Digital Bucket » Movies

Spike Lee Wraps Principal Photography on Amazon Studios Feature “Chi-Raq”

Staff — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 21:46:15 +0000

Amazon Studios is backing Spike Lee feature “Chi-Raq” making it the first original feature from Amazon Studios.

Chi-Raq was filmed entirely on location in Chicago and gathered criticism from some local politicians, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel who expressed concerns about the movie’s title, worried that the film brands their city as a war zone.

“I’m honored to be part of the film that will launch Amazon Studios and to tell a story that is so important. Please don’t be fooled by the title of Chi-Raq, this new Spike Lee joint will be something very special. We have assembled a stellar cast,” said Lee, who wrote the script with Kevin Willmott.

There is no official release date for the movie, but The Hollywood Reporter reports that the film will have a December theatrical run in order to be eligible for awards and then will open on a wider scale in January. After initially opening in theaters, the film will then be made available pretty quickly to Amazon Prime subscribers for streaming, a model Amazon intends to follow for all of its film releases.

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Citizenfour Wins Oscar For Best Documentary Feature

Staff — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 07:09:30 +0000

Digital Bucket says:

NSA spying on American citizens and the rest of the world has gone mainstream, and the film that lays it all out just won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Orwell stops spinning, smiles.

Citizen Four premieres on HBO Monday, February 23rd if you’d like to know what your government has been up to.

You may want to call your local cable provider and get a subscription, then thank Director Laura Poitras and whistle blower Edwars Snowden for daring to talk about it.

The Verge has the rest:

At tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony, Laura Poitras’ Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour won the award for Best Documentary Feature. Despite being the odds-on favorite for the award, the field was competitive this year, including Netflix’s critically-acclaimed Virunga for the honor.

Citizenfour, which saw wide release last fall, offers an inside look at the first week of the Snowden leaks. Filmmaker Poitras was first contacted by Snowden about the NSA’s surveillance activities in January 2013. By May, she had flown out to Hong Kong to conduct her first on-camera interviews with the whistleblower. Her second set of interviews were done with Glenn Greenwald in Russia later that year. Though plenty was left on the cutting room floor, the movie earned a number of awards on its way to the Oscars, including a BAFTA for Best Documentary.

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DUH! ‘American Sniper’ Pulled From Baghdad’s Only Cinema

Staff — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 21:08:33 +0000

Digital Bucket says:

Did anyone really think American Sniper would play well in Iraq? Well, it didn’t. Sniper briefly played in Baghdad, the city that’s home to the $700 million American embassy (the most expensive and largest on earth). However American Sniper was pulled from Baghdad’s only movie theater for… wait for it… dehumanizing Iraqis.

We have three words for the film’s distributor… know your audience.

from The Independent:

Due to objections from the minister of culture and a slew of rowdy screenings, the film – which follows the story of real-life Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle – has been pulled from Baghdad’s only cinema for “dehumanising Iraqis”.

“He told me the film insults Iraqis,” said cinemas manager Fares Hilal who withdrew the film to avoid fines and possible closure. “If we show it, we will be criticized. But if we don’t, we lose money.”

The six-screen cinema, which opened last year at Mansour Mall, is the first to offer Iraqis an American movie-going experience. Sarmad Moazzem, a security adviser at the cinema, was outraged by the US film’s inaccuracies and insensitive portrayal of Iraqi culture.

Peek Under The Curtain With These Behind-The-Scenes Photos

Staff — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 19:57:08 +0000

Excerpt from The PhotoMag

Scenes of great and successful movies dissolve us within them and we forget that it is actually a movie and the sights we see might actually be Hollywood sets. This amazing and unbelievable effect is simply achieved by all that goes on behind the camera, between the scenes. Here we showcase some of the most interesting and amazing behind-the-scenes shots taken from popular films.

Go behind the camera and check out these behind the scene photographs from some blockbuster films.

The post Peek Under The Curtain With These Behind-The-Scenes Photos appeared first on Digital Bucket.

What CAN’T Meryl Do?

Staff — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 22:46:17 +0000

Digital Bucket says:

Diablo Cody just tweeted this one about her pal Meryl Streep, one of the most talented actors on planet earth:

There actually is nothing she can't do. RICKI: http://t.co/m3sag6z6Sg

— Diablo Cody (@diablocody) February 4, 2015

We concur. Aside from playing a dude, Meryl Streep can do anything. Actually, scratch that. She could probably play a convincing dude too…

UPDATE: Our crack Digital Bucket research team points out that Meryl already has played a man on film, and a Rabbi at that – to glowing reviews… But of course!

People.com has the scoop about Meryl starring in Cody’s latest film:

Meryl Streep, rocker?

In the first photo of Streep from her upcoming movie, Ricki and the Flash, the Academy Award-winning actress looks like a natural on stage with a guitar in hand.

In Juno writer Diablo Cody’s latest movie, Streep, 65, plays singer-guitarist and Flash band member Ricki, who gave up everything to pursue her dream of rock-‘n’-roll stardom. Then she returns home to make amends with her family.

Streep’s real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer, also plays the role on screen, alongside Kevin Kline as Ricki’s ex-husband, and rocker Rick Springfield plays a bandmate who is in love with Ricki.

American Sniper Draws Crowds… In Bagdad

Staff — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 17:05:43 +0000

The reaction of some Iraqi moviegoers to “American Sniper” as it plays in Bagdad is surprising.

Whether it’s simply out of curiosity, or a true reflection of public sentiment is difficult to know.

Whatever the case, the film continues to draw crowds, stir emotions and create controversy wherever it plays.

[Excerpt] from Global Post

In Baghdad, where much of the film is set, the movie drew full crowds at one of the city’s new upscale cinemas. Dressed in a fur-collared coat and loafers, Mohammed says many of the showings were sold out, and he knows of people who had to book their tickets a day in advance during opening week.

Mohammed says one of the film’s opening scenes, when Kyle spots a woman and child who appear to be preparing to attack US troops during the initial invasion of Iraq, had the entire audience on the edge of their seats.

“When the sniper was hesitating to shoot [the child holding the RPG] everyone was yelling ‘Just shoot him!’” he said.

41 A-List Actors Who Bombed Like Johnny Depp in ‘Mortdecai’

Staff — Sun, 01 Feb 2015 06:23:48 +0000

Digital Bucket says:

C’mon, you knew it looked awful from the moment you saw the first commercial for Johnny Depp’s Mortdecai. But it’s not the first time one of Hollywood’s biggest stars willingly chose to make what turned out to be a big fat bomb. (Yeah, we’re talking to you Sandler, Jack and Jill was arguably the worst movie of the new century.)

Here’s a reminder of all those A-listers who pioneered the art of bad film.

by Travis Reilly, The Wrap:

From Julia Roberts to Ryan Reynolds, even Hollywood’s heavyweights have starred in a turkey or two.

When Johnny Depp‘s mustache comedy “Mortdecai” brought in less than $5 million on opening weekend, it marked the A-list actor’s fifth straight box office bomb. But he’s far from the only top billed actor to endure a tanker or two.

The 51-year-old film star and his co-stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor and Olivia Munn are in fact in very good company.

Also Read: 19 Biggest Box-Office Bombs and Bummers in 2014: From ‘The Giver’ to ‘Winter’s Tale’ (Photos)

From Brad Pitt (“Fight Club”) to Cameron Diaz (“The Box”) to Jamie Foxx (“Stealth”), nearly every high-profile actor has suffered a few setbacks throughout the course of their careers.

‘The Lord of the Rings’ Peter Jackson: OCD or Just Cray ?

Staff — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 16:03:10 +0000

DF @ Digital Bucket says:

Over the years countless stories have emerged highlighting certain film directors obsession with the most minute details. Details which often add great expense to accomplish but which are – aside from a few members of the crew – largely lost on the film going public which may never notice or appreciate them.

For example in The Shinning, Stanley Kubrick made his own secretary spend months typing up individually unique pages for the scene in which Shelley Duvall goes through the novel Jack Nicholson is writing and reads page after page of, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.

In The Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson had the costume department make six miles of chain mail by hand, link by link. Furthermore, because the mail is what the actors wore under their armor only a few inches of is visible even if you freeze-frame on an individual soldier. Working non-stop, 32,000 feet of chain mail took over two years to create. You didn’t see most of it because the chain mail was used in a massive crowd and the entire scene was filmed at night in the rain.

But Jackson’s obsession didn’t stop there. When making the first Lord of the Rings movie he had over 48,000 detailed pieces of armor painstakingly crafted including 10,000 hand-forged Orcish belt buckles that are virtually impossible to see in the middle of a sprawling CGI-enhanced melee.

So if you ever wondered how a movie could cost over $200 million to make, look very carefully deep into the shadows for the answers.

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One of Sundance’s Best Films Was Shot On An iPhone 5S

Staff — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 21:51:03 +0000

by Casey Newton, The Verge:

Tangerine, a breakout hit from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is full of surprises. There’s the subject matter: transgender prostitutes working in a not-so glamorous part of Hollywood. And there are the characters: flinty, funny, nobody’s victim. But the story behind the camera is as surprising as what’s in front of it. Particularly because the camera used to shoot Tangerine was the iPhone 5S.

Plenty of amateur films have been shot using iPhones, but by all reports, this is the first movie at the Sundance Film Festival to be shot almost entirely on an Apple device. It was a decision that indie writer and director Sean Baker made to accommodate the film’s small budget. But you’d never guess the camera, to look at it: Tangerine was shot in a widescreen, 2:35:1 aspect ratio, and its camera zooms through the streets of LA with a fluidity you’d never expect from a handheld device. And yet despite his camera of choice, Baker says the iPhone made for a good partner. “It was surprisingly easy,” Baker says. “We never lost any footage.”

Disney Eyeing Chris Pratt For Indiana Jones Revival

Staff — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 23:00:33 +0000

Digital Bucket says,

Step in to the way back machine for a minute. Can you envision a young Harrison Ford playing Peter Quill in The Guardians of the Galaxy? …We knew ya could.

Now, the more important question is can you envision Chris Pratt playing the iconic Indiana Jones in a revamp of the classic blockbuster Spielberg-Luca series? …We knew ya could. So can Disney.

Deadline’s Mike Fleming, Jr. has the story:

by Mike Fleming, Jr., Deadline.com:

Here’s one from the helluva good idea department. Marvel offerings are soaring, and Star Wars is being reinvigorated by director JJ Abrams. Now, Disney has just started to turn its attention to reviving the Indian Jones franchise after buying the rights from Paramount in 2013.

I’m cautioned that while things are very early, I hear the studio has set its sights on Chris Pratt as the swashbuckling archaeologist they hope to build the new franchise around, the role made famous by Harrison Ford in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Pratt jumped to leading-man movie status with his performance in last year’s blockbuster Guardians Of The Galaxy for Marvel and Disney. He starts The Magnificent Seven with Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua in April for MGM and Sony, and there’s the inevitable Guardians Of The Galaxy sequel.