Stephen Soderbergh

Channing Tatum to co-star in Steven Soderbergh’s KNOCKOUT; Antonio Banderas May Also Join Cast

by Matt Currie    Posted: January 11th, 2010 at 1:00 pm

According to The Playlist, director Steven Soderbergh, apparently having been swept off his feet by the Dear John trailer, has decided to flesh out his Knockout cast with professional non-emoter Channing Tatum. In case you missed our last story on this project, Knockout is a spy thriller that will star MMA figher Gina Carano as a member of a covert military squad who is double-crossed by someone on her team, leading her on a quest to uncover the guilty parties and, one would imagine, dole out lots of retaliatory ass-kicking. Tatum will have a small part as a member of Carano’s team that reaches out to her once she goes off the grid.

After casting the inexperienced and possibly awful Carano, Soderbergh balanced things out by surrounding her with a proven-to-be-awesome supporting cast, including Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, and Dennis Quaid. Obviously, the casting of Tatum throws things out of whack again, but the director is taking steps to remedy this, as, also per The Playlist, Antonio Banderas is close to joining the ensemble as the leader of a European black-ops squad.

Hit the jump for my thoughts on the casting, especially as far as Carano is concerned.

Steven Soderbergh Takes HBO and AMC to Task About Ruined Aspect Ratios

by Matt Goldberg    Posted: August 12th, 2009 at 12:10 pm

If you don’t know or don’t care about cinematic aspect ratios, you should.  There’s a reason everyone’s selling widescreen TVs now and a large part of it has to do with aspect ratios.  You know those black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when you’re watching shows like “Mad Men” or “Entourage”?  That’s because it’s what the director intended (also, on television it provides a more cinematic quality) and aspect ratio is considered by every director.  Almost every movie and most dramatic television shows have moved to this ratio and it’s not because it’s necessarily better as much as that’s the way the filmmaker thought it worked best.  When a movie gets butchered for distribution on television, especially cable television, that’s a travesty for a director.

Director Steven Soderbergh has had enough, and now he’s speaking out about it.  Hit the jump to read what he has to say.

Stephen Soderbergh’s THE INFORMANT! Trailer – Starring Matt Damon

by Matt Goldberg    Posted: June 30th, 2009 at 6:04 pm

I need to create an ongoing series called “Matt Is Bad At His Job” when major facts about movies just go completely off my radar.  This would be one of those instances as I had no idea that Stephen Soderbergh’s upcoming film, “The Informant!” was a comedy.  I thought it was a film in the vein of “The Insider” instead of a film that would be a comedic companion piece to the “The Insider”.  I didn’t even know that the title includes an exclamation point.

But sometimes being bad at your job yields nice surprises and this new trailer for “The Informant!” is certainly one of them.  Matt Damon, being one of the best and most versatile actors working today, is getting to really indulge his comedic timing here and he looks to be completely fantastic.  It looks like Soderbergh may be delivering one of the year’s best films and one of his most fun films that doesn’t start with the word “Ocean’s”.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer. “The Informant!” hits theatres this September.

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