Posts for 'Movies' Category

 Martin Scorsese's latest film pays a personal tribute to Elia Kazan, one of Hollywood's and Broadway's most influential directors but also a controversial figure who turned anti-communist informant in the McCarthy era.
In "A Letter to Elia," an hour-long documentary screening at the Venice film festival, Scorsese credits Kazan and his emotionally-charged, raw and realistic style as the inspiration for his becoming a filmmaker.
He recalls in particular the huge impact that two of Kazan's best-known films, "On the Waterfront" with Marlon Brando (1954) and "East of Eden" with James Dean (1955), had on him as a teenager. "It's almost impossible to say how deeply I was affected by Kazan's films," Scorsese wrote shortly after Kazan's death in 2003 at 94. Scorsese discovered Kazan as a young boy going to the movies on his own in New York and was at his side with Robert De Niro when Kazan, whose films won 20 Academy Awards, received a lifetime achievement Oscar in 1999.

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The new Apple TV is substantially smaller than the current model, fits in the palm of a hand, and is priced at just US$99 - much less than the US$229 of the current model. The new device will now play movies and TV shows on rentals. Movies can be rented the same day the DVDs go on sale for US$4.99, and TV shows are available for 99 cents each.

"Our users want Hollywood movies and TV shows, cheaper; they don't want amateur hour," Steve Jobs said. "They don't want another computer. They don't want to manage storage. They want it to be silent, cool and small.

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Well, in an unsurprising yet still traumatic development for Western civilization, the Twilight Saga continues to shatter box office records and set the hearts of teenage girls all aflutter.

The latest footnote in the decline of the Roman Empire, Eclipse, picked up an impressive $69 million, despite losing most of its initial audience on a weekday opening. So far, the flick has picked up $161 million in five days.

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And the wardrobe changes were as many as the sands in the desert, and the colours rivalled the rainbow itself.
Yup, the fab Sex and the City foursome is back in all its fashion glory, and this time the visual splendour of the costumes -and Samantha's gargantuan earrings -is matched by the epic sets.

Sex and the City 2, opening in wide release today, is a dazzler, from the opening credits sequence of a kaleidoscopic Chrysler Building; to the Busby Berkeley-worthy wedding set of Stanford Blatch and Anthony, with none other than Liza Minnelli presiding, in black sequins, natch; to the desert scene shot in Morocco on the same stretch of sand as Lawrence of Arabia. And the Abu Dhabi hotel suite of rooms -actually the Mandarin Oriental in Marrakech -is opulent beyond most people's imagination, as of course, is Carrie's famous closet, where the first flick closed.

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Bella’s story plays out in some unexpected ways. The generations-long feud between werewolves and vampires is resolved to focus on Bella’s latest opportunity for self-sacrifice.

In Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final installment in the series, Bella’s story plays out in some unexpected ways. The ongoing conflicts that made this series so compelling a human girl in love with a vampire, a werewolf in love with a human girl, the generations-long feud between werewolves and vampires is resolved to focus on Bella’s latest opportunity for self-sacrifice.

“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn” has been given the green light to begin initial production by Summit Entertainment. The fourth saga in the Twilight Series is going back to its roots and will be filmed in Portland, Oregon. The original Twilight film was shot there. In addition, a new production company, Sunswept Entertainment, has been brought on board for Breaking Dawn. Sunswept Entertainment was created by Karen Rosenfelt, who is the daughter of former MGM Chairman & CEO Frank Edward Rosenfelt. Karen Rosenfelt served as Producer on both “Twilight” and on “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”. She did not work on “New Moon”, but is producing “Breaking Dawn” through her Sunswept Entertainment banner.

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Here's the Twilight fang club ... a pack of filmgoers who reckon the teen movies are a howling success. Ahead of today's DVD release of New Moon - the second in the Twilight saga - the film was given a premiere for an audience of wolves.

These four-legged Twi-hards at Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire watched their movie counterparts at an open-air screening by film company E1 Entertainment.

The vampire v werewolf hit - starring Kristen Stewart, Brit star Robert Pattinson and US talent Taylor Lautner - was shown on a 16 square metre screen in one of the country's only wolf enclosures.

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The first and final shots in "Edge of Darkness" belong in a different movie. They are beautiful, poetic, and dark explorations of ambitious filmmaking. Unfortunately, the sense of wonder these images imply is corroded by the rest of the film.

"Edge of Darkness" wastes little time to establish its characters, mostly because that would detract from the mindless action of the story, before Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic) is gunned down in front of her father's house.

This sends Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) on a mission to find her killers and bring them to justice: solo style. Craven basically gathers his information through beating the crap out of various individuals, instead of using the limited cognitive skills at his disposal.

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New Zealand actress Anna Paquin refused to answer personal questions about her love life at the Golden Globe Awards.

Paquin, who missed out on a second trophy for best actress in a television series at the ceremony, was asked a series of intimate questions by Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet.

Her fiance Stephen Moyer, who she met on the set of True Blood, admitted to Seacrest the pair had gotten engaged in Hawaii and that it was a "surprise".

But when asked when the first fell in love, Paquin shut up shop. "At what point did you realise there was more than just 'set chemistry?' Right away, or did it take a while?" asked the E! host.

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All the end-of-year/decade lists going up right now inspired me to hit one up of my own. And all the hype about James Cameron’s Avatar, which is being trumpeted as some sort of monumental science fiction success, gave me just the topic:  the actual best science fiction movies of the aughts.

This list might be controversial, but I stand by it.  I watch a lot of movies, and not just the big-name stuff–indie and foreign flicks comprise probably half of what I see between the big screen and my DVD player.

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When critics really want to castigate a movie, they'll often describe it as being "like a video game." Whereas, as evidenced by a recent Uncharted 2 TV commercial, it's high praise for a video game to be described as "like a movie."

What aficionados of both will agree upon is that the movie tie-in game is usually a lost cause.  Just as Avatar hopes to push cinematic boundaries when it hits theatres Dec.

18, director James Cameron has been trumpeting its corresponding video game, which came out Dec. 1 and tells a prequel story leading up to the movie.  Created by Ubisoft's Montreal studio, the game embraces two prevalent trends in movie games.

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