Full disclosure right off the bat here, some die-hard Romney fans and those with hyper-sensitivity to the F-Bomb and haters of politics generally may not want to proceed, so if you do, go at your own peril. A tidy little vid starring Barack supporter-extraordinaire Samuel L. Jackson has hit the internet, and though a tad longer than the typical 30 second political spot flooding the airwaves in this election season, it is quite a bit more clever and funnier – though it helps if you’re a supporter of the incumbent, naturally. And while it is unabashedly supportive of Obama, the prez does not come in and say he “supports this message” like in most other political ads. In this version, Jackson invades a home of a quiet suburban family of lackadaisical Obama ’08 supporters to tell them to, “Wake the F**** Up.” The three-minute, forty-second video is sponsored by the Jewish Council for Education and Research and is a riff on a reading the Oscar-nominated actor did last year of a satirical “children’s book” called Go the F*** to Sleep , a charming little diddy that went viral. The book’s author, Adam Mansbach also wrote the script for the pro-Obama version of the story, which opens with a young girl who lies awake in her bed fretting that her complacent family will sleep the election away, when just four years ago they were taking to the streets. The video premiered on Yahoo! Little Suzie gets out of bed, but not far from sight is her political ally in-waiting with political rhymes and a final “Wake the F*** Up” as she traipses through her house encountering her listless family members. First off, she goes to her parents who are falling asleep watching TV in the living room. And like an angel, Jackson appears with a riddle urging little Suzie’s parents to get involved. Next she heads into her older brother’s room, who is sitting with his feet up on his desk. Suzie blasts her brother saying that the election is about their future and recalls how he was on the front lines in ’08. Her brother replies that all politicians are “the same” and like magic again, Jackson appears giving a friendly warning that goes something like this: “They’re all the same? Please! Obama’s sent SEALS to Bin Laden’s place, Romney sent jobs overseas. And how about that student loan overhaul? It’s going to save you thousands of bucks. Mitt will cut that sh** in a second. Hey dude, Wake the F*** Up!” Next she heads to her older sister’s room with more prose about planned parenthood etc., Jackson appears, gives his two cents with another riddle and another, “Wake the F*** Up!” And finally, it’s off to grandma and grandpa’s room who are, incidentally, proving that older folks do have good times, until they’re interrupted by you know who… Medicare is the big theme here, naturally, and one more “Wake the F*** Up!” [Source: Yahoo! News ]
It’s a good fall for ambitious movies. In the wake of the September release of Paul Thomas Anderson ‘s The Master , Warner Bros will open Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings’ Cloud Atlas to theaters on Oct. 26, and a trio of TV spots has begun building awareness of the film adaptation of David Mitchell’s 2004 novel. Check out the clips after the jump and stay tuned for Jen Yamato’s upcoming report on the film’s debut at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX on Wednesday night. Mitchell’s story featured six interconnected stories that spanned from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future. Judging from the TV spots, which feature Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugo Weaving, among other cast members, Tykwer ( Run, Lola, Run ) and the Wachowskis have remained true to the book’s central themes about the cyclical nature of life and the universality of human nature. What do you think? Follow Frank DiGIacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Also in Thursday’s round-up of news briefs, Disney Publishing is planning a book for Tim Burton fans who can’t get enough of Frankenweenie . Also this afternoon, a couple of new films that will be heading their way to theaters. World Premiere of Hitchcock to Open AFI Fest The film starring Oscar winners Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren as well as Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel and Vera Miles will have its World Premiere November 1st as the Opening Night Gala at AFI Fest 2012. Directed by Sacha Gervasi and based on the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello, the film is a love story about one of the most influential filmmakers of the last century, Alfred Hitchcock, and his wife and partner, Alma Reville, which takes place during the making of the distinguished director’s seminal 1960 movie, Psycho . The Fox Searchlight feature will open in theaters this November. The 2012 AFI Fest takes place in Los Angeles November 1 – 8. Lincoln by Steven Spielberg was previously announced as the event’s Closing Night gala. J.K. Rowling Says Similarities Exist Between The Casual Vacancy and Harry Potter The author said there are common themes between her new adult-oriented novel and her blockbuster Harry Potter series including religion and death, though unlike in the boy wizard novels, she said there are deaths in her new book that readers “won’t care much about,” THR reports . Disney Publishing Frankenweenie: An Electrifying Book Based on Walt Disney’s stop-motion animated film by Tim Burton, the interactive book uses video, music and original sketches to offer a behind-the-scenes look into the making of the movie that will be released October 5th. Available on the iBookstore, this book is Disney Publishing’s first to be created with Apple’s iBooks author. Additional information can be found on the Disney Publishing website . Amphibious: Creature of the Deep is Heading to N. American Theaters The tongue-in-cheek creature feature by Brian Yuzna was picked up by Freestyle Digital Media. The pic tells the tale of a marine biologist, Skylar Shane, who hires an expat charter boat captain, Jack Bowman, to help her find prehistoric life form samples in the north Sumatran Sea. After she takes in an orphaned boy, strange occurrences happen on board the ship, including the death of some local smugglers by an unknown entity. Jen Cohen’s Museum Hours Heads to U.S. Theaters The Cinema Guild has picked up rights to Museum Hours , which debuted at the Locarno Film Festival and had its North American premiere in Toronto. The film centers on a Vienna museum guard befriends an enigmatic visitor, the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum becomes a mysterious crossroads which sparks explorations of their lives, the city, and the ways artworks reflect and shape the world.
Fantastic Fest is already halfway done here in Austin, and Monday night the best of the fest were honored at the Fantastic Fest Awards . It’s the only awards ceremony in existence (certainly the only one we’ve heard of) where the winners have to chug a beer before they can accept their award…except for horror category judge Barbara Crampton , who chugged wine, and comedy judge Doug Benson, who smoked a bong. Two of this year’s big winners were also two of the most provocative and nudity-filled features of the entire festival: Sweeping the horror categories this year with awards for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Director, AND Best Picture was Here Comes the Devil (2012), director Adri
Although the above photo of Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska calls to mind a Lana Del Rey music video, it’s actually a still from something much more exciting: Vengeance trilogy director Park Chan-Wook’s upcoming horror thriller Stoker. Despite the title, which refers to the surname of the core characters, the tense, stylish trailer for the Fox Searchlight film, which you can find after the jump, does not look like a vampire tale. Rather, creepy, craven humans look like the monsters of this movie. In one scene, Kidman’s character Evie Stoker icily tells her daughter India (Wasikowska): “I can’t wait to watch life tear you apart.” In another, weird Uncle Charle Stoker (Matthew Goode) tells Kidman, “She’s of age,” presumably referring to India. “She’s of age for what?” replies Kidman with a disgusted look on her face. “You have no idea,” responds Goode in a tone that made my skin crawl. Those who’ve come to know and expect a certain level of creative, Grand Guignol bloodshed in Park’s pictures will have to wait and see, but there are a few promising indications in the trailer. When India is taunted by a classmate at school, she stabs him with a sharp pencil. There are also scenes of Wasikowska hefting what looks like a high-powered rifle. If you haven’t seen Park’s Vengeance trilogy — Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance — you might want to bone up before Stoker is released March 1, 2013. In addition to being one of Korea’s most popular filmmakers, Park’s fans include Django Unchained director Quentin Tarantino. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Despite the silliness, sexism, and let’s face it, more than a handful of bad movies, James Bond has endured as a franchise for 50 years because deep down inside, all of us, at one time, wanted to be spies, and as anyone living vicariously through the movies knows, a good spy needs a great theme song. For better or for worse, presented below are all 22 James Bond title songs and sequences, ranked in order from worst to best. Get your martinis and Walthers ready, ladies and gentlemen… 22. Quantum of Solace I’ve got nothing against Jack White or Alicia Keys , but yikes. This sort of mash-up is just not what James Bond is about. The grating production and completely asynchronous arrangement would be irritating as a standalone song: in a Bond film it’s borderline insulting. The visuals aren’t too great either, and look like some sort of digitally upgraded B-roll from The Mummy Returns . 21. Die Another Day Fans said goodbye to Pierce Brosnan in 2002, and it’s hard to determine exactly how many films he overstayed his welcome by. Rest assured, however, that Die Another Day will go down in history as one of the worst Bond films of the modern era, and the cookie-cutter, auto-tuned, glitchy mess of a title track by Madonna (speaking of stars who overstayed their welcome…) isn’t going to be fondly remembered any time soon, either. 20. The World Is Not Enough It’s hard to tell when performers began hoping a James Bond film would get them exposure rather than the other way around, but it’s safe to bet that it was well before Garbage performed the title track to 1999’s The World is Not Enough , since I imagine the bulk of kids in the theater went “who?” when the phrase “title song performed by Garbage” flashed across the screen. Still, the song is serviceable, and the sequence impressively slick. 19. Moonraker Ugh. Poor Shirley Bassey deserved better than this. After having her name attached to one certifiably classic and one so-so Bond film, Moonraker had to go and mess with the program. Clearly the producers insisted that Bassey drop the completely unmusical phrase “Moonraker” somewhere into the track, and it’s laughably bad. I would have just turned in a new cut of Goldfinger with the titles swapped out, but that’s why I’m not in charge of such things. 18. For Your Eyes Only This song and sequence are notable only because they ushered James Bond into the 1980s with plenty of appropriate glam and glitter, and because Sheena Easton appeared in the opening sequence. Otherwise there’s not much else to say. 17. The Living Daylights Remember A-Ha, better known as “that Norwegian band who did Take on Me”? Well, they had another hit song two years after their award-winner: the theme to Timothy Dalton’s on-screen debut as James Bond. It’s a nice synthed-out dance number, perfect for 1980s 007, but the visuals look like the director just turned on the camera, told the naked girls to writhe around, and then went to lunch. A little effort, people! (Bonus factoid: Joe Don Baker appears in this film, many years before his turn as a CIA operative in Goldeneye ).
James Franco is still channeling all those Renaissance Men from – well, the Renaissance. The actor, director, artist, student, musician, model, writer (have I forgotten anything?) hit the Toronto International Film Festival last month promoting his latest in Spring Breakers by director Harmony Korine , in which he plays a low-brow thug . But now it’s late September and it’s time to roll out with something else. This time, it’s a music video with his newly launched musical project, Daddy, with artist Tim O’Keefe. Motown superstar Smokey Robinson joins in on vocals in the sultry single, Crime , which debuted today via Spin Magazine . Franco met the singer in a perfect alignment of coincidences that only a man with outsized good karma can have. He told Spin : “I had been listening to Motown everyday, talking to Tim O’Keefe about our project. He recommended a documentary about the history of Motown. So I watched the doc in the car on the way to the airport in RI one night, most of the doc was about Smokey. [Then] on the plane to L.A. I slept the whole way and when we landed I woke up with a smiling face standing over me. He said, ‘Hey, I’m a big fan.’ I just stared. ‘It’s Smokey,’ he said. If Smokey Robinson was a fan of mine I wasn’t going to let him get away. Six months later after Tim and I had written the songs I called Smokey from Detroit and asked him to sing on one of the songs and he said sure.” Franco said that his experience in Spring Breakers , which also stars Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine, influenced his Daddy project. His co-stars are featured on the cover art of the Daddy EP. And in one scene in the feature, his character, Dangeruss, sings to hundreds of people on the beach.”That showed me how different singing to an audience is than acting in a scene before an audience,” he said. “When you sing you are connecting directly to the audience; when you act in a scene you are engulfed in the imaginary world and you are connected to the other performers.” [ Source: Spin ]
Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick ( Twilight , Up in the Air ) got her start on Broadway — nabbing a Tony nomination at the age of 12, no less — before making her film debut in 2003’s musical Camp . In this week’s infectiously fun college-set comedy Pitch Perfect she comes full circle playing Beca, an antisocial college freshman who reluctantly joins a ragtag campus a capella group as they attempt to pop song-warble their way to the top. Kendrick rang Movieline to discuss the crowd-pleasing Pitch Perfect , her initial resistance to doing a musical, how one afternoon’s worth of YouTube obsessing paid off (and led to one of the neatest performances in the film, and the undeniable power of Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA.” Beca is an audience surrogate of sorts, a loner entering this strange world of college a cappella from the outside. She is kind of an audience stand-in, and you get to be kind of repulsed by this aggressively geeky world at the beginning of the movie and then fall in love with it while Beca does. The interesting thing to me about the idea of a character that on paper is supposed to be really “cool” is, when you bring it to life, breaking her down and making her seem less cool, because that’s when I think the audience really connects with her. I don’t think you can just say, “Hey audience, this is a cool character so you’re supposed to like her.” For me, I fall in love with characters when they’re out of their element or are uncomfortable and you really feel for them in a knee-jerk sympathetic way. So I had a lot of fun trying to make Beca less cool. It’s fun to take a girl who fancies herself a little bad-ass and kind of embarrass her. That is a lesson she learns — that she’s not too cool for a cappella and she really does need these friends in her life. Yes — she has a secret love of pop music that she pretends to not have, but she lets her freak flag fly. She’s also probably the first mash-up DJ protagonist we’ve seen in the movies. To be perfectly honest, I was really nervous about that because I know friends who are into that kind of stuff and I didn’t want to put anything across onscreen that felt inauthentic. By the time we started filming I was like, “But really — when are you guys going to show me how to do this?” And we kind of ran out of time so I kind of refused to have them explicitly show too much of what Beca was doing because I didn’t know what I was doing. So it’s all alluded to but I didn’t want to have any glaring inaccuracies onscreen. You probably don’t need to worry too much. I have a feeling Pitch Perfect might inspire a generation of kids to look into this whole mash-up business. I hope so! That would be pretty sweet. Your career started on Broadway and in the film Camp , so Pitch Perfect brings you full circle back to music. Were you looking for a musically-oriented project? I wasn’t looking for this, and in fact I remember reading the script and the thing that made me nervous was the musical aspect. It was almost like I wish Kay Cannon could rewrite the script replacing the a cappella with a chess club because I was worried about it being corny. But I fell in love with the script so much because it was so smart and funny and surprising. I was so charmed by it, I was like, “Okay — guess I’m singing in a movie!” What gave you pause about singing again? I knew there’d be comparisons to Glee and there are people who just will not accept a musical as a good movie or automatically think it’s corny, so I knew that would be a little bit of a hurdle. And also it’s making yourself vulnerable in another way, putting yourself on screen singing in a completely sincere fashion. Which is not a problem for a lot of the characters in this movie, these kids who are so, so into a cappella and these competitions. It makes me happy to know this is based on a real community, that there are people like this out there in the world. When I was like 18 and I had just moved to L.A., a friend of mine had a crush on a guy who was in the UCLA a cappella group and I got dragged to this competition between UCLA and USC, and I thought it was going to be the most excruciating night of my life. By the end of it I was starstruck and thought these guys were the coolest, I wanted to meet them and hang out with them — and this was years ago, so it was an interesting example of how you can think something’s really dorky, like in the documentary Spellbound, but by the end of it you’re so invested. Do you see many parallels between the world of musical theater that you started out in and the world of a cappella? I think there are rock stars within every subgenre, and for people who are obsessed with musical theater Sutton Foster and Audra MacDonald are like Beyonce to them. I’m sure the a cappella world has their own version of that, and that exists in every geeky subculture. Did you audition for Pitch Perfect with a song? I met Jason like two years ago about it and they did ask me to sing, so I sang that song with the cups [from the film] that I learned from a YouTube video, and they were like, “Oh my god, that’s going in the movie!” I loved that routine! What inspired you to use that piece? Well, I had just learned it because I’m aggressively dorky. [Laughs] When they asked me to sing I was like, as it happened, here’s something I wasted an afternoon learning, so I might as well show them. That’s pretty impressive. It only took one afternoon? And from a YouTube video it was hard! The relationship Beca has with her fellow classmate Jesse (Skylar Adkins) is so adorably John Hughesian, but they bond over Beca’s film illiteracy. How has she never seen The Breakfast Club ? Coming from a film world and living in a film bubble it’s so hard for me to believe that anyone in the world says they don’t like movies and they’ve never seen Breakfast Club , so that was the least plausible thing in the movie in my mind. And I hated every second of pretending I wasn’t a huge film nerd. I mean, I suppose we all have holes in our film viewing history… Oh, so many! There are definitely movies I’ve never seen. I’ve never seen the original Heartbreak Kid , I’ve never seen Rome, Open City … obviously thousands upon thousands of films that I wish I could see. Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day, but I do the best I can. In a fairly short period of time you’ve taken on a real variety of roles and projects. How much have the roles you’ve sought out and been offered changed over the years? I think right after Up in the Air everyone wanted me to play the girl from Up in the Air , and it took a little while for people to think of me as an actress from a film that they liked instead of just that character. So it was weird, a little bit of time had to pass before people like [ End of Watch director] David Ayer began thinking of me as the kind of softer, sexier wife character or in this, a kind of rebellious tattooed character. So I’m definitely grateful that those opportunities are coming along. And in The Company You Keep you play an FBI agent, which is pretty mind-blowing that you can play a college freshman and a government agent back to back. Yeah! I remember Michelle Monaghan one year played like 34 and 19 within a month of each other. I’m just flattered to have the opportunity to play so many different things, that people see me in different ways. Another upcoming film of yours is Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies… It was one of those tightrope things where it was really amazing and really scary, but I had an amazing time making it. I’m glad I had the chance to do it, really glad I got to challenge myself in that way. Given that you had that bit of difficulty getting people to see you differently after Up in the Air this is particularly interesting because the cast of Drinking Buddies were allowed to help shape their characters. I basically based the character on my sister-in-law, which was fun. I don’t know if she’ll think it’s anything like her but that’s what I had in mind. Lastly, to bring it back to Pitch Perfect one last time, there’s a scene in the film that I see as a depiction of a universal truth: Nobody can resist singing along to Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA.” True or false? [Laughs] I think that scene was brilliant because it’s such a painfully corny song that Beca should hate, but it’s a telling moment. Is she going to pretend to be too cool for school, or is she going to go along with it and bond with these girls? I love that she’s willing to embarrass herself out of love for these new friends that she has. Pitch Perfect is in theaters Friday. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Hotel Transylvania ‘s Selena Gomez and Andy Samberg are big fans of each other musically, and in an interview with Movie Fanatic, they were asked for their favorite song by the other. Selena’s favorite Lonely Island song , revealed by Andy, may surprise you … Selena Gomez-Andy Samberg Interview “Will you please say it?” a sheepish Selena Gomez said, laughing, to her co-star. “I’m not going to say your favorite song of mine,” he replied, before adding … “She likes ‘Jizz in My Pants.'” Really, who doesn’t get turned on by that classic? In the film, Selena Gomez portrays Mavis, the daughter of Dracula (Adam Sandler). Samberg takes on the well-traveled American who lands at this private resort for monsters. Visit Movie Fanatic for more on this film and all the latest movie news !
The filmmaker-critic relationship has always been complex — as demonstrated last weekend with hearty debate and even more heartfelt punches in the epic Joe Swanberg – Devin Faraci throwdown, henceforth known as the Mumble in the Jungle — but Sunday night, Looper director Rian Johnson and journalist Aaron Hillis united in sweet synergy to drop a rousing rendition of Weird Al’s Kinks-meets- Star Wars classic “Yoda.” I wish I had a futuristic time machine to take us all back to relive the moment with our younger selves, but this YouTube video capturing the entire number should suffice. There’s a long history of karaoke at film festivals, but rarely does festival karaoke reach the heights of the legendary magical musical moments at Fantastic Fest. This year celebrity karaoke began with Mexican recording artist and actress Laura Caro ( who won Fantastic Fest’s award for Best Actress for Here Comes the Devil ), who blew the roof off the Alamo Drafthouse’s Highball singing her signature cover of “I Will Always Love You” — the song that got her on Mexico’s American Idol -like La Academia . Sunday night the entire visiting Looper crew got in on the action as Noah Segan (AKA Looper ‘s Kid Blue) dueted with film journalista Karina Longworth and Tracie Thoms , who sang on freaking Broadway , crooned The Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly.” And of course, yours truly got up there one or two times to sing a little something. When in Austin… Reward Johnson’s tremendous karaoke effort by checking out Looper , in theaters this Friday. [Video via Todd Gilchrist ; Photo credit Jack Plunkett] Read more from Fantastic Fest! Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
