In the upcoming graphic and violent, post-apocalyptic thriller ‘The Divide’, nine strangers — all tenants of a New York high rise apartment — escape a nuclear attack by hiding out in the building’s bunker-like basement. Trapped for days underground with no hope for rescue, and only unspeakable horrors awaiting them on the other side of the bunker door, the group begins to descend into madness, each turning on one another with physical and psychotic torment.

As supplies dwindle, and tensions flare, and they grow increasingly unhinged by their close quarters and hopelessness, each act against one another becomes more depraved than the next. While everyone in the bunker allows themselves to be overcome by desperation and lose their humanity, one survivor holds onto a thin chance for escape even with no promise of salvation on the outside.

The director, French Xavier Gens, who directed the feature version of the game ‘Hitman’, explained his choice to direct ‘The Divide’, starring Michael Biehn, Lauren German and TV ‘Heroes’ ‘s Milo Ventimiglia.

What originally drew you to the project? 

I received the script (previously named Shelter) written by Karl Mueller and the concept of the basement shelter really attracted me. I spoke with producers, Ross M. Dinerstein and Darryn Welch about giving the movie a larger scope by opening the film with a nuclear explosion as the catalyst. We hired Eron Sheean to help rewrite the script and weave in that element throughout the film.

How do you the feel the film fits in with your previous work? 

For me, The Divide is like my first real feature. Frontier(s) was a film with a lot of influence and Hitman was a studio movie. The Divide was a true indie film with a crew and cast of passionate people working on the film. It was a dream to do that film in that environment and made it easy for me to give the best I had to make the film. Filming The Divide has been my best experience as a filmmaker and I have met great friends on that set. From the crew to the producers and Anchor Bay Films, everyone has been really amazing and really supportive.

Were there any other films or filmmakers you drew inspiration from while making the film? 

Not really, but there is a subtle tribute to John Carpenter in The Divide. One of the characters is named Sam Carpenter and there is a piece of music by Jean Pierre Taieb, which was inspired by the score of Ennio Morricone for The Thing.

Can you tell us how you assembled such a diverse cast? 

It was a long casting process, but once we found everyone, it was fantastic working with such an amazing cast. It was very important to find actors who were ready to take risks and willing to embrace the extreme situations and also ready to improvise.

Sometimes there was some tension between the actors because they were all on diets to lose weight for their roles and there are several scenes in the film showing the escalating conflict. Instead of calming down the tension, it was very interesting to play with the natural emotions to push the performances and to catch that tension on camera instead.

How do you feel the film speaks about human nature? 

The film is speaking about the end of humanity and shows how you can easily lose your humanity in extreme situations. I don’t want the film to give a lesson but just show the audience what happens when a small group of people are trapped in an extreme situation; like seeing a laboratory experiment with white mice.

How was the experience of making the film independently different from your studio work? 

It was the best experience, I had total freedom. The version that is being released in theaters this January is the director’s cut and I want to thank my producers and Anchor Bay Films again for supporting me in that adventure. I’ve had a situation where I lost control of a film with the studio and it was very tough for me, and I almost decided to stop making movies. With The Divide, it’s like a rebirth for me. There is a place where you can express yourself and work with total freedom, and I want to work only in that environment.

What do you hope audiences take away from the film? 

I hope the audience will leave the theater reminded that life is beautiful. I feel the last scene of the film is like Baudelaire poetry, it’s dark, bleak and a little depressing, but beautiful.

The Divide will be in theaters this January 13.

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Baz Luhrmann, the Australian director known for films such as “Romeo and Juliet” and “Moulin Rouge,” has decided to make his next project a film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, “The Great Gatsby.” This classic novel has already been brought to the big screen three times: first in 1926 as a silent film, then in 1949, and in 1974, which starred Robert Redford and was directed by Jack Clayton.

Luhrmann’s version adds something previous versions failed to deliver: the entire film will be shot in 3-D. Today, it seems that no matter what kind of movie we are seeing, everything seems to be shot in 3-D, whether it is necessary or not. Has Hollywood just become obsessed with 3-D, or does every movie we are seeing actually need to be shot in 3-D?

Over the past twenty to thirty years, if a film was in 3-D, there was a reason for it. A certain scene would leap out, and blow you away. Now, ever since James Cameron’s “Avatar,” it seems everything we see should be in 3-D. I have discovered certain moviegoers don’t mind the fact the many films are being produced in 3-D. What bothers most people is the amount of money it costs to watch these films.

They are more expensive than a traditional 2-D film. Is this is all just a fad? In movie history, beginning with sound, moviegoers said it was just a fad, and it wouldn’t last. Then the same thing happened with color. Maybe this is just the next step in the evolution of motion pictures.

According to 3DTV Blog, one person said that they are just trying to get people to get used to the idea of 3-D. When color first came out, they still made black and white films for years. He also believes that less than ten percent of movies will actually be in 3-D. Hollywood has tried 3-D numerous times, mainly in the 1950s and 1980s, but it never took off.

It just seemed to be a novelty. So why do they think it’s going to work this time? One of the reasons some moviegoers mentioned for the push into 3-D is that these movies can make more money at the box office because of the increase in prices people need to pay to watch these films.

A lot of fans are outraged at the decision to make “The Great Gatsby” in 3-D, and feel it’s a marketing tool to boost ticket sales. David Calhoun, the film editor, said his heart sank when he heard this movie was in 3-D. It is a dramatic period piece set in a time alcohol was banned in the United States.

Where is the logic behind filming it in 3-D – having Gatsby’s hat poking out of the screen, or Daisy’s necklace floating before your eyes? There should be more time spent on developing the story than on special effects, which are minimal.

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Recently, the Superman reboot, Man of Steel, has been building its cast for some time now.  However, Warner Brother Studios put the brakes on the release date and extended it to June 14, 2013.

There is some speculation on why this delay was put into place but nothing official has been given out by either the producers or the studio.  The copyright issue on Man of Steel is pushing the date a little too close as production is being delayed along side its release.

The Man of Steel cast has had its fill of rumors, and big names.  Now, the cast is pretty much set with Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Michael Shannon, Christopher Meloni, Russell Crowe, Julia Ormond, Harry Lennix and Antje Traue.  But, with the release date pushed it’s unclear if the cast will stay the same.

No word has come out from the producer, Christopher Nolan, about any cast changes.  When asked about the Man of Steel delay, Henry Cavill, who will play Superman said, “they broke it to me gently…it’s okay, it’s nothing to do with me…I just focus on the character and do my job.”

Cavill also showed his excitement for the movie to start filming.  “I’m really raring to go.  It’s exciting, humbling, and about time to get started,” Cavill said.

The reason why the movie has been delayed about six months is, at this moment, unclear.  Some believe that there are problems with the script that Kurt Jonstad needs to finish.  This accusation could be true.  The script has gone through many changes, and writers since David Goyo penned it.

The more popular belief for the delayed release is that Warner Brothers does not want to go into competition with other big name releases coming out in 2012, such as Quentin Tarantino’s Django: Unchained, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, or Disney’s Lone Ranger.  Alongside this competition, 2012 is already a big comic-book movie year with The Avengers, and The Amazing Spider- Man.

The copyright issue is said to be pushing it close but not necessarily a problem for the film.  The contract dictates that the movie must go into production before the end of 2012.  With everyone in the cast and crew in place they can easily make that deadline.

Man of Steel is scheduled to come out a little less than two years from now.  With many (including Cavill) antsy for the project to start this delay comes as a disappointment to some but many look at it in a positive light.

The newfound time will allow the writers to fix bugs in the script, and the production team can take its time to make sure everything falls into place.  Nevertheless, it still is a long time till its release in 2013 but having patience always pays off.

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With Jaws came blockbusters. In 1975, Steven Spielberg had become the forefather of the big summer films, but with the release of Life in a Day, arises the genre of cinematic experiment. Life in a Day is a collaboration between Scott Free, Ridley Scott’s production company, and Youtube. On July 24, 2010, people filmed a portion of their lives on camera and then uploaded it via Youtube to Scott Free Productions. About 80,000 people submitted their pieces, amounting to 4,500 hours of video. These submissions were done all around the globe from 192 different nations.

The film was announced just weeks before the mass filming on July 24. In order to achieve many different perspectives in the movie, Against All Odds Productions distributed over 500 digital cameras around the world. After filming finished, every user uploaded his or her footage onto Youtube where it was then reviewed and edited. The editing was done by director Kevin MacDonald, Joe Walker and 25 helpers, and primarily used a trial and error process of eliminating and finding the footage MacDonald felt would make it in the film. Rummaging through the videos took about 6 months. It was then given to Sundance for its world premiere on January 27, while Youtube streamed it over its website in order for the world to see what it made.

After the premiere at Sundance, there was a Q&A session with MacDonald, Walker, Liza Marshall (co-producer), Tim Partridge (co-producer) and 26 of the filmmakers that shot some of the footage. At the Q&A session everyone talked about his or her experiences on the project. One of the questions toward MacDonald was what the intended message was in the film. He responded, “I suppose it sounds like a cliché…[but] the message is about connection, and that we are all connected.” The main obstacle the creators had was the editing. Liza Marshall had said, “…the original cut we saw was 3 hours, and we wanted to keep everything in the 3 hour cut, so we had a really difficult decision process to basically to half of the movie.” Because there was so much footage, another obstacle MacDonald found hard was making these bits and pieces of film into a logical narrative.

This movie hits home with just about everyone.  It makes you feel small. It makes you tear with joy, then shutter with a sea of overwhelming.  It shows the audience that there are other people in the world that are just like them. When watching the movie, you realize that no matter how disagreeable the day is getting, no matter how rainy the sky looks, there is always someone parachuting out of a plane, or eating a juicy watermelon. MacDonald was right, and not in a clichéd way, because what he said is, in fact, true. It connects us by making us realize that people we have never met before do the same things that we do. It does not point out to one person as an individual. It points out everyone as a collective. It is releasing on July 27, 2011. A whole year will have passed since all the events were caught on film. Even if you do not like documentaries, even if you do not like MacDonald or Ridley Scott, see this movie. It opens your eyes to what life is– beautiful. And the best part is that it is not in 3-D.

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