Salt was originally written with the intention of becoming an espionage action-thriller with Tom Cruise as the lead. However, when Cruise backed out of the production… Jolie substituted the big name Mission: Impossible star and the script was rewritten for a female lead. Salt’s loosely modeled on the Bourne series with short, sharp bursts of action and a rogue agent on the loose.

This is your typical (wo)man-on-the-run actioner with a hot pursuit from government authorities in an attempt to dispatch the “traitor” with as little collateral damage as possible with one really big twist… it’s a lady spy. Don’t get me wrong, The Last Kiss Goodnight made Samuel L. Jackson look like the damsel in distress… but why can’t we just leave the kick-ass espionage to real-life characters like James Bond and Jason Bourne? “Who is Salt?” is this movie’s tag line… yet somehow “Pass the Salt.” may have been more fitting. Sorry Angie, better give it a rub.

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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There’s a cess-pit of bad football films out there.

Of course, the discerning viewer will recognise that Any Given Sunday rises above the sentiment and excrement that makes up 90% of the movies in this drama.

It’s a great film. There’s plenty of old-school Pacino filth and grit in there.

And there’s that one, iridescent moment that builds slowly without you even knowing it, until BAM, it’s there, and you know you’re looking at the pinnacle of the movie.

You know what I’m talking about. It’s the Inches Speech. The one that film critics praise as the most convincing Hollywood pep-talk on celluloid.

This one:

CLICK HERE for true glory

Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone ripped off Walt Disney’s Fantasia… well, at least the title of that famous 10-minute symphonic clip of Mickey Mouse and his magic shrooms brooms. Seventy years later we have the live-action The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which has taken revenge on Harry Potter with a knock-off adventure. It’s a vicious cycle and unfortunately, for hogwarts and potheads – Harry doesn’t make an appearance in this one – he doesn’t even feature in the title, poor blighter!

As far as fantasy adventures go, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice makes a worthy popcorn-popper in the build-up to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 scheduled for release in early December. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice follows in the wake of Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and is a safe bet if you got a kick out of that fun yet perilsome Harry Potter wannabe. Just imagine Nicolas Cage in National Treasure: Book of Secrets, except with long hair, a Merlin infatuation and a slightly more famous sidekick.

Catch the rest of the review, the trailer and Mickey Mouse after the jump…

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Word is afoot that a film version of my all time favourite childhood comic, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is in the works, with the writers of the Iron Man franchise on the case.

Although, whether this film will work for the generation that actually cared about the comic remains to be seen. After all, the turtles were a favourite childhood comic for some very good reasons. When you’re a child, you desperately want to be a teenager. Being a ninja that is both teenage AND a mutant turtle is a trifecta of awesomeness that no pre-pubescent being can deny.

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Screw G.I. Joe, The A-Team are the quintessential All-American action heroes from the ’80s… destined to be everyone’s favourite crack commando squad of mercenaries from now until the end of time. I can tell… I had a Murdock action figure (don’t judge me). Action, adventure, comedy and mild peril… The A-Team had it all and who can forget Hannibal Smith’s wise-cracks, disguises and cigar-champing, B.A.’s ingenuity, mohawk and bling, Murdock’s voices, madcap antics and crazy eyes or Faceman’s erm… face.

They brought television to the people like Robin Hood and his merry men would’ve if they’d had TV in their day with action-packed adventure, comedy, crime and heaps of explosive (and surprisingly blood-free) cartoon violence for the masses. Now they’re back from Vietnam… *cough* Iraq and in 20 years… possibly Zimbabwe? No, not the original teamsters… George Peppard’s gone over the top for the final chukka, Mr. T’s just beaten cancer, Dwight Schultz has probably been committed and Dirk Benedict probably looks more like Keith Richards by now. It would’ve been the equivalent of a Rolling Stones reunion… but sadly, the G-Team or Geriatric Team was not meant to be.  “Da-da-da…da-da…da?”

Catch rest of the theme tune, movie review and trailer after the jump…

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Please Give starts with a series of… boobs, breasts, jugs and “chesticles” of all shapes and sizes. It’s quite an introduction for a smart coming-of-age comedy drama with Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet. Now this isn’t a flattering set of boob shots, but more of a flattening one as ordinary breasts are compressed for mammograms in what  seems like a gratuitous breast cancer awareness placement. Is it justified exposure… the jury jugs are still out.

Please Give’s intro ranks alongside A Touch of Spice, that spicy Greek film that starts with a baby breastfeeding on a full-screen nipple dusted with a little spice. Now the title and movie poster for Please Give makes it sound like the tag line for a half-baked blood donor agency with an 0-800 number. The truth of the matter is that it’s a slice-of-life dramedy, which deals with charity, ethics and love with an insightful take on modern society and a strong dose of bittersweet comedy.

Catch the rest of the movie review and the trailer after the jump…

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Predators is a sequel to Predator and Predator 2. Since it’s no longer cool to add a number to denote how many times a blockbuster title has been exploited, unless you’re going straight-to-video or you’re a superhero… it gets the imaginative reworking, Predators. Now it’s been a good 23 years since Arnie busted a Predator’s chops in the original and in that time we’ve seen a former Mr. Universe and Hollywood action hero go into politics and a spin-off, AVP: Alien vs. Predator with its own sequel.

Schwarzenegger may have switched to politics because he couldn’t win an Oscar, but Predator almost did it – thanks to late special effects wizard, Stan Winston, who was nominated for an Oscar for creating this “pretty” beast. A lot changes in two decades and that’s why Adrien Brody will not be running for Governor and Predators will not be nominated for anything in the upcoming Academy Awards… shame.

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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in-cep-tion [in-sep-shuh n]
noun – beginning; start; commencement.

When Christopher Nolan releases a film, the world stops and takes notice… The director started making movies when he was just seven-years-old and 33 years down-the-line he’s still doing what he loves with only several feature length films to date. A short filmography by Hollywood standards, but when you consider Stanley Kubrick, one of the late greats, only made 16 films in 5 decades it puts Nolan’s career in perspective.

Just like any Kubrick film, Nolan’s are meticulous and carry some serious weight, in substance and in box office return. Nolan has managed to bridge the great divide with the big budget allure of a traditional blockbuster and the finesse of an art house production. His latest offering Inception, is a surreal Matrix-type film with echoes of classic heist movies like Inside Man and Ocean’s Eleven, but does it measure up?

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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The original Fight Club with Brad Pitt is on a lot of people’s “Top 10 favourite movies” lists. It’s exciting , it’s scandalous and, for the ladies, one might even deem it sexy. This is exactly what Jane Austen has offered with the upcoming film, “Jane Austen’s Fight Club” which witnesses the uprising of illegal organised brawls amongst the women of the day – somewhere in the 1800’s.

Yes, of course this is absolute kak. It is what we call a “spoof” movie trailer and it has been viewed over 200,000 times already. This is slightly less than the video we made that time for Randall Abrahams and IDOLS, but can definitely still be called “viral.”

Let’s see what The Telegraph had to say about it:

A spoof film trailer, Jane Austen’s Fight Club, has gone viral, gaining nearly 200,000 hits on YouTube in just two days.

The video shows Lizzie Bennett and other Austen characters – including Emma and the Dashwoods – setting up an underground boxing club, in manner of the cult David Fincher film Fight Club. Lizzie plays the role of Brad Pitt’s character Tyler Durden: “The first rule of Fight Club is, one never mentions Fight Club”.

The society ladies engage in fights on a croquet lawn and sit bleeding during high tea.

It is not the first ‘mashup’ of either Jane Austen’s work or Fight Club. Recently, a book called “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” imagined what would happen if events in the Regency-era novel had been interrupted by an attack of the undead.

And a Funny or Die video called Ferris Club re-set the 1980s teen movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with Ferris as Tyler and the hapless Cameron as Ed Norton’s unnamed narrator, claiming to see the real psychological truth behind the John Hughes classic. “Cameron is not a beautiful and unique snowflake”, it warns.

[more here]

Nice.

Real nice.

The Expendables will be the manliest movie you will ever watch in your whole life. Warning: Effeminate viewers may suffer death.

Written and directed by the star of the film, Sylvester Stallone, The Expendables promises pretty much the same kind of action as Rambo 4, except this time there’s more than one guy with huge pecks, and huge guns.

They’ve also got big firearms.

Hell, I reckon the combined weight of these guys’ pectoral muscles tips the scale on the biomass of 2oceansvibe Media.

I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty certain a thick fog of testosterone descended on the set during filming.

It killed all green plants and mimes within a one mile radius (that’s right, MILE, because miles are manlier than kilometres).

Don’t believe me? Well for a start, one of the bulky superstars, and all-round ass-kicker extraordinaire, Stone Cold Steve Austin, broke Stallone’s neck on set. Probably just for the hell of it, too.

Still don’t believe me that it’ll be the manliest movie ever made?

Check this out.

CLICK HERE to have your face melted off

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are possibly the coldest on-screen Hollywood couple since Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters, may they rest in peace. Cruise has always been a little distant, giving that looking-into-the-Sun gaze to the point that it’s become more of a glaze. What’s more, he’s embarrassed himself in the media so many times over the last few years that he’s literally become the village idiot of Tinseltown.

Cameron Diaz is just as “fridge-ed”, last starring alongside Cruise in Vanilla Sky. You can count her list of romantic comedies on one hand if you exclude movies like: There’s Something About Mary and Feeling Minnesota. She’s Hollywood’s Miss Unattainable and that’s reflected in her pay cheque as one of the most sought after actresses. Luckily, she’s got the looks and charm to melt away that Ice, Ice, Baby exterior. Strip away their looks and they’ve got nothing on the chemistry between Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner when it comes to high action-adventure and romance in Knight and Day.

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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“One, two, Freddy’s coming for you!” A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the most successful horror franchises ever with more sequels than Rocky… giving Freddy Krueger, the burnt man with a fedora and bladed claw an all-access pass to our dreams for almost three decades! After Freddy’s “colleagues”, Halloween’s Michael Myers and Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees recently received their own remakes, it was almost inevitable that Krueger would also be given a face-lift, courtesy of Michael Bay.

M-m-michael Bay… the guy who directed The Rock, Bad Boys and Transformers you say? That’s the one… Bay’s either a big fan of horror or money, because he’s made a hobby of systematically resurrecting ’70s and ’80s horror classics and turning them into over-produced, creepy remakes over the last few years. The hit list includes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher, Friday the 13th and now A Nightmare on Elm Street. The scariest thing about them… the film-maker’s insistence that they be categorised as horror.

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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The Muse is threatening a viewing of the new Twilight at some stage this weekend – possibly even as soon as Friday night. With weed levels at an all-time low, I’m not really sure how this is all going to pan out. Let alone whether or not I will make it to the other side.

But then I found this, Twilight For Guys. I’m not sure if this version is showing at the V&A, but if is, then you can count me in.

Hey don’t forget, if you don’t know where and when movies are, you can check out movie cinemas and times using that new iPhone app Naviflix. It makes use of your GPS coordinates to locate the nearest cinema to you.

[thanks nico]

When you think “Irish movie”, what’s the first thing that pops into your head?

You think dreary coastlines, people with a strange affinity for potatoes, seaweed and fish (usually together in a pie), the IRA and The Cranberries. At a push, you might be thinking Gerard Butler and posthumous love letters (why, Gerard, why?).

But you don’t think of kung fu, or leprechaun monk kung fu masters, or Boyzone. And you most certainly don’t think of them all at the same time.

The early and mid-nineties were a prosperous time for genocide. Kosovo was 1994 and 1995, Rwanda was 1994. Fatal Deviation was 1993. The poor, poor Irish.

Are your eyes ready?

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Jim Carrey is gay. Well, at least in his latest outing, I Love You Phillip Morris in which he portrays the real life story of Steven Jay Russell, a cop, a conman, an inmate and a big fan of musicals. If you desperately want one of those golden statuettes, play someone famous, someone that’s mentally-challenged or just “play it gay”. After all, it worked for Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Hillary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, Charlize Theron in Monster and Sean Penn in Milk.

Let’s not forget about those phenomenal turns from Colin Firth in A Single Man, Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain, Greg Kinnear in As Good As It Gets and Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. It seems that if can’t “play it gay” as a straight actor in Hollywood, you’re either too commercial or you can’t act – just ask Will Smith. If you flip the coin again, the only gay actor in living history to win an Oscar for playing a gay character is none other than Sir Ian McKellen for Gods and Monsters – as if Lord of the Rings wasn’t camp enough already!

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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Twilight… twilight… TWILIGHT! The word still sends shivers up and down my spine as I think of the young tweens gnashing their teeth like wolverines and vampires at the chance of sinking their teeth into Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner or if they’re not too hungry Kristen Stewart. It’s a good thing they didn’t release Twilight: Eclipse in 3D, otherwise cinemas could have literally turned into a feeding frenzy with tweens reaching out and biting whatever’s within reach in the hopes of uniting with their on-screen Twidols.

It’s true… monsters are still in and nothing can be more erotic than having one kidnap you and take you “sight-seeing” on the Empire State Building or falling prey to their blood lust as they “take a nibble”. Twilight: Eclipse is a mixer for werewolves and vampires, but this is no ordinary Halloween fancy dress party – it’s the real deal, where humans can and do fall in love with these sensual “beasties” – hey, it technically happened in Beauty & The Beast. Bestiality aside… the new Twilight installation is here and the Twihards aren’t going to go down without a fight in trying to make you understand!

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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“She’s out of my league”… those crushing words have been uttered many times in a variety of awkward social situations ranging from slurred bar speak to side-by-side urinal talk. That phrase may be damning, ego-deflating and self-deprecating, but somehow it still doesn’t stop 10s from locking arms with 5s. Come on be honest… when you see a 10 with a 5: first base is money, second base is prostitution, third base is the 10’s in Hell and a home run – well, how often does that happen?

So what if it really did happen to a brother, an imaginary friend, a lover… or that “friend” with herpes? Would you believe it for one minute and more importantly, would you be a supportive buddy or a doomsday prophet? Well, that’s where Kirk (Jay Baruchel) finds himself caught between his loser airport security friends, underachieving family and Molly (Alice Eve), a perfect 10 in Tsssshh… “Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day! Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day!” …She’s Out of My League.

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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A buddy of mine, Warren Adler, is starring in a locally made film called StringCaesar. The movie was filmed inside Pollsmoor, South Africa’s most notorious prison, as it becomes a microcosm of the world of Julius Ceasar’s adolescence, where gangs, deals, allegiances, sexual liaisons, fear, anger, tears, laughter and fleeting happines were the order of the day.

StringCaesar tells the timeless story of a young man’s impassioned quest for power, for the meaning of freedom and to know himself, to live his dreams, to achieve his ambitions. We see his struggle to survive by becoming a manipulator, a powerbroker, a dictator – with roots in politics, violence and gang warfare.

Filled with drama, emotion and conflict, this is a production we as South Africans can be proud of.

Well done, guys!

More on the film: Trailer, Cast, Synopsis, Gallery, PR & Media (ETV interview and more) here.

The Box stars Cameron Diaz and while The Botox would have  been a more provocative title, the curiosity of discovering what’s inside the box has been a “priceless” fascination for man, cat and baby since the beginning of time. Writer-director, Richard Kelly has only made one film since the acclaimed Donnie Darko. Unfortunately, Southland Tales didn’t deliver the goods as a follow-up film and made Donnie Darko seem more like a fluke than a masterpiece.

Even more disappointing is that it’s still going South with The Box. Kelly has adapted a Richard Matheson short story called Button, Button into a fully-fledged film. However, fleshing out a skeleton when you’ve only got the Broken Heart in place is a lot more difficult than you’d expect…just ask anyone who’s played Operation.

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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Great actors don’t just impersonate, they embody personalities for a living and you’ve got to wonder how much of their soul dies with each new character they bring to life? When that soul passes… is there a red carpet leading into the fiery depths of Hell, an angel starter pack (halo, harp and wings) waiting for them at the pearly gates or do their souls belong to the Imaginarium?  Heath Ledger played The Joker to perfection in The Dark Knight, a role which prompted a haunting warning from Hollywood shark and original Joker, Jack Nicholson.

Many would agree with Nicholson’s damning words after Ledger was found stone cold in his hotel room during the filming of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus just weeks before the release of The Dark Knight. However, all speculation rested on his role as The Joker and no one even really questioned the level of his involvement with The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a psychedelic Terry Gilliam film about the very essence of being, looking beyond the mirror…

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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Okay, so I’ve heard about Angels with Dirty Faces and Angels in the Outfield. I never thought I’d live to see the day angels started toting Thor’s hammer and The Punisher’s weapon of choice… until I saw Legion. When God realises that humanity isn’t getting any better he decides to scour mankind from the face of the Earth. It’s not a rapture, it’s more of a nine-plagues-rolled-into-one zombie apocalypse.

Michael thinks God may have been a bit harsh and decides to sever ties with heaven by surgically removing his angel wings behind a dumpster and rallying behind humanity’s last hope, a pregnant woman in a desolate roadside joint. It’s basically an apocalyptic nativity story complete with a roadside manger and ordinary folks substituting Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. Sing together now… “all-ll-ll-ll-ll-ll-ll-righ-ty then”.

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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Green Zone is just another better-than-average Iraq war film in the company of Body of Lies, Traitor and The Kingdom. We’ve seen the covert missions, the terrorist agendas and the corrupt officials before and it’s getting a little old now…

The film’s main selling point is that it comes straight from the tag team that brought us The Bourne Ultimatum, Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass, who bring a similar flair to Green Zone with quick camera action shots and our hero’s rogue status as he delves deeper to the source of the corrupt intelligence reports on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

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