Big Gay Picture Show

Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema and more

Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema & more

Matt Damon May Head To The Great Wall of China

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matt-damonEver since the box office in China started to explode, Hollywood has been trying to find ways to court the country’s viewers, whether it’s remaking The Karate Kid and setting it in China or shooting Chinese-only scenes for Iron Man 3.

A couple of years ago Legendary, the company behind the likes of Godzilla and Pacific Rim, even set up a China based offshoot and announced plans for a movie about the Great Wall Of China. Now it’s moving forward with Deadline reporting the Matt Damon is circling to star and Zhang Yimou (Hero, House Of Flying Daggers) set to direct.

The film was originally due to shoot last year with with Henry Cavill and Benjamin Walker set to star and Ed Zwick directing. That all fell through though, so they’re starting over with the hope Damon will sign on.

There’s still not too much info on Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro’s script (with more recent work by Tony Gilroy), other than that it ‘reveals the mystery behind why the Great Wall was built, and the secrets hidden beneath its stones’.

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Chatting To Matt Carter, Creator Of Iris Prize Festival Opening Movie, Jayson Bend: Queen and Country

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matt carter jayson bendIn a few weeks’ time the gay-themed British spy film Jayson Bend: Queen and Country has the honour of being the opening movie at the Iris Prize Festival in Cardiff, Wales. We sat down with the film’s creator, Matt Carter, for a quick chat about his cinematic love letter to everyone’s favourite super-spy.

Where did the idea for Jayson Bend come from?
It just started off as a bit of fun, really. I was in the pub with a few friends who’re filmmakers and we were chatting about what it would be like if James Bond were gay. We came up with the title sequence and the innuendo names, and thought it would be fun to just make a very short project; a 10-minute film. Andrew wrote the short script, and we started thinking about making it. The more we looked at it, we realised that if we really wanted to make a proper spoof, and really make it like James Bond but gay and with a bit more comedy, we’d need to make it longer. So the script crept up in length and ended up being the 48-minute film that it is now. [Read more…]

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Hit Gay-Themed Brit Flick Pride Could Become A Musical

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pride-better-slideAfter getting almost universally great reviews, Pride opened in the UK last week placing third on the chart, which isn’t bad considering few gay-themed British movies even make it into mainstream cinemas. However it appears it may not end with a movie, because as with fellow miner’s strike movie Billy Elliot, it may become a musical.

The idea has been floated by the movie’s writer Stephen Beresford, who told London Live (via THR) that he’s talked about it with the film’s director, Matthew Warchus and has also spoken to some West End producers about it. Warchus made his name in the theatre, including directing the acclaimed musical version of Roald Dahl’s Mathidla. He also recently took over from Kevin Spacey as the creative director of the Old Vic Theatre in London, so he’s certainly a good person to have on board to get Pride on to the stage.

However it’s far from a done deal and appears to be merely in vague discussions at the moment. Beresford says, “[Warchus] came up with nine reasons why we shouldn’t do it, but by the end of the journey we had turned them into reasons why we should. He adds, “These days, when films are created, all those things, these possibilities, are taken into account when they are sorting out the rights. We’ll see.”

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Ben Whishaw To Take The Lead In New Gay-Themed BBC Spy Drama

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lilting-ben-whishawOut actor Ben Whishaw is a busy man, but he’s finding time to slot in another role, with The Independent confirming he’ll take the lead role in the five-part drama London Spy. Unusually for what’s being described as a dramatic thriller, he’ll be playing a gay character.

The show is about ‘Danny [Whishaw] is an outgoing and pleasure-seeking romantic who becomes embroiled in the world of British espionage after falling for the enigmatic Alex.

‘But when Alex disappears, Danny must decide whether he is prepared to find out what has happened to him.’

The intriguing sounding script comes from openly gay writer Tom Rob Smith, whose novel Child 44 has been turned into a movie starring Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman, which is due out Spring 2015.

The author comments, “Ben Whishaw is quite simply one of the best actors in the country. It’s an extraordinary privilege, as a writer, to have him play the lead.”

The show will start filming in October, with Whishaw presumably slotting it in before he’s needed on set to play Q in the next James Bond movie, which is set to shoot this winter.

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Big Eyes Trailer – Tim Burton takes on a 60s art tale with Amy Adams & Christoph Waltz

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big-eyes-pic1Tim Burton is most often thought of as a director of the fantastical, but he’s heading back to true tales of the relatively recent past with Big Eyes, and now we get our first look we a trailer.

The film follows Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), whose paintings of large-eyed children were massively popular in the 1950s and 1960s. However initially her husband Walter (Christoph Waltz) claimed to the world that he was behind the paintings.

After the two fell out, she revealred that she was the true artist behind all the big-eyed paintings, and that the rather pompous and self-obsessed Walter (who spoke about himself in the third person and compared himself to Rembrandt and El Greco) stole all the credit for her work.

This set off a long running dispute between the two which ended in court battles, and a rather dramatic moment in court where the judge asked both to do some painting. Walter refused to do so because of a pain in his arm, but Margaret quickly crafted one of her trademark paintings.

Terence Stamp, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter and Jason Schwartzman also star. The movie is heading for a Christmas US release. [Read more…]

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Matthew McConaughey Gets Wet In Another New Interstellar Poster

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Interstellar-IMAX-posterA couple of days ago a new poster for Interstellar debuted, and now another one has arrived promoting the IMAX release of Christopher Nolan’s film.

As with The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan has once again captured key sequences of Interstellar using IMAX cameras, helping to ensure these moments look particularly impressive in the massive screen format.

The film chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage. As the poster shows, that involved going to a planet that’s completely covered in water.

The movie’s due out in November.

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David Ayer May Take On DC’s Supervillain Movie Suicide Squad

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david-ayerFans of Arrow were introduced to the Suicide Squad partway through Season 2, when the DC Comics property made an appearance in the show. Now Warner is moving forward with bringing them to a wider audience, with the news that David Ayer is the top pick to direct a Suicide Squad film, according to Variety.

It doesn’t appear a deal has been signed with the Fury and End Of Watch director yet, but it seems he’s interested.

Warner/DC has been thinking about a Suicide Squad film for quite a while, but had put it on the backburner as they pieced together plans for a large, interconnected superhero universe based around Justice League characters. However with the studio planning at least nine DC movies over the next few years, it appears it’s found space for the Squad to be one of those films.

The basic idea of the Suicide Sqaud is that they are captured supervillains who are given a chance to redeem themselves by taking on missions that may kill them all. There have been various incarnations of the squad, involving such characters as Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, Bronze Tiger and Harley Quinn.

It appears Warner may also want to include some better known villains, as Variety suggests there may be room for the likes of The Joker and Lex Luthor. There will also be the opportunities for characters to appear in other DC movies.

Justin Marks is writing the script, although at the moment it’s not clear which of the nine announced DC/Warner movie release dates Suicide Squad is likely to slot into.

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Ang Lee To Direct Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

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Ang-LeeEver since Life Of Pi there have been various rumours and reports about what Ang Lee might direct next, but there’s been nothing that seemed particularly certain. However now it appears he’s found what he wants to do, as Deadline reports he’s signed up to helm Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, based on Ben Fountain’s novel.

Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) wrote the script, which ‘tells the funny and heartbreaking story of 19-year-old soldier Billy Lynn and his squad, who survive an Iraq battle that is captured by embedded news cameras, causing them to become celebrated as heroes. They are brought home by the US administration for a promotional tour that culminates at the halftime show of a Thanksgiving Day football game in Texas, before they are returned to the war. Almost the entire movie takes place during the game, with flashes away to other events.’

Ang Lee comments, “I am very excited to be going back to work and to be collaborating with my old friend Tom Rothman. The most important thing to me is storytelling and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a story that immediately gripped me. I look forward to starting the creative process with this extraordinary team of collaborators.”

It’s not clear when it will shoot.

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Angelina Jolie To Helm Elephant Poaching Movie Africa

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Angelina-JolieAngelina Jolie is certainly taking her directing career seriously. She’s already got Unbroken being released later this year, is currently on set helming By The Sea (which she also wrote) and now Deadline reports that she’s attached to direct Africa.

The movie will follow Richard Leakey, who’s perhaps best known internationally for his work as an paleoanthropologist, investigating and finding fossils from some of the earliest human ancestors. However the film is more interested in his work helping to rein in elephant and rhino poaching, which was threatening to ensure the animals’ extinction in only a few years.

Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Forrest Gump, The Insider) has come up with the script.

Jolie comments, “I’ve felt a deep connection to Africa and its culture for much of my life, and was taken with Eric’s beautiful script about a man drawn into the violent conflict with elephant poachers who emerged with a deeper understanding of man’s footprint and a profound sense of responsibility for the world around him.”

There’s no info on when the movie might shoot.

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Benedict Cumberbatch Works On The Bombe In A New Imitation Game Poster

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imitation-game-posterThe Imitation Game will kick off the London Film Festival on October 8th ahead of its UK release on November 14th. With the release fast approaching a new poster for the movie has arrived via Empire.

The image seems a bit mysterious unless you know a bit about the story it’s based on. It shows Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing standing in front of the bombe, the electromechanical machine he created to help decode the German Enigma codes during World War II (a different device to his famed first programmable computer, Colossus, which helped with the even more fiendish Lorenz cipher).

The film chronicles the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team at Britain’s top-secret code-breaking centre, Bletchley Park. Turing, whose contributions and genius significantly shortened the war, saving thousands of lives, was the eventual victim of an unenlightened British Establishment.

Tragically in the 1950s Turing admitted to the police he was gay while reporting a robbery, believing they would protect him and catch those who’d stolen from him. Instead it was him who found himself in court. After he was convicted he was shunned by the establishment and despite his incredible mind he found himself pushed to the sidelines. He committed suicide (although some say it was an accident) not too long afterwards.

You can watch the trailer here.

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