MSN Movies UK - Blog
So movies are saving the world now…
Big blockbusters like Avatar and this Summer’s Robin Hood are all about making cash. Obscene amounts of cash. Filthy amounts of cash.
But today’s debt and carbon filled world has made the beneficiaries of these money-magnet films think about what to do with the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars they generate.
Avatar’s James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver were in São Paulo to plant the first tree as part of a global partnership to plant one million trees worldwide – an initiative between Fox and Earth Day Network to promo the Avatar DVD. Cameron planted the pau-brasil – a native Brazilian tree – which is a powerful symbol of recouperation of the forests in that country and a species that is 99% extinct.
Seems he’s not just concerned with Pandora. I guess those people who spotted the subtle environmental message in Avatar were right all along. But it’s not just Avatar.
Universal has announced the launch of its "Robin Hood: Lionhearts" program, a cause-based initiative designed to reward those who “dedicate their time to changing the world”. The scheme aims embody the legendary Robin Hood message through peer sharing and social networking.
It’s about Lionhearts, defined as “people who make a positive impact in society via their participation in a cause or charity.” Three Lionhearts will win a Grand Award and receive $5,000 each, in addition to $5,000 to share with a cause of their choice. Ten Lionhearts will win a First Award and receive $500 each, in addition to $500 to share with a cause of their choice. Lionhearts will be featured through an online profile along with their chosen cause. Universal is working with not-for-profits United Way, City Year and Robin Hood, to identify Lionhearts in their respective organizations.
You could read into the obvious PR thinking behind this. In both cases, the “cause” publicises the movie heavily. But the benefit on the other side mean this is undoubtedly to be applauded.
It’s only right that when blockbusters are shoving a moral message down our throats, they should promote that message actively in the real world. This particularly applies to those that count their box office take in billions. That means you Avatar.
We’d love to see this sort of charity from every blockbuster. Spidey 4 could fund the protection of rare, urrr, spiders. Or something…
How big was Avatar? THIS Big…
Our infographic shows the biggest movies of 2009/10. The size is directly proportionate to the global box office take.
Thanks to worldle for helping us conjure this.
Pun-tastic Shrek posters
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There’s a strong feeling of rolling out Shrek – the reliable green cashcow – for one last flogging this year.
There’s a sense of desperation about these new posters don’t you think? The film’s have been headed progressively downhill since the first one. I’m not sensing a change in the pattern here.
Corey Haim dies
Corey Haim has died aged 38 in Los Angeles.
The 1980s teen heartthrob, best known for his roles in Lucas and The Lost Boys, died in the early hours of Wednesday at Providence St Joseph Medical Centre in Burbank, Los Angeles County coroner Cheryl MacWillie said.
An autopsy will determine the cause of death and there were no other details, she said.
Police said there was no evidence of foul play.
Haim had flulike symptoms before he died and was getting over-the-counter and prescription medications, police said. The cause of death is unknown.
“He could have succumbed to whatever (illness) he had or it could have been drugs. Who knows?” police sergeant William Mann said. “He has had a drug problem in the past.”
Haim was taken by ambulance to the hospital from an apartment in Los Angeles near Burbank. The enormous complex is known as Oakwood and is popular with young actors, police sergeant Michael Kammert said.
Haim acknowledged his struggle with drug abuse to The Sun in 2004.
“I was working on Lost Boys when I smoked my first joint,” he told the newspaper. “I did cocaine for about a year and a half, then it led to crack.”
Haim said he went into rehabilitation and was put on prescription drugs. He took both stimulants and sedatives such as Valium.
“I started on the downers which were a hell of a lot better than the uppers because I was a nervous wreck,” he said. “But one led to two, two led to four, four led to eight, until at the end it was about 85 a day.”
In 2007, he told ABC’s Nightline that drugs hurt his career.
“I feel like with myself I ruined myself to the point where I wasn’t functional enough to work for anybody, even myself. I wasn’t working,” he said.
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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: What you need to know
A literary phenomenon that has created one of the the great female anti-heroes, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo deserves your attention. If you are not already in love with Lisbeth Salander, believe me, you soon will be.
For the as yet uninitiated still wondering what all the fuss is about, here’s a simple blaggers’ guide to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to ensure you won’t be caught short at the water fountain not knowing your Blomkvists from your Bergers. We’re good like that.
· Blomkvist is our male protagonist, a womanising, chain-smoking caffeine fiend – wrongly accused of slander and fighting the good fight to clear his name
· Lisbeth Salander is our female protagonist, a womanising, chain-smoking caffeine fiend – wrongly accused of being mentally incapable. The similarities end there…
· Lisbeth Salander is a hacker of extraordinary skill and ability – she’s a Mac, not a PC
· Millenium is a hard hitting, bad guy exposing magazine feared by soulless money grabbing corporations the world over – and co-owned by Blomkvist
· Henrik Vanger is the aging patriarch of the famous and rich Vanger family who has been haunted for the last 14 years by the mysterious disappearance of his niece – Harriet Vanger. He employs Blomkivist to discover and document his family’s many dark secrets
· Middle aged traditional journo Blomkvist and wild child hacker Salander team up personally and professionally to solve the great Vanger mystery. Opposites really do attract!
· The Vanger Family is a tangled web of Nazi supporters, sadists and emotionally stunted aristocrats. Christmas is a blast…
· Lisbeth is under legal guardianship after being declared mentally incompetent and spending a good proportion of her teenage years in a metal asylum. She DOES NOT like authority
· The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first in a three part trilogy – oh yes, there’s more
· The millennium trilogy has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. The book’s author died under mysterious circumstances and never lived to see the phenomenon his work would become
· Hell hath no fury like a Lisbeth Salander scorned
· The millennium trilogy has been known to cause extreme insomnia, eye strain, paranoia and the desire to thoroughly kick someone’s ass. You have been warned.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hits UK cinemas on 12 March.
Oscars 2010: live!
Bafta awards 2010: Live
MSN Movies is here to guide you through the awards-dishing glamour-fest of the Bafta awards 2010.
Stay with us throughout the evening from 9pm for live updates and commentary. Sigh… if only Stephen Fry was still presenting.
9pm Nice atmosphere on the red carpet and it’s not raining. Mickey Rourke is bright orange. James Cameron is all smiles. Vanessa Redgrave is getting the fellowship.
Jonathan Ross claims to be a 3d rendering conjured up by James Cameron. Hilarious Ross, really.
Nice montage of the year’s flicks that included The Hangover, The Road and The Informant! Ended nicely on Up. We do that bit so much better than the Oscars.
9.13 Moon SO needs to win this Best British newcomer award. And yup it does. Maybe we’ll be seeing presenter Colin Firth again later. TEARS ON THE FIRST AWARD as director Duncan Jones cracks up. Blimey!
Avatar wins best SFX. "That was a surprise wasn’t it!" says Woss, fittingly.
Best supporting actor goes, inevitably, to Christophe Waltz for Inglourious Basterds. He’s won every award so far this year. The Oscar is his. He gives a nice speech about being a "supported" actor and gushes about QT.
I’m a fan of the Bafta format: we scroll through scenes from the Best Picture nominees across the course of the evening. This look at An Education is making me think perhaps just enough of the British academy voters might have gone for it. Might it stand up to the might of Avatar? I hope so, personally.
Prince William looks bored by the best hair and make-up category. I know how he feels.
Matt Dillon presents Best Supporting Actress. Mo’Nique – the crowd favourite – wins. Director Lee Daniels (he who "polarised America") accepts.
9.40 – Fish Tank wins Best British Film. I was holding out hope for In The Loop but Fish Tank is by far the better awards material. It’s out on DVD now and well worth picking up.
"Erotically charged" vampire actor Robert Pattinson presents Best Original Screenplay. The Hurt Locker wins it and we catch our first sight of director Kathryn Bigelow sitting a comfortable distance away from her ex-husband James Cameron.
The Orange Rising Star award goes to "erotically charged" Twilight actress Kristen Stewart. She gives thanks to the "attentive" twilight fans, perhaps hinting that she’s done with the attention of the twi-hards.
Pete Docter – the director of Up and a particularly nice chap if I do say so myself – accepts the most obvious award of the evening. Good on him.
"Language is no barrier to great storytelling" says a lovely-looking Carey Mulligan as she presents Best Film not in the English language. A Prophet wins.
10.20 Clive Owen presents Best Director. Bigelow vs. Cameron in the battle of the exes… Kathryn Bigelow! Straight to a shot of ex-hubby Jim Cameron clapping. Did she just mouth the words "oh well" in Cameron’s direction?
BEST ACTOR – COLIN FIRTH for A Single Man. "I thought I couldn’t possibly do this until a man came to repair my fridge. I would like to thank the fridge guy."
BEST ACTRESS – MICKEY ROURKE CAN’T READ THE AUTOCUE! Easily the best moment of the night so far as he squints his way through and tells them to slow it down. CAREY MULLIGAN wins.
BEST FILM – Dustin Hoffman can’t read the autocue either. He’s making it up. THE HURT LOCKER!! Jim Cameron isn’t smiling this time. He’s mentally folding up his acceptance speech. Well done Kathryn Bigelow. "This is beyond our wildest imagination thank you!"
Prince William shows up in a horrid double-breasted suit to take the reins of Bafta from the ill Richard Attenborough. Uma Thurman gives the gushy speech before presenting the fellowship to Vanessa Redgrave. I’m surprised she doesn’t have it already. "You’ve done me in," says an overwhelmed Redgrave who gives a touching speech. She blows us all a kiss and it’s good night Bafta. The story tomorrow? "Avatar beaten by Cameron’s ex!"
A letter from Parker Selfridge – Pandora Resources Development Administration
Greetings earthlings!
Ha! Sorry I always wanted to say that! I guess spending all this time on an alien world is bringing out my nerdy side.
So things have been going well up here. Business is good. We’ve run into a few problems with the local life forms. But I don’t see it being too much of an issue.
In fact I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I’ve heard a few whispers that our little unobtanium mining operation is getting a little unpopular back there on earth. Seems that the locals (na’avi, or something?) have been becoming quite the flavour of the month.
I mean, what the hell!? I’m on the frontier here people! I’m busting my ass to provide us with a little mineral that can SAVE OUR ENTIRE SPECIES and you’re all worrying about these oversize blue things and their precious tree!
Sorry. Lost my rag there.
I was sent here to do a job, okay? I’m just doing what I have to do to get paid. I got Sigourney Weaver giving me the beatdown every day as it is. Last thing I need is all this bad press.
Listen guys, if it wasn’t for the fact that these aliens are blue, sort of attractive and remind us of The Lost Boys from Peter Pan, we’d have kicked them out of their goddamn treehouse YEARS ago. What if they were a species of evil gigantic bugs like the ones out of Starship Troopers?! You wouldn’t have cared so much if we’d kicked THOSE aliens out of their local habitat…
Besides, it’s a big planet with lots of trees. All we need is for them to vacate this specific area. Hell, we can move them back to the states and they can have the big Cedar outside my mom’s. I just need them to move. Is it so big a deal? Really!?
I can see why this happened. What with all their “I have a cool spear and a ponytail that I stick in my dragon’s ear!” stuff, these blue things are a PR nightmare. The only thing I got going for me is that they’re pretty irritating with their holier-than-thou mumbo jumbo about being “at one with the planet” and so on. I mean how full of themselves can one species get?! Yeah so they sleep in giant leaves. You wouldn’t want to have a beer with one would you! Give me a human any day of the week, warts and all.
All I ask is that we look at the situation objectively. We need the unobtanium, so let’s just give the giant smirfs a little nudge and get the hell out of there.
Ah crap, Sigourney Weaver’s back again. I gotta go.
Later,
Movie on the move
I took a step forwards into the digital age this morning.
I watched a movie on the way to work. It’s now easy to download a flick onto your i-pod or whatever pocket-candy you’ve chosen.
What did I watch? Couples Retreat, which was just made available in the I-tunes store.
I know, I know… it’s hardly a challenging work of cinema to spark the brain-matter. But this is my commute. It’s something lightweight to take my mind off the freezing cold, shoving crowds and depressing train delays that form the South West London transport experience every day. A movie that is essentially a Carribean holiday with a few Vince Vaughn one-liners thrown is just about perfect.
And it was surprisingly fun. I was even able to watch as I tramped my way through the 15-minute walk to my local train station. A traffic accident waiting to happen? I probably was. But I could do that walk blindfolded. Watching the unhappy couples arrive in paradise was a happy distraction from frozen London.
You may be proud of your giant DVD collection just now. But as digital copies like this become more and more accessible and easy-to-watch, you’ll be tempted to go digital and save some space, just like you did with the CDs.
2010 Oscar nominations
It’s all-change for the Oscars this year, with more Best Movie nominations than ever before – 10 in total.
Avatar is the frontrunner for the prestigious title – all the nominees in the main categories are listed below.
Best Movie (10 nominations this year)
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Precious
Up
Up In The Air
An Education
District 9
Inglourious Basterds
A Serious Man
The Blind Side
Best Actress
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia
Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Gabourey Sidibe – Precious
Helen Mirren – The Last Station
Best Actor
Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
Morgan Freeman – Invictus
George Clooney – Up In The Air
Colin Firth – A Single Man
Jeremy Renner _ The Hurt Locker
Best Supporting Actress
Mo’Nique – Precious
Anna Kendrick – Up In The Air
Penelope Cruz – Nine
Vera Farmiga – Up In The Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal – Crazy Heart
Best Supporting Actor
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds
Christopher Plummer – The Last Station
Matt Damon – Invictus
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones
Woody Harrelson – The Messenger
Best Director
James Cameron – Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
Jason Reitman – Up In The Air
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels – Precious
Best Animation
Up
Coraline
Fantastic Mr Fox
The Princess And The Frog
The Secret Life Of Kells
