Ari Folman is one animated guy, and this doesn’t just apply to his chosen film medium. Constantly roaming the stuffy hotel suite where we meet, the 50-year-old Israeli filmmaker is like a gruff but generous-natured shaggy grey bear, forever gesticulating, glugging water, interrupting questions and asking his own. This restless, curious nature is no surprise if you’ve seen the two features that have made his international reputation. 2008’s Waltz With Bashir, a singular, surreal, multi-award-winning flash/CG-rotoscoped animation based on his own horrific combat experiences as a young man; and now its follow-up, the even more striking live-action/animation hybrid The Congress. Read more
All posts by Leigh Singer
Vocal Heroes: The 25 Best Voice Only Movie Performances / IGN
Among all the raves for Guardians of the Galaxy, there’s been a lot of love for an actor we don’t even see: Bradley Cooper, voice of scene-stealing mutant raccoon Rocket (Vin Diesel’s Groot is great too, but he does utter only four words). Casting is key in all movie roles. And for non-physical parts, relying solely on the actor’s voice to convey everything they can offer the character, maybe even more so. Even a thesp as great as Colin Firth recently got replaced as the voice of Paddington in the upcoming film by new Bond ‘Q’ Ben Whishaw, when the filmmakers realised Firth sounded “too mature” for a young Peruvian bear who ends up in London (curiously arriving with a cut-glass English accent to boot). Read more
Transformers: Age of Extinction -Transformers or Transfakers?
We challenge Mark Wahlberg and the rest of the Age of Extinction cast to see if they can tell a Transformer from the fakes we made up.
Roman Coppola
As part of our new summer US project States of Independence we’ve invited our favourite 30 American curators, magazines, creatives and institutions to takeover Dazed for a day.
Roman Coppola put his thang down, flipped it and reversed it by founding director’s collective The Directors Bureau, a who’s who of directing superstars like Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola and CANADA. For Dazed, The Directors Bureau chart the changes in indie cinema, and challenge young filmmakers to pick up a camera. Read more
The Two Faces of January
Unlike many acclaimed novelists, the movies have done pretty well by Patricia Highsmith. Following Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1951 adaptation of her debut thriller Strangers on a Train, Highsmith’s most infamous anti-hero, Tom Ripley, has schemed through several high-class screen outings – Plein Soleil (1960), The American Friend (1977) and the late Anthony Minghella’s excellent The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), the first film to truly showcase Matt Damon’s range as vulnerable, needy yet ruthless sociopath. Read more
Blue Ruin
There comes a time in your life when you finally, sadly, have to admit: you are not, and will never be, Liam Neeson. That if something precious is Taken from you, you simply don’t have the particular set of skills to get it back or get payback. Your amateur efforts will likely make you a nightmare to people like, well, yourself actually. Read more
Expendables 3: Introducing the Young Guns
“Our stories by and large have been pretty much told. So now we have to branch out and investigate other people’s lives. There’s only so many times you can go to that well and you’re like, ‘I’m sick of the taste of this water. Give me something fresh. A new spring.’”
Woah. When Sylvester Stallone, star of six Rocky movies and four Rambos tells you it might be time to start a movie series over, you listen carefully. Is Stallone seriously considering retiring himself and his aging action cohorts from their very own franchise? Even the latest Expendables 3 ‘Roll Call’ trailer tags it as ‘One Last Ride’. Time to say goodbye to Arnie and Sly? Read more
Stallone Wants Nicholson and Eastwood for the Expendables
When The Expendables 3 cast additions were announced, they were mighty impressive: Ford (Han Solo/Indiana Jones), Gibson (Mad Max/Braveheart), Banderas (Desperado/Zorro) et al. All guys with a proven action track record and therefore kind of obvious, if total fantasy, candidates to sign up.
But what if along with these stars, you’d had Jack Nicholson? Read more
The Expendables 3 Set Visit
Interviewing movie stars is, by and large, not that intimidating. Micro-managed one-on-ones in plush surroundings, the talent slickly styled and on their best behaviour. Faced with neverending conveyor belts of press, it’s the actors who might get jittery.
Sitting three feet across from Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Antonio Banderas and Randy Couture, fresh off the set in full combat gear, all staring impassively as you formulate a question is another deal altogether.
“You’re lucky to be in this room,” Stallone growls at IGN. “You’re in the presence of greatness, kid.” These are The Expendables. You’re merely, well, expendable. Small ‘e’. Read more
The Quiet Ones
A film called The Quiet Ones that starts with a young patient being kept awake by blasting Slade’s ‘70s anthem ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’ into her room? It’s a welcome shot of black humour – and glam rock – suggesting Hammer Films’ new entry in its resurrected horror slate might buzz with a little more wit and originality than your average scary movie.
Unfortunately that feeling lasts little longer than a Slade single and all too quickly we’re back in a depressingly familiar groove. If Hammer’s previous spectral story, The Woman in Black, was a worldwide chart-topper, this lackluster follow-up is unlikely to bother the box-office hit parade. Read more