Here at Movieline readers have to work for their hard-earned prizes, but today we have a haiku contest that should also engage your inner child and tap into the most whimsical, fantastical depths of your imagination: Write an original haiku inspired by this weekend's colorful and witty Snow White retelling Mirror Mirror -- a movie featuring heroines in swan dresses and people wearing boats as hats! -- and you could win dinner and a movie for four! UPDATED: See the winning entry below!
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He's painted cinematic landscapes of psychosexual kink (The Cell), childhood fantasy (The Fall), and ancient Greek 3-D abs (Immortals), but in this week's Mirror Mirror director Tarsem takes a turn into uncharted territory: The family-friendly fairytale. Turning his attentions to the story of Snow White, Tarsem creates another visually rich fantasyland of imagination -- and gives the fabled princess a post-modern streak to boot -- with the help of the late Oscar-winning costume designer and longtime collaborator Eiko Ishioka (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark), who passed away in January at the age of 73. In an exclusive chat, Tarsem takes Movieline through his work with Ishioka and the whimsical, inventive, and utterly imaginative designs of Mirror Mirror that comprise their final collaboration on film.
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It may be indicative of Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders’ fearlessness – or his newness, this being his feature debut – that, after presenting much-anticipated footage to fans yesterday at WonderCon, he nonchalantly dropped the vivid phrase “dwarf gangbangs” into a discussion about his dark (and yes, likely PG-13) allegorical fairytale actioner. (Now that’s how you get the attention of a certain demographic.) For the record, there are no such scenarios in June's action-packed SWATH, but there were many more revelations and key insights to be had into Sanders’ take on the age-old tale, which stars Twilight’s Kristen Stewart and debuts two months after that other Snow White movie dances into theaters.
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Another year, another couple hundred entries in the ever-deepening conversational archive known as The Movieline Interview. They're the collective backbone of our site, and in 2011, it was at its strongest. Look back with us now at the highlights, including the luminary likes of Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jason Segel, Jodie Foster, Paul Giamatti, and a certain honey badger of a director.
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The Twilight Saga sparkled to another #1 opening, as if you had any doubt; it was just a matter of how many millions Breaking Dawn would rake in, after Friday's $72 million opening day. But while all the excitement over weddings, butter-colored honeymoons, and monster vampire babies couldn't quite help BD eclipse New Moon (groan), it still nudged out Pirates of the Caribbean: The One with the Kraken for the #5 biggest opening of all time. That's forever, baby. Let's get our imprinting on in today's Weekend Receipts.
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While it didn't quite slay Jack and Jill at the box office -- a more resounding spanking might've restored my faith in humanity, but many, many folks still came out for the Adam Sandler twinsies comedy -- Tarsem's fantasy actioner Immortals exceeded expectations on its way to a surprising $32 million number one opening, the best ever debut for studio Relativity Media. Also: Puss in Boots and Tower Heist continued to slide down the ranks, with J. Edgar making a decent go of things to round out the Top 5. Dive in for your Weekend Receipts!
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I've said it before: Next Movie's "Rappers Review Movies" video series is ingenious. The latest rhymer to play Ebert with Hollywood's new releases is NYC-based Immortal Technique, a lyricist who frequently uses his songs to draw attention to socio-economic and political disparities. Taking on Tarsem's Greek actioner Immortals, he drops some serious conscious commentary on even greater issues: Namely, how much Clash of the Titans and the next-gen Star Wars movies totally sucked. PREACH!
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Much has been made of British actor Henry Cavill's abs in this week's Immortals, or the strange, logic-defying Superman beard spied on the set of Man of Steel. Never mind that the 28-year-old actor turns in a persuasive dramatic performance in Tarsem's stylized fantasy myth, playing the classic hero Theseus as an honorable peasant battling a sadistic god-hating tyrant (Mickey Rourke) with the aid of a comely priestess (Freida Pinto) and supernatural bow and arrows. But therein lies the surprise: Go to Immortals for the bloody action, or the mythological spin, or the wonderment of Tarsem's visuals, and you'll also get the pleasant revelation that Cavill wears leading man status like a natural.
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Some directors clearly have no filter and suffer for it; others choose to live altogether filter-less, playing the game their own way, on their own terms. Which is why earlier this year Movieline anointed Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) the honey badger of Hollywood; an indie film talent recently gone mainstream -- who wore a homemade shirt proclaiming "I've been media trained" at WonderCon -- Tarsem's infamously cheeky public persona might threaten to overtake his work if only his films, just three features to date counting this week's Immortals, weren't so distinctive and gorgeous.
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This week, Movieline's favorite honey badger of directors, Tarsem (The Fall, The Cell), unveils his spin on Greek mythology in Immortals, a fantasy actioner that blends artistic influences as vast and varied as Caravaggio, classics, and Henry Cavill's abs. So who better to invite to a round of My Favorite Scene than the visionary filmmaker, who managed to pinpoint the uncanny cinematic parallels between the 1992 Belgian mockumentary Man Bites Dog, a Cannes Film Festival awardee, and that one episode from the "brilliant" first season of COPS.
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Tarsem fans and Greek mythology nerds, get your thinking caps out; Movieline's got four (4) pairs of VIP tickets to give away to send you and a guest to the Los Angeles premiere of Immortals, and the tix will go to the commenters who submit the best captions to accompany any of the below fantastical stills (or the one above) from the Henry Cavill-starring action pic. Ready, set, caption away! Details after the jump. [UPDATE: Contest is now closed to new submissions.]
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It was an agonizing enough process just getting cast in Tarsem's Immortals, stars Luke Evans and Henry Cavill told Movieline over the weekend at WonderCon, where audiences got their first look at the November fantasy pic. But the real struggle, they say, was in reaching and maintaining the physique required of their roles as Zeus and Theseus, respectively -- characters for whom godlike perfection was a prerequisite. But hey, no pressure!
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New theory: Immortals director Tarsem Singh (excuse us, visionary director Tarsem) is the honey badger of film directors. In an unprecedented move Saturday in San Francisco, the filmmaker behind such films as The Cell and The Fall stole the hearts and minds of WonderCon attendees away from Cowboys & Aliens helmer Jon Favreau -- and mind you, Favreau is so popular that he has his own entrance music ("Back in Black," natch). So how did visionary director Tarsem bring the house down during the panel for The Immortals, a 300-styled movie he described as "Caravaggio meets Fight Club?" Hit the jump for highlights from TarsemCon.
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