Theater owners and all of the attendant press at this week’s CinemaCon presentations (press had to outnumber the owners given how much has been reported) got a look at a lot of hotly anticipated movies, from Prometheus to The Dark Knight Rises,  to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Another film that cinefiles have been looking forward to is Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, based on the bestselling and highly acclaimed novel by Yann Martel (played in the film by Tobey Maguire), The film tells a magical adventure story centering on Pi Patel (Saruj Sharma), the precocious son of a zoo keeper. Dwellers in Pondicherry, India, the family decides to move to Canada, hitching a ride on a huge freighter. After a shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean on a 26-foot lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, all fighting for survival.  Lee told his audience. "When I read the book, I thought it was unmakeable," noting that the book is about "adventure, hope, wonder, survival and faith."

The above is the first official still from the film, the look of which has been compared to the paintings of artist Frederic Remington. "The real movie will be more moving, and more spectacular," promised the overly humble Lee from the theater stage, who has said elsewhere at the convention that learning how to shoot in 3D was a struggle.

Lee screened 20 minutes of footage of the film which is due this Christmas, but it beguiled his audience and portends both box office success and critical acclaim.  

By all accounts of those who have seen the footage, Lee may have advanced the format, using the extra dimensionality to give movie making added emotional resonance, similar to the initial effect of Technicolor or sound. (Like Scorsese did with Hugo, just taken up another notch.) His job, Lee said, was to use 3D "to put you in the emotional space of the characters." 

Fox Co-Chairman Tom Rothman introduced the footage comparing Lee's film with the technological breakthroughs James Cameron had accomplished with Titanic. “If Avatar was 3D's Birth of a Nation than Ang Lee's Life of Pi may be its Citizen Kane."

Life of Pi opens in the US and the UK on December 21.

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source

Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgard and Jeremy Irvine joined director Jonathan Teplitzky in Edinburgh yesterday to announce the start of filming in the Scottish capital for The Railway Man.

Based on a true story, the film follows British officer Eric Lomax (Firth) who was captured and tortured by the Japanese in WW2. Years later, Lomax, under the persuasion of his wife (Kidman), seeks out and confronts one of his captors. Skarsgård is Lomax’s best friend who goes back to the scene of the torture with him. Hiroyuki Sanada (47 Ronin) plays the Japanese officer.

This sounds very promising indeed! With a screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce (Tristram Shandy, Millions) and producer Andy Paterson, filming (which had been set for February) begins Monday April 30 and will later move to Queensland Australia and Thailand. Lionsgate UK has the foreign rights but expect to see this on the block at TIFF if all goes well.  (Teplitzky had a film at the fest last year with Burning Man.)  More as we get it.

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Photo credit: WENN

Fox has released the first official still for Of Men and Mavericks, the film about the life of extraordinary young surfer Jay Moriarty who made a name for himself at 16 when he surfed the breakneck section of California coast called Mavericks.  You may remember we brought you quite a few pics from the set during filming last fall. C’mon! You remember…Gerard Butler in a wetsuit!

Jonny Weston plays Moriarty and Butler plays his mentor Frosty Hesson. (You may also remember that G nearly drowned when he was knocked off his board by a monster wave and held under for two more, back in December.)

That wasn’t the only crisis to befall the film, Academy Award nominated director Curtis Hanson was felled by health problems and had to be replaced by Michael Apted for the final weeks of filming. Hanson is said to be on the road to recovery but no word as to whether he’s resumed control of the film in the post-production phase.

Centers on the late Jay Moriarity and his quest to ride the iconic Northern California break known as Mavericks, where winter swells bring in treacherous waves the size of five-story buildings.

 

Moriarity trained for more than a year under mentor Frosty Hesson, and in the process the two forged a unique relationship that ultimately transformed both their lives. Moriarity's story remains an inspiration to surfers around the globe, who've coined the phrase, "Live like Jay."

Of Men and Mavericks also stars Elisabeth Shue, Leven Rambin, Abigail Spencer, Taylor Handley and Scott Eastwood. It’s due to open in the US October 26 and 2^nd November in the UK.

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Our man Jason Statham has a new movie opening today. It’s called Safe. You might remember us mentioning it a few times. But, Lionsgate wants to remind you that The Stath will be back later this summer as part of that muscle-bound, really ratty pack of bad boys in The Expendables 2, a sequel (whodathunkit?) to 2010’s The Expendables.  Up top is a new image from the film, featuring The Guvernator, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis, but even better, check out the gallery of badassery down below. We have character posters full of menace, mayhem and big guns for nearly everyone including Statham, Stallone, Willis, Schwarzenegger, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Chuck Norris, Randy Couture, Jean Claude Van Damm, Yu Nan and even little Liam Hemsworth who looks much too sweet for this posse.

The ringleaders are of course  Stallone as Barney Ross and Statham as his right hand man Lee Christmas. Here’s the official synopsis:

The Expendables are back and this time it’s personal… Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren),Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) — with newest members Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) and Maggie (Yu Nan) aboard — are reunited when Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) enlists the Expendables to take on a seemingly simple job. The task looks like an easy paycheck for Barney and his band of old-school mercenaries. But when things go wrong and one of their own is viciously killed, the Expendables are compelled to seek revenge in hostile territory where the odds are stacked against them. Hell-bent on payback, the crew cuts a swath of destruction through opposing forces, wreaking havoc and shutting down an unexpected threat in the nick of time — six pounds of weapons-grade plutonium; enough to change the balance of power in the world. But that’s nothing compared to the justice they serve against the villainous adversary who savagely murdered their brother. That is done the Expendables way….

The Expendables 2: Electric Bugaloo…(sorry, not really) opens August 17 in the US and the UK.   Thanks to Collider for amassing the posters.

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It’s still more than six months until Twilight: Breaking Dawn – part 2 opens but Summit Entertainment has no intentions of letting you forget about it in the meantime while you’re lining up for all of the summer blockbusters coming down the pike.

Less than two weeks ago we had a new poster and today we have two official images. The first is a Cullen family portrait of Edward and Bella (with her newly vamped out eyes), and the second is Jacob’s yearbook picture…no not really. It’s just a pic of Taylor Lautner. I guess these pics are special because they’re the beginning of the end. Or something…

Academy Award® winner Bill Condon directed both the first and second part of the two-part finale, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. The project, based on the fourth novel in author Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, was written by Melissa Rosenberg with Wyck Godfrey, Karen Rosenfelt and Stephenie Meyer producing. 

After the birth of Renesmee, the Cullens gather other vampire clans in order to protect the child from a false allegation that puts the family in front of the Volturi.

The next and final chapter in The Twilight Saga, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 will arrive in theatres on November 16, 2012. Can you hold on that long?

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Last night we got two new stills and a really bad poster for John Hillcoat’s Lawless, a movie based on Matt Bondurant’s novel which he based on the true tales of his Virginia mountain kinfolk. The night before that, we got the first kick-ass trailer.  In case you still haven’t heard, the movie’s about three brothers, played by Jason Clarke as Howard, Tom Hardy as Forest and Shia LaBeouf as Jack Bondurant, who become notorious (as in mad, bad and dangerous to know) bootleggers – a  word they themselves would never have used.  They were simply “blockadin’” and they continued the family business – “the whiskey trade” –  long after Prohibition had been repealed..

Those of you following the bouncing ball will remember that I said I’d do a post about this movie every day if the Weinstein Company wants to keep dropping new little tidbits. Well, guess what? Today we have five more brand new stills. They feature fresh angles on Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain, as well as your first look at Mia Wasikowska and Guy Pearce

After its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month, Lawless is scheduled for an August 31 release in the States, leaving it primed for Venice. More will surely follow. Wonder what tomorrow will bring?

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Several weeks ago we had your first on-set look at Christoph Waltz in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, followed closely by the first poster.  At that point we had some info, but not a lot in terms of the actual plot.

First, we have two official stills to share from the film. One giving us our first look at Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin Candie and the other featuring both Christoph Waltz as King Schultz and a first look at Jamie Foxx as Django.

Add to that, what many were calling an ‘official’ plot synopsis came online last week, but I was waiting for confirmation. According to The Weinstein Company, we have it and this is the really truly official plotline for the film (turns out what we had wasn’t too far off):

Set in the South two years before the Civil War, Django Unchained stars Academy Award-winner Jamie Foxx as Django, a slave whose brutal history with his former owners lands him face-to-face with German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Academy Award-winner Christoph Waltz). Schultz is on the trail of the murderous Brittle brothers, and only Django can lead him to his bounty. The unorthodox Schultz acquires Django with a promise to free him upon the capture of the Brittles, dead or alive.

Success leads Schultz to free Django, though the two men choose not to go their separate ways. Instead, Schultz seeks out the South’s most wanted criminals with Django by his side. Honing vital hunting skills, Django remains focused on one goal: finding and rescuing Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), the wife he lost to the slave trade long ago.

Django and Schultz’s search ultimately leads them to Calvin Candie (Academy Award-nominee Leonardo DiCaprio), the proprietor of Candyland, an infamous plantation where slaves are groomed by trainer Ace Woody (Kurt Russell) to battle each other for sport. Exploring the compound under false pretenses, Django and Schultz arouse the suspicion of Stephen (Academy Award-nominee Samuel L. Jackson), Candie’s trusted house slave. Their moves are marked, and a treacherous organization closes in on them. If Django and Schultz are to escape with Broomhilda, they must choose between independence and solidarity, between sacrifice and survival…

Written and directed by Academy Award-winner Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained is produced by Stacey Sher, Pilar Savone and Reginald Hudlin. The executive producers are Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Michael Shamberg, Shannon McIntosh, and James Skotchdopole.Django Unchained will be released in the U.S. on December 25, 2012, and in the UK on the 19th January.

Going against my own policy, I’m betting Harvey already has at least two of his horses lined up for the Awards Season race with Django Unchained and Lawless.  

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Brand new Prometheus news! In addition to that rad new poster of Michael Fassbender as the android David (good to know Verizon will still be around in a few hundred years), there’s a new behind-the-scenes featurette for Sir Ridley Scott’s eagerly (understatement?) awaited sci-fi epic Prometheus.  Who cares if it consists mostly of the actors singing the praises of the director. For one thing, Ridley Scott is worthy of praise. When Charlize Theron calls him her “fantasy director” I believe her. Scott has been at this game so long that someone of Theron’s age probably grew up watching his films and dreaming of some day working with him (or not. She was a dancer before she blew out her knee.)

The other thing about this clip is that in between the gushing is a better look at the sets than we’ve had before and some bits of new footage.  I’ve said it before, I’m sure I’ll say it again in the next month and a half before this movie finally opens, the marketing campaign has thus far been brilliant. Fox just keeps throwing out the bread crumbs, and we’re all like starving dogs licking them up…and yet despite all we’ve been given, we still don’t know very much at all.

In the distant future, two superpowers control Earth and fight each other for all the solar system's natural resources. When one side dispatches a team to a distant planet to terraform it for human colonization, the team discovers an indigenous race of bio-mechanoid killers. 

Ridley Scott, director of Alien and Blade Runner, returns to the genre he helped define. With PROMETHEUS, he creates a groundbreaking mythology, in which a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a thrilling journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

Prometheus, written by Damon Lindelof (Lost, Cowboys & Aliens) and Jon Spaihts (The Darkest Hour) and starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green, Rafe Spall, Sean Harris and Patrick Wilson begins its voyage on 1st June in the UK (just over 5 more weeks!) and June 8 ( just over 6 more weeks!) in the US.

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(thanks to FirstShowing for the heads up)