A ticking clock and a handgun are the first things you see in The Raid: Redemption. Before anything, there's the implication of imminent violence. The promise of that opening shot is paid off pretty well once a grenade, a propane tank, and a fridge are used to level an entire floor's worth of guys with guns, 31 minutes later.
This year’s Sundance festival has survived its first weekend, but not without some serious shit going down. To the breakdown!
While there are some vocal detractors, an impassioned consensus has formed around Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin’s directorial debut.
Jeremy Renner is attached to King of Heists, an adaptation of J. North Conway's nonfiction book about an 1878 New York City bank robbery in which a man named George Leslie came to town pretending to be an upscale gentleman while assembling a crew that eventually pulled $3 million from the Manhattan Savings Institution. This all sounds totally great, and that’s before considering the project’s potential for old-timey moustaches. Grade: A [Deadline]
Simon Cowell is actively trying to sell Red or Black?, a game show produced by his company Syco that premiered in the UK earlier this month, to US networks, and a sale might happen in the next few weeks. While there are other contrivances built in, the show is apparently more or less televised roulette. So good news for our very own game-show pitch, a televised version of "Guess which number I'm thinking of." Grade: D [Vulture]
The Muppets (November 23)
In the last few years, has there been a better marketing campaign than the one for The Muppets? Maybe not. The latest is a send up of David Fincher’s kick-ass trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This briskly edited spoof reveals a ton of new stuff, and if you look closely, you’ll even see Chris Cooper singing and dancing.
