a hand in a regional Indian production in the southern language of Telugu: the fantasy adventure Anaganaga O Dheerudu (Once Upon a Warrior), opening worldwide (including in North America) this Friday. I was told by the friendly folks at L.A. Telugu that this weekend's initial release in the States will not be English subtitled (those prints apparently will be released next weekend), but if the lavish trailer (that is subtitled) below is any indication, it looks to be a visual extravaganza of Hollywood-level polish that speaks a universal tongue of cinematic sensory splendor that transcends spoken language.
Jay Hunt, Controller of BBC One, confirmed at the Edinburgh Television Festival today that one of the nation's most talked about dramas – Luther – has been recommissioned.
Jay Hunt says: "Luther was the most memorable new detective on the block. I am delighted it will be returning to BBC One."
Luther makes a welcome return in two two-hour specials with Idris Elba reprising his role of Luther, the near-genius murder detective whose brilliant mind can't always save him from the dangerous violence of his passions.
Idris Elba says: "I'm really excited to be coming home to play Luther again. He's got so many more stories to tell... assuming he manages to live long enough. I've cleared my diary and will be back later in the year."
Creator and writer Neil Cross says: "In series one, we saw DCI John Luther take quite a beating – both physically and emotionally. In these specials, he's not only still standing – he's back for more. Luther's world is as fast-moving and dangerous as ever... and the challenges he faces are even more intense.
Luther was commissioned by Ben Stephenson, Controller BBC Drama Commissioning, and Jay Hunt, Controller, BBC One, and will transmit in 2011.
In the gripping, twisting six-episode run of Luther, writer/series creator Neil Cross has done a remarkable job of having his cake and eating it too, in a creative (in every sense) manner of speaking: satisfying both the formula requirements of the police/investigative procedural but at the same time venturing into the unexpected, particularly by way of the unusually rich characterizations. After setting up an incredibly trying, cliffhanging predicament for DCI John Luther (Idris Elba)--on top of the many other already-running concerns--leading into the finale episode, it would only reasonably follow for this hour to be even more plot-driven than normal, and early indications point to, if not exactly a clean resolution, then something approaching a more traditional sense of closure. But much like his protagonist, Cross chooses to not only not go the expected route but sidestep any sort of easy out; owing to his literary roots, his focus here isn't so much on a tidy completion of the overall story arc than the culmination of the characters and the greater thematic concerns.
Of course, these greater concerns are, as Cross has deftly done in previous episodes, organic extensions of the plot. Coming full circle with the opening of the series, Luther is on the obsessive hunt for the perpetrator of a horrible crime, but now with the added baggage of both his previous mental break and his particular closeness to this case, he himself is being pursued by the authorities as prime suspect--thus revealing and confirming Luther's colleagues' true feelings about him. However eager she was to have Luther's skill and determination back on her team, it's clear that his boss, DCU Rose Teller (Saskia Reeves), never fully (re-)trusted him; one step further is DCI Martin Schenk (Dermot Crowley), who after having kept a watchful eye on Luther's conduct, seems almost giddy at the prospect of having something concrete on which to bust him. On the flip side, the true depths of Luther's partner DS Justin Ripley's (Warren Brown) loyalty and trust come to the fore, and clearly reveals him as being one of the only two people with any clear understanding of his character.
The other person, of course, is Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson), with whom Luther, with quite literally nowhere else to turn, reluctantly allies himself--thus not only further cementing the yin/yang, two sides of the same coin parallel Cross has drawn from episode 1, but also boiling the series back down to the fundamental conflict in their respective worldviews: the belief in the existence of love (him) or the world's utter indifference (her). It's no spoiler to say that the answer ultimately rules in Luther's favor--after all, his often over-passionate, but never less than pure, love for estranged wife Zoe (Indira Varma) is one of his primary motivations--but in keeping with Cross's own world view as evidenced in this series, the answer carries with it a myriad of realistically complex, sometimes seemingly contradictory, and always painfully true dimensions. There is love as in Ripley's idealistic lawman loyalty to Luther, but then there's the more twisted but not at all dissimilar devotion Alice has for him. Then there's how the awareness of love's existence can be used as a weapon of manipulation; or, more sincerely but often even more damaging, how love can be so strong as to drive one to act on violent, passionate impulse.
And then there is Luther himself, who exemplifies how the truest, most honest belief in love could be the only thing that can elevate a human above savage animals--and by the hour's end, it is he, for all the more questionable and destructive (to others and most especially himself) acts he has committed, who recognizes that compassion and mercy is a valid, maybe even the best, choice in the face of the most trying and horrific circumstances. But in making that boldest and humane of choices, it leaves one vulnerable to misleading perceptions and very reasonable doubt--making the closing song choice of Nina Simone's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" all too apt, not just in terms of DCI John Luther's situation but that of Cross and the series as a whole. The messy outcome of the tense final moments may leave audiences echoing Luther's final line and thus starving for a second series, but should a follow-up not materialize--though I sincerely hope there will be one--Cross and director Stefan Schwartz, despite any viewer frustration at the absence of a television-conventional close, could not have summed up the deeper, more prominent ideas at work in a more effective, satisfying, and fittingly chilling and haunting manner.
Neil Cross, you sneaky bastard. It seems the (relatively) lower key and detachment of episode 4 of Luther was the series writer/creator's clever way of leaving the audience even more shellshocked by the truly stunning developments in the series' penultimate installment. Initially Cross and new director Stefan Schwartz appear to be picking up on the more conventional note of the last episode, setting up a kidnapping-for-ransom story in rather expectedly grisly fashion (namely, a severed tongue--which, naturally, is just a warm-up for things to come). But unlike the aberration of episode 4, this Case of the Week follows what had been the modus operandi of Cross in the first three: the procedural plot as an entry point to further illuminate and dissect the characters and their relationships. But Cross even manages to surprise at this angle; by the midpoint the episode is no longer so much about the kidnapping as it is taking a hard look not at DCI John Luther (Idris Elba) but longtime colleague DCI Ian Reed (Steven Mackintosh). At first the greater emphasis strikes a bit odd given Reed's heretofore fairly background status, but in keeping with how intricately layered Cross has structured this series, the further exploration of Reed leads to explanations and motivations for some of his decisions in previous installments, not to mention sheds light on perhaps why he and Luther share such a strong bond in the first place.
So goes Cross and Schwartz's remarkable job of not only building the tension, but also gradually widening the scope and raising the dramatic stakes as the hour progresses. First Luther feels the stress of merely the Case of the Week and its compounding complications; then it's the ever-volatile relations with his colleagues on the force; then it's the continuing drama with wife Zoe (Indira Varma), which reaches a new crisis point; and by the truly wrenching dual climaxes, all these threads have organically converged into one incredibly difficult (to put it very mildly) situation for Luther and everyone in his orbit. It's a reflection of the harrowing emotional roller coaster of this episode--further intensified by the incredibly powerful performances by Elba, Mackintosh, and Varma--that Luther's weekly encounter with scary psycho Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson) is actually the hour's quietest moment--but it's perhaps the most emblematic of the entire series, as it distills what clearly has always been Cross's central concern. As all these external forces and circumstances close in on Luther, the biggest challenge is not to his smarts or his skill or even his sanity, but to the very core of who he is: his driving faith in--despite all the emptiness and ugliness he regularly encounters--the existence of love in world. As a massive cliffhanger sets the stage for a full-circle finale that again finds him on a single-minded mission fueled by passion and rage, Luther's success--and salvation--wholly rests on the confirmation or denial of his defining belief.
After the top-to-bottom intensity and major character and story arc shifts of last week's installment, it's not at all shocking that the fourth episode of Luther finds the tone and pace dialed down a bit. What is surprising, though, is that this episode is not merely calmer relative to the last, but that director Sam Miller (who also helmed episode 3) uses a gentler hand and a lower key, period--and for an episode that, while not as pivotal as the previous one, does not lack for either important overall plot developments or lurid subject matter. The latter respect comes by way of DCI John Luther's (Idris Elba) Case of the Week, which centers on no less than not only a serial murderer of women, but one with a serious handbag fetish. While this storyline does build to a rather graphically violent climax, it ultimately feels a bit mundane, for writer/series creator Neil Cross does not use the week's criminal concern to either illuminate and enrich Luther (except for revealing him to be a David Bowie fan) or the other characters, nor does it inform the continuing story arcs in any way. It's the first time in the series' run where the self-contained plot of the week plays like a routine procedural episode.
Thankfully Cross continues to not be routine when it comes to the ongoing character matters, which take turns both expected and not. With the exposure of his career-threatening secret appearing all but inevitable, Luther finally seeks to make a decisively clean break from any sort of contact with the ever-eager-to-"help," ever-batshit-crazy Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson), which sets her off even more--and brings about an unexpectedly abrupt resolution (though not exactly closure) to one of the longer-looming issues. After the previous episode's events, Luther and wife Zoe (Indira Varma) begin the hour not exactly estranged, but the rediscovered closeness proves to create new complications that may leave them even further apart. These aren't exactly insignificant developments at all, but Cross and Miller play them (aside from one requisite freak-out apiece for Luther and Alice, that is) in an unusually understated fashion, which is a bit refreshing coming after the frantic previous installment not to mention a rather surprising choice overall. But such an approach paired with a less than thrilling Case of the Week leaves the episode feeling a bit minor and wanting. With only two more weeks to go, here's hoping next week's penultimate chapter finds the tension and energy level jumpstarted in preparation for the big finish.
Within the first ten minutes of the third episode of Luther, the audience is treated to a man thrusting his tongue at and then licking a woman's face, words scrawled on walls in fresh human blood, and one of the series regulars washing his bloody face after suffering a brutal beating. Such newly in-your-face boldness I initially completely chalked up to a change in director--at the helm this time is Sam Miller, taking over from the first two's Brian Kirk--but it soon becomes apparent that this episode serves as a pivot that signals a dramatically (in every sense) dark and intense turn for the back half of the series. For a start, stories don't come much darker or more intense than DCI John Luther's (Idris Elba) Case of the Week, that of a satanic kidnapper and murderer who keeps his victims in a freezer while he does all sorts of nasty business with their blood.
For all the surface, sensationalistic shocks that come with exploring such grisly territory (including an instance of blood drinking, no less--not for nothing did the usually lax BBC affix a content advisory), writer/series creator Neil Cross cannily packs his biggest punches in how this case impacts the much larger picture of no less than the entire series. In my post on episode 2, I predicted that in this episode "the week's case will be closed in one way or another, but ongoing saga of John Luther will more likely be untidier than ever," and while I was correct, I had no idea quite to the degree, nor just how Cross would organically, seamlessly intertwine the concerns of the week's procedural case with further enriching the characters, relationships, and larger story arcs--to say nothing of just how much Cross corrupts the already-shaky status quo. For all his investigative acumen, Luther finds that the only way to nab this latest psycho on the scene is to enlist the counsel of another, the ever-present, ever-unhinged Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson, creepy-crazy-captivating as ever)--who on her own has already been serving up unsolicited "help" in trying to bring Luther and estranged wife Zoe (Indira Varma) back together. But whatever immediate results this uneasy alliance may yield on both those fronts, the lasting overall fallout promises to be detrimental, if not outright devastating, to Luther. Indeed, by the hour's end, not only is Luther back in even lesser graces with his superiors, his relationship with supportive but straight-arrow partner DS Justin Ripley (Warren Brown, finally getting a bit more to do) has been severely tested, and Alice's sense of spiritual kinship with him is proven to be not so much twisted than it is true. The real suspense for the remaining three episodes lies not in the question of if Luther will suffer his ultimate downfall but if he will care enough to save himself.
Monday night I had a rare advance press screening for a major Bollywood release, Anurag Basu's Kites, starring Hindi film superstar Hrithik Roshan in his first starring release since 2008's spectacular historical epic Jodhaa Akbar. I am embargoed from writing in any depth on the film until the global release this Friday, May 21, but Roshan's characteristically terrific dance number in the film got me remembering (and YouTube-ing) some of the great dance performances he's given over his career, which turns a decade old this year.
Directed by his father Rakesh Roshan, his 2000 debut Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai (Won't You Say... You Love Me), is, on the whole, pretty damn terrible, but what most definitely isn't is the younger Roshan's charisma and dancing ability. The "Ek Pal Ka Jeena" ("There's Only a Moment in Life") number (part of a very solid song score with which this very bad movie was blessed) became an instant classic and singlehandedly turned him into a major movie star overnight, and his effortless grace and presence make it easy to see why.
The first film I actually saw Roshan in was Karan Johar's all-star 2001 family drama Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (Sometimes Happiness Sometimes Sorrow...), which features what is probably my favorite Bollywood song/number of all time, "You Are My Soniya." Yes, it's the epitome of bubblegum pop in any language, but damn it if I don't have it frequently pop into my head at random moments in the years since I first heard the song--which has just about as much to do with Roshan's dancing as it does the song's catchy melody.
To this day, the most unique and challenging number I've seen Roshan perform is the limb-twisting "Main Aisa Kyun Hoon?" ("Why Am I Like This?") number in Farhan Akhtar's 2004 war drama Lakshya (Aim). Choreographed by the great Prabhu Deva, it's a dramatic departure from the dance club or traditional dress numbers actors are most often called on to do in Bollywood.
The last time Roshan danced onscreen in a major showcase prior to Kites (not counting his cameo role in last year's Luck by Chance nor an end credits snippet in 2008's Krazzy 4; Jodhaa Akbar exercised just about all of his skills except dancing) was in 2006's actioner Dhoom:2 (Blast:2), which marked his long-awaited first on-screen pairing with arguably the best female dancer currently active in Bollywood, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan--and they did not disappoint.
