Taken from the November 2009 issue of Empire:

“Empire: There was a piece in The Guardian recently, around the DVD release of Che, where it sounded like you wanted to give up. But you don’t sound defeated…

Soderbergh: Okay…What that guy did was not cool. I was not depressed, I was not defeated, I was not resigned. In fact, I was very much the way I am right now.  I was speaking in sort of philosophical terms about the business, about that film, and it was spun and put out in the aftermath of the Moneyball situation to look as though it was a reaction to that. That was not cool, the way I was characterised in that piece.”

Reassuring news!

The first trailer for the next Werner Herzog film is finally here. Written and directed by Herzog, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is also produced by David Lynch, and stars Willem Dafoe and Chloë Sevigny, as well as Michael Shannon, whose Oscar nomination last year for his supporting role in Revolutionary Road was very well-deserved. The trailer is surprisingly atypical of trailers for a Herzog/Lynch feature, but the movie still looks really great, and with such a stellar cast and crew I’m officially excited!

I have just been informed that Harmony Korine is working on his fourth feature film – a musical called Trash Humpers – and that it is set to be unveiled at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival as part of their Visions section. I repeat: this is going to be released this year. 2009. Next. Freaking. Month.

The website describes Trash Humpers as a “handheld video of a loser-gang cult-freak collective who do antisocial things in a non-narrative way, except for the song-and-dance numbers”. As someone who adores his work, I find it hard to communicate my excitement without resorting to a string of incomprehensible letters and exclamation marks. This is beyond excitement, this is…

…SGHBS!!!!

This comes only two years after Mister Lonely. Julien-Donkey Boy came two years after Gummo. Gummo came two years after Kids. This announcement and his recent work Crutchnap hints at a return to form; not just a return to the controversial nature of his previous films and his unique directorial approach, but a return to productivity. While I’ve enjoyed Harmony’s recent commercials, I was worried that they would result in another hiatus period like the seven-year gap between Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely, and that he would focus less on feature films. I’m so glad to be wrong.

A harmony-korine.com user said:
When I talked to harmony at his art exhibit opening in nashville he told me he had two things in the work. First, he was getting ready to shoot something very quickly and very small. He said that it was going to make more people angry than anything he’s ever done. Second, he was going to be working on something bigger by the end of this year. I’m guessing this is the former.

Excuse me, I’ve gotta go pass out now.

EDIT: Some screenshots from the film have been released. You can view them at the Toronto International Film Festival website.

EDIT 2: Trash Humpers will also be screened at the New York Film Festival.

The first trailer for Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s story Fantastic Mr. Fox has just been released. You can see it at Yahoo! Movies by clicking here.

Personally, I’m incredibly excited for this. The Projectorheads’ opinion on Wes Anderson is split – some of us think he can do no wrong, others don’t quite get the hype. I count myself in the former category, and this trailer seems to show me that he can go out of his comfort zone and still make a great film. As much as the voiceover tries to make the trailer look like a typical kid’s movie, the voice acting and animation style shine through to show this is gonna be something special.

IMDb tells me the UK release date for this is October 23rd (November 13th for Americans, and not until January 10th for Australians). I can’t wait.