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Watch the First Trailer for Jason Reitman's LABOR DAY

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Once thought to be a serious Oscar contender, Labor Day opened to lukewarm reviews out of the Toronto International Film Festival and has largely fallen off the radar as one to be strongly anticipated. Nonetheless anything from Jason Reitman, director of Juno, Up in the Air, Thank You For Smoking and Young Adult, is worth a watch, even if this will be one of his lesser efforts. Starring Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet as a pair of strangers forced together by chance, Labor Day is currently rocking a 65% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Depressed single mom Adele (Winslet) and her son Henry offer a wounded, fearsome man (Brolin), who turns out to be a con on the run, a ride home and a place to lie low. As the police turn over the town in search of the escaped convict, Adele and her son gradually learn his true story as their options become increasingly limited. As the Labor Day weekend runs to a close,  Tobey Maguire, Clark Gregg, JK Simmons, Brooke Smith and James Van Der Beek co-star.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z51qJA1qrU0

Labor Day is directed by Jason Reitman and stars Josh Brolin, Kate Winslet, Tobey Maguire, Clark Gregg, JK Simmons, Brooke Smith and James Van Der Beek. It will not open on Labor Day as it comes to theaters on Christmas Day.

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Poster for Latino PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES

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When Paranormal Activity 5 couldn’t keep up the annual Halloween-release trend of the last four films in the franchise, the official Latin spin-off, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, looked to fill in the gap. However, that next film in the wildly popular franchise also won’t make a Halloween season release as it’s not hitting theaters until the dumping grounds known as January. Is the series losing steam already or are they trying to shake up the formula and having more trouble with it than expected? With a new poster and an old trailer to go off, see if this looks like anything new or just more of the found footage same.

While the film is endorsed by the makers of the PA, it will be a big move in a new direction as the film will feature an all Latino cast with only little crossover to the mainstay material. It will however feature young Katie and Kristi, played by the same actresses from Paranormal Activity 3. While the details are relatively slim at this point, the film is said to focus on a Catholic investigation of some, you guessed it, paranormal activity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6DYsGTMkCU

While this won’t be the first one-off of the series, it is the first official one. In 2010, an unofficial Japanese sequel, known as Paranormal Activity: Tokyo Night, followed Haruka Yamano, who broke her legs in a car accident and has since started feeling the presence of ghosts. It’s later revealed  that the woman that Haruka mowed down and killed was Katie, of the original Paranormal Activity, killing her and thus transferring her ghostly follower onto himself. Obviously the film was marked as non-canon because Katie lives on after the events of the first film and continues to be most central character of the franchise.

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Mass Graves and Amensia Populate OPEN GRAVE Trailer

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In the trailer for Open Grave, Sharlto Copley (District 9) wakes up in a pile of bodies matching the likes of Ben’s Dharma hole in Lost. Stripped of memories and surrounded by unknown people also suffering sudden amnesia, he doesn’t know if he the author of this mass grave or if it’s one of his new acquaintances. Talk about hell in a hand basket. 

Coming out of nowhere, this independent horror/thriller looks to capitalize on our thirst for suspense and blood lust. Starring a host of unknowns like Joseph MorganThomas Kretschmann, Josie Ho, and Erin Richards, Open Graves is the second film from Gonzalo López-Gallego, who previously made the found-footage-in-space film Apollo 18. However unfavorably that film was received, this looks to be a step in a better direction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CID6KYVxl6I#t=32

The official synopsis for Open Grave reads:

A man (Sharlto Copley, DISTRICT 9, ELYSIUM) wakes up in a pit of dead bodies with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Fleeing the scene, he breaks into a nearby house and is met at gunpoint by a group of terrified strangers, all suffering from memory loss. Suspicion gives way to violence as the group starts to piece together clues about their identities, but when they uncover a threat that’s more vicious—and hungry—than each other, they are forced to figure out what brought them all together—before it’s too late.

Open Grave is directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego and stars Sharlto Copley, Thomas Kretschmann, Josie Ho, Joseph Morgan, Erin Richards and Max Wrottesley. It hits VOD on December 24 before opening in theaters on January 3, 2014.

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LONDON HAS FALLEN To Film in 2014 With Original Cast

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It seems the studios want Gerard Butler to be John McClane. Unfortunately, Bruce Willis is already John McClane, so the Diehard rip-off, Olympus Has Fallen, will be getting a sequel, set in London. The title is, you guessed it, London has Fallen and Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman are set to reprise their roles. Also reprising their roles will be Olympus screenwriters, Katrin Benedikt and Creighton Rothenberger. No director has yet been chosen.

The new film will follow Gerard Butler, as he attempts to foil a terrorist plot set to trike London during the Prime Minister’s funeral, along with his sidekick, Aaron Eckhart as the president of the United States (because who else is more equipped to personally handle terrorist threats) and an English MI6 agent.

Shooting begins in London on May 5, 2014, so this one is still a little ways down the pipeline, but it promises to be just as absurdly huge in scale as the first. The production deserves much applause for actually planning to film in London, as opposed to a green room. Practically solidified by this news are plans for London Down, much to everyone’s eventual confusion. You heard it here first.

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Out in Theaters: MAN OF TAI CHI

“Man of Tai Chi”
Directed by Keanu Reeves
Starring Tiger Hu Chen, Keanu Reeves, Karen Mok, Simon Yam, Silvio Simac, Qing Ye
Action
105 Mins
R
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Without exception, every time that Keanu Reeves‘s opens his mouth in Man of Tai Chi, I chuckled. And I wasn’t alone. Every member of the audience was stifling giggles as Reeves stumbled his way through brief chunks of unwieldy dialogue. We burst into laughter when Reeves breaks the third-wall with a roar – teeth-bared and thrashing at the camera like a lion ripping at hunks of sirloin. It’s as if the fog has lifted and Reeves recognizes just how awful an actor he truly is. Seeing Man of Tai Chi is like watching Reeve’s B-list baptism, as the man onscreen embraces his goofy robotic persona to the fullest extent, milking all he can with self-deprecating automockery.

For how applaudably terrible Reeves the actor is, his directorial debut is a bit of a mixed bag that actually tilts more towards success end of the dial, making it hardly the piping failure I fully expected. As a cross-cultural production split between the U.S. and China, the film employs Chinese actors, speaking mostly Chinese, with Reeves as the only whitewashed American with any spoken lines. The decisions Reeves makes – first to film in China with exclusively Chinese actors and to put himself into his own film –  are head scratchers, but somehow they kind of end up working – operative word being: “kind of”.

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The Chinese actors are mostly fine when they’re speaking Chinese – fine being the only description that really sums up the inoffensive but uninspiring nature of their work – but when they transition into the occasional English phrase, their lack of formal acting training shines through, blinding as a Tuscon afternoon. It’s as if Reeves recited the line to his cast right before the take and they quickly spit it out with the grasp of an ESL crash course student. It’s not intentional racism but some performers do sound like the xenophobia re-dubs on Kung Fu films of the 1970s.

But as a martial arts film, Man of Tai Chi shines. Even though some camera framing issues render certain shots inconsequential, the acrobatic mastery of star Tiger Hu Chen and his many opponents are feats to be marveled. As Chen swings his limbs like thunderous hams, we forget the wires that help float these artists of combat through the air in the most unnatural of ways. At any rate, our focus is zeroed in on the nth degree of precision with which each blow and each block is delivered.

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Chen plays Chen (and no, that’s not a typo), a delivery boy who moonlights as a prize fighter. He’s deeply attached to his family and his master, a man who has taught him the ways of Tai Chi since he was a young boy. Traditionally considered a non-violent martial art, Chen surprises all when he uses an aggravated style of “hard” Tai Chi to usurp the reigning martial arts champion, winning him the attention of a shady security empire’s ring leader, Donaka Mark (Reeves).

Mark pulls some strings to all but guarantee that Chen will agree to be his personal prize fighter and the race is on. As Chen gets more and more involved in a circuit of privately broadcast beat downs, he begins to turn towards the dark side, transforming from the innocent boy he was into a barbarous warrior. We later learn: this transformation is the point.

In many ways, Chen’s journey mimics the descent of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. There’s even some unspoken mysticism to “unleashing your chi” that comes across a lot like “the force”. But as Skywalker became Vader through an eroded sense of hubris, Chen’s descent is forged for him. Like a Chinese Truman Show, those watching invite the moral corrosion, paying top dollar to see a good man turned. 

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Made on a tight budget of $25 million, Man of Tai Chi spends money in the right place: choreography. Even though the sparse CGI couldn’t convince your grandma that some of the larger set effects are real, carefully rehearsed hand-to-hand combat is executed with meticulous precision. It may look like a film on a budget at times but when the flurry of fists starts rumbling, it no longer matters. 

As a director, Keanu has made a valiant effort but his minimalist approach and hoodwinked character direction still keep him pegged as a mostly unknown talent. Meanwhile, the script from Resident Evil 6‘s Michael G. Cooney is as amateur as they come and makes you wonder how many tapes of old martial arts movies he watched for research.

For American audiences unfamiliar with the chest of international martial arts film, outside of the late success of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, Man of Tai Chi hopes to be a revival for the genre in the U.S. and an ushering in of a new talent in the hawk-faced Chen. The introduction to Chen alone legitimizes the film, even through its abundance of puerility. Even for someone not typically interested in martial arts, Man of Tai Chi does a great job at convincing us that we don’t need fast cars, massive shoot outs, and large breasted vixens to make an exciting action movie – just two dudes willing to beat the living snot out of each other.

C+

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Out in Theaters: ENDER'S GAME

“Ender’s Game”
Directed by Gavin Hood
Starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, Ben Kingsley, Moises Arias, Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin
Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
114 Mins
PG-13
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Ender, a natural born strategist, waxes philosophy like he’s Sun Tzu. Taking “The Art of War” to its next logical step, Ender believes it’s not enough to understand his enemy. For him, truly understanding your enemy comes hand-in-hand with loving them. When you know someone well enough to predict their moves militarily, you glimpse into their soul. All at once, this zen of inter-connectivity gives Ender an upper hand in battle but also puts him in a constantly state of moral dread. He knows he can be a mighty conqueror the likes of Caesar but doesn’t know if he should be.  

Based on the popular young adult novels by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game is built on a foundation of tough philosophical questions like these. Tackling ethical issues that date back to the dawn of fighting with sticks and stone and span to our current climate of piloted drone warfare, moral quandaries are given precedence in the film, but often come across as heavy-handed and poorly thought through.

For a movie entirely about tactics, it’s lacking in tactical approach to philosophy as process. Socrates, famous for breaking down prejudices in order to reach universal truths championed the dissection of established beliefs through reasoning alone. To discover truth, he used critical analysis to better understand the world around him and the many false beliefs that dominated society at large. Here, Ender’s Game is philosophy as a means to an end, an “I told you so” of childish rashness rather than a contemplative, almost meditative, study. Rather than a thought process, here philosophy is a bat. Like Bonzo, you’ll want to be sure to cover your head from the beat downs to come.

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Philosophical dissection of Ender’s Game aside, the film floats by on the freckled charm of Asa Butterfield (Hugo). Unlike his peers, Ender has a preternatural tact for foreseeing the consequences, good and bad, of his physical actions and a pension for using violence to prevent future violence. Butterfield does a fine job at conveying the dueling nature of Ender’s innocence and incessant scheming. At once aggressive and acutely aware of his dangerous aggression, Ender is a morally complex character – a suiting trait for the morally complex world he inhabits.

On Earth, 50 years have passed since a devastating alien attack almost wiped out the planet’s population. Like a post-9/11 America, tapestries hang in offices and homes alike, wallpapering sentiments of “Never Forget.” At the hands of the bug-like Formics, Earthlings faced their demise but managed a narrow victory in a play of much-celebrated battlefield bravado. One man, we are told, single-handedly chased the enemy off and ever since, Earth has awaited the return of their ruthless enemy, all the while training legions of child soldiers.

Picked as the last hope for humanity, children are utilized for their fast processing skills, unfaltering obedience, and gullible code of honor. Ender is chosen to lead not because of his tendency towards violence but because of his thought process within said violence. Never the one to start a fight but always the one to finish it, he’s not a sadist, but a tactician. For these qualities, Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) sees Ender as the ideal candidate to lead Earth’s troops into the final battle with the Formic.
   
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Joining Butterfield is a legion of youth actors that act little more than their age. Moises Arias as Bonzo and Hailee Steinfeld as Petra both do caricatures of the seething bully and flirty love interest but Abigail Breslin as Ender’s sister Valentine is really the most reined in of these child performers. Her character is harmony, her performance refined, a nice counterpoint to the violent lifestyle that Ender’s profession has surrounded him by. She and bullying older brother Peter are the fulcrum points around which Ender measures himself. As Colonel Graff says, he needs to fall somewhere between them. He must harness both violence and peace – he must become a cocktail of serenity and rage.

As Ender trains to become a commander, he must undergo physical challenges that hone his motor skills and mental games meant to whet his battlefield acuity. In a turn of revamped Quidditch – except without brooms, magic, or gravity – the “launchies” spent most of their days training in an arena-based game of space dodge-bullet, where they earn points for blasting each other with stunners. Like Quidditch, the game can be won, regardless of points accumulated, if one team member passes through their opponents’ gate unscathed. Unlike Quidditch, this tournament has bearing outside the arena as the victor will go on to lead Earth’s army against the evil bug aliens. Perhaps this convoluted plot point is more an issue with the source material than the movie, but I’ve never heard of a Superbowl winning team captain going on to lead an army.

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Why the young launchies must spend so much time pushing their bodies to the limit when all eventual warfare is exclusively done through drone command is never addressed. Nor is the fact that regardless of the grueling training, none of the launchies – all of whom are on one side or the other of the scrawny-to-chubby spectrum – seem to put on any bulk or shed any pounds. They’re all in the same physical shape as day one. Surely this has to do with the fact that the film employs underage performers, and you can’t quite push a 12-year old to shed pounds like Christian Bale, but oversights like this are noticeable throughout and work to diminish the sense of reality director Gavin Hood is working so hard to create.

As the film pushes towards a close, the inevitable last act twist is somewhat foreseeable but nevertheless cements the relative worth of the film. Barking out commands with the crackly voice of a teen in metamorphosis, Ender leads his troops to video-simulated victory after victory until a crushing reality is revealed: maybe it’s not a game after all.

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In blurring the lines between video game violence and real world violence, Hood explores the hefty moral consequences of drone warfare, even when he’s being too clunky for his own good. While I admit to not having read the book, the ending comes out of left field, begging for a sequel and an impending franchise. There’s a delicate art to franchise building that used to revolve around worth but nowadays is left at the behest of the filmmaker. It’s as if a “what comes next?” cliffhanger is a necessity for any movie that costs over $100 million dollars. The question is: if you build it, will they come?

While the communist undertones, expressed here as the “hive mentality,” may be outdated now, many of the issues seen in Ender’s Game are even more relevant today than they were when it was written (i.e. drone warfare, bullying, surveillance, video game violence, child soldiers, etc.) However, Hood can’t help himself but to let them fly in your face, like the drilling of drones in the film’s finale, never really developing the ever-important why? behind it all.

C

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Out in Theaters: ENDERS GAME

Ender, a natural born strategist, waxes philosophy like he’s Sun Tzu. Taking “The Art of War” to its next logical step, Ender believes it’s not enough to understand his enemy. For him, true understanding comes hand-in-hand with love for the enemy. When you know someone well enough to predicate their moves militarily, you glimpse into their soul. All at once, this zen of inter-connectivity gives Ender an upper hand in battle but also puts him in a constantly state of moral dread. He knows he can be a mighty conqueror the likes of Caesar but doesn’t know if he should be.  

Based on the popular young adult novels by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game is built on a foundation of tough philosophical questions like these. Tackling ethical issues that date back to the dawn of fighting with sticks and stone and span to our current climate of piloted drone warfare, moral quandaries are given precedence in the film, but often come across as heavy-handed. For a movie all about tactics, it’s lacking in tactical approach to philosophy as process. Socrates, famous for breaking down prejudices in order to reach universal truth, championed the dissection of established beliefs through reasoning alone. To discover truth, he used critical analysis to better understand the world around him and the many false beliefs that dominated society in large. Here, Ender’s philosophy is a means to an end, an “I told you so” of childish rashness. Rather than a thought process, here philosophy is a bat. Like Bonzo, you’ll want to be sure to cover your head.

Philosophical dissection of Ender’s Game aside, the film floats by on the freckled charm of Asa Butterfield (Hugo). Unlike his peers, Ender has a preternatural tact for foreseeing the consequences, good and bad, of his physical actions and a pension for using violence to prevent future violence and Butterfield does a fine job at conveying the dueling nature of Ender’s innocence and incessant scheming. At once aggressive and acutely aware of the danger of his aggression, Ender is a moral complex character – a suiting trait for the morally complex world he inhabits.

On Earth, 50 years have passed since a devastating alien attack almost wiped clean the slate of our planet’s population. Like a post-9/11 America, tapestries wallpaper the walls with sentiments of “Never Forget.” At the hands of the bug-like Formics, Earthlings faced their demise but managed victory by a move of much-celebrated battlefield bravado. One man, we are told, single-handedly chased the enemy off and ever since, Earth has awaited the return of their ruthless enemy, all the while training legions of child soldiers. Picked as the last hope for humanity, children are utilized for their fast processing skills, unfaltering obedience, and gullible code of honor. Ender is chosen to lead not because of his tendency towards violence but because of his thought process within violence. Never the one to start a fight but always the one to finish it, he’s not a sadist, but a tactician. For these qualities, Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) seems Ender at the ideal candidate to lead Earth’s troops into the final battle with the Formic.
   
Joining Butterfield is a legion of youth actors that act little more than their age. Moises Arias as Bonzo and Hailee Steinfeld as Petra both do suitable caricatures of the seething bully and flirty love interest but Abigail Breslin as Ender’s sister Valentine is really the most reined in of these child performers. Her character is harmony, her performance refined, a nice counterpoint to the violence lifestyle that Ender’s profession has surrounded him by. She, and bullying older brother Peter, are the fulcrum points around which Ender measures himself. As Colonel Graff says, he needs to be someone who can harness both violence and peace – a cocktail of serenity and rage.

S

As relevant as many of the issues seen in Ender’s Game are today (drone warfare, surveillance, video game violence, child soldiers), they fly in your face, never really developing the why? of it all.

these issues translate well  dissects these
Barking out commands with the crackly voice of a teen in metamorphosis, Ender wins the  

drone warfare
surveillance
video game violence
child soldiers
communism expressed as the “hive mentality”

Violence in video games is different from violence in real life.

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WOLF OF WALL STREET Gets New Trailer and 2 Hour 45 Min Runtime

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After long-awaited news that Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street would be pushed to Christmas Day, the old trailer touting the November 15 release date was immediately outdated and badly needed an update. One of the key reasons that why the film was pushed took place in the editing room as Marty’s early cut of the film crossed the pariah-like three hour mark. With the new cut of the film pushing 2 hours and 45 minutes, it’s fair to say that Scorsese’s latest will still be another crime epic suiting his long form story-telling tactics.

At this point in the game, Wolf is a massively unknown Oscar contender. It’s not difficult to see a situation in which the film plays more like a dark comedy than Academy fare but it’s also likely that Scorsese’s latest nabs a good number of nominations on its way out the door. Leonardo DiCaprio is probably the most likely of the cast to be nominated but early stirrings for Jonah Hill and Matthew McConaughey haven’t seemed to stop yet. However a supporting nomination for McConaughey here seems very unlikely, as he is sure to grab a Best Actor nod for his work in Dallas Buyers Club.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN329BNwtho

The Wolf of Wall Street is directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo Dicaprio, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey,  Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau, Kyle Chandler, Jean Dujardin, Rob Reiner and Spike Jonze. It hits theaters November 15.

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Emile Hirsch Cast in John BELUSHI Biopic

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According to the Hollywood Reporter, Emile Hirsch has been cast as comedy legend John Belushi, in the Steve Conrad directed biopic simply named Belushi. Conrad’s film will follow the heights reached by Belushi’s comedic genius, as well as his self-induced downfall and eventual death at the hands of drugs and alcohol.

Hirsch undoubtedly has some ridiculously large shoes to fill. Considering the relative recency of Belushi’s body of work, easy access to his “Greatest Hits Clips” could render any missteps in portrayal by Hirsch as a fodder for tough critics. However, John Belushi’s friend and SNL co-star, Dan Aykroyd will serve as the film’s executive producer, which may alleviate audience’s worries at some extent or perhaps usher in a different set of uneasy feelings. Hopefully, we can expect an honest attempt from Aykroyd to tribute his dear friend on the silver screen, rather than another “the time is ripe” cash grab. Jim Carrey proved a similar feat possible with his portrayal of comic legend Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. Perhaps Hirsch should give him a call. Filming is set to start in New York early next year. 

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