The Playlist

Review: 'Piranha 3DD' Dutifully Fails To Be In On The Joke

By Gabe Toro
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May 31, 2012 2:19 PM
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11 Comments

Reviews

If you're gonna go for it, go for it. That was the philosophy Alexandre Aja pursued for the bleakly funny "Piranha 3D," an orgy of death and dismemberment that indulged in the hedonism of spring break before letting loose swarms of genetically-superior fish that were decidedly playing for keeps. As much as Aja's characters had tongue firmly planted in cheek (see: Jerry O'Connell as Joe Francis), his committment to tearing these characters apart like cheap confetti never wavered, orchestrating a straight-faced massacre that might as well have been "Saving Private Ryan" for the "Jersey Shore" generation. Aja, like the piranhas, saw the youth of today and tasted blood in the water, not so much with a smile as much as a predatory grin.

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'The Expendables,' 'Red' & 'Step Up' Being Eyed For Potential TV Series

By Kevin Jagernauth
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May 31, 2012 2:00 PM
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0 Comments

Television

Earlier this year, Lionsgate bought Summit for big pile of money, and the question more savvy business types began asking was: "Why?" Granted, the indie studio was successful, largely due in part to the "Twilight" franchise, but it remained to be seen how Lionsgate would exploit the rest of their catalog to make the purchase worth the price. Well, now there appears to be some insight into their approach.

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James Toback & Alec Baldwin Reveal Details Of The Film They're Trying To Raise Financing For

By Simon Dang
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May 31, 2012 1:58 PM
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2 Comments

News

Just before the Cannes Film Festival, it was revealed that James Toback and Alec Baldwin were teaming for an under-the-radar, Cannes-set documentary about film financing known as "Seduced and Abandoned." The movie is an attempt to document the duo's efforts to raise financing for an actual movie they are looking to make together (more on that in a second). While some reports suggested it was a mockumentary, the "30 Rock" star has now explained the project's evolution, revealing that he and Toback's motivations quickly changed as they realised they weren't there "to make fun of people. That doesn’t do us any good. I thought let’s come here and let’s ask people a very simple construction which is: What was the movie business like before? What happened? And what is it like now in your lifetime?”

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Joe Carnahan's 'Groundhog Day'-Style Action Movie 'Continue' Moving Ahead At Fox

By Joe Cunningham
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May 31, 2012 1:41 PM
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1 Comment

News

Back in January when Joe Carnahan was busy wrong-footing everyone with a surprisingly mature follow-up to “Smokin’ Aces” and “The A-Team” in the form of “The Grey,” he also started talking a little about what features might come next. One of those was “Continue,” which Carnahan candidly described as “ ’Groundhog Day’ as an action movie,” and “funny as shit.” But we got the feeling that as passionate as he was about that project, he had his heart set on making “Killing Pablo,” which during the same interview he described as being “the best script I’ve ever written.”

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Christian Bale & Natalie Portman Frolic In The Surf In Set Pics From Terrence Malick's 'Knight Of Cups'

By Kevin Jagernauth
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May 31, 2012 1:09 PM
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11 Comments

News

While we continue to wonder about..."To The Wonder"...and if it will show up at the Venice Film Festival or continue to stay on Terrence Malick's shelf, the filmmaker is already headlong on three movies in various stages of development: the doucmentary "The Voyage of Time" and a pair of feature films, the formerly titled "Lawless," and "Knight of Cups." Of course, Malick goes by Malick's schedule and he's been in pre-production/shooting on both pictures already and at least in the case of the latter, the seaside is going to provide a common meeting place for the main characters.

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Review: ‘Hide Away’ Has A Great Performance By Josh Lucas Nearly Suffocated By A Truly Lousy Movie

By Drew Taylor
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May 31, 2012 1:01 PM
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0 Comments

Reviews

John Lucas is one of those actors who, mathematically at least, ought to be a movie star. He’s been a part of several high profile projects that should have launched him into the starry stratosphere (he was the romantic lead in Reese Witherspoon’s hit “Sweet Home Alabama;” a heavy in Ang Lee’s “Hulk;” and the anchor in big budget Hollywood movies that were supposed to be hits but ended up tanking, things like “Poseidon” and “Stealth”) and he has a laid back appeal and versatility (seek out his menacing turn in David Gordon Green’s underrated “Undertow”) that should put him in the same league as, say, Bradley Cooper. Instead, he’s stuck in projects undeserving of his considerable talents… Like the low-budget indie “Hide Away,” a truly lousy movie that does everything it can to suffocate Lucas’ very fine performance.

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Details Emerge For Disney/Pixar's 'The Good Dinosaur'

By Drew Taylor
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May 31, 2012 12:36 PM
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1 Comment

News

After “Monsters University,” next summer’s wholly unnecessary prequel to “Monsters, Inc.” (which imagines our monstrous heroes scaring their way through college), Pixar will embark on a cluster of highly original films that bring to mind the combination of adventurous storytelling and outrageous concepts that gave us, in sequential years, “Ratatouille,” “WALL-E” and “Up,” with these new films tackling everything from imagined earths, the sparks of imagination, and the Mexican holiday of Dia De Los Muertos. The first of these films (and the only one, so far, with a title) is 2014’s “The Good Dinosaur,” directed by “Up” co-director Bob Peterson and Peter Sohn, who gave us the glorious Pixar short “Partly Cloudy” and was the voice of Emile in “Ratatouille.” Details have been few and far between, although it has been acknowledged that it takes place on an alternate earth where the meteor missed and dinosaurs have evolved alongside humans, but recently the LA Times sat down with the creative principles behind the movie and got a few more nuggets of information.

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Make It Stop: Omnibus Films 'Athens, My City' & 'Tbilisi, My City' In The Works Adding To Already Exhausted Genre

By Benjamin Wright
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May 31, 2012 12:23 PM
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1 Comment

News

Are omnibus movies about different cities wearing themselves thin? “Paris, je ta’ime” had its moments and was a novel idea with a cutesy title, but since then we’ve had the insufferable “New York, I Love You” and the uneven “Tokyo!” And unfortunately, it seems producers in cities around the world are now looking to boost their profile by taking on the same format.

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5 Fractured Fairy Tale Movies Worth Watching After 'Snow White And The Huntsman'

By Benjamin Wright
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May 31, 2012 11:57 AM
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10 Comments

Features

Once upon a time there existed a cinematic landscape where not every feature-length fairy tale movie was drawn from a classic story, and the descriptor “fractured fairy tale” didn’t just mean gross-out humor and a Scottish-accented Mike Myers playing a big green ogre. While some of those films have certainly succeeded (this writer has a soft spot for the first “Shrek”), the kind of tale that the likes of the Brothers Grimm would collect in their oeuvre of beloved folklore was often of the darker-hued variety – pitting characters in bleak struggles that would see them rise from the ashes as better individuals for it in the end. Yes, the stories were simple, but they also served as a basis for many of the storytelling tropes that are used today – and may have influenced a few of our own moral compasses, with the fables acting as parables for life's lessons.

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Watch: New 'The Bourne Legacy' Trailer Nods To The Past & Excitingly Strides Into The Future

By Kevin Jagernauth
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May 31, 2012 11:51 AM
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19 Comments

News

Forget Jason Bourne....meet Aaron Cross. Universal has the tricky task of enticing viewers to be 'Bourne' again (ha ha) with a new installment in the franchise that links to the past mostly in name, and has a new face in Jeremy Renner leading the charge. And while the teaser trailer did a good job of keeping things mysterious while promising to deliver on action, the new full-length trailer, which just premiered at Apple, puts Renner front and center and gives a more complete picture of the world we're going to be stepping into.

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