Sci-Fi Love Stories Are the Cruelest Love Stories

There’s an element of science fiction in all romance. We can’t always explain love, and we end up beholden to the wonder of it all, confused and delighted all at once. In much the same way, there’s an element of romance in the depths of outer space and in the worlds of science fiction, people existing in a place that is often hostile to humans, searching for meaning in a vast, unknown universe, fighting for survival as inexplicable occurrences bring people together and drive them apart. Bringing the two seemingly different genres together seems only natural, the finest elements of both combining to form one formidable genre: science fiction romance.

The sci-fi romance film “Upside Down” deals with a man (Jim Sturgess), and a woman (Kirsten Dunst), who live in a strange world, on twin planets that each have completely opposite gravitational forces. It’s a perfect premise to express the difficulties facing relationships: People on separate worlds, desperately struggling to connect even as they’re kept apart by circumstances beyond their control. While many of us face smaller hurdles in our love lives, the truth remains that romances in science fiction often come with unique challenges. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a few recent sci-fi romances to see what forces threatened to deny these couples.

Many of the greatest romances in science fiction often seem to have an element of time travel to them. Normal relationships that aren’t trapped by the confines of reality quickly seems to pale in comparison as star crossed lovers find themselves separated by time and distance that seem insurmountable. In “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” Henry, played by Eric Bana, jumps around in time without knowing when or where the time traveling might happen, anchored to reality only by his love of Rachel McAdams’ character, Clare. Time travel not only presents the biggest obstacle to their continued lives together, but is the device that reunites them, time and again. Though most couples may fight over menial matters, these two never know when they may see each other again, if they’ll both know it, and how to keep their love alive throughout all the constant changes. Time is simply another hurdle to overcome.

Based on a real ad placed in a newspaper, the indie film “Safety Not Guaranteed” follows Darius, an investigative journalist played by Aubrey Plaza, as she attempts to discover whether or not Kenneth (Mark Duplass) is capable of time travel as he claims. The initial premise of a mad man looking for a traveling companion gives way to a tender and complicated look at the reasons why these people would time travel, not for money or fame, but out of love for one another and desire for real connection.

“Back to the Future” may not strike you as a great romance but Marty McFly’s parents would never have gotten together without his intervention, and their happy marriage was directly due to his complicated matchmaking. The logic of time travel gets especially hazy with this one, but it’s a wild, and joyful ride all the way through the trilogy, including McFly’s own romance. The idea that we can somehow alter the future is an intoxicating one, and an entire generation of kids have grown up obsessed with time travel thanks to this movie, and a whole lotta fear about changing the past and affecting the future.

Directed by the great Wong Kar-Wai, “2046? is a time-spanning, genre-blending ode to love that follows the lives and loves of a writer who boards a train for a mysterious place, 2046, with the hopes of understanding his great loves. Elegant and beautiful, the film serves as a fascinating sequel to “In the Mood for Love”, and jumps from the ’60s to the future effortlessly. Tony Leung is always a pleasure, but it’s the women of 2046 who steal the show, from Zhang Ziyi to Faye Wong.

There are other sci fi romances that lack the element of time travel that still manage to explore the concept of romance, including Andrei Tarkovsky’s solemn masterpiece, “Solaris”. An aging astronaut is sent into space to uncover what’s happened to an errant mission, and ends up face to face with a mysterious woman who seems to be his long-dead wife. Haunting, strange, and confusing, Solaris explores a love that reaches from beyond the grave to pull a man from Earth towards the distant stars. Though some people prefer Soderbergh’s version with George Clooney, nothing can touch the Russian original for mood, beauty and contemplative grace.

Many of us have had relationships end so badly we wished that we could erase our memories forever. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” showed us a world where that was entirely possible. Jim Carrey has never been better and Kate Winslet showed us a quirky side of her we never knew existed, and the unlikely pair make one of the greatest couples in sci-fi history as we’re privy not only to the highest highs but also the lowest lows of their love life.

Though it’s unconventional, and it’s certainly not between two humans, “Wall-E” may have the market cornered on sci-fi romance as the infinitely lovable garbage robot Wall-E falls in love with the hyper slick, modern flying robot Eve. The pair are mismatched, old and new, with entirely different personalities, and unable to fully communicate with one another, but there’s a lesson in grace and love in there for all of us as Wall-E pursues Eve and proves himself dedicated beyond all measure. Whoever says animated movies are just for kids isn’t paying close enough attention.

 

Because they made two movies together in addition to their hit TV series, “The X-Files” no list would be complete without David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in their sci-fi iterations as Dana Scully and Fox Mulder. These two Special Agents of the FBI battled monsters, murderous killers, government conspiracy and alien invasion, all while keeping it professional. But that didn’t last, and fans finally got to see these two fall in love over the last few seasons of their show, and display a lot of love for one another in the movies. Plus, as a result, we got that awesome Flipmode Squad rap lyric, “We like Scully and Mulder, walkin’ shoulder to shoulder.”

“The Matrix” may seem an odd choice, but Carrie-Ann Moss in skin tight black leather, and Keanu Reeves playing an emotionless human sent to save humanity from machines? There has never been a cooler movie at the time of release, and this movie had an undeniably huge impact on every film that came after. Underneath it all was a lot of compassion and desperation as Neo adjusted to his harsh new reality, and when they weren’t busy fighting for their future, these two were smoldering at one another and exploring the desert of the real.

Defying destiny is one of the most outrageous acts that love can take, and it’s brought fully to life by Emily Blunt and Matt Damon in “The Adjustment Bureau”. When Damon’s character accidentally falls in love with Blunt during a chance meeting, he’s cornered by a strange consortium of all powerful men in suits, and told to leave her alone as it’s not in the cards for the two of them to be together. To hell with that! Damon and Blunt reunite after years and face enormous challenges from this unknown, mystical agency that causes the question of whether or not we have free will in love to be posed, endlessly.

Which are your favorites? Let us know in the comments below.

Categories: No Categories

Tags: 2046, Back to the future, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Romance, Safety Not Guaranteed, Sci Fi Romance, Science fiction, Solaris, The Adjustment Bureau, The Fountain, The Matrix, The time traveler's wife, The x-files, Upside Down, Wall-e

The Opening Shot of Ryan Gosling’s New Film Will Blow Your Mind

[Via MTV] If there’s any one word to describe “The Place Beyond the Pines” — an epic new drama that re-teams Derek Cianfrance with his “Blue Valentine” star Ryan Gosling — it’s “ambitious.” Chronicling three generations of crime and punishment in the upstate New York city of Schenectady, Cianfrance’s new film plays like a wildly cool but deathly serious cross between “Goodfellas” and “Cloud Atlas”, as we watch the fallout from a bank heist gone wrong play out over more than 15 years, beginning with Gosling and eventually involving the likes of Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Dane DeHaan and more.

But Cianfrance isn’t exactly coy about his ambition — in fact, the very first shot of “The Place Beyond the Pines” makes it abundantly clear that the film isn’t interested in doing things the easy way. The opening shot is a total mind-blower, and it’s a credit to Cianfrance’s engaging storyline that you don’t spend the 140 minutes that follow just sitting there and thinking to yourself, “How did they do that!?”

(mild spoiler warning)

The first thing we see is the back of Gosling’s bleach blonde head as the camera follows him through the clatter of a busy fairground. And … actually, it’s probably best to let Cianfrance take things from here. MTV recently sat down with the filmmaker, who opened up on he accomplished a seemingly impossible trick.

“Director Derek Cianfrance wanted an opening shot that reflected the film’s size, so he and his director of photography, Sean Bobbitt, conceived a five-and-a-half-minute take that followed the stunt cyclist played by Gosling through a busy fairground and ended with him inside a globe of death with two other motorcyclists.

‘We were shooting in an active fair,’ Cianfrance told MTV. We had to put our circus tent and the trailer exactly five minutes and 30 seconds in walking distance away from each other. That was the time we had slotted for our title sequence. We timed everything out, and we did this take.’

Also check out: Exclusive photos from “The Place Beyond the Pines”

But as anyone familiar with the hysteria that Gosling can generate by walking through a crowd, one does not simply have one of Hollywood’s biggest stars waltz through an active fairground, and the ‘Place Beyond the Pines’ crew had to prepare for that. ‘It was kind of a nightmare,’ Cianfrance said. ‘We had a number of our ADs out on the set that day, and they’re all wearing these big Dr. Seuss hats. They were crucial in pulling people’s attention away from Ryan. That was a big challenge with a shot like that. Once someone looks at the camera, it ruins the shot.’”

Of course, that wasn’t even the hard part. Head on over to MTV to read how they shot Ryan Gosling driving a motorcycle around two other riders in a steel “Globe of Death.”

The Place Beyond the Pines rolls into theaters on March 29.

Read our review of “The Place Beyond the Pines”

Categories: No Categories

Tags: Derek Cianfrance, Eva mendes, Mtv, Ryan gosling, The Place Beyond The Pines

SXSW Review: ‘Evil Dead’

The downright gnarliest mainstream horror release in recent memory, “Evil Dead” is certainly a considerable and occasionally commendable dose of the ol’ ultra-violence, but Fede Alvarez’ Raimi-sanctioned update of 1981’s cult favorite only really has that demented determination going for it.

Mia (Jane Levy) encourages two friends — pre-med Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and high school teacher Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) — to accompany her out to her family’s cabin deep in the woods as she tries once more to kick her drug habit. Mia’s big brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez), also shows up, with girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) in tow, and while the siblings try to put aside their recent estrangement, Mia’s friends want to ensure that her cold turkey routine sticks this time. Of course, once certain teachers get the bright idea to read aloud from a certain book of the dead recovered from the basement, Mia soon finds herself tormented and possessed by a demon whose erratic behavior her pals initially mistake for withdrawal-related crankiness.

The overhead shot of a flesh-bound book carefully placed on a table beside a shotgun and its shells has all the markings of a hellish-weekend starter kit, and the fact that the book itself is wrapped in both garbage bags and barbed wire to keep away the curious serves as an apt metaphor for this new take, one which manages to be both plastic and sharp. The first feature from director/co-writer Alvarez always takes careful care in framing carnage and casting shadows with an unflinching, nigh fetishistic eye, and the result is as slick as the first film was scrappy, emphasizing sheer audacity over spirited anarchy. With that in mind, said mayhem is indeed sickening stuff, an effective union of digital and (more commonly) practical gore effects with a particularly juicy sound mix, delivered at a relentless pace, and the fourth act (!) is somehow still a doozy despite the preceding parade of horrors. (FYI: stay after the credits.)

The re-established mythos may adhere to tidy symptoms and solutions for our characters’ demonic dilemmas, but hey, it’s just nice to see some kids actually take the time to read a book these days. (It should be pointed out that there isn’t a cell phone or any excuse for poor service in sight, a cliche refreshingly dodged via simple omission. Even the cars are just not-modern enough to suggest a time between now and the original’s era, although none are as dated as Sam Raimi’s precious Oldsmobile, making its requisite appearance here.) Levy and Fernandez are given much of what passes for heavy lifting with their strained relationship; every other character is in turn defined by Mia’s literalized junkie demons and their futile efforts to help, but not by much else.

Given the climax’s unexaggerated torrent of blood, and the film’s generally proud sense of punishment, it’s hard to imagine that the audience isn’t tweaking for their fix of the red stuff more than any character on-screen is. To echo the sensationalist sales pitch of the original (“The ultimate experience in grueling terror!”), this team has decided to run with the tagline “The Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience.” For all its gruesomeness, there’s little here that actually terrifies, but let’s face it: “Modern Horror at Its Most Devoutly Masochistic” just isn’t quite as catchy.

Grade: B

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Evil Dead, Fede alvarez, Jane levy, Lou taylor pucci, Movie review, Sam raimi, Shiloh Fernandez, South by southwest, SXSW, Sxsw 2013, The Evil Dead

New on Streaming Week of Mar 18, 2013 - Movies Streaming This Week: ‘Les Miserables’ & More

Well, this week may be light on new releases but boy do they pack a wallop! Join Jessica Chastain in the hunt for bin Laden in Kathryn Bigelow’s intense “Zero Dark Thirty.” Then available on Friday there’s the epic musical “Les Miserables,” hot off Anne Hathaway’s Oscar win, and Judd Apatow’s kinda sequel to “Knocked Up,” “This Is 40.”

So basically you have your weekend covered. You’re welcome.

NEW RELEASES

‘Zero Dark Thirty’
Director Kathryn Bigelow proves she can do action sequences as well as the boys with this powerful look inside the hunt for Osama bin Laden that is spearheaded by a relentless CIA officer (Jessica Chastain) which leads to a thrilling finale that is even more impressive seeing you already know the outcome.
Why Watch It: See why Bigelow not getting an Oscar nomination this year will go down as one of the biggest snubs.
Available On: Cable On Demand, iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant

‘Les Miserables’
The latest film adaptation of the legendary musical (originating from the equally legendary novel by Victor Hugo) stars an all-star cast that includes Anne Hathaway in the Oscar-winning role of Fantine, Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried in this testament to the power of the human spirit.
Why Watch It: Regardless if you like musicals or not, the sets and grand scope of the film brings you back to the era of old Hollywood epics.
Available On [3/22]: Cable On Demand, iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant

‘This Is 40'
Judd Apatow’s sort-of sequel to “Knocked Up” brings us back into the household of Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) a few years after the events of “Knocked” to explore this modern day family filled with growing kids, the ups and downs of marriage and the realities of growing old. And like most Apatow films, the unrated version is always a bit more fun.
Why Watch It: Some of your favorites from Knocked Up return and Albert Brooks proves once more why he should be in every film.
Available On [3/22]: Cable On Demand, Amazon Instant

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

‘Big Fish’
If you dig deep enough you can find sensitivity in most of Tim Burton’s work, but for “Big Fish” the director put it out in the open. This fantasy tale follows the travels in the life of Ed Bloom (played equally brilliantly by Ewan McGregor as young Ed and Albert Finney as old Ed), who now dying reveals the stories (or exaggerations) to his cynical son (Billy Crudup).
Available On: iTunes, Netflix, VUDU, Amazon Instant, YouTube

‘Pretty In Pink’
Arguably John Hughes’ greatest screenplay, this teen comedy that epitomized the ‘80s still holds up today as Adie, Duckie and Blane still lives inside most teens today (just in different clothes and listening to different music).
Available On: iTunes, Netflix, VUDU, Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play

‘Madonna: Truth or Dare’
The material girl shows us a different side in this revealing documentary shot during her 1990 Blond Ambition tour. Never shy of the camera, she revels what drives her, why she pushes buttons and reveals the love of her life will always be Sean Penn (wonder if she still feels that way?). Fun fact: It was produced by a then little-known company run by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Miramax Films.
Available On: Hulu (free)

Categories: Columns, New on Streaming This Week, Streaming, Streaming/On Demand

Tags: Albert Finney, Amanda seyfried, Amazon Instant, Anne hathaway, Big Fish, Cable On Demand, Ewan mcgregor, Google Play, Hugh jackman, Hulu, ITunes, Jessica chastain, John hughes, Judd apatow, Kathryn bigelow, Les Miserables, Leslie Mann, Madonna, Madonna: Truth or Dare, Paul rudd, Pretty in Pink, Russell crowe, This is 40, Tim burton, VUDU, YouTube, Zero Dark Thirty

The Wizards of Oz: James Franco vs. Frank Morgan

It took Dorothy and company a whole movie to lift the veil on “The Wizard of Oz,” but the better part of a hundred years has given this weekend’s “Oz the Great and Powerful” cinema-goers a touch more preparation for what to expect from the younger version of that man behind the giant curtain. Sure, the new installment revolves around how the Wizard came to be in the first place, but fans can likely expect to see all the kooky smoke and mirrors trickery of old come through just the same.

Really, the biggest distinction might exist within the two chaps playing the guy, Frank Morgan and James Franco. Upon inspection of even their most generic biographical details, the two pretty much seem(ed) to be exactly the opposite of one another. Seriously, the differences between the gents are almost comically severe.

For starters, Frank Morgan came from New York City and was the eleventh (11th!) child of spirits sellers, while James Franco was born in Palo Alto, California to a pair of Stanford-educated intellectual types – a writer and a businessman – and was the first of three boys.

Morgan attended Cornell University right out of the high school gate and brothered up with the boys at Phi Kappa Psi, while Franco, who’d been through the legal ringer a few times already during his disaffected youth, dropped out of UCLA his freshman year and started working the fryer at McDonald’s to afford his acting class pursuits. In all fairness to James Franco, though, he made up his education in spades and now boasts multiple fine arts degrees from prestigious schools (not including Cornell). He’s even said to have set a record for most credits taken in a single semester.

Next, Old Francis M. got his first big break by appearing on the Broadway stage, while James, who supposedly went by the name Ted at some point in his wacky adolescence, sloughed through various TV guest spots in L.A. before landing the now-cult classic one season series “Freak and Geeks.”

 

Franky got hitched at the tender age of twenty-four – the same year he started acting – and had a son, but James is still quite the eligible bachelor at thirty-four.

In his spare time, Frank Morgan fancied boating and hitting the family sauce, while James Franco seems to fancy himself a modern day Renaissance Man whose zest for activity has made him a teacher, a director, a painter, a writer, a musician and everything else under the umbrella of artistry. The two seem politically polar opposites as well, as James Franco exhibits a rather loosey-goosey sort of liberalism while Frank Morgan was regarded as a strict conservative.

As for their rumored behaviors on set, well, Frank Morgan was said to have toted around a briefcase full of mini-bottles while James Franco is known to do things like read Homer and James Joyce in between takes. On the other hand, Morgan has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and James Franco just received his first … and brought an Oz doll with him to the ceremony.

These two gents might live on grouped in Hollywood history as the Wizards that once were, but we’ll sure remember them to be two wildly different individuals.

Categories: Features

Tags: Frank Morgan, James franco, Oz: The Great and Powerful, The Wizard of Oz

SXSW Review: ‘Some Girl(s)’

It’s not always easy to effectively translate the stage to the screen — just ask Susan Stroman or Tom Hooper — and director Daisy von Scherler Mayer walks that line trickily throughout her film adaptation of Neil LaBute’s play, “Some Girl(s).”

In a series of vignettes, we follow an unnamed writer (Adam Brody) as he crisscrosses the country in search of former flames. There’s Sam (Jennifer Morrison) in Seattle, Tyler (Mia Maestro) in Chicago, Linsday (Emily Watson) in Boston, Reggie (Zoe Kazan) in Seattle … again, and finally Bobbi (Kristen Bell) in Los Angeles, and they have each played the part of “some girl” he has dated in stories from his past, whether they be overheard anecdotes in aisles of the neighborhood grocery store or widely published fictions in which he’s helped himself to the facts and simply changed the names.

And so we watch Brody’s character as he proceeds on his pre-nuptials ex-girlfriend catch-up tour, encountering all manner of temptation, frustration and resentment on his road to, seemingly, self-discovery and emotional closure for both parties at each stop along the way. For some, it was “just a kiss”; for others, full-blown affairs resulted in public humiliation. Naturally, not all are happy to see him again; when he makes his best case for this project, one explodes, “Oppenheimer meant well! Pol Pot meant well!”

It’s not hard to see how Brody’s usual charms might have seen him woo so many women (he’s considerately whittled it down to these priority partners from a number we never hear), and it’s not surprising when it’s revealed that his motives fall more in line with the basically despicable tradition of LaBute’s other male protagonists (“In the Company of Men,” “Your Friends & Neighbors,” “The Wicker Man”). Mayer (“The Guru,” “Party Girl”) effectively prevents the recurring set-up of two adults in one hotel room from growing stale or stagy by keeping the camera close and loose, hovering over these exchanges about the nature of running away from, crawling back to and letting go of romantic relationships.

However, exceedingly mannered line deliveries initially give these back-and-forths an overly rehearsed and theatrical cadence, an accent of sorts that the performers — all otherwise game for their respective roles in heartache — then struggle to shake. Whenever they do, though, “Some Girl(s)” settles into a suitably savage or funny groove. As presented here, it’s minor LaBute, but nonetheless short and bittersweet.

Grade: B-

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Adam brody, Daisy von scherler mayer, Emily watson, Kristen bell, Mia Maestro, Movie review, Neil LaBute, Some Girls, South by southwest, SXSW, Sxsw 2013, William goss, Zoe Kazan

SXSW: The 10 Movies We’re Most Excited to See

SXSW officially starts today in rainy Austin, and with 133 features (including 78 World Premieres and 76 first time directors), there is A LOT to wade through. Here are our picks for the ten films we’re most excited to see at the festival — be sure to keep an eye out for our reviews of these titles as our SXSW content rolls out over the course of the next week! SXSW forrrreevvverrrr…

“SPRING BREAKERS”

What Is It?

Four college girls who land in jail after robbing a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation find themselves bailed out by a cornrowed drug / arms dealer named Alien (James Franco, natch) who wants them to do some dirty work.

dir: Harmony Korine. Cast: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson

Why Are We Excited? 

Because no one can stop talking about this wild head trip of a movie from “Kids” director Korine. Word is it must be seen to be believed, and that what you see will be craze-balls amazing. It should also be noted that tons of top critics (i.e. Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Time) hate the film, which is my kind of endorsement! While there are plenty of Sundance favorites screening at SXSW, including my personal most anticipated movie of 2013, “Before Midnight”, with that I at least have some idea what to expect. With this? No idea what’s in store, except that Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez will be acting distinctly un-Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez-like. Thus “Spring Breakers” is our most anticipated Sundance holdover at SXSW.

“MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING”

What Is It?

Shakespeare’s classic comedy is given a contemporary spin in Joss Whedon’s film, “Much Ado About Nothing”.

dir Joss Whedon cast: Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Fran Kranz,

Why Are We Excited?

JOSS WHEDON. SHAKESPEARE. EVERYTHING WONDERFUL. Shot in black & white in his Santa Monica backyard over the course of 12 days right after wrapping “The Avengers,” “Much Ado About Nothing” finally makes its return to the festival scene for the first time since it debuted at last year’s Toronto International Film Fest, and all of the geeks are freaking out, myself included. The whole cast is expected to show up for the screening and subsequent panel, ramping up for the film’s April release. Oh, and they are all staying on an “Arty Bus”, the Vine-tastic antics from which you can follow at @muchadofilm. Dying inside.

“SOME GIRL(S)”

What Is It?

On the eve of his wedding, a successful writer travels around the country to meet up with ex-lovers in an attempt to make amends for his wrongdoings.

dir Daisy Vn Scherler Mayer screenwriter: Neil LaBute Cast : Adam Brody, Kristen Bell, Zoe Kazan, Mía Maestro, Jennifer Morrison, Emily Watson

Why Are We Excited?

Being excited about Neil “Not the bees!” LaBute seems odd, I know, but he is at his best when exploring dark comedies about relationships! And gender roles! And this certainly fits that bill. Not to mention the list of Girl(s) is a highly impressive one, especially if you fall into that .004% of the population that loved both “Veronica Mars” and “Ruby Sparks”, and casually enjoys “Once Upon a Time”. Will LaBute’s penchant for uncomfortably chauvinistic characters and bizarre recent film history (“the bees are in my eyes arghgh!!) ruin a perfectly good logline, or will this be his best adaptation since 2003s “The Shape of Things”? We’ll be sure to let you know.

“HAUNTER”

What Is It?

Lisa Johnson is one day shy of her 16th birthday and will be forever. She and her family are doomed to repeat the fateful day before they were all killed in 1985.

dir: Vincenzo Natali Cast: Cast: Abigail Breslin, Stephen McHattie, Peter Outerbridge, Michelle Nolden, David Hewlett

Why Are We Excited?

Confession: “Splice” was in my top ten of its year. Confession number two: I don’t regret that decision one little bit. Confession number three: If I could watch “Splice” right now, I would, but I’m at SXSW, so I can’t. Life is hard. While the 2011 mad scientist flick was extremely divisive (read: everyone hated it but me), it certainly had vision, and no wonder, coming from the man who also made “Cube” (and not “Cube 2: Hypercube”). Now Natali returns with this horror flick appearing in the midnight series and I need it NOW.

“DRINKING BUDDIES”

What Is It?

Weekend trips, office parties, late night conversations, drinking on the job, marriage pressure, biological clocks, holding eye contact a second too long… you know what makes the line between “friends” and “more than friends” really blurry? Beer.

dir. Joe Swanberg cast: Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston

Why Are We Excited? 

Prolific indie director Swanberg making a semi-romantic comedy that doesn’t star unknowns? Whaaaat’s happening? What will this be? Plus, hey, any movie that makes us SXSW goers feel better about any ill-advised situations we get ourselves into once our beer goggles are on seems a fitting choice, right? Though if I’m being honest, I’m mostly excited for this because of “New Girl”‘s Jake Johnson. Because “New Girl”‘s Jake Johnson is the best Jake Johnson.

“WE CAUSE SCENES”

What Is It?

The extraordinary story of a group of twenty-somethings who seized the streets of New York, transforming the meaning of comedy, performance and art through forming “Improv Everywhere,” a prank collective ten years in the making. dir Matt Adams.

Why Are We Excited?

Improv Everywhere has been causing friendly havoc in New York City for years, and now all of us — participants, victims, and witnesses — get a glimpse behind the scenes. How *do* they get that No Pants Subway Ride organized every year? Plus, we hear there may be an Improv Everywhere event taking place at SXSW around the film’s premiere / there will obviously be an Improv Everywhere event taking place at SXSW around the film’s premiere, so be sure to keep an eye on Twitter for updates tonight.

“BURMA”

What Is It?

On the eve of an annual sibling reunion, a troubled young writer is sent reeling with the arrival of an unexpected guest.

dir Carlos Puga cast: Christopher Abbott, Gaby Hoffmann

Why Are We Excited?

“Girls’” Abbott (Charlie) breaks out of the “nicest guy ever turned total jerk, which I guess is okay cause Marnie DID break his heart, but man did that scene at his company hurt” mold in this drama. The kid has legitimate cred, having acted on the New York stage for years, and now is his chance to show off how honed his craft might be (not a euphemism. I think).

“ZERO CHARISMA”

What Is It? 

An obsessive fantasy nerd gradually becomes unhinged when a charismatic hipster joins his role-playing game.

dir. Andrew Matthews and Katie Graham cast: Sad Edison, Garrett Graham, Brock England, Anne Gee Byrd, Cyndi Williams

Why Are We Excited? 

A movie about fellow nerds! A totally different type of nerd, fine, but I consider them to be my brethren all the same. Although tabletop RPGs are unfamiliar territory to me, I do loves me some intense board games (I have regular Battlestar Galactica The Board Game nights, don’t mess with me) and I’m fascinated by what the next level of this sort of obsession of mine would be, especially if some hipster tried joining my group, psh. Plus, the directors DPed/edited “Best Worst Movie” and this is their directorial debut, so duh.

“SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY”

What Is It?

What happens when you allow yourself to act on your dreams? Spark takes us behind the curtain with organizers and participants of Burning Man, revealing a year of unprecedented challenges and growth. Dir. Jessie Deeter.

Why Are We Excited?

Finally a chance to see what the hell Burning Man is actually all about without having to commit to a week in the desert (and undoubtedly ingesting more than anyone’s fair share of peyote).

“COLDWATER”

What Is It? 

A teenage boy is sent to a juvenile reform facility in the wilderness. As we learn about the tragic events that sent him there, his struggle becomes one for survival with the inmates, the counselors, and with the retired war colonel in charge.

Why Are We Excited?

The first movie from many members of the creative team of “Bellflower” since the beloved indie sensation’s 2011 release. “Bellflower” producer/actor Vincent Grashaw makes his feature length writing/directing debut about a subject matter close to his heart.

Categories: Lists

Tags: Coldwater, Drinking buddies, Film Festivals, Haunters, Joe swanberg, Joss whedon, Much Ado About Nothing, Some Girls, Spring Breakers, SXSW, Sxsw 2013, Zero charisma

Awesomethology: The Best Segments From Omnibus Horror Films

This week’s “The ABCs of Death” presents 26 tales of bloody terror in one nifty little package, all held together by the very broad theme of “death.” Anthology films are nothing new, though, and often provide both young and seasoned filmmakers the chance to flex their muscles in a short form that allows them to explore subjects or techniques outside their wheelhouse. Sometimes the results are masturbatory or phoned-in, but in every omnibus picture there is usually one segment that everyone agrees was the topper.

Since horror stories are often most effective in short bursts an anthology is a choice way to present them, so here’s a list of all the juiciest morsels from the omnibus pantheon. Perhaps some intrepid reader out there can compile them all into one big (highly illegal) MEGA ANTHOLOGY?

Yes, it’s Disney, but what list would be complete without the most thrilling denouement in any music-oriented movie? Being Walt Disney’s (final) attempt to elevate his work to the level of high art, “Fantasia” has some legit scary scenes in it, especially if you’re not sexually attracted to hippos, but none more indelible than his interpretation of Modest Mussorgsky’s eerie tone poem. It features a massive demon named Chernabog (partly modeled after Bela Lugosi) orchestrating a slew of ghosts and demonic forms above a gloomy castle, inspiring heavy metal albums for generations to come. What stops this fiendishness? Schubert’s Ave Maria, duh!

Before Ozzie Osborne took the moniker for his occult band of miscreants, “Black Sabbath” was a wicked cool Italian anthology (from the amazing Mario Bava) containing three tales of dread that spawned a boom of this type of film in the ’60s. That’s why there’s four of them from that era on this list. The other two segments have threatening phone calls and Russian vampires, but the kicker is the final one about a sleazy nurse who steals a ring off the finger of a dead psychic woman’s corpse. Inspired by Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the woman keeps hearing a monotonous drop of water (really pangs of conscience) that drives her up the wall. What really makes this creeper so memorable is the apparition of the dead woman, whose frozen facial features are F**KING TERRIFYING!

Masaki Kobayashi took home a Special Jury Prize at the ’65 Cannes Film Festival for this four-part exploration of ancient Kaidan (“ghost story”) folklore. All of them have a deliberately studio-bound look to them, with theatrical backdrops representing outdoor locations, and this artificiality makes it all the more dreamlike… or nightmarelike. “Woman of the Snow” has a hapless woodcutter stranded in a blizzard, who meets a strange Yuki-onna, an icy female snow spirit, who agrees to save his butt on the condition that he never tell another soul about it. Year’s later he forgets his promise… WHOOPS!

Amicus was the rival to England’s Hammer Studios in pumping out old fashioned B-level horror, usually starring Peter Cushing and/or Christopher Lee. This one has both, with Cushing as the eponymous Dr. Terror as he reads tarot cards to five men during a long-ass train trip. Their fates are revealed in the form of lurid tales, the best involving Christopher Lee as an uptight art critic who angrily runs down an artist. Later, the artist’s severed hand begins a non-stop rampage of revenge against Lee, surviving pokings, fires and burial to ultimately strangle the bastard. Hells yeah.

Euro auteurs Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini joined forces for this trilogy of (loose) Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, originally titled “Histoires Extraordinaires.” While the first two fall flat, good ol’ Fellini really went all the way with a wild, hallucinatory jaunt about a boozy, publicity shy Shakespearian actor who agrees to do a film in Rome in exchange for a new Ferrari. Thing is, he keeps having visions of a little girl with a ball, and it’s driving him nuts and, eventually, across a really rickety bridge. This is Fellini at his surreal, “8½”-like best, with a truly bugged-out performance by pasty-faced Terrence Stamp, who looks like he’s been partying for a century.

The French magazine Metal Hurlant (and it’s American counterpart Heavy Metal) was one of the first outlets that catered to adult sensibilities in mainstream comics, i.e. blood and tits. Produced by Ivan Reitman, the animated film had 8 sequences inspired by the comics, held together by a wraparound about a mysterious orb that seems to cause evil wherever it goes. This glow-in-the-dark maguffin manages to cross paths with a World War II bomber where everyone except the two pilots has been killed. Soon the pilots discover that their crew are not as deceased as they seem… “Alien” creator Dan O’Bannon crafted this quick little horror piece in the spirit of EC Comics (like “Creepshow”), and there’s something compelling about the lonely nighttime setting in the skies above the Pacific.

There have been many, many, MANY films adapted from the works of Stephen King, but how many of them actually STAR the Master of Horror? George Romero of “Night of the Living Dead”-fame was at the height of his powers when he drafted King to bang out five tales of medium-well horror (just a little bloody in the center), and the result was a hit. Future stars like Ed Harris and Ted Danson both appeared in other segments, but none of them hold a candle to King’s hambone bow as slackjawed hick Jordy, who touches a strange space meteorite only to wind up covered in green plant-like gunk. Romero uses tons of Dutch angles and optical effects to recreate the graphic look of old EC Comics like “Tales from the Crypt.”

This big budget tribute to Rod Serling’s perennial series was soured by the on-set death of Vic Morrow and two children during the shooting of John Landis’ portion, which caused a falling out with producer Steven Spielberg and ultimately, the studio turned a blind eye to the other two segments. This resulted in young Joe Dante and George Miller given free reign, with Miller’s being the undisputed champ. “Nightmare” remakes the famous William Shatner episode about a destructive gremlin on the wing of a plane, with John Lithgow taking over Shatner part splendidly. Lithgow is out of his head from minute-one, but manages to work himself to fever pitch by the time the monster is tearing out the plane’s engine, and Miller (hot off “The Road Warrior”) was clearly on top of his game in the suspense department.

Though he’s most famous for his many slice ‘em dice ‘em samurai chanbara flicks, Kurosawa has a wide range of ability, as you might expect from one of the greatest filmmakers of all-time. This collection of brief filmic sketches unfold with steady dream logic, and include a radioactive cloud shrouding Mount Fuji in red or Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh (you read that correctly). The most haunting of the bunch is “The Tunnel,” a slow burn horror tale of a Japanese officer walking home after World War II who comes across a dark, foreboding tunnel. He’s met by a demonic red dog strapped with explosives, then encounters the ghosts of all the soldiers he sent to their deaths during battle. That’s gotta be every commander’s worst nightmare.

Okay, not exactly a horror flick, but elements of horror mos def permeate throughout. Made in the wake of the indie movie boom of the mid-nineties, this noble experiment plays like a sitcom version of “Mystery Train,” but with four jarringly un-unified visions guiding the mess. Although all of them are tied together through Tim Roth’s manic bellhop, the first two pieces by Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell are unwatchable, and then we get to the Robert Rodriguez segment “The Misbehavers.” It finds Roth having to babysit Antonio Banderas’ two precocious kids, with them stirring up a whole heap of trouble starting with a dead prostitute in the bed. Rodriguez would again emerge the victor over Tarantino in the two-header “Grindhouse,” but it should be said that QT’s segment in “Four Rooms” may in fact be his worst film, if for no other reason than he stole it wholesale from Roald Dahl’s short story “Man from the South.”

Categories: Features

Tags: Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, Black Sabbath, Creepshow, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, Fantasia, Four Rooms, Heavy Metal, Kwaidan, Max Evry, Spirits of the Dead, The ABCs of death, Twilight Zone: The Movie

The 10 Most Intense Documentaries Ever Made

Immersion is one of the virtues of documentary filmmaking that narrative features aren’t easily able to match. For all of Hollywood’s emphasis on spectacle and additional dimensions, not even a $300 million 3D blockbuster can offer the kind of transportive, “you are there” experience that a good documentary filmmaker can muster with the right circumstances and a decent digital camera. Cinematic verisimilitude is a historically problematic idea, but the best documentaries have a way of seducing you into their world while maintaining the mutual agreement that some version of what you’re watching actually happened, a gambit that underscores the immediacy of a scene in a way unique to the form, upping the the stakes with the kind of suspense that only exists in real life. It’s not that fiction films can’t seduce you into a breathless state of anxiety and anticipation (exhibit A: the Alamo Drafthouse armrest that I squeezed to death during the SXSW premiere of “Kill List”), but that some documentaries have the power to rattle you by simply by turning up the dial on the world you think you know.

Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel’s “Leviathan,” which opened in limited release last Friday, is one such documentary. A bracingly visceral and wordless portrait look at (in, and beneath) a commercial fishing vessel off the New Bedford coast, “Leviathan” is kind of like watching “The Deadliest Catch” in a D-Box theater where the seats have been designed to kill you. Or, since reductive analogies are so much fun, perhaps it’s better to frame it as “Finding Nemo” meets “Crank 2.” The filmmakers attached a mess of tiny GoPro cameras along ship’s hull in order to fully capture the chaos required for the daily catch, and the approach — while seemingly abstract — ultimately allows for a purity of expression that traditional film language doesn’t seem to believe itself capable of achieving. You’re not just there, you’re everywhere. And it. Is. Intense.

Leviathan Trailer July 2012 from Sensory Ethnography Lab on Vimeo.

And so, in honor of “Leviathan,” we give you our list of the 10 most intense documentaries ever made. Proceed with caution.

10.) “BURDEN OF DREAMS” (1982)

While the films of Werner Herzog might seem to be a natural fit for a list like this, even his most dire and extreme documentary work is imbued with a certain stripe of playfulness that amplifies their wonder at the expense of their blunt force  (save for perhaps “Lessons of Darkness,” which observed the aftermath of the first Kuwaiti War from a God’s-eye view). Of course, documentaries about Werner Herzog are a different story altogether. Les Blank’s “Burden of Dreams” is the most insane making-of documentary that any feature film has ever inspired (it makes “Heart of Darkness” look like a studio EPK). The production of Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” was one of the most notoriously troubled in movie history, spanning four brutal years in the jungles of Peru, where Mick Jagger was recast, one of the locales offered to murder lead actor Klaus Kinski, and the physical feats involved in shooting began to become more impressively demented than those of the story the film was written to tell.

The Most Harrowing Scene: Fitzcarraldo was a rubber baron whose love for opera was such that he was determined to build a theater for his beloved art in the middle of the Peruvian jungle, a process that ultimately required him to drag a steamship over a mountain. But Fitzcarraldo had the good sense to break the ship down into individual pieces and drag them to their destination one by one, whereas Herzog — the Conquistador of the Useless — had to one-up his hero by lugging the entire ship over the terrain. It’s impossible to watch his indigenous crew operate the pulley system without holding your breath.

9.) “LA SOUFRIERE” (1977)

Just kidding, here’s a Herzog film. First there was Chekhov’s gun, followed by Hitchcock’s bomb under the table, and then there was Herzog’s giant smoking volcano in the background. In some ways, “La Soufriere” may actually be the most Herzog film of them all. Who else, upon learning of an imminent and catastrophic eruption on a small Caribbean island, would immediately grab a camera crew and rush to the scene? Herzog traveled to the eponymous volcano on the island of Guadeloupe in order to speak with the few indigenous people who refused to evacuate, the filmmaker characteristically fascinated by these stubborn villagers and their relationship with nature and near-certain death.

The Most Harrowing Scene: The film only runs 30 minutes, and the threat of disaster looms heavy over each one of them, but the film’s most nail-biting moment may actually be an anecdote Herzog relays about the volcano’s previous eruption, and the one man on the island who survived its wrath.

8.) “HOW TO DIE IN OREGON” (2011)

Peter Richardson’s right to life doc goes from 0 to “weeping uncontrollably” faster than any other movie ever made. That may sound like hyperbole, but it’s hard to compete with a film that opens by observing a terminally ill cancer patient taking a lethal dose of  Secanol in real-time. The man’s death, which transpires before our eyes with grace and dignity, appropriately sets the stage for the film to come, which engages with the fight to legalize physician-assisted suicide in the titular stage. Essential viewing that is nevertheless extremely difficult to watch, “How to Die in Oregon” absolutely obliterates the conventional definition of a “happy ending,” giving a face to one of the preeminent issues our time.

The Most Harrowing Scene: When the woman whose narrative anchors the film looks into the camera and says “I’ll know when my life isn’t worth living anymore. In which case, my choice will seem easy and obvious. And I’ll be grateful.” It’s a simple moment of quiet testimony, but those words echo with seismic energy, as the viewer is forced to consider the value of their own time, and how it conflates with one of the preeminent issues of our age.

7.) “GIMME SHELTER” (1970)

One of the cinema’s most breathless powder kegs, “Gimme Shelter” chronicles the most infamous debacle in rock history (pre-Creed era). Co-directors David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin were on hand for the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway in 1969 when one of the most popular bands on the planet played a free show to over 300,000 people, and had only a phalanx of riled up Hells Angels as security. The carnage that ensued may never be forgotten, thanks in part to this film.

The Most Harrowing Scene: “There were four births, four deaths, and an awful lot of scuffles reported.” Mick Jagger listens to a radio interview with a Hells Angel the day after the disastrous show, and the emotions play across his face in bold as he tries to process the events, and his role in enabling them to happen.

6.) “THIS IS NOT A FILM” (2011)

And the judges say… it counts! Jafar Panahi’s fiction-documentary hybrid (which here is a stand-in for an entire generation of self-reflective Iranian docudramas) proves that such distinctions are ultimately meaningless, as the famous filmmaker — jailed in his home for ill-defined crimes against the state — explains from his living room the next movie that he had intended to make. Of course, footage we’re watching, shot entirely on consumer equipment such as Panahi’s iPhone, ultimately became his next movie, a playful but righteous polemic that subverts the circumstances of his confinement by turning his apartment into a hall of mirrors, unraveling the nature and necessity of creative freedoms in a world that’s interested in neither.

The Most Harrowing Scene: It’s tempting to cite the (not) film’s explosive finale, or the seemingly incidental elevator ride in which Panahi encounters a garbage collector who serves as an obvious amalgam of all the characters he’s ever created. Nevertheless, the biggest gut-punch may be the scene in which Panahi is choked by a profound frustration when trying to walk us through his next script. Walking away from his workspace on the floor in disgust, Panahi tearfully rues, “If we could tell a film, why would we make a film?”

5.) “THE ACT OF KILLING” (2012)

Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary introduces us to the men behind the Indonesian death squads that mercilessly executed more than a million “Communists” when the military staged a coup d’état over their national government in 1965. I saw it all the way back before lunch today, and it’s already a dark horse contender for the most intense documentary every made. Executive produced by Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, and acquired by Drafthouse Films for a theatrical release this summer (a perfect double-feature with “Fast Six”!), “The Act of Killing” is a complex and horrifying look at a world where the bad guys won, and had to live with themselves. An astonishingly grim examination of personal memory and collective forgetting, Oppenheimer’s documentary is like an unholy mashup between the work of Abbas Kiarostami and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “After Life,” as he invites his proud subjects to recreate their atrocities on film.

The Most Harrowing Scene (spoiler alert?): There’s not much room for debate here, as the film ends with a scene of unspeakably violent catharsis, Oppenheimer’s primary subject — a wiry old executioner — suddenly reconciling himself to the slaughter of thousands. The sounds his frail body makes as it digests an unfathomably odious personal history are unlike anything you’ve ever heard (I hope).

4.) “LAKE OF FIRE” (2006)

It’s pretty easy to understand why Tony Kaye’s (“American History X”) epic profile of abortion in America might be an intense thing to watch, if only because it’s, well, an epic profile of abortion in America. Not every documentary can end with finding Sugar Man, you know? An unflinching and even-handed look at the ongoing battle for reproductive rights in this country, “Lake of Fire” presents both sides of the argument and every shade in between, culminating with…

The Most Harrowing Scene: The graphic, largely unedited depiction of an abortion. And, despite having years of industry wisdom at his disposal, Kaye refuses to ease the tension by having Morgan Freeman narrate the procedure. And now, the super fun part begins for yours truly, as I have to trawl Google for a suitable image to place above this blurb (yeah, it was ultimately easier to just embed the entire film below).

3.) “KOYAANISQATSI” (1983)

Godfrey Reggio describes the films that comprise his renowned “Qatsi” trilogy as “unmediated visualizations, symphonic portraits of our planet in which the cinema is empowered to observe the infinitude of life on this planet. That may not sound like a party, but Reggio has an innate understanding as to which images — when paired with certain tracks by composer Philip Glass — have the capacity to function as windows to a divine catharsis. A rocket exploding in slow motion; a gaggle of Las Vegas showgirls staring into the camera; a time-lapse look at Times Square during rush hour, in which the people zip about at such a speed that they begin to resemble the flow of information inside of a computer chip. It’s hypnotic stuff, and the velocity of Reggio’s montage will awe you into a dumb stupor.

The Most Harrowing Scene: The entire middle portion of the film, in which our planet goes into warp speed and the interconnectivity of modern civilization leaps out at you like a hidden image in one of those Magic Eye designs.

2.) “THE EMPEROR’S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON” (1987)

It can be difficult to even read about Kazuo Hara’s documentary without feeling a little bit queasy, and if your morbid curiosity doesn’t extend to stories of cannibalism, you may want to simply jump past this entry. Hara’s film follows the one-man redemption tour of a man named Kenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old veteran of the Japanese army who served in New Guinea during World War II. Haunted by the events of the time (especially those in which he was an active participant), Okuzaki leads Hara’s camera on a search for his former comrades as he tries to find the men responsible for murdering two of the people in his unit. As we learn the story about his unit was cordoned off from supplies in New Guinea and left to fend for themselves, the details about the missing men begin to add up in the most horrifying of ways.

The Most Harrowing Scene: It’s rare that title cards at the end of a film provide a movie with some of its most astonishing moments, but the ultimate fate of Kenzo Okuzakim, which Hara isn’t able to capture with his camera, retroactively shades everything we knew about him until that point. Warning: The following clip is disturbing. Duh.

1.) “NIGHT AND FOG” (1955)

The last thing the world needs is another stunned summation of Alain Resnais’ 32-minute still-life of the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps, so I’ll simply say that this austere look at the aftermath of a genocide endures as one of the definitive portraits of the Holocaust for good reason.

The Most Harrowing Scene: There’s hardly an image in this film that won’t scar your memory for life, but the shot that haunts me most is one that reveals just how close civilians lived to these factories of death, carrying on their daily lives as the greatest atrocities of the 20th century took place on just the other side of a barbed-wire fence.

Categories: Lists

Tags: Alain Resnais, Burden of Dreams, David Ehrlich, How to Die in Oregon, Jafar Panahi, Koyaanisqatsi, Lake of Fire, Leviathan, List, Night and Fog, The Act of Killing, The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On, This is Not A Film, Werner herzog

SXSW Review: ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’

What’s the next logical progression from Criss Angel and his “Mindfreak” shenanigans? Clearly it’s “Steve Gray: Brain Rapist”. As embodied by Jim Carrey, Gray represents the threat of newer, edgier street magic that threatens to put old-school Vegas showmen like Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) out of business.

Directed by “30 Rock” vet Don Scardino and written by a quartet of credited writers, “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” is a sporadically hilarious lark that nonetheless adheres to the lunkhead blueprint that has defined the careers of Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell over the past decade. Hell, one could trace “Wonderstone” right over the plotting of 2001’s “Zoolander” in particular: the aloof lead (Carell), the equally aloof sidekick (Buscemi), the flamboyant rival (Carrey), the blonde love interest/straight (wo)man (Olivia Wilde). In one of the film’s funnier sequences, Steve and Burt even engage in a competitive magic-off that isn’t far off from that film’s walk-off bit.

Carell’s pompous personality is only good for so many chuckles, but Scardino has better luck finding laughs in the margins of the everyday world of magicians (jerk illusionists tease bartenders with lavish tips before levitating out the door; well-meaning ones bring magic kits to starving Cambodian villages) and from casual parental abandonment in the film’s prologue (“Happy Birthday, Me” pricelessly scrawled on a cake made from scratch by Mom’s kindly instructions). When hotel owner Doug Munny (James Gandolfini) remarks on Steve Gray’s success, a defensive Burt scoffs, “So he mutters and cuts himself. My niece does that!”

A lot of these one-off gags and throwaway lines muffle the creaks of a well-worn plot in which Burt loses his cherished spotlight, shuns his best friend, abuses his most beleaguered admirer and then wises up with the help of childhood icon Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin), now banished to a retirement home. Even as something of an expert phony, Arkin deflates the big-hair, bigger-ego caricatures from a distance and makes the film’s stabs at sincerity somewhat bearable. Whenever “Bruce Almighty” cohorts Carell and Carrey do reunite, there are some goofy laughs to be had, but Buscemi and Wilde are in turn mostly left to exchange exasperated looks on the sidelines (a shame, given Wilde’s impressively comical performance in last year’s “Butter” and her amusing anxiety early on here).

Like the back half of its namesake, “Wonderstone” isn’t terribly hip, edgy or new itself, just amusing enough to pass the time. While Scardino and friends do manage to end the film on an admirably nutty note, this gathering of comedic minds ultimately fails to produce any true movie magic.

Grade: C+

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Alan Arkin, Don scardino, Jim carrey, Movie review, Olivia wilde, South by southwest, Steve buscemi, Steve carell, SXSW, Sxsw 2013, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, William goss

‘Oz’ Is Both Great and Powerful at the Box Office

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. He’s just counting his money.

Yes, as expected, “Oz the Great and Powerful” completely destroyed the box office this weekend, racking up an impressive $80.3 million domestically for the biggest release of the year as well as the third biggest March release in film history.  Only last year’s “The Hunger Games” ($152.5 million) and 2010's “Alice in Wonderland” ($116.1 million) did better.

The success of “Alice in Wonderland,” of course, prompted Disney to begin production on “Oz the Great and Powerful,” with the studio releasing the film on the same weekend in hopes of replicating “Alice in Wonderland’s” monumental $1 billion final take.

But while those kind of numbers seem unlikely — “Oz the Great and Powerful” earned an additional $69.9 million overseas for a total of $150.2 million worldwide, while “Alice in Wonderland” took in $210.1 million worldwide in its opening frame — “Oz the Great and Powerful” does seem set to more than recoup Disney’s estimated $215 million investment.

Betting that kind of money on a relatively unproven star like James Franco was a pretty big risk. But with work already well underway on a sequel (or midquel, or… whatever), it looks like this is one gamble that is going to pay off big time.

The same can’t be said for anything else at the box office this weekend, however. “Jack the Giant Slayer” dropped to second place in its second weekend, earning just $10 million. That brings its domestic total to only $43.8 million so far, putting it on track to become one of the biggest financial disasters in recent memory. And new release “Dead Man Down” turned out to have a strangely prophetic title, as the Colin Farrell revenge flick opened to just $5.4 million.

Looks like this weekend, “Oz the Great and Powerful” used up all the fairy tale endings.

Here’s a look at the full box office chart, courtesy of Hollywood.com:

1. “Oz the Great and Powerful” – $80.3m (our review)
2. “Jack the Giant Slayer” – $10m (our review)
3. “Identity Thief” – $6.3m (our review)
4. “Dead Man Down” – $5.4m (our review)
5. “Snitch” – $5.1m (our review)
6. “21 and Over” – $5.1m (our review)
7. “Safe Haven” – $3.8m (our review)
8. “Silver Linings Playbook” – $3.7m (our review)
9. “Escape From Planet Earth” – $3.2m (our review)
10. “The Last Exorcism Part II” – $3.1m (our review)

Categories: News

Tags: Box office, Oz: The Great and Powerful

CHINESE ZODIAC (2012)

 

Tanggal Rilis : 20 December 2012 (Hong Kong)
Jenis Film : Action | Adventure
Diperankan Oleh : Jackie Chan, Oliver Platt, Laura Weissbecker

Ringkasan Cerita CHINESE ZODIAC (2012) :

CZ12 (also known as Chinese Zodiac, is a 2012 Hong Kong-Chinese action film co-produced, written, directed by, and starring Jackie Chan. The film is a pseudo-reboot of a film franchise that began with Armour of God (1987) and its sequel, Armour of God II: Operation Condor. Asian Hawk (Jackie Chan) leads a mercenary team to recover several lost artifacts from the Old Summer Palace, the bronze heads of the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals which was looted by foreigners in the 1800s. Assisted by a Chinese student and a Parisian lady, Hawk stops at nothing to accomplish the mission.

Eric’s Bad Movies: ‘Land of Doom’ (1986)

“Land of Doom” was made in the 1980s, which means there was a 35 percent chance it would take place in a post-apocalyptic future. This sort of movie was very common in the ’80s, partly because of Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation, and partly because movies set in barren wastelands don’t need a lot of expensive sets or costumes. Dress everybody in rags, find a patch of desert, and you’re good to go.

I have omitted details like “screenplay” and “actors” from that business model because so did the people who made “Land of Doom.” “What is our movie about?” the producers asked. “It’s about some people after the apocalypse!” the writer answered. “Can you be more specific?” asked the producers. “No I cannot!” said the writer. Then the director said, “Enough talk, time is money,” yelled “Action!,” and spent the next couple days pointing a camera at whoever walked in front of it.

The careless tone is set by the opening narration, in which a lady says: “I don’t know how the final war began. It doesn’t even matter.” Oh, doesn’t it? Pray tell, what else “doesn’t matter” in your movie? Plot? Characters? Inciting incidents, rising action, climax, and denouement? Yes, I thought so.

The lady who is uninterested in how the final war began is Harmony (Deborah Rennard), a feisty post-apocalyptic gal who just wants to roam the wastelands in peace and quiet without being hassled or murdered by anyone. You’d think it would be fairly easy to find solitude when the population of the entire planet can be expressed in five digits, but Harmony’s always running into marauders and gangs. (Maybe it’s because she keeps wandering through the same single acre of Turkish desert where the movie was filmed.)

One night while seeking refuge from the violent nightmare that society has become, she stumbles into a cave where a fellow named Anderson (Garrick Dowhen) is recuperating from wounds received in an earlier skirmish. In general, the post-apocalyptic men are even less sensitive toward women than the pre-apocalypse men were, but Anderson is decent. He’s too hurt to move, and they’re both stuck in the cave for the night.

“My name is Anderson. What’s yours?” (Silence.) “I just thought, since we’ll be spending the night together–”
“Will you shut up?”
“Whatever you say.”

Then he shoots a snake that was about to slither past her (note: Anderson has a gun.) (Also note: there is a zero-tolerance policy for snakes after the apocalypse.) This thoughtful, violent gesture softens her up.

“Harmony. My name is Harmony.”
“Oh. That’s a very pretty name.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

So Harmony is not very easy to talk to.

Anderson is looking for a fabled land where peace has been restored. Perhaps Harmony would like to accompany him on his search for this place? Harmony says no: she is a loner.

“Most loners don’t survive.”
“I do.”
“I bet you do.”

OK, now it’s our turn: what’s that supposed to mean? Is “Land of Doom” going to be 85 minutes of two grumpy idiots talking to each other in vague but accusatory tones while nothing happens? Is this the passive-aggressive, post-apocalyptic version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”? Because we do not have the strength for that.

Fortunately, there is more to it. The “villain” in this “story” (under certain limited definitions of those terms) is Slater (Daniel Radell), a blond lunatic who, in keeping with the tradition of insane costumes for villains in cheesy post-apocalyptic flicks, wears a leather “Phantom of the Opera” mask. Slater and Anderson used to be part of the same survivors’ community, but when it came time to organize and rebuild — which Anderson was a proponent of — he was outvoted in favor of anarchy and Slater-ism (which is easier and more fun than organizing and rebuilding). Now Slater is the leader of the most barbaric gang in the land, and his goons are constantly pursuing Anderson so they can kill him.

This, then, is the bulk of the film: Harmony and Anderson trudge endlessly through the desert; Harmony is increasingly grouchy at being dragged into Anderson’s problems; every few minutes a new batch of bedraggled Slater minions pops up; and Harmony and Anderson fight them hand-to-hand in sloppy, underrehearsed bouts choreographed by a crew member who had never seen a fight before.

 

You may ask: Why is Slater so intent on capturing Anderson? Anderson wants to get far, far away and find someplace nicer to live; why not let him? Did Anderson personally injury Slater in some unforgivable way? Is there more to it than a disagreement over leadership styles? I mean, the winners of elections don’t usually send death squads after the losers (though we’d probably have higher voter turnouts if they did). So what is driving Slater to be so passionate on this subject?

If you do ask yourself these questions, congratulations! You’ve given the story more thought than its writer did. Its writer got as far as “SLATER IS HUNTING ANDERSON” and then was distracted by something shiny.

Anyway, this goes on for a while, possibly forever. Harmony and Anderson meet a guy who offers them food that turns out to be human meat, which they decline like ungrateful bastards. Harmony continues to be angry about everyone and everything, even beating an attacker to death with a rock at one point. Anderson says, “Harmony, you can’t change the world by killing everybody,” which isn’t true, because killing everybody would actually be a very effective way of changing the world.

One thing I will say for “Land of Doom” is that the people in it, who are not good actors, are very enthusiastic about acting (which they are not good at). Nearly every performance, especially among the bad guys, is alive with over-the-top cackling lunacy. They don’t act well, but they act a lot. I could see the film being nominated for Most Acting.

Categories: Columns

Tags: Eric's bad movies, Land of Doom, Who's afraid of virginia woolf

Watch 20 Minutes Of Deleted Scenes From ‘The Master’

Anyone who watched (and re-watched and re-watched) the trailers for “The Master” knows that writer / director / superhero Paul Thomas Anderson shot a whole bunch of footage that didn’t quite make its way into the theatrical cut of the film. A few months after “The Master” made its initial splash, PTA presented the film at LACMA alongside a 20-minute reel of deleted scenes, which he had cut together into a nicely paced and fully scored assembly. The reel was included as a bit of bonus material on the DVD and Blu-Ray (in stores now), and now — inevitably — it has made its way onto YouTube.

The reel is a treat for fans of the film, and perhaps even more essential viewing for those who were frustrated by the beguiling bromance between WWII vet Freddie Quell and neo-mystic religious figure Lancaster Dodd. And be sure to stick around for the whole thing, as the package ends with a “blooper” from the famous Processing scene, a fit of uncontrollable laughter that reveals just how fluidly Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman were able to slip in and out of these indelible characters.

(via The Playlist)

Categories: DVD

Tags: Amy adams, Blu-ray, Deleted scenes, Joaquin phoenix, Paul thomas anderson, Philip seymour hoffman, The master

The New ‘Iron Man 3′ Trailer is Here!

While it’s hard to say that we’re in desperate need of some more Tony Stark (dude was everywhere in 2012 thanks to “The Avengers”), to say that we’ve missed writer / director Shane Black would be a massive understatement. The screenwriting superstar responsible for quip-tastic action classics like “Lethal Weapon” and “The Last Boy Scout” revealed himself to be a wildly talented director with 2005's “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” which starred Robert Downey Jr. as a real thief whose brush with Hollywood transforms him into a fake detective, and ultimately paved the way for Downey to become Iron Man. With “Iron Man 3? it all comes full circle, as Shane Black gets to re-team with the actor in the Marvel film universe which may never have come to pass without them.

Here’s the new full trailer for “Iron Man 3,” which will kick off the summer movie season May 3, and hopefully infuse the snarkiest of superheroes with the joy and purpose that was so sorely missed in Jon Favreau’s last installment. Check it out (via Yahoo!)

A nice synopsis from our pals at NextMovie:

Starring the always awesome Robert Downey Jr. as noted genius billionaire playboy philanthropist Tony Stark, the newest installment in the ongoing “Iron Man” saga looks to ratchet up the angst, as Stark deals not only with the emotional fallout from the events of last year’s mega-hit “The Avengers” but also with a brand new menace, the heavily bearded techno-terrorist known as the Mandarin (Sir Ben Kingsley).

And the Mandarin appears ready to make things very personal for Stark, as he targets not only Tony’s super cool beachside house, but also the one thing Tony “can’t live without,” namely the always lovely Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

So does Iron Man prefer, in the words of the Mandarin, an empty life? Or a meaningful death?

Categories: Trailers

Tags: Gwyneth paltrow, Iron Man 3, Marvel, Robert downey jr., Shane Black, Summer blockbusters, Superhero, Tony Stark, Trailer

New on Streaming Week of Mar 04, 2013 - Movies Streaming/On Demand This Week: ‘Breaking Dawn-Part 2,’ ‘Red Dawn’ & More

All you Twihards out there, this week is a big one. The final installment, “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” is now On Demand and streaming. If that’s not your thing, also out is the latest Gerard Butler romantic comedy, “Playing for Keeps,” and a reboot of the ‘80s invasion thriller, “Red Dawn.” Plus a couple of titles available same day as it opens in theaters.

NEW RELEASES

‘Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2'
The saga that has kept tweens and housewives equally enthralled since 2008 comes to an end with this final film, which brings Bella, Edward, Jacob and little Renesmee up against the Volturi.
Why Watch It: You’ve come this far, time to finish it.
Available On: Cable On Demand, iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant

‘Playing for Keeps’
Gerard Butler plays a washed up soccer star looking for a new career. He attempts to become a more responsible adult when he begins coaching his son’s soccer team, but with the soccer moms flocking to him things get a little difficult.
Why Watch It: You know you can’t resist a bit of that Gerard charm.
Available On: Cable On Demand, iTunes

‘Red Dawn’
A remake of John Milius’ 1984 Red Scare thriller, this time around heartthrobs Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Isabel Lucas (and Tom Cruise’s son Connor) star as the teens who take it upon themselves to strike back after North Korean soldiers invade their town.
Why Watch It: Not as gritty as the original but still a worthy remake.
Available On: Cable On Demand, iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant

‘Lay The Favorite’
From The Queen director Stephen Frears, Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Joshua Jackson are just some of the stars that pop up in this comedy about a naïve cocktail waitress (Hall) who becomes a gambling prodigy.
Why Watch It: Nice to see Rebecca Hall step away from the dramatic roles for a sec to play a fun role.
Available On: iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play

‘It’s A Disaster’
This dark comedy follows four couples meeting for brunch who begin to unravel in different ways when they learn that the apocalypse may be a few hours away. David Cross, America Ferrera and Julia Stiles round out the diverse cast.
Why Watch It: A festival hit with some great laughs.
Available On: Cable On Demand [Opens In Theaters 4/12]

‘A Place At The Table’
With millions of Americans going hungry, documentary filmmakers Kristie Jacobson and Lori Silverbush look at this epidemic by highlighting three people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. The film, also out in theaters, is highlighted by appearances from Jeff Bridges, Raj Patel and Tom Colicchio.
Why Watch It: An important film that can hopefully change our policies on what we eat.
Available On: Cable On Demand, VUDU

’6 Souls’
Also available same day as it hits theaters, Julianne Moore stars in this thriller produced by the twisted souls who brought us “The Ring.” Moore plays Cara, a forensic psychologist who discovers that her patient (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) has multiple personalities of murder victims. Now Cara is on a search for what happened to them.
Why Watch It: Moore and Meyers elevate a typical horror.
Available On: Cable On Demand, VUDU

‘Gun Hill Road’
This Sundance favorite from 2011, Enrique (Esai Morales) has returned home after a three-year stint in prison to find his son, now a teen, living a lifestyle he does not approve of. As Enrique tries to rebuild his life he also attempts to reconnect with the son he barely knew.
Why Watch It: A moving story that highlights the talents of its director, Rashaad Ernesto Green.
Available On: iTunes

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

‘The Apartment’
Billy Wilder wins director and screenwriting Oscars for his classic that stars Jack Lemmon as C.C. Baxter, a shy company man trying to raise up the ladder by letter his executives use his apartment for their extra-marital affairs. But things get tricky when C.C. falls for one of the girls (Shirley MacLaine).
Available On: iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play

‘Lolita’
Stanley Kubrick tests the limits of 1960s censorship with his adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s streamy novel of a relationship between a literature professor (James Mason) and a teenage girl (Sue Lyon).
Available On: iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play

‘Stevie’
Known for his landmark documentaries like “Hoop Dreams” and most recently “The Interrupters,” Steve James’ most personal work is this 2002 release which follows the director as he attempts to reconnect with the boy he was a big brother of ten years prior. Now an adult with a rap sheet, little Stevie is not looking for fatherly advice.
Available On: iTunes, VUDU

Categories: Columns, New on Streaming This Week, Streaming, Streaming/On Demand

Tags: 6 Souls, A Place at the Table, America Ferrera, Billy wilder, Bruce willis, Catherine zeta-jones, Chris Hemsworth, David Cross, Gerard butler, Gun Hill Road, Isabel Lucas, It's A Disastert, Jack lemmon, James mason, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Josh hutcherson, Joshua jackson, Julia Stiles, Julianne moore, Lay the favorite, Lolita, Playing for Keeps, Rebecca hall, Red dawn, Shirley maclaine, Stanley Kubrick, Steve James, Stevie, Sue Lyon, The Apartment, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2

Review: ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’

As a professional, I’m loathe to ever step out of the theater while a film is rolling, but a dire need to relieve my bladder during “Oz: The Great and Powerful” reached an unbearable point. I did a quick dash down the stairs and to the gents’, forgoing my one and only opportunity to skip through a hallway singing “we’re off to take a whizzer.” With great speed I settled back in my seat, to find James Franco’s transported Kansas huckster racing in histrionic fear with his computer generated compatriots – pretty much just as I’d left them.

I turned to my wife and whispered, “what’d I miss?” The blank look she shot me in response said it all.

The thing is this: neither she nor I disliked “Oz: The Great and Powerful.” Indeed, as one who holds great fondness for the early, more aggressive work of Sam Raimi I found sequences in this film to be his best in years. But don’t think for a minute that its story is anything other than a joke, a mere excuse to play around with outrageous colors and let actors chomp on some splendid digital scenery. Considering how these movies usually go, this attitude is wonderfully refreshing.

The opening of “Oz” is remarkable. With a funhouse credits sequence that exploits 3D like a kid let behind the ice cream counter, Raimi sets up shop at a traveling circus. There, a somewhat rakish magician (Franco) is caught mid-bullshit with a local gal he’s got his eyes on. On stage, his stentorian tone and hokey act have a genuine charm. These short scenes among the tents is some of the most loving “join the circus” stuff since Woody Allen’s “Shadows and Fog” from 1991.

When an angry, singlet-wearing strong man chases Franco away, his hot air balloon (don’t ask) heads straight into a tornado. Evoking Raimi’s former leading man Bruce Campbell, Franco turns his face to jelly as the camera zooms in and around him at unconventional angles, dented calliopes flying at his head, until the image expands from a 4:3 ratio to widescreen and color takes over.

 

He’s landed in the land of Oz, where he’s soon introduced to witches (Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz), talking monkeys and a little girl made of ceramic. In classic Preston Sturges form he’s mistaken for the prophesied Wizard who will bring peace and order to the realm. Franco does little to protest the claim, especially once he sees his throne, scepter and Scrooge McDuck money pit. Frankly, the characters don’t matter. The dialogue doesn’t matter. The performances, however, are quite extraordinary. Franco’s delivery of “so long, suckers!” does a great deal to inform this movie. Moments later, in a lake, he shouts “I can’t swim!” There’s no one else around, so you wouldn’t be wrong in asking “who’s he talking to?” The raised eyebrows and slightly silly tone is all a little bit of a put on, but not so much that kids (or idiots) will notice. Neither Franco nor anyone else goes full Depp in this one.

Milking it more than Franco, however, is Michelle Williams, whose dimples ought to have their own SAG card. As Glinda the Good Witch each moment she’s on screen is a complex waltz between irony and sincerity. It’s the type of performance Catherine O’Hara would give in one of the more high concept “SCTV” sketches – the ones where there weren’t any noticeable jokes. Only here it is in a gorgeous costume beside state of the art effects.

Now, finally, we get to the real star of the movie: Oz. You don’t get much more iconic than the Emerald City, and Raimi’s team nails it. There’s a fealty to the original film (lots of red smoke, the guards’ costumes, etc.) but it’s all done up big and beautiful. The third act of “Oz: The Great and Powerful” goes on and on and on, and under normal circumstances I’d be tapping my watch in anticipation of that final boss fight. This time, however, the visual aspects of the film more than made up for my complete lack of emotional attachment.

Raimi made a choice and it payed off. By treating the scenario as “almost a joke,” I stayed engaged because I was amused. Franco’s bluffing big speech to the troops at the end was so goofy I couldn’t help but laugh. Normally by this stage in a Hollywood effects-driven movie (say a ‘Wrath of the Titans’ or ‘Jack the Giant Slayer’) I’m just slumped over in my seat waiting for death. By lowering the stakes to the point of near-non existence, Raimi manages to keep things engaging, which is a very real act of wizardry in and of itself.

Grade B

Categories: Reviews

Tags: James franco, Michelle williams, Mila kunis, Oz: The Great and Powerful, Review, Sam raimi

Watch the First Trailer for Noah Baumbach’s ‘Frances Ha’

Just when we thought we had Noah Baumbach pegged, the “Greenberg” writer / director arrived at last year’s Telluride Film Festival with a little movie from left field that might just be the best thing he’s ever made. Shot digitally in luminous black-and-white, “Frances Ha” follows the adventures of a woman on the cusp of 30 (Baumbach’s muse Greta Gerwig naturally plays the titular lost soul), as she bounces around between friends, lovers and living situations, as the lines start to blur between all three. Low-key but brimming with an assured, lightning in a bottle energy — as if Baumbach and Gerwig shot the film on such short notice because they were afraid it might get away from them — “Frances Ha” is a winsome and winning delight, a coming-of-age story for those of us who seemed to skip over that part of our lives.

Also, for you “Holy Motors” fans (aka everyone, right?), keep your ears peeled for a toe-tapping homage to Leos Carax. And by “keep your ears peeled,” I mean “watch the trailer below, in which the reference will be abundantly obvious to anyone who’s seen ‘Mauvais Sang.’”

Read our full review of the film here, and check out the trailer below! (via Apple)

IFC Films will release “Frances Ha” on May 17, 2013.

Categories: Trailers

Tags: Black and white, Frances Ha, Greta gerwig, Ifc films, Noah Baumbach, Trailers

Exclusive Clip: ‘Reality’

One of the breakout hits at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Matteo Garrone’s “Reality” is now — thanks to Oscilloscope – one of the most exciting films of the season (spring, late winter, whatever you want to call it). Following up his grim crime masterpiece “Gomorrah” with an ostensibly lighter story about a fishmonger who desperately wants to be on the Italian version of “Big Brother,” Garrone’s “Reality” is ultimately no less disturbing than any of our own.

After being invited to audition for the “Big Brother” producers at Cinecittá Studios in Rome, the affable Lucíano (Aniello Arena) quickly becomes consumed by his obsession with landing a spot on the show. Before long, Lucíano becomes convinced that every stranger he encounters is a stealth agent from the production, sent to spy on him in order to determine if he’s fit to be cast. What begins as an innocent gamble for a better life soon devolves into a rabbit hole of paranoia and broken dreams, Garrone twisting this potentially conventional story into a moving portrait of a society that has conferred fame as its new religion, no matter the cost.

Also check out: Our Cannes Review of “Reality”

Oscilloscope has provided us with this telling clip from the film, in which Lucíano thinks he’s receiving the big call that will change his life. But his life, we’ll soon learn, can be a little cruel.

“Reality” opens in NYC on March 15, LA on March 22, and will then expand across the country.

Categories: No Categories

Tags: Cannes, Exclusive Clip, Matteo Garrone, Oscilliscope, Reality

‘Django Unchained,’ ‘Ted’ and ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ Score 2013 MTV Movie Award Noms

The nominees for the 2013 MTV Movie Awards have been revealed, setting up what looks to be another rollicking ceremony celebrating the Cinema of Cool (via golden statues of popcorn — or Golden Popcorns, if you want to be all official-like).

MTV’s own Josh Horowitz joined “Pitch Perfect” star Rebel Wilson to announce the nominees, with Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” and Seth MacFarlane’s “Ted” coming forth as the major contenders with seven nominations each. Does this mean that the slave turned bounty hunter should team up with the foul-mouthed, hard-drinking teddy bear in some future cinematic adventure? Hey, we’d see it. Twice.

Meanwhile, “Silver Linings Playbook” follows close behind with six nominations, while Christian Bale’s final (OR IS IT?) gig as the Caped Crusader, “The Dark Knight Rises,” scored five. Rounding it up are “The Avengers,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” Wilson’s own “Pitch Perfect” and the latest 007 adventure “Skyfall” with four nominations each.

Check out the full list of nominees at NextMovie, and seize the “Power of the Popcorn” yourself as voting will be open from now through Saturday, April 13 at the official site of the MTV Movie Awards. The 2013 Movie Awards will air live on Sunday, April 14 at 9:00 P.M. ET/PT on MTV.

Categories: Awards

Tags: 2013 MTV Movie Awards, Mtv movie awards

Box Office Fiasco: Everything Bombs

Hollywood spent last weekend patting itself on the back at the Academy Awards, but it’s a very different story this weekend, as every single new release completely bombed. You know what they say: Pride goeth before the fall.

Leading the charge straight down the drain was, of course, Bryan Singer’s ill-advised CGI fantasia “Jack the Giant Slayer,” which opened with $28 million to take the title of first loser. That doesn’t sound too bad until you consider the fact that the movie cost north of $200 million. To put things in perspective, “John Carter,” which opened almost exactly one year ago and is considered one of the biggest flops in film history, earned $30 million in its first weekend. So that’s not good.

And the news wasn’t any better for the weekend’s other two new wide releases. “21 and Over,” a blatant ripoff of “The Hangover” written by, well, the guys who wrote “The Hangover,” crashed and burned to the tune of just $9 million, good for third place. And the horror sequel “The Last Exorcism Part II” brought in only $8 million to land in fourth place, though at least it didn’t cost much to make either.

Pretty much the only good news at the box office this weekend came from the Melissa McCarthy comedy “Identity Thief,” which exploited its weak competition to drag in another $9.7 million. That brings it’s total to $107.5 million to date, making it the first film of 2013 to break the $100 million mark.

Of course, box office salvation is on the horizon, as the presumed blockbuster “Oz the Great and Powerful” is set to open in theaters next weekend. Will it be enough to turn around Hollywood’s fortunes? One thing’s for sure: It certainly couldn’t do any worse.

Here’s a look at this weekend’s full box office top ten, courtesy of Hollywood.com:

1. “Jack the Giant Slayer” – $28m (our review)
2. “Identity Thief” – $9.7m (our review)
3. “21 and Over” – $9m (our review)
4. “The Last Exorcism Part II” – $8m (our review)
5. “Snitch” – $7.7m (our review)
6. “Escape From Planet Earth” – $6.7m (our review)
7. “Safe Haven” – $6.3m (our review)
8. “Silver Linings Playbook” – $5.9m (our review)
9. “A Good Day to Die Hard” – $4.5m (our review)
10. “Dark Skies” – $3.6m (our review)

Categories: News

Tags: 21 and Over, Box office, Jack the Giant Slayer

Body Slamming The Multiplex: The Future of WWE Studios

When you hear the letters WWE, you instantly think of large men being body slammed and leaping from top turnbuckles to the glee of thousands of adoring fans in arenas across the country (and millions more watching from home). And when you hear WWE Studios you instantly think of large men trying to act in modestly budgeted genre movies to low box office draws and dismal reviews.

Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment has been successful in many endeavors that parallel its main money-maker, but the one thing it can’t seem to crack are the movies. Of course, it’s not for lack of trying.

Back in 1989, when it was called the World Wrestling Federation and Hulk Hogan was at his zenith, ol’ Vince looked around and saw action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone dominating the box office and decided that his Adonis could do the same. He went ahead and made the first-ever film produced by the WWF, “No Holds Barred,” starring Hogan as, you guessed it, a wrestler going up against a crooked promoter and a psychotic bad guy. Riding Hogan’s popularity, and shrewdly using the weekly WWF TV shows and their Pay-Per View events to promote it, “No Holds Barred” took in a respectable earning of $16 million while in theaters (coming at #2 its opening weekend behind “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”). Wrestling was suddenly a very real player in the moviemaking business.

Well, kind of. WWF, renamed World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002, went silent in their movie endeavors after “No Holds Barred” for the better part of decade. Then in the early 2000s WWE Films (now called WWE Studios) was formed producing action, horror and comedies headlined by WWE talent. I mean, who could forget Triple H in “The Chaperone” or Edge opposite Jamie Kennedy in “Bending The Rules” or Kane in “See No Evil.” The films that got theatrical distribution rarely made a dent in the box office, while the others went straight-to-DVD.

However, in 2013 WWE Studios is trying a new formula. With the hiring of former Miramax executive Michael Luisi as studio head, there have been seismic changes, and all the proof you need is to look at the new releases for the next few weeks. “Dead Man Down,” the actioner starring Terrence Howard, Colin Farrell, Noomi Repace and directed by original “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” helmer Niels Arden Oplev as well as thriller “The Call,” starring Halle Berry, are both co-produced by WWE Studios.

With his relationships in the industry, Luisi, who came on as president of WWE Studios in 2011, has been able to quickly attach the studio to projects that could attract WWE’s fanbase, even if they didn’t feature any wrestling elements (though WWE superstars Wade Barrett and David Otunga have small supporting roles in “Dead Man Down” and “The Call,” respectively). The films’ marketing campaigns have conspicuously lacked any explicit mention of WWE’s involvement.

“The WWE logo is such an iconic and recognizable brand that it brings incredible strength, but it can sometimes bring preconceived notions,” Luisi told Film.com.  “We want people to know the movies are ours, but we want to do it in a way that isn’t potentially creating the wrong impression. The movies come first.”

Luisi says the new strategy for the studio is broken down in three segments. There’s the wide theatrical releases that attract broader audiences with the casting of name talent. Then there are the branded wrestler-heavy franchises that will be released direct-to-home, like the upcoming “The Marine: Homefront,” the third installment of the WWE-produced action franchise that once starred WWE superstar John Cena (and is one of the few successful franchises in WWE Studio’s stable). For “Homefront” they cast one of their younger stars in the lead role; even those unfamiliar with the wrestling world might recognize Mike “The Miz” Mizanin from his stint on MTV’s “The Real World: Back to New York.” Finally, there are the acquisitions of titles at film festivals, which will be promoted through the WWE TV programs and other marketing.

Luisi is certainly moving in the right direction to make non-wrestling fans realize WWE isn’t just about making “wrestling movies.” “You’re judged by the company you keep,” he says. “So hopefully people will say, ‘Wow, they’re involved with some tremendous producers and directors and actors. There’s really something different going on.”"

But at the same time Luisi knows where his bread is buttered, and there’s no better example of that than an upcoming project he was most excited to talk about: a feature animated film co-produced with Warner Bros. animation that has Scooby-Doo and his gang solving a mystery at WrestleMania.

As much as things change, they stay the same I guess.

Categories: No Categories

Tags: Colin farrell, Dead Man Down, Hulk Hogan, John cena, Michael Luisi, Noomi Repace, Terrence howard, The Call, Wrestling, WWE

10 Actors You Think Won For Something But Won For Something Else

The Oscars are the ultimate prize in the movie industry, but the storied Academy, as anyone who has filled out an annual office pool can attest, sometimes fails to reward filmmakers and actors when you expect it. That’s why there are so many award winners who have Academy Awards for what we consider the wrong film. It’s a totally different issue than those completely snubbed for the honor (we feel for you, Ben Affleck). We’re talking about the disconnect between which movie a renowned performer or auteur deserved to win for and which actually landed them the golden statue.

If you think about the following 10 Oscar winners’ careers, we guarantee you’ll assume they won for a different movie.

10. Meryl Streep: The most nominated actor in Academy history is living legend Meryl Streep. With 17 nominations to her name, it’s difficult to remember exactly which three performances netted her the statue. “Sophie’s Choice” remains her four-decade career’s signature film, but the other two are harder to pinpoint, even if she won one just last year! In 2012, Streep upset favorite frontrunner Viola Davis with her portrayal of “The Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher, but what about the prolific actress’s unforgettable turns in “Doubt,” “The Devil Wears Prada,”  “Julie & Julia,” “Silkwood” and “The Deer Hunter”? She won for none of those, but for her 1979 family drama, “Kramer Vs. Kramer.”

9. Robert De Niro: The one, the only De Niro has two Academy Awards. One is definitely for his tour de force as aging boxer Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull,” and the other … Is it also for a Scorsese-directed drama? Nope. It’s not for playing a loyal Vietnam vet in “The Deer Hunter,” a homicidal ex-con in “Cape Fear” or a psychotic Vietnam vet in “Taxi Driver.” De Niro won his other Oscar the first time he was nominated, for Best Supporting Actor in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather: Part II.” While his win for playing the young Vito Corleone was well deserved, De Niro has played so many extraordinary characters, it’s easy to believe those other roles earned Oscars.

8. Roman Polanski: He may have a both depressing and despicable personal history, but Polanski is a brilliant filmmaker who’s been nominated for Best Director four times (“Chinatown,” “Tess” and “The Pianist”) and Best Adapted Screenplay (“Rosemary’s Baby”). Even though “Chinatown” is considered Polanski’s best film, earning 11 Academy Award nominations, the neo-noir classic scored only one Oscar – for Robert Towne’s original screenplay. Polanski’s twisty Los Angeles-set drama had the misfortune of being pitted against Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather, Part II,” so it’s the Holocaust drama “The Pianist” (2002) that earned the Polish-French director his Oscar due.

7. Cate Blanchett: The amazing Aussie actress has memorably played the Queen of England, a royal elf and the bard of rock and roll, but her Academy Award isn’t for “Elizabeth,” “The Lord of the Rings” or “I’m Not There.” Blanchett’s one Oscar (she’s been nominated four times) is for her supporting role portraying Katherine Hepburn opposite Leo DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes in “The Aviator” (2004). The patrician New England accent alone earned her the award. We still can’t believe Blanchett has yet to win a Best Actress.

6. Whoopi Goldberg: If you were to play a montage of Goldberg’s film roles in your head, you’d pause and marvel at exactly one film – her starring role as Celie in “The Color Purple” (1984). Goldberg beautifully portrayed a woman who survives every indignity that comes along with being black, poor, ugly, a woman, a “nothin’ at all” in the rural Jim Crow South. But Steven Spielberg’s adaptation didn’t win a single Academy Award, despite 11 nominations. Goldberg went on to win a Best Supporting Actress award for playing an eccentric medium in “Ghost” six years later.

5. Judi Dench: Eight minutes. That’s how long Dench’s droll depiction of Queen Elizabeth I lasted in “Shakespeare in Love.” Her acceptance speech lasted almost as long, and she herself joked, “I feel for eight minutes on the screen, I should only get a little bit of him.” Considering Dench has impressed critics and audiences for 50 years in much more substantial roles, like playing England’s other famous female monarchs in “Mrs. Brown” and the eponymous Alzheimer-suffering novelist in “Iris,” not to mention her inimitable portrayal of Bond’s boss “M,” it’s hard to be sure which role should have snagged the grand Dame her Oscar.

4. Martin Scorsese: When Scorsese took the podium for his Best Director Oscar in 2007, many might have assumed he was accepting his second or possibly third Academy Award. After all, what were the odds that New York City’s quintessential auteur would win his first Oscar for “The Departed,” a Boston cops-and-mobsters drama? This is the filmmaker responsible for “Goodfellas,” “Raging Bull” and “Taxi Driver,” so surely Marty had already won for one of those homages to the “Mean Streets” of New York. Alas, no. Scorsese has been nominated for 10 Oscars but only has the one.

3. Tommy Lee Jones: Another Best Supporting Actor nominee this year, the “Lincoln” actor has brilliantly played stern-faced men for more than 40 years in unforgettable movies like “No Country for Old Men,” “In the Valley of Elah,” “JFK” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” But it wasn’t playing a West Texas sheriff, a grieving father, a conspirator to kill the president or Crystal Gale’s husband that led to Jones’s Academy Award but playing a persistent U.S. Marshal in the action thriller “The Fugitive.” It doesn’t help that Jones beat out the considerably more deserving Ralph Fiennes’s turn as the scary evil SS officer in “Schindler’s List,” for his win.

2. Denzel Washington: With his nomination for “Flight,” Washington has a cool half-dozen Oscar nominations and two wins. He’s one of only six actors to display both a Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor on his shelf. Thanks to that epic tear streaming down his face, there’s no doubt what movie was his Supporting “Glory.” And the leading role belonged to Washington for his career-best performance as black power activist “Malcolm X.” No other actor could have pulled off such a masterful depiction, and finally a black actor besides Sidney Poitier landed a Leading Actor award. Wait, what? Denzel lost in one of Oscar’s biggest upsets. Instead, he won nine years later for playing a very, very bad cop in “Training Day.”

1. Al Pacino: And just who was responsible for Washington’s loss in 1993? That would be none other than Al Pacino, who won the Oscar on his eighth (and so far, last) try. It’s unbelievable, but Pacino’s name was never called for playing mafia son-turned-boss Michael Corleone in “The Godfather” (either time!) or whistleblowing cop “Serpico” or the inept bank robber in “Dog Day Afternoon.” No, Pacino won for a movie that has not withstood the test of even 20 years, “Scent of a Woman.” His over-the-top hooahing as a retired blind Army officer certainly didn’t deserve the Academy Award, not when compared to Denzel, and not to his own best roles.

Categories: Awards

Tags: Al pacino, Cate blanchett, Denzel washington, Ghost, Judi dench, Kramer vs. kramer, Martin scorsese, Meryl Street, Robert de niro, Roman polanski, Scent of a Woman, Shakespeare in love, The aviator, The departed, The fugitive, The Godfather Part II, The Pianist, Tommy lee jones, Training Day, Whoopi goldberg