ScreenCrave.com » Richard Kelly

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies With Natalie Portman

Krystal Clark — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:59:46 +0000

Golden Globe winning actress Natalie Portman continues to surprise us with her movie choices. First she signed on to star as the love interest in Thor, and now she’ll co-star in Richard Kelly‘s production of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. We know it sounds crazy but this news is legit, and comes straight from Variety.

Not only will Portman headline Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but she’ll also co-produce with her handsomecharlie production company. The film will expand on the Jane Austen classic by adding a few blood thirty zombies into the mix. It’s based on the reinterpretation of author Seth Grahame-Smith, and tells the timeless story of a woman’s quest for love and independence amid the outbreak of a deadly virus that turns the undead into vicious killers. If that’s not a backdrop for a love story I don’t know what is.

Portman will star as Elizabeth Bennet, a heroine who is distracted from her quest to eradicate the zombie outbreak by the arrival of the arrogant Mr. Darcy. Even though this sounds like an odd move on Portman’s part, you can’t deny the entertainment value this film has to offer. Comedic zombie movies are always fun to watch. The real question here is, who will play Mr. Darcy? What brave soul could take on such a challenge? Do you have any ideas?

What do you think of Portman’s decision to take on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?

The Box: Movie Review

JC — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:53:33 +0000

Based on the classic short story, “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson, writer/director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) brings us The Box, which asks the question, what would you be willing to sacrifice for a million dollars? Between this and The Fourth Kind, this weekend’s box office should empty the pockets of sci-fi fans nation wide.

Check out the review below…

The Players

Director/Writer: Richard Kelly
Cast: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella
Producers: Richard Kelly, Dan Lin

Synopsis:

The year is 1976, and life in the suburbs is about as anti-climactic as feeding a fish. Norma Lewis (Diaz) a teacher at a private high school and her husband Arthur (Marsden) a NASA engineer live an average life with their son, until a lube-job with a hole in his face (Langella) shows up at their doorstep with an intriguing proposition: The Box. Press the button on the box, and you are immediately presented with 1 million dollars – at the expense of 1 human life. The burning question: press it and spend the rest of your life as a guilt-ridden degenerate? This is America, money talks, baby.

The Good:

Concept: “At the heart of ‘The Box’ is moral dilemma” says Richard Kelly. Concurred. The decision at hand for the Lewis family is a tough one – Arthur has been demoted, Norma needs surgery, etc. How often is one million dollars sitting on your kitchen table? A random, unrelated person will die, but your problems are solved. It’s optimistic to assume that the inhabitants of a universe driven by materialism wouldn’t at least mull over the proposition.
Temptation: Norma presses the button only to instantly regret her move. Humans have an indispensable desire for immediate satisfaction that oftentimes breeds impulsive behavior. Sadly, we don’t spend enough time considering the ramifications. The Box is a heightened, but well projected demonstration of this reality – challenging both the film’s characters and the audience with questions of self-sacrifice and redemption.
Structure: The story unravels itself quite inventively. While initially there are a lot of vague scenes and random cutting around, gradually, everything becomes accounted for. Every bit of tape presents a needed piece of information about this mysterious box. Once the story takes off, the rush of suspense and the desire to put the pieces together captures the audience until the credits roll.
Message: If we can’t prioritize the good of mankind before our individual needs, the demise of the human race is right around the corner. Enough said.

The Bad:

Cameron Diaz: I’m constantly asking myself how it is that Diaz tricks casting directors into giving her roles. She barely demonstrated a morsel of honesty in her performance. And her massively exaggerated Southern dialect (while no one else in the cast had more than a subtle twang) deflected all believability. The tears, the quizzical brow, the scowls of horror (!), were all hilarious – so hilarious, in fact, it was easy to forget how many people were dying and how high the steaks actually were. Not good.

Overall:

The Box was not bad, not bad at all. Even for those of us who aren’t sci-fi fans, this movie provokes much thought and definitely had me in a bit of a mental zone for a solid hour after seeing it.

Rating: 8/10

Check out The Box in theaters November 6th!

Photo Gallery:

Trailer:

Comic-Con 2009: Cameron Diaz and James Marsden’s The Box Interview

Mali Elfman — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:01:46 +0000

I recently sat down with the stars of Richard Kelly‘s upcoming thriller, The Box. Cameron Diaz and James Marsden made the trip down to San Diego’s Comic-Con to give the fans and the press some info about their latest film. I learned a lot about their characters, the story, but most importantly I tried to get some dirt on Diaz starring in the Green Hornet! You can see if I was successful when you read my interview after the jump.

Can you talk a little about the story and your character?

JM: Well, life is sort of pretty simple at the beginning of this. They’re just sort of your average American couple and this strange guy shows up and says, ‘Hi, half of my face is gone, but here’s this box. If you press this button someone you don’t know will die and you’ll get a million dollars.’ They’re in a place financially where they could use a million dollars. He’s sort of a scientist and doesn’t believe that this is real but they hypothetically go down and have these discussions, like, ‘Could we do this, in good conscious take out someone else’s life?’ I saw the clip out there. That’s about as far as we can go.

Do you guys go back and forth on the issue?

JM: Yeah, definitely. For Norma, she saw Arlington herself. So she already knows that what she saw was real, that this man had half a face. So at this point it’s already unbelievable if you hear it, but since she’s seen it she knows that it’s real. So it makes her feel that this is a possibility, that what he’s saying is really true. She saw the money herself and he gave her a $100 and he wants to make sure the money is real. He didn’t see him. He doesn’t know how real this is.

What is this box? What is it that happens?

CD: Yeah, and he takes it apart and sees there’s nothing inside of it. He says there’s no way that this box can do what he says it can do. It’s just a box. It’s just a button. There’s nothing inside of it, there’s no transmitter. So they do go back and forth on it a lot but for the sake of moving through you see that there’s a moment where it’s just a button and they don’t really feel, it’s funny because when I think the decision is made in a way I think that Norma just expects it to not be real. It’s like, ‘Okay, maybe nothing will happen and if it happens it’ll all be okay because it’ll be someone we don’t know and someone who probably deserves it. It could be a murderer on death row.’ She’s really just hoping, they’re hoping for the best.

You’ve done a lot of romantic comedy work and straight comedy work before. Is the thriller aspect of this film what attracted you?

CD: Yeah. I think overall, funnily enough, I saw a beautiful love story in this movie. I did like the sort of existential part of this, why people do what they do, where are we coming from, is there a hand that sort of rests over us? Is there somebody judging us? What is it that sort of defines human beings? Can a decision like this really sort of be able – I think it does, but a decision like this because of the whole Arlington thing and his employers, basically it infers that there’s this bigger power that overlooks humanity and says, ‘We’re going to put you through this test and if you fail it we’re going to see if you’re willing to be here, if we’re willing to let you stay here, if you’re worthy of it –it’s the word that I’m looking for – ‘if you’re worthy of staying here.’ It’s sort of like on a day to day basis we make decisions, everyone does, that have repercussions. This decision, in particular, being a moral one is one of those really deep human questions, like, ‘What would I do? Would I really take another humans life? What would I take it for, a million dollars?’ Everyday we push a button. We push a button every single day in some way or another with the decisions that we make on every level, from the food that we eat, to the car that we drive. Every decision we make is pushing a button, and overall, are those decision ultimately going to lead to our demise? Yes. Can they also lead to us flourishing? Yes. It’s a matter of whether we question ourselves on a day to day basis, like, ‘What does this mean? What does this decision really mean?’ That’s what I saw in this film when I first read it.

JM: No more questions like that. She said it all.

What scares you guys? What gives you a really good fright?

CD: I don’t know. Oh, you know what terrifies me? Trailers to horror movies. I just can’t watch them. I hate horror movies. I’m always afraid. I kind of want to look but I’m always afraid that I’m going to look too long and see the one image that I’m not going to be able to get out of my head for at least a week every night before I’m going to bed. That’s the one I just don’t like.

JM: I’ll say that to Richard’s [Kelly] credit, what I love about this film is that it feels like to me a classic Kubrick, Hitchcock, suspenseful get into your head, get under your skin kind of thriller that are few and far between nowadays. That’s what terrifies me. I don’t know if you remember the original ‘Haunting’ but you don’t see anything and what you don’t see is what’s killing you. It’s what’s driving you crazy and is scary. In this day and age I know it’s very popular to show the blood, show the knives and tie people up but to me it’s more the psychological elements that terrify me. I was listening to NPR the other day and they were talking about Raymond Chandler and they said what was scary about some of these great crime dramas wasn’t that someone was bleeding to death on the floor but that he was trying to pick up a paperclip off a table that had a polish to it, as he’s dying, trying to pick this paperclip up and that it was this awful, real moment. That makes no sense, I don’t know. But the point is that it’s the psychological element that terrifies me and that’s what I think really exists strongly in this movie. To me it feels nostalgic to some of those great Hitchcock films. It definitely gives a nod to many of those. So I’m happy to be a part of that.

Cameron, what are you looking forward to doing on ‘The Green Hornet’?

CD: A lot of things. I’m very excited to work with Michel Gondry and with Seth Rogen. I’m just really excited about it.

Do you get to be funny in that, too?

CD: I’ll tell you when it happens.

What kind of charge do you get, Cameron, from being around the fans down here?

CD: Oh, it’s great. My favorite part so far has been the signing of all the posters for the fans that came through. It was so great. Everyone is so kind and so generous. They’re so happy to see us and they’re excited about the film. So it’s nice to be around people who are really positive and excited about the filmmaking process.

Has anyone given you any cool memorabilia?

CD: No, not yet. I’d like to.

New Trailer for The Box

Mali Elfman — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:19:55 +0000

Are you ready for THE BOX! It might not sound scary at first, but don’t worry, it is. From Richard Kelly, the writer and director of Donnie Darko, comes another eerie film about a couple put in an extraordinary circumstance. The film stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a normal suburban husband and wife who get a visit from a man (Frank Langella) who gives them a wooden box.

Check out the trailer below…

Synopsis: A mysterious stranger, delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million with the press of a button. But, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world; someone they don’t know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the cross-hairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity.

Normally I would toss this aside as another run-of-the-mill horror film, but Kelly has been able to deliver great things in the past, so I’m eager to see what he’s come up with. What about you?

Does this film look like a one of a kind film like Donnie Darko? Or another cliched horror film?

The Box hits theatres on October 30th.

ScreenCrave.com » Richard Kelly

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies With Natalie Portman

Related Posts

The Box: Movie Review

The Players

Synopsis:

The Good:

The Bad:

Overall:

Rating: 8/10

Photo Gallery:

Trailer:

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Comic-Con 2009: Cameron Diaz and James Marsden’s The Box Interview

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New Trailer for The Box

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