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by Tim Ryan on Thursday, Nov. 19 2009, 05:08 PM
This week at the movies, we've got hot teen vampires (The Twilight Saga: New Moon, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson); a football family (The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron); and some interplanetary mishaps (Planet 51, with voice work by Dwayne Johnson and Jessica Biel). What do the critics have to say? So far, it looks like the latest installment of the Twilight Saga is failing to resonate with the critics, but that didn't stop the first movie from doing gangbusters at the box office, pleasing all of the book's fans in the process. Sandra Bullock hasn't had much luck this year on the Tomatometer, and that doesn't look to change. And lastly, Planet 51 seems as though it doesn't carry much narrative weight behind those flashy visuals. Read the full article for all the details.
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by RT Staff on Thursday, Nov. 19 2009, 04:20 PM
A big part of the cinema's appeal is its ability to take us places we've never been -- but to really work, that escapism has to be grounded to universal themes, and like the Good Book says, the greatest of these is love. As any Twilight fan could tell you, nothing ratchets up the drama like star-crossed love, and to celebrate the imminent release of the franchise's second installment, New Moon, we've put together a list of some of Hollywood's most noteworthy -- and most persistent -- couples. We couldn't cover them all, of course, but if you've ever shed tears for the injustice of an onscreen love unfairly denied, you're sure to swoon over this week's Total Recall!
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by David Chung on Wednesday, Nov. 18 2009, 02:09 PM
With the memory of midnight showings of Twilight and Comic-Con fandemonium still fresh in Twilighters' and critics' minds, The Twilight Saga: New Moon bursts into theaters with no shortage of expectations this Friday.
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by Tim Ryan on Tuesday, Nov. 17 2009, 03:19 PM
During his remarkable 40-year career, Werner Herzog has made some of world cinema's boldest films -- including Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Stroszek, Fitzcaraldo, and a remake of Nosferatu. In recent years, he's approached mainstream success in the United States, with the eccentric documentary Grizzly Man and the Vietnam war film Rescue Dawn, which starred Christian Bale. His latest, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, features Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes in the tale of a cop who tries to solve a brutal murder and keep his grip on reality while battling drug addiction, gambling debts, and familial woes. Read the full article to get the whole story.
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by Joe Utichi on Monday, Nov. 16 2009, 04:21 PM
Not a lot of people know that actor Eric Bana, familiar to most from roles in the likes of Star Trek, Munich and Ang Lee's Hulk, is a massive petrol head. With the release of Love the Beast, Bana aims to change that. It's a love letter to his pride and joy, a Ford GT Falcon Coupe which he's owned since he was 15, a documentary about his obsession with it and with racing, and the mourning attached to his crash during the Targa rally in 2007. Along the way Bana interviews the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, Jay Leno and Dr. Phil as he attempts to understand his passion better. In London to promote the UK release -- it's out on DVD now -- Bana sat down with RT to talk more about his pride and joy.
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by Oscar Hillerstrom on Sunday, Nov. 15 2009, 05:51 PM
Ren Klyce may not be a household name to most, but for those who are keen on sound design, he's the kind of chap that you might mention alongside Ben Burtt, the legendary creator of the Star Wars soundscapes. Working with David Fincher (almost exclusively) since 1995's Se7en, he has created some of the most memorably unnerving soundscapes ever put to film. One of which was, of course, 1999's iconic Fight Club. With the film's 10-year anniversary a special edition is being released on Blu-ray and DVD, with extras devoted entirely to the sometimes shockingly graphic sounds that underpinned what is still, for many, a confronting film. For others, of course, it's a modern day masterpiece. We spoke with Ren on the Fox Studios Lot in Los Angeles and he gave us the low down on what inspires him in movies, and just what went into the creation of those bone-shattering fight sequences.
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by Gitesh Pandya on Sunday, Nov. 15 2009, 04:28 PM
This weekend Audiences were warned - by Mayans and film critics alike - but moviegoers around the world still flooded the multiplexes to see Roland Emmerich's latest disaster epic 2012 which generated an explosive global debut. Last weekend's top film A Christmas Carol held up well in its second weekend taking the runner-up spot while the awards hopeful Precious expanded moderately but raced all the way up to number four despite playing in fewer than 200 theaters. Overall ticket sales were slightly behind last year's levels, but well ahead of 2007. Blasting past expectations, Sony scored its best opening of 2009 with 2012 which grossed an estimated $65M this weekend from North America alone.
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by Greg Dean Schmitz on Friday, Nov. 13 2009, 04:52 PM
This week's Ketchup includes new movies for the directors of Moon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, as well as casting news for Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx and two of the stars of The Hangover.
FRESH DEVELOPMENTS
#1 WILL THE BLACK CAT JINX PETER PARKER IN SPIDER-MAN 4?
The comic book site Mania.com is reporting that director Sam Raimi is currently casting for Spider-Man 4, and this early information gives us new insight into a possible new character.
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by Alex Vo on Friday, Nov. 13 2009, 03:57 PM
Happy Friday Harvest, a weekly round-up of the best pictures, posters, and videos that have become available for viewing/download on Rotten Tomatoes. Each section features the favorite or most interesting item we've added for the week, along with several other new highlights. Enjoy!
With each successive movie, Pierre Morel is attracting more financing and bigger names. His third, From Paris With Love (after District B13 and Taken), will show what he can really do with a big budget and in familiar gegraphy. Hopefully, this one also puts him back in R-movie territory.
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by Joe Utichi on Friday, Nov. 13 2009, 09:06 AM
James Schamus might be a workaholic. If it's not enough that he's the head of Focus Features -- the independent imprint of Universal -- he's also an established producer and screenwriter best known for his collaborations with Ang Lee. This week sees the release of the pair's latest, Taking Woodstock, a comedy about a family integral to the birth of the infamous Woodstock concert of 1969. And if that isn't enough, he's an associate professor of film at Columbia University and just delivered a politically-charged lecture to a rapt London Film Festival audience. While in town, he sat down with RT to talk about the release of Taking Woodstock, his work at Focus and his thoughts on the Tomatometer...
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by Tim Ryan on Thursday, Nov. 12 2009, 03:58 PM
This week at the movies, we've got a global catastrophe (2012, starring John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor) and some rock 'n' roll rebellion (Pirate Radio, starring Philip S. Hoffman and Bill Nighy). What do the critics have to say? Nobody goes to a Roland Emmerich picture expecting art or realism; they go for sheer spectacle. On that level, critics say, 2012 largely delivers. However, they also note that if you enjoy character development, witty dialogue, remotely plausible science, and brevity, you're out of luck. It's an understatement to say that the mid-to-late-1960s was a revolutionary period for British rock music, and Pirate Radio is a fond, celebratory comedy about those heady times. Critics say it may not rock quite hard enough, but it's got enough infectious good humor -- and hummable tunes -- to drown out objections.
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by Joe Utichi on Thursday, Nov. 12 2009, 09:22 AM
The rule that no two Ang Lee movies are ever the same is confidently kept intact with the release of his latest, Taking Woodstock, a comedy about the true story behind the Woodstock music festival in 1969. It follows romantic wartime drama Lust, Caution and the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain on the director's CV and arrives in UK cinemas this week. As RT sits down with Lee to ask his five favourite films, he's keen to point out that if we'd asked him another day we'd have received an entirely different list. "It's a hard one to answer," he tells us. "I could give 50, or 100. I'll throw out 5 that come into my head."
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by Michael Adams on Wednesday, Nov. 11 2009, 08:11 PM
This week's 2012 sees director Roland Emmerich getting back to doing what he does best -- or worst, depending on which side of the argument you fall -- as he uses Mayan prophecy as a loose pretext for laying waste to the planet in a way that would shame even his previous Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Of course, movie-makers have been depicting the end of the world since the dawn of cinema, so we decided to take a look back at 10 of the landmark films of the disaster genre. Have a nice apocalypse, kids...
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by Tim Ryan on Tuesday, Nov. 10 2009, 10:39 PM
Ah, the holiday season. A time for family, peace, goodwill, and some of the best that Hollywood has to offer. From the hotly-anticipated (Avatar, The Twilight Saga: New Moon) to the family-friendly (The Princess and the Frog); from Oscar contenders (Invictus) to wild spectacles (2012), the holiday movie season has something for everyone. We at RT have prepared a handy guide of what will be invading the multiplex as the leaves turn, so read on for scoop on the season's slate, which includes new flicks from directors like James Cameron Peter Jackson, Clint Eastwood, and Wes Anderson, and stars like Robert Downey Jr., George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro, and Penelope Cruz.
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by Alex Vo on Tuesday, Nov. 10 2009, 04:17 PM
We're fairly certain Roland Emmerich's movies hold the record for combined body count. Such a feat is a result of career built around movies like Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow, bombastic, crowd-pleasing disaster movies that frequently leave the planet in runs. His latest effort is 2012, opening this Friday and starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as survivors in a world tearing apart at the seams and submerged in water. Rotten Tomatoes spoke to Emmerich to get his Five Favorite Films, and on the following page you can read our interview, where he discusses the upcoming 2012 television show, his thoughts on Avatar, and creating popcorn movies on a global scale.
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by Jeff Giles on Tuesday, Nov. 10 2009, 01:40 PM
For much of the 1980s, John Cusack was one of Hollywood's most dependable go-to guys for affable leads in teen romantic comedies -- typecasting that led to some great films (Better Off Dead, Say Anything...) as well as some rather forgettable efforts (Hot Pursuit, One Crazy Summer). But beneath that guy-next-door exterior lurked the heart of a thespian, and over the last 20 years, Cusack has assembled one of the more eclectic filmographies in the biz, starring in action flicks (Con Air), quirky dramas (Being John Malkovich), and even dabbling in horror (1408). With his starring turn in Roland Emmerich's latest big-budget disaster epic, 2012, arriving in theaters this weekend, could there be a better time to give Mr. Cusack's collected works the Total Recall treatment?
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by Gitesh Pandya on Sunday, Nov. 08 2009, 04:41 PM
This weekend Moviegoers powered Jim Carrey's holiday kidpic A Christmas Carol to a number one opening but some fans remained stingy preventing the Disney 3D toon from meeting industry expectations. On the complete other side of the movie spectrum, the inner city drama Precious debuted to spectacular results enjoying one of the most impressive limited release debuts ever. Three other new wide releases were sprinkled across the top ten with mixed results as the overall marketplace fell behind year-ago levels.
The 3D yuletide pic A Christmas Carol bowed on top this weekend grossing an estimated $31M from 3,683 locations and performed better than previous motion capture pics from director Robert Zemeckis, but worse than most animated films that kick off the holiday movie season in early November.
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by Greg Dean Schmitz on Friday, Nov. 06 2009, 05:01 PM
This Week's Ketchup includes news about movies based upon Micronauts, Arabian Nights and The Berenstain Bears, as well as casting news for Sir Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Owen Wilson; and a new movie for the director of Slumdog Millionaire.
FRESH DEVELOPMENTS
#1 J.J. ABRAMS WANTS TO PLAY WITH YOUR OLD MICRONAUTS TOYS
Hot off the success of his reimagining of Star Trek, J.J. Abrams is in negotiations to produce a movie based upon the popular 1970s-1980s Japanese toy franchise Micronauts, which was also a long-running Marvel Comics series. Micronauts was a series of interchangeable science fiction heroes, robots and vehicles (sort of imagine a cross between action figures and LEGO) that collectively told the story of alien warriors in the grip of an intergalactic war. The best part was that they have crashed on the strange world of Earth where they find themselves just the size of little toys. Among the most popular Micronauts figures were Biotron, Microtron, Acroyear and Baron Karza.
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by Alex Vo on Friday, Nov. 06 2009, 02:21 PM
Happy Friday Harvest, a weekly round-up of the best pictures, posters, and videos that have become available for viewing/download on Rotten Tomatoes. Each section features the favorite or most interesting item we've added for the week, along with several other new highlights. Enjoy!
The Road is finally nearing its end. Countless delays hasn't hurt The Road's considerable buzz, and right now it's pulling a strong mid-80s Tomatometer. This new batch shows off the incredible scenes of decay and destruction, along with images of peace before the world ended.
I feel like I'm pretty burnt out on superheroes. But I thought the same on the subject of zombies, but Zombieland was still awesome. There's an upcoming wave of caustic superhero flicks, such as Kick-Ass and Defendor, and here's hoping they execute their high concepts well enough to shake off the genre's stagnancy.
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by Tim Ryan on Thursday, Nov. 05 2009, 04:03 PM
This week at the movies, we've got some modern-day Dickens (Disney's A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman); a button-pushing thriller (The Box, starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden); vanishing Alaskans (The Fourth Kind, starring Milla Jovovich and Elias Koteas); and some psychic soldiers (The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney and Jeff Bridges). What do the critics have to say? Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is one of literature's most haunting morality tales - and one of the most adapted. Critics are largely split on two key aspects of Robert Zemeckis' motion-capture version starring Jim Carrey: whether it honors the, ahem, spirit of Dickens' classic, and whether the motion-capture technology is aesthetically appealing.
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