New Star Trek Beyond Trailer

Paramount has released the second trailer for the third film in their rebooted Star Trek franchise Star Trek Beyond. The new teaser has instantly proved a far bigger hit with fans online than the first trailer which fiercely divided opinion with song choice and largely failed to capture Trekkie’s imaginations.

The latest preview reveals a bit more of Idris Elba and Kingsman star Sofia Boutella  stealing the show in heavy alien makeup. It also showcases a bit more plot and big action set pieces, winning fans over with a storyline that seems to hark back to the spirit of the original series in boldly going somewhere new and dangerous.

A Hologram For The King Review

The Plot

Failing businessman, Alan (Tom Hanks) looks to recoup his losses by traveling to Saudi Arabia and selling his idea to a wealthy monarch.

The Good

Beginning with Hanks performing the opening lines of Talking Heads’ ‘Once In A Lifetime’ in a strange fourth wall breaking dream/commercial sequence, writer/director Tom Tykwer sets up his adaptation of David Eggers’ novel as an unusual film. For the most part though, A Hologram For The King is much more compelling than it’s trailers suggest. Tom Hanks clearly has fun in his role as struggling salesman, Alan. Having had a brief encounter years earlier involving an awkwardly delivered fish joke, Alan is packed off to Saudi Arabia to close a potentially career-boosting deal with the king. But, as optimistic as Alan stays, the trip doesn’t seem to be quite as smooth sailing as he had hoped.

Sleeping in and missing the morning bus to the undeveloped plot of land that doesn’t appear to be moving forward much, Alan soon meets Yousef (Alexander Black), a personal driver who fears an upcoming assassination upon him from a scorned husband, prompting him to have to rewire his car engine to make sure no bombs have been planted. It’s this kind of quirky humour that gives the film a fun feeling while also managing to stay grounded with serious subplots involving Alan’s messed up home life. While he manages to escape his irksome ex-wife, a worrying bump on his back soon starts to become more troubling.

Even when the film moves towards the traditional underlying love story, Tykwer manages to refrain from making it an embarrassing mix of genre defining awkwardness between Hanks and his female doctor, Zahra (Sarita Choudhury). The mix of two different cultures clashing together has been seen and done enough times by now but Tykwer ensures it never feels like we’re not looking down on the culturally different approach to romance or belittling it in any way.

The Bad

The only slight misgiving this film does is in it’s casting of Lewis Rainer as young Tom Hanks. Having been a part of cinema history since probably before he was Rainer’s age, it does feel slightly jarring to have Rainer pop up and try to convince us he is Hanks in his prime. With Hanks’ own son, Colin already an actor and at the right age for it, he would have been a much better choice for the small role.

The Ugly Truth

Tykwer manages to find a perfect balance between humour and drama with the help of a great cast. Chaudhury and Hanks play off each other seamlessly while Alexander Black injects some well placed lightness in a slow revealing script which brings some darkness along the way.

Review by Johnny Ellis

The Nice Guys London Premiere Pictures

Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe , Joel Silver, Angourie Rice and director Shane Black walked the red carpet at the LondonUK premiere for new 70s era buddy comedy The Nice Guys last night. Check out some amazing pics and exclusive red carpet interviews below

Predator Sequel Director Meeting Schwarzenegger

Talking to Red Carpet News at the London premiere for new 70s set buddy comedy The Nice Guys, Wrier/director Shane Black spoke about his excitement for the upcoming Predator Sequel The Predator. He also hinted that a possible return for original franchise star Arnold Schwarzenegger could be on the cards, with plans to meet for brunch and secret discussions with his former co-star. Video Interview and Transcript below:

Speaking about plans to reboot the Predator franchise and atone for the failings of the various failed spin-offs Shane Black explained:

Well The Preadtor is something I have a history with as well as just being dear to my heart. It was kind of the beginning of my relationship with Hollywood and Joel Silver. In this one we’re just trying to get some excitement and mystery back, in the same way I think Ridley is summoning the spirit of Alien with Prometheus and now the much anticipated prequel. I think Predator has that potential too, to get back to the portent and sense of mystery, some of the power that may have been missing in some of the more modestly budgeted knock offs over the few years intervening. We want to do it more as a film the feels like an event. That’s a challenge and a responsibility I don’t take lightly. Our goal ultimately is that people love this again and they’re aware of it in a way they buy their ticket a month out in advance and they see it like they’d see a summer movie.

As for whether Arnold Schwarzenegger could reprise his iconic role to form a part of the new sequel Black was coy but gave fans significant hope:

Arnie and I have a meeting when we get back to just chat for breakfast…  I’m not allowed to talk about what we’ll be talking about… Maybe we’ll just talk about the weather. You don’t know and I’m not going to tell you! But though everything’s still up in the air the train is rolling, it’s left the station on Predator and I couldn’t be more excited!

The Nice Guys Russell Crowe Interview

Russell Crowe sits down in London to talk about The Nice Guys, his brilliant new 1970s set buddy film co-starring Ryan Gosling and directed by genre legend Shane Black. 

I guess you can write chemistry in a script but bringing that to life on the screen is different. You and Ryan are wonderful to watch, was it fun to play?

Yeah, you know, you can’t manufacture that, you either have it or you don’t. But the key to it is not that complex, it is just about listening. If you are listening to each other and tuned in it doesn’t matter what left step he takes or improv he is going to do, I can go with him as I haven’t anticipated or made any assumptions, and it goes both ways. That is essentially all you are seeing, a couple of guys who are very aware that the other guy can do anything at any given moment, so you best tune in.

Is that really his Ryan Gosling’s actual scream we hear in the film?

It freaks me out, it is the best scream in feature film since Gene Wilder. That is a hell of a scream.

The on-screen bromance you have with Ryan is great, did you follow the script strictly or was there a lot of improv?

Well, the cool thing about working with Shane at this point of his life where he has had the ups and downs, is that he understands you have to trust who you hire. We were both very respectful of the script and will do it the way it reads but we also brought ideas everyday and said what if we move it like this or that, and Shane trusted that we would work in the spirit of what he intended. There is a lot of stuff improvised on a daily basis and it isn’t discussed, it is just in the movie and you go with it.

We have spoken about the chemistry with Ryan but we also get a reunion of you and Kim after LA Confidential. What was it like to hook up with Kim again?

You have to tread carefully in London!

Maybe hook up wasn’t the right word! (Laughter)

It was great seeing Kim again. We were talking and realised we hadn’t been in the same room together for over a decade, but it is a very different cinematic relationship than before. We had so many hours together on LA Confidential that we had a very intimate friendship and that still remains. That is the funny thing about this business, you can go on a cycle and not see each other for years but if you connected you still connect the next time you see each other, so it was great to see her and all that but a very different work experience this time.

Back to Ryan, was there any problem with corpsing or cracking up between takes?

 See, this is great I am in a country where people know what corpsing is, in America they’re like, I have no idea what that is! If you take the 26 years of making lead roles in feature films prior to The Nice Guys, the amount of times I will have corpsed on camera in that whole time, 49, 50 films, whatever, would be less then any given week making Nice Guys. This little b*****d makes me laugh. Sometimes I would suspect he was up all night thinking of a way to make me laugh, he has a natural comedic gift and he is a funny b*****d, so yeah, I laughed my head off all the time. This one scene, we had blocked off the Sunset, very simple shot, we have to come in, do a couple of lines of dialogue then drive away. And Ryan is just not on the script: he is just jamming on some idea that is in his head about German spank films and I am falling apart in the car trying to get my lines out as he goes into the pseudo German he does with such conviction. So he is doing all that and you have Joel Silver standing in the Sunset saying “I have the whole street blocked off to shoot my movie, not tonight guys, not tonight.” So we are sitting in the car and I say to Ryan “so we going to  stick to the script” and Ryan says, “no”.

What was it like to work with the younger cast?

 We had a sort of joke of Angorie being the most mature person on set. It was kind of a joke but it was kind of real too. She was always prepared, she came ready to give everything. She had very limited experience but a fine intellect and a real enthusiasm for the craft, so it was great. The thing is to get her to that place of comfort, apart from the work Shane did with her, Ryan put a lot of effort into that. A few days ago we were having a chat and I said “I just knew you were going to be a great dad when I saw you do that”. She started to flower because she felt comfortable and could own the space.

Why does your character live where he does?

We thought it was a brilliant idea. We shot a little piece that is not in the movie where he just sits in his apartment deep in thought and you can hear the laughter from the live shows going on downstairs, and over time you see the laughter seep in to him and he then smiles. I don’t know what it meant but it was really cool to shoot. You know he has no friends, no life and you can see his history in that apartment and how it looks.

You mentioned intentionally messing around during an important scene, did that make shooting the film a much longer process?

When did I say one scene? Everyday, every scene, can I make it clearer. If Ryan was here he would say he thought his character was called schmuck because every time we turned around that is what we heard the most from Joel looking at the monitors.

If you do get an opportunity to revisit these characters for a sequel are there things you would like to see in that?

Interesting thing about sequels, it seems every movie I do someone asks in a press conference if there will be a sequel and then it never happens. So now you’ve f*cked it up for everyone! I mean, certainly there is a lot we can do with these characters so it could be fun. For some reason Ryan and I think the title “The Nice Guys Mexican Detectives” is hilarious and I don’t know why!