plus 4, ETHAN HAWKE: 'MOVIES ARE TOO LONG' - New Kerala

ETHAN HAWKE: 'MOVIES ARE TOO LONG' - New Kerala
(WWE) Booker T On WWE Return, Big Show Makes Out w/ A Man In New Movie ... - TWNP-Wrestling News
Movie review: Don't fall for 'Leap Year' - La Crosse Tribune
Hollywood set for summer movie battles - Courier-Journal
Movie Review: 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus' - Delaware County Daily Times

ETHAN HAWKE: 'MOVIES ARE TOO LONG' - New Kerala

Posted: 08 Jan 2010 12:03 AM PST

ETHAN HAWKE is urging Hollywood bosses to keep their films short to avoid boring cinema audiences, because a lot of modern movies are "at least 20 minutes too long."

The actor, who is heading back to the big screen this year (10) in new vampire movie Daybreakers, is adamant many modern directors are too arrogant and refuse to edit their work properly.

And Hawke fears overly-long productions could have a negative impact on the film industry if fans get tired of spending hours in movie theatres.

He tells the Los Angeles Times, "I don't know what has happened to movies, but lately every movie is at least 20 minutes too long. It used to be that if you were three hours long it was because it was epic - a movie about Gandhi; something with very important subject matters. Now, it doesn't matter what you're making a movie about; everyone thinks their movie is so brilliant that it has to be three hours long. Not to be critical but... well, we all know which movies those are."

--IANS-WENN

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(WWE) Booker T On WWE Return, Big Show Makes Out w/ A Man In New Movie ... - TWNP-Wrestling News

Posted: 07 Jan 2010 04:32 PM PST

Headline Posted by Feras Ballout on 9:16:42 PM Jan 7, 2010

- WWE Studios' Knucklehead starring Big Show will be released in theaters on April 23rd. WWE will begin promoting the movie around WrestleMania 26.

- Former WWE and TNA star Booker T appeared on the Monday Night Mayhem Radio Network recently and addressed rumors swirling online of him making his return to WWE at the Royal Rumble. Here is what he said: "I had no plans of being on either show. Right now, I'm taking a little time off and seeing exactly which way I want to go. Wrestling has been very good to me on both the WWE side and the TNA side, so right now, I'm just taking some time off."

- To promote the new WWE Mattel action figures, WWE will be setting up a booth at events where fans can take a photo and pose as a figure inside a life-sized action figure case and then receive a code to download the photo online.

- WWE Superstars Mark Henry, Kane, MVP, Chris Jericho, Big Show and The Great Khali all have appearances in the upcoming SNL film MacGruber. While Chris Jericho is the only one who has a speaking role, it's said that Big Show makes out with another man in the movie, according to one person who has seen a rough edit. The movie comes out on April 16th.

4 Exclusive Photos Of Big Show Making Out w/ Man In New SNL Movie! (>>)

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Movie review: Don't fall for 'Leap Year' - La Crosse Tribune

Posted: 07 Jan 2010 10:29 PM PST

"Leap Year'' is a perfectly named movie. Not because of the calendar anomaly that serves as the thin catalyst for the plot — because it seems four years long.

The ultra-light romantic comedy focuses on Anna (Amy Adams), a woman who believes everything in life should be meticulously planned. That philosophy gets tested when she decides to follow her dull boyfriend (Adam Scott), who hasn't proposed after four years, to a medical conference in Ireland, where there's a vague custom that women can propose to men on Feb. 29.

Of course, her trip is a disaster, except for meeting Declan (Matthew Goode), a bar owner and taxi cab driver. They head off across some gorgeous countryside, bickering all the way. Is it possible this immediate hatred could be masking some sexual tension? (Do you really have to ask?)

There are no fireworks between Adams and Goode. They just slog though the story like rom-com zombies. Both actors generally are dependable, but it would have taken a Christmas miracle to make the asinine script by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont come alive. Kaplan wrote "Made of Honor," and this script has some remarkable similarities to that one.

Anand Tucker's direction would have worked if this were a "Let's Visit Ireland" travelogue, instead of a story that has been done much better in movies from "The Chase" to "P.S. I Love You."

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Hollywood set for summer movie battles - Courier-Journal

Posted: 08 Jan 2010 12:03 AM PST

LOS ANGELES — The dust has barely settled on the 2009 movie year, but it's never too early to look ahead to the promise and peril of 2010, especially its summer box-office showdowns.

About 40 percent of all movie tickets are sold between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and as the studios try to squeeze more dollars from the vacation season, they not only are expanding the parameters of what defines the summer (Marvel and Paramount's "Iron Man 2" opens on May 7) but also inevitably packing numerous movies into some key weekends like so many cars on the freeway.

As is often the case, some of the year's most-anticipated movies — DreamWorks' "Shrek Forever After" on May 21, for example — will open alone, with the competition steering clear.

It's the same wide berth given last summer to Paramount's "Star Trek," Sony's "Angels & Demons" and Warner Bros.' "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," all of which premiered with no new national releases against them.

But even with studios staking out release dates well beyond our imagining — DreamWorks already has claimed May 25, 2012, for "Madagascar 3" and has penciled in "Shrek 5" for 2013 — it's inevitable there will be any number of bloody clashes.

This past summer, Sony's "Year One" dared to premiere directly opposite Disney's "The Proposal," and we know how well that turned out for Jack Black.

Based on what agents, studio executives and filmmakers have been saying, here's a look at some of this summer's face-offs, with a handicapping of the races.

May 28

Disney's "The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" versus Warner Bros.' "Sex and the City 2."

• Horn: We all know how badly some recent video game adaptations have fared (remember "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li"?), but Jerry Bruckheimer's "Prince of Persia" feels like both a hit in its own right and the potential launch of a new franchise.

The first "Sex and the City" grossed more than $150 million, but the sandstorms defeat the shoes.

• Fritz: No question "Persia" will open bigger, thanks to a well-known brand among gamers, a hunky star (Jake Gyllenhaal) and what look like phenomenal special effects.

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Movie Review: 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus' - Delaware County Daily Times

Posted: 08 Jan 2010 02:11 AM PST

By Jake Coyle, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) --- Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" is more than a peculiar coda for Heath Ledger. It's not just a trivia answer — though that may well be its fate.

"Parnassus" goes down in the books as another entry in Gilliam's history of remarkable production misfortunes, including the shuttering of his "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" and the tragic loss of his star, Ledger, while filming this movie.

With relatively few changes, Gilliam and co-writer Charles McKeown refashioned the script so that Ledger's part could be finished with three actors filling in. Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell came to the rescue.

The resulting film is an outlandish juggling act. It teeters, creaks and breaks at the seams, but somehow holds together better than you would expect and better than such an extravagant farce should. It ultimately spins out of control, but one still leaves the theater impressed by Gilliam's resilient skill at creating such ornate tales.

In modern-day London along the shadows of the River Thames, Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) leads his traveling show on a large, unwieldy horse-drawn carriage. With him are his 15-year-old daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole); his sidekick, Percy (Verne Troyer); and the young performer Anton (Andrew Garfield).

They are a ramshackle lot of apparently faded glory, dressed in Victorian garb and covered in dirty makeup. For drunks spilling out of techno clubs, they offer the gift of story and imagination.

When someone takes the stage, Dr. Parnassus meditates and the volunteer goes through a mirror. On the other side is a world of imagination.

One of the film's failings is that it doesn't quite establish what this world represents. But the surrealism is wonderful, very much reminiscent of the animations Gilliam created with Monty Python.

All who enter are eventually given a vague, symbolic choice between virtue and vice, the latter tantalizing offered by Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), a devil in a bowler hat. Those who choose well emerge from the mirror exuberant and healed; those who don't never return.

We learn that Dr. Parnassus gained his powers in a deal with Mr. Nick struck more than 1,000 years ago. In a second deal, he traded his immortality for youth, promising his daughter to Mr. Nick when she turns 16.

Squinty and wearing a thin mustache, Waits plays Mr. Nick as a likable troublemaker; a good sport who relishes a bet and even dryly urges Dr. Parnassus to "accentuate the positive." Arriving days before their deadline, he strikes another bargain: Dr. Parnassus can keep his daughter if he can win five souls before Mr. Nick does.

And as any baseball fan knows, anything can happen in a five-game series.

While the Imaginarium strives for success, they rescue a man in a white suit they find hanging from a noose under a bridge — our harrowing, creepy first sight of Ledger. The troupe takes him in and soon finds the man is useful in bringing crowds to the Imaginarium.

This is Ledger as a showman. He's charismatic and charming, easily winning over volunteers. But he's also jittery from the anxiety of the secrets he keeps from his new friends.

Ledger's performance outside of the mirror is complete but somewhat one-dimensional. He never got the chance to play the scenes inside the mirror — and that's where the battle for his soul takes place.

On three separate trips into the mirror, Depp, Law and Farrell play Ledger's character. In the CGI-created fantasy world of the Imaginarium, it's a plausible shift. Of the bunch, Farrell is the most natural and dynamic.

For all its bizarre contraptions, Gilliam's film is essentially about a father's misdeeds coming back to haunt him. The dependably excellent Plummer plays Dr. Parnassus with weariness, like an artist gone too long without an audience.

One is tempted to compare "Doctor Parnassus" to another film making the case for wonder: James Cameron's "Avatar." Cameron's fantasy is bright colors and violence, good and evil. Gilliam's is a faded, absurdist magic that strikes more true to the messiness of life.

Messy is one thing, but overstuffed is another. Gilliam remains a talented juggler — now if only he would toss fewer things in the air.

"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," a Sony Pictures Classics release, is rated PG for violent images, some sensuality, language and smoking. Running time: 122 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.