“Highlights of Battleship partnerships include (in alphabetical order): CHEVRON EXTRAMILE — Chevron’s ExtraMile convenience stores will feature a Battleship instant-win game that will be promoted via radio, in-store game cards, as well as online with banner ads at Chevronextramile.com. In-store signage will include pump toppers, pump posters, door decals, counter cards and employee buttons.” [ Deadline ]
Can you guess the most-rented DVD of 2011? Hint: It wasn’t the most-bought DVD of 2011, but you probably already knew that . Another hint: Despite all odds, it doesn’t star Danny Trejo . Give up? Don’t we all! Per the LAT : The Bruce Willis action-comedy Red was the most rented DVD of 2011 but wasn’t even close to the top of the sales charts. The most rented movies are a mix of films that largely enjoyed solid but not spectacular runs at the box office. They seemed to leave theaters with good word-of-mouth, leading people to sample the films via rental. Among the most bought DVDs, meanwhile, are many of the top-grossing hits of last year. Animated films sold particularly well. Since children often watch their favorite animated movies multiple times, making a purchase was more economical than rental. No. 1 on the list was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 , while other big sellers included Deathly Hallows: Part 2 , Tangled , Transformers: Dark of the Moon and The Help . The only film to make both Top 10 lists: breakout comedy Bridesmaids . So if there’s any doubt that the bulk of midgrade theatrical releases are just commercials for DVDs that studios don’t really want you to rent anyway, and/or that better blockbusters have the potential to influence stronger DVD sales, let it be put to rest. [ LAT ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The Ninja Turtles Culture War just gets better : “Paramount marketing changed the name. They made the title simple. The characters you all remember are exactly the same, and yes they still act like teenagers. Everything you remember, why you liked the characters, is in the movie. This script is being developed by two very smart writers, with one of the original creators of Ninja Turtles . They care VERY MUCH about making this film for the fans. Everyone on this team cares about the fans. Just give them a chance. Jonathan the director , is a major fan of the whole franchise. HE’S NOT GOING TO LET YOU DOWN.” [ Shoot For the Edit ]
‘We’re happy with what we wrote,’ Winter tells MTV News, confirming that he and Keanu Reeves reprised their characters while developing the script. By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Alex Winter Photo: MTV News God gave rock and roll to you, and if you’re lucky, he’ll give you a brand new “Bill and Ted” adventure as well! That’s the plan, at least, according to one half of the dimwitted duo: Alex Winter, who starred as Bill Preston Esq. in both “Excellent Adventure” and “Bogus Journey,” isn’t just hoping for a “Bill and Ted” reunion, he’s getting close to making it actually happen. “I think the reality is that there probably will be another one,” Winter told MTV News during a recent interview. Indeed, Winter and co-star Keanu Reeves both recently confirmed that a third “Bill and Ted” script is finished (and totally excellent). Of course, given how long it’s taken to get the third movie off the ground — “Bogus Journey,” their last appearance, hit theaters in 1991 — arriving at a universally agreed-upon idea wasn’t an exact science. “We just kicked ideas around [over the years] and eventually, we kicked one idea around that clicked,” Winter said. “It felt timely. Funnily enough, it felt better because so much time had gone by. What would it be like to revisit those guys now? From a comedy standpoint, it felt kind of cool to revisit two galvanized comic characters a chunk of time later, [exploring] what you can do with that from a comedy perspective.” Though much time has passed between the last “Bill and Ted” and now, Winter admitted that it’s “very possible” that Bill and Ted themselves, despite their age, haven’t grown up with the times — though he would neither confirm nor deny their current maturity level. What he would say, however, is that the next “Bill and Ted” adventure would focus heavily on the rock and roll spirit that’s always been present in the franchise. “What’s happened to rock and roll in the last 20 years? The movie’s going to get in and play with some of that stuff,” he said. “Where is rock? Where are we? What’s happened to the whole idea of saving the world — or what hasn’t happened? There’s a lot to play with there.” There’s so much to play with, in fact, that Winter and Reeves both slipped into character on more than one occasion while developing the new “Bill and Ted” script. “Yes, we did. It’s really sad how easy it was [to get back into character],” he laughed. “You go away and do all this other stuff and go, ‘I’m not Bill, that’s absurd!’ … And then me and Reeves got together, and suddenly we’re the characters again. We didn’t even mean to. We just started riffing on it. When we were doing notes and me and Reeves started riffing on the dialogue, it’s just, oh my god. Yeah, it’s in there. God knows.” “Bill and Ted 3,” which has a title that Winter won’t reveal just yet (“But it’ll say it all,” he promised), still has obstacles in the way. No, there are no Evil Us’s to consider, but the script does not yet have a green-light. According to Winter, though, he’s more than happy with the project as it stands, even if it never makes it to the big screen. “It’s something we think is a very fun thing. We had a lot of fun developing it, and the guys are amazing writers,” Winter said of working with longtime “Bill and Ted” writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. “We had a lot of fun with the script. We’re happy with where it’s at now. If it goes forward, great. If it doesn’t, we’re happy with what they wrote and what we came up with.” Tell us what you think of the most excellent “Bill and Ted” news in the comments section!
Can you believe that someone is accusing the writers of This Means War of being… lazy? “The fact remains, though, that most people don’t launch into film-studies lectures on a first date, not unless they’re in the movie business. When they do so in a romantic comedy it’s a giveaway that the screenwriter was too lazy and unimaginative to give their characters any hobbies that they don’t have themselves. It shifts the story even further away from reality.” Seriously! It’s getting bad. Someone start a human rights petition . [ The Economist via The Awl ]
Pssst, Seneca Crane and other Gamemakers: Katniss Everdeen would like your attention. A new clip from The Hunger Games should ease many concerns fans of this book series might possess, as it’s taken straight from the pages of the best-selling Suzanne Collins’ novel. Watch now as Katinss brandishes her best skill in order to make an impression on those who will decide her fate: The Hunger Games Clip: Katniss Takes Aim The sneak peek premiered on the movie’s Facebook page and included, along with it, the following statement from Collins: “I’m really happy with how it turned out… Director Gary Ross has created an adaptation that is faithful in both narrative and theme, but he’s also brought a rich and powerful vision of Panem, its brutality and excesses, to the film as well… The cast, led by the extraordinary Jennifer Lawrence , is absolutely wonderful across the board. It’s such a pleasure to see how they’ve embodied the characters and brought them to life.” The Hunger Games – EEEK! – opens on March 23.
Movie’s stars Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd stop by for a chat about the movie, which premieres Friday. By Kevin P. Sullivan Paul Rudd in “Wanderlust” Photo: Universal As part of “MTV First,” Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston premiered a never-before-seen clip from their upcoming comedy “Wanderlust” … but that was only the beginning. In the clip, their characters embrace their new lives on the Elysium commune with some new, let’s say … experiences. Now we have an extended NSFW version of the same scene that takes a raunchier look at life at Elysium. The extended version contains some drug references, so some viewer discretion is advised. In “Wanderlust,” Rudd’s character, George, loses his job and leaves New York with his wife, Linda, in search of a new beginning. After a failed attempt to shack up with George’s brother, they head off again in search of a new home. But they accidentally wind up stuck in the hippie commune inhabited by a wide range of characters. One of those characters introduced in the clip is Seth, the spiritual leader of the commune, played by Aniston’s real-life boyfriend Justin Theroux . The couple met while making the film, and in the clip, we see their onscreen introduction. We’re also introduced to the characters played by Lauren Ambrose and Jordan Peele, Almond and Rodney. The clip was just the beginning of the fun. If you haven’t seen it already, be sure to check out MTV News’ Josh Horowitz’s entire interview with Rudd and Aniston, which followed the premiere of the new clip from “Wanderlust.” During the interview, they addressed things like onscreen nudity and took questions from the fans via Twitter. “Wanderlust” opens in theaters on Friday. Check out everything we’ve got on “Wanderlust.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV First: Paul Rudd & Jennifer Aniston Related Photos ‘Wanderlust’
‘We really are attached to everybody’s journey, and so I’m really excited to see how that all plays out,’ actress tells MTV News. By Kara Warner, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Elizabeth Banks Photo: MTV News It’s hard not to love Elizabeth Banks. She’s smart, funny, pretty, makes great choices with her roles in film and television and just seems like an all-around great person. And although we’ve been fans of Banks’ work for years, it’s her role as Effie Trinkett in “The Hunger Games” that has us almost bouncing off the walls with excitement. When MTV News caught up with Banks recently, we asked what scenes she’s most looking forward to see on the big screen when the film opens March 23. “I have not seen much of the arena, so I’m excited to see the actual Games. It’s very emotional. We really become very attached to the characters, even Cato and Thresh, kind of the bad guys of the book,” Banks said. “We really are attached to everybody’s journey, and so I’m really excited to see how that all plays out.” Banks said that, for her part, the Reaping was the most challenging and fulfilling sequence to shoot. “The Reaping is amazing. We get so see a heroine step forward and show herself for the first time and come to life, and it was a really remarkable scene to shoot. It was difficult to shoot under insane conditions, about 105 degrees the couple days we shot it. We had all these young kids there dropping like flies,” Banks recalled. “It was madness, and it’s also the only time we spend in District 12.” Banks added that the best way to take the edge off the extreme temperatures and conditions during the filming of the Reaping was to lighten the mood between takes. “I think whenever it’s difficult, one of my favorite ways to deal with it is to joke around. We take the work seriously, but we try not to take ourselves too seriously. Woody [Harrelson] is a great partner in crime,” she said of her humorous co-star. “He tells really off-color jokes and is fantastically self-deprecating and fun to be around.” Check out everything we’ve got on “The Hunger Games.” For young Hollywood news, fashion and “Twilight” updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Hunger Games’ Related Photos The Hunger Games
Portuguese director Miguel Gomes’s inventive, playful black-and-white Tabu — part drama, part romance, part malaria-induced fever dream — has turned out to be a favorite among critics at the Berlinale this week, alongside Christian Petzold’s Barbara , and it’s not hard to see why. Tabu was one of the few movies here to be heralded by a ripple of excitement — it seemed to be the one competition film everyone was curious to see. In the movie’s first section — despite an intriguing reference to a “sad and melancholic crocodile” — I feared the buzz would amount to nothing. And what if this crocodile never actually appeared? I wasn’t leaving without my crocodile, I decided, and luckily, I wasn’t disappointed. Gomes — who previously directed The Portuguese Nun and Our Beloved Month of August — used to be a film critic, and you know how those people are: They love their movie references, and Gomes uses plenty. (The film’s title itself is a nod to F.W. Murnau’s movie of the same name.) But he manages to avoid coming off as either a show-off or know-it-all, particularly in the movie’s second section. The first chapter deals with a mysterious elderly Portuguese woman named Aurora (Laura Soveral), whose mind appears to be disintegrating and who is convinced her housekeeper (Isabel Cardoso) is working black magic on her. She begs her neighbor, Pilar (Teresa Madruga), for help. It’s only after Aurora dies, and Pilar seeks out the man who used to be her lover, that the movie truly springs to life: The opening section is clearly intended to be an extended prologue, a means of whetting our appetite for what’s to come. In part two, we meet the young Aurora (played by Ana Moreira), a big-game hunter who, like good old Isak Dinesen before her, has a farm in Africa. Aurora is beautiful, headstrong, possibly emotionally unstable. She’s also a crackerjack markswoman who always gets her prey, sacking big game right and left. That includes menfolk: She’s married to a staid, successful businessman who doesn’t give her the attention she needs. It’s no surprise when she falls into the arms of Ventura (Carloto Cotta), a John Gilbert lookalike who plays in a local band — it specializes in hyper-romantic Phil Spector covers — and who also has some romantic complications of his own, in the form of a lover named Mario (Manuel Mesquita). The second half of Tabu is mostly silent. There’s sound, in the form of birds or crickets or rustling leaves, but all the dialogue of the story remains unheard and implied: The actors move their lips, but no words come out, and the effect is surprisingly intimate, like being keyed in to a secret language between lovers. We know what’s happening, and what’s going on in the characters’ heads, thanks to a voiceover narration provided by the old-man version of Ventura (Henrique Espirito Santo), as he reflects on his obsessive and marvelously melodramatic relationship with the young Aurora. Did I mention that by the time she and Ventura get together, she’s already pregnant with her husband’s child? Gomes piles one complication on top of another, but the effect is poetic rather than jumbled. I’ve been hearing people comparing Tabu to The Artist , couching it as a more art-housey version of that picture. There are similarities, but each film exists in its own distinct and imaginatively realized world. Gomes’s is dreamier, more impressionistic — at times, in the first section, the conversations between the characters spin out in oblique, off-kilter loops, as if they’d been invented by a less-flamboyant, less-kooky Almodovar. Gomes’s style here is winsome and affectionate; at times, it’s a little too arch and self-aware. But the picture’s satiny imagery, rendered in black, white and every glorious gradation in between, is so lovely that that hardly matters. The two lovers, Aurora and Ventura, lounge by a reflecting pool, glasses of lemonade on a tray between them, as that aforementioned crocodile — at this point, a mere babe — skims through the water like a silent witness to all that’s passing between them. Now we know why he’s sad and melancholic: He’s the croc who knew too much. But at least he’s been lucky enough to swim through this romantic dream of a movie. Read more of Movieline’s Berlinale 2012 coverage here . Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘I am like my character in that I am black,’ Jordan Carlos jokes to MTV News before tonight’s premiere. By Jocelyn Vena Sunkrish Bala, Elisabeth Hower and Jordan Carlos Photo: MTV News The characters on MTV’s new scripted series “I Just Want My Pants Back” are young, occasionally romantically challenged and always up for a good time. The show, set in New York, is a nonstop party that follows the lives of several twentysomethings trying to find love and find themselves in the Big Apple. The characters each play a role (sassy, neurotic, lustful) in their circle of friends, the same way that those other “Friends” did back in the 1990s. The show focuses on Jason, Tina and the rest of their Brooklyn-dwelling crew as they struggle with unemployment and general disaffection. But are the actors anything like their characters on the show? MTV News investigates. Jordan Carlos and Elisabeth Hower play the show’s only couple. Their characters, Eric and Stacey, are extremely driven (she goes to law school, he goes to med school) and very much in love, but for Carlos the similarities begin and end with only one trait. “I am a black person,” he joked. “I am like my character in that I am black.” Hower, almost on cue, added, “I am also a girl in real life,” before noting that there’s some part of those people in their real-life personas. “No, I think there’s a little bit of all of us in the characters. We all have to connect to our characters.” Meanwhile, Sunkrish Bala plays Bobby, the gang’s pal and the owner of their local bodega. Always quick with some sassy advice, Bala notes that, well, he’s not quite like Bobby. “I’m nothing like my character,” he said. “But I know a lot of guys like [him]. I have a relationship with guys [like that].” While one half of the cast finds it harder to relate to their small-screen counterparts, Kim Shaw and Peter Vack seem to relate a bit more to their characters on the show. With notes of “Sex and the City” thanks to the characters’ ups and downs in the romance department, Shaw plays the sexy, Samantha-esque Tina, while Vack plays Jason, the male hipster equivalent to Carrie Bradshaw. “We’re probably too much like them!” Shaw laughed. “I wish I was a little quicker with my words like Tina is. She says exactly what she’s thinking all the time. I think [Vack is] not as sexually deviant as Jason is on the show.” “Jason’s not a sexual deviant,” Vack protested. “I’m a romantic like Jason.” “I Just Want My Pants Back” premieres tonight at 11 p.m. ET, right after “Jersey Shore.” Stick with MTV’s Remote Control blog for more coverage of the show. Related Videos I Just Want My Pants Back | Sneak Peeks
