“After 18 years of being utterly ordinary, I finally found I could shine.” Twilight ‘s Bella Swan has gotten a lot of flack for her penchant for passive pouting and agonizing over boys, but in Breaking Dawn Part 2 she finally comes into her own, a fully fledged vampiress possessing newfound confidence and strength. Hey, having a monster baby will do incredible things to a girl. You know this. You watch Teen Mom . See Kristen Stewart come alive — so to speak — in the full teaser trailer. Breaking Dawn Part 2 also benefits from a few new elements: the international political intrigue and menace of the Volturi who venture Stateside with baby Renesmee in their sights, and the X-Men esque super powers on display as Bella and Edward recruit sympathetic vamps to their side. Oh, and let us not forget Jacob and Renesmee and the love that dare not speak its name! ( Imprinting .) Synopsis: The next and final chapter in THE TWILIGHT SAGA, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN – PART 2 will arrive in theatres on November 16, 2012. Academy Award® winner Bill Condon directed both the first and second part of the two-part finale starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. The film, based on the fourth novel in author Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, was written by Melissa Rosenberg with Wyck Godfrey, Karen Rosenfelt and Stephenie Meyer producing. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 hits theaters November 16. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The Kick-Ass sequel was a forgone conclusion but speculation mounted on when it would occur and if its stars including Aaron Johnson would take part. But all turned out fine and Jeff Wadlow will direct from his script, a follow up to the original that debuted at SXSW back in 2010 that went on to gross $103M at the box office worldwide. That’s a lot of ass-kicking! Star Aaron Johnson told Collider that he’s seen the script and it shouldn’t disappoint. “It’s pretty much set to go this fall,” he said. “I think now [Chloe Grace Moretz] and [Christopher Mintz-Plasse] are on board. I’m certainly set up to do it…Yeah, I think it’s going to happen.” Asked about the script, Johnson assures that the new version will keep the faith. “Oh, yeah! It keeps the standard from the first film.” Continuing, Johnson adds about creator Matthew Vaughn: “The only way he was ever going to make a sequel was if it could be anywhere close to the first one, and keep that class and that quality, and just maintain something original and new and refreshing. And this script delivers all of that, right now.” [ Collider ]
Decades after championing auteur theory and tangling with Pauline Kael, New York-based film critic Andrew Sarris has died at the age of 83, survived by his wife, the film critic Molly Haskell. In honor of one of the most influential careers in American film criticism, revisit one of Sarris’s first notable reviews — his celebration of Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal 1960 film Psycho , which the then-32-year-old insisted “should be seen at least three times by any discerning film-goer.” Sarris, whose career spanned stints at the New York Bulletin, the Village Voice, and The New York Observer, popularized and championed the auteur theory after spending time with New Wave filmmakers in Paris. Subbing in for the absent Village Voice critic Jonas Mekas, he infused his review of Psycho with this approach to viewing film as a expression of a director’s personal vision, later solidifying his stance (and coining the phrase “auteur theory”) in his 1962 essay “Notes on the Auteur Theory.” But back to bold beginnings: Read Sarris’s full Psycho review here (re-published in J. Hoberman’s 2010 remembrance), portions of which are excerpted below. “A close inspection of Psycho indicates not only that the French have been right all along, but that Hitchcock is the most-daring avant-garde film-maker in America today. Besides making previous horror films look like variations of Pollyanna , Psycho is overlaid with a richly symbolic commentary on the modern world as a public swamp in which human feelings and passions are flushed down the drain. What once seemed like impurities in his patented cut-and-chase technique now give Psycho and the rest of Hollywood Hitchcock a personal flavor and intellectual penetration which his British classics lack.” “…Hitchcock no longer cheats his endings. Where the mystery of Diabolique , for example, is explained in the most popular after-all-this-is-just-a-movie-and-we’ve-been-taken manner, the solution of Psycho is more ghoulish than the antecedent horror which includes the grisliest murder scenes ever filmed. Although Hitchcock continually teases his conglomerate audience, he never fails to deliver on his most ominous portents. Such divergent American institutions as motherhood and motels, will never seem quite the same again, and only Hitchcock could give a soft-spoken State Trooper the visually sinister overtones of a dehumanized machine patrolling a conformist society.” ” Psycho should be seen at least three times by any discerning film-goer, the first time for the sheer terror of the experience, and on this occasion I fully agree with Hitchcock that only a congenital spoilsport would reveal the plot; the second time for the macabre comedy inherent in the conception of the film; and the third for all the hidden meanings and symbols lurking beneath the surface of the first American movie since Touch of Evil to stand in the same creative rank as the great European films.” [ NYT ] [Photo: Sarris last month at the 25th anniversary of Columbia University’s Film Festival, via Getty Images]
If the world were ending imminently — say, in three weeks — would you throw off the shackles of social confines and indulge in every crazy impulse the moment inspired? Would you seek out your loved ones in order to spend your last days in their company? Would you just stay put and continue on as normal right up until the final moment? Seeking a Friend for the End of the World , the directorial debut of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist writer Lorene Scafaria, combines a deviously tragicomic take on the approaching annihilation of mankind with a irritatingly unconvincing and unnecessary love story. Until romance reluctantly but unavoidably creaks into the story (seeking a friend, my ass), the film starts off so well, exploring the most prosaic of upcoming apocalypses as seen through the eyes of Dodge ( Steve Carell ), a man whose life has been largely unexceptional and is now about to come to an end, along with most everyone else’s. (One of the film’s nice touches is an overheard radio broadcast about how the planet’s best and brightest are being gathered into some kind of ark — a standard issue global cataclysm plot point never touched on again, because the characters in this film aren’t exceptional enough to be plucked up.) At the outset beginning, he and his wife listen to a news announcement about how a last effort to stop a giant asteroid headed toward us has failed, and that impact was in an estimated 21 days. She looks at him, and then runs for the hills, never to be seen again. For a while, Dodge keeps going into work at his insurance company, where his boss notes that the few remaining employees are allowed to dress like it’s casual Friday every day, and wonders if anyone would like to take over as CFO. On the TV, there’s news that air travel has ended and cell phones are no longer working. At a dinner party being thrown by Dodge’s friends Warren (Rob Corddry) and Diane (Connie Britton), polite talk about what attendees plan to do with the rest of their time (one member suggests she’s going to finally take that pottery class she’s been meaning to) devolves into wild debauchery, getting the children drunk and someone arriving with hard drugs like you would a nice bottle of wine for the table. “I regret my entire life,” Dodge says, and seems ready to let that be the sentiment with which he waits out Armageddon, until he has a chance encounter with his neighbor Penny ( Keira Knightley ), a flaky, teary Brit who has just broken up with her boyfriend Owen (Adam Brody) and now mourns the fact that she has no way to make it back to England to see her family one last time. She also has a pile of his letters that were accidentally put in her box — three years worth — including one from his high school girlfriend saying he’s the love of her life. Penny has a car and Dodge knows someone who has a plane, and the two make a deal to help each other get where they need to go. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is primarily a meander through random encounters on the road toward Dodge’s old sweetheart, most of them wild-eyed but sweet — aside from a riot that springs up in Los-Angeles-barely-pretending-to-be-New-York, where the pair live, the film’s world is good-hearted even when faced with impending doom. Whether encountering survivalists or the dedicated, giddy employees of a chain restaurant, everyone quivers with a delirious what-the-hell vibe that’s melancholy and amusing. Our obsession with the apocalypse is stronger than ever — it practically merits its own movie subsection, if its too scattered to be a genre. There’s no reason why the end of the world shouldn’t get the romantic comedy treatment, but the connection that springs up between Dodge and Penny feels awkward and forced. It’s not just that Carell is 22 years older than Knightley, or that the process in which he falls in love with her consists of him staring puppy-dog like while she weeps on the phone to her family — it’s that the idea of two people finding an unexpected connection to one another and offering up kindness in desperate times is actually much more touching than the insistence that they’re last-minute soulmates. Carell and Knightley have no spark of romantic chemistry between them — in fact, they actually clash in more interesting ways, with Dodge being a morose wet blanket and Penny coming across as a disaster who tends to allow major mistake to happen and then cry about them. The things they stumble onto — dinner in an abandoned house, a line of people headed to the beach — have a warm, wistful tangibility to them, in the way that you’d think the conscious gathering of last experiences would. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World ‘s effusive declarations of love just seem like the stagey stuff of movies — they’ve got nothing on the moment in which Dodge lies on the carpet and listens the Walker Brothers’ “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore)” on vinyl while he waits for the earth to be destroyed. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Singer will appear alongside Jim Parsons in ‘Happy Smekday!’ based on a novel by Adam Rex. By Jocelyn Vena Rihanna Photo: Rihanna battled some bad aliens in “Battleship,” but now it seems she’ll be tackling a much friendlier extraterrestrial life form in her animated flick, “Happy Smekday!” She’s set to play the lead alongside “Big Bang Theory” Emmy-winner Jim Parsons. The flick, based on Adam Rex’s book “The True Meaning of Smekday,” follows an alien race who come to Earth to hide away from their enemies. When one of the aliens accidentally spills the beans about their hideout to the bad guys, he must go on the run with a teenage girl. The twosome then goes on a road trip through a dystopian America, learning about humanity along the way. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film is slated for a 2014 release. “Antz” and “Over the Hedge” director Tim Johnson will helm the DreamWorks Animation project, with “Get Smart” screenwriters Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember penning the script. It’s just another film credit for Ri, who has begun her transition from singer to singer/actress. Ever since her appearance in “Battleship,” roles have been steadily coming her way. “I got a few scripts, actually, a lot of incredible roles,” she told MTV News recently. “Some of which I felt were a little too big for me, being that I never did a movie. So I wanted to really get my feet wet, try it, see what it was like and know how I wanted to move from there. I’m really glad ‘Battleship’ turned out to be the first one.” She was recently spotted on the set of “End of the World,” confirming her long-rumored cameo in the Seth Rogen comedy. She shot down chatter that she would play Whitney Houston in a biopic of her life, and her rep recently denied rumors that she would be in the next “Fast and The Furious.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Battleship’ Related Artists Rihanna
U.K. critics are divided down the middle on Sony’s ‘Spider-Man’ reboot, starring Andrew Garfield as the friendly neighborhood hero. By Josh Wigler Andrew Garfield in “The Amazing Spider-Man” Photo: Peter Parker swings back into U.S. theaters on July 3 with “The Amazing Spider-Man,” this time played by British up-and-comer Andrew Garfield — and while Stateside critics have stayed hush-hush on their feelings about the “Amazing” reboot for now, our friends across the pond have been more outspoken with their reactions. Several U.K. news outlets including The Guardian and Empire have published their reviews of director Marc Webb’s “Spider-Man” reboot, following the film’s London premiere on Monday. The consensus is not unlike Parker’s own superhero career: rocky at points, healthy at times and flat-out “amazing” in other areas. Keep reading for the good and the bad from the early “Amazing Spider-Man” reviews! Webb & The Web-Spinner “Webb successfully treads a fine line between keeping the hardcore superhero-movie fans happy and injecting a dose of meaningful affect. Parker is generally reckoned to be the most ‘relatable’ figure in the superhero canon, but the pastel-bright synthetics of the earlier movies did little to dispel the sense that the comic-book world could only construct its characters out of clunking great blocks of melodrama. In re-engineering Parker into the introspective, uncertain male more typical of his previous film, Webb is aided by a terrific performance from Andrew Garfield, who brings a genial unflappability that allows him to negotiate the often-ludicrous demands of the superhero plotline. At the same time, Webb also shows an unarguable facility for the more traditional action elements of the story, and the 3D certainly helps: he pulls off some properly nauseating shots as Parker dives off skyscrapers, rescues kids from falling, and the like.” — Andrew Pulver, The Guardian Toning It Down “The shadow of ‘Batman Begins’ looms as ‘Amazing’ opens, the gold standard of origin-skewed reboots riskily invoked. Parker as a child plays games at home, stumbles on some destiny-sealing revelations, loses his parents on a stormy night… A dark roots movie steeped in tragedy? Some ‘untold story,’ that. Webb finds much surer footing as Parker hits high school, helped by crack casting. More confident than the last, this Parker is slick on a skateboard and not shy about standing up to Flash Thompson. The geek just got chic: who better to play him than the guy with the algorithms and rhythm from ‘The Social Network’? A young buck made testy by grief, a rebel without a comb, Garfield nails all bases here, star DNA aglow. Stare-y eyes melting, he’s winningly earnest; lithe of physique, he delivers in the dust-ups; blithely gatecrashing Gwen Stacy’s bedroom, he gives good dreamboat.” — Total Film Love For The Ladies “Then there’s his needle-sharp young girlfriend, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), who wants to get under his skin even more than that radioactive arachnid did; find out what it is that makes his Spidey-senses tingle. Amid all of the soul-searching and lip-biting, it suddenly struck me: Webb has created the first superhero movie aimed primarily at women. Ever since ‘Twilight’ tipped off Hollywood to the spending power of girls and their mothers, a range of increasingly expensive films aimed at that audience has materialised. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before a superhero suited up with them in mind, although it remains to be seen how die-hard Spider-fans will react to their hero courting a different — some would say rival — demographic.” — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph The Negative Spin “Director Marc Webb aims for a new realism, stripping away the brio of Sam Raimi’s 2002 version with Tobey Maguire. He also dispenses with much of the character and sass that always made this character fun. It’s not Garfield’s fault: he is a convincingly troubled, inarticulate Peter Parker, a springily athletic Spider-Man, and has awesome hair. His greatest enemy is the script. That, and the rather wearisome 3D.” — Nick Curtis, The London Evening Standard The Final Word “Graced with great performances from Garfield and Stone, ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ is a rare comic-book flick that is better at examining relationships than superheroism. If it doesn’t approach the current benchmark of ‘Avengers Assemble,’ it still delivers a different enough, enjoyable origin story to live comfortably alongside the Raimi era.” –Ian Freer, Empire What do you think of the early “Spider-Man” reviews? Let us know in the comments section below! Check out everything we’ve got on “The Amazing Spider-Man.” For breaking news and previews of the latest comic book movies — updated around the clock — visit SplashPage.MTV.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ Related Photos The Amazing Spider-Man
‘Weeds’ actor, who was up for the role of Peeta in ‘Hunger Games,’ tells MTV News he’d ‘love’ to play Finnick in the sequel. By Kara Warner Hunter Parrish Photo: Our fellow “Hunger Games” fans will likely recall the fact that the casting process for the first film garnered more than a few headlines, particularly regarding the roles of Katniss, Peeta and Gale. Now that those roles have long been filled and the movie has gone on to break box-office records, we have been focused on the casting rumors around its sequel, “Catching Fire.” While Lionsgate hasn’t made any announcements about who will join the cast for the sequel, particularly as fan-favorite character Finnick Odair, that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from churning out likely prospects. One of the fan-supported candidates is “Weeds” actor Hunter Parrish, who was also an early favorite to play Peeta until Josh Hutcherson won the role. When MTV News caught up with Parrish recently to discuss the release of his first single, “Sitting at Home,” we couldn’t help but ask for his thoughts on the franchise and also being considered for Finnick. “This whole ‘Hunger Games’ thing, man … I’ve read all of the books, because I’ve been through this once before,” Parrish said. “It was very exciting for me [to be considered] for the first movie, to be a part of that, and I read all of the books at that time, and I loved the script and the director and Jennifer Lawrence who was cast at that point. I saw it as something very exciting, and I was very excited about it, but it wasn’t [meant to be]. Josh is also a friend of mine, and I haven’t seen the film yet, but people say amazing things about it, and he’s great, he’s perfect. We’ve worked together before, and he’s a great actor,” Parrish said sincerely. While Parrish is grateful for the fan support behind the Finnick campaign, his experience from the first round of casting has him feeling more cautious about things this time around. “I kind of dove in for that one, so for this one, I don’t know,” he said. “I think you just kind of step back, and if it happens, it happens. I’m not going to really spend too much time thinking about it, but I’d love to. I wouldn’t cast myself, but that’s not helping me getting cast for that movie,” he joked. “But I’m a fan of the books. I think there’s fantastic actors that would probably be better. So there’s that for getting me a job!” In continuing with his gracious thoughts about other actors he’d consider for Finnick, we asked Parrish if he wanted to give a shout-out to any for fun. “No, I wouldn’t go that far!” he laughed. “I still want the job, I’m just saying … ” Check out everything we’ve got on “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” For young Hollywood news, fashion and “Twilight” updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com .
Martin Hill tells the Daily how he set the stage with the visually arresting opening scene. By Kevin P. Sullivan An Engineer in “Prometheus” Photo: This article contains “Prometheus” spoilers. Ridley Scott’s ” Prometheus ” begins with some of the film’s most arresting images. A hairless, pale-skinned Engineer stands atop a waterfall. He drinks a liquid that we may never learn more about, disintegrates and, in turn, creates all of life on Earth. The visuals set the stage for the rest of the film and show Scott’s use of 3-D simultaneously, and now, new videos from the Daily explore the effects work that went into making that shot and the Prometheus’ crash with the Engineer ship. Visual effects supervisor Martin Hill from WETA Digital goes into great detail during his interview about the opening sequence, the creation of life. Not only was the team challenged with creating an impressive visual, but one that succinctly told a complex story. “Because we had such a short amount of time to tell the story of the DNA getting infected, breaking apart, and then re-forming and recombining to show Earth DNA, we had to make the designs of the different DNA quite graphical, quite illustrative of what they were,” Hill said. After some time, the sequence shifts to the microscopic level, traveling inside the veins of the Engineer. For those sequences, Scott instructed the visual effects team to emphasize the destruction being done. “The Engineer’s DNA, we thought, ‘This needs to be quite sinister, but we know it’s going to get infected, and the infection has to look more messed up than the Engineer’s DNA,’ ” Hill said. “We used quite a light color palette for Engineer’s DNA, and then the infection comes on and it’s very melted looking. Ridley actually said to us, ‘It has to feel like war in there. The DNA is just being torn apart.’ ” The actual scene of genetic destruction came together from computer-generated elements, but the inspiration for the look came from a very real-life source of inspiration. “We try to use as much reality as possible, so we were looking at all different kinds of reference, so eventually we settled on fish bones, actual decayed fish spines, to represent the structure of the DNA,” Hill said. “For the infection that rolls across the infected DNA, what we did was carve actual blocks of silicone with the vein structures in there and pumped black ink and oils and all kinds of different materials through those, filmed them, and used the motion of those as the basis for all of our effects for the veins and the effect coursing through his body.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Prometheus.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com .
Last April came the out-of-nowhere casting calls , but now you’ll have to come to terms with the fact that Raging Bull II — a prequel and sequel to the Martin Scorsese film, with William Forsythe in the role made famous by Robert De Niro — has actually begun filming. Variety reports: “[Forsythe] stars as boxing champ Jake LaMotta in his older years with newcomer Mojean Aria playing the younger version of the character made famous by Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 classic Raging Bull .” William Forsythe as Jake LaMotta. Yep. It’s happening. Directed by Martin Guigui (from a script co-written with Rustam Branaman), Raging Bull II takes its inspiration from real life pugilist LaMotta’s book, and no — Scorsese isn’t involved. As if . Filming is now in progress in Los Angeles, with an interesting supporting cast that includes Joe Mantegna, Tom Sizemore, Penelope Ann Miller, Natasha Henstridge, Alicia Witt, Ray Wise, Harry Hamlin, Bill Bellamy and James Russo, though cast member Juliet Landau, Tweeting a photo of herself in costume as a starlet who has an affair with LaMotta, described many of theirs as cameo appearances. The film purports to tell LaMotta’s story “‘before the rage’ and ‘after the rage,'” and while it’s tough to guess just how this revisiting of LaMotta’s life will turn out, Witt did Tweet a photo of herself on set last week: Meanwhile, Twilight ‘s Alex Meraz also has a role — as a character named Paco — and recently shared what could be his curly-haired look for the film. Draw your own conclusions: [via Variety ]
Comic who also appeared in the spin-off ‘The Parkers’ died of cervical cancer. By Gil Kaufman Yvette Wilson Photo: Comic and actress Yvette Wilson, one of the stars of the 1990s UPN sitcom “Moesha,” died on Thursday at the age of 48 after a battle with cervical cancer. Wilson, who played Andell Wilkerson, the owner of neighborhood hang spot the Den on the sitcom starring singer Brandy , went on to play that same role on the “Moesha” spin-off “The Parkers.” Wilson’s good friend, Jeffrey Pittle, confirmed the news that Wilson had passed in a statement on a website he set up to help raise funds for her treatment. “It is with a heavy heart that I can verify that Yvette passed away last evening after a lengthy and hard battle,” he wrote. “She was a fighter to the end, and her talent, humor and amazing friendship will be sorely missed. She will live on through her awesome body of work.” Born on March 6, 1964, in Los Angeles, Wilson backed her way into acting by taking a friend’s dare to do stand-up comedy and then landing a spot on the short-lived sitcom “Thea.” That helped her book bit parts in movies including “House Party 2” and its sequel, “Friday,” “Poetic Justice” and “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.” Those gigs won her the part of Wilkerson on “Moesha,” where she counseled her younger charge while keeping an eye on the kids at the Den. She parlayed that into a co-starring role alongside Mo’Nique on “The Parkers.” When Wilson’s cancer crisis got serious after years of battles with kidney failure and kidney transplants, Pittle started a website to raise money for her treatment. Dubbing it the “Yvette Wilson CANCER SUCKS FUND,” the site had raised nearly 30 percent of its $50,000 goal at the time of her death. A number of her friends and admirers tweeted tributes, including “Moesha” co-star Shar Jackson, who wrote , “F— Cancer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! … oh god … my heart is soooo unbelievably broken … I wanna thank all my tweeties for their prayers but god has chosen to take my sister Yvette home.” Also weighing in was Jamie Foxx , who said, “God bless u Yvette Wilson. Tears in my eyes. Keep God laughing” and former Fugees singer Lauryn Hill , who wrote, “R.I.P. Yvette Wilson … Life is short, so cherish yours.” A number of other actors/comedians also praised Wilson and offered condolences, including Cedric the Entertainer, Loni Love, Marlon Wayans and Roots drummer ?uestlove.
