Maybe call it a trailer preamble. Tidbits of the backstory and a tease of M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming sci-fi pic After Earth spread around the internet after the film’s official site launched a run-down of the backstory. The video gives an account of a 1908 spacecraft crash and the subsequent discovery of a technology called “Lightstream” that propelled humankind forward, before ultimately destroying it. Will Smith and his son Jaden Smith star in the project, which is slated for release next June. The Columbia Pictures release pictures the descendants of the original Polish scientist who worked on the technology, the Raige family, studied Lightstream for generations, but its advances also resulted in environmental catastrophe and one of their own, Skyler Raige leads thousands to an alternative world. They become the most influential family in human history… Smith and Smith play, you guessed it, father and son in this new world 1,000 years after the cataclysmic events forced humanity to flee earth, according to Comingsoon.net (http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=92568). The elder Smith returns from duty to be a father to his estranged son Kitai (the younger Smith). But when an asteroid destroys their craft, they crash-down on a now unfamiliar planet Earth. Kitai has always wanted to be a soldier, and now with his father seriously injured in the cockpit, he must traverse a hostile land to recover their rescue beacon. [Source: Comingsoon.net and Columbia Pictures ]
Actress tells MTV News her romance with Steve Carell in ‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’ is not really a romance at all. By Kevin P. Sullivan Keira Knightley in “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” Photo: The new Keira Knightley – Steve Carell film, ” Seeking a Friend for the End of the World ,” is not a traditional romance for a number of reasons — the main one being the meteor that is headed toward Earth and will likely end all life on the planet. The other, less cataclysmic way “Seeking a Friend” subverts your typical rom-com tropes is that the relationship at the center of the film isn’t—at least according to Knightley —a romantic one. It’s just about sex. Her character, Penny, and Carell’s character, Dodge, neighbors who have never spoken, only join forces when they’re left utterly alone as the world comes to an end. Eventually, their relationship becomes something more, but Knightley would argue not much more. “I don’t know that their romantic arc actually has much to do with romance in the beginning and has more to do with ‘It’s the end of the world, and we both want to have sex,’ ” she said. “I think that was sort of more what the romantic arc was hinged on, and then what it becomes is about friendship.” For such a complex on-screen relationship, chemistry between Carell and Knightley became all-the-more important, but the actress said that getting along with her co-star was never a problem. “As far as chemistry goes with Steve, he is one of the loveliest men in the entire world,” she said. “He is so funny, and so courteous to everyone. He is a consummate professional. He’s just a lovely, lovely man. I defy anybody not to have good chemistry with him.” Carell, who got his start as a comedian, once again shows off his dramatic chops in “Seeking a Friend,” and Knightley said he is not one of the funny men who have to be on all the time. “There are a lot of comics who are fabulous, but are relentlessly [telling] one joke after another, after another, which is completely fabulous, but when you’re working, it can be kind of tricky,” Knightley said. “Steve’s not like that. He is incredibly funny, but he’s funny in a way that makes everybody around him feel like they’re funny as well. He’s incredibly inclusive, but also, he’s a complete professional, so he’s about getting the best of everybody. If that means having a laugh and having a joke, that’s what happens. If that means giving everyone space, that’s what he means as well.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World’
In honor of Father’s Day, we name our favorite ‘worst’ dads in film, from Mrs. Doubtfire to Darth Vader. By Kevin P. Sullivan Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire” Photo: The movies have given us some of the best and worst fathers in the history of pop culture. A deadbeat dad can spark the action for an entire film, and a good one can inspire the lesson you’re supposed to take home from a movie. But some dads are just so wonderfully misguided, so hilariously unfit for their role that we can’t help but love them. So in honor of Father’s Day, here is our rundown of some of our favorite best worst dads in film history. Odin – “Thor” Sure, he’s the All Father, dad to Thor, and pretty terrible stepfather to Loki, but when he’s really needed, what does he do? He goes into his “Odinsleep.” Earth was on the brink of destruction thanks to Loki’s treacherous ways, and Odin’s solution is to take a nap? Granted he wakes up just in time to save Thor from falling off of the destroyed Bifr
Actress reportedly in talks to follow up ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’ and ‘The Bling Ring’ with biblical epic. By Kevin P. Sullivan Emma Watson Photo: Getty Images In her post-“Harry Potter” career, Emma Watson has already racked up some impressive credits with grade-A filmmakers. Last year, she had a supporting role in the well-received My Week With Marilyn ,” and she just wrapped her turn as a bad girl in Sofia Coppola’s ” The Bling Ring .” Now, Deadline New York is reporting that Watson is in talks for a role in Darren Aronofsky ‘s biblical epic, ” Noah .” Watson would play Ila, a young woman on that famous ark, who, according to Deadline, develops a “close relationship” with the character Shem, played by Douglas Booth . “Noah” will feature Russell Crowe as the title character, the man who gathers two of every animal and builds an enormous boat to continue life on Earth after an apocalyptic flood. The ambitious project has added a few other castmembers in recent weeks with Watson’s ” Perks of Being a Wallflower ” co-star Logan Lerman and Booth both signing on to play Noah’s sons Ham and Shem, respectively. Watson may have been sending her fans a small hint about potentially joining the film. On May 22, the actress tweeted , “Just added @DarrenAronofsky. I love his work. P.S. don’t be put off by his profile picture! : ) x.” Just added @ DarrenAronofsky . I love his work. P.s don’t be put off by his profile picture! : ) x — Emma Watson (@EmWatson) May 22, 2012 Watson should have an eventful few months if she eventually signs on to “Noah.” Aronofsky is reportedly seeking a July start date for an eventual release in March of 2014. Her next film, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” is set for a limited in September, and “The Bling Ring” should hit theaters sometime next year. For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com .
Did you think Twitter chose a bird as its mascot simply because birds make a tweeting sound? Wrong! “Whether soaring high above the earth to take in a broad view, or flocking with other birds to achieve a common purpose, a bird in flight is the ultimate representation of freedom, hope and limitless possibility,” the company said today. What’s the occasion for this purple prose? It’s the debut of a… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : adfreak Discovery Date : 06/06/2012 17:57 Number of articles : 2
Twilight / Snow White and the Huntsman star Kristen Stewart comes off as admirably self-possessed (“I don’t care about the voracious, starving shit eaters who want to turn truth into shit”) in Vanity Fair, even when bemoaning the photograph that changed her life: “You can Google my name and one of the first things that comes up is images of me sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe with my ex-boyfriend and my dog. It was [taken] the day the movie came out. I was no one. I was a kid. I had just turned 18. In [the tabloids] the next day it was like I was a delinquent slimy idiot, whereas I’m kind of a weirdo, creative Valley Girl who smokes pot. Big deal. But that changed my daily life instantly. I didn’t go out in my underwear anymore.” [ Vanity Fair ]
Twilight / Snow White and the Huntsman star Kristen Stewart comes off as admirably self-possessed (“I don’t care about the voracious, starving shit eaters who want to turn truth into shit”) in Vanity Fair, even when bemoaning the photograph that changed her life: “You can Google my name and one of the first things that comes up is images of me sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe with my ex-boyfriend and my dog. It was [taken] the day the movie came out. I was no one. I was a kid. I had just turned 18. In [the tabloids] the next day it was like I was a delinquent slimy idiot, whereas I’m kind of a weirdo, creative Valley Girl who smokes pot. Big deal. But that changed my daily life instantly. I didn’t go out in my underwear anymore.” [ Vanity Fair ]
People with a strong sartorial sense know the difference between what’s elegant and what’s merely elaborate. It’s not the same in the movie world, where big and overcomplicated is so often mistaken for better, when really it’s only…big and overcomplicated. Ridley Scott ’s Prometheus , designed as a sort-of prequel to the director’s 1979 terror-in-space aria Alien , is elaborate all right. But it’s imaginative only in a stiff, expensive way. Scott vests the movie with an admirable degree of integrity – it doesn’t feel like a cheap grab for our moviegoing dollars – but it doesn’t inspire anything so vital as wonder or fear, either. Prometheus has been one of the most anticipated pictures of the summer, but its lackluster payoff is summed up perfectly by one of its chief characters, a scientist who travels a long way from Earth in the hope of meeting the allegedly superior beings who created us humans: “This place isn’t what we thought it was.” [ Some spoilers follow. ] That character, Elizabeth Shaw ( Noomi Rapace ), is an archeologist who, in one of the movie’s early scenes, circa 2089, stands hand-in-hand with her partner and beau Charlie Holloway (the exquisitely, painfully dull Logan Marshall-Green ) as the two gaze in wonder upon an Earth cave drawing they’ve just discovered. The pictogram shows a couple of unearthly creatures standing tall and pointing at something-or-other. Are they gods who created us, or just random visitors? Shaw thinks they may be the former, and she’s eager for a meet-and-greet. “I think they want us to come and find them,” she says, voicing one of those really bad ideas that make the world of science fiction go ’round. Before long the two have joined a crew of 15 others, all headed to an undisclosed destination in space where they will freely and joyfully act upon yet more bad ideas, including packing a severed alien head into a space baggie and reaching out to touch a slimy tadpole-penis-head thing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The others aboard the all-too-appropriately named Prometheus include a tall, icy businesswoman named Vickers ( Charlize Theron ), a representative of the corporate behemoth that’s funding the trip; the ship’s captain, Janek (played by the appealing, casual Idris Elba); David ( Michael Fassbender ), an android a la Ian Holm’s character in Alien , who has learned a healthy handful of ancient languages as a way of possibly communicating with whatever godlike forebears the crew may encounter; and a random Asian guy who wanders around idly in the background of a few shots until, inexplicably — mini-spoiler alert — he becomes one of the story’s heroes. (This disposable Asian is played by Benedict Wong, who also appeared in Duncan Jones’ 2011 Moon .) There are a bunch of others – including some dumb geologists/biologists (Rafe Spall and Sean Harris) and a doctory-scientist type (Kate Dickie) – but the cast of Prometheus suggests that 17 crew members on a movie space ship is about 10 too many. (The Nostromo , after all, carried 7, and Scott and writer Dan O’Bannon made it easy to distinguish one from another.) But Prometheus , both ship and movie, is overloaded in every way: Scott and screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof have packed the picture full of noble themes, most of them having to do with the way our yearning to understand the unknown jostles uncomfortably against our desire to explain everything through science. “I just want answers, babe,” the logic-mongering Holloway tells the dreamier Shaw, though this is before – and here, take note of another mini-spoiler alert – a wriggly wormlike thing starts poking out of his eyeball. What do Shaw and the others discover on the mysterious planet to which they’ve trekked? They make their way into a cave where the air is actually breathable – they lift off their bubble helmets and take in deep gulps of the stuff, which seems inadvisable, but what the heck? Deep in the cave’s recesses they find a magnificent hallway replete with majestic murals and a large sculpture surrounded by a formation of conga drums covered with sweaty spores. Prometheus features a host of effects designed to make you say, “What the heck?” and yet none of it stirs real curiosity, awe or dread. The crew also encounters, of course, some variations on the magnificent spoodly pinky-gray creatures designed by H.R. Giger for the earlier Alien pictures. Perhaps these thingies are supposed to be bigger, more impressive and more realistic, whatever that might mean. Yet there’s a business-as-usual quality about them, and they herald their presence openly rather than lurk menacingly in the shadows, as if announcing cheerfully, “You expected to see us, and here we are!” That’s not to say there aren’t some lovely effects in Prometheus , including a sequence in which a group of hologram ghosts appear as shimmery dots and dashes of light – they rush toward and through our intrepid explorers, on their way to, or away from, something. But we never find out who they are or what they’re running toward or from. In fact, there are dozens of loose ends in Prometheus , hanging like so many squirmy, dangly tails. Fassbender’s android commits a significant, malicious act for reasons that are never made clear: We know he has no soul, and thus probably no conscience, but his actions seem like the result of some deeply human traits — Scott never bothers to explain. The geography of the ship is carelessly delineated: Creatures show up in one passageway or another – it’s never clear what room or area they’re coming from. One of these slimy, willfully malevolent wrigglers emerges at a significant climactic moment, and it’s unclear whether it’s a random critter or a larger version of a baby we’ve seen earlier – the lapse represents a missed opportunity, a possible means of fleshing out some of the movie’s ideas about the relationship between gods and the creatures they create (or destroy). Scott is trying to make sure Prometheus is about something, and his ideals may have distracted him from the more prosaic task of just getting on with the storytelling. When Brian De Palma presented, with Mission to Mars , a much more passionate, and more narratively sound, version of this sort of interplanetary spiritual idealism, it was treated as a “bad” science fiction movie. Prometheus , on the other hand, is tasteful even in the midst of all its squirm-inducing gross-outs, and that’s a liability: It’s impossible to have tasteful passion. The actors mostly seem lost here: Rapace comes off as a doll-like naïf, pretty but wholly lacking in charisma or even science-fueled ardor. Guy Pearce appears in heavy age makeup which, if you ask me, is a total waste of a perfectly good Guy Pearce. Theron and Fassbender have much more presence: Theron, at least, gets to suit up and fire a flamethrower – the vision of her big bubble-helmeted head perched upon a body that seems to consist mainly of two lily-stem legs is something to behold. And Scott gives Fassbender the quietest, most poetic sequence in the movie: Early in the picture, the robot David wanders the ship while the rest of the crew are still deep in their hypersleep dreams. He busies himself with assorted tasks, and then sits down before a massive wraparound screen, where he watches Lawrence of Arabia with rapturous admiration. David finds a physical, if not spiritual, twin in O’Toole’s T.E. Lawrence, a model for the man he’d like to be, if only he were a man at all. But Scott doesn’t, or can’t, sustain the eerie, resonant beauty of that sequence. Prometheus isn’t a piece of junk. It feels as if Scott has tried very hard to please us, his audience, in an honest if costly way. He surely knows how high the stakes are: With Alien , Scott gave us one of the great science-fiction films of all time, a picture that was at once glorious and austere; when I looked at it recently, I was struck by how wonderfully slow-moving it was, and yet every minute is taut. But Prometheus is a world apart, a far more unwieldy picture that tries hard to defy this new, noisier age of movies and doesn’t have the agility or the suppleness to do so. You can practically hear Prometheus groaning under the weight of its ambitions; it’s a far cry from the sound Scott was going for, the music of the celestial spheres. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
People with a strong sartorial sense know the difference between what’s elegant and what’s merely elaborate. It’s not the same in the movie world, where big and overcomplicated is so often mistaken for better, when really it’s only…big and overcomplicated. Ridley Scott ’s Prometheus , designed as a sort-of prequel to the director’s 1979 terror-in-space aria Alien , is elaborate all right. But it’s imaginative only in a stiff, expensive way. Scott vests the movie with an admirable degree of integrity – it doesn’t feel like a cheap grab for our moviegoing dollars – but it doesn’t inspire anything so vital as wonder or fear, either. Prometheus has been one of the most anticipated pictures of the summer, but its lackluster payoff is summed up perfectly by one of its chief characters, a scientist who travels a long way from Earth in the hope of meeting the allegedly superior beings who created us humans: “This place isn’t what we thought it was.” [ Some spoilers follow. ] That character, Elizabeth Shaw ( Noomi Rapace ), is an archeologist who, in one of the movie’s early scenes, circa 2089, stands hand-in-hand with her partner and beau Charlie Holloway (the exquisitely, painfully dull Logan Marshall-Green ) as the two gaze in wonder upon an Earth cave drawing they’ve just discovered. The pictogram shows a couple of unearthly creatures standing tall and pointing at something-or-other. Are they gods who created us, or just random visitors? Shaw thinks they may be the former, and she’s eager for a meet-and-greet. “I think they want us to come and find them,” she says, voicing one of those really bad ideas that make the world of science fiction go ’round. Before long the two have joined a crew of 15 others, all headed to an undisclosed destination in space where they will freely and joyfully act upon yet more bad ideas, including packing a severed alien head into a space baggie and reaching out to touch a slimy tadpole-penis-head thing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The others aboard the all-too-appropriately named Prometheus include a tall, icy businesswoman named Vickers ( Charlize Theron ), a representative of the corporate behemoth that’s funding the trip; the ship’s captain, Janek (played by the appealing, casual Idris Elba); David ( Michael Fassbender ), an android a la Ian Holm’s character in Alien , who has learned a healthy handful of ancient languages as a way of possibly communicating with whatever godlike forebears the crew may encounter; and a random Asian guy who wanders around idly in the background of a few shots until, inexplicably — mini-spoiler alert — he becomes one of the story’s heroes. (This disposable Asian is played by Benedict Wong, who also appeared in Duncan Jones’ 2011 Moon .) There are a bunch of others – including some dumb geologists/biologists (Rafe Spall and Sean Harris) and a doctory-scientist type (Kate Dickie) – but the cast of Prometheus suggests that 17 crew members on a movie space ship is about 10 too many. (The Nostromo , after all, carried 7, and Scott and writer Dan O’Bannon made it easy to distinguish one from another.) But Prometheus , both ship and movie, is overloaded in every way: Scott and screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof have packed the picture full of noble themes, most of them having to do with the way our yearning to understand the unknown jostles uncomfortably against our desire to explain everything through science. “I just want answers, babe,” the logic-mongering Holloway tells the dreamier Shaw, though this is before – and here, take note of another mini-spoiler alert – a wriggly wormlike thing starts poking out of his eyeball. What do Shaw and the others discover on the mysterious planet to which they’ve trekked? They make their way into a cave where the air is actually breathable – they lift off their bubble helmets and take in deep gulps of the stuff, which seems inadvisable, but what the heck? Deep in the cave’s recesses they find a magnificent hallway replete with majestic murals and a large sculpture surrounded by a formation of conga drums covered with sweaty spores. Prometheus features a host of effects designed to make you say, “What the heck?” and yet none of it stirs real curiosity, awe or dread. The crew also encounters, of course, some variations on the magnificent spoodly pinky-gray creatures designed by H.R. Giger for the earlier Alien pictures. Perhaps these thingies are supposed to be bigger, more impressive and more realistic, whatever that might mean. Yet there’s a business-as-usual quality about them, and they herald their presence openly rather than lurk menacingly in the shadows, as if announcing cheerfully, “You expected to see us, and here we are!” That’s not to say there aren’t some lovely effects in Prometheus , including a sequence in which a group of hologram ghosts appear as shimmery dots and dashes of light – they rush toward and through our intrepid explorers, on their way to, or away from, something. But we never find out who they are or what they’re running toward or from. In fact, there are dozens of loose ends in Prometheus , hanging like so many squirmy, dangly tails. Fassbender’s android commits a significant, malicious act for reasons that are never made clear: We know he has no soul, and thus probably no conscience, but his actions seem like the result of some deeply human traits — Scott never bothers to explain. The geography of the ship is carelessly delineated: Creatures show up in one passageway or another – it’s never clear what room or area they’re coming from. One of these slimy, willfully malevolent wrigglers emerges at a significant climactic moment, and it’s unclear whether it’s a random critter or a larger version of a baby we’ve seen earlier – the lapse represents a missed opportunity, a possible means of fleshing out some of the movie’s ideas about the relationship between gods and the creatures they create (or destroy). Scott is trying to make sure Prometheus is about something, and his ideals may have distracted him from the more prosaic task of just getting on with the storytelling. When Brian De Palma presented, with Mission to Mars , a much more passionate, and more narratively sound, version of this sort of interplanetary spiritual idealism, it was treated as a “bad” science fiction movie. Prometheus , on the other hand, is tasteful even in the midst of all its squirm-inducing gross-outs, and that’s a liability: It’s impossible to have tasteful passion. The actors mostly seem lost here: Rapace comes off as a doll-like naïf, pretty but wholly lacking in charisma or even science-fueled ardor. Guy Pearce appears in heavy age makeup which, if you ask me, is a total waste of a perfectly good Guy Pearce. Theron and Fassbender have much more presence: Theron, at least, gets to suit up and fire a flamethrower – the vision of her big bubble-helmeted head perched upon a body that seems to consist mainly of two lily-stem legs is something to behold. And Scott gives Fassbender the quietest, most poetic sequence in the movie: Early in the picture, the robot David wanders the ship while the rest of the crew are still deep in their hypersleep dreams. He busies himself with assorted tasks, and then sits down before a massive wraparound screen, where he watches Lawrence of Arabia with rapturous admiration. David finds a physical, if not spiritual, twin in O’Toole’s T.E. Lawrence, a model for the man he’d like to be, if only he were a man at all. But Scott doesn’t, or can’t, sustain the eerie, resonant beauty of that sequence. Prometheus isn’t a piece of junk. It feels as if Scott has tried very hard to please us, his audience, in an honest if costly way. He surely knows how high the stakes are: With Alien , Scott gave us one of the great science-fiction films of all time, a picture that was at once glorious and austere; when I looked at it recently, I was struck by how wonderfully slow-moving it was, and yet every minute is taut. But Prometheus is a world apart, a far more unwieldy picture that tries hard to defy this new, noisier age of movies and doesn’t have the agility or the suppleness to do so. You can practically hear Prometheus groaning under the weight of its ambitions; it’s a far cry from the sound Scott was going for, the music of the celestial spheres. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘I would still have to be someone who could wisecrack,’ Clark Gregg tells MTV News about his future at Marvel. By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Kara Warner Clark Gregg Photo: MTV News Alas, poor Coulson — we knew him well. “Avengers” director Joss Whedon is known for killing off fan-favorite characters to heighten the stakes of his stories — we’re still pouring one out for Serenity flyboy Wash all these years later. In the Marvel superhero flick, it wasn’t one of Earth’s mightiest heroes who bit the bullet, but the much beloved S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson who lost his life at the hands of Asgardian bad boy Loki. Of course, this is a comic book property we’re talking about, and in comics, no one stays dead for long. That idea has kept Coulson fans feeling optimistic about the possible return of actor Clark Gregg to the Marvel movie universe at some point down the line, with his resurrection as popular character Vision the current leading theory. Speaking with MTV News in the lead-up to the 2012 MTV Movie Awards on Sunday (June 3), Gregg opened up about returning to the Marvel universe as the Avengers’ resident android . “Vision is cool,” he said. “But I would hate to be any AI life form. If I got to come back, I would need to still be somebody who could wisecrack, because my favorite part of the job was that if anybody was going to tease anybody about their diva superhero outfit or whatever, it would be me.” Indeed, while Gregg has “seen a lot of theories” about Coulson’s return — “I love what people are doing with that,” he said — he’s just as happy to let his character rest in peace. “I really love what Joss did with Agent Coulson in ‘The Avengers,’ ” he said. “It seems like an idea that was in the cards, not only from Joss but from Marvel, in that you needed to ground the movie in some real emotion and stakes. I loved playing that guy, and I’ll miss playing him, but I was glad to have that job.” Coulson’s fate will remain a hotly debated topic for many weeks to come, we’re sure. But even if the hard-nosed S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is gone for good, that doesn’t mean Gregg can’t visit the set of “Avengers 2,” right? “That might be hard. I might be sad,” he said. Then again … “I guess I would [visit the set] if I was dressed up as a sentient android,” he teased. Head over to MovieAwards.MTV.com to vote for your favorite flicks now! The 21st annual MTV Movie Awards air live Sunday, June 3, at 9 p.m. ET. Related Videos Behind The Scenes At The 2012 MTV Movie Awards Related Photos ‘Avengers’
