Peter Jackson took to the interwebs to usher in Tolkien Week – currently underway, natch – announcing a new trailer for December’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey that will drop Wednesday the 19th. (Mark your calendars, wizards!) And for good measure, USA Today debuted a new batch of exclusive Hobbit pics for your viewing pleasure. Gollum is ready for his close-up. Click right here or on Gandalf’s wise old mug for over a dozen images from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , in theaters (and 3-D and IMAX) on December 14. [ USA Today ]
Well, I don’t see any latex nipple protrusions, but our sister site Deadline makes an interesting point . After posting an exclusive ComingSoon.net shot of Joel Kinnaman in the new black RoboCop suit for Jose Padilha’s remake, Deadline noted that “The outfit does kinda have a Tim Burton’s Batman feel to it — a far cry from Peter Weller’s metallic get-up in the original. So, we’d like to put the question to you. Does the RoboCop 2.0 suit remind you too much of a certain Caped Crusader’s black get-up? Take the poll after the jump. RoboCop hits theaters on Aug. 9, 2013. So, the good news is, even if you don’t like it, you have time to get used to it. Oh yes, and one clarifying point about the nipples: as our commenter “Horrified” points out, those design details weren’t added until Joel Schumacher took the reins from Burton to direct Batman Forever and Batman & Robin .) Padilha’s update also stars Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley and Jennifer Ehle, Josh Zetumer and Nick Schenk wrote the re-boot script. Set in 2028, Kinnaman plays a Detroit cop seriously messed up in the line of duty. After the multinational, morally bankrupt Omnicorp saves his life and gives him super-human abilities — see suit, above — the newly christened RoboCop opens a can of whoop-ass on Detroit’s criminal element, and, if the new story follows the old, his very creators. Take Our Poll Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
The New York Times reported Friday morning that Google had made the controversial decision to block access to the inflammatory anti-Islam video, Innocence of Muslims , in Egypt and Libya, where the crude production had sparked anti-U.S. riots and violence that resulted in the deaths of four American diplomats, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stephens . According to the Times , Google, which owns YouTube where the clip is posted, did not remove the video from its site because its policy is to remove content only if it is deemed “hate speech,” or “if it is responding to valid court orders or government requests.” Based on company guidelines, the Internet behemoth determined that Innocence of Muslims “was not hate speech,” the paper reported, but Google still made the exceptional decision to block access to the video in Egypt and Libya in response to the violence and killings. In the wake of this extraordinary decision by an American company to censor content, Movieline wants to hear from you. Take the poll after the jump and tell us if Google’s actions were warranted, or if, in your opinion, even more decisive action is required. Google’s immense power as one of the pillars of the Internet means that it can have huge influence over the boundaries of free speech on the web. As Peter Spiro, a constitutional and international law professor at Temple University, told the Times : “Google is the world’s gatekeeper for information so if Google wants to define the First Amendment to exclude this sort of material then there’s not a lot the rest of the world can do about it.” [ New York Times ] You can make your opinion heard. If your point of view doesn’t fit neatly into one of the three choices below, please leave it in the comments box. Take Our Poll Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“Directing a movie is not that much different than producing albums. It’s working with talent and guiding them,” says Jim Akin, who makes his directorial debut at 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday with the premiere of After The Triumph of Your Birth at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, California. Akin is better known as the husband and bass player for singer/songwriter Maria McKee, formerly of the alt-country band Lone Justice. She co-produced the movie and co-wrote its score with Akin, and though Martin Scorsese once directed her in Robbie Robertson’s “Somewhere Down The Crazy River” music video, she counts this as her first real acting role. What’s the movie about? That’s a tough question, Akin told me. “I’ve tried about a dozen times to come up with an answer, and I can’t do it,” he said. So, he asked his wife to do it for him. “It’s been called a road movie on foot,” said McKee. “It’s been called a tone poem. My Irish friends said it was Joycean — a man’s philosophical journey. And during his sojourning, he meets a number of surreal characters along the way.” Judging from the trailer, which is posted below, David Lynch and tough-guy poet Charles Bukowski are also influences, particularly when the protagonist is heard in voiceover saying: “I was a bystander doing a death waltz through the shit parade of suicide highway.” “I like the idea of a man working through his existence and his identity and his place in life, and trying to make peace with that,” Akin finally volunteered. That man is McKee’s drummer Tom Dunne, whose story arc takes him from the desert to the ocean on foot. The characters whose paths he crosses are local actors and friends of Akin and McKee who, the first-time filmmaker said, “wanted to be part of the experience.” Akin said that their generosity was one of the factors that enabled him to make the picture for the hard-to-believe sum of $550. “I did the writing, the shooting and the sound, the locations and the editing,” he explained. “Maria worked with me on the score.” Akin added that he kept the production costs minimal because “I didn’t want to borrow money or risk money because then I would feel more free about my ideas.” McKee, who plays a musician in After the Triumph of Your Birth calls the role “my first non-singing job in front of the camera,” although she does perform “One True Love,” which Akin wrote, at a piano, and an a cappella prayer. (She also sings on the soundtrack, on which Akin also appears as his recording alter ego, The Shootist.) People have been trying to get me to act since I was 16,” McKee said. “But I never wanted to be an actress per se because I wanted control over the material. My relationship with Jim is ideal. We were able to work together and shape the material in an intimate way.” After the premiere at the Aero, McKee and Akin will treat guests to a musical performance. If you can’t make it, the movie will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray disc on Sept. 18. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Jessica Chastain ‘s had an incredibly good run of prestige films in the brief span of time that she’s been in Hollywood: Take Shelter , Coriolanus , Tree of Life , The Help , and this summer’s Lawless have made quite the highlight reel. So it was inevitable that the starlet would pop up in a horror film sooner or later. Might as well be a spooky one like the Guillermo Del Toro -executive produced Mama , right? Well — spooky, silly, horror movies tend to be both of those things these days and Mama , from first time feature director Andres Muschietti (adapting his own short film), doesn’t look to be terribly groundbreaking. Lucas ( Game of Thrones ‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend Annabel (Chastain) take in Lucas’s two young nieces, who are discovered living near-feral existences on their own in a desolate cabin in the woods for five years following their parents’ death. Adjusting to life with the adopted tykes isn’t so easy, though – Annabel begins to suspect that something sinister (“Mama!”) has followed them. And it probably doesn’t like seeing a new mommy tucking the kids in at night. Moody atmospherics, supernatural suspense, spider-crawling ghouls, Chastain with a black dye job and heavily-lined eyes at her very Gothiest… nothing seems all that original here. Despite Del Toro’s involvement and Chastain’s abilities, this is hitting theaters during the dumping grounds of January, so temper your expectations. Verdict: Looks like that Julia Roberts movie Stepmom , with ghosts. Meh. Mama is in theaters January 18. [Via Apple ]
She has won a slew of awards around the worldwide festival circuit and an Indian Academy Award nomination for titles including Fire , Water and Bollywood/Hollywood , but Indian-born filmmaker Deepa Metha’s latest Midnight’s Children may never be available to Indian audiences because the current government’s aversion to the film, which had its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival , has made the title unpalatable to distributors. The story, written by Salman Rushdie, who himself received a death Fatwa from the late Ayatollah Khomeini for another one of his novels, The Satanic Verses mirrors India’s history told through the emotional coming-of-age of a young man. India’s ruling Congress Party is the same party of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who ruled the world’s largest democracy from the mid-’60s to the late ’70s and again in the ’80s. The story includes a scathing indictment of the Prime Minister who was assassinated in 1984, causing the ire of officials though no outright ban is currently in place. Instead, distributors apparently fear soft reprisals and are avoiding the title. “Salman has often said that the book was his love letter to India,” said Metha as quoted in the Hindustan Times . “I think the film reflects that love. What a pity if insecure politicians deprive the people of India to make up their own minds about what the film means, or does not mean, to them.” This is not the first time that Metha has run afoul of authorities at home. Hindu right-wingers prevented her from filming Water in the country and she shifted production to neighboring Sri Lanka (where she also filmed Midnight’s Children ). And Rushdie’s Satanic Versus remains banned in India. “Ultimately, Midnight’s Children is about the emotional growth of a young man that parallels his country,” said Metha. “An allegory that almost everyone is relating to, despite color, gender, geographic boundaries.” Midnight’s Children will open in 40 countries beginning this fall. [Source: Hindustan Times , BBC ]
If you can appreciate a musical that unabashedly uses a 1996 Blackstreet jam as a communal rallying cry, then Pitch Perfect will be the most fun you have at the movies this year. (Also, we can totally be friends.) Producers Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman, joined at an LA screening by cast members Brittany Snow, Skylar Astin, Alexis Knapp, Hana Mae Lee, Anna Camp, and Ester Dean, revealed how they first saw the potential in a nonfiction book about real life college a capella competitions – or, in the parlance of Pitch Perfect : The a-ca- drama . In a post-screening Q&A with Just Jared founder Jared Eng, Banks and co-producer/husband Handelman explained that they were inspired by GQ editor Mickey Rapkin’s nonfiction book Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Capella Glory . Based on the ups and downs of real a cappella college teams they developed the feature about Beca ( Anna Kendrick ), a loner college freshman and wannabe mash-up DJ who reluctantly joins the Bellas, a floundering all-girls singing group struggling to sing their way to the top. (Jason Moore, nominated for a Tony for the raunchy Broadway comedy-musical Avenue Q , directs; the script is by 30 Rock scribe Kay Cannon.) Musical numbers abound as the Bellas and their all-male rivals, the Treble Makers, compete through the a capella season and face off on campus. In addition to producing, Banks also provides comic relief in the film as a seasoned a capella competition commentator alongside John Michael Higgins. “The part was meant for Kristen Wiig,” Banks admitted. The film brings Kendrick full circle back to her musical roots; years before making her film debut in the 2003 musical Camp – after which she earned fans from Rocket Science and the Twilight movies and earned an Oscar nomination for Up in the Air — she got her start on Broadway and was nominated for a Tony at the age of 12. Skylar Astin, another Broadway-born talent best known for starring alongside Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff in the original cast of Spring Awakening , makes a big screen splash as Jesse, the classmate/rival who sings his way into Beca’s heart. Being on set was “like an all-star theater camp,” he said, before granting an audience member’s request for a song by belting the theme to The Gummi Bears . As the plus-sized foreign student who introduces herself as “Fat Amy,” Rebel Wilson ( Bridesmaids ) steals scenes left and right (“I’m the best singer in Tasmania… with teeth”). Casting the character presented a unique challenge. “In the script the character is called ‘Fat Amy,’ so it’s really hard to send it to actresses,” Banks said. “Rebel recognized what an iconic character Fat Amy would be.” Chart-topping songwriter/singer Ester Dean, who’s written for Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, and Britney Spears, shared her own unusual Pitch Perfect casting story: After lobbying for a voice part in Universal’s The Lorax , Dean was sent to audition for the role of Cynthia Rose, the tomboyish maybe-lesbian member of the Bellas with a booming voice. She got the part and wrote Rihanna’s “Where Have You Been” during the three-month shoot in Baton Rouge. (In a funny twist of fate she “covers” “S&M” in Pitch Perfect — a song she wrote herself. ) Meanwhile, co-star Brittany Snow, who tapped into her musical talents in Hairspray , plays one of two senior Bellas leaders who take a capella very seriously . Her favorite number? Singing Blackstreet in an empty pool during Pitch Perfect ‘s riff-off, though she was envious that it’s Kendrick who gets to perform the rap intro. No diggity, no doubt. Pitch Perfect opens on September 28. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Smashed has been built up as Mary Elizabeth Winstead ‘s career-maker — a character-driven piece about an alcoholic woman entering AA — although time will tell if the addiction dramedy has the mojo to muscle in on the awards race with folks like Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Lawrence hogging all the buzz with their respective festival hits. But take a look at the first Smashed trailer and four additional clips, co-starring Aaron Paul, Octavia Spencer , Megan Mullally, and Nick Offerman (courtesy of Sony Classics ) and get to early prognosticating on Winstead’s chances. Official Trailer (via Yahoo): It’s meaty stuff for Winstead, and director James Ponsoldt makes great use of her wonderfully wide-open face. Paul threatens to be a force as well, with that constant crackling energy of his. Hell, everyone in this ensemble is pretty fantastic in their own right (see following clips for scenes with Paul, Mullally, and the erstwhile Ron Swanson) though for my money the scene below of Winstead’s Kate going from flip to crushingly emotional in the span of a single shot as she introduces herself at an AA meeting is the most powerful and telling sign yet that this is a big moment for Winstead. Smashed will hit theaters on October 12. [Via Yahoo ]
