X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

Two one-sheets for Matthew Vaughn's new mutant flick are out, and they look quite lovely. First Class, which is set in the '60's, explains the relationship between Professor X and Magneto--before they were bald and crippled, and bent on human genocide respectively.

Great cast, led by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy; Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Zoë Kravitz, Rose Byrne and a bunch of dudes are also along for the ride.

X-Men: First Class arrives June 3, 2011.

2011 ACADEMY AWARDS

The King's Speech was crowned Best Film of the year in last night's cinematic gala event. Speech also ended up snagging director, actor, and original screenplay. Inception also left the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles with four statues, (sadly, but well deserved) all in technical categories. I'll have my retrospective Oscar diary up by tomorrow night; in the meantime here are all the winners from last night's ceremony:

Picture: The King's Speech
Director: Tom Hooper (The King's Speech)
Actor: Colin Firth (The King's Speech)
Supporting Actor: Christian Bale (The Fighter)
Actress: Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
Original Screenplay: David Seidler (The King's Speech)
Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)
Foreign Language Film: In A Better World--Denmark
Documentary: Inside Job
Documentary Short Film: Strangers No More
Animated Film: Toy Story 3
Animated Short: The Lost Thing
Live-Action Short: God of Love
Editing: The Social Network

Cinematography: Inception

Visual Effects: Inception
Sound Mixing: Inception
Sound Editing: Inception
Original Score: The Social Network
Original Song: "We Belong Together--Toy Story 3
Make-up: The Wolfman
Art Direction: Alice In Wonderland
Costume Design: Alice In Wonderland
Lifetime Achievement: Francis Ford Coppola

2011 ACADEMY AWARDS

The moment we've all been waiting for is here: after hours of discussing and prognasticating, the 83rd annual Academy Awards will be broadcast live tonight starting at 8pm EST. Hosted by James 'Franco' Franco and Anne Hathaway, the winners tonight will earn a naked golden man and a significant pay raise. And they need it, man. Have you seen Keira Knightley? She is wasting away.

Picture
Black Swan (Fox Searchlight)

The Fighter (Paramount)

Inception (Warner Bros.)

The Kids Are All Right (Focus Features)

The King's Speech (The Weinstein Company)

127 Hours (Fox Searchlight)

The Social Network (Sony Pictures Releasing)

Toy Story 3 (Walt Disney)

True Grit (Paramount Pictures)

Winter's Bone (Roadside Attractions)

What will win: The King's Speech. That Facebook film was the early leader, but with a dominating run at recent award ceremonies, Tom Hooper's story about King George VI's stammer will be crowned (tee hee) come the end of the night.

What should win: Love to see the lowly Winter's Bone win it all (not going to happen), or Inception, which would rectify (slightly) Christopher Nolan's snubbing in the directorial category. 

What's missing: Never Let Me Go (although not as great as its literary predecessor) was my favourite film of 2010.

See the rest of the nominees and projected winners after the break. 

TWENTY TEN TOP TEN

With the Academy Awards mere days away, it's a prime opportunity to divulge my top ten films of 2010. The new year is actually not so fresh any longer, but with the Oscars acting as the unofficial ending point, it seems like the appropriate time.

Sadly, I couldn't get around to seeing everything. Some notables I missed are Somewhere, Another Year, Rabbit Hole, Please Give, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Fish Tank, Carlos, Last Train Home, Sweet Grass, Inside Job, The Square, among others. I plan on seeing them all in the near future. If they happen to jump into the top ten, I'll perhaps amend the list.

Some "experts" have said that this was a down year for film; they couldn't be more wrong. I'd ask them what the difference was between this one and others past. There was some absolutely exquisite works, just as there was some absolute shit. This rings true for ten years in the past, and will continue to be so ten years in the future. Celluloid has always been a polarizing medium; one man's trash is another man's treasure, as they say. Not strangely, my favourite motion pictures are the ones that stick with me the most. Ones where you may only see them once, but you can recall the most minute details. My best of 2010 covers a wide range: from documentary to foreign, science fiction and American classic. The world is a big place, and film, more than any other art form, can truly capture what it has to offer.

See the runners up and the top ten after the break.

SUCKER PUNCH

Once again, Sucker Punch's marketing team (who literally have the easiest job on Earth) have hit the nail on the head with a fresh batch of promotional art for its upcoming March 25 release. Just mash attractive ladies with some short skirts, skintight tops, knee highs, and the greatest invention ever: fishnet stockings combined with ass-less chaps, and you have a winner.

Even though there's only another month before its release, director Zack Snyder and company continue to unveil some new product, perhaps in hopes of generating more buzz for his first original film. Once more: Blondie (Emily Browning) is sent to a psychiatric hospital to await lobotimization. While there, she meets up with the hottest group of crazy women you'll ever hope to meet, and together they go insane plan their escape through their collective minds, which conjure up various environments including: WWI battlefields and futuristic cities.

Four more after the break.

BAD TEACHER

Cameron Diaz hasn't been very interesting since Vanilla Sky back in 2002, so it's a nice change of pace to see her in Jake Kasdan's Bad Teacher. Kasdan's last directorial effort was Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, but more interesting is the fact that he acted in The Big Chill (1983), which is an awesome flick.

Diaz plays an educator who wants nothing more then to smoke weed, get fake tits, and sit on Justin Timberlake's face, while Jason Segel's around to play the world's funniest gym teacher. Timberlake's been killing it lately, whether on SNL, or the upcoming Friends With Benefits. The rumour is that Timberlake would accept a two-year gig on the late night comedy sketch show if creator Lorne Michaels offered. Let's hope he comes through for the masses.

If not for starring in general nonsense and dating Alex Rodriguez, Diaz would be more respectable. She certainly has the mouth for raunchy comedies.

Hold my ball-sac.



Bad Teacher instructs us in theatres June 17, 2011.

PAUL

When aliens land on Earth, I want them to be like Paul--or Natasha Henstridge from Species. Greg Mottola's (Superbad) latest takes us on a roadtrip with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, as they and a big-head extra-terrestrial (Seth Rogan) look to thrwart the capture attempts of Jason Bateman and Bill Hader.

This has looked funny throughout the trailers, but now a red-band one has emerged which only solidifies the laughs. English audiences have been lucky with its release overseas on February 11. Us, west of the Atlantic will have to wait until March 18.

Get your goddamn hands off my motherfucking junk!

APOLLO 18

Guess what? The government lied; there was actually an eighteenth manned mision to the moon. This one ended badly. Not in the "there's a system error" kinda way, but more "shit, there's a space crab in my helmet."

This is being passed off as another in the ever-growing line of found footage films. There are some freaky scenes in the trailer, but when you're in an environment with no air and limited company, I'd imagine some gnarly things might go on.

BLU-RAY RELEASE OF THE WEEK

I easily could have gone with Memento, or Stieg Larsson's Dragon Tattoo trilogy, but at the end of the day, nothing beats the voice talents of Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, and some animated mythical beasts.

Lots to love here. The magician Schmendrick (which kinda sounds like part of the penis) turning a tree into a large bosomed woman; a talking, angry, alcoholic skeleton; a cat with an eyepatch. Farrow's voicing of Amalthea/Unicorn is titillating, and to top it all off, we're treated to the marvel that is America.

THE BLACK MAMBA

If you can forgive the fact that he comes up with his own nickname, speaks in the third person, is a perennial ball hog, throws his teammates under the bus, and cheats on his incredibly hot wife with an incredibly lesser woman, Kobe Bryant actually does a decent job in the short film by Robert Rodriguez (Desperado).

Black Mamba features a slew of cameos and explosions; as well as a number of annoying stare downs by Kobe Bean himself. If you like basketball, Nike, really scary black dudes and Danny Trejo, this one's for you.

BLU-RAY RELEASE OF THE WEEK

Let's celebrate the insane sexuality of Bernardo Bertolucci. I love the States, but they have a history of frowning upon a few certain subjects: namely nudity and excessive language. But, Italians? Fuhgettaboutit.

Bertolucci really has no qualms about t & a (something to be truly thankful for). In The Last Tango of Paris, Marlon Brando's Paul, who has just lost his wife, begins an affair with a Parisian woman named Jeanne (Maria Schneider). The tryst starts off as simply sexual (the best kind no doubt), where names and details of their lives are forbidden. Feelings inevitably come into the picture (always ruins everything), and then shit starts to hit the fan. But not real shit--that's gross whatever country you live in.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

It's about time someone made a film highlighting the brilliance of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

ONE DAY

Alright, so we're to believe that the premise behind An Education's Lone Scherfig's latest is that Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) first meet at their University of Edinburgh graduation in 1988, and then proceed to meet once a year for the next twenty years. An article in USA Today depicted One Day as "the British answer to When Harry Met Sally," although I'm failing to hear a question anywhere near. 

I can handle Sturgess, who is respectable (still must see Heartless from 2009), and even Hathaway whom I'm growing on more and more (although, she better nail Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, or I'm gonna shit kittens. I still think it should have been Eva Green). I'll even give props to the saturated poster seen above for the palette alone. But, a somewhat attractive duo, who share feelings for one another, yet only get together for twenty-four hours of every year, even though they're from the same country? Just fuck right off. It seems Day was a novel first by David Nicholls (which just has to be the nom de plume of Nicholas Sparks, right?), but he also wrote the screenplay, so I can just point all my displeasure towards one man. 

Sadly, Focus Features is backing this one, which probably means it's going to be pretty good; although I feel like the narrative can only go in two directions: Dexter and Emma remain single and just bang for one day each year. Or even worse, they're married but haven't forgotten about their one true love so they get together and bang for one day each year. Either way, this sounds more like the British answer to Fuck Buddies (later, No Strings Attached). 

I'm just going to wait for Like Crazy. 

SCREAM 4

We can all agree that the 'Ghostface killer' mask is a scary one, and there are some genuinely frightening moments from the trilogy (none more so than the original's opening with the !!SPOILER ALERT!! intimate slaughtering of Drew Barrymore), but to be frank, if any plastic cover-up that you can buy for a buck ninety-nine at a 7/11 started staring at me through my window, I would immediately crap my pants. 

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

Thanks to Sony Pictures, we have our first official picture of Andrew Garfield all costumed out as Spider-Man. Here he is sans mask with a backpack (?) just strolling around the sidewalks of New York; now it's the whole she-bang in classic Spidey pose, as well as confirming the fact that artificial web-shooters will be used.

I like what I've seen so far. With him not having the ability to create organic web fluid from his forearms, Spider-Man appears a wee bit more vulnerable. Naysayers point to the unbelievability of a high school kid creating one of the strongest substances in the world, which would have subsequently netted him millions.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Marion Cotillard could be reteaming with director Christoper Nolan after the two collaborated in last year's cash cow and universally lauded Inception. Cotillard, who won an Oscar for 2007's La Vie en Rose, is being penned as the love interest in the final chapter of Nolan's Batman trilogy.

One character that's been thrown around incessantly has been Talia al Ghul, the daughter of Ra's: Liam Neeson from Batman Begins. This would provide a nice bookend to Nolan's tale, as well as allow one of the best actresses around to strut her stuff alonside equally capable counterparts Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman et al.

In the comics, Talia actually got knocked up (kinda. The baby was actually grown artificially in a laboratory, and engineered to perfection, but he still shares the DNA of Talia and Bats) by the Caped Crusader and "birthed" Damien Wayne, who would later become the fifth incarnation of the boy wonder Robin.

Anne Hathaway is already confirmed as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, while Tom Hardy is set (to break Batman's spine?) as the hulking and highly intelligent Bane.

July 20, 2012 cannot get here quickly enough.

TRANSFOMERS; DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

It's amazing how much Michael Bay can fit in a thirty second spot. Tough to say how I feel about this. The first 'robots in disguise' flick was good; the second was piss poor. But let's be honest, they all look exactly alike. The asinine plot and writing was what made Revenge of the Fallen so atrocious (not to mention racist). The special effects have always been impressive, and nothing has changed here. The only new component is Rosie Huntington-Whitetley (replacing the departed Megan Fox) looking equally dumbstruck and sexy.

Also Optimus Prime is doing a pirouette down a crowded street slicing up baddies.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

The long awaited first trailer for Matthew Vaughn's (Layer Cake) is here. I say long awaited because the film is supposed to be coming out June 3 and there's almost been nothing leaked--at least nothing positive. Rumours of constant reshoots and being over budget have been running rampant, and not until recently have we seen anything from the 20th Century Fox bigwigs.

Still, even with all the trouble this film seems to be carrying with it, the trailer looks pretty fantastic. The 60's vibe that circulates seems very real and appropriate seeing that 1963 was the actual first appearance of the band of mutants.

The voice-over of JFK is a brilliant choice, while the supplanting of the characters from present day to an earlier time period is a great way to shake up a near stale genre. I'm an unabashed X-Men fanatic; one who was entirely disgusted with how The Last Stand ended up. The word of mouth for Class has been nothing but putrid; this trailer however leaves a real nice taste in my mouth.

SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL

Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder have found their boy in blue (tights). Henry Cavill, who was Jesus Christ's son in the film adaptation Alexandre Dumais' The Count of Monte Cristo, will don the cape and the 'S' curled hair.

Snyder takes over from Bryan Singer, whose Superman Returns wasn't really all that bad, albeit a glaring carbon copy from the original Superman (1978). Nolan, whose had insane success with the Batman franchise, steered away from the director's chair, instead taking the role of producer. Snyder is a spirited choice given his track record, but with Nolan at least somewhat behind the selection, I'll trust the man's judgment. 

Cavill for his part, has tried--and failed--in the past for the roles of Bruce Wayne and Edward Cullen (the latter being a severe blessing in disguise if you ask me). Other than Cristo, Cavill has mostly had bit parts in films, while starring in Showtime's The Tudors. Here's guessing playing the Man of Steel and his poorly disguised alter-ego Clark Kent will turn the tide.