In Theaters: December 9th 2011

By Melvin Browne

New Year’s Eve

“New Year’s Eve” celebrates love, hope, forgiveness, second chances and fresh starts, with intertwining stories told amidst the pulse and promise of New York City on the most dazzling night of the year.

The film’s all-star cast includes Academy Award winner Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Academy Award nominee Abigail Breslin, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, two-time Academy Award winner Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Hector Elizondo, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Seth Meyers, Lea Michele, Sarah Jessica Parker, Academy Award nominee Michelle Pfeiffer, Til Schweiger, two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank and Sofia Vergara.

The Sitter

When the world’s most irresponsible babysitter takes three of the world’s worst kids on an unforgettable overnight adventure through the streets of New York City, it’s anyone’s guess who’s going to make it home in one piece. “The Sitter” is a new level of twisted and debauched hilarity, starring Jonah Hill.

I Melt With You

Richard (Thomas Jane), Ron (Jeremy Piven), Jonathan (Rob Lowe) and Tim (Christian McKay) are old college friends that gather annually for a week in Big Sur to celebrate their friendship and catch-up on each other’s lives. They seem like typical men in their forties – all with careers, families, and enormous responsibilities – but like most people there is a lot more beneath the surface.

As the week progresses, they go down the rabbit hole of excess as mountains of drugs are consumed to a blaring rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack. Parties with much younger women spin out of control. Exhausted and run ragged, they bare their souls to one another revealing the disillusionment with their lives. As the truth emerges, the reunion takes a much darker turn when a promise from their past is brought to light. From director Mark Pellington, “I Melt With You” is a visually dazzling, wild and wooly trip deep into the male psyche, driven by four amazingly committed and profound performances.

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New Movies In Theaters: November 4th 2011

By Melvin Browne

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

The new “Harold & Kumar” comedy picks up six years after the duo’s last adventure. After years of growing apart, Harold Lee (John Cho) and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) have replaced each other with new friends and are preparing for their respective Yuletide celebrations. But when a mysterious package mistakenly arrives at Kumar’s door on Christmas Eve, his attempt to redirect it to Harold’s house ends with the “high grade” contents—and Harold’s father-in-law’s prize Christmas tree— going up in smoke. With his in-laws out of the house for the day, Harold decides to cover his tracks, rather than come clean. Reluctantly embarking on another ill-advised journey with Kumar through New York City, their search for the perfect replacement tree almost blows Christmas Eve sky high.

Tower Heist

Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy lead an all-star cast in Tower Heist, a comedy caper about working stiffs who seek revenge on the Wall Street swindler who stiffed them. After the workers at a luxury Central Park condominium discover the penthouse billionaire has stolen their retirement, they plot the ultimate revenge: a heist to reclaim what he took from them.

The Son of No One

A young cop is assigned to a precinct in the working class neighborhood where he grew up, and an old secret threatens to destroy his life and his family.

In Theaters 10/14: “Footloose”, “The Thing”, and “The Big Year”

By Melvin Browne

Footloose

Writer/Director Craig Brewer delivers a new take of the beloved 1984 classic film, “Footloose”. Ren MacCormack (played by newcomer Kenny Wormald) is transplanted from Boston to the small southern town of Bomont where he experiences a heavy dose of culture shock. A few years prior, the community was rocked by a tragic accident that killed five teenagers after a night out and Bomont’s local councilmen and the beloved Reverend Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid) responded by implementing ordinances that prohibit loud music and dancing. Not one to bow to the status quo, Ren challenges the ban, revitalizing the town and falling in love with the minister’s troubled daughter Ariel (Julianne Hough) in the process.

The Thing

Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller “The Thing”, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they’re infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.

Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. She discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up. When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.

The Big Year

Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson are at a crossroads — one is experiencing a mid-life crisis, another a late-life crisis, and the third, a far from ordinary no-life crisis. The Big Year is a sophisticated comedy about three friendly rivals who, tired of being ruled by obligations and responsibilities, dedicate a year of their lives to following their dreams. Their big year takes them on a cross-country journey of wild and life-changing adventures.

In Theaters 9/30: Whats Your Number, Dream House and 50/50

By Melvin Browne

What’s Your Number? :

Inspired by author Karyn Bosnak’s novel 20 Times a Lady, director Mark Mylod’s freewheeling comedy tells the tale of one hopelessly single woman that’s convinced she’s passed up the man of her dreams. Upon reading a magazine article that leaves her dejected about her future marriage prospects, Ally Darling (Anna Faris) begins to fear that one of her many ex-boyfriends may have been “the one that got away.” Now, with a little help from her mischievous neighbor (Chris Evans), Ally is paying a visit to each of her exes in order to reel in the perfect catch.

Dream House:

Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz star in ‘Dream House,’ a suspense thriller about a family that unknowingly moves into a home where grisly murders were committed…only to find themselves the killer’s next target.

Successful publisher Will Atenton (Craig) quit a high power job in Manhattan to relocate his wife, Libby (Weisz), and two girls to a quaint New England town. But as they settle into their new life, they discover their perfect home was the murder scene of a mother and her children. And the entire city believes it was at the hands of the husband who survived.

When Will investigates, he’s not sure if he’s starting to see ghosts or if the tragic story is just hitting too close to home. His only clues come from Ann Paterson (Watts), a mysterious neighbor who knew those who were shot. And as Will and Ann piece together the haunting puzzle, they must find out who murdered the family in Will’s dream house before he returns to kill again.

50/50:

50/50 is the story of a guy’s transformative and amusing journey to health. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in this heartfelt comedy drama about a young man’s struggle with discovering that he has cancer. 50/50 draws its emotional core from Will Reiser’s own experience with cancer and reminds us that friendship and love, no matter what bizarre turns they take, are the greatest healers.

Whats Your Number, Dream House and 50/50 in theaters this Friday, September 30th 2011… Enjoy!

Abduction, Moneyball and Machine Gun Preacher: In Theaters 9/23

By Melvin Browne

ABDUCTION:

Taylor Lautner stars as a young man unwittingly thrust into a deadly world of covert espionage in, “Abduction” For as long as he can remember, Nathan Harper (Taylor Lautner) has had the uneasy feeling that he’s living someone else’s life. When he stumbles upon an image of himself as a little boy on a missing persons website, all of Nathan’s darkest fears come true: he realizes his parents are not his own and his life is a lie, carefully fabricated to hide something more mysterious and dangerous than he could have ever imagined. Just as he begins to piece together his true identity, Nathan is targeted by a team of trained killers, forcing him on the run with the only person he can trust, his neighbor, Karen (Lily Collins). Every second counts as Nathan and Karen race to evade an army of assassins and federal operatives. But as his opponents close in, Nathan realizes that the only way he’ll survive – and solve the mystery of his elusive biological father – is to stop running and take matters into his own hands.

MONEYBALL:

Based on a true story, Brad Pitt stars in “Moneyball as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s and the guy who assembles the team, who has an epiphany: all of baseball’s conventional wisdom is wrong. Forced to reinvent his team on a tight budget, Beane will have to outsmart the richer clubs. The onetime jock teams with Ivy League grad Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) in an unlikely partnership, recruiting bargain players that the scouts call flawed, but all of whom have an ability to get on base, score runs, and win games. It’s more than baseball, it’s a revolution – one that challenges old school traditions and puts Beane in the crosshairs of those who say he’s tearing out the heart and soul of the game.

Machine Gun Preacher:

Machine Gun Preacher’ is the inspirational true story of Sam Childers, a former drug-dealing criminal who undergoes an astonishing transformation and finds an unexpected calling as the savior of hundreds of kidnapped and orphaned children. When ex-biker-gang member Sam Childers (Gerard Butler) makes the life-changing decision to go to East Africa to help repair homes destroyed by civil war, he is outraged by the unspeakable horrors faced by the region’s vulnerable populace, especially the children. Ignoring the warnings of more experienced aid workers, Sam breaks ground for an orphanage where it’s most needed–in the middle of territory controlled by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a renegade militia that forces youngsters to become soldiers before they even reach their teens. But for Sam, it is not enough to shelter the LRA’s intended victims. Determined to save as many as possible, he leads armed missions deep into enemy territory to retrieve kidnapped children, restoring peace to their lives–and eventually his own.

Gay Zombie Film Banned from Aussie Film Fest

 By: Katrina Robinson

Two things I love: gay people and zombies. And the Melbourne International Film Festival has the nerve to ban it from screening!  

L.A. Zombie, described by AFP as “a gay zombie porn flick which shows aliens engaging in necrophilia” has been rejected by the festival’s organizers and censors. The film stars porn actor Francois Sagat as a man who believes he’s an alien zombie who has been sent to Earth to search for homosexual sex and dead bodies.  

Interesting premise…  

But don’t worry. There will be other places to see L.A. Zombie. It will have its world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland on August 5 and then will go on to air at the Toronto festival in September. And Aussies may have the chance to view the film on DVD if they wish.  

I’m pretty sure this is one “porno” I’m going to have to see…

M. Night Shyamalan’s First Movie Aimed Toward Kids

By Katrina Robinson

M. Night Shyamalan became famous with his film The Sixth Sense, and then he continued to wow audiences with movies including Unbreakable, Signs, and more. But now he’s hoping to impress a younger crowd.

The Last Airbender hits theaters Thursday, July 1st, and it’s Shyamalan’s first attempt to rein in younger audiences. The film is based on a Nickelodeon cartoon series of the same name.

Shyamalan explained his decision to Early Show co-anchor Erica Hill: “[I’d] been asking my agents to find me something, and in the end it was my 7-year-old daughter that found me the movie. She was watching a show and said, ‘Oh, this is so great, watch it, watch it.’ Of course, I ignored her for a long time…And finally we watched it and we were about to eat dinner, and I said, ‘This would make a great movie,’ and everybody went nutso.”

 I’ve seen the trailers for The Last Airbender, and it looks pretty rocking to me. So I give you kudos, Mr. Shyamalan!

Megan Fox’s Tiny Waistline Equals Big News

 

By Katrina Robinson

I know, I know. We all talk about the most menial subjects when it comes to celebrities. But what can I say? It’s just so entertaining. So here’s another trite subject to bring up with your friends during happy hour. 

Certainly you’ve seen the trailers for Jonah Hex. But have you noticed the ultra-tiny waist that Megan Fox is sporting during the film? She has, in several interviews, revealed how painful the corset was that she wore as her costume in her role as a prostitute bad ass in the movie. In fact, she got her waist down to a shocking 18 inches.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she said, “It hurt, but you can’t resist wanting to mess with it – I was obsessed with getting it as tight as we possibly could and, in a lot of the scenes, we got it down really small.”

At the end of the day, Megan was still affected by that blasted corset. She said, “When we would take [the corset] off, it would leave these deep grooves, these deep indents from the boning in the corset. I’d have it for the whole next day. The next 24 hours I’d be imprinted with the corset.”

I know that beauty is pain, but come on. This corset business is taking it a little too far.

Check out the trailer for Johan Hex:

Be Good. Be Safe.
Much Love.
E.