For that select few who've always wondered what Matt Damon would look like without his hair, you might want to check out the latest pictures from Neil Blomkamp's upcoming sci-fi flick Elysium. The Bourne star has gone for a look we can only describe as Bruce Willis-ian, although that's absolutely not a term we expect to catch on. There are other bald films stars, you know.
Well, 51% of the world's population are female, I suppose, so it's not massively surprising that the final (yes!) film in the Twilight franchise pulled in $141.3 million at the box office over the weekend. That's right: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, which is actually the name of a film, beat Skyfall, which took in just $100 million by comparison.
Ever since we saw them having it out in Knocked Up, it looks to be Judd Apatow's intention to use his own family to tell us all about his own family, though the director has conveniently replaced himself with Paul Rudd, because, well, who wouldn't replace themselves with Paul Rudd? So ignoring the fact that Apatow has cast his wife and two children to play the exact same roles they would serve in his own personal life, This Is 40 looks to be another strong comedy from the guy who makes all the comedies.
We've all encountered books that've proved impossible to get through for one reason or another. For a lot of people, it's those infernal "classics" your English professor was always going about: Finnegans Wake, To A Lighthouse. For others, it's anything written by Dan Brown (for completely different reasons). But for Ben Affleck, it's Stephen King's post apocalyptic novel The Stand that's causing him a whole bunch of trouble, what with its 800+ pages, layered characters, and multiple plot strands. Gosh.
The film adaptation of World War Z has apparently been organised with the same kind of scrambling chaos that you'd find in a horde of zombies going after the very last human being. What we mean by that appropriately-themed analogy is that this thing has proven itself to be a relentless mess from the very beginning, a project whose "difficult production" will be sure to go down with the likes of Jaws and Apocalypse Now, should it turn out to be as good as any of those.
You'd hoped that it might've moved away from our atmosphere and threatened a stupider and more gullible planet with its obvious screen adaptability, but the Asteroids movie has gone and got itself into a slingshot orbit and has fired itself right back at us. And emerging from his farmhouse on a foggy night to investigate a smoking hole in the ground is writer Jez Butterworth, who may or may not have been taken over by an alien parasite, given that he's said "Yes, I'll write that" whilst also keeping a straight face.
Great cinema is driven by great ambition. Without ambition, movies wouldn't exist. Because every project that finds its way into the production stages - even those that don't turn out right in the end or fail to succeed at the box office - is loaded with ambition: somebody has to pursue the dream that one day this thing will get into a theatre and people will watch it. Almost every picture will have that person somewhere in its midst. It must, otherwise what's the point?
Although a Pinocchio-based film seems like the perfect gift that Tim Burton might bestow upon his go-to quirkmeister Johnny Depp ("Can I play Pinocchio, Tim? Can I?"), he's apparently moving away from his boyfriend for chance to work with another actor: Robert Downey Jr.. Well, not that Downey Jr. would play Pinocchio, of course, because that would make for some uncomfortable viewing: he's in line to star as Geppetto, Pinocchio's father. This Burton project has been rumored for a while, but it's just been reported that Jane Goldman (Kiss Ass) has signed on to write the thing.
You may know Aaron Sorkin as "that guy who wrote The West Wing", or perhaps even as "that guy who wrote several versions of the same show after he wrote The West Wing". However you know him - and we prefer to do so through his actually remarkable movie The Social Network - Sorkin is one of Hollywood's hottest writers, and he's currently working away on his next technology-based sort-of biopic. He's did Facebook back in 2010 when that was still cool and running our lives, and he's doing Steve Jobs while Apple are still (burning a hole) in all of our pockets.
Even though the people who made the floppiest movies of the year have probably had a hard enough time as it is, what with all that money they lost and the negative comments they've received from random passerbys who had nasty things to say and sharp objects to throw, Forbes' list of the biggest flops of the year has emerged to make them feel that little bit worse. There aren't too many surprises to be had, although we were sure that The Oogieloves In The Big Balloon Adventure was going to do so much better. Oh, well, audiences these days. You c
