Lovely new, vocal trailer for ParaNorman

We're very, very excited about the upcoming stop-motion animated ParaNorman, which has just released a new trailer...A little while ago we were blessed with the first, instrumental trailer for upcoming animation ParaNorman, which was pretty delightful. Now we can see a more conventional offering, and get a peak into the plot of the movie.

The stop-motion animated film tells the story of Norman, a misunderstood boy who can see the dead. Soon he must take on the ghosts and zombies of the town, and enlist the help of its clueless residents.

The film stars the voice talents of Kodi Smit-McPhee, Casey Affleck, Anna Kendrick, John Goodman, Leslie Mann, Jodelle Ferland, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bernard Hill and Jeff Garlin. Sam Fell and Chris Butler direct.

It’s released in the UK on September 14th 2012. MSN have the trailer.

Juno Temple joins Lovelace

'That' girl you've been hearing so much about has now secured a role in Lovelace, after she's finished Nolan duties for The Dark Knight Rises...

Juno Temple is an actress who has been threatening to break into the mainstream for a while, only for her to slink back into indie-land straight away. After her part in next summer’s The Dark Knight Rises though, it’s probable that she’ll tip over the edge of that fame barrier she’s been teetering on for so long.
And the role of Linda Lovelace’s best friend in biopic Lovelace is now apparently hers, and she will star alongside Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone and Wes Bentley.
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are on directing duties, as the film depicts a period of feminist revolution and sexual expression. Linda Lovelace was the world’s ‘first erotic superstar’, before later speaking out against the industry.

New Year's Eve(2011) review

Storyline

The lives of several couples and singles in New York intertwine over the course of New Year's Eve.

Garry Marshall has managed to cram in even more stars for his latest holiday-themed rom-com, and this time they're celebrating New Year's Eve...

When Garry Marshall’s Valentine’s Day emerged a couple of years ago to scathing reviews, everyone announced the tentatively developing ensemble rom-com 'genre' dead in the water. Well, no one seems to have told Marshall, who’s now created a follow-up holiday movie, much like a child would assemble a particularly mundane jigsaw puzzle of the hottest box-office stars of the moment.
The film, which takes place over one day and culminates in New York City’s Times Square, stars the head-spinning cast of Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Robert De Niro, Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Seth Meyers, Katherine Heigl, Jon Bon Jovi, Sofia Vergara, Ashton Kutcher, Lea Michele, Sarah Jessica Parker, Abigail Breslin, Josh Duhamel, Hilary Swank and Ludacris. Each is tangled in a relationship of some sort, be it familial, romantic or otherwise.

Some story threads are adequately entertaining, some extremely boring, and others nausea inducing, but put together no one comes
out looking very good. The blueprint for this kind of movie was Richard Curtis’ Love Actually, which blended all of its various plots and characters fairly seamlessly, fleshing out the players that needed our sympathy and leaving the rest to provide padding and humour. New Year’s Eve has no such foresight, and, by providing them with equal screen time, doesn’t allow a single couple the room to breathe.
Hilary Swank as the newly instated vice president of the Times Square Alliance is served the best deal, and does her very best with what she's given. Barring a horribly sentimental speech we’re supposed to believe was made off the cuff, her story is the most interesting and even boosts proceedings with some mild peril. She’s helped out by Ludacris, but he’s not even given enough attention to let us know who he is. Her real relationship is one of the film’s big reveals, and I won’t spoil it here.
Everything else is borderline intolerable. Zac Efron has been slowly courting credible stardom, first with good performances in low-rate rom-coms (17 Again) and then in films like Me and Orson Welles, but here he's forced to take several steps backwards. Despite his charming demeanor and ever-so-pretty face, his attempts at playing a shallow, womanising 20-something just fall flat. He enters into a pact with Michelle Pfeiffer in an attempt to win the hottest ticket in town (quite how she secured them is never revealed), but first must help her accomplish a lifetimes worth of resolutions.
Like most of the film, this should be easy pickings. The efforts of a redeemable young man helping a regretful middle-aged woman achieve her ambitions sounds like the stuff of great feel-good guilty pleasure, but ends up unbelievable and grating. The same goes for Sarah Jessica Parker and Josh Duhamel’s meet-up at the film’s climax; we’ve spent the whole film setting up an epic romance, but the woman Duhamel describes is nothing like the SJP we’ve spent time with. It’s a relationship built for convenience, probably out of a process of elimination, and leaves the audience feeling cheated.
The awful-ness of the dialogue is highlighted by Sofia Vergara who, while often leaving you breathless with laughter on Modern Family, here just makes you want to bind and gag her for fear of the next ‘joke’. There really isn’t a single laugh here, only eliciting audible groans when a new cameo is revealed or another commercial message hits you in the face. Lea Michele, in a chance to break out of her stifling Glee role, just inhabits that same role in a different situation, and Ashton Kutcher does nothing to dissuade those recently acquired haters.
Love Actually was not a work of art, but when its successors fail so utterly to recapture the same heart-warming magic, it’s tempting to rate it above its worth. The more stars they cram into the frame, the less story and development each get, and the result is a mess of egos and 'types' fighting for your attention. With a little more care and attention, and a little less editing of the more endearing stories, New Year’s Eve could have been a nice holiday movie on the shelf of many a rom-com fan. As it stands, I don’t think even the most forgiving viewer could ignore its flaws, making it just another reason to leave the compilation genre in the dust.

Vampire's Kiss


After reading so many comments who put this film down, I just had to write something to its defence. True: the film is confusing in many ways; you get confused what is real and what is not for example. But some of the hilarious scenes in this movie is more than worth it. In one of his most remarkable, over-the-top performances, Nicolas Cage transforms from an up-tight snob to a complete lunatic. This is one of the most original and unconventional movies I have ever seen. Those of you who want predictable Hollywood movies should steer away; for the rest of you this can be an enjoyable experience!

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Lord of War

A movie about a gunrunner who arms the dictators, tyrants, and genocide-perpetrators of the world should not be this deliciously funny. Lord of War is story-telling perfection. The opening scene depicts the life of a bullet, from its creation in the factory to the moment it blasts through the head of a poor African child.

Nicolas Cage is Yuri Orlov, the son of Ukrainian immigrants, who becomes the world's most successful arms dealer. Writer/director
Andrew Niccol took every major world conflict of the part 25 years and seamlessly incorporated them into a smart, funny, complex story about violence, corruption, and the essence of warfare. Lord of War has no clear-cut, black-or-white, good-or-evil "moral of the story," but no intelligent observation ever does. It's just a fabulous film. "I never sold to Osama Bin Laden

," Yuri tells the audience. "Not on moral grounds, but because his checks were always bouncing back then."




American painter turned director Julian Schnabel loves biopics of extraordinary artists. His feature debut, "Basquiat" (1996), was an interesting portrait of the troubled painter (played by Jeffrey Wright). His second film, "Before Night Falls" (2000), was even better, and told the story of Cuban poet/novelist Reinaldo Arenas (the magnificent Javier Bardem). His new film, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", surpasses his previous efforts and is nothing short of a masterpiece, for lack of a better word. This time, though, his "artist" is a successful 43 year-old man, Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), a bon-vivant who becomes a victim of the so-called "locked-in syndrome" after a sudden stroke. His mental faculties are intact, but he can't move anything but his left eyelid. With the help of a speech therapist, he struggles to write his memoirs, by blinking letter by letter and letting her write what he wants to say.

Saying more about the plot would spoil
the wonderful experience of watching "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". The camera angles/visuals are breathtaking (courtesy of two-time Oscar winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski), and in some moments he makes us see everything from Bauby's point of view. In spite of Bauby's disability, the film is never overly melodramatic, being similar to (but even better than) "The Sea Inside" and "My Left Foot". The cast is fantastic, from Amalric to screen legend Max von Sydow, and the beautiful women in Jean-Do's life (Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny and Emmanuelle Seigner, among others). The soundtrack is also memorable, including Charles Trenet's wondrous "La Mer" (which was recorded by Bobby Darin in English as "Beyond the Sea"). "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" won the Golden Globes for best director and foreign film, and got four Oscar nominations (director, adapted screenplay, editing and cinematography -

but NOT Best Foreign Film). France made the mistake of submitting the (fantastic) animation "Persepolis" instead of "Diving Bell", but they should know the Academy would never give Best Foreign Film for an animated movie, as good as it might be, and therefore neither of them got the nomination. But that's actually the Academy's fault for their stupid rules, since France should've been allowed to submit both movies. What if two of the best foreign movies of the year were from the same country? In a perfect world, there would be only a Best Picture category and films from any country and any language would be nominated, but since most people still ignore subtitles, this 'segregation' has to exist. Oh well. Oscar blunders apart, this is a film that will make you see and value the beauty of life. Bravo, Mr. Schnabel! Bravo, Monsieur Bauby!、





It's a Wonderful Life

I am a film lover from 'way back, having even served a stint as a newspaper movie critic. Entries in my personal list of Greatest Films of All Time include "Fantasia," "To Kill A Mockingbird," "Casablanca," "Singin' in the Rain," "North by Northwest," and "The Sound of Music. But sitting atop all of them, as undisputed champ, is "It's a Wonderful Life."

I have seen it hundreds of times (dating back to, oh, when I was a teenager I suppose, and our local PBS station ran it as part of a pledge drive). I drive my wife and family to distraction when we watch it together because I quote all the dialogue along with the actors.

I cry every time--and this is after viewing upon viewing--when Harry Bailey toasts his big brother George as "...the richest man in town." The emotions in that scene are so true and pure that I can't help but be affected by them.

The performances are unparalleled. Stewart is brilliant as a small-town dreamer who loses and finds his way. His superlative acting abilities cause us to identify strongly with him (how many of us have lamented--even to ourselves--that no one seems to notice the sacrifices we've made?), which is, I think, why the movie bears up under so many repeat viewings. Reed is just lovely here, the epitome of sunny girlfriend, caring lover, devoted wife, dedicated mother.

Capra's talent as a screenwriter are all over this script. He knows just how hard to tug the heartstrings without becoming overblown or phony. And his technical wizardry is evident too. I've never seen--before or since--more natural-looking onscreen snow.

Watching IAWL has become a tonic, a pick-me-up when I really need one--whether it's the Christmas season or not. Its message--that each one of us is important and has *something* to contribute to the greater good--is one about which the world could use some reminding from time to time.

Scent of a Woman

Pacino's Col. Slade is a account of turmoil. Not because he's blind, but because he's never been able to acceleration aloft the amaurosis and still acquisition accord with himself and with the world. One of the abundant adverse characters of contempo years. His adventure is abundant like Hickey's in "Iceman Cometh" or Howard Beale's in "Network." They never anticipate they do acceptable in the apple with what they have, so they acquisition themselves in this aphotic aperture and they break there. No one can advice them out. No
one looks afterwards them. No one feels what they feel. As years go on and opportunities are lost, the aphotic aperture gets abounding with a lot anger, affliction and possibly regret. Can they be healed? Do they wish to be healed?
In "Scent of a Woman," Pacino presents this dark, black appearance altogether in his Oscar acceptable performance. He overwhelms you with his connected bellowing and acclimation of O'Donnell's Charlie. He's a man who never larboard the Military. My assumption is that you can never yield the aggressive of out the man, alone the man out of the military. He doesn't accusation anyone or annihilation for his blindness. He's man who thinks that somehow, he was destined to "tour the battlefield" this way.