One hundred and eighty-five years after Hans Christian Andersen first penned his fairy tale The Little Mermaid, the most famous fish out of water story continues to charm readers of all ages. Countless editions of Andersen’s famous story, along with his other famous works, have been printed and reprinted, and adapted for the small screen and big screen with the latest–a live-action version–coming from Disney by the end of the year, incorporating songs from the studio’s 1989 version. But if you haven’t read the original fairy tale lately–or at all–you may be surprised to learn how much closer the 1984 live-action movie Splash was to the original. With the new film on its way, what better time to revisit the original, and we’ve found an incredible new, lavishly illustrated edition from designers MinaLima that makes a great storybook to read to kids, full of interactive elements. Check out a preview ofThe Little Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales for borg readers below, along with some details of what you’ll find inside, including some important fairy tales everyone, of every age, should know.
Gunpowder Milkshake is a title that reminds me of ice cream companies referring to their products as “concretes.” If your product doesn’t sound appetizing, how do you expect to get anyone to try it? If it’s a movie, maybe you need to hire a cast that includes Karen Gillan, Carla Gugino, Lena Headey, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, and Paul Giamatti. For those that can get past the goofy title, the trailer for StudioCanal’s new in-your-face action romp looks like fun: a mix of John Wick, Kingsman, Kill Bill, and The Librarians, complete with an R rating for violence.
So many badass women performers, we’re hoping it takes up several spots in our annual kick-ass heroines list.
It’s not quite Tarantino style, but it has the lighting and over-the-top camera work that reminds us of Atomic Blonde,Hotel Artemis, and the silly/sweet vibe of Baby Driver–all good movies to be compared to. And it features the young co-star of My Spy, Chloe Coleman.
Check out the trailer below for the summer action flick, Gunpowder Milkshake.
The price of knowledge is often great and grim. If you like your historical biopics about scientific discoveries of the inspiring and motivational variety, Amazon Studios and Studiocanal’s latest filmRadioactive, a barely recognizable adaptation of the Lauren Redniss graphic novel, Radioactive: Marie & PierreCurie: ATale ofLove and Fallout,may not be for you. Yet exceptional performances by Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, Jack Reacher, Die Another Day) as Maria Skłodowska aka Madame Marie Curie and Anya Taylor-Joy (Emma, Split, The New Mutants) as her daughter Iréne, and a dearth of new films this summer, will likely make this 2018 production worth your time. It arrived in the U.S. for the first time this week streaming on Amazon Prime.
Thirty-eight years ago in 1980 I saw my first horror movie in the theater, John Carpenter’s The Fog. Referred to as “the most beautifully shot of all John Carpenter films,” “a better Halloween movie than the slasher that bears the holiday’s name,” “an incredibly atmospheric horror flick,” and “a horror classic,” The Fog is returning to theaters in time for Halloween. It’s distributor, Rialto Pictures, contacted borg.com with the below trailer for the film’s new 4K restoration edition from Studiocanal. This is the first restoration for John Carpenter’s first follow-up to the mega-hit 1970s slasher flick, Halloween.
“Out of theatrical release for years due to faded, unplayable prints, The Fog can now be viewed again as it was intended, with the restoration of its breathtaking color cinematography by Dean Cundey (Escape From New York, the Back To The Future series, Apollo 13, Romancing The Stone), who deftly captured both the daylight beauty of the Point Reyes shore and the ghostly goings-on in the dark, eerie night,” according to the publicist for Rialto.
The movie stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau in her first feature film, Tom Atkins, Hal Holbrook, and Janet Leigh(star of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Curtis’s mother), plus John Houseman and familiar Carpenter stock actor John “Buck” Flower. The beautiful seaside town of Antonio Bay is visited by a large fog bank on the anniversary of the town’s founding. Two women in the town, a radio DJ stationed at the lighthouse (Barbeau) and a drifter (Curtis), try to escape what lies within the fog as the town preacher learns the terrible secret behind the fog’s appearance.
The release coincides with the release of the new Halloween reboot movie’s release, also starring Jamie Lee Curtis (a great excuse for Alamo Drafthouse theaters to schedule a double feature?). Check out this trailer for the 4K restoration of The Fog:
A new print edition of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel The Secret Garden is coming to bookstores next month, and its artistry and design could stand as the definitive version–a storybook that could be a new favorite for the next generation of readers. Originally published in serial form for both adults and children in 1910, Burnett’s classic book of children forced to grow up in difficult times and the value of friendship to their growth was initially not so well-received. Burnett would be better known for her novels Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Little Princess even years past her death, but over time The Secret Garden flourished to become a beloved favorite, frequently ranked high on British and American reading lists, including those of School Library Journal, the U.S. National Education Association, and the BBC. The novel made its way into the public domain, and has been the subject of countless print editions, as well as plays, musicals, television features, and theatrical films. Actors Dean Stockwell, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Glynis Johns, and Honor Blackman have all found roles in various adaptations of the book. And soon another big-screen adaptation is coming your way from StudioCanal starring Colin Firth and Julie Walters.
Design studio MinaLima has partnered with Harper Design to release a truly beautiful version of The Secret Garden incorporating three-dimensional elements and hundreds of pieces of colorful line art and decorations. A garden’s worth of vibrant flowers hug the footer numbers at the bottom of each page, colorful end papers adorn each new chapter, the off-white pages have an antiqued appearance, each chapter finds an old-fashioned stylized introductory letter, and pop-up images emphasize story elements. It even includes a traditional paper doll, and cleverly folded paper gardens. The 384-page hardcover features a gilded, textured cover, and tucked throughout the book are symbols and images found in Burnett’s sumptuous text. The fifth in a series of children’s classics illustrated by MinaLima, includingPeter Pan, The Jungle Book, The Beauty and the Beast, andThe Little Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales,The Secret Garden is the pinnacle of these accurately self-described “lavishly illustrated” editions, finding a story that doesn’t require illustrations, but is enhanced so well by MinaLima’s application of them. At two points in the story, letters are received via post by key characters, and instead of merely printing them in text as found in the original novel, the illustrators include two actual letters, designed as replicas, neatly folded just as you would have found real letters in the late 19th century, ready for readers to pull out and read as they move through the story. That tactile experience will move readers young and old.
The style of artwork is suited to the story, combining British and Indian influences the young lead character Mary Lennox would have been familiar with, plus ink color choices and wallpapers similarly found in her era. In this tale, Mary, an initially angry, “quite contrary” daughter of a British couple living in India that dies of cholera, finds herself nearly abandoned at a widowed uncle’s giant mansion back in England. There she discovers the widower’s abandoned garden, and her relationships with three young people, an older girl and two boys, allow her to grow and move beyond her past.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Nick Park is back with his next entry in Aardman Animations’ ingenious world of classic stop-motion animation. The family comedy Early Man takes audiences back to the city of Manchester, England, at the dawn of the Bronze Age. In this slapstick look at history, cave men created football (American soccer) from a fallen meteorite. The sport fell out of favor, but was picked up again and embraced in the early Bronze Age by a city of moderners, but the cave men are still around and have one chance to save their world if they can only beat the Bronze Age team at the game. Unfortunately it’s a group of bumbling early humans who must learn the sport and take on a group of arrogant professional players. But it’s in the genes of the cave men, so amid a non-stop volley of sports metaphors, tropes, and jokes, the cave men have a go at it.
Leading the team and the story is Dug, voiced by Eddie Redmayne (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), along with his companion, an eager early-era wild boar named Hognob, voiced by the film’s director Nick Park. The duo make for a solid homage, albeit a prehistoric incarnation, of Park’s famous Wallace & Gromit. The villain in the tale is Bronze Age leader Lord Nooth, lover and hoarder of all things bronze, especially bronze coins. He’s voiced by a nearly unrecognizable Tom Hiddleston (Thor: Ragnarok) playing an over-the-top, snooty opportunist in full-on Monty Python comedy style. Game of Thrones and Doctor Who actor Maisie Williams offers her own voice acting talent as Dug’s new friend Goona, and Timothy Spall (Harry Potter series, Alice in Wonderland, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams) is Dug’s good-natured and encouraging leader, the firmly about the old ways Chief Bobnar.
Little kids will laugh at the silliness of the characters and adult U.S. anglophiles will understand most, but probably not all, of the British comedic references. And there are many. Soccer fans will pick up on references to the sport, to Manchester United, zebra crossings, and puns that will work for fans of any sport. Want to see why Stonehenge was built? Ever seen the genesis of the electric razor? The film has already opened to positive reviews in the United Kingdom, but does not arrive in theaters in the States until later this week.
You still have 12 days to get in on what has become a fully funded Kickstarter campaign for a new tabletop roleplaying game. Half wargame, half tactics game, The Terminator: The Official Board Game is an asymmetrical strategy game in the making for 2-5 players played across two game boards: one in 1984 and one in 2029. It’s all based on the original 1984 science fiction classic, James Cameron film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
One player takes control of all of Skynet’s forces, including Hunter Killer machines and Terminator cyborgs. The rest of the players take the role of the human resistance, like Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, struggling against the impossible odds of the machine uprising. Each of the two game boards play differently: 2029 focuses on light troop and resource management in a lopsided battle for dominance. 1984 focuses on personal missions with high stakes and intense pacing. Missions arise through the course of gameplay, and have players make decisions in 1984 that will affect the future, erasing and adding components in real time. You can download and try your own paper version of the game now, including game boards, game cards, tokens, and rules at this link. Take a look at a full half hour video of gameplay below.
In well under a month since the Kickstarter began, the crowd-funding campaign was full funded. A wide variety of game purchase options remain available, as well as great perks for donors. Check out all the options at the The Terminator: The Official Board Gamehere.
Timothy Hutton. Brian Dennehy. Christopher Eccleston. Paul Bettany. Neal McDonough. Tom Hardy. David Thewlis. Tara Fitzgerald. Robert Knepper. Chazz Palminteri.
That’s a pretty impressive roster of actors taking to mobster stories this year, in only two productions. One a television series, the other a big screen release. What draws us to gangster stories anyway? Even before the film classics The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Hollywood was pumping out–and audiences were devouring–movies about gangsters back to black and white pictures starring screen legends like James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. More recent, modern classics like Goodfellas and Donnie Brasco have defined what we all look for in a mob story. Coming 2015 releases continue to look at this popular sub-genre.
First up is Public Morals, an in-your-face, no-holds-barred series showing all the ugliness of a 1960s New York City, and a police division with corrupt a corrupt force led by show creator and star Edward Burns. Public Morals is TNT’s latest effort to produce a show to compete with the sex and violence you’d find on HBO or Showtime.
You’ll find top-notch genre actors Hutton, Dennehy, McDonough, and Knepper on this series.
Next up is a British movie, Legend, which tells the true story of twin brother mobsters Reggie and Ronald Kray, played by The Dark Knight Rises and Mad Max: Fury Road’s Tom Hardy.
Henry V is probably the best of William Shakespeare’s dramas adapted for film, garnering for director and lead actor Kenneth Branagh two Oscar nominations. For the bloodiest of Shakespeare’s plays, Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds, X-Men franchise, Prometheus, Jonah Hex) will take the crown as the title character in this year’s Studiocanal production of Macbeth. Oscar winner Marion Cotillard (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception) will take on the prized role of Lady Macbeth.
From the first trailer released for the latest Macbeth, we can see plenty that may indicate this film is in the same league as Branagh’s film. Plenty of artistry in the cinematography and costumes, and indications that some real effort went into the battle scenes. And isn’t Fassbender a dead ringer for Richard Harris in Camelot?
Other familiar actors featured in the film include David Thewlis (Timeline, the Harry Potter franchise, RED 2, DragonHeart), Paddy Considine (Hot Fuzz, The Bourne Ultimatum, The World’s End), Elizabeth Debicki (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), and David Hayman (Shetland, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit).
Here’s the first trailer for director Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth:
