Greetings
valued Dan's Movie Report readers, I would like to wish you all a
happy New Year. Full disclosure, I have never watched ANY of the
Black Mirror shows prior to this. I come to this interactive film as
a fan of a variety of entertainment. Netflix represents an
opportunity for film makers and content creators the world over to
ply their craft. It is forcing older media to be more creative, and
in 2019 will bring the biggest blockbuster ever for Scorcese.
Exciting times ahead, big risks as well.
The
Black Mirror interactive movie represents for me as a viewer, the
opportunity to watch an entire season of programming with a variety
of scenarios. There is 5 hours of content, on this even though it
says 1 hour and 37 minutes. Stick with it, choose all the options. I
am not going to be a jerk and spoil it but for me when I saw Chloe
Bruce as a stunt person, I needed to find that option, wow! I will
liken Bandersnatch to a choice between the light, the dark and the Netflix path,
if the viewer has not reached the credits on all three paths then
congrats you have more work. Wait, too hard you say, I understand it,
you can be one of the apparent 45 million who have watched Bird Box,
which I have not seen, mostly due to the tremendous amount of unusual
content, and the amazing Tidelands series.
I plan to watch Bird Box
of course but again, Netflix is checking if its viewers want to see
more happy, sad, action, violence, and or emotional stories. Black
Mirror is their own personal playground, a rabbit hole or a mountain,
you decide, jump or not, do or not.
Overall
the interactive film as a whole is a huge step to Netflix,they are learning
their audience. Big risk, as the stock has taken a hit after the
Summer high. It is exciting times in this bustling world to “Netflix
and Chill!!” Black Mirror: Bandersnatch Rates a mind bending - 9 out
of 10!
Greetings
valued Dan's Movie Report readers. Director Daniel Zirilli has posted
on his social media that the action film he shot last summer is in
picture lock. For those readers who are unfamiliar with the term it
means the film has completed running time and film editing, but has
to then go through sound design, score, and other audio enhancements. Daniel reports that the sound design and score will take approximately one month to complete and to expect screenings and release information to follow shortly thereafter.
Starring
Luke Goss ("Blade II," "Hellboy: The Golden Army"), Juju Chan
("Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"), Michael Pare ("The
Infiltrator," "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Bill Duke ("Mandy," "Predator"),
Dilan Jay, Roger Guenveur Smith ("Do The Right Thing," "Dope"), Gary
Cairns ("Hero Wanted," "Daylight's End"), Natalie Burn ("The Expendables
3," "Mechanic 2") and Jay Mohr ("Jerry Maguire," "Street Kings"),
"Hollow Point" is an action-packed revenge thriller from director Daniel
Zirilli ("The Asian Connection," "Crossing Point") and screenwriters
Chad Law & Evan Law ("Daylight's End," "The Hit List") — with A Mariana Ortigoza. Hollow Point is produced by Adel Nur. Working on musical score is Nicholas Rivera, he has worked with director Daniel Zirilli prior on Time Rush. Keep reading Dan's Movie Report in 2019 for more on the film! The coverage will include cast interviews, a new interview with director Daniel Zirilli, and a chat with Nicholas Rivera, about scoring for films! Plus more photos and videos~~ In the mean time please check out the initial official post about the Hollow Point including the plot synopsis @ http://dansmoviereport.blogspot.com/2018/07/hollow-point-in-production-official.html
Special thanks go to Daniel Zirilli for filming these two very cool promo videos live on the set of Hollow Point, the first one is of Director of Photography Carmen Cabana Second video is of actress Natalie Burn in character!
Please check out the film's Facebook Page @ https://www.facebook.com/hollowpointfilm1/ Get ready for action in 2019 on Dan's Movie Report, your home for in depth exclusives!
Greetings
valued Dan's Movie Report readers. Hope all of you are having an
amazing holiday season. Literally out of left field comes the second
film in the Knights of the Damned series.
Producer/Director/Writer/Actor Ben Loyd Holmes wore so many hats on
this film that he deserves a medal for rescuing this film from the abyss.
Usually the companies releasing the films push out screeners, press
releases, promos etc... Sadly this never happened for Dragon Kingdom.
Distribution
issues aside, Dragon Kingdom represents a huge step forward from
Knights of the Damned. Bigger scope, better lighting, more engaging
story, and the best part, copious action. Again, Dark Kingdom this is an ultra low
budget film, thus I rate it in a comparison to films with similar
budgets.
Dragon
Kingdom opens with a village basically wiped out due to “Furies”,
a race of people like zombies yet they are high functioning, and move
fast. They fight berserk style with no real method. The small group of
Knights assist the Princess of the town to evacuate to the nearest
castle. Of course in her possession is some dragon egg, which the
dragon comes to retrieve, yeah this film has everything. Incidentally, the VFX are decent for a micro-budget film and do not detract from the story.
Interestingly
enough, not every creature the group encounters on their quest through the
Dark Kingdom is malicious by nature, sometimes a softer approach is
needed hah, no spoilers. The film essentially is a quest, yet the path is the
find, so many creatures including one who is a mixture of a cyclops.
ram, bear, and human.
Wait,
I know what my readers are thinking, what is the focus on Dragon
Kingdom, HA the focus is action and that is where the film really
shines. Their are a band of crazy female warriors, a Dark Kingdom
ruler, and some more mythical beasts to vanquish. Just about every
weapon is used and Zara Phythian has a pretty bad ass fight near the
end, Ben vanquishes his shirt as for his fight toward the end with
the lugubrious, and loquacious Dark Kingdom ruler.
Ben
and Zara are stepping up their acting game in Dark Kingdom. Actually
the acting is decent from all of the principal performers. Rebecca
Dyson-Smith as princess Elizabeth undergoes a transformation, from
delicate flower, to somewhat of a more forceful leader, and she shows
the proper emotion for her character development throughout the film.
I
have a few small complaints: one is the somewhat lack of urgency to
leave the original village, and rather methodical movement through
the Dark Kingdom. The second complaint is that some of the fight
scenes are filmed to close to the performers. The final complaint is
a mild spoiler, a character who can shoot arrows with accuracy is taken early on in the quest and is like just gone, and kind of
written out of the story. I feel that her character would have
offered an interesting dynamic later on in the film. Ben provided me with insight, on why this happened, understandable, but a bit dissapointing.
Quips
aside, Dragon Kingdom is pretty entertaining, nah it is not a deep
story, but some clever monsters, and action, coupled with a tight
running time of under 86 minutes including credits crawl, is def
worth a watch. For the issues this film had with distribution and
woeful lack of promotion, it deserves to be more widely seen. Dragon
Kingdom rates a 7 out of 10.
Greetings
valued Dan's Movie Report readers. About a year ago actress Jet
Tranter who I interviewed for Lady Bloodfight alerted me to a new
Netflix series called Tidelands. Incidentally Tidelands is the first
series to be produced by Netflix in Australia, this is a big step
towards global expansion for the company.
Tidelands
season one includes 8 episodes approximately 40 minutes in length and
flows more like a series of 3 movies at appx 4 total hours of running
time. One episode flows into the next and what is cool is that there
is very little title sequencing just a small montage and then it goes
right into the previous scene where it left off. I feel that 8-10
episodes for most seasons is plenty and many 13 episode seasons are
too long and overthink the story and can lose some of the audience
along the way, if the stories are not entertaining and engaging.
Tidelands
opens right up with a young lady Cal, played by Charlotte Best who
was wrongly convicted of murdering someone by setting a fire. She
spent 10 years in Jail and now released she discovers many things
about the area she grew up in. Ancient secrets curses, Tidelanders
(water people like mermaids who can live for 100s of years) and
Sirens. The other complication is her brother is mixed up in some
drug ring, this plot is not explored too much, but adds a side
wrinkle to the story.
The
big bad silliness is Elsa Pataky as Adrielle Cuthbert. She plays a
“Queen” of the Tidelanders hell bent on summoning the original
mother Sirens. Yes it is as crazy as it sounds, Elsa is a great
actress, I first saw her in El Arte De Morir AKA The Art of Dying,
she did a great job in that film, and I know she has it in her. This
was the perfect portrayal of an Ice Water princess! Elsa did the
dangerous icy stares and looked devilish most of the time, and her
time included killings and passion!
The
external scenes in Australia were shot with care and scope. I wish
more was shot in the ocean, but enough water was on the show and some
of the effects were pretty cool. By filming series such as Tidelands
in various locations they can, give the audience a sense of feel for
the town or parish they are in.
Hard
to classify the series style wise. Leaning towards mythological more
than crime drama, the series also has several action scenes, but not
over the top to detract from the story. The audience is brought into
the story, also through a seer, Queen Abrielle is able to look into
the future so some deft foreshadowing takes place.
Overall
Tidelands is a great series, yet very violent and sexual, not for kids. The show offers a unique and entertaining story wrapped up into a well
dressed package. Tidelands rates a very strong 8 out of 10, def worth
a binge watch! Thanks again to Jet Tranter for turning me on to this
series, please check out our older interview @
http://dansmoviereport.blogspot.com/2015/04/actress-jet-tranter-interview-exclusive.html
Greetings valued Dan's Movie Report
readers. As most of my followers know, I research films and TV shows from all over the world looking for unique talent to spotlight and interview. Thanks to my buddy Ron Smoorenburg, who worked with Kelly
Tandiono on the new HBO Asia series 'Grisse' I connected and present
a brand new interview. Kelly chats about Grisse and some of her
modeling and hosting work on Asia Top Model.
DMR: Chat a bit about your childhood, and
your first jobs in modeling?
KT: As a child I have always been a Tomboy
I was very active and sporty. I even used to fight with boys but they
always end up running away because I was pretty good at fighting. I
never thought I would end up being a model nevertheless an actor. I
started my modeling career in Singapore while I was in University, initially as
a part time job. I didn’t know I was pretty good at it until I was
booked by Calvin Klein himself during a casting in Singapore for my
first runway as a model. Until one day when I graduated, I started to
travel around the world and started my career as a professional
model.
DMR: Did you attend a modeling classes or
seminars?
KT: I learned everything by doing,
though I wished that I did attend a modeling school. It would have
made my career progress even further.
DMR: How did you get cast in Asia's Next Top Model?
KT: It was very funny, I actually got a
message from Facebook telling me that they would like to meet with me
as a possibility to be a model mentor and judge on Asia’s next top
model season 4. I was pretty surprised and actually thought it was a
hoax but thankfully I replied, met the team and I got the job.
DMR: I watched a couple of episodes of the
show online, seems like in the Asia version the models are more
active, what are your thoughts about the show did you watch prior to
going on the show?
KT: I have to be honest, I don’t really
watch reality TV shows, but for this show, before I was offered the job to
be a model mentor on season 4, I actually casted for season 2 and
wanted to be part as a contestant confident enough I could win it but
I didn’t make the casting. I guess god had a bigger plan for me and
I’m very thankful for that. I believe this show gives the
contestant a chance to shine and proceed further on their career as a
professional model.
DMR: Cool Story, I saw that the models had to do a lot
of sequences that involved some action did you discuss your ideas
with the producers since you were a mentor and judge on season 4.?
KT: Yes of course I did every episode we
would sit down and discuss with the team.
DMR: Speaking of Models and Supermodels,
please chat about the formation, ideas, and goals of the Supermodels
Project. What made you want to join, and or help form the project?
KT: Supermodels Project is a project that
came true for me as a model. I always had a dream of opening up my
own school so I could share my experience, knowledge and passion with
others. So I and another 3 Indonesian supermodels joined forces to
build a character building school that just opened up this April
2018. This school not only teaches modeling but also acting, public
speaking, sports, culture, nutrition and many more. For more
information you can check our website at www.supermodelsproject.com
or our instagram @supermodelsproject
DMR: On to Grisse, just watched the trailer
for HBO's Grisse, very cool looking series like a U.S. Western, can you discuss how you
auditioned and got the part on the show?
KT: My agent, Fly Entertains in Singapore
actually got this casting for me. I casted for this and met the
director Mike Wiluan and writer Rayya Makarim. I am very happy to
have met these talented people, and very fortunate chance to have the opportunity to work with
them.
DMR: Chat about your Grisse character name
and brief description?
KT: My character name is Hidayat. Hidayat
is a quiet, abrasive and cautious lady, but can be very aggressive at
times. She possesses a masculine name and character as a result of
years pretending to be a boy to avoid unwanted attention. Her family
was murdered and evicted forcibly from their village. She had nowhere
to go but to join the rebels. In order for her to join she had to
maintain her guise as a boy to be allowed to fight, that is why she
has good fighting skills.
DMR: Chat about some of the action training
you had to do for the role.
KT: I always love training because this
makes you better and stronger. I would always come to the
choreography studio everyday to work out and bug my choreographer
Kazu and Eko to train me. I realized that martial art training makes
me happy and gets me in good mood even if I am always in a good mood.
I learned new techniques and even got the chance to work with Ron
Smoorenburg he has amazing moves though I got punched accidentally
during the take because my reaction was too slow. It was awesome!!!
DMR: Did you get to do any stunts, wire-work,
I did see that you had some fighting.
KT: For the fighting I did it myself but I
wish I did the slings and fire jumps but the production team had
stunts to do that as a lot of the moves are very dangerous and they
prohibit the cast to do so. Safety was their first priority.
DMR: I saw the listing is for HBO Asia only
and an 8 episode series are there any plans that you have heard of to
expand the series to more episodes and to the U.S. Eventually?
KT: I believe you can watch it on HBO GO,
HBO HD and HBO OD for US and Europe. For the second season that would
be up to infinite studios and HBO.
Above: Kelly in the Puma ad, please check out the one minute video, after reading the interview.
DMR: Speaking of training, I know you are a
brand ambassador for Puma and your commercials are really bad ass to
say the least, are you given the chance to have input on them? If so,
what were some of the ideas you discussed with the producers if not,
chat about concepts and how they were filmed like length of time to
film the commercials and shooting schedules etc...
KT: Yes usually we would have briefings. I
would usually give ideas such as the poses, photographer, make up and
outfit.
DMR: That is very good being able to have creative input. I am curious about the Indonesian film
market in 2018 with the recent success of The Raid films and the
actors from the films enjoying some Worldwide spotlight how has it
helped the industry and has it helped newer actors get parts as well?
KT: ,Yes thankfully with movies like the Raid
it has helped the industry for Indonesian actors to be offered and be allowed a chance to play in a Hollywood Productionand not only that recently an
Indonesian film has been cooperating with Fox international
production and HBO.
DMR: Chat about your career path, After
Grisse do you have any new TV or film projects in the works?
KT: The project that I am working on right
now is an action movie Gundala an Indonesian superhero movie based on
a comic book. Directed by Joko Anwar a screenplay production.
DMR: Perhaps end the interview with some
advice to young models and actresses, just starting out in the
business. Is there anything you wish you had done at a younger age or
not done as a younger person in the business?
KT: I am actually very thankful to have
achieved a lot of things in life but the one thing that I would have
done earlier is to go to a film school. I am in the entertainment
industry but there are so many things and terms that I am still
unaware of so never stop learning, meet as many interesting and
inspiring individuals as possible, and don’t forget to dream. Dream
big and never lose hope, always remember dreams don’t work unless
you do.
Thanks Kelly! What an interview!
Definitely
follow Kelly's social media official outlets and watch for more
exclusive material in the coming months on Dan's Movie Report.
Greetings valued Dan's Movie Report
readers. A couple of years back I reviewed Kenneth Mader's Displacement. The mind bending near future sci-fi drama blurred the
lines for genre and tone, essentially launching the career of the
fantastic actress Courtney Hope. Fast forward to 2018, Mr Mader is
back with a hard hitting psychological terror short entitled Echos.
The 23 minute short is long enough to tell a story but short enough
to comfortably watch and see a possible expansion of the concept. A
teenager who is haunted by past memories, serves as the background,
young actresses Cameron Crates and Campbell Crates exude real
confidence considering their youthfulness.
Echoes is about the atmosphere and mood
more than action and flash. Trust me, this is a good thing. The cool
thing about the two Kenneth Mader films I have reviewed, they force
the viewers to ponder the possibilities and plot twists. In Echoes I
see a future feature film or limited mini-series. The haunting
imagery, sparse yet poignant dialogue, and characters can easily be
expanded to flesh out a much longer film.
Time is taken on lighting, background,
and some special ghosting effects, to add to the overall quality of
the film. Many times on indie short films corners are cut due to
expenses and or shooting time, this can severely hamper their
quality. Just because a film is lower budget, no reason the passion
and quality should be lacking.
Writer Julie Kimbrill Ishaya and
Kenneth Mader provide the story, I am interested to ready and view
more of her work as well. Actually seems like her and Kenneth Mader
gel in style and ideas. I hope the two of them write a feature film
together.
Finally, I am not going to spoil the
plot, nor any character development. Echoes is best watched a few
times, in fact, the images inside your mind, about the film may
change. Breathe deep, check out Echoes, I highly recommend the film,
Echoes rates a 8 out of 10.
Greetings valued Dan's Movie Report Readers!!! Hot Rock band Leaving Eden prepare to depart from the Boston Area on a Hot Trip to Florida to begin their tour for the new CD on Dark Star Records: Descending!!
