Movies Monday!

It’s with a heavy heart that we bring you this week’s Movies Monday. What should have been one of the cinematic highlights of the year, the Dark Knight Rises launch, was overshadowed by the terrible goings-on in Denver. Our thoughts are with all those affected.
 
A film we’re bracing at the bit to see is End Of Watch, a kick-ass cop drama from the makers of Training Day.
 
“End Of Watch stars Academy Award-nominee Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña as young police officers Taylor and Zavala as they patrol the city’s meanest streets of south central Los Angeles,” we’re told. “Giving the story a gripping, first-person immediacy, the action unfolds through footage from the handheld HD cameras of the police officers, gang members, surveillance cameras, and citizens caught in the line of fire to create a riveting portrait of the city’s most dangerous corners, the cops who risk their lives there every day, and the price they and their families are forced to pay.”
Gimmicky or the closest Hollywood has come to giving us the real LAPD deal? Decide yourself when it drops on September 28.
 

 
 
Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Antje Traue, Ayelet Zurer, Christopher Meloni and Russell Crowe are the seriously heavyweight cast in Man Of Steel, the new Superman romp which while not out until June 2013 has just got the teaser trailer treatment. To be honest, we're a little underwhelmed...
 

 
  Video: Man Of Steel Trailer
 

 
 
The winner of a Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear, Sister is a beautifully shot coming of age tale, which will hopefully get an art house run-out here.
 
“With his sister drifting in and out of jobs and relationships, 12-year-old Simon takes on the responsibility of providing for the two of them,” reads the synopsis.  Every day, he takes the lift up to the opulent ski world above, stealing equipment from rich tourists to resell to the local kids down in the valley. He is able to keep their little family afloat with his small-time hustles and his sister is thankful for the money he brings in. But, when Simon partners with a crooked British seasonal worker, he begins to lose his boundaries, affecting his relationship with his sister and plummeting him into dangerous territory.
 
 

 
 
Another big festival favourite is The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye, a documentary account of the painful plastic surgery Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV man Genesis P. Orridge and his wife have undergone in order to create a new gender.
Not for the feint-hearted, but absolutely fascinating.
 

 
Other documentaries piquing Movies Monday’s interest are Ambassador and Wild Horse, Wild Ride.
The first is a Borat-style romp, which finds Danish director Mads Brugger going undercover in Central Africa as a faux-diplomat searching for blood diamonds while the latter “tells the story of the Extreme Mustang Makeover Challenge, an annual contest that dares 100 people to each tame a totally wild mustang in order to get it adopted into a better life beyond federal corrals. Eventually all will converge in Fort Worth, Texas, to compete against each other and offer the horses up for adoption at an auction in which the trainers, if they wish to keep their horses, must bid against the public.”
 

 

 
"Enjoy" is possibly not the right word, but we're certainly impressed with our first sighting of Fat Kid Rules The World, the big screen adaptation of KL Going’s 2003 novel about suicidal 296-pound teen Troy Billings. Troy's salvation eventually lies in him being asked by the local guitar hero to join his Nirvana-esque band. A free tune from the soundtrack can be found at http://tuggthefatkid.comwhere they're also mounting a "bring Fat Kid Rules The World to your town" campaign.

The reviews have all been rave for The Tall Man, a psychological horror starring Jessica Biel who, busy lady, is also in Total Recall and Playing The Field this year and plays Viper in 2013's eagerly-awaited The Wolverine.
Children have been vanishing; abducted by a mysterious entity the townspeople call ‘The Tall Man’ who’s not to be confused with the spooky Phantasm mortician of the same name. Biel’s character, Julia, is sceptical until her son becomes his latest victim…
 
 

 
Crazy Heart fans will adore The Fall, a Clare Bowen and Powers Boothe co-starring look at how morals go out of the window when Nashville fame and fortune is at stake.
 
“Chart-topping Rayna James is a country legend who’s had a career any singer would envy, though lately her popularity is starting to wane. Fans still line up to get her autograph, but she’s not packing the arenas like she used to. Rayna’s record label thinks a concert tour, opening for up-and-comer Juliette Barnes, the young and sexy future of country music, is just what Rayna needs. But scheming Juliette can’t wait to steal Rayna’s spotlight. Sharing a stage with that disrespectful, untalented, little vixen is the last thing Rayna wants to do, which sets up a power struggle for popularity.”
 

 
To the small screen now and America’s indifference to anything not made in their own back yard – Steve Van Zandt addresses the subject in the new Hot Press – means that CBS have turned the BBC’s Sherlock into Elementary.
Starring Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes and Lucy Liu as a gender-swap Watson, the action is set, natch, in New York and also benefits from the talents of Aidan Quinn.
 
 

 
 
Sticking with what the major US networks have in store for us this autumn, ABC have lavished a fortune on new military drama series, Last Resort.
Created by Shawn Ryan of The Shield and The Chicago Code fame, it tells the story of a submarine crew who set up their own sovereign island state after refusing to nuke Pakistan. Far-fetched but apparently highly watchable.
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
Bringing the curtain down on this week’s Movies Monday is the Dum Dum Girls-soundtracked trailer for Bret Easton Ellis’ The Canyons.
We say “trailer” but it’s actually a random montage of LA images, which director Paul Schrader has assembled to give people “a flavour” of the 2013 film, which star Lindsay Lohan and porn actor James Deen who enjoyed his first stint in rehab while still at Junior (very) High.
 

 
Incidentally, Bret Easton Ellis is a must-follow on Twitter if you want his random – and very entertaining – thoughts on life, love and Stanley Kubrick.

Remember that Bollywood movie they filmed last year in Dublin? Well, the first Ek Tha Tiger trailer has just surfaced on YouTube and most entertaining it looks too with Trinity College, Kilkenny GAA shirts and leprechaun hats all making for, ahem, a highly authentic Irish feel.

Starring two of the biggest Bollywood box-office attractions around, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, it hits Indian screens on August 15 with a UK – and possibly Irish – release to follow.

Okay, we're out of here for another week. Thoughts, opinions and other Movies Monday-related stuff and nonsense should be sent to [email protected]