Written by Parveen Maghera 

January calls for an excit­ing film-a-thon with 11 new movies being released this month, some of which have already been released :

January 6

The Devil Inside

Stars: Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth

A hor­ror genre film, The Devil Inside screams of exor­cism, as Isabella goes through a series of ille­gal exor­cism to help her pos­sessed mother recover but later dis­cov­ers about her very own mother mur­der­ing three oth­ers dur­ing her own exorcism.

(The Devil Inside is top on the Box Office with a week­end gross of $34.5 mil­lion and $34.5 mil­lion to date, to tepid crit­i­cal response. )

Beneath the Darkness

Stars: Dennis Quaid

Beneath the Darkness unfolds the mys­tery behind a mor­ti­cian, Ely Vaughn, as a group of high-school goers expose the secret behind Vaughn’s room­mate: a woman’s corpse.

January 12

Contraband

Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Giovanni Ribisi and Mark Wahlberg

Contraband depicts a thriller-action sequence of events when a for­mer smug­gler Chris Farrady makes his way to Panama to pay off his brother-in-law’s debt to a drug lord by invest­ing in coun­ter­feit bills.
(Box Office updates on Contraband hit­ting first place with $8.7 mil­lion on Friday.)

Beauty and the Beast 3D

Stars: Paige O’Hara and Robby Benson
This ani­mated 1991 re-release takes audi­ence back into the olden days as the stu­dious book-loving inventor’s daugh­ter, Belle, and the hand­some man turned ugly mon­ster, Beast, returns to the big screen with amaz­ingly per­formed chords and set pieces like the “Busby Berkeley-style dancing-kitchenware spec­tac­u­lar, ”Be Our Guest,” and the roman­tic ball­room centerpiece”.

January 13

Loosies

Stars: Peter Facinelli, Jaimie Alexander and Michael Madsen

Loosies fol­lows Bobby through his pro­fes­sional pick-pocket busi­ness in New York’s sub­way, only end­ing up leav­ing a woman, Lucy, three-month preg­nant after a one-night stand.

Albatross

Stars: Jessica Brown-Findlay, Felicity Jones and Sebastian Koch

Albatross is a drama and com­edy film of an intel­lec­tual, Beth, as her family’s quite exis­tence is ruined after the affair unfolds between Emilia, the new house­keeper, and Jonathan, Beth’s father.

Joyful Noise

Stars: Queen Latifah, Keke Palmer and Dolly Parton

Joyful noise takes on the musi­cal genre with catchy and feet-tapping num­bers, head­ing straight to The National Joyful Competition as Vi Rose Hill takes the direc­tions on her hands in G.G. Sparrows choir ensemble.

(Beauty and the Beast 3D takes the sec­ond place after Contraband, tak­ing $5.6 mil­lion on Friday.)

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Upcoming Movies:

January 20

Underworld: Awakening

Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Michael Ealy and India Eisley

Another vampire-thrilled install­ment, Underworld: Awakening takes on the war by both humans and vam­pires as they fight to erad­i­cate both species. Vampire Selene takes on the bat­tle to fight for her humankind after escap­ing 12 years of imprisonment.

Red Tails

Stars: Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard

A WWII cen­tric film, Red Tails is a story about an African-American pilot team in a Tuskegee train­ing pro­gram. As the Africans take the back­seat to the Americans when air­power is needed despite their ample fly­ing skills, they risk their lives and own the skies to com­bat their enemy coun­ter­parts when a sud­den dan­ger­ous mis­sion arises.

Haywire

Stars: Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas and Gina Carano

An action-packed thriller film, Haywire takes the role of a for­mer marine, Mallory Kane, into promi­nence as she sets on kick-ass revenge when she is betrayed by whom she always reports her world­wide under­ground mis­sions to.

January 27

One for the Money

Stars: Katherine Heigl and Jason O’Mara

Divorcee Stephanie Plum, unem­ployed and pen­ni­less, is hired as a recov­ery agent at a cousin’s com­pany. She brings in a mur­der sus­pect, Joe Morellia, who turns out to be a for­mer sweet­heart from her high school days. As One for the Money goes on, Morellia’s fall for Plum takes on.

The Grey

Stars: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney and Frank Grillo

The Grey fol­lows an oil-rig crew, with leader Ottway, in the bleak Alaskan wilder­ness after their plane crashes. With only a few days left to seek shel­ter as the freez­ing tem­per­a­tures and treach­er­ous ter­rains start to ham­per their efforts, they are in a dead zone with a pack of wolves prey­ing on them as they get weaker.

Man on a Ledge

Stars: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks and Jamie Bell

Man on a Ledge takes on the crime-thriller genre as it explores the root cause of Nick Cassidy’s crime after being accused of a $40 mil­lion jewel theft by a cor­rupt busi­ness­man David Englander. The ex-con grabs the atten­tion by plant­ing him­self on a ledge of a high-rise hotel, in the hope to clear his name.

Entertainment Weekly — Coming Soon  ( Header pic cour­tesy of  Paper-Leaf )

Written by Parveen Maghera

The Dark Knight Rises con­tin­ues to be the most antic­i­pated film of the year as Entertainment weekly reveals three new images of the film.

The images unveil Bane’s evil dis­po­si­tion in Gotham yet again, whilst not for­get­ting the Gotham’s dis­tin­guished heroes, Commissioner Gordon and undoubt­edly, Batman.

They sure don’t reveal any part of sto­ry­line but it is just as worth­while await­ing the char­ac­ters to go live on the big screen.

Three new Dark Knight Rises images online — EW.com (via– TotalFilm)

Written by Parveen Maghera

 As Daniel craig makes his antic­i­pat­ing reprisal of James Bond in Skyfall, the film series also cel­e­brates 50 years of undoubted full-on enter­tain­ment this year!

In cel­e­bra­tion of Bond’s 50^th anniver­sary, Bond 50 was brought to light by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) stu­dios and Twenteith Century Fox at the Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. This col­lectible box-set con­sists of 22 James Bond films on Blu-ray. This is indeed, the first ever pack­age of films to be offered in such a com­po­si­tion.

Bond 50, as described by the offi­cial press release, “show­cases fifty years of Bond neatly pack­aged into one cool, sleek col­lec­table box-set fea­tur­ing all six iconic James Bond actors”. From Dr. No to Quantum of Solace, this pack­age con­tains all 22 James Bond fea­ture films, along with 130 hours of bonus fea­tures which include new and exclu­sive content.

“With all 22 fea­ture films avail­able on Blu-ray in one col­lec­tion for the first time this is a great way for fans to catch up on 007’s epic jour­ney before Skyfall hits the­aters next Fall,” said Michael Brown, Senior Vice President, MGM Home Entertainment.

I’d say, a fully-fledged home enter­tain­ment pack­age indeed.

However, Bond 50 is just the tip of the ice­berg. Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli and Eon Productions informs of excit­ing activ­i­ties in store to com­mem­o­rate Bond’s 50 years of unde­fined enter­tain­ment.

“We are also delighted that Fox has unveiled a spe­cially designed anniver­sary poster which we hope the fans will love as much as we do. Our web­site, 007.com will be reg­u­larly updated with all the lat­est anniver­sary news and events.”

Bond 50 will be released on 1^st October 2012 but pre-order ser­vices are avail­able at var­i­ous online outlets.

All 22 James Bond films are com­ing to Blu-ray-Total Film 

Written by Sean Koh

Whether escap­ing an alien inva­sion, or future cops, or antag­o­nis­tic heli­copters, Tom Cruise could always rely on his trusty legs to take him far.

 Cribbed off the good folks at screened.com , who might have noticed Tom’s single-minded deter­mi­na­tion to ‘book-the-hell-out-of-here’.

‘Catch Cruise If You Can’ — Screened.com 

Written by Sean Koh

Featuring Kristen Dunst and Jim Sturgess, the French-made; Romance Mind-bender is set for release some­time 2012. 

Stylish and sleek as hell, I am per­son­ally stoked to watch this one. 

Written by Parveen Maghera

 Another sneak peak into the most antic­i­pat­ing film yet: The Dark Knight Rises.
Anna Hathaway updates on what we could expect from the film, the LA Times reports.

“Gotham City is full of grace,” as Hathaway describes.

She empha­sises on how Joker, played by Heath Ledger from the 2008 instal­ment, was por­trayed with great mad­ness, yet, exhibit­ing grace and a code. Hathaway admits her role in the film being one with “beliefs and codes” as what the char­ac­ters in Gotham exem­plify. “A lot of the way she moves and inter­acts with peo­ple is informed by her world­view,” she says.

Crediting Chris Nolan for his admir­ing direc­to­r­ial style, Hathaway says that Nolan has made the char­ac­ters so “com­plex, defined and sophis­ti­cated” that the cast them­selves have to under­stand the char­ac­ter very well in order to per­form the roles. It is just the mat­ter of believ­ing that they are the char­ac­ters them­selves and it is left to them to decide how they can exhibit the per­son­al­i­ties of such characters.

Moving on, Hathaway also admit­ted show­ing great inter­est in the comics after she became part of the cast. She per­son­ally admires her entry to the film as she meets Batman, played by Christian Bale. She says “‘Let go of me or I’ll claw your eyes out,’ and he says, ‘Careful, claws in or papa spank.’” Hathaway has been pleased with the progress of the Batman char­ac­ters since then.

As we can see, Hathaway’s char­ac­ter, has indeed, mes­mer­ized her after all and she has well been inspired by Hedy Lamarr who was, her­self, the key inspi­ra­tion to Catwoman. It is Lamarr’s extra­or­di­nary breath­ing that cap­ti­vates Hathaway, as she describes, “[s]he takes these long, deep, lan­guid breaths and exhales slowly.” Since then, Hathaway has been work­ing on her breath­ing, in the hope to achieve a sim­i­lar sen­sa­tion Lamarr cre­ates in her films.

And of course not for­get­ting, as Catwoman, Hathaway stands in line with Halle Berry, Michelle Pfeiffer, Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt and Lee Meriwether who have played the char­ac­ter in films and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions. With Julie Newmar wel­com­ing Hathaway as the newest mem­ber of the feline role, Hathaway is deter­mined to exe­cute well on her behalf and is not con­cerned of being com­pared by those in the past.

“What’s come before doesn’t limit or even affect this new ver­sion,” she says. “It doesn’t affect me because each Catwoman – and this is true in the comics as well – she is defined by the con­text of the Gotham City cre­ated around her.”

She shared that till now, Catwoman’s char­ac­ter is greatly influ­enced by Gotham City as well as the cre­ater of the city at the time. With Tim Burton’s Gotham cre­at­ing the per­sona of Pfeiffer’s Catwoman and Adam West’s Gotham cre­at­ing that of Kitt’s, she reit­er­ates that “[y]ou have to live in what­ever the real­ity of the world is and what­ever Gotham is.” In this case, Hathaway’s Catwoman is the result of Nolan’s idea of what Gotham is.

Nevertheless, Catwoman seems to have a seem­ingly enthralling per­sona and with Anna Hathaway’s excite­ment and ded­i­ca­tion in giv­ing jus­tice to the char­ac­ter, I must say, Catwoman’s charisma and charm in the film would make it one of the great­est watch of the cen­tury.

LA Times had also reported on a descrip­tion of the scene, pre­ced­ing the interview:

  “Gotham City is a war zone,” begins the descrip­tion. “A ruth­less mad­man named Bane has ripped away any sense of secu­rity and the cit­i­zens, hag­gard and clutch­ing suit­cases with refugee anx­i­ety, sit behind barbed wire wait­ing to see what will blow up next. A hooded pris­oner is dragged in – it’s Bruce Wayne, one of Gotham’s most famous faces – but the eyes of the crowd go instead to the woman in black stand­ing at the top of the staircase.”

‘Dark Knight Rises’ star Anne Hathaway: ‘Gotham City is full of grace’ — Los Angeles Times 

From all at SgNewWave,

We wish you a Happy Hanukkah, a Merry Christmas, and an excel­lent Saturnalia! 

Also, stay safe, and buckle down for the com­ing 2012 Ragnarök… Happy Holidays everyone! 

Christmas In The Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album - Amazon.com