Here’s the first trailer for Universal and Illumination Entertainment’s Despicable Me spinoff starring the word-challenged yellow folks who “all share the same goal: to serve the most despicable master around.” Their well-intentioned bumbling leads to the demise of dinosaurs, Napoleon, Dracula and others, until Kevin, Stuart and Bob help the Minions discover their real purpose — and end up in 1968 New York. The voice cast includes a few folks you might have heard of: Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney and Steve Coogan. Directed by DM and DM2 helmer Pierre Coffin and written by Bryan Lynch, the Illumination Entertainment pic saunters into theaters July 10.

The Dutch harsh electro act XMH are back with a new download single (out on November 14, but already ready for ordering via Bandcamp). You get 2 tracks now plus the complete single the moment it's released if you order via Bandcamp. 

The 5-track single holds the title track, 3 remixes by upcoming electro favorites Avarice In Audio, Belgium's Implant and The Last Dance plus the exclusive new song, the B-side "The Ticking Clock".

"The Blind" is the second single taken from their aggrotech album "in Your Face" released on Alfa Matrix back in April. 

John Carpenter, the Legendary Director and Composer behind Halloween, Escape From New York, They Live, Assault on Precinct 13 and many more announces his debut solo album Lost Themes out February 3rd on Sacred Bones Records. In anticipation of his debut release, Carpenter shares a new track “Vortex,” a custom-designed video for “Vortex” set to clips from different Carpenter films and the full album artwork and track list.

Jesse von Doom, the creator of the “Vortex” video loop says, “The page takes a bunch of scenes from various John Carpenter films and turns them into a unique video each visit. It was built along with CASH Music, a nonprofit that builds free and open technology for musicians. We start with a list of favorite clips, pull them in a random order, then vary the length of each edit to bring a more unique feel to each visit. Watch long enough and you'll see the best Kurt Russell movie never made.”

John Carpenter has been responsible for much of the horror genre’s most striking soundtrack work in the fifteen movies he’s both directed and scored. The themes that drive them can be stripped to a few coldly repeating notes, take on the electrifying thunder of a rock concert, or submerge themselves into exotic, unholy miasmas. It’s work that instantly floods his fans’ musical memory with imagery of a menacing shape stalking a babysitter, a relentless wall of ghost-filled fog, lightning-fisted kung fu fighters, or a mirror holding the gateway to hell. Lost Themes asks Carpenter’s acolytes to visualize their own nightmares.

“Lost Themes was all about having fun,” Carpenter says. “It can be both great and bad to score over images, which is what I’m used to. Here there were no pressures. No actors asking me what they’re supposed to do. No crew waiting. No cutting room to go to. No release pending. It’s just fun. And I couldn’t have a better set-up at my house, where I depended on (collaborators) Cody (Carpenter, of the band Ludrium) and Daniel (Davies, who scored I, Frankenstein) to bring me ideas as we began improvising. The plan was to make my music more complete and fuller, because we had unlimited tracks. I wasn’t dealing with just analogue anymore. It’s a brand new world. And there was nothing in any of our heads when we started other than to make it moody.”

As is Carpenter’s style, repetition is the key to the thundering power of these tracks, their energy swirling with shredding chords, soaring organs, unnerving pianos and captivating percussion. Singularly titled to inspire dread with such names as “Vortex,” “Dominion,” “Abyss,” and “Purgatory,” but all linked into a unified whole, Lost Themes has a mesmerizing power. Horror fans will be reminded of Carpenter’s past works, as well as ancestors like Mike Oldfeld’s Tubular Bells and the raging guitars and chiming percussion of Goblin’s Suspiria. “’Both classical music and rock and roll are part of my musical language, which is riff-driven,” Carpenter explains. “So if you listen carefully, I’m sure you can hear some echoes from my past. But I’m sure that’s true of any composer. You just bring your music along with you.”

These Lost Themes will doubtlessly inspire listeners to materialize their own eerily atmospheric dimensions, musical lands inspired by John Carpenter’s motifs, even as the composer-director looks ahead with excitement towards brave new musical worlds he can explore. “The best way I can describe what we’ve done is that it’s a ‘soundtrack sampler,’ which is what Cody calls it. They’re little moments of score from movies made in our imaginations. Now I hope it inspires people to create films that could be scored with this music.”

‘Not just a chic -thriller, but an engrossing study of Italian society and a downward-spiralling economy’.The Hollywood Reporter

STARRING

Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Fabrizio Gifuni, Valeria Golino, Matilde Gioli, Guglielmo Pinelli & Giovanni Anzaldo

Valeria Golina and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, two of Italy’s leading actresses, star in Human Capital, a new thriller based on Stephen Amidon’s best-selling book of the same name that twists love, class, and ambition into a singular, true-life story. Human Capital also serves as Italy’s candidate for the foreign-language Academy Award race.

Small-time estate agent, Dino (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), seizes a chance to climb the local social-ladder when dropping his beautiful daughter Serena (Matilde Gioli) off to visit her boyfriend Massimiliano (Guglielmo Pinelli) – the son of Giovanni Bernaschi (Fabrizio Gifuni), a hot-shot hedge-fund investor, at a large villa on the edge of town. Making up the fourth man in a game of tennis doubles, his natural sporting ability and opportunistic eye provide him an unlikely entrance to a world where making money is both easy and fast. Depending on your access to the right amount of capital, that is. When Giovanni suggests Dino join his latest fund scheme, with a mere €500,000, Dino, is so desperate to be a part of the Bernaschi circle that he puts his own house and business up as collateral.

When a cyclist is the victim of an accidental hit-and-run after a school awards ceremony one night just before Christmas the destinies of these two families are catastrophically interwoven and a mystery emerges from the accident that centres around the two misunderstood and emotionally neglected teenagers. Coinciding with the sudden onset of the financial crisis – a situation that threatens the immediate security of the rich and aspiring-rich alike, cracks quickly start to emerge. From the rich and bored wife Carla (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), with misguided aspirations of artistic patronage, this multi-layered human drama serves up an absorbing treatise on how the rich can ride roughshod over the ‘little people’ when their security is threatened

Human Capital, is a gripping and thrilling drama with a mystery at its centre – who was driving the jeep that fateful night and what will the consequences be – for all involved?

Here is the next chapter from the Jobs-soap!

With Christian Bale parting ways on the project, Sony has moved quickly to find their man to portray the late Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Michael Fassbender is in early talks to play “Jobs” in the the Sony biopic that Danny Boyle is directing, sources confirm.

Based on Walter Isaacson’s biography “Steve Jobs,” the real-life drama is directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin. Scott Rudin will produce along with Mark Gordon and Guymon Casady. Sorkin has publicly said the movie will be divided into three long scenes, each taking place backstage before one of Apple’s famous product launches.

“The first one being the Mac,” he told the Daily Beast. “The second one being NeXT, after he had left Apple. And the third one being the iPod.” “It’s a little like writing about the Beatles,” he added. “There are so many people out there that know him and revere him."

Source: Variety