Ben Affleck’s critically acclaimed ‘Argo’ came in a close second with a $20.1 million debut. By Ryan J. Downey Liam Neeson in “Taken 2” Photo: M6 Films
A solid performance by Liam Neeson does not elevate the film beyond your standard-issue sequel, critics say. By Amy Wilkinson Liam Neeson in “Taken 2” Photo: Fox
I’ll give Liam Neeson this much. He’s even braver in real life than the hard asses he plays in the movies. The New York Daily News reports that Neeson, 60, raised $20,000 for breast cancer research on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Monday by stripping down to a pair of pink bikini briefs and entering a dunk tank on the talk show. “If I take this off, does the $10,000 become $20,000?” Neeson asked DeGeneres as he doffed the pink robe he was wearing to reveal the similarly hued Speedo. “We get fined if you take those off,” the talk-show host said pointing to his briefs. After taking the hot seat, he was promptly doused with with a huge tub of water when an audience nailed the tank target. Kudos to Neeson for sucking it up for charity, but, at the risk of sounding like a real a-hole, I’m going to suggest that he didn’t suck it up enough. Judging from the rolls of belly fat visible in the video, I think that Neeson should either adopt a high-protein diet and Hugh Jackman’s personal trainer or begin employing what I am calling “The Willis Technique” since seeing Looper . Watching Rian Johnson’s impressive but depressing time-travel film, I noticed that Willis, who looks more fat and happy than John McLean in the film — that’s a Die Hard joke — tended to be well-covered in his bedroom cuddle scenes with Qing Xu. I’m sure there’s a very good reason that Willis favored chaste white t-shirts and other cover-ups while spooning with the love of his life, but I have to wonder if some bright person on that set, maybe Bruce himself, realized that the simple undergarment would hide a multitude of fleshy sins that could very well have made Johnson’s plausible dystopian future unbearable. Check out the video below and tell me you don’t think the Willis Technique should not become de rigueur among actors of a certain age. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Nadya Suleman and her brood finally have a new place to live. No really. Sunday, Octomom packed up her 14 kids to a new 5,000-square-foot home in Palmdale, Calif. Goodbye, foreclosure, hello new rental property with indoor plumbing. It’s a done deal now. Thanks to the Octomom porn proceeds, she should be able to make the $2500/month rent, even with more than a dozen mouths to feed. Nadya Suleman was originally set to rent a different house in Palmdale , but pulled out of the deal because she felt the landlord was jerking her around. Prior to that, landlords were rejecting her left and right. No word if the new place has a pool that would easily enable more smoking hot Nadya Suleman bikini photos like the one above. One can only hope, people.
We are taken with Taken 2 star Liam Neeson. The action star appeared on Ellen yesterday and got nearly naked, stripping down to his pink skivvies in the name of a very important cause: breast cancer research. On the program, a cancer-surviving audience member was chosen to try and nail a target with a ball, dropping a bucket of water down on the actor’s head and dropping $20,000 into the hands of a charity. Watch the sexy, helpful events unfold now: Liam Neeson Strips!
In 2008’s B-movie hit Taken , Liam Neeson cracked skulls across Europe in search of his kidnapped daughter. In October’s Taken 2 , director Olivier Megaton and producer/co-writer Luc Besson set out to achieve something rare — An actual continuation of story! Multi-film character development! Unexpected moral examinations! — a proper sequel, in other words, as evidenced by the first trailer viewable after the jump. The concept for Taken 2 was already promising on paper: The daughter Neeson saved in the first movie (Maggie Grace) must now help save her parents from the vengeance-seeking gangster father (Rade Šerbedžija) of the baddies Neeson murdered in his fatherly rage. The film’s new trailer delivers on this front, demonstrating what few sequels or reboots or re-jiggered whatchamacalits these days bother to do properly: Expand on their predecessors in new and interesting ways. Neeson’s ex-operative Bryan Mills seems to be the same guy he was in Taken , but the plot turns his righteous actions in the first film on their head; another father out there is mourning, and wants bloody revenge. Who’s to say Šerbedžija’s paternal pain doesn’t warrant its own reckoning? Is this a mindless action sequel or a meditation on the cycle of vengeance and a parent’s drive to protect their children at any moral cost? Meanwhile, Grace (whom Besson attempted to turn into an action star earlier this year in the Guy Pearce vehicle Lockout ) has the opportunity to morph her victimized daughter character into a heroine. Look at the way she leaps over rooftops like a lady Jason Bourne! Turning Kim into an action hero not only makes up for how wimpy and naive she seemed (a perception magnified by my residual resentment of Grace’s turn as the useless Shannon on LOST , I’ll admit), it could turn Taken into a bona fide franchise instead of, as too many hit films become, a series of diminishing, direct-to-DVD quality returns featuring declining marquee actors/C-listers/WWE stars. And we haven’t even seen the fighting potential of ex-wife (and now-kidnap victim) Lenore, though the lethal potential of Famke Janssen’s thighs is a historically documented cinematic fact. Taken 2 is set for release on October 5. Let’s hope it lives up to the potential. Thoughts?
In 2008’s B-movie hit Taken , Liam Neeson cracked skulls across Europe in search of his kidnapped daughter. In October’s Taken 2 , director Olivier Megaton and producer/co-writer Luc Besson set out to achieve something rare — An actual continuation of story! Multi-film character development! Unexpected moral examinations! — a proper sequel, in other words, as evidenced by the first trailer viewable after the jump. The concept for Taken 2 was already promising on paper: The daughter Neeson saved in the first movie (Maggie Grace) must now help save her parents from the vengeance-seeking gangster father (Rade Šerbedžija) of the baddies Neeson murdered in his fatherly rage. The film’s new trailer delivers on this front, demonstrating what few sequels or reboots or re-jiggered whatchamacalits these days bother to do properly: Expand on their predecessors in new and interesting ways. Neeson’s ex-operative Bryan Mills seems to be the same guy he was in Taken , but the plot turns his righteous actions in the first film on their head; another father out there is mourning, and wants bloody revenge. Who’s to say Šerbedžija’s paternal pain doesn’t warrant its own reckoning? Is this a mindless action sequel or a meditation on the cycle of vengeance and a parent’s drive to protect their children at any moral cost? Meanwhile, Grace (whom Besson attempted to turn into an action star earlier this year in the Guy Pearce vehicle Lockout ) has the opportunity to morph her victimized daughter character into a heroine. Look at the way she leaps over rooftops like a lady Jason Bourne! Turning Kim into an action hero not only makes up for how wimpy and naive she seemed (a perception magnified by my residual resentment of Grace’s turn as the useless Shannon on LOST , I’ll admit), it could turn Taken into a bona fide franchise instead of, as too many hit films become, a series of diminishing, direct-to-DVD quality returns featuring declining marquee actors/C-listers/WWE stars. And we haven’t even seen the fighting potential of ex-wife (and now-kidnap victim) Lenore, though the lethal potential of Famke Janssen’s thighs is a historically documented cinematic fact. Taken 2 is set for release on October 5. Let’s hope it lives up to the potential. Thoughts?
‘I got more criticism about my hair than Jennifer Aniston did when she started ‘Friends,’ ‘ the ‘Wrath of the Titans’ star quips to MTV News. By Kevin P. Sullivan Sam Worthington in “Wrath of the Titans” Photo: Warner Bros. When previews began to play for “Wrath of the Titans,” the follow-up to 2010’s “Clash of the Titans,” the element of the trailer that got the biggest reaction wasn’t the mythological beasts or the battling gods, but the longer locks on star Sam Worthington’s head. Gone was Perseus’ anachronistic buzz cut from the original — a nitpicking problem for some who saw “Clash” — and in its stead was Worthington’s naturally curly hair. “I got more criticism about my hair than Jennifer Aniston did when she started ‘Friends,’ ” Worthington quipped to MTV News. With so much of the attention leading into the film’s premiere focused squarely on Worthington’s head, the actor told MTV News he isn’t too worried about those people’s opinions. “My brain goes, ‘If that’s the only thing you’re going to be focusing on, maybe you should get out more,’ ” Worthington said. Liam Neeson, Worthington’s co-star, offered some kind words about the change in hairdo. “His hair was good,” Neeson said. “The hair was good,” Worthington agreed. Within the fictional realm of “Wrath of the Titans,” the change in hairstyle makes sense for its own reasons. “The story jumps 10 years,” Neeson said. The sequel picks up a decade after the end of “Clash of the Titans.” Perseus is now a father and recent widower, and it isn’t long before his deadbeat dad Zeus comes a-callin’, asking for help once more. Still, Worthington continued to make light of the hairy discussion, suggesting that if the franchise were to continue, his hair options have no bounds. “It took Perseus 10 years. If we did another one, I’d just go longer. I’ll just keep going,” he said. “By the time you get to ‘Wrath of the Titans 10,’ I’ll look like Cousin Itt.” “And each hair is a demigod,” Neeson added. “Think about that.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Wrath of the Titans.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Wrath Of The Titans’
Film shows what happens when an oil-drilling team goes missing, and no one comes looking for them. By Kevin P. Sullivan Liam Neeson in “The Grey” Photo: Open Road Films In most movies where the main characters find themselves stranded after a shipwreck or a plane crash, the survivors take solace in the fact that someone must be looking for them. “The Grey” isn’t like most movies. In the new film, which hits theaters Friday, Liam Neeson plays a member of an oil-drilling team that gets into a plane crash somewhere near the Arctic Circle during their journey home. Many die in the incident, and the remaining members soon realize that no one is coming for them. Unless you count the wolves. Neeson told MTV News that the rougher edges of the characters in “The Grey” are what make the film something new and resonant. “They’re definitely flotsam and jetsam of society. One of them says after the mishap with the airplane that ‘Nobody’s going to care about us,’ ” Neeson said. “Nobody’s going to send out reconnaissance planes to try and find these guys because who cares? You know?” During the course of the film, one of the characters makes reference to “Alive,” the Ethan Hawke film about a rugby team stranded in the Andes. Neeson’s co-star Frank Grillo described how their film and co-writer/director Joe Carnahan took a different road. “The element of survival is different because these are just much different men, as opposed to being civilized,” he said. “They’re not real civilized guys, and I think that’s what Joe [Carnahan] tries to show you in the beginning of the film.” Even if the realization that no one will look for these men is devastating, Neeson believes that’s ultimately what keeps the characters going. “It’s from that sadness that they realize who they are and what they are and how they’re just a speck of dust in society,” Neeson said. “But that somehow empowers them to continue on with this crazy journey for freedom and solace and to get out of this predicament. It actually gives them strength, the fact that they’re nondescript.” Will you see “The Grey” this weekend? Leave your comment below!
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