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Joaquin Phoenix Loves an AI in Spike Jonze's HER Trailer

Spike Jonze is a brilliant filmmaker. From Adaptation to Being John Malkovich, Where the Wild Things Are to Jackass, he has a unique view of things, typically informed by the writing of Charlie Kaufman. While Her is not a collaboration with Kaufman, it is an original concept from Jonze that sounds kind of intriguing until you watch the trailer and its massively talented cast. Then, it becomes very, very intriguing.

Joaquin Phoenix is Theodore Twombly, a heartbroken and lonely writer. In the throes of a post-breakup depression, Twombly develops an unlikely relationship with his newly-purchased operating system that’s designed to meet his every need (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).

The film co-stars Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pratt and Scarlett Johansson as the voice of “Samantha”.

Take a look at the trailer and see if you’d want to go running to theaters to see this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4

Her is directed by Spike Jonze and stars Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Pratt and Rooney Mara. It hits theaters on November 20.

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First Look at Ginsberg Murder Mystery KILL YOUR DARLINGS

 

Godawful poster aside, Kill Your Darlings is a film worth looking into. Actor Daniel Radcliffe seems to be doing everything in his power to expunge his association with the eponymous character from the Harry Potter saga, this time taking the mantle of the beatnik bard, Allen Ginsberg. The film centers around a murder that draws the superheroes of the beatnik generation, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, together Avengers-style.

With stars Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan giving this film a powerful soul and first time director John Krokidas taking the beatnik generation in a new and inspired direction, this walked away from this year’s Sundance Film Festival with mostly positive buzz. While it’s not slated to go wide anywhere yet, Kill Your Darlings will see a limited release on October 18.

Kill Your Darlings is directed by John Krokidas and stars Daniel Radcliffe, Dane Dehaan, Michael C. Hall, Ben Foster, Elizabeth Olsen, Jack Huston, Davis Cross and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It hits limited theaters on October 18.

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It's Hammer Time in Second THOR: THE DARK WORLD Trailer

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After a host of teaser pictures, a first trailer and a rather dull poster, Thor: The Dark World returns to the internet world to excite the feeble minds of the fanboy drones. While “superhero fatigue” is certainly a thing many bloggers experience, I have pretty much been onboard with the Marvel films up to this point. The onslaught of marketing though does get tiring. So without further adieu, here is the newest trailer for Thor: The Dark World. Expect about three more before it debuts in November.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npvJ9FTgZbM

Thor: The Dark World is directed by Game of Thrones helmer Alan Taylor andstars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie PortmanTom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins and opens in theaters on November 8, 2013.

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Muppet Trailer for MUPPETS MOST WANTED

After the success of the Jason Segel-led The Muppets, Disney seems to have a fresh start for one of their most popular franchises that will be followed up with Muppets Most Wanted. While Segel won’t be returning, the Muppet legacy of having puppets surrounded by a wildly talented cast continues as Muppets Most Wanted will feature Tom Hiddleston, Christoph Waltz, Ray Liotta, Tina Fey, Danny Trejo, Ty Burrell, Frank Langella and Ricky Gervais.

This newest Muppet film follows the newly reunited crew on a world tour where they find themselves wrapped into an European jewel-heist caper headed by a Kermit the Frog lookalike and his dastardly sidekick. Take a look at the trailer and see if you will make it to the theater to see Kermit, Ms. Piggy and the gang back in action.

Muppets Most Wanted is directed by James Bobins and stars Tom Hiddleston, Christoph Waltz, Ray Liotta, Tina Fey, Danny Trejo, Ty Burrell, Frank Langella and Ricky Gervais.

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Newest DIANA Biopic Trailer

A few months back, we had our first look at Naomi Watts as Princess Di in the first trailer for the once-thought to be Oscar contender. However with its lack of festival play and studios lack of interest in sweeping it up (it was eventually picked up by the very unknown Embankment Films), it’s Oscar chances seem to be disintegrating by the day.

Whether this means Watts won’t be earning the nomination that so many people expected her to garnish from this is unclear but it does mean a resounding lack of faith in the product they are pedaling. Take a look at the trailer and see if you think that Watts still has a shot at a nom.

Diana is directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and stars Naomi Watts and Naveen Andrews. Although it is still without an official release date, it’ll be sure to hit theaters in the thick of this year’s Oscar season.

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Things Heat up in Next THE COUNSELOR Trailer

A seeming onslaught of material for Ridley Scott’s (Gladiator, Alien) The Counselor is bursting from the gates with a second, or third if you count the foreign teaser, trailer just released. With a script penned by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, The Road), this Fox 2000 stars Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, in the story of a lawyer turned drug smuggler who gets too deep in a dirty business.

While it’s Oscar changes are unknown, The Counselor will hopefully be the caliber of film that’ll turn churn up some interest some award’s season, or at least be an epic time at the theaters. With the talent involved, I’m really expecting something special.

Check out this third trailer and if you they’ve bought your ticket yet.

The Counselor is directed by Ridley Scott, written by Cormac McCartney and stars Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. It hits theaters October 25.

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Out in Theaters: THE SPECTACULAR NOW

“The Spectacular Now”
Directed by James Ponsoldt
Starring Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Brie Larson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bob Odenkirk
Comedy, Drama
95 Mins
R

What do you get when you fold an affable high school comedy into a serious meditation on heredity and real-world relationships? Apparently a winning formula as The Spectacular Now manages to merge comedy and drama seamlessly. Instead of the competing comedic and tragic elements compromising each other’s effectiveness, both sides benefit from the inclusion of the other and result in a film that’s both genuinely funny and emotionally meaningful. Relative newcomer Miles Teller (Project X) lights up the screen as Sutter Kelly and the many relationships he surrounds himself with are earnest but guarded, bitter yet sweet – much like the film itself.

The film opens within a somewhat retread formula as Sutter responds to a college application asking him to recount the most difficult challenge he has had to overcome. Even though his Dad is out of the picture, Sutter has mostly skated through life with semi-charmed naivety. As far as he sees it, being a white-collar, middle-class child of a single parent hasn’t been particularly hard for him. However, we eventually learn though that this is only the impression he wants to give off. Instead of searching himself to truly discover the hardships of his life, he slams out a half-hearted essay on getting over his recently ex-girlfriend, Cassidy, played by Brie Larson (United States of Tara). Playing the part of the jester has become his calling card so it’s no wonder that he can’t take a question about personal challenge seriously.

In the process of moving on from this generic “he’s cool, she’s cool” high school relationship, Sutter falls deep into an alcoholic stupor. After a night of particularly heavy drinking, Sutter wakes up disoriented and car-less in Aimee Finnicky’s lawn. Unlike Sutter, Aimee Finnicky, played by Shailene Woodley (The Descendants), is not popular. She agrees to help him find his car and they strike up an unlikely relationship. Unlike the superficial sexual scourging of his past, Sutter surprises himself with how gentle and earnest his relationship with Aimee is. Finding similarly wounded souls in each other,  they begin to reveal their unlicked wounds that have caked up over the years.

It’s not like we haven’t seen the formula of ‘popular boy who dates an unpopular girl and ends up falling in love with her’ before but it’s never been quite like this. Instead of the cheap, formulaic third-act revelation of “You only dated me because of blank?!” or “First Name Last Name, you broke my heart”, this leads to something far more genuine and poignant on every front. Instead of an easy escape, director James Ponsoldt straps his characters in and sets them on an emotional crash course within their respective families. Since we genuinely feel for these injured and innocent characters, we want them to succeed, we want them to find happiness and we want them to grow, making it all the more difficult when we see them falter and stall out.

With the late high school setting, breezy comic sensibility and similar visual palette, I felt like I was in store from some kind of Superbad knock-off and couldn’t shake the fact that Sutter looked like a lab experiment crossbreed of Fred Savage and Shia LaBeaouf matched with Jonah Hill‘s voice (see the film and you’ll know exactly what I mean.) But as the film opened up its story to something larger than the transitory high school setting, it presented a whole other realm of storytelling potential. With this, it seizes that opportunity to become more than just low-brow comedy or story-boarded dramatics and captures a rare potency.

Whereas the first act thrives off of Sutter’s comedic timing and the second on the Woodley and Teller’s chemistry, as the film charges into its final act, Ponsoldt tips the film into more challenging territory. As the threads keeping Sutter’s life together unwind, the performances step to the forefront and both Teller and Woodley handle the emotional gravitas with careful footing.

Piggy-backing on her critically acclaimed performance in The Descendents, Woodley is a rock. She steps inside of Aimee, embodying her easily won-over plain Jane with original flair. After being overlooked for Oscar gold for her last solid effort, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her name on many prognosticators’ lips this season.

As our tour guide through this whole venture, Sutter is an uncharacteristically complex teenager. Ponsoldt isn’t afraid to step into the shadows and strip Sutter of his saccharine veneer and reveal the wounded, frightened child abandoned by his daddy. When forced to face his demons, even when the result is ugly, Teller demonstrates his full commitment to Sutter’s character and presents a rounded and bold-blooded man-child stabbing holes in his own chrysalis.

Proving again that he can juggle sincerity and comedy, Ponsoldt does it even more effectively here than he did with his last effort Smashed. Where he could easily have descended into preaching or easy-outs, he chooses the difficult road because it more genuinely suits his characters and his story. As Sutter and Aimee race closer towards graduation, the film shifts towards a more philosophical approach, tackling what, exactly, this “spectacular now” means. Living life in the moment is Sutter’s excuse for his incessant slacking and glossy lifestyle but upon meeting his deadbeat dad (Kyle Chandler), he realizes that maybe growing up is a necessary evil after all.

Dodging the stuffy trappings of many coming-of-age tales by reworking their stereotypes to its benefit, The Spectacular Now eclipses expectation. Instead of avoiding clichés entirely, Ponsoldt uses them to his advantage. And while the framework for the genre has clearly already been established, it rarely results in something this good and all around meaningful. It joins the ranks of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Superbad as timeless films about the difficulty of transition and the promise of human connection while carving out enough of a name for itself to be remembered years down the line.

A-

————–——-For my interview with director James Ponsoldst, click here. ————-——–

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Documentary Dossier: BLACKFISH

“Blackfish”
Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite

Documentary, Drama
90 Mins
PG-13

A documentary thrives on three elements: diligent research, visceral impact and well-structured organization. Going down that list, Blackfish can take solace in a big black check through each. Although I wasn’t as knotted up as the woman wiping a torrent of tears from her eyes for a good 75 percent of the film sitting next to me, the weighty subject matter, hard hitting questions and inviting narrative structure make this a documentary that is not to be missed.

Documenting the life of a single killer whale who takes his genus name all too seriously, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite invites us to explore not the life of a monster but the journey of a tormented soul. In true documentarian fashion, Cowperthwaite takes us to the beginning of the story so that we can better understand the perceived transformation of one docile creature into a man-eating beast.
At the mere age of two, Tilikum is chased down by a flock of seamen working as orca-capturers in nearby Puget Sound. Cordoned off from his mother and roughly hauled into restraints, the young Tilikum jolts in self-aware terror. All the while, his family surrounds the sidelines, separated from their children by fishermen’s nets, wailing away in obvious displays of affectionate grief. In these moments, Cowperthwaite begins to trace the deep-seeded emotional complexity of the Orca species while winning over our sympathies and our curiosities.

Bringing in a neurologist to examine the structure of an orca brain, we’re told that the orca limbic system (an neurological structure linked to emotion) is far more complex and advanced than those found in humans. Because the limbic system is connected to emotional response, this shows an unparalleled emotional complexity residing within the orca species. Research going above and beyond like this, matched with well-timed placement within the film, makes the ensuing ordeal all the more horrifying.

Since the young orcas are the only ones suitable to capture (as shipping costs are quite obviously the first and only concern) there is no regard for the larger, elder ones. Those caught in the nets are sliced open, stuffed with rocks and tied to anchors. Their unsightly (and considerably illegal) corpses are then sent discreetly to the bottom of the ocean. Cowperthwaite has somehow uncovered video evidence of this sad state of affairs and her superlative ability to seek out and appropriately harness this footage is unmatched.

What Cowperthwaite was not able to get footage of, she has broadcast with animated recreation. Rendering the capture of Tilikum in post-amateur animation is not strictly a necessity but it adds a narrative course that if missing would invoke a sense of lost chronology.  Under a self-imposed weight of incumbency, Cowperthwaite revels in fierce levels of detail, revealing and recreating all that she can. In this perseverance to disseminate the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Blackfish stands out from amongst the documentary crowd.

The young but fast growing Tilikum is next sent to Canada to perform at Sealand of the Pacific, where he spends the majority of his time in a 20 foot by 30 foot pool shared with two other foreign orcas who take to chastising and bullying him. They often “rake” his blubbery exterior – essentially stripping his flesh into bloody ribbons with their teeth. As Tilikum suffers, his captors grow rich. As his “cellmates” rake his flesh, his captors rake in the money. The bottom-of-the-barrel standards are shockingly poor and we watch helplessly; mystified and dazed in a stupefied horror.

When one Sealand trainer slips into the tank, she is brutalized and murdered with eyewitness accounts placing responsibility on the male bull with whom we are already familiar: Tilikum. Seizing the opportunity to make some money on the way out, Sealand of the Pacific ships the dangerous orca off to the Disney World of ocean parks; Seaworld. These are the conspicuous beginnings of a whale, which has now wracked up a body count of three to perform to this day and yet continues to perform.

In an attempt to peek behind the curtain, Cowperthwaite shifts her focus onto the corporate structure of SeaWorld and their backwater tactics of secrecy, collusion, and irresponsibility. This is an organization that knowingly deceives park-guests, employees, and advocacy groups, asserting that orcas in no way pose a threat to their trainers. In some regard, they’re right, as there are no documented cases of orca-on-human violence documented in the wild. In captivity however, the number of assaults are staggering. The real shock is not in the data though but in the willingness of the corporate giant to sweep it under the rug.

In this wheelhouse of misinformation, only disaster can follow. Taking the accounts of various former SeaWorld trainers, Cowperthwaite correctly points out how they, nor their captive animals, are the ones to blame. These trainers are passionate about the animals they work with and are deceived into participating in a tremendously vicious cycle where they must literally put their lives on the line if they wish to continue working with the animals.

From SeaWorld’s perspective, there is no need for concern about employees’ safety regardless of the fact that they’re working with 5000 pound giants. Furthermore, all responsibility from a resulting “accident” should rest solely on human error. Even though their claim is blatantly preposterous and illegitimate, they continue to dictate the circumstances of work expectations and, after accidents, courtroom dealings. Regrettably, it took the death of a renowned coworker, Dawn Brancheau, to bring the issue into the limelight.

But even advocates for humane treatment of the captured orcas and the neglected trainers don’t have a tangible solution in mind. The problem is set and in a self-perpetuating cycle. These domesticated orcas have no place to go, as they cannot be released into the wild without an ardent rehabilitation regiment, while their caged interactions are barefaced ticking-time-bombs. It’s a problem without an obvious solution and one that seems to be charging onward.

What Cowperthwaite manages to do best with Blackfish is to not demonize her subject Tilikum. While this could have been a field day for euthanizing the undeniably violent creature, it is instead a case for his defense. As one advocate rightfully says, “How would you feel if you were trapped in a bath tub for 20 years?” Both provocateur and informant, Blackfish highlights out the blood in the water and invites the sharks to swarm. While Cowperthwaite doesn’t strictly call for an up-in-arms boycott of SeaWorld, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt. As both a moral defense of its subject, an intelligent debasing of the SeaWorld corporation and an elegantly made piece of film, Blackfish walks on water.

A-

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Promo Trask Inc. Teaser and First Look at Mystique and Sentinels for X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

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In a bit of a news roundup, I’m trying to cover all the press material literally flying out of X-Men: Days of Future Past. After the success of The Wolverine and the post-credits scenes that more than hinted at the next step in the X-Men film franchise, Days of Future Past is gearing up to pull a bit of an Avengers move in bringing together the entirety of the X-Men film universe.

The first bit is a promo teaser that comes from the perspective of Trask Industries, the enemy in this next installment that threatens to eliminate all of mutantkind once and for all. “Join Trask Industries” it says, “as we celebrate 50 years of the Sentinel program and look forward to an even brighter future.” 

While I’m not quite up to snuff on my X-Men mythology, Sentinels are giant, killer robots seen as the solution to the “mutant problem.” The leader of Trask Inc.? Peter Dinklage

Take a look at Dinklage as Bolivar Trask as well as a picture of a full-sized sentinel from the set that director Bryan Singer tweeted earlier today.

Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask

 

   
Bryan Singer on set with full-sized sentinel. 

 

X-Men: Days of Future Past is directed by Bryan Singer and stars Patrick Stewart, James McAvoy, Ian McKellen, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Ellen Page, Anna Paquin, Shaun Ashmore, Omar Sy and Evan Peters. It hits theaters on May 23, 2014.