I’m sure Channing Tatum ‘s real life high school reunion was just like yours: Equal parts awkward, fun, and harrowing, with a few Step Up -style dance-offs. Watch Tatum and a deep cast of fellow millennials like Anthony Mackie, Justin Long, Kate Mara, Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, Ari Graynor, Rosario Dawson, and Jenna Dewan in 10 Years and be thankful that your totally ’90s yearbook photos are safely tucked away in a dark, safe place and not being put on blast in a movie trailer. Ten Years marks the directorial debut of writer Jamie Linden ( We Are Marshall , Dear John ) and is produced by Tatum and his Magic Mike partner Reid Carolin. With Tatum and offscreen wife Dewan playing his onscreen girlfriend, this is a Step Up reunion of sorts… and a Mackie/Brian Geraghty Hurt Locker reunion… and a We Are Marshall reunion… and a What’s Your Number reunion… and a Dear John reunion… Verdict: Vicariously living through other people’s high school reunion > attending your own? Synopsis (via Yahoo ): In this ensemble comedy, 10 Years follows a group of friends on the night of their high school reunion who, a decade later, still haven’t quite grown up. Channing Tatum plays Jake, who is deeply in love with his girlfriend (Jenna Dewan-Tatum) and ready to propose—until he runs into his high school flame (Rosario Dawson) for the first time in years. Jake’s friend Cully (played by funnyman Chris Pratt) married his cheerleader girlfriend (Ari Graynor), and has been looking forward to the reunion so he can finally apologize to all the classmates he bullied in high school. However, after a few too many drinks, the jock-turned-family man ends up reverting back to his old ways instead. Meanwhile, longtime rivals Marty (Justin Long) and A.J (Max Minghella) spend the night picking up right where they left off, vying to impress the hottest girl in class (Lynn Collins). The famous one of the group, Reeves (Oscar Isaac) is now a rock star, but is still too shy to talk to his high school crush (Kate Mara.) Written and directed by Jamie Linden, and produced by Channing Tatum, 10 Years also stars Brian Geraghty, Ron Livingston, Anthony Mackie, Aubrey Plaza, Scott Porter, Aaron Yoo and Nick Zano. 10 YEARS hits theaters September 14, 2012 .
To even describe The Expendables 2 as a movie seems to do both the medium and this strange, smirking effort a disservice. It isn’t a movie — it’s more like the world’s most expensive, elaborate viral video, making a detour to the big screen before being broken up into more easily consumable segments to be consumed on YouTube. 2010’s The Expendables , directed by its star Sylvester Stallone , was built around the meta-joke of its cast being a who’s who of past and current action stars, particularly ones associated with the more iconic of ’80s muscle movies. But it also had characters with rough personality designations, it had settings and a plot that actually crescendoed toward its violent conclusion. Helmed by Con Air ‘s Simon West, The Expendables 2 has none of these things. Instead, what it has is Chuck Norris making a cameo as a character named Booker (a hat tip to Good Guys Wear Black ) to shoot a few dudes and then recount a Chuck Norris fact (it involves a king cobra). It has Arnold Schwarzenegger, who also briefly appeared in the first film, showing up to joke about being back and terminating people, and ending a bickering session with Bruce Willis by muttering “Yippee-ki-yay.” Whatever throwback charm the first film had has been utterly Snakes on a Plane -d by this sequel, which from the start is far more pleased with itself than audience members are ever given a chance to be. So Stallone is back as Barney Ross, leader of the mercenary group of the title, who’ve become (with one key exception) hammily invincible in the time since the last film ended. Along with his bantering best bud Lee Christmas ( Jason Statham ), Ross heads his team up on a mission to rescue a Chinese billionaire in the opening scene, a sequence that turns into an orgy of automatic weapon fire, armored vehicles smashing through walls and a chase that eventual takes to the water, no element of which sustains even the illusion of putting the preening main characters in harm’s way. If you’ve been in the game this long, it seems, you no longer need to even pretend you could get shot by those extras gamely firing blanks. Dolph Lundgren is still on board as Gunner Jensen, gone from turncoat to comic relief, while Jet Li has a fight scene or two before making a shrug of an exit. Terry Crews and Randy Couture are given little to do other than flex their biceps and fill in the background in this iteration. And Liam Hemsworth shows up as the new team sniper, whose place as “the kid” in a film that’s all about decidedly grown (and slightly creaky) men suggests he’s in a position of peril even before he ends up taking one last gig before retiring to start a new life with his girl. The Expendables are given a mission by Willis’ CIA agent Mr. Church, and head off to retrieve a valuable object from a downed plane at the direction of token female Maggie (Yu Nan), a motorcycle-riding Chinese agent who charms Ross with her ability to efficiently torture information out of informants. When the plan goes awry, Ross and company set out for revenge, targeting a swaggering villain who’s actually named Vilain, and who’s played by a scene-chewing Jean-Claude Van Damme in sunglasses, a duster and a Satanic neck tattoo. In an age of overabundance of CGI, in which neither physical presence nor prowess is required to take the lead in an action film, the appeal of something like The Expendables is clear. Stallone and his buddies aren’t just waving the banner of nostalgia, they’re a stand-in for practical effects and martial arts training, for being able to hold the camera with bulk and charisma (if not necessarily acting range) while delivery cheesy one-liners with a dearth of irony. They represent an outmoded form of the blockbuster, one that’s become replaced by something even more slick, calculated and forgettable — consider the new Total Recall versus the feature on which it was based, the remake a film in which everything is possible and yet nothing seems to matter. The longing for more tangible entertainments is what makes The Expendables 2 feel so damnably lazy — it trades on the quirk of being able to assemble cast-members who’ve devalued enough over the years to become affordable in a single movie, and then barely bothers to actually make that movie. It’s not a joyless effort, but it’s one in which (with the exception of the always admirably present Statham) most of the joy feels self-directed — just a group of guys pounding each other on the back between takes and reassuring themselves that they’ve still got it. Maybe they do, but there’s little evidence of the fact on screen here, in this smug attempt to power a franchise on novelty value alone. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“Eventually this all passes. The public horrors of today eventually blow away. And, yes, you are changed by the awful wake of reckoning they leave behind. You trust less. You calculate your steps. You survive. Hopefully in the process you don’t lose your ability to throw your arms in the air again and spin in wild abandon. That is the ultimate F.U. and—finally—the most beautiful survival tool of all. Don’t let them take that away from you.” [ Daily Beast ]
A simple E-F-E-F bass line progression is all it took to make a generation of moviegoers scared spitless to swim in the ocean. With Steven Spielberg’s classic 1975 beach emptier Jaws set for Blu-ray release on Tuesday, composer John Williams talks about the simple-but-oh-so-effective theme he created for the film’s voracious Great White shark in an interview with John Burlingame. According to the interview, the first and only music Williams played for Spielberg prior to the recording sessions was what would eventually become known as the Jaws theme that Williams says was “so simple, insistent and driving, that it seems unstoppable, like the attack of the shark.” Spielberg was not sold at first. “I played him the simple little E-F-E-F bass line that we all know on the piano,” and Spielberg laughed at first. But, Williams explains: “I just began playing around with simple motifs that could be distributed in the orchestra, and settled on what I thought was the most powerful thing, which is to say the simplest. Like most ideas, they’re often the most compelling.” Spielberg’s response, according to the composer who is also known for his indelible scores for the Star Wars films, Raiders of the Lost Ark , and Close Encounters of the Third Kind , among other landmark films was: “Let’s try it.” Burlingame writes that Williams spent two months writing more than 50 minutes of music for Jaws . They recorded in early March 1975 with a 73-piece orchestra. “It was a lot of fun, like a great big playground,” Williams says. “We had a really good time, and Steven loved it.” Spielberg even lent his less-than-masterful clarinet playing — shades of Woody Allen worship, perhaps? — to the soundtrack for a scene early in Jaws when a high-school band plays Sousa during a parade. Burlingame notes that “Williams needed to record a terrible-sounding rendition with his orchestra, which included many of the finest musicians in Hollywood.” Or as Williams puts it: “It’s very difficult to ask these great musicians to play badly.” So, Spielberg, who’d played clarinet in a high-school band, joined the orchestra on that number. “He added just the right amateur quality to the piece. A few measures still survive in the movie,” says Williams, who is probably one of the few people in the movie industry who could say Spielberg sucks at the clarinet and still manage to work in the business. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
The 19-year-old star tweets optimistically, prepares for new movie after Nickelodeon’s end to the three-season series. By Christina Garibaldi Victoria Justice Photo: Getty Images
Given author Stephenie Meyer’s close connection to Summit’s Twilight films (she came onboard to produce the final two films), the vampire saga has retained a firm sense of authenticity even as scripter Melissa Rosenberg has tweaked and added details to translate Meyer’s vision for the big screen. But a new EW Breaking Dawn Part 2 preview teases a “pretty big shock” for fans expecting stark faithfulness to the series-ender. What could be more shocking than the all-out vampire/werewolf/baby-loving party that already is Breaking Dawn ? According to EW , who has a slew of new Breaking Dawn Part 2 images including the above look at Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson in happier, more undead times, Rosenberg changed plot elements in the film’s last act that had Pattinson going, “What?” (Seriously. That’s what he says he said.) The good news is, Rosenberg didn’t act alone; she and Meyer supposedly conjured this maybe-huge, probably not-so-earth-shattering deviation together: Even devoted readers of Meyer’s books are in for a pretty big shock in the final third of the film, when the plot strays from the last novel in a sequence dreamed up by Meyer and longtime screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg one night over dinner. “When I first read the script, I got to that part and was like, ‘What?'” Pattinson says. “And then I had to go back a page.” Still, even those averse to change will be more than satisfied, and probably thrilled, by how the series ends. The actors certainly are. Says Pattinson, “It does it a serious justice.” The bad news (for now) is, fans have no idea how major or minor said change is. Since much of Breaking Dawn the novel is spent rallying for an epic final showdown between Edward and Bella’s army of vampire friends and family and the insidious Italian coven fronted by Michael Sheen, there’s a good chance the tweak is related to the X-Men: The Last Stand -like standoff between the two opposing enemies. Then again, since that standoff also happens to be rather anticlimactic — it’s the reason I never thought the book could be adapted easily to the screen — any injection of some new dramatic advancement would be welcome. But hey, who knows? Maybe it’s something as simple as a flashforward to Jacob and Renesmee’s happy future together, which isn’t weird at all . [ EW via CinemaBlend ]
Another day another magazine cover for Jordin Sparks , who is joined by her “Sparkle” sisters Carmen Ejogo and Tika Sumpter on the front of EBONY’s September issue which hits newsstands today. Inside the cast gives their first magazine interview which includes Whitney Houston reflections with the entire cast of the film. EBONY also has two “as told tos” by writer Lynn Norment with Bobbi Kristina and Pat Houston. Check out some excerpts from Jordin Sparks and Bobbi Kristina below: JORDIN SPARKS “I think if Sparkle were here now, and a real person, we would be best friends. She’s been wanting [fame] her whole life. Music is all she thinks about; it’s all she has ever wanted to do…That’s how I felt when I was growing up.” BOBBI KRISTINA “I’m so proud that you were able to finish making Sparkle…(you) being so happy was an absolutely beautiful thing for me to watch,” she said. The issue also includes an HBCU special profiling the winners of the 2012 HBCU Queens contest and for the first time ever, EBONY lists the leading secondary education programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the nation across the Sciences, Business, Liberal Arts, and Law disciplines. Twenty-five years later, EBONY goes back to school with a look at Cosby Show spin-off A Different World. It examines the highs, lows, and how the show explored real life lessons with ground breaking episodes. Feature includes commentary from Jasmine Guy, Kadeem Hardison, and Co-Executive Producer and Writer, Susan Fales-Hill. There’s also a feature called Free At Last about how DNA testing, social media and recanted testimonies two thousand black men who have been exonerated since 1989. EBONY profiles three of those men as they reclaim their lives and fight to regain acceptance in today’s society. Sounds like a good read to us!
The world premiere of Robert Zemeckis ‘s Flight will close the 50th anniversary edition of the New York Film Festival , organizers said Thursday. The action-packed thriller stars Oscar-winner Denzel Washington as Whip Whitaker, a veteran airline pilot who crash lands his plane following a mid-air catastrophe, saving nearly everyone on board. Though he’s hailed as a hero immediately after the incident, the legal, oral and ethical areas of his behavior before and immediately after become more ambiguous that initially portrayed to the public. John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Melissa Leo, Bruce Greenwood and Kelly Reilly also star in Flight , which Paramount Pictures will release in theaters November 2nd. “Robert Zemeckis has shown his diversity as a storyteller in comedies, dramas and has skillfully translated narratives into specific effect environments,” Rose Kuo, executive director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center said in a statement. “It is a pleasure to see him bring to life his complicated, tragic-comic portrait of a man in crisis, with an exceptional and poignant performance by Denzel Washington.” NYFF’s selection committee includes Richard Peña, the event’s long-serving chair who will retire later this year. Also on the committee are Melissa Anderson, contributor to the Village Voice , Scott Foundas, Associate Program Director, Todd McCarthy, chief film critic at The Hollywood Reporter and Amy Taubin, contributor at Film Comment and Sight and Sound The 17-day New York Film Festival annually spotlights the latest in world cinema from both celebrated auteurs and new talent. The Film Society of Lincoln Center hosts the annually anticipated New York film event, taking place this year September 28 – October 14.
Also in Thursday’s round-up of news briefs, Tim Robbins is set to take on the director role after long absence. Montreal’s genre event the Fantasia Film Festival hands out its awards. And Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal honored at European film event. The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Take That, George Michael Tipped As Olympics Closing Acts Sunday’s Closing Ceremony at the London Olympics will feature over 4,100 performers including a massive showing of Britain’s musical headliners. Among the performers who will apparently play are The Who, Paul McCartney, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, George Michael, Paul Weller, the Spice Girls, Adele, Ray Davies, Liam Gallagher, Annie Lennox, Madness, the Pet Shop Boys, Take That, Muse, One Direction and members of Queen, Deadline reports . Shia LaBeouf Eyes Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Nymphomaniac revolves around the erotic pursuits of a woman, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, from her youth to 50 as recounted by her husband, played by Stellan Skarsgard. Details about his possible role are still to be determined, THR reports . Tim Robbins to Direct City of Lies After directing three films in the ’90s including Dead Man Walking (1995), Tim Robbins has signed on to direct Endgame Entertainment’s City of Lies about two spies who fall in love while on separate spying mission in Prague, THR reports . Doomsday Book and Toad Road Take Top Fantasia Film Festival Prizes Montreal’s genre event, the Fantasia International Film Festival awarded Kim Jee-woon and Yim Pil-sung’s Doomsday Book its Cheval Noir Award for Best Film, while Jason Banker’s Toad Road took nods for Best Director and Best Actor for James Davidson. Yeon Sang Ho’s The King of Pigs won the Satoshi Kon Award for Achievement in Animation and a special mention from the First Feature Jury, Indiewire reports . Gael Garcia Bernal Honored at Locarno Film Festival “I think I still have a lot of room to grow,” Garcia Bernal told the crowd of more than 8,000 in the Piazza Grande. “Perhaps not in terms of height, but in terms of experience.” Garcia Bernal is one of the youngest honorees to receive the festival’s Excellence Award at 33, BBC reports .
Filmmaker and actress Julie Delpy won accolades at the Berlin International Film Festival back in 2007 with her hilarious 2 Days In Paris , in which she starred opposite Adam Goldberg as a couple who stop off in Paris for a short visit, staying with her parents en route back to the U.S. Delpy, who wrote and directed the feature that did solid numbers in release jiggered the formula for a sequel, 2 Days In New York , which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January. This time, she stars opposite Chris Rock , and similarly to Paris her family factors into the dialog-heavy plot that’s riddled with eccentricity, social commentary and crazy mishaps. In the film, Delpy’s character Marion is now living with her boyfriend Mingus (Chris Rock) in a New York apartment with their cat and two children from their previous relationships. Marion’s father (played by her real-life dad, Albert Delpy), her sister and her over the top boyfriend suddenly decide to pay a visit from France, unleashing another 48 hours of family drama. Similarly to 2 Days In Paris , Marion’s family is sometimes unnervingly open in their discussions about sexuality and other topics most would consider crosses social boundaries. The French-American cultural disconnect only amplifies the gulf and the result is laugh out loud funny. Julie Delpy and Chris Rock chatted with ML about the film at Sundance. Initially Rock was about to leave, but sat down for a few minutes before heading out of Park City. Delpy, who first acted in none other than French-Swiss maestro Jean-Luc Godard’s Détective in 1985 and has since gone on to do many roles including Before Sunset , has since taken on the director’s hat herself and is a steadfast filmmaking convert. She talks about making films outside the studio system, though she said she’d like to try it sometime and would consider it another welcome challenge. In fact, she would like to try almost everything – almost… Similarly to 2 Days In Paris , you pulled together financing through Europe, can a dialog-driven film exist within Hollywood or is this the only way to put together a film like your latest, 2 Days In New York ? Julie Delpy: I never even thought of going to a studio. It’s just the way I do things. I put the financing together through a European financing system and it’s not easy – it’s a struggle. It might be easier in a way to go to a studio Chris Rock: I think it depends on who you are as a filmmaker. JD: I’m sure if it was through a studio, I wouldn’t be able to do this film exactly the way it is. Though I’m not really sure because I’ve never really been approached by a studio. I’m not sure if they know who I am or know I’m a filmmaker. They don’t even know I’m an actress – trust me [laughs]. CR: I think it depends on who you are as a filmmaker determines how much control you will have and, you know, if you want more control, you’re better off not going through a studio, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. JD: Some things in this movie may not have been their whole thing. They may have wanted a different ending, though honestly, I don’t know what they would want because I haven’t worked with them. For me, I just do it in the way I know how. How did you both come together for this project? CR: I saw 2 Days in Paris and I Loo-oooved 2 Days in Paris . JD: I’d seen his work and have always loved his work. I met him briefly once and he stuck in my mind. The minute I thought of doing a sequel to 2 Days in Paris , I knew I was going to be in a relationship with Mingus who is going to be Chris Rock, so he just came to my mind How has this contrasted with your most recent work Chris? CR: It’s fun, but the French thing – you have to get used to the fact you don’t understand what people around you are saying, but other than that it wasn’t much different than any other movie. I found working with the star and director was easy because you’re always talking to the boss. It’s harder when you’re talking to different people about different things. Because normally when you’re doing a movie, the star is kind-of half-way the director anyway… If the star doesn’t like what’s happening, you’re going to do what the star wants 90% of the time anyway. I hope I get to work with more star-directors… I read that when you were writing this story, you said you wanted to build on “real ground,” what did you mean by that? JD: I spent a lot of time with [Krzysztof] Kieslowski after we did White (1994) talking about movies and writing and everything. He’d tell me that I’m such a movie buff and I was obsessed. He’d tell me, ‘I haven’t seen this, or I haven’t seen that,’ and I’d say, ‘what have you seen?’ and he’d tell me, ‘real life.’ And that stuck with me. What can be more true than take some truth and build something from that. Obsession with death for instance – so something like that – and build from there into a story. 2 Days in New York is grounded in reality. There’s a couple with kids re-constructed and brought together… [ Chris Rock is pulled out of the room at this point and they say their good byes ] [ Continuing ]: I like to base my stories on simple things. It could have been a drama, but I love comedy so that’s what I did. But for this, I like to incorporate things that I know. So in it, I talk about my mother’s death. She actually passed away three years ago. She was in 2 Days in Paris and she was a wonderful actress. So she couldn’t be in this film obviously, so I had to find a way to talk about it… Your father is in this film as he was, of course, in 2 Days in Paris. Are his antics in the film similar to how he is in real-life? Yeah he’s very crazy. He’s very funny and very light, but also a very profound person. He’s not a superficial person at all. He’s fun and he likes to laugh and loves life, but he also has profound problems. He’s not happy all the time, but if we’re at a festival and the film’s playing well then we’re all happy. For me it was great to write parts for my parents in the first film and in this film for my father. It’s wonderful to be able to do that. They gave me so much by exposing me to film. My father gave me directing education through his past direction of plays. They gave me so much, so I’m glad I could give back a little bit. He keys a Hummer in this film in one memorable NYC street scene, and I was thinking it’s his almost child-like rebellious way of perhaps lashing out about global warming… Yeah exactly, that is a stand on global warming. Is he like that in real life? No, but my dad hates cars. They’re all over the place in Paris and they park on sidewalks and have no respect. As he ever keyed a car? No, but he’s joked about it for years so I let him have his fantasy in the film. I mean, I hate cars too. I live in L.A. so of course I have a car, but it’s the only real way we have for transport. But we’re polluting every moment of the day and we’ll pay for it. We’ll be gone [some day]… But Earth will be ok, but it’ll shake us out. So what do you think about Sequels? What about a 2 Days in L.A. or 2 Days in Tokyo ? I think the franchise is going to stop there. I’m not a James Bond kind of girl. I think it stops here at 2 Days in New York . But I’d certainly like to direct more films and will if given the opportunity to do it…I have a lot of friends who are directors and they call me to ask if I’d like to be in them – people like Richard Linklater etc. or maybe not someone who’s my friend but just someone I really like, but I think my first desire is filmmaking. What other kinds of stories do you want to do? Everything. Just everything from sci-fi to dramas – but maybe not sports movies. It’s not that I don’t like sports movies, but it’s just that I don’t get it. I don’t really understand sports, but everything else I’d like to do. I’d like to do a thriller, though I don’t know if I’d be good at it, but I’d like to try it. Maybe it’s pretentious and I’m crazy and all that, but I think I will do a thriller one day. It’s such a struggle to make movies. With this movie, we stopped two weeks before we started shooting and the film fell apart and then we put it all back together and then four weeks into the shoot we stopped. It was really, really hard. Was it harder than 2 Days in Paris ? In a way it was. There was more money involved with shooting in New York. I thought Paris would be more expensive. No, Paris is much less expensive. New York is… I think $3 million went into trucks, so I mean it’s really expensive. I mean like basically it’s very very expensive. And it’s fine if you have the money, and we had the money, but when the money fell apart at the last minute, it was just drama. It was the most painful experience to think you’re about to shoot and then everything just stops. Would you consider going a different route when tackling some of the other stories and genres you’re interested in doing down the line – maybe even the studios? I think I would do it if given the opportunity. But I’m also interested in working within limitations. I have limitations with my films which is typically major financial limitations, but having a studio tell you what to do would be a limitation too, but it would be manageable. I think the only thing that’s not manageable is death. People dying or people who are sick is not manageable. Everything else is nothing. You know I consider in life, people in movies lose perspective because it becomes so important… I’m not like that. It’s life, there are people dying around you, there’s craziness – that’s serious. A studio telling me what to do, that’s manageable. That’s just a boss telling you what to do and that’s fine, I’ll do my best within my limitation… So if that opportunity came along, then you’d do it? Yes, it’s almost fun to me, it would be a fun thing to do.
