STACK #184 Feb 2020

YOUR TO FILM, TV, MUSIC, GAMING & LIFE TECH ESSENTIAL GUIDE STACK Issue 184 FEBRUARY 2020 “Come with me or you’ll be dead in 30 seconds.” stack.com.au ISSUE 184 Feb ’20

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ISSUE 184 Feb ’20

INSIDE

CONTENT CREATION STACK’SGUIDE

TO BEING THE NEXTONLINE SUPERSTAR GOING MOBILE FROM 5G TO MOBILEGAMING, WEDIVE INTO THEWORLDOF SMARTPHONES

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Founder Nic Short Editor-in-Chief Paul Jones Film & TV Editor Scott Hocking Contributors

Issue 184 FEB 2020

Music Editor Zoë Radas Online Editor Amy Flower

WELCOME

Creative Director Gary Siewert Movies Consultant Kerrie Taylor Games Consultant Sachi Fernando Music Consultant Mike Glynn Marketing Manager Fleur Parker Chief Contributors Bob Jones , Gill Pringle Contributors Glenn Cochrane, Jeff Jenkins, Simon Lukic, Billy Pinnell, Denise Hylands, Bryget Chrisfield, Simon Winkler, Nathan Lawrence, Jake Cleland, Holly Pereira, Adam Colby, Dan Nicholson, Alex Deutrom, Bec Summer Social Media Manager Imogene Lewis-Granland Production Manager Craig Patterson Correspondence STACK 33 Jessie Street, Richmond, VIC 3121 Disclaimer STACK is published by Scribal Custom Pty Ltd (ACN 092 362 135). © Copyright Scribal Custom Pty Ltd, 2020 All rights reserved. All material appearing in this publication is copyright unless otherwise stated or it may rest with the provider of the supplied material or advertisement. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of Scribal Custom Pty Ltd. No responsibility is accepted for accuracy of advertisements or information. Whilst care has been taken in the research and preparation of this publication, the publishers, writers or anyone else associated cannot accept any responsibility for any loss, injury or hardship arising from the content contained herein or reliance therefrom, howsoever caused, and it remains your responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of any such content. Views expressed are not necessarily endorsed by the publisher or the editor. By the very nature of this publication, things change daily and we cannot take responsibility for any changes or inaccuracies that occur subsequent to going to press. RATINGS GUIDE

Do you remember Piranha II: The Spawning ? James Cameron is hoping you don’t. It was his first feature that he failed to complete. Why? The Italian producer sacked Cameron and finished the film himself. But it was during post-production on Piranha II in Rome that the director fell sick and had a fever dream that would inspire the creation of a classic. Two years later, The Terminator , made on a skinny budget of just $US6 million, tore through box offices netting $78 million in the process. It not only kickstarted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ascent to the top but also spawned five sequels, culminating in this month’s home entertainment release of Terminator: Dark Fate . While Arnold has hung in there through sequels good and bad, Dark Fate sees the return of Cameron as a producer and Linda Hamilton reprising the iconic role of Sarah Connor in a direct sequel to 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day . Elsewhere this month, a favourite in the STACK office – and a long forgotten cult classic from the ‘80s – has finally appeared on DVD. Michael Mann’s hypnotic horror flick The Keep – a film that we have even badgered Mann himself to rubberstamp when we interviewed him last year – is now available at JB stores, and it’s a keeper for horror fans and cinephiles alike. And finally, in our new LifeTech section we’re diving deep

into the world of content creation and uncovering what it takes to become a YouTube or games streaming sensation right from the comfort of your own bedroom. Additionally, our smartphone feature looks at 5G, how to stream content directly to your screen, and a look at the absorbing world of mobile gaming. Paul Jones, Editor-in-Chief

The large print giveth, the small print taketh away. “I don’t know aboutmagic. I always called it ‘the shining.’”

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Issue 184 FEB 2020

YOUR TO FILM, TV,MUSIC,GAMING& LIFE TECH ESSENTIALGUIDE

YOUR TO FILM, TV,MUSIC, GAMING& LIFE TECH ESSENTIALGUIDE STACK Issue 184 FEBRUARY2020 “Comewithme or you’ll be dead in 30 seconds.” stack.com.au ISSUE 184 Feb ’20

stack.com.au

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ISSUE 184 Feb ’20

ISSUE 184 Feb ’20

MUSIC

ISSUE 184 Feb ’20

INSIDE

CONTENT CREATION STACK’S GUIDE TO BEING THE NEXTONLINE SUPERSTAR GOING MOBILE FROM 5G TO MOBILE GAMING, WE DIVE INTO THEWORLDOF SMARTPHONES

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stack.com.au

ISSUE 184 Feb ’20

INSIDE

INSIDE

CONTENT CREATION STACK’SGUIDE TO BEING THE NEXTONLINE SUPERSTAR

CONTENT CREATION STACK’SGUIDE

YOUR MONTHLY GUIDE TO THE HOTTEST TECH

TO BEING THE NEXTONLINE SUPERSTAR GOING MOBILE FROM 5G TO MOBILEGAMING, WEDIVE INTO THEWORLDOF SMARTPHONES

GOING MOBILE FROM 5G TO MOBILEGAMING, WEDIVE INTO

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TECH LIFE L MOTOROLA REBOOT THE CLASSIC RAZR

LIFE TECH:AGUIDE TOCONTENTCREATION

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YOUR MONTHLYGUIDE TO THE HOTTEST TECH

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CINEMA 12-13 BIRDS OF PREY: ON THE SET WITH MARGOT ROBBIE MOVIES & TV 14 bob j: THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN TEEN-PIC 16-17 TERMINATOR: DARK FATE: IT’S NOT JUST ARNIE THAT’S BACK 18 LAST CHRISTMAS: INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR PAUL FEIG 20 THE KEEP: A LONG LOST CULT CLASSIC RESURFACES 21 GEMINI MAN: THE VFX THAT CREATED WILL SMITH JR. 22-25 REVIEWS 26 AWARD-WINNING CLASSICS AT JB HI-FI

LIFE TECH 30 the big tech announcements at ces 32-33 our guide to becoming a youtube sensation 34 YOUTUBER Danger dolan’s tips for CONTENT CREATION success 36 the top 5 youtubers 38-40 get the skinny on games streaming 42-48 build your own home content creation studio 52 5g - what’s it all about? 54 stream to your screen 56-57 mobile gaming 60-62 what’s new at jb!

GAMES 66 need a new gaming keyboard? Corsair has you covered 68 all the big gaming announcements from january’s ces 70 we go hands-on with monster energy super cross 72 are you ready for the WWII zombie apocalypse? 74 looking for a new game to play this month? check out february’s release slate 76 stack recommends - our pick of the last month’s best releases

MUSIC 3-6 INTERVIEWS: A TRIO OF CONVOS COMPRISING BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB, LA ROUX AND OUR OWN BANOFFEE 8-9 TAME IMPALA: WE TALK THE SLOW RUSH WITH KEVIN PARKER 10 MUSIC HISTORY: ALL THE FACTS OF FEBRUARIES PAST 12 ROVING REPORTER HEADS DOWN SOUTH, PLUS RAD PRE-ORDER OFFERS 14-15 BREAKOUT BELTER: EURYTHMICS’ SWEET DREAMS (ARE MADE OF THIS) 16-19 ALBUM REVIEWS: GRIMES, KESHA, DUNE RATS, CARIBOU, JACK RIVER, BEST COAST, THE AMITY AFFLICTION, KING KRULE, BANOFFEE, AND MANY MORE

QUIZ & COMPETITIONS on page 78

Henry Golding Emilia Clarke FROM Paul Feig DIRECTOR OF Bridesmaids & WRITER Emma Thompson

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Bonus Features Include alternate opening & ending, deleted scenes and much more! Featuring the music by the legendary Grammy-winning artist George Michael, including brand new previously unreleased music. NEW TO BLU-RAY TM & DVD AT FEBRUARY 12

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STACK ROVING REPORTER

4K UHD BEST-SELLERS for JANUARY 2020

are an older demographic who watch a lot of TV. “ Big Little Lies has also been popular, with the second season released last month. And of course a LOT of ABC classics!” In the movie department, Downton Abbey , Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood , Ride Like a Girl and Joker have been flying off the shelves over the holiday period, Simone says. And with awards season currently in full swing, it’s not surprising that the winning and nominated

titles are experiencing a spike in sales. Moreover, the store’s proximity to Melbourne’s historic Rivoli Cinemas drives interest in independent films and documentaries. “ Free Solo really went off here,” notes Simone, “and the Peter Jackson doco They Shall Not Grow Old was an incredible seller for us.” Yes, the residents of Camberwell have classy taste, which is also reflected in the most requested recent release title – Pavarotti , a documentary celebrating the life of the legendary opera superstar. “It’s very highbrow here,” Simone says with a laugh. And speaking of Camberwell locals, does a certain acclaimed Aussie actor ever pay a visit to the store? “Geoffrey Rush is a major staple of our store,” confirms Simone. “You can tell when a Christmas casual has had a Geoffrey Rush experience. We see him quite regularly and a lot of AFL footballers come in, too.” Aside from working in a store frequented by celebrity clientele, Simone says the best part of her job is when a customer can finally be united with a release they’ve been coveting. “That moment when someone thinks JB may not have a certain something and we do, and they can hold it in their hands and finally take it home, that’s really rewarding.”

SHOP TALK

I n the Melbourne suburb of Camberwell, JB customers just can’t get enough of The Crown . “It’s been like that for a few years now,” says movies and music coordinator Simone Maree, adding that the Camberwell store’s clientele

1 Joker 2 Joker (JB Exc. Steebook) 3 Ad Astra 4 Rambo: Last Blood 5 Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood 6 Avengers: Endgame 7 Seven Worlds, One Planet 8 Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (JB Exc. Steebook) 9 Alita: Battle Angel 10 Captain Marvel

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Simone Maree at JB Camberwell, Melbourne

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– Eric Eisenberg, CINEMABLEND “ SCARY AND MESMERIZING. ”

Strong horror themes and violence

© 2020WarnerBros.Entertainment Inc.All rights reserved.

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sense where you feel like you’re watching a nightmare unfold in broad daylight, and it’s that stark sunlight as well.” Adding to the sense of unease is the film’s eerie central location – an abandoned tourist attraction on the outskirts of Canberra. “It was an amazing find,” says D’Aquino. “There was a gold mining town there that was rebuilt as a

TONY D’AQUINO

A graduate of the prestigious VCA School of Film and Television, Tony D’Aquino has only made one feature film to date, but he’s an instant local hero to horror fans for delivering a good old fashioned R-rated gorefest proudly made in Australia. D’Aquino’s ferocious debut, The Furies , can be described as a mix of The Hunger Games and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The story involves a group of women who are mysteriously abducted and forced to play a most dangerous game, in which they are hunted by masked maniacs. A self-described “huge horror nerd,” D’Aquino tells STACK the idea for the film stemmed from his desire to do a modern take on the slasher film cycle of the 1980s. “I love the slasher genre and that ‘final girl’ trope, where one woman survives to face off

against the masked killer. So I thought, what would happen if you had a whole bunch of final women and a whole bunch of killers and put them together – how would that play out? “That was the idea, and I also wanted to

update the slasher a bit, because it became a bit problematic later in the cycle, being misogynistic

and sexist. I wanted to change it up and make it all about the women, but not them waiting to be rescued or running around screaming with their tops falling off. “My main tonal inspiration is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , the 1974 version. I wanted that

tourist attraction, but it quickly went broke in the ‘70s, I believe, and they just walked

I wanted The Furies to be like a fun rollercoaster ride, going back to the VHS days...

away and left everything there. So it’s kind of been rotting since then and the

buildings have aged naturally; it looks like a real ghost town. The owner kindly let us rent the property and it basically became a studio backlot for us. It’s in the

middle of 60 acres of ghost gums, which are quite eerie, particularly for overseas audiences. It looks like a forest of bleached bones.” Essential to any homage to ‘80s slasher flicks is an abundance of gruesome make-up effects, and D’Aquino kept things practical, enlisting prosthetics designer Larry Van Duynhoven ( Upgrade ) to deliver the insanely gory set pieces. “He was happy that I was going to show all the effects and not cut away from them,” D’Aquino says. “I wanted The Furies to be like a fun rollercoaster ride, going back to the VHS days of getting a video, a bunch of friends and a pizza, and to scream and laugh and engage with the movie.” SH

The Furies is out on Feb 12

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“A fun, twisted ride that will haunt you for weeks” JoBlo.com

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CINEMA FEATURE

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STACK visited the set of Birds of Prey to chat with star and co-producer Margot Robbie about the ‘Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn’. Words Gill Pringle

S miling demurely through a dizzying a Time…in Hollywood , STACK got to witness a very different Margot Robbie earlier last year on the set of her upcoming movie, Birds of Prey . It’s on the movie set where Robbie really comes alive, never more so than with Birds of Prey , pulling double duty as the film’s co-producer. This is no vanity title, given that she fought for this film to be made – and without her input it’s quite likely it wouldn’t exist at all, given the failings of Suicide Squad (2016) where she debuted her Harley Quinn alongside Jared Leto’s Joker. “I first pitched the idea when we were still shooting Suicide Squad in 2015, so it’s taken almost four years to have it fully realised to where it is now,” says Robbie, who has award season where she’s in the mix for roles in both Bombshell and Once Upon

exist in the DC world are quite dark, so I felt we might have a little more liberty with a [US] R-rating to really delve deeply and explore the characters in an unbridled fashion.” With director Cathy Yan, she found a kindred spirit – another member of the girl gang, if you like. If an independent filmmaker with little proven track record might not be the first choice of a major studio, then Robbie was convinced from hello. “Cathy did this incredible film called Dead Pigs , which she shot in China with little time or money. Therefore, you feel very confident that someone can pull off a giant film when they do something as extraordinary as that. But it also had an ensemble cast and a huge aspect of this is: How do you give, with little real estate on screen, people the opportunity to understand everyone’s characters and their motivations, and then enjoy watching them

amassed an impressive collection of Suicide Squad/Harley Quinn comic books. Her one-sentence pitch? “R-rated girl gang film – with Harley!” she laughs. That pitch doesn’t stray far from the truth. Essentially a Harley Quinn film, we see her, post-break-up with the Joker, joining up with superheroes Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett- Bell), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) to rescue a young girl from an evil crime lord. “It seemed crazy to me that in real life I was always hanging out with a girl gang – whether it’s my London girls, my Aussie girls, my American girl group – we always roll in a gang and yet I so rarely see a girl gang on screen, so I crave that and I’m sure audience members do too,” she says. “Plus, when we were shooting Suicide Squad , of course many of our characters who

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interweave? Cathy did that so beautifully in her film and when she came in with her pitch; her understanding of the characters and what she was going to bring to it and how she was going to elevate it, included things that we hadn’t even considered. You need someone who’s going to add all those extra layers.” With an ever-expanding female superhero universe – be it Black Widow, Captain Marvel or Wonder Woman – Robbie believes there’s room for many more women. “I think all women – not just on screen – express their femininity and feel empowered in different ways, and we certainly have a very eclectic group here; different age ranges and different walks of life. You can tell obviously that everyone is different. I think it’s important to reflect different aspects of female empowerment on screen.” Following the success of Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman , Robbie’s co-producers Sue Kroll and Bryan Unkeless, were certainly keen to hire women in all key positions. “It is a female led movie with a strong feminine perspective. We’ve always said we wanted the right person for the job and we‘re thrilled that it’s Cathy Yan directing and Christina Hodson as our writer. We have a lot of really interesting women involved with the production,” Robbie says. On set, she’s been pulling 15-hour days between shooting her scenes and fulfilling producer duties. Yes, she could easily have handed her baby off to someone else once the project was green-lit, but she was determined to see it to the end. “When I first pitched the idea four years ago, at that point, I hadn’t produced anything. But I guess if you’re there

I so rarely see a girl gang on screen and I crave that, and I'm sure audience members do too

Margot Robbie, Rosie Perez and director CathyYan on the set

involved in that capacity.” Surprisingly, Tina Fey was a big inspiration: “I’ve produced a few times now and really enjoy it. I don’t mind wearing two hats and don’t feel like one role is sacrificed in lieu of the other. Tina Fey once told me when I did a film with her where she was acting and producing, ‘It’s kind of like a wedding day. If you do a lot of planning in advance, you can just enjoy the day’. Unforeseen things often crop on the day that, no matter how much planning we do, you must deal with it in the moment, but we’re a really strong producing unit, and when I’m on

set, my co-producers have got everything covered.” On the day we visit the Birds of Prey set, Robbie is filming a sequence with Winstead and Perez, the three women escaping an angry assailant by jumping down a fairground slide in a funhouse. Serving as an origin story for the Birds of Prey, Robbie enjoys the group dynamic, adding, “In the world of the comic books, there’s just a million different scenarios you could see Harley in; all as exciting as the next,” she says with undisguised enthusiasm, her blonde/pink hair drawn back in Harley’s trademark pigtails. The Birds of Prey loosely come together after a girl named Cassandra [Ella Jay Basco] steals a diamond from Ewan McGregor’s powerful and dangerous nightclub owner Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask. Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to recapture that diamond, Cassandra becoming the most wanted person on the outskirts of Gotham that day. Taking place over a 24-hour period, the film further utilises flashback sequences. “Harley is hugely motivated to get this diamond back and it also puts her into a very strange predicament where she’s also hanging out with a child who she feels the need to both protect and potentially betray,” she adds. This time out, Robbie aims to show a more personal side of Harley Quinn. “You get to hear her story from her perspective; obviously she’s a very unreliable narrator, but she’s the narrator nonetheless and you get a glimpse of what it's like to be inside Harley’s head – whether it’s some scenes being shot from her perspective or whether it’s just the spin she puts on the narration, or whether it's something as simple as going back to Harley’s apartment. You really get to know Harley in a more intimate way.”

at the inception of the idea and you want to see it develop in the creative spirit that you initially pitched it as, the producing aspect occurred organically. Obviously I’ve spent so long on this and have so much passion for it that I definitely wanted to be

Birds of Prey is in cinemas Feb 6

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Ford played a vocational schoolteacher whose first assignment is a New York inner-city school which is a place of hostility, apathy and simmering violence. The classrooms are filled with unruly and threatening ethnic-type hooligans who hold their teachers in utter contempt, and by using Rock Around the Clock  by Bill Haley and the Comets as its main musical theme, Blackboard Jungle  launched rock and roll music into the movies. The second release was Warner Bros.' seminal teen-angst film Rebel Without a Cause,  starring the young iconic method actor James Dean. Dean's burning intensity perfectly expressed the torment of the nation's

The RISE ofthe American Teen-Pic

Fact: The three stars of Rebel Without a Cause – James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo – all met untimely deaths. Dean - car crash; Wood - drowning; Mineo - stabbed to death.

youth and Rebel  is a classic example of outstanding filmmaking and insightful sociology. Dean was killed when he crashed

E ver since the particularly during the 1930s Depression era, Hollywood produced any number of films about problem youngsters. Classic productions such as Dead End  (1937), Angels with Dirty Faces  and Boys Town  (both 1938) being prime examples. In the majority of these movies the young characters, invariably living in inner-city slums, turn bad because of social deprivation. The movies learned to talk, but

current youthful rebellion. But instead of attracting adults the movie struck a chord with the new youth subculture. This resulted in thousands of young Americans flocking to cinemas to see what they saw as a youth-oriented movie.  Taking notice of the healthy box-office returns for the low budget  The Wild One , Hollywood, hoping to cash in on the hot new topic of juvenile delinquency, developed a new movie formula/genre, which would eventually become known in the

Marlon Brando in TheWild One (1953)

his Porsche Spyder on a lonely stretch of highway west of Bakersfield, California, scarcely a week before the opening of the film. Dean's death made him a legend and photographs of the actor, to this day, resonate with the young and disaffected across America and around the world. In the years after its debut, Rebel Without a Cause  became a worldwide cult phenomenon and it remains for many movie fans "the American motion picture of the 1950s."  All of the major and minor Hollywood studios were swift to recognise that these three "juvenile delinquent" movies had produced box-office gold, achieved almost by accident by generating a new adolescent audience in record numbers. Subsequently, with sensational advertising campaigns, they have used the image of the teenager as a reliable and marketable character in film after film throughout the last six decades. Furthermore, the vast majority of American movies produced today cater primarily to one segment of the entertainment audience – teenagers.

teenage movies of the mid-1950s, however, were not just about alienated youths from poor neighbourhoods. It was in fact a direct product of the decline of classical Hollywood and the rise of the post-WWII privileged American teenager. American adults during this period had become extremely anxious at the growth of a new youth subculture that challenged traditional parental authority. With its distinctive rock and roll music, dress and language, it certainly did not correspond with conventional American parents. Their anxiety was fuelled even more by the media continually reporting on the fearful rise of suburban juvenile delinquency. Marlon Brando perfectly captured this new rebellious youth attitude in what would become the granddaddy of teen-pics –  The Wild One (1953). When Brando's character Johnny, the leader of a motorcycle gang, is asked the question, "What are you rebelling against?" he sneeringly answers, "Whadda ya got?". The Columbia Pictures production had been directly aimed at an ever-diminishing adult cinema audience by carrying a stark warning of the strong link between criminal activity and the

1960s as the Teen-Pic. Hollywood's courtship of the teenage audience began in earnest in 1955 with two movies that would explore issues of race, sex, class, gender and national identity that affected the lives of typical 1950s American youth.  The first of these was the MGM production Blackboard Jungle,  in which Glenn

Vic Morrow pulls a knife on Glenn Ford in a scene from Blackboard Jungle (1955)

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FILM FEATURE

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After several polarising sequels, Terminator: Dark Fate reunites the core threesome of producer James Cameron and stars Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger to deliver a direct follow-up – and worthy successor – to TheTerminator andT2: Judgment Day .

“The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves.” It’s a quote that Terminator fans know very well, and the sequels that followed James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) used this mantra to create new and alternate timelines that messed with the mythology and frustrated the faithful. The newTerminator film might be called Dark Fate but it represents a ripping return to form for the franchise. Adopting the same approach as the recent Halloween , it ignores the post-T2 sequels and brings back the original’s big guns to create a direct follow-up to the Cameron classics. Set in the same timeline as the first two

continued to consult with people working at the forefront of the artificial intelligence world,” says the filmmaker. “They all believe there will be an AI equal to or greater than a human mind. They also say it’s not going to turn into Skynet, but how do we know that?” That’s certainly a chilling prospect to contemplate, and Cameron promises that Terminator: Dark Fate will recapture the intensity and future shock of the original Terminator and its follow-up. “The first film was supposed to scare the crap out of you about a possible dark future and the survival of a girl that we come to care about. This film, like the others, deals with the threat of a human collision with artificial super-intelligence, which is a whole lot less science fiction today than it was in 1984 or 1991.

movies and featuring the return of Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger in their iconic roles, as well as James Cameron as producer, Terminator Dark Fate can be considered the first ‘legitimate’ Terminator sequel since 1991. “Above anything else, we wanted to create a return to form with Dark Fate . Terminator 1 and 2 hold a very special place in cinematic history, and we wanted Dark Fate to be a continuation of Jim’s vision for the franchise,” explains producer David Ellison. “There was only one way we were going to do it – and that was if James Cameron was going to come back to the franchise.” It’s been almost three decades since Terminator 2 , so what enticed Cameron back to the Terminator universe? “Over the years I have

T-800 The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator Salvation

T-1000 Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator: Genisys

Skynet is always upgrading, with each new Terminator film introducing a lethal new model of the cybernetic future assassin.

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“We considered things like whether it should take place in the present, the past or the future. Should it focus on Sarah; should it be John? We all felt strongly that the film should be in some way a handoff to new characters, but we wanted to continue the structure of the ‘trinity’ consisting of hunters, protectors, and prey.” Terminator: Dark Fate is set two decades after Sarah Connor prevented Judgment Day and finds a young Mexico City factory worker, Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), targeted for termination by a lethal new model of machine assassin, the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna). Her survival depends upon a future protector, super-soldier Grace (Mackenzie Davis), the battle-hardened Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), and a rather familiar T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Cameron stresses his role was producer, not director, entrusting the film to Deadpool director Tim Miller, with whom he worked on the shooting script. “I believe utterly in the sanctity of the director’s creative process with the actors, the cinematographer, the production designer and so on. My job was to tee this up, set it in motion and let them do their thing.” As a fan of Deadpool , Ellison was supportive of the choice of Miller to direct. “I thought the action and world he created with that film was brilliant. Tim was able to craft a movie that reinvented not just the superhero genre, but the R-rated action genre as well, which is exactly the kind of director we needed for Terminator: Dark Fate ,” he says.

Key to the narrative of Terminator: Dark Fate is revealing what happened to Sarah Connor in the decades following the events of T2: Judgment Day . It was also a further incentive for Tim Miller to sign on as director. “As a fan myself, I wondered how I would feel about another Terminator movie,” he says. “I might think, ‘Is

Director Tim Miller and Linda Hamilton

this needed?’ Until I heard Linda is back and we’re going to finish the story of Sarah Connor. That’s a reason to show up. And for me as a director, that’s the reason to make the movie. No offense to other actors who have played her in other films, but to me there’s only one Sarah Connor and it is Linda Hamilton.” For Hamilton, the idea of returning to the role after so long was intriguing. “After T2 , I felt I had worked a very complete character arc from a nobody to a warrior woman,” she explains. “At that point I didn’t want to just keep doing it without the ability to add something new. But the last 28 years have changed Sarah dramatically and I was ready to explore that. “When this film begins, she is lost, broken and rootless. She learns that, after all her sacrifices, the future hasn’t changed in the way she had hoped. That pretty much destroys her. The only thing she has left is her loathing of technology, the future and machines. She goes on another journey to try to reach that last little kernel of humanity inside herself.” Reuniting with Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the big highlights of shooting Terminator: Dark Fate , she adds. “I don’t really think in terms of how iconic all this is, although I know many people do. I was just happy to see Arnold. In fact, I didn’t know how happy I was going to be until he showed up on set.”

• Terminator: Dark Fate is out Feb 12

Miller’s guiding principle was to stay true to the fundamentals of the Terminator franchise, while putting his own unique stamp on the film.

he’s been thinking about it for years. Even though he had never planned to make this movie, his thoughts about AI have continued to evolve, and he never lost his connection to the story.” Cameron believes that the initial goal to create a direct sequel to The Terminator and T2 has been accomplished, in both tone and narrative. “It’s gritty, it’s fast, it’s intense, and it’s linear. The whole story takes place in 36 hours and is a white-knuckle ride through a kind of techno-hell that arrives in our present day.” Miller hopes his Terminator film will be a worthy successor to the first two movies. “It’s Linda Hamilton’s return, Arnold’s back, Jim’s here and we have a really great infusion of new ideas and new blood as well,” he says. “You care about every one of these characters. Each of them has moments that I hope will make the audience cry and cheer. There are amazing action set pieces that will get the blood pumping and a plot that will have the audience constantly wondering what happens next. Hopefully, it all adds up to a great time...

“I never thought, ‘I’m going to make the movie just like Jim Cameron would,’” he says. “But I knew from his films that the secret to making a great Terminator film is character,

character, character. Jim is particularly good at the details that make you feel you’re watching real people going through extraordinary events.” The director adds that Cameron’s involvement from the very beginning was crucial to the process. “He knows the material like nobody else and

“With Dark Fate , I tried to honour what we all love about the original films,” he concludes. “My hope is that Terminator fans will feel the same way and that the film can introduce a new generation to the world and characters Jim created.”

REV-9 Terminator: Dark Fate

TX Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

T-3000 Terminator: Genisys

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and I had to drop out of that movie, so we kept in touch discussing what we were going to do together, and I guess she just felt like this was the one.” Despite the film taking its title from the famous George Michael song of the same name, Feig was adamant about not tail- coating the success of artist-focused films like Yesterday and Blinded by the Light . “I didn’t want to do a jukebox move and it had to feel organic,” he explains. “Aside from the title of Last Christmas , Emma had put a few placeholders into the script for some of George’s songs, but it wasn’t until his estate showed me a documentary that he directed for the BBC that I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, his music has to be the thing that ushers us through this film.’” With an infectious sense of joy, he describes how Michael’s music is infused into the story. “When you hear his lyrics and his music, it’s clear that his DNA is hard-baked into this. Also Emma knew George and had met with him about the script and he really loved it and wanted to be involved with the music. Even though he is not with us anymore, the movie was demanding him. So we started by clearing five of his songs to use in the movie, but by the time I got through post- production we had 15 songs in it.” With an ever present tone of optimism, Last Christmas is also riddled with other themes; some obvious and others subtle, and when asked what he would like audiences to take away from the film, Feig was excited to spread the message of goodwill. “Just the idea that we’re all in this life together. There’s so much divisiveness and intolerance going on right now, and fear of the other that it just feels like the right movie at the right time. I feel like this is the right antidote to just how exhausted we all are right now from all of the divisiveness that’s going on. It’s just a very good natured film about how to repair your life.” Returning to other important topical issues, we pose Feig a question that many have personally struggled with over the years: Christmas movies outside of the Christmas period – yay or nay? With a laugh, he has no hesitation responding, “Oh it’s a definite yay from me!” before enthusiastically elaborating on the matter. “I think there’s nothing nicer than checking in on It’s a Wonderful Life in the middle of summer. Christmas is such a great time of the year with feelings of charity and love and we completely forget about that when we get to the middle of summer.” Of course we reminded him that Down Under we do, in fact, celebrate Christmas

STACK caught up with director Paul Feig to talk about his British-flavoured – and George Michael-infused – rom-com, Last Christmas . Words Glenn Cochrane F ollowing a string of unmistakably American comedies like Bridesmaids , Spy and Ghostbusters ,

director Paul Feig has switched gears for his latest movie, trading his trademark brand of crass hilarity for a more reserved and nuanced British sensibility. The film is Last Christmas , a rom-com starring Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding and Emma Thompson, that weaves together a blossoming romance with a soundtrack comprised entirely of George Michael songs. When speaking with STACK about his love of Christmas movies, Feig took a stance on one of the most pressing issues of our time. “I know there’s debate, but I say that Die Hard is a Christmas movie,” he offers with a cheeky grin, adding that It’s a Wonderful Life and Love Actually are among his all-time favourites. Written by Emma Thompson and her husband Greg Wise, Last Christmas tells the story of Kate (Clarke), a reckless twenty-something whose run of bad luck sees her cross paths with a handsome stranger, Tom (Golding), and with an ongoing reminder to always ‘look up’, their story becomes one of romance, redemption and reinvention. While some might consider the film’s British flavour to be uncharacteristic of a prolific voice in American comedy, Feig explains there were no barriers. “My whole life has been influenced by British comedy and I actually felt very at home. We didn’t have too many references or jokes that wouldn’t work for an American audience and Emma and I compromised on some things so

• Last Christmas is out on Feb 12

Emilia Clarke & Paul Feig at the Paris Premiere

My whole life has been influenced by British comedy and I actually felt very at home

that they would work for all audiences. But overall, I think if you look at a lot of my comedy, it kind of does have that feel to it.” As it turns out, Feig’s appointment as director was a result of being originally attached to a

different project. “Emma and I were supposed to do Late Night together, the Mindy Kaling movie, and I flew to London to spend time with her to develop the character. We just hit it off and realised that we have a very similar sensibility. Eventually the scheduling didn’t work out

in the summertime – an oversight that amused him greatly. “Oh yeah. Then you should watch it when it’s cold. How weird would that be?"

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Mann revealed to STACK in a recent interview. “[ The Keep ] tragically never got to be what I wanted it to be for a number of reasons. One of the most tragic things is that my spectacular visual effects supervisor died very early on in post-production and we could never figure out how the components he did were supposed to come together,” he explained. While we may never experience Mann’s original vision for The Keep , the silver lining is that the theatrical version of this elusive, long lost cult classic has finally made its worldwide debut on DVD, thanks to the efforts of local distributor Via Vision Entertainment. “Michael Mann’s The Keep has been one of the most requested films from physical media collectors all around the world, as the movie has not had an official release since the VHS and Laserdisc era,” says Josh Hibberd, Head of Acquisitions & Commercial Development at Via Vision. “Due to this absence in the market the film has had quite a few ‘unofficial releases’ throughout the years with substandard picture and audio. It was exciting for us to secure an official licence with Paramount Pictures to finally deliver a quality release of the film for the first time worldwide. “We were initially hoping to give the film a

Cult movie buffs can finally add director Michael Mann’s elusive fantasy/horror film The Keep to their collections, with the first legitimate release of the film since the VHS & Laserdisc era. Words Scott Hocking

deluxe Blu-ray release but due to the lack of HD materials currently available in the archive it wasn’t possible at this time,” he adds. “However the existing SD transfer from the original negative was in surprisingly very good shape and included the fantastic original score by Tangerine Dream. Ultimately we felt it was more than worthy of a DVD release and no doubt many horror fans will agree.”

D espite the plethora of films available on home entertainment formats, some titles still remain frustratingly unavailable and have consequently become ‘Holy Grails’ amongst collectors. One of the most coveted of these is director Michael Mann’s haunting and hypnotic World War II fantasy/horror movie The Keep (1983), in which a Nazi garrison assigned to guard a pass in the Romanian alps take up residence in a gothic fortress that was built not to keep something out, but to keep something in… Ignoring the warnings of the fortress’s caretaker to “never touch the crosses” that adorn the interior of the keep, two soldiers remove one from the wall and subsequently unleash a malignant force that is far worse than the Third Reich. Loosely adapted by Mann from the novel by F. Paul Wilson (who has since written several sequels), The Keep is a strange and ethereal film that boasts an exceptional cast including Gabriel Byrne, Scott Glenn, Jurgen Prochnow, and Ian McKellen as an ailing Jewish professor enlisted to discover what is killing the German troops. Mann saturates the film with an eerie ambience, which is complemented by a haunting score by Euro synthesizer kings Tangerine Dream. Despite its impressive pedigree and stylish execution, The Keep failed to resonate with audiences and critics on its initial release in 1983, but has since attracted a devoted cult following who have doggedly petitioned for its

release on DVD and Blu-ray. Moreover, Mann’s original three- hour cut of the film – which was reduced to 96 minutes by studio Paramount – has become the stuff of legend, with fans clamouring for the director’s original version to be restored. Unfortunately a Director’s Cut will remain a pipe dream, as

• The Keep is available now at JB Hi-Fi stores

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characters in films like the Planet of the Apes series. The real challenge, however, was avoiding the ‘uncanny valley’ – that unsettling feeling that arises when something that is designed to look human isn’t entirely convincing. “The only difference is a talking chimpanzee is something that we kind of understand but don’t totally recognise. Whereas our brains are wired 100 per cent to recognise a human face and the emotion in a human face. You rarely run into the uncanny valley when it comes to animals because we don’t associate with animals like we do with other human beings. So we have to get it 100 per cent right.” Williams says that VFX testing during pre- production was limited due to the expense and effort involved, but fortunately producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Ang Lee had complete faith that Williams and his team could pull it off. “You just kind of commit to it, he says. “But there are a bunch of validation tests where you take photographs from earlier movies and pose our digital character to match those. It’s not so much seeing if we’re able to do it, it’s more knowing we aren’t yet there. It’s to show us where we’re off and keep refining it. Imagine you’re painting a person and the groundwater test is having your painting next to the person as you’re painting it so you can constantly improve your painting to look like the person.” When selecting early Will Smith performances to use as a reference for creating Smith Jr., Williams says the first Bad Boys and Independence Day were the primary choices, adding “with a smidge of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air , Six Degrees of Separation and Men in Black .”

WHERE THERE’S THERE’S A WAY A ,

Will Smith faces-off against a younger version of himself in Ang Lee’s action-thriller Gemini Man , which sets a new benchmark inVFX with the creation of a completely digital human character. GuyWilliams, visual effects supervisor atWeta Digital, explains why the creation of Smith Jr. required more than simply digitally de-aging the actor. Words Scott Hocking “T he crux of the movie is there’s a 50-year-old set-up to do that. It’s achievable and has been done in the past, but really puts a burden on the filming process, especially because they also physically fight each other,

assassin who wants to retire and is hunted by an assassin who we find out is a clone of himself that’s 30 years younger,” says Guy Williams. “The important part, or spine of the movie, is about the existential crisis that two people feel when they realise one is a clone and a precursor. So to really play on that dichotomy and the conflict on a mental level, you have to recognise both the 50-year-old assassin and the 20-year-old assassin as being the same person. The idea is to pull you in to the point where you feel their

which makes it so you couldn’t do that even if you wanted to. So there’s that limitation. “The other thing was, as amazing as these approaches are, they don’t scale perfectly. If we do a lot of shots, they’re built off the amazing brute strength of individual artists, so if you have to do a lot of work, then you might have to bring in people who aren’t as good as your best people, and you start to spot the differences. “Ang wanted to shoot 4K, 120fps Stereo 3D. He didn’t want as good as people have done to date, he wanted

GuyWilliams

...we couldn’t just have a different actor play the younger part

So was Smith a little freaked out when he saw the finished effect? “He was always very complimentary,” says Williams. “At one point I had him backstage with no cameras or microphones and I said, ‘just tell me the honest truth – did we achieve the result you’d hoped for?’ And he said, ‘you don’t understand dude, it was incredibly trippy – I’m looking at this and I know that it looks like me, it talks like me, that it is me there, but I know

to do better. So right off the bat we knew the needs of the story and the desires of the director – we were looking at creating a fully digital human.” Williams goes on to explain that creating such an ambitious digital illusion was not dissimilar to the performance-capture techniques used to create digital

angst and can relate to it more, so we couldn’t just have a different actor play the younger part. “The question is why couldn’t we have Will Smith play both roles and just use traditional de-aging techniques? There were two reasons for that. One was that he’s on frame twice – he’s talking to himself a bunch of times. You would have to do a very complex motion-control

I didn’t do that. It’s very confusing to me!’ He found it very interesting to see himself do something that he had never done before.”

• Gemini Man is now yours to own on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD

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