And nothing but the Tron … Tron: Legacy, that is. Here’s the latest full-length trailer to the highly anticipated sequel. Gentlemen, start your computer engines!
Step 1: The off-kiltered Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland might frighten younger children, confuse older ones – and bore the adults.
Step 2: Watch a different kind of Alice. We’re definitely not in Disneyland anymore. Burton has re-imagined Lewis Carroll’s timeless classic as only his kooky mind can. Much like all his films, Alice takes on a particularly skewed, slightly scary perspective, all at once visually dazzling and inventive. Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now 19, remembers her original Wonderland experience only as a dream, but when faced with the reality of having to accept a marriage proposal, she once again sees the rabbit in a waistcoat and follows him down the hole. She still thinks it’s a dream – until the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), the Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and the others convince her it’s oh-so-real. She’s back because she’s the only one who can end the Red Queen’s (Helena Bonham Carter) reign of terror.
Step 3: Hire the right cast. Always unique, Depp channels another kind of weird, foppish Brit, who adopts a decidedly edgier Scottish brogue when the Hatter gets angry – and boy, he works those crazy eyes. Wasikowska, best known for her role in HBO’s In Treatment, is spunky and valiant as Alice. But Bonham Carter simply steals the show as the insecure Red Queen, big head and all. She’s hilarious, screaming for a warm pig for her feet and to be entertained by her “fat boys” Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas). For once, she actually outshines Depp, her real-life companion’s other favorite person (I’m talking about Burton).
Step 4: Not what you’d expect. Naturally, I took my 10-year-old daughter to the movie with me, having read the book to her when she was little and watched the Disney adaptation together, so both us were full of high expectations. I truly believed Burton was basically born to make an Alice in Wonderland. Yet as technically stunning and well-acted as Alice is, the director unfortunately falls short in my assessment. The script takes mostly from Carroll’s Alice sequel Through the Looking-Glass, along with the poem “Jabberwocky,” and while Burton has all the moving parts in order (little ones will definitely hide their eyes from the Bandersnatch), the pacing drags and misses some of the wonderment and magic of the Carroll’s vision. My daughter started fidgeting, and I grew restless, as the film droned on in the middle, only to pick up during the climactic final battle. A “Very Merry Un-Birthday” song would have been nice addition, I’m just saying.
Level of difficulty in watcing Alice in Wonderland: Pretty easy, but it’s just not what I was hoping for from someone like Tim Burton.
Never have I’ve seen a Best Picture race be so (pardon the pun) up in the air.
It all started with the decision to do the whole 10 nominees thing. It’s fair to say most prognosticators, at this point, think this was probably one of the lamest moves the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences has ever made. I, on the other hand, still sort of like the idea of giving more films a chance. But this thinking may have backfired overall since the voters now have TOO many choices, especially with the new confusing system of voting for Best Pic, in which the voters rank the films one through 10. I’m not sure I get it – and I can bet most of the Academy voters don’t either.
So. That leaves the big hanging question: Which film is going to walk away with the prize? It’s basically down to three films: Avatar, Inglourious Basterds and The Hurt Locker. Before we get into the grit on those three, however, let’s applaud the other nominees.
If these were the old days with just five nominees, then Up in the Air would have joined the three above without question. The delightful dramedy about life, love and the pursuit of air mileage points had a surge of frontrunner-ness when it first came out but has now faded into fourth position. Rounding out the top five would have most likely been the indie Precious, the gritty well-crafted film about a teenage girl’s fervent desire to escape her abusive reality.
The other five nominees give a nice, well-rounded view of the best of 2009. There’s the feel-good crowd-pleasing sports weepie The Blind Side, which surprised many when it made the list because of its TV movie-of-the-week subject matter, but holds up just the same. There’s the summer biggie District 9, which combines sci-fi action with social commentary in a highly charged, visual way. There’s Up, which certainly was one of the best of ‘09 and will win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature – but making the top 10 is just the Academy’s way of saying, “See? A Pixar movie CAN be a Best Picture nominee.” There’s An Education, which represents the British film contingency, a film about a young girl in London’s swinging ’60s who discovers herself. And finally, A Serious Man, the Coen brothers semi-autobiographical black comedy about a 1970s Jewish, Midwestern college professor who’s got a lot on his plate.
Then we get to the top three choices. Proponents for Avatar say it should win for 
James Cameron’s sheer effort and vision. The story is a tad weak, yes, but the visual wonderment makes up for any shortcomings. Plus, its moniker as the highest grossing film of all time doesn’t hurt. Certainly didn’t hurt Best Pic winner Titanic.
Followers of The Hurt Locker say it has the edge because of its well-crafted, teeth-clenching war action combined with some superb acting. It’s got Kathryn Bigelow, who will most likely win for Best Director – and, its the critics’ favorite, hands down, winning almost all of the smaller awards.
Lastly, the pros for Quentin Tarantino’s Jewish-revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds: glorious Tarantino-isms; long, lingering and simmering scenes; razor-sharp dialogue; and Harvey Weinstein, who is marketing the hell out of this thing, just like he did for surprise Best Pic winner Shakespeare in Love.
L.A Times’ The Envelope has published three anonymous ballots, in which two voters picked Basterds, while the other picked Avatar, and Entertainment Weekly got a hold of four ballots, in which three anonymous voters picked Avatar and one picked The Hurt Locker. Quite a conundrum, indeed. If you asked me three months ago, I would have gone with Basterds all the way. The subject matter alone would have sold it to the voters, in my opinion. But now, I’m sticking with Avatar, simply because of its pedigree and contribution to the future of filmmaking.
If one of the other two win, however, I won’t be disappointed – just sad to have lost my $10.00.
Ask Jake Gyllenhaal. He plays the Prince of Persia, which I’m really not sure about. Here’s the latest trailer:
See? If they were doing this thing tongue in cheek, I might be more inclined to love it. But it seems so serious, so I’m a little hesitant.
Who’s excited about the new redo of Nightmare on Elm Street? Here’s the latest full-length trailer to whet your appetite:
Step 1: Is it a Cop Out to make a throwback to the ’80s buddy cop comedy instead of doing something original? Maybe, but at least it’ll make you laugh out loud a few times.
Step 2: Tell me if you heard this one before: Two veteran NY cops, Jimmy Munroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan), who’ve been partners forever and who like to do the whole good cop/bad cop thing when they interrogate suspects, get chewed out by their boss and suspended for destroying property in a stake out/chase that goes awry. But that doesn’t stop them, oh no. They end up involved in catching a crazy, badass Mexican drug lord (Weeds‘ Guillermo Diaz) with the two other, more straight-and-narrow detectives (Kevin Pollack and Adam Brody), all while trying to recover a stolen baseball card worth thousands to Jimmy – his only means to pay for his daughter’s wedding.
Step 3: Realize it’s all too familiar – except for maybe that last part about Jimmy and his daughter’s wedding – so much so that you feel like you’ve actually gone back 25 years and stepped onto a set of Beverly Hills Cop or Lethal Weapon, with the bad ’80s techno soundtrack and everything. I’m sure this is all intentional on Kevin Smith’s part, who – for the first time in his career – is only the director for hire. Yet, even if he didn’t write it, Cop Out has Smith’s paw prints all over it, which in this case, is a good thing since Smith clearly loves the genre and pays outrageous homage to it.
Step 4: Laugh, if you want to. There are definitely some hilarious bits – many you’ve already seen in the trailer, but a few more you haven’t. The always good Willis plays it straight for the most part, while the often annoying Morgan spews his lines in a rapid fire, spittle-filled delivery. The two make an unusual pairing, without some of that deep-seated camaraderie of, say, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, but Willis and Morgan make it work as best they can. I’ve never been a huge fan of the 30 Rock star – and Cop Out doesn’t really change those sentiments – but I do give Morgan some credit for a few of the film’s laughs. I attribute most of my LOL moments, however, to Seann William Scott, who kills it as an irritating thief into Parkour. He steals every scene he is in.
Level of difficulty in watching Cop Out: Not too hard. While Cop Out certainly couldn’t be considered stellar entertainment, it also doesn’t pretend to be anything else but what it is: a sometimes riotous, mostly silly buddy cop flick.
Here’s an interesting trailer to the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty — about how Walt Disney Animation came back from the brink of extinction in the early 1980s, with the release of The Little Mermaid, to having huge success for the next 10 years.
I’m thinking Disney may need some other kind of miracle now since they are sort of back in the crapper again.
With great anticipation! Here’s a clip from the movie, entitled “Clothe This Girl”:
In anything, apparently. This hotter than hot young Twilight lad has got Hollywood clamoring for him. The latest scuttlebutt from Variety is that Lionsgate has paid big bucks for Lautner’s next gig, Abduction, a thriller about a young man who discovers his own baby picture on a missing persons website. There was apparently a heated bidding war over the spec script from writer Shawn Christensen, with Lionsgate shelling out the most cash. Lautner’s recently developed production company Tailor Made Prods. (get it?) will also be co-producing. Enjoy it, Taylor and be smart. LEARN. Because it can all end if you make bad movies.
In other casting news: Seann William Scott and director/writer Kevin Smith are teaming up for Hit Somebody, Cinematical reports. It’s about a hockey player who’s better at slamming guys than playing the game (hmmm, sounds a little like Tooth Fairy). But since Smith is passionate about the sport, it could be a natural fit for him. God knows he needs more of those. There’s also talk Scott might reprise his defining role as Stifler, from the American Pie series. He told Coming Soon, “I’ve been talking to them about it and there’s a possibility. We came up with an awesome idea and I’m kind of at the point where I’m already known as that character forever anyways. As much as I want to do a part like Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, I did American Pie three times and then versions of that in ten other movies. If it makes sense and if it makes people laugh than maybe.” Good luck with that.
Cutie Jeffery Dean Morgan of Watchmen fame is set to do a film with Sam Worthington of Avatar fame called The Fields. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Morgan will star as a detective transplanted from New York, while Worthington will portray a local investigator probing a series of unsolved murders in industrial wastelands surrounding Gulf Coast refineries, where as many as 70 bodies have turned up over the past two decades. Together they wage a war against the unknown assailants. Ahhhh, tense.
And finally, Al Pacino and Channing Tatum will go toe-to-toe in Son of No One about a young cop, who is assigned to a precinct in the working class neighborhood where he grew up, with an old secret surfacing and threatening to destroy his life and family, says the Reporter. Sounds all-too familiar to me, but I’ll see hunky Tatum in just about anything.
Scorsese and DiCaprio hit it again. As the movies released start getting better, we’ve got our second score in a few weeks with Shutter Island, which took the top spot from last week’s Valentine’s Day.
Here is the top five at the box office this weekend:
1. NEW! Shutter Island (Paramount) – $40.2 mil; 2,991 theaters; $13,440 PT
2. Valentine’s Day (Warner Bros.) – $17.1 mil; 3,665 theaters; $4,682 PT; $87.4 cume
3. Avatar (Fox) – $16 mil; 2,581 theaters; $6,238 PT; $687.8 mil cume
4. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Fox) – $15.3 mil; 3,396 theaters; $4,505 PT $58.7 mil cume
5. The Wolfman (Universal) – $9.8 mil; 3,223 theaters; $3,055 PT; $50.3 mil cume
Slowly but surely the movies are getting better and bigger. I think holding Shutter Island’s release date until now (it was supposed to open last October) may have been a smart move since the movie gained some anticipation in those months. Could it have been an Oscar contender? Perhaps. The acting is certainly good enough and the film’s aesthetics are top-notch, so it could have had a chance at snagging some nods. But it seems like the studio didn’t have enough faith and wanted to open it with less competition — and obviously, it paid off.
This upcoming weekend isn’t AS strong, but movie-going peeps might be into a buddy cop flick with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in Cop Out. OR they might be into zombie movies with the horror film The Crazies. Either way, it’s all just gearing up for the Mar. 5 release of Alice in Wonderland, which should open huge. How huge, though? Anyone want to take a guess? I’m going to say between $70-$80 million. That’s high, I know, but I think audiences are ready for a tentpole movie.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the trailer for The Crazies, cause that’s just the kind zombie-lovin’ gal I am:
