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Will the world end in fire or in ice? And when it does, will the lowly cockroach inherit the earth? The end of days is one thing Hollywood knows how to do really well -- at least sometimes. With Knowing releasing this week -- and another swarm of apocalyptically themed movies just over the horizon -- we thought it high time to take stock of the many tried-and-true horsemen of the apocalypse.
Posted 03.19.09 by reelz -
DeadlineHollywood reports that Natalie Portman may possibly join the cast of Thor, likely in the role of Sif, Thor's wife.
Who would play opposite Portman as Thor is still undecided, and it looks like rumored Kenneth Branagh favorite Alexander Skarsgård has some competition. Charlie Hunnam (F/X's Sons of Anarchy), Tom Hiddleston (Branagh's co-star from in the Masterpiece series Wallander), Liam Hemsworth (Knowing), and Danish actor Joel Kinnaman (Danish movies) are all being tested for the movie. Most of the actors are unknown because, according to a source, there is a "powerful lobby" that wants an unknown cast as Thor.
There's even less time for casting decisions, as Thor's release date has been changed again, this time to May 20, 2011, two weeks after Spider-Man 4.
Posted 03.17.09 by Ryan -
Three new clips from Knowing have just been released, giving us a more detailed look at the movie's really spectacular subway and plane crash sequences, as well as some tension-building scenes in which the Nicolas Cage character begins puzzling out the horror behind the mysterious numbers. The train wreck is the real standout here. Another clip of it was released earlier, but that one was more focused on Cage's futile attempts to limit the damage. This time it's all about the carnage and mayhem. In a recent interview with SciFi Wire, director Alex Proyas talked about the inspiration behind the sequence:
So what we decided to do is we had the train actually leap the tracks and go sliding across the subway [platform], and I just ... find that, you know, carnage in crowded places is one of the most horrific things you can possibly imagine, because there's nowhere to go. So this whole notion that a train carriage at a hundred miles an hour is ... skidding across a platform, and you've got nowhere to run, and you're going to get mowed down, is a pretty brutal concept.
Next time you stand on a crowded subway platform, it's definitely going to have you keeping your eye out for a quick exit strategy. Watch:
Posted 02.27.09 by reelz -
The idea that the end is indeed nigh has become a fixture of the contemporary zeitgeist and one that filmmakers are exploiting to the hilt in upcoming movies from Terminator Salvation to 2012 to Knowing. The director of Knowing, Alex Proyas, recently sat down with the crew of io9 and talked a bit about what made his take on the coming apocalypse different. The basic premise, he says, is "like an urban myth," that someone could have buried information, "like a message in a bottle," with a code that predicts disasters with total accuracy. Laid down in the 1950s and dug up in the present day, the time capsule device also allowed him to play with the idea that the future isn't what it used to be. Unlike the 1950s, where the specter of nuclear armageddon crowded out all other threats, he says, "Now, annihilation could come from so many different directions, it's hard to know which specter of destruction to be scared of." There was also a naive optimism about the future in the '50s that he brings out in a scene where the time capsule is being buried with everyone "talking brightly about the promise of a shining future, with the proverbial flying cars and personal rocket ships." We all know how that turned out.
Posted 01.30.09 by reelz -
Is Earth's number up?
A provocative new poster for Alex Proyas' apocalyptic thriller Knowing has popped up at Ain't It Cool, teasing a truly ultimate cataclysm, with the Earth itself on fire and disintegrating into numbers from the South Pole up. Assuming it's more than just a very cool promo image, it looks as if star Nicolas Cage really will have his hands full trying to prevent a bit more than your run-of-the-mill preordained apocalyptic disaster. The concept is not totally unprecedented though. It bears more than a passing resemblance to the opening sequence of Showtime's sci-fi series Odyssey 5, in which the earth dramatically explodes before your eyes. Interestingly, in that series too, the main characters, who have been sent back into the past, try to avert a literal planetary destruction about which they are the only ones in the know.
Posted 12.04.08 by reelz