There is one unpleasant truth about the current wave of 3d Re-Releases hitting cinemas in the coming weeks, months and years. The door is now wide open for some directors to continually fiddle with their films post-release.

It is one thing to release a director’s cut, or advertise an alternate take on a film, but, as George Lucas has proved time and again, sometimes the filmmakers just make changes and don’t acknowledge previous versions at all. Cementing what ever current release as ‘the’ version of the movie everyone is meant to see. This rarely goes over well.

So has James Cameron gone down this potentially dark path with his new 3D Re-Release of Titanic? Well according The Telegraph, yes and no:

There are very few things Pixar could do that would get me more excited to see one of their films. Between the overall popularity of Toy Story, Up, The Incredibles and tons more, there is very little the animation studio can do that would be considered a bad move (Owen Wilson vehicles not included).

With that said, it’s hard to believe they’ve found a way to speak to their audience even more with their upcoming video game parody film, Wreck-It Ralph, but it looks like they just might. Here’s the official synopsis of the film. Consider it Donkey Kong from the gorilla’s perspective.

Wreck-It Ralph (voice of John C. Reilly) longs to be as beloved as his game’s perfect Good Guy, Fix-It Felix (voice of 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer). Problem is, nobody loves a Bad Guy. But they do love heroes… so when a modern, first-person shooter game arrives featuring tough-as-nails Sergeant Calhoun (voice of Jane Lynch), Ralph sees it as his ticket to heroism and happiness. He sneaks into the game with a simple plan—win a medal—but soon wrecks everything, and accidentally unleashes a deadly enemy that threatens every game in the arcade.

Ralph’s only hope? Vanellope von Schweetz (voice of Sarah Silverman), a young troublemaking “glitch” from a candy-coated cart racing game who might just be the one to teach Ralph what it means to be a Good Guy. But will he realize he is good enough to become a hero before it’s “Game Over” for the entire arcade?

As if the concept of several video and board games being parodied in a Pixar film isn’t enough to guarantee your $10, the studio has recently released some images that will give us an idea of how this video game-based world will look. Take a look after the jump, and catch Wreck-It Ralph in theaters this November.

Continue Reading →

Last month we spent time reviewing the Golden Globe nominated film scores, at the time I had only listened to one of them going in so it was a nice way to start award season and catch up on some great scores. Now that the Oscar nominations have been released I was going to do the same thing, only I have already reviewed most of them

Thankfully I spaced out and didn’t review the second of John Williams two nominated scores yet, The Adventures of Tintin, so I can knock out the last of the major nominated scores and be all caught up in time for the big show next month. After this week I will move onto the two films with Oscar nominated songs to spice things up a bit.

The Adventures of Tintin is the second score from Williams this year and in tandem with War Horse showcases the Maestro’s range as a composer, even today. Based on the action/adventure films Williams has composed for in the past, Tintin  marks a bit of a departure as the music is not dominated by specific themes, it is more a collection of classic action music that sets the stage for the impressive animated film.

Continue Reading →

At 5:30 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed their nominations for this year’s Oscars.

Hugo leads with 11 total nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The Artist scored 10 nods.

Some of the nominations were a big surprise, especially in the Best Picture catagory. While films like The Artist and The Descendants were a shoe-in, especially after their performance in the Golden Globes, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Help were also recognized. Also curiously, there were only nine pictures nominated as opposed to ten, which we’ve seen the past two years.

Best Director is chock full of veteran Oscar nominees. Woody Allen, Terrance Malick, Alexander Payne, and Martin Scorsese have earned almost 40 nominations all together. Michel Hazanivicus, however, is up for his first nomination.

Most notably absent from several catagories was Drive, for Best Picture, Best Actor for Ryan Gosling’s spectacular performance and Best Supporting Actor for Albert Brooks. It dig snag a nomination for Sound Editing, but I would have liked to see it recognized a bit more.

The Oscar buzz continues until the Academy Awards ceremony airs on Sunday February 26th. You can see the full listing of nominees after the jump, and let us know what you think of the nominations!

Continue Reading →

If there is one franchise that has managed to live up to its very low standard, film after film, it would have to be Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil. Since the first one back in 2002, this franchise has managed to keep up with the technology, while hardly losing any of the excitement that fans are piling in to see with every new release.

With that comes Retribution, the fifth film in the franchise. This time, we’ve got a full group of folks joining from across the decade-spanning films. Joining lead Milla Jovovich this time around is Michelle Rodriguez (returning from the first film), Oded Fehr (Apocalypse & Extinction), and Sienna Guillory (Apocalypse & Afterlife).

A pretty stellar cast, given the heavy mythos of this world. And speaking of heavy, here’s the synopsis (as if you needed one):

The Umbrella Corporation’s deadly T-virus continues to ravage the Earth, transforming the global population into legions of the flesh eating Undead. The human race’s last and only hope, Alice (Milla Jovovich), awakens in the heart of Umbrella’s most clandestine operations facility and unveils more of her mysterious past as she delves further into the complex.

Without a safe haven, Alice continues to hunt those responsible for the outbreak; a chase that takes her from Tokyo to New York, Washington, D.C. and Moscow, culminating in a mind-blowing revelation that will force her to rethink everything that she once thought to be true. Aided by newfound allies and familiar friends, Alice must fight to survive long enough to escape a hostile world on the brink of oblivion. The countdown has begun.

Take a look at the trailer after the jump, in which takes a fun jab at the world of tablets we’ve come to live in. Catch Resident Evil: Retribution in theaters and in 3D on September 14th.

Continue Reading →

If you’ve been keeping with our previous posts, you can see that this year is going to be quite the melting pot of horror films. In today’s installment, we sum it all up with the final films of 2012.

Check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t yet. Now onto the rest.

October 5, 2012 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D

(Distributed by Lionsgate Films) This film is intended as somewhat of an alternate sequel to the original 1974 film directed by Tobe Hooper and advances thirty five years into the story.

October 19, 2012 – Paranormal Activity 4

(Distributed by Paramount Pictures) The film is a continuation of the series.  If you’ve seen one then you’ve pretty much seen them all.

Continue Reading →

This past weekend we saw the release of Beauty and the Beast in 3D, the most recent in a string of classic films getting a 3D face lift.  The next big re-release is only a few weeks away with the first of the Star Wars 3D updates. Lucas is starting with Episode One, and is moving on through the franchise with a new re-release every year.

Even though the prequel trilogy lives in infamy among most film fans, the impending arrival of a Star Wars film on the big screen still holds some weight. In advance of the February launch a new set of five posters has hit the web, each with a wildy different design and most of them actually pretty cool.

It is gratifying that the posters excise the existence of Jar Jar Binks completely, although it would have been nice had Jake Lloyd received the same treatment. The upcoming 3D versions of these films represents the greatest perk of the 3D post conversion era we live in.

To have an opportunity to watch classic films on the big screen again in new and exciting ways is an exciting proposition. Hopefully lesser films like the prequel trilogy don’t ruin it before we get back to the original trilogy.

You can see the whole set of new posters after the jump.

Continue Reading →

Fans everywhere who were grinding their teeth during the reboot of the classic Clash of the Titans back in 2010 will finally have another reason to have the studio system as the trailer for Wrath of the Titans has hit the web.

Sure, it had a bad wrap the moment we found out a reboot to such a classic was even getting made, but the trailer doesn’t do much to show us otherwise. Here’s the unnecessarily massive synopsis, so you don’t get lost.

A decade after his heroic defeat of the monstrous Kraken, Perseus (Worthington) –the demigod son of Zeus (Neeson)–is attempting to live a quieter life as a village fisherman and the sole parent to his 10-year old son, Helius. Meanwhile, a struggle for supremacy rages between the gods and the Titans.

Dangerously weakened by humanity’s lack of devotion, the gods are losing control of the imprisoned Titans and their ferocious leader, Kronos, father of the long-ruling brothers Zeus, Hades (Fiennes) and Poseidon (Danny Huston). The triumvirate had overthrown their powerful father long ago, leaving him to rot in the gloomy abyss of Tartarus, a dungeon that lies deep within the cavernous underworld.

Continue Reading →

I tend to think of Scorsese as a master of genre films—he’s done gangster films (Goodfellas, Casino), comedy (After Hours, The King of Comedy), police drama (The Departed), psychological thriller (Shutter Island), boxing (Raging Bull), biopic (Kundun, The Aviator, No Direction Home), concert (Shine a Light), historical (Gangs of New York), literary classic (The Age of Innocence), even a remake Cape Fear) and a sequel (The Color of Money)—but he tends to bring such a distinct touch to the films, they don’t quite feel like genre films.

So when I heard he was taking a stab at a kiddie flick, Hugo immediately shot to my most anticipated Scorsese film to date (outside, of course, of the fictional film he was making with Larry David as the money-hurling mob boss in Curb Your Enthusiasm)—added to that who wouldn’t be interested in Scorsese’s take on 3D?

And Hugo doesn’t disappoint. It’s not the most compelling story, but for all its two-hour-seven-minute running time, I wasn’t bored once. There’s a lot more going on, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but first the rundown.

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an urchin who haunts a Paris railway station in the early 1930s, repairing its clocks and stealing various cogs and sprockets to rebuild the homunculus he and his father (Jude Law) were working on right up to his death. While Hugo tends to remain out of the sight and mind of the station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), he’s less successful evading the eye of the toymaker he robs (Ben Kingsley). Caught trying to thieve a wind-up mouse, he’s forced to give up his father’s notebook, which includes all the instructions on repairing the mechanical man and provokes a strange reaction from the toymaker.

Continue Reading →

Mario has a brand new game just around the corner. To celebrate the release of Super Mario 3D Land, Nintendo took over Time Square in New York City, brining a little bit of the mushroom kingdom to throngs of fans. Set up on the streets of New York was a life size Mario dream land, complete with pipes, bouncy coin jumps and a classic flag pole at the end.

The brand new 3DS game is the first original adventure for Mario on Nintendo’s newest handheld, and anticipation could not be higher. The glasses-less 3D technology has always been impressive, but the 3DS has been lacking a lynch pin game to make people need the device. Nintendo has high hopes Super Mario 3d Land is that game. Word on the street in Mushroom Land, New York is that Nintendo might have gotten their wish.

We are most excited about the triumphant return of the Tanooki Suit, Mario’s full body raccoon outfit. This awesome costume debuted in Super Mario Bros. 3 on the original NES and has been woefully underused since. Mario has donned several full body costumes, but there was always something extra amazing about seeing our favorite plummer get his furry on.

You can catch a video of the awesome Super Mario 3D Land event after the jump.

Continue Reading →

There’s an old saying that goes something like “don’t fix something if it isn’t broken”. The people that manage Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s career obviously know this saying very well. When he broke the bank in Disney’s The Game Plan, they thought it may be a good idea to use him in a reboot of the classic Escape from Witch Mountain film.

That movie raked in millions as well, so what’s next? How about a sequel to a film from only a few years ago that was so bad, it forced Brendan Fraser out of the acting game completely. That’s where Journey 2: The Mysterious Island comes into play. Here’s the Rock-centered premise.

Young adventurer Sean (Josh Hutcherson) receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist–a place of strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes, and more than one astonishing secret. Unable to stop him from going, Sean’s new stepfather (Johnson) joins the quest. Together with a helicopter pilot (Guzman( and his beautiful, strong-willed daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant (Caine) and escape before seismic shock waves force the island under the sea and bury its treasures forever.

Can this franchise be saved by Dwayne’s comedic charm? Or will this fall under the umbrella of “bad ideas” that New Line has masterminded over the past years? Decide for yourself after the jump with the first trailer. Journey 2 hits theaters February 10th.

Continue Reading →

Everyone loves evil counterparts. Superman had Bizarro, He-Man had Faker, and Captain Planet had Captain Pollution. For decades, people have loved seeing evil “mirror universe” versions of our favorite characters, so why don’t the Muppets get the same love?

That’s exactly what we’re getting in the brand new trailer for Jason Segel’s upcoming revamp, The Muppets. In the film Segel attempts to bring the once superstar Muppets back to the stage they were made to perform on. Here’s the full synopsis.

On vacation in Los Angeles, Walter, the world’s biggest Muppet fan, and his friends Gary (Jason Segel) and Mary (Amy Adams) from Smalltown, USA, discover the nefarious plan of oilman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) to raze the Muppet Theater and drill for the oil recently discovered beneath the Muppets’ former stomping grounds.

To stage The Greatest Muppet Telethon Ever and raise the $10 million needed to save the theater, Walter, Mary and Gary help Kermit reunite the Muppets, who have all gone their separate ways: Fozzie now performs with a Reno casino tribute band called the Moopets, Miss Piggy is a plus-size fashion editor at Vogue Paris, Animal is in a Santa Barbara clinic for anger management, and Gonzo is a high-powered plumbing magnate.

Check out these “Moopets” and the full trailer after the jump. The film is set to hit theaters on November 23rd.

Continue Reading →