As soon as he took the reins on this week's remake of Sam Peckinpah's brutal 1971 classic Straw Dogs, writer-director Rod Lurie knew the haters would come in droves. "From the minute we announced it everybody was on my ass in the blogosphere, telling me that I couldn't carry his jockstrap and I'll never be Sam Peckinpah," Lurie told Movieline on the eve of his film's release. But with his updated take on the Peckinpah film, which transplants the violent tale to the American South and re-envisions protagonists David and Amy Sumner (James Marsden and Kate Bosworth) as a Hollywood couple fighting off fire and brimstone-raised good ol' boys, Lurie was never attempting to mimic Peckinpah at all -- in fact, he was doing just the opposite.
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In this installment of Weekend Forecast, three new and (mostly) intriguing offerings vie at the box office: the Ryan Gosling showcase Drive, Sarah Jessica Parker's I Don't Know How She Does It, and Rod Lurie's remake of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. But will any of them be a match for the proven global box-office dazzle of Disney's The Lion King 3D?
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Take a deep breath, folks, and prepare for the nearly three minutes of tense exchanges and brutal violence (five words: boiling oil in the face) that comprise the first trailer for Rod Lurie's Straw Dogs remake. The setting has been moved to the Deep South, but the character relationships and abject horrors look to be faithfully evocative of Sam Peckinpah's original film, which taught audiences why you should never push a mild-mannered husband to the brink of desperation.
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Here's your first look at images from Rod Lurie's Straw Dogs remake, which moves the setting of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 film from England to America, and sets up L.A. couple James Marsden and Kate Bosworth for a really unpleasant vacay in the Deep South. The EW scans also include your first look at True Blood's Alexander Skarsgård in the role of Charlie, a character at the center of the original film's most controversial scenes.
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A hyper-energized CG bunny voiced by Russell Brand may flit maniacally around James Marsden almost constantly in this week's live-action/animated Easter adventure Hop, but it's very much Marsden's moment to shine. As Fred, a 30-year-old loser still searching for direction, the Oklahoma-born actor plays straight man to Brand's rambunctious teenage rabbit in a PG-rated film filled with gleaming candy factories and Cute Overload-ready characters. He's come quite a long way, and deliberately so, from his role as a disturbed husband pushed to the brink of violence in the upcoming Straw Dogs remake.
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