Mondo di Musica

Best Picture nominee “MONEYBALL” soon in Philippine cinemas

2012-02-16T05:04:00.000-08:00

Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor, Columbia Pictures’ critically acclaimed sports-oriented film “Moneyball” is based on the true story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) – once a would-be baseball superstar who, stung by the failure to live up to expectations on the field, turned his fiercely competitive nature to management.

Directed by Bennett Miller (“Capote”), “Moneyball” also bagged nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Sound Mixing.

In 2003, former Salomon Brothers bond trader turned author Michael Lewis, at the time best known for such business and politics bestsellers as Liar’s Poker and The New New Thing, published a book about baseball. Only it wasn’t just about baseball. On the surface, it was about how the under-funded, underrated Oakland A’s took on an unfair system of big-money and powerhouse teams. But it was really about the fascinating mix of men behind a major cultural shift and how a risky vision, born from necessity, becomes reality, when a ragtag team of cast-offs rejected due to unfounded biases, get the chance to finally prove their potential.

Now, Lewis’s book has been adapted into a feature film, “Moneyball,” starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the A’s General Manager – the man who would have to think differently and reinvent the rules if his team was going to compete. “Moneyball is a classic underdog story,” says Pitt, who also serves as a producer of the project. “They go up against the system. How are they going to survive, how are they going to compete? Even if they do groom good talent, that talent gets poached by the big-market, big-money teams. And what these guys decided was, they couldn’t fight the other guy’s fight, or they were going to lose. They had to re-examine everything, to look for new knowledge, to find some kind of justice.”

At first glimpse, Lewis’ best-selling and groundbreaking book does not lend itself to a film adaptation. The book is a study of inefficiencies and oversights within the markets of the game of baseball and features case studies of undervalued items, (players, strategies, tactics), using analyses of statistics and theories. But at the center of it all is Billy Beane on a quixotic quest and as his story unfolds, something unexpected happens. His pursuit of a championship leads to something larger and more meaningful. The hallways and front offices of the Oakland Coliseum become an unlikely setting for inspiration and redemption.

Lewis’ book sheds light on the hindrances of groupthink and how irrational intuition and conventional ‘wisdom’ have dominated institutions throughout history. Challenging a system invariably provokes a fight. The film Moneyball builds its foundation from the experience of one man who chooses to take on that fight. Piercing through the layers of statistics, the film finds the quieter, deeper, and more personal story of Billy Beane, which bristles with moments of self-doubt and real life courage.

“Whenever a book is adapted into a movie, there are two possibilities: either the filmmakers stick to the book, or they make up their own story,” says Michael Lewis. “With `Moneyball,’ frankly, I wondered how they were going to do it, because the book doesn’t necessarily have a single narrative or the kind of dramatic arc you usually see in a movie. So it was truly tough to crack the code and get it right and it was an extremely pleasant surprise to see that Bennett and the screenwriters did the impossible – not only did I love the movie, but I was stunned by how well it represents my book. It is honest and true to what happened with Billy and the A’s and what they achieved.”

Bennett Miller adds, “I wasn’t interested in the tropes of sports movies. I’d rather not end a film with a hero carried off on the shoulders of teammates in a stadium where fans are screaming their heads off, champagne corks flying, trophies, fireworks, and all of that. I prefer the quiet triumphs, that might not burn as bright but deeper and more lasting, where you see someone struggle internally and then come out the other side to realize something has changed within them.”

“Michael Lewis likes stories about unconventional thinkers,” says Miller. “That’s what Moneyball is – a story about a character whose past and whose circumstances lead him to and require him to think differently. I like that you have a character who takes a risk not just to make something of himself, but more so to understand something about himself. Billy is trying to do something more meaningful than simply win baseball games – only even he doesn’t really understand that until he starts to turn things around. All of a sudden this baseball season, which is a David versus Goliath story, becomes not just one competitive man’s desperate attempt to win games. It’s really a trial, an attempt to prove something that would, if proven true, explain in part why his life turned out the way it did, which is a thrilling idea.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Moneyball” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visithttp://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

SANDRA BULLOCK, incredibly affecting in “EXTREMELY LOUD”

2012-02-10T18:17:00.000-08:00

Two years after winning an Academy Award for “The Blind Side,” Sandra Bullock takes the role of grief-stricken mother whose apparent absence in her son's life is not quite what it seems, in Warner Bros.' heartwrenching drama, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

Nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards, the film is a story that unfolds from inside the young mind of Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), an inventive eleven year-old New Yorker whose discovery of a key in his deceased father’s belongings sets him off on an urgent search across the city for the lock it will open. A year after his father (Tom Hanks) die on 9/11 in the World Trade Center on what Oskar calls “The Worst Day,” he is determined to keep his vital connection to the man who playfully cajoled him into confronting his wildest fears.

“What I find so moving about Oskar is that he feels there has to be an answer, but there is not always a clear ‘why’ or a ‘because’ to a situation,” Bullock says. “And sometimes the answer you get is not the one you expect, which is something Oskar has to discover for himself.”

Unlike Oskar’s father, his mother, Linda (Bullock), has always found it tough to reach her son, and that only seems to increase by a factor of 10 when her husband is no longer there to bridge the gap. Yet, much as she seems lost in her own private realm of grief, Linda is connecting to Oskar in ways of which he is not even aware.

Director Stephen Daldry felt there was an organic empathy in Bullock that would allow the role to work. “Sandra is a first-rate actress who really took her role to heart,” he says. “She looked after Thomas very well and formed a strong relationship with him that translated to the screen. She was able to bring a gravitas that was entirely appropriate but also a real charm.”

For Bullock, the intriguing part was playing a mother who has to work at bonding with her son and forging her own route back into his world after his father’s death. “I think when her husband was alive, Linda was always okay with just stepping back and letting Oskar and his father be a great team together,” she observes. “But now that Oskar has lost his playmate and the one person who grounded him and who he felt was his intellectual equal, she isn’t sure she can be any of those things to her son. And she’s in the process of grieving too, so she doesn’t have much energy to fight for that connection she so desperately wants with him. She has to struggle to find the solution.”

Given the subjective, first-person viewpoint of the film, Bullock also had to play her character the way Oskar perceives her – which was especially difficult because Oskar does not see the full picture of his mother. “I had to come to grips with the idea that the audience is seeing Linda on the screen entirely through Oskar’s point of view – and his view of her is not always very favorable,” she explains. “In some scenes, she can seem to be the opposite of nurturing, yet later, it becomes clear what is really going on with her. Still, I had to be okay with her looking at times like she wasn’t being a good mother to a child who is really in need. Part of it is that what Oskar sees is her grief, which is ugly and imperfect, but also very real. But what Oskar doesn’t know is that she is also very worried about him and that causes her to really try to think like he does.”

To explore Linda Schell’s experience more deeply, Bullock listened to recordings of phone calls and voice-mail messages left by those trapped in the World Trade Center for their families. “That was very hard for me,” she says. “But what floored me was to hear people giving comfort to those they were leaving behind. You really understand that the pain of hearing that is something that could never go away.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN | Exclusive at Ayala Malls cinemas

2012-02-10T18:03:00.000-08:00

The Weinstein Company's critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated film “My Week With Marilyn” starring Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh will be shown soon exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 and Trinoma).

Early in the summer of 1956, American film star Marilyn Monroe (Williams) set foot on British soil for the first time. On honeymoon with her husband, the celebrated playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), Monroe came to England to shoot “The Prince and the Showgirl” - the film that famously united her with Sir Laurence Olivier (Branagh), the British theatre and film legend who directed and co-starred in the film.

That same summer, 23-year-old Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) set foot on a film set for the first time in his life. Newly graduated from Oxford, Clark aspired to be a filmmaker and found a job as a lowly production hand on the set of “The Prince and the Showgirl.” Forty years later, he recounted his experiences of the six-month shoot in a diary-style memoir entitled The Prince, the Showgirl and Me. But one week in Clark's account was missing...

It wasn't until years later that Clark revealed why. In a follow-up memoir entitled My Week with Marilyn, he recounted the true story of one magical week he spent alone with the world's biggest star -- the week he spent with Marilyn.

"For a lot of people Marilyn is more of an iconic image than an actress,” admits director Simon Curtis. "People haven't seen her films as much as they have her portrait. My way into this project was falling in love with the first of Colin Clark's two memoirs. As somebody who was assistant director at The Royal Court Theatre, I found it fascinating to uncover this moment in time.”

The first memoir, The Prince, The Showgirl and Me, recounts Clark's experiences working as third assistant director on the set of Monroe's first film as both producer and star in which she played opposite Olivier, who also directed. The book recounts the production's myriad problems, fuelled almost exclusively by the lack of communication and understanding between the two stars: Monroe's erratic behavior and tardiness were exacerbated by her addiction to alcohol and prescription medication; while Olivier, a staunch traditionalist, refused to accommodate Monroe's idiosyncrasies or her devotion to Method acting, which she practiced under the guidance of Paula Strasberg.

While Clark's memoir is a dishy, fly-on-the-wall account of Olivier's and Monroe's fraught partnership, his follow-up memoir, My Week With Marilyn, feels like an intimate confession. In it, Clark affectionately remembers one enchanted week he spent leading the troubled Monroe on a tour of the English countryside. It offers an all-too-rare glimpse of the real woman beneath the carefully cultivated image, unencumbered by the busy machinery of stardom.

"I couldn't believe my eyes when My Week with Marilyn was published,” avows Curtis. "Colin really did have this tense, erotically charged week with the most famous woman in the world, at the peak of her fame. I couldn't believe my luck when I was able to get hold of the rights. People had tried over the years. And in the last year I've met at least three very established directors who have said, "I've always wanted to make that story.' So I feel very lucky.”

ADAM SANDLER plays the dual roles of “JACK AND JILL”

2012-02-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

Director Dennis Dugan re-teams with Adam Sandler for the eighth time on Columbia Pictures’ new comedy “Jack and Jill.”

In the film, Jack (Sandler) was living an almost perfect life, with the exception of one, annoying constant – his twin sister Jill (also played by Sandler). Every year he has to tolerate a Thanksgiving visit from his smothering sister, who doesn’t take long to turn his life upside down. As the weekend intrusion starts stretching into a month, the siblings fight, tease, and bicker in the way only twins can. When it becomes clear Jill is never leaving, Jack sets into motion several schemes that he hopes will return Jill to where he loves her most – the other side of the country.

“What I found interesting was that somewhere partway through the production I thought of Adam as playing Jack, but I thought of Jill as if she were her own person. Adam didn’t walk around off-camera acting like Jill, but after a while, it was as if Jill was a woman we hired who happened to look remarkably like Adam.”

In the film, Sandler plays Jack, an advertising executive who is one commercial away from hitting the big time – or, if the deal falls through, unmitigated disaster. Into this turmoil comes his twin sister, Jill – who always makes things more complicated than they need to be.

“I knew Adam would have no problem playing Jill. The part he worked at was to play Jack,” says Steve Koren, who co-wrote the screenplay with Sandler. “Jack’s the kind of guy who’s a little bit on edge – he’s had to work to make that guy different from who he really is.”

While writing the film with Adam Sandler, Koren found some interesting things. “Some twins actually create their own language when they’re little kids, so we invented a special, private language that only Jack and Jill speak,” he says. “We also found out that twins have a bond that is a lot stronger than some siblings, so we tried to incorporate as much of that as possible.”

Playing the dual role required an ingenious sense of timing from Sandler. “Part of the joke was that Jack and Jill would do the exact same things at the exact same time,” Koren explains. “What that meant, of course, was that Adam would do the scene once, and then he’d redo it as the other character. It was almost like a dance, a ballet; Adam had to have incredible focus and perfect timing. It was pretty incredible to watch.”

Describing the character and the plot of the film, Koren explains, “Jill had only two constants in her life – taking care of her parents and the love of her bird, Poopsie. She’s sacrificed her personal life. When she comes to visit Jack for the holidays and won’t leave, Jack tries to help her find a guy – a guy who he hopes will get her out of his house.”

Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 22, “Jack and Jill” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us atwww.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

TANGLED "EVER AFTER” to debut short feature with “BEAUTY AND THE BEAST” 3D

2012-02-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

Walt Disney Pictures has announced that "Tangled Ever After," the short film follow-up to their 2010 hit animated feature “Tangled” will be an added attraction to “Beauty and the Beast” 3D when it opens in the Philippines on Feb. 22.

By popular demand, directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard are bringing back some of Disney’s most beloved characters when "Tangled Ever After" picks up where "Tangled" left off. The Kingdom is in a festive mood as everyone gathers for the royal wedding of Rapunzel and Flynn. However, when Pascal and Maximus, as flower chameleon and ring bearer, respectively, lose the gold bands, a frenzied search and recovery mission gets underway. As the desperate duo tries to find the rings before anyone discovers that they’re missing, they leave behind a trail of comical chaos that includes flying lanterns, a flock of doves, a wine barrel barricade and a very sticky finale. Will Maximus and Pascal save the day and make it to the church in time? And will they ever get Flynn’s nose right?

"Tangled Ever After" is the perfect accompaniment to "Beauty and the Beast", which is returning to the big screen in Disney Digital 3D and introducing a whole new generation to the Disney classic with stunning new 3D imagery. “Beauty and the Beast” was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning Oscars for Best Song, by the renowned Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, and Best Original Score (Menken).

“Beauty and the Beast” 3D is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.

CHANNING TATUM & RACHEL McADAMS talk about nudity in “THE VOW”

2012-02-06T05:44:00.000-08:00

Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum are set to warm audience's hearts in Columbia Pictures' upcoming romantic movie, "The Vow," but when it came time to shoot the movie's racy scenes, Channing had a few tricks up his sleeve - and down his pants!

"He bared his ass quite a bit," Access Hollywood correspondent Tim Vincent said of Channing's performance to Rachel at the film's junket.

"He did bare some other things. Yeah, he goes for it," Rachel said with laugh.

In the upcoming movie, the actors share a scene where Rachel's character walks in on Channing's character completely naked, a scene that the actor employed the help of the prop department on to enhance his nether regions.

"He's very generous, giving, thoughtful actor. He went to the prop department like a month in advance and said hey, 'I want to help Rachel out in this scene. I don't want her to have to pretend too much,'" Rachel explained. "He had a prosthetic made!"

Channing told Access that he worried about Rachel's reaction skills for the pivotal scene.

"I really didn't have faith in her acting, to be totally honest. I wanted to get a real reaction from her, because it needed to be good," he joked. "I made sure that I had [a prosthetic] that was down to my shin and that take is in the movie."

“The Vow” is the real-life story of a young couple who were struck by tragedy shortly after their wedding. A car crash puts the wife (McAdams) in a coma, where she is cared for by her devoted husband (Tatum). When she comes to, without any memory of her husband or their marriage, the husband must woo her and ultimately win her heart once again.

Opening across the Philippines on Friday, Feb. 10, “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.

GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE” rolls to the screen in 3D!

2012-02-06T05:38:00.000-08:00

Warner Bros.' highly-awaited sequel “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” brings to the screen the hell-raising hero Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider in eye-popping 3D!

“The movie for us was always going to be in 3D, from the very beginning – we love making the movie a more immersive experience. It seemed like a really cool idea, especially with our style of shooting,” says co-director Brian Taylor. “We tried to push the envelope with the technology. The first thing they told us was all the things we couldn’t do – no handheld camera, no quick cuts, no lens flares, no soft foreground, no super-long lenses, no super-wide lenses… and we asked, well, why?”

“There are rules, and directors Mark [Neveldine] and Brian wanted to break those rules, so it was my job to break them,” says stereographer Craig Mumma. “We wanted to take their style and adapt it to the screen and make 3D an enjoyable experience. The way Mark and Brian shoot, the camera work is an integral part of the movie, almost like another character. There’s no changing the way they shoot, so we had to come up with tools to adapt.”

In the film, Johnny (Nicolas Cage) - still struggling with his curse as the devil's bounty hunter - is hiding out in a remote part of Eastern Europe when he is recruited by a secret sect of the church to save a young boy from the devil. At first, Johnny is reluctant to embrace the power of the Ghost Rider, but it is the only way to protect the boy - and possibly rid himself of his curse forever.

Neveldine/Taylor’s extreme filmmaking required a story that broke new ground as well. It wouldn’t do to simply pick up where the last film left off. “This story takes place years later, when Blaze – and the Ghost Rider – are in an entirely different place,” says producer Ari Arad. “Johnny Blaze is now miles away from his place of birth, trying to run away from the demon inside him. In comes a priest, Moreau, played by Idris Elba, who promises to help Johnny – if Johnny can help find a certain boy. If Johnny can find the boy and save the child’s soul, he might be able to save his own soul as well.”

Opening across the Philippines on Friday, Feb. 17 in digital 3D and regular theaters, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Fun facts ABOUT THE MAKING OF “JOHN CARTER”

2012-02-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

As the grand opening of the 3D epic, action-adventure “John Carter” gets nearer, Walt Disney Pictures released some interesting trivia about the making of this much anticipated film.

Set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars), “John Carter” tells the story of war‐weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

“John Carter” is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first novel, “A Princess of Mars.” An American writer, Burroughs was born in Chicago and is best known for writing and creating “Tarzan”—still one of the most successful and iconic fictional creations of all time.

2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the character John Carter.

Since 1935, various filmmakers have attempted to make a movie based on “A Princess of Mars”—the first was intended to be an animated feature film by Bob Clampett of “Beany and Cecil” fame. If it had been made, it would have been America’s first full-length animated film, prior to Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which premiered in 1937.

Academy Award®–winning director/writer Andrew Stanton directed and co-wrote the screenplay for “WALL•E,” which earned the Academy Award® and Golden Globe Award® for Best Animated Feature of 2008. He was Oscar®-nominated for the screenplay. Stanton made his directorial debut with “Finding Nemo,” garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay and winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film of 2003.

“John Carter” screenwriters Andrew Stanton, Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon discovered they had something in common when they met: they all still possessed the John Carter drawings and artwork that they had done when they were boys.

Crewmembers, working on location in Utah, found a large bone protruding from the ground. The Bureau of Land Management confirmed it was in fact a Sauropod bone—either a femur or scapula—from a dinosaur that could have been 60ft long. An excavation is currently taking place to retrieve the rest of the prehistoric skeleton.

The Ancient Barsoomian typography carved into the walls of the sacred temples in “John Carter” took their original design from actual markings found on the surface of the planet Mars.

Working from the original source material, a linguist was hired to create the entire Thark Martian language, using just a few words mentioned in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels.

The actors playing the nine-foot tall, green Thark characters had to learn to walk on stilts to film the scenes with John Carter, giving the correct eye-line contact for the dialogue.

Stunt Coordinator Tom Struthers was delighted and amazed that Taylor Kitsch did 98% of his own stunt work, including an 85-foot jump in the learning-to-walk sequence, a 65-foot jump in the arena, battling the ferocious white apes, and a 250- foot long series of jumps in the Martian wilderness.

Cinema audiences will be astonished to see actress Lynn Collins, when not donning her Dejah Thoris look, has strawberry blonde hair and fair skin.

While filming in Utah, the film crew came across a small space center called the Mars Society Desert Research Station. No one was home but the Website reads: “Teams of hard-working volunteers, working in full simulation mode in the barren canyon lands of Utah, continue to explore the surrounding terrain, cataloging more waypoints, and analyzing the geology and biology of this fascinating and remarkably Mars-like region.”

(Opening across the Philippines in March, “John Carter” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.)

MADONNA: The Truth Is She Never Left You (Advocate Interview)

2012-02-03T17:54:00.000-08:00

Nearly 30 years into her reign as the greatest gay icon, Madonna is back in a big way with her new film, W.E., and her first studio album in four years, reminding us why so many adore her.

The temptation to apply layers of meaning to the story Madonna tells in her new film, the cryptically titled W.E., is irresistible.

The pop superstar’s second feature film as a director, W.E. is a tale of two women, two cultures, and two eras. Wallis Simpson was a real-life American socialite of the 1930s who was vilified for falling in love with England’s King Edward VIII; he abdicated the throne to marry the divorcée. Madonna’s movie attempts to reclaim Wallis’s image by turning a polarizing woman often perceived as a villain into a sympathetic figure.

And then there’s Wally Winthrop, the other woman — this one fictional — in New York City in the late 1990s, at a time when Simpson’s jewels and other possessions were being auctioned off for charity. Trapped in an abusive marriage that appeared to be fairy-tale perfect, Wally obsesses over Wallis, her bygone namesake, and turns to her for support.

Like Madonna’s best videos and music, W.E. is a pastiche of eras past and present, with a heavy emphasis on style, fashion, and design. Her presence is clearly felt. More oblique is the connection to Madonna’s own life. The movie depicts Wallis as a dramatically different person than she was in her private, tortured reality. Wally’s fantasy facade, concealing a darker truth, invites comparison to Madonna’s now-dissolved marriage to filmmaker Guy Ritchie and raises the question of whether Madonna feels as vilified as Wallis.

“I was intrigued,” Madonna says of the royals. She had a vague awareness of Wallis but only really got to know her story when she moved to England. “Like Wallis Simpson, I felt like an outsider. I thought, Life is so different here, and I’m used to being a New Yorker, and I have to learn how to drive on the other side of the road. Suddenly, I found myself living out in an English country house and trying to find my way in this world, so I decided to really take it on and do research and find out about English history and learn about the royal family.”

Madonna read every book she could find about Simpson and her time. She became obsessed with the tragic notion that a woman then was only as good as the man she would marry. “The idea of making a choice for love wasn’t really part of their world,” says Madonna. “The fact that they eventually found each other and were willing to jump into this fishbowl of scandal and rile people up, even though Wallis knew, as she says in the film, that she would become the most hated woman in the world” — that’s what captivated Madonna.

While she doesn’t claim the title “most hated” for herself, she feels a connection to Simpson. “I mean, I certainly don’t engage [with the media] as much as I did,” she says. “When people are writing about you in the beginning and they’re saying nice things, you’re like, ‘Oh!’ You feel this lift of energy. Then they say bad things, and of course, you’re affected by that too.”

Madonna spent a lot of time caring about the bad, but she claims to have moved on. “I don’t really dwell on it anymore. I used to be kind of fixated on it and think, It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, but it is what it is, and I just have to get on with my life.”

But Madonna’s passion for this topic belies that resolute attitude: “If you are threatened by me as a female or you think I’m doing too much or saying too much or being too much of a provocateur, then no matter how great of a song I write or how amazing of a film I make, you’re not going to allow yourself to enjoy it, because you’re going to be too entrenched in being angry with me or putting me in my place or punishing me.”

Meeting Madonna in person can be a little jarring. For someone so larger-than-life, she’s surprisingly petite. Sitting down and launching into conversation, she is disarmingly engaged, and she slouches a bit, like any mere mortal. But she’s not, of course. A burly man is guarding the door of the suite at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel where she has settled in for the afternoon. And she’s dressed eccentrically — black leather fingerless Chanel gloves cover her hands, silver bracelets of varying shapes run up both forearms (and, predictably, a red kabbalah string), and a royal blue asymmetrical shift hugs her taut figure.

Her experience of feeling burned by the press has made her particularly deft at dodging questions, discussing what she wants to discuss. But after a few tangential monologues about duchesses and dowagers, the most famous woman in the world offers a bit of insight into the connection she feels to Wallis Simpson. “It’s intriguing because we are raised to believe in the fairy-tale kind of love, that we are going to be swept off our feet by … you know, in both of our cases, Mr. Right, and our knight in shining armor is going to come along and save us, pick us up, and put us on the back of his beautiful steed, and we’re going to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.” She pauses. “God knows, that doesn’t happen.”

Now she’s on a roll. “There are so many things about her. The fact that she said he left his prison” — Madonna’s talking about King Edward feeling imprisoned by the monarchy — “only to incarcerate me in a prison of my own.” And with that, Madonna answers the question. And doesn’t. “In spite of it all, I think she lived her life in a very dignified manner. And she wasn’t a victim.”

Right: King Edward VIII (James D’Arcy) whirls Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) around a dance floor.

When Madonna first became famous, almost 30 years ago, she was defined by that very quality: She was no victim.

For the gay men who were there in the beginning, when she was shaking it on the dance floors of New York City, the men who reveled in her early hits, Madonna was the ultimate expression of in-your-face sexuality. She was self-possessed and uninhibited. She dressed up for the party, and she took it all off for the after-party.

Her impact wasn’t limited to gay men. Madonna boldly toyed with transgender imagery on a grand stage: She co-opted the Harlem drag balls for the “Vogue” video, she featured trans people and cross-dressers of all stripes in her banned “Justify My Love” video, and her coffee-table tome, Sex, posited couples in all sorts of configurations. Her high profile are-they-or-aren’t-they friendships with such queer women as Sandra Bernhard, Rosie O’Donnell, and Ingrid Casares as well as her promotion of bisexual artists like Meshell Ndegeocello helped to take queer sensibility into the mainstream.

In the midst of the AIDS crisis, when fear was rampant and gay men were dying at a horrifying rate, Madonna was among the first to take a stand, to say, as she did in the tour documentary Truth or Dare, that it’s OK to be a gay man who is openly sexual.

“That it’s OK to be gay, period,” Madonna says emphatically before launching into an impassioned recounting of her experience of the AIDS onslaught. “I was extremely affected by it. I remember lying on a bed with a friend of mine who was a musician, and he had been diagnosed with this kind of cancer, but nobody knew what it was. He was this beautiful man, and I watched him kind of waste away, and then another gay friend, and then another gay friend, and then another gay friend. They were all artists and all truly special and dear to me.”

In retrospect, Madonna sees that as the moment when her sense of self became entangled with that of gay men. “I saw how people treated them differently,” she says. “I saw the prejudices, and I think probably I got that confused with, intertwined with, you know, maybe things that…ways that people treated me differently.”

As Madonna reinvented herself, gay fans hung on through thick and thin, through Who’s That Girl and Body of Evidence, weathering reported flings with Dennis Rodman and Vanilla Ice. Fans bowed down at the sight of her as Evita and shored up support upon hearing Ray of Light, only to have to endure Swept Away and American Life and that British accent. It’s been a bumpy ride for Madonna fans.

Perhaps Madonna wasn’t the only one to “confuse” her personal treatment with that of gay men. The feeling was mutual. As she exploded in popularity Madonna became identified with the collective gay male sense of self. So when she moved on, devoting less and less time to her gay compatriots, many felt a twinge of abandonment. That’s when bitching about Madonna became the great gay pastime.

“I never left them,” insists Madonna, echoing a lyric from Evita. “When you’re single, you certainly have more time to socialize and hang out with your gay friends, but then you get married and you have a husband and you have children, and your husband wants you to spend time with him. I’m not married anymore, but I have four kids, and I don’t have a lot of time for socializing.” She’s been back in New York for two years, after splitting with Ritchie.

“I hope nobody’s taking that personally. It certainly was not a conscious decision. As it stands, most of my friends in England are gay. But I’m back,” she says, adding reassuringly, “Never fear.”

Madonna is most certainly back. And love her or hate her (or love her, then hate her, then love her again) one thing is for sure: The world-renowned provocateur, boundary-pushing mother of reinvention still makes news. Tidbits about her latest film and MDNA, her first album in four years, even her high-dollar, three-record deal with Interscope have sparked a host of headlines. As did the announcement of her Super Bowl halftime show. You can’t get more all-American than that. (And, yes, she was warned to avoid a repeat of Janet Jackson’s Nipplegate.)

Indeed, who hasn’t already seen Madonna’s nipples? Whether she was writhing in a wedding dress at the Video Music Awards or photographed while hitchhiking naked, when she rose to fame Madonna was all about pushing sexual boundaries. But sex is old news. Madonna paved the way, and everyone since — including Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj, both of whom she’s smooched — has walked that path.

One such successor speaks to a new generation of LGBT fans. Recently Time magazine referred to Madonna as “the Lady Gaga of the ’80s.” When I ask about this, a bit of a chill sweeps over the room.

“I have no thoughts,” she says. “What’s the question?” So I ask it a different way: What do you think of how Gaga connects with her fans, and is it parallel to the relationship you had with gay fans early on?

Madonna pauses for a moment, composing herself. “It seems genuine,” she says, also seeming genuine. “It seems natural, and I can see why she has a young gay following. I can see that they connect to her kind of not fitting into the conventional norm. I mean, she’s not Britney Spears. She’s not built like a brick shithouse. She seems to have had a challenging upbringing, and so I can see where she would also have that kind of connection, a symbiotic relationship with gay men.”

To many fans, that symbiosis has the outward appearance of the relationship Madonna had with her gay fans earlier in her career. Gaga has an intertwined dependence in which her fans’ pain and alienation are bound up with her own. Perhaps every generation gets the gay icon it needs. For today’s wave of queer youth, it’s Gaga, who is spreading the antibullying gospel. But she has undoubtedly taken cues from the Madonna playbook. Whether she’s singing the “Express Yourself” — reminiscent “Born This Way” or producing her Truth or Dare-like HBO concert film, Gaga is following a trail that Madonna blazed.

“I’m magnificent!” Madonna says initially when asked what she’s like as a director. Then she gets serious. “I don’t know — I’m pretty methodical and detail-oriented, very specific with everybody from the camera crew to the actors to the costume designer to the hair and makeup people. I was very specific with everybody all the time. I love giving actors as much information as possible and helping them as much as I can and then leaving them alone if they want me to.”

She learned that she is resilient, which one would think Madonna already knows. “Yeah, but now I really know that,” she says, pointing out that she wrote a script that takes place on two continents and in two time periods with two sets of actors. It’s a pretty complicated undertaking for a novice director.

Making a movie is never an easy process, and yet Madonna keeps at it, sometimes with little success. Early press releases for W.E. touted it as “Madonna’s directorial debut,” a misrepresentation that has since been corrected. But for most of the world, it may as well be. Hardly anyone saw the last one she directed, 2008’s Filth and Wisdom.

“Madonna is self-aware enough to know that there are people who actively dislike her, who don’t know her and yet presume that they do and pass vitriolic judgments against her,” says Alek Keshishian, who ought to know. He directed Truth or Dare 21 years ago and teamed up with Madonna again on W.E., for which they’re co-screenwriters.

“I was like 23 years old when she called me to do Truth or Dare,” says Keshishian, who went on to direct the film With Honors as well as numerous commercials. “We always remained in touch.”

Though he’s used to being in the director’s chair himself, Keshishian recognized that in this situation Madonna’s in charge. It’s a characterization she doesn’t attempt to dispute. “Yeah, yeah, for sure,” she says, shedding a bit of light on their method. “We’re like two schoolchildren. I would look away, and then I would look up at the screen and he would have typed something completely X-rated and pornographic.”

But Madonna would never participate in that, right? “No, no,” she says, grinning broadly. “Well, he would drag me into it. And then I would be like, ‘OK, OK, let’s stop this, we have to get back to work.’ And then he would get on his BlackBerry and I’d scream at him, and then I would have to go and do something with one of my kids and he would scream at me, and we would accuse each other of being unprofessional.”

Madonna is even more firm as a parent. “I’m a strict mother,” she says. “My daughter doesn’t know why I won’t allow her to get everything pierced or a tattoo or dye her hair blond on the tips and pink at the roots.” Lourdes, 15 now, can do any of those things once she’s 18. “But from now until then…”

Like most mothers, Madonna can be more than a bit embarrassing. “They just really want me to just be Mom and be normal, and don’t show up dressed in any outlandish way,” says the woman who’s not accustomed to deflecting attention. “Just come to school, do the parent-teacher meetings. I can’t even wear a tracksuit. That attracts attention too. You know, they don’t really want to see me as a famous person or a celebrity or somebody. They don’t get it right now. They think I’m a little quirky.”

Recently she’s found herself wistful for the old days. “Reading Patti Smith’s book Just Kids really helped me,” says Madonna, reminded of her early days in New York, that magical time when being creative and innocent and free was everything. “It’s important to remember that and bring that forward into your life and to have spontaneous moments.” She decided to reclaim a bit of that lost impulsiveness recently. “On Sunday, I squeezed my four kids into the car and [went] shopping in East Hampton. It was very weird. The people in Ralph Lauren were not prepared. I never go shopping. And my daughter was looking like” — Madonna scrunches up her nose, as if in disbelief — “because she’s always trying to get me to go shopping, and I never will. That was fun.”

It seems that Madonna is still enjoying what she’s doing. She even seems to have mellowed a bit. Reinvention? Maybe, at 53, she’s had enough of that. “Is making a film reinventing myself?” she asks. “I don’t think so. I’m just telling stories with different clothes on.”

Source: Advocate | Ari Karpel

SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL | Amy Adams is Lois Lane

2012-02-03T17:33:00.001-08:00

Amy Adams has been cast as Lois Lane in Zack Snyder‘s Superman: Man of Steel. The role in the 2012 Superman reboot has been the subject of many auditions and much conjecture. As far back as February, reports named Kristen Stewart, Rachel McAdams, Jessica Biel, Dianna Agron, Malin Akerman, Olivia Wilde, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kristen Bell, Lake Bell, and Lindsay Lohan as possible actresses auditioning, pursuing, or wanting the coveted fictional journalist role. In the end it went to three time Oscar nominee Amy Adams.

The 36-year-old star got the news on Sunday from director Zack Snyder, who phoned her from Paris, where he was promoting his just-opened film, “Sucker Punch.” There had been a crush of Hollywood interest in the lead female role in the Warner Bros. project but Snyder said that after meeting with Adams, she was the clear choice to take on a character that dates back to 1938 and has long represented the strong, professional woman who can hold her own against any man – even if he can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

“There was a big, giant search for Lois,” Snyder said. “For us it was a big thing and obviously a really important role. We did a lot of auditioning but we had this meeting with Amy Adams and after that I just felt she was perfect for it.”

Adams made her cinematic debut with 1999’s Drop Dead Gorgeous, but it was 2005’s June bug that really caught the public’s attention. Her turn as the chatty, naive wife to Benjamin McKenzie won over critics and earned her her first Oscar nod. Since then, appeared in a wide variety of films — some of her most notable films include Talladega Nights, Enchanted, Doubt (Oscar nomination #2), and last year’s The Fighter (Oscar nomination #3). She will next be seen in The Muppets as Jason Segel’s girlfriend, and On the Road as Viggo Mortensen’s wife.

Amy Adams joins the Superman: Man of Steel cast that already includes Henry Cavill, Kevin Costner, and Diane Keaton. I think this is an inspired casting decision, especially after seeing her performance in The Fighter. Henry Cavill has a serious supporting cast for his potential star-making role.

Source: Film Book

Vanity Fair Magazine 2012 | Hollywood sparkling cover photo

2012-02-03T17:24:00.000-08:00

The Hollywood Cover for Vanity Fair’s 2012 Hollywood issue features Rooney Mara, Mia Wasikowska, Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain, Elizabeth Olsen, Adepero Oduye, Shailene Woodley, Paula Patton, Felicity Jones, Lily Collins, and Brit Marling. The 2012 Hollywood Cover photo for Vanity Fair was taken by “contributing photographer Mario Testino”.

The Vanity Fair Magazine 2012 Hollywood cover photo:

About the set, feel, and stage of the Vanity Fair Magazine 2012 Hollywood cover photo:

The Art Deco set was designed to evoke the all-white, Jazz Age interiors of English decorator Syrie Maugham, whose clients included Bunny Mellon, Elsa Schiaparelli, and the Duchess of Windsor; V.F.’s fashion and style director, Jessica Diehl, put the 11 cover starlets in pastel satin dresses and frothy feathers to lend a 20s and 30s boudoir feel.

Source: Film Book

Sneak Peek: First “JAMES BOND - SKYFALL” photo revealed!

2012-02-03T17:10:00.000-08:00

Columbia Pictures has just released the first official photo from the highly anticipated James Bond film, “Skyfall” – the 23rd adventure in the longest-running film franchise of all time.

The photo features Daniel Craig, back as James Bond 007 for the third time, in Shanghai, carrying a tiny pistol in what looks to be a tense situation...

In the film, James Bond’s loyalty to M (Judi Dench) is tested as her past comes back to haunt her. As MI6 comes under attack, 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost.

Craig says on the progress of the movie's shoot: “We’re well into filming now and I couldn’t be happier with it all. We have a great script, incredible actors and a really strong creative team.”

“Skyfall,” from Albert R. Broccoli’s Eon Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, and Sony Pictures Entertainment, is directed by Academy Award® winner Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” “Road to Perdition”).

The screenplay is written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and John Logan. “Skyfall” will begin its worldwide roll-out in the UK and Ireland on October 26th 2012 and in North America and Asia (including the Philippines) on November 9th 2012.

Joining Craig in the cast are Javier Bardem, Dame Judi Dench, Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Ben Whishaw and Bérénice Marlohe.

“Skyfall” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

AL PACINO pokes fun at himself in “JACK AND JILL ”

2012-02-03T17:05:00.001-08:00

Legendary actor Al Pacino parodies his screen persona as he plays a bigger-than-life version of himself in Columbia Pictures' new, rambunctious comedy “Jack and Jill.”

In the film, advertising executive Jack (Adam Sandler) was living an almost perfect life, with the exception of one, annoying constant – his twin sister Jill (also played by Sandler). Every year he has to tolerate a Thanksgiving visit from his smothering sister, who doesn’t take long to turn his life upside down. When she won’t leave, Jack tries to help her find a guy – a guy who he hopes will get her out of his house.

Of course, nothing goes as planned. Instead of a date, Jill gets an impossibly unlikely suitor. In the story, Jack needs Al Pacino to agree to do a commercial – and if he can’t get Pacino, Dunkin Donuts will take their business elsewhere. Just as he’s wondering what he’s going to do, who should fall for Jill but the Oscar®-winning actor himself? Just one catch – in the movie, the character of Pacino is suffering from a nervous breakdown.

For the role of Al Pacino, the filmmakers decided to get Al Pacino. “Al Pacino isn’t really playing himself – he’s playing an obsessive actor who has gone a bit off the deep end and is losing his marbles,” says screenwriter Steve Koren. “So, when he falls for Jill, he goes overboard. He’s willing to go to any length to get the girl. The trouble is, Jill’s just not all that into him. She knows more about ‘American Idol’ than she does about Al Pacino.”

Pacino plays the character in a way that is very different from the man he is in real life. “He’s an actor who’s losing control,” says Pacino. “He has had an overload of work and it’s starting to take hold of him and affect his mental capacity. He’s clearly in the middle of a breakdown. That’s the track I’ve taken in order to play myself as somebody else – it’s all heightened and exaggerated as to make it believable in a comedy. However, I tried to keep it real so that the madness is real.”

In the movie, the character of Pacino is starting to lose his grip on reality. He has been mulling an offer to play Don Quixote in “Man of La Mancha” on Broadway – and when he meets Jill, he endows himself and Jill with characteristics of the characters. “In ‘Man of La Mancha,’ Don Quixote is a madman who believes himself to be a knight, and he believes Dulcinea to be a princess, even though she’s an ugly peasant. He falls madly in love with her by endowing her with virtues she doesn’t really possess,” Pacino explains. “When my character meets Jill, he does the same thing. She becomes his Dulcinea. In a sense, my character unconsciously uses her as a tool to find out if he indeed wants to play the part of Don Quixote. He gives Jill all the traits of the character Dulcinea so he can rehearse it, try it out, and see if it fits. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it, but there’s method in his madness.”

In addition, Jill represents something that the character of Pacino feels he has lost. “Our character of Pacino is at a crossroads,” says director Dennis Dugan. “He’s kind of lost in Los Angeles. The thing that’s missing in life is who he used to be – a sense of home and roots. Suddenly, here’s a woman who comes to him at the height of his fame and reminds him of who he used to be. He needs to go back to his home, and he thinks Jill is his ticket.”

“I love the idea of playing an older movie star, clinging, trying to get back to what it was that made him do this thing in the first place,” Pacino continues. “My character is a guy who just wants to go back home, wants to be simple again, but will never be able to be that way again. And no matter how crazy he is, his instincts are still working as an actor – if he engages her in the same way Don Quixote engages Dulcinea, he can find out if he can really play the part in ‘Man of La Mancha.’ It’s subtle and unusual, but this is the actor’s journey out of madness.”

Dugan says that working with Pacino was, of course, a completely unique experience. “I didn’t know what to expect – he’s obviously a serious actor – but he embraced the insanity,” says Dugan. “He played his version of Pacino in a truly brilliant way. He’s a genuinely nice guy and he had a terrific attitude about the whole thing.”

Naturally, the real Pacino provided exactly what you’d expect: a tremendous actor, having the time of his life. “Al was at the top of his game – Adam would throw something at him, and Al would catch it and fire it right back,” says Dugan. “He embraced the way we work, which I think is different from the way most sets work. But Al was never thrown off by any of it – he stood in there and hit it as hard as he could.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Jack and Jill” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visithttp://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

“JOHN CARTER” – An epic, action-adventure set on Mars

2012-02-01T05:25:00.000-08:00

Walt Disney Pictures presents the 3D epic, action‐adventure “John Carter,” based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic, “A Princess of Mars,” the first novel in Burroughs' Barsoom series.

Directed by Academy Award®–winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton, “John Carter” is set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). The film tells the story of war‐weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

2012 marks the 100th anniversary of Burroughs’ character John Carter, the original space hero featured in the series, who has thrilled generations with his adventures on Mars.

Over generations, John Carter has become a heroic paradigm across all forms of pop culture. From novels to comic books, artwork to animation, TV and now cinema, the character has inspired some of the most creative minds of the last century.

A fan of the Barsoom series of books since childhood, director/writer Andrew Stanton explains what inspired him to bring “John Carter” to the big screen in his first foray into live action: “I stumbled across these books at the perfect age, I was about ten, and I just fell in love with the concept of a human finding himself on Mars, among amazing creatures in a strange new world. A stranger in a strange land. It was a very romantic aspect of adventure and science fiction. I always thought it would be cool to see this realized on the big screen."

“‘John Carter’ is a big epic adventure with romance and action and political intrigue,” continues Stanton. “Because the subject matter was written so long ago, it was also a bit of an origin of those kinds of stories—a comic book before there were comic books, an adventure story before that became a genre of its own.”

Andrew Stanton directed and co‐wrote the screenplay for Disney/Pixar’s “WALL‐E,” which earned the Academy Award® and Golden Globe® for Best Animated Feature (2008). Stanton was nominated for an Oscar® for the screenplay. He made his directorial debut with Disney/Pixar’s “Finding Nemo,” garnering an Academy Award–nomination for Best Original Screenplay and winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature (2003). Stanton has worked as a screenwriter and/or executive producer on Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life” (which he also co‐directed), “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Ratatouille” and “Up.”

Willem Dafoe, who plays Tars Tarkas in the film, comments on working with Stanton, “I worked with Andrew on ‘Finding Nemo.’ And even though you’re doing a voice, he’s incredibly well researched and knows every shot, every process—he’s an incredible multitasker. So when he told me about this project and how it was going to be approached, I was very excited. Because he’s the kind of guy that can handle that. Without any cynicism about the process. He loves this stuff. He loves the story.”

The stellar ensemble cast is led by Taylor Kitsch (NBC’S “Friday Night Lights”, “X‐Men Origins: Wolverine”) in the title role, Lynn Collins (“X‐Men Origins: Wolverine”) as the warrior princess Dejah Thoris and Oscar® nominee Willem Dafoe (“Spider‐Man”) as Martian inhabitant Tars Tarkas.

The cast also includes Thomas Haden Church (“Spider‐Man 3”), Polly Walker (“Clash of the Titans”), Samantha Morton (“Elizabeth: The Golden Age”), Mark Strong (“Sherlock Holmes”), Ciaran Hinds (“There Will Be Blood”), Dominic West (“300”), James Purefoy (“Resident Evil”) and Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”). Daryl Sabara (Disney’s “A Christmas Carol,” “Spy Kids”) takes the role of John Carter’s teenaged nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Opening across the Philippines in March 2012, “John Carter” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.

From Underworld to Sparks - SCOTT SPEEDMAN, the other man in “THE VOW”

2012-01-30T16:52:00.000-08:00

Finding huge box-office success with such blockbusters as “Underworld” and “Underworld: Evolution” where he originated the central character of the hybrid Vampire/Lycan Michael Corvinus, Scott Speedman now explores his romantic side in Columbia Pictures' endearing love story, “The Vow.” He joins an impressive ensemble led by Channing Tatum, Rachel McAdams, Jessica Lange and Sam Neill.

Paige has reverted mentally to the young law student she was five years earlier, before she met Leo and became an artist. In seemingly an instant, she is no longer the wife Leo knew, and on top of that, she no longer recognizes her current life. Making matters worse, Paige thinks she's still engaged to charming businessman Jeremy (Speedman), who still wants her, and remains reluctant to embrace Leo, with his less conventional lifestyle making music, as anyone she might have ever loved.

As for the role of Jeremy, it was important to cast an actor who had the charisma to be a formidable foe for Leo and someone that the audience would believe Paige had loved, and may still love. Jeremy shows the other path that Paige could have taken and could choose again. Scott Speedman was cast in this role and did not disappoint.

“The great thing about Scott is that he plays a leading man,” explains director Michael Sucsy. “A lot of times with Hollywood casting, you’ve got the big movie star in one role, and then some supporting guy in the other role. Well, guess who she’s going to end up with? It telegraphs it. So the great thing about casting Scott is that it really puts into question who she’s going to end up with. He has to be a contender, and I love that about Scott and his performance.”

An added bonus was that Scott and Rachel had worked together previously and therefore evoked a natural chemistry on set. “Scott really nailed the role. We’re lucky to have had him,” adds McAdams.

Scott Speedman most recently starred in “Barney's Version” opposite Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman for director Richard Lewis, “Good Neighbours” opposite Jay Baruchel for director Jacob Tierney and “Adoration” for director Atom Egoyan. Prior to that he starred opposite Liv Tyler in the box-office smash “The Strangers.”

His other film credits include Ron Shelton’s “Dark Blue,” opposite Kurt Russell; Isabel Coixet’s “My Life Without Me,” opposite Sarah Polley, for which he won Best Actor at the Bordeaux International Film Festival; Bruce Paltrow’s “Duets,” co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Maria Bello; and Lee Tamahori’s “xXx: State of the Union.”

In television, Speedman landed the role of Ben Covington in the popular WB Network drama “Felicity,” which had a successful four-season run.

Opening across the Philippines this February, “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.

Latest computer generated visual FX stun in “GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE”

2012-01-30T16:47:00.000-08:00

Though the directors’ focus for Warner Bros.' “Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance” was to capture as much of the action in camera as possible, it was clear from the beginning that the film would have to employ CG effects as well. After all, the title character has a flaming skull.

In the film, Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) -- still struggling with his curse as the devil’s bounty hunter – is hiding out in a remote part of Eastern Europe when he is recruited by a secret sect of the church to save a young boy from the devil. At first, Johnny is reluctant to embrace the power of the Ghost Rider, but it is the only way to protect the boy – and possibly rid himself of his curse forever.

Overseeing the VFX is Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Durst, who says, like all of the departments, the new Ghost Rider film would have a very different look from its predecessor. “[Directors] Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor really wanted a new look for `Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.' It’s a darker film, so we created a look that integrated with that. The look of the character isn’t stylized at all – it is as if Ghost Rider really existed, really had a flaming head. The skull is dark and charred – just as it would be if you really had a skull that was on fire. Another touch like that is the shoulders of the jacket – they would be bubbling up from the heat inside the body.”

The primary challenge in creating the VFX, says Durst, is that the character is “interactive. The light that comes off the flames on his head – it interacts with his shoulders and anything else nearby. But interactive light is very difficult to recreate in the computer. It’s so subtle, and it interacts in different ways with different fabrics and objects. So to achieve that, we took a hood with LED lights on it that flickered on and off. That had two great benefits for us: first, the LED lights served as tracking markers in the computer, so when Nick moved his head from left to right, we could make the skull match those movements. But the LEDs also cast a light on anything that was in proximity, so it would give us the light that would occur if the flame really was on his head.”

Durst also notes that since the release of the first “Ghost Rider” film, there have been tremendous advances in CG animation. “The foundation of getting flames in CG is fluid dynamics, and so much has happened technologically in just the last five or six years,” he says. “For the original film, Sony Pictures Imageworks created their own code and worked within the software systems that existed at the time. It was very labor intensive. For the new film, with six years’ worth of development of the technology in the field, we had a big head start. You can make things look stunningly real now.”

The effects were completed by Iloura, an Australian company. “We canvassed the world to see who had the best fire,” says Durst. “Their first test had everything – the right, dark look for the skull, the flames, the right vibe. Everyone fell in love with it right there, and Iloura did a great job on the movie.”

Opening across the Philippines on Friday, Feb. 17, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

“JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND” takes on IMAX 3D cinemas on Feb. 2!!!

2012-01-29T14:30:00.000-08:00

Believe the impossible, discover the incredible as New Line Cinema's “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” embarks on an adventure of a lifetime in IMAX 3D! The film will be shown in local IMAX 3D cinemas, as well as digital 3D and regular theatres starting Thursday, Feb. 2.

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Vanessa Hudgens, Josh Hutcherson and Michael Caine, “Journey 2” takes moviegoers on a fun and fantastic new adventure to parts unknown, a place so remote it has lain hidden for centuries … and, when found, is almost impossible to escape.

Upon seeing the script for “Journey 2,” director Brad Peyton says, “I never imagined doing it small. Right away, I knew it had to involve land, sea and air, with creatures, caves, storms, underwater battles and aerial chases, and all of it set against the most incredible, breathtaking terrain. That meant utilizing the latest and best technology, to deliver something special in the 3D realm that the prequel ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ helped to establish.”

In 2008 that film broke ground as the first narrative feature to employ the Fusion System, a sophisticated digital 3D camera rig developed by James Cameron and cinematographer Vince Pace, and subsequently used on “Avatar.” Not surprisingly, the “Journey 2” filmmakers returned to the Cameron Pace Group for state-of-the-art strategies and equipment to capture the depth and scope Peyton wanted to achieve in a range of real-world environments.

“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” is a New Line Cinema presentation, will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

TOM HANKS, the perfect dad in “EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE”

2012-01-29T14:16:00.000-08:00

Two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks stars as Thomas Schell, a devoted husband and father who was at the wrong place, at the wrong time during the fateful day of 9/11, in Warner Bros.' life-affirming drama, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

The film is a story that unfolds from inside the young mind of Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), an inventive eleven year-old New Yorker whose discovery of a key in his deceased father’s belongings sets him off on an urgent search across the city for the lock it will open. A year after his father died in the World Trade Center on what Oskar calls “The Worst Day,” he is determined to keep his vital connection to the man who playfully cajoled him into confronting his wildest fears.

As a screen character, Thomas Schell was a challenge because he is seen entirely through Oskar’s eyes, to the extent that much about his history and inner life remain mysterious -- except for the parts that have made an impression on Oskar and especially Oskar’s memories of their very best times together, which remain indelibly immediate to him.

To embody the essence of a father as captured in time by his young son, director Stephen Daldry thought early on of Tom Hanks. “We thought that in terms of Oskar’s memories of Thomas as the perfect dad...well, who else could that be but Tom Hanks?” recalls Daldry. “Tom took that responsibility to heart and created a real bond with child actor Thomas Horn that was evident to everybody on the set. They were absolutely charming together, which was great for me as a filmmaker, because they created this dynamic relationship and all I had to do was shoot it. It was an act of real dedication by an extraordinary actor and collaborator.”

Hanks was drawn to the way the script gets inside Oskar’s mind at a time when the power of logical facts to keep him grounded seems to have evaporated. “In the blink of an eye, the course of Oskar’s whole world changes, and he loses his only anchor,” Hanks says. “His father used to tell him that there are always clues and treasures to be found in the world. So when he finds his father’s key, it’s very interesting that Oskar devises his own elaborate hunt for what the key might mean, convinced it will somehow explain the unexplained to him. It becomes a very personal, intimate story of a kid trying to make sense in his own way of a nonsensical world.”

He adds: “It was easiest thing in the world for me to want to do this – as soon as I read it, there was not even any question.”

The actor says he gave a lot of consideration to the kind of father Thomas was to Oskar prior to his death. He also kept in mind that Thomas was himself a child of immigrants who took up the trade of jewelry as his only clear opportunity to support his family, even though he dreamed of being a scientist. “I think Thomas was someone who felt the real task in his life was to make sure that his very bright son became a well-rounded, content human being who might make the world a better place,” Hanks says. “Since Thomas himself grew up without a father, fathering Oskar was the most important thing to him. I think he loved inventing wild stories for Oskar, like the one he makes up about New York’s lost Sixth Borough, but he also very clearly designed these stories to get Oskar out in the world and help him feel safe there.”

In part, Hanks drew on his own experiences as a father. “The emotional part of it for me was going back and remembering what it’s like to have an 11-year-old kid who is bubbling over with life,” he says.

While Hanks believes Thomas was well aware that Oskar often showed signs of behavior akin to Asperger’s Syndrome, he also says Thomas readily accepted and even related to many of his son’s oddities and phobias, which made the two of them even closer. “I think Thomas wasn’t bothered at all by his son’s behaviors,” he says. “Instead, he looked for ways to build bridges over Oskar’s turbulence, over his constant questions, his flights of fancy and his fears. Yet because of that, when he’s gone, it magnifies the incredible loss for Oskar even more.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

A tale as old as time in “BEAUTY AND THE BEAST” 3D

2012-01-29T14:14:00.000-08:00

One of the most popular and enduring romantic adventures the world has ever known became one of the most ambitious and entertaining animated motion pictures ever brought to the screen with Walt Disney Pictures' 30th full-length animated feature, ''Beauty and the Beast” which is coming to Philippine theaters for the first time in 3D.

This classic fairy tale about a beautiful young girl and her encounter with an enchanted beast has long fascinated and intrigued storytellers, filmmakers and their audiences. Through the artistry and imagination of the Disney creative team, an inspired song score by two Academy Award®–winning songwriters and the contributions of an enormously talented vocal ensemble, this age-old fantasy took on exciting new dimensions that are only possible through the magic of animation.

The "Beauty and the Beast" story is indeed “a tale as old as time" with variations on the central theme going as far back as Greek mythology. In 1550, Italian author Giovan Straparalo wrote the first account of the story as it is generally known. The tale grew in popularity during the 18th century with books by French authors Madam Le Prince De Beaumont and Madame Gabrielle di Villeneuve. In 1946, acclaimed French director Jean Cocteau used cinematic imagery and lyrical expression to bring this story imaginatively to the big screen ("La Belle et la Bete").

"Doing your own version of 'Beauty and the Beast' is as much a tradition as is the story itself," says producer Don Hahn. "Part of the fun is that each generation and culture adapts this story to be its own. The themes––you can't judge a book by its cover, and beauty is only skin deep–– are as relevant today as ever."

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton agrees, "The lessons of this story are truly timeless, especially for kids growing up today. It tells them to look beyond the surface and beyond materialism and that what is in their hearts and souls are the things that really matter."

The release of "Beauty and the Beast" in 3D comes at a time when both the art of animation and the 3D process are enjoying their greatest popularity.

All of the filmmakers and artists who have been involved with the 3D transformation of “Beauty and the Beast” are in unanimous agreement that they take pride in being part of the great legacy of this iconic film. As stereographer Robert Neuman says, “It’s amazing to be able to take these great movies like ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘The Lion King’ and give audiences a new way to see them again. Even if they're seeing it for the first time, or the one-hundredth time, this is a whole new experience for audiences.”

“It’s a privilege, really, and an honor to be able to bring this movie out,” says Don Hahn. “‘Beauty and the Beast’ has always been special in the hearts of the audience. From the first sneak previews that we did at the New York Film Festival, when it was still unfinished, to the original release, it’s always received a really warm reception. It’s great to go back and relive it now.

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Beauty and the Beast” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.

Controversial movie "THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO” rated R-18 without cuts by MTRCB

2012-01-27T05:25:00.000-08:00

Columbia Pictures' critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated thriller “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” has been approved without cuts by the Movies & Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) with an R-18 rating. This means, only audiences 18-years-old and above may be admitted when it opens in selected theaters on Feb. 1.

“Dragon Tattoo” caused a stir when it was released in the US last December, owing to its dark themes and graphic scenes of sexual assault, violence and nudity.

Last Tuesday, the film earned five Academy Award nominations, notably for Best Actress (Rooney Mara), Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing.

Director David Fincher (“The Social Network”) uncoils the world of author Stieg Larsson’s global blockbuster thriller on the screen in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Within the story’s labyrinth lie murder, corruption, family secrets and the inner demons of the two unexpected partners chasing the truth of a 40-year-old mystery. Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is a financial reporter determined to restore his honor after being convicted of libel. Engaged by one of Sweden’s wealthiest industrialists, Henrik Vanger (Academy Award® nominee Christopher Plummer), to get to the bottom of the long-ago disappearance of his beloved niece, Harriet – murdered, Vanger believes, by a member of his large family – the journalist heads to a remote island on the frozen Swedish coast, unaware of what awaits him.

At the same time, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), an unusual but ingenious investigator with Milton Security, is hired to do a background check on Blomkvist, a job that ultimately leads to her joining Mikael in his investigation of who killed Harriet Vanger. Though Lisbeth shields herself from a world that has repeatedly betrayed her, her hacking skills and single-minded focus become invaluable. While Mikael goes face-to-face with the tight-lipped Vangers, Lisbeth plies the wired shadows. They begin to trace a chain of homicides from the past into the present, forging a fragile strand of trust even as they are pulled into the most savage currents of modern crime.

Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 1, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

World's darkest hero rides again in “GHOST RIDER” sequel

2012-01-27T05:17:00.000-08:00

He fought the curse. Now, a new evil will make Johnny Blaze embrace his power. This February, the world’s darkest hero rides again in Warner Bros.’ supernatural action-thriller “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.”

Starring Nicolas Cage, the film is directed by Neveldine/Taylor – also known as Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor – who have earned a cult following with their stylish and edgy films, including “Crank” and “Gamer.”

Neveldine explains that the directors were excited to approach their new film for two major reasons. “We were thrilled to have the opportunity to direct a franchise film with Nicolas Cage, and, second, to work with this really cool, edgy, comic book series – I mean, this dude has a flaming skull and kicks major ass,” says Neveldine. “I think the studio wanted to do something edgier with this franchise, so our attitude and style of filmmaking fit perfectly with the tone they were hoping to see. We were all on the same page.”

With a free hand to give the film that edgy tone, the directors could let their imaginations run wild. “The only thing we knew we wanted to keep from the first film was Nick Cage. We wanted to change everything else – the way he looks, the way he dresses, the bike. We wanted souls to be burned and dragged to hell. And lucky for us, the studio said, ‘That’s great; that’s what we were hoping you’d say.’ And that became the start of our process. What we were really going for is a mood, a feeling, an aesthetic – to make him badass.”

That process continued all the way through production, as Neveldine and Taylor employ a kinetic style both in front of and behind the camera, as Cage explains. “The energy of making this film was a different experience,” says the actor. “It’s a much more wild, almost daredevil experience – even the way Mark Neveldine shoots. He’s like a stuntman, risking his life hundreds of times, hanging off of wires or shooting while skating on Rollerblades – he’s a very active, macho filmmaker. Fans are going to be blown away by the photography and Mark, Brian and (Director of Photography) Brandon Trost’s daredevil camerawork.”

Describing their intense set experience, Neveldine says, “At the end of the day, we have to get the performance and the shots, and we’ll get them any way we can. You’ll see us hanging off of cars and shooting on Rollerblades to push the cinematic envelope.”

Where other directors might choose to create the Ghost Rider’s world inside a computer, Neveldine/Taylor capture as much as they can practically. “We use real stunt guys and real motorcycle action – though we did set the guy’s head on fire in the computer afterwards,” says Taylor. “We think it makes for a better, more visceral experience for the viewer if they’re seeing something real.”

Editor Brian Berdan, who worked with the directors on Crank, says, “They are so creative; it’s all hand-held and intuitive and not totally planned out. That liveliness of a hand-held camera and someone with the sense of what to do with it makes it all really come to life. It can be a challenge to edit, because you get a ton of footage – some of which makes you initially think, ‘I can’t do anything with this,’ and then the camera will come in at just the right point and you grab exactly what you need!”

It’s a style that Cage relishes. “They have this gonzo energy, this wild intensity – they’re both really up for anything. I think I fit into that, too.”

“We were excited for our tone and dark humor to leak into the project,” says Neveldine. “At the same time, it was important to keep it grounded and hard-hitting.”

Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 16, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

The day after 9/11 in “EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE”

2012-01-25T21:25:00.000-08:00

One of the most definitive novels about 9/11 becomes one of the year’s most cathartic cinematic experiences as Warner Bros. brings to the screen “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Directed by Stephen Daldry (“The Reader,” “The Hours”), the film has been nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards.

In 2005 the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, already renowned for his blend of incisive comedy and tragedy in his debut novel “Everything Is Illuminated,” published his follow-up “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.” His second novel was, on the one hand, the playful story of an unusually precocious and sensitive boy who invents fantastical devices, dreams about astrophysics, collects a vast assortment of random facts – and is compelled into a quixotic odyssey through the fabric of New York. At the same time, the novel was the first major literary exploration into the grief of 9/11 families, and a study of how a child’s imagination helps him navigate overwhelming fear and unfathomable loss in the wake of events that no logic could possibly reconcile.

When Stephen Daldry read the book, he was struck most of all by Oskar’s subjective point of view. An unusual child with arrestingly high intelligence yet eccentric and obsessive behaviors that might put him on the autistic spectrum, Oskar describes the world around him with his own particular mix of naiveté and insight, nervousness and boldness, incomprehension and a need to understand. Most of all, Daldry was intrigued by how this POV, just like a child’s imagination, combined random thoughts, flashes of memory, lists of ideas and impromptu fantasies with pure emotion – all at a moment when life has irrevocably changed for Oskar’s family and the world around him.

“I found it truly compelling that Jonathan Safran Foer told this story not only from the perspective of a boy enduring unimaginable heartbreak, but a boy who has his own singular view of everything,” says Daldry. “It’s a perspective that is engaging, inventive and emotionally rich.”

Oskar’s very personal experience of September 11th, and what came after, was brought to the fore in a screenplay adaptation by Eric Roth, who wanted to be true to the distinctive immediacy of Foer’s novel. “It’s a very emotional book and I hope it is a very emotional movie,” says Roth. “There’s also a real kinetic energy to the book – and the challenge was to translate that into visual imagery.”

The book wove many themes – of individual and national trauma, of childhood’s strangeness, of the nature of tragedy and the endurance of love through family hardship – into its tapestry. Each of those themes was key to the storytelling, but Roth found his way in through one particular element: the relationship between Oskar and his father, Thomas (Hanks), who is seen in the film entirely through Oskar’s subjective memories, which are in turn fueled by a confusing mixture of love, loss and lingering questions.

Oskar deeply misses his father’s so-called “reconnaissance expeditions,” clever puzzles that Thomas created for Oskar to solve, not only as inspired father-son games but also to help him engage with the world despite his social awkwardness. So when he finds the mysterious key in the bottom of a vase hidden in the dark recesses of his father’s closet, Oskar propels himself into a new mission to ferret out the key’s meaning.

His only clue to the key’s potential origins is the name “Black,” written on the envelope in which he found it, so Oskar dutifully makes an ambitious plan to visit all 472 people named Black in the New York City phone books, even though, according to the math, it will take him three years to do so.

Like many kids with gifted intelligence, high sensory sensitivity and impaired social skills, Oskar thrives on schedules, rules and facts yet his search takes him far from the predictable and the comfortable. But no matter what obstacles stand in his way, Oskar is determined to complete his task.

“Oskar is a kid who is different, but in a wonderful way,” notes Roth. “He might have a form of Asperger’s but he also has a great imagination and a real sense of curiosity along with his many fears. For a long time, he was kept afloat very much by his father who enjoyed so many similar things. So now, when Oskar finds his father’s key a year after his death, he believes it has to unlock something – a piece of advice, an object, some wisdom that his father left for him. And it leads him on an adventure that is his way of coming to terms with grief and all sorts of other things.”

As Roth began compacting Foer’s wide-ranging plot and finding the cinematic structure, he found Foer to be a supportive resource. “Jonathan is a wonderful novelist but my ability is to be a good dramatist and bring the work alive on the screen. He really trusted me in that process and we developed a very close and collaborative relationship.”

Adds Stephen Daldry: “Jonathan really understands the difference between a book and a script, and was very helpful. He never once uttered the phrase, ‘Well, in the book…’ He was always open to interpretation and reinvention.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

KATIE HOLMES PLAYS SANDLER’S WIFE IN “JACK AND JILL”

2012-01-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

Katie Holmes stars opposite Adam Sandler in Columbia Pictures’ uproarious comedy “Jack and Jill.”

In the film, Jack (Sandler) was living an almost perfect life, with the exception of one, annoying constant – his twin sister Jill (also Sandler). Every year he has to tolerate a Thanksgiving visit from his smothering sister, who doesn’t take long to turn his life upside down. As the weekend intrusion starts stretching into a month, the siblings fight, tease, and bicker in the way only twins can. When it becomes clear Jill is never leaving, Jack sets into motion several schemes that he hopes will return Jill to where he loves her most – the other side of the country.

Holmes joins the cast as Erin, Jack’s wife and mother to their two children. “She’s a very busy wife and mother,” Holmes explains. “When Jill comes to town and creates a lot of mayhem within the family, she’s the one who’s trying to keep it all together.

“It was wonderful to see Adam transform into Jill,” she continues. “As a woman, it was nice to have conversations with a man about shaving legs, how pantyhose and heels feel, and all of the tougher parts about being a woman. Adam was a great sport – it was really, really fun.”

Holmes has showcased her ability as an actress to play a wide spectrum of diversified roles. She has appeared in several notable films ranging from the action blockbuster “Batman Begins,” directed by Christopher Nolan, to critically acclaimed art house pictures such as Ang Lee's “The Ice Storm” and Peter Hedges' “Pieces of April.”

Holmes was most recently seen on the big screen in “Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark” and “The Son of No One.” On television, she portrayed First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in “The Kennedys,” opposite Greg Kinnear as President John F. Kennedy.

Holmes has worked with some of Hollywood's most prominent and talented directors. Her credits include “Wonder Boys,” directed by Curtis Hanson; “Thank You for Smoking,” directed by Jason Reitman; “The Gift,” directed by Sam Raimi; “Abandon,” directed by Stephen Gaghan; “Go,” directed by Doug Liman; “Phone Booth,” directed by Joel Schumacher; “First Daughter,” directed by Forest Whitaker; “Teaching Mrs. Tingle,” directed by Kevin Williamson; and “Disturbing Behavior,” directed by David Nutter. 2008 marked her Broadway debut in Arthur Millers “All My Sons” opposite John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest and Patrick Wilson. Her portrayal of Ann garnered glowing reviews and established her as an accomplished actress on both screen and stage.

In 1996, Holmes landed the role of Libbets Casey opposite Tobey Maguire and Sigourney Weaver in Lee's award-winning drama “The Ice Storm” while in Los Angeles for pilot season. A year later she was cast as Joey Potter on the TV series "Dawson's Creek," opposite James Van Der Beek and Michelle Williams. The show quickly became the highest-rated series on the WB network throughout its six-season run.

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Jack and Jill” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

“JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND” siezes overseas gold

2012-01-25T21:09:00.000-08:00

Burbank, CA January 23, 2012 – New Line Cinema’s 3D family adventure, “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” is off to a strong start at the global box office. Launching ahead of the US in seven territories— Australia , Korea , Hong Kong , Taiwan , Singapore , Malaysia and New Zealand —the film grossed an excellent $7.9 million, which is 44% ahead of its predecessor in the same countries. The announcement was made today by Veronika Kwan-Rubinek, President of International Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures.

“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” is the sequel to the 2008 global box office hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” both inspired by the novels of legendary fantasist Jules Verne. “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” directed by Brad Peyton, stars Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzmán, Vanessa Hudgens and Kristin Davis.

“The first ‘Journey’ went on to gross $141 million internationally, and to exceed it by such a great margin in these early markets is truly gratifying,” Kwan-Rubinek said. “This success is a testament to the vision of the filmmakers and the dedication of the cast, led by Dwayne Johnson, for delivering the perfect film for this corridor—an action-packed and fun-filled 3D adventure for families and audiences of all ages.”

The release was targeted to coincide with the Chinese New Year holiday in Asia and summer school holidays in Australia and New Zealand , predating the US release, which required a different marketing approach. “We’ve embarked on a multi-tiered marketing program to support our early release dates, encompassing talent tours across Taiwan , Australia and Mexico , with further tour stops forthcoming,” commented Sue Kroll, the Studio’s President, Worldwide Marketing. “A strong media presence, combined with our broad advertising and event outdoor campaign, set the stage for these early launches around the world. The tremendous success overseas also helps to build momentum leading up to our U.S. and broader international launches in the weeks to come.”

Shot in 3D, the new family adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” is directed by Brad Peyton from a screenplay by Brian Gunn & Mark Gunn, story by Richard Outten and Brian Gunn & Mark Gunn

“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” is a New Line Cinema presentation and will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company. The film will open across the Philippines on Thursday, Feb. 2.

CHANNING TATUM must win his wife back in “THE VOW”

2012-01-25T20:52:00.000-08:00

One of Hollywood’s most sought after young actors who have established themselves among the next generation of leading men, Channing Tatum (“G.I. Joe,” “Dear John”) now stars opposite Rachel McAdams in Columbia Pictures' inspiring romantic drama “The Vow.”

In the film, newlyweds Paige (McAdams) and Leo (Tatum) were struck by tragedy shortly after their marriage. A car crash puts Paige in a coma, where she is cared for by her devoted husband. When she comes to, without any memory of her husband or their marriage, the husband must woo her and ultimately win her heart once again.

Tatum is a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic, and felt the script told an authentic story about a once in a lifetime love and what people will do to hold on to that. “Falling in love is the easy part!” notes Tatum. “Getting on with your life together and making sure you stay in touch and connected because life can get in the way sometimes, that’s the tough part. I think that a huge part of Leo and Paige’s journey is based on the fact that not only do they make each other intensely happy and support each other, but that they pushed each other to grow and when you do that it really does take you to the next level in a relationship and in life.”

The actor admits that he found the role emotionally difficult at times because, as a young husband himself, he couldn’t help but imagine himself in this situation: “I hope I would be as brave as Leo is; it’s heartbreaking for him, but he has the faith to let Paige find her own way. And this role is great because Leo is so truthful about his love, he doesn’t hold it back, and I can relate to that. I love love! It’s harder to play than running around with guns and being physical, but it’s very satisfying.”

Tatum says it made total sense to him to work so hard to win Paige back: “If my wife (actress Jenna Dewan) lost her memory of me, I wouldn’t just be like ‘Okay, alright, well, see you later, good luck’. No. I’d be fighting tooth and nail and plug away at this until it comes back. No matter what.”

He continues: “It’s so frustrating for Leo because there’s nothing visibly wrong with his wife; she talks like Paige, she walks like Paige, everything is exactly the same, but it’s just her memory of her husband is completely gone. And it’s that much more painful that she remembered other people, her family, but just not her husband and everything they had been together.”

For director Michael Sucsy, casting Tatum was a case of finding the soldier of love in an established movie warrior. “The Leo role is a knight in shining armor, and prior to this I’d only seen Channing’s work where he’d been in tough, military roles. So I went to meet him, and we sat down, and I called the producers afterward and I said, ‘He is the guy. He’s Leo. It’s perfect for him.’ I got the sense that his heart was bigger than his chest cavity. He’s got a huge heart, Channing does, and so does Leo, and that really comes out when he has to keep sticking with his wife through the ups and downs.”

From Rachel McAdams’ point of view, “Channing Tatum is the perfect guy for this role because he’s a real renaissance man; chivalrous and gentlemanly. He’s playing someone who would do anything to win back his wife’s heart and that’s very much, I think, who Channing is. He’s a very heroic kind of guy, so yeah, and I know he loves love and really believes in it and I think he made Leo a really stoic character that you just fall in love with and believe that he’s definitely the rock in the relationship throughout. He added such lovely little touches to Leo.”

All in all, Channing Tatum sums up the core of the movie’s message this way: “It’s a big deal to vow yourself for life to somebody and mean it. It really is something.”

Tatum will next star in a contemporary motion picture adaptation of “21 Jump Street” opposite Jonah Hill. Tatum and Hill are also executive producers on the project, which is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 10, “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.

“UNDERWORLD” sequel awakens to NO. 1 spot, grosses P49.72-M in 4 days!!!

2012-01-25T16:50:00.000-08:00

Rabid fans welcomed the return of Kate Beckinsale to the “Underworld” franchise, catapulting the 3D 4th installment “Underworld Awakening” to the No. 1 spot at the Philippine box-office for the Jan. 20 to 23 frame.

The sequel slew the competition with a nationwide gross of a stunning P49.72-million opening weekend, this according to Victor R. Cabrera, managing director of Columbia Pictures which distributed the film locally.

That phenomenal bow marks the biggest opening ever for the “Underworld” franchise, as well as the most successful debut so far this year for any title, local or foreign.

Rolling out in 155 screens across the country, “Awakening” posted its biggest receipts in SM Mall of Asia (P 3.03-M), Trinoma (P2.85-M), SM North EDSA (P2.35-M), SM Megamall (P2.24-M), SM Cebu (P1.90-M), Glorietta 4 (P1.61-M), Greenbelt 3 (P1.54-M), Newport (P1.52-M), Alabang Town Center (P1.276-M) and Power Plant Mall (P1.274-M).

Completing the Top 20 cinemas are Ayala Cebu (P1.18-M), Eastwood (P1.15-M), Gateway (P1.11-M), Robinsons Ermita (P 988,965), Gaisano (P 940,048), Market Market (P 838,236), SM Clark (P 739,563), SM San Lazaro (P 705,278), Greenhills (P 693,888) and Sta. Lucia East (P 636,938).

In the US, "Underworld Awakening" also opened in first place with $25.4 million, good for a $8,252 per theater average.

The millennia-old battle between Vampires and Lycans rages on in stunning 3D in “Underworld Awakening,” the most spectacular installment in the hugely popular franchise. Taking the celebrated saga’s signature action and mayhem to a new level, the film pits the legendary Vampire warrioress Selene (Beckinsale) against her most powerful adversary yet, just as she discovers a shocking secret that will change everything she has ever fought for.

Fifteen years have passed since Selene and her human-Lycan hybrid lover Michael vanquished the Vampire Elder Marcus in “Underworld Evolution.” In the intervening years, mankind has discovered the existence of both the Vampire and Lycan clans, and launched an all-out war to eradicate both species. Selene, captured during the genocide, awakens after more than a decade to find herself captive in a sealed laboratory at Antigen, a powerful biotech corporation dedicated to developing a vaccine against the viruses that have created the Vampires and Lycans.

Now showing across the Philippines in IMAX 3D, Digital 3D and regular theaters, “Underworld Awakening” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games. Like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH

Sneak Peek: TOM HANKS & SANDRA BULLOCK's “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”

2012-01-25T16:38:00.000-08:00

From three-time Academy Award® nominated director Stephen Daldry (“Billy Elliot,” “The Reader,” “The Hours”) comes the poignant drama “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

The Warner Bros. film stars Academy Award® winners Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” “Philadelphia”) and Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”) along with newcomer Thomas Horn in the role of Oskar, and was produced by Scott Rudin (“No Country for Old Men,” “The Social Network,” “True Grit”).

The screenplay is by Academy Award® winner Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump,” “The Insider”), based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s acclaimed bestseller.

“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is a story that unfolds from inside the young mind of Oskar Schell, an inventive eleven year-old New Yorker whose discovery of a key in his deceased father’s belongings sets him off on an urgent search across the city for the lock it will open. A year after his father died in the World Trade Center on what Oskar calls “The Worst Day,” he is determined to keep his vital connection to the man who playfully cajoled him into confronting his wildest fears. Now, as Oskar crosses the five New York boroughs in quest of the missing lock – encountering an eclectic assortment of people who are each survivors in their own way – he begins to uncover unseen links to the father he misses, to the mother who seems so far away from him and to the whole noisy, dangerous, discombobulating world around him.

The film also stars Academy Award® nominees Max von Sydow (“Shutter Island,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “Pelle the Conqueror”) and Viola Davis (“Doubt,” “The Help”), John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright and Zoe Caldwell.

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Adele's 'FIRE' burns path to Hot 100 Summit

2012-01-25T16:14:00.000-08:00

'Set Fire to the Rain' becomes the third single from '21' to lead the Hot 100 while '21' has sat atop the Billboard 200.

Adele's "Set Fire to the Rain" takes over atop the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, dethroning Rihanna's "We Found Love," featuring Calvin Harris, after 10 weeks and making history in the process.

As Adele's set "21" leads the Billboard 200 album chart for a 17th week, "Fire" is the third single to top the Hot 100 while "21" has sat atop the album tally. First single "Rolling in the Deep" began a seven-week Hot 100 reign the week of May 21, 2011, when "21" was in its sixth week in charge of the Billboard 200.

Follow-up "Someone Like You" crowned the Hot 100 the week of Sept. 17, 2011. In the song's fifth and final week at No. 1 (Nov. 5), "21" returned to the Billboard 200 apex for a 13th frame.

With "21" at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 four another four weeks as of this week, "Fire" (Adele's third career Hot 100 topper) makes the set the first by a single artist to have led the Billboard 200 concurrently with three Hot 100 No. 1s.

In the 53 years that the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 have coexisted, nine albums had topped the Billboard 200 at the same time that two of their singles dominated the Hot 100. Usher had last so doubled up, with "Yeah," featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris, and "Burn" each commanding the Hot 100 in 2004 while parent album "Confessions" led the Billboard 200.

The multi-artist "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack was the first to manage the trifold concurrent feat, heading up the Billboard 200 while the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever" and Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You" each reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 in 1978.

The coronation of a third Hot 100 No. 1 in "Fire" as "21" continues to rack up weeks atop the Hot 100 reinforces the set's uncommon staying power. The strength of the album's singles has clearly been a factor in keeping "21" afloat atop the Billboard 200 for 17 (nonconsecutive) weeks, making the set the longest-running No. 1 album since the Whitney Houston-led soundtrack to "The Bodyguard" (20 weeks at No. 1) in 1992-93.

"Fire" reaches the Hot 100's top spot despite slipping 1-2 on the Digital Songs chart. The song sold 185,000 downloads (down 4%) in the list's tracking week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. With its latest week of sales, it passes the 2-million mark in downloads sold.

On Radio Songs, "Fire" holds at No. 5, up 13% to 105 million audience impressions, according to Nielsen BDS. The gain grants the song top Airplay Gainer honors on the Hot 100 for a third consecutive week.

"Fire" douses the 10-week reign of Rihanna's "We Found Love" on the Hot 100. The cut slips to No. 2, although it spends a 10th frame at No. 1 on Radio Songs (150 million, down 1%). "Love" maintains both its rank (No. 6) and sales total (140,000) from last week on Digital Songs.

Flo Rida's "Good Feeling" holds at No. 3 on the Hot 100, bulleting at No. 3 on Radio Songs (125 million, up 4%) while dropping 2-5 on Digital Songs (142,000, down 13%). In a bittersweet turn of timing, the song keeps the voice of R&B legend Etta James at its Hot 100 peak to-date after her passing at 73 Friday (Jan. 20). (Today would have been James' 74th birthday). "Feeling" samples her 1962 song "Something's Got a Hold on Me."

David Guetta's "Turn Me On," featuring Nicki Minaj, bounds 10-4 on the Hot 100 with the chart's Digital Gainer award. The song blasts 7-1 on Digital Songs (198,000, up 44%), marking each artist's first No. 1 on the download chart. On Radio Songs, "Turn" charges 31-19 (48 million, up 23%). With his Hot 100 ascent, Guetta matches his best rank, first achieved with previous single "Without You," featuring Usher. The music video for "Turn Me On" will premiere Jan. 31 on Vevo.

Katy Perry's "The One That Got Away" rebounds 6-5 on the Hot 100, Bruno Mars' "It Will Rain" drops 4-6 and LMFAO's former two-week No. 1 "Sexy and I Know It" descends 5-7.

Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" roars into the Hot 100's top 10 (21-8) on the strength of an 11-3 vault on Digital Songs (175,000, up 48%) and a 71-44 flight on Radio Songs (29 million, up 73%). With "Mr. Know It All," the first single from her album "Stronger," having peaked at No. 10, Clarkson posts her first back-to-back Hot 100 top 10s (excluding last month's "I'll Be Home for Christmas," which was not actively promoted to radio) since the first four singles from her album "Breakaway" hit the top tier consecutively in 2004-05.

Jay-Z and Kanye West's "Ni**as in Paris" falls 7-9 on the Hot 100, while Jessie J celebrates her first top 10 with "Domino" (15-10). While the latter song is the British singer's maiden Hot 100 top 10, it's the 36th and 29th, respectively, for co-authors Max Martin and Dr. Luke as writers.

Source: Billboard | by Gary Trust, N.Y. | January 25, 2012 11:50 EST

Twice the fun, twice the mayhem in Adam Sandler's “JACK AND JILL”

2012-01-24T06:23:00.000-08:00

Adam Sandler's twin sister is coming for the holidays...and it aint pretty. Columbia Pictures presents the outrageous comedy “Jack and Jill” from director Dennis Dugan and starring Sandler, Katie Holmes and Al Pacino.

When you get together with your family for the holidays, everybody has that one family member who drives you crazy. They mean well, and you love them, but still…

For Jack (Sandler), that’s his sister – his twin sister – Jill (also played by Sandler). Growing up, their lives were incredibly intertwined. But ever since Jack moved away, they have moved in different directions. Jack has become a highly motivated and successful ad executive in L.A., while Jill was the one who stayed back east and took care of their parents. Now, they see each other only once a year, at Thanksgiving, when Jill comes to L.A. for a visit. Time and distance have taken a toll on their relationship – and now Jack finds himself enduring Jill’s annual visit, rather than enjoying it.

Still, it’s just a couple of days, right? Wrong. Jack and Jill get off on the wrong foot – just like always – and the only way Jack can make things right is to ask Jill to stay on through Hanukkah, giving her some time to enjoy everything L.A. has to offer, from game shows to horseback riding. Still, Jack isn’t exactly pleased that his sister is extending her trip…

And adding to Jack’s stress is the fact that things aren’t going all that well at his ad agency. His biggest client, Dunkin Donuts, is demanding that Jack deliver Al Pacino to perform in a new Dunkaccino commercial. Jack wonders how in the world he is going to get Pacino – does he even do commercials? – and his quest is intensified when he finds out that the famous actor is having a nervous breakdown and losing his mind. Having played one too many roles, the actor is starting to confuse reality with the parts he is playing and is acting out in some increasingly erratic ways.

When Jack takes Jill to see the Lakers, he approaches Pacino about the commercial, but is stunned when Pacino is much more interested in talking to Jill. It turns out that Jill reminds Pacino of everything he left behind – his boyhood home in the Bronx, his childhood – and for Pacino, who is preparing to play Don Quixote on stage, something clicks. Because he’s having trouble with reality, suddenly, Jill isn’t Jack’s wacky sister… she’s Dulcinea, Don Quixote’s idealized romantic love – and Pacino must conquer her affections to realize his quest.

Trouble is, Jill isn’t interested. But Pacino will not be brushed aside so easily. Inviting himself to Jack and Jill’s surprise birthday party, he sweeps Jill off her feet and takes her for a private party at his home – but Jill still isn’t biting, which only inflames Pacino’s passion (and insanity). It’s not clear who’s more upset – Jill, from the experience, or Jack, who thinks his chance to get Pacino could be over, or Pacino, who is completely losing it for Jill.

For Jack, now the shoe is on the other foot: he has to try to convince Jill to extend her trip even further and give Pacino one more shot. It’s a move that sets in motion a wild, outrageous series of events that reveals to Jack who the most important people in his life are – and have always been.

RACHEL McADAMS struggles with memory-loss in “THE VOW”

2012-01-24T06:16:00.000-08:00

She broke countless hearts in such memorable romantic dramas as “The Notebook” and “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” Now, Rachel McAdams stars in another touching love story – Columbia Pictures’ “The Vow” opposite Channing Tatum.

"The Vow” is the real-life story of Paige and Leo, a newlywed New Mexico couple, who were struck by tragedy shortly after their marriage. A car crash puts Paige in a coma, where she is cared for by her devoted husband. When she comes to, without any memory of her husband or their marriage, the husband must woo her and ultimately win her heart once again.

For director Michael Sucsy, casting Paige was tricky, because it was important for the character not to come off as too distant when adjusting to her post-coma world. “The difficult thing for an actress in approaching the role of Paige is that she comes out and she doesn’t have any connection to her husband. He’s a stranger to her. If she’s too off-putting, it’s hard to root for her. And in the case of Rachel McAdams, she’s the perfect actress to play the role, because she can tread that line of being likeable, but being convincing that she’s going through this process of having lost her memory.”

McAdams connected with the script and her character from the beginning: “I loved the way the script unfolded. When we first meet Paige, she is a much more actualized version of herself than we see later on in the film, which is kind of a backwards way to go but exactly what I found so interesting.” She explains, “Paige has embraced the life she’s made with Leo. They’re clearly free and comfortable and supportive of each other; she appreciates his music and he encourages her sculpting. But then we find out that she’s cut off from her family and denying a big part of her life.”

It’s been said that a common reaction for people with brain trauma and memory loss is for them feel inadequate and frustrated. The people and things they can’t remember become associated with anxiety, frustration and confusion. This aspect also intrigued McAdams. “It stands to reason that a person would feel overwhelmed by it all and want to avoid what is making them feel bad about themselves even though others are trying to help,” she says. “It must be so frustrating for everyone in this situation! So often people have to take a stand about who they are, but then they lose important people in their life. Paige feels inadequate and frustrated by her memory loss and at one point just finds it easier to be away from Leo. This is about bridging the gap between those two things and so many of us can relate to that.”

“It’s a great romantic love story but also about familial love too,” says McAdams. “When Paige wakes up and doesn’t recognize her husband and learns that she’s estranged from her family, she sees big holes in her life that need to be filled in. I find that idea of not knowing if you will find your way back to your destiny so interesting.” She continues, “Do you naturally gravitate towards all the things you were already going towards in your life, or does it just start from scratch and you have to build yourself up as a person all over again? And I think that’s such an interesting idea that they say you will naturally go where you were. You’ll find your way back there even though you have to relearn everything from scratch. A driving force through the whole movie is you’re waiting for this epiphany, you’re waiting for that light bulb moment and it doesn’t necessarily come.”

Co-star Channing Tatum is so impressed by Rachel: “Look, she is one of the most brilliant and beautiful people that I’ve ever met. Not just as an actor, but as a person. She cares. She has the true talent to be able to make any line work - and we’ve got some serious big lines in this movie - which can be hard to pull off, but she just does. She has an uncanny ability to make anything sound real and amazing because she commits and believes in it. I’m in awe of her and I’ve learned so much from her.”

Opening across the Philippines in February, “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.

SNEAK PEEK: “BEAUTY AND THE BEAST” 3D

2012-01-24T06:06:00.000-08:00

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ magical tale “Beauty and the Beast” returns to the big screen in Disney Digital 3D™, introducing a whole new generation to the Disney classic with stunning 3D.

The film captures the fantastic journey of Belle (voice of Paige O’Hara), a bright and beautiful young woman who’s taken prisoner by a hideous beast (voice of Robby Benson) in his castle. Despite her precarious situation, Belle befriends the castle’s enchanted staff—a teapot, a candelabra and a mantel clock, among others—and ultimately learns to see beneath the Beast’s exterior to discover the heart and soul of a prince.

Featuring unforgettable music by Academy Award® winners Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, and an enormously talented vocal ensemble, “Beauty and the Beast” was the first animated feature to receive a Best Picture nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

One of the most popular and enduring romantic adventures the world has ever known became one of the most ambitious and entertaining animated motion pictures ever brought to the screen when ''Beauty and the Beast" premiered in 1991. This classic fairy tale has long fascinated and intrigued storytellers, filmmakers and their audiences. Through the artistry and imagination of the Disney creative team, an inspired song score and the contributions of an enormously talented vocal ensemble, this age-old fantasy took on exciting new dimensions that are only possible through the magic of animation.

"Beauty and the Beast" was the fifth classic fairy tale to be adapted as a Disney animated feature. The tradition began in 1937 with "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," which was based on the famous story by the Brothers Grimm. In the 1950s, Walt Disney and his animators successfully tackled two classic folk tales by French author Charles Perrault––"Cinderella" (1950) and "Sleeping Beauty" (1959). Another famous purveyor of fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen, was the source of ''The Little Mermaid," Disney's 1989 release, which went on to become the Studio’s most successful animated feature up until that time.

Heading up the team was producer Don Hahn, a long-time Disney veteran, and two talented young directors, Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, who made their debut in that capacity on this film. Writer Linda Woolverton created a fresh and stylish screenplay which became the structural and emotional blueprint for the visual development and storyboarding phases. Ten supervising animators were assigned to specific characters and took on the task of bringing them to life with the assistance of an impressive group of character animators, cleanup artists and other key supporting players.

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Beauty and the Beast” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.

OSCARS 2012 | 84th Academy Awards Nominations Announcement

2012-01-24T06:01:00.000-08:00

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the nominees for the 84th Academy Awards. Here are the nominees in the 10 major categories. The Oscars will be televised on ABC on Sunday, Feb. 26.

Best Picture

The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Best Director

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

Best Actor

Demián Bichir, A Better Life
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Actress

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Best Supporting Actress

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help

Best Original Screenplay

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids
J.C. Chandor, Margin Call
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Asghar Farhadi, A Separation

Best Adapted Screenplay

Alexander Payne, Jim Rash & Nat Faxon, The Descendants
John Logan, Hugo
George Clooney, Grant Heslov & Beau Willimon, The Ides of March
Aaron Sorkin & Steven Zaillian, Moneyball
Peter Straughan & Bridget O’Connor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Animated Film

The Adventures of Tintin
A Cat in Paris
Chico & Rita
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss in Boots
Rango

Best Foreign Language Film

Bullhead (Belgium)
Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)
A Separation (Iran)
Footnote (Israel)
In Darkness (Poland)

Source: Dave Karger | Entertainment Weekly

DAVID FINCHER gets Best Director nod for “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO”

2012-01-24T05:51:00.000-08:00

The holiday movie season last 2010 seemed to belong to filmmaker David Fincher. His "The Social Network" struck the zeitgeist among movie goers, critics and awards groups. Twenty-five days after Fincher completed "Network," the director found himself in Sweden, shooting Columbia Pictures' new thriller "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."

It's the English language adaptation of Swedish author Steig Larsson's first installment of his popular Millennium thriller series, with tales of avenging sexual violence against women. Fincher's version stars Rooney Mara as a young computer hacker helping a journalist (Daniel Craig) crack a case of a missing woman.

And like in 2010, Fincher is once again collecting accolades – the latest is a Best Director nomination for “Dragon Tattoo” from the prestigious Directors Guild of America.

In the following interview, Fincher talks about the film, the Swedish franchise and his sentiments on Hollywood's awards season this year.

Q: How is your version different from the Swedish film?

David Fincher: "I wholly respect what's been done in advance of our beginning. But I also think that we brought it a different sensibility to it, a different telling. We're doing parts of the story that were cut for length or budget in the past. There is a lot of back story and some of that stuff is channeled elsewhere in the Swedish version."

Q: Do you feel pressure to live up to fans' expectations?

Fincher: "I live to sidestep feeling pressure. Because if you're spending $250,000 per day of shooting, you learn to deal with pressure. I feel responsibility to an author who is not going to be able to see the movie. I feel responsibility to a Swedish crew who gave everything, 12 hours a day for 100 days to help put this thing on the screen. I feel responsibility to the actors. We don't want to stink the place up. Hopefully this version will live alongside the other version."

Q: There were many actresses vying for the explosive character of Lisbeth Salander. How did you pick Rooney Mara?

Fincher: "I didn't see Lisbeth like that. I don't see her as a kick-ass avenger. I see her as damaged goods and very real. I was never looking for her to be Joan Jett. I was looking for, 'How does a girl who's been through all the things that this girl has been through -- how does she survive, where does she find a moment of happiness, at what point in the movie does she smile'?"

Q: And Rooney answered those questions for you?

Fincher: "These are the things that you turn to somebody, not just because they're a great actor or because they can pretend well, but because they're sort of an emotional hanger and you're putting this character, like a suit of clothes, on it. The wonderful thing about Rooney was it kept exposing itself layer after layer."

Q: You have a 17-year-old daughter. Did this story speak to a protective fatherly instinct in you?

Fincher: "I'm not gonna deny that there are things about Rooney that are similar to different women that I have in my life. I would like to say that I felt compelled for reasons of feeling injustice. It's shocking to me the kind of depravity that the story was talking about. But it was first and foremost these two characters and the story -- this bizarre team, these bizarre lovers, these bizarre avengers. This story has a lot of the trappings of pulpy thriller fiction but it also has deeper roots and deeper resonance."

Q: Last year "The Social Network" cleaned up during awards season. Do you have any hopes for "Dragon Tattoo" doing the same this year?

Fincher: "No. I honestly don't think that's in the cards. There's probably too much sodomy in this movie for it to be (a contender). But who knows? Maybe sodomy is big this year. (Laughs)"

Q: How about box office. Do you think the subject matter will affect the film's ticket sales?

Fincher: "When the book was first given to me in 2006 or something, in galley form, the answer (to the question was), 'I don't know.' It was up my alley, but I didn't know if anyone was was going to read the book. That 'I don't know' thing is important to me to keep. It's the secret handshake. The fact that 60 million people have bought the books says to me that there is an audience out there who is okay with adult themes and adult material if it's done well and it has some human characters at the center of it."

Q: Would you like to continue working on the rest of the books and direct the second installment?

Fincher: "At this point, no. But ask me again in two months. I'm so tired right now I can't think straight. You don't ask a woman in labor, 'Do you want another child?'" (laughs)

Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 01 in its uncut R-18 version, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us atwww.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

NICOLAS CAGE in favor of darker, scarier “GHOST RIDER”

2012-01-24T05:45:00.000-08:00

Nicolas Cage returns as Johnny Blaze in Warner Bros.' 3D supernatural action-thriller "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance." In the film, Johnny - still struggling with his curse as the devil's bounty hunter - is hiding out in a remote part of Eastern Europe when he is recruited by a secret sect of the church to save a young boy from the devil. At first, Johnny is reluctant to embrace the power of the Ghost Rider, but it is the only way to protect the boy - and possibly rid himself of his curse forever.

During a press conference at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, Cage assured fans that “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” will be scarier than his first outing as the comic book-inspired character. “This one, with directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, will go into the wonderful bliss of the nightmare imagination. I think it will be very entertaining.”

Check out the rest of Cage's thoughts about the film in the following interview.

Q. What new things were you able to add to “Ghost Rider” this time?

Nicolas Cage: When I was trying to think about how the Ghost Rider would move, I wanted to find something really weird, which would be like levitating in circles. We called it 'the compass' together, to mess with how he would attack his enemies. It was like trying to design a body language from another dimension that would hopefully scare you and entertain you.

Q. Were there any stunts that really stood out for you, that really pushed your personal limits?

Cage: All the wirework was very stimulating, but also very nauseating, literally. I was going around in circles, upside down, and I was really trying not to throw up because it kept spinning and spinning. It’s one of my favorite things that we all came up with together, so I’m glad it’s there. It was well worth it.

Q. Did you have any pressure to make this film lighter?

Cage: There’s a lot of humor to be found in sarcasm and darkness. You talk to any paramedic, they survive by developing a pretty off-kilter sense of humor. I think Blaze, with any luck, has that because he’s really dealing with the fact that his head goes on fire, for years now. In the first movie, he kept it at bay. He was more like an innocent goofball. In this movie, there’s been a little fiery tapdance on his head, for several years. I think it should change his personality quite a bit.

Q. You played a character who had escaped from hell in “Drive Angry.” Are there any similarities or differences between that and this version of “Ghost Rider”?

Cage: They’re totally different. In “Drive Angry,” I was playing a living dead man. Blaze is a living man who turns into a demon, so it’s a totally different kind of energy. A living dead man has to be a little bit more dead, whereas a living man who turns into a ghost can still be very alive.

Q. When you read comic books as a kid, it wasn’t always the coolest thing, but now you’re in a position in Hollywood to make those seemingly uncool things, cool for everybody. What’s it like to be in this moment in time, when all these characters you loved as a kid are being loved by the masses?

Cage: I actually had a vision of it when I was 9, that this was going to happen. It took a while because we didn’t have the technology to make them come to life so magnificently, as we do today. It was always so goofy, the stupid costumes of “Spider-Man” in the old movies in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and “Captain America.” But now, it’s become all the rage because there’s something in it for everybody. It’s perfect entertainment. It’s exciting for me. I love seeing all the movies happen.

Q. What comics do you read now? What are you passionate about?

Cage: I was into Planet Hulk. I thought that was pretty inspired stuff. I went back in time and looked at Batman vs. Predator. I just had to see who won that battle. There’s a lot of fun stuff. It’s always a good experience to go shopping in a local comic book shop.

Q. Who won that battle?

Cage: It was kind of a tie-breaker, but they usually are. I think Batman won, which was a bit of a stretch.

Brian Taylor: We’ve decided that Ghost Rider can kill all the other superheroes. Ghost Rider can beat Superman.

Cage: Because he has the penance stare, and everyone’s done something wrong. He will just look at you over and over and over and over again.

(Opening across the Philippines on February, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.)

VANESSA HUDGENS tempts fate in “JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND”

2012-01-24T05:34:00.000-08:00

The young star of the “High School Musical” films, Vanessa Hudgens doesn’t sing while on camera in New Line Cinema's action-adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” but makes up for it behind the scenes. “She’s always dancing,” co-star Josh Hutcherson points out.

“And singing,” Hudgens pipes in. The young actress describes her character, Kailani, as “very fun. She’s an island girl. She kind of gets sucked into this adventure against her will, but through Sean (Hutcherson) she opens up her heart because she’s really ruled by her head.”

The follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” takes moviegoers on a fun and fantastic new adventure to parts unknown, a place so remote it has lain hidden for centuries … and, when found, is almost impossible to escape. The film also stars Dwayne Johnson and Michael Caine.

Kailani is also the only young woman on the adventure, “So, it’s my job to look out for the boys. It’s awesome. I mean everybody’s so amazing. I really get along with the guys.”

Kailani is part of the father/daughter helicopter team who flew Sean and Hank (Johnson) to the island from nearby Palau, New Guinea, in a blinding hurricane that has destroyed the copter and left them all stranded together.

But Kailani's father, Gabato (Luis Guzman) is really just a doting father, striving to give her what she wants most: the means to go to college. Kailani, in turn, loves him dearly and appreciates his efforts but doesn’t actually expect their marginal enterprise to bring in the funds to finance that dream. Truth is, Dad isn’t much of a businessman, and Gabato’s Luxury Tours would likely not survive without her help.

Watching them interact is both touching and funny. “Vanessa flawlessly plays straight man to his craziness,” says producer Charlotte Huggins. “She never reacts to him, which is exactly what you would expect from someone who has lived her whole life with a man like this. She’s beyond reacting. He says something outrageous and then moves on to the next thought, and so does she. They were perfectly in tune.”

“Kailani is tough because she has to be,” says Hudgens. “She looks after her father. She’s also very outspoken, and, from the start, the one thing she’s been most outspoken about is how this job was a bad idea.”

And, mere minutes into their charter flight, it appears that she was right.

Not only did the helicopter accident destroy the group’s only means of transportation, it also seems to have destroyed any chance the instantly-smitten Sean hoped he had to catch Kailani’s eye. Instead, he catches only the Polynesian beauty’s ire as she vows to hold him personally responsible for this and all other calamities that lay ahead.

“Sean is a dreamer and Kailani is far more practical. He wants her to get into the spirit of this great quest but she’s just focused on the risks,” Hutcherson explains.

Having sized up the American teen before he stepped foot in the copter, Kailani is convinced he as wouldn’t have the slightest idea what her life is like and what her problems are. But as events unfold, she begins to wonder if she might have been mistaken, especially as they quite literally can’t avoid falling into each other’s arms with each surprise the island tosses up. “Embracing this experience and everything it offers means she’ll have to open her heart and Kailani has always been ruled by her head,” says Hudgens. “But she gets pulled into this incredible world and ends up finding more than she expected.”

Opening across the Philippines on Thursday, Feb. 2 in IMAX 3D, Digital 3D and regular theatres, “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

New actors pump fresh blood to “UNDERWORLD AWAKENING”

2012-01-24T05:13:00.000-08:00

Joining Kate Beckinsale in Columbia Pictures' supernatural action-thriller “Underworld Awakening” are new cast members India Eisley and Theo James who both play pivotal characters that could propel the popular franchise to greater heights.

“Underworld Awakening” brings a stunning new dimension to the epic battle between Vampires and Lycans, as the first film in the franchise to shoot in 3D. Beckinsale returns in her lead role as the vampire warrioress Selene, who escapes imprisonment to find herself in a world where humans have discovered the existence of both Vampire and Lycan clans, and are conducting an all-out war to eradicate both immortal species.

Newcomer India Eisley plays the teenaged Eve, whose life has been lived as a test subject for the biotech conglomerate Antigen that imprisoned her mother – none other than, Selene. Eisley, who takes on her first major film role in “Underworld Awakening,” captivated the filmmakers with her solemn precocity and otherworldly beauty. “India has an exotic quality to her,” says producer Gary Lucchesi. “She’s also completely believable as Kate’s daughter. She tested the first day of casting and we never topped her.”

In the film, Eve is discovered by Selene huddled in a damp underground hallway where she has taken shelter from a Lycan attack. “She’s spent her whole life at Antigen as kind of a lab rat,” says Eisley. “She broke out in her hybrid form, but she has no idea what to do because she’s never been outside. Once she gets out into the real world, it’s a complete shock.”

Eve is a bundle of contradictions, says the young actress, unaware of her powerful abilities, she’s frightened by everything she is experiencing for the first time. “Eve is both really tough and vulnerable,” Eisley says. “Like most teenage girls, she has extremes of emotion, but it’s enhanced. She has these conflicting impulses within her that she can’t control, so it goes from being very restrained to being completely animalistic.”

As a longtime fan of the franchise, Eisley applauds the changes that “Underworld Awakening” brings to the story. “It is really great how they’re re-introducing Kate and at the same time introducing new characters,” she notes. “They’ve interwoven all of the storylines seamlessly. Kate’s one of my favorite actresses and she’s just as lovely as I thought she would be. I just feel lucky to be working with her.”

Also new to the franchise is the Vampire David, played by Theo James. David has been searching for Selene, whose reputation has inspired him to want to fight back against human aggression. “For David, Selene’s a kind of legend,” says James. “She’s this super hot Vampire, but also hard as nails. When David hears she may be alive, nothing can stop him from trying to find her.”

David and his coven, which is led by his father Thomas, have taken shelter from ongoing human attacks below ground. But David is aching to take action. “The script is really strong,” says James. “We’ve got a mix of blood ties, family bonds and revenge, plus the genocide angle. I did a lot of work to make sure I knew exactly where my character was coming from, where he sat in the history of it.”

David is the first Vampire that Selene encounters at a moment when she fears there aren’t any left in the world. He takes her to his secret coven, where the remaining Vampires are hidden, but his father wants to turn Selene and Eve away. “To be fair, Selene has a reputation for killing Elders and causing all sorts of trouble,” says Beckinsale. “David becomes a champion of sorts for her. She’s never had anyone on her side before.”

Adding new young actors like Eisley and James opens up more possibilities for the franchise, says Lucchesi. “The story that does not feel complete at the end of the movie. You really feel that the franchise must go on and I think you’re going to see prominent roles for Eve and David in future Underworld films.”

Opening across the Philippines on Friday, Jan. 20 in IMAX 3D, Digital 3D and regular theaters, “Underworld Awakening” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.

JOSH HUTCHERSON explores “THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND” in “JOURNEY” sequel

2012-01-24T05:04:00.000-08:00

Actor-on-the-rise Josh Hutcherson (upcoming “The Hunger Games”) returns as young explorer Sean in New Line Cinema's “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” the follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

When the story opens, young Sean is definitely not where he wants to be. It’s been years since his father’s death, and his mother, Liz (Kristin Davis), has recently married Hank (Dwayne Johnson) and relocated the family to suburban Ohio. With no friends around, and a stepfather with whom he’s convinced he has nothing in common, Sean spends many solitary hours poring over his maps and Jules Verne novels and dreaming about undiscovered corners of the world that await him.

“He feels trapped,” says Hutcherson, who reprises a role that has matured in sync with his own life in the four years since “Journey to the Center of the Earth” first screened. “He’s ready to move on to bigger things, and he’s filled with curiosity about the world, which I completely understand. I think a lot of people do, even if they’re not necessarily interested in discovering lost islands. There’s just a driving need to be out there on your own, figuring things out and finding your own way.”

More specifically, Hutcherson emphasizes, “Sean doesn’t want any part of his step-dad. He thinks the guy has nothing to offer; he’s unhip, uncool and has no imagination.”

“Hank and Sean are at odds from the beginning, as one wants to connect and the other wants to distance himself,” explains Johnson. “Family is one of the most important thing to Hank, and his intention throughout the story is to make his family whole again.”

But as noble as Hank’s intentions are, Sean feels he’s to blame for everything wrong with his life right now. More importantly, he’s sure to be the immovable object standing between Sean and the exploration the young man considers his birthright.

That assumption will be tested sooner than Sean thinks when he receives a strange radio call one night. It’s an encrypted S.O.S. that he suspects may be from his grandfather, Alexander, who hasn’t been heard from since he set out to prove that the Mysterious Island in Jules Verne’s novel was fact and not fiction.

“Alexander is Sean’s idol. He’s pretty much always done whatever he wanted, and he’s always off on some crazy expedition,” says Hutcherson. “If Alexander is in trouble, Sean will do anything to reach him.”

Sean couldn’t be more thrilled and vindicated. But his euphoria at finding his grandfather is short-lived when he learns that getting off the island will be much harder than falling onto it, and that they have very little time in which to accomplish it. The ground beneath them is sinking. Fast. The entire land mass will be underwater in days, if not hours, and their slim chance of survival is entirely in their own hands.

Hutcherson was most recently seen in Lisa Cholodenko’s Academy Award®-nominated feature, “The Kids are All Right.” His additional film credits include “The Vampire’s Assistant,” opposite John C. Reilly and Salma Hayek; “Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D,” “Bridge To Terabithia”; “Firehouse Dog”; “RV”; “Little Manhattan”; “Zathura” and “The Polar Express.” Hutcherson won Young Artist Awards for Leading Young Actor for his roles in “Zathura” and “Bridge to Terabithia.”

Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 02 in IMAX 3D, Digital 3D and regular theatres, “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” is a New Line Cinema presentation, will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

DWAYNE "The Rock" JOHNSON journeys to “THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND”

2012-01-24T04:56:00.000-08:00

He has solidified himself as a global box office success with gross film revenues in excess of 2.1 billion dollars worldwide with such blockbusters as “Fast Five,” “The Rundown,” “The Scorpion King” and “The Mummy Returns.” Now, Dwayne Johnson stars in another potential megahit, New Line Cinema's 3D family adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.”

The film begins when seventeen-year-old Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson) receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist. Unable to stop him from tracking the signal to its source, Sean’s new stepfather, Hank (Johnson), joins the quest that will take them first to the South Pacific, and then to a place few people have ever seen. Or lived to tell about. It’s a place of stunning beauty, strange and threatening life forms, volcanoes, mountains of gold and more than one astonishing secret, in this follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

Johnson plays Hank, a Navy vet who runs his own construction company and is accustomed to tackling things head-on and fixing problems. But can’t quite figure out a way to fix the situation with his stepson, Sean. “Like a lot of teenagers—and I was no exception—Sean thinks he has all the answers,” Johnson says. “He’s experienced a lot of abandonment between the loss of his father and his grandfather’s travels, so he is naturally wary when this new father figure comes into his life. Hank and Sean are at odds from the beginning, as one wants to connect and the other wants to distance himself.”

Johnson continues, “Family is one of the most important thing to Hank, and his intention throughout the story is to make his family whole again.”

“Dwayne brings so much to every role,” notes director Brad Peyton. “With his million dollar fists and billion dollar smile, he could carry a movie just on his action chops alone but he also has impeccable comic timing and he’s endlessly charismatic. I wanted everything—the whole Dwayne Johnson experience—for this movie, and he brought it all. He even sings…who knew? And plays the ukulele.”

Its first four words are electrifying. THE ISLAND IS REAL.

Likewise, Hank will do anything to reach Sean, even if it means accompanying him to the South Sea on what he believes can only be a wild goose chase, feigning interest in the unlikely yarn about an island that history forgot, just to keep an eye on him. But days later, after a harrowing crash-landing in the most unbelievable place he’s ever seen, no one is more surprised than Hank.

While the island unites them in a single goal, it underscores the fact that their individual reasons for being there are widely different. “But it’s the developing relationship between Sean and Hank that anchors everything else and serves as our way into the story,” cites Peyton, who opted for a light touch in showing how these two ultimately find their way toward an understanding.

“Sometimes in the development of a script there’s the temptation to oversell the character beats and arcs,” producer Tripp Vinson offers. “But in the hands of talented actors like Dwayne and Josh you can allow those revelations to emerge through their performances.”

Opening in theatres beginning February 2012, “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” is a New Line Cinema presentation, will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

NAOMI WATTS & JUDI DENCH – The women of “J. EDGAR”

2012-01-23T18:31:00.000-08:00

Oscar honorees Naomi Watts and Judi Dench play the most important and influential women in the life of towering American historical figure J. Edgar Hoover, in Warner Bros.' controversial drama, “J. Edgar.” They portray Hoover's trusted secretary, Helen Gandy; and his stern mother, Annie Hoover.

A lifelong ally whom Hoover knew would never betray him was his secretary at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Helen Gandy. “Helen kind of ran the agency,” director Clint Eastwood contends. “If you ask the old-timers, whenever you wanted to know something, you went to see her. She had much more information than anyone else.”

“Helen’s commitment to Edgar never faltered,” says Watts. “I think she was initially impressed by him and found him clever and charismatic, but she was only interested in a career. She worked closely with him longer than anyone, through incredible changes in the world, and she remained steady and poised till then end.”

For the Australian actress, playing a deeply patriotic American in a film about one of the country’s most controversial figures was enlightening. “I knew nothing about my character, and very little more about Hoover, when I took the role. Not being a part of America’s history, and then not having lived through those times, made this a great learning experience for me.”

“Naomi did such a fantastic job,” producer Robert Lorenz states. “The role was an understated but important one in the film, and she really made the most out of every scene and elevated the character, which was fitting for the role that Helen Gandy played in Hoover’s life.”

One woman who was not content to stay in the background of her son’s life was Annie Hoover. A domineering force, she wielded great influence over him and served as his measure of a moral high ground. Hoover lived with her and turned to her for guidance at every stage of his life, until her death when he was 43.

The venerable Judi Dench brought her to life in such a way that “you were able to love her and fear her at the same time, and she never even raised her voice,” says producer Brian Grazer.

“She was really the kind of mother you don’t want around,” Dench comments. “She was very opinionated, and unbelievably possessive of Edgar, though she had three other children. I think she wanted not only the best for him, but beyond that, as if his accomplishments were a reflection on her. She reminded me a bit of Lady MacBeth. I think she wanted to be associated with the greatest man in the land. Edgar didn’t stand a chance, really.”

Despite both their long careers, this was the first opportunity Eastwood and Dench had to work together. The actress was thrilled to get the call. “He’s a legend,” she smiles, “so when he rang me up, my voice went up several octaves. I thought, ‘I’ve waited 75 years for this.’”

That sentiment went both ways. “Judi’s a terrific lady, I’ve always been such a great admirer of hers,” Eastwood affirms. “She was my only choice for this role, so I’m certainly glad she didn’t turn me down.”

Opening across the Philippines on Jan. 25, “J. Edgar” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

REDISCOVERING THE LOVE STORY IN “THE VOW”

2012-01-23T18:22:00.000-08:00

In Columbia Pictures' new, poignant romantic drama “The Vow,” Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo (Channing Tatum) are a young married couple, madly in love and living fulfilling lives as artists in Chicago. One snowy night, the two fall victim to a car accident. Leo survives intact, but a head trauma erases Paige’s entire memory of her relationship with her husband. When she comes out of her coma, Leo is a stranger to her.

Suddenly Leo finds himself in the painful position of rebooting the relationship he’s waited his whole life for, and win his wife's love all over again. Paige has reverted mentally to the young law student she was five years earlier, before she met Leo and became an artist. In seemingly an instant, she is no longer the wife Leo knew, and on top of that, she no longer recognizes her current life. She can’t fathom why she is estranged from her parents (Jessica Lange and Sam Neill), misses her more conservative wardrobe, and doesn’t understand why she would have dropped out of university and a promising career in law. Making matters worse, Paige thinks she's still engaged to charming businessman Jeremy (Scott Speedman), who still wants her, and remains reluctant to embrace Leo, with his less conventional lifestyle making music, as anyone she might have ever loved.

When Paige's memory recovery appears to be a hopeless cause, Leo begins to confront his worst fear—that he's lost the love of his life and his only family. Refusing to give up, he decides to start fresh and court Paige as if they've just met, with the hope that since they fell in love once, they can do it again. It’s a challenge that will test everything he’s ever believed about love, about being true to oneself, and about that sacred part of every marriage ceremony: the vow two people make to each other.

“The Vow” is directed by Michael Sucsy (HBO's “Grey Gardens”) from a screenplay by Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein and Jason Katims, story by Stuart Sender.

Everybody loves a good romance, but hasn’t every love story been told by this point in the history of cinema?

Spyglass Entertainment Co-Chairman Roger Birnbaum admits he’d grappled with this question for years. Then a news story crossed his desk: “I read an article about a couple who’d been in a car accident and the woman never recovered her memories of the man she loved.” Immediately, the unusual nature of the story spoke to him.

What happened to New Mexico residents Kim Carpenter and his wife Krickitt -- an initially tragic but ultimately uplifting saga of a man and woman who found each other again after a seemingly insurmountable obstacle – touched many lives when it was first reported. The Carpenters would eventually publish a book about their experience in 2000.

Spyglass producer Jonathan Glickman describes what interested them in the Carpenters’ story. “We got excited by the idea of telling a story of a relationship that was inspired by true events that had not yet been seen, but was also relatable to anyone because of the universal themes about the need to adapt to change for any relationship to last.”

Krickitt Carpenter, who has been happily married to Kim now for 18 years even though the period of memory she lost never returned, boils down what happened to them this way: “My husband is amazing. He did everything he could to win me back. Life is full of ups and downs and challenges, but you have to dig down and be the best that you can be.”

Honoring the emotional reality of such an extraordinary incident required coming up with an original story that had the right balance, explains Glickman, “Because the story is so emotional and gripping, we didn’t want to make it a melodrama, but something that could elevate itself to one of those classic love stories like `The Way We Were' or `Love Story.' The script needed to be accessible, with humor and a light touch throughout, so that we don’t take ourselves so seriously.”

“I just thought it sounded like an incredible premise for a film,” says director Michael Sucsy. “The fact that two people are already in love when the movie starts, and then they’re ripped apart, and then they have to find a way back to each other, that really touched me. The thing that hit me the most was the fact that this could happen to anybody at any time. A lot of time when we deal with memory loss, it’s about Alzheimer’s and growing old, but I thought this was a really universal way of being able to relate to the problem.”

ROONEY MARA, A Best Actress contender for “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO”

2012-01-23T18:13:00.000-08:00

She wowed audiences with her brief but memorable performance as the ex-girlfriend of Mark Zuckerberg, in the opening scene of 2010’s “The Social Network.” Now, fast-rising star Rooney Mara breaks away from the pack with her riveting portrayal of the titular role in Columbia Pictures' harrowing thriller “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” She's nominated for Best Actress at the Golden Globes, and considered a shoo-in for the same honor at the Academy Awards.

Director David Fincher's “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” kicks off the screen adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster Millennium Trilogy, the epic series of thrillers that have sold 65 million copies in 46 countries. First published in 2005, shortly after Larsson’s own death, the first novel in the series,The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo introduced readers to financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and avenging hacker Lisbeth Salander (played in the film by Daniel Craig and Mara, respectively).

As soon as production was in motion for “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” the search was on for the title character of Lisbeth Salander. The danger was that everyone who had read the book had already formed a personal picture of her in their minds. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Timesdescribed Lisbeth thus in her review:

"Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson’s fierce pixie of a heroine, is one of the most original characters to come along in a while: a gamin, Audrey Hepburn look-alike with tattoos and piercings, the take-no-prisoners attitude of Lara Croft and the cool, unsentimental intellect of Mr. Spock. She is the vulnerable victim turned vigilante; a willfully antisocial girl, once labeled mentally incompetent by the state’s social services, who has proved herself as incandescently proficient as any video game warrior.”

In adapting the character, Steven Zaillian aimed to capture all those contrasting shades of Salander’s persona, one that is heavily armored, yet vulnerable if any one dares to get that close. “She’s the kind of character who is the most fun to write,” Zaillian says. “There’s a kind of wish fulfillment to her in the way that she takes care of things, the way she will only put up with so much, but there are other sides to her as well. A big part of the power of the movie is Lisbeth Salander.”

Fincher now wanted to find all that in an actress, but more than anything he wanted someone who would be willing to walk to the edge of an already risky character and take a leap. That’s what he found in Rooney Mara, but it wasn’t straightforward.

The filmmakers conducted an exhaustive search for the role of Lisbeth. Fincher put her through a seemingly unending series of intensive auditions – in which he asked her to do everything from recite Swedish poetry to pose with motorcycles – to prove what she could do in the role.

“What endeared me to her during the audition process was exactly what I wanted from Lisbeth: she doesn’t quit. I wanted that person who was indomitable,” he says. “By the end of our casting process, I knew this was someone worth falling on the grenade for.”

He continues: “She started with so much of what we were looking for, what we needed. She’s a bit of a fringe-dweller in her real life. But more than that she was willing to do the work to understand this character. I said, ‘I don’t know if she can do it, but I know she will try like hell if we can just inspire her and support her and then cut her loose.’ And that’s what happened. She chopped her hair off, she learned to ride a motorcycle, she went to Sweden on her own and disappeared off the grid. And if you have someone willing to do all that, that’s everything. Piercings are piercings, but anyone could pull that part off.”

For Mara, the chain of auditions kept her on edge, helping to fuel the character even more. “I was ready and willing to do and show them anything to get the part,” she states. “But as it got closer, I was like, ‘What else do I have to show you guys? I’ve shown you everything. I need to either move on with my life, or let’s do this. I’m ready to just throw down, but make up your minds.’”

The months of performing and waiting culminated in an ultimatum. “David brought me into his office and started rambling about the part, going on and on about all the reasons someone shouldn’t want it – how it might change my life, and not necessarily for the better. Then he hands me his iPad and it has a press release on it saying I’ve been cast in the part. He told me that they planned to send it out that day and I had a half an hour to decide if I wanted them to or not.”

Mara didn’t hesitate. The character was already under her skin. “There’s never been a female character like Lisbeth, this sort of tiny, androgynous person who has so many different facets to her,” she says. “You’re so with her – and yet, at the same time, you question her because she’s not someone who always does things you agree with. To me, that was really interesting.”

She adds: “I think a lot of people relate to her, even if she is also strange to them, because most people at some point have felt like an outsider or like they are being held back by the powers that be.”

As soon as she accepted the role, Mara was in the gauntlet. “An hour after I told David yes, I was disassembling a computer, getting on a motorcycle and starting skateboard lessons. And literally five days later, I was in Stockholm,” she recalls. “There wasn’t really time to think about what it meant that I got the part, or how I felt about it. I just literally went into laser-focus mode.”

But she definitely wasn’t scared away by Fincher’s warnings. “He told me, ‘You’re going to have to go to Sweden and be alone and experience this girl’s life.’ He told me, ‘The movie is going to consume you. You’ll have to say goodbye for a time to your family and friends.’ But he didn’t really know me yet, then,” she explains. “He didn’t know that I’m actually a loner and that what he wanted didn’t scare me. It might have scared someone else, but not me.”

Eventually, she also radically transformed her entire appearance, cutting her long hair, undertaking numerous body piercings, and bleaching her eyebrows, which she says was the most shocking. Not only was it a hauntingly transgressive look, but also it opened up Lisbeth’s face, allowing the character’s mix of unsentimental intelligence and buried rage room to play out.

“Right before we did the bleaching, I was really together, I was ready for it, I was excited,” Mara recalls. “Then I looked in the mirror and I really freaked out. But I think the bleaching was one of the best things we did for the look of the character. It really put our own stamp on it.”

Another part of Mara’s stamp on Lisbeth was finding just the right way to reveal all her self-imposed emotional blockades. “David and I talked about the idea that there is no open wound with Lisbeth. She’s all scar tissue. She doesn’t cry, she rarely allows herself to really feel, but beneath the scars, the audience has to know the wounds are there,” she describes.

In the end, Mara says the experience of playing Lisbeth was everything she fought for in those months of trying to nab the role. “It’s the kind of part that comes around once in a lifetime,” she concludes. “But apart from that, the thing I’m most excited to take from the experience is that I feel more capable. I’ve learned so much and done so many things I never thought I could do.”

She concludes: “That’s my favorite thing about David, that he challenges everyone. That’s why his movies are so great. Because they challenge you and make you think about things you wouldn’t have – and I think people like to be challenged.”

Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 01, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

“GHOST RIDER” director BRIAN TAYLOR says sequel is a re-invention

2012-01-23T17:56:00.000-08:00

The directing team Neveldine/Taylor (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) – known for its edgy, gritty and kinetic action movies “Crank,” “Crank: High Voltage,” and “Gamer” – take on the supernatural action thriller “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance,” the highly anticipated sequel to the 2007 blockbuster “Ghost Rider” starring Nicolas Cage.

In the sequel, Johnny Blaze (Cage) -- still struggling with his curse as the devil’s bounty hunter – is hiding out in a remote part of Eastern Europe when he is recruited by a secret sect of the church to save a young boy (Fergus Riordan) from the devil (Ciaran Hinds). At first, Johnny is reluctant to embrace the power of the Ghost Rider, but it is the only way to protect the boy – and possibly rid himself of his curse forever.

In the following interview, Brian Taylor -- one half of the directing team -- talks about the film during a visit with journalists on location in Eastern Europe.

Question: How’s the shoot been going for you so far?

Brian Taylor: It’s been going unbelievably well. The cast we have on this movie is unbelievable, so every day, there are performances that make you walk away super-funked up about what you’re doing. The locations I mean are just unbelievable. This place Cappadocia in Turkey, it’s like the desert planet on Star Wars in real life. It’s crazy. I can’t believe nobody’s shot 50 movies there. We’re shooting in these 6,000 year old ruins and just tromping all over them like it’s a backlot. There’ll be like a thousand of year old statue and grips are like standing on the head when they’re setting lights.

Q: Was there one thing coming onto the project that was the most important thing for you to make it your own, make it feel fresh and original?

Taylor: It’s just that we wanted to really humanize it, and well, I think the main decision coming in that we wanted to differentiate this movie and make it alive and fresh. In the last movie, the title character was played by stunt guys, so the big thing we wanted coming in before anything else was the Ghost Rider needs to be played by Nicolas Cage, always, all the time. When he’s fighting, all the time, so 95% of the stuntwork, all the action, everything that is the “GR” is Nic and he’s playing it as a dual role, because the Ghost Rider is possessed by the spirit of Zarathos, it’s a different person, it’s not Johnny Blaze.

So he’s playing it as a dual role and a lot of the planning that went into the movie and preparation for his role is finding that character. What’s the language of this demon? What’s the language of this ancient god or whatever he is? We’ll found out what he is but that’s inhabiting this body. How does he move differently? And we nailed it and that’s what makes it so awesome, because in those scenes, they’re alive and every single frame you’re watching Ghost Rider, it’s gonna be the flaming skull, but you’re going to feel an actor, you’re going to feel a performance and you’re going to feel a character in all of those moments. So it brings the raw energy of the dialogue and all of that stuff into the action scenes, too.

Q: How beholden are you either to the comics or the first movie in terms of the look or story? The new motorcycle is very different and it’s not a big chopper like the comics, which is pretty outrageous.

Taylor: Well there’s been a million Ghost Rider comics. There’s been a lot of different versions of it and they’re all totally different. For me, it’s the full range of styles. The only books that we really were inspired by in the Ghost Rider canon were the Garth Ennis/Clayton Crain series, which is a much darker version of the character.

Q: So you’re almost creating your own version of it?

Taylor: Yeah, we wanted to just completely depart from the first movie and make it a whole thing. We’re picking up this character, whatever, five or six years later, and he’s in a much different place. He’s a much different guy. He’s in Europe, it’s a different bike. The physical transformation that happens to him has progressed where he doesn’t look the same, the skull looks different, everything looks different. It’s changed and progressed. Think of it like an illness and it’s progressed and this is in the final stages of that illness. It’s gonna feel a lot different from the first movie.

Q: Nic was saying that a lot of the things in here are very trippy, so I’m just curious if there are particular scenes that stand out as super-trippy to you?

Taylor: There’s a lot. Well this exorcism scene is going to be excellent. We shot half of it this morning and we shoot half of it at the end, but we’re really welcoming… you know there’s like two different versions of Nicolas Cage. There’s sort of mainstream Cage and there’s balls-to-the-wall Cage, and we’re definitely welcoming the demon. The performance we’re getting from Cage, it’s going to be one of those epic Nic Cage performances that people talk about.

Opening across the Philippines on February, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

KATE BECKINSALE BACK AS SELENE IN “UNDERWORLD AWAKENING”

2012-01-23T17:35:00.000-08:00

Fans of the first two Underworld films are sure to be thrilled by the return of actress Kate Beckinsale in the role of the fearsome Vampire huntress Selene, in Columbia Pictures' 3D action-thriller “Underworld Awakening.” “We really wanted to work with Kate again,” says producer Gary Lucchesi. “Sometimes the stars just align themselves perfectly and this is one of those times.”

Beckinsale admits she thought twice about slipping back into the familiar skintight black latex suit before accepting the part again. “But it was a life-changing role for me, so I feel very affectionate towards it. It’s exciting to be able to follow a character over such a long period of time. It’s rare to get that chance.”

Tom Rosenberg, Lakeshore Entertainment chairman and CEO, says he’s thrilled to have Beckinsale in the film. “She is Selene, and Selene is the heart and soul of Underworld. Right from that first scene in the first film, she embodied the perfect tone.”

On set, it was clear she had lost none of the edge that made Selene an iconic figure in Underworld lore. “Kate can switch into Selene like that,” says co-director Mårlind, snapping his fingers. “She can be having a laugh, but when action’s called, she has those guns up and she looks like she’s going to kill you. She has a highway into Selene that is fantastic. As a director, it’s marvelous to have someone who is so close to their character.”

Revisiting the character and mythology that helped launch her career as a bona fide movie star was great fun for the actress. “It was exciting to do this together with the people who created the original film in a new environment with a different set of problems for Selene,” she says. “We all wanted a really fresh take and I think we’ve achieved that.”

The most unsettling change for Selene is finding that she has a daughter. “Suddenly being presented with a child who’s almost fully grown is a shock, especially when the girl’s father is gone,” says Beckinsale. “It’s quite a lot to handle. I wouldn’t say Selene is suddenly soft and maternal, but she’s protective in a new and different sort of way.”

After a centuries-long lifetime of being answerable to no one, Selene is only slowly able to embrace her daughter, says co-writer J. Michael Straczynski. “It brings out another side of her,” he notes. “In the previous movies, she was primarily focused on battling the bad guys. She was fighting against them, not fighting for someone, as she is now.”

The child opens up the character of Selene to a host of new possibilities and allows the character some emotional moments unlike anything in the previous films. “For the first time, there is a certain amount of vulnerability in Selene,” says producer Richard Wright. “She has an interplay with Eve that is very un-Selene like. Selene is very cold and nothing gets under her skin. She loves no one, she’s a killing machine—and then she has a daughter.”

Eve’s presence adds a new dimension to an already unique storyline, observes Beckinsale. “There aren’t very many female-led franchises, that work without being deliberately titillating or objectifying the lead character. I think that’s one of the great things about Selene becoming a mother, with all the attendant conflicts.”

LEONARDO DiCAPRIO's stellar performance vies for Best Actor with “J. EDGAR”

2012-01-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

Coming off Christopher Nolan's explosive blockbuster “Inception,” Leonardo DiCaprio now makes his first-ever Clint Eastwood-directed film with Warner Bros.' controversial drama “J. Edgar.” For his riveting portrayal of J. Edgar Hoover, DiCaprio has been nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a favorite to earn the same honor at the Oscars.

A towering figure in American history, J. Edgar Hoover devoted himself to public service, essentially putting aside any personal relationships he might have wanted to have for what he considered to be the greater good. As one who served to gain authority as well as the public’s adoration, he saw his opportunity to achieve both by positioning himself as a supreme crime-fighting figure, a hero of the populace.

“Hoover was incredibly ambitious as a young man,” says DiCaprio, who took on the character that would take him from a man in his twenties to one at 77. “He was highly motivated to succeed in Washington, primarily due to his mother’s expectations of him. His father had failed to become a major political figure, and Annie Hoover wanted her son to carry the family name to great fame and fortune, with little or no regard for what else Edgar might have needed for himself. He became this stoic, bulldog enforcer who had to keep his personal life very personal. He became all about secrets.”

With so little known about the man’s inner life, DiCaprio did vast amounts of research in order to create a fully realized Hoover on screen. “It was a terrific challenge to breathe life into this person, because he was such a mystery,” he says. “I did find that he was very manipulative and very charming; he could charm anyone in the room but at the same time intimidate them. He liked the spotlight, but he concentrated so much on work that it defined much of who he was, his morals, the decisions that he made on really every level. I hesitate to use the word priest because J. Edgar Hoover was no priest, but he certainly looked at the FBI as his church.”

“Leo is a total professional, he comes completely prepared,” Eastwood says. “From the start, I could see he’d done all of his homework, thought a lot about what he had to do, and was interested in my take on things. I was really impressed by his focus, and I think it translated into the character.”

The actor was thrilled to be working with the legendary director. “Clint’s process is impeccable because he trusts his own instincts, he trusts his gut. There’s a beautiful simplicity to the way he works; he has one vision, which made it easier to do my job. He’s really like a corner man. It was like going into the ring and having your coach there, backing you up. And I think that confidence and support are evident on the screen.”

DiCaprio concludes, “I think what allowed me to really get a real sense of Hoover I was portraying was that, at its heart, ours is a story about the person inside. Lots of stories have been told about the man, but I feel that his relationships with [close friend] Clyde Tolson, [secretary] Helen Gandy and his mother really forged who he was for the entirety of his life and career. That was what compelled me to go to work every day, and it’s what I hope will intrigue people as they watch the movie.”

Opening across the Philippines on Jan. 25, “J. Edgar” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

CHANNING TATUM & RACHEL MCADAMS lead cast for heart-breaking love story THE VOW

2012-01-19T20:19:00.000-08:00

Columbia Pictures has just released the international posters of its upcoming romantic drama “The Vow” starring Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams.

"The Vow” is the real-life story of a newlywed New Mexico couple who were struck by tragedy shortly after their marriage. A car crash puts the wife (McAdams) in a coma, where she is cared for by her devoted husband (Tatum). When she comes to, without any memory of her husband or their marriage, the husband must woo her and ultimately win her heart once again.

Directed by Michael Sucsy, “The Vow” is written by Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein and Jason Katims, with story by Stuart Sender. The film also stars Sam Neill, Scott Speedman and Jessica Lange.

Opening across the Philippines in February 2012, “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.

SPARTACUS 'VENGEANCE' | The Women of Spartacus video

2012-01-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

The video The Women of Spartacus for the second season of Spartacus: Blood and Sand entitled Spartacus: Vengeance is about the female heroines and villains in the upcoming season. They include: “Lucy Lawless (Lucretia), Viva Bianca (Ilithyia), Katrina Law (Mira), and Hanna Mangan Lawrence (Seppia). The Women of Spartacus goes into how ”the women of Spartacus: Vengeance shape this season”.

Watching Lucretia and Ilithyia fight, Ilithyia about to kill Lucretia, is a confrontation that has been brewing since the middle of the first season of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. I am looking forward to what Seppia brings to the table as well.

About the revolt Spartacus leads, The Third Servile War:

The Third Servile War (73-71 BC), also called the Gladiator War and The War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last of a series of unrelated and unsuccessful slave rebellions against the Roman Republic, known collectively as the Roman Servile Wars. The Third Servile War was the only one to directly threaten the Roman heartland of Italy and was doubly alarming to the Roman people due to the repeated successes of the rapidly growing band of rebel slaves against the Roman army between 73 and 71 BC.

Spartacus: Vengeance will also star Liam McIntyre, Manu Bennett, Peter Mensah, Dustin Clare, Gareth Williams, Nick E. Tarabay, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and John Hannah.

Watch The Women of Spartacus video below and leave your thoughts on it in the comments section. For more Spartacus: Vengeance will air on Starz January 27, 2012.

Source: Film Book