If you're a Tyler Perry fan and your home could use a few conversation-starting posters on the wall, then you've come to the right place. Movieline is giving away one fun — and funny — prize pack to commemorate the March 29 opening of Tyler Perry's Temptation, written and directed by Tyler Perry and featuring Kim Kardashian in the Madea role. (I kid!) more »
As terribly easy as it is to hate on the Twilight films, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II was the best of the series. (Not that it was without its share of WTFery — imprinting and vampire fistfights and every second of Michael Sheen onscreen, anyone?) But with Breaking Dawn - Part II nominated for 11 Razzie Awards in just ten categories, up against the likes of Adam Sandler's That's My Boy, Eddie Murphy's A Thousand Words, and the bizarro pop culture sensation/box office bomb The Oogieloves In Big Balloon Adventure, let's be real: Does Twilight truly deserve to win all the Razzies?
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R. Kelly is taking his multi-chapter, possibly never-ending R&B hip-hopera, Trapped in the Closet, so super-seriously; the least we can do is return the deliciously campy favor. Watch R. Kelly transform - via prosthetics and a fat suit - into "Randolph," a la Tyler Perry, in a new behind-the-scenes look at Trapped in the Closet, which hits the airwaves on November 23 on IFC. more »
As a tough Detroit cop in Rob Cohen's Alex Cross Rachel Nichols (G.I. Joe, Conan) hunts a maniacal serial killer (Matthew Fox) alongside Tyler Perry, who attempts to crossover from his niche following to the mainstream with the James Patterson crime thriller. But it's not the first time the co-stars shared a scene, as Nichols recalled with a laugh: "It took me four days to say, 'You know what’s really funny? We were in Star Trek together!'"
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Wanna count the number of successful movie franchises with a black lead? You don't even need one hand — two fingers will do: Shaft and Blade. Summit Entertainment is hoping to make it three by giving James Patterson's character Alex Cross — who Morgan Freeman played in Kiss The Girls and Along Came A Spider — a new eponymous chapter. more »
After spending six years playing hero on ABC's LOST, Matthew Fox crossed over to the dark side for role in the James Patterson adaptation Alex Cross, in which he plays a master assassin named Picasso whose perverse precision and meticulous skill make him a deadly foil to Detroit cop/psychological profiler (Tyler Perry).
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It's a curious truth about Tyler Perry that, when not in drag and playing the outsized role of Madea, he's a recessive screen presence, appearing a little uncomfortable in his own body, awkward and not particularly emotive. When he gives himself a role like the one in Good Deeds, it fits as part of the character, but anchoring a potential action franchise like Alex Cross, he looks like he'd rather be somewhere else. more »
Also in Thursday morning's round-up of news briefs: The National Board of Review releases details for its awards event; Tyler Perry revs up for a second Double Cross; a Toronto heist thriller heads to U.S. theaters; And remembering Dutch actress Syliva Kristel and Japanese director Koji Wakamatsu.
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By all indications at the LA press day the principals involved in Alex Cross are happy as plums with the pic director Rob Cohen delivered, which sees Tyler Perry (of Madea fame) making his action hero debut on Friday. So is it any wonder that a deal is underway already with novelist James Patterson to start work on Double Cross, the next in what Summit and QED International hope is another fruitful Perry franchise?
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Also in Tuesday morning's round-up of news briefs, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Tom Hardy team up for an anti-poaching project. Ewan McGregor will receive San Sebastian honors. Morgan Freeman and Elizabeth Banks board an animated project. And fire once again hits Tyler Perry's Atlanta studio.
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Introducing Movieline's ARRIVALS series, spotlighting breakthrough performers enjoying a bit of a "moment." Today meet British actress Carmen Ejogo, whose scene-stealing performance in Sparkle kicks off a big year in film and TV.
As much as Sparkle is about well, Sparkle (Jordin Sparks), the shy young singer who learns to come into her own in this weekend's R&B remake (not to mention Whitney Houston in what might have been her comeback), it's Carmen Ejogo's scene-stealing Sister — sultry, ambitious, and tragically doomed — who brings the film's cautionary lessons crashing home. Ejogo's offscreen story is even more intriguing: the MENSA member and one-time backing singer for Tricky (she does her own vocals in the film) got her start in the 1986 David Bowie musical Absolute Beginners and tried the leading lady route in her first crossover roles (Metro, What's the Worst That Could Happen), before earning notice in Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, HBO's Boycott, Lackawanna Blues, and last year's Away We Go.
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"Why did I put all my money into this? Is this going to work? God, do you hear me? Where are the people? I’m so scared. How will I pay these people? Why did I do this? I can’t pay my rent, they are going to repossess my car. The year was 1992, July 8th-12th. All these questions were crowding my mind. I was a 22-year old wannabe... but what I wanted to be I didn't know." Relax, Tyler Perry — you've spoken to Movieline! You've made it! All downhill from here. [TylerPerry.com]
Audiences headed out to theaters to see a foul-mouthed Teddy Bear and some hot man flesh over the weekend. Universal's Ted grossed over $54.1 million over the Friday through Sunday, while Warner Bros.' Magic Mike came in at just over $39.15 million. The two studio newcomers topped the overall box office for the weekend, while last week's newcomer animation Brave held the third spot. Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection landed in fourth place.
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With Tyler Perry gradually segueing toward non-drag leading man status with Good Deeds and the upcoming James Patterson thriller Alex Cross, his latest appearance as the sassy, wisdom-dispensing matriarch of the title in Madea's Witness Protection has an aura of fatigued reluctance to it, as does the film itself. Perry mentioned to Movieline that while he planned to keep with the character as long as there was demand from audiences, he "would be pretty good with passing it on," and certainly in her franchise's seventh installment Mabel Simmons, better known as Madea, seems ready to do the same, unable to summon the usual levels of outrageousness as she once again plays magical mender of other people's problems.
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It’s easy to dismiss the films of Tyler Perry, undisputed king of a niche multi-media empire of his own making, as broad, caricature-laden comedy populated by what Spike Lee famously labeled “coonery buffoonery.” But beneath the be-wigged, slapstick-y heft of Perry’s most famous character, Madea, and her often violent crusades in the name of family values — as seen in Friday’s Madea’s Witness Protection, the sassy grandmother’s seventh big-screen outing — lies a fount of subversive discussions of race, class, and self-examination. The only question is: Is Tyler Perry aware of it?
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