Photos From The Hobbit Set

You know, the more I think about the setbacks this movie has had since plans for it were first uttered from that Peter Jackson's mouth; the more I think the powers that be is telling us the new Hobbit movies are just not meant to be.

But anyway, TheOneRing.net has posted up a few pics from the set of The Hobbit as the crew awaits Peter Jackson who's recovering from surgery to begin principal photography next month.

Here's to the helming of a great new epic. Hopefully. *cough* The Lovely Bones *cough*

Adrianne Palicki Cast As Wonder Woman

The Internet was abuzz last night with the recent announcement of Adrianne Palicki, star of Legion and Friday Night Lights will be returning to television as the titular character in David E. Kelley's Wonder Woman.

Now I'm a fan of David E. Kelley. Hey, the dude made Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal and Boston Public. He's friggin God. But when you hear about the details of the direction he's taking with this adaptation of the Amazonian warrior, you'd scratch your head to.

No joke. As Spill.com describes it:

Wonder Woman is a multiple personality Ally McBeal meets Carrie Bradshaw. Rather than focus on Wonder Woman's role as an Amazonian woman trying to find her place in the world while fighting crime, Kelley has written her as a sobbing, ice-cream eating, Katy Perry-singing man-stalker who juggles three different identities: Wonder Woman - a streetwise vigilante dressed in leather who makes wisecracks while beating up thugs, Diana Themyscira - a high powered executive and chairperson of Themyscira Industries (the company that funds her crimefighting), and mousy "everygirl" Diana Price - a frazzled and sexually-frustrated wageslave who just likes to "hang with her galpals". 

And while I don't mind Palicki's casting, I was really hoping for Megan Gale to play her. Don't know who she is? Google Image her and set the moderate search off. Hu hu.

2011 BAFTA Award Winners

Back from Ipoh ya'll. First of,big shout out to Arcade Fire for restoring some credibility to the Grammy's. And to Will Smith to stop putting his kids in embarrassing promotional crap. Anyway, back in movie world, the BAFTAs happened last night and here's the full list of winners:

BEST FILM
•The King’s Speech
•The Social Network
•True Grit
•Black Swan
•Inception

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
•The King’s Speech
•Made In Dagenham
•127 Hours
•Another Year
•Four Lions

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER
•Chris Morris- Four Lions
•Gareth Edwards-Monsters
•Nick Whitfield- Skeletons
•Clio Barnard, Tracy O’Riordan- The Arbor
•Banksy, Jaimie D’Cruz- Exit Through The Gift Shop

BEST DIRECTOR
•David Fincher- The Social Network
•Danny Boyle-127 Hours
•Darren Aronofsky- Black Swan
•Christopher Nolan- Inception
•Tom Hooper- The King’s Speech

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
•The King’s Speech
•Black Swan
•The Fighter
•Inception
•The Kids Are All Right

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
•The Social Network
•Toy Story 3
•True Grit
•127 Hours
•The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

BEST FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
•The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
•I Am Love
•Of Gods And Men
•The Secret In Their Eyes
•Biutiful

BEST ANIMATED FILM
•Toy Story 3
•Despicable Me
•How To Train Your Dragon

BEST LEADING ACTOR

•Colin Firth- The King’s Speech

•James Franco- 127 Hours
•Javier Bardem- Biutiful
•Jeff Bridges- True Grit
•Jesse Eisenberg- The Social Network

BEST LEADING ACTRESS
•Natalie Portman- Black Swan
•Noomi Rapace- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
•Hailee Steinfeld- True Grit
•Annette Benning - The Kids Are All Right
•Julianne Moore- The Kids Are All Right

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
•Geoffrey Rush- The King’s Speech
•Christian Bale- The Fighter
•Andrew Garfield- The Social Network
•Pete Postlewaite- The Town
•Mark Ruffalo - The Kids Are All Right

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
•Helena Bonham Carter- The King’s Speech
Barbara Hershey- Black Swan
•Lesley Manville- Another Year
•Miranda Richardson- Made in Dagenham
•Amy Adams- The Fighter

BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC
•The King’s Speech- Alexandre Desplat
•127 Hours – A.R. Rahman
•Alice In Wonderland - Danny Elfman
•How To Train Your Dragon- John Powell
•Inception- Hans Zimmer

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
•True Grit
•127 Hours
•Black Swan
•Inception
•The King’s Speech

BEST EDITING
•The Social Network
•127 Hours
•Black Swan
•Inception
•The King’s Speech

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
•Inception
•The King’s Speech
•True Grit
•Alice In Wonderland
•Black Swan

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
•Alice In Wonderland
•Black Swan
•The King’s Speech
•Made In Dagenham
•True Grit

BEST SOUND
•Inception
•The King’s Speech
•True Grit
•127 Hours
•Black Swan

BEST SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
•Inception
•Toy Story 3
•Alice In Wonderland
•Black Swan
•Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1

BEST MAKE UP & HAIR
•Alice In Wonderland
•Black Swan
•Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1
•The King’s Speech
•Made In Dagenham

BEST SHORT ANIMATION
•The Eagleman Stag
•Matter Fisher
•Thursday

BEST SHORT FILM
•Until The Rivers Run Red
•Connect
•Lin
•Rite
•Turning

ORANGE WEDNESDAYS RISING AWARD
•Tom Hardy
•Aaron Johnson
•Emma Stone
•Gemma Arterton
•Andrew Garfield

First Look At Conan The Barbarian

I thought this was a joke until I actually saw the pictures. Really? You're serious about this? Okay then. Your funeral.

So imdb has revealed the teaser poster and first images of Jason Momoa as Conan the Barbarian in Marcus Nispel's adaptation the iconic warrior character. The film is said to mostly follow the character's origins from it's collection of 1950's short stories on the tale of Conan the Cimmerian and his adventures across the continent of Hyboria on a quest to avenge the murder of his father and the slaughter of his village.

There are two reasons why this film is not going to work. Number 1, the director Marcus Nispel hasn't had a single likable film in his resume. He's done the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the remake of Friday The 13th and Pathfinder. Guess what? All of them were shitty films.

Next are the writers. Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, who's credits include Sahara and A Sound of Thunder. Yeah.... boring films.

The only thing I'm looking forward to see is Rachel Nichols and Rose McGowan. These two girls are unbelievably hot and have a track record for taking off their clothes in films. And being that this is a movie where people walk around scantily clad, this should be one fine piece of cinema.

Conan The Barbarian premieres in August 2011.

Paranormal Activity 2 | Review

Horror or no horror, this ghost is getting really boring.

I really hope this is the last I see of the Paranormal Activity series, because at risk of ending up like Saw trash, this genre of found footage and a nocturnal, lazy ghost has gotten old in just two films. Now I saw this movie in the dark and alone just like I did with it's predecessor and I was dead fucking bored.

So what we have here is generally the prequel to Paranormal Activity. We follow a family who's mom is related to Katie from the first movie. So we do see Micah and Katie here and there. The family brings home their newborn son but finds their house has been ransacked without anything taken. The dad sets up security cameras all over the house and over the next few weeks, boring ass ghost shit happens.

The gimmick may have worked in the last film thanks to the hype and the fact that the film actually had some genuinely creepy moments, but Paranormal Activity 2 is just dull. Everything that happens in the fist film happens here in painfully predictable jump scare scenes. Person is in kitchen, living room, bedroom. Person is alone. Person is sitting. Kitchen, living room, bedroom is quiet. A chair moves. Que audience screaming.

There's just nothing to be surprised of let alone scared of in this sequel. And the fact that we already know what plays out in Paranormal Activity makes this movie absolutely useless. It offers nothing new in terms of scares, and only squeezes in a tiny bit of information to the lore of the first film. This movie is the Saw 3,4,5,6,7 of the Saw series. It's all about how much money this dead horse can ring in before an angry mob is organized outside Lionsgates.

But I will say this, the actors were much better than the first movie. Certainly less annoying. I bought these guys as a family, who acted like rational, average people. Watching them interact and deal with this whole paranormal theme was enjoyable, funny at times. But this also meant that we have to sit through long periods of this family doing average boring stuff before a chair moves in the background.

And this movie actually had a climax! And a pretty good one. The storyline of the film ends in a pretty freaky basement scene with a whole lot of elements from The Blair Witch Project being referenced. That climax was pretty tight. Too bad it got ruined by the shittiest piece of bull ending that had horrible special effects and just a flat out laughable train wreck by Katie Featherston.

I mean... this movie isn't bad or anything. It's not Vampire Sucks but there's really nothing to look forward to here. Bor-a-ring.

RATING: 4/10

Sammy's Adventure: The Secret Passage | Review

And the award for most blatant use of Bruno Mars songs in a movie goes to this one.

So Sammy's Adventure is this little known animated Belgian film that is making it's rounds through the international market hoping to fish for some foreign nominations I guess. It's practically Around The World In 80 Days set in the life of a sea turtle as it travels the oceans and meets different creatures as humans and global warming threaten to.... uhm... come to think of it, doesn't really threaten anything.

Don't believe the 3D hogs who are hounding this movie. I thought Sammy's Adventure looked fantastic in 3D. Sure they achieved the effect by very cheap means of having a fish or octopus swim to the screen but it was still effective. Certainly more believable to see something that is swimming in 3D than to have say..... a bribe taking demigod that's throwing a poorly animated coin in Clash of the Titans. I'm sure you'll forgive the shortcomings of the methods used in a kid's movie.

And for a non-Pixar, non-Hollywood studio film, the special effects and CGI of Sammy's Adventure were brilliant. The underwater scenes were just a visual opus of color and spectacle on par with Finding Nemo. There were a few scenes that were not as well animated than the rest and it did take me out of the story a little bit. But quite frankly there isn't much story to Sammy's Adventure to begin with.

The whole Secret Passage thing gets done in the first half of the movie to make way for a barrage of ecological, Green Peace PSA's that get communicated in the most blaring, cheap ways possible. Instead of actually winning over the audience's pathos with some heartbreaking scenes like.. I don't know.. have Sammy's friend die by being chocked by plastic or some Bambi shit, the filmmaker literally has these animated characters look to the screen in 3D and go, "It's up to you humans to ensure we don't go extinct." Uh... yeah. Die.

Wonderful visuals and 3D at the side, there really isn't much else to recommend about Sammy's Adventure. I felt that the green messages they were presenting in the film was the whole driving force of the movie instead of having some likable characters subconsciously drilling those messages in by having a good story with a lot of obstacles. It's the very basic of children movies. Hey, if a movie about dancing penguins can achieve that without sounding all too forceful on the green message, I was disappointed that Sammy's Adventure couldn't produce that same effect.

Sammy's Adventure may be a visually stunning happy affair, but it is unable to invoke the emotions necessary to make it anything other than an adequate Sunday child time waster.

RATING: 3/10

Latest Super Bowl XLV TV Spots

First off.. Black Eyed Peas should die. So the Super Bowl's going on right now in the U.S and that can mean two things. Packers awesomeness and summer movie trailers! Paramount unleashed their TV spots for hell of a lot of their summer lineup including JJ Abrams super secret film, Super 8 and the two new additions to The Avengers universe, Thor and Captain America. I got all the TV spots right here. Enjoy!

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES

SUPER 8

THOR

BATTLE LOS ANGELES

COWBOYS & ALIENS

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