The isolation, anxiety, and loneliness of extended human spaceflight, recently explored in films like Netflix's "Spaceman" and the Apple TV+ series "Constellation," can be a debilitating side effect, and it's one that's examined in disorienting detail in Swedish director Mikael Håfström's new sci-fi thriller "Slingshot."

Starring Casey Affleck, Laurence Fishburne, and Tomer Capone, "Slingshot" opened in theaters on Aug. 30 from Bleecker Street. It revolves around three distinguished astronauts aboard the Odyssey 1 spacecraft en route to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. The long voyage requires a gravity-assist maneuver around Jupiter, and as the astronauts prepare for this dangerous move, one of them begins to have hallucinations caused by hypersleep drugs that make him question reality. These unsettling visions increase in intensity, threatening the mission's goals.

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"It's relative to '1408' in the way that it's a contained space and a psychological drama in an environment where you can't really get out from, because you're in the room or in the spaceship in complete isolation in space," Håfström told Space.com.

"I've always been drawn to that kind of story," he added. "There's something challenging making something in such a contained area. It's very interesting to work with actors in that sense. There's very little physical room to maneuver, so you need to work in a different way. I had the script for quite some time before we actually got the chance to make it. But I always carried it with me for all these reasons. It could be on a deserted island or anywhere, but now it happens to be in space. It's not 'Star Wars' or anything like that. When people see the film, they'll understand more about what I'm talking about. You need actors that can bring it home, and we were lucky."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17136439

Writer/Director Coralie Fargeat set the bar high for herself in 2017, with her debut feature Revenge delivering a visceral, feminine twist to the rape-revenge thriller that climaxed in an epic bloodbath. So much that it seemed nearly impossible to top. Yet the filmmaker does just that with sophomore effort The Substance, transforming a familiar concept into something so entertaining and grotesquely over the top that it keeps you firmly in its grip until an epic, grand guignol finish.

Another disaster for Lionsgate and just three weeks after release.

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1f7b5zp/lord_of_the_rings_characters_screen_time_vs/

Coming soon from ITN Studios is the slasher movie Piglet, the latest twisted take on a public domain character from the Pooh universe, and we’ve got the trailer for you this afternoon.

For clarity, this project is not part of the public domain universe known as the “Poohniverse,” which began with Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Same idea, different team.

Watch the official Piglet trailer below and expect a release date soon.

Trailer

It is virtually unheard-of for top filmmakers and talent to get back to a journalist almost immediately without going through armies of publicists. Not so when it comes to talking about Neon founder and CEO Tom Quinn, the savvy and innovative indie executive whose company is enjoying its best year in history thanks to nurturing the under-35 cinephile crowd, as well as seeing yet another one of its films, Anora, win the prestigious 2024 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or for the fifth consecutive year, an unprecedented feat for a U.S. indie or studio distributor.

“Tom has something — a once highly valued human trait that, one might argue by looking around, apparently humans don’t need anymore — it’s called good taste, and Tom has it in surplus. I think he might put it in his laundry detergent, his toothpaste, his milkshakes,” Longlegs director Oz Perkins tells THR within several hours of receiving a request for comment.

Perkins, and Neon, are still reeling from the record-breaking performance of Longlegs, the summer box office sensation that has surpassed Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite to become Neon’s top-grossing title of all time domestically with north of $74 million, making it the most successful indie horror pic in a decade and the top indie film of the year so far (currently, it’s No. 12 on the summer chart in a neck-and-neck battle with Alien: Romulus and ranking ahead of Mad Max: Furiosa). Sydney Sweeney, who starred in and produced Immaculate for Neon earlier this year, also dispatched her own take almost instantly: “One thing that I’ve admired about Tom is that he’s honestly for the art. Neon often takes risks with unconventional storytelling and marketing strategies. They support independent films and filmmakers, creating engaging ways to bring audiences into worlds that some companies may overlook.”

The film executive’s three-decade career included stints at indie stalwarts Samuel Goldwyn, Magnolia and then Radius-TWC, a label of The Weinstein Co., before he founded Neon (the official moniker is NEON Unrated LLC) in 2017 with backing from 30West. Neon has released 115 films, both narrative features and documentaries, and garnered 32 Oscar nominations and six wins, including best picture and best director for Bong’s groundbreaking Parasite, the first non-English film to take home the statuette.

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Quinn, who grew up overseas, where his dad coached basketball — helping to explain his worldly perspective — recently spoke with THR about the state of the business, Neon’s rivalry with A24 and why he doesn’t let dust-ups with talent get him down.

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Neon and A24 rank Nos. 10 and 9, respectively, in 2024 domestic box office share, with less than $15 million separating the two of you. Do you cringe when seeing all the glowing headlines about A24? How do you view your rivalry?

It’s a great question. We are both New York-centric companies. That’s where we started. Most of us, if not all of us, have worked in New York. I spent 20 years there but now live in L.A. We’ve exchanged a lot of directors. We pick up movies that they walked away from, and vice versa, but we’re not the same. Here’s a stark difference: In their first seven years, they released three foreign-language films and three documentaries. We’ve released 64 — 32 foreign-language films and 32 documentaries. We are very different, but are very much on the same trajectory. They won best picture, and we won best picture. But I don’t understand their business and their valuations. I’m sure most of the industry doesn’t either, but more power to them.

What’s the one that got away in terms of a bidding war?

I was all over [2022’s] Talk to Me. We were the first offer, the highest offer and the only wide-release offer before anybody else woke up. And we narrowly lost that to A24, so credit to them.

Film noir was first identified at a distance. In 1946, Italian-born French critic Nino Frank coined the term to describe a cycle of coolly cynical crime thrillers produced by Hollywood earlier in that decade, but only recently available in Paris. “These ‘dark’ films, these films noirs, no longer have anything in common with the ordinary run of detective movies,” wrote Frank of films including Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) and The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944). But the term still has legs, with films as recent, and as far removed from Hollywood, as the Chinese crime procedural Only the River Flows, which was released this summer, inspiring critics to reach for the word noir.

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Those inspired to travel further into homegrown noir should check out the new season beginning this week at BFI Southbank, Martin Scorsese Selects Hidden Gems of British Cinema, co-curated with Edgar Wright, which contains such gritty British classics as It Always Rains on Sunday (Robert Hamer, 1947), a noirish and sexy drama starring Googie Withers and John McCallum as an East End housewife and her fugitive ex-boyfriend. In a recent interview for Sight and Sound magazine, Scorsese talked about how the influence of gothic literature imbues the Brit noir with gloom and horror: “There’s a toughness in the British style that doesn’t have any room for compromise.”

The journey continues. Online, aficionados use the hashtag #Noirvember as an excuse to explore the world of noir. This November, the Film Noir Fest in Weston-super-Mare will screen noirs from around the world, not least London noirs and Mexican films of the 1950s, including El Bruto (1953), a rarely shown title directed by Luis Buñuel.

As for new films that take on the noir mantle, such as Only the River Flows, they simply create more flashbacks into film history, forging connections between film-makers and films united by a shared cinematic mood. One that lingers, dangerously.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train), Tom Hardy (Venom) and director Cary Fukunaga (No Time To Die) are teaming for Jo Nesbo crime-thriller adaptation, Blood On Snow, which will likely be the biggest pre-sales title at TIFF for WME Independent and Range.

Nesbø is scripting the project (with revisions by Ben Power), based on his own best-selling novel of the same name.

The buzzy story unfolds in 1970’s Oslo, where two rival gang leaders—Hoffman and the Fisherman (Hardy) —vie for control.

It marks a rare feature screenwriting outing for the acclaimed Norwegian novelist whose books have been adapted into multiple hit movies and TV series. Filming is due to take place later this year.

The synopsis reads: “Hoffman’s trusted hitman, Olav (Johnson), is a cold, efficient killer, perfect for the job. But beneath his ruthless exterior lies an unexpected intelligence and an unwavering moral code shaped by a complicated childhood…When Hoffman orders his own wife to be murdered, Olav’s principles clash with his loyalties. Instead of pulling the trigger, he hatches a scheme that makes him Hoffman’s next target and with nowhere safe to turn, Olav forms an uneasy alliance that places him at the heart of Oslo’s deadly gang war. Once a violent enforcer, Olav’s choice makes him an unlikely hero in a world where no good deed goes unpunished.”