Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds probably aren’t even dating. But that’s not about to stop OK! Magazine from implying he put a baby in that! For years, friends say, she tried in vain to conceive with her biker mogul ex-husband, Jesse James. Finally, OK! claims, she’s struck fetal gold! Already mom to adopted 19-month-old son Louis Bardot, is Sandra, who resigned herself to raising Louis alone, ready to give him a sibling? “Once the adoption went through, she was over the moon,” says a vague source . “She’s never been happier than she has been since Louis entered her life.” And why not? Sandra’s life has gotten exponentially better since March 2010. First off, that cheater Jesse James has been divorced and is no longer in it. Secondly, Ryan Reynolds has been, a lot. Whether her decade-long friendship with her co-star in The Proposal ripens into a full-blown romance (we doubt it) or not, and whether she’s actually pregnant or not (we really doubt it), things are on the up and up for the star.
With a whimper (and some killer sharks and space madness ), the summer movie season drew to a close this week. Which is why we were looking to the future here at Movieline with our Fall Preview guide, chock full of first looks and predictions for the coming months! As you head into your long holiday weekend, take a moment to look back on our week spent looking forward to an action-packed fall movie season!
When they work, found footage films are testaments to the power of a limited perspective. Features like The Blair Witch Project , REC and Cloverfield get juice out of the fact that we’re not able to see or know more than the characters on screen. They use a gloss of the intentionally clumsy — jittery camerawork, lower quality footage, mundane dialogue — to allow a story to invade from an unexpected angle. They require cleverness in concept and, more importantly, in construction, particularly when the found footage flick in question is of the horror genre, as so many of them are; there’s no easier way to lose your audience than to make them wonder why, when such frightening things are allegedly happening, your characters are still bothering to roll tape. On the plus side, they’re a way to hide your monster (or witch, or demon, or alien) from view for longer than is usually allowed a more standard film — and the monster we imagine is usually much scarier than the one we finally see on screen.
Michael Bay’s robot flick will hit theaters again on Friday and run for two weeks. By Terri Schwartz Bumblebee in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” Photo: Paramount The moon will go dark again as Paramount gears up to re-release “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” in IMAX this Friday. The third “Transformers” flick is currently the second-highest-grossing film of the year in the U.S., coming in second to “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” with $348.5 million. “Dark of the Moon” will get a second life in 246 IMAX theaters in North America beginning on Friday, according to The Hollywood Reporter , and will run in IMAX through September 8. In most cases, that means the Michael Bay flick will screen alongside already running movies like “Deathly Hallows, Part 2,” “Cowboys & Aliens” and “Final Destination 5,” given that Steven Soderbergh’s soon-to-open “Contagion” doesn’t hit IMAX until September 9. Last year, “Avatar” made a similar move at the end of the summer, attempting to recapture moviegoers’ interest before the end of the blockbuster movie season. The major difference between re-releases for “Avatar” and “Dark of the Moon” is that James Cameron stuffed “Avatar” with nine more minutes of previously unreleased footage to entice moviegoers. While “Dark of the Moon” doesn’t have new footage, the newest releases haven’t been big draws at the box office and that may make it a good time to try to nab any stragglers who still want to see giant robots blow things up. Christopher Nolan’s Batman flick also benefited from this strategy. After its initial July 2008 opening, Warner Bros. gave “The Dark Knight” a February 2009 IMAX re-release . And even though the studio bypassed the summer movie season for the second release, the stunt still worked. There was plenty of residual interest in the flick following its Academy Awards success, and the second run helped push “Dark Knight” onto the list of the highest-grossing films of all time. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a trend in summers to come, with blockbuster films like “Prometheus,” “Men in Black III,” “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Dark Knight Rises” all set to hit theaters in 2012. Check out everything we’ve got on “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Transformers: Dark Of The Moon’ Related Photos ‘Transformers: Dark Of The Moon’ Crashes Into New York City ‘Transformers: Dark Of The Moon’
Last night on True Blood , years’ worth of fan fiction came to sweaty, thrusting life as Sookie ( Anna Paquin ) finally got her fang-bang on with Viking vampire hunk Eric ( Alexander Skarsgard ). In this season, Eric has lost his memory, making him less of a pushy a-hole and therefore more attractive to fragile faerie Sookie. The two were about to get it on at the beginning of the episode when Sookie’s ex Bill ( Stephen Moyer ) busted in and skinterrupted them in action. Luckily, at the end of the episode, the lovers reunited in the woods and Anna made a welcome return to True Blood nudity by baring both boobs in the moonlight. Speaking of the moon, Luna ( Janina Gavankar ) was also supernaturally sexy last night when she doffed her top in an attempt to seduce fellow shapeshifter Sam. The attempt was successful (what man could resist that?), but what Janina didn’t know was that her lover wasn’t Sam at all, but his brother, who shapeshifted into Sam earlier that day. Does this mean she’ll have to seduce the real Sam again next week? Skin Central sure hopes so! Members can read more about Anna Paquin and Janina Gavankar right here on MrSkin.com, and check out all the breaking nudes on our True Blood page!
Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro advised director, who aimed to ‘maintain some mystery and surprises.’ By Eric Ditzian Daniel Craig in “Cowboys & Aliens” Photo: Universal Pictures How do you surprise someone who’s seen it all — aliens who snatch bodies and aliens with dreadlocks and aliens who bloodily birth themselves from your stomach and aliens who phone home and aliens who eat cat food and great big blue aliens with tails they use for sex? Forget about the decades of classic extraterrestrial flicks that stream daily on TV, tablets and desktops. This year alone, movies like “Battle: Los Angeles,” “Super 8,” “Green Lantern” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” have hit the big screen, each trying to deliver not only eye-popping visuals but the post-credits comment between friends, “Damn, dude, have you ever seen something like that?” The answer, all too often and quite understandably, is, “Yes, yes, I have.” That’s the challenge “Cowboys & Aliens” director Jon Favreau faced as he sought to bring alien baddies to the Old West for a genre mash-up that hit theaters Friday (July 29). Favreau, though, counts himself lucky that he was able to lean on some of the most-established sci-fi players in Hollywood for help. The cinematic result is a race of aliens that land in a down-on-its-luck mining town, start to kidnap residents and eventually reveal themselves as extraterrestrial superfreaks on par with anything we’ve seen at the theater in recent years. Earlier this month in Montana, Favreau talked with MTV News about what makes a great big-screen alien , the special-effects decisions that helped his filmmaking process and the advice Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro gave him along the way. (Beware of spoilers below.) “When you set out to make a movie like ‘Cowboys & Aliens,’ if you just play it as one joke for the whole movie, you’re in trouble,” Favreau explained. “You run out of gas after about the length of an ‘SNL’ sketch. So we really wanted to find an approach that could bear out a whole story. Part of it was identifying what kind of alien movie to make and what kind of cowboy movie to make.” The answer to the alien question was to reach back to classics of the ’70s and ’80s, before CG glam overtook practical effects as the preferred method of creating otherworldly creatures. “The alien movies I like the most are the ones I grew up with,” he said. “It was the pre-CG, almost verging on horror versions of alien films, like ‘Alien,’ ‘Aliens,’ ‘Predator’ and all the Spielberg stuff, and I include ‘Jaws’ in that, too. They were all the same kind of movie. “It was before you had computer effects, so you had to, through lighting and mystery and music, slowly reveal the creature. That technique has some somewhat been lost now, thanks to CGI. Even though we have CGI creatures eventually, we do use animatronics and we do use lighting and all the old techniques to reveal them.” The aliens in “Cowboys” have landed in an Arizona town to mine for gold — a metal as precious to humans as it is to these space travelers. What’s truly cool about them is their transformative quality: Their faces move and shift to expose layers below, and their bodies open up to unleash hidden, gooey hands. Gross and fascinating and scary, all at once. That’s exactly what Favreau was hoping to accomplish. ” ‘Predator’ and ‘Alien’: What was fun about those films is, as you saw the creatures, more and more layers were revealed, whether it was armor coming off with ‘Predator’ [and] weaponry, or in the case of ‘Alien,’ with the second set of teeth or the metamorphosis that it did from its egg state to the face-hugger to whatever that larval phase was when it busts out of your chest and finally into the big [creature],” he said. “It’s the shape-shifting quality of the aliens that I thought was really cool. We wanted to maintain some mystery and surprises with our creature.” To create those surprises, Favreau not only depended on his team of artists and effects masters, but on Spielberg and del Toro. “[Spielberg] was very involved with certain aspects of it preproduction, and one of those aspects was the alien design, because he’s been involved with so many,” he said. “And now seeing ‘Falling Skies’ and seeing ‘Super 8,’ I see that he was not just involved with his own films, but other films and projects he’s been producing and overseeing. He had a lot of specific insight into what things were important. “And Guillermo del Toro, I also know him, and he’s masterful,” Favreau added. “He always said you’ve got to get the silhouette right first and then you got to get the color right and then you got to get the detail right, in that order. He’s actually somebody who helped out and came in the editing room. I was showing him our animatronic work, because he’s very picky about that stuff, and when I knew it passed his muster, I felt very good.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Cowboys & Aliens.” For breaking news and previews of the latest comic book movies — updated around the clock — visit SplashPage.MTV.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ Related Photos ‘Cowboys & Aliens’
Captain America is more than just the First Avenger. He was also first at the box office this weekend. Chris Evans and company earned $65.8 million on Friday and Saturday, challenging Thor as the highest-grossing superhero opening of the summer. Our friends at Movie Fanatic gave the action flick four strong stars . Captain America Movie Trailer Harry Potter’s final adventure dropped by a staggering 72 percent in its second weekend, but it would have been impossible to have come close to its record-breaking first few days of release. Let’s take a look at the top five, shall we? Captain America: The First Avenger – $65.8 million Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – $48.1 million Friends with Benefits – $18.5 million Transformers: Dark of the Moon – $12 million Horrible Bosses – $11.7 million
Film experts weigh in on how ‘Deathly Hallows, Part 2’ blockbuster finale is likely to fare in the long run. By Eric Ditzian Daniel Radcliffe in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” Photo: Warner Bros. There was little doubt that when the “Harry Potter” franchise finally came to a close after a decade-long presence at the multiplex, it would do so in epically lucrative fashion. But only when “Deathly Hallows, Part 2” actually began lighting up screens last Thursday at midnight did the true extent of its box-office power become clear: The film raked in a record $43.5 million at those early screenings and ended up shattering the three-day opening record of “The Dark Knight.” “While I assumed it would have the best ‘Harry Potter’ debut of all time, I wasn’t quite sold on the fact that it could eclipse the ‘Dark Knight’ record, as none of the previous films, although highly successful, have ever approached that staggering number, despite having one of the most rabid fanbases filmdom has ever seen,” said Jeff Bock, box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. “This was monumental, as it seems everyone wanted to be a part of the discussion, everyone wanted to say goodbye to dear friends, and everyone wanted to experience the magic on the big screen one more time.” But not everyone wanted that magical experience in 3-D. While “Deathly Hallows, Part 2” benefited from the largest 3-D launch ever, according to Box Office Mojo , a majority of ticket buyers choose 2-D screenings, with just 43 percent of its total gross coming from 3-D screenings (“Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” by comparison, earned 60 percent of its opening gross from 3-D showings). So, although “Deathly Hallows, Part 2” opening marks the second-biggest 3-D opening after “Alice in Wonderland,” the last “Potter” film wasn’t a 3-D must-see — it was a pop-culture must-see. But insiders hardly predicted how intense the get-out-to-the-theater urge would be. Phil Contrino, editor of Boxoffice.com, pointed at social-networking sites as the key factor that raised awareness and drove ticket sales in the days leading up to release. The franchise’s Facebook page added 870,000 new “likes” last week and Twitter registered more than 225,000 tweets in that time frame. “It clearly showed that even casual fans of the series were excited about the last installment,” he said. “You can’t break records with just die-hard fans — you have to expand the base. That’s exactly what ‘Part 2’ did.” Just don’t expect it to do what “Avatar” did. James Cameron’s sci-fi flick built slowly and stayed at the top of the box office for weeks. “Deathly Hallows, Part 2,” by contrast, experienced a hefty, 53 percent drop from Friday to Saturday, showing the film, like so many blockbusters before it, was a frontloaded theatrical event. While it will safely become the biggest movie of the summer, these wizards won’t be able to compete with Cameron’s big blue aliens, who drove “Avatar” to $2.8 billion worldwide. “While the global grosses of ‘Avatar’ and ‘Titanic’ will likely be out of reach, expect ‘Deathly Hallows, Part 2’ to become the third-highest grossing movie ever once it exits theaters, and surpasses ‘Lord of the Rings: Return of the King,’ which hauled in $1.1 billion worldwide, ” Bock said. “Harry Potter,” then, is on the verge of unseating “Star Wars” to become the most lucrative franchise in movie history. While some franchises struggle to maintain early success (see this summer’s “Transformers” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” films), “Potter” has had no such problems. The example that Warner Bros. has set with its boy wizard is one that other studios wrapping up franchises would be wise to follow. ” ‘Potter’ fans grew up and didn’t abandon the series, but that could happen with ‘Twilight,’ ” Contrino said. “You have to mature at the same pace as your audience. The ‘Potter’ series grew darker and more compelling as its audience aged. It worked perfectly.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.” For young Hollywood news, fashion and “Twilight” updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2’ ‘Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2’ Red-Carpet Highlights Related Photos ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2’ Opening-Night Madness ‘Deathly Hallows, Part 2’ Brings The Magic To New York Premiere ‘Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2’
Harry Potter claimed his rightful place atop the weekend box office, and how : Shattering box office records and unseating Transformers: Dark of the Moon , the closing chapter of the boy wizard’s magical saga topped The Dark Knight , Spider-Man , and The Twilight Saga: New Moon as the biggest weekend opener of all time . Cue the celebratory wizard rock jam !
