Monsters University

By Dana Stevens|

A collection of the characters from Pixar's Monster's University
Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures USA

Pixar Studios has painted itself into a corner (though because it’s Pixar, it’s an adorable corner, surrounded by top-quality enamel paint). They’ve established a reputation for themselves as the animation studio of record, the place for state-of-the-art children’s entertainment that also reliably hits the sweet spot for adults. At their best, Pixar movies can realistically aspire to the status of lasting cinematic art. (We won’t quibble here about which of these movies should enter the pantheon—I’m a partisan of Ratatouille and the Toy Story trilogy myself.)

But because Pixar’s rep has been polished to such a high sheen over the course of three decades, the slightest bit of tarnish really shows. Cars 2 (2011) was no worse than most hectic, underplotted summer kids’ movies, and better than many; still, upon its release there was much garment-rending and tooth-gnashing about the declining standards of Pixar.

The studio’s first-ever prequel, Monsters University, will probably get some of those same reactions: Though it’s a far sight better than Cars 2, it falls well short of the standard set by its excellent predecessor, Monsters Inc. (2001). And though this is a sweet, clever, gorgeously animated movie I’d be glad to take my kid to on a Saturday afternoon, I’m not sure it’s one I’d insist all my grownup friends drop what they’re doing to see.

Directed by Cars co-writer Dan Scanlon, the film revisits several of the main characters from Monsters Inc., back in their formative days at the titular alma mater. Mike Wazowski, the green walking eyeball voiced by Billy Crystal; and James P. “Sulley” Sullivan, the shaggy purple-and-blue behemoth voiced by John Goodman; are back, as is their nemesis, the sneaky four-handed lizard Randall Boggs (voiced by Steve Buscemi). The story folds in elements of college movies from Animal House to Revenge of the Nerds, imagining a stratified big-monster-on-campus culture in which the BMOCs, proud of their superior scariness, lord it over their cuddlier, less threatening classmates.

To refresh your memory about the logic by which the Monsters universe functions: The chief power source in this world of diversely shaped weirdos consists of the screams of human children, whom the monsters sneak up on nightly through magic doors connecting the two universes.

(As ingeniously thought through in the first movie, it all makes a kind of sense.) This time around, we learn that being a “scarer” is one of the most prestigious and desirable jobs in the monster world, which makes Monsters University, among other things, a film about the anxieties of meritocracy. Shy, nerdy, minuscule Mike has dreamed since childhood of becoming a world-class scarer. He eschews frat parties to bone up on his sneaking and roaring technique, the better to impress the fearsome Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren, wonderfully animated as a dour, glowering centipede).

Sulley, on the other hand, comes from a legendary family of scarers, and he’s lazily resting on his laurels as a big, furry dude with a naturally loud roar. When they’re both kicked out of the scaring program for picking a fight with each other in class, Mike and Sulley find themselves rooming together at the hopelessly uncool Oozma Kappa frat house (whose misfit denizens, including a U-shaped Muppetlike creature voiced by Charlie Day, are among the best things in the movie).

Monster U’s biggest mistake is to make its chief conflict a monster-on-monster one—the annual running of the university’s intramural Scare Games, in which the pitiful Oozma Kappa team must take on the sneering jocks of Roar Omega Roar. Monsters Inc. focused instead on the relationship between Sulley and the little girl he accidentally brought across the threshold into the monster world.

The notion of children as tiny, toxic beings capable of making even the most imposing monster don a hazmat suit has an understandable Bizarro World appeal for children (and a different kind of appeal for adults, who may on occasion experience kids as precisely that alien and frightening). Monsters University doesn’t truck in that kind of rich, fairy-tale–like symbolic meaning—in essence, it’s a sports movie, a simple, inspirational story of monster friendship, teamwork, and pluck. I’m not sure I needed to revisit Mike and Sulley’s world 12 years later (or, looked at from their point of view, earlier). But once you find yourself whisked over the threshold, it’s a colorful, funny, charming place to spend an afternoon.



source: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2013/06/monsters_university_the_monsters_inc_prequel_reviewed.html
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World War Z Would Have Been Better if It Weren’t a Zombie Movie

BY ANGELA WATERCUTTER

For all of the delays, rewrites, and reshoots that plagued World War Z, it turned out to be a solid summer action flick. The irony, though, is the thing that might be its most festering infection is the plague itself.

World War Z would be better if it weren’t a zombie movie.

That’s not to say there shouldn’t be legions of infected undead swarming all over the place, because those things actually are pretty awesome. But when something markets itself as a “zombie movie,” it inevitably takes on certain baggage. Zombies — and the movies, TV shows, and comics about them — have a rich history and certain tropes that demand to be acknowledged. If they’re not, it’s hard to get past the cognitive dissonance created by a movie, no matter how enjoyable it might be, that isn’t what it’s billed as. It’s as if a scrawny, insecure Thor appeared in an Avengers flick. It might be an interesting story or character study, but that dude wouldn’t be a truly Asgardian superhero.

Similarly, if you’re a fan of gory zombie action and you’re going to this PG-13 flick looking for your bloody fix of gore, you might leave wanting.

Of course, changing up the zombie game is exactly what director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) and his fellow filmmakers set out to do. During a recent screening of World War Z in San Francisco, the movie’s star and producer Brad Pitt introduced the film by saying, “If you think you’re just about to see another zombie film, you’re in for a bit of a shock. … This thing is big, it’s like nothing you’ve seen before.”

He’s right.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points for World War Z in the text below.)

The movie, a fast-paced race by one man to stop a total zombie apocalypse, isn’t like a lot of zombie fare, which tends to focus on a small group of people fighting the undead in rural (or at least abandoned) surroundings.

Before we go any further, though, a quick primer: World War Z — loosely based on the book by Max (son of Mel) Brooks — is an enjoyable action movie in which former United Nations investigator Gerry Lane, played by Pitt, finds himself, his wife and two young daughters in the midst of a worldwide undead epidemic. The family escapes with help from Lane’s U.N. connections, but by calling in that favor he is asked to trace the source of the disease and stop it. He goes from South Korea, scene of one of the first reported cases, to Jerusalem, which has built a wall to keep the undead out, and ultimately to a World Health Organization facility.

His journey is a nail-biter. (We have the cuticles to prove it.) And in addition to being suspenseful, the flick drives home the personal and global reactions such an outbreak would bring. In a key moment, Lane believes he may have been infected and stands on the roof of a towering apartment building prepared to jump, knowing he’s better off dead than a threat to his family. That’s as real as it gets. Also telling are the geopolitical reactions and their ties to real-world politics. North Korea, for example, staves off an invasion of the undead by removing everyone’s teeth so they can’t bite. Such undertones make World War Z as intelligent as it is shocking.

That said, it could use a little more feeling and character development, but, hey, you can only tell so much story in a couple hours.

But considering the tweaking done to zombie lore, it could’ve just as easily been about another kind of outbreak and been just as poignant. And maybe it should have. As Annalee Newitz at io9 notes, “Maybe the problem with World War Z is that zombie movies require a certain amount of weirdness or subversiveness to succeed. Turning a zombie pandemic into a generic disaster movie robs the zombies of their dirty, nasty edginess and robs the disaster of its epic scope.”

Bingo. But what if World War Z didn’t call itself a zombie movie?

The biggest difference in its zombie mythology is the fact that World War Z‘s zombies run, and fast. They also swarm in huge packs. Although this is on-trend right now (see also: 28 Days Later, I Am Legend), having fast zombies in a film largely devoid of other zombie tropes just puts things even further off message. There are detailed and widely accepted reasons why zombies are slow – that whole rotting bodies thing, for one, and the fact that re-animated corpses would not have high-functioning motor skills. This, of course, was expertly chronicled in in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead when Sheriff McClelland, asked by a reporter if the undead are moving slow, replied, “Yeah, they’re dead.”

World War Z offers a fair explanation for its swift zombies: the running dead are in the first phase of the outbreak and haven’t had as much time to decompose as, say, they walkers in the barn in The Walking Dead. They’ve still got a bit of their human facilities and all they want is to bite again. “If you got bitten right now you’re still healthy, so you could run,” the movie’s visual effect supervisor Scott Farrar explained to Wired. “So this idea of just stumbling around didn’t make any sense.”

OK, we’ll buy that. But there’s the question of why these zombies work in teams, unlike the zombies of yore that mostly bumped into each other in a single-minded quest for braaaaains. It begs the question, “Are these things smart?” No, says, neuroscientist and Zombie Research Society adviser Bradley Voytek. He told us awhile ago that the zombies are “simply exhibiting emergent behaviors like what we see with ants.” Still, the zombies in World War Z don’t behave much like their forbears.

Zippy zombies wouldn’t be problematic in and of itself, but it is the most obvious of the many deviations the film has made from the book. Worse, Brooks also wrote Zombie Survival Guide, which states most zombies “move at a rate of barely one step per 1.5 seconds” and provided the “laws” for Z. World War Z, a bestseller beloved by fans, is an oral history of how what’s left of Earth’s population survived the zombie invasion. While certain themes from the book, like how political and class issues play into the apocalypse and how zombie-ism is diagnosed, are evident in the film, it’s largely divergent from its source material. And that’s something that’s not going to sit well with Brooks’ hardcore fans.

Which brings us back to the point: This shouldn’t be a zombie movie. Not that it doesn’t work as a zombie movie — ignore past precedent and it largely does — but it could avoid having to live up to an entire canon of zombie history if it wasn’t.

In the intro to his book Brooks writes, “zombie remains a loaded word, a devastating word, unrivaled in its power to conjure up so many memories or emotions.” In context, he’s talking about the use of the world in a post-apocalyptic sense — saying “zombie” reminds people of the Dark Years. But it remains a loaded word in pop culture too. It reminds people of Romero and gruesome horror films, both of which are not part of World War Z but have a place in the hearts of fans of the genre. Not that other films haven’t broken from tradition to success. Zombieland had fairly fast-moving critters and Warm Bodies turned at least one walker into Romeo and then found him “cured” by love, but those were comedies and thus didn’t take themselves too seriously. Making a big action flick with Brad Pitt at the helm and calling it World War Z promises, intentionally or not, some points on which the film does not deliver. That will leave people disappointed.

Had the movie been a tale about a pandemic, it would be a perfect summer popcorn flick. All of the elements are there: A fast-spreading contagion that threatens the world’s entire population, masses of sick people threaten to infect the rest of us, politicians bickering over what to do, a Good Samaritan with great hair who can think on his feet, and a group of scientists racing to save the world. If it was called World War Really Bad Hydrophobia (or something like that), it would still be great nail-biting entertainment and nobody would have an issue with it. Of course, this is somewhat ironic since the film is getting kudos for not being afraid to actually use the word “zombie” and buck against the “genre blindness” of a lot of similar flicks. But we digress.

source: read more at http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/06/world-war-z-review-zombies/2/
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'MAN OF STEEL' BREAKS JUNE RECORD

By JOHN NOLTE

It might not be "Iron Man 3" money ($174 million opening weekend), but the Christopher Nolan produced, Zack Snyder directed "Man of Steel," is on pace to break a June record for a non-sequel with a $120 million weekend haul. This puts Hollywood's the third attempt at a Superman franchise way ahead of the second, the pitiful "Superman Returns," which scored only $84.6 million over a five-day weekend.

According to Box Office Mojo, the previous June record holder was "Toy Story 3," with $110 million. "Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen" came in second with $108 million. If Nikki Finke's numbers are correct, there is no question "Man of Steel" will beat the non-sequel record. It might, though, beat all records, which is something even Warner Bros. didn't dare predict.
What we have here, as well, is yet another example of a major divide between critics and moviegoers. Via the reliable Cinemascore, we know that audiences have given "Man of Steel" an A-, which signifies the kind of word of mouth and return business necessary to create a blockbuster as opposed to a one-weekend wonder. Critics, though, were nowhere near as impressed, collectively giving the film "rotten tomato" status, with a 57% ranking.
By contrast, the appalling "Superman Returns," which stripped Superman of his masculinity, Americanism, and chivalry (remember the spying on Lois Lane?) earned a 75% score from critics.







source: breitbart.com
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"Man of Steel" critics' reviews: Film wallows in sorrow more than soars

By LESLEY SAVAGE / CBS NEWS

Henry Cavill as Superman and Amy Adams as Lois Lane in "Man of Steel." / WARNER BROS.

The reviews are in, and while most movie critics agree that the newest retelling of the classic Superman story is worth seeing, "Man of Steel" is weighed down by pathos and too much kryptonite.

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Featuring Henry Cavill in the red-and-blue tights, and Amy Adams as his love interest, this Zack Snyder-directed story by the "Dark Knight" trilogy's Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer (with Goyer penning the screenplay), gets bogged down by its own gravity, and lacks the fun and light-heartedness of previous movie and TV versions, according to the critics.

Check out what they had to say below.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: "Caught in the slipstream between action and angst, 'Man of Steel' is a bumpy ride for sure. But there's no way to stay blind to its wonders."

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: "There's very little humor or joy in this Superman story, and not enough character development for us really to care once the big-budget pyrotechnics are under way."

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: "For now, audiences can only speculate as to the hidden depths of Cavill, who in Zack Snyder's busy, bombastic creation myth is reduced to little more than a joyless cipher or dazzling physical specimen."

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: "The chief problem here is one of rhythm and balance in the storytelling and directing. The movie swings between destructive overstatement and flat-footed homilies."

David Edelstein, New York magazine: ["Man of Steel" offers] "lots of noise and clutter -- but never the simple charm of the original comic by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster or the faintly self-abashed handsomeness of Christopher Reeve. The movie isn't dead on arrival, like Snyder's over-reverent 'Watchmen.' But it's pleasure-free."

Dana Stevens, Slate: "Snyder provides an elegantly illuminated retelling of the origin story of that most saintly of superheroes, Superman."

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: "This is a great, big, meaty, chewy superhero adventure, which broadly does what it sets out to do, though at excessive length. What I missed were the gentle, innocent pleasures of Superman's day-to-day crimefighting existence.... Due to the cataclysmic battle in this film, much of the Man of Steel's mystery and novelty have been used up. Subsequent adventures may lose altitude."

Justin Craig, FoxNews.com: "Zack Snyder, Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer have managed to become Superman's very own Kryptonite, stripping the iconic character of his greatest assets: wit, charm, and most importantly, hope; rendering "Man of Steel" this blockbuster season's biggest disappointment."

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: "'Dark Knight'-style makeover never quite comes together. Sure, Superman is still faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. ... But he's been transformed into the latest in a long line of soul-searching super-brooders, trapped between his devastated birth planet of Krypton and his adopted new home on Earth. He's just another haunted outsider grappling with issues."

Ty Burr: The Boston Globe: "Snyder knows how to put on a show, and 'Man of Steel' has a massive scope that's hard to resist. ... But what's missing from this Superman saga is a sense of lightness, of pop joy."

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: "Given the 'Dark Knight' trilogy's Nolan and Goyer's involvement, it's no surprise that 'Man of Steel' is conceptualized in the Batman mold, a dark end of the street extravaganza where, theoretically at least, epic vision would be joined with dramatic heft. It hasn't worked out quite that way.

Stephanie Zacharek, the Village Voice: "'Man of Steel' is a movie event with an actual movie inside, crying to get out. Despite its preposterous self-seriousness, its overblown, CGI'ed-to-death climax, and its desperate efforts to depict the destruction of, well, everything on Earth, there's greatness in this retelling of the origin of Superman, moments of intimate grandeur, some marvelous, subtle acting, and a superhero costume that's a feat of mad mod genius."



source: Read more visit cbsnews.com
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'300: Rise of an Empire' trailer released: Gerard Butler's Leonidas makes depressing cameo — as corpse

By Ethan Sacks / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

King Leonidas' corpse makes an appearance in the new trailer for '300: Rise of an Empire'
It’s a Greek travesty!

The new trailer for “300: Rise of an Empire,” which hit the Internet Wednesday, opens with the jarring sight of the nefarious Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) riding over the corpses of Gerard Butler’s Spartan King Leonidas and most of his 299 loyal, doomed subjects.

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Lena Headey shoots the breeze as Queen Gorgo.

From there....things get a little more epic.
“The idea of this movie was always that it takes place at about the same time of the first one," director Noam Murro told MTV News. "It's as if you zoomed out and saw a bigger time frame and told a bigger story of what happened in '300.' The first movie speaks to the detail of this sequel.

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Sullivan Stapleton takes over on lead abs for Gerard Butler in the sequel to 2006's '300.'

“It is larger in scale, and it takes place on water,” adds Murro, who took over helming duties from producer Zack Snyder.
Leonidas’ fight is picked up by Greek general Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), who has a Persian naval armada to destroy led by Eva Green’s bow-wielding Artemisia.

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Rodrigo Santoro reprises his role as the evil Xerxes.

Returning from the original is Spartan Queen Gorgo, played by “Game of Thrones” star Lena Headey, who vows that her husband’s sacrifice won’t be in vain.
“It begins as a whisper, a promise,” she tells her men. “The lightest of breezes dances above the death cries of 300 men. That breeze became a wind.”

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Eva Green's Artemisia shows her softer side.

A wind of hyper-stylized carnage and sultry sex scenes, apparently, judging by the rest of two-minute, 30-second trailer.
The battle of Thermopylae never looked this cool in a history book.

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

The movie is set during the real-life Battle of Thermopylae — though a different verison than the one familiar from the history books.

“300: Rise of an Empire,” loosely based on the graphic novel “Xerxes” by Frank Miller, invades theaters on March 7, 2014.

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Much of the action is set at sea - or at least a CGI version of sea - in '300: Rise of an Empire.'



source: nydailynews.com
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First look! Orlando Bloom reprises his role as arrow-shooting Legolas in new Hobbit trailer The Desolation of Smaug

By SHYAM DODGE

Return of the elf: Orlando Bloom reprises his role as Legolas, from the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, in the second instalment of The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug

The pointy eared archer Legolas is back.
The immortal elven prince, portrayed by Orlando Bloom, makes a fiery entrance in the new trailer for the second instalment of the Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation Of Smaug.
With his trademark blonde half ponytail and long bow, Orlando slides into frame in the opening sequences of the teaser drawing an arrow on Thorin Oakenshield, played by Richard Armitage, threatening: 'Do not think I won't kill you dwarf.'

Watch out! Orlando shows off his archery skills as he fights Orcs in the fantasy adventure film

Orlando, with his bow fully drawn, says the lines after careening down a steep leaf strewn knoll only to land effortlessly on his feet.
Legolas is later seen talking with Evangeline Lilly's new elven character Tauriel, as she appears to convince him of offering his aid to the dwarves and the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, saying: 'It is our fight.'
But Orlando, 36, draws his bow more than once in the trailer, as he can be seen aiming at the head of an Orc during a battle scene in a sunlit clearing on a mountain top.

Unexpected arrival: Orlando's Legolas was not a part of the original The Hobbit but was written into the film adaptation to spice up the storyline

The appearance of Legolas will most likely be an unexpected development for fans of the fantasy novel The Hobbit, which preceded the epic J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy The Lord Of The Rings.
While Orlando's character featured prominently in both the books and Peter Jackson's film version of the three part LOTR series, he was not in the original story of The Hobbit.
Jackson offered an explanation for writing Legolas into the Hobbit films to Entertainment Weekly: 'He’s [elven king] Thranduil’s son, and Thranduil is one of the characters in The Hobbit, and because elves are immortal, it makes sense Legolas would be part of the sequence in the Woodland Realm.'
The director also promised that Orlando's appearance is 'more than a cameo.'

Mixing it up: Director Peter Jackson admitted that Evangeline's character was added to bring a female element to the male dominated story

In 2011 Jackson announced Orlando's casting on his Facebook page, writing: 'Ten years ago, Orlando Bloom created an iconic character with his portrayal of Legolas.
'I'm excited to announce today that we'll be revisiting Middle Earth with him once more. I’m thrilled to be working with Orlando again.'
Adding: 'Funny thing is, I look older—and he doesn’t! I guess that's why he makes such a wonderful elf.'



source: dailymail
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Sugar and spice! Jessica Alba mixes candy colours with biker babe boots as stomps around Venice Beach

By KAILEY HARLESS

Beach chic: Jessica Alba topped a black ensemble with a colourful scarf as she ran errands in Venice Beach on Thursday

As a mother of two and a best selling author, she now promotes a squeaky clean image.
But Jessica Alba played to both her sweet and tough sides as she headed out to run errands in Venice, California, on Thursday.
The 32-year-old topped an otherwise edgy outfit with a girly touch of a colourful scarf.

Still a girly girl: Despite her black tank top and studded biker boots, the 32-year-old beauty displayed her taste for ladylike accessories with a candy-coloured scarf

A range of candy-sweet tones swirled in a print that wrapped around the Sin City star's neck.
Underneath laid a simple black tank top that left her tanned, toned arms free to capture some SoCal rays.
With her hands full of a to-go coffee cup, a wallet, a cell phone and a bottle of water, Jessica displayed her multi-tasking skills that surely help her run her family, a growing business and a busy acting career.

Keeping the rest of her look simple, the Fantastic Four star tucked dark skinny jeans into studded biker boots.
Sticking to the ease of casual Venice Beach, it looked as if Jessica let her brunette locks air dry, as she flipped it to one side of her head.
Oversized black sunglasses shielded her eyes from the beaming sunshine.

Flying solo: The actress enjoyed a rare moment of alone time as she went for a coffee run in Venice

With four-year-old daughter Honor and one-year-old daughter Haven not at her side, the actress seemed to be relishing a rare moment of free time.
Jessica's solo outing arrived on the tail of her new movie trailer being leaked.

Sneak peek: The actress stars in Machete Kills, the trailer of which was leaked on Thursday

Starring alongside the likes of Amber Heard, Sofia Vergara, Lady Gaga, Mel Gibson and Charlie Sheen, the film centres on a man, Machete, recruited to battle his way through Mexico in order to take down an arms dealer who looks to launch a weapon into space.
The action film is set to hit U.S. theatres on September 13.



source: dailymail