The Playlist

Watch: Trailer For 'R.I.P.D.' With Ryan Reynolds & Jeff Bridges Looks Like Some Spooky Summer Fun

By Drew Taylor
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April 17, 2013 6:10 PM
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21 Comments

News

In terms of "most anticipated summer movies," "R.I.P.D.," a new supernatural action film from Universal that stars Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges, before today, didn't even chart. In fact, we're not sure we quite understood what it was even supposed to be – it has a primo July 19th release date but very little in terms of pre-release hype, save for a vaguely "Men in Black"-ish teaser poster and a funny/cool name (it stands for "Rest In Peace Department" – love the puns). But with the debut of a full trailer, it looks like "R.I.P.D." could be one of the sleeper surprise of the summer, promising gobs of goofy, spooky fun.

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Ryan Reynolds Is Not Actually Confirmed For The 'Highlander' Remake

By Kevin Jagernauth
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June 27, 2012 3:27 PM
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6 Comments

News

With a holiday coming up next week, it's been a pretty slow news week and the morsel making the rounds that Ryan Reynolds has joined the brewing "Highlander" remake was likely too good to resist. But alas, it's not true.

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Review: Starpower Like Julia Roberts & Ryan Reynolds Can't Save Flaccid 'Fireflies In The Garden'

By Todd Gilchrist
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October 12, 2011 12:59 PM
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0 Comments

“Fireflies in the Garden” is the cinematic equivalent of going out to dinner with your friend’s family and then having to watch them all fight like cats and dogs the whole time: it’s got to be worse for the people going through it, but you sure as hell have no interest in watching it. Writer-director Dennis Lee, who I can only imagine drew from a deep well of personal experiences – or if he didn’t, clearly suffers from dysfunction envy – created this vivid tale of an embittered writer returning to his childhood home to confront a troubled past. But he failed to realize that personal catharsis isn’t the same as popular entertainment, especially if the characters barely qualify as real people, which is why the only thing more false in “Fireflies in the Garden” than its flaccid melodrama is its clichéd emotional redemption.

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Who Could Be The Men In Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E’?

By Kevin Jagernauth
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September 20, 2011 4:29 AM
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14 Comments

'The Killing' Star Joel Kinnaman, Michael Fassbender & Ewan McGregor Among Names Being Considered By The DirectorSteven Soderbergh's latest picture "Contagion" is in its second week of release with a healthy tally thus far of over $45 million, and his next feature, the independent male stripper film "Magic Mike," is currently shooting. And now the director is already mapping out -- at least if he sticks to the current plan -- his penultimate film, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."

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'Wolverine' Sequel May Have To Wait Several More Months for Hugh Jackman (Maybe Summer 2012)

By Drew Taylor
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September 8, 2011 10:53 AM
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2 Comments

Matthew Vaughn Expected To Return For Another 'X-Men: First Class Sequel'While making the rounds to promote the home video release of the surprisingly fun "X-Men: First Class" (tomorrow is "First Friday" or something, 20th Century Fox is making a huge over-done fuss out of this release in hopes to drum up some more revenue, sheesh), producer Lauren Shuler Donner -- who we're sure is a nice lady but on the special features portion of the Blu-ray disc looks like some kind of horrifying wax sculpture brought to life by dark magic to inflict deadly harm on the land of the living -- let loose some details about other projects set within the "X-Men" universe.

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Who Were The Winners And Losers Of The Summer Of 2011?

By Oliver Lyttelton
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August 30, 2011 4:08 AM
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24 Comments

As the summer winds die down with a flat and uninspired whimper, the realization sets in: the summer of 2011 was for the birds. "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" was the last major tent-pole to open, followed by sleeper hits like "The Help" and the not-so-successful R-rated action comedy, "30 Minutes or Less." Many had forecast that the overstuffed summer would prove disastrous, with Jon Favreau predicting that, "There’s not a weekend where there won’t be teeth on the floor," but ironically it's Favreau's film that proved to be one of the biggest box-office disappointments. Financially, films did very well with three billion-dollar blockbusters – “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”-- helping the industry set a summer box-office record and nearly rebound from a horrible start to 2011 (Currently, 2011 revenue is running only 4 percent behind 2010, but in March, things were looking grim – 19% lower than the year previous).

Keira Knightley's 'London Boulevard' & Julia Roberts' 'Fireflies In The Garden' Get Fall Dates

By Kevin Jagernauth
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August 26, 2011 5:10 AM
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6 Comments

Update: Yahoo have the new trailer for the film which seems to pretend Hayden Panettiere isn't in the movie anymore.

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Weekend Box Office: 'Apes' Rise With Massive $54 Million, Audiences Rise Against Ryan Reynolds

By Gabe Toro
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August 7, 2011 4:33 AM
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12 Comments

“The Planet Of The Apes” saga is one of the healthier franchises in movie history. All the sequels occurred within a reasonable time frame, and while they were of varied quality, each one had their own separate reason to exist, and none were truly embarrassing. By comparison, the remake in 2001 was so far removed from the series’ original ethos that most won’t even acknowledge it as part of any continuity. Nevertheless, that atrocity opened to $68 million, which nears $100 million when adjusted for inflation. So while some may have been burned by the series thanks to Tim Burton, ten years might have been the appropriate time to reboot and still retain a base that remains aware of “The Planet of The Apes” as a sketchy form of “cinema history.”

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Point Counter-Point Review: 'The Change-Up' Is Gross-Out Unfunny Or Messy But With Amusing Laughs

By Drew Taylor
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August 3, 2011 4:48 AM
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3 Comments

“The Change-Up” is nothing if not honest. Before the title card has even popped up on screen, Jason Bateman, playing a stressed out husband, father, and (pivotally) lawyer, gets poop sprayed onto his face and, seconds later, into his mouth. It’s a very gross gag very early on and sets the stage for what might be, in the summer of raunchy comedies, the very raunchiest of them all. The problems arise, later on, though, when the truly outrageous stuff uneasily mingles with more earthbound relationship issues and the film winds up being a tepid mixture of both.

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'Green Lantern' Sequel May Ditch Early Story Outlines And Start From Scratch

By Gabe Toro
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August 2, 2011 6:01 AM
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10 Comments

Just Like Audiences Worldwide, WB Reportedly Not Happy With Martin Campbell's DirectionThere is nothing about a prospective "Green Lantern 2" that doesn't reek of flop sweat. DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. are scuffling in their race against Marvel/themselves to develop a new chain of franchises based on comic book characters, and the performance of "GL" this summer has certainly hurt momentum. With "The Dark Knight Rises" pegged for next summer and "The Man Of Steel" after that, they're going to want to diversify, lest the studio be forced to greenlight a bunch of actual real movies with interesting original characters not made to sell Happy Meals. Ye gods.

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