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The Latest in ShowBiz News

Angels & Demons is #1 at the box office!
Mack Chico
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2009/05/17 at 12:00am

Movies

Angels & Demons is #1 at the box office!

05.17.2009 | By |

Angels & Demons is #1 at the box office!

“Angels and Demons” — sequel to the hit 2006 thriller “The Da Vinci Code” — topped weekend box office sales across North America, edging out last week’s winner ‘Star Trek,’ according to industry projections on Sunday.

Directed by Ron Howard and with Tom Hanks reprising his starring turn, the thriller took in some 48 million dollars, five million more than number two “Star Trek,” at 43 million dollars, box office tracker Exhibitor Relations said.

Superhero spinoff “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” which claimed the best debut of the year two weekends earlier with 87 million dollars, this weekend netted just 14.8 million for a distant third place finish.

In fourth place was romantic comedy “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” starring Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner, earning 6.8 million dollars in its third week.

Superstar singer Beyonce’s taut thriller “Obsessed” slipped one spot to fifth with 4.6 million dollars, while youthful fantasy “17 Again,” starring US teen idol Zac Efron, also fell one place to sixth, with a 3.4 million dollar take.

“Monsters vs Aliens,” an animated tale of a rag-tag group of monsters who save the world from destruction came in seventh with three million dollars in receipts.

In the eighth spot was “The Soloist,” an inspirational musical tale based on a true story and starring Robert Downey Jr and Jamie Foxx, which scored 2.4 million dollars in ticket sales in its fourth weekend.

Comic caper “Next Day Air,” about a bungled cocaine delivery and the efforts to retrieve it, was ninth with 2.3 million dollars in receipts, while Disney’s “Earth” documentary claimed 10th place with 1.7 million dollars.

Blogs want Javier Bardem in new Star Trek sequel
Mack Chico
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2009/05/17 at 12:00am

Movies

Blogs want Javier Bardem in new Star Trek sequel

05.17.2009 | By |

Blogs want Javier Bardem in new Star Trek sequel

Javier Bardem is being talked about, across the online press spectrum, to play Khan in the new Star Trek sequel.

And the primary cast and filmmakers have already signed for at least two more movies, though that doesn’t necessarily guarantee they will get made.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from grinding away. If you can believe the conjecture, the main villain has already been chosen for the next movie, namely genetically enhanced, would-be universal conqueror Khan Noonien Singh.

(Ricardo Montalban played that role on the original “Trek” series episode “Space Seed,” as well as the 1982 movie spin-off, “The Wrath of Khan.”)

In fact there’s some speculation about who might step into Montalban’s shoes: Spanish actor Javier Bardem.

He’s already played one memorable villain role — hired killer Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men,” a performance for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.

But frankly, I’d prefer to see Bardem play a new character. Perhaps a Klingon opponent for Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk.

Scorsese to distribute movies on internet
Mack Chico
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2009/05/17 at 12:00am

Movies

Scorsese to distribute movies on internet

05.17.2009 | By |

Scorsese to distribute movies on internet

Martin Scorsese, as ardent an advocate as there is for serving up film the old-fashioned way, has decided to embrace digital distribution for movies restored by his World Cinema Foundation.

The films that the organization restores every year — often obscure titles like “Dry Summer,” a Turkish picture from 1936 — will now be available online through theauteurs.com, a Web site that calls itself a “virtual cinematheque.”

Many will be free. And a partnership with B-Side Entertainment will soon bring the foundation’s films to Netflix and iTunes.

The restored movies will also be broadly distributed for the first time to museums, colleges, festivals and film clubs.

Until now, the foundation’s work was screened at the annual Cannes Film Festival in France, and that’s about it. “To be appreciated, they have to be seen,” Mr. Scorsese said on Friday afternoon at a news conference in Cannes. “Now, they should be seen as they were intended to be seen, but audience awareness can build in surprising ways.”

Kent Jones, who was formerly the associate director of programming at the New York Film Society, will join the foundation as executive director with a mandate to promote the distribution of the foundation’s titles to new platforms, Mr. Scorsese added.

Mr. Scorsese, who serves as the foundation’s chairman, established it in 2007 with a clutch of other celebrated directors (including Stephen Frears and Guillermo del Toro) to restore and preserve neglected films from around the world. Master copies of many obscure films from decades past have deteriorated so much that they are no longer usable or have disappeared. Only about 10 percent of the silent movies made in the United States, for instance, still exist.

“The more audiences see these films, the more they want to see other films like them,” Mr. Scorsese said. “Then what happens is the audience changes, which means the movies that are being made change.”

This year at Cannes, the foundation is reintroducing films like “Al-Momia,” an Egyptian picture from 1969 from the director Shadi Abdel Salam, and “The Wave,” a Mexican title directed by Emilio Gómez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann in 1936.

On Friday, as part of his announcement, Mr. Scorsese included a premiere of a restoration of “The Red Shoes,” the 1948 British film directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Angels & Demons
Jack Rico
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2009/05/15 at 12:00am

Reviews

Angels & Demons

05.15.2009 | By |

Rated: PG-13 for sequences of violence, disturbing images and thematic material.
Release Date: 2009-05-15
Starring: Akiva Goldsman
Director(s):
Distributor:
Film Genre:
Country: USA
Official Website: http://www.sonypictures.com.mx/Sony/HotSites/Mx/angelesydemonios/

Go to our film page

Angels & Demons

‘The Da Vinci Code’ was such good, clever cinematic entertainment, that expectations for ‘Angels & Demons’ to either match or exceed its success were crucial. Regrettably, neither came true. The contrivances and absurd coincidences of the clues are so predictable and telegraphed that it zapped all the fun out of the film. This new effort by Ron Howard and Tom Hanks falls short of their talents and abilities. Hanks not only phoned in his performance, it looked like he created a cartoon version of his character Robert Langdon.

“Angels & Demons,” published in 2000 by author Dan Brown, sees Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared in the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization called the Illuminati to turn half of Rome into a wasteland.

Here’s the good and the bad with ‘Angels & Demons’: Entertainment vs. Implausibility.

Let me explain…the bad is that this film is ‘The Da Vinci Code’ on steroids, it’s so over-the-top. The clues are never ending and they are too easy to create any suspense. Also the acting was, for some reason or other, below par. Perhaps the cast’s uninspired efforts were a byproduct of shooting in a studio lot as opposed to Vatican City, which did not give any clearance to film on its premises. No wonder you saw so much CGI this time around. Finally, the ending takes a turn to the absurd, fully confirming that corporate studio heads prevailed by creating a film for the ‘everyday joe’ and not the literary fans of the book.

The good can be described in the beautiful and elegant camerawork of cinematographer Salvatore Totino, and a captivating story that tells of the mysteries inside the holy Vatican City. There are many scenes that are very entertaining to watch and delight in.

Still, the bad outweighs the good and the preposterous plot outweighs everything. If you’re a fan of the book you’ll be entertained but disappointed, and if you’re not, the same thing.

Trailer Premiere of "In the Loop"
Jack Rico
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2009/05/15 at 12:00am

Movies

Trailer Premiere of "In the Loop"

05.15.2009 | By |

Trailer Premiere of "In the Loop"

“In the Loop” is drawing instant comparisons to some of the great political and absurdist comedies such as “Doctor Strangelove”, “Wag the Dog”, “Thank You For Not Smoking”, “Monty Python”.

The film is a smart comedy with razor-sharp, truly laugh-out-loud dialogue that pokes fun at the absurdity and ineptitude of our highest leaders. With everyone looking out for number one, and the fate of the free world at stake (but apparently incidental), the hilarious ensemble cast of characters bumbles its way through Machiavellian political dealings, across continents, and toward comic resolutions that are unforeseeable.

“In the Loop” will be released in theaters on July 24th, 2009.

 

 

Management (Movie Review)
Jack Rico
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2009/05/14 at 12:00am

MoviesReviews

Management (Movie Review)

05.14.2009 | By |

Aniston plays a traveling saleswoman who sells cheap art to small companies in motels. She has a fling with an aimless, underachieving assistant motel manager (Zahn) at one of her stops, and he ends pursuing her all over the U.S. Talk about getting suckered into vulnerability. Steve Zahn dripped that adjective in his latest performance in the film ‘Management’, also starring Jennifer Aniston. The movie, which has all the makings of an indie film, but it’s really targeted towards a more mainstream audience, is perhaps the best romantic comedy of the year. That’s really not saying much since the genre hasn’t put out a real charmer in a while. Read More

Taken
Alex Florez
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2009/05/13 at 12:00am

DVD ReviewsReviews

Taken

05.13.2009 | By |

Rating: 2.0

Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, disturbing thematic material, sexual content, some drug references and language.
Release Date: 2009-01-30
Starring: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Director(s):
Distributor:
Film Genre:
Country:France
Official Website: http://www.takenmovie.com/

 Go to our film page

 

For years now, french filmmaker Luc Besson (The Transporter) has been hemorrhaging preposterous action films that are wildly unsophisticated in their storytelling but that are also inexplicably entertaining.  Taken is no exception. 

Yet the Besson-written screenplay is directed by another frenchmen, Pierre Morel, who at least for this film, happens to share his exact same sensibility:  A reckless disregard for character development because the order of the day is a ‘shoot-em up thriller’.

Unsurprisingly then, the film’s premise is pretty straightforward. It centers on a former government operative named Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) who is on the hunt for a fearsome organization that has taken his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), with whom he has just started to rekindle a relationship with.  After being absent for most of her life, Mills will terrorize all of Paris hunting down the band of kidnappers to prove his fatherhood.

Despite its slow beginning, hokey dialogue, and poor acting on everyone’s account (Maggie Grace being especially unbearable), the film doesn’t ever pretend to be more than it really is. It’s just strange to see Neeson, such an accomplished actor, playing the type of role usually reserved for people like Jason Statham. 

I know what I’m getting into when when I watch these films and so I’m rarely disappointed.  And If you have the slightest appetite for the genre, then it should be an easy 90 minutes of film to watch.

Taken is the type of film that easily gets filed under the ‘really bad films I’d watch category’.

Passengers
Jack Rico
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By

2009/05/13 at 12:00am

DVD ReviewsReviews

Passengers

05.13.2009 | By |

Rating: 2.0

Rated: PG-13 for thematic elements including some scary images, and sensuality.
Release Date: 2008-10-24
Starring: Ronnie Christensen
Director(s):
Distributor:
Film Genre:
Country:Canada
Official Website: NULL

 Go to our film page

‘Passengers’, the fifth film from Rodrigo Garcia, son of the Colombian nobel prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, sets out to be a profound romantic thriller, yet delivers a platitudinous experience worth only a DVD sit, maybe if that.

The story begins with five survivors of a plane crash. A young therapist, Claire (Anne Hathaway), is assigned to counsel them. When they share their recollections of the incident, they begin to disappear mysteriously, one by one except Eric (Patrick Wilson), the most secretive of the passengers. Eric seems to hold all the answers to this enigmatic puzzle.

Passengers is a thriller that doesn’t thrill or chill the spine. It doesn’t deliver as promised, perhaps due to a disjointed script by Ronnie Christensen. As a result, the film feels uninspired and unsuspenseful. Garcia manages to at least capture the great chemistry between Wilson and Hathaway, by far the film’s best moments. He has shown he can create films with a strong subject matter, in particular with a female cast (Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, Ten Tiny Love Stories, Nine Lives), but unfortunately it hasn’t translated into success, the same problem his father “Gabo” suffers from.

Outside of some serviceable special effects, a charming performance by the two protagonists, there is nothing else of substance to latch on to. I imagine it seemed great on paper – “ ‘It’ girl Anne Hathaway stars in a thriller love story full of suspense, ghosts and a Hollywood plane crash” – except no one expected the banality of the outcome. The film fits better as Saturday night fare on cable.

Nicole Kidman says ‘adios’ to new Allen film
Mack Chico
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2009/05/13 at 12:00am

Movies

Nicole Kidman says ‘adios’ to new Allen film

05.13.2009 | By |

Nicole Kidman says 'adios' to new Allen film

Nicole Kidman has ankled her role in Woody Allen’s latest, untitled project.

Pic, which co-stars Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts and Freida Pinto, is set to start shooting in London in the summer.

A scheduling conflict arose due to Kidman producing (through her Rabbit Hole productions)and starring with Aaron Eckhart in the film “Rabbit Hole,” being directed by John Cameron-Mitchell and filming on the East Coast this summer.

There is no word yet on who Kidman’s replacement will be.

Steve Tenenbaum, Gravier Prods.’ Letty Aronson and Mediapro’s Jaume Roures are producing, with Mediapro also financing.

Gravier and Mediapro previously teamed to make Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

Allen’s London-set project will be the first of a three-picture deal between Allen and Mediapro.

Spain’s Imagina Intl. is handling international sales.

Scorsese and ‘Sinatra’ to unite on screen!
Mack Chico
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By

2009/05/13 at 12:00am

Movies

Scorsese and ‘Sinatra’ to unite on screen!

05.13.2009 | By |

Scorsese and 'Sinatra' to unite on screen!

Martin Scorsese will direct the biopic “Sinatra” for Universal Pictures and Mandalay Pictures.

Phil Alden Robinson is writing the screenplay for Sinatra based on the life of the iconic entertainer.

Universal and Mandalay have been quietly developing the project after securing the Frank Sinatra life rights and music rights from Frank Sinatra Enterprises — a joint venture of the Sinatra Estate and Warner Music Group. The process of acquiring the rights took years.

Peter Guber and Cathy Schulman are producing.

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