Tuesday, June 23, 2015
‘Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension’ Will End the Series
From slashfilm, A new installment in the Paranormal Activity series opens this fall, and the first images from Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimensionare now online. The film is called the “final installment” of the series, and promises to close the book on the story begun in 2009.
You read that right. This is, for now at least, the last Paranormal Activity film. “We made this movie like it’s the end of this Paranormal line for sure,” says Jason Blum. And that title promises quite a few revelations.
USA Today has the images, and quotes producer Jason Blum saying,
It’s coming to an end. This is it, the finale. We’re saying it before the movie opens. We’re not going to grind this horror franchise into the ground. This will keep Paranormal Activity as part of this culture and this particular time in a really fantastic way… All the questions that everyone has asked from the past ‘Paranormal Activity’ films: What does Toby look like? What’s the backstory to the families? These questions have been teased out. Now they will be answered.
Yeah, they’re going to show Toby this time. Oh, and the film will be released with 3D used for parts of the movie, but not all. (See the synopsis below.)
Will this really be the last one? Plenty of other horror series have trotted out “final” chapters only to later continue with many more installments. (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter effectively turned the concept of declaring an end into a joke. That was the fourth film, and six more followed, not counting a spin-off and reboot.) Blum is saying this is it. We’ll see how long that holds.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension opens on October 23. Gregory Plotkin directed from a script by Adam Robitel and Gavin Heffernan.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension centers on the Fleeges — father Ryan (Chris J. Murray), mother Emily (Brit Shaw) and their young daughter Leila (Ivy George) — who move into a house and discover a video camera and a box of tapes in the garage. When they look through the camera’s lens, they begin to see the paranormal activity happening around them – including the re-emergence of young Kristi and Katie. The video camera footage will be presented in 3D in theaters.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Box Office
From ew, This weekend marks the first time a Pixar movie hasn’t opened number one at the box office, but we think the studio will be okay with this result: Inside Out, the studio’s latest offering, debuted with an estimated $91.1 million in North American ticket sales, giving it the largest opening ever for an original property (defined by Disney as a non-sequel and non-sourced work), surpassing the 2009 opening weekend of Avatar ($77 million). Pete Docter’s film ranks as the second biggest Pixar opening of all time, just behind Toy Story 3, which debuted with $110.3 million.
Early tracking predicted that Inside Out would debut around $60 million, which is about what other original Pixar films like WALL-E($63.1 million) and Cars ($60.1 million) had earned, and many believedthat the unstoppable force of Jurassic World would eat into Inside Out’s success. But as early as Friday, it was clear that Inside Out was destined for bigger things, and it actually topped the night with a whopping $34.2 million (including Thursday previews). Even thoughInside Out ended the weekend in second place, it’s the biggest No. 2 debut of all time, demolishing the $68.7 million record previously held by The Day After Tomorrow.
Still, even with all of Inside Out’s success, it wasn’t enough to stopJurassic World. Chris Pratt and his team of velociraptors won the weekend, only dropping about 51 percent to an estimated $102 million. This makes it the second-biggest second weekend of all time, just shy of Marvel The Avengers’ $103.1 million. Like last weekend, it’s important to note that $102 million is just an estimate, and if Jurassic World sees a particularly strong Father’s Day turnout, it could end up breaking The Avengers’ record when final numbers are released on Monday.
Globally, Jurassic World has already earned $981.3 million, and it’s on track to become the fastest film ever to hit $1 billion. (Furious 7 set the current record of 17 days in April.)
Dope, the only other new opening this weekend, rounded out the top five with an estimated $6 million, falling just short of expectations.
Here are this weekend’s top five at the box office:
1. Jurassic World — $102 million
2. Inside Out — $91.1 million
3. Spy — $10.5 million
4. San Andreas — $8.2 million
5. Dope — $6 million
Jake Lloyd, Former 'Star Wars' Child Star, Arrested After High-Speed Chase
WALTERBORO, S.C. (AP) — A former child actor who starred in one of the "Star Wars" movie sequels faces charges after leading South Carolina deputies on a high-speed chase.
Colleton County Sheriff's deputies on Wednesday arrested a 26-year-old man they confirmed through a former talent agent was Jake Lloyd, who played a young Anakin Skywalker in the 1999 movie "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace," Sgt. Kyle Strickland said Sunday.
The man gave his name as Jake Broadbent, Strickland said. The man's birthdate matched the actors' listed by movie database IMDB.com and a hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado, where Lloyd was born.
The man was charged with failing to stop for officers and reckless driving after hitting speeds over 100 miles an hour, Strickland said.
Deputies in coastal Charleston County initially tried to stop the fleeing vehicle early Wednesday afternoon, but quit chasing after the man drove into neighboring Colleton County, Sheriff's Office Major Eric Watson said Sunday.
The chase lasted for more than 25 miles before Lloyd drove off Interstate 95, plowed through a fence, and continued speeding along a parallel frontage road, authorities said. The road ended at a dead end, but the vehicle kept going into a wooded area before it hit several small trees and stopped.
The man had not posted bond and remained in jail Sunday evening, Strickland said.
Lloyd said in a 2012 interview that the role he performed when he was 10 years old made his youth hellish because he was bullied by other children. His last acting credit was in 2005, according to IMDB.com.
Friday, June 19, 2015
‘Dope’ Review: John Hughes Meets the ‘Hood in Rick Famuyiwa Teen Action Comedy
So many movies play it safe and predictable that you have to give it up to “Dope” for making consistently bold moves — even if they don’t always pay off. This vibrant film is a bit of a mess, but it’s a beautiful one.
Writer-director Rick Famuyiwa (“The Wood”) gives us three unique, eccentric, fresh adolescent characters who don’t feel like the usual teen-movie archetypes — and then he almost immediately plunges them into shootouts and drug deals that feel crushingly familiar. “Dope” clearly wants to mix “Risky Business” and the John Hughes oeuvre with the 1990s milieu of “Boyz n the Hood” and the many films it inspired. But while there’s no reason that combo couldn’t work, Famuyiwa doesn’t quite nail the proportions.
The ’90s are a recurring touchstone here, with our heroes Malcolm (Shameik Moore), Diggy (Kiersey Clemons, “Transparent”) and Jib (Tony Revolori, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”) obsessed over the decade and its music and its fashions, from their stack of “Yo! MTV Raps” VHS cassettes to the top of Malcolm’s Kid n Play hairdo. As narrator Forest Whitaker (who also produced) points out, these three are outcasts in their Inglewood high school, both for their anachronistic affectations and for their desire to make good grades and go to college.
It’s in that opening narration where Famuyiwa establishes his go-for-broke intentions toward the film’s tone: Whitaker tells us about another nerdy kid who got shot during a restaurant hold-up and the camera shows the victim’s bloody GameBoy while Whitaker notes that, ironically, he was just a few points shy of the high score. That’s a pretty ballsy opening salvo, promising a tightrope walk between dark comedy and realistic suffering. Unfortunately, “Dope” can’t maintain that balance.
Malcolm is forced to shuttle romantic messages between local drug dealer Dom (rapper A$AP Rocky) and his estranged girlfriend Nakia (Zoë Kravitz), eventually becoming smitten with her himself despite the inherent danger involved. Malcolm’s willingness to go whither Nakia goest eventually lands Malcolm and his friends possession of Dom’s satchel, which holds a large amount of an ecstasy-like drug that seemingly everyone in Inglewood wants.
The characters here are too interesting (or at least potentially interesting) to get caught up in yet another bag-of-drugs plot. Diggy, for example, is a baby butch lesbian whose androgyny confuses men and enchants a series of women, while Dom balances cold intelligence, a dry wit and a propensity for ruthless violence in the way of the great screen villains. But once “Dope” goes off on long tangents explaining how Bitcoin works (it’s part of how our heroes wind up selling the drugs online), it’s clear that the movie has somewhat lost its way.
Still, Famuyiwa brings such vitality to the production that it’s hard not to get absorbed, even when the story’s initial promise gets wrapped up unsatisfactorily — or rather, too satisfactorily, with all the complicated and random odds and ends tied up in a neat bow. Tom Cruise‘s character in“Risky Business” manages to get into Princeton, yes, but at least there’s still that crack in the Faberge egg.
(Side tangent: after “Dope” and “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” can filmmakers please retire the framing device of the college application essay, at least for a while? It’s so overused that the trope has become the new “…and that was the summer that changed everything.”)
If nothing else, “Dope” is the movie that turned Shameik Moore into a leading man, and here’s hoping the industry finds more characters this interesting for him to play. He’s charismatic and engaging (I would have loved more scenes between Moore and the underutilized Kimberly Elise, who plays Malcolm’s bus-driver mom), and he brings the kind of wit, energy and sheer movie magnetism that heralds an interesting career ahead.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Marvel Concedes Opening Record to 'Jurassic World' with Painting of Chris Pratt on Mjolnir-Wielding T-Rex
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