The group gave Zero Dark Thirty its top Best Picture and Best Director prizes in addition to Best Actress for Jessica Chastain , while Lincoln ‘s Daniel Day-Lewis took Best Actor with the Chicago Film Critics Association Monday. [ Related: Golden Globes Unveil 70th Edition Nominees And ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Takes Top National Board Of Review Honors ] [ Related: LA Film Critics Name ‘Amour’ Best Picture, Boost ‘The Master,’ Jazz Up Oscar Race ] The wins follow: Best Picture: Zero Dark Thirty Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis , Lincoln Best Actress: Jessica Chastain , Zero Dark Thirty Best Supporting Actor: Phillip Seymour Hoffman , The Master Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams , The Master Best Original Screenplay: Zero Dark Thirty by Mark Boal Best Adapted Screenplay: Lincoln by Tony Kushner Best Foreign Language Film: Amour Best Documentary: The Invisible War Best Animated Feature: ParaNorman Best Cinematography: Mihai Milaimare Jr. , The Master Best Original Score: Jonny Greenwood , The Master Best Art Direction: Moonrise Kingdom Best Editing: William Goldenberg & Dylan Tichenor , Zero Dark Thirty Most Promising Performer: Quvenzhané Wallis , Beasts of the Southern Wild Most Promising Filmmaker: Benh Zeitlin , Beasts of the Southern Wild [ Related: NY Film Critics Circle Spices Up Oscar Race With ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Best Picture Pick ]
It’s impressive how much J.J. Abrams and the folks at Bad Robot manage to pack into the new teaser trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness without revealing, well, the actual plot of the summer 2013 sequel. Space action! Benedict Cumberbatch ! That darned hands-on-glass scene that just screams ” I have been and always shall be your friend !” Watch the action-packed teaser below and let’s get to piecing together the puzzle. The teaser is big on setting up an ambiguous adversarial relationship between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Cumberbatch, but Captain Pike’s voice over seems more telling of the themes Star Trek Into Darkness will hit: Kirk’s bravado, and the danger it poses to his crew. Despite the out of context flashes of intriguing set pieces — Star Wars ian spaceship action, that leap off a cliff, that other leap off a building, and what appears to be the Enterprise crash-landing in water — the hands moment ends the tease with a clear nod to Wrath of Khan , although we can’t tell who’s on what side of the glass. Still, something tells me there are more clues hidden in this teaser than we might think, like this brief shot of Noel Clarke’s as-yet unidentified character. As seen in the first nine minutes of the film , Clarke plays a man whose ailing daughter Cumberbatch approaches at a London hospital and offers to save. Here we see him in a possibly-Starfleet uniform as he appears to drop a thumble full of something into a glass of water — perhaps fulfilling his end of his deal with the Cumber-Devil? What intriguing bits and clues do you see in the teaser? Chime in below. Star Trek Into Darkness hits theaters May 17, 2013. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
We were duped too. A video thought to be linked to Kanye West ‘s Cruel Winter release is, in fact, not his. Director Austin Christianson, who has worked with Wiz Khalifa and Rihanna, said the trailer was made outside of the artist’s G.O.O.D. Music or his label, Def Jam. Late last week, a video circulated via YouTube that appeared to be a follow-up of West’s Cruel Summer project . According to Fuse , the video is actually a concept that had been made public with the aim to work with West and was only intended for him to see, though it made its way into the press around the world. “Without getting into many details, I will say that the trailer was independently made and the video is essentially a concept trailer… It’s used for pitching an idea and/or concept to a client,” Christianson told Fuse. “With that said, the video was being used for pitching purposes and it’s naturally intended only for the client to see.” Apparently Christianson had opted to work with West and decided to reach out to him in a not-so-private way. The brouhaha ramped up when Def Jam denied involvement and the trailer was removed. For his part, West’s crowd has not referenced the fake Cruel Winter trailer and hasn’t even confirmed if one is in the offing. [Source: Pitchfork ]
After last week’s bizarre President Camacho “Funny or Die” press conference , in which white people were severely maligned, the website has redeemed itself with a get-out-the-vote video from one of its founders, Will Ferrell . I had to watch the video twice, because the first time, I was terribly distracted by the push-broom mustache Ferrell is wearing in the clip, which makes the number Gary Oldman wore in The Dark Knight Rises look inconspicuous by comparison. The Anchorman 2 star, whose impersonation of George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live is sorely missed, gets right down to business in the video explaining that he’ll do anything to get you to vote. Ferrell offers to make you a dinner of angel-hair pasta, help you move a couch, eat human toe nails, punch himself in the face or give you a tattoo, though, he warns, “I do not know how to draw.” The actor also shows off some of his dance moves for those who’d be interested in seeing him let his freak flag fly, or just do the Robot. “That was just a taste,” he promises after getting down with his bad self. “If you want the full buffet, you’re going to have to vote.” I vote that Ferrell gives us a sequel to this video when the polls open tomorrow. Oh yes, and though Ferrell keeps the political talk non-partisan for most of the video, he does reveal that he’s an Obama man at clip’s end. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
With a year to go before Pacific Rim hits theaters, Guillermo del Toro ( Hellboy , Pan’s Labyrinth ) hit Comic-Con with stars Charlie Hunnam , Ron Perlman , Rinko Kikuchi and Charlie Day to preview the giant robot-monster movie, inspired by the Japanese sci-fi pics he watched as a kid. His vision for the film? Dirty, epic, and realistic — so much so that Del Toro and his crew built functioning, practical robots and entire sets with hydraulics (“a huge engineering feat!”), putting his actors in the thick of the action rather than go the CG route. Del Toro called the experience “the best I’ve had on any film set in all my life.” Day remembered it slightly differently: “You tortured the f*** out of us!” Developed with writer Travis Beacham, Pacific Rim is set years into a war between humans, piloting massive robots called Jaegers, and giant monsters from the sea that threaten to wipe out civilization. When his passion project At the Mountains of Madness folded, Del Toro turned his attentions to Pacific Rim , channeling an outsized amount of energy into making it his most ambitious project to date. Given the Japanese sci-fi flicks that inspired the film — not to mention the upcoming Godzilla reboot bringing kaiju culture back into the mainstream — it’s easy to guess that genre aficionado Del Toro has crafted in Pacific Rim a love letter to said films. That love is abundant, but he insists that the pic will be forging its own path rather than referencing what’s come before. “I wouldn’t compare it to a Godzilla film,” said Del Toro. “[I told my crew] we should not reference other movies. We should not go and re-watch Gamera or re-watch Gojira or War of the Gargantuans because we love them, right? So we said, let’s create the world that we’re doing. We should not be doing a referential film.” So what should you know about Pacific Rim ? Del Toro and his cast shared the essentials of the characters and robots vs. monsters universe of the film. THE CHARACTERS Hunnam plays Raleigh Antrobus, a former soldier called back into action who partners with Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori to co-pilot an obsolete Jaeger. “When you meet me in the beginning of the story I’ve suffered a giant loss, and not only has it killed my sense of self-worth, it’s also killed my will to fight and keep on going,” Hunnam explained. “Rinko and a couple of people bring me out of retirement to try to help in this grand push. And I think that journey is a very relatable one; I think everybody in their life has fallen down and not felt like getting back up, but you have to no matter how difficult it is.” Kikuchi, who earned an Oscar nomination for Babel and appeared in Rian Johnson’s Brothers Bloom , plays a newbie pilot who, like Raleigh, has also suffered great loss in her life. “The idea is that two people that are really, really hurt, can become one,” Del Toro said of the partnership between the two characters. “Both in the robot metaphorically, and in life. They meet when they’re two empty pieces and connect almost like a puzzle.” Making the leap to big screen action is Day ( It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia ), as Newt Gotlieb. “You need big tough guys and strong guys and the people that you believe could fight and save the world,” said Day, “and then in the case of my guy, you think, how does the sort of everyman who you’d think couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag — how’s that guy going to contribute? What I think people will latch onto with my character is how flawed he is in his attempts to help save the world.” Rounding out the cast is Del Toro regular Perlman, whose Hannibal Chow is a black marketeer specializing in the illicit monster trade. “I have a relationship with the powers that be whereby I have the right to sell all these fallen monsters on the black market to rich people who have way too much money and are looking to collect rare and exotic, strange shit. So I have no moral compass, I have no scruples whatsoever — I’m just a profiteer, and in this case a war profiteer. But the war is not amongst countries, it’s a war against time for all of humanity.” THE SETS In his pursuit for realism, Del Toro approximated faux-oil-splattered lenses and imperfect camera work to add believability to the visual experience. That desire for verisimilitude extended to his sets — some of which were outfitted with their own systems of shocks to make real the sort of effects that might otherwise be achieved with CG. “We built a lot of things that were oversize and difficult in order to bring that tactile effect,” Del Toro explained. “We built a whole street of Tokyo and we rigged it with pneumatic shocks, so every time the monster took a step the whole street would vibrate and the cars would jump and the walls would shake and the lampposts would shake and the air conditioning units would fall.” THE ROBOTS With names like Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha, the Jaegers of Pacific Rim are as tall as buildings and operate between two human pilots, connected by a neural link. “I wanted each robot to have a personality and for you to feel when the robot gets hurt, or when the robot wins,” said Del Toro. “I want to make the audience feel for those machines as much as they feel for the humans — and also, frankly, for the kaiju.” Del Toro and his team designed the robots with real world mechanics in mind, with parts that served practical functions. And when it came time to film, he called on his cast to jump into their rigs for the aforementioned “torture.” “The cockpit of the robot which is in the head, is almost three stories high,” described Del Toro. “And we mounted it on hydraulic shakers so in battle every time they got hit, it would really hit. And I wanted to do it with the actors, I didn’t want to do it with the doubles.” “The first time they were in,” he recalled, “Charlie came to visit the first group of actors — I won’t say who they were — and said, ‘Crybabies!’ This machine, which is the interface between the robots and them, flows with their bodies. It was a huge engineering feat. It was real. We could have done it CG, but why do that? [Laughs]” “Every guy broke. The only one that never complained was Rinko.” Stay tuned for Movieline’s chat with Rinko Kikuchi and read more from Comic-Con 2012 here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Paul Verhoeven and Ed Neumeier’s dystopian action-adventure flick RoboCop (which I was too young to realize was a satire upon release) rolled off the assembly line before viral videos had been invented. Just imagine if these. . .marginally clever distractions had existed back in 1987. Heck, I’m sure we’d all be offering bids on lots in Delta City “for a dollar!” The forthcoming remake of RoboCop (here you can take a pause to sigh, wonder why you are surprised that there’s a RoboCop remake coming, then continue on) launched its fake corporate site recently, hawking the wares from Omni Corp. Omni Corp – called Omni Consumer Products in the original – is the privatized company contracted with cleaning up the streets of Detroit using whatever bloody, brutal means necessary. RoboCop’s most famous scene is the presentation of the robot ED-209 in the OCP board room, wherein a computer glitch makes swiss cheese out of a poor schnook named Mr. Kinney. The producers of the new RoboCop , who’d’ve had nerds with pitchforks at the studio gate if ED-209 wasn’t in the pic, have included a version in the new continuity and are wisely revealing him now so we won’t have to sit and wonder when it will happen during the film. (Oh, if only Rise of the Planet of the Apes had thought of this before Draco Malfoy nearly gaffed-up the film with is “madhouse” and “damned dirty” line readings.) The design of the new ED-209 looks like a sleeker, pointier version of the original – like ED Senior mated with a Lamborghini. The video itself is on par with what we have come to expect from fanboy movies’ viral vids, but only teases what RoboCop himself will look like. All said, whoever came up with the line “we’ve got the future under control” definitely earned their pay that day. Previously: New RoboCop Joel Kinnaman discussed the “gritty” reboot with Movieline . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Paul Verhoeven and Ed Neumeier’s dystopian action-adventure flick RoboCop (which I was too young to realize was a satire upon release) rolled off the assembly line before viral videos had been invented. Just imagine if these. . .marginally clever distractions had existed back in 1987. Heck, I’m sure we’d all be offering bids on lots in Delta City “for a dollar!” The forthcoming remake of RoboCop (here you can take a pause to sigh, wonder why you are surprised that there’s a RoboCop remake coming, then continue on) launched its fake corporate site recently, hawking the wares from Omni Corp. Omni Corp – called Omni Consumer Products in the original – is the privatized company contracted with cleaning up the streets of Detroit using whatever bloody, brutal means necessary. RoboCop’s most famous scene is the presentation of the robot ED-209 in the OCP board room, wherein a computer glitch makes swiss cheese out of a poor schnook named Mr. Kinney. The producers of the new RoboCop , who’d’ve had nerds with pitchforks at the studio gate if ED-209 wasn’t in the pic, have included a version in the new continuity and are wisely revealing him now so we won’t have to sit and wonder when it will happen during the film. (Oh, if only Rise of the Planet of the Apes had thought of this before Draco Malfoy nearly gaffed-up the film with is “madhouse” and “damned dirty” line readings.) The design of the new ED-209 looks like a sleeker, pointier version of the original – like ED Senior mated with a Lamborghini. The video itself is on par with what we have come to expect from fanboy movies’ viral vids, but only teases what RoboCop himself will look like. All said, whoever came up with the line “we’ve got the future under control” definitely earned their pay that day. Previously: New RoboCop Joel Kinnaman discussed the “gritty” reboot with Movieline . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
It’s been 25 years since Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop painted a nightmare vision of a near future in which a cyborg policeman became humanity’s salvation — so how will the upcoming reboot, starring Swedish-American actor Joel Kinnaman (AKA Holder of TV’s The Killing ), update the tale? Movieline spoke with Kinnaman, who continues his Hollywood cross-over attempt in Friday’s New York drama Lola Versus , about Jose Padilha ’s RoboCop — and the real-world technology that suggests we’re already in a much different future than the original envisioned. Not convinced that the robot future is close at hand? Just take a look at the cyborg advances that have been made in Japan, where Kinnaman joked he’d be going to spend time with lifelike robots in preparation for his RoboCop role. “Have you seen these Japanese hospital droids, or humanoids or whatever they call them? They’ve perfected the skin, the skin looks so real, and they have these motors between the eyes for when they smile,” he marveled. “It’s just mind-blowing. We’re pretty close already. You can find it on YouTube. It’s spooky, but we’re getting really close.” Kinnaman says shooting on the remake begins for him in September, with Gary Oldman on board to play Norton, a scientist responsible for turning the human Alex Murphy into RoboCop. Today, THR broke the news that Samuel L. Jackson playing “Pat Novak, a charismatic TV mogul and a powerful force in the Robocop world.” As for writer-director Padilha ( Elite Squad , Elite Squad 2 ), Kinnaman had high praise. “He’s a young master, and a very strong visionary, and he wants to make something with a lot of substance, he said. “If you’ve seen Elite Squad then you know the action sequences are a walk in the park for him, he can portray action very realistically – and that’s how he wants to do this movie.” “It takes place in the future and it’s RoboCop , but it’s still going to feel like a gritty, down to earth movie,” he added. “With a lot of fireworks around it, but…” Back in September, Padilha spoke with Movieline describing his take on RoboCop and the deeper questions his version will explore: Even looking at the first RoboCop , which is a film that I love, it’s not local in that sense; it has an acid critique of society as a whole and it also deals with different subject matter that is more universal, like what is it like to replace people with automatic systems? A lot of jobs today are being automated; what happens when you extend that concept to very important areas of society like law enforcement? What happens if you start controlling the behavior of criminals or people in general with software-running machines? Those questions, they look like they’re sci-fi but they’re not. Pretty soon we’ll have robots in our society, you’re going to have a lot of automated processes that used to be done by people – this is happening. Society and technology is changing so fast, and the impact of the change on society and technology is global, not local. RoboCop talks a little bit about this. What does it mean to replace a person or enhance a person by using technology? What does that do to the person themselves? What sort of drama does it create, what sort of philosophical questions lurk behind those things? Kinnaman, meanwhile, has said his and Padilha’s approach to the character is more of an “acting piece” than Peter Weller’s original turn; a reported costume update means his eyes will be more visible, for starters. Asked to elaborate, he offered this explanation of how their RoboCop will differ from Verhoeven’s: “It just comes from the realization that our vision of a robot 30 years from now is very different from the vision of what a robot was in the future in 1987. That is the main thing. Obviously there are some things in the script that lead into that, but that stuff I can’t talk about.” Check back for the full Movieline interview this week. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Ohio Deputy Gets Fired For Ordering Inmates To Dance To Usher’s “Yeah” SMH at the inmates doing the worm and the robot to use the phone: Some inmates did the worm, others chose the old school robot. Each dance was performed to the beat of hip-hop artist Usher on command from a now-fired Summit County deputy. The inmate prize: use of a jail microwave. The charges are revealed in an internal affairs report released Wednesday. Deputy Dominic Martucci, 35, was fired for violating the department’s policies, including a mandate that inmates be treated humanely. Martucci is accused of ordering five inmates dance to Usher’s Yeah! song and then inviting other deputies to watch during an early evening shift on April 11. The inmates danced their way to regaining use of a microwave that they had lost earlier that day. Another inmate won the right to use the phone and commissary items for his old-school robot dance routine. Martucci blared the music from a smartphone, the report said. “I did what I had to do so I could use the phone,” the inmate told investigators. A family member had died and he needed to contact relatives, he said. At one point, Martucci signaled a fellow deputy to watch the dance. “Stop and watch this, it’s going to be funny,” he said, according to the report. One inmate said as many as five deputies looked on during the dance. They were also looking to make sure a supervisor was not nearby, investigators said. The inmate said some dancers were rewarded with commissary items, but not him. The inmate was told he “messed up” and faced a trip to the hole. The inmate alleged Martucci demanded he dance “one minute to my liking.” The inmate was eventually let out of lock down, the report shows. The allegations came out through an inmate’s memo to a sergeant sent days later. “[Martucci] told the inmates that if they wanted out of lock up and the microwave back, that they would have to dance for him,” an internal affair report noted. “He let out the [five inmates] and told them to entertain him by dancing…” Martucci was suspended April 23. This week, Sheriff Drew Alexander fired the deputy on departmental charges of mistreating the inmates, misconduct and having a cell phone in the jail. In his defense, Martucci told investigators he forced the inmates to dance in order to regain day room privileges lost earlier in the shift. The inmates did not touch each other. During the internal investigation, investigators said Martucci admitted his actions were wrong, but that he intended only to “lighten the tension” in the jail pod. Another deputy who saw the dancing said the inmates were laughing during the song. SMH. Do you think he deserved to get fired? Source More On Bossip! Get Ya Mind Right! 10 Ways To Tell That Everyone You Know Thinks You’re A Ho You’re The Worst: The 10 Biggest A-Holes In Sports Happy 40th Rocky! Let’s Celebrate The Rock’s Birthday By Looking At His Most Scintillating Pics, Ladies Caption This: Rihanna In The Strip Club
The Prometheus campaign’s Guy Pearce TED Talk from the future was pretty clever, but there’s an uncanny brilliance to this new viral spot that focuses on Michael Fassbender ‘s android character, David. In a fictional ad for Weyland Corp., “David” outlines the advanced features and tech that make him a perfect robot — able to assimilate into the human work force, think on his own, and even cry. But something tells me all will not turn out to be muted pastels and obedience and robot smiles once the space poop hits the fan… Fassbender’s ability to play just a shade on the wrong side of human is wonderfully jarring, but the sight of him “emoting” with those two tears rolling down his pre-fab cheeks is the single best thing I’ve seen in a while. Chilling! Intriguing. And yet it doesn’t seem to give away too much about the still-mysterious Prometheus . What do you make of the viral spot and what it tells us about David? Prometheus is in theaters June 8. [via Joblo ]
