It’s impressive how much J.J. Abrams and the folks at Bad Robot manage to pack into the new teaser trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness without revealing, well, the actual plot of the summer 2013 sequel. Space action! Benedict Cumberbatch ! That darned hands-on-glass scene that just screams ” I have been and always shall be your friend !” Watch the action-packed teaser below and let’s get to piecing together the puzzle. The teaser is big on setting up an ambiguous adversarial relationship between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Cumberbatch, but Captain Pike’s voice over seems more telling of the themes Star Trek Into Darkness will hit: Kirk’s bravado, and the danger it poses to his crew. Despite the out of context flashes of intriguing set pieces — Star Wars ian spaceship action, that leap off a cliff, that other leap off a building, and what appears to be the Enterprise crash-landing in water — the hands moment ends the tease with a clear nod to Wrath of Khan , although we can’t tell who’s on what side of the glass. Still, something tells me there are more clues hidden in this teaser than we might think, like this brief shot of Noel Clarke’s as-yet unidentified character. As seen in the first nine minutes of the film , Clarke plays a man whose ailing daughter Cumberbatch approaches at a London hospital and offers to save. Here we see him in a possibly-Starfleet uniform as he appears to drop a thumble full of something into a glass of water — perhaps fulfilling his end of his deal with the Cumber-Devil? What intriguing bits and clues do you see in the teaser? Chime in below. Star Trek Into Darkness hits theaters May 17, 2013. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Martin Scorsese is taking on the 42nd President of the United States for his next project and Bill Clinton himself is fully participating in the non-fiction film. Produced in conjunction with HBO , the film will “explore his perspectives on history, politics, culture and the world.” Scorsese will produce and direct the film. In announcing the film, Scorsese said Clinton is a “Towering figure who remains a major voice in world issues,” adding, “President Clinton continues to shape the political dialogue both here and around the world. Through intimate conversations, I hope to provide greater insight into this transcendent figure.” William Jefferson Clinton served as the 42nd U.S. President from 1993 to 2001 and was the first Democratic leader in six decades to be elected twice. He is credited with leading the U.S. to one of the longest economic expansions in American history. After leaving office, he established the William J. Clinton Foundation which aims to “improve global health, strengthen economies, promote healthier childhoods and protect the environment by fostering partnerships among governments, business, NGOs and private citizens.” “President Clinton is one of the most compelling figures of our time, whose world view and perspective, combined with his uncommon intelligence, making him a singular voice on the world stage,” said HBO CEO Richard Plepler and programming president Michael Lombardo in a joint statement. “This documentary, under Marty’s gifted direction, creates a unique opportunity for the President to reflect on myriad issues that have consumed his attention and passion throughout both his Presidency and post-Presidency.” “I am pleased that legendary director Martin Scorsese and HBO have agreed to this film,” Clinton said in a statement. “I look forward to sharing my perspective on my years as President and my work in the years since with HBO’s audience.” Martin Scorsese collaborated with the 2011 doc George Harrison: Living in the Material World . He’s also worked with the premium network with the documentary Public Speaking (2010) and the series Boardwalk Empire , in which he is an executive producer.
No surprise, it was a Hobbit weekend with the title, accounting for over half of the overall box office and even setting a December record. It did not match the highest estimates of some box office prognosticators, but nevertheless a solid showing considering its expectations. The top 10 grossed over $122.6 million. 1. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Gross: $84,775,000 Screens: 4,045 (PSA: $20,958) Week: 1 As expected, Middle Earth proved highly lucrative at the box office, even setting a December record. With 4,045 theaters, The Hobbit ‘s gross outpaced the previous December record-holder, I Am Legend with $77.2 million. It also performed above the start of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at $73.3 million. Still, the Lord of the Rings prequel did not match the lofty expectations of $100 million some had predicted. The feature accounted for over half of the b.o. over the weekend. 2. Rise of the Guardians Gross: $7,420,000 (Cume: $71,361,823) Screens: 3,387 (PSA: $2,191) Week: 4 (Change: – 28.7%) Rise of the Guardians placed second again and the title only fell about 29% maintaining momentum that should continue with its holiday theme. The pic will have to contend with a number of new releases headed to theaters between now and Christmas, so reaching the $100 million mark may still be tough. 3. Lincoln Gross: $7,244,000 (Cume: $107,898,000) Screens: 2,285 (PSA: 3,170) Week: 6 (Change: – 18.8%) After its big Golden Globe nomination haul, Steven Spielberg’s pic on the 16th U.S. President held strong, only dropping under 19% as the title added 271 theaters. Among the Oscar contenders, it is the highest grossing, at nearly $107.9 million, ahead of Argo ‘s $104.9 million. 4. Skyfall Gross: $7 million (Cume: $272,366,000) Screens: 2,924 (PSA: $2,394) Week: 6 (Change: – 35.1%) The latest Bond hit number one last weekend in a generally slow box office, but displayed bravado nonetheless. The pic continued to show strength over the weekend, placing fourth in its sixth week with only a 35% drop despite losing 477 theaters from the previous week. 5. Life of Pi Gross: $5.4 million (Cume: $69,559,406) Screens: 2,548 (PSA: $2,119) Week: 4 (Change: – 35.2%) Ang Lee’s 3-D spectacle held decently with a 35% drop as it lost 398 theaters over the previous weekend. Life of Pi again placed 5th in the box office rankings and it continues to be a tiger at the box office overseas where it has grossed an additional $128.5 million. Still it will have a tough time hitting $100 million domestically. 6. Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Gross: $5,175,000 (Cume: $276,865,000) Screens: 3,042 (PSA: $1,701) Week: 5 (Change: – 43.5%) The Twilight finale lost 604 theaters in its 5th weekend, placing sixth on the chart, dropping three spots from the previous weekend. Worldwide it has grossed a cool $778,265,000 worldwide. 7. Wreck-It Ralph Gross: $3,273,000 (Cume: $168,779,000) Screens: 2,249 (PSA: $1,455) Week: 7 (Change: – 32.6%) In its seventh weekend of release, the animated Disney pic only dropped 32.6 per cent after losing 497 theaters. It again placed seventh in the chart. Abroad the pic has cumed $57.7 million. 8. Playing for Keeps Gross: $3,247,000 (Cume: $10,838,092) Screens: 2,840 (PSA: $1,143) Week: 2 (Change: – 43.5%) Opening in sixth place, the pic added three venues and dropped two slots to eighth. The pic will struggle to stay in the top 10 and will likely not stay in theaters in a significant way as new offerings open. 9. Red Dawn Gross: $2,394,000 (Cume: $40,889,423) Screens: 2,250 (PSA: $1,064) Week: 4 (Change: – 43.5%) One month out, Red Dawn lost 504 theaters and dropped one spot to 9th place. The pic will struggle to pass $45 million domestically which marks a likely loss considering its $65 million production budget. 10. Silver Linings Playbook Gross: $2,084,000 (Cume: $16,954,049 Screens: 371 (PSA: $5,617) Week: 5 (Change: – 4%) The Oscar hopeful broke the top 10 after flirting with it for a number of weeks. The feature is in comparatively far fewer theaters than its other top 10 brethren and its $5,617 per screen average is only outpaced by The Hobbit , which bowed this weekend. After dropping nearly 30% in each of the last couple weeks, the film only fell a very slight 4% this weekend, showing the title has some solid footing as it heads into the thick of the holidays and a wider expansion likely in the New Year.
The film won a number of prizes including Best Picture. Also in Monday’s round-up of news, seven films made the Academy’s Shortlist of titles competing in the hair and makeup category; Lili Taylor’s latest is set for a Berlin premiere; newcomers in the Specialty Box Office opened weak over the weekend; and film critic Karina Longworth is leaving L.A. Weekly. Silver Linings Playbook Wins 4 Satellite Awards Including Best Picture David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook took five prizes at the 17th annual Satellite Awards Sunday including Best Picture and best director for Russell and best actor prizes for Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, THR reports . 7 Movies On Makeup Short List Seven films remain in competition for the Makeup and Hairstyling category for the 85th Academy Awards. Hitchcock , The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , Les Misérables , Lincoln , Looper , Men in Black 3 and Snow White and the Huntsman made the short list. Three nominees will lead into the Oscar ceremony. Lili Taylor’s The Cold Lands Set for Berlin Premiere The film by Tom Gilroy will have its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. Also starring John Ventimiglia, the pic revolves around Atticus who flees from authorities after his mother’s sudden death into the rugged mountains and dense forests of upstate New York. The feature is part of the initial films announced in the Berlinale’s Generation Programme. See the full list of announced titles here . Any Day Now Soft as Holdovers Hyde Park On Hudson and Silver Linings Playbook Stay Solid Any Day Now bowed in 16 theaters a brave story starring Alan Cumming about a gay couple fighting to retain custody of special needs child they reared. Any Day Now is a brave film and story that earned audience prizes at festivals throughout the year. Unfortunately it did not connect fully with paying audiences in its debut but hopefully its audience will build through word-of-mouth. It averaged only $2,563 per location. More specialty results at Deadline. Film Critic Karina Longworth Leaves L.A. Weekly Longworth began at L.A. Weekly replacing Scott Foundas who headed to the Film Society of Lincoln Center. He’s returning to Village Voice Media as its critic. She is writing a book about Meryl Streep for Cahiers du Cinema and will freelance, TOH reports .
The hero of Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat declared “The cinema is truth, 24 times per second,” as The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw noted while pondering frame rates and cinematic standards last year. Peter Jackson insists that it’s closer to 48 frames per second , as demonstrated by the groundbreaking new frame rate he utilized for this weekend’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey . But do scientific theories about the way our brains perceive images and reality — truth unfolding onscreen, in front of our eyes — support Jackson’s brave new vision for cinema, or undermine it? There is a great gulf between the cinematic look of 24 fps, the traditional rate at which film images are presented in succession to simulate moving images on a screen, and 48 fps. The latter packs more visual information into each second of film, for better and worse . Jackson and his fellow HFR enthusiasts (including James Cameron and Douglas Trumbull ) argue that 48 fps and even higher frame rates result in greater clarity and a closer approximation to real life. They also contend it reduces motion blur, thus improving the look of 3-D images. But scientists and researchers in the field of consciousness perception say that the human brain perceives reality at a rate somewhere between 24 fps and 48 fps — 40 conscious moments per second , to be more exact — and exceeding the limit of the brain’s speed of cognition beyond the sweet spot that connotes realism is where Jackson & Co. get into trouble. Movieline spoke with filmmaker James Kerwin , who lectured on the subject of the science of film perception and consciousness at the University of Arizona’s Center for Consciousness Studies . (His presentation included an analysis of the work of Dr. Stuart Hameroff and British cosmologist/philosopher Roger Penrose, and their quantum theory of consciousness.) According to Kerwin, there really is a simple scientific answer for why The Hobbit ’s 48 fps presentation plays so poorly with some viewers — and it’s not something we’ll get used to over time. HOW OUR BRAINS PERCEIVE REALITY James Kerwin: “Studies seem to show that most humans see about 66 frames per second — that’s how we see reality through our eyes, and our brains. So you would think that 48 frames per second is sufficiently below that — that it would look very different from reality. But what people aren’t taking into account is the fact that although we see 66 frames per second, neuroscientists and consciousness researchers are starting to realize that we’re only consciously aware of 40 moments per second.” “Dr. Hameroff’s theory has to do with the synchrony of the gamma waves in the brain — it’s called gamma synchrony — the brain wave cycle of 40 hertz. There’s a very strong theory that that is why we perceive 40 moments per second, but regardless of the reason, most researchers agree we perceive 40 conscious moments per second. In other words: our eyes see more than that but we’re only aware of 40. So if a frame rate hits or exceeds 40 fps, it looks to us like reality. Whereas if it’s significantly below that, like 24 fps or even 30 fps, there’s a separation, there’s a difference — and we know immediately that what we’re watching is not real.” HIGH FRAME RATES AND THE UNCANNY VALLEY “You’ve got guys like Cameron and Jackson saying, let’s make it more real because the more realistic, the better; the higher the definition, the more 3-D, the more this, the more that. They’re not taking into account what’s called The Uncanny Valley in psychology. The Uncanny Valley says that, statistically, if you map out a consumer’s reaction to something they’re seeing, if they’re seeing something artificial and it starts to approach something looking real, they begin to inherently psychologically reject it.” “Not every person perceives the Uncanny Valley, however. There are some people that just do not reject things that look too real, although the vast majority of people do experience that phenomenon. So you’re going to get some individuals who see it and go, This looks great! The problem is anecdotes are not evidence. You have to look at the public as a whole, and I think that’s what Jackson and Cameron are not doing.” FORWARD-MOVING HFR VS. TRADITIONAL FILM CONVENTIONS “There are all sorts of conventions in film that are not found in reality. People talk to each other in ways that they don’t in reality. Things are lit in ways that they’re not lit in reality. The make-up, the hair, the props, everything is fake. If you stand on a film set and you watch the actors performing, you don’t for a second think that it’s real. There are acting conventions that we have chosen to accept.” “One thing a lot of people are saying about The Hobbit in 48 is that the acting is bad — well, the acting’s not bad, they’re simply acting with cinematic conventions but it’s such a high frame rate that the motion looks too real and you can see through the artifice of the acting.” THE NECESSARY SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF — WHICH 48 FPS LACKS “It’s psychological: we need suspension of disbelief, and suspension of disbelief comes from the lower frame rate. The lower frame rate allows our brains to say, Okay — I’m not perceiving 40 conscious moments per second anymore; I’m only perceiving 24, or 30, and therefore this is not real and I can accept the artificial conventions of the acting and the lighting and the props. It’s an inherent part of the way our brain perceives things. Twenty-four or 30 frames per second is an inherent part of the cinematic experience. It’s the way we accept cinema. It’s the way we suspend our disbelief.” “Those high frame rates are great for reality television, and we accept them because we know these things are real. We’re always going to associate high frame rates with something that’s not acted, and our brains are always going to associate low frame rates with something that is not. It’s not a learned behavior; [Some say] you watch it long enough and you won’t associate it with cheap soap operas anymore. That’s nonsense. The science does not say that. It’s not learned behavior. It’s an inherent part of the way our brains see things.” James Kerwin is currently in development on an adaptation of R.U.R. Find more about him at his website , and head here to read further on Dr. Stuart Hameroff’s consciousness studies. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Save the Date , the new film from director Michael Mohan ( One Too Many Mornings ), is a neat, lightweight little hipster romance about commitment issues between people barely ready to confront what they want, much less tell others about it. (I hate to use the h-word, but there’s really no avoiding it when talking about a film in which an artist/bookstore employee breaks up with a guy in a band and starts dating a marine biologist who’s been mooning over her at work.) Written by Mohan alongside Jeffrey Brown and Egan Reich, the film follows two sisters and the men they’re involved with. Sarah ( Lizzy Caplan ) and Beth ( Alison Brie ) are dating a pair of guys in an indie group called Wolfbird. The most sensible Beth and drummer Andrew ( Martin Starr) are getting married, while responsibility-averse Sarah and lead singer Kevin (Geoffrey Arend) have just moved in together. It’s a tidy arrangement that’s blown to bits when, in a fit of euphoria during a successful hometown show, Kevin decides to propose to Sarah in front of the crowd despite Andrew’s warning that the timing’s not right. She’s horrified, doesn’t accept, and soon Wolfbird’s off on tour with a broken-hearted frontman while she moves into a new place and tumbles too quickly into a relationship with the sweet Jonathan (Mark Webber), who’s been ordering books for his master’s degree at Sarah’s store just because she works there. Beth expects this to be a rebound relationship that will catapult her flaky sister back into Kevin’s arms, but as time goes on it starts to seem like that has everything to do with what she wants and not what Sarah does. Save the Date , which belongs to a recent rash of films, from (500) Days of Summer to The Freebie and Celeste & Jesse Forever , that have showcased Los Angeles as an actual warm, distinctive city, manages its modest pleasures because of its likable cast. Arend, who may be best known as the spouse of Mad Men ‘s Christina Hendricks , makes a convincingly charismatic/smothering musician, and Freaks and Geeks alum Martin Starr is a pleasure to see in anything, particularly a role in which he’s a disheveled rocker. And actor and filmmaker Webber brings vulnerability to a character who’s initially a little too good to be true, until he finally calls Sarah on her skittishness. All three are playing painfully nice guys (“I want to make sure I’m not stepping over any boundaries!” Jonathan protests as Sarah drags him to bed) who are at the mercy of the women in their lives — Beth is deep into planning a wedding Andrew has little interest in, and Sarah threatens to smash both Kevin and Jonathan’s hearts in her quest for happiness. Brie’s a talented comedienne, but she plays things straight here, bringing nuance to a potentially shrill character so caught up in her own nuptials that she starts to see her sister’s issues as interference. And Caplan carries the bulk of the film, her Sarah a girl for whom some things, like guys and her comic-style artwork, come easy, while longer-range decisions and plans remain intimidating and to be avoided. “It makes me think that aspirations are just totally overrated,” she tells Jonathan on a date as she describes her friends’ career and complaints about their busy lives, but her arty slackerdom reveals itself to be a kind of cowardice. In Gone Girl , former Entertainment Weekly writer turned novelist Gillian Flynn’s hit thriller, the character Amy describes an archetype she calls the “Cool Girl,” an aspirational creature who’s just one of the guys, “who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex,” but who is, of course, also “hot and understanding.” It’s a type that Caplan’s become a queen at playing (I’d put Olivia Munn in second place), beautiful and hip and slovenly and all over the place, an attractive mess — see Bachelorette , 3, 2, 1… Frankie Go Boom , Party Down and Hot Tub Time Machine . In the history of female roles on screen, there have been far worse types to play, despite Amy’s condemnation, but Caplan, who’s always a winning presence, is most interesting when she provides peeks behind the Cool Girl mask — as in how her character in Bachelorette was on the verge of being repulsive, her carousel of partying and hookups starting to wear on her, to look less like fun she’s having and more like self-destruction. Sarah’s most intriguing when she’s an accidental monster, part of her power a certain inherent narcissism that allows her to act on impulse but also to be blithely unrecognizing of the reactions of others when she’s caught up in her own feelings. She and Jonathan have a cute and sometimes cutesy courtship (one Mohan likes to mark with periodic shots of their feet), but it’s when he stands up to her and demands to know what it is about intimacy she’s so afraid of, and when Andrew has his own showdown with Beth, that the film really coheres. That’s when it delineates how the very qualities that can be appealing in someone can also be problematic. Mohan’s film may not manage anything out of the ordinary, but it does present a convincingly contemporary depiction of relationships and dating when the goalposts have been moved, or when we’re at least trying to pretend they have. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Any Day Now writer-director Travis Fine came across the story that would be his next film from a script that sat on the desk of original writer George Arthur Bloom and adapted it and tapped Alan Cumming to star in the story about a gay couple in the late ’70s who fight a discriminatory legal system to formally adopt a special needs teen who has been in their care. The feature, which opens Friday through Music Box Films, has won audience prizes at festivals throughout the year, including Tribeca where it debuted last Spring, to Provincetown, Chicago, Woodstock, Seattle and Outfest. Inspired by a true story and touching on legal and social issues that are more relevant now than ever, Any Day Now tells a story of love, acceptance, and creating your own family. In the late 1970s, when Marco (Isaac Leyva), a teenager with down syndrome who’s been abandoned by his mother, is taken in by committed couple Rudy (Alan Cumming) and Paul (Garret Dillahunt), he finds in them the family he’s never had. However, when their unconventional living arrangement is discovered by the authorities, Rudy and Paul must fight a biased legal system to adopt the child they have come to love as their own. Co-starring Frances Fisher, Gregg Henry and Chris Mulkey, Music Box Films will open the film in select theaters across the country on December 14.
“Can I be honest with you? I’m bad news. I’m not your friend. I’m not going to help you – I’m going to break you. Any questions?” are the haunting words that open the latest Zero Dark Thirty trailer spoken by actor Jason Clarke who plays Dan, a CIA interrogator. [ Related: Oscar Index: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Caught In The Cross-Hairs ] His character is at the center of a mini-controversy that broke this week by critics of the film by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow who say it justifies the U.S.’s use of water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques — considered torture by many &mdash’ as useful tools in the eventual successful hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. The trailer depicts the worldwide hunt from the boardrooms of the CIA in Washington, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and eventually Afghanistan and Pakistan. Jessica Chastain, who has received multiple critics awards and nominations so far, including a Golden Globe nomination yesterday , is the secret operative at the center of the hunt. The trailer hints at the slick telling of the story and ends with what sounds like a child’s choir singing a haunting version of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” [ Related: Should Torture Controversy Blindside ‘Zero Dark Thirty’? ] Zero Dark Thirty Synopsis: For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar-winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal ( The Hurt Locker ) for the story of history’s greatest manhunt for the world’s most dangerous man.
Prognosticators have maybe five (or even as few as two) possible Oscar winners, and most lists of ten (or so) have many of the same titles though perhaps in various orders. But folks, the nominations have yet to come in and the Academy made that clear today with its list of 282 feature films for 2012 that are eligible for Best Picture. [ Related: Oscar Index: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Caught In The Cross-Hairs ] Rules are rules and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially considers a feature film that played in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County by midnight, December 31 and begin a minimum seven consecutive day run. [ Related: Golden Globes Unveil 70th Edition Nominees ] Under Academy rules, a feature-length motion picture must have a running time of more than 40 minutes and must have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film, or in a qualifying digital format. Feature films that receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release are not eligible for Academy Awards in any category. Diary of a Wimpy Kid Dog Days to Django Unchained ; The First Time to Flight ; Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted to Magic Mike ; 17 Girls to The Sessions … They’re all on the official list , so don’t count out the non-elite not making Awards headlines. The 85th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 10, 2013, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2013
Kristen Stewart says it was director Walter Salles’ passion for On The Road that inspired her to sign on for the film. At the New York premiere for the film, the actress, who plays free-spirited Marylou (a character based on Beat icon Neal Cassady’s onetime wife LuAnne Henderson), Stewart told me she was impressed by the immersive research that Salles did — including a 2011 documentary called Searching for On The Road — in preparation for adapting Jack Kerouac’s novel for the screen. “There’s an honor to this story and to the project that is not typical in our business,” Stewart said. Salles is lucky to have her riding shotgun, too. Hollywood has been trying to turn On the Road into a movie since the year it was published, 1957, and Stewart’s immense star power was crucial to getting the job done. RELATED: Check out Movieline’s photo gallery of Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund at the On The Road screening at AFI Fest Salles also talked to me at the premiere as did cast members Sam Riley , Garrett Hedlund and Kirsten Dunst and screenwriter Jose Rivera. It was fun to congratulate him for getting top billing on the movie poster — a rare thing indeed for writers in Hollywood. Check out my full interview below: MORE ON KRISTEN: Kristen Stewart Shares How ‘On The Road’ Helped Her Be Unabashedly Herself Kristen Stewart Talks ‘Hard Love’ In Toronto For On The Road Kristen Stewart Tells Toronto Her Character’s Ability To ‘Love So Openly’ Was Difficult, Nude Scenes Not So Much Follow Movieline on Twitter . Follow Grace Randolph on Twitter .
