Could this one be a new kiddie classic? “The LEGO® Movie,” the first-ever, full-length theatrical LEGO® adventure, from Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures, stars Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie and Charlie Day, with Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman. The stars came out in force for the family flick, opening today (February 7) in theaters everywhere. The original 3D computer animated story follows Emmet, an ordinary, rules-following, perfectly average LEGO minifigure who is mistakenly identified as the most extraordinary person and the key to saving the world. He is drafted into a fellowship of strangers on an epic quest to stop an evil tyrant, a journey for which Emmet is hopelessly and hilariously under-prepared. Check out the trailer: The Lego Movie opens in theaters nationwide today. Will you and the kiddies be watching? Peep more pics from the premiere below:
Celebrity Atheists God is good. All the time. And all the time, God is good. However, some of these celebrities don’t feel the same way. Atheism is a thing and these celebrities believe in not believing. Take a look and see what they believe in. Continue reading →
Celebrity Atheists God is good. All the time. And all the time, God is good. However, some of these celebrities don’t feel the same way. Atheism is a thing and these celebrities believe in not believing. Take a look and see what they believe in. Continue reading →
Gotta hand it to Morgan Freeman on this one. After falling asleep during a live interview with a Seattle TV station and leaving Now You See Me co-star Michael Caine to field the questions, the snooze-fest went viral. But the self-aware actor later told People in a statement, “I wasn’t actually sleepin. I’m a beta tester for Google Eyelids. I was merely updating my Facebook page!” Morgan Freeman Falls Asleep in TV Interview About halfway through the interview about the film, which opens May 31, the 75-year-old Freeman shut his eyes as clips from the movie were shown. When the cameras returned to the legendary pair, his head was down and his eyes were shut for a minute at least while Caine continued the interview. Who knew Morgan was so high tech.
As mediocre as Identity Thief is, it didn’t cool my appreciation for Jason Bateman . For one thing, his work on Arrested Development was Sofa King good that he’d have to suck for a long time to lose me. For another, I don’t think we’ve seen the full extent of this guy’s talent, and, in GQ’s April-issue Q&A with Bateman, the actor lets drop that, in addition to a fruitful career as a director, he’d like to have a New York-based talk show down the road. Here’s what he tells GQ writer Brendan Vaughan: GQ: Jeffrey Tambor [who plays George Bluth in Arrested Development ] once compared you to Johnny Carson in the way that you play the straight man but with this dark center . When I read that, it occurred to me that you might be a good talk-show host. Have you ever thought about that? Jason Bateman: That’s interesting, I was just talking about that. Without getting too specific about it, because I can’t, I’ve thought seriously about it as recently as last year. Having just come back from doing a week of talk shows last week [to promote Identity Thief ], I was talking to Amanda about, in twenty years—when the girls go to college and we can finally move to New York, which is what I’ve been wanting to do forever—if television will have me, I would love to do that. Regis retired at what, 80? So in twenty years I’ll be 64. To host a talk show then, that would be a fun way to do the last bit. I like that idea. Bateman is quick-witted and outrageous — when Vaughan requests Hazelnut-flavored Coffee-Mate in his cup of joe, the actor tells him, “I think your vagina’s bleeding” — he’s thoughtful and, as an actor, he’s able to easily shift from funny to serious without grinding his gears. He’s also that rare child performer who carved out a successful second act for himself in adulthood, and that tells me he’ll be great at interviewing celebrities because he understands the brutality of show business. If he’s serious, he’d make a fine talk-show host some day, and NBC will probably be looking for one once it burns through all the talent it currently has. In the meantime, Bateman is working on his directorial debut, Bad Words , and when Vaughan asks him how he sees his career evolving as a hyphenate, he replies: “As opposed to Ron Howard’s career, which is exclusively directing and producing, no acting, and like [Jon] Favreau’s career and Pete Berg’s career, where it’s mostly directing—I think, more realistically, I’d like it to be more like George Clooney’s career or Ben Stiller’s career or Ben Affleck’s career as far as splitting the time between acting and directing. I’m so… I just vibrate at how excited I am about the complexity of the process, of making a fake world for an audience. It’s not a God complex, but that’s what directors are doing: They’re creating a fake world, and it is four-walled. It’s 360 degrees. When a movie is great, you don’t notice the effort. It is a real world that you’ve just watched. There’s no better job in the world than directing a film. I’m convinced of it.” Who’s bleeding now, Mr. Bateman? Photo credits: Peggy Sirota/ GQ [ GQ ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
A North Korean terrorist may be responsible for taking the president hostage, but it’s Bulgarian-made CGI that does the most damage in Antoine Fuqua’s intense, ugly, White-House-under-siege actioner Olympus Has Fallen . Cut past the pic’s superficial patriotism, and the message is ironically clear: Never outsource your visual effects when a domestic shop will do. Courageously representing the human element in this mostly digital assault on American soil, Gerard Butler holds his own as a one-man-army. Millennium was wise to push this grim act-of-war movie out three months ahead of Columbia’s like-minded White House Down . In June, auds will see how Roland Emmerich , whose Independence Day gleefully made things go boom at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., handles the task today. For the moment, the post-9/11 memory of real attacks on American targets still hits a bit too close to home. And though Hollywood’s jaunty disaster-movie days may have passed, this lower-budget entry comes with the satisfaction of evening the score before end credits roll. Olympus Has Fallen helmer Fuqua, who’s known for bringing an unflinching toughness to inner cities ( Training Day ) and ancient history ( King Arthur ), sticks to the Die Hard model here, minus most of the tossed-off one-liners. In ex-Special Forces pro Mike Banning, Butler presents a gritty but humorless hero who cusses, bleeds and occasionally pauses to remove shards of glass from his wounds. To raise the personal stakes, Creighton Rothenberger’s script opens with a prologue in which Banning saves the life of President Benjamin Asher ( Aaron Eckhart , who looks the part of a Wall St.-friendly commander in chief), but fails to protect the First Lady ( Ashley Judd ) — a tragedy that leaves the redemption-seeking secret service agent reassigned to desk duty. Banning’s chance to square the books with Asher arrives when heavily armed guerillas swarm the White House, led by the undercover Kang ( Die Another Day ’s Rick Yune). While a massive CG warplane flies low over D.C., gunning down pedestrians and blasting the top off the Washington Monument, turncoat Forbes ( Dylan McDermott ) helps Kang and his men take the president and his top staffers (including Melissa Leo’s unyielding Secretary of Defense) captive in the White House’s underground safe room. Hokey glimpses of tourists attempting to outrun blocks of falling granite make the lo-fi effects of an earlier era look realistic by comparison. As pedestrians run for cover or die in the crossfire, Banning makes his way into the fray, searching for the president’s missing son (Finley Jacobson) before worrying about the kidnapped world leaders. With Asher incapacitated and his veep brutally executed before the eyes of the military’s top brass, the shot-calling role falls to the Speaker of the House, played by Morgan Freeman , an actor with experience at holding the reins of power, having occupied the Oval Office in Deep Impact . Freeman demonstrates due gravitas, steeling his nerves with a strong cup of coffee while the small army of character actors around him hang their heads in desperation. Fuqua’s widescreen approach — which offers ample room for all that vidgame-quality CG — relishes such cornball iconography, featuring shots of the American flag pierced with bullets, or tumbling slowly to the ground against a flame-red sunset, while Trevor Morris’ drum-corps score keeps things sounding duly martial. Banning earns well-deserved cheers for using a heavy bust of Lincoln’s head to bust in a baddie’s noggin. Though not as exciting as the White House-storming seventh season of 24 , the high-concept project alternates between brawny action movie and crudely considered “what if” scenario. Despite the pic’s one-on-many focus, Fuqua approaches it as a full-blown war movie, incorporating the military’s latest toys into large-scale shootouts between squads of anonymous opponents. Sadly, those crude Bulgarian-rendered effects aren’t much more convincing than the recent White-House-in-the-crosshairs propaganda videos pouring out of North Korea. Butler brings things back to a more practical level, as his butt-kicking hero shoots, stabs and punches his way through to the commander-in-distress, only to face off against a foreign-rigged computer program in the final scene. Figures. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Only Morgan Freeman, Cicely Tyson and God know what the future holds because they created everything and know all, but it’s always fun to predict the unknown. We doubt some of these predictions will happen (this year), but if they do, remember where you saw them first. Here are our bold predictions for 2013. Take a look.
It sounded semi-believable as celebrity gossip stories go, given the time period and the people involved, but chalk this up to yet another hoax / hacking job: Chris Federline never said he banged and impregnated Britney Spears. According to The Smoking Gun , Kevin Federline’s brother did NOT file any lawsuit against his former pop star sister-in-law, as was reported widely last week. The whole story, in actuality, is a hoax perpetrated by an ex-convict who was recently busted for violating his probation on a conspiracy and wire fraud conviction. Amazingly, the same clown filed a bogus lawsuit against Justin Bieber this year for stealing his credit card and using it to pay for a “penis enlargement.” Jonathan Lee Riches has also been tied to a hoax involving the CT shooting, though he was not behind the Newtown scam arrest made by the FBI earlier this week. Why he had it out for Britney and Chris Federline, we have no idea. But it’s good to know Spears never shagged K-Fed’s own brother while they were married (probably). Chris also claimed, as per the original story, that he was the father of Brit’s oldest son Sean Preston. Looks like Kevin’s still on the hook for that one. In other recent THG hoax news: This eagle snatching a baby was fake Shakira didn’t actually give birth last week Morgan Freeman did not blame the media for the Newtown shooting
