Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell among other stars urging fans to vote for their favorites before June 3 show. By Kevin P. Sullivan Liam Hemsworth Photo: MTV Movie fans from around the world, have you heard the call? It’s not a time to idly let your favorite movies go unrecognized. Is it time for Rupert Grint and Emma Watson to steal the Best Kiss glory away from repeat winners Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson? Was Jon Hamm a bigger dirtbag than Jennifer Aniston? You have to rise up, sit down and make your voice heard for the 2012 MTV Movie Awards , and this isn’t just us telling you. A new promo for the awards features the likes of Captain America himself, Chris Evans, and someone you may know as Effie Trinket, Elizabeth Banks, and they have the very same message for you. A number of stars have assembled to spread the message of this year’s MTV Movie Awards. Not only are Evans and Banks on hand, but Chlo
So you may have heard that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have business this week at Cannes . Where does that leave Twilight Saga third wheel Taylor Lautner in the post-franchise wilderness? Good question! Because I have no idea what to make of the movie he’s attached to at the Cannes Film Market. Behold Tracers , the announcemnet of which just trickled over the transom at ML HQ. Synopsis emphasis mine, naturally: TAYLOR LAUTNER TO STAR IN THE FAST-PACED PARKOUR THRILLER TRACERS FilmNation Entertainment to Handle International Sales Starting at Cannes Los Angeles, May 14, 2012 – FilmNation Entertainment will introduce the action thriller TRACERS to international buyers at the Cannes Film Festival. From the producers of Twilight and Dear John , TRACERS will star Taylor Lautner ( The Twilight Saga, Abduction ) and will be directed by Daniel Benmayor ( Bruc, the Manhunt ). Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey of Temple Hill Entertainment will produce. WME will handle sales in the US. New York City bicycle messenger, Cam (Lautner) is the hottest thing on two wheels, but is in debt to an organized crime gang. When he crashes his bike into a sexy stranger, Nikki, Cam is immediately seduced by her and the thrill of the world of parkour. At Cannes, FilmNation Entertainment is also handling international sales on THE BLING RING from director Sofia Coppola. In addition, FilmNation has two in-competition titles: LAWLESS from director John Hillcoat starring Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy; and Jeff Nichols’ MUD which is also produced by FilmNation’s Aaron Ryder, starring Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon. “The hottest thing on two wheels”? “Crashes his bike into a sexy stranger”? “The thrill of the world of parkour”? Look out, Abduction — Tracers will see your crazy and raise you a dated action genre. I can only presume that if you buy the rights to Bling Ring, Lawless , and Mud , FilmNation will throw Tracers in for free, but don’t take my word for it. We’ll let you know what we find out on the Croisette. Read all of Movieline’s Cannes coverage here .
‘All I’ve heard is that it’s very scandalous, to say the least,’ Dobrev tells MTV News of the best-selling book. By Jocelyn Vena Nina Dobrev Photo: MTV News Nina Dobrev hasn’t read the best-selling “Fifty Shades of Grey” just yet, but with every young starlet’s name floating around as a possible contender for the female lead, literature student Anastasia Steele , she might want to start reading up. “All I’ve heard is that it’s very scandalous, to say the least,” the “Vampire Diaries” star told MTV News. “I haven’t read it, but who knows? I mean, well, I guess we’ll have to see.” Fans of the erotic trilogy might not mind seeing Dobrev get her S&M on with her “Diaries” co-star Ian Somerhalder in the big-screen adaptation of the E L James book. But she confessed that if she does play the part, she wouldn’t want to have Somerhalder playing the millionaire beau, Christian Grey . “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said. “I think it’s best for any of the actors on the ‘Vampire Diaries’ to kind of do their own things … and create new characters. And as much as you try when you shoot a movie, if it’s two of the same people, the fans will always see you as … they’ll see me as Elena and they’ll see him as Damon if we do a film together.” So, that means “Fifty” fans will only get either Dobrev or Somerhalder if either gets cast in the film. And Dobrev is most certainly rooting for him. “I think it would be better [if] either he should get it or I should get it,” she said. “I know that apparently he’s really great for the role, so I hope that he gets it.” Given how sexy the book is, casting might not be the only challenge. Some fans are wondering how they can adapt the highly charged sex scenes for an R-rated version of the film . “Making this movie will absolutely be a challenge. It is going to take a devoted director who admittedly likes the books and understands that, first and foremost, this is a love story,” Lisa Parker from FiftyShadesFilm.com told MTV News. “If telling the love story is the main focus, then we do believe the steamy sex scenes can be shot and edited in a way to get us an R-rated movie rather than NC-17 … [the fans] are confident that Ms. James will protect the integrity of her story regardless of the ultimate rating.” Who would you like to see cast in the film version of “Fifty Shades of Grey”? Tell us in the comments.
‘All I’ve heard is that it’s very scandalous, to say the least,’ Dobrev tells MTV News of the best-selling book. By Jocelyn Vena Nina Dobrev Photo: MTV News Nina Dobrev hasn’t read the best-selling “Fifty Shades of Grey” just yet, but with every young starlet’s name floating around as a possible contender for the female lead, literature student Anastasia Steele , she might want to start reading up. “All I’ve heard is that it’s very scandalous, to say the least,” the “Vampire Diaries” star told MTV News. “I haven’t read it, but who knows? I mean, well, I guess we’ll have to see.” Fans of the erotic trilogy might not mind seeing Dobrev get her S&M on with her “Diaries” co-star Ian Somerhalder in the big-screen adaptation of the E L James book. But she confessed that if she does play the part, she wouldn’t want to have Somerhalder playing the millionaire beau, Christian Grey . “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said. “I think it’s best for any of the actors on the ‘Vampire Diaries’ to kind of do their own things … and create new characters. And as much as you try when you shoot a movie, if it’s two of the same people, the fans will always see you as … they’ll see me as Elena and they’ll see him as Damon if we do a film together.” So, that means “Fifty” fans will only get either Dobrev or Somerhalder if either gets cast in the film. And Dobrev is most certainly rooting for him. “I think it would be better [if] either he should get it or I should get it,” she said. “I know that apparently he’s really great for the role, so I hope that he gets it.” Given how sexy the book is, casting might not be the only challenge. Some fans are wondering how they can adapt the highly charged sex scenes for an R-rated version of the film . “Making this movie will absolutely be a challenge. It is going to take a devoted director who admittedly likes the books and understands that, first and foremost, this is a love story,” Lisa Parker from FiftyShadesFilm.com told MTV News. “If telling the love story is the main focus, then we do believe the steamy sex scenes can be shot and edited in a way to get us an R-rated movie rather than NC-17 … [the fans] are confident that Ms. James will protect the integrity of her story regardless of the ultimate rating.” Who would you like to see cast in the film version of “Fifty Shades of Grey”? Tell us in the comments.
Movie Trailer of the Day: Earlier this week, we were treated to a sneak peek for The Campaign, spliced together from two “political ads” for wannabe congressmen Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. This trailer’s the real deal. [ entv ] Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Daily What Discovery Date : 11/05/2012 17:40 Number of articles : 2
Gosling reunites with Emma Stone in the star-studded, Tommy gun-packed clip. By Kevin P. Sullivan Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in “Gangster Squad” Photo: Warner Bros. One of the fall’s most anticipated releases, ” Gangster Squad ,” packs an all-star cast, old-school vibe and a bunch of Tommy guns. Needless to say, we’re interested. The film from “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer just got its first trailer, so we’ve broken it down for you into these five keys scenes. “Every kingdom comes up bloody” A centerpiece of the trailer, it’s hard to miss Sean Penn even under all of that makeup. In “Gangster Squad,” Penn plays Mickey Cohen, an east coast gangster who has come to Los Angeles to become “a god.” Cohen is the ultimate evil that the Gangster Squad is going to stop at nothing to put out for good. The trailer gives lots of screen time to Penn, and when you also consider the prosthetics on his face, it’s not hard to imagine that Warner Bros. would make a Best Supporting Actor push for him come Oscar season. Mackie, Gosling and Pe
There are enough terrific, elegant old-style Tim Burton touches in Dark Shadows that, now and then, you might be fooled into thinking the once-mad genius had finally come back to his senses: A young girl gazes dreamily through the window of a train slipping through the New England countryside, the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” serving as an aural curtain for her reverie; a wispy ghost woman floats toward the waiting arms of a giant chandelier, her hair and tattered skirt winding around its crystals like jellyfish tendrils; a secret button reveals a passageway whose opening is framed by mechanical ocean waves and a cadre of cast-iron wolves raising their snouts to the moon in a hearty salute. Parts of Dark Shadows look lovely. So what happened to the story? Burton used to be a madman; now he’s just a franchise. The vibrant inventiveness of pictures like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (his debut) and the doleful elegance of his Batman movies and Sleepy Hollow have given way, over the past 10 years, to an excess of primary-color gimmickry. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland are loaded with self-conscious wonder and strained jokes masquerading as clever ones. Similarly, Dark Shadows suffers from the now-predictable Tim Burton pile-on: Like a matron who’s gone mad for garish jewelry, he just doesn’t know when to stop. It didn’t have to be that way. Dark Shadows takes its inspiration from the late-’60s spooky-Gothic soaper of the same name, starring Jonathan Frid (who died just last month) as a lovesick vampire named Barnabas Collins. The show was just the thing to scare the bejesus outta you while you enjoyed your bowl of after-school Cheerios, and my friends and I adored it. Clearly, Burton did too, because there are dots and dashes of affection in this Dark Shadows . The script, by John August and Seth Grahame-Smith, resuscitates many of the original characters and keeps them fairly close to the spirit of their forbears, though only the movie’s opening sequence – the finest section of the picture — is set in the early 1800s. Johnny Depp plays Barnabas Collins, formerly the son of a rich Maine fishing family, now a lost 19th-century soul transplanted to early ’70s New England, a land of banana-seat bikes, frilly granny dresses and Donovan records. Eva Green plays Angelique, a witch who begins spinning a never-ending web of revenge around Barnabas after he spurns her. Bella Heathcote is Barnabas’ original true love Josette DuPres and her 20th century reincarnation Victoria Winter, two women — or, rather, two versions of the same woman – who drive Angelique to diabolical, murderous measures. Here’s how it all plays out in the Burton version: Angelique, after murdering Josette, turns the then-human Barnabas into a vampire and locks him in a coffin, which is then buried. He remains there until the 1970s, when he’s dug up accidentally. (He wastes no time in makes a tasty meal out of some hapless construction workers.) He treks to his old homestead, Collinwood Manor, and finds that much has changed: The mansion’s current mistress is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer), an ice-cool lady whose necklace collection appears to include the complete stock of the Trifari, Monet and Napier factories combined. Elizabeth lives in the old house with other members of the extended Collins family, including her disaffected teenage daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her semi-orphaned nephew David (Gully McGrath), a troubled lad who keeps having visions of his dead mother. Also floating around are David’s layabout dad, Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), who seems to exist in the story only as a hanger for loud plaid jackets, and blowsy, horny psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), who can’t keep her mitts off mystery-man Barnabas. If you think that’s too many characters to fit comfortably or reasonably into any story, you’re right. Dark Shadows is a rambling affair in which characters who ought to be central to the plot — Josette/Victoria, for instance — drop out of sight for long, mysterious stretches. Some of the performances are extremely entertaining: Green makes a great bad gal, a lanky temptress in an assortment of vixenish Ossie Clark-style gowns and pantsuits. (Costumer Colleen Atwood does right by her.) And Depp is marvelous when he’s not called upon to look quizzically at lava lamps and such: His hair has been styled into great, Frid-like pointy bangs, but his performance is more homage than impersonation. Just as he discovers he’s been turned into a bloodsucker, he surveys his newly sprouted Nosferatu talons with a mix of wonder and horror. The scene takes place in the movie’s semi-naturalistic Gothic opener, before Barnabas has acquired his white warpaint pallor, and it’s the kind of moment that makes you wish Depp would play more roles with less makeup. Because, through most of Dark Shadows , he’s wearing a lot of it, and it’s almost as heavy as the shtick Burton has saddled him with. The movie is overloaded with gags about how tacky the ’70s were, and the routine gets tired, fast. Barnabas recoils from the bright-eyed visage of a Troll doll, and blanches when he accidentally hits the buzzer on an Operation game. Sure, lava lamps are hee-larious, and yet — does everything in Burton’s world have to be so retrolicious? Dark Shadows needs a lot more soap and a lot less kitsch. I fell in love with the movie’s opening sequence, which lays out the movie’s back story — if only Burton had taken that preamble and fleshed it out, instead of just cranking up the old gag machine. The opening sequence captures what was so compelling about the TV show, despite its rather modest production values: It was true to the spirit of Gothic literature while also being dishy and entertaining enough for the masses (i.e., a seven-year-old me). Burton outlines Barnabas’ origins with the same courtly spookiness he brought to his sort-of Washington Irving adaptation Sleepy Hollow : We see Josette, driven to madness by Angelique and throwing herself off a steep cliff. Barnabas runs after her and stands on a rock amid the crashing waves, gazing into the mist and seeing only a bleak eternity. The image — rendered very handsomely by DP Bruno Delbonnell, though I’m sure there was plenty of CGI help — is lifted straight from a famous painting that you’ve probably seen even if you think you haven’t, The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog , by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. Why couldn’t Burton have sustained that moody elegance, while also packing some of his loopy wit around it? Beyond that opening sequence, there’s nothing very dark or shadowy or even just imaginative about Dark Shadows . It’s proof that the candyman can’t. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Also in Thursday morning’s Biz Break: Another star may be leaving Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained , getting to know this year’s Cannes competition jury and a new ‘bear’ animation heads for production. Russell Brand to Host MTV Movie Awards Brand will host the awards show for the first time on June 3 from the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City in California. Drive, Like Crazy, The Descendants, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and My Week with Marilyn are among this year’s nominees . Thai Cannes Palme d’Or Winner to Head Locarno Jury Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2010 for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives , will lead the jury at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland this summer. The 65th edition will take place August 1 – 11. Vulgaria to Open New York Asian Film Festival The comedy by Pang Ho-cheung is described as a “movie about making movies,” featuring gangsters with names like Brother Tyrannosaur, sleazy lawyers, the sex-film industry, and men who “love donkeys perhaps a little too much.” The 2012 NYAFF Lifetime Achievement Award will go to Korean action director Chung Chang-Wha. Around the ‘net… Guillermo Del Toro Boards Pinocchio Del Toro will co-direct Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio along with Mark Gustafson, animation director on The Fantastic Mr. Fox . The project is a 3-D stop-motion animated production from the Jim Henson Company. Shooting begins in summer 2013, Variety reports . Sacha Baron Cohen Unties from Django He was originally attached to play the role of Scotty Harmony, a role described in the screenplay as an overweight 24-year-old who receives a female slave as a gift from his father. Dictator commitments are keeping him away from the Quentin Tarantino-directed feature. Kurt Russell may also be on the way out, Cinemapulse reports . Meet the Jury Who Will Decide the Cannes Palme d’Or Actors, directors and a fashion designer are among this group of people who will decide on Cannes winners this year, including the top prize, the Palme d’Or. THR reports . Producer David Heyman and StudioCanal Team for Paddington Bear Paul King will direct the story of the curious young bear who travels from Peru to London’s Paddington station where he’s taken in by an English family, Deadline reports .
Rejoice, Shaun of the Dead / Hot Fuzz faithful! At long last, the eagerly anticipated threequel in Edgar Wright ‘s “Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy” (AKA “The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy” — Wright’s version of Kieślowski’s Colors series) is on its way. Deadline reports that The World’s End , to be directed by Wright with collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost starring, is set to begin filming this September with fingers crossed for a spring 2013 release. But wait, there’s more! Get a taste of the trio’s upcoming shenanigans from the film’s synopsis, which promises adventure, friendship, and — what else? — pubs. The only catch: According to the report, Universal “hasn’t yet green lit the film.” But Wright and Co. are charging ahead anyway with the fall start anyway! Good luck to ’em. (And good luck holding your breath, Ant-Man -watchers…) The set-up: 20 years after attempting an epic pub crawl, five childhood friends reunite when one of them becomes hell bent on trying the drinking marathon again. They are convinced to stage an encore by mate Gary King, a 40-year old man trapped at the cigarette end of his teens, who drags his reluctant pals to their home town and once again attempts to reach the fabled pub, The World’s End. As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realize the real struggle is for the future, not just theirs but humankind’s. Reaching The World’s End is the least of their worries. [ Deadline ]
It’s dangerous business to begin a movie with a voice-over monologue introducing “a long tale of women dressed in black.” Run, while there’s still time! Yet it’s a testament to director and actress Nadine Labaki’s gracefulness she pulls off this story as well as she does in Where Do We Go Now? , a fable set in a fictional town, presumably in Lebanon, where Christians and Muslims live together in bumptious accord, if not in complete harmony. Actually, the women – those aforementioned creatures dressed in black – get along famously, gathering regularly at the same café for all manner of gossip and chitchat. It’s the men who can’t hold it together: They’re always on the brink of fisticuffs and worse, each group expecting only the worst from the other. Don’t look now, but somebody filled the church holy water fonts with blood – must be the Muslims! Goats and chickens running amok in the mosque? Got to be those pesky Christians! The women are always suffering because of the men: As the movie opens, they stride toward the local cemetery en masse, their procession orchestrated as if it were a Pina Bausch routine, with somber, stiff leg movements and rhythmic breast-beating. The graves – Christians on one side of the burial ground, Muslims on the other – all bear pictures of the women’s lost men, people who have caused them a great deal of sorrow. The problem, as Labaki and her co-writers Jhad Hojeily and Rodney Al Haddad make clear, is that the men just can’t stop fighting. The village also happens to be located in an area riven by violence – it’s surrounded by land mines, which, in an early scene, kill a hapless goat. (The event is played for laughs, not pathos.) Meanwhile, a tentative romance brews between doe-eyed café proprietress Amale (Labaki, a sultry and winning presence) and local handyman Rabih (Julien Farhat), who’s doing some renovation work in her establishment. She’s Christian, he’s Muslim, and their union will be symbolic if it ever gets off the ground. But again, those men! They just won’t listen. The women eventually hatch a plan to keep peace in the village, but tragedy strikes regardless, making their lot even more challenging and wearying. You can see where Labaki is going with all this: If women ruled the world, there’d be no more war. It’s a darling idea, and Labaki does all she can to keep the proceedings entertaining – the picture is dotted with whimsical comedic touches and even includes a smattering of spontaneous Umbrellas of Cherbourg -style musical numbers. It also features an ensemble cast made up largely of nonprofessional actors, and they can be quite charming to watch. For a picture about centuries-old infighting and suffering, Where Do We Go Now? really is pretty cheerful. But its occasional entertainment value aside, the picture is also blithe to the point of being flimsy. This is Labaki’s second feature: The first was the 2007 Caramel , an engaging and visually lush picture set in a Beirut beauty shop, the perfect setting for a very different sort of story about the complications of women’s lives. Caramel is a delightfully fizzy picture, but oddly enough – or perhaps not – it cuts much deeper than Where Do We Go Now? It’s far less sanctimonious, and it defines some of the very real challenges modern women face in the Middle East: Even though its characters feel they’re free to shape their own futures, there are certain restrictions – put in place by men, of course – that threaten to hold them back. One character in Caramel is engaged to be married and has to find a solution to prevent her fiancé from learning that he isn’t her first. You could argue that her plight is nothing compared with massive wars fought on religious grounds. Then again, it’s a man’s pride she’s trying to protect, and she’ll do what it takes to preserve his illusions. Labaki clearly understands the connection between the larger battles and the small ones – it’s just that her ideas come through more subtly and effectively in the beauty-shop movie than in the war-zone movie. She doesn’t need exploding land mines to get her point across. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
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