Latest news with #Filmmaking
Khaleej Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Kamal Haasan pens heartfelt birthday message to 'Thug Life' director Mani Ratnam
Veteran Indian actor and filmmaker Kamal Haasan marked director Mani Ratnam's birthday with an emotional message that celebrated their decades-long cinematic partnership. The note, shared publicly, struck a deeply personal tone, reflecting on their journey from the iconic Nayakan to their much-anticipated upcoming film Thug Life. "Happy Birthday, Mani Ratnam," Haasan wrote, adding, "From Nayakan to Thug Life, we've journeyed through time together -- as colleagues, family, co-dreamers, and above all, as lifelong students of cinema," he wrote on X. He went on to praise Ratnam not only for his creative brilliance but for being a guiding presence throughout the years. "Through every chapter, your presence has been a source of strength -- a mind I turn to in moments of doubt, and a soul deeply attuned to the language of film like few others. May your stories keep unfolding, for with every frame, your vision brings depth, beauty, and meaning to cinema," he wrote, signing off with, "Forever your friend, Kamal Haasan." Happy Birthday, Mani Ratnam. From Nayakan to Thug Life, weâ��ve journeyed through time together â�� as colleagues, family, co-dreamers, and above all, as lifelong students of cinema. Through every chapter, your presence has been a source of strength â�� a mind I turn to in moments ofâ�¦ — Kamal Haasan (@ikamalhaasan) June 2, 2025 Haasan and Ratnam share one of the most revered collaborations in Indian cinema. Their first and most celebrated partnership came in 1987 with Nayakan, a Tamil crime drama loosely inspired by the life of underworld don Varadarajan Mudaliar. The film not only became a critical and commercial success but was also India's official entry to the Academy Awards that year. It remains a landmark in Indian filmmaking. Now, 37 years later, the duo is reuniting for Thug Life, a high-profile gangster drama expected to hit screens on June 5. The film features Haasan in a central role alongside actor Silambarasan TR.
Geek Tyrant
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Leslie Grace to Lead Survival Thriller PROPEL as Diver Swallowed by a Giant Sperm Whale — GeekTyrant
After her breakout in In the Heights and the high-profile shelving of Batgirl , Leslie Grace is diving into a whole new kind of challenge, as she will play a diver swallowed whole by a giant sperm whale in the upcoming survival thriller Propel . The film is being described as Gravity meets 127 Hours … but underwater and in a whale. If that visual alone doesn't pique your curiosity, the synopsis might: ' Propel will see Grace star as Kate Acosta, a commercial diver who is swallowed by a giant sperm whale during a routine commercial dive. Trapped in a living prison and gasping for air, Kate must confront both real-life monsters of the deep and her inner demons as a desperate fight for survival and salvation unfolds.' The film is written by Jeremy Marwick and inspired by true events. It's being directed by Felipe Vargas, who previously helmed Rosario , and is aiming for that gripping survival-space of storytelling where it's one human versus the impossible, except this time the impossible is warm, wet, and alive. Altitude will handle international sales and is presenting the project at Cannes as a 'pulse-pounding elemental thriller that will leave you breathless.' Grace has already proven she can command the screen with charisma and emotional depth, now she gets to test those chops in a a wild and crazy survival story set inside the belly of a whale. Source: Variety
Geek Tyrant
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
VFX Artists React To and Share Insight For SIN CITY, ULTRAMAN ARC, and More — GeekTyrant
The gang at Corridor Crew got together for another VFX Artis React video and they dive in offering insight into the visual effects of films like Sin City , Ultraman Arc , an old Honda ad, and the French movie, Bastion 36 . I remember being completely blown away by Robert Rodiguez's Sin City! That movie blew my mind at the time. I love the style, and I was fascinated by how the filmmaker brought the story to life to give us such a stylized comic book movie. We'd never really seen anything like that before. So, it's fun seeing the Corridor Crew get together to talk about and break down how that movie was made.
Forbes
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Clown In A Cornfield' Director On Horror Comedy's Catchy Title And Why He Avoided The ‘Terrifier' Route
Scene from "Clown in a Cornfield." RLJE Films/Shudder When Clown in a Cornfield director Eli Craig first heard the title for what his next movie could potentially be, he immediately fell in love with it. After all, it's not too often that a title alone for a film yields so much potential — think Snakes on a Plane or Sharknado — but given the source material was already established as a beloved book, Clown in a Cornfield was too cool of a crop not to be picked. 'I saw the title and I was like 'I got to make this movie, and I hope that I hope the book is something I want to make,' Craig told me in a recent Zoom conversation. 'The title alone to me captures the spirit of something … It has so many layers to it. It has everything horror and funny, and of course, a clown.' While Clown in a Cornfield is a blood-splattered R-rated comedy, the story originated from author Adam Cesare's Bram Stoker Award-winning young adult novel from 2020. And while the book was written for YA readers, it didn't preclude Craig from amping up the scares for laughs. 'I always believed that the R-rated films I saw as a young adult affected me forever,' recalled Craig, whose mother is legendary screen star Sally Field. 'I remember the first horror films I ever saw vividly. They made me want to be a horror film director someday.' And quite the horror filmmaker Craig has become, with credits including the 2017 Netflix horror comedy Little Evil with Adam Scott and Evangeline Lilly, and the 2010 horror comedy cult classic Tucker and Dave vs. Evil, starring Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk. When it came to Clown in a Cornfield, Craig said he wasn't about to change the way he makes his horror comedies because the source material originated as a YA novel. 'You can't give young people too little credit for their sophistication, and I didn't want to talk down to Gen Z at all [with this movie] Playing in Thursday previews ahead of opening in theater nationwide on Friday, Clown in a Cornfield stars Katie Douglas as Quinn Maybrook, a teen who moves with her doctor father, Glenn, move to the sleepy farm town of Kettle Springs to start anew and try to heal the fraught relationship following the death of Quinn's mother. What Quinn and Glenn don't realize is that Kettle Springs is going through tough times after the town's lifeblood industry — the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory — has burned to the ground, leaving the community in a lurch. In a bid to ease the town of its depressed state, the Baypen Corn Syrup Mascot — Frendo the Clown — has turned into a demented soul and is emerging from the rural cornfields to dispatch his victims in a particularly cruel ways, and Quinn and her new friends in Kettle Springs are in Frendo's line of sight. Of course, having a clown in Clown in a Cornfield automatically makes the film creepy, especially in the wake of the IT movies' Pennywise the Clown and Art the Clown from the Terrifier movies. The big difference, though, is while yes, there's ample amounts of blood and gore in Clown in a Cornfield, Eli Craig — who co-wrote the screen adaptation of Adam Cesare's book along with Carter Blanchard — didn't want the film to cross the line into Terrifier movie territory and have audiences vomiting in theater aisle. 'My gut is the line and sometimes I go to the point where I feel like I'm testing my own gut, where I can't really watch something myself,' Craig explained. With Terrifier 3, I had to watch the film in little segments to study it and I realized, 'Oh wow, Damien Leone is a master.' I wanted to look at how he was doing in-camera special effects. [At the same time] That's not to say Craig doesn't push the line with his blood and gore in Clown in a Cornfield. It's just that when he does, the kills are imbued with sights that can't help but make you laugh. 'I feel like I've hit the mark where most people are going to go, 'Ooh!' and start turning away, but then I'm done,' Craig said. 'I have these moments that may be a little shocking, but there's just a touch of humor in it as well that makes it tolerable. 'I want to have the kills be quite real and a little bit shocking, gritty and brutal, but also have a touch of playfulness to them,' the director added. 'They're not brutal to the point of being sickening, though. That's the line for me. I'm not interested in making a sickening movie. I want to make a fun movie that has kills in it.' Scene from "Clown in a Cornfield." RLJE Films/Shudder Masks, of course, have defined so many evil villains throughout horror film history, whether it be Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Michael Myers in the Halloween movies and Ghostface in the Scream franchise. As such, Eli Craig worked in close collaboration with his special makeup effects designer Doug Morrow and the film's producers to create a creepy Frendo the Clown mask that audiences wouldn't forget. 'The design goes way back to trying to figure out what this clown would look like in a commercial for the Kettle Springs corn syrup factory,' Craig recalled. 'He was like a Ronald McDonald in the 30s or 40s, like a salesman. The idea was to first represent the optimism of America, which then dissipated into this darkness, which shifted, melted and distorted into an evil-looking clown. 'So we took the features of like the joyful salesman clown with the eyes and then warped it a little bit and brought the smile up a little more with these awful-looking teeth,' Craig added. 'That's when we nailed it. When we finally got it, we were like, 'Okay, that's it. Let's print that. Let's make that mask. It's quite frightening.' With any luck, audiences are going to be freaked out by Frendo the Clown when the film opens in theaters this weekend and the masked creeper will be back to (corn) stalk and slay some more in a sequel or sequels to Clown in a Cornfield. After all, Clown in a Cornfield is just the first of three books by Adam Cesare, which is followed by Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives, which was published in 2022 and The Church of Frendo, which was released in 2024. Going back to the idea of a movie title meaning everything, I shared my idea with Craig for a potential sequel for the next Frendo film: Clown in a Cornfield: Field of Screams. 'I'm writing it down. Do I have to give you credit?' Craig answered me with a laugh. 'I actually genuinely like that. Right now it's called Frendo Lives, but Field of Screams is pretty rad … thanks for that, Tim!' Also starring Kevin Durand, Carson MacCormack, Cassandra Potenza, Verity Marks, Ayo Solanke, Vincent Muller and Will Sasso, Clown in a Cornfield plays in Thursday previews before opening in theaters nationwide on Friday.
Associated Press
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Movie Review: The sweep of history courses through Jia Zhangke's ‘Caught By the Tides'
Jia Zhangke's 'Caught by the Tides' is less than two hours long and yet contains nearly a quarter-century of time's relentless march forward. Few films course with history the way it does in the Chinese master's latest, an epic collage that spans 21 years. Jia undertook the film during the pandemic, assembling a mix of fiction and documentary, including images from his earlier films as well as newly shot scenes. That might sound like a mishmash kind of moviemaking. But for Jia, the preeminent cinematic chronicler of 21st century China, it's a remarkably cohesive, even profound vessel for capturing what has most interested him as a filmmaker: the tidal wave-sized currents of technological progress and social transmutation that wash over a lifetime. The high-speed upheavals of modern China are, of course, a fitting setting for such interests. Jia's films are often most expressed in their surroundings — in vistas of infrastructure that dwarf his protagonists. Fans of Jia will recognize some from his previous films. For me, there's never been a more moving backdrop from him than the rubble and mass displacement of the Three Gorges Dam project (seen here, as in his 2008 film 'Still Life'). 'Caught by the Tides' is ostensibly about Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao, Jia's wife and muse) and her lover Bin (Li Zhubin), whom she searches for years after a row sent them in different directions. But in 'Caught by the Tides,' these characters are more like life rafts bobbing in expansive waters, making their way aimlessly. The poetry of 'Caught by the Tides' comes from a grander arc. In one of the film's opening scenes, shot on grainy digital film, women in a Datong city room laugh together, singing old, half-remembered songs. The film's final scenes, set more than two decades later in the southern city of Zhuhai, are more crisply photographed and depict a more impersonal world of smartphones, robots and QR codes. For a moment, Jia even adopts the perspective of a surveillance camera. Another moment: a shot, from pre-digital times, drifting down a street with men looking back at us, smoking and mildly curious. Cut then to what might be the same street years later, where a woman parades as a model in front of a sprawling shopping mall. In 'Caught by the Tides,' these changes go unexplained and unspoken. But the evolutions they chart are deeply familiar to anyone who has lived through even some of these years, in China or elsewhere. We see how people once moved differently, spoke differently and sang differently. Progress and loss exist together as one. Zhao and Li age through the film, leaving them weathered, too, by time. A song late in the film goes: 'I can't grasp the warmth we once shared.' 'Caught by the Tides,' a Sideshow and Janus Films release, is unrated by the Motion Picture Association. In Mandarin. Running time: 116 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
