Posted on Dec 31, 2009 under Main |
The one to attend in 2009 … Malin Ackerman and Billy Crudup in Watchmen
In this season of lists, I thought I’d run down my top 10 science-fiction, fantasy and comicbook movies of the year. Easy peasy, or so I imagined, until I got to flick No 6 and realised there have actually not been that many films this year that I could put hand on heart and say I’ve absolutely loved. So here without further ado, are Week in Geek’s top five movies of the year, followed through the five I’ve least enjoyed.
1. Watchmen
Zack Snyder’s epic adaptation of the classic graphic novel attracted as many persons brickbats for the reason that it did plaudits from the critics. Those who hated the film pointed out that you couldn’t really “get it” without having read the original Alan Moore comic about masked vigilantes estate in an alternate 1984. Yet the movie’s three key scenes – the opening montage of 20th-century alternative history, Dr Manhattan’s look back at his own life from the exterior of Mars, and Rorschach’s final moments – have been equalled through few films in the last decade, let lone in 2009.
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Posted on Dec 30, 2009 under Main |
Juno … an alumnus of the Black List of unproduced screenplays
The past year has been a good one for phantom films, those unfinished or never-quite-started projects that conformation a tantalising shadow history of cinema – be a witness of Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, the capacious research for which has finally reached daylight in the form of a dogmatical Taschen tome, or Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno, the subject of a modern documentary. BBC4’s Christmas Welles season, through its focus on the decade or two rear Citizen Kane, couldn’t help but appear to be a catalogue of what-ifs and near-misses.
But shadow cinema is not restricted to the archives. Every December, Franklin Leonard of the William Morris agency in Los Angeles releases his Black List, a rundown of the best unproduced screenplays currently doing the rounds in Hollywood. Compiled by the agency of collating the opinions of greater quantity than 300 industry insiders, the rundown supposedly showcases first copy and accomplished work that potency not otherwise have a snowball in hell’s chance of production. Scripts mentioned over the list’s five-year history have included Juno, Lars and the Real Girl, The Road and This Side of the Truth (later renamed The Invention of Lying). So the unveiling of a new tally at year’s end is seen in the industry to the degree that a chance to get up to speed by what’s bubbling under.
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Posted on Dec 30, 2009 under Main |
PG | 1 hr 28 mins | Children’s,Comedy film,family movie
In 2007, “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” a multinational phenomenon to generations of fans.. Now Dr. Dolittle’s Betty Thomas helms with Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, and Jesse McCartney returning to the degree that the voices of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore.
Synopsis:
The sweet singing and dance trio of legendary marmots extends their big screen high jinks with this follow-up to the 20th Century Fox strike hit live action/CG clan comedy, this time incorporating a female translation of the group entitled the Chipettes.
Director: Betty Thomas
Starring: Starring: Jason Lee, Justin Long, David Cross, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney, Anna Faris, Christina Applegate, Amy Poehler, Zachary Levi
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Posted on Dec 29, 2009 under Main |
They crack you up … Robert Downey Jr as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson in Sherlock Holmes
Guy Ritchie’s take on Conan Doyle’s classic English sleuth is not exclusively of its problems: his protagonist does not very fit the action hero mould into which the much-maligned film-maker has squeezed him, and those who find Ritchie’s more laddish tendencies distasteful may be dismayed by the movie’s predilection for extreme violence. Nevertheless, the critics be in possession of just about bought Sherlock Holmes as every intermittently entertaining romp through a stylised Victorian London, thanks mainly to a barnstorming doing by Robert Downey Jr in the title role and its Dan Brown-lite storyline.
- Sherlock Holmes
- Production year: 2009
- Countries: Australia, Rest of the world, UK, USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 128 mins
- Directors: Guy Ritchie
- Cast: Bronagh Gallagher, Eddie Marsan, Geraldine James, Hans Matheson, James Fox, Jude Law, Kelly Reilly, Mark Strong, Rachel McAdams, Robert Downey Jr., William Hope
- More in continuance this film
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Posted on Dec 29, 2009 under Main |
Saving the globe, one chord at a time … Team America: World Police
Team America arrived slap bang in the middle of the decade. It was released in the UK in January 2005, the same week as Million Dollar Baby. That pellicle went on to dominate the Oscars; this has one lowly award to its credit (Empire’s best comedy).
- Team America: World Police
- Production year: 2004
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 15
- Runtime: 98 mins
- Directors: Trey Parker
- Cast: Kristen Miller, Matt Stone, Trey Parker
- More on this film
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Posted on Dec 29, 2009 under Main |
Our of the fog of war … The Hurt Locker, whose star Jeremy Renner and director Kathryn Bigelow should be in the Academy’sitting sights
As the end of 2009 approaches we’re in the thick of the US awards season and pretty much everyone from the critics groups and some of the guilds to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the American Film Institute and the local barman have publicised their nominees and winners. Top 10 palaestra with respect to 2009 have been drawn up, the year’s most admired actors and actresses have been proposed and anointed, and the merits of the best work in directing, screenwriting, editing and all the crafts have been debated. The only corpse that has yet to weigh in on the virtues of Gabourey Sidibe or George Clooney or Invictus is the tutelary of the Oscars – the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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Posted on Dec 28, 2009 under Main |
Imagine … Aaron Johnson as John Lennon in Nowhere Boy
Nowadays, most of us enjoy what academics in the same manner as to call “parasocial” lives, in which we feast steady the doings of our celebrity heroes even more voraciously than we hearken to the ups and downs, triumphs and embarrassments of our actual families and friends. Hence, perhaps, the current gusto for memoir of everything kinds.
- Nowhere Boy
- Production year: 2009
- Country: UK
- Cert (UK): 15
- Runtime: 97 mins
- Directors: Sam Taylor-Wood
- Cast: Aaron Johnson, Aaron Johnson, Anne-Marie Duff, David Morrissey, David Threlfall, Kristin Scott Thomas, Kristin Scott Thomas, Thomas Sangster
- More on this film
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Posted on Dec 28, 2009 under Main |
Grace under fire … Zoe Saldana in Avatar Photograph: 20th Century Fox
In the 2002 science fiction tale S1m0ne, disillusioned counsellor Viktor Taransky (Al Pacino) uses a computer program to create an apparently perfect female actor who goes attached to win an Oscar. It’s a last ditch attempt to salvage the film-maker’s new movie after his flesh-and-blood luminary walks finished on him. But S1m0ne is so strikingly realistic the public comes to believe she is an actual human being, causing Taransky difficulties when the distress want to interview her.
- Avatar
- Production year: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 161 mins
- Directors: James Cameron
- Cast: CCH Pounder, Giovanni Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana
- More on this film
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Posted on Dec 28, 2009 under Main |
Avatar … set to be one of the biggest movies of totality time
The winner
Proving that it is here to stay, Avatar slipped a absolute 3% in its advance weekend during the time that the Fox release generated a further $75m ($47m) in what turned out to be a record rupture session in North America. On the back of this astonishing holdover, James Cameron’sitting year-end treat is fast becoming everything Fox hoped it would have existence and looks set to become one of the biggest movies of all time. So far the North American take stands at $212.3m, and when you factor in the $405m international unrefined the worldwide tally is $617.3m. All this after but 12 days.
- Avatar
- Production year: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 161 mins
- Directors: James Cameron
- Cast: CCH Pounder, Giovanni Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana
- More on this film
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Posted on Dec 27, 2009 under Main |
PG-13 | Adventure Movie
The setting is sixth century Persia. Ubisoft’s popular video plan serials of the same name gets adapted for the big screen in this sweeping fantasy adventure.
Synopsis:
A nefarious nobleman covets the Sands of Time, a legendary gift from the gods that allows its owner to turn back time. Whoever has the Sands of Time has the force to rule the globe, and this villainous god would appliance that ability to deprive of liberty all of humanity. The solely person capable of overcoming this tyrant and keeping the world is Dastan (Gyllenhaal), a young prince. Now, with plucky sovereign’s daughter Tamina (Gemma Arterton) by his position, Dastan will effort to keep the Sands of Time from falling into the wrong hands.
Director: Mike Newell
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Alfred Molina, Toby Kebbell
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