This, kids, is how an international director should make their English language debut. First, build up your own name and your own style so that international financiers know that you don't actually need them to be successful and, therefore, they can't push you to do something you don't want to do. Second, find a project you're passionate about but couldn't necessarily afford to make on home soil. Third, assemble one hell of a killer cast and go for it. Johnnie To evidently understands all of this.
We've known about his upcoming remake of classic French action film The Red Circle for some time now, and have also known that he's in pursuit of Orlando Bloom to play a key role. Well, Tim Roth confirmed his involvement a couple weeks ago and word is now trickling out that Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun Fat has also signed on the dotted line. Alain Delon is also confirmed and rumblings persist that Liam Neeson is in negotiations. And, that, boys and girls is one stellar cast. Shooting is scheduled to start in December.
Most exciting casting to me is Alain Delon. Perfect way to bridge it to the Melville original.
Is Liam Neeson being in it been confirmed?
Johnnie To knows how to make me sweet with anticipation...
calling red circle an action film makes me doubt that todd has ever seen the movie. orlando bloom ? I would not mention his name together with "stellar cast" although he's an capable actor. but no way stellar. but if he gets the role I think he will be cast for, it could work.
Tim Roth !!!! oh yeah. chow-yun !!!! even more yeahs.
Good god, not Legolas, that guy can't act.
Aside from that poster boy, the rest of the cast is great. Also, i'm guessing this is getting shot in Hong Kong, because the last thing i remember is TO saying that he wouldn't make a film outside of HK.
Orlando Bloom???!!!
oook, another chinese director falling into the hollywood circus brrr... This doesn´t make me feel so happy to say the truth.
Yes this is all good but will they wear the chain-link masks?
[quote]another chinese director falling into the hollywood circus brrr[/quote]
It's a HK production distributed by French-based Studio Canal so Hollywood is nothing to do with the movie production-wise.
yep ook,sorry about the mistake, I guess after reading Orlando Bloom I just couldn´t read anymore...Glad to hear that.
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-> Grind House overview page
Contents [hide]
1 The Official Grindhouse Production Notes
2 PLANET TERROR
2.1 Synopsis
2.2 About the Production
2.3 SICKOS, SHORT SKIRTS, EXPLOSIONS AND BLOOD
2.4 The Cast
2.5 The Crew
3 DEATH PROOF
3.1 Synopsis
3.2 About The Production
3.3 STUNTMAN MIKE
3.4 NOVA/CIVIC
3.5 AFTERMATH
3.6 MUSTANG/CHALLENGER/CHARGER
3.7 THE WAR OF THE DODGES
3.8 = CLOTHES AND CRIME SCENES
3.9 SHOOT TO KILL
3.10 Cast
3.11 Crew
The Official Grindhouse Production Notes
Dimension Films Presents
GRINDHOUSE
Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez
Production Notes As of 3/23/07
US Release Date: April 6, 2007
Rated R by the MPAA Running Time: TBD www.grindhousemovie.net
Two of the most renowned filmmakers go back to back with GRINDHOUSE, a double dose packed to the gills with guns and guts. The unprecedented project from the longtime collaborators (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, FOUR ROOMS, SIN CITY) presents two original, complete films as a double feature. Quentin Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF is a white knuckle ride behind the wheel of a psycho serial killer’s roving, revving, racing death machine. Robert Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR is a heart-pounding trip to a town ravaged by a mysterious plague. Inspired by the unique distribution of independent horror classics of the sixties and seventies, these two shockingly bold features are presented together on a drive-in style double bill, replete with fake trailers, missing reels and plenty of exploitative mayhem. The impetus for GRINDHOUSE began during a time before the multiplex and state-of-the-art home theaters ruled the movie-going experience. The origins of the term “Grindhouse” are fuzzy: some cite the types of films shown (as in “Bump-and-Grind”) in run down former movie palaces; others point to a method of presentation -- movies were “grinded out” in ancient projectors one after another. Frequently, the movies were grouped by exploitation subgenre. Splatter, slasher, sexploitation, blaxploitation, cannibal and mondo movies would be grouped together and shown with graphic trailers. This was movie exhibition in its alternative heyday, simultaneously run-down and vividly alive. “They were old houses that that were more dilapidated than existed for the people in the big city neighborhoods, or they were all-night theaters that would play three or four movies,” Tarantino explains. “It would be a place for the bums to go and sleep. If you’re hiding out from the law you’d go there for the night. Then, at six in the morning they wake you up and send you out, and you’d walk around for ninety minutes and come right back in again.” But exploitation movies weren’t just for urbanites: “Drive-ins had the same shows, but were a whole different setting,” Tarantino says. “Grindhouse theaters were in more urban areas. Dallas would have grindhouses, and Houston would have grindhouses, but when you get into the outer regions of Texas, it’s more about drive-ins.” Theaters were booked independently. Film titles were changed from market to market and were promoted locally (especially in the case of the rural drive-ins). One print would travel from an old movie palace to a drive-in. “It wasn’t like the way movies are now, where a movie opens up on three thousand theaters playing everywhere at once,” Tarantino explains. “Exploitation companies would make maybe twenty prints for a big release. That was a huge release, actually. You would take those twenty prints to Houston, or Los Angeles. You’d just schlep them around the country, one place at a time. And they usually only played for a week. The grindhouses could get those movies that week they opened. They’d be backed by newspaper support, and be backed by television -- local channel support.” “Because they made so few prints that they would be scratched up and worn out, and have chunks chopped out of them by the time anybody saw them,” Rodriguez adds.
“If you were lucky enough to get an exploitation movie at the beginning of its run, the prints could be OK. But after it played at the El Paso Drive-In Theater, God knows what condition it might be in. It depends on what part of the daisy chain you lived in as far as how good the prints were going to be by the time you got them,” Tarantino says. “But grindhouses would also get the big budget films that had been playing back in the day when movies played for six months,” Tarantino notes. “They would also get them on their way out of town.
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johnsmith
Wide Circles