Director Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York, The Departed) and Leonardo DiCaprio (Shutter Island, The Aviator) have both committed to an adaptation of The Wolf of Wall Street. This film will be the fifth time the duo will be working together.

The film is based on the memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort. It chronicles his rise and fall as a Wall Street stock broker in the 80′s and 90′s.  The script for the film is written by Terrence Winter, who is currently the executive producer of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.

In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance. Reputedly the prototype for the film Boiler Room, Stratton Oakmont turned microcap investing into a wickedly lucrative game as Belfort’s hyped-up, coked-out brokers browbeat clients into stock buys that were guaranteed to earn obscene profits, just not for the clients.

Continue Reading →

As with writers, Directors are pretty high on our list of important pieces of the film and TV making puzzle. If writers are the initial creative force that takes an idea from nothing and makes it into something, directors are the force that shapes that something into a clear vision and fulfills its potential for greatness. Or, they get it as close as it’s ever going to get.

With that in mind, the Directors Guild of America President Taylor Hackford today announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2011.

“The directors nominated this year for the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film Award have each demonstrated an inspired command of the medium. The fact that their prodigious talents have been recognized by their peers is the highest honor a director can achieve,” said Hackford. “I offer my most sincere congratulations to each of the nominees.”

The winner will be named at the 64th Annual DGA Awards Dinner on Saturday, January 28, 2012, at the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland.

The nominees are (in alphabetical order):

WOODY ALLEN
Midnight in Paris
(Sony Pictures Classics)
Mr. Allen’s Directorial Team:
Unit Production Managers: Matthieu Rubin, Helen Robin
First Assistant Director: Gil Kenny
Second Assistant Director: Delphine Bertrand

Continue Reading →

Nothing like awards season to let you focus in on some fantastic film music! The Golden Globe nominations went out this week and in honor of that Film Score Friday is going to cover the nominated scores each of the next four weeks. I say four weeks because we already covered the excellent War Horse by John Williams. So let’s start off big with Hugo by Howard Shore.

Howard Shore is one of today’s leading composers, everyone and their mother knows his stuff from The Lord of the Rings, but Shore has had an impressive career beyond Middle-Earth. So it was an immediate pleasure to realize he was writing the music to Scorsese’s cinematic love letter to film.

Shore brings a fantastic French sound to the table. Much like Michael Giacchino’s Ratatouille score, Shore takes a the French style and makes it work beautifully within his own bag of tricks. The French influences are in almost every aspect of the score, yet at no time does it sound like wall to wall French music.

Continue Reading →

I tend to think of Scorsese as a master of genre films—he’s done gangster films (Goodfellas, Casino), comedy (After Hours, The King of Comedy), police drama (The Departed), psychological thriller (Shutter Island), boxing (Raging Bull), biopic (Kundun, The Aviator, No Direction Home), concert (Shine a Light), historical (Gangs of New York), literary classic (The Age of Innocence), even a remake Cape Fear) and a sequel (The Color of Money)—but he tends to bring such a distinct touch to the films, they don’t quite feel like genre films.

So when I heard he was taking a stab at a kiddie flick, Hugo immediately shot to my most anticipated Scorsese film to date (outside, of course, of the fictional film he was making with Larry David as the money-hurling mob boss in Curb Your Enthusiasm)—added to that who wouldn’t be interested in Scorsese’s take on 3D?

And Hugo doesn’t disappoint. It’s not the most compelling story, but for all its two-hour-seven-minute running time, I wasn’t bored once. There’s a lot more going on, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but first the rundown.

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an urchin who haunts a Paris railway station in the early 1930s, repairing its clocks and stealing various cogs and sprockets to rebuild the homunculus he and his father (Jude Law) were working on right up to his death. While Hugo tends to remain out of the sight and mind of the station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), he’s less successful evading the eye of the toymaker he robs (Ben Kingsley). Caught trying to thieve a wind-up mouse, he’s forced to give up his father’s notebook, which includes all the instructions on repairing the mechanical man and provokes a strange reaction from the toymaker.

Continue Reading →

It turns out even decades of laughter through the form of hundreds of felt puppets can’t beat the Kristen Stewart pregnancy movie. After having one of the most intense marketing campaigns that Disney has ever executed for The Muppets, Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 still managed to beat the film in the box office by over $10 million during the holiday weekend.

The vampy melodrama got the #1 spot for the second weekend in a row with $42 million this weekend, while Muppets (which made $42 in total since it opened on Wednesday) was only able to pull in an estimated $29 million. It looks like vampires really are more popular than singing frogs and pigs. Shame.

Also hitting theaters this weekend, Sony’s Arthur Christmas fell flat with an estimated $12.7 opening weekend. Speaking of falling flat, Scorsese’s Hugo had an even weaker opening, as it came in 5th place with just over $11 million.

These films could very well do better as we draw closer to the holidays, but don’t expect to see much in the form of sequels for these family classics. Those films may not have performed as well as they could have, but what did was the Weinstein’s My Week with Marilyn which pulled off just over $2 million for its first weekend.

Continue Reading →

Once upon a time, the state of cinemas was a gritty, hilarious, violent place filled with guns, big boobs, and every kind of animal wanting to kill and/or eat your flesh. These days, everything is dumbed down to the least common denominator, but with an homage to some of those classic film genres.

Now, you can get to see exactly what that world was like with a brand new documentary delving into the eclectic mind of cinematic legend Roger Corman in Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel. Here’s the premise.

CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL is a tantalizing and star-studded tribute to Roger Corman, Hollywood’s most prolific writer-director producer, and seminal influencing force in modern moviemaking over the last 60 years. Featuring interviews with Hollywood icons and cinematic luminaries, some who launched their careers within Corman’s unforgettable world of filmmaking, including Paul W.S. Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert De Niro, Peter Fonda, Pam Grier, Ron Howard, Eli Roth, Martin Scorsese, William Shatner and Jack Nicholson, along with many others, this documentary chronicles how Corman created his cult film empire, one low-budget success at a time, capitalizing on undiscovered talent, and pushing the boundaries of independent filmmaking.

The film is set to hit select theaters on December 16th, but you can check out the very first trailer for it after the jump.

Continue Reading →

When last we left Nucke Thomson and HBO’s Boardwalk Empire things seemed to be going pretty well for him. He had the girl and business was going the way he wanted it to go. Well, sorta.

The new season of the show debuts this Sunday and to get you ready we’ve got a whole slew of videos to bring to you. Among them are some previews of the new season, a clip from the premiere and several character profiles.

Boardwalk Empire has seen tremendous success on HBO and was given a second season after only airing one episode of its first. The show has built up quite a following and features a teriffic cast of characters.

Can’t wait to see what they do next. Fortunately, don’t have to wait too long.

Season two of Boardwalk Empire debuts Sunday night at 9/8C on HBO.

Click through for all the videos. And we do mean all.

Continue Reading →

Martin Scorsese is a genius. No, I don’t mean he’s just talented or gifted or lucky (well, he may be those too). I mean he’s a certified genius. He’s one man who found his calling early, stuck with it and over the years has created some of the finest moments in cinema history.

And now, it looks like he’s done it again with his latest film Hugo. Based on the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, the film tells the story of orphan Hugo (Asa Butterfield) who lives inside the walls of a Paris train station.

His days are spent trying to unravel a mystery that links his late father to an ill-mannered toy shop owner living below him and a heart-shaped lock which seems to have no key. With the help from an eccentric girl named Isabelle (Chloe Moretz), he embarks on an adventure to solve the mystery. The film also features Jude Law as Hugo’s father and Ben Kingsley as Georges Melies, Isabelle’s godfather.

Based on this trailer alone I can safely say the movie looks terrific. Plus, Scorsese and Cholie Moretz. Forget about it, I’m in.

Hugo is set to arrive in theaters on November 23. Check out the trailer after the jump.

Continue Reading →

This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt are joined by Joseph Dilworth of Pop Culture Zoo and, of course, hilarity and informative discussion ensues. During the show all manner of new and recurring topics are discussed, dissected and otherwise examined.

Some of those topics include Emerald City Comic Con, Tron Legacy and potential sequels, Star Trek old and new, the Wolverine sequel without Darren Aronofsky, the renewal of Community and Fringe‘s rating slump, casting for various films including Kevin Costner as Pa Kent in Superman, X-Men First Class, Martin Scorsese’s The Dark Night and a whole lot more. And again this week, no Charlie Sheen. You’re welcome.

Of course, your hosts and guest also made some picks this week including Joseph’s dual picks of the movie Sourcecode and the new comic Vampirella, Matt’s pick of the movie Rubber and Chris’ pick of the new movie Limitless, featuring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

With the hype machine in full swing over the last few months promoting all of the new TV shows hitting the small screen this month, it’s nice to actually see a show that lives up to the hype. HBO’s Boardwalk Empire is such a show.

Debuting to record ratings and already renewed for a second season after one episode, Boardwalk Empire is that rare combination of elements that ends up being well worth the time it takes to watch. We’ve talked about the show before here at the site and today we’ve got some videos to get you ready for Sunday’s all-new episode.

In these videos you get a good preview of Sunday’s episode showing more of the action and intrigue as well as an extended scene of Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) telling a story about how he has no trouble causing the death of people just for fun. Not a nice guy to be sure.

Check out the preview after the jump. Boardwalk Empire, which features Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt,  Kelly Macdonald and Dabney Coleman, airs Sunday at 9/8C on HBO.

Continue Reading →

With the ratings for Sunday’s premiere of the Martin Scorsese Terrance Winter show Boardwalk Empire showing it to be a big hit, HBO has already reacted to the news and is giving the show another season after airing only that first episode. HBO made the decision “following resounding critical approval and high viewer numbers.”

The series starring Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt had 4.8 million viewers to become the cable network’s biggest debut since Deadwood in 2004. According to reports,the renewal decision was a combination of factors including the terrific premiere ratings, positive reviews and also the substantial upfront cost of making the series, which the network would like to see spread across as many episodes as possible.

As an immediete fan of the show after watching the first episode and knowing it only gets better from here, I’m pretty happy about the news. Besides, who wouldn’t want more Scorsese? I know I do.

Want more details on HBO’s decision? Check out the full press release after the jump. Boardwalk Empire airs Sunday nights at 9/8C on HBO.

Continue Reading →

I don’t know about you, but we’re pretty excited for the premiere of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire around here. If you’re looking for intense drama, outstanding acting, writing and direction you should definitely check this show out.

After all it comes from the creative team of Martin Scorsese and Terrance Winter (The Sopranos) who, individually, have been involved in some of the best movies and TV shows of all time. So naturally, with these two talented men working together, anticipation for Boardwalk Empire is very high.

To help get you interested in the series we’ve got three promo videos to share with you today. In them you get a look at some of the characters and situations of the series including its star Steve Buscemi as Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, Kelly MacDonald as Margaret Schroeder, Michael Pitt as Jimmy Darmody and Stephen Graham as a young Al Capone. Plus, you get a real look at the production itself and the care that’s gone into realizing the world of 1920′s Atlantic City.

Check out all three videos after the jump. Boardwalk Empire premieres Sunday at 9/8C on HBO.

Continue Reading →