The first Europa Report trailer is here! The film takes a very realistic approach to the sci-fi/thriller genre, with an almost cinéma vérité quality. Europa Report Trailer When an ocean is discovered under the ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa, a team of astronauts is sent to explore it. Looking for single-celled organisms, the crew finds something much more profound. Sebastian Cordero directs the film, with the script written by Philip Gelatt. Sharlto Copley, Michael Nyqvist, Christian Camargo, Embeth Davidtz, Dan Fogler, Anamaria Marinca, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Karolina Wydra, and Daniel Wu star. Europa Report premieres on VOD July 27, and will come to theaters August 2.
The very first Elysium trailer is here! And finally gives us an idea of what the heck Matt Damon’s giant exoskeleton is for. Take a look: Elysium Trailer The film takes place in a dystopian future where an overpopulated and desecrated Earth has been abandoned by the wealthy in favor of an idyllic floating city called Elysium. Damon plays Max Coburn, a man on Earth who desperately needs to get to Elysium to cure a fatal illness. Now, as for that exoskeleton: apparently, it is used to “override” the system at Elysium and allow Coburn access. Seems like a key card could have done that trick, but… Damon is joined by Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Wagner Moura, Alice Braga, and Diego Luna. Elysium will hit theaters August 9.
Also in Tuesday morning’s round-up of news briefs: Shameless star Emmy Rossum set for Hilary Swank project; Colin Firth is set for a charity gala at the upcoming Dubai International Film Festival; And Oscar submissions for Best Animated Feature are almost due. Oscars: Animated Feature Film Submissions Due November 1st Filmmaker submissions are due in the Animated Feature category for the 85th Academy Awards. Forms, supporting material etc. must be turned into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by 5pm PT Thursday, November 1st. Rules and submission forms are available at their website . Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards will take place January 10th at 5:30am PT. Around the ‘net… Tony Scott Autopsy Reveals Only ‘Therapeutic’ Levels of Drugs L.A. Coroners office said director Tony Scott had a “”therapeutic level of Mirtazipine (Remeron) which is an anti-depressant and zopiclone (Lunesta), a sleep-aid” in his system the day he died on August 19th. The 68 year-old director of Top Gun died from injuries when he jumped from an L.A. harbor bridge. Earlier speculation of possible brain cancer were not detected, Deadline reports . Skyfall Set for Royal Roll-out Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will attend the world premiere in London of the latest Bond installment. Daniel Craig, Judi Dench and Javier Bardem will attend the screening at the Royal Albert Hall. Proceeds from Tuesday’s royal gala are going to charities that help members of Britain’s intelligence services. Skyfall is the 23rd official Bond film and Craig’s third turn, A.P. reports . Colin Firth to Join Charity Gala at Dubai Film Festival Firth and his wife Livia as well as Kristin Davis and Rooney Mara will attend a charity event for charity Oxfam at the upcoming Dubai International Film Festival. All proceeds from the black tie gala dinner and auction featuring one-of-a-kind prizes donated by celebrity Oxfam partners will go to the UAE-based philanthropic organization Dubai Cares and Oxfam, THR reports . Emmy Rossum Eyes Hilary Swank Starrer, You’re Not You Rossum, who stars in Showtime’s Shameless is in talks to star opposite Hilary Swank in the drama. She would play a self-absorbed college student whose life is changed when she takes a job caring for a woman (Swank) with Lou Gehrig’s disease, THR reports .
The Jolie-Pitt brood appear to have caught the acting bug from their folks. Last August, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie ‘s four-year-old daughter was cast as the young Princess Aurora in Maleficent , starring her superstar mother in the title role. Now, two siblings are set to join the production, and with a 2014 release date, could there be room for more? Jolie and Pitt’s son Pax, 8, and daughter Zahara, 7, are also set to appear in the big screen spin on the Sleeping Beauty tale, Us Weekly reports, adding that their parts will be small and they will not have speaking roles. Four year-old Vivienne joined the Maleficent cast as the young Princess Aurora. She eventually grows up to be the enemy to the evil Maleficent. Walt Disney Productions confirmed the addition in August. Daughter Shiloh, 6, meanwhile also nearly appeared in the movie, but she was apparently not in the mood during the day her part was supposed to shoot. She made an appearance in her dad’s feature The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008. Maleficent , directed by Robert Stromberg ( Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ), also stars Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Miranda Richardson, Juno Temple and Lesley Manville. It is slated for a 3-D release in March, 2014. The pic retells the Sleeping Beauty story from the POV of villainess Maleficent. Fourteen year-old Fanning will play the grown-up Princess Aurora and gave a shout-out to Jolie in a recent E! News interview. “She’s so elegant. She looks just amazing as Maleficent, all her costumes and her makeup. You know, it’s like an elegant scary—sort of spooky. But you get used to it…It’s perfect.” [ Sources: Huffington Post , Yahoo , Us Weekly, E! ]
“Katy tells us that it’s okay to stand out,” one of pneumatic pop star Katy Perry’s disciples intones at the beginning of Katy Perry: Part of Me 3D , a shiny, brightly colored piece of fan candy that follows the performer as she embarks on her 2011 world tour. Also the Word of Katy: “How could you ever be too cartoon-y?” The latter, exclaimed as Perry’s being fitted into one of her Jetsons concession girl costumes, is a baldly rhetorical question. Somewhere in between those two lines of pop scripture lies the explanation for the only female artist to eke five number-one hits from a single album, her 2010 record Teenage Dream . Do we still talk in terms of albums? The record-keepers do, anyway, still bound by the standards of the past. And Perry, the daughter of born-again evangelists (her father’s aging rock god outfit makes more sense upon learning that he used to cook up LSD; no trace of her mother’s romantic history with Jimi Hendrix remains), likes to play with a retro look. But she is an unmistakably modern creation, as the brand-conscious Part of Me confirms, beginning with the webcam testimonials from fans about the realness and relatability of their heroine that segue to an 18-year-old Katy earnestly confiding into her own laptop. Except the teenage Katy, as though guided by shivering foreknowledge of this exact moment, expresses her desire to be a leader, and her doubts about taking on “all those responsibilities.” Madonna was 25 when Dick Clark got her to blurt out her plan “to rule the world.” Perry has cited pop music’s great survivor as an influence, but I couldn’t watch Part of Me without thinking of how thinly it compares to Madonna: Truth or Dare , a backstage concert film that documents the singer at the peak of world domination. Madonna the road-mother, Madonna the hardass, Madonna the cut-up, Madonna the boyfriend emasculator, Madonna the “even when I feel like shit they love me” fan mocker, Madonna the incandescent performer who terrifies her followers as often as she transfixes them. I became a Madonna fan as a little girl; I could still dance the entire Blonde Ambition tour if I had to, like, save the world. Not that I’ve envisioned such a scenario. But then as now I would have chewed through my own wrist to avoid an encounter with the star, and the idea of relating to Madonna in some sisterly or otherwise pals-y way feels universe-invertingly wrong. Part of Me works hard to establish that Katy Perry is just like you and me. At the same time, her coterie (including an assistant as well as costume and make-up teams) assure us that Perry deserves her fame. She’s a good person from Santa Barbara who charmed even the Cobra Snake (a louche nightlife photographer) when she lit out for Los Angeles with a few bikinis, zero bibles, and a dream. Small doubts are seeded through the introductory interviews – can she handle a tour this big? – and even her manager expresses surprise at her success. There’s a glaze to the talking head segments familiar from any number of MTV or VH-1 artist infomercials. The concert footage (from shows staged around the world) is meant to showcase the 3-D presentation; there are dancers bouncing around and some fleet camerawork, but the laser light effects make the best use of it. Reality TV figureheads and first-time directors Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz produced last year’s wildly successful Justin Bieber: Never Say Never . The same formula of gifting a fan-made star back to the people is followed, but Cutforth and Lipsitz never ascend to a moment of kitsch ecstasy on par with Bieber’s slow-mo signature lid shimmy. Perry is no dancer and not much of a mover; she’s a more mannequin-ish presence, but an energizer mannequin, expressive and ever connecting. Her cabaret rendition of “I Kissed a Girl” has unprocessed flair, and a witty quick-change number sparks an absolute shitfit in the stands. Her solid and unsurprising voice sounds solid and unsurprising, but with any production as slick as this one – where personality is prized over performance – it’s hard to know what you’re getting. Unlike Bieber, Perry had several close encounters with the big time. We learn of her various blighted record deals and studio makeovers (Perry tried everything from gospel to country to angry-girl rock) and get a small sense of her musicianship. Then, in a preposterous sequence, the story of her professional bottom (involving a botched partnership with pop gurus The Matrix) is crosscut with a bondage number in which Katy wails about being held hostage. After that, we are told, Perry decided to just be herself, and the rest is chart and bullet-bra-busting history. And who is that? What can you say about someone whose real self resembles a marzipan anime character? Well, she’s a goofball and a charmer, to start. She’s sweet with fans and an everygirl champ with her crew. She’s in every way devoted to the job of being Katy Perry, and the state of her marriage to comedian Russell Brand soon replaces the “can she hack it?” storyline. Or maybe it’s another stem of the same storyline. “A baby can’t have a baby,” she pronounces after Brand texts her possible names for their kids. “And I’m still a baby.” Background drama builds to a meltdown in Brazil, the show goes dramatically on, and the split is reframed as a feminist conundrum: The baby wants to work. Despite this careful (and successful) depiction of a warm and decent person, Perry the pop star remains stubbornly two-dimensional. She’s a sexless sex symbol, too girlish to be a girl, and her crack about being a cartoon feels critical to her anodyne appeal. Perry might sing about seeing your peacock and cover the front rows in whipped cream shot out of a two-foot canister, but it couldn’t be more congenial or less erotic. Only an extreme fetishist could actually get off on her shtick; for the rest of us, especially her adoring tween army of fans, she’s a human Pez dispenser barking out candy-covered platitudes. Even her much-feted boobs seem friendly. Beckoning from behind them is the strangely modern conception of pop stardom, one that derives its powerful hold on (largely young, female) fans from the promise that if you can’t live the cupcake dream, Katy Perry will gladly live it for you. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The first image of the mysterious Elysium has made its way onto the Internet and a smooth skulled Matt Damon sporting a severe weapon and futuristic bric-a-brac are revealed. Director Neill Blomkamp received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay for District 9 in 2010, which made over $115 million in the U.S. alone. Not bad for a feature directorial debut and no doubt a pass to move onto bigger and brighter things. The image, which came via The Playlist is reminiscent of District 9 weaponry. Sony said the sci-fi pic will be part of their presentation at Comic-Con. But, is it just me or does this image of Matt Damon make him look eerily similar to a notorious Dutch man currently sitting in a Peruvian prison? Joran van der Sloot looks like he could be a double for Damon in this pic if one just gave him some weapons (or maybe not a good idea), a tan shirt and some robotic attachments… Pardon the digress. Elysium also stars Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, William Fichtner, Alice Braga, Diego Luna and Wagner Moura and is slated to open next March. Set in 2159, a wealthy elite live on a man-made space station, while everyone else lives on a ruined Earth. It is one man’s mission (Damon) to bring back equality to the divergent worlds. [Source: Screenrant via The Playlist ]
Cower in fear (and admiration) for the villainous Angelina Jolie ! Releasing a first look at their upcoming Maleficent , Disney announced today that production is underway on the Jolie-toplined adaptation centered on Sleeping Beauty ‘s evil witch, which “reveals the events that hardened her heart and drove her to curse the baby, Aurora.” Just look at those cheekbones. Scary! The retconned fairytale (in theaters in 2014) brings the witch Maleficent front and center, with innocent young Elle Fanning playing Princess Aurora. Fanning and Jolie are joined by a solid line-up: Sharlto Copley, Sam Riley, Juno Temple, Imelda Staunton, Miranda Richardson, and Lesley Manville round out the cast, while Disney Renaissance legend Don Hahn is among the executive producers. Once upon a time, Tim Burton and Darren Aronofsky’s names were bandied about to helm the picture, but visual effects vet Robert Stromberg landed in the director’s chair, marking his directorial debut. Meanwhile, Maleficent ‘s script is written by Linda Woolverton ( Beauty and the Beast , The Lion King ) and they’ve got Rick Baker onboard for make-up, all of which is promising enough for me…for now. Maleficent is set for release (in 3-D) on March 14, 2014.
While talking up this month’s Men in Black III – in which he does an uncanny Tommy Lee Jones impersonation playing Jones’ ‘60s-era younger self – Josh Brolin took a moment to discuss the upcoming project that makes him nervous just to think about: Spike Lee ’s Oldboy , the remake of Park Chan-wook’s ultraviolent 2003 film, for which Brolin says he sought Park’s blessing before taking on the Hollywood remake. “I love Oldboy and I’m close with Chan-wook Park and I emailed him a couple months ago just asking for his blessing to do this movie,” said Brolin, “because if he had said no I wouldn’t have done it. I really respect his movie and we’ll make a little different movie, and this whole idea of a more Hollywood version of it, whatever – we’re just going to do a different version and have respect for the initial story and premise.” “I’m talking about it nervously because it makes me nervous.” Brolin will be joined in the cast by rising ingénue Elizabeth Olsen and District 9 ’s Sharlto Copley , the latter of whom sent his own message to Brolin when he joined the cast. “He just wrote me an email and was like, ‘Look, I’ve got to get this out of the way – Goonies was my favorite film! Now I’m going to make 20 years of your life miserable,’” Brolin said. The details of just how much Lee’s remake will stay true to the original film remain a mystery, though Brolin did confirm that their version will keep the infamous hammer fight scene. “Yes, by the way,” he said. “Yes. It’s a hammer, a knife, and all that stuff. Will we keep the octopus and the other stuff? You know, there are some changes and all that. But I think it’s really good. It still makes me throw down the script halfway through.” Filming begins in October on the anticipated project, and while Brolin seems confident that the remake will remain true to the source material while carving its own path, he knows a thing or two about woulda-coulda-shoulda thinking. Elsewhere in the conversation, Brolin brought up the specter of his 2010 bomb Jonah Hex unprompted. “I think that was a snowball effect,” he said, citing the film’s meteoric plunge in the media. “It got so much negative press, because we did so many reshoots, we did a ton of reshoots, man. I’m going to stand behind any movie that I do, and I do like the character. If I go back and see it now, I go, ‘That’s an interesting character.’ It’s not the movie I would have made. My intention was to make an Eastwood/Leone-esque really gritty $5-7 million film that I think would have been massively profitable, but you don’t have control over these things all the time.” Despite all that, Brolin learned a long time ago to embrace the serendipity of perceived failure – like when he lost the lead in 21 Jump Street to Johnny Depp . “ 21 Jump Street was between Johnny Depp and I,” he recalled. “Johnny got it, but we were in his apartment waiting to find out which one was going to actually leave on a plane that night.” Asked how he dealt with the disappointment of losing that gig, he laughed. “I love that you think 21 Jump Street was a huge disappointment! Johnny called me a year later and said, ‘Dude, this is awful!’” Stay tuned for more from Brolin, Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, and Barry Sonnenfeld on Men in Black III . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Posted onDecember 15, 2010by|Comments Off on The A-Team’s Sharlto Copley on Budgets, Apartheid and Going Off Script
While this summer’s big-budget adaptation of the ’80s TV hit The A-Team (out this week from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment) may not have been the franchise tentpole its studio hoped to get for the money it spent, the action extravaganza did confirm the star quality of Sharlto Copley , who first turned up on our pop culture radars after his starring role in the 2009 Best Picture nominee District 9 .
The A-Team rolled into Hollywood in a big way last night. How big? Stars Bradley Cooper and Sharlto Copley made their way down Hollywood Boulevard toward the famed Grauman’s Chinese…
