Crazy Heart writer/director looks to be in the hunt for awards season glory with Out of the Furnace starring Oscar winner Christian Bale, two-time Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson, two-time Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe, Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, Oscar nominee Casey Affleck, and Oscar nominee Sam Shepard. Relativity Media’s just released this new trailer for the film opening in theaters on November 27, 2013.
The Plot:
Russell Baze (Christian Bale) has a rough life: he works a dead-end blue-collar job at the local steel mill by day and cares for his terminally ill father by night. When Russell’s brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) returns home from serving time in Iraq, he gets lured into one of the most ruthless crime rings in the Northeast and mysteriously disappears. The police fail to crack the case, so – with nothing left to lose – Russell takes matters into his own hands, putting his life on the line to seek justice for his brother.
The teaser poster for Lovelace was all legs, but this new one is all Amanda Seyfried. Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Lovelace explores the life of porn star Linda Lovelace – but not just the parts of her story the public knows well.
The cast also includes Peter Sarsgaard, Wes Bentley, Adam Brody, Hank Azaria, Bobby Cannavale, James Franco, Debi Mazar, Chris Noth, and Robert Patrick.
The Plot:
In 1972—before the internet, before the porn explosion—Deep Throat was a phenomenon: the first scripted pornographic theatrical feature film, featuring a story, some jokes, and an unknown and unlikely star, Linda Lovelace. Escaping a strict religious family, Linda discovered freedom and the high-life when she fell for and married charismatic hustler Chuck Traynor.
As Linda Lovelace, she became an international sensation—less centerfold fantasy than a charming girl-next-door with an impressive capacity for fellatio. Fully inhabiting her new identity, Linda became an enthusiastic spokesperson for sexual freedom and uninhibited hedonism. Six years later she presented another utterly contradictory narrative to the world—and herself as the survivor of a far darker story.
NBC will be introducing a new hour-long game show to its lineup. The network’s just given the go-ahead for eight episodes of Wall of Fame, so says NBC Alternative and Late Night Programming President Paul Telegdy.
Announcing the show, Telegdy stated: “This series offers something for everyone in a unique game show format that rewards families who know their pop culture trivia. Our celebrities will add an extra element of surprise as they too will have their knowledge tested — providing a high potential for many unpredictable and raucous answers.”
The Plot: Wall of Fame is a comedic game show where one family can win big money if they can not only answer pop culture trivia questions correctly, but can also guess whether members of our celebrity Wall of Fame delivered the correct answers to those same questions. The celebrity answers will sometimes surprise you, sometimes impress you, but they will always make viewers laugh.
“It isn’t enough for families to know the correct answer to pop culture trivia questions. In order to win big money, contestants need to predict which of our eclectic panel of celebrities also knows the correct answer,” says David Goldberg, Chairman and CEO, Endemol North America. “Audiences will be constantly amused and surprised by our celebrity’s answers. It’s the classic case of ‘you can’t always judge a book by its cover.”
Yes, you read that headline correctly. Warner Bros isn’t just simply providing San Diego Comic-Con attendees with bags featuring their shows Arrow, The Vampire Diaries, The Following, The Big Bang Theory, Revolution, Supernatural, and Teen Titans Go!, they’re also giving the 130,000 attendees detachable capes. In addition to the bags featuring TV shows, WB’s giving away Godzilla, The LEGO® Movie, 300: Rise of an Empire, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, and the classic Batman themed bags.
According to the official announcement, this year’s swag bag is actually a backpack complete with a built-in, detachable cape.
Warner Bros Pictures pushed back the release date of Seventh Son from a 2013 spot to January 14, 2014 but they haven’t delayed showing off a two-minute trailer and a teaser poster with Jeff Bridges. Now, I’m not at all familiar with the source material, so I have no idea if this trailer will make fans of The Spook’s Apprentice by Joseph Delaney react with anger or joy. But as someone entirely new to the story, the trailer left me wondering what Seventh Son is actually about.
Directed by Sergei Bodrov (Mongol), Seventh Son stars Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore, Djimon Hounsou, Antje Traue, Kit Harington, Alicia Vikander, and Olivia Williams.
The Plot:
In a time long past, an evil is about to be unleashed that will reignite the war between the forces of the supernatural and humankind once more. Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges), the last of the Falcon Knights, had imprisoned the malevolently powerful witch, Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), many years ago. But now she has escaped and is seeking vengeance.
Summoning her followers of every incarnation, Mother Malkin is preparing to unleash her terrible wrath on an unsuspecting world. Only one thing stands in her way: Master Gregory.
In a deadly reunion, Gregory comes face to face with the evil he always feared would someday return. He has only until the next full moon to do what usually takes years: train his new apprentice, Tom Ward (Ben Barnes) to fight a dark magic unlike any other.
Man’s only hope lies in the seventh son of a seventh son.
Watching a trailer for Pacific Rim, I instantly assumed it would be essentially Godzilla vs Robot Jox. Watching the movie Pacific Rim, I learned that I was essentially right.
Director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro brings his penchant for monster design here to a much grander scale. The film is set not too far into the future, where a dimensional rift has allowed gigantic creatures to emerge and wreak havoc upon human civilization. The world powers unite to create giant robots named Jaegers, which conveniently for the story’s sake require two pilots to merge their consciousnesses together in order to control them. They call this act ‘drifting,’ and the notion of how powerful that kind of connection between people can be is about as deep as the script gets as far as character development.
That’s fine of course because when you’re making a ridiculously expensive movie about colossal behemoths fighting giant robots, most of the audience would prefer the characters shut up and fight. To his credit, del Toro generally understands this, and while the few moments the story attempts to grow a brain are mostly laughable, there’s usually not much time between one fight and the next.
What makes Pacific Rim impressive is the scale in which confrontations are set. Watching one Jaeger use a giant boat as a club or a monster-level skyscraper with minimal effort is a fun sight to behold. Even more impressive is that the 3D in the film is actually quite good. Rather than mimic most movies that only concentrate on making the opening sequence stand out, there’s both an immersive nature throughout the film and a number of non-gimmicky elements hurled toward the camera that work well. If you’re going to see this movie, seeing it in 3D is the way to go.
Perhaps the only real disappointment in del Toro’s approach was setting so much of the movie in the dark of the night. Only some early scenes and the odd battle here or there take place while the sun is up. Leaving the theater, I joked that they should have called this Midnight Rim: Hong Kong Drift. Hmm … that’s less funny on paper … and if you didn’t know the home base for the Jaegers is in Hong Kong … oh well. It also would have been nice for the monsters to have some personality, but they were fairly interchangeable aside from their particular method of attack.
I’d talk about the acting, but there’s really not much point. The characters are all stereotypes of one thing or another and they interact with each other just as stereotypically. Even the comic relief, coming via Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, and del Toro mainstay Ron Perlman, is just barely on the right side of being over the top vs. cloying annoyance. Their moments provide a break from the grim tone carried out throughout the rest of the movie so while they weren’t very inspired, it was necessary to balance out the overall picture (and something Man of Steel could have sorely used).
The selling point is the massive scale on which the fights take place, and to that end, the movie delivers. Sure, it’s basically like mashing together Robot Jox, Godzilla, Cloverfield, Top Gun, Independence Day, and Hellboy but those are all perfect summer movies and so is Pacific Rim (okay, maybe Robot Jox isn’t perfect, but I love that cheesy 80s stuff). You get what you pay for in this case and that’s not something I can say about most of the big-budget spectacles that have graced theaters this year.
GRADE: B-
Pacific Rim starring Charlie Hunnam opens in theaters on July 11, 2013 and is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief language.
Tom Hanks leads the cast of Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks based on the true story of Walt Disney’s pursuit of the rights to make a Mary Poppins movie. Directed by John Lee Hancock, Saving Mr. Banks also features Emma Thompson, Colin Farrell, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Whitford, Annie Rose Buckley, Ruth Wilson, B.J. Novak, Rachel Griffiths, and Kathy Baker.
Saving Mr. Banks opens in theaters on December 20, 2013.
The Plot:
When Walt Disney’s daughters begged him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins, he made them a promise—one that he didn’t realize would take 20 years to keep. In his quest to obtain the rights, Walt comes up against a curmudgeonly, uncompromising writer who has absolutely no intention of letting her beloved magical nanny get mauled by the Hollywood machine. But, as the books stop selling and money grows short, Travers reluctantly agrees to go to Los Angeles to hear Disney’s plans for the adaptation.
For those two short weeks in 1961, Walt Disney pulls out all the stops. Armed with imaginative storyboards and chirpy songs from the talented Sherman brothers, Walt launches an all-out onslaught on P.L. Travers, but the prickly author doesn’t budge. He soon begins to watch helplessly as Travers becomes increasingly immovable and the rights begin to move further away from his grasp.
It is only when he reaches into his own childhood that Walt discovers the truth about the ghosts that haunt her, and together they set Mary Poppins free to ultimately make one of the most endearing films in cinematic history.
Inspired by true events, Saving Mr. Banks is the extraordinary, untold story of how Disney’s classic Mary Poppins made it to the screen—and the testy relationship that the legendary Walt Disney had with author P.L. Travers that almost derailed it.
Ruckus and Dirk in A&E’s new real-life series ‘Bad Ink’ - Photo by Zach Dilgard Copyright 2012
A&E will be debuting Bad Ink, their latest reality series featuring tattoo artists, on August 11, 2013 at 10pm ET. The new show will premiere with back-to-back episodes featuring Las Vegas tattoo “aficionados” as they attempt to fix tattoo mistakes.
Details on Bad Ink [Per A&E]:
Bad Ink centers on Dirk Vermin, one of the nation’s most well-respected tattoo artists, and his best friend Ruckus as they go on the hunt for sin city’s worst ink jobs. From rebellious school kids to housewives to grandmothers, in Vegas, no one is immune from waking up and saying “What did I just do?” These people are this colorful duo’s primary targets, as Dirk and Ruckus ambush convention goers, tourists and locals alike, inspecting their awful art up close and personally.
For a lucky few, Dirk will be able to work his magic and transform the cringe-worthy eyesores into noteworthy masterpieces. Behind every tattoo in Vegas is often an amusing tale… but these guys will not let anyone they find leave the city a victim of bad ink!
In the season premiere episode at 10PM, Dirk and Ruckus get a desperate call from a Jacqui, a client whose birthday celebration turned into a tattoo nightmare she can’t forget. Later, they meet Alex, a man whose failed attempt at professing his love has left him with a tattoo scar that threatens his new relationship.
Dead Anyway by Chris Knopf immediately grabs the reader and doesn’t let go as it winds its way to the end on a path laden with numerous twists and turns. The book is told through the eyes of Arthur Cathcart. Arthur comes home from a walk to the post office to find an unknown man in his house pointing a gun at his wife, Florencia. After shooting Arthur in the thigh to gain compliance and show he’s serious, the gunman demands Florencia secretly complete some information on a sheet of paper he gives her.
Once this is done, the gunman shoots each of them in the head. Florencia dies immediately. Arthur survives.
Through the aid of his sister, Arthur fakes his death in order to find the gunman and the people who hired him. He is driven by the intense need to avenge the death of his wife. As his terribly injured brain goes through the process of healing, Arthur sets up new identities and begins his hunt. Prior to the murder of his wife, he was a professional market researcher for a wide variety of corporations, so he is well-versed in making his way around the internet, asking questions, and getting answers out of people who don’t necessarily want to respond to questions. Arthur also has the ability to hack into most computers, including that of Florencia’s insurance company. He’ll need all of these skills if he is to succeed in his quest for revenge.
The characters Arthur meets along the way are, to say the least, interesting, including a colorful gang of Bosnians. But are they friends or foes? This could be said about a majority of the characters in the book because it is not readily apparent who is helping and who is hindering Arthur. Armed with numerous disguises and fake identification, he enters a world of violence and danger; a world very far away from his previous stay-at-home husband life. He will need to use every bit of his analytical skills to track down his prey.
One of the enjoyable aspects of Dead Anyway is that Arthur could be anybody. He’s not a cop, a government agent; possesses no awesome physical abilities. He does, however, have the intense desire to have revenge for what happened to him and his wife. The book is original, has great characters and, although the book can easily stand by itself, the ending of the book appears to guarantee a sequel. I hope it is as entertaining as Dead Anyway.
One thing you can definitely say about this new The Canyons trailer is that it doesn’t give away much of the plot. It does have lots of shots of Lindsay Lohan sprinkled with some review quotes, but it’s light on actual substance.
Coming to theaters and Video on Demand on August 2, 2013, The Canyons was directed by Paul Schrader and stars Lohan, James Deen, and Nolan Gerard Funk.
The Plot:
While calculating young movie producer Christian (Deen) makes films to keep his trust fund intact, his actress girlfriend, Tara (Lohan), hides an affair with an actor from her past. But Christian becomes aware of her infidelity, which leads the young Angelenos into a violent, sexually-charged tour through the dark side of human nature.
