How to Survive a Plague turned on the water-works and other outpourings of emotion when it debuted at Sundance earlier this year. Its subjects, the driving-forces behind AIDS activist groups ACT-Up (the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) and TAG (Treatment Action Group), took matters into their own hands against a massive tide of fear, discrimination and government failure to deal with the disease that ravaged the gay community in the ’80s and ’90s. Director David France profiles the heroes of the movement who moved the needle in forging treatment and official recognition against extraordinary odds, and today Movieline has your first look at the official poster. Sundance Selects will debut the feature September 21st following the film’s healthy festival run to date. Below, find the poster designed by Sam Smyth and the trailer along with the official synopsis: How to Survive a Plague is the story of the brave young men and women who successfully reversed the tide of an epidemic, demanded the attention of a fearful nation and stopped AIDS from becoming a death sentence. This improbable group of activists bucked oppression and, with no scientific training, infiltrated government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry, helping to identify promising new medication and treatments and move them through trials and into drugstores in record time. In the process, they saved their own lives and ended the darkest days of a veritable plague, while virtually emptying AIDS wards in American hospitals in the process. The powerful story of their fight is a classic tale of empowerment and activism that has since inspired movements for change in everything from breast cancer research to Occupy Wall Street. Their story stands as a powerful inspiration to future generations, a road map, and a call to arms. This is how you change the world. Official Selection: Sundance Film Festival, New Directors/New films, San Francisco International Film Festival, Provincetown International Film Festival, Outfest Documentary Centerpiece, Seattle International Film Festival. Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Kidding! Michael Shannon was born to play oddball creepy-types, and I mean that in the best way possible. So his turn as Richard Kuklinski, the notorious contract killer from New Jersey known as The Iceman who killed for sport and for gangsters for three decades, seems fitting. Anyone else feeling curious pangs of sympathy for the Mafia hitman-slash-family man who claimed to have murdered over 100 men over the course of his “career?” Kuklinski grew up in the Jersey suburbs with abusive parents before beating a bully to death at the age of 14; it was his first murder. His double life as loving father and husband and ice-cold killer is one of those fascinatingly true tales (read the gory details here , literally) and Shannon is one of a handful of actors who could probably pull off the dichotomy. So I’m morbidly curious about The Iceman , even as the head shots and stabby glimpses abound in this first trailer. Shannon and his various period wiseguy hair co-star with Winona Ryder, James Franco, David Schwimmer, and Ray Liotta. Oh, also? CHRIS EVANS AS AN ICE CREAM TRUCK-DRIVING HITMAN NAMED MISTER SOFTEE. Worth the price of admission alone, no? Based on the book The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer , The Iceman will debut at the Venice and Toronto film fests. [ Apple ]
Now that John Hillcoat ‘s brutal Prohibition tale Lawless has hit screens ( read Movieline’s review here ) you can more vividly imagine the testosterone-and-moonshine fueled atmosphere that might have permeated the set, where, as Lawless legend has it, co-stars Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy had an unscripted scuffle. Nevertheless, while making the press rounds Hillcoat and LaBeouf both tried to squash rumors of the brotherly beef. Just a little innocent horseplay gone wrong? LaBeouf and Hardy play Jack and Forrest Bondurant, two of a trio of bootlegging brothers who come to blows with the law (and, sometimes, each other) as they run a moonshine empire out of their hill country home base. A third brother, Howard (played by Jason Clarke) rounds out the sibling dynamic, but it’s the strained relationship between the cardigan-clad family head Forrest and young, headstrong Jack that provides the bulk of the dramatic push and pull. As the story goes, one day on set LaBeouf knocked out Hardy and Hardy “never did that roughhouse stuff with me again.” The tangle first came to light in LaBeouf’s fantastically unfiltered Details interview , though that was, understandably, overshadowed by his revelation about hooking up with Transformers co-star Megan Fox and other assorted truth bombs. Then, while promoting his MMA pic Warrior , Hardy dropped a few cheeky quotes about the incident. “I got knocked out by Shia LaBeouf, actually,” Hardy said to journalists, as recounted by Den of Geek . “In Wettest County , apparently .” Apparently! So now comes Hillcoat to set the record straight. “There was this kind of, like, this challenging brotherly thing that starts going on with him,” Hillcoat admitted in an interview with Yahoo . “But yeah, there was a tussle, but it wasn’t quite the thing that was described.” LaBeouf, who’s yet again spilled so many juicier, more distracting quotes of late — from his acid-dropping Method acting to his embracing of real sex in Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac to his maybe-joke that he got the job by sending in a sex tape — tells MTV that the fistfight was borne out of love. “That was straight love,” he said. “There was a lot of love on that set in general. There was a lot of aggression in me and a lot of aggression on [Hardy’s] side. We were playing brothers. There was a constant finger-in-the-ear [teasing] thing going on for a while.” [ Yahoo , MTV ]
Teletubbies marketing visionary Kenn Viselman was banking on his latest kiddie venture, the C-list cameo-packed “interactive” adventure The Oogieloves In The Big Balloon Adventure , capturing the hearts and minds of 3-5 year-olds and their parents this Labor Day weekend. But while it looks like Viselman will make a historical splash in the film game, it’s so, so, so the wrong kind: Averaging just $47 per screen after opening in 2,160 theaters on Wednesday, Oogieloves could go down with one of the worst openings of all time. Box Office Mojo reports the dismal figures from Oogieloves ‘ opening day as a $102,564 take in over 2,000 theaters, or an average of $47.48 per screen, which Christopher Rosen of Huffington Post points out could grant Oogieloves the title of worst wide-release ever if business doesn’t pick up. Like, a lot . But hey, there’s always the chance that parents were waiting for the weekend to take the kids to go dance and talk back to the three giant, terrifying noseless puppet heroes of Oogieloves . Kids love J. Edgar jokes and Christopher Lloyd with maracas! Fingers crossed you make back that $20 million budget, fellas! Meanwhile, stay tuned for further developments on the Oogieloves front. We’re keeping a close watch on this one. Previously: So WTF Is An Oogieloves , Anyway? [ Box Office Mojo , HuffPo ]
This week, your Labor Day holiday viewing kicks off with Tom Hardy in cardigans in John Hillcoat’s Lawless for the grown-ups and the PG-13 horror flick The Possession for everyone else. Well, almost everyone else; if you have eyeballs and live in the targeted marketing range of self-professed Teletubbies PR whiz Kenn Viselman, another new offering is jockeying for the disposable ticket monies of the kid-toting demographic out there. Its name is Oogieloves . And it’s coming for you. The Oogieloves In The Big Balloon Adventure is, like The Teletubbies , colorful G-rated children’s programming built around giant humanoid creatures, this time full-bodied puppet-kids Goobie, Zoozie and Toofie. (Unfortunately the stoner entertainment potential seems much, much lower here.) There’s no good reason for you to know what the Oogieloves are, though if you’re like me the billboards and posters around town have a lingering, disturbing effect. My immediate reaction to turning the corner to come face to face with one of these Oogieloves posters: WHAT ARE THESE GIANT FABRIC CANDY-COLORED CHILDREN-PUPPETS WITH NO NOSES? WHY DO THEY STARE AT ME FROM BEHIND THOSE BALLOONS LIKE PUPPET PEEPING TOMS?? DEAR GOD THEY’RE GOING TO EAT ME, AREN’T THEY??? And side note: Guys, just stop trying to make “Oogust” happen. Oogieloves aims to set itself apart from the competition by offering children and parents an interactive moviegoing experience: Here, the young viewer is encouraged to dance and sing with the screen characters as a gaggle of semi-recognizable celebrities (Toni Braxton, Cloris Leachman, Chazz Palminteri, Cary Elwes, Jaime Pressly) turn in cameos to keep the grown-ups from falling asleep/banging their heads against the seat, at least on some basic level of C-list celebrity spotting. I’m not a parent, so I don’t have much of an idea of how excruciating it is to sit through the majority of television and film programming aimed at the toddler set. I imagine Oogieloves isn’t any less torturous to sit through than your average kids picture. But there’s also a practical upside to the experimental interactive angle. “Instead of giving our children popcorn and soda and asking them to sit still during a 90 minute movie, we looked at the experience from a child’s point of view,” Viselman explained to the Sacramento Bee. It’s not just Baby Brigade night at your local cineplex; it’s playtime for a theater full of energetic tots who don’t have to try to sit still for an hour and a half, staring passively at the screen. Herein lies Viselman’s genius, if I may use that word (it’s been applied to him in the past for blowing up The Teletubbies phenomenon by fabricating the Tinky Winky gay rumors, and casting George Carlin in Thomas the Tank Engine ). Oogieloves , regardless of its actual content, fulfills a need that parents can’t find elsewhere – the chance to bring children to the movies without having to shush them, or wrangle them, without worrying about disturbing other patrons. Viselman teamed up with educator/Ph.D. Faith Rogow to pen a Parents Guide to Oogieloves ( pdf ) that outlines all the ways in which Oogieloves is an enriching educational film for 3-5 year-olds. It doesn’t include my favorite trivia bit about this whole Oogieloves business: That Viselman concocted the idea after going to a Tyler Perry movie and noticing how members of the audience were super into talking back to the screen. So if you find yourself dragged along to see Christopher Lloyd flamenco dancing with giant scary puppet spawn this week, you know who to blame/thank. ( Oogieloves is directed by Matthew Diamond, whose 1998 Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary for the Paul Taylor dance doc Dancemaker , amazingly enough, lends the pic some Oscar cred.) So what the good God is Oogieloves to any of us without children to entertain? I boil it down to the famous people trapped in this ultimate paycheck gig, even if some of them seem to be enjoying themselves much more than others. Let’s rank the celebrity cameos based on film stills and guess at who’s Oogielovin’ and Oogiehating their lives this week, in order of increasing enjoyment/decreasing humiliation: Christopher Lloyd as Lero Sombrero The front-runner of the Oogieloves misery contest appears to be Christopher Lloyd but hey, only a viewing of the film will tell. Even Piranha 3DD made more sense than this. Carey Elwes as Bobby Wobbly Remember Cary Elwes’ glory days? Sigh. Chazz Palminteri as Marvin Milkshake Fascinatingly enough, the Oscar nominee almost seems like he’s actually having fun, or at least doesn’t give a shit that he’s serving milkshakes to puppet children in a movie called Oogieloves . Jaime Pressly as Lola Sombrero Likewise, there’s no trace of sadness in Pressly’s face. I fully believe her dedication to the Oogieloves cause. Toni Braxton as Rosalie Rosebud On the other hand, Toni Braxton looks completely unfazed playing an over-the-top singer modeled after Mariah Carey . This could be her acting breakthrough. Cloris Leachman as Dottie Rounder And that brings us to the unsinkable Cloris Leachman, who appears to be having a freaking ball (as she always does). This is your Oogieloves MVP right here. Anyone planning on seeing Oogieloves this week? Come on back and tell us how it was. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
