The Flickcast

The Secret Inspiration For ‘The Dark Knight’ Score

Posted on January 9, 2012

The Dark Knight Rises is one of the most anticipated movies of the year for many reasons, one such reason is the new score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. The previous movie had one of the more subtle, complex and ultimately effective scores for any Super Hero movie ever, so of course anticipation is high for this installment’s music.

While we wait on the upcoming score to be released it can be fun to reflect back on what has come before. A recent YouTube video has popped up with some very interesting revelations about the inspiration for one of the more memorable musical moments from the last film. It appears as if the track ‘Why So Serious’ bears more than a passing resemblance to the score of an early 80’s French film.

Now most people will use this as yet another moment to stand on a pedestal and try to tear down Zimmer as a plagiarizer. Hans Zimmer has a reputation of taking music from his previous films and re-purposing them in future movies, just take a listen to some of the action music in Rango and you will hear more than a little Pirates of the Caribbean.

Monday Picks: Mel Gibson In ‘Mad Max’

Posted on January 9, 2012

This week’s Monday Pick is the 1979 action thriller Mad Max, a film that lunched one of the most lucrative franchises in film history. The Mad Max trilogy has spawned many imitations over the last thirty plus years, but they fail to add up to George Miller’s fantastic vision of the ultimate dystopian future.

Mel Gibson (who was virtually unknown at the time) stars as police pursuit man Max Rockatansky. He patrols the highways of the not too distant future Australia that is on the verge of complete anarchy and lawlessness. In the first installment of the series, Miller shows the audience that in this future, resources like food, water, and gasoline are becoming scarce and society is beginning to break down. The Main Force Patrol (MFP) is the uniformed highway safety enforcement whose main purpose is to stop marauding gangs who pose a threat to the society they are desperately trying to preserve.

The first ten minutes of Mad Max are filled with some of the most impressive and dangerous stunts ever performed in any film before or since. The MFP is in pursuit of an escaped convict who calls himself the Night Rider. Along with his girlfriend, the two take off in one of the force’s fastest V-8 pursuit vehicles and are successful in evading several pursuit units.

Erica Durance As Wonder Woman In This Week’s ‘Harry’s Law’

Posted on January 9, 2012

Were you a fan of Smallville and do you miss the cast and often wonder what happened to some of your favorites like Erica Durance, who played the awesome Lois Lane in the series? Well don’t worry, Durance is still out there working hard and hasn’t given up her superhero cred either.

How do we know? Well, on this week’s episode of Harry’s Law she picks up the mantle of vigilantie justice and takes to the streets dressed as another pretty famous superhero: Wonder Woman.

Of course, we’ve got video of this momentous event to share with you today, courtesy of NBC and via the folks at TV Line. But before that, here’s some scoop on Durance’s character:

Having suffered abuse in the past, Durance’s character, Annie, takes a violent — and controversial — course of “self-therapy” in order to cope and to prevent the same thing from happening to other women.

“I got to get back into that kind of [fighting] stuff, the punching,” Durance told TVLine when we visited the show’s set in November. And judging from the preview clip below, she throws a mean right hook. But those jabs don’t come without big consequences, which is what leads Annie to seek legal help from her old high school classmate, Adam (Nate Corddry).

“She’s done a couple of things and gone too far in the eyes of society,” explains Durance. “So she’s actually under a lot of fire.”

Take a look at Durance as Wonder Woman after the jump and be sure to watch the entire episode of Harry’s Law this Wednesday at 9/8C on NBC.

DGA Awards Nominations Announced

Posted on January 9, 2012

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

Dream Cast: ‘The Fantastic Four’ Reboot

Posted on January 9, 2012

Between Marvel Studios regaining the rights to many of its properties and FOX rumored to be planning a reboot of the franchise, it seems a foregone conclusion that we will be getting a shiny new Fantastic Four film in the next couple years.

And as fans of the comic know, the key to a successful relaunch will be capturing the interpersonal dynamics of Marvel’s First Family. And that means finding a perfect central cast.

David Tennant as “Mister Fantastic”

A scientist, a genius among geniuses, Reed Richards is not your typical action hero. But let’s not forget that he was also an explorer, an adventurer, and an astronaut, and that was all BEFORE gaining super powers.

We’re talking about a man so overwhelmed with curiosity, with the desire to learn and discover and solve problems that he regularly leads his loved ones from one dangerous situation to the next. And if we’re to believe they follow him there, he better have some personality.

Coming in 2012: ‘The Last Guardian’ for PlayStation 3

Posted on January 9, 2012

In 2009, a trailer leaked online just before E3 which was supposedly the next work from the team behind Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. It featured a strange, cat dragon creature that captured the attention of the internet. Days later, the trailer would officially be released as The Last Guardian… and then little else was heard about the game.

It wasn’t until the Tokyo Game Show in 2010 that more would be shown and the game was expected for a 2011 release date alongside the announcement of a 3D capable and high res collection of Team Ico’s previous two titles.

Now, it has come out that changes in the production cycle of the game have caused the delays as well as the upcoming departure of director Fumito Ueda, the man acknowledged as the heart and head of Team Ico. Though Ueda has promised to see the game through to completion, be it by his own choice or contractual agreements with Sony, the delays have people worried over the title’s future.

In The Last Guardian, players will control a small boy who must work with and care for the large creature, referred to as Trico, and guide the creature what to do based on its animal instincts in order to complete puzzles. Examples given include throwing a barrel to attract Trico’s attention or coercing the creature to sit instead of barreling past the player. Players must also feed Trico and remove arrows from the creature’s body.

Box Office Report: ‘The Devil Inside’ Scares Up Big January Debut

Posted on January 9, 2012

Usually January is a wasteland for the box office, dominated by award bait films, studio dump offs and the sputtering remains of the Christmas blockbusters. This week, one new film braved these difficult days and came out with very respectable numbers.

The Devil Inside debuted on over twenty-two hundred screens, bringing in an estimated thirty-four and a half million dollars. The satanic possession horror film raked in the 3rd highest January opening ever behind Cloverfield and the special edition re-release of Star Wars back in ’97. The movie had a production budget of only one million, which makes this weekend a pretty big win for Paramount.

Coming in second place this weekend was Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol , which continued it’s very impressive run. With another twenty million, it now is on pace to threaten Mission: Impossible 2 as the series’ top grosser. The movie has had several weeks of really solid holds and is proving to be the big winner of the crowded holiday season.

Film Score Friday: ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

Posted on January 6, 2012

Last year Trent Reznor lead a resurgence of main stream musicians turning to film scores. The 80’s saw a lot of this trend, most notably Danny Elfman, of Oingo Boingo fame and Christopher Franke of Tangerine Dream. The best two scores from 2010 came from popular musicians in Reznor’s The Social Network and Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy. 2011 might be shaping up the same with one notable score by The Chemical Bros. already released.

Reznor is back again, with compatriot Atticus Ross, for another David Fincher score. This time writing the music for a film that seems much more up the ally of the Nine Inch Nails artist. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a dark, thrilling murder mystery that seems a [perfect fit for they style of music Ross and Reznor have made previously.

Much like The Social Network, this score is deceptively complex, with subtle tracks that wash over your mind like the blankets of snow that define the movie. The music is not overly orchestral, but that works to the advantage of the film, helping cement a ton of tension and keeping everything feeling a bit off.

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