Tuesday 18 July 2017

Major new sci-fi movie "1" starring Dan Ewing commences principal photography down under

A new sci-fi thriller starring rising young star Dan Ewing begins filming in Australia this week.

“1” from Truant Productions, will tell of the last man on Earth as he undertakes a long, perilous journey in search of redemption while trying to stay one step ahead of a malevolent alien invasion.

The film, from writer-director Robert Braiden, will shoot in South East Queensland – which previously played host to fellow science-fiction films and series Terra Nova, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treaderand Thor : Ragnarok.

Reckless car hooner Darren (Dan Ewing, TVs “Home & Away”) lives for the thrill of high-speed highway racing and burnouts. His life is going nowhere fast while his adoring girlfriend Misha dreams of them settling down and for Darren to do something more meaningful with his life. When Darren causes a car crash that injures Misha she decides to leave.

Now alone and guilt-ridden, Darren is forced to confront his behaviour until the arrival of an alien invasion throws his life into chaos as humanity is quickly wiped out. His love for Misha compels him to begin a long and dangerous journey to find her, and along the way he must survive alone in the wild, battle his guilt, and stay one step ahead of the alien ships that relentlessly search for him.

Says writer-producer-EP Robert Braiden : “‘1’ is unique in that it truly shows the very last person on earth – literally no one else is left. Films such as ‘The Quiet Earth’, ‘I Am Legend’, ‘The World The Flesh and The Devil’ all hint that they are last-person-on-earth films, yet all end up introducing other characters. ‘1’ is different. From the action and dangerous excitement of high-speed racing to the quiet and solitude of the natural world, ‘1’ will be a profoundly moving and powerful look at life, love, destiny and being able to let go of the material world in order to find new truths.”

Adds producer Tristan Barr, “‘1’ is set to be the most original, exciting and even groundbreaking independent science-fiction feature film ever produced in Australia. A big-screen film that not only will showcase some of the most stunning scenery here, it will also move and inspire audiences with its universal story of love and forgiveness.”

Damien Lipp, director of photography, was the first producer down under to shoot a full-length feature film, Watch the Sunset, in one single take, across the span of 9 different location and a running time of 82 minutes. Watch the Sunset, which Lipp co-directed with Michael Gosden, is currently playing festivals in Australia and is due out in the US next year.

Production on “1” begins this week in South-East Queensland, with a release expected in 2018.



Monday 17 July 2017

BLADE RUNNER 2049 – Trailer 2


The past will always find you. Watch the NEW Blade Runner 2049, in theaters October 6.

Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.

From executive producer Ridley Scott and director Denis Villeneuve, #BladeRunner2049 stars Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana De Armas, MacKenzie Davis, Sylvia Hoeks, Lennie James, Carla Juri, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista and Jared Leto.

Competition: Win The Lost City Of Z on DVD

The Lost City Of Z  is out on DVD & Blu-ray on July 24th and to celebrate we have a great competition for you and 3 copies of the DVD to give away.

Synopsis:
Based on the international bestseller, The Lost City of Z tells the incredible true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam, Pacific Rim, Sons of Anarchy), who journeys into the Amazon at the dawn of the 20th century and discovers evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization that may have once inhabited the region.

Despite being ridiculed by the scientific establishment, the determined Fawcett - supported by his devoted wife (Sienna Miller, High-Rise, American Sniper), son (Tom Holland) and aide-de-camp (Robert Pattinson, The Twilight Saga) - returns to his beloved jungle in an attempt to prove his case, culminating in his mysterious disappearance in 1925.

An epic tale of courage and passion, The Lost City of Z is a stirring tribute to the exploratory spirit and a conflicted adventurer driven to the verge of obsession.

Check out the release on Amazon by clicking the link below: (Opens in a new window)
The Lost City Of Z [DVD]

To enter all you have to do is answer this easy question...

Who directs The Lost City Of Z?

Send you name, address and of course the answer to competition@beentothemovies.com




Terms and conditions
1. Closing date 31-07-17
2. No alternative prize is available
3. When the competition ends as indicated on this page, any and all entries received after this point will not count and emails blacklisted due to not checking this page first.
4. Winners will be chosen randomly and will be informed via email.

Friday 14 July 2017

CINEMA THAT DARES


Since the cinema experience was created in the late 19th century, the urge to thrill, shock and test audience boundaries has always been apparent. From the moment cinema goers ran for their lives at the sight of a train pulling into a station in the Lumière brothers’ L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, cinema has dared to test audience’s limits wherever possible.

Now, after 140 years at the forefront of entertainment around the world and surviving many tests to its existence, cinema is still daring to push audiences beyond their comfort zone. Paul Verhoven’s critically adored thriller Elle is definitely a film that dares to go against the norm, and so to celebrate its release on Digital Download from on July 3rd and on DVD and Blu-ray from July 10th, we’re looking at other masterpieces from cinema’s global back-catalogue that dared, keeping the art as bold as it can be.

Straw Dogs (1971)
During the 1960’s and 70’s Hollywood became a melting pot for artistic inspiration. As the political mindset of western society began to change with a new generation, so did the focus of film’s that represented them, as themes of rebellion began to be championed by directors with increasing artistic power on set. A telling example of this era is Sam Peckinpah’s intense thriller Straw Dogs, set in the sticks of the British countryside, as an American couple (played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George) move into a small village and are immediately made to feel unwelcome by the locals. This tension escalates to the point where Hoffman has to turn his home into a fortress to defend against a gang of intruders with anything he can find (surely an inspiration to Home Alone?). As the tension continues to rise, the leader of the gang graphically and violently rapes George’s character, in a scene that was met with immediate outrage, with many feeling it glamorised sexual violence. Views on the film have since become a lot less negative, as it became an example of how the era was testing audience boundaries during a period of massive social change.

Kids (1995)
Much in the same vein as Vietnam War-era Hollywood, the 90’s proved to be another mass venture into the bold and beautiful for cinema, coinciding with the emergence of a new indie genre. Many filmmakers looked to rebel against the increasingly generic mainstream the industry was heading towards, culminating in a host of micro-budget, personable films centred around human issues, such as Larry Clarke’s Kids. Written by Harmoney Korine (Spring Breakers), the film follows a group of youths in New York City, one of whom, Telly, has a goal to de-flower as many virgins as he can. When one of his old encounters discovers that she is HIV+, after only one encounter with a guy, Telly ignores this and decides to continue on his mission. During a time where the message of ‘safe sex’ was everywhere, Kids used the fear of HIV in society to test audiences view on youth culture.

Oldboy (2003)
Since Oldboy’s release at the start of the 21st century, it has snowballed to become a huge cult hit, as gobsmacked reactions to the film helped fan the flames of word-of-mouth. The film uses mystery as its catalyst, following the story of Oh Dae-su, who is imprisoned in a cell which resembles a hotel room for 15 years without knowing the identity of his captor or his captor's motives. When he is finally released, Dae-su finds himself still trapped in a web of conspiracy and violence. His own quest for vengeance becomes tied in with romance when he falls in love with an attractive young woman. The film’s particularly violent and disturbing ending asks questions of its audiences morals when new-found information is presented to them in a plot twist for the ages.

Blue Is The Warmest Colour (2013)
None of the films on this list are to be advised to watch with one’s grandparents, but this is especially true for Abdellatif Kechiche’s Palme d’Or winner Blue is the Warmest Colour. The film runs for three hours, and it feels like at least 10% of that is filled with long and graphic sex scenes, as the lead character Adèle strives to explore her new-found sexuality. Although French cinema is known for its fairly constant examination of eroticism, this gives a much more grounded look at sex, stripped of any glamour. As beautiful and touching a love story as it is a top shelf favourite, the film was met with a mix of rapture and shock but it also represents an age of acceptance over titillation.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)
There are many things in Stanley Kubrick’s excessively bleak and crazed masterpiece A Clockwork Orange that make it a necessary mention. This obviously includes the opening 20 minutes where a gang dressed in top hats and jock straps take the term gallivanting to a whole new level, by beating homeless men to death and raping women in their own home. However, the rest of the film continues to test the audiences morals every which way, as after Malcolm McDowell’s gang leader is brought to justice, he get’s the brainwash treatment in a horrific Orwellian-like attempt at rehabilitation. Kubrick presents his audience with a vulgar human being, and then asks the audience whether they are able to sympathise with him in relation to the bigger social picture. Boundary-breaking cinema from the master himself!

Elle (2016)
Showing that filmmakers still thrive on the opportunity to shock, Paul Verhoven certainly doesn’t hold back with his visualisation of Phillippe Dijan’s novel Oh.... The film’s opening see’s the titular character being assaulted by a masked intruder. Whilst this assault is shocking in itself, it is Elle’s laissez faire response that has caused much of the debate around the film: she rises, sweeps up the broken glass, takes a bath and orders sushi, omits to tell the police but casually tells her closest friends over dinner. Elle appears to be, for the most part, unaffected by the incident, and takes on the task of tracking down the offender herself without help from the police, helping fuel reactions of a feminist masterpiece. Unlike traditional thrillers, it is not the violence that shocks or grips the audience (although violence is most certainly present), it is that Elle makes drastically different decisions to most people, subverting expectations and encapsulating the audience’s intrigue. Verhoven has since said that only the fierce Isabelle Huppert could have given the justification and accessibility to such a closed off character, something we can definitely agree with!

ELLE IS Available ON DIGITAL download JULY 3rd, 2017AND AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD JULY 10th, 2017

Thursday 13 July 2017

Exploration on Film


Exploration has become something of an obsession for the human race. Unhappy with our own lot, we have often been known to scout the far reaches of the earth in search of something else, something different and primarily something exciting.

The expeditions of infamous explorers Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus led to the discovery of extraordinary places, cultures and peoples that were previously unknown to the western world. Their stories are as remarkable as their findings, and so it comes as no surprise that cinema, the window through which we see our own world, has provided some of the greatest exploratory tales of all time. Ventures across high seas, prehistoric lost worlds and even the far corners of the universe have been adapted for cinema.
The latest addition to this intriguing sub-genre of the film world is James Gray’s fascinating adaptation of David Grann’s book The Lost City of Z, documenting the travels made by Percy Fawcett in the Bolivian Amazon, as he became obsessive in his search of an ancient city in the heart of the jungle. To celebrate the DVD and Blu-ray release on July 24th, we’re counting down very best exploration adventures to ever hit the big screen...

Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Our first introduction to the untouchable yet loveable Indy - the greatest museum artefact saviour in the modern age - came as he was tracking a golden idol in a booby-trapped temple in Peru. However after his quest is swiftly thwarted at the hands of the Nazis, Indiana proceeds to travel the globe in search of a much greater treasure: The Arc of the Covenant. A dramatic finale sees Indy and love interest Marion taken hostage by the Nazis as they perform a ritualistic opening of the lost Ark, only for them to escape by the skin of their teeth, spared by the almighty. This beloved adventure movie from Steven Spielberg is one of four from a franchise which spans 27 years, in which Mr. Jones tackles every corner of the earth. It may not surprise you to learn that the character of Indiana Jones was inspired by none other than Percy Fawcett. Both Indy and Percy’s passion for cultural artefacts and history, and their willingness to risk their lives to preserve them is something to inspire us all!

The Martian (2015)
In recent years, explorers have become bored with our blue and green planet, what with practically every inch available to see via Google Maps. So ever since the infamous space race during the 60s, outer space has been the centre of attention with cinema following suit. In this particular venture, Matt Damon and a fellow group of space boffs go on a mission to Mars, but during their departure they get the feeling that they’ve forgotten something... And so, with Damon stranded on the red planet with no sign of rescue any time soon, he is forced to try and survive in any way possible, including eating a fresh batch of poo-tatoes (no, that’s not a spelling error). During his time stuck on Mars, Damon’s character is forced to utilise the planet for all its worth until NASA come back to retrieve their forgotten man.

Jurassic Park (1993)
Although the island off the coast of Costa Rica had already been discovered, what was then bred there by Richard Attenborough’s obsessed eccentric millionaire John Hammond took exploration to a whole new level. In the hopes of building a one-of-a-kind theme park, Hammond cloned various dinosaurs back from extinction to make for more wonder and thrills for potential guests. However he got a little more than he bargained for when the park gets shut down by a ferocious storm and the snarling dinosaurs show that “just because you can play god, doesn’t mean you should” – to quote Mr Goldblum. Probably best to stick to roller-coasters next time, we think!

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
Perhaps one of the earliest examples of true explorers comes in the form of men with eye patches, peg legs and sarcastic colourful birds on their shoulders. In this adaptation of a Disney Land theme park ride, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and his crew of drunken misfits sail the high-seas in a quest to find the last golden coin which will grant him sweet, sweet mortality. During the film, Cap’ain Jack shows he is a true master of exploration, building a huge secret stash of booze on a desert island in case he’s stranded, which he then is. That man knows what his priorities are, if nothing else!

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Another example of space exploration on this list comes in the form of Stanley Kubrick’s mind-bending sci-fi symphony, 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the space of 2 and a half hours, Kubrick manages to explore where we’ve come from, where we are (through the film’s futuristic present day), and where we’re going. Through the presence of a ominous and shrill black monolith, the human race are seen to progress in their evolution, one step at a time; learning how to use tools as apes, and transforming into something ‘other’ from humans, and the completion of the monolith’s evolutionary mission. Kubrick spent over two years meticulously creating the most "realistic" depictions of outer space ever seen; greatly enhancing our knowledge of what it’s actually like to experience the cosmos.

The Abyss (1989)
Finally, after exploring outer space with Aliens, James Cameron turned his attentions to what has become a personal passion of his; deep-sea exploration. The crew of an experimental, high-tech submersible is called into action to investigate a mysterious nuclear submarine crash. A series of strange encounters leads the crew to suspect the accident was caused by an extraterrestrial craft, and that they may be participating in an encounter with an alien species, and in order to make contact, they must brave the abyss... Hollywood’s fascination with the great blue sea has been longstanding. An interest that is continually piqued by scientists who tell us that only 5% of the sea has been explored, allowing the power of film’s imagination to thrive in the untouched depths.

THE LOST CITY OF Z is Available on EST from 17th July  On Blu-ray & DVD from 24th July, 2017