Friday, 28 January 2011

New Movie Releases – 28 January 2011


The Mechanic (2011)

Stars: Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Donald Sutherland, Tony Goldwyn
Director: Simon West
Genre: Action/Crime/Thriller
CBS Films, Millennium Films, Chartoff-Winkler Productions
Time: 93 min
Rating: Restricted

Follows an elite hit man as he teaches his trade to an apprentice who has a connection to one of his previous victims.


The Rite (2011)

Stars: Colin O'Donoghue, Anthony Hopkins, Ciarán Hinds, Alice Braga
Director: Mikael Håfström
Genre: Drama/Horror/Thriller
New Line Cinema, Contrafilm, Mid Atlantic Films
Time: 114 min
Rating: PG-13


An American seminary student travels to Italy to take an exorcism course.



Biutiful (2010)

Stars: Javier Bardem, Maricel Álvarez, Hanaa Bouchaib, Guillermo Estrella
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Genre: Drama
Menageatroz, Mod Producciones, Focus Features
Time: 148 min
Rating: Restricted

This is the story of Uxbal, a man living in this world, but able to see his death, which guides his every move.



From Prada to Nada (2011)

Stars: Camilla Belle, Alexa Vega, Kuno Becker, Tina French
Director: Angel Gracia
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
OddLot Entertainment, Gilbert Films, Lionsgate
Time: 107 min
Rating: PG-13

A Latina spin on Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility," where two spoiled sisters who have been left penniless after their father's sudden death are forced to move in with their estranged aunt in East Los Angeles.


Kaboom (2010)

Stars: Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Chris Zylka, Roxane Mesquida
Director: Gregg Araki
Genre: Comedy/Mystery/Sci-Fi
Desperate Pictures, Wild Bunch, Super Crispy Entertainment
Time: 86 min
Rating: Unrated

A sci-fi story centered on the sexual awakening of a group of college students.


Friday, 21 January 2011

New Movie Releases – 21 January 2011


The Company Men (2010)

Stars: Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Suzanne Rico
Director: John Wells
Genre: Drama
Weinstein Company, The, Battle Mountain Films, Spring Creek Productions
Time: 104 min
Rating: Restricted

The story centers on a year in the life of three men trying to survive a round of corporate downsizing at a major company - and how that affects them, their families, and their communities.


No Strings Attached (2011)

Stars: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline, Cary Elwes
Director: Ivan Reitman
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Paramount Pictures, Cold Spring Pictures, Spyglass Entertainment
Time: 108 min
Rating: Restricted

A guy and girl try to keep their relationship strictly physical, but it's not long before they learn that they want something more.


The Way Back (2010)

Stars: Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Dragos Bucur
Director: Peter Weir
Genre: Adventure/Drama/History
Exclusive Films, National Geographic Films, Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ
Time: 133 min
Rating: PG-13


Siberian gulag escapees walk 4000 miles overland to freedom in India

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Vancouver Sun - 18 January 2011

A Little Tramp in modern times
Charlie Chaplin's films remain relevant and continue to delight audiences today
BY JOHN MACKIE
VANCOUVER SUN
            Charlie Chaplin's heyday was in the 1920s and '30S, and many of his biggest movies were made during the silent era. But he remains one of the greatest movie stars of all time, an instantly recognizable figure whose movies still play regularly on TV.
            Nothing compares with seeing them on the big screen, though, and Pacific Cinematheque is staging a major retrospective of his work beginning Thursday, through Feb. 11, in new 35-mm prints from Europe.
            "They're beautiful, pristine, brand-new prints," says Jim Sinclair of Pacific Cinematheque.
            "It's like seeing the films for the first time. Seeing them the way they were meant to be seen, on the big screen, in excellent copies."
            The 17-film retrospective brings together almost every feature Chaplin directed, from classics like The Gold Rush, Modern Times and The Great Dictator to lesser-known works like A Woman of Paris, Payday and Limelight.
            The big question is how many people will come out to see them, particularly the silent movies.
            "Anyone who tries to show black and white films to young people will know the reaction: `Oh, what's this, black and white?' " says Sinclair.
            "It's going to be curious, we'll see [how big the audience is]. These are great films, and he's a great physical comedian. But they're also heart-wrenching and poignant, smart, moving, funny films. So we hope they will find an audience."
            They have been doing just that since last summer, when the retrospective made its North American debut in Los Angeles.
            "It's amazing, how Chaplin translates," says Sarah Finklea of Janus Films, the North American distributor. "I've had a lot of programmers say they were watching it with small kids and the kids were just losing it, watching Chaplin. They'd forgotten how much it does appeal to young children."
            Janus specializes in classic movies; it's an associated company to the Criterion Collection, which does deluxe DVD reissues. Finklea says that Chaplin's films are "absolute perennials."
            "I don't think these films ever died," says Finklea, who is a distant relative of the late dancer-actress Cyd Charisse (whose birth name was Tula Ellice Finklea).
            "But I know [that with] some of the slightly earlier stuff, there hadn't been prints around since maybe the '8os. I don't even know when the last time a wide retrospective was done. But there's always demand within certain theatres, and we like keeping the library alive."
            Besides being a great actor and director, Charlie Chaplin was a savvy business-man. He co-founded United Artists pictures, owned the copyrights to his work, and kept prints.
            Chaplin died in 1977 and his legacy is ' handled by the Chaplin estate in Paris, which has been working with the Cineteca of the Comune di Bologna in Italy on restorations of his catalogue. The new 35-mm prints came from this arrangement.
            Chaplin was a comedic genius who produced some of the most famous moments in movie history, such as the part of Modern Times in which Chaplin's Little Tramp is caught in the giant gears on an industrial assembly line, and the scene in which the starving Chaplin eats his shoe in The Gold Rush.
            But when she's asked for her favourite Chaplin film, Finklea picks a relatively obscure one.
            "Mine is one of the shorts, The Idle Class," she says. "I love that one.
            Of the features I'd have to say The Circus, I think it's hilarious.
            "The Idle Class is one of the Tramp shorts. It's a film [in which] he also plays an aristocratic drunk, so he has two parts in the same film. It's a mistaken identity film, he plays a rich alcoholic husband at this sort of country club estate. The Little Tramp arrives at the country club to take the air, and play golf with some clubs he ' picked up somewhere. At some point the drunk's wife gets the two of them mixed up at a costume party.

At a glance
When: Thursday, through Friday, Feb. 11
Where: Pacific Cinematheque, 1131 Howe
Tickets: $10.50 single bill; $12.50 double bill
Information: http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca/chaplin
SCREENING SCHEDULE
The Gold Rush, Payday: Thursday-Sunday
The Circus, The Idle Class: Thursday-Saturday
The Kid, A Day's Pleasure: Saturday, Sunday
A Woman of Paris, Sunnyside: Sunday-Thursday
A Dog's Life, Shoulder Arms, The Pilgrim: Thursday, Jan. 27-Saturday, Jan. 29:
City Lights: Friday Jan. 28-Sunday Jan. 30, Tuesday Feb. 1
Modern Times: Friday Jan. 28-Sunday Jan. 30
The Great Dictator: Monday, Jan. 30, Tuesday Jan. 31, Sunday, Feb. 6:
A King in New York: Monday, Jan. 31, Tuesday, Feb. 1, Saturday, Feb. 5
Limelight: Monday, Feb. 7, Thursday, Feb. 10, Friday, Feb. 11
Monsieur Verdoux: Monday, Feb. 7, Thursday, Feb. 10, Friday, Feb. 11

            "The Circus is really great. Again it's a Little Tramp story. The Little Tramp finds a job working as a comedy act in the circus. He doesn't know he's funny: he is mistaken as a pickpocket and gets chased through an actual performance. The crowd is not laughing at the actual clowns, but as soon as he appears running from the police, the crowd loses it. So he gets hired on, falls in love with a tightrope artist, and hilarity ensues."
            Both are in the retrospective, along with his lesser-known talkies like Limelight (a sad, beautiful film about an aging vaudeville star in which Chaplin makes his only onscreen appearance with another silent movie icon, Buster Keaton), and Monsieur Verdoux, where he plays a ladykiller, literally.
            "They're very truck in their perspective," says Cinematheque's Sinclair. "Monsieur Verdoux kind of freaked people out, with Chaplin playing a serial killer.'
            His most acclaimed talkie is The Great Dictator, a satire of Adolf Hitler that' Chaplin made almost two years before the United States went to war with Germany; shooting started in September 1939, the same month Germany invaded Poland.
            The Great Dictator maybe the funniest serious movie ever made (or vice-versa). Chaplin's cinematic fuehrer is dubbed the Phooey, Hitler becomes Adenoid Hynkel, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels is renamed Garbitsch, and Luftwaffe head Hermann Goering becomes Field Marshal Herring.
Chaplin mocks Hitler's plans for world domination by having Hynkel play with a balloon done up like the world; at one point, he's lying on his desk and sends it skyward with a bump from his bum. But when Hynkel tries to squeeze the world too tight, it explodes.
"It is amazing," Sinclair says. "[But] Chaplin did say later if he had known about the enormity of Hitler's crimes he wouldn't have ridiculed him in the same way, or made a funny movie about him."

jmackie@vancouversun.com

Friday, 14 January 2011

New Movie Releases – 14 January 2011


The Green Hornet (2011)

Stars: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz, Cameron Diaz
Director: Michel Gondry
Genre: Action/Comedy/Crime/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Columbia Pictures, Original Film
Time: 119 min
Rating: PG-13

Following the death of his father, Britt Reid, heir to his father's large company, teams up with his late dad's assistant Kato to become a masked crime fighting team.


The Dilemma (2011)
Stars: Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Winona Ryder, Jennifer Connelly
Director: Ron Howard
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment, Spyglass Entertainment
Time: 111 min
Rating: PG-13

A man discovers that his best friend's wife is having an affair.


Barney's Version (2010)

Stars: Paul Giamatti, Rosamund Pike, Jake Hoffman, Macha Grenon
Director: Richard J. Lewis
Genre: Comedy | Drama
Serendipity Point Films, Fandango, Lyla Films
Time: 134 min
Rating: Restricted

The picaresque and touching story of the politically incorrect, fully lived life of the impulsive, irascible and fearlessly blunt Barney Panofsky.


Ong Bak 3 (2010)

Stars: Tony Jaa, Dan Chupong, Sarunyu Wongkrachang, Primorata
Directors: Tony Jaa/Panna Rittikrai
Genre: Action
Iyara Films
Time: 99 min
Rating: Restricted

Ong Bak 3 picks up where Ong Bak 2 had left off. Tien is captured and almost beaten to death before he is saved and brought back to the Kana Khone villagers. There he is taught meditation and how to deal with his Karma, but very soon his arch rival returns challenging Tien for a final duel.


A Somewhat Gentle Man (2010)

Stars: Stellan Skarsgård, Bjørn Floberg, Jorunn Kjellsby, Gard B. Eidsvold
Director: Hans Petter Moland
Country: Norway
Language: Norwegian/Swedish
Genre: Comedy/Crime/Drama
Paradox Produksjon
Time: 113 min
Rating:


Ulrik is reluctantly let out of prison after serving 12 years for murder. He has to cope with his gang, his ex, a few women - and a snitch. His son has a fiancé. Her family doesn't approve of murder. They have a nursery, they have principles. Ulrik is a somewhat gentle man. But how gentle can you be? ...and he's losing his hair.

Friday, 7 January 2011

New Movie Releases – 7 January 2011


Season of the Witch (2011)
 

Stars: Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Claire Foy, Stephen Campbell Moore
Director: Dominic Sena
Genre: Action/Adventure/Fantasy
Atlas Entertainment, Relativity Media
Time: 95 min
Rating: PG-13

14th-century knights transport a suspected witch to a monastery, where monks deduce her powers could be the source of the Black Plague.


Country Strong (2010)

Stars: Garrett Hedlund, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leighton Meester, Tim McGraw
Director: Shana Feste
Genre: Drama/Music
Screen Gems, Maguire Entertainment, TVM
Time: 117 min
Rating: PG-13


A rising country-music songwriter works with a fallen star to work their way fame, causing romantic complications along the way.