Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
‘Dinner For Schmucks’: Idiot Patrol, By Kurt Loder
July 31st, 2010 | 
Author: Paul Rudd and Steve Carell make the most of a very light comedy.
Steve Carell and Jemaine Clement in “Dinner for Schmucks”
Photo: Paramount Pictures
“Dinner for Schmucks” is as light as a fistful of feathers — as a comedy in the age of Apatow, it’s barely there. But the sharp cast is smart enough not to weigh down the airy tale with heavy shtick (which might have been a temptation), and director Jay Roach lays out the story with straightforward simplicity. The movie becomes funnier than you might expect at the beginning; as summer comedies go, it’s a small surprise.
Paul Rudd plays Tim, an upwardly mobile finance hotshot at an L.A. investment firm. After he reels in a wealthy new client, an enormously snooty Swiss moneybags named Mueller (David Walliams, of “Little Britain”), Tim’s boss (Bruce Greenwood) tantalizes him with the prospect of a big promotion — but on one condition: Tim will have to attend an annual company dinner to which each top executive is expected to bring an idiot — the most pathetic specimen of humanity he can find. The exec with the biggest idiot wins.
Tim’s girlfriend, a gallery owner named Julie (Stephanie Szostak), is so appalled by this idea that he promises her he won’t take part. For one thing, he’s starting to worry that Julie might fall into the clutches of her hottest new artist, the egomaniacal Kieran (Jemaine Clement), whose outsize paintings all feature him in dementedly heroic poses. Finally, though, Tim is overcome by ambition and decides to attend the dinner. Now he just has to find an idiot.
Fortuitously, while driving down the street in his pricey sports car, Tim accidentally runs into Barry (Steve Carell), who turns out to be a perfect goofus. (“I’ve been hit by a Datsun before,” he says excitedly, “but never a Porsche.”) Barry is an IRS drone by day, but his real passion is creative taxidermy: collecting dead mice, stuffing them, outfitting them with handmade clothing and then arranging them in elaborate tableaux. (One of these, meticulously housed in a display case, is an all-rodent restaging of the Last Supper.)
Here, unfortunately, the movie, which is a remake of a 1998 French film, hits an unpleasant bump. Barry is supposed to be a complete moron (Carell seems to have derived this toothy nutcake from the Jerry Lewis canon, minus Lewis’ abrasive whininess), but his “mouster-pieces,” as he calls them, really are inspired. When Tim fails to realize this at first, and pushes ahead with his dinner plan, we begin to question his character in an unsmiling way. He’ll eventually have a change of heart — that’s the preordained point of the story — but a sour taste lingers.
The movie is naturally pointed like an arrow toward the concluding idiot dinner. Along the way to it, though, we meet some fine daffy characters, among them Barry’s IRS boss, Therman (Zach Galifianakis), who has a private passion of his own for mind control (he’s written a book called “Your Mind Is My Puppet”); and a lunatic party girl named Darla (Lucy Punch), who has been stalking Tim ever since he drunkenly went to bed with her three years earlier. (She comes on to men
tongue-first.)
Additional oddballs turn up at the idiot dinner itself, of course: a blind fencing enthusiast, a lonely ventriloquist with his wooden-headed “wife,” and a dead-pet psychic who disrupts the feast when she starts receiving messages from the main course (broiled lobster). It’s no surprise that the dinner collapses into a slapstick fiasco (which goes on a little too long), or that in the end the sleazy guys all get their comeuppance and the idiots emerge as misunderstood sweethearts whose obsessions make sense in the context of their eccentric lives. As Barry puts it, more or less quoting John Lennon: “You may say I’m a dreamer.
But I’m not.”
(“Dinner for Schmucks” is a Paramount Pictures presentation.
Paramount and MTV are both subsidiaries of Viacom.)
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Michael Cera Pitches Ideas For ‘Arrested Development’ Movie
Cera hopes the movie will happen ‘soon’ and has ideas for his character George-Michael’s arc.
By Kara Warner, with reporting by Josh Horowitz
Michael Cera
Photo: MTV News
The news surrounding the alleged “Arrested Development” movie continues to be as back-and-forth as a Wimbledon tennis match. Despite a fanbase almost more obsessive than those at last week’s Comic-Con, the movie has had its ups and downs, with the latest news announced by way of creator Mitch Hurwitz, who confirmed recently that work on the movie’s script had begun.
Now, straight from the mouth of George-Michael himself, Michael Cera, who graced MTV News with his presence during our Comic-Con live stream last week, we have further confirmation that the film will indeed happen. And Cera also told us about his hopes and dreams for his character’s quirky arc.
“I hope it will happen soon,” he said. “I think it’s going to … soon, hopefully.” But like every other cast member who has been approached about the subject, Cera didn’t have much more to say about the planned production. “I know so little about it,” he admitted.
Cera did briefly indulge our suggestion that he and cast members Jeffrey Tambor and Jason Bateman should just shoot the film while they’re all in San Diego for the convention — he laughed and said that idea “would be great” — but referenced his character’s continued awkwardness as a starting point upon which Hurwitz should focus some character evolution.
“I want to pitch Mitch Hurwitz this thing where, if we do do the movie, my character over the years has turned into kind of a creepy guy. I’m still in love with my cousin and leaving flowers on her door, and all the members of the family are like, ‘What is going on? It’s been years now. …’ ”
Cera appears to have grown tired of playing that side of George-Michael, which leaves the field open for suggestions on what trouble he may or may not find himself in once/if the movie officially begins production.
Do you think the “Arrested Development” movie will ever happen? What should happen with Cera’s character, George-Michael? Tell us in the comments!
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‘Charlie St. Cloud’: Dead Zone, By Kurt Loder
Zac Efron in ghost world.
Zac Efron in “Charlie St. Cloud”
Photo: Universal Pictures
Charlie St. Cloud sees dead people. Possibly filing in to watch this movie. Although the storyline of “Charlie St. Cloud” has some nice love-after-death twists, and the imagery — gleaming harbor-town nightscapes and sleek sailboats skudding across the water — has been beautifully rendered, the picture is becalmed by the star performance at its center.
Charlie (Zac Efron) lives for sailing, and as the movie opens, in his briny hometown on the Washington coast, he’s preparing to leave for Stanford University in the fall on a sailing scholarship. Despite his resemblance to Zac Efron, Charlie doesn’t have a girlfriend. He’s entirely devoted to his mother (a minimal appearance by Kim Basinger) and especially his little brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan, talented beyond the call of cuteness). Sam lives for baseball, and Charlie coaches him with daily pitching practice in a clearing in some nearby woods. Charlie tells Sam he’ll always be there for him. But then there’s a car crash; Sam is killed, but Charlie, although briefly flatlined, survives.
Five years later, we find Charlie working as a caretaker at the local cemetery. He canceled his Stanford plans because … well, because he told Sam he’d always be there for him. And Sam is still there, turning up in the woods every evening for their regular pitching sessions. Presumably Charlie has decided to spend the rest of his life as an undead-baseball coach. But then he meets the beautiful Tess (Amanda Crew), an avid sailor herself, who’s gearing up for an around-the-world race in her elegant yacht. As Charlie and Tess fall in love, Sam, with no other earthly hobbies to occupy his time, watches them with growing unease (possibly even observing the movie’s lone sex scene, a coupling so discreet it barely rises to the level of PG-13). “I could feel you forgetting me,” he tells Charlie. “Without you, I feel myself start to disappear.”
This basic plot conflict grows even slushier following a second tragedy, which introduces another level of lovelorn ambiguity. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of Tahan and Crew (who injects some liveliness into the otherwise turgid proceedings), the real love story at the heart of the picture is the sultry union of Zac Efron and director Burr Steers’ camera. Efron, such a charmer in last year’s “17 Again,” is a hopeless mope here, acting mainly with his burnished tan and his bioluminescent blue eyes, which we all too often see welling with tears. Charlie stares out to sea. He stares into his soul. He suffers and suffers, and his muffled torment, even when backgrounded by glorious coastal sunsets, grows oppressive. We want Efron to jack this character up to another emotional level, to manifest some personality, but he just keeps wallowing in heartbreak. So while Charlie keeps seeing dead people (there’s also a deceased buddy on hand), we’re left watching a dead movie.
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‘Tron Legacy’ Star Jeff Bridges Explains How He Plays His Younger Self
‘It’s great to be able to play a character in a story at any age you want now,’ veteran actor says about revisiting his 1982 role.
By Eric Ditzian, with additional reporting by Josh Horowitz
Jeff Bridges
Photo: MTV News
In March, when the “Tron Legacy” teaser trailer dropped online and showed us our first glimpse of a reverse-aged Jeff Bridges, director Joseph Kosinski revealed to MTV News that capturing this CGI-assisted footage was his greatest challenge.
“The hardest thing to do in visual effects is pull off a realistic human face,” he explained.
But that was the task filmmakers took on when they set out to make a sequel to the 1982 original, in which Bridges starred as two characters: a software designer named Kevin Flynn who’s sucked into a computer-generated gaming world, and a digital villain named Clu. With Clu playing a key role in “Legacy,” Kosinski had to re-create the ’80s-era Bridges to step into the Clu role once again. As he revealed to us, his reference point was the Bridges of the 1984 drama, “Against All Odds.”
For Bridges himself, the opportunity to play, in essence, his younger self was not one he could pass up. “It was very exciting to be a part of that,” he told us recently at Comic-Con. “That was one of the reasons that got me involved in ‘Tron’ in the first place, was to be a part of that cutting-edge technology. This one takes it to the nth degree.”
To get the visual effects right, Bridges shimmied into a motion-capture suit and set to work. “Playing the young guy, we did a lot of work in a space called the Volume — you record motion-capture work,” he said. “That was a completely unique experience for me. I had never done that. It’s great to be able to play a character in a story at any age you want now. I can play my character when he’s 4 years old.”
Of course, there’s always the chance that one day actors won’t be needed at all, as filmmakers fully create their characters in a computer. “I go between worry and gratefulness. Maybe I’ll be ready to do something else by that time,” he laughed about the possibility. “There is going to be a time — it’s probably already here — when they say, ‘Let’s get a combination of [co-star] Garrett [Hedlund] and Bridges and let’s put a little Bela Lugosi in there. What the hell — let’s see what happens!’ ”
Check out everything we’ve got on “Tron Legacy.”
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‘Scream 4′ Stars Rory Culkin, Nico Tortorella On Working With Original ‘Scream’ Cast
Plus, Tortorella reveals onscreen romance with Emma Roberts’ ‘Scream 4′ character.
By Jocelyn Vena
Rory Culkin
Photo: MTV News
It almost seems like when they were casting “Scream 4,” they stole from the credits for the Joel Schumacher-directed gritty drug drama “Twelve.” Three of the film’s castmates, Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin and Nico Tortorella, will all have roles in the upcoming sequel in the “Scream” franchise. While Roberts couldn’t make it to the premiere due to her “Scream 4″ shooting schedule, MTV News did get some dish from Culkin and Tortorella.
“We’re still shooting it. Not really allowed to talk about it. I signed a contract, seriously. I can’t say anything and I’d hate to get sued,” Culkin told MTV News at the New York City premiere of “Twelve.” “I better keep quiet on this!”
“I was [a fan of the original]. I was the ghost-faced killer for Halloween in the third or fourth grade,” he added. “Am I the killer this time around? … I am under contract.”
While Culkin decided to keep mum, his “Twelve” and “Scream 4″ co-star dished a bit more, revealing that he and Roberts may get busy. “My name is Trevor, and Emma and I have a love interest throughout the whole movie, and I can’t really give you too much more,” Tortorella said, adding that being on-set with some of the original cast is very exciting. “I can’t give you any information past that.”
“Yeah, Courteney’s there, Neve’s there, David’s there. You know, it’s really like walking into a family, and they’re just all accepting us with mad open arms,” he explained. “They’re all incredible people. It’s been quite the trip. I had never seen the originals until after I auditioned for the first time. … After watching them all, yeah, it’s one of its own.”
Other key players in the star-studded cast include Hayden Panettiere, who recently shared some details about the movie, Adam Brody, Anthony Anderson and Marley Shelton.
“Scream 4″ is scheduled to open April 15, 2011.
Check out everything we’ve got on “Scream 4.”
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‘Thor’ At Comic-Con: Everything You Need To Know
From Chris Hemsworth’s preparation for the role to Thor’s costume and hammers, here are the details we’ve learned so far.
By Eric Ditzian
“Thor” star Chris Hemsworth at Comic-Con 2010
Photo: Jerod Harris/ Getty Images
Almost a week after Marvel debuted the first footage from “Thor” at Comic-Con, the video has popped up online. Now it’s not only the lucky nerds that swooped into San Diego last weekend who get to gawk over the incredibly cool footage, which includes Chris Hemsworth as Thor laying down the hurt on some S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, a close look at the mythical gods of gold-plated Asgard, and Thor swapping spit with the scientist played by Natalie Portman.
The Con simply delivered an embarrassment of “Thor” riches, and to help everyone get a handle on what was revealed, we’ve gathered all the available info right here. Read on for everything you need to know about “Thor” at Comic-Con.
How Hemsworth Prepared: Vikings and Mike Tyson
Early in 2009, the Australian-born Hemsworth was unknown on American shores. Then he wowed audiences with his turn as James Kirk’s dad in “Star Trek” and won the hearts of Marvel execs, who gifted him with the role of Thor. How did Hemsworth prepare for the role? Not so much with comic book reading about Norse gods but with historical research about the Vikings.
“They live with this fearlessness, which for me was a lot of the angle I came at Thor with,” he told us. “He does reckless sort of things, but his heart is in the right place. He believes it’s right. He’s not just a madman.”
When it came to creating Thor’s fighting style, Hemsworth at first turned to former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson. “Mike Tyson is very low to the ground, with a big open chest and big shoulder swings. Very sort of brutal but graceful at the same time,” he explained. “As we shot stuff, we realized that it’s virtually impossible to do that. The costume is pretty limiting with the movement, so there was a lot to work around.”
Thor’s Look: Armor, Hammers and Nakedness
As we saw in the Con footage, Thor is cast out of Asgard and lands on Earth, stripped of his armor and his all-powerful hammer. And without that hammer, Hemsworth admitted he felt more than a little vulnerable on set.
“You feel naked without it after holding it for a while,” he laughed.
The actor went on to reveal that filmmakers employed various hammers depending on the needs of each scene. “There were a few different versions for different shots — the close-up one and the stunt one,” he said. “The main one was very heavy, a beautifully polished, metal, wood, leather-looking thing. It was an impressive thing.”
Equally impressive for the actor was Thor’s costume, which had Hemsworth feeling nothing short of empowered. “I put the costume on for the first time and had the camera test and [co-star] Anthony Hopkins was there with me,” he said. “We looked at each other and he said, ‘God, there’s no acting required here, is there?’ ”
Destroyer, Loki and Odin’s Throne
Marvel’s “Thor” effort at Comic-Con wasn’t all about the central god, of course. Out on the floor was Odin’s golden throne and the Destroyer armor in all its metallic glory. Hemsworth also gave us a sneak peek at Thor’s battle with the nefarious Loki (Tom Hiddleston).
“We had a big rehearsal process with one particular fight scene we were doing and the whole time, Tom had his staff and his Loki helmet on with the horns,” Hemsworth said. “He always wore it in rehearsals while he moved, so basically he’s sweating and he can’t hear anything because [the helmet] is extraordinarily heavy. He had this kind of crazy look in his eyes, and the whole time I was thinking, ‘He’s going to kill me!’ He’s swinging his staff and catching me in the legs and in the fingers and I kept thinking, ‘He’s going to hurt somebody.’ ”
Check out everything we’ve got on “Thor.”
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50 Cent, Chace Crawford Late For ‘Twelve’ Premiere Due To President Obama
‘We had to go all the way around to get here, but he’s the president,’ 50 said about Obama’s visit, which blocked traffic.
By Jocelyn Vena
Chace Crawford at the “Twelve” premiere on Wednesday
Photo: Dario Cantatore/Getty Images
NEW YORK — Many screaming girls thronged the Landmark Sunshine Cinema to catch a glimpse of “Gossip Girl” star Chace Crawford at the premiere of his gritty drug drama “Twelve,” but it was the NYPD who stopped traffic — to make way for President Obama‘s motorcade during his visit to New York on Wednesday. The ensuing confusion made it difficult for the cast of the flick to show up for their own premiere.
“We shut down the street for the premiere and for me,” Crawford joked to MTV News. “I didn’t want any traffic on Houston [Street] and then Obama just swooped in — figures! I mean, I called and invited him and texted him and he didn’t want to come. It’s just a mess!”
Crawford’s co-star 50 Cent was impressed by the way that Obama could just shut down the entire neighborhood.
“It’s interesting — the streets are blocked off for a few avenues,” he said. “We had to go all the way around to get here, but he’s the president.”
Zoë Kravitz not only had to battle traffic to get to the premiere, but also the heat and humidity. “We were in traffic for the longest time and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ ” she explained. “I almost got out and took the subway, and the only reason I didn’t was because it was so hot my hair would have been out to here,” she gestured.
And while the cast was excited to be at the premiere for the Joel Schumacher-directed flick, they know that at the end of the day, the big headline will be Obama’s trip to New York.
“It’s pretty ridiculous, huh?” Nico Tortorella said. “You’re expecting this big ol’ premiere and the president walks by and we can’t compete! But it is what it is. Welcome to New York City!”
Check out everything we’ve got on “Twelve.”
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‘Breaking Dawn’ Writer Says She’s Trying To ‘Find Room’ For All Characters
‘The Cullen family is large, the wolf family is large, you have three leads,’ Melissa Rosenberg tells MTV News of her challenging writing process.
By Kara Warner
Melissa Rosenberg
Photo: MTV News
As all die-hard “Twilight” fans know, screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg is still hard at work on finalizing the scripts for the two-part “Breaking Dawn” finale, the first of which is scheduled to begin shooting in November. MTV News was lucky enough to catch up with the “Dexter” and “Twilight” screenwriter at San Diego Comic-Con, where she held court on a “Girls Gone Genre” panel. And while she still won’t reveal where the two films will break, she did give us a few details about the birthing scene and the “Book of Jacob,” as well as some dish on how she plans to handle all of the new characters Stephenie Meyer introduces in “Dawn.”
“It’s extremely challenging to introduce those new characters because you already have quite a slew of characters to service,” Rosenberg admitted of Meyer’s final book. “The Cullen family is large, the wolf family is large, you have three leads … finding room for all of them is a challenge. For me, it is about pulling forward the ones that are essential and really making sure they have a presence.”
Naturally, Rosenberg didn’t say specifically which characters would or would not appear in the films, but simply that she hopes “all of them will be there in one shape or another.”
Fans interested in checking in more frequently with Rosenberg’s “Dawn” progress can check out her Facebook page, which Rosenberg told us she checks regularly to see what Twi-hards are saying and involve them in plotline discussions.
“I ask people to really weigh in with what are their favorite scenes in the books, what’s important to them,” Rosenberg said. “And there generally seems to be a consensus about one scene or another. It’s really helpful for me and I’ll interact with them sometimes.”
She added that the fan interaction has helped her to squash any out-of-control Internet-generated rumors about her “Dawn” scripts. “At one point, [the fans] were upset because they had gotten the impression that I was choosing not to put the birthing scene in the script, and I was able to go online and say, ‘I don’t know where that idea came from, but of course the birthing scene is going to be in.’ ” Another Net-generated rumor, according to Rosenberg, is that she won’t include the Book of Jacob in the final film. “I don’t know where that idea came from, but that is not true,” she confirmed. “We are going to see Jacob’s perspective equally, so don’t worry.”
Are you concerned about how Melissa Rosenberg will handle the birthing scene or the Book of Jacob? Tell us in the comments.
Check out everything we’ve got on “Breaking Dawn, Pt. 1.”
For young Hollywood news, fashion and “Twilight” updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.
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James Cameron And Guillermo Del Toro To Collaborate On 3-D ‘Mountains Of Madness’
Cameron will produce del Toro’s adaptation of story of explorers who encounter alien creatures in Antarctica.
By Eric Ditzian
Guillermo Del Toro
Photo: Jerod Harris/ Getty Images
When we caught up with Guillermo del Toro at Comic-Con over the weekend, he was impressively tight-lipped about his new project following his departure from “The Hobbit” in May. The Mexican-born director has long had a desire to adapt H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” for the big screen, but he declined to announce plans to direct the project at the Con.
Now Deadline.com has the news that del Toro will in fact helm “Mountains of Madness,” that James Cameron has come on-board as a producer and that they’ll shoot the film with 3-D cameras. Cameron’s presence on the project apparently convinced Universal to give del Toro a thumbs-up, and preproduction is expected to begin in the next few weeks, with an eye on a summer 2011 shoot.
Lovecraft’s story follows a group of explorers who set off for Antarctica and discover alien creatures, mythical cities and a host of bizarre dangers. While del Toro wouldn’t confirm his plans to direct at Comic-Con, he did go into detail about his work on the script with Matthew Robbins (“Mimic”).
“We are rewriting slightly the screenplay we’ve had for 12 years,” he told MTV News. “Matthew and I believe that a screenplay like that you have to tackle again every so often. We tackled it last about two years ago, [when] Matt and I felt like we needed to rewrite some stuff. Matt is my greatest writing partner because we keep updating anything we haven’t shot, we keep saying, ‘Let’s do another rewrite.’ So we’re going to do another rewrite in the next couple months.’
“There [are] movies that have come out that have done things that are similar to some of the stuff we were trying,” he further explained. “Thirteen years ago it was a big challenge, but right now what we’re doing is keeping it alive.”
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BACK-ISSUE BIN: Comic-Con Highlights, Avengers Assemble, And Green Lantern’s Oath
Comic-Con 2010 is in the rearview mirror, and this week’s top stories were dominated by reports from the big show. Much like at the convention itself, Marvel ruled the headlines with their “Avengers” lineup, among other things.
Still, DC’s “Green Lantern” slate had a lot of people talking before, during, and after the show!
Here’s a rundown of the Top 10 headlines this week on Splash Page, counting down to the week’s biggest story!
10. “Deadpool is not a superhero,” Ryan Reynolds told us… and he’ll stab anyone who says otherwise!
9. It seemed like everyone on Twitter was discussing the leaked “Thor” trailer this week, so here’s a roundup of their reactions.
8. Meet “The Avengers” cast (so far) for the very first time
7. Everyone wanted to know what happened at the “Green Lantern” Comic-Con panel — and we brought you every little detail!
6. At Comic-Con, the “Thor” Destroyer armor was revealed!
5. Twitter had some very strong reactions to the “Sucker Punch” trailer and the arrival of “Starcraft 2,” among other topics this week.
4. Chris Hemsworth said Thor’s costume and hammer “sell the picture” when it comes to his upcoming Marvel movie.
3. Ryan Reynolds weighed in on the “Green Lantern” costume controversy.
2. Joss Whedon explained why Mark Ruffalo is right man for Bruce Banner in “The Avengers.”
And for the week’s top story…
1. No surprise here: Marvel’s Comic-Con movie panel was one of the weekend’s biggest hits… and we were there!
What was your favorite story this week? Let us know what you think in the comment section or on Twitter!