Fantastic Mr Fox - Trailer

The stop-motion film, marking Anderson's first foray into animation, is an adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic children's story, centering on a clever fox who must outwit three mean, dimwitted farmers who try their hardest to hurt Mr. Fox and his family. George Clooney will voice Mr. Fox, while Cate Blanchett voices his wife.

Out on 13th November.

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Fantastic Mr Fox - Photos from Wes Anderson's adaption of the Roald Dahl classic

The film focuses on a crafty fox (voiced by George Clooney) who finds himself and his family targeted for death by the three dumb, plug-ugly farmers who tire of sharing their chickens with the critter. The Fantastic Mr. Fox features the voices of George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Meryl Streep.

How about that for a cast! The film is due out on 13th November.

I'm a little unsure about the look of the film. Not what I was expecting, but typical Wes Anderson quirkyness. What are your thoughts?

Source: filmsactu.com

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More photos of Crowe as Robin Hood

Filming is well under way for Ridley Scott's Robin Hood and here are a few more photos of Russell Crowe as Robin Hood. Just Jared had the pics along with a few others.

The photos where taken on Pembrokeshire Beach in Wales. The one below also shows Kevin Durand (Blob in Wolverine) in the back.

Robin Hood stars Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Vanessa Redgrave, Mark Strong, Scott Grimes, Kevin Durand, Alan Doyle, Oscar Isaacs, Lea Seydoux and William Hurt and will be released nationwide on 14th May 2010.

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Robin Hood - Our first look at Russell Crowe as the Hooded Man

USA Today had the first look at the Crowester as Sherwood Forest's most famous bandit.

Sporting a Caesar haircut and slimmed-down physique, Crowe shed the weight he gained for his portly characters in State of Play and Body of Lies. He also updated the bandit's wardrobe.

"He doesn't have the old Robin Hood tights," says producer Brian Grazer. "He's got armor. He's very medieval. He looks, if anything, more like he did in Gladiator than anything we're used to seeing with Robin Hood."

And though it won't be easy replicating the box office or Oscar success of the 2000 film —Gladiator raked in $458 million worldwide and won five Academy Awards, including best picture — Grazer says Robin Hood's story was ripe for revisiting.

"Oddly, it's a metaphor for today," Grazer says. "He's trying to create equality in a world where there are a lot of injustices. He's a crusader for the people, trying to reclaim some of the ill-gotten gains of the wealthy. That's a universal theme."

Not that the film will linger on the contemporary. "We just shot a scene where Maid Marion fires a flaming bow and arrow into the night sky. It's just a cool story."

Crowe certainly looks fighting fit in the photo, not quite as different a look as I thought it would be, but I suppose there is only so much you can do with the Hooded Man. What do you think of Crowe's look?

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Robin Hood - Plot Synopsis and Cast list

Universal has announced the full cast listing for Ridley Scott’s Yet-To-Be-Titled Robin Hood movie, which has begun production in the United Kingdom. Joining Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett will be:

* Vanessa Redgrave (Julia, Atonement) as John and Richard’s mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine
* Mark Strong (Body of Lies, Stardust) as King John’s vicious henchman, Sir Godfrey
* Oscar Isaac (Che, Body of Lies) as King John
* Léa Seydoux (13 French Street, Inglourious Basterds) as the woman who will become queen, French Princess Isabella

Robin’s band of men:

* Scott Grimes (ER, American Dad) as Welshman Will Scarlet
* Kevin Durand (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, 3:10 to Yuma) as Robin’s right-hand, Scotsman Little John
* Alan Doyle as their troubadour, Irishman Allan Adayle

Crowe stars as the legendary figure known by generations as Robin Hood, whose exploits have endured in popular mythology and ignited the imagination of those who share his spirit of adventure and righteousness. In 13th century England, Robin and his band of marauders confront corruption in a local village and lead an uprising against the crown that will forever alter the balance of world power. And whether thief or hero, one man from humble beginnings will become an eternal symbol of freedom for his people.

The untitled Robin Hood adventure chronicles the life of an expert archer, previously interested only in self-preservation, from his service in King Richard’s army against the French. Upon Richard’s death, Robin travels to Nottingham, a town suffering from the corruption of a despotic sheriff and crippling taxation, where he falls for the spirited widow Lady Marion (Blanchett), a woman skeptical of the identity and motivations of this crusader from the forest. Hoping to earn the hand of Maid Marion and salvage the village, Robin assembles a gang whose lethal mercenary skills are matched only by its appetite for life. Together, they begin preying on the indulgent upper class to correct injustices under the sheriff.

With their country weakened from decades of war, embattled from the ineffective rule of the new king and vulnerable to insurgencies from within and threats from afar, Robin and his men heed a call to ever greater adventure. This unlikeliest of heroes and his allies set off to protect their country from slipping into bloody civil war and return glory to England once more.

That excellent picture is by Tony Lee

Source: /film

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Ridley Scott's Robin Hood has a release date

Filming on the new Robin Hood film starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett is due to start in Spring.

There have been lots of changes to the plot and the title itself has gone from being called Nottingham to the classic Robin Hood.

Now Original Sharp has the news that the film will be due out in blockbuster season next year on 14th May.

Looks like this may be one of the big movies of next year. Are you excited to see Crowe as Robin Hood?

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Cate Blanchett to be Maid Marion

Speaking to The Telegraph’s Mandrake on the red carpet of the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards, Mark Strong has claimed that Cate Blanchett is likely to inherit the role of Maid Marian in Ridley Scott’s Nottingham.

“I think Cate Blanchett is set to take the Maid Marian part. She is a wonderful actress and it would make it a much classier film if she was in it.”

Strong will be in the film as Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and Russel Crowe is down to play both Robin Hood and the Sherrif of Nottingham. More on that story here.

/film have more.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Poster

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008 - Movie Review

Director: David Fincher
Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Julia Ormond
Running Time: 159 minutes
Score: 7 / 10

This review is by thorneer and may contain spoilers

"The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button" would seem to have everything going for it - major stars, an enormous budget, and a conceit that can't be beat. However, in the end it's that very conceit that hamstrings an otherwise wondrous piece of movie-making.

Fincher's characters tend to be psychos, paranoiacs, obsessives, some of whom struggle vainly against the darkness in their own souls, but many others who have embraced it. Benjamin Button is none of the above, and that's perhaps his problem. Button, born "under unusual circumstances" in 1918 New Orleans, spends his early life literally surrounded by death, raised, as he is, by an orderly in a home for the elderly. As a prematurely old man himself (an effect achieved by fantastic MOCAP work from Pitt), perhaps it's not surprising that as he grows into a body with which he may truly engage the world, he is more content to observe appreciably.

Now, this may be true to the spirit of the character, but unfortunately for Fincher and his screenwriter, Eric Roth, it doesn't make for very interesting cinema. At a recent screening, Roth referred to Button's character as the "anti-Gump", a classification that seemed both apt and problematic. This film will certainly earn comparisons to Robert Zemeckis' modern classic(also written by Roth), but where that film had a truly fascinating central character, who experienced as many mistakes and tragedies as victories and happiness, Fincher and Roth's protagonist is a cipher. There's a telling sequence around the middle of the film, where Button, by now a merchant seaman holed up in a dingy hotel in Murmansk, strikes up a relationship with a bored wife of a minor British official (Tilda Swinton). Unable to sleep, they meet each night for tea and good conversation (and later, sex). But instead of letting us hear what those conversations are about, he simply creates a montage, set to music, of various meetings fading into one another. By the time Swinton's character departs the film, we know next to nothing new about Benjamin other than that he has trouble sleeping and likes hot tea. The fact is that even Swinton's character, on screen for perhaps fifteen minutes, is more engaging. It's a frustrating glimpse of what might have been, had the filmmakers chosen to put the character before the gimmick, instead of the other way around.

Which brings us to Cate Blanchett. As Daisy, whom Benjamin meets as a young girl and who grows into a luminously beautiful and troubled ballet dancer, Blanchett shines as brightly as she ever has on screen. Unlike Benjamin, Daisy is not content to simply accept whatever life throws her way - she has dreams and attempts to act on them, and does her best to lead a normal, interesting life. Benjamin, passive as always, must quietly observe as she grows out of the playmate of his "youth" and into a somewhat headstrong woman who nonetheless possessed of enormous potential. His loyalty pays off, though, when circumstances bring them together again at a time when they both happen to be the same age - a fleeting moment, and one they will cherish. But again, the relationship between couple and audience is one-sided, because while we can see why Daisy would wish to return to the rock-steady loyalty of Benjamin, it's unclear what he feels about her other than a regard (she's certainly lovely enough). We are told in rather soggy voice-over narration (spread throughout the film) that Daisy is "the most beautiful person I'd ever seen", but that's all we'll get.

And so it goes, for nearly three hours. We cut frequently, and irritatingly, back to a modern-day hospital in New Orleans, where a dying Daisy asks her daughter (Julia Ormond) to read to her from Benjamin's diary as Hurricane Katrina pounds on the windows. There's something being said in these scenes about regret and the passage of time, but the appealing Ormond's character is one-note, and Blanchett seems nearly suffocated under pounds of old age makeup. It's from this diary whence springs Benjamin's narration, but, as Mr. Roth pointed out, Gump this ain't. Suffice it to say that the budget is up there on screen as we go on this strange trip through the twentieth century with Brad Pitt as our guide. A possibly unintentional (I doubt it) laugh arises mid-film when Benjamin finally reaches something around Pitt's own age. He strides into a garage in the mid-50's, decked out in leather jacket and shades, and whips a tarp off a motorcycle, on which he speeds out to the harbor to do some bare-chested sailing on a boat he builds himself (the shades remain on his head). It's a knowing wink to the wish-fulfillment of the casting - who wouldn't want their old crotchety husband to get younger and younger until they looked like Brad Pitt? - and a clever way to underscore the underlying tragedy of the situation. Sure, he looks like Brad Pitt in "Fight Club", "Se7en", "Thelma & Louise", but eventually he's going to look like Brad Pitt in "Cutting Class", and then Brad Pitt in seventh grade, and finally Brad Pitt as a toddler, and that's not so sexy.

Pitt does a fine job. It's a pity that Fincher, who has used him to such great effect twice before, didn't let him cut loose. Instead this is his most low-key performance since Meet Joe Black, in which he played Death, who was really just a nice young man curious about the world. Come to think of it, that's pretty much all that Benjamin Button is, and, if nothing else, he knows more about death than just about anybody around. Too bad that a film that means to affirm life turns out to be rather lifeless.

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Not even a heart attack can stop the Emperor

This from The Times.

A leading actor in a West End play insisted on finishing his opening night performance before being taken to hospital.

Concealing his discomfort from critics at the Gielgud Theatre sufficiently for them to later deliver glowing reviews, Ian McDiarmid carried on with his role as the Father in Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author despite suffering from dizzy spells.

McDiarmid, 64, who gained international fame as Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars films, declined to comment yesterday on reports that he had had a heart attack on stage.

Representatives of the play said that the actor's condition could not have been as serious as a heart attack because he returned to the role a week later. But McDiarmid's condition was sufficiently worrying for backstage staff to call for an ambulance ten minutes before the performance was due to end.

Paramedics arrived within seven minutes and saw the actor after the curtain call. A spokeswoman for the play said: “I think he had dizzy spells or something. He did the curtain call and he felt not quite there.”

She had previously denied that McDiarmid was taken to hospital, but said that this had been a mistake. “The doctor saw him and said, 'Why don't you rest for a few days?' There was a very rigorous technical rehearsal period up to that point. The show had been in Chichester [before it transferred to London] and everything.”

Benedict Nightingale, theatre critic of The Times, who attended the performance on September 15, said that he had not noticed any frailty. “He looked ghastly, but then he was meant to. He looked white, but whether he looked any whiter than he does normally, I can't say. He is a very febrile, contained sort of actor.”

The Times awarded the play four stars and said that McDiarmid “doesn't quite catch the Father's inner guilt but is still an impressively sardonic, sinister figure”.

The show the following day was cancelled and Stephen Crane, the understudy, took over for the remainder of the week. Sources close to the production said that McDiarmid was a committed actor who would not wish to retire over a health scare.
McDiarmid, who describes himself as a private person, has a distinguished history as a stage actor and helped to inject Hollywood glamour into London theatre during his 13 years as artistic director of the Almeida by persuading Kevin Spacey, Cate Blanchett and Liam Neeson to perform there. He is best known for his portrayal of the most evil man in the Universe in four of George Lucas's Star Wars films.

He will soon portray Sir Denis Thatcher in Margaret, a television dramatisation of Mrs Thatcher's last days in power.

McDiarmid is expected to continue in Six Characters in Search of an Author until the run ends on November 2.

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 2008 - Review

Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Shia LeBoeuf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Cate Blanchett
Running Time: 124 minutes

Score: 2/10

Thanks to Chisholm for this review.

Gentlemen, I was desperately trying not to think about "George's latest release" (misconstrue that as you wish :o ) but here goes. I thought I'd put my 3 pennies worth in a take my chances with the lions!

I know I hold the Indy franchise in high regard and that my expectations were probably equally as high but that doesn't excuse what I can only describe as one of the laziest films I have seen in some time, and I’ve watched some poor movies.

I dislike the movie because it was poorly filmed, acted, directed, scripted, scored, and edited and because its special effects where horrendous. I can't imagine the average 10-year-old would enjoy this latest "Indiana Jones" movie much more than the original. After many years of trying to come up with a story for the fourth "Indiana Jones" movie, George Lucas comes up with what is easily the most incomprehensible and unbelievable mess of the entire franchise.

The story didn't bother me, handled well it could have worked, considering previous story lines this wasn't much of stretch. I'm trying to really establish why the whole movie was like nails on a chalk board and I think one of the reasons is because it was predictable, very predictable. There were no surprises, not once did I remotely think anyone's life was in danger and that includes the bad guys. I think it basically lacked adventure, child or adult you expect a certain vibe from and Indy flick, this was more like a bad spoof written by a director who is hell bent on removing any sort of peril or danger from his films.

It did seem like Ox was supposed to be Abner Ravenwood but at the last minute they did a script rewrite because people wouldn't accept that he may not have died in Raiders. (We never actually saw him die/dead) Possibly Hurts worst performance, I thought for the first few scenes he would be putting it on and we would see him helping Indy escape. Instead we had a Sloth like character from the Goonies retarding all the way through until we get to the ... the... the.. bawk .....heavee .....retch ......Wedding!!!

"3 times it drops" what could he possibly mean!! ...The child behind me in the cinema, I think he was about 6 weeks old (I could be wrong) shouted "he means the f*cking water falls indy you tool, why are you letting the bird drive"

Mutt, for argument sake lets call him scrappy doo. I actually found his character one of the strongest elements of the movie. Okay his James Dean entrance and overly obvious "im impetulant but secretly intelligent act" was annoying but I think he had some of the best scenes. It was just unfortunate that every scene was delivered with a cut to Indy, with a look on his face that said "what a guy, I used to be young once"( I get it! indy is old, very clever! Yes George/Stephen I know you want us to like Mutt! Thus continuing the Indy franchise! I buy it!)

Considering Lucas owns CGI its basically his, he made it! I think the G actually stands for George, yet it sucked as the Americans say! Im not supposed to see CGI thats the point! Every scene looked CG'd even the scenes that didn't need to be. All the main sets looked looked small and cheap with very suspect backgrounds. The set where they found the plastic skull (int & EXT) looked very small, no grandeur, just a few gymnastic minstrels flipping about. I don't need to mention Mutt-zan, Hat delivering killer Ants, Elevator trees, rubber rope-snakes, or the sh!test looking baddy death scene in history. (Apologies George I know you don't have death scenes or guns anymore, I mean where the baddy gets transported to the ship ready to meet Dreyfuss in a few years time)

How many times did Indy escape and get recaptured in a Benny hill style! That was just bordering on insulting! The one thing I don't 100% agree with it that on though is that, okay the movies are directed at a younger audience but they can still be intelligent enough to engage adults. I think regarding films, directors underestimate children and their intelligence, I think they would enjoy a movie equally if not more so if it wasn't so dumbed down and slapstick.

When I was a child I enjoyed all the star wars & Indiana jones films, but so did my parents and most of the adults I knew. This was partly because the stories were intelligently written (if not still far fetched) and could be watched by the whole family without feeling they were directly aimed at children.

The latest instalments of Starwars and Indy seem to be action sequences bolted together with a rather convoluted plot line that you couldn’t care less for. None of the complex CGI sequences in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" can hold a candle, in fact, to the moment when a youthful Indy, confronted by a black-robed warrior, watched and waited while the guy twirled his scimitar, then pulled out his revolver and simply popped him with no further ado.

I feel a little better! But I'm still in deep shock!

Basically I could go on, but its not healthy, as its just a movie. To round up, I found this movie insulting on almost every level! I give it 2/10 and rate it just below an annoyingly itchy Anus!

"There are only 3 Indy's"