movies

Ever since the silent era, where many films have now been lost, preservation of the medium has been a challenge—one that seemed to ease with the rise of the home video market in the 70s and 80s. In recent years, however, physical media has largely given way to streaming, making older films more difficult to maintain and leaving others at risk of removal due to a perceived lack of demand. In an effort to combat this problem, Warner Brothers is now trying a unique experiment by releasing several older films on YouTube for free. Although the studio has rightly earned a reputation for abandoning projects and prioritizing streaming over live cinema, this is perhaps one thing they are doing right. It's easy to conclude that the studio is doing the right thing for the wrong reason, but such an idea offers a rare glimmer of hope for how old films can be preserved outside of streaming. Time will tell whether this gamble will work, but it remains something that other studios should at least consider.

we need to look only to Amazon’s most recent attempt at an international espionage franchise for a depressing sneak preview of what might lie ahead. We refer to Prime Video’s $300 million (and counting) 2023 folly Citadel – a towering inferno of iffy action courtesy of Marvel’s Russo Brothers, which is far worse than even Bond’s sorriest moments (okay, maybe not as bad as Pierce Brosnan’s invisible Jag in Die Another Day but definitely in the same time zone).

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Watching Citadel, it’s tempting to conclude that it is an artefact from an alternate universe where James Bond is a bit rubbish. With Bodyguard’s Richard Madden playing the lead spy and Lesley Manville as the Blofeld-esque mega-villain (undercover as a UK Ambassador), it has a thick veneer of Britishness. It’s chock-full of globe-trotting, with the fun pinging between US, London, Paris and Italy (though the bulk of the filming was in Slovenia and Birmingham).

Plus, there are oodles of gadgets, including futuristic memory-wiping devices that would have Q puce with envy. And just like James “Make Mine a Land Rover” Bond, it’s stuffed with product placement: you can even press “pause” to purchase products flogged by the series (if you want to buy the suit worn by Madden, just go ahead and call up your Amazon account).

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To be fair, on paper at least Citadel didn’t sound terrible (not that it sounded particularly compelling either). Amazon certainly felt it had a sure-fire smash on its hands. It didn’t even take the time to establish that there was an audience for yet another spy series to go alongside Bond, Jason Bourne, Mission: Impossible, Archer, Slow Horses, The Night Manager, etc. Instead, it greenlit Citadel and multiple spin-offs for “local markets”– including India, Italy and Mexico.

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Unfortunately the Russos were too busy to take a hands-on role in Citadel (among other undertakings, they were making ditchwater dull $200 million action movie The Gray Man for Netflix). So they passed it to writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec (who had worked with Hollywood’s own mystery box man, JJ Abrams, on Alias), with Game of Thrones veteran Brian Kirk directing five of the seven episodes of the first season.

Which is where the trouble started. Amazon is said to have had “reservations” about early footage presented by Appelbaum and Nemec. One source of contention was an ambitious – and expensive – “ski and hand-gliding sequence” with which the pilot was to open.

With Applebaum and Nemec in a stand-off with Amazon, the Russos returned and agreed to kill the set-piece (which was to have been followed by a five-year time jump). They were just getting started: Appelbaum departed, and Kirk and producer Sarah Bradshaw followed soon afterwards. Roll on multiple reshoots, which pushed the budget to a mind-boggling $300 million (twice what it costs the Broccolis to make Die Another Day).

Having taken over, the Russos decided to rebuild Citadel from the ground up. They brought in cinematographer Thomas Sigel for additional footage and David Weil – writer of the Al Pacino Nazi drama Hunters – to rework the scripts. Meanwhile, costs continued to balloon.

But where that money went was unclear when Citadel – clocking in at a mere six episodes – finally reached the screen (season two is due in 2025). It looked shoddy, and after an admittedly memorable opening shoot-out featuring Madden and Chopra on a train, there wasn’t enough action. The plot in which Madden’s Mason Kane loses his memory was meanwhile stonkingly derivative – to the point where his on-screen wife jokingly refers to him as “Jason Bourne”.

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Cheap-looking, unoriginal and bland, Citadel impressed no one. “A pricey Bond audition tape,” said the Telegraph – focusing on Madden’s performance. “A choppy, generic blockbuster-by-numbers with a nine-figure budget you’d never detect from the chintzy CGI.” agreed Variety.

The public was even less forgiving. “A very mediocre show that feels written by AI… Predictable, messy, you do not care about the characters in the slightest,” wrote one viewer. “Flat, uninspired and just plain boring.”

Undeterred, Amazon ploughed on with its global spin-offs – though without the Russos, who have gone back to Marvel, where they are working on the inevitable new Avengers movies. The first, Citadel: Diana, was set in the Italian Alps and produced for Prime by Rome-headquartered ITV subsidiary Cattleya. It debuted last April to deafening indifference.

That was also the response to Citadel: Honey Bunny – an Indian prequel which followed the early romance of the parents of Chopra’s character. It topped the Amazon viewing charts in India but, much like George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, otherwise came and went without a trace.

Vanishing without a trace is not a fate a 21st-century James Bond is likely to suffer. But the failure of Citadel is nonetheless a depressing sneak preview of what may lie ahead for Ian Fleming’s super-spook. Cheesy and hamstrung by too much executive meddling, Citadel took a sure-fire formula – spies hop around the globe shooting people – and missed the target by a mile.

Apply the same treatment to Bond, and cinema’s favourite spy might well suffer a fate worse than the one Goldfinger had in mind when he strapped Sean Connery to that table and whipped out his laser. A cack-handed Prime Video might well leave Bond morally wounded, and anyone who suffered through Citadel will fear the worst.

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24529102

Amazon has paid more than $1bn for “creative control” of the James Bond franchise, the Guardian understands, in a deal that has met with a mixed response from stars of the films.

Amazon MGM Studios said on Thursday that it had struck a deal with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, the British-American heirs to the film producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and longtime stewards of the Bond films.

The world’s second largest corporation by revenue confirmed it had formed a joint venture with the duo to house the James Bond intellectual property with Amazon assuming “creative control”.

Amazon said the financial terms were for its eyes only, but it is understood that control of 007 was ceded for about $1bn (£790m), a figure first reported by the US Hollywood news oulet Deadline.

Daniel Craig, the most recent actor to play Bond, offered his congratulations to Broccoli and Wilson on Friday. Craig, who first appeared in Casino Royale in 2006, said: “My respect, admiration and love for Barbara and Michael remain constant and undiminished.

“I wish Michael a long, relaxing (and well-deserved) retirement, and whatever ventures Barbara goes on to do, I know they will be spectacular and I hope I can be part of them.”

The actor Valerie Leon, however, a former “Bond girl”, raised concerns that 007 would not be British any more if Amazon was calling the shots.

Leon, 81, featured in the films The Spy Who Loved Me and Never Say Never Again, alongside Roger Moore and Sean Connery. She told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that it does not worry her because “life changes and everything moves on and changes”.

“The Bond franchise was very British and it won’t be any more,” she said. “And obviously, if they make films they won’t go into the cinema … everything is so changed now, it just won’t be the same and I’m very old-fashioned anyway.”

Amazon MGM Studios is set to take creative control of the James Bond franchise.

The shock announcement — which is sure to shake and, indeed, stir the industry — was made Thursday, alongside the news that long-time producers and custodians of 007, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, would be stepping back.

As per details of the arrangement, Amazon MGM Studios, Wilson and Broccoli have formed a new joint venture to house the James Bond intellectual property rights. The three parties will remain co-owners of the iconic franchise but Amazon MGM will have creative control.

Brady Corbet, the 36-year-old director behind Oscar season’s most acclaimed film, has said he – and many of his fellow nominees – are experiencing severe financial difficulties.

Corbet said he “made zero dollars” from his three-and-a-half hour drama about a Hungarian architect in postwar America.

“I just directed three advertisements in Portugal,” Corbet told Marc Maron on his WTF podcast. “It’s the first time that I had made any money in years.” He went on to explain that he and his wife and co-writer/producer, Mona Fastvold, “made zero dollars on the last two films that we made”.

The Brutalist, which has garnered 10 nominations at this year’s Academy Awards, has been widely praised for its relative economy, given its substantial scope and running time.

Corbet’s budget on the film was $9.6m (£7.62m), and a week after its premiere at the Venice film festival in August 2024, distribution rights were acquired by A24 for a similar sum, after a bidding war.

The Brutalist has so far taken $14.6m (£11.6m) in the US. In the UK, where it is being distributed by Focus and Universal, its current total is $3.2m (£2.5m). Rest of the world earnings to date stand at around $13.4m (£10.6m) for a global gross of $31.1m (£24.7m).

On his show, Maron pressed Corbet for clarification about payment for the film, to which he replied: “Yes. Actually, zero. We had to just sort of live off of a paycheck from three years ago.”

A number of his lauded peers were in a similar predicament, said Corbet. “I’ve spoken to many film-makers that have the films that are nominated this year that can’t pay their rent. I mean, that’s a real thing.”

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24402951

It’s no secret that the original Star Wars trilogy inspired many of today’s best filmmakers. Now, we can add one more to that list. French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat has received great acclaim for her film The Substance, which is nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Fargeat herself is up for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

Apparently, it was Star Wars where Fargeat first got her spark as a director. Letterboxd recently shared Fargeat’s La Guerre des Étoiles, a Star Wars fan film from 1993 that she made at the age of 17. The thumbnail adds it was Fargeat’s first film. The title “La Guerre des Étoiles” is French for “Star Wars.” The film uses action figures and other methods to recreate scenes from Return of the Jedi. (Editor’s note: The action scenes remind me of stuff my buddies and I filmed in our youth that we swore was award-worthy.)

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25750177

Benedict Cumberbatch spoke about his relationship to masculinity at the Berlin Film Festival press conference for "The Thing With Feathers."

“Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!” That’s what Jeff Bridges bellows about Robert Downey Jr. in the first Iron Man movie. And, for a while, it was that scrappy, improvisational Stark-like energy that made Marvel Studios special. Across three “phases” of filmmaking, Marvel combined the backbone of good superhero storytelling (likable characters, exciting action, cool special effects, compelling plots, a fun sense of humor) with the true secret sauce of the genre: meaningful storytelling themes.

Lately, however, it’s as if Marvel has forgotten that superhero stories are actually supposed to have ideas. Marvel has moved from the Age Of Heroes to the Age Of Aimless Intersecting Content. That philosophy reaches its nadir in the latest big-screen addition to the MCU, Captain America: Brave New World—a film that continues the “what are we doing here?” trend of recent Marvel projects like Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion.

It wasn’t always like this. Marvel once understood what filmmakers like Richard Donner and Sam Raimi long ago proved: More than any other genre, superhero stories are built around archetypal characters engaging in ideological battles meant to reflect something larger about the human condition. That means they need driving central themes to elevate their sometimes-thin individual components into something greater than the sum of their parts.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24377755

This amusingly overwrought mystery-horror-thriller is both a new release and a reissue all at once. Originally made in 2004, and shown at a few genre-specific film festivals, it never secured distribution. Still, it found a way to get seen on alternative platforms like YouTube and homemade DVDs. Frustrated with the lack of appreciation for his work, director Eugenio Mira started sending copies of the film to directors he admired like Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro among others, exactly the right kind of guys who like to champion neglected cult classics. Meanwhile, lead actor Corey Feldman (once a child star in the likes of Stand By Me and The Goonies back in the 1980s) was conducting his own under-the-radar campaign on the film’s behalf. After it ended up getting shown via a scratchy master print at a screening hosted by director Jordan Peele (Get Out, Nope) and praised to the heavens, funds suddenly became available for a 4K restoration and a limited worldwide release. Now we can all see what the fuss is about.

Was it worth the wait? Yes and no.

I wouldn't go much further as they do say " It’s best to know as little as possible going in" and then proceed to drop hints, which is naughty.