03.19.2019 | By Jack Rico |
Guillermo del Toro will join directors David O. Russell and Dee Rees, plus producer Irwin Winkler and actors Michael J. Fox and Queen Latifah at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival speaker lineup which will feature collaborators Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Read More
10.29.2013 | By Jack Rico |
After rumors that Martin Scorsese wasn’t going to have ‘The Wolf Of Wall Street‘ ready for Oscar consideration this year, news broke that it will have a Christmas Day release. Now we have the second full length theatrical trailer that is much better than the original. Read More
02.17.2010 | By Jack Rico |
The new psychological thriller, “Shutter Island,” based on the popular novel by Dennis Lehane, comes from the dexterous and practiced hands of legendary director Martin Scorsese. The film is deluged with a plethora of twists and turns, brilliant acting by Leonardo DiCaprio and jarring scenes of suspense created and framed to perfection by its helmer. You should be excited to see this film… the entertainment value is high and the production quality is of the highest caliber. It’s definitely a must see movie!
For those of you who unfamiliar with the plotline, we’ll reveal only a succinct version. The film adaptation tells the tale of two U.S. marshals, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), who are summoned to a remote and barren island off the cost of Massachusetts to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a prisoner from the island’s fortress-like mental ward. Not much can else be revealed because anything more can ruin the movie experience.
One thing you will take away from this movie is Scorsese’s prowess in the visual department. Some of the camera shots seen make you wish the projectionist could pause them and play it over and over again. After seeing all of DiCaprio’s films, Shutter Island, in my humble opinion, is perhaps one of the top 3 best performances of his career (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Shutter Island and Basketball Diaries, in order). That is what you await at your local theater this weekend.
A major subtext in the movie’s theme is a question asked by all of us, at one point or another in our lives: Am I mad, or is the world around me mad? What’s real and what is not? (I’ve been there before). Just like Hitchcock, the story is constantly deviating us from our path of clarity, creating scenes that don’t really exist and submerging us into a nightmare we can’t manage to wake up from.
At first, the film seems to be just another intriguing noir detective story but it is so much more than that. The references and homages in the film are multiple, everything from “Out of the Past” to “Shock Corridor” and “The Snake Pit” to Hitchcock’s “Spellbound.”
“Shutter Island” is a world where nothing is what it appears to be. It’s suspenseful, mysterious, ambiguous and insane. Now that sounds like a fun movie!
02.15.2010 | By Jack Rico |
It was a cold day in New York City as I arrived at one of New York’s top hotels, Le Meridien, to attend an exclusive press conference with Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, author Dennis Lehane, amongst others, to discuss ‘Shutter Island‘, Scorsese’s new cinematic effort.
First off was Lehane and his crew. Every one got off questions, including me. Then Scorsese’s crew came in and only 4 questions were asked – I was one of the lucky ones to get one in.
What you will hear in the audio slide to the left to you are the questions I asked DiCaprio, Scorsese and Lehane, in order. Essentially, this audio encompasses DiCaprio’s thoughts on his acting, how difficult it was to film these scenes, along with Scorsese’s directorial style and Lehane’s thoughts on the film adaptation of the book.
Without further adieu, here is the official interview from the stars of ‘Shutter Island‘.
05.18.2009 | By Jack Rico |
Universal, the studio behind Martin Scorsese’s recently announced Frank Sinatra biopic, has put Johnny Depp at the top of its wish list of actors to play Ol’ Blue Eyes, according to Deadline Hollywood Daily.
Scorsese had reportedly been eyeing longtime collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed) for the lead role.
But now that the Universal-produced period-heist picture Public Enemies, starring Depp and Christian Bale, looks like a potential winner, the studio is eager to line up Depp’s next high-profile project.
Universal would neither confirm or deny the report; and Depp’s rep says it’s untrue.
05.17.2009 | By Mack Chico |
Martin Scorsese, as ardent an advocate as there is for serving up film the old-fashioned way, has decided to embrace digital distribution for movies restored by his World Cinema Foundation.
The films that the organization restores every year — often obscure titles like “Dry Summer,” a Turkish picture from 1936 — will now be available online through theauteurs.com, a Web site that calls itself a “virtual cinematheque.”
Many will be free. And a partnership with B-Side Entertainment will soon bring the foundation’s films to Netflix and iTunes.
The restored movies will also be broadly distributed for the first time to museums, colleges, festivals and film clubs.
Until now, the foundation’s work was screened at the annual Cannes Film Festival in France, and that’s about it. “To be appreciated, they have to be seen,” Mr. Scorsese said on Friday afternoon at a news conference in Cannes. “Now, they should be seen as they were intended to be seen, but audience awareness can build in surprising ways.”
Kent Jones, who was formerly the associate director of programming at the New York Film Society, will join the foundation as executive director with a mandate to promote the distribution of the foundation’s titles to new platforms, Mr. Scorsese added.
Mr. Scorsese, who serves as the foundation’s chairman, established it in 2007 with a clutch of other celebrated directors (including Stephen Frears and Guillermo del Toro) to restore and preserve neglected films from around the world. Master copies of many obscure films from decades past have deteriorated so much that they are no longer usable or have disappeared. Only about 10 percent of the silent movies made in the United States, for instance, still exist.
“The more audiences see these films, the more they want to see other films like them,” Mr. Scorsese said. “Then what happens is the audience changes, which means the movies that are being made change.”
This year at Cannes, the foundation is reintroducing films like “Al-Momia,” an Egyptian picture from 1969 from the director Shadi Abdel Salam, and “The Wave,” a Mexican title directed by Emilio Gómez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann in 1936.
On Friday, as part of his announcement, Mr. Scorsese included a premiere of a restoration of “The Red Shoes,” the 1948 British film directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
05.13.2009 | By Mack Chico |
Martin Scorsese will direct the biopic “Sinatra” for Universal Pictures and Mandalay Pictures.
Phil Alden Robinson is writing the screenplay for Sinatra based on the life of the iconic entertainer.
Universal and Mandalay have been quietly developing the project after securing the Frank Sinatra life rights and music rights from Frank Sinatra Enterprises — a joint venture of the Sinatra Estate and Warner Music Group. The process of acquiring the rights took years.
Peter Guber and Cathy Schulman are producing.
04.22.2009 | By Mack Chico |
It’s Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s fourth film together,which officially makes them Hollywood’s hottest couple after Brad ‘n’ Angie. But Shutter Island is not just exciting because of that; it’s also shaping up to be something of a stylistic shift for Scorsese. And here’s a shot of Scorsese directing DiCaprio (as Teddy Daniels) and Michelle Williams as his wife.
Co-star Mark Ruffalo, who plays a US marshal alongside DiCaprio, said, “This could be one of [Scorsese’s] great films. He gets to do everything he loves about film: noir, dream sequences, suspense, tough urban stuff. It’s absolute madness, twist upon twist.”
Scorsese himself has likened the film to Orson Welles’ take on Kafka’s The Trial, or Hitchcock at his weirdest, which sounds pretty darn promising to us. The film’s out on October 9 in the UK and October 2 in the US. Next year’s Oscar race starts here.
Picture is from Empire Online.
