Here's an easy formula to get attention for your Worst Movies of 2012 list. Take the unfathomable big-budget box-office failure that's likely to top a lot of these year-end thumbsuckers — and make it number two. Next, single out an ambitious film by a trio of filmmakers with a passionate following. Put it at the top (or is it the bottom?) of your list and wait for their fans to scream. more »
Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted was an unexpectedly charming addition to the summer's kiddie flick franchise pile-up, better and stranger than, honestly, it needed to be in a subgenre that is, Pixar aside, usually just about merchandising potential and providing enough bright moving objects to occupy young attention spans for 80 minutes. People hoping for the same pleasant surprise when escorting offspring to Ice Age: Continental Drift might as well pre-crush those hopes in advance before donning their 3-D glasses — the film, the fourth in the series from Blue Sky Studios, is just a sugary jumble of goofy voices, hyperkinetic action scenes and rote plot elements that rolls forward just enough to get us to the de rigueur pop song that plays over the closing credits.
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After months of humiliating posters and destabilizing trailers, the big-screen "adaptation" of Heidi Murkoff's megahit advice tome What to Expect When You're Expecting has finally arrived at multiplexes nationwide. Critical reactions are about as chilly as you might expect for a film that turns one of the most influential books of the last quarter-century into a kitchen-sink ensemble romcom; while director Kirk Jones's film does seem to have its following (21 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes! Even A.O. Scott is into it! Sort of!), the overriding sense seems to be one of vague — or maybe not so vague — loathing. Let's cool off with a refreshing dip in the bile.
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Hollywood, a humble request? I realize that abortion is has become too divisive a topic these days to drop into a mainstream movie product like What To Expect When You're Expecting, especially in what's an overall innocuous ensemble comedy based, somehow, on a bestselling pregnancy guidebook (between this and Battleship, it's one strange week for source material). It's also a tough topic from which to wring laughs. And in something carefully calculated to be as broad in appeal as possible, any mention of the option of terminating a pregnancy is just going to be one more thing that could isolate potential movie audiences, like an ugly poster, being in a foreign language or attempting analysis of the Iraq War.
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The surprise winner of this year's Forbes Celebrity 100 list was singer-actress-American Idol famous person Jennifer Lopez, who beat out the likes of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga in the magazine's uber-scientific calculation of the celebrity with the most fiscal earnings and fame. J. Lo even bested Oprah, but then Oprah's having an off year despite raking in $165 million. Not bad for a former fly girl — and a wily Hollywood strategist, at that — whose second pregnancy-themed movie in a row is coincidentally due in theaters this week. [Forbes]
Well, it looks like Lionsgate has picked their pony in the Catching Fire directing race; I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence has reportedly been offered the job to helm the Hunger Games sequel, which is set to start filming on a tight schedule this August. Lawrence has three features under his belt, in addition to music videos for the likes of J. Lo and Britney Spears; he most recently directed Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon in Water for Elephants (but also made 2005's Constantine).
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Neither the ladies nor the guys have emerged from the What to Expect When You're Expecting marketing miasma unscathed, but at least now we can get all of our ensemble humiliation out of the way in one convenient new one-sheet.
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When Darren Aronofsky directed a sumptuous Revlon commercial for mascara last year I called it his "least-daring work to date," but now comes a new project to trump that dubious accomplishment. Behold, the Oscar-nominated Black Swan director's gripping ad for Kohl's department store featuring J. Lo singing and dancing to a Kiki Dee cover song, a video that makes Jessica Biel plumping her lashes look like Requiem for a Dream.
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"She knows that I know that she knows that I know the whole scene is deliberate, right down to the supporting players -- assistants, various friends, family -- arranged here and there around the pool, ready to do a star's bidding... That Lopez has dared to try and pull off such a time-honored Hollywood gambit as Rising-Star-Interviewed-By-The-Pool is in keeping with her overall strategy of playing Big. Big is Jennifer Lopez's forte." The jury may be out on Lopez's maybe-wardrobe malfunction onstage at the Oscars, but you can treat yourself with Stephen Rebello's full 1998 Movieline must-read, stat.
The champagne's been tippled, the winners are all celebrating, and somewhere Uggie's getting a LOT of sausages. So let's relive the highlights of the 2012 Academy Awards show! Click through for Movieline's gallery and name your favorite moment from the big night. Was it Best Supporting Actress Octavia Spencer's emotional acceptance speech? Or Descendants co-scripter Jim Rash's impromptu Angelina Jolie impersonation? Those bits and more in vivid photographic detail after the jump!
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Signs continue to emerge suggesting that What to Expect When You're Expecting is a real movie with real stars and a very real prospect of opening theatrically, as opposed to one of those mock all-star trailers that the Funny or Die crew coughed up over bad Chinese food at the end of a 14-hour day. The latest indication: Character posters! It's like The Avengers of maternity anthologies! If, that is, the Avengers labored superhumanly on behalf of the beleaguered population of Cringe City.
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"It’s got Ben Affleck as a big, dumb mook, and, well, he’s pretty good at it. And it’s got Jennifer Lopez playing her most interesting character since Out of Sight [...] But those two are the reason that Gigli arrived with such built-in hostility from moviegoers and critics, because this was the film where the duo met and fell into the PDA-heavy romance that become such a constant, unceasing annoyance in the months that followed. It was a classic example of buyer’s remorse — through tabloids and entertainment 'news' programs, we couldn’t get enough Bennifer coverage, and then, in the blink of an eye, we’d had enough, we were done with them, and we didn’t want to see anything that had anything to do with them." Yeah! Sheesh. Actually, no, but still. [Flavorwire]
There is a group of individuals whom Movieline would like to salute: The passionate, faceless people who lovingly record, in surprising detail and with confounding care, the full plot summaries for horrible movies on Wikipedia. Wikipedia movie plot historians, your day has come.
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Fox's Ice Age franchise is getting some new voices for its fourth installment, next summer's Ice Age: Continental Drift. Among them: A hip-hop star, an American Idol judge, two comedians, and your future Bourne, who will mingle with the beloved returning heroes of the previous three Ice Age films in the July 2012 sequel. What adventures await in the fourth installment of the popular animated series?
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