Twilight superstar Kristen Stewart and Australian favourite Chris Hemsworth, hot off the phenomenal success
of Avengers, join visionary Director Rupert Sanders on a tour to Sydney for the Australian premiere of their
epic action-adventure SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNSTMAN, taking place in true style at Event cinemas,
Westfield Bondi Junction June 19. The trio will be enchanting press on Tues 19th and Wed 20th June to
promote the breath-taking new vision of the legendary tale, opening in Cinemas across Australia on Thursday
June 21.

The Expendables (2010) (2nd half – stumbled upon on Foxtel)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke

A team of mercenaries is given the assignment to take out a corrupt military leader and a rogue CIA operative on a Latin American island.

Final Destination (2000)

After a teenager has a terrifying vision of him and his friends dying in a plane crash, he prevents the accident only to have Death hunt them down, one by one.

Lock Up (1989) (1st Half -  stumbled upon on Foxtel)

Frank Leone (Stallone)  is nearing the end of his prison term for a relatively minor crime. Just before he is paroled, however, Warden Drumgoole takes charge. Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland) was assigned to a hell-hole prison after his administration was publicly humiliated by Leone, and has now arrived on the scene to ensure that Leone never sees the light of day. Also stars Sonny (Billy from Predator) Landham as Chink Weber

The Straights – Episode 1: I was struck immediately by the influence of the Godfather  - I have therefore predicted how the entire series will play out. I’ll keep you all posted.

Bel Ami (2012)

George Duroy (Robert Pattinson) seduces and manipulates the city’s most influential and wealthy women – Clotilde de Marelle (Christina Ricci), Madeleine Forestier (Uma Thurman) and Virginie Walters (Kristin Scott Thomas) on his rise from peasantry to the ruling class in 1890s Paris.

Silent Souls (2012)

The Duel (2012)

Men In Black 3 (2012)

Game of Thrones Series 2 Episodes 1 & 2

Planet Hulk (2010)

Directed by Sam Liu. Writing credits Greg Pak based on the comic “Planet Hulk” by and Carlo Pagulayan comic “Planet Hulk” by  Greg Johnson (screen story) & Craig Kyle (screen story) & Joshua Fine (screen story)

The Incredible Hulk, ejected from Earth in a spaceship, crash-lands on a planet ruled by a tyrant, who forces him to fight in a coliseum against other powerful creatures. The Hulk reluctantly befriends the combatants on his team.

An Idiot Abroad Series 2 Episode 3

Midnight in Paris

Gil’s world turns upside down when as midnight strikes on a picturesque Parisian Street he’s able to travel back to the 1920s Paris (his professed Golden Era) filled with iconic artists (writers/painters/musicians) such as Hemmingway, F.Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), T.S Elliot, Cole Porter, and Salvador Dali (Adrian Brody).

Manhunter

Blake Howard is a Writer, Rotten Tomatoes Approved Reviewer, Blogger (Castle Co-Op) and Podcaster (That Movie Show 2UE), he has a Batman tattoo, cultivates ‘sooky’ Labradors and is remarkably cynical for his age .

Read more from Blake Howard here. Blake is also on Twitter @blakeisbatman

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Blake Howard

Source: Collider & BatmanNews.com

Blake Howard is a Writer, Rotten Tomatoes Approved Reviewer, Blogger (Castle Co-Op) and Podcaster (That Movie Show 2UE), he has a Batman tattoo, cultivates ‘sooky’ Labradors and is remarkably cynical for his age .

Read more from Blake Howard here. Blake is also on Twitter @blakeisbatman

I have a secret that I’m about to let you in on.  (But don’t tell anyone.)  Apocalypse Now has only been viewed by myself once.  And that was a couple of weeks ago in preparation for this article.  (I can see the more-judging readers have already gone off to visit other areas of the site but the rest of you, allow me to explain a small factor about myself.)

If others are constantly praising something, whether friends or critics, one of two things happen – 1. I either become so disinterested in said product that others become offended by it or, 2. It is so hyped up that by the time I get around to experiencing it, the product has no chance of meeting the expectations others have placed on it for me.

This all sounds a bit ‘woe-is-me, first-world-problems’ I guess so now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’ll talk about the film.  First things first though, if you’re even worse than I and are still yet to see it let me reassure you that it is worth all the praise it’s been receiving since 1979.  There is reason why every bachelor pad has this film poster in the living room.

The story goes is Apocalypse Now is a road movie without a road.  Our narrator and passive onlooker Captain Willard, played by a very young Martin Sheen, is sent on a mission to capture and kill Colonel Kurtz as he’s gone renegade in the jungle, killing anyone he deems worthy.  It’s a PR nightmare if the word gets out and he needs to be stopped before any other lives are taken.  The catch – this mission is top secret and Willard must convince a crew to take him upstream through hell without providing an answer to why.

Where Saving Private Ryan scared the bejesus out of you with incredibly realistic gore and horror elements and Band of Brothers turned the notion of killing into a unifying front, Apocalypse Now is the reason you enjoy them so much.  And, despite the different wars and approach to filmmaking (multiple engaging voices versus a single reflective voice), this does it so much better.

I’m talking about the Redux version, by the way.  I don’t have the original theatrical cut and despite my own searching for it when I first bought it all those years ago to gather dust, I don’t think this makes any difference as to what we’re talking about.  If anything, I believe I’m better off having viewed Redux – it feels more complete, as if the original cut must have been lacking a necessary something.  Some of the cuts may be a tad too long but this was filmed in an age where the story was the most important thing, not flashy effects or having the ‘coolest fucking-looking scene’ or other such stupidity.  And at almost three and a half hours I wasn’t bored once.  I’m not even kidding.

As for discussing the best elements of the film?  I don’t have a clue where to begin answering that.  The opening still shot of palm trees flapping quietly in the breeze, frozen for such a moment that you begin to wonder the image is broken then the explosion of tons of firepower through such an idyllic setting as this is one of those reels that you know about even if you haven’t seen the film.  Or Robert Duvall’s turn as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, the crazy surf-addicted war veteran that orders his men to grab a surfboard amid enemy fire.  Then again, let’s not rule out Willard’s boatmen’s private time with the Playboy bunnies and their complete removal from reality, trying to get them to become the postergirl they’ve fantasised about for months, down to the way she wears her hair.  Neither the various musical interludes that make up sections of the film, most notably The Doors’ The End.

No, I think the greatest achievement this film brought was the moment we met the main character we’ve heard so much about yet only see in the flesh for so little – where Willard meets Kurtz, the man himself.  He’s a bloated Marlon Brando that was reportedly hired for $4 million (a huge wad of cash at the time) that’s so well hidden in the shadows at first that he really does seem like a entity, a bodiless voice that speaks to us about our deepest fears and truths.  Kurtz is already aware of Willard’s mission to kill him and apart from a reminder that he’ll be killed if he tries any cowboy manoeuvres, he doesn’t seem phased at all by Willard’s presence in this universe he’s created, separate from everything else.  It’s a scene that had me at my most focused I’ve ever been without caffeine, a rare feat these days.

This article could easily turn into a paraphrased rehash of everything that went wrong during shooting – heart attacks, recasting and subsequent reshooting, a hurricane – but either you already know about it or you can see the film and research that on your own afterwards.  Because that’s not important.  What is integral is that you see this film if you haven’t; and if you have, watch it again.  For all the years I’ve know of its existence, I’m yet to hear someone badmouth it.  And if they have, they’re the kind of person that thinks Fast Five is a cinematic accomplishment.

For all of the films we’re presenting to you in our Top 50 countdown, this is in the top 5 that are the most important, if one can whittle it down to such a small number as that.  What the other four are is up to you but this is number one, first and foremost.

I’m so passionate about a film I’ve seen so little of because it’s in that small secluded theatre of films that have rendered such a big talker as myself so speechless afterwards that I see the very art of filmmaking in a brand new light, along with the world around me.  That’s about as frank as I can get on the subject of this film with you.

Follow Nicholas Brodie on twitter @fodusempire and @CastleCo-Op.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Blake Howard

Acknowledgements: Nicholas Brodie

Official Synopsis for Hyde Park on the Hudson:

In June 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Academy Award nominee Bill Murray) and his wife Eleanor (Olivia Williams) host the King and Queen of England (Samuel West and Olivia Colman) for a weekend at the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park on Hudson, in upstate New York – the first-ever visit of a reigning English monarch to America. With Britain facing imminent war with Germany, the Royals are desperately looking to FDR for support. But international affairs must be juggled with the complexities of FDR’s domestic establishment, as wife, mother, and mistresses all conspire to make the royal weekend an unforgettable one. Seen through the eyes of Daisy (Academy Award nominee Laura Linney), Franklin’s neighbor and intimate, the weekend will produce not only a special relationship between two great nations, but, for Daisy – and through her, for us all – a deeper understanding of the mysteries of love and friendship.

Click here to view the embedded video.

SOURCE: Collider

Blake Howard is a Writer, Rotten Tomatoes Approved Reviewer, Blogger (Castle Co-Op) and Podcaster (That Movie Show 2UE), he has a Batman tattoo, cultivates ‘sooky’ Labradors and is remarkably cynical for his age .

Read more from Blake Howard here. Blake is also on Twitter @blakeisbatman

Lawless (2012)

Set in the Depression-era Franklin County, Virginia, a bootlegging gang is threatened by authorities who want a cut of their profits.

Source: Joblo.com & The Huffington Post 

Blake Howard is a Writer, Rotten Tomatoes Approved Reviewer, Blogger (Castle Co-Op) and Podcaster (That Movie Show 2UE), he has a Batman tattoo, cultivates ‘sooky’ Labradors and is remarkably cynical for his age .

Read more from Blake Howard here. Blake is also on Twitter @blakeisbatman

This week I have been listening to:

The Swell Season by The Swell Season

Strict Joy by The Swell Season

The Cost by The Frames

Anar by Marketa Irglova

Piano Man by Billy Joel

The Stranger by Billy Joel

River Of Dreams by Billy Joel

Bon Iver by Bon Iver

Gilgamesh by Gypsy & The Cat

Everyone Is Here by The Finn Brothers

What have you been listening to this last week?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Blake Howard

I open the salad, which is more of a ‘healthy meal’ as opposed to a straight ‘salad’. It’s slow cooked lamb, roasted garlic, capsicum, fetta, baby spinach and some kind of oily dressing. I was enjoying very much, absorbing the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in my ears pretty oblivious to the happenings around me. As the time counted down until the train arrived the platform begun to fill up. People started taking their seats around me and then eventually onto the bench alongside me.

At that point – intent on smashing that salad’s face in – I had not realised how much of the seat I was taking up. For whatever reason I glance to my left and see a little old woman with an afro of grey curls and no front teeth waddling towards the seat. As you do, I took my bag off of the seat, placed it on the floor and slid to the edge of the seat to make room for her.

She smiled with her mostly toothless grin and thanked me and said something that I couldn’t hear through my headphones. I took out a bud.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a problem at all.”

[Gesturing towards my bag]

“I won’t steal anything”

“Ha, no I was just moving it so that you had some room.” I began to place my bud back in my ear – the open salad box was taunting me with its deliciousness and I couldn’t wait any longer.

“Usually people just ignore me..[the rest of what she said was muffled by the continuing Podcast]” – I looked at her to see if she had more to say but she looked in the other direction at that moment.

I continued eating – the train approached and as it pulled in I closed the box and gathered my things to board the train. The old lady got up and to leverage her leaving she grabbed my hand and stuffed a tissue in it simultaneously. She then wordlessly waddled off down the platform.

I looked at the girl who’d been sitting on the other end of the bench. She appeared slightly freaked out by the wordless exchange, as did I. For a second I thought – “she didn’t just write her phone number on that did she?!?” But in a moment of maternal instinct, to return the favour of the seat, she’d handed me a tissue to wipe my face. I did have a serviette in my pocket, (she obviously didn’t know that, but she didn’t what me to look a mess for those people at my destination. I dropped the tissue, it was one of those grandma’s bag tissues that doesn’t appear to originate from a box but the exchange had me smiling for the rest of the day.

P.S

I told my lovely fiancé – her response was as follows:

Blake Howard is a Writer, Rotten Tomatoes Approved Reviewer, Blogger (Castle Co-Op) and Podcaster (That Movie Show 2UE), he has a Batman tattoo, cultivates ‘sooky’ Labradors and is remarkably cynical for his age .

Read more from Blake Howard here. Blake is also on Twitter @blakeisbatman

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Blake Howard

Acknowledgements: Copy Ed. Kim Regent

“The action is supposed to take place about a year or a year and a half after the first story. It’s a very clever sequel with the usual thrills and spills, but the ante is upped quite a bit in this one… They kidnap him to humiliate him, torture him, and ultimately bring him back to the village in Albania where the boys from the original film came from. With the help of my daughter… she wants to help me escape from where these bad guys have me”

 Source: Collider & EW

Blake Howard is a Writer, Rotten Tomatoes Approved Reviewer, Blogger (Castle Co-Op) and Podcaster (That Movie Show 2UE), he has a Batman tattoo, cultivates ‘sooky’ Labradors and is remarkably cynical for his age .

Read more from Blake Howard here. Blake is also on Twitter @blakeisbatman

Written by: Etan Cohen, David Koepp, Jeff Nathanson, Michael Soccio and Lowell Cunningham (comic)                                   

Starring: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Jermaine Clement and Josh Brolin

It’s hard to believe that the original Men In Black was released 15 years ago. 19friggen97! Will Smith was an established pop musician and T.V star, but was still on the precipice of discovering his true cinematic pulling power. The original film was a monetary and critical success. Director Barry Sonnenfeld used the Lowell Cunningham comic source material and a fun script from Ed Solomon (Bill and Ted) to uncover the ‘truth’ of the great staple of Alien invasion folklore (the ‘Men In Black’ from a nameless government organisation). It was a fun buddy-cop alien invasion mash-up that still holds up remarkably well on repeat viewings. Right now writing this I’m suppressing the urge to do my Vincent D’Onofrio “SHHUGGGGERRR…IN….WHATTTTTERRRRRRR” impression. The sequel MiB 2, released in 2002, was terrible. A decade later they’re attempting to reignite the franchise.

Agent J (Will Smith) must travel back in time to 1969, to intercept an evil alien ‘Boris the Animal’(Jermaine ‘Flight of the Concords’ Clement)  from assassinating his partner Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones [present] and Josh Brolin [past]) and changing the future.

A big positive for me is that the events of the second film are essentially ignored. The off world love story nonsense is all gone. The third film doesn’t get itself caught up with the same tropes of the original story, where J is having his eyes open to this new world. Barry Sonnenfeld does a good job of diving you into the action and contrasting the modern MiB futuristic aesthetic with kitsch couture and machinery of the late 60s. Everything’s bigger, slower, and there’s even a moment where you here the dial up modem sound that gave me a chuckle. J’s now an accomplished Agent, so when news of Boris’ escape from a MiB prison facility reaches him, he’s surprised by the fact that he’s still being kept in the dark by the agency and his partner. The script is no Coen Bros. effort but it’s a light, fun, sci fi adventure fare – tonally more a sequel to the original than the second film.

The chemistry between J (Will Smith) and K (TLJ) has been an integral part of the franchise, it uses the Back to the Future technique of going back to find the origins of the character. The trip back to the past is used to great effect. Josh Brolin’s K is amazing and he’s able to bring a brightness and a charm back to the character that the grizzled and gruff older K character has been lacking since the original film. Brolin’s the breath of fresh air that the franchise needs.

Tommy Lee Jones is war weary in MiB3 – he’s intentionally more grizzled and tired (15 years since the original will do that to you) than the K of the original. He’s always good in his all too brief screen time. Will Smith’s performance is akin to the J of the original – having fun adding his flair to the job that his more staunch and serious counterparts are unable to do. He’s definitely trying to inject the humour into every situation, which on a number of occasions results in it feeling like he’s trying too hard. It’s not his best performance, but he redelivers on the audiences expectations of the character.

One of the staple jokes of the MiB series is the celebrity cameos that suggest alien origins. It’s something that’s usually happening on the screens in the war room that gives that ‘picture in picture’ chuckles to compliment the goings on. But this time there’s two sensational cameos in the past/alternate futures- one is the MiB inside man in the NYC art scene and J’s new partner in the alternate future are highlights of the movie (that I won’t spoil).

MiB 3 does justice to the fun and whimsy of the original, and gives you a surprisingly emotional insight into the characters – it travelled back in time to save this franchise from dying. 

Blake Howard is a Writer, Rotten Tomatoes Approved Reviewer, Blogger (Castle Co-Op) and Podcaster (That Movie Show 2UE), he has a Batman tattoo, cultivates ‘sooky’ Labradors and is remarkably cynical for his age .

Read more from Blake Howard here. Blake is also on Twitter @blakeisbatman

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Blake Howard

Acknowledgements: Ed. Nick Brodie