Posted Nov 29th 2008 3:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Trailer Trash
Time to kick back, have a turkey sandwich and dig into some post-Thanksgiving movie trailer goodness.
The Ugly Truth
Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler star in this romantic comedy. Butler is an abrasive, chauvinistic TV personality and Heigl is his romantically challenged producer. The story looks fairly predictable and this one is going to have to rely heavily on the charisma of the cast. The release date is April 3.
What Doesn't Kill YouCrime drama starring
Mark Ruffalo and
Ethan Hawke as childhood friends from Boston whose life of crime puts a strain on their personal lives. This looks reminiscent of other Boston-based crime flicks like
The Departed and
Gone Baby Gone, but looks like it has a passion all its own. This will be one to watch for and it goes into limited release on December 12.
New in Town
A fish-out-of-water comedy starring
Renee Zellweger as a Miami businesswoman who relocates to Minnesota in the middle of the Winter. Having witnessed a Minnesota Winter firsthand, I can sympathize.
Harry Connick Jr. plays the flannel-garbed, rough-around-the-edges hunk she falls for. This could be fun, and it comes out sometime in 2009.
Continue reading Trailer Park: Things Get Ugly
Posted Nov 28th 2008 3:02PM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Comedy, Romance, Sony, Movie Marketing, Trailers and Clips
The trailer for
The Ugly Truth, the romantic comedy starring
Gerard Butler and
Katherine Heigl is up at the
film's official website. The premise of this film sounded downright terrible -- a television producer is forced to deal with a chauvinistic correspondent, who decides to teach her what men want so that she can find love, with the pair discovering "an unexpected result" along the way. Could that result be ... love? Yeah, probably.
But you know what? The trailer's not half bad, and it really does seem like an updated and raunchier
Pillow Talk. Plus, it's rated R, which gives me a lot of hope that it could be something akin to a Judd Apatow movie. I really expected a lot of PG-13 chauvanism, not lessons on how to sexily eat a hot dog, or Butler using the phrase "ladygarden."
Maybe I'm just a sucker for a Butler movie after all. I slagged him off a bit
last week, but he's just so darn charming, even when he's being a total sleaze. Then again, 2 hours of him saying things like "Get on a Stairmaster!" might be an emotionally unpleasant experience. I like escapism in my movies. If I wanted to hear guys saying that kind of stuff to me, I'd just go to a Denver bar and wait ten minutes. It'd be cheaper than a movie ticket.
The Ugly Truth opens April 3rd, 2009.
Posted Nov 27th 2008 10:32AM by Erik Davis
Filed under: Comedy, Romance, Fandom, Movie Marketing, Trailers and Clips
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Okay, maybe I'm being a bit tough on the film and the trailer. After all, it seems every few years we need one of these films -- the kind that reminds us how hard it is to connect and communicate with the opposite sex. Or do we? Maybe it's the star-studded cast that's turning me off, then, or maybe it's just that I feel like we've been down this road time and time again; relationships are tough, we know, and they're painful, unfortunately -- so does throwing in a blackberry joke and a few lines of dialogue about MySpace make it all seem fresher?
Anyway, there's a new trailer out for the rom-com
He's Just Not That Into You (in theaters February 6), which itself is based on a
book full of relationship advice and not a real, solid story -- and so what you get is pretty much what you see in this trailer: A mish-mosh of different romantic situations and people (ie: pretty famous faces) looking for advice from other famous faces. "Should I call? When should I call him back?" I don't know, didn't we decide this, like, 37 movies ago? Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Justin Long and Scarlett Johansson star. Check out the trailer below, and let me know if I'm being too rough on this one.
Posted Nov 26th 2008 7:02PM by Scott Weinberg
Filed under: Classics, Drama, Foreign Language, Romance, Celebrities and Controversy
Toss this one right into the "unproven" files, but it's amusing enough to warrant some exploration: According to
this tabloid (along with
The Guardian and our pals at
Spout), it seems that spouses Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes may be gearing up to remake Bernardo Bertolucci's controversially sexy romance drama
Last Tango in Paris. The last time we saw Tom Cruise nail a spouse on camera was in 1999's
Eyes Wide Shut, and I'm sure he probably groped Mimi Rogers in a movie once or twice. (Say what you like, but the guy does have good taste in women.)
"They need to have sex on screen, to prove their love" is what
The Guardian's Xan Brooks had to say, which only serves to make the whole thing sound more like an April Fool's gag. The paragon of journalism that is
Now Magazine indicates that the couple simply wants to star together in something sexy. I believe the title
Basic Instinct was tossed out as an example. Yikes. In Mr. Brooks' tongue-in-cheek piece, he proposes a remake of
Betty Blue. Double yikes. But if this entirely goofball story turns out to be 100% true, and Cruise / Holmes
are intent on making a "sek-say" remake together ...
Lolita makes a little more sense. Or maybe
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Seriously, that I'd go see.
But the question of the day is now this: Does it creep you out to see married couples "doin' it" in a movie? Hmmm, I think I smell a new Cinematical Seven topic.
Posted Nov 26th 2008 3:15PM by William Goss
Filed under: Romance, Mystery & Suspense, Universal, Trailers and Clips
Reuniting after 2004's
Closer, it appears that stars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, along with
Bourne writer Tony Gilroy, are all out to have a bit more fun with
Duplicity; the trailer just went up
over at Apple.
If anything, it comes off as more of a zippy heist film of sorts than the thriller I took it to be from the earliest synopsis on, even though corporate espionage remains the name of the game. Then again, maybe we're overdue for another
Thomas Crown Affair-like outing, and between the cast (which also includes Tom Wilkinson, who was in Gilroy's
Michael Clayton, and Paul Giamatti, who shared the screen with Clive in
Shoot 'Em Up) and the crew, I'm pretty much sold.
(If Billy Bob Thornton is still in this, though, as Monika reported
last January, he sure isn't showing up here, and IMDb remains mum.)
Duplicity opens on March 20th of next year -- about a month after Clive's bang-ier espionage efforts in
The International.
Posted Nov 25th 2008 2:32PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Comedy, Romance, Thrillers, Deals, Scripts
There's nothing quite like a father incensed with possible harm to his kid and fighting the odds to find and save her. But it's familiar. We've been there, and seen that. So, what would that be like with a French director who freaked out film festival audiences with
Martyrs?
The Hollywood Reporter posts that
Pascal Laugier has been tapped to write and direct a new supernatural thriller called
Details. Based on a short story by China Mieville, the film follows a dad obsessed with finding his missing daughter. However, this isn't a simple case of kidnapping -- she disappears after "stirring up dark forces." But if you want something more familiar, the man is also bringing us the
Hellraiser remake.
In other news...
Are you ready? Hollywood is bringing us a romcom that will strap us in seats for a full month of romantic comedy! Okay, not quite, but
The Hollywood Reporter does say that Lionsgate has picked up a spec by new writer Corinne Kingsbury called
31 Days of Larry. So far, we've got one lone word to describe it: "irreverent." Let's hope that doesn't mean a romcom starring Kevin James, as he's romanced by Adam Sandler. I'm a bit tarnished on the whole "Larry" on the big screen thing. (Not James, just anything that reminds me of that film.)
Posted Nov 24th 2008 3:45PM by William Goss
Filed under: Action, Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom
Don't worry: this post is perfectly safe to read. The link included, perhaps a little less so.
This might prove to be most amusing to
those few souls who bothered to see this
Twilight flick over the weekend -- since they've presumably already torn through the three books that follow -- but for everyone else, here's a word of warning: the image included after
this link is one of a Queens subway poster for the film on which some considerate individual has succinctly written key spoilers from the remainder of the series.
(Also, he/she drew a penis on Edward's cheek. For dramatic effect, I suppose.)
Some of the remarks shared, I must admit to having skimmed over, and with any luck, they'll be lost to either apathy or amnesia once the other films come around (I can already feel the former kicking in). Only the first sequel,
New Moon, has
formally been announced, but come on: most people don't hesitate to print money once they're given a license to.
Posted Nov 24th 2008 3:02PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Comedy, Romance, Deals
I love director
Anand Tucker's professional trajectory. He dove into music, sisters, and drama with
Hilary and Jackie and followed it up with Steve Martin's strange romance,
Shopgirl. Then there was some father and son dynamics before grabbing upcoming projects about the Yorkshire Ripper, sex changes, and a CIA spy thriller. So, what does he top this all with?
Variety reports that he's signed on to helm
Harry Elfont and Deb Kaplan's upcoming romcom,
Leap Year. The one that Amy Adams grabbed
last month. The film, which heads into production in Ireland this March, follows a woman who flies over to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend on leap day. Why? Because an Irish tradition says that when men get proposals on that day, they have to say yes. She gets delayed, and surely doesn't want to wait another four years to make her possible marriage a sure thing, so she's got to race across the country to make it.
Good ... or bad? Well, this slightly brings to mind a certain
Matchmaker story, which was bad in a sweet sort of way. Harry and Deb brought us
Can't Hardly Wait, which rocked, but they also gave us flicks like
Made of Honor and
The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. But Tucker is involved, and would he sign on for a crappy romcom? Eh, I can't decide. What say you?
Posted Nov 21st 2008 12:14PM by Eric D. Snider
Filed under: Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, Fandom
Look, I know the drill. If any element of the
Twilight movie varies even slightly from the way you pictured it in your head, then it is the worst film ever made and you hate it and
Catherine Hardwicke has ruined your childhood. Or, alternatively, you've built up so much anticipation for the movie that you're going to love love LOVE it no matter what, even if it's bad, you don't care, you refuse to listen to any criticisms LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU. I know how it goes.
The book's most devoted fans are seeing the film anyway, so I guess I'm talking to everyone else -- those who haven't read the book, or who (like me) read it, mostly enjoyed it, then didn't give it another thought. Is the
Twilight movie of any use to those people? Or, as a friend asked me, does it work purely as a vampire movie?
Oh, heavens, no. Noooooo. This is not a vampire movie. This is a somber teen romance that happens to have some vampires in it. Little attempt is made to establish the mythology of the bloodsuckers, and the supernatural elements are downplayed -- a wise move, since the special effects, when they are necessary, are at about the level you'd expect from a movie that is more focused on romance than sci-fi action.
All of which is in keeping with the tone of Stephenie Meyer's book, which is eight parts romance and two parts action/fantasy. That's why it's been such a phenomenal success with women, and why the male-dominated geek industry -- the Nerderati, if you will -- has been so skeptical of that success. "What?" they scoff. "A super-popular vampire book that we, as men, AREN'T interested in? Inconceivable! It must be terrible, and its popularity is probably being over-reported!"
Continue reading Review: Twilight -- Eric's Take
Posted Nov 20th 2008 9:03PM by Peter Martin
Filed under: Action, Romance, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews
Remarkably faithful to the spirit of its source material, the film version of Twilight crams most of the key episodes from Stephenie Meyer's novel into its breathless, 122-minute running time. Under the direction of Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), Twilight gallops along handsomely, showcasing the cloudy, misty beauty of its gorgeous Pacific Northwest forest locations; you can practically smell the pine trees and feel the crunch of fallen leaves beneath your feet. Using voice-over narration sparingly, screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg trots out all the major (and most of the minor) characters from the book, recounting the story in abbreviated fashion while demonstrating respect for Meyer's novel and its huge, faithful audience.
Twilight may not add up to much more than the sum of its parts, but those parts can be mighty entertaining, especially when handsome Edward (Robert Pattinson, oozing uncertain charm) is whooshing through the woods with plucky Bella (Kristen Stewart, self-assured and determined) on his back. Still, the romance at the heart of the book has been shorn of some of its heart in the translation to the big screen, sacrificed on the altar of a broader demographic. Readers of the book could feel somewhat shortchanged by the relentless emphasis on forward momentum rather than romantic fantasy; the flip side is that newcomers can enjoy the whirlwind pace and the brooding, ominous atmosphere, and everyone can revel in the spectacle of flying vampires playing a pinball version of sandlot baseball.
Continue reading Review: Twilight -- Peter's Take
Posted Nov 20th 2008 11:03AM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Drama, Music & Musicals, Romance, Casting, RumorMonger, Newsstand
Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston are going to prison, according to
Just Jared --
admittedly
not the most accurate source for film news. But considering that tabloids have obsessively documented the meetings, it's probably close to being a done deal.
Goree Girls is a 1940s musical to be produced by Aniston. MSN describes the plot as a semi-true story inspired by Skip Hollandsworth's article "
O Sister Where Art Thou." It's actually a pretty cool story of the first female country-and-western musicians who just happened to be prison inmates. Hollandsworth's article is definitely worth reading for the whole story, which is a pretty heartbreaking one, despite the relatively happy ending.
And that's kind of my problem with the concept .I love the story, but ...
Jennifer Aniston as an inmate? As a
singing inmate? Already, it looks like this is getting the slick and shiny Hollywood treatment rather than something truthful. I want to see
Walk the Line, not
Chicago. The article convinces me there's a brilliant movie here, the MSN description initially just made wince and wonder where
Gerard Butler's promise went.
By now, you're probably wondering what part Butler does play in a women's prison movie. From the article, I'm guessing he plays the "strapping Paul Mitchell," an inmate who narrowly escaped death row (literally -- he was strapped to the electric car when his pardon came in) and drove the Goree Girls to their shows. He eventually married one of them, so for once, the Hollywood love angle is actually part of the true story.
Now, Butler I can believe as a prison inmate (it's the hard knock school of Glasgow), but Aniston as his prison paramour stretches the realm of belivability. However, a lot of grit
could be added by whoever lands the directing job and the rest of the cast. So, keep this one on your radar, and watch for it all to be made official.
Posted Nov 19th 2008 10:02PM by James Rocchi
Filed under: Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Interviews
At the end of a long day of interviews promoting
Twilight, it might be exhaustion -- or high spirits -- that makes
Kristen Stewart so blunt; asked if she's thought about walking away from the series just to mess with people's heads, she laughs: " Oh, God, yeah. I've totally had the thought; it would be so easy for me to send so many hundreds of girls into such a frenzy. It took a long time for me to admit that I was too bogged down by the first book, to admit to these girls that I wasn't as ... I'm just as obsessed as they are; I read it from an entirely different perspective and had to live it for three months. I can't start the next book unless I have the job to do, or I'm just gonna drive myself insane -- and even this, they don't get that. They're like "What? How could you not read the book ...?" Yeah, I have thought, many times. "What could I do?" It'd be so easy. ..."
Stewart spoke about coming to grips with a dedicated group of fans, getting into character, changing Bella's wardrobe, how she kept the
natural in
Twilight's supernatural story and much more in Los Angeles.
Cinematical: There's this great moment in Twilight where Bella's driving by the diner as her friends are walking out, and she's running for her life from vampires, and her friends are happy and she's sad ... Was it hard building a naturalistic character in this film, or was it a good place to retreat to, from all the special effects and supernatural stuff?
Kristen Stewart: It's funny; when we were doing the film, it didn't feel like a big effects movie. They were never around; we didn't have the money to pull it off; everything was in-camera. It always felt like a character-driven movie; it always felt like I may as well just be doing an indie, except there's like fifteen thousand more people sitting behind the monitor with opinions. In this case it was ... I feel like it's a very real world; the only little minor detail is that (Edward's) a vampire. And that could be very representative of any problem that a guy you're with may have, any sort of hang-up he may have; this is just a really sort of glorified extreme version of that. So, it was always so rooted in reality that no, that doesn't really apply.
Continue reading Interview: 'Twilight' Star Kristen Stewart
Posted Nov 19th 2008 6:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Animation, Comedy, Horror, Romance, Trailer Trash, Family Films
This past weekend marked the biggest opening in history for a James Bond film and Daniel Craig proved that his successful reimagining of the character in
Casino Royale was no fluke. Here's the top five:
1. Quantum of Solace: $67.5 million
2. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: $35 million
3. Role Models: $11.1 million
4. High School Musical 3: Senior Year: $5.6 million
5. Changeling: $4.3 millionTwo new releases this week, including an animated comedy and a teen romance with a hint of horror.
BoltWhat's It All About: Animated family feature from Disney about a canine actor who doesn't realize the amazing feats he performs on television are really just special effects. Featuring the voices of
John Travolta,
Miley Cyrus, and
Malcom McDowell.
Why It Might Do Well: The trailer is appealing and slapping Miley Cyrus's name on anything geared at kids is like having a license to print money. Combine that with an 85% fresh rating at
Rottentomatoes.com, and this one should open to impressive numbers.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The
Madagascar sequel is still out, so it may siphon off some of the audience
Bolt is shooting for.
Number of Theaters: 3,500
Prediction: $42 million
Twilight
What's It All About: A teenage girl moves to Washington state to live with her father and soon falls in love with a local boy. Her new heartthrob, however, has no heart beat as he and his family are vampires.
Why It Might Do Well: Twilight is based on a best-selling series of novels with an ardent fan following ensuring that come this Friday theaters will be filled with goth-tinged teen angst both on an off screen.
Why It Might Not Do Well: I don't see that happening. In fact I think this will be the number one flick.
Number of Theaters: 3,200
Prediction: $44 million
The big question is how well
Quantam of Solace is going to do in its second week. I'm betting that both of the new releases will outdo Mr. Bond, leaving him shaken but not stirred. Here's my prediction.
1. Twilight
2. Bolt
3. Quantum of Solace
4. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
5. Role Models
Continue reading Box Office: Twilight Arrives
Posted Nov 19th 2008 12:32PM by Scott Weinberg
Filed under: Comedy, Horror, Music & Musicals, Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Remakes and Sequels, Trailers and Clips
As any hardcore
Little Shop of Horrors fan can tell you -- and there are tons of us -- the 1986 cinematic version once had a much darker ending ... one that was much more in line with the dual source material of
this musical and
this Corman flick. But since this was 1986 and Frank Oz's movie had a lot of funny people in it ... a few test audiences deemed the finale too dark, and so we got a so-so ending tacked on to an otherwise excellent musical comedy.
When Warner Bros. first released
Little Shop of Horrors on DVD, the original ending was included as part of the special features -- but that release was recalled right quick, which means that most of us actually own
this particular DVD. But now, through the magic of YouTube + Cinematical, we can finally sit down and pick through the original ending of
Little Shop. Obviously it's not "final print" material in any way, but you can definitely get enough to make you wish, oh I dunno, that someone would toss some money at the flick and let Frank Oz re-create a director's cut.
So if you own the "original" WB DVD, well goody for you. The rest of us can watch the fascinating footage right after the jump...
Continue reading Watch This: Original Ending for 'Little Shop of Horrors'
Posted Nov 19th 2008 11:03AM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Deals, Scripts, Family Films
If teens who lust for vampires, or fight dastardly sorcerers, aren't your thing, what about mind readers?
Variety posts that MGM has picked up a young adult novel by Amy Kathleen Ryan called
Vibes, and
Nancy Drew scribe
Tiffany Paulsen is on board to adapt it. The book focuses on a girl named Kristi who wakes up one day to discover that she can read people's minds. She learns what people think of her (like that she's fat or gross), but finds that her gift isn't helping her actually read
people. She's a Sookie without the sexy vampire!
In other news,
Variety reports that Warner Bros. is hungry for
Nicholas Sparks'
The Lucky One. They cut a seven-figure deal to score
The Notebook scribe's latest bestseller, which will be produced by Denise Di Novi, an old pro in the world of Sparks on screen (she produced
Rodanthe, Walk to Remember, and
Message in a Bottle). This latest novel focuses on a Marine named Logan who is lucky enough to survive three tours in Iraq. He thinks that his fortune is attached to a photo he carried of a woman he never met, so he sets out to meet her. And, I'm sure, to fall in love. For now, however, you'll have to appease yourself with other Sparks fare, like
Dear John, which is currently in production.
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