Posted: 16 Mar 2010 12:05 AM PDT

I got a chance to see the new 3D version of Alice in Wonderland yesterday, and I can understand why the critics were lukewarm about the movie, which is a sort of sequel to the Lewis Carroll tales. The grownup Alice takes a bit of getting used to, and the backstory -- whether she's going to marry a rich twit -- was so thin that it didn't provide any suspense at all. I wish her character was more developed; as it is, she doesn't really come alive until about half-way through the movie. Luckily, there are plenty of interesting, manic characters surrounding her, including Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. Add the animated Cheshire Cat, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and a talking bloodhound, and there's plenty to entertain you.

For another take on Alice, here's a look at a new version of the classic, illustrated by artist Camilla Rose Garcia. Alice and the other characters have a spindly, Goth-like feel, which may appeal to the same readers who like the reimagining of the Jane Austen novels.

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Movie News & Gossip - YAHOO!

Posted: 16 Mar 2010 12:05 AM PDT

Orlando Bloom won't be returning to the fourth installment of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, the star told MTV News at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

"No, definitely not," he said, explaining that he believes his character, William Turner, "is sort of swimming around with the fish at the bottom of the ocean."

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ShoWest 2010: Movie Theaters Asked to Offer Healthier ... - Coming Soon!

Posted: 15 Mar 2010 11:43 PM PDT

The nation's theater owners were asked today by the head of a major Hollywood studio to have healthier snacks at their concession stands in addition to their traditional offerings of candy, popcorn and soda.

In a speech at ShoWest, the nation's largest convention for the movie theater industry, Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton said, "adding healthier options to your existing menu is the right thing to do for our industry, for audiences and for our country."

Lynton said a poll of moviegoers commissioned by Sony Pictures revealed:

two-thirds of moviegoers and three-quarters of parents are more likely to buy healthy snacks at theaters if they are offered;
forty-two percent of parents said they would buy concessions more often if healthy options were available;
sixty percent of parents said having healthier snacks in theaters would enhance their overall moviegoing experience;

Lynton said he was not asking theaters to stop selling popcorn, soda and candy. "Audiences love them," he said. "I'm just talking about adding some healthier items to what you already sell."

Lynton also announced that the Alliance for a Healthier Generation has offered to meet with the theater owners "and offer advice on how to change your menus in a way that makes sense for your audiences and your business."

"The private sector, including the theatre industry, has the ability to improve the access families have to healthier foods and beverages," said President Bill Clinton, founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation, who co-leads the Alliance for a Healthier Generation with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and American Heart Association President Clyde Yancy. "The Alliance brokered voluntary agreements with the beverage industry that resulted in an 88 percent decrease in beverage calories shipped to America's schools in just a few years. We are eager to work with the movie theater industry to craft similar agreements to provide healthy concession options in movie theaters."

"In order to turn the tide on the obesity epidemic we are going to need to make soup to nuts changes in the number of calories we take in and the calories we actively use. Because kids are eating and foraging at home, school, sporting events and at the movies, changes are needed everywhere," said Dr. Neal Halfon, professor of pediatrics, public health and public policy at UCLA and director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities. "We can't expect kids to make healthy choices if they aren't given healthy choices to make. And while this is a nationwide problem, and will require support from companies with a national stature like Sony Pictures and large theater chains, it will also depend on the ingenuity and commitment of local theater operators to make the difference in their communities."

In a videotaped message to the convention, Dr. Mehmet Oz, vice chair and professor of surgery at Columbia University and host of "The Dr. Oz Show," said, "Everyone enjoys popcorn and a soda at the movies, but there are healthier alternatives. Good nutrition doesn't mean eating spinach at every meal. But with so many children and teens going to movies so often these days, I think we've got to be mindful about what they're eating and drinking, and giving them the chance to choose healthier food makes a lot of sense."

Lynton said theater owners should consider taking this step because childhood obesity is an epidemic, it's the responsible thing to do for audiences and society, and it's good for their business because it would help families enjoy theaters even more and, by giving them healthier options, more snacks will be purchased.

Regarding what kinds of snacks might be offered at theaters, Lynton said, "I don't think giant tubs of spinach or broccoli's a good idea. And nobody wants to eat cauliflower while watching Spider-Man, or drink a 40-ounce cup of prune juice."

He said moviegoers suggested to the studio's interviewers the kind of snacks they'd like to see:

fresh fruit, fruit cups, apples with dip;
veggies with dip;
yogurt;
granola bars and trail mix;
baked chips, apples chips and unbuttered, air-popped popcorn.

Lynton said some people sneak healthy snacks into movie theaters, like a granola bar or a box of raisins, which represents an untapped market for concession stands. "People are consuming food differently these days. In fact, many of your theaters are located near Starbucks and Whole Foods and in malls and other places where consumers are now finding more nutritious food and beverage options. Audiences would love both a great theatrical experience and terrific snacks."

Lynton said employees at Sony Pictures are offered a subsidized healthy lunch special and expanded salad bar at the studio commissary. He noted some theaters are moving in the direction of offering healthier foods; some use canola oil instead of coconut oil for their popcorn. He also said he understands that some things "will prove to be logistically or economically impossibleBut even small steps in the right direction can have a big impact."

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Spring's Buzziest Movie - Daily Beast

Posted: 15 Mar 2010 10:53 PM PDT

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BS Top - Curtis Kick Ass Dan Smith / Lions Gate Behold Kick-Ass, the film that wowed a small group of hard-core film geeks—and includes Nicolas Cage's funniest role in years. Bryan Curtis attends its world premiere at SXSW.

Last December, a select group of 200 film geeks gathered in a movie theater in Austin, Texas. They were there at the invitation of Harry Knowles, the founder of the Web site Ain't It Cool News. Every year, Knowles celebrates his birthday by screening 24 consecutive hours of movies, an exercise he calls the Butt-Numb-A-Thon. Knowles had plied his Hollywood connections to get big-name, as-yet-unreleased blockbusters like Shutter Island, The Lovely Bones, and, the geek Holy Grail, Avatar. As an additional course, Knowles got a print of a comic-book movie called Kick-Ass.

Matthew Vaughn, the director of Kick-Ass, was in the theater that night, and worried whether the geeks would adopt his movie. "If they didn't like it, then we were fucked," Vaughn said in an interview this weekend.

Click below to watch the NSFW Red Band trailer.

Kick-Ass was not a high-priority piece of geek cinema. "The expectation level was kind of a code yellow," Eric Vespe, an Ain't It Cool writer, told me. To make matters worse, one of theater's speakers gave out about a half-hour into the movie. But then something strange happened. Though the audience had been watching movies for 20 straight hours, they began cheering Kick-Ass' brutal action sequences and started clapping along with the music. With its copious references to Batman and Spider-Man—its knowingness to the whole business of comic-book movies—Kick-Ass had won over the hordes. Vespe said it felt like being at a rock concert, adding that Kick-Ass got a bigger ovation than Avatar, Shutter Island, everything other film.

"They got the movie," Vaughn said later. "They got every nuance."

The intervening three months has seen Kick-Ass, which opens nationally on April 16, become a word-of-mouth sensation in certain quarters of the Internet. (A raunchy red-band trailer didn't hurt.) On Friday night, Kick-Ass was back in Austin to open the South By Southwest Film Festival.

• Bryan Curtis: The Best Films of SXSW So what is it? To call it a comic-book spoof, like Mystery Men (1999), would be an injustice. Kick-Ass is, Vaughn said, "a postmodern love letter to superhero films." It borrows teen ennui from Spider-Man, vicious action from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and lines from many comic properties I am not studied enough to recognize. Dave Lizewski (played by Aaron Johnson) is a high-school dweeb ala Peter Parker. "Out of my friends, I wasn't even the funny one," he laments. So Dave does something about it. He puts on a forest-green scuba suit. Where the rest of us see the fifth Ninja Turtle, he sees a brave and dashing super hero. He takes to the streets. He is Kick-Ass.

And, well, he's no Dark Knight. In an early scene, Kick-Ass tries to battle some street toughs and gets stabbed in the gut. Describing his directorial thinking, Vaughn said, "Let's at least show the audience of kids that it's not really a good idea to put on a costume and attack a gangster." Kick-Ass is soon out of the hospital and joined by a father and daughter who have also become amateur super heroes: Nicolas Cage (playing a Batman knock-off named Big Daddy) and Chloe Moretz (calling herself Hit-Girl, with a purple wig apparently borrowed from Phyllis Diller).

Kick-Ass has more heroes, like Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who sounds like sports drink and looks like Johnny Weir. The whole mood is the opposite of the soaring tone of most comic-book movies. Tweaking a line from Spider-Man, Dave says, "With no power comes no responsibility."

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