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We are tasked here at ComicMix to opine on all that is going around the world of pop culture. Maybe a bit more of a bend towards the comics side of things (it is in the name, right?). But as it stands this week… I don’t care about pop culture. I’ve been catching up on Legends of Tomorrow, but it seems trivial at best. I picked up comics from the shop, a feat I haven’t done on a regular basis in over two years.

I was going to wax poetic on all things Rebirth, but really, why would I? Heck. I could even stretch so far as to discuss my pending excitement of the announcement of Injustice 2, coming out next year on the Playstation and Xbox. I could, but I’m not going to.

I know you arrive at my column each and every week awaiting some...

Even before Norman Reedus gave TVLine a heads-up that the sixth season finale of The Walking Dead was “the most hardcore finale we’ve ever had,” we were afraid, very afraid. How could we not be? We knew that, if the series stuck to the plot of the comics, Glenn was bound for a once-in-a-lifetime date with Negan’s barbed-wire-covered bat, Lucille.

And it turned out, we were right to be scared.

“Last Day on Earth” was a nerve-racking 93 minutes of television. And it served up a twist ending that we’re pretty sure none of us saw — or hoped to see — coming.

The Russian language film Diggers has a new trailer. The film takes place beneath Moscow, in an old subway station and route. Here, a train has missed its stop and people have gone missing; a search party has gone in to rescue the missing passengers, but they have found something malevolent in the dark. Diggers is from director Tikhon Kornev (Mamy). And, the film stars Roman Evdokimov and Anna Vasilyeva. The exciting trailer for the film is hosted here. The film looks similar to another, End of the Line (2007). Both films take place deep below ground. While it does not appear that there is a religious, doomsday cult in Diggers, both films feature a dangerous situation, in a confining subway tunnel. As well, a release date for Diggers is still forthcoming. But, it will be posted here, once announced. Release Date: Tba. Director: Tikhon Kornev. Cast: Roman Evdokimov, Anna Vasilyeva Alena Savastova,...

In 2008, I discovered a great short film titled I Love Sarah Jane by commercial and music video director Spencer Susser (you can watch it here — and if you haven’t yet, you really need to). I was slightly disappointed by Susser’s feature directorial debut Hesher, which premiered at the 2010 Sundnace Film Festival. Since the festival, Susser has been trying […]

The post Votd: Spencer Susser’s Eugene Short Film appeared first on /Film.

What would you wish for if you suddenly held in your hands a laptop that granted wishes? How far would you take it, and what would happen next? For those looking for a bit of Sunday fun to cheer them up, look no further than Eugene, a sponsored short film directed by Spencer Susser, the Aussie filmmaker who brought us that short I Love Sarah Jane years ago as well as the feature Hesher. Created for (and chosen as one of the winners of) a filmmaking competition held by Intel and W Hotels, Eugene is a humorous story of what happens when you give a lonely, bearded man too much power. It's fun and will leave you with a smile. From the description on Short of the Week: "A traveler in Washington DC gets a mysterious gift: a laptop that grants all his wishes. How will he wield his unexpected powers?...

If you have no other expectations walking into a Danny Boyle film, you at least know you’re going to get a unique and original experience, and Trance doesn’t change the fact. Ultimately, this is a film that may actually suffer for its effort to put together odd spins, because it can’t follow through as effectively as it thinks it can, but for most of its run you can hardly help but enjoy the trip you’re on.

Simon (James McAvoy) has managed to get himself into a bit of a jam, and he’s now in the supreme fix of inability to extricate himself from it – he can’t remember anything. It doesn’t seem like he should be having any trouble at all, really, but such is the way of spinning webs. He’s just a simple, hopeful auctioneer at a house that is selling incredibly expensive art…...

Chicago – It may sound harsh but “Trance” will be a mere footnote in the career of Danny Boyle. It’s neither one of his best but also far from his worst film. The mega-talented director of “Shallow Grave,” “Trainspotting,” and “127 Hours” brings his confident style to the film but the convoluted script turns in on itself so many times that I think even Boyle got a little bored with it. Rosario Dawson overplays but Vincent Cassel once again intrigues and James McAvoy delivers. It will be a footnote for them all.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Again, I don’t mean that to sound so harsh. When people look back on the careers of creative people, it’s the highs and lows that they remember most of all. “Trance” is neither. It’s a solid, down-the-middle, decent rental. Boyle is such a talented filmmaker that he can make nearly anything interesting but he struggles...

Director Danny Boyle gets credit for never repeating himself. In a short retrospective contained on the newly released Trance Blu-ray, he talks about the appeal of each film and how making them has continually surprised him. He had read the Joe Ahearne script for Trance years earlier and it stayed with him and he finally shot it. Then let it marinate in Post Production while he mounted the incredible opening for the most recent Olympics.

Ahearne wrote the script back in the 1990s and first showed it to Boyle after he shot Shallow Grave and the concept lingered. It is also partially based on the eponymous British television series. Boyle’s frequently collaborating John Hodge stepped in to rework parts of the script and then it was finally made last year.

The movie is many things but never dull and demands your attention. What appears to be a basic art...

If Steven Soderbergh had directed Wild Things it might have looked a lot like Danny Boyle's Trance, a slick, trippy head-twist of a movie involving missing art and hypnotherapy (wuut?). James McAvoy stars as Simon, a fine art auctioneer mixed up with a criminal gang led by Franck (a perfectly sleazy Vincent Cassel). When a pricey painting goes missing, Franck hires a hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson) to nudge Simon's memory into revealing where it is--and that's when things get all kinds of weird. And Rosario Dawson gets all kinds of naked (for good reason!). Extras: Deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, a Danny Boyle retrospective, "Danny's Film Noir," a few behind-the-scenes featurettes including one on hypnotherapy and the short film Eugene by Spencer Susser...

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This week: Director Danny Boyle crafts a stylish modern-day film noir with a bizarre love triangle in "Trance," starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel.

Also new this week is the British crime drama "Welcome to the Punch," which also stars McAvoy as well as Mark Strong, and the Blu-ray debuts of "The 300 Spartans" (1962) and Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" (1997).

'Trance'

Box Office: $2.3 million

Rotten Tomatoes: 68% Fresh

Storyline: Director Danny Boyle's British psychological thriller stars James McAvoy as Simon Newton, a fine art auctioneer mixed up with a gang led by Franck (Vincent Cassel) When a heist goes wrong and a revered painting goes missing, hypnotist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) is hired to help Simon remember where the painting is. The stakes get higher when the boundaries between reality and hypnotic suggestion begin to blur.

Extras!: Both the DVD and Blu-ray contain deleted scenes,...

Danny Boyle’s Trance is now available on DigitalHD and will debut on Blu-ray add DVD July 23. To celebrate, we have 1 copy of the disc to giveaway to a lucky reader.

Trance brings us tons of twists and turns in the plot as multiple layers of backstabbing occur. Movies with unexpected turns have become a favorite of audiences. It’s a difficult task to make sure that the twist is unpredictable, but when it is done correctly, double-cross heist films make great additions to movie history. Here, we lay out some of our favorite twisty-turny heist films.

From Academy Award-Winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) comes an “exhilarating brain-twister” (New York Post)! After a blow to the head during his attempted robbery of a $27 million Goya painting, Simon (James McAvoy, X-Men: First Class), a fine-art auctioneer, awakens to find that the painting – and his memory – are missing. Forced by his...

Though it's more a thriller than a true horror movie (hence our lack of coverage up to now), that doesn't mean we won't give you ladies and gents a chance to score a Blu-ray copy of the new film from 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle, entitled Trance.

To enter for your chance to win, just send us an E-mail Here including your Full Name And Mailing Address. We’ll take care of the rest.

Look for the flick on Blu-ray on July 23rd.

Synopsis

From Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) comes an “exhilarating brain-twister” (New York Post)! After a blow to the head during his attempted robbery of a $27 million Goya painting, Simon (James McAvoy, X-Men: First Class), a fine-art auctioneer, awakens to find that the painting – and his memory – are missing. Forced by his ruthless crime partner Franck (Vincent Cassel, Black Swan) to undergo hypnosis, Simon enters...

When I was writing about Nash Edgerton and Spencer Susser's epic short film The Captain yesterday, I was interested to see that Susser had also directed another short in 2012 called Eugene - produced by Ben Gilovitz who also produced The Captain and Ariel Kleiman's short masterpiece Deeper Than Yesterday. So I knew I had to track this baby down. Then when I was trying to navigate YouTube's atrocious new layout today, I realised that Blue Tongue Films had uploaded Susser's new film in late November, and I've included it below for your viewing pleasure. It seems that Eugene is part of a branded content series for Intel's Ultrabook, and in Susser's style is a sweet little comedy that involves sudden violence.Check out the short below,...