Appreciated by wee’uns but widely disliked by adults with reviews to write, Planes seemed like a rare creative misfire for Lasseter-era Disney. But there were enough tinies in the former camp - $220m worth – to warrant a trilogy, and sure enough, part two, Planes 2: Fire & Rescue arrives this summer. If it’s anything like as easy on the eye as these new concept posters, that critical animus might just soften. {Planes 2 posters}
The story this time has a crew of firefighting aircraft defending Piston Peak National Park from the ravages of bush fire. Signing up on scorch prevention duty is Dusty (Dane Cook), hero of Planes, who is resigned to his retirement from racing with a dicky engine and looking for a new outlet for his talents.
Also on deck are wizened fire-and-rescue chopper Blade Ranger (Ed Harris), tanker Dipper (Julie Bowen), heavy-lift helicopter Windlifter (Wes Studi), ex-military transport (Dale Dye) and some multi-terrain vehicles called The Smokejumpers. In an ideal world, Aliens’ UD-4L Cheyenne Dropship would turn up too, but we can’t guarantee it.
Directed by Mouse House veteran Bobs Gannaway, Planes 2: Fire & Rescue will be in UK cinemas on August 8.
Trespass, which Smith is directing from Alastair Siddons’ script, follows the stories of three generations of the criminal Cutler family, who live as outlaws. Their world includes illegal hunting, ram-raiding stately homes and making fun of police efforts to hunt them down.
But when eldest son Chad (Fassbender) is finally nabbed by the law, he’s torn between the guiding anarchy of his father (Gleeson) and what he thinks could be best for his own kids in the long run. Cue a battle of opinions that threatens to tear the family apart.
With a cast like this, Trespass Against Us certainly has a tempting setup, and Smith has also wrangled talent for behind the camera, with The Chemical Brothers on board to write and perform the score. It should all kick off shooting this summer.
Taken from our Greatest movie ever, take a gander at this beauty
We didn't want to publish this month's subscriber cover at the same time we announced the newsstand version, since it's sort of a spoiler for our 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time poll. But since we assume you have probably already seen the full list, here is our carbonite beauty in all its glory.{Empire Magazine 301 Subscriber Cover}
Usually, you'd have to have subscribed six weeks ago to be sure of getting this cover, but in case you don't have a time machine / Kitty Pryde handy, we're giving you the chance to subscribe now and get this one anyway; click this way to do so.
Inside, of course, is the complete list of the 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time, along with pull-out features on everything from Planet Of The Apes to The Third Man to Skyfall to - of course - The Empire Strikes Back. And much, much more, as ever. If you're less fussed about covers, you can pick up this month's newsstand cover in all good newsagents now, and online in its digital format.
When the eye-popping new trailer for The Book Of Life broke last night, more colourful than an explosion at a Pantone factory, we jumped straight on the phone to its producer, one Guillermo del Toro, to get the low-down.
“It’s about celebrating love and life,” explains del Toro of a project he’s been working on concurrently with Crimson Peak. “The designs were mostly done by Jorge (Gutierrez), who I think is a brilliant visual genius,” he adds of his director.
Based on the Mexican Dia de Muertos holiday, the pair’s new animated adventure tells the story of a pair of friends, Manolo, voiced by Diego Luna, and town hero Joaquin (Channing Tatum), who both vie for the affections of the beautiful Maria (Zoë Saldana). For Manolo, alas, the path of true love has a venomous magical snake on it, and he’s sent spinning across three netherworlds in the hope of returning to reclaim his love.
As The Book Of Life’s producer, del Toro's skills were brought to bear reworking the storyline. He expanded the canvas, hanging its central love story around an epic quest, magical beasties and three characters whose destinies are yet to be decided. “When I came on board the story was very, very different,” he says. “We worked together in reshaping the story to give them a real journey, so they could travel through three magical lands in a very classic arc.”
He was originally introduced to his collaborator via Gutierrez’s Mexican TV superhero, El Tigre, a firm favourite in the del Toro household, and the pair’s creative sensibilities gelled naturally. “It looks so beautiful, so artistic,” del Toro enthuses, diverting credit for the creation of its three, kaleidoscopic worlds to his director. “My daughter loves his style, I love his style. He has a touch that makes it feel almost like handicraft: you can feel the wood, the ceramic. It’s quite remarkable. I think he’s unique.”
Music is writ large in the story, adding Mexican flavour to the carnival. “From the beginning, we agreed on doing covers of pop songs with a marimba or a mariachi or a bolero,” reveals del Toro. Overseeing the mariachi-fication is Babel composer Gustavo Santaolalla. “We have everything from classical, romantic Mexican songs to contemporary hits,” reveals del Toro, adding with a chuckle, “and ‘Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?’, rearranged with a mariachi.”
If the idea of Celtic sex lion Rod Stewart being retooled with additional Latin smoulder gets you hot under the collar, that might not be entirely coincidental. The Book Of Life could be del Toro’s first true love story and riffs on the great lovers of Greek mythology, as well as Mexican legends. “It’s the story of two lovers who refuse to be separated by anything,” he explains. “The characters have a very classic arc like Orpheus and Eurydice. It’s about love not giving up.”
As you’d expect from the Mexican, there’s personal resonance in the themes of love, death and celebration. “When I was a kid we celebrated [the Day of the Dead] in Guadalajara, my home town,” del Toro tells Empire. “There was a huge open-air market and they would sell all kinds of skulls: rubber, plastic, ceramic, and I remember going there with great enthusiasm and buying skulls. My grandmother used to take my brother and I there when we were very young.”
So can we expect some Book Of Life tie-in merchandise for that Guadalajara market? “I would love that!” laughs del Toro. “I hope we can make a few toy skulls.” Over to you, Hasbro.
The Book Of Life lands in UK cinemas on October 24.
And with Cuban Fury it was undoubtedly the ridiculously camp and brilliant dance instructor Bejan, as played by Four Lions and Fone/Facejacker star Kayvan Novak.
Watch our exclusive DVD extra below, in which Bejan urges you to DANCE!
Cuban Fury is available on DVD and Blu-ray from 9 June 2014.
Harry Potter, little orphan Annie, Liam Neeson, Mexican skeletons and South American drug dealers all star in a swathe of interesting new trailers.
First up, Daniel Radcliffe woos Zoe Kazan in What If (previously called The F Word), a hip looking anti-rom-com about a British med school dropout who falls for a kooky animator. Radcliffe and Kazan nail the nervy cutesiness, but Adam Driver (as Radcliffe’s weird best friend) steals it by shouting about sex and nachos.
There’s singin’ and dancin’ and sweepin’ in the Annie remake – with Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts Of The Southern Wild) belting out ‘It’s A Hard Knock Life’ to Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. No sound of Jay-Z’s remixed score yet though.
Liam Neeson is looking mean and moody in A Walk Among The Tombstones – Scott Frank’s (The Lookout) gangster noir thriller about a deadbeat ex-cop who teams up with a drug dealer to find a kidnapped woman. Falling somewhere between Taken and Max Payne, it looks like a perfect match for Neeson's grit.
Channing Tatum, Zoe Saldana and Diego Luna all voice skeletons in the Del Toro produced animation The Book Of Life. Set around the Mexican Day Of The Dead (and feeling quite a lot like the old Lucasarts game Grim Fandango), it looks utterly gorgeous.
Finally, Jeremy Renner stars in Michael Cuesta’s (Homeland, Dexter) drug trafficking thriller, Kill The Messanger – the true story of a journalist who lifts the lid on a CIA cover-up in Nicaragua.
Emily Blunt is starring in the thriller, playing a law enforcement agent who has to work with a mysterious government operative (Benicio Del Toro) and a squad of fellow agents to take down a drug kingpin. Exact details on Bernthal’s character haven’t been specified beyond the fact that he’s called Ted. We doubt he’s a talking bear, though.
Villeneuve is working from Tyler Sheridan’s script for the movie, aiming to shoot later this year. Bernthal has also booked a role in Me & Earl & The Dying Girl, which Alfonso Gomez-Rejon will direct, adapted by Jesse Andrews from his Young Adult novel. It’ll find a high school student ordered by his mother to befriend a girl battling leukaemia. Bernthal is playing a teacher in that one. And then there’s Gerardo’ Naranjo’s latest untitled project, where Bernthal will be someone named Monroe alongside the already-cast Dakota Fanning and Evan Rachel Wood. It’ll be a busy rest of the year for him…
You would think that anyone dealing in the criminal world of kidnapping would know to avoid tangling with Liam Neeson. But clearly the crooks in Scott Frank’s A Walk Among The Tombstones have never seen a frame of a Taken film. Have a gander at the trailer over at Apple.
Written and directed by Scott Frank, and based on Lawrence Block’s bestselling mystery novels, the thriller finds Neeson as Matt Scudder, a former NYPD cop who quit the job after a robbery at his local bar cost lives. Now, he works as a grungy, unlicensed private eye, taking on cases for anyone willing to “gift” him the readies.
When he reluctantly agrees to help a drug trafficker (Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens, about as far from the period drama as he could hope to land short of heading into space) find the men who kidnapped and brutally murdered his wife, he discovers that this is not the first ransom case that has gone badly with these particular criminals. And this latest kidnapping will not be the last… Digging into the gang’s associates, Scudder soon learns that this might be his most dangerous assignment yet.
Neeson certainly knows how to handle this sort of gruff, enigmatic warrior, though Scudder is definitely not Bryan Mills. And Frank is the man who brought us Out Of Sight, and his underrated directorial debut The Lookout, so we definitely have our hopes for this one. A Walk Among The Tombstones is out on September 19.
Sausage Party will follow one banger's journey to discover the truth about his existence after falling out of a shopping trolley. Can he make it back through the supermarket to his aisle before the Fourth of July? Will he end up going from the frying pan and into the fire? Will he be able to have his cake and eat it? Can sausages even eat cake? We don’t know, and we highly doubt the film will answer that. McBride and Rudd are, of course, old Rogen cohorts, while Anders, a part of the Mail Order Comedy troupe, cameoed in Bad Neighbours.
No details have yet leaked on who anyone in the cast is actually playing, but we do know that the new additions join Rogen, Jonah Hill, Kristen Wiig, Salma Hayek, Edward Norton, David Krumholtz, Nick Kroll, Michael Cera, James Franco, Craig Robinson and Bill Hader. Rogen and Goldberg came up with the concept, and handed it to Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffier to write, with animation veterans Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan taking on the lion’s share of directorial duties. Which is especially useful since Rogen and Goldberg have also been busy finishing their latest live-action directing job, The Interview. Sausage Party is now scheduled to hit stores cinemas on June 3, 2016 in the US via Sony, though it remains to be seen whether the UK will have to wait longer to see it.
