Gwyneth Paltrow wants you to know that Pepper Potts is no pushover.
Paltrow plays Tony Stark's (a.k.a. Iron Man) business partner and significant other in Iron Man 3, the third film of the franchise that put Marvel Studios on the map and helped usher in this unprecedented age of superhero movies.
Take a peek at the film's trailers and you'll see Potts has more to do than just worry about her man. The usually calm and collected character gets in on the action, even donning the Iron Man suit to help Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) battle terrorist The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley).
Of course, the extent of that action remains a closely guarded secret.
Yes, it's been 20 years (!) since Steven Spielberg scared us with rippling water in a plastic cup, Laura Dern and Sam Neill got slack-jawed in the face of giant beasts long thought extinct and Jeff Goldblum used his eccentric charm to add some laughs, and yes sex appeal, to the now-classic Jurassic Park, hitting theatres in 3D April 5.
In case you're too young to remember the first iteration that cleaned up at the box office in 1993, or have since forgotten the pertinent details in the two decades that have passed, we've got a refresher of sorts that outlines the story, the key players and the book that started it all.
Take a trip back in time and, as Samuel L. Jackson would say, hold onto your butts!
The storm is upon us.
We're on the Albuquerque, New Mexico, set of The Host, where cast and crew have stopped production to shield their eyes and wait out a late afternoon sand storm. Dust, gravel and high winds whip by for a few minutes only to stop suddenly, and then it's back to business on the sci-fi film that'll surely generate a flurry of attention for its young Irish star, Saoirse Ronan.
Based on the book by "Twilight" author Stephenie Meyer, The Host takes place in the near future when parasitic aliens called Souls have taken control of human beings by invading their bodies and wiping out their identities.
But some humans, including the teenage rebel Mel (Ronan), have powerful wills, and when a Soul named Wanderer — Wanda for short — infects Mel, it becomes emotionally attached to her. That means two identities are jostling inside Mel's body.
Books will surely be written about the complicated journey to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's classic novel to the big screen.
The abridged version runs something like this: After Peter Jackson completed the Lord of the Rings trilogy in 2003 with New Line, director and studio were keen to make The Hobbit. New Line would co-produce the film with MGM, which held the film rights. However, Jackson and New Line got into a legal battle over royalties, finally settling the matter in the fall of 2007. It was then announced Jackson would executive produce The Hobbit and its sequel.
In 2008, Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) was brought in to direct, but script delays and the fact MGM had fallen into bankruptcy held up production, forcing him to abandon the project in May 2010. This past October, del Toro told The Hollywood Reporter that leaving The Hobbit was "the most difficult professional decision I've ever had to make."
The obvious choice to take over directing duties was Jackson. In the same Hollywood Reporter story New Line president Toby Emmerich said, "It wasn't clear the movies would survive if he didn't step in."
A movie can take us anywhere, anytime — a story can shift between the past, present and future — and startling new worlds can be created in the blink of an eye.
However, it takes a special filmmaker to create such on-screen magic, and in the case of Cloud Atlas it takes three directors: Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski.
The trio combines talents to adapt author David Mitchell's award-winning, epic novel that follows various human souls through a myriad of lifetimes. As they move from lifetime to lifetime they sometimes switch genders and races, and ultimately must account for their past actions. Here's how some of the pieces fit together in this cinematic puzzle.
There's nothing wrong with playing the girlfriend, or the neighbour, but Rebecca Hall deserves a better fate.
The 30-year-old British actor, who is familiar to many as Ben Affleck's love interest in The Town and Vicky in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, has earned the opportunity to show off her considerable talent, which she finally does as the star of the eerie ghost story The Awakening.
Set in 1921's post-World War I England, the film casts Hall as Florence Cathcart, a woman dedicated to debunking all things supernatural. When a teacher (Dominic West) at a remote boarding school comes to her claiming the ghost of a young boy is roaming the halls and frightening the students, Florence feels compelled to investigate and prove there are no such things as ghosts. What follows is a tension-filled story with clever plot twists that showcase Hall's dramatic acting chops.
You may have to catch your breath when she appears in Sparkle, the moment you see the late Whitney Houston alive and well on screen. The remake of the 1976 film of the same name finished shooting in November of last year, three months before Houston's death on February 11, 2012.
Early reports herald Houston's performance as Emma, a former R&B singer trying to guide her three daughters as they break into the Motown music scene of the late 1960s. We often forget that Houston — who optioned the rights to Sparkle in the mid-'90s and served as an executive producer on the remake — was for a brief, shining moment, a huge Hollywood star. We look at back at the three films she made, which cemented her title as actor-singer.
This month's hugely-anticipated The Dark Knight Rises is the eighth big-screen Batman pic and the third directed by Christopher Nolan after Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. No other superhero franchise has been successfully rebooted twice, survived major cast changes and altered its tone from campy to serious, back to campy and then back to stone-cold serious.
With TDKR hitting theatres on July 20 and with Comic-Con kicking off July 12, we're taking a look at the evolution of the Bat on film, from the men who've donned the cowl — West to Keaton to Clooney — to series directors Burton and Schumacher, and finally a look at the rise of the 21st-century Batman, Christian Bale.
Take a look at our round-up of the Big-screen Batmans after the jump!
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