Just after the film’s site went live, Warner Bros. Pictures also released six character posters for Zack Snyder’s SUCKER PUNCH. The posters are of Emily Browning – Babydoll, Vanessa Hudgens – Blondie, Abbie Cornish – Sweet Pea, Jamie Chung – Amber, Jena Malone – Rocket and Carla Gugino – Madam Gorski.
Synopsis:
Set in the 1950s, the story follows Babydoll (Emily Browning) who is confined to a mental institution by her stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomized in five days. While there, she imagines an alternative reality to hide her from the pain, and in that world, she begins planning her escape, needing to steal five objects to help get her out before she is deflowered by a vile man.
SUCKER PUNCH stars Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone, Carla Gugino, Jon Hamm, Oscar Isaac, and Scott Glenn. The film will be in theaters next year on March 25, 2011.
SUCKER PUNCH is an epic action fantasy that takes us into the vivid imagination of a young girl whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Unrestrained by the boundaries of time and place, she is free to go where her mind takes her, but her incredible adventures blur …
Synopsis:
Set in the 1950s, the story follows Babydoll (Emily Browning) who is confined to a mental institution by her stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomized in five days. While there, she imagines an alternative reality to hide her from the pain, and in that world, she begins planning her escape, needing to steal five objects to help get her out before she is deflowered by a vile man.
SUCKER PUNCH stars Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone, Carla Gugino, Jon Hamm, Oscar Isaac, and Scott Glenn. The film will be in theaters next year on March 25, 2011.
From Warner Bros. Pictures comes this new trailer for Ben Affleck’s THE TOWN starring Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Pete Postlethwaite, and Chris Cooper.
THE TOWN is Affleck’s follow-up to his amazing GONE BABY GONE (2007) and is the adaptation of the Chuck Hogan novel “The Prince of Thieves.” Looks like were off for another thrilling, tension-filled ride to Affleck’s hometown of Boston as the scenes in this trailer left me with goosebumps.
Synopsis:
Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) is an unrepentant criminal, the de facto leader of a group of ruthless bank robbers who pride themselves in stealing what they want and getting out clean. With no real attachments, Doug never has to fear losing anyone close to him. But that all changed on the gang’s latest job, when they briefly took a hostage–bank manager, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). Though they let her go unharmed, Claire is nervously aware that the robbers know her name…and where she lives. But she lets her guard down when she meets an unassuming and rather charming man named Doug…not realizing that he is the same man who only days earlier had terrorized her. The instant attraction between them gradually turns into a passionate romance that threatens to take them both down a dangerous, and potentially deadly, path.
THE TOWN will be in theaters on September 17, 2010. You can find the film on Facebook and Twitter.
Hello guys and gals! It’s your good friend Melissa again, with another tasty movie snack. This time its the new trailer and poster for “HOWL”, starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg. The official press release states:
Opening in New York and San Francisco on September 24th, 2010 and
in Los Angeles on October 1st, 2010.
Directed by: Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman
Starring: James Franco, David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, Bob Balaban, Alessandro Nivola, Treat Williams,
Mary-Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels
Starring James Franco in a career-defining performance as Allen Ginsberg, HOWL is the story of how the young poet’s seminal work broke down societal barriers in the face of an infamous public obscenity trial. In his famously confessional style, Ginsberg – poet, counter-culture icon, and chronicler of the Beat Generation – recounts the road trips, love affairs, and search for personal liberation that led to HOWL, the most timeless work of his career. HOWL interweaves three stories: the unfolding of the landmark 1957 obscenity trial; an imaginative animated ride through the prophetic masterpiece; and a unique portrait of a man who found new ways to express himself, and in doing so, changed his own life and galvanized a generation.
HOWL is written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and stars James Franco, David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, Bob Balaban, Alessandro Nivola, Treat Williams, with Mary-Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels. The film is produced by Elizabeth Redleaf and Christine Kunewa Walker for Werc Werk Works and executive produced by Gus Van Sant and Jawal Nga. The animation design is by Eric Drooker, with cinematography by Edward Lachman, production designer by Therese DePrez, costume design by Kurt and Bart and a score by Carter Burwell.
So check out the trailer and poster below. This is sure to be a fantastic film!
SHREK FOREVER AFTER just seems like an act in overkill. Many (those who actually appreciated the humor found in the first, two films, anyway) believed the franchise fell off a cliff with SHREK THE THIRD. We’ll see if this fourth film can redeem the series. We’ll leave the judgment up to you based on this synopsis:
After fathering triplets, Shrek feels a bit over-domesticated. He strikes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin to get his ogre mojo back. Something goes horribly wrong, and Shrek must experience what life in Far Far Away would have been like had he never existed.
This synopsis and the first, official shot of the film you see above come to us courtesy of USA Today. Okay, the idea of bringing the “mojo” concept in from the AUSTIN POWERS films is a bit intriguing. Head of creative production at DreamWorks, Bill Damaschke and director Mike Mitchell are making the claim that this will be the final film in the series, but we’ll see how that goes after it makes about $300 million domestic.
Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and Antonio Banderas all reprise their roles. SHREK FOREVER AFTER’s head of story, Walt Dohrn, is providing the voice for Rumpelstiltskin. Also coming on board are Kathy Griffin and Kristin Schaal as ogre-hunting witches, and Jon Hamm as the ogre leader of an underground resistance group.
SHREK FOREVER AFTER is set to hit theaters in 3-D (didn’t see that one coming, did you?) on May 21st, 2010. Look for the film’s first trailer to hit in front of copies of AVATAR on December 18th.
Don’t let the overly qualified cast list fool you. STOLEN LIVES is about eight commercial breaks short of being a movie of the week, not one, but two kidnapped child tales that intersect in highly sporadic and, overall, loose-fitting ways. It feels like it’s moving fast, but it plods and plods until all the loose ends seem to magically tie themselves off and then, simply, end.
Jon Hamm and Josh Lucas star as two fathers in completely different eras. Hamm plays a cop in the present day who is obsessed with his missing son. He, along with his wife, played by Rhona Mitra, is the first on the scene when news hits him that a child’s body has been found buried underneath a construction site. Upon taking the skeletal remains to a pathologist, he learns the child is not his son but, rather, that of a child who was murdered some 50 years before. Cue the flashback score, as we jump back to Lucas’ character’s story. He plays a newly single father in the 1950s who is trying to find work while caring for his mentally handicapped son.
Sadly, STOLEN LIVES seems to only have enough juice in either its story or its direction to cover one of these stories thoroughly and well. The story covers the modern day narrative well, while the direction by Anders Anderson seems to have its head in the clouds of the ’50s. Nothing comes together skillfully in the film, and the jumps back and forth add jarring to the list of this films characteristics.
At just 90 minutes, the pacing is all wrong. There are moments where we are finally beginning to see a semblance of attention and focus on any, one aspect only to be quickly rushed back to the other storyline for no, clear reason. STOLEN LIVES, perhaps, could have benefited from a little breathing room, some padding in each, respective story to not only flesh out some of the side characters these two fathers are contending with but to give us, the audience, a bit of time to sort out the stories in our own heads.
Not to say the film is convoluted. Far from it. If anything, it’s too simple, and it begins to feel like we are shown rather than told the segment from the ’50s just to keep this from being a short. We know where the film is headed long before it gets there. Any sense of surprise or thoughts of a genuine twist are quickly lost. As if working against an already set run time, the film rushes through its ending revelations like a third grader trying to get through the last, few paragraphs of that week’s chapter. It doesn’t hold on anything, blazes through even the most rudimentary of details, and, ultimately, leaves us far behind. At this point, we don’t even care if we keep up.
The one element STOLEN LIVES has going for it in spades is in the performance of its cast. Hamm and Lucas are, each, terrific in what they are given. Mitra sits on the sidelines, but she even does that skillfully. Even James Van Der Beek shows up to prove he can still hold his own.
Lost in the woods of its own devising, STOLEN LIVES tells two uninteresting stories in particularly uninteresting ways. Anderson’s camera work is satisfactory, and the acting chops provide the only meat on this film’s bones. Unfortunately, there is just far too much working against it. In the end, the film amounts to very little, a forgettable gust of wind that believes itself to be a cyclone. It talks big, but, aside from the acting, it doesn’t live up to its own hype.
STOLEN LIVES will screen at Plaza Frontenac on Saturday, November 14th at 7:15pm and on Sunday, November 15th at 7:00pm during the 18th Annual Whitaker Saint Louis International Film Festival.
