The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is likely to win four weekends in a row at the box office. Also in Friday’s round-up of news, Ashton Kutcher ‘s Steve Jobs pic jOBS will head to theaters months after its Sundance debut; Kickstarter passes $100 million pledge mark; Michael Haneke withdraws Amour from an awards race; and a look at weekend expansions among the Specialties. Box Office: Hobbit to Cut Down Texas Chainsaw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is set to continue a month-long reign at the box office, outpacing newcomer Texas Chainsaw , which will open in 2,654 theaters. Hobbit has cumed $242 million domestically, Variety reports . Ashton Kutcher’s Sundance Steve Jobs Film Heads to Theaters jOBS , the film about the Apple mastermind Steve Jobs from 1971 – 2000, which will close the upcoming Sundance Film Festival will head out to theaters April 23rd. Open Road will distribute the film directed by Joshua Michael Stern, Deadline reports . Kickstarter Pledges Pass $100 Million Users of Kickstarter.com have pledged upward of $100 million to independent film projects. Together, 891,979 people have pledged $102.7 million to indies since April 2009 of which $85 million has been collected for 8,500 projects, THR reports . Michael Haneke Withdraws Amour from Austrian Film Awards Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke has withdrawn his critically applauded Oscar hopeful Amour to give other local films a chance at recognition. The French-language film would have been ineligible for some categories. The film has already won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress at the European Film Awards and is Austria’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, The Guardian reports . Specialty Preview: The Impossible , Promised Land , Hyde Park On Hudson Hope to Gain Momentum Post-holiday attention on limited releases will focus on holdovers and expansions, including Lionsgate-Summit’s The Impossible , Focus Features’ Promised Land and Hyde Park On Hudson and The Weinstein Company’s Silver Linings Playbook and others, Deadline reports .
The makers of Texas Chainsaw — or Texas Chainsaw 3D , as it’s being widely advertised — would like to you forget all about nearly 40 years’ worth of sequels, prequels, remakes and reboots, and pretend that only a couple of decades or so have passed since the events depicted way back in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Helmer John Luessenhop ( Takers ) and a small army of scripters go back to the bloody roots of the long-running franchise to concoct a better-than-average horror-thriller that relies more on potent suspense than graphic savagery or stereoscopic tricks. Don’t be surprised if it scores a B.O. killing. Pic begins quite literally where Tobe Hooper’s ’74 original left off, with a shrieking, blood-splattered beauty fleeing the homestead of a psycho-killer clan, pursued by a masked and humongous brute wielding a chainsaw. The new plot kicks off when angry locals arrive on the scene, torch the home of the fiendish family, and prematurely celebrate as they rashly assume they’ve destroyed Leatherface, the chap with the chainsaw, and all his creepy kinfolk. Flash-forward about 20 years: Lovely young Heather Miller (Alexandra Daddario) is thrown for a loop when she’s informed that the white-trash couple she’s always known as mom and dad really are her adoptive parents. Truth to tell, however, this revelation doesn’t appear to strike her as bad news. Besides, she’s perked up by what she thinks is good news: A recently deceased grandmother she never knew she had has bequeathed her a palatial home near a small town in Texas. Accompanied by her boyfriend (R&B artist Tremaine “Trey Songz” Neverson ), another fun couple (Tania Raymonde, Keram Malicki-Sanchez) and a too-friendly hitchhiker (Shaun Sipos) they pick up along the way, Heather drives deep into the heart of Texas to check out her inheritance. Unfortunately, the house isn’t entirely empty. Even more unfortunately, the sole, secretive inhabitant is a masked maniac with a penchant for heavy-duty garden tools. Luessenhop occasionally springs a wink-wink allusion to Hooper’s original pic — most notably during a scene involving a well-stocked freezer — and sprinkles a few darkly comical touches into the mix. (Heather, it should be noted, is introduced carving steaks in the meat department at a supermarket.) For the most part, however, Texas Chainsaw is deadly serious as it goes about the business of sustaining tension and generating shocks. And while Luessenhop and his writers respectfully adhere to many genre conventions (rest assured that, during the first two-thirds of the story, just about everyone you’d expect to get killed does), they’re surprisingly clever when it comes to subversively shifting audience sympathies during the final 30 minutes of their briskly paced 92-minute pic. Daddario — who’s given ample opportunity to flaunt the flattest stomach of any scream queen in recent memory — makes an impressively resourceful heroine. Standout supporting players include Thom Barry as a sheriff who disapproves of vigilantism; Paul Rae as a mayor who only thinks he knows where all the bodies are buried, and Dan Yeager as the still-crazy-after-all-these-years Leatherface. Sharp-eyed movie buffs may notice Gunnar Hansen, the original Leatherface, and Marilyn Burns, the heroine of Hooper’s ’74 pic, in cameo roles. To his credit, Luessenhop doesn’t linger on the gore in intensely violent moments. (What he does show is more than adequately effective.) Nor does he exploit the 3D gimmickry to startle auds with gushers of blood or severed body parts. On the other hand, the helmer can’t resist the urge to make it appear, every so often, that a chainsaw blade is jutting off the screen, understandably enough for a pic with this particular pedigree. Read More on Texas Chainsaw 3D : Trey Songz On His ‘Texas Chainsaw 3D’ Debut (And R. Kelly’s ‘Trapped In The Closet’) Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Kim Kardashian has an important message for everyone who believes carrying a person inside your womb for nine months is as easy as garnering fame by letting a random hip hop artist bang you on video : You’re mistaken. Indeed, a pregnant Kim Kardashian spoke to Entertainment Tonight on New Year’s Eve and said she hasn’t had any morning sickness or cravings yet… but pregnancy is still tough! But, hey, she’s heard it’s worthwhile in the end. So at least there’s that… Kim Kardashian: Pregnancy is Hard!
We hope you’re sitting down, but Jenelle Evans and Courtland Rogers are still happily married despite their ugly Twitter fight. She says it was “just a day break.” She Tweeted, “I live [with] my husband and we are married. I’m not believing any rumors. We are happy and everyone wants us together and [to] make this work.” That inspiring message is a far cry from just a few days ago, when the Teen Mom 2 star became absolutely outraged with her husband of one month. Rogers, who had previously expressed concern over her drug use , was talking on the phone one night to his ex-girlfriend and mother of his daughter, Taylor. “Dude, he told everyone that he wanted Taylor to never ever contact him again then he waits until I’m asleep to talk to her?” Jenelle Evans Tweeted. Courtland Rogers responded to his wife’s accusations on Twitter, writing, “So I just got broke up with because of talking to my lil girl on the phone last night.” But Evans didn’t buy it. “First of all, why is your daughter up at 11 p.m. anyways when you were ‘talking’ to her on the phone?!” she asked. “Haha right.” The MTV star then said she was single, adding, “Why would I come back ‘home’ when you just threw my suitcase down the stairs and at your own sister?” She abruptly peaced out of Twitter as well, but on January 1, she was back online and claiming she had reconciled with her husband over New Year’s. “For the record I never broke up with Jenelle,” Rogers noted. “We took a day break with our families to enjoy time with them. I love her with all my heart.” While she’s apparently made up with her man – and they’ve made it a whole month without filing for divorce – she took the time to go off on his ex. “About this whole Taylor situation,” she Tweeted. “Courtland has told Taylor to please leave us alone and she gets all mad and posts tweets. That’s all!” “I have NOT been staying at my moms either I’ve been living with him and been there everyday so no Court hasn’t seen her at ALL, lmao.” “And I hate that fucking cunt dude… Idk why she says we ‘get along’ and ‘I’m being played’ becuz she wants the D. It’s immature… Stop.” Finally, and most hilariously, the 21-year-old Carolina hurricane added, “I’m so sick of my business being posted all over twitter.” Sure you are Jenelle. Sure you are.
He ain’t never told no lie, he ain’t never told no lie Samuel L. Jackson Says His D’Jango Unchained Character Is Most Hated Negro In Cinema Via Essence Samuel L. Jackson has made a career of playing sinister characters. But none is quite as unlikeable, or controversial, as his character Stephen in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. As the Candyland plantation’s oldest and more revered slave, Stephen, as Jackson puts it, “is the power behind the throne,” who throws a wrench in Django’s plans to rescue his wife—while providing a bevy of hearty laughs at the expense of Django and company. Peep what “Uncle Sam” had to say about his character. ESSENCE.com : What was it like to play an evil, but extremely funny, character? SAMUEL L. JACKSON : It’s great to have a character that has that kind of agenda. [Stephen] throws those great lines and [has those] relationships with people and has tons of conflicts. It’s great to be that. ESSENCE.com : Did you have any hesitation about taking on the role? JACKSON : No, Quentin called me and said he had this movie he wanted me to be in. I read the script and thought this was great. I could be as evil as I want to be and be the most hated Negro in cinematic history. I was there! ESSENCE.com : Was there any part of you that slightly resented Stephen because he ruined things for Django? JACKSON : No, I like all my characters. You can’t play a villain and think of yourself as a villain. It’s not the thing to do. You have to go about the business of doing what he does and being who he is. I like Stephen. I like the fact that Stephen knows who he is and he’s comfortable in the skin he’s in. ESSENCE.com : How do you go about preparing to play a house slave, if there is a way? JACKSON : How do you prepare? Well, you know he is. You know where he came from. You know he’s a product of his environment and he’s been there forever. He runs the plantation, he can read and write. He writes the checks. He does more than everybody knows he does. He’s essentially the power behind the thrown in the plantation. He’s got a lot of power. He’s the freest slave on the plantation. He’s not burden by any of things that all the other slaves are. He doesn’t have to go out in the fields and work. He tells people what to do. He has a position of authority. He’s authority. He’s a business man. [Laughs] Bossip was fortunate enough to be invited to the Atlanta screening of D’Jango Unchained last week and despite the repetitive use of the N-word, we were very impressed by the film. Again, Sam Jackson isn’t lying when he says you are going to HATE his character! Image via D’Jango
Latino Review is citing a source who says Warner Bros. has settled on storyline its 2015 Justice League movie. According to the tipster, the film will look to issues 183-185 of the Justice League comic, which was released back in 1980. That plot has Darkseid — confirmed as the movie’s villain — attempting to use a magical laser beam to blast planet Earth to bits and move his home world, Apokolips, into its place. Yikes! Latino Review ‘s stories are quite usually accurate, but until the news receives official confirmation, I’m taking this with a big-ass grain of Kryptonite. Besides, as cool as this sounds, there’s a hell of a lot more from DC’s storied history worth mining for the first cinematic team-up between Superman and Batman (and the rest, cough.) I think DC and WB need to consider all options available to them before committing, so to help them out, here are three other superpowered super stories worth exploiting: 1. Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) By the 1980s, the DC universe had stopped making sense thanks to 40-plus years of superhero funnybooks that had been reactively and haphazardly modified to suit the aesthetic tastes of the times. Batman was both the grumpy avenger of the 1970s AND the campy 1950s version whose relationship with Robin unfairly inspired the moral panic book Seduction of the Innocent . Superman was both a stiff-necked last son of Krypton and the guy who had Krypto the Super Dog. No superhero’s official backstory made any sense at all, basically, and DC’s official explanation, the Multiverse (all these various contradictory versions of characters existed in numerous parallel dimensions) now made less sense than Mulholland Drive. To fix this mess, DC writer Marv Wolfman came up with Crisis , in which two godlike beings — The Monitor and his evil counterpart the Anti-Monitor — used DC’s various character incarnations in a battle over control of the Multiverse. Total destruction was narrowly avoided when even stalwart villains like Darkseid joined the fight to stop the Anti-Monitor — the result being that DC became a single universe once more and some inconvenient characters were erased seemingly forever from Continuity. (RIP: Supergirl and Barry Allen.) Subsequently, that universe was rebooted, and the next two years saw Superman restarted at issue 1 and the publication of both Batman: Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns . Since Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series and Zack Snyder’s upcoming Man of Steel both take their cues from the post- Crisis DC universe, they don’t need a reboot, but not so the rest of the DC movie and television continuity. We know Darkseid is the villain of the Justice League movie, but that doesn’t mean his evil plan couldn’t have the happy result of willing the recent Green Lantern movie, and the old Wonder Woman and The Flash tv shows out of existence forever. A Crisis -inspired plot could give us new versions of those characters without the tedious need for any sort of origin-story movies. Just so long as Mark Hamill’s Trickster stays in the picture. 2. War of the Gods (1991) You know which character is unfairly ignored, despite frequent, abortive attempts to revive her onscreen? Wonder Woman . By far the DC superhero with the most potential for epic plots full of crazy mythology this side of Superman, Wonder Woman is an immortal demigod and the second most powerful active superhero in the DC universe. Too bad though, because instead of the terrifyingly powerful Amazonian princess we need, every attempt to bring Wonder Woman back ends up being some silly faux-feminist nonsense that manages more than anything else to infantilize the character. This is why of all the trepidations I have about Justice League , the most troubling is how she’ll be portrayed. Warner Bros. can fix this by basing the plot of Justice League on the War of the Gods crossover, which was created to celebrate Wonder Woman’s 50 th anniversary. That story had the ancient Roman gods go to war against the ancient Greek gods (which is kind of like the original cast of Beverly Hills 90210 starting a gang war with the cast of the CW’s 90210 ), while pantheons of other ancient cultures rose up and tried grabbing a piece of whatever was left. Wonder Woman and her fellow Amazonians of Paradise Island end up having to save Earth, with some help from DC’s other heroes (including a Brainwashed Captain Marvel). Darksied, being the antagonist of DC’s New Gods, is the perfect behind-the-scenes manipulator to rile the old gods. And best of all, it gives Wonder Woman, criminally neglected in filmed-entertainment for almost 40 years, a chance to be front and center of Justice League without it coming off as painful tokenism. 3. Hostess Snack Cake Wars Finally, we come to the greatest and the timeliest crisis for Warner Bros.’ Justice League to overcome: The horrifying shortage of Twinkies. From 1975 through the early ’80s, Hostess advertised heavily in the pages of Marvel and DC comics via a series of hilariously irresponsible short comics featuring each company’s superheroes and villains battling over control of — no, seriously — Hostess snack cakes. You can see the whole series of them here . Each adventure involved either some nefarious villain’s plot to steal or disrupt the supply of these delicious, obesity-causing confections — believe me, I know. #formerfatkid — or superheroes using Hostess cakes to foil criminal activity. No matter who lost, we won, however, because Vanilla Pudding Pies were the shit. Of course, now we know that if the average super villain was serious about destroying the supply of Hostess Ding Dongs and Twinkies, they should have gotten their MBA. So why not make this current event the basis of Justice League ? Have the ruler of Apokolips form an asset management company, buy Hostess, and loot it from the inside via perfectly legal tricks like destroying the employee fund. Thrill to the helplessness of the Justice League as they fail to convince a bankruptcy court that not only should Hostess employees get to keep their pensions, but that Darkseid is planning to destroy the universe. Darkseid could even run for president, citing his business acumen as proof of competence and rendering Superman painfully impotent as cable news channels constantly demand to see his Kryptonian birth certificate. Far-fetched? Hell yes, but no more so than the idea that unions are a force more evil than the Legion of Doom. So what would you like to see in the Justice League movie? Sound off in comments. Ross Lincoln is a LA-based freelance writer from Oklahoma with an unhealthy obsession with comics, movies, video games, ancient history, Gore Vidal, and wine. READ MORE: DC’s Competitive Darkseid? Reported ‘Justice League’ Villain Inspired ‘Avengers 2’ Bad Guy Follow Ross A. Lincoln on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Once again, it’s that time of year for us to decide who’s the hottest piece in the universe. Here are the Miss Universe contestants arriving at ‘Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino’ in Las Vegas. If I had to choose a winner based on these photos alone, I’d have to go with Miss Lithuania followed by Miss Ukraine as a close 2nd. However, the only way we can really judge is when they strip down to their bikinis. I guess we’ll have to wait until it airs on TV. Who’s your favorite?
Meet Danielle Sharp . I’ve never heard of her before which is surprising because I know every single girl with D cups or bigger in this business. I need to step up my game and be the boobie connoisseur that you guys have come to expect. This is a wake-up call and I deeply apologize if I’ve been slacking! Anyway, Danielle just catapulted herself as my new favorite UK glamor model. God, those things are MASSIVE! Enjoy!
The Chinese government doesn’t play when it comes to the death penalty… According to the International Business Times , this lunatic had six women imprisoned, and cops only found out about his dungeon after one of his victims escaped! A man has been sentenced to death in China for keeping six women in a dungeon as slaves and then murdering two of them. Li Hao, 35, was found guilty of murder, assault, organized prostitution, illegal detention, and spreading adult films for profit. He was given the death penalty at the Luoyan Luoyang Intermediate People’s Court in Henan Province, Xinhua news agency has said. The court heard how Li had dug the dungeon himself under a basement he had bought in Luoyang in 2009. He would trick the women into going there and then kept them prisoner, the court said. The six women had been imprisoned for between two and 21 months. Li repeatedly assaulted the women, forced them to have intercourse with customers, and made them appear in obscene web shows. His motive, police said, was to make money by forcing the women into prostitution and appear in his shows. Two of the women were killed while they were kept in the dungeon. Three more of Li’s prisoners were also found guilty of murder; in one case Li had instructed the women to kill. The court allowed the women leniency for committing these crimes as they took place under extreme circumstances – one received a three year jail sentence and the other two were put on probation. Li’s dungeon was discovered after one of his victims escaped and reported her captor to the police. Prior to his imprisonment, Li had been a clerk for Luoyang’s technological supervision bureau. He was married and had an eight-month-old baby when he was arrested last year. He’s got some pretty twisted skeletons in his closet. Images via tumblr
This shady son of a beyotch just looks like his lips spew out racist remarks allll day long! According to International Business Times: A police officer has appeared before magistrates in London for telling a colleague that black people “look like moneys”. PC Costas Dakoutros said that PC Kevin Hughes, of Brentwood, Essex, made the comments while they were on patrol after seeing three black men standing on the pavement. Prosecutor Kate Wilkinson told Westminster magistrates court how Hughes turned to Dakoutros and said: “Look at them, they look like f*****g monkeys.” She said: “PC Dakoutros looked shocked and said ‘You can’t say that’.” Hughes replied: “No, but it’s true.” Wilkinson continued: “He began to deliberate that they [black people] were closely related to chimpanzees and then said they were more closely related to Neanderthals.” Another colleague, who was also in the car at the time, is alleged to have heard Hughes say: “Black people hadn’t evolved and lived in mud huts in Africa.” Following the shift, Dakoutros wrote an email to himself detailing events, which read: “Kevin looked at three IC3 (black) males and stated they looked like monkeys.” Hughes denied the charge and said he was commenting on the way one man was walking. Wilkinson said: “[Hughes] said he didn’t recall seeing three black males but said he saw someone with a certain gait who walked like a monkey and he had said to PC Dakoutros something about a monkey.” Word??? Just imagine what kind of isht they’ve said that was not heard. And y’all thought it was bad here in the U.S. SMH.
