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.

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. 

Released 100 years ago today- 5 February 1910 (USA)

Twelfth Night (1910)

Stars: Julia Swayne Gordon, Charles Kent, Florence Turner

Directors: Eugene Mullin, Charles Kent

Writers: Eugene Mullin (scenario), William Shakespeare (play)

Genre: Short/Comedy/Drama

Production Co:Vitagraph Company of America

Time: 12 min

Rating: Passed

Status: Survived

Plot

When Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are shipwrecked and separated, Viola dresses in her brother's clothes and becomes a page in the palace of the Duke of Orsino. Thinking Viola is a boy, the Duke sends her with a message to Olivia, whom he loves. A series of complications begins when Olivia falls in love with the page 'boy'.

Fifty years ago today - Monday 5 January 1959

The Vancouver Sun - Monday 5 January 1959

Silent Screen Idol
     Romantic idol of the silent screen, Ramon Navarro, was arrested by Los Angeles police for drunk driving after running through a red light.
     Police said the 59-year-old actor, who was freed on $263 bail, was "abusive" and failed to pass sobriety tests.

Released 100 years ago today - 23 October 1908 (USA)

Romance of a Jewess

Stars: Florence Lawrence, George Gebhardt, Gladys Egan

Director: D.W. Griffith

Writer: D.W. Griffith

Genre: Drama/Short

American Mutoscope & Biograph

Time: 10 min

Rating: Not Rated

Status: Survived

Plot

Ruth Simonson, with her father, is seen kneeling at the bedside of her mother, whose sands of life are rapidly

ebbing. Realizing her end near, Mrs. Simonson takes from her neck a chain and locket and places it around the neck of her daughter, Ruth, with the prayerful injunction that she be ever guided in the path of prudence and virtue by this memorial. Commending her to the care of her father, the old lady goes to meet her Master in the Great Beyond. Two years later we find Ruth assisting her old father in his pawnshop. Mr. Simonson, although a money-lender, is benevolent in nature and his many deeds of munificence have endeared him to all who know him. Hence, when the local schatchen appears with Jacob Rubenstein, a wealthy suitor for his daughter's hand, it was his desire for her future happiness that induced him to look with favor on him. Ruth, however, had given her heart to Sol Bimberg, an impecunious bookseller in the neighbourhood. While Mr. Simonson has no aversion for Sol, ...

This Day 50 years ago – Saturday 5 January 1957

 DOCTOR DISPUTES STORY

'Kidnapped' Actress Found; Claims Pair Assaulted Her

   INDIO, Calif. (BUP)—Actress Marie (The Body) McDonald told Los Angeles police today she was criminally attacked by two men who she said kidnapped her Thursday night from her San Fernando Valley home.

   She told officers questioning her at a hospital here about her 24-hour disappearance that the two men, a Mexican and a Negro, abducted her under threats to harm her three children.

   She said they forced her to perform unnatural sex acts while she was held in a Los Angeles house, blindfolded "with a sack over my head."

   An examining physician at the hospital later disputed Miss McDonald's claim she had been raped.

BLACK EYE

   The 32-year-old blonde movie queen was found wandering dazed and Incoherent along U.S. highway 60.70 in the desert early today by a truck driver.

   Hospital attendants reported her face was bruised as from a beating, she had a black eye and portions of two front teeth were missing.

   Kept under sedation Friday night, the actress recovered suf­ficiently today to relate to officers her lurid tale of being kidnapped from her palatial home, attacked and then dumped from a speeding ear by her assailants.

HAD $167

   Clad only in a nightrobe over pajama tops, she was found by truck driver Richard D. Corn. 38. He turned her over to police whom she told that she had been beaten raped and robbed of a 22-carat diamond ring.

   Deputies said however that she had $167 in cash in her robe pocket.

   The FBI said it would not enter the case because there was "no evidence of interstate transport."

   Police said they didn't know how to treat the case.

PHONED FRIENDS

   They pointed cut that Miss McDonald had telephoned three times to friends while she claimed she was being held cap­tive but hadn't phoned police.

   They also said that clipped newspaper sections from which a kidnap note had been fashioned, and a tablet of writing paper similar to that to which the note was pasted were both found in the actress' home.

This Day 50 years ago - Friday 4 January 1957

Actress Missing, Feared Kidnapped

   HOLLYWOOD (BUP) — Beautiful actress Marie (The Body) McDonald disappeared from her $65,000 Fernando Valley home early today in night clothes and police feared she was kidnapped.

   Police indicated they had identified two men as the suspected kidnappers.

   Two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were called into the case, on "stand-by" until the 24-hours required by federal law has passed and provided for their entry into the case.

   A trail of anonymous threatening telephone calls and a kidnap note were left behind by the supposed kidnappers, believed by police to have abducted the blonde, 32-year-old divorced mother of three children shortly after midnight this morning.

   "We are compelled by the set of circumstances to treat the disappearance as a bona fide kidnap," said Los Angeles police Chief William Parker. "From all we know at this time it would appear that she left the premises with someone she knew."

   However, the Los Angeles Herald-Express said the actress telephoned the newspaper's Hollywood columnist, Harrison Carroll, at 4 a.m. saying she had been kidnapped by two men.

   'Tonight at my home these two men came in and abducted me. They drugged me. They gave me a shot of something... They carried me miles." the actress was quoted as saying.

   "They arc in the next room. They think I'm asleep. That's how I happened to get hold of a telephone ... They wanted “my ring and money.”

The Vancouver Sun