Brad Pitt to Star in ‘Twelve Years a Slave’

 

Brad Pitt is back in the news again and once more he has attached himself to a critically acclaimed true story.

Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, was already producing, and now Brad himself has agreed to appear in the movie as well.  Mr. Pitt usually chooses his roles well, and in joining Michael Fassbender and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the film adaptation of Solomon Northrup’s stunning autobiography, it appears he has grabbed another winner.

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Movie Review - 'Salt'

Salt Starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, and Chiwetel Ejiofor Directed by Phillip Noyce Rated PG-13

The recent Russian spy ring notwithstanding, the golden era of cloak and dagger stuff, what really inspired the mountains of great secret agent fiction over the past half century, was the Cold War. The CIA was formed after WWII to replace the OSS, and on the other side - back when it was convenient to think about the world in black and white terms - the KGB similarly rose from the ashes of Russian intelligence outfits in the early 1950s. Dating back further, you have spies like the notorious Cambridge Five, British communists who worked for years as double agents and possibly even triple agents. But in the past 20 years, it has been less relevant to use the Soviets (or now just the Russians) as villains in a spy caper. Very often, in fact, the CIA is parlayed as the evil force. But now, the Russians are back in the spotlight, thanks to both the real spy caper that's unfolded in the past month and Angelina Jolie's run-and-shoot affair called Salt. The title is Jolie's character's last name. Evelyn Salt works for the CIA and is interrogating a Russian defector when her world crashes down around her. The defector says that a Russian agent will kill that country's president while he's in New York attending the funeral of the US vice president. That Russian agent's name, he says, is Evelyn Salt. And here's where the running and shooting comes in. Clunky to this point, Salt picks up steam thanks to the action scenes, which aren't very well shot or edited, but the stunt work and some of Salt's ingenuity is great fun to watch. The film's script, by Kurt Wimmer, also keeps us on our toes by throwing a few question marks in that interrupt our understanding of the story, and let's just leave it at that. The reveals in the plot are placed very strategically and each one works, particularly if you don't try looking ahead in an effort to see what's next. That's the job of the movie, after all. Salt is trying to clear her name, but then why run? And why do some of the other things she engages in that could cast more doubt on her real motives?

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Movie Review - '2012'

2012 Starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson Directed by Roland Emmerich Rated PG-13

A common complaint leveled at movie critics, almost exclusively with big budget blockbusters, is that we expect them to be something they're not. True, not everything tries to win Oscars and bad acting and writing can often be overlooked, but some films are so bad even on the basis that they should be evaluated that you can only forgive so much in the interest of entertainment. Within its own little universe, 2012 really only wants to create the apocalypse to end all apocalypses, and it's pretty successful at it, frankly. Director Roland Emmerich is The Master of Disaster, having helmed a few movies that put human civilization on the brink of extinction from one cause or another. There's always an unlikely hero, seldom a likely one, and familiar monuments get demolished rather convincingly through computer animation. There's always a scientist who knows how it will play out, and somehow amid all of this, there's romance in bloom. As you might suspect, 2012 is loosely inspired by the end of the Mayan calendar, which goes dark in December of that year. Some of the scientific theories at work here exist, although they may be shady. Still, unless you know these things going in, it seems fairly plausible: The sun is basically cooking the crust of the Earth and eventually - say, December 2012 - it will finally give way and everything will start to move uncontrollably. You probably don't know there are nearly 10,000 earthquakes a day because most of that movement is so minor you never feel it. But it's always moving, and we know California is overdue for "the big one." So why not? Now, in Emmerich's world where all this is set in motion, does the movie work? More often than it doesn't, and that might be a surprise. Considering his film is over two-and-a-half hours long, it holds together pretty well. That doesn't mean 2012 doesn't have its problems or that the things our survivors live through are in any way acceptable, but the movie just keeps rolling on, and when Emmerich does slow down so we can catch our breath, these characters aren't that bad.

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Trailer - PBS Masterpiece Presentation 'Endgame'

Next weekend, the film Endgame will air on PBS, a little less than two weeks before its theatrical debut. It's a strange strategy, although the run in theaters will likely be pretty limited. But with this cast and this trailer, I thought you should know about it whether you want to pay to see it or if you just want to make an appointment to watch it on TV on October 25th.

The film is based on real events from 1980s South Africa, in the midst of Apartheid. William Hurt plays an Afrikaaner businessman who agrees to help Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a representative of the opposition group the African National Congress, in an effort to broker the end of Apartheid. That was an unpopular point of view in many parts of South Africa at the time, of course. Endgame co-stars Jonny Lee Miller and the great Mark Strong, and kudos to William Hurt's accent. That's a tough one to get right, but he sounds like he's on the right track.

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Three Predictably Apocalyptic Posters for '2012'

Roland Emmerich's latest disaster movie comes out in November. It's called 2012, in case you haven't heard, and as you can probably guess, it's based on all of those loony tunes theories that the Mayan calendar calls for the end of the world at the end of that year.

As silly as the basis for the movie it, the concept, however, is ideal for a big budget effects movie, and few guys know their way around the possibility of the end of the world quite like Emmerich (Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow). This time around, the destruction follows John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and a bunch of extras sure to die in grisly ways. Here are three new posters that leave very little to the imagination: If the Mayans prove to be correct, property values are going to go way down.

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