PAC-MAN, DONKEY KONG, GALAGA, CENTIPEDE, and SPACE INVADERS. Are you a child of the 80’s – then you’re gonna love the brand new trailer for PIXELS!
When intergalactic aliens misinterpret video-feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war against them, they attack the Earth, using the games as models for their various assaults.
President Will Cooper (Kevin James) has to call on his childhood best friend, ’80s video game champion Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler), now a home theater installer, to lead a team of old-school arcaders (Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad) to defeat the aliens and save the planet.
Joining them is Lt. Col. Violet Van Patten (Michelle Monaghan), a specialist supplying the arcaders with unique weapons to fight the aliens.
The film is directed by Chris Columbus.
It’s game on or game over when PIXELS opens in theaters on July 24.
Principal photography is underway on Warner Bros. Pictures’ ARMS & THE DUDES, starring Oscar nominee Jonah Hill (“The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Moneyball”) and Miles Teller (“Whiplash”).
“The Hangover” trilogy director and Oscar nominee Todd Phillips (“Borat” screenplay) is directing the film.
Based on a true story, ARMS & THE DUDES follows two friends in their early 20s (Hill and Teller) living in Miami during the Iraq War who exploit a little-known government initiative that allows small businesses to bid on U.S. Military contracts. Starting small, they begin raking in big money and are living the high life. But the pair gets in over their heads when they land a $300 million deal to arm the Afghan Military—a deal that puts them in business with some very shady people, not the least of which turns out to be the U.S. Government.
Phillips directs from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jason Smilovic (“Lucky Number Slevin”), and Stephen C. Chin (“Another Day in Paradise”), based on the Rolling Stone article by Guy Lawson.
Todd Phillips and Bradley Cooper, under the banner of their 22nd & Green Productions, and Mark Gordon, under the banner of The Mark Gordon Company, are producing the film. The executive producers are David Siegel and Bryan Zuriff.
Filming began on location in Romania, and shooting is also being accomplished in Las Vegas, Southern California, Miami, and in Morocco.
ARMS & THE DUDES reunites Phillips with several of his collaborators from “The Hangover” trilogy, including director of photography Lawrence Sher, production designer Bill Brzeski and editor Jeff Groth. Joining the team is costume designer Michael Kaplan (“Star Trek,” “Star Trek: Into Darkness”).
The film will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment company.
Focus Features has acquired North American distribution rights from Pathé to the drama SUFFRAGETTE, directed by BAFTA Award winner Sarah Gavron from a script written by Emmy Award winner Abi Morgan, for a Fall 2015 domestic release.
The cast of the U.K. film includes Academy Award nominees Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter, BAFTA Award winner Ben Whishaw, British Independent Film Award winner Anne-Marie Duff, Golden Globe Award nominee Brendan Gleeson, and three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep.
SUFFRAGETTE is a moving drama that will empower all who are striving for equal rights in our own day and age. The stirring story, inspired by the early-20th-century campaign by the suffragettes for the right of women to vote, centers on Maud (played by Carey Mulligan), a working wife and mother who comes to realize that she must fight for her dignity both at home and in her workplace. Realizing that she is not alone, she becomes an activist alongside other brave women from all walks of life. The early efforts at resistance were passive but as the women faced increasingly aggressive police action, the suffragettes become galvanized – risking their very lives to ensure that women’s rights would be recognized and respected.
Focus has also acquired the distribution rights for Latin America, India, South Korea, and most of Eastern Europe including Russia; Universal Pictures International will release the film in those territories. Focus CEO Peter Schlessel made the announcement today.
Ruby Films’ Alison Owen, an Academy Award nominee as producer of Elizabeth, and Faye Ward are the producers of SUFFRAGETTE, which is directed by Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane) from a screenplay by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady). The film’s executive producers are Cameron McCracken, Tessa Ross, Rose Garnett, Nik Bower, James Schamus, and Teresa Moneo.
SUFFRAGETTE is a Ruby Films production for Focus Features, Pathé, Film4, and the BFI in association with Ingenious Media and with the participation of Canal+ and Cine-Cinema.
Meryl Streep, who plays Emmeline Pankhurst in SUFFRAGETTE, commented: “Every daughter should know this history, every son write it on his own heart.”
Peter Schlessel, CEO of Focus Features, said, “Suffragette is a story that will resonate with men and women across the generations; it is about parents and children, courage and dedication, and making hard choices. Sarah, Abi, Alison and Faye are women who represent an amazing convergence of filmmaking talent. We’re proud to partner with Pathé to bring this powerful drama to audiences worldwide.”
The deal was negotiated by Focus Features’ Beth Lemberger, Executive Vice President, Business Affairs, and Lia Buman, President of Acquisitions, with Cameron McCracken, Managing Director, Pathé Productions, and Muriel Sauzay, Head of Sales, Pathé International.
The official teaser poster for SPECTRE was released today.
The film, from Albert R. Broccoli’s EON Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, and Sony Pictures Entertainment, is directed by Sam Mendes and stars Daniel Craig, who returns for his fourth film as Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007.
Along with Daniel Craig, the cast includes Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear as well as newcomers Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci and Andrew Scott.
A cryptic message from Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organisation. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE.
SPECTRE will have a global release on November 6, 2015.
Watch Sam Mendes in a recent behind-the-scenes video HERE.
The cast of THE DIVERGENT SERIES: INSURGENT took NYC by storm last night at the U.S. premiere.
Stars Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Academy Award Winner Octavia Spencer, Jai Courtney, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Maggie Q, Mekhi Phifer, Daniel Dae Kim, Keiynan Lonsdale, Rosa Salazar, Suki Waterhouse, Jonny Weston, Ashley Judd, author Veronica Roth, and director Robert Schwentke walked the red carpet at the INSURGENT NYC Premiere.
Download the Insurgent Original Motion Picture Soundtrack featuring M83, Zella Day, Woodkid & more on iTunes HERE.
From now until March 23rd at 12pm ET/9am PT,FANDANGO is offering a bonus download of the DIVERGENT eBook for the NOOK Reading Appas a gift with each ticket purchase. http://www.thedivergentseries.com/#tickets
THE DIVERGENT SERIES: INSURGENT raises the stakes for Tris as she searches for allies and answers in the ruins of a futuristic Chicago. Tris (Woodley) and Four (James) are now fugitives on the run, hunted by Jeanine (Winslet), the leader of the power-hungry Erudite elite. Racing against time, they must find out what Tris’s family sacrificed their lives to protect, and why the Erudite leaders will do anything to stop them.
Haunted by her past choices but desperate to protect the ones she loves, Tris, with Four at her side, faces one impossible challenge after another as they unlock the truth about the past and ultimately the future of their world.
Filming is in full swing for Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures’ CREED.
Here’s a look at Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan on the set of CREED at the ‘Rocky Steps’ at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Monday (March 16, 2015) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Opening on November 25, 2015, the film explores a new chapter in the “Rocky” story and stars Academy Award nominee Sylvester Stallone in his iconic role and Michael B. Jordan as the son of Apollo Creed.
Adonis Johnson (Jordan) never knew his famous father, world heavyweight champion Apollo Creed, who died before he was born. Still, there’s no denying that boxing is in his blood, so Adonis heads to Philadelphia, the site of Apollo Creed’s legendary match with a tough upstart named Rocky Balboa.
Once in the City of Brotherly Love, Adonis tracks Rocky (Stallone) down and asks him to be his trainer. Despite his insistence that he is out of the fight game for good, Rocky sees in Adonis the strength and determination he had known in Apollo—the fierce rival who became his closest friend. Agreeing to take him on, Rocky trains the young fighter, even as the former champ is battling an opponent more deadly than any he faced in the ring.
With Rocky in his corner, it isn’t long before Adonis gets his own shot at the title…but can he develop not only the drive but also the heart of a true fighter, in time to get into the ring?
CREED also stars Tessa Thompson (“Selma,” “Dear White People”) as Bianca, a local singer-songwriter who becomes involved with Adonis; Phylicia Rashad (Lifetime’s “Steel Magnolias”) as Mary Anne Creed, Apollo’s widow; and English pro boxer and former three-time ABA Heavyweight Champion Anthony Bellew as boxing champ “Pretty” Ricky Conlan.
Ryan Coogler directs from a screenplay he wrote with Aaron Covington, based on characters from the “Rocky” series written by Sylvester Stallone. The film is being produced by Robert Chartoff, Irwin Winkler, Charles Winkler, William Chartoff, David Winkler, Sylvester Stallone and Kevin King Templeton. Joining Coogler behind the scenes are director of photography Maryse Alberti (“The Wrestler”) and costume designer Emma Potts (“127 Hours”), as well as his “Fruitvale Station” team: editors Claudia Castello and Michael P. Shawver; production designer Hannah Beachler; and composer Ludwig Göransson.
Watch the new trailer for The Weinstein Company’s WOMAN IN GOLD – opening April 1st.
WOMAN IN GOLD is the remarkable true story of one woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage and seek justice for what happened to her family.
Sixty years after she fled Vienna during World War II, an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), starts her journey to retrieve family possessions seized by the Nazis, among them Klimt’s famous painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.
Together with her inexperienced but plucky young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), she embarks upon a major battle which takes them all the way to the heart of the Austrian establishment and the U.S. Supreme Court, and forces her to confront difficult truths about the past along the way.
For director Simon Curtis, his introduction to the story of Maria Altmann came through watching a program made for the BBC’s Imagine documentary series. Presented by his friend Alan Yentob and entitled “Stealing Klimt,” it recounted the tale of the painting, Altmann’s family and her battle to reclaim the paintings which had once hung in her childhood home, and featured extensive interviews with Altmann in particular, as well as Randol Schoenberg and Hubertus Czernin, the two men most instrumental in helping her to eventually triumph.
For many reasons, Curtis found himself deeply affected by Maria Altmann’s story and pitched it as a potential feature to Christine Langan, Head of BBC Films. “It spoke to so many things that interest me in the way that it bolted the Second World War and the Holocaust to contemporary America,” says Curtis, who had recently made his acclaimed feature directing debut with MY WEEK WITH MARILYN for BBC Films and the Weinstein Company. “To me, the painting and Maria Altmann seemed to be emblematic of the entire 20th century, both originating in Vienna in its golden age at the beginning of the century and both ending in the United States at the end of the American century.”
WOMAN IN GOLD’s original score is a collaboration between Martin Phipps and Oscar winner Hans Zimmer.
To portray the indomitable, headstrong and feisty Maria Altmann, Helen Mirren was Curtis’ first and only choice. “Although I knew Helen, I’d never directed her,” he says. “So it was a thrill when she shared my enthusiasm for the script. She’s perfect for the role because she’s intelligent and very much her own woman. She doesn’t suffer fools. She’s of Russian descent and credible as someone from a Jewish milieu. She has both the wit and the anger of the character. We were very lucky to get her.”
“Helen is just a consummate actress who can turn her hand to anything,” adds Thompson. “She’s subtle and delicate; she’s also funny and irreverent. She’s got all the right characteristics for Maria, including a sense of iconoclasm.”
With Mirren on board as Maria, it was Harvey Weinstein who first suggested Ryan Reynolds for the role of Randy Schoenberg. The odd-couple dimension to WOMAN IN GOLD’s central relationship made everyone realize that Weinstein’s suggestion was an inspired one, with Reynolds’ natural wit and charm delivering an audience-friendly boost to the character.
“Ryan’s got the intellect, the wit, the lightness of touch and the depth, all of which were very important for this,” says Thompson. “He’s a great choice and he immersed himself very powerfully into the character.”
“Harvey called me and said, ‘Hey Reynolds, it’s your lucky day,’” recalls the actor. “He was right. It’s a tremendous story that I had a passing knowledge of, only because I had seen the painting at a Klimt exhibition when I was a young kid backpacking through Europe. The story is fascinating, and the chance to spend a few months with the great Helen Mirren was a privilege.”
For Mirren, Altmann’s story was a new discovery. “Stories like this that come out of real life have extra piquancy and emotional content because you know that it was true,” she remarks. “It’s that classic story of the weak versus the strong and when the weak win out over the strong, that’s always a meaningful human story. I think most of us identify with that. A story like Maria’s is so important to tell. And that’s the great thing about film: it can preserve a story.”
Maria Altmann passed away in 2011, at the age of 94.
Check out the official US trailer for Sony Pictures Classics film INFINITELY POLAR BEAR, starring Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana.
INFINITELY POLAR BEAR opens in NY and LA on June 19th and expands nationally in the following weeks.
1978.
While most fathers spend their days at work, CAM STUART (Mark Ruffalo) is more likely to be found mushroom-hunting, cooking elaborate meals, or working on one of his many half completed projects. His family’s wealth keeps his family just barely afloat, while Cam struggles to live with manic depression. When Cam has a manic breakdown that lands him in a mental hospital, his wife MAGGIE (Zoe Saldana) and their two young daughters, AMELIA and FAITH, are forced to leave their house in the country and move into a cramped apartment in Cambridge, where Maggie tries to find a decent job, with no luck.
Broke, stressed, and overwhelmed, Maggie applies to business school and is accepted to Columbia University’s MBA program. Seeing this as her chance to build a better life for their daughters, Maggie asks Cam to become the primary caregiver for the girls while she completes her degree in New York. After all, routine is what the doctor ordered and the girls miss their dad. Cam agrees, hoping to rebuild his family. But the two spirited girls are not interested in making things easy for him.
With Maggie away in New York, Cam quickly realizes that he’s in over his head. Over the course of the next 18 months, as Maggie rushes to complete her degree, he learns, through trial and a lot of error, how to take care of his precocious daughters as well as himself. After years of struggling to find his place in the world, Cam may finally have found where he fits in.
Based on a true story, INFINITELY POLAR BEAR is a funny and heartbreaking portrait of the many unexpected ways in which parents and children save each other.
This is Maya Forbes first film as writer and director. She began her career on the HBO comedy, “The Larry Sanders Show,” and spent four years as a writer/producer on that groundbreaking show. She has since written numerous television episodes and feature films, including the animated “Monsters vs. Aliens” and the independent “Seeing Other People.”
English Rock Band The Who. Going up to Manchester on the train. Left is Chris Stamp (brother of Terence Stamp) who was the business manager. and Kit Lambert Manager (producer on the album Tommy). 1966.
Sony Pictures Classics has released the official trailer and poster for their upcoming documentary LAMBERT & STAMP, about THE WHO and their visionary managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. The film opens in NY and LA on April 3rd and expands nationally in the following weeks.
The film had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. In his review, Rob Nelson (Variety) wrote, “James D. Cooper’s impeccably directed debut is a definitive screen bio of the Who and its-rock operatic rise.”
“Cooper tells a full-bodied story in this fast-paced two hours, harnessing the chaotic energy of two men who generated a whirl of unconventional ideas and strategies,” stated David Rooney (THR).
LAMBERT & STAMP tells the remarkable story of Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert, aspiring filmmakers from opposite sides of the tracks who set out to find a subject for their underground movie, leading them to discover, mentor and manage the iconic band that would become known as The Who.
LAMBERT & STAMP is charged with a mad concoction of noise, love, rebellion, artistry, and hilarity. Starring Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert, featuring Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, director James D. Cooper takes us along on the surprising ride of two men who shaped one of the most exciting bands of all time and a universal search examining the sensitive and frightening bonds that make it possible to create.
How could you not love MY GIRL, the 1991 hit tale of friendship, romance and tragedy with that great cast? The story is set during the summer of 1972 and centers on Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chulumsky), an 11 year old tomboy. Her dad (Dan Aykroyd) is an undertaker and she lives in a funeral parlor. Her mom died during childbirth and her gramma (Ann Nelson) is losing her mind. When makeup artist Shelly (Jamie Leigh Curtis) starts working with her dad, they become close and eventually fall in love. Vada is jealous of her step-mother to be, but she has a best friend, the adorable Thomas J (Macaulay Culkin) who understands her and she can talk to him about anything. The most unbearable thing for Vada would be losing him, so she is absolutely distraught when tragedy strikes!
I saw MY GIRL when it was new and have not revisited it until I watched the new Blu-ray from Sony. Many thought MY GIRL was going to be a comedy when it first came out, but young kids expecting another HOME ALONE must have exited theaters in need of therapy. There are many funny moments sprinkled throughout the first 2/3 of the movie, but so much tragedy is stuffed into the final third that’s it’s a bit much, but I do commend the bold choice the screenwriters took in that regard. In the real world, a girl like Vada would need lots of counseling, yet the ending shows her in good spirits. This is a movie, of course, so it doesn’t affect the viewing experience, but you can’t help but watch and think “what more could possibly happen to this girl?”
MY GIRL will be released by Sony on Blu-ray March 17th and We Are Movie Geeks has had a peek:
The AVC encoded image (1.85:1 aspect ratio) is sharp, but the indoor scenes, especially those in the funeral home, have a distracting grayish hue. The presentation is best in broad daylight, allowing colors to find life, offering naturalistic hues for the rural setting, while costuming and food items bring out a passable sense of red and yellow. Skintones are acceptable without being remarkable.
The 5.1 DTS-HD MA sound mix offers adequate care of the essentials, leading with crisp dialogue exchanges that preserve the juvenile performances. Scoring is sharp and pronounced, with satisfying instrumentation but little fullness.
The MY GIRL Blu contains a decent amount of extras:
Audio Commentary: Is an interesting one in that it’s the film’s writer, Laurice Elehwany, doing all of the talking. It’s a nice change of pace and she goes into a lot of detail about the writing process and how things on screen differed from her original vision.
A Day on the Set is a 5-minute montage of on-set footage.
Original Behind the Scenes Featurette is a basic, 6-minute ‘making of’ doc
