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

 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 Parveen Maghera
 The Dark Knight Rises offi­cial trailer shines an unfor­giv­ing light on Batman’s ardu­ous chal­lenge yet: to defeat Bane.

After the teaser, the trailer gives audi­ences a greater view of Bane’s demon-like demeanour and intro­duces Catwoman into Gotham City (played by Anna Hathway).

Released by Warner Brothers ear­lier this week, the trailer had hit 12.5 mil­lion views within the first 24 hours of release, break­ing the exist­ing record for iTunes trailer down­loads.

“The trailer went online on Monday at 10:00 am and was soon being watched again (and again) by fans, who parsed over every enig­matic detail”, as quoted from Moviefone.

Following the trailer, Warner Bros. recently released new images for The Dark Knight Rises, unveil­ing Batman’s new wicked weapon and not for­get­ting, his won­drous Batpod. Images also include Bane in his newly stacked half-armour suit.

Starring Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman, the Dark Knight Rises is set 8 years after the events of The Dark Knight (a prior instal­ment released in 2008) where ter­ror­ist leader Bane, played by Tom Hardy, pushes Gotham City into yet another series of blood­cur­dling events. Batman, played by Christian Bale, returns with an ever­last­ing impres­sion to destroy evil and to end the leg­end, for good.

With its trailer exhibit­ing a con­sid­er­able impres­sion of what the film depicts, it would be a long wait for the full film to be released.

20 July 2012 is the release date for the film in the UK.

Warner releases new Dark Knight Rises images- Total Film 

Written by Christopher Sim, Edited by Trey Seah

Apple’s iProducts. South Korean pop music. Air. 

These things are every­where. You can’t avoid them with­out mak­ing a con­scious effort. 

In a word, ubiq­ui­tous.

That word is bandied around a lot in the doc­u­men­tary Helvetica. The film is directed and pro­duced by Gary Hustwit, and was released in 2007 to coin­cide with the fifti­eth birth­day of the font type­face family.

With the sub­ject of Helvetica seem­ing to be any­thing but com­plex, one would expect the rest of the film to fol­low suit by being sim­i­larly trans­par­ent; indeed, Helvetica is made up of footage of rant­ing old men, among other things. This, how­ever, is where the film truly shines.

Written by Sean Koh

As Hollywood wakes from a turkey-induced hol­i­day coma, we take moment to briefly remem­ber the vic­tims of last [Black] Friday’s pepper-spray frenzy, puz­zle at why ‘Breaking Dawn’ keeps its No.1 seat at last weekend’s box-office, and brace our­selves for the inevitable Cyber-Monday Apocalypse where ridicu­lously under-priced Blu-Ray movies will over­turn world economies and kill us all.

But of course, who are we kid­ding? Let’s get to the movie news that actu­ally matter.

Christian Bale Done With Batman, after ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

Says Bale, in an inter­view with the Philippine Daily Inquirer “I wrapped a few days ago, so that will be the last time I’m tak­ing that [Batman hood] off.”

This comes as no sur­prise, with Director Chris Nolan stat­ing that the next Batman movie will also be his last. This also marks the end of what was an espe­cially good run for the Batman movie series, which hasn’t always been spectacular.

As Bale also states :

“When you have the oppor­tu­nity to be a char­ac­ter so many times, you develop another rela­tion­ship with him, a more pro­found one.”

I won­der if George Clooney or Val Kilmer could say the same.

Speilberg Not Impressed With Movies Made Today:

It isn’t all that hard to imag­ine why really. The era of movies geared toward pre-pubescent ‘Tweens’, that brought us block­buster hits such as ‘Never Say Never’ and ‘Twillight’, just isn’t impress­ing Speilberg. :

“There’s not a lot of films I’d watch that are made over the past 20 years, because I’m much more of a roman­tic.
“I like to go way back to the source. I look at a lot of silent movies for inspi­ra­tion because they’re all told visu­ally and they’re all told with hyper-extended per­for­mance and with won­der­ful use of a frame. It’s a way of get­ting my engine started.”

Just as an accom­pa­ni­ment to that,David Gritten over at The Telegraph wrote an inter­est­ing arti­cle on the rise of movie crowd-pleasers for grown-ups, such as ‘Hugo’ and ‘The Decendents’, which gives us hope for the future of great films.

Bret McKenzie Hints At A ‘Flight Of The Concords’ Movie

Oh, please make this happen.

In an inter­view with The Hollywood Reporter, Bret McKenzie of the short-lived but well-loved HBO series hints at a ‘Flight Of The Concords’ movie say­ing : “We’re gonna try and do a movie,” he said. “We just need a story.” Bret McKenzie appear­ing at The Muppets movie pre­mière reunites with his for­mer co-star Kristen Schaal, and co-creator James Bobin for musi­cal work on the lat­est Muppets movie.

Speaking of which, we’re all still wait­ing for that Arrested Development movie, which I imag­ine must be in movie devel­op­ment hell right now (no pun intended).

And finally,

Box Office Earning Calls: Breaking Dawn still doing Gangbusters, And The Rise Of The Holiday Family Movies

Time for the reg­u­lar Twilight check in… and it looks like it still glit­ters. Making over $489.3 mil­lion Worldwide, ‘Breaking Dawn’ eas­ily over­shad­owed the bet­ter reviewed, family-oriented new addi­tions this week. ‘The Muppets’ which debut at $42 mil­lion over a the long hol­i­day week­end leads the pack of ‘PG-ers’ with danc­ing pen­guins in ‘Happy Feet 2’, and ‘Hugo’ com­ing in at places No.3 and No.5 [respec­tively] on the Box Office charts.

The Decendents holds steady at No.10, cap­ping off the Thanksgiving weekend.

Very recently, SGNewWave has had the plea­sure to be invited to catch the open­ing film of the 15^th Annual German Film Festival, Almanya — Willikomemen in Deutchland (Welcome to Germany). The film picked up a good cou­ple of awards, includ­ing Best Film in Silver, and Best Screenplay, the recent German Film Awards 2011.

So while well aware of the crit­i­cal acclaim the film had received, we asked some of the SGNW exco to give their some post-movie impres­sions, while at the post-screening buf­fet fresh from the screen­ing, and famished.

So with­out much fur­ther ado, here’s our first ever, Nutshell Reviews for Almanya — Willikomemen in Deutchland .

Written by Adrian Lim

This a movie that feels like Ocean’s 11 but is not quite up to the styl­ized ver­sion of the film.

Here, Alan Alda (MASH) is at his creep­ily dis­lik­able best as a rich Wall Street fig­ure whose lowli­est employ­ees seek revenge after he has swin­dled them out of their pen­sions and life sav­ings. He is of course Bernie Maddoff who took away mil­lions from investors.

The movie takes half an hour to get going, show­ing us the work­ings of the rich in a rich town in a rich build­ing. So when Alan Alda gets arrested and is found to have swin­dled money from the work­ers in the build­ing, Stiller decides on a heist of the fraudster’s hid­den cash which coin­cides with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York. It should have been fun but its rather less fun than it might have been due to some poor timing.