Okay, let's take a momentary break from movies about men dressing up as bats to fight crime, superheroes teaming up to stop an alien invasion, and human beings searching for our beginning and finding our end. It'll only be a quick break, I promise. Instead, we're going to focus here on 96 Minutes, a drama inspired by real-life events that's set for release on DVD next Tuesday, May 29th.
As a director, France's Luc Besson is the man behind The Professional, La Femme Nikita, and The Fifth Element, amongst others. As a producer and frequent-screenwriter, he's an action-impresario responsible for Taken, Colombiana, and The Transporter franchise. In order to bring some unique projects from Besson to American theaters, Relativity Media is joining forces with Besson's EuropaCorp, co-financing anddomestically distributing two new films.
Paranoia, a thriller with a unique, all-star cast, has found an American distributor and a release date. Relativity Media has acquired U.S. rights to the film based on the novel by Joseph Finder, and today the studio announced that Paranoia will hit theaters Stateside on September 27, 2013.
Liam Hemsworth, an Australian up-and-comer who last appeared as Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games, leads the cast as a regular guy who finds himself blackmailed into a costly game of corporate and technological espionage with unimaginably high stakes. Also starring in Paranoia are Academy Award nominees Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford, along with Lucas Till, who played Havoc in last summer's X-Men: First Class.
Are you ready to rock?
Opening in theaters on June 15th is the big screen adaptation of the smash hit Broadway musical Rock of Ages, which was directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray). The film truly features an all-star cast that includes Julianne Hough (Footloose), Diego Boneta (Mean Girls 2), Russell Brand (Arthur), Alec Baldwin (TV's 30 Rock), Bryan Cranston (Drive), Paul Giamatti (Sideways), Malin Akerman (Watchmen), Will Forte (MacGruber), Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago), singer Mary J. Blige, and international superstar Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol).
Rock of Ages tells the story of small town girl Sherrie (Hough) and city boy Drew (Boneta), who meet on the Sunset Strip while pursuing their Hollywood dreams. Much like the musical, the film features rock 'n' roll hits of the era from such legendary artists as Def Leppard, Joan Jett, Journey, Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison, and White Snake.
The new comedic drama What to Expect When You're Expecting isn't based on the most likely source material. Sure, the book of the same name by Heidi Murkoff has consistently topped bestseller lists since first being published in 1984. In three subsequent editions since then, it has sold almost 15 million copies and become the go-to handbook for modern pregnancy. That's what makes it an unlikely movie: it's a self-help text, a practical guide filled with information and tips on the different stages of pregnancy and early childhood.
The film version, Kirk Jones and co-written by Heather Hatch and Shauna Cross, incorporates Murkoff's applicable advice into a narrative feature by telling five interconnected stories of pregnancy, each with their own couples and circumstances. That means What to Expect When You're Expecting stars a sprawling ensemble cast, including Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Elizabeth Banks, Rodrigo Santoro, Chris Rock, Brooklyn Decker, Matthew Morrison, Anna Kendrick, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ben Falcone, Chace Crawford, Rob Huebel, and Joe Manganiello.
IAR Managing Editor Jami Philbrick attended the press day for this Lionsgate release in Los Angeles, where Murkoff and Jones, along with much of the all-star ensemble cast, enthusiastically discussed the book, making the movie, drawing from real-life experience, and working with lovely, talented ladies.
Families often present themselves socially as far more functional and enviable than they might be behind closed doors. This goes from little touches, like cleaning up the house before company comes over, to devastating secrets, like a demented kid in the attic who subsists entirely off of fish heads.
The Perfect Family, hitting theaters this Friday, May 4th, dramatizes this tendency as a comedic drama. In the film, directed by Anne Renton, Oscar nominee Kathleen Turner plays Eileen Cleary, a matriarch who is determined to demonstrate just how healthy and wholesome her family is in order to win a Catholic Woman of the Year award. Her efforts put her at odds with her grown-up children as she attempts to win, even at the expense of her family and their struggles.
The film, which also stars Emily Deschanel, Richard Chamberlain, Jason Ritter, and Elizabeth Pena, provoked some discussion here at IAR. So, with The Perfect Family arriving this week, we thought we'd present our latest Rogue 10, a list of ten cinematic families who appear ordinary at first glance, but who are hiding some very fundamental dysfunction.
Opening in theaters on May 4th is a new drama from first time director Anne Renton called The Perfect Family. The film stars a talented cast of actors that includes Academy Award-nominee Kathleen Turner (Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone), Emily Deschanel (TV's Bones), Jason Ritter (TV's Parenthood), Richard Chamberlain (The Towering Inferno), Elizabeth Pena (Rush Hour), and Sharon Lawrence (TV's NYPD Blue).
IAR's very own Josh Heller recently had a chance to sit down with actress Emily Deschanel, as well as Academy Award-nominee Kathleen Turner to discuss their work on The Perfect Family. The two actresses talked about their new movie, its dramatic themes, Deschanel's connection to her role, Turner's complex character, the traps of method acting, religion, and working with the film's female director.
Some actors bring something special no matter the movie in which they're appearing, regardless of the size or nature of their role. To say that Willem Dafoe is such an actor would be a dramatic understatement. The Oscar-caliber actor has officially signed on to Relativity Media's Out of Furnace, an homage to gritty 1970s crime thrillers that follows a recently released convict as he sets out to avenge his brother.
Today, we at IAR are pleased to bring you eight exclusive images from the ensemble drama 96 Minutes.
In our ever-more technologically-connected lives, it's easy to lose sight of the actual, tangible interconnectivity between real, physical people and the way our lives can end up inextricably entwined with those we thought were total strangers. 96 Minutes is inspired by actual events, and unfolds in real-time to explore the way we relate to one another and how a series of seemingly trivial decisions can add up to a cataclysm.
In his career as an actor, Jason Statham has quite frequently played unstoppable tough guys, and whether out of revenge, profit, or self-preservation, Staham characters have perpetrated violence against innumerable bad guys, good guys, and assorted anonymous henchmen. In this Friday's Safe, written and directed by Boaz Yakin, Statham stars as a former NYPD cop and cage fighter who kicks ass in order to protect a helpless a young girl.
See, Catherine Chan plays a little girl who knows the numerical code to a safe containing an invaluable MacGuffin, meaning that Statham must safeguard her from corrupt cops, Triad gangsters, and the Russian mafia, all of whom would happily dispose of the child once they opened that safe.
The story of Safe had us thinking about the tried-and-true trope of serious cinematic tough guys whose primary goal is the protecting of otherwise helpless youths. We're not talking about guys like Superman or Spider-Man, who rescue different kids on a daily basis. Instead, this latest Rogue 10 lists, in no particular order, ten onscreen heroes who dedicate themselves to their youthful charges.