Alex Honnold Documentary Free Solo Is as Extreme as the Man

If mountain-climbing documentaries make you puke-dizzy, Free Solo is probably not a good idea. This National Geographic head-spinner from husband-and-wife co-directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin is extreme in the extreme. The focus is on Alex Honnold, a free climber who gives the finger to gravity every time he suits up. Honnold, 33, climbs alone, sees no need for such niceties as rope, harness and pitons and rejects the odds against surviving that come with the job. Free Solo even includes a morbid collage of dead climbers. No matter. Honnold has done more than 1,000 solitary ascents and hes here to tell about it.

Free Solo details Honnolds process as he preps to scale the 3,000-foot wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park with just his fingers and feet. His mother, Dierdre Wolownick, worries. So does new girlfriend Sanni McCandless. So what drives this dude? A pre-climb MRI indicates a brain that doesnt register what most brains would register under the circumstances: crippling fear. As Honnold sees it, Nobody achieves anything great by being happy and cozy.

None of that cozy stuff in Free Solo, though the film stalls a bit before liftoff. Once on the rock, however, youll be glued to the screen. Even cameraman Mikey Schaefer looks away during the hairiest parts of the climb. Just wait for The Boulder Problem, when Honnold basically karate kicks over a stony obstacle at 2,000 feet. The camera work in Free Solo will blow your mind or whatevers left of it. Were told that drones were used to film a few of the trickier angles. It wouldnt be surprising if eagles joined the crew. You may never figure out why Honnold does what he does. But pumped by Marco Beltramis score and your own adrenaline, you feel every spectacular moment. Can you hold your breath for an entire movie? Free Solo will put you to the test.

Ghostbusters to Splash: Why Gender-Flipping Is the New Gritty Reboot

Yesterday afternoon, the industry trade papers reported that Disney was mounting a remake of Splash, a 1984 romcom starring a young Tom Hanks smitten with part-time mermaid Daryl Hannah. Remaking a popular favorite thats not surprising. What was shocking, however, was the way Disney turned the tide on this announcements reception by swapping its leads genders, casting movie star/second-coming-of-Gene-Kelly Channing Tatum as the merman and hot-streak character actress Jillian Bell as the ordinary Hanks type. It could have easily been another soul-deadening studio plan to prop up a moldy premise Weekend at Bernies-style and market it to a new generation. Instead, Splash 2.0 sounds like it has the potential to be an interesting prospect.

Conjuring a massive payday used to be as simple as applying a new layer of grit to a property that audiences know and love, and sitting back as the brand familiarity pays for itself. Maybe folks have gotten wise, or maybe the people making movies are just having an off year, but either way, its not working as reliably as it used to. Think of the movie industry like a big childrens soccer game, with everyone chasing after the highly lucrative ball regardless of what positions theyve been assigned to play. The Gritty Reboot has now officially rolled out of bounds, and its starting to look like the gender-flip movie is the trend du jour.

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Its been a long, rough summer for Hollywood. Every week seems to bring some new bloated flop, arriving with great fanfare before dying a noisy death at the cineplex. (Did you know that they made a sequel to Tim Burtons Alice In Wonderland? Seriously!) With Tinseltown approaching DEFCON 1, everyones in search of a way back into the huge untapped reserves of money lying dormant in Americas pockets.

So Disney clearly borrowed a page from Sonys playbook, modeling their bigger Splash after Julys woman-fronted, troll-angering Ghostbusters reboot. Though the films box-office returns have been lackluster (its barely made back its $144 million budget), it undoubtedly generated more conversation than any other studio picture in recent memory, not all of it positive. And while creating a cultural flash point that left a huge imprint on the years zeitgeist may not be a substitute for having a runaway blockbuster, its perfectly understandable that rival studios would want to capitalize on that potential free publicity. The Mouse House had already doubled down on this gamble, too, with a sequel reboot to The Rocketeer starring a young woman of color also now in the earliest developmental stages.

Many of Ghostbusters most ardent critics charged the film with merely being shameless gimmickry, which, while not entirely incorrect, is still pretty rich. The ironic thing is that the trolls railing against the picture were the same culture-consumers that cleared the way for the most common Hollywood gimmick of the last decade: the Gritty Reboot. Jolted into action by Christopher Nolans staggeringly successful trilogy of grown-up Batman movies, studios rushed to exhume the graves of their most beloved creative properties and reanimate them for a younger, edgier crowd. Some of these efforts, it bears mentioning, have been solid Nolans films connected because they were a little smarter and more well-structured than the average studio film, and the recent toughened-upPlanet of the Apes franchise is worth a look too. But the majority of them have mistaken humorlessness for maturity. (The critical dogpile on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justicecurrently stands as the Gritty Reboots nadir.)

A small subgenre emerged, unified by its corpse-tone color palette, close-up shots of intense staring, and standard-issue anguished protagonists coping with internal conflict. This method of rejuvenating old properties was simple and easy to reproduce, the essence of a good gimmick, and so naturally these Gritty Reboots started popping up everywhere in short order. Survey the movies hyped at San Diego Comic-Con last month: fresh coats of paint applied to the usual cast of superheroes, anotherBlair Witch, new Kings Arthur and Kong. (The latter of which is scheduled do battle with new Godzilla in a future project.) Universal has laid track for a whole interconnected universe of Gritty Reboots built around their classic roster of monsters, and DCs slate of features to come stretches out years into the future. The process that we might call grit-ification became the default move for executives hoping to goose an aging franchise with some modern appeal.

Three movies in, the gender-flip still has a long way to go before reaching the ubiquity of the grit-wave, but they do share the quality of gimmickry and thats not necessarily a negative thing. A gimmick, by definition, is nothing more than a novel strategy designed to catch attention and increase mass appeal. The gender-flip could supplant the Gritty Reboot as the hot new gimmick, but until it overstays its welcome, this move could be a pretty solid strategy. Reversing the gender dynamic in a film like Splash changes the whole fabric of the movie, converting a familiar man-cultivates-naive-woman narrative into something new. If this is creative bankruptcy, atleast this specific type leaves more room for little sparks of originality, and the sum total of its effects in the industry is undeniably positive. (Women getting work is women getting work, after all.)

At our most cynical, were all guilty of grumbling about how Hollywood insists on making the same movies over and over again, but all gimmicks are not created equal. If the gender-flip movement grows at the same rate as the self-serious revivals currently sweeping cineplexes like a dark-grey plague, audiences will eventually grow tired. Studios will get wise and come up with a new conceptual twist for a change of pace, continuing the cycle thats gotten the film industry this far. And by the time that happens, therell be a lot more women headlining major big-budget releases. Hollywood insists on picking through its 30-year-old leftovers, fine they still have the ability make the industry a better place to work while they do it. And if that means giving Kristen Wiig a proton pack and slapping a fishtail on Channing Tatum, so be it.

See a Clip From Arcade Fires Reflektor Tapes Movie

Two years after they released Reflektor, Arcade Fire will release a feature film called The Reflektor Tapes into movie theaters on September 24th. Khalil Joseph, who won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2013 for his trippy Flying Lotus video Until the Quiet Comes, helmed the picture. The band has put out a trailer for the film and promised to posttheater and ticketing informationin the near future.

The 45-second clip, streaming below, contains footage of the band performing in Haiti and in front of crowds worldwide and talking about what their music means to them. The band also released an eight-minute look at the film, focusing on the song Porno, which is streaming above.

That Porno clip shows footage of the musicians jamming and more scenes from their Haiti visit, all with artsy picture-in-picture juxtaposition. When the song fizzles out at around the five-minute mark, the film blendssounds from a drumming jam with images of an empty arena; the band members wearing giant papier-mch heads and a man in a mirror suit before transitioning into even more experimental territory.

A.V. Club reports that Joseph screened the film for students at the California Institute for the Arts last fall.

In other Arcade Fire news, the groups Win Butler and Rgine Chassagne announced in May that they were planning on opening up a Haitian restaurant called Agrikol in Montreal. Two months earlier, the couple announced that they had invested in Jay Zs streaming service Tidal, along with a smattering of other chart-topping pop stars. They stood next to Beyonc for the announcement.

Razzing the Years Worst Movies

Welcome to the Razzies, an organization founded in 1980 by John Wilson to mete out punishment to the movies that punished us. On Feb. 23rd, the day before the Oscars, the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation will once again stick it big time to Hollywoods most egregious suckfests. The Razzie trophy aptly features a cluster of balls. As you know, the wussy Oscar statuette has no balls. Razzie winners rarely show up to accept their trophy, except for Tom Green who admirably appeared in 2002 with five feet of his own red carpet to accept his due for Freddy Got Fingered.

What I admire most about the Razzies Im a long time voting member is that the award only goes to the gloriously godawful. A movie is only Razzie worthy when its intrinsic worthlessness sinks to levels so low that the pain of watching it turns to pleasure.

You know what Im saying. Websters defines the slang for raspberry as a sound of derision or contempt, made by expelling air forcibly so as to vibrate the tongue between the lips. So put your lips together and blow as we eyeball a few of this years nominees. By all means, feel free to add some of your own if you think a genuine baddie got away.

WORST PICTURE

Bratz

Daddy Day Camp

I Know Who Killed Me

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry

Norbit

Norbit easily takes the racist, sexist cake for comedy. But Id like to see a few of Hollywoods pompous Iraq war movies take a hit, especially Rendition.

WORST DIRECTOR

Dennis Dugan I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK & LARRY

Roland Joffe CAPTIVITY

Brian Robbins NORBIT

Fred Savage DADDY DAY CAMP

Chris Siverston I KNOW WHO KILLED ME

Since Roland Joffe once flew high as the director of The Killing Fields and The Mission, he ought to be forced to grovel for Captivity, a chunk of torture porn thats not even as honest as the Saw franchise. By that standard, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, The Wonder Boys) also took a fall with Lucky You.

WORST ACTOR

Nicolas Cage

GHOST RIDER, NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS and NEXT

Jim Carrey

THE NUMBER 23

Cuba Gooding, Jr.

DADDY DAY CAMP and NORBIT

Eddie Murphy (as Norbit)

NORBIT

Adam Sandler

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK & LARRY

Worthy nominees all. Eddie Murphy was so offensively bad in each of the three roles he played in Norbit that it probably cost him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar last year for Dreamgirls. Here hes only nominated for his role as the title character (hes much worse in drag), so Id give the prize to Nic Cage for sleepwalking through three films. And how about a write-in vote for Hayden Christensen in Awake and an early nod for next year for taking all the jump out of Jumper?

WORST ACTRESS

Jessica Alba

AWAKE, FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER and GOOD LUCK CHUCK

Logan Browning, Janel Parrish, Nathalia Ramos & Skyler Shaye (A Four-for-One Deal!)

BRATZ

Elisha Cuthbert

CAPTIVITY

Diane Keaton

BECAUSE I SAID SO

Lindsay Lohan (as Aubrey)

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME

Lindsay Lohan (as Dakota)

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME

Lohan wins in a walk, especially as Dakota the stripper. But wheres Hllary Swank for following two Oscar wins with The Reaping and P.S. I Love You? Sheesh.

WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Orlando Bloom

PIRATES OF THE CAROB-BEAN: AT WITS END

Kevin James

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK & LARRY

Eddie Murphy (as Mr. Wong)

NORBIT

Rob Schneider

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK & LARRY

Jon Voight

BRATZ, NATIONAL TREASURE 2, SEPTEMBER DAWN and TRANSFORMERS

Ill go with Orlando Bloon who is bland enough to make Hayden Christensen look exciting. My write-in vote goes to the excruciatingly unfunny Robin Williams in License to Wed.

WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Jessica Biel

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK & LARRY and NEXT

Carmen Electra

EPIC MOVIE

Eddie Murphy (as Rasputia)

NORBIT

Julia Ormond

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME

Nicolette Sheridan

CODE NAME: THE CLEANER

Its here, in his drag fatsuit, that Eddie Murphy brings down womankind and his own career. Crass, thy name is Eddie M as Rasputia. Question: Why the free ride for Nicole Kidman in The Golden Compass, her face frozen into a botoxed version of Darth Vader?

WORST PREQUEL OR SEQUEL

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

Daddy Day Camp

Evan Almighty

Hannibal Rising

Hostel: Part II

All bad, yes, but the third Pirates of the Caribbean showed just how low talent would sink for a paycheck, and Rush Hour 3 and Shrek the Third werent far behind.

Good luck, Razzie well all be waiting next week to see who you razz the most?

Underworld: Blood Wars Review: Why Wont This Vampire Franchise Die Already?

The new movie year has just gifted us with its first indisputable film fiasco. Dont you just love January the official burial ground for Hollywood cinematic sins against art and entertainment. OK, my expectations were low for Underworld: Blood Wars. But scraping bottom would be a step up for this fifth chapter in the series, which inexplicably retains a loyal box-office following. Go figure. It was less than a year ago that Kate Beckinsale was giving the performance of her career in Whit Stillmans gorgeously literate Love & Friendship. Now the British actress is back in a vampire series so dull-witted and trite that it might explain the blank stare she uses here in place of a performance. Look, even beautiful, talented actresses need paychecks.

For those who know nothing of the Underworld universe (and how I envy you!), Beckinsale looking hot as ever in shiny black leather again plays Selene, a vampire Death Dealer, a.k.a. the fighting elite among bloodsuckers. Shes still caught in the middle of the blood wars between vampires and lycans (wolves). Tobias Menzies plays Marius, the new leader of the wolf pack and a dude so EVIL he wants to kidnap Selenes daughter for his own power-mad purposes. Luckily, our heroine still has David (Theo James), from the last film, on her side. Its too bad no one on the creative team sided with the audience. Dont we deserve more than incompetent acting, an incoherent plot and CGI so bad it looks like your Uncle Harry shot it with his relic of a smartphone?

I had a bit of hope, what with Outlanders Anna Foerster in the directors seat. But Foerster, like everyone else In this surprise-free enterprise, has been hired to deliver banal business as usual. At that, they succeed. Like the four franchise fillers that preceded it, Underworld: Blood Wars is undoubtedly impervious to bad reviews. What it needs is a stake through the heart.

Project X

Most teen flicks just fake being fueled by anarchy. But the gut-bustingly funny Project X is the real deal. Its raunchy, reckless and ready to party. Whats not to like? Unless youre one of those stickers for form and content. Then go watch this years Oscar nominees. Project X is an unholy mess that reaches down to the age-irrelevant drive in all of us to just get shitfaced and run amok, in this case with the help of booze, pot, Ecstasy, a bevy of hot bitches, a crotch-punching midget and a flamethrower. The Pasadena house party at the center of this free-for-all is being thrown by Thomas Kub (a most excellent Thomas Mann) a loser ofa high school senior desperate to be cool and de-virginized on his 17th birthday. Its the oldest story in the teen playbook, and screenwriters Matt Drake and Michael Bacall dont fix whats not broken. Goaded on by his buds Costa (Oliver Cooper), J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown) and Dax (Dax Flame), Thomas goes rogue and throws a bash when his trusting parents leave the nest for a weekend. Things quickly pass freakout when the invites go viral and 50 guests swell to 1500. And we see it all through the woozy lens of Daxs digicam, which doesnt miss a topless boob or a stunt that might land a Mercedes in a swimming pool. Project X is a shitfaced Paranormal Activity. As filmmaking, its a disaster. As a party movie that puts its own spin on what Animal House started, its just the movie Snooki can show to her kids. No moralizing allowed. Music video director Nima Nourizadeh makes his feature debut with Project X. But the defining sensibility behind the film is clearly producer Todd Phillips, best known for his two Hangover films, but given props in these parts as far back as 2000s Road Trip. The movie has all the heft of a tweet,but Philips has made it look pimp and, until the police end the party, Project X really is a riot.

Matthew McConaughey on True Detective, His Pal Woody, McConaissance

Last night, for the first time in several months, Matthew McConaughey wasnt at home watching his favorite show on TV: HBOs True Detective, in which he stars as the brilliant but deeply troubled homicide cop Rustin Rust Cohle. Im doing what the publics doing, he says. I received all eight episodes, but I said, You know what? Im gonna check them out each Sunday night and then sit on each episode for a week. Ive found myself going back and watching each one of them about three times during the week and fucking really enjoying it.

The Dark Thrills of True Detective

He had a pretty good reason for missing the seventh episode: McConaughey was at the Academy Awards, where he got called dirty-pretty by Ellen DeGeneres, flirted with Kim Novak as they presented the animated movie awards and, ultimately, scored the Best Actor statue himself for Dallas Buyers Club. Congratulations! McConaugheyhas confirmed he wont return to the show for Season Two, but gamely answered our questions about Season One:

How does Rustin Cohle fit into the great, acclaimed work youve been doing for the last couple of years?
Oh yeah.Russtiiiinnn Cohhhhlllle.Ha ha! You know, Ive been able to find such clearly identifiable characters, whether its Mark Hanna in Wolf of Wall Street or Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club. Look at Dallas in Magic Mike and Joe in Killer Joe these are characters with such clear obsessions. Ive said this before, but thats what Ive been choosing: Somebody who I could get drunk on their obsessions. Characters that live on the fringe theyre all a little bit on the outskirts of civilization. I find a certain ownership and freedom in that.

Hows True Detective spinning out for you? Does it feel different than it felt when you were shooting it?
No, Im very impressed with it. What did I know going in? I loved the writing. I read the first two episodes, and I said, If you guys will let me be Cohle, Im in. I was like, Jeez, I cant wait to hear what comes out of this fucking guys mouth on the page. Plus I was a fan of [True Detective director] Cary FukunagasSin Nombre. And the fact that wed be shooting film boy, that really shows.

Maybe even more than in Dallas Buyers Club, your body language and your cadences feel so transformed from the very deliberate, sober Cohle of 1995 to the shattered Cohle of 2012 and this wild, undercover narcotics officer that Cohle plays, who goes by the name Crash.
I remember making some choices about how to play 1995 Cohle to really underplay it and keep things boiling underneath. And I remember at about week five or six, getting a little anxious. Wooh, do I need to do more? Do I need to do something different? Is this gonna be boring? But I was like, Trustthe 2012 Cohle. Trust that Crash is coming and allow there to be a dynamic in there, McConaughey. Looking at the work now, Im glad I didnt try to give Cohle more colors in 95.

How much Cohle is there in showrunner/creator Nic Pizzolatto, or vice versa?
Well I dont know. Nics not Cohle but Nic sure as hell knows Cohle, probably the best out of all the characters. Theres also parts of me in there, I think. What I love about Cohle is everything he says is true. Like it or not. He cant suffer fools, and to get through everyday life, you have to suffer fools. Cohle cant do that. No illusions. Absolutely not.

You need illusions to get through life.
Most people need them to get by. But Nic doesnt suffer fools either; thats one of the reasons I really like the guy. Its not about manners and grace. Thats part of where he and I get along, because we can be brutally honest, and we dont think its brutal. You know what I mean? Were just like, Oh thanks, I know where you stand, you know where I stand.

Do you see yourself working with Nic in the future?
Yeah. I sure do. Nic and I have certain similar sensibilities. The way he writes roles that I would like, with singular voices and perspectives and their own personal politics. I want to do more with him. Im absolutely sure.

When they first approached you about the show, Nic was thinking of you for the part of Cohles partner, Martin Hart. But once you were cast as Cohle, you suggested Woody Harrelson for that part. What was it like having him as the guy that you went through this thing with?
Woody and I have always done comedy together. As Woody puts it: He hits the ball to me, I hit it back harder, he hits it back harder than I hit it to him, and we volley back and forth. Thats part of the beauty of us, and thats part of the beauty of our friendship. But this is about opposition. This is about not being on each others frequency.

But even though its such a dark show, the odd couple nature of your relationship produces some very funny moments.
I didnt know we were going to get that much humor out of it. Some people go, Whats so damn funny? I go, I dont know, man. Maybe its my sense of humor. I find how these two go back and forth with each other hilarious.

You guys were all together down there, living in New Orleans and shooting along the coast for almost six months. What was it like?
It was an endurance test. It was long. We shot 450 pages in six months. And Im not the biggest, everyone-go-hook-up-after-work guy. I dont go out on school nights.

So it wasnt Fast Times with Woody and Matthew in New Orleans?
Im not much into that. Ive got a family; Woodys got a family.

But Nic did mention one heavy tequila night you guys had early on.
Well, thats what I was saying earlier about Nic, about how he and I could share the brutal truth. We said some things to each other that night that most people would wake up the next day and go, I think I completely severed my relationship with that other person. But I was like, What a great night! And he was the same way. We flipped off into the fourth dimension and then let off a lot of steam, let out a lot of things.

Have you done it again since?
Yeah, weve done it a couple of times since. I always like a good night with Nic, and even Woody sometimes, where you want to make sure you dont really have anything to do the next day. Or maybe even the next day after.