it's NORTON VS DE NIRO in STONE

Overture Films' gripping dark drama "Stone," may not be an easy story for some audiences , but the nuanced tale was a draw for acting heavyweights Robert De Niro and Edward Norton.

"I always liked the script," De Niro said of "Stone," which deals with hypocrisy and guilt, and is set in the rapidly decaying environs of post-recession Detroit. "I thought the whole thing had an interesting tone and feel about it," the Oscar winner explained.

De Niro plays Jack Mabry, a prison parole officer just days from retirement who has to deal with the manipulative Gerald "Stone" Creeson as one of his final assignments.

Played menacingly by Norton with cornrows and a hard stare, Stone is not above using his sexy wife Lucetta -- model-actress Milla Jovovich in a shift from her "Resident Evil" action films -- as the bait to force Jack to recommend an early release.

However, the line between criminal and upstanding citizen blur as Stone undergoes a spiritual transformation, while Jack's encounters with Lucetta pressure his already decaying marriage and force him to compromise his own principles.

None of the characters are easy to sympathize. "I think that most of the films that I've really been affected by in my life have been the ones that really left me with a lot of questions in my head, a lot to think about," Norton said.

Norton admitted that moviegoers looking for the characters to redeem themselves at the end of the film may come away disappointed, but he said the film's strength lies in its ambiguity and unanswered questions.

"I see a lot of really crappy movies that are making sure you understand that redemption took place and they just put me to sleep," he said. "Everything doesn't get redeemed in life, and I don't think that's the only thing that makes a movie have an impact."

The pairing of De Niro and Norton, considered among the greats of their respective acting generations, reunites the co-stars of the 2001 heist flick "The Score."

But Norton said it took some convincing to get him to sign on. "At first the script was a little bit elusive for me. I didn't really get it," until director John Curran won him over, he said. "But I definitely thought it was great to work with somebody a second time. (De Niro) has a very particular way of working."

De Niro -- known for immersing himself completely in roles, such as when he gained 60 pounds to play boxer Jake La Motta in "Raging Bull" -- will often go off script in the middle of a scene to get a more authentic response from his co-stars.

"He really makes you earn scenes. He can be very resistant to doing things that just are following scripts. If you don't earn the response, he kind of won't give it to you," Norton said. "It's very bracing, actually.”

(“Stone” will be shown soon exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas – Trinoma, Glorietta 4 & Greenbelt 3.)

Want to receive more stuff from me? Enter your email address and click the button:

Read More

EASY A speaks of teen life

On the heels of a little white lie about losing her virginity, clean-cut high schooler Olive finds that her new-found bad-girl rap has an upside: she is finally getting noticed. Olive decides to exploit her "easy" reputation and use the school rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing. But life starts to spin hilariously out of control, in Columbia Pictures' teen comedy “Easy A.”

The film stars Emma Stone (recently cast as Gwen Stacy in the “Spider-Man” 2012 reboot) as Olive, Penn Badgley (TV’s “Gossip Girl”), Amanda Bynes (“What a Girl Wants”), Cam Gigandet (“Twilight”) and Aly Michalka (TV’s “Hellcats”).

The world of “Easy A” first arose out of a concept screenwriter Bert Royal had to fuse a timeless work of literature with a contemporary milieu. Royal chose Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” -- about the public ordeal a 17th century Boston woman named Hester Prynne goes through over an act of adultery -- as the classic source. “I never intended it to be a strict adaptation of the book,” says Royal, “but to use thematic elements as an inspiration.”

“The major theme of the piece,” continues the writer, “is about puritanical values versus being yourself. Olive is an extremely liberal person and feels like people should be true to themselves, but unfortunately she’s growing up in a society that condemns people for stepping out of the norm. Her goal is to loosen up the town a little bit, which she does, but not in the way she intended.”

Producer Zanne Devine says, “Using `The Scarlet Letter' as source material, and his understanding of the deeper themes, Bert wrote a screenplay that was wonderfully suited to modern day high school, and demonstrates in a funny and meaningful way that these themes are as relevant today as they have been for centuries.”

“Although the story takes place in high school, it goes way beyond that,” says director Will Gluck. “It’s really about morality, how rumors get started, and about the importance people attach to how they are perceived by others. It very quickly leaves high school and becomes a story about the entire town. It’s also a very funny movie with some very touching emotionally dramatic moments. It’s far from being just a high school movie.”

Gluck also responded to the female-centric nature of the screenplay. “It was great to see a script that’s written from the girl’s point of view,” adds Gluck. “Most films are about the lengths that the guys go through to get the girl. This is about a girl that doesn’t want to be ‘gotten,’ but still wants a boyfriend.”

For Gluck, the fact that this was a movie about the hot-button topic of sex, but with no actual sex scenes, made the experience uniquely fun. “In a weird way, it’s kind of conservative,” admits Gluck. “The lesson of this story is to wait, but sometimes you’ve got to take a crazy path to get to that answer. It’s interesting how sexuality in America has become about what people think about it, and less about the actual act. This movie gets rid of the act, as there is no act whatsoever, and is about how people talk about it, and how you feel about yourself if you’re perceived in that way.”

“The morality of this movie is actually a morality I think would be great for my eleven year-old daughter to understand,” says Devine, “which is a girl’s empowerment about making decisions about her sexual behavior, and her choices about how her level of intimacy she’s comfortable with in her life. Olive spends a lot of the movie reacting to what other people are projecting on her, not what really happened, and that morality is well within a PG-13 (US) mindset, because the moral of the story and the ultimate lesson of the movie is one I think that any parent of a young girl or boy would want them to take away.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Easy A” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

Want to receive more stuff from me? Enter your email address and click the button:

Read More

director's interview for UNSTOPPABLE

Action maestro Tony Scott presents his fifth film with Denzel Washington in the runaway train thriller “Unstoppable,” inspired by true events. Denzel describes the director as the hardest working person on set, while his co-star Chris Pine calls him “the magic movie elf”, a tightly wound ball of appropriately unstoppable energy.

Here, the British auteur explains the method behind his madness, and how his work was inspired by his mother.

Q: What is it about the theme of man versus machine that you found inspiring?

A: Because my last movie was The Taking of Pelham 123, everyone thinks I’ve got this love affair with trains. Actually, it’s two different stories and this one is more like Jaws; we even call the train “The Beast”. The movie starts at 50 miles an hour and ends up at 150.

Q: Why did you want to tackle another movie set on a train so soon after Pelham?

A: I read the script three years ago and I loved it. Other people said to me, ‘Why are you doing another train movie?’ I said I don’t see it that way, it’s a totally different beast. This thing is very different from anything I’ve done before and it has this tremendous momentum in terms of the story.

Q: This is the fifth time you’ve chosen to share that journey with Denzel Washington. Why him?

A: He’s a major talent. With every movie I’ve done with him we’ve always managed to tap into a different aspect of his personality, so it’s never Denzel. He can internalize something and give very little on the outside and still communicate everything. Two of my heroes are Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington and they both have that same thing. They do a lot of homework and they sit it all back, but they still communicate.

Q: You deliberately avoided doing a lot of CGI work on the film – why is that?

A: I take pride in the fact that I shot everything for real. I sound like an old fart, but I’m not. I just think one of my major strengths is being able to put people in the seat of a racecar or a cockpit or a train. This film has weight and energy and danger. We shot the whole thing at 50, 60, 80 miles an hour. We did a 360-degree track around the train at 80 miles an hour.

Q: Did you get any pressure to use CGI?

A: When my mom was still alive she used to say there’s something ‘funny’ about that scene—when it didn’t quite work. It was always the CGI. Plus there’s something about the weight of those engines and the noise and the power and the scale that is really hard to reproduce with CGI.

Q: Were you inspired by any other, great American runaway train movies?

A: I love Runaway Train, the movie with John Voight and Eric Roberts. We pay homage to it at the end.

Opening November 10 in the Philippines, “Unstoppable” is a 20th Century Fox film to be distributed by Warner Bros.

Want to receive more stuff from me? Enter your email address and click the button:

Read More

TODD PHILLIPS directs DUE DATE

From Todd Phillips, the director of the smash comedy “The Hangover,” comes “Due Date” starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis as two unlikely companions who are thrown together on a road trip that turns out to be as life-changing as it is outrageous.

Downey plays Peter Highman, an expectant first-time father whose wife’s due date is a mere five days away. As Peter hurries to catch a flight home from Atlanta to be at her side for the birth, his best intentions go completely awry when a chance encounter with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) forces Peter to hitch a ride with Ethan—on what turns out to be a cross-country road trip that will ultimately destroy several cars, numerous friendships and Peter’s last nerve.

For Phillips, who also serves as a producer and co-writer on the film, the fun of making “Due Date” has been tied to the remarkable cast he has assembled. “Half-way through `The Hangover,' I decided I wanted to work with Zach Galifianakis again,” he notes. “Then, getting a guy like Robert Downey Jr. was a long shot, but when he came on board, it was crazy. So, when the concept came together with the right cast, we had a movie. What made it different was the ability to walk that thin line of awkwardness between the two main characters. But that’s why we have actors like Robert and Zach—they’re so good at it.”

The entire shoot of “Due Date” has been fuelled with an “anything goes” spirit of improvisation, says Phillips. “They throw lines at each other, but we normally talk about it before,” he says. “Still, the spirit of improvising is in the film in a way that makes it feel alive.”

“Every day’s a little bit different, but we’re always doing the same thing, which is playing around and massaging it and trying to have a good time,” Downey says. “I think that’s one of the great things that Phillips said—that he loves doing this because he gets paid to do what he would do for free. And he basically laughs all day long.”

Susan Downey, who serves as an executive producer, adds, “Robert, Zach and Todd all really feed off of each other. They almost have a kind of brotherhood in how they approach this. They just go at each other in a very fun yet constructive way. And they all share the same goal—they just want to make the best version of this possible. It may not be a version that’s on the page the morning they show up to shoot the scene, but they just keep mining it and pushing it to be the best that it can be.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Due Date” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Want to receive more stuff from me? Enter your email address and click the button:

Read More

THE SOCIAL NETWORK holds sneak previews next week

Considered as the film to beat in next year's Academy Awards, Columbia Pictures' “The Social Network,” the controversial movie detailing the origins of social media megasite Facebook, will have whole-day sneak previews on Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 18 & 19 in selected theaters in Metro Manila. Tickets will be available at regular admission prices.

This affords film buffs and Facebookers a chance to watch the much-talked-about and critically acclaimed movie ahead of its grand opening here on Oct. 27. “The Social Network” has been the No. 1 movie in the US for two consecutive weeks now, earning a cumulative gross of $47-million.

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times praises “The Social Network” as “fleet...funny, exhilarating...supremely confident...a creation story for the digital age,” while Richard Corliss of Time Magazine raves, “The film is like a video game at warp speed. The rewards for paying attention are mammoth and exhilarating.”

“It’s the movie of the year that also brilliantly defines the decade,” applauds Peter Travers of Rolling Stone.

In the film, on a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history, but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications.

Also starring are Justin Timberlake (“Shrek The Third”) as Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder who became Facebook's founding president; and Andrew Garfield (“Lions for Lambs,” “Spider-Man” 2012) as Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who fell out with Zuckerberg over money.

Directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like ColumbiaPicturesPH on Facebook.

Want to receive more stuff from me? Enter your email address and click the button:

Read More

high school catfight is rekindled in YOU AGAIN

No matter how old you are, you never get over high school.

In Touchstone Pictures' new comedy “You Again,” successful PR girl Marni (Kristen Bell) heads home for her older brother’s wedding and discovers that he’s marrying her high school arch nemesis (Odette Yustman), who’s conveniently forgotten all the rotten things she did so many years ago.

Then the bride’s jet-setting aunt (Sigourney Weaver) bursts in and Marni’s not-so-jet-setting mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) comes face to face with her own high school rival. The claws come out and old wounds are opened in this crazy comedy about what happens when you’re reunited with the one person you’d like to forget.

First-time screenwriter Moe Jelline wrote “You Again” four years ago from an idea she had based upon her own life experience. Jelline reveals, “I’ve always been fascinated how high school is a blip in your life—four years—and yet somehow the emotional ups and downs can stay with some people for the rest of their lives. Anyone who’s ever thought twice about going to their high school reunion knows exactly what I’m talking about.”

She continues, “I have an adorable brother and, at the same time I was playing with this script idea, many of my friends were calling me asking if he was single, could they be set up, et cetera. And that thought was slightly horrifying—I mean, my brother dating one of my friends? Um, NO….”

Jelline considers, “Then, it occurred to me that it’s better that he wind up with someone that I like versus someone I don’t, and from that concept, another idea gelled that incorporated my high school experiences – what if your greatest nightmare came back to haunt you in a very permanent way? What if your high school nemesis was marrying your brother?” proposes Jelline.

And so, “You Again” was born.

Director Andy Fickman offers, “I loved the universal appeal of the script—everyone has someone from their past that made their life less than wonderful. In high school, those arch enemies can have an even more profound power on your daily existence. I found the more people I spoke with, the more everyone had a ‘You Again’ person from their past, regardless of age or gender.”

As for helming Moe Jelline’s script, Fickman admits, “Exploring this theme was very exciting and a perfect place to breed comedy.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “You Again” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.

Want to receive more stuff from me? Enter your email address and click the button:

Read More

ADAM LAMBERT in Manila 10-10-10

10-10-10 marks Adam Lambert's concert here in Manila at the SM Mall of Asia Concert Grounds. Adam Lambert is the runner-up in American Idol's season 8. his debut, "For Your Entertainment" is included in the lineup and will probably sing a lot from his album.

i'm sure fans will witness some of his songs during the American Idol season LIVE! ticket Prices are VIP P6,310, Gold P4,510, Silver P3,610, Bronze P1,810 and General Admission P550.

but oh well, im gonna miss this concert tonight.

Want to receive more stuff from me? Enter your email address and click the button:

Read More