Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Behind the Scenes, Hot Topic, SXSW Film Festival, New Releases, Sci-Fi, Cinematical, Festivals

Throughout almost all of his career as a filmmaker, Greg Mottola has told stories that celebrate the sweet, funny and sometimes hard process of coming of age. In his latest film, ‘Paul,’ he does the same, but for two decidedly different characters (or at least characters of different ages) than in his previous efforts ‘Superbad’ and ‘Adventureland:’ Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost), two pushing-40 British nerds whose pilgrimage to Comic-Con is hijacked when they encounter the title character (Seth Rogen), who happens to be an actual extraterrestrial. Although the project was written by stars Frost and Pegg, Mottola gives their alien tale human dimensions, dispensing life lessons and laughs in equal measures as the duo liberally references classic sci-fi texts like ‘Star Wars’ and ‘E.T.’ en route to their own rendezvous with otherworldly creatures.

Cinematical sat down with Mottola in Austin at the South by Southwest Film festival, where ‘Paul’ played like gangbusters to a crowd comfortable with celebrating nerd-dom. In addition to talking about the film’s pastiche of references, Mottola explained the film’s unusually… mature coming-of-age curve, and offered his thoughts about telling stories that connect with more than the Comic-Con crowd that is flatteringly depicted in the film.

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Filed under: Trailers and Clips, Documentaries, Cinematical, Festivals

Every year the film and music portions of South by South West merge in 24 Beats Per Second, a category of the film fest devoted to movies about music. This year, however, they’ll overlap like never before, thanks to the World Premiere of ‘Outside Industry: The Story of SXSW,’ a documentary that “follows the four founders as they navigate through the successes, backlash, criticism and even arson to become the biggest music industry event in the world.”

If you’re attending the fest, the film will premiere on 3/16 at 4:30pm with an encore on 3/19 at noon. But you don’t have to wait that long to catch a look at the film– Cinematical is happy to share a few pics and even a clip from Alan Berg’s continuation of his Emmy-winning short film ‘South by Southwest: The Business of Music.’

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Filed under: Movie News, Cinematical, Festivals

It’s hard not to pick on a filmmaker like Uwe Boll; most of his movies stink and he willingly courts controversy like it’s a sport. And that’s a shame, really, because having heard the man speak in person, it’s clear his passion for filmmaking is genuine even if his art falls short of his ambition. Yet every time we try to convince ourselves that Boll should be taken seriously, he does something goofy and lowers our expectations all over again.

Case in point: Uwe Boll has announced that early next week he will draw up criminal charges against the Berlin Film Festival. The charges? “Breach of trust and unfair competition in its selection process.” As dramatic as that sounds, however, the reality behind it is, in typical Boll fashion, much more comical.

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Filed under: Horror, Sci-Fi, Cinematical, Festivals

Last week saw the announcement of the bulk of the 130+ feature films programmed for SXSW’s 2011 Film Festival, but one crucial component was missing: The SXSW Midnight and SXFantastic slates. So if your favorite parts of a film festival are the bold, brash and bloody movies that tend to only play after the sun has gone down and you happen to be heading to Austin this March 11th, it looks like SXSW has a nice variety of twisted delights in store.

You can find the full lineup as well as SXSW’s Short Films slate below, but as far as the darker films go, here’s what we’re looking forward to the most:

‘The Divide’, a post-apocalyptic genre bender that finds a group of apartment tenants taking refuge in their building’s bomb shelter of a basement immediately after a brilliant yellow flash levels their city’s skyline. From ‘Frontiere(s)’ director Xavier Gens, so you know it’ll be pretty out there. Check out the impressive teaser trailer for it:

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Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Movie News, Cinematical, Festivals

The ‘Your Highness’ panel at New York Comic-Con started abnormally early for a movie targeted towards stoners (the yawn-inducing time of 10:30 am). Although bleary-eyed and ravenous with the munchies, the NYCC audience was psyched to see James Franco, Danny McBride, Justin Theroux and director David Gordon Green promote this medieval comedy meets ‘High Times.’ McBride (aka “Kenny F*cking Powers” as seen in ‘Eastbound and Down’) also wrote ‘Your Highness,’ and is working on a comic book prequel to the movie, as MTV Splashpage reported yesterday.

The panel was greeted by lots of screaming even before we saw the clip, which was chock full of filthy jokes about sucking one’s own venom, chain mail, Natalie Portman kicking ass (and showing her ass in a thong), and much more. It was moderated by Tom McCarthy, who directed ‘The Station Agent’ and ‘The Visitor.’

IT’S HISTORICALLY INACCURATE!
“One thing I have to say is we had a lot of fun combining some of our favorite things of Ye Olden Times and really bringing a fantasy element to a period piece,” said McBride. “We do kind of pride ourselves on the historical inaccuracies.” True enough, at one point McBride sports a powdered wig and a beauty mark that’s several centuries away from Medieval Times. Needless to say, the props people also had fun creating special smoking apparatus for the Wizard’s Weed that everyone partakes of.

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Filed under: Reviews, Cinematical, Festivals

What do the Beatles, a serial killer and a gentle soul have in common? ‘Golden Slumber’ takes inspiration from the Beatles song that appeared on their last album, ‘Abbey Road.’ The Japanese-language film begins in a very calm manner, as a family shops in a mall and two old college friends reunite. The two old friends, Aoyagi and Morita, have a pleasant chat before Aoyagi falls asleep in his friend’s car. When he wakes up, Morita begins spinning a tale of paranoid conspiracy that sounds very far-fetched … until the Japanese prime minister’s car explodes nearby and Aoyagi is immediately suspected. Shocked, Aoyagi goes on the run.

Under the expert direction of Yoshihiro Nakamura, ‘Golden Slumber’ smoothly veers from political thriller to human drama to family comedy and then back again. Just when you think you have the movie pegged — it’s a Hitchcock ‘Wrong Man’ scenario — it morphs into something else entirely. Nakamura, who made the amazing ‘Fish Story,’ a word of mouth hit at Fantastic Fest last year, isn’t afraid of naked emotionalism. Yet even when the movie’s heart is on its sleeve, it never feels contrived; Nakamura reins in the melodrama in a captivating, compelling manner. This is a movie that deserves wider notice.