Shamelessly vulgar, definitively adult and just this side of X-rated. Oh, and their movie is pretty lurid too.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
'Gears Of War' Screenwriter Aims For 'Gritty And Real' Big-Screen Version Of Video Game
Microsoft's alien-invasion-themed "Gears of War" is already one of the hottest video games to hit the market in recent years, but could it be one of the hottest films to hit theaters too? With the release of the game's sequel days away and "Underworld" director Len Wiseman now behind the camera, MTV spoke to "Gears of War" screenwriter Chris Morgan about the status of the film and the big questions that have gamers buzzing.
While Morgan said the final script for the film has yet to be approved by developer Epic Games, he did say that the rumors that the "Gears of War" film will be a prequel of sorts to the story that unfolds in the game are untrue — or, rather, not entirely true.
"There are elements to it that can be considered a prequel," Morgan teased, "but it's not a prequel as far as I'm concerned."
What he could confirm, however, is the live-action debut of some of the game's most familiar faces — namely, the game's main character, Marcus Fenix, and fellow Delta Force soldier Dominic Santiago. Better yet, Morgan hinted that the current script would bring "Emergence Day," the initial invasion by alien baddies known as the Locust Horde, to the big screen.
"It would be a crying shame not to deal with Marcus and Dom," Morgan told MTV News. "I would not be interested in the movie if we weren't dealing with them. I want to see those guys. I want to see 'Emergence Day.' I want to see this stuff happen."
Exactly how that will happen will involve a delicate mix of computer-generated effects and live-action drama, Morgan said. The writer compared his template for scripting "Gears of War" to the mix of creature effects and live interaction in James Cameron's "Aliens." Bringing that concept to the screen, though, will be Wiseman's job.
The director's plan for "Gears of War" is to stay away from an "all-green-screen, all-CGI movie," Morgan said, only using the computer effects for "the big stuff" and certain scenes featuring the Locust.
"In [Wiseman's] mind, he wants to make it as realistic as possible," Morgan said, "and to blur those lines where your mind says, 'Oh, it's a big CGI film.' "
Morgan confirmed that some of the game's most recognizable creatures would make an appearance in the film (read more about the bad guys who will appear in the "Gears of War" movie, including the terrifying Berserker, on the MTV Movies Blog). He also told us that the game's humor-under-fire vibe would also find its way into the film — in some fashion, at least. An avid gamer, he confessed that even though he wasn't "a comedy guy," the humor of "Gears of War" comes naturally once you spend as much time as he has with the characters in both the script and the game.
"I can't write a joke to save my life, but I can, at the right moment, tap into that human thing that comes in when you're in a foxhole and things are raining down," Morgan said. "I think you will definitely have those fun moments, those fun lines and moments between the two. But by and large, I think it will be gritty and real.
"I want to write and play it as though it happened today," he added. "Look outside at your city and imagine that the Locust started rising — that's how I want it to feel."
‘Twilight’ Sneak Peek To Premiere At International Rome Film Festival
Madonna’s Striptease Tribute to Britney Spears
(E! Online)
Opry asks Morgan to become its newest member
(AP)
'Twilight' Star Robert Pattinson Moves From Edward Cullen To Salvador Dali -- Check Out Photos Here!
Mere months ago, the stars of "Twilight" were hardly household names. As the film's November 21 release date continues to draw close, however, it has become nearly impossible to turn on the television, open a magazine or read your favorite blog without seeing Cam Gigandet, Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart and all the others. But where do these shooting stars go from here?
MTV News has obtained seven exclusive photos from Robert Pattinson's upcoming film "Little Ashes" that make the answer a little clearer. They reveal the most dramatic role yet in the heartthrob's young career, as he steps away from the Edward Cullen role and assumes the persona of eccentric, surrealist painter Salvador Dalн.
The photos depict an 18-year-old Dalн (both with and without his trademark mustache) as he makes the move from his small birth town in Spain to Madrid, where he begins experimenting with the cubist style that launched his young career. The film also depicts young poet/dramatist Federico Garcнa Lorca (newcomer Javier Beltran) and filmmaker Luis Buсel (Matthew McNulty from "Control") and the friendship forged between the three men.
For those of you who haven't been keeping up on your art history, Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalн i Domиnech lived from 1904 to 1989 and was best known for such dazzling, bizarre paintings as "The Persistence of Memory" and "Swans Reflecting Elephants." A collaborator with the likes of Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock (who both tapped into his mind for scenes in their films), Dalн excelled at drawing attention to himself through his unconventional clothes and facial hair — a persona he largely developed during the early years that "Little Ashes" will portray.
Directed by Paul Morrison, the film's Web site promises that it will come to select theaters in 2009 and that it is rated R for "sexual content, language and a brief disturbing image." Clearly, Pattinson's "Twilight" follow-up will be a long way from Stephenie Meyer's best-selling young-adult novels — but his loyal fans are already eager to see if he will once again dazzle them.
Josh Groban set to salute televison at the Emmys
(AP)
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
Peter Facinelli Compares ‘Twilight’ Patriarch Carlisle Cullen To His Breakthrough Role In ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’
Sinking Our Teeth Into Modern Vampires: How Do 'Twilight,' 'Buffy' And Others Compare?
A fearless young woman is attracted to an impossibly handsome vampire — sound like the story line from "Twilight"? It could also be "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," HBO's "True Blood" or FEARnet's upcoming "The Dark Path Chronicles."
Even Anita Blake, the vampire hunter who famously quipped, "I don't date vampires, I kill them," ends up falling for a guy with fangs.
Which is all to say, nothing is new under the midnight sun — vampiric lore included. Twilighters who can't wait for the movie's release in three weeks can get their fix in lots of other places this Halloween. But how do the other stories stack up?
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" may not be on television anymore, but the Dark Horse comic actually has a "Twilight" character. "I never knew 'Twilight' existed when I named the character Twilight," Joss Whedon, creator of "Buffy," laughed. "There's room for many Twilights."
"Buffy" the comic doesn't have as much star-crossed romance as "Buffy" the TV show, in which Buffy falls for Angel, the Edward Cullen of his day. The central metaphors of the two series are very different — you should wait until you get "bitten" for "Twilight," high school is hell for Buffy — as are the two heroines, Bella and Buffy. Buffy doesn't waste time anguishing about whether her vampy boy will marry her, impregnate her, bite her — she's got bigger issues, like having to save the world (again). But the overall arc about the anguish of loving someone who is immortal is still there.
"If people want stories about girls who love vampires, they should have them," Whedon said. "It's not like I came up with it. It's always deeply romantic or deeply interesting or deeply scary, or all of the above, and that's going to be mined long after I'm gone."
"True Blood," based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, also has a very different metaphor to offer — vampire as outsider deserving equal rights — but the heroine is someone Twilighters can relate to. Like Bella, Sookie is an outcast in her small town, and she's plunged headfirst into a supernatural world when a hot vamp walks into her life. Edward is intrigued by Bella because he can't read her mind — Sookie is intrigued by Bill because she can't read his.
Sookie's the psychic in this series, and it's what makes it hard for her to connect with people — what they say and what they think are very different, and all the voices swirl in her head like buzzing bees. But Bill, who as a human was a Confederate soldier, makes her feel calm. Both Bella and Sookie feel more at home with Edward and Bill — who are beautiful, noble, gentlemanly and self-despising. Bella and Sookie are inexperienced when the story begins, but as they get to know their vamps, they both want their guy to take a bite. Edward and Bill are weaned from drinking human blood — Edward drinks the blood of animals, and Bill drinks a synthetic substitute made in Japan, sold in bottles at room temperature as True Blood.
"If it's just a story device to have fangs, then I'm just not that interested," "True Blood" creator Alan Ball laughed. "We're really trying to focus on who Bill is, what's his history, what is the curse of being immortal, how is that a bad thing, what's it like to be immortal and still yearn to be human, to have lost everything that meant something to you? To meet somebody and feel like you have a second beginning? You know? And so those are the things that I think are important to me."
Mary Lambert's "Dark Path Chronicles" features a young girl named Samantha, who, like Sookie, hears voices — but the question remains if she's psychic or just schizophrenic. She falls for "really cute" Jurgen, who looks 23 but is 75 years old and, as a human, had been forced to fight for the Germans in World War II.
"Vampires are the quintessential rock stars," Lambert said. "They're forever young, they come out at night, they have superpowers — but in exchange, they've been robbed of their humanity. So if they do fall in love, they're doomed to lose people, because humans die and vampires don't."
Like Sookie and Bella, Samantha is a bit inexperienced and not sure what she's getting into at first. But despite her naпvetй, she's fearless, perhaps when she shouldn't be.
"It's like Juliette Lewis and Robert De Niro in 'Cape Fear,' " Lambert explained, "except this guy is young and handsome. But we all know that he could suck her blood and kill her. The audience should be afraid for her. She wants him to be her boyfriend, and this is the question — like in 'Twilight,' when the good girl meets the bad boy — should she lose her virginity to him? Should she go off on a motorcycle with him? It's a metaphor."
But not every vampire story sticks to that whole romantic notion of the vampire as a gentleman caller — sometimes, when the vampire comes calling, you should slam the door shut and run. The vampires in "30 Days of Night" and the upcoming sequel "Dark Days" are not interested in seducing the women of Barrow, Alaska, or any other town, nor do they have a peace treaty with any other neighboring supernatural creatures. They just want to feed. And there's nothing in their frenzy that would make teen girls swoon over, say, Vicente or Marlow.
"That's driving me nuts," Steve Niles, creator of "30 Days of Night," complained. "We've got 'Twilight,' which 16-year-old girls are going batsh—over. One of my big motivators for '30 Days of Night' was that vampires had gotten annoying and silly [by being romantic]. So I strip it back to where they look at you like cattle. They don't like humans. They don't spend time worrying about us."
So the whole bad-boy metaphor, or the losing-your-virginity metaphor — being bitten as a substitute for sex — goes out the window in exchange for a metaphor more worthy of Halloween.
"It's a direct confrontation with death," Niles said. "And they're metaphors for fear of invasion and disease and more. Vampires have the potential to be really scary. How can they be scary if cheerleaders are dating them?"
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
Beck brings it all back home in wide-ranging show
(Reuters)
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
'High School Musical 3' Named Most Likely To Succeed At Box Office
Box-Office Top Five
#1 "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" ($42 million)
#2 "Saw V" ($30.5 million)
#3 "Max Payne" ($7.6 million)
#4 "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" ($6.9 million)
#5 "Pride and Glory" ($6.3 million)
"High School Musical 3: Senior Year" was voted Most Likely to Succeed by audience members this weekend, winning the box office with a hefty $42 million. In doing so, the third entry in Disney's wildly popular song-and-dance series (and the last starring mainstays Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, et al) scored the best-ever opening for a musical.
From one genre to the next, records were also broken this weekend in horror with a second-place finish and $30.5 million for "Saw V," which pushed the series past "Friday the 13th" as the highest-grossing horror franchise in history.
Mark Wahlberg's "Max Payne" fell 56 percent in its second week, falling to third place with $7.6 million. The video game adaptation has now made $29.7 million overall. Say hi to your mother for me.
Rounding out the top five, "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" and "Pride and Glory" came in fourth and fifth place respectively. With $6.9 million, "Chihuahua" has now made $78.1 million in four weeks. "Pride and Glory," which made $6.3 million, was in its first week of release.
In limited release, Clint Eastwood's "Changeling," starring Angelina Jolie, and Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" had auspicious per-theater averages, boding well for future wide expansion.
‘Rent’ brings down the curtain on Broadway run
(AP)
‘High School Musical’ Stars Nominate ‘Classmates’ For Senior Superlatives
TRVSDJAM: Loud, Proud Collaboration of Cool
(E! Online)
T.I. Talks 'Bone Deep,' Hopes For Long Hollywood Career
NEW YORK — In the movie "Bone Deep," T.I. has the role of a bank robber — a "well-dressed" bank robber at that — who was loyal to his crew and wants some reciprocation.
"I play Ghost," Tip explained recently. "Ghost is a guy who was once the head of this crew — me and Idris [Elba] started the crew. I took a hit on the last job. I got shot and went to prison — I did about five years. I did the time, didn't mention anyone's name, didn't snitch. Didn't cooperate or nothing. Now I'm back out. The crew has gone on to do other jobs. Their position is, 'We've held your money for you. It's been collecting interest.' I'm like, 'Yeah, OK, but I got a job I wanna do.' They're like, 'Usually, we wait a year or two before we do a job.' I'm like, 'Yeah, I've got a job I wanna do on Tuesday. And y'all owe me.' That's what the film is about — whether or not they do that job, whether or not they trust me, whether or not we will pull the job off and what will happen after and all that kind of stuff. You have to see."
A few weeks back, a photo of Tip dressed in a traffic guard's uniform found its way online. "That's a part of the story," he explained. "I don't wanna give the story away too much."
In "Bone Deep," Tip works with a plethora of co-stars, including Elba, who also appeared with him in "American Gangster."
"It's going great. I think it will be a real hot film," Tip declared. "Everybody is getting along great — Idris, Paul Walker, Michael Ealy, Chris Brown, even Matt Dillon. All of them are cool."
Much like his album Paper Trail pushed Tip's artistic boundaries, the MC says he wanted to apply the same work ethics and principles to his ongoing acting career.
"I was taught that most of the successful actors from Will [Smith] to Denzel [Washington] — even Idris will tell you — take on the roles that scare the sh-- out of you. Joe Pesci also told me that. I've heard that in so many different places. They may have different ways of saying it. You always challenge yourself. You do the sh-- you're terrified of doing or what you don't think you can do.
"The thing is, with acting, you can't necessarily get comfortable, because you never do two films that are exactly alike," he added. "Every character provides a different set of challenges. By the end of this film, I would have mastered this character, but then I move on to the next film, to another character."
"Bone Deep" hits theaters next year. The next single from Paper Trail is "Live Your Life," featuring Rihanna. The video debuts this week.
Beck brings it all back home in wide-ranging show
(Reuters)
Oscar loosens rules for music categories
(Reuters)
Chris Brown Dances Around Bullets In Upcoming Film ‘Bone Deep’
Monday, October 27, 2008
'High School Musical' Stars Nominate 'Classmates' For Senior Superlatives
The stars of "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" are growing up and moving on.
Over the past couple of years, we've seen Zac Efron, Corbin Bleu, Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Hudgens go from teen idol wannabes to full-fledged teen dreams. In this installment of the "High School Musical" franchise, their characters — Troy Bolton, Chad Danforth, Sharpay Evans and Gabriella Montez — are graduating, saying farewell and heading off to college. But what senior year is complete without some good old-fashioned senior superlatives?
'Synecdoche, New York': Nowhere Man, By Kurt Loder
Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter for whom "brilliant" is the default adjective, is reported to have been displeased in the past with what some directors have done with his scripts (notably George Clooney, with "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind"). Now, with "Synecdoche, New York," Kaufman has directed one himself. The result is a picture that is (a) brilliant, in scattered parts, but also (b) a reminder that virtually every writer needs an editor.
The movie is about failure, decay and death, pretty much in that order. Oh, and confusion, possibly your own. It's presented as a comedy (well, of a Kaufmanian sort), but it's not exactly light on its feet. Philip Seymour Hoffman, usually such a fascinating actor to watch, is here sunk deep in shlubbiness as Caden Cotard, a mediocre director of plays stranded in the theatrical outback of Schenectady, New York. (Cotard's Syndrome — meaningfully, no doubt — is the psychiatric delusion that one is dead or rotting, or that the world no longer exists.) Caden is obsessed with disease and dying; his wife, Adele (the unconquerable Catherine Keener), thinks a lot about her husband dying, too, but in a hopeful way. Adele is an artist — she paints pictures so tiny they require headset magnification to make out what's going on in them. When she scores an exhibition of her work in Berlin, she leaves Caden behind but takes their 4-year-old daughter along. Not a good sign, but what can Caden do? As someone says at one point or another, "He lives in a half-world between stasis and anti-stasis."
At the local community theater over which he glumly presides, Caden is staging a production of (what else?) "Death of a Salesman." On his own now, he strikes up a flirtation with the bosomy box-office ticket girl, Hazel (Samantha Morton). When Hazel sets out in search of a house to buy, we see that the one she selects is on fire. She takes it. (This house-afire gag is funny the first time we see it; whether we need to see it again is a question to which the answer is no.)
Caden begins to have trouble keeping track of time. When he laments to Hazel that Adele has been gone for a year now, she tells him, "It's been a week." He consults a therapist (Hope Davis), who's not a lot of help. (She recommends to him a novel written by a 4-year-old boy: "He killed himself when he was 5.") To make things more complicated — although not nearly as complicated as they'll soon become — Caden is also being followed by a tall, balding man named Sammy (Tom Noonan). Why? Be patient.
If I may hurry things along a bit, Caden, who doesn't seem overly encumbered by talent, is suddenly awarded a MacArthur "genius" grant, which will allow him to stage the play of his life — literally — in a huge, hangar-like warehouse in New York. He builds enormous sets that look like ... New York. He hires actors to play himself and the other people who clutter his existence. He is, you see, observing his life rather than living it. At one point, Sammy makes a bid for the role of Caden. "I've been following you for 20 years," he says. "Hire me, and you'll find out who you truly are." After a while, cast and crew begin growing restive — rehearsals have been going on for 17 years. (At this point in the film, that sounds about right.)
I've passed over Caden's plague of boils, his daughter's green poop, a heavily tattooed woman dying in a German hospital and dozens of other plot eccentricities that I think we can continue passing over. The movie's message is stated forthrightly, not to say repeatedly: "I'm very lonely." "The end is built into the beginning." "After death, there's nothing." Anyone unfamiliar with this worldview has clearly never sat through some of Woody Allen's less-popular pictures.
As the cast and the concept of Caden's play metastasize, there are some surreally funny moments. Many more moments, unfortunately, are surreal in the manner of so what? And while a remarkable number of fine actresses pass through Kaufman's conceptual clamor — Michelle Williams, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest — the prosthetic aging makeup under which some of them are obscured and the relentless shifting of their characters make it a little difficult to tell who's who and what's what and why.
There are parts of the movie that confirm Kaufman's brilliance as a writer (as if that's ever been in doubt). And the picture is certainly ambitious — although toward the end he seems to be floundering a bit. But "Synecdoche" is less a demonstration of his gifts as a director (which are not overwhelmingly apparent) than it is an illustration of why he still needs one.
‘Max Payne’: Rain Man, By Kurt Loder
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
‘Filth and Wisdom’: Absolute Beginner, By Kurt Loder
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Ashley Tisdale Hones Alien-Fighting Skills In 'They Came From Upstairs'
In Ashley Tisdale's upcoming flick "They Came From Upstairs," the "High School Musical" star takes a break from singing and dancing to fend off space invaders. "I'm really excited about it. I haven't even seen the trailer yet," she told MTV News. "But [the film] comes out in January. It's an action comedy, and I had my first action scene in it, so it's pretty exciting."
Horror-Movie Deaths You Don't Have To Worry About
Conventional wisdom says scary movies work best when they trick you into thinking you could be in the same danger as the actors. Over the past few years, few films have tapped into this more effectively than "The Strangers" — a creepy flick about slashers who invade a house and do unspeakable things to a couple, simply because they "were home."
But if the thought of watching that new DVD this Halloween gets you too creeped out, you're in the right place. One out of every five homes will suffer a break-in, while your odds of being killed by lightning are 2.32 million to one. The chances are zero, however, that you'll be eaten by your bed or find a leprechaun growing out of your crotch.
Below is a list of the polar opposite of "Strangers": The most inconceivable, unrealistic and just plain dumb deaths in the history of cinema. Enjoy the morbid memories and remember: If a cookie ever pulls a loaded gun on you, this article comes with a money-back guarantee.
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
Sam Raimi Gets Back To His Horror Roots With ‘Drag Me To Hell’
'High School Musical' Heartthrob Zac Efron 'Couldn't Be More Excited' To Dance Again In 'Footloose' Remake
Zac Efron has a face that screams "teen dream." The combination of his dreamy baby blue eyes, perfectly coiffed hair and bronze skin gets teen girls everywhere all fired up — which is probably why it seems he was born to play basketball stud Troy Bolton in the "High School Musical" franchise.
But with Troy graduating from high school, Efron isn't satisfied to be just the Disney pretty boy. He's already lined up a few more films, and his two upcoming projects find him showing his chops as an actor and a teen heartthrob. Efron is set to star in another teen flick, "17 Again," as well as a literary drama about Orson Welles.
'Changeling': Lost Boys, By Kurt Loder
It's a wonder the Christine Collins story, with its layers of cruelty, corruption and sudden, bloody horror, has gone unexplored by filmmakers for the last 80 years. Now, finally exhumed from moldering Los Angeles municipal archives by writer J. Michael Straczynski, this previously untold tale is the basis of Clint Eastwood's powerfully disturbing new movie, "Changeling" — the latest peak in his 37-year directing career.
Working with a longtime collaborative team that includes cinematographer Tom Stern and production designer James J. Murakami, Eastwood has given the picture a creamy period look, with rich shades of brown and muted blues, which perfectly encircles and sets off the terrible events at the center of the story. And his recreation of a long-gone L.A., with vintage skyline and streets arrayed with red trolleys and rickety automobiles, is a small marvel in itself.
The year is 1928. Collins (Angelina Jolie), a switchboard supervisor and single mother, returns home one afternoon to find that her nine-year-old son, Walter, has disappeared. The LAPD, notorious at the time for its brazen racketeering and for shooting down citizens with impunity, dawdles for four months, while public indignation, stoked by a fiery radio minister named Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), angrily mounts. Then, suddenly, the captain in charge of the case, a smarmy martinet named J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), announces that Walter has been found, in DeKalb, Illinois. The boy (Devon Conti) is brought back to Los Angeles, but as soon as he steps down off the train, with a sly, conniving grin on his face, Collins realizes that he's not her child. Unnamed "experts," however, have determined that he is, and Jones condescendingly tells her to take the boy home and "try him out for a couple of weeks."
Backed up by Briegleb, Collins continues to protest the authorities' cruel incompetence, creating a public scandal so embarrassing to the police that they invoke a self-invented rule called "Code 12," which allows them to consign anyone who annoys them (mainly women) to the county insane asylum, where they're plied with drugs and electro-shock sessions until they come to their senses and shut up. The asylum is a hellacious place, of course, but Eastwood doesn't overplay it (we're not quite in Frances Farmer territory here). It's presided over by an unfeeling doctor (Denis O'Hare) who's clearly on the cops' payroll, and patrolled by an examining nurse (scary Riki Lindhome) whose glowering face is an icon of icy indifference. Collins finds an ally here, though, a prostitute named Carol (Amy Ryan, excellent yet again), who made the mistake of filing brutality charges against a client who turned out to be a cop. Carol gives Collins the lowdown on life in the bin. "You gotta do everything you can to look normal," she says. "If you smile too much, you're delusional; if you don't smile, you're depressed." Collins is offered the chance to be released from the asylum if she'll just sign a statement absolving the police of any blame in her case. She turns it down.
Meanwhile, a police detective named Ybarra (Michael Kelly), possibly the only straight cop on the force, is investigating the disappearance of a number of other boys about 60 miles away in rural Wineville. Soon, at a godforsaken chicken ranch, Ybarra comes to believe that he's found little Walter Collins, too. Here the movie takes an unexpected turn into terrifying depravity, played out in flashbacks. Eastwood stages these jolting scenes with extraordinary control: They're not completely graphic, but they have a brutal, gory psychological power, made all the more unsettling by the man perpetrating them, a smiling hayseed lunatic named Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner).
"Changeling" is a wonderfully well-made picture. It's borderline grim and, in the second half, spiked with really wrenching shocks; but it draws you in from the quiet beginning, and holds you all the way through to its frightful and beautifully edited conclusion. (The editors, Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach, are also old Eastwood hands.) The actors are impeccable, resisting at all turns the showiness that the material invites. Jolie once again surmounts the burden of her fame and beauty to portray Collins, not as a before-her-time feminist crusader (although that's a motif the movie attempts to impose a little too emphatically), but as a woman who simply, stubbornly won't back down in pursuit of her lost child. Malkovich's character is little more than an angel of vengeance, but with his marcelled hairpiece and his air of pinched concern, we're always happy to see him intervene in the distressing proceedings, as we are whenever Kelly's staunch investigator takes over a scene. Eastwood also elicits exceptional performances from the film's juvenile actors, especially Eddie Alderson as the tormented kid who finally blows the whistle on the abominations being perpetrated at the chicken ranch.
The movie feels a little long at two hours and 20 minutes, and after a while you may grow weary of hearing Jolie cry out (well after you've gotten the point), "He's not my child!" There's an ambiguous lack of resolution at the end, too. Collins' search for her little boy never really ended. However, the facts of the case are laid out in such a way that we're pretty certain that we have an answer, even if this indomitable mom refuses to accept it.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
'Incredible Hulk' Producer Wants To Make A Sequel, Which Could Include Edward Norton
Compare 2003's "Hulk" with the new-to-DVD "The Incredible Hulk," and you'll find one common creative element: Gale Anne Hurd.
Hurd, the super-producer behind the "Terminator" and "Punisher" franchises, fell in love with the big green guy as a child, purchased the rights to him in the early '90s while Marvel was in disarray and continues to cherish him as the most powerful of all superhero stories. And now that the character is relaunched, Hurd has big plans for the years ahead.
"When girls are growing up, they're the ones who are picked on," she said. "I had an older brother, and there's no way that you could ever really fight back. So, to me, the Hulk was wish fulfillment. [My family] had a little cabin, and in the summers we'd go up there. It didn't have running water and it didn't have electricity, but the big thing there was a market we would go to before we went up to our cabin, and they sold 'Spider-Man,' 'Incredible Hulk' and 'Fantastic Four' [comics].
"I always bought them out," the now-53-year-old Hollywood power player laughed. "That was my treat for the summer."
This past June, Hurd returned the favor by giving audiences a summer treat with "The Incredible Hulk," a film that established Edward Norton as the new Dr. Bruce Banner. And although Marvel Studio's president of production recently told us that Hulk's future is somewhat uncertain, Hurd revealed that she has every intention of creating an "Incredible Hulk 2" and that Norton is signed on to once again get angry.
"It's all going to depend on the screenplay and where his character goes in any sequel, because he does have a multiple-picture deal," she said of Norton, who told us recently that he's waiting to hear from Marvel regarding Hulk's future. "[Norton's situation] is the same with every franchise like this, when you have one of the top actors of his generation."
Those who've seen "The Incredible Hulk" know that a not-too-subtle sequel hint was dropped when Tim Blake Nelson's Samuel Sterns had a sample of Banner's blood drip into an open wound on his head, causing him to mutate. Hurd said that a proper "Hulk 2" would pick up on this event.
"The Leader," she said when asked what Nelson was transforming into when last we saw him. "It would be a blast [to put the Leader in the sequel], and Tim Blake Nelson is tremendous and a very talented filmmaker in his own right."
But before any Hulk/Leader throw-down can take place, she said, Hulk will likely be seen alongside Iron Man, Captain America and the other heroes being recruited by Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury. "Next, he's likely to appear in an 'Avengers' movie, but that's completely up to Marvel," she explained. "It's wonderful that Marvel now controls so many of their own characters, and they can create a Marvel universe in film and populate it with so many of their characters who naturally exist together. I think an 'Avengers' film is a very exciting prospect."
Asked about her own involvement in the summer 2011 film, she revealed that just because Hulk will be involved with "Avengers" doesn't mean she will. "That I couldn't tell you," Hurd said. "There haven't been any discussions about that."
So instead, she's thinking about a "Hulk 2" these days. "When I think of all the many, many, many villains in the Hulk universe, we've now done the Abomination, so wouldn't it be great to tackle the Leader?" she beamed. "It's a completely different type of cerebral villain, which would give the movie a terrific new take on the character."
And even if "Hulk 2" doesn't come along until 2012 or beyond, the wait wouldn't be a concern for Hurd, who once took 12 years between the second and third "Terminator" films. "You know what? You never give up on something that is worth doing," she promised. "General audiences responded really well [to 'The Incredible Hulk'], and so we look forward to having the opportunity to do it again."
Could ‘Runaways’ Movie Be The New ‘Goonies’? Marvel President Hopes So
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
Jesse McCartney Finally Hits Big Screen In ‘Keith’ — But Is He ‘The Next Leonardo DiCaprio’?
'Saw' Through 'Saw V' In One Night: 10 Hours Of Torture
UNIVERSAL CITY, California — To celebrate the premiere of this week's "Saw V," theaters all over the country hosted "Saw Fest" marathons, unspooling all five movies for the low price of $15. But who'd voluntarily subject themselves to a fate as brutal as any game Jigsaw has ever dreamt up?
MTV News interns Kristen Freethy and Summer Barry, that's who!
Armed with nothing more than a notepad, pen and petty cash for popcorn, our dynamic duo hit the theater to see what 10 hours of torture porn does to the human mind. Below is their diary, detailing all the thrills, chills and "High School Musical" death fantasies.
(If you haven't seen the "Saw" movies, beware of spoilers ahead — including details from the yet-released "Saw V." For more on the latest "Saw" flick, head to our Movies Blog for a review.)
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Seth Rogen's 'Green Hornet' Will Tell Hero's Origin Story Because 'No One Knows Anything About The Green Hornet'
Speaking with MTV News last November, writer/star Seth Rogen promised he was buffing up for the role of Britt Reid in "The Green Hornet," he was looking very strongly at Stephen Chow for the role of Kato, and the movie wouldn't follow an origin story.
Well, two out of three ain't bad.
Looking more svelte and in-shape than ever, Rogen now insists that his action-hero comedy — which he likened in tone to "True Lies" — will follow a more traditional "beginnings" arc.
'High School Musical' Newbies Think Of Themselves As 'A Breath Of Fresh Air' For East High
If the rumors are true, there may be a fourth "High School Musical" movie on the way. And although we're saying goodbye to the original cast in "High School Musical 3: Senior Year," the latest film introduces three fresh-faced newbies — Justin Martin, Jemma McKenzie-Brown and Matt Prokop — to pick up where the original Wildcats left off.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens And Ashley Tisdale Reminisce About Their 'High School Musical' Education
It's all over for East High's original Wildcats.
The cast of "High School Musical" is growing up and moving on, and the movie's breakout stars — Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale — sat down with MTV News to reminisce about their time together shooting the Disney franchise's swan song.
"We all grew up together," Hudgens told MTV News. "We have an amazing time every time we get together. It's a blast."
'Twilight' Tuesday: Anna Kendrick Says It Was 'Easy To Get Googly Eyed' At Robert Pattinson
SANTA MONICA, California — Happy "One Month Until 'Twilight' Day," everybody! If you haven't gotten yourself a cake yet, please rush out to your nearest bakery immediately.
To help you celebrate, indie darling Anna Kendrick stopped by the MTV studios recently for her very own "Twilight" Tuesday. A fun, sweet, down-to-earth actress whose career is moving along almost as quickly as she spoke in last year's "Rocket Science," Kendrick was eager to talk to us about her role as Bella's bud Jessica Stanley, making googly eyes at Rob Pattinson, and her undying love for things wrapped in pancakes.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
'High School Musical' Star Ashley Tisdale Is Ready To Pass The Torch To New Co-Stars
Ashley Tisdale's role as Sharpay Evans borders on the absurd, and playing that kind of comedic character provided her with the skills she needs now that it's time for the cast of "High School Musical" to graduate on to bigger and better things. Tisdale's first post-"HSM" role is in the comedy "They Came From Upstairs."
"It's an action comedy, and I get to have my first action scene," she excitedly told MTV News. "It was a lot of fun, and I want to do more action scenes. It was very exciting.
Could 'Runaways' Movie Be The New 'Goonies'? Marvel President Hopes So
They are the masterminds who brought you "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk." They are working on films for characters like Thor, Captain America and Dr. Strange, not to mention their tag team "The Avengers."
But ask Marvel Studios President of Production Kevin Feige what film he's most excited about, and the answer isn't a single adult superhero — it's a teen one. More accurately, a group of teen heroes. "Runaways" — which is currently being scripted by comic writer Brian K. Vaughan — is tentatively scheduled to be among the studio's many post-"Avengers" projects.
"I love the idea. Brian brought to Marvel one of the best new concepts that we've had in quite some time," Feige said of the film, for which he expects a finished script in early 2009. "It's very different than anything we've done before."
"Runaways" follows a group of kids who come to discover that their parents are up to no good — as in, a take-over-the-world kind of "no good."
OK, sure, not everybody's parents are supervillains, Feige laughed, but didn't everybody at some point think their parents were?
"I love the idea of kids banding together, discovering this thing, which I think all kids secretly wonder at one time or another whether their parents are good or evil. Well, these guys find out, unfortunately, that their parents happen to be supervillains," Feige said of the flick's setup. "I loved, when I was a kid, movies like 'Goonies' and 'Explorers' — and a non-genre example of that is 'Stand by Me' — the idea that when I came home from school, I could go on an adventure anywhere."
Now in its fifth year and on its third major writer (which included Terry Moore and "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon), "Runaways," the film, will more or less follow Vaughan's creation arc, Feige said.
"In our discussions with Brian, we wanted him to be the person to bring it to life. I think it won't be a precise story line of any [of his comics], but certainly it will be most similar to the tone or origins of his structure in its initial run," Feige explained.
What it may or may not follow is the recent Marvel convention of cross-pollination, which is the buzzword of the summer thanks to cameos like Nick Fury's in "Iron Man" and Tony Stark's in "The Incredible Hulk." In the "Runaways" comic, several prominent heroes make brief appearances, but Feige thinks it's unlikely for the film version.
"If it fits a dramatic moment that we want to get across in the film, we would be able to do that — but I wouldn't want to rely on having Iron Man come in and wave every five minutes so we can put that in the commercial and sell more," Feige said. "I really want to build movies to stand on their own, and there's no reason that 'Runaways' — with the right script and the right cast — couldn't fit that on its own."
Are you a fan of "Runaways"? Help us cast it on the MTV Movies Blog.
‘Twilight’ Sneak Peek To Premiere At International Rome Film Festival
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
Monday, October 20, 2008
'Max Payne' Takes Aim At 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua' For Box-Office #1
The Box-Office Top Five
#1 "Max Payne" ($18 million)
#2 "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" ($11.2 million)
#3 "The Secret Life of Bees" ($11.1 million)
#4 "W." ($10.6 million)
#5 "Eagle Eye" ($7.3 million)
With only a couple of weeks left before the presidential election, director Oliver Stone was betting that audiences would want to look back on the nation's controversial leader of the past eight years. As it turned out, viewers were instead eager to relive a whole different kind of pain.
Mark Wahlberg's "Max Payne" led the weekend box office with $18 million, putting it in first place. The moody, noir-esque adaptation of the best-selling video game series cast the former Funky Bunch leader as a disgruntled cop out to avenge the murder of his family. Mila Kunis, Chris O'Donnell and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges all played against type in the flick that was directed by hit ("Behind Enemy Lines") or miss ("The Omen") filmmaker John Moore.
The big opening for "Payne" (and the lackluster debut of "W.") meant that Wahlberg and Josh Brolin would only be hanging out together in New York this weekend. As far as the box office was concerned, there'd be two films standing between the "Saturday Night Live" guest stars.
The unstoppable, unfathomable "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" took in another $11.2 million, putting the talking-dog movie in second place and its total take at just under $70 million. Opening right behind it was newcomer "The Secret Life of Bees," which doesn't have a single talking bee in it. Instead, the period drama about a 14-year-old girl who escapes her father's abuse by fleeing to South Carolina and finding a new family among honey-farming sisters stars Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson and the suddenly back-on-the-scene Dakota Fanning.
Fool me twice and we won't get fooled again, but Stone's "W." couldn't fool enough people into caring again about the outgoing administration, and so the controversial biopic opened softly in fourth place. Taking in $10.6 million, the film stars Brolin as our 43rd president, alongside a supporting cast that includes such actor's actors as James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn and Richard Dreyfuss. The film may still have a second term in its future, however, as buzz is building around Brolin and others as possibly award-worthy candidates.
Breaking with his usual Hollywood catchphrase, Shia LaBeouf is likely screaming "Yes, yes, yes!" at this very moment, as his "Eagle Eye" continues to hover in the top five. The thriller continues its march toward the $100 million neighborhood, making it a profitable sleeper hit.
The funnier-than-it-should-be "Sex Drive" opened weakly in ninth place with $3.6 million, surrounded by the likes of "Body of Lies" (sixth place, $6.9 million), "Quarantine" (seventh, $6.3 million), "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" (eighth, $3.9 million) and "Nights in Rodanthe" (10th, $2.7 million). Just outside the top 10, Kirk Cameron's "Fireproof" earned enough to surpass the $20 million milestone, and has now grossed 40 times its budget.
‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ Claims Best In Show At Box Office
‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ Still Top Dog At Box Office
Where Will We See Britney Spears’ Spread?
(E! Online)
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
'High School Musical' Star Corbin Bleu Doesn't Think Franchise Should Graduate To College
Corbin Bleu is growing up, and the 19-year-old is ready to move on from his role as mop-topped Chad Danforth in the popular "High School Musical" franchise. Even Chad is moving on, now that he'll be attending the University of Albuquerque, and Bleu isn't sure there's any reason to make "High School Musical 4: The College Years."
Sunday, October 19, 2008
'What Just Happened': Reeling, By Kurt Loder
The trouble with movies about Hollywood weaselry is that they have to be made by the weasels. Nevertheless, some of these films have sharply captured the scheming, trashy energy of the place ("The Bad and the Beautiful") and its ego-grinding emotional sadism (about half of "Swimming With Sharks"). And Robert Altman's 1992 "The Player" — made by a born outsider in exile from the industry at the time the picture was shot — really nailed it.
"What Just Happened," the new Barry Levinson movie, resembles "The Player" in some ways. The main character, Ben (Robert De Niro), is a harried producer; there's a mad English director named Jeremy (Michael Wincott) who strongly recalls the mad English writer played by Richard E. Grant in Altman's film; and of course everybody in the movie lies a lot. But "The Player" had a story — a mean, memorable one. Levinson's picture is a little light in that department, which is understandable: "The Player" was scripted by the acidulous Michael Tolkin, from his own novel. "What Just Happened" is based on a 2002 memoir by veteran producer Art Linson ("Fight Club"). So while Altman's movie had a dramatic structure, this one is basically a procession of incidents; there's no resolution because there's not a whole lot of story to resolve.
Still, the picture is very funny in parts. It has a light, shaggy charm, and De Niro is at his most winningly comical, whether fretting over his placement in one of those Vanity Fair "power people" photo shoots ("It really matters") or deftly fending off a writer pitching an unlikely script about a florist ("It's the Rose Bowl Parade meets 'The Da Vinci Code,' " the scribe says). Ben has two major headaches on his hands. One is Jeremy's movie, a Sean Penn vehicle with the all-purpose title "Fiercely," which is scheduled to open the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. Unveiled at an audience test screening with studio suits in attendance, "Fiercely" concludes with a scene in which not only is Penn (playing himself) gunned down, but his loyal little dog is then shot dead. (We see this from close behind the pup's head, with mutt blood splattering the camera lens.) Studio chief Lou Tarnow (Catherine Keener) notes the appalled reaction in the screening room. "We're gonna lose a lotta money," she says.
Then there's Ben's Bruce Willis film. Willis (also playing himself) is being paid $20 million to lend his famous face to this picture, but when he shows up to start shooting, it's hidden behind a big bushy beard — and he refuses to shave it off. (The real-life incident in Linson's book involved Alec Baldwin.) And this Willis is such a raging horror that his jittery agent (John Turturro) is too terrified to confront him.
Amid all this, Ben is also sparring with his ex-wife, Kelly (Robin Wright Penn), who's apparently sleeping with some screenwriter, and protectively obsessing over his 17-year-old daughter, Zoe (Kristen Stewart): When she shows up in tears at the funeral of a recently deceased agent, he realizes his little girl had been boffing the guy. (The funeral scene is reminiscent of "The Player," too.) Can life get any more exasperating? You bet.
De Niro is wonderfully wry in a scene in which Ben and Kelly attend a counseling session: The emotionally-stunted Ben, squirming and muttering and tossing off little whispery one-liners, is so tormented by the shrink's demand for intimate details that he'd rather be anywhere else — maybe even sharing man-hugs with the ferocious Willis. And Willis is funnier here than he's been since, well, "The Player" (in which he also offered up a version of himself). Addressing a roomful of mourners at the funeral, he looks around sourly and says, "I see so many people here I'd rather be eulogizing." Even Sean Penn unpacks a little-seen sense of self-deprecating humor: Reminding a studio exec about the upcoming flight to Cannes, he says, "Did you work out the G5? I gotta smoke on the plane."
The picture is a bit disjointed. There's a sequence with Ben and a hot young actress (the fabulously-monikered Moon Bloodgood) that could've been dropped with no loss; and the scenes at the end, when Ben arrives in Cannes, feel tacked on. But all of the actors involved seem to be having such a good time, you want to go along with them. And when the movie hits its peaks, you can't help joining in.
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
McConaughey Spins Tunes, Yarns for NPR’s KCRW
(E! Online)
‘Hounddog’: Woof, By Kurt Loder
'Moving Midway': Race Relations, By Kurt Loder
In 2004, veteran film critic Godfrey Cheshire was presented with an interesting subject for a documentary. For completely unexpected reasons, it soon became a riveting subject, and then a life-changing one. Now it's the focus of Cheshire's first feature, "Moving Midway," an extraordinary picture that delves into the most painful recess of American racial relations.
Cheshire (with whom I'm acquainted) grew up in Raleigh in the 1950s and '60s, and has deep roots in North Carolina, with family branches that trace back into the 18th century and remain centered on an ancestral, pre-Civil War mansion, the Midway Plantation, not far from Raleigh. At the beginning of the movie, he has received word that his cousin Charlie, Midway's current owner, fed up with the unstoppable encroachment of highways, strip malls and fast-food joints, has decided to move the old mansion, along with its outbuildings, to a rural location more like its original environs. Cheshire decides to document the move.
Returning to Midway from his home in New York, Cheshire is informed by Charlie that he has been contacted by a black man who has proved to him that, because of a sexual liaison between their great-great-great-grandfather Charles Hinton and a slave cook named Selanie, there is a previously unknown black branch of their family — more than 100 new relatives. Back in New York, Cheshire seeks out Dr. Robert Hinton, a professor of Africana Studies at New York University, who agrees to provide his research expertise in the making of the film. (Hinton isn't a blood relation to Cheshire or Charlie; his ancestors were slaves at Midway and, as was common, took — or were assigned — the family's name. Hinton, a civil-rights militant in his youth, says that now, in his sixties, he has come to terms with his troubling background: "I realized I had a Southern identity as well as an African-American identity.")
Cheshire duly films the actual moving of Midway — a remarkable feat that entails lifting the mansion up on wheels and carting it off over some very tricky terrain to its new location. But the most illuminating aspect of the picture is the quick acceptance of the family's new racial dimension by both its white and black branches, an acceptance that has a distinctively Southern grace and warmth. This is most vividly displayed at a big family party at the end of the film — after Midway has arrived at its new site — that brings them all together for the first time.
"Moving Midway" isn't a simple-minded brotherhood-of-man tract. The film is spiked with artfully edited excerpts from some of the movies that have shaped American racial attitudes over the years, from "Birth of a Nation" and "Song of the South" (the 1946 Disney hit that featured the happy-slave storyteller "Uncle Remus") to the 1939 plantation blockbuster "Gone With the Wind" (which, as Cheshire says in a voiceover, "transports us back to a golden age — of Hollywood"). But the picture has an extraordinary feeling of calm inquiry (you can easily imagine the more sensationalized treatment this material might have been given by a Northern filmmaker); and even the occasional tart observations of some of its participants have a grudging affection. When Cheshire takes Robert Hinton to observe a local reenactment of a Civil War battle, the professor musters a wry smile. "I'm perfectly happy to have them keep fighting the war," he says, "as long as they keep losing it."
Lily Praises Po-po, Eviscerates Elton
(E! Online)
‘Rachel Getting Married’: All In The Family, By Kurt Loder
‘Max Payne’: Rain Man, By Kurt Loder
'Filth and Wisdom': Absolute Beginner, By Kurt Loder
Madonna makes her directorial debut with a three-hour movie that ... no, wait — it says 84 minutes here; surely a misprint. Anyway, Madonna makes her directorial debut with what seems like a very long movie about, well, filth and wisdom, I suppose. Or as narrator-star Eugene Hutz puts it, "Without filth, there can be no wisdom." As deep thoughts go, this seems too feeble to provoke much in the way of actual thought, let alone to hang a movie on, but let us, unlike the film, move right along.
The setting is London; the subject, three friends. Juliette (Vicky McClure) is determined to save disease-ravaged African children by stealing bottles of pills from the pharmacy in which she works and ... what: mailing them off to general delivery, Zimbabwe? Not clear. Holly (Holly Weston) is an underemployed ballerina who's persuaded to try stripping to pay the rent. (The pole-dancing scenes in which she features seem like an attempted comment on the objectification of women's bodies; but then the scenes themselves objectify women's bodies — although not nearly as much as pole-dancing aficionados might hope.)
And then there's A.K. (Hutz), a lushly-mustachioed layabout who pays his rent by conducting S&M sessions (heavy on the caning) in his ratty apartment and sitting in an empty bathtub dispensing gaseous aphorisms straight to the camera. ("He who licks a knife will soon cut his tongue." "If you want to reach the sky, f--- a duck and learn to fly.") Hutz, of course, is the leader of the gypsy-rock band Gogol Bordello, a group on which Madonna dotes, and which gets lots of exposure here. As a frontman, he's a rousing performer. As a constant presence in the movie, however, he is deeply, maddeningly tedious. After his seventh or eighth wearying epigram ("There is more to love than words — for instance, the back of a woman's neck"), you want to leap onto the screen and start caning him.
Why Madonna should want to pursue her love of movies beyond simply appearing in them and into the realm of directing (and producing) is a mystery. She's brought some friendly pros onboard to help out: cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones is a longtime associate of her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Guy Ritchie; and Dan Cadan, who's officially taking the fall for the script, is a onetime Ritchie assistant who has also worked on electronic press kits for two of his movies. But who should be credited for the awful lighting (the movie is lit like a lavatory), and the clichйd overhead shots of people morosely curled up on beds, and the puzzling decision, midway through the movie, to suddenly start styling Vicky McClure to look like Jean Seberg in Godard's "Breathless"? I'm afraid we know.
Also lamentable is Madonna's decision to call her production company Semtex Films. Semtex is a well-known plastic explosive, much favored by terrorists. For bombs.
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
Madonna’s Striptease Tribute to Britney Spears
(E! Online)
Do All Video Game Movies Suck? 'Max Payne' Stars Hope Not
In the past two decades, few forces have invaded Hollywood quite like comic book movies and video game movies. We've seen nearly two dozen of each, marketed all over the world, making hundreds of millions of dollars while supplanting books as Hollywood's primary source of inspiration.
But when you line up the two film canons for comparison, you get a list of universally beloved, ripped-from-the-pages comics flicks ("The Dark Knight,""Iron Man,""X2," etc.) paired up against a sad medium ("Doom,""Silent Hill") whose greatest moment is ... "Mortal Kombat"?
While the stars behind this weekend's "Max Payne" are convinced that they'll reverse the trend, we can't help but wonder whether the deck is stacked against them. Below, high-profile personalities from the movie and gaming worlds weigh in on a question that comes up all too frequently: Why do video game movies suck?
Lance Bass Talks Marriage, Kids and Same-Sex Dancing
(E! Online)
Megan Fox, Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron And More Make Moviefone’s ‘Hottest Young Stars’ List
‘Twilight’ Tuesday: Stars Answer More Of Fans’ Burning Questions … Like What It’s Like To Kiss Robert Pattinson
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Jennifer Hudson Angles For A 'Sex And The City' Comeback, Calls 'Secret Life Of Bees' A 'Powerful Film'
Jennifer Hudson may have just released her self-titled debut album, but the former "American Idol" contestant is already returning to the big screen for several upcoming film projects. She won the Oscar for her role as Effie White in "Dreamgirls" and also starred in this year's hit chick flick "Sex and the City," and with a few more movies on the horizon, she's ready to call Hollywood home.
Hudson is back in drama mode for the film "The Secret Life of Bees." "I'm so excited. It's a very powerful film," she told MTV News. "There's not one weak link in it. It's based in the civil-rights era. I play Dakota [Fanning]'s character Lily's nanny."
'Max Payne': Rain Man, By Kurt Loder
"Max Payne" is yet another video game brought to grim, snarling life for the screen. It has all the hallmarks of the genre: cold blue mortuarial color, teeming rain (abating only for photogenic snowfall) and a stone-faced hero bent on brutal, bloody vengeance. The movie is styled to death — it's hyper film noir without the philosophical resonance — and it's certainly something to see. Whether it's worth seeing may depend on your penchant for grim, snarling video games.
Mark Wahlberg plays Max Payne, a cold-case detective who's determined to catch and inflict maximum pain on the crudballs who murdered his wife and child. Max sets the movie's tone right at the beginning: "I don't believe in heaven," he says. "I believe in fear, and death." The rest of the picture is a relentless demonstration of this deeply held conviction.
Max stalks the extra-mean streets of New York (a computer-assisted metropolis bearing an odd, familiar resemblance to Toronto, where the movie was shot). He's onto a gang of mutant goons who sport a mysterious tattoo — a single black wing — and traffic in an equally mysterious drug called Valkyr. (When talk turns to rites of ancient Norway, you quickly get the picture). Does Valkyr have something to do with the giant black-winged creatures that sometimes fill the sky, visible only to V junkies? The question requires but a moment's pondering.
Max is intermittently assisted by a killer chick named Mona (Mila Kunis, the new-love interest in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"), who looks nothing like a mutant goon despite having her own black-wing tattoo; his affable ex-partner, Alex (Donal Logue), and an avuncular older friend named Hensley (Beau Bridges), now head of security for the shadowy Aesir Corporation. (What's cooking inside that place, you wonder, very briefly.) But he's also dogged by Bravura (Ludacris), a top cop who suspects Max may be a killer himself. Which he is, of course, but in a good way.
Wahlberg is too talented an actor for these blood orgies; but this at least allows him to inflect his character with glimmerings of human interest, if only in sunshiny flashbacks to the wife-and-kid life of which he's been robbed. The other lead players are similarly overqualified for their roles, and they help elevate the proceedings somewhat. Irish director John Moore ("The Omen") and his cinematographer, Jonathan Sela ("The Midnight Meat Train"), have invested many of the outdoor scenes with a steely, spectral beauty; and in its dark, clammy milieu, the movie much resembles the "Underworld" films. (It also cries out to be, like them, a full-on vampire flick, which it isn't, quite — although it's certainly more substantial, story-wise.)
So, "Max Payne": worth a look? Your call.
‘Rachel Getting Married’: All In The Family, By Kurt Loder
Placido Domingo sings at Mexico pyramid
(AP)
Twilight Scoop! Sequels, Action and Paramore
(E! Online)
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