2015 Harvey Award winners — full list!

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Denise

harvey winnerIt’ ain’t the Awards Season Onslaught until Baltimore Comic-Con holds it’s yearly Harvey Awards.  Which they did last night.  And while I loved many of this year’s noms that didn’t take away a prize last night, this year’s winners are an amazing crop o’ talent.

A special shout-out to:

  • Fiona Staples and the entire Saga crew for their multiple wins
  • Jack Morelli, for his amazing work — and Harvey win — lettering Afterlife With Archie
  • Danny Miki for his Best Inker Harvey (and his gorgeous colors in Batman)
  • And the amazing Baltimore Comic-Con Guest of Honor Mark Waid for his Best Writer win for his work on Daredevil

Why am I still flappin’ my fingers? Let’s get to the winners already!

Congratulations to all the winners, and to Vivek Tiwary for being the host with the most!

Continue reading →

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“Steve Jobs” – new images and synopsis

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Denise

steve jobs onsheetIt’s pretty cut and dry when you see that a biopic is hitting theaters.  So I’ll just drop the synopsis on you, and let you peep the stills.  After seeing the trailer for Steve Jobs, I’m looking forward to seeing this film.  Aaaaaand go!

Set backstage in the minutes before three iconic product launches spanning Jobs’ career—beginning with the Macintosh in 1984, and ending with the unveiling of the iMac in 1998—Steve Jobs takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.

Steve Jobs is directed by Academy Award® winner Danny Boyle and written by Academy Award® winner Aaron Sorkin, working from Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of the Apple founder. The producers are Mark Gordon, Guymon Casady of Film 360, Scott Rudin, Boyle, and Academy Award® winner Christian Colson.

Michael Fassbender plays Steve Jobs, the pioneering founder of Apple, with Academy Award®-winning actress Kate Winslet starring as Joanna Hoffman, former marketing chief of Macintosh. Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple, is played by Seth Rogen, and Jeff Daniels stars as former Apple CEO John Sculley. The film also stars Katherine Waterston as Chrisann Brennan, Jobs’ ex-girlfriend, and Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original members of the Apple Macintosh development team. http://www.stevejobsthefilm.com

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“The Intern” – comfort food that charms and entertains

Posted on September 25, 2015 by Denise

intern2015

Nutshell: folks who love Nancy Meyers’ modern-day fairy tales will love this one too.  Things are tied up way too nicely at the end, but De Niro and Hathaway are charming.  Grade: B

Nancy Meyers is queen of women’s comfort flicks.  The Holiday, Baby Boom, What Women Want.  Heck, she even managed to do a wonderful job rebooting The Parent Trap, making the story more all-ages than the original (casting affable actors Dennis Quaid and  Natasha Richardson didn’t hurt either.)  So you know going in that The Intern will be a fluffy throw-pillow of fun that won’t tax you too much, and will leave you with some warm fuzzies as you head to your car.  And that’s exactly what you’ll get.

Ben Whittaker is 70 years old, and bored out of his mind after his retirement.  A widower, his empty house only serves to remind him that he’s got no place to be, nowhere to go.  So when he sees a flyer advertising for senior interns (read: over-60 years old), he goes for it.  And finds himself working with Jules Ostin, the CEO of an online fashion website who is Type A times twelve.  Can these two help each other?  Um, this is a Meyers joint; of course they can. Continue reading →

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“Angry Birds” trailer hints at an origin story

Posted on September 24, 2015 by Denise
Chuck (Josh Gad), Red (Jason Sudeikis), Bomb (Danny McBride) in Columbia Pictures and Rovio's ANGRY BIRDS.

Chuck (Josh Gad), Red (Jason Sudeikis), Bomb (Danny McBride) in Columbia Pictures and Rovio’s ANGRY BIRDS.

Well’p.  Who hasn’t played Angry Birds?  So it figures that somebody’d get an idea to make a movie out of the game.  Hey, it worked so well for Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter and Alone in the Dark.  At least this time the film will be animated, and it’s got the whole “geared to kids but adults will dig the double entendres too” thing going on.  Synopsis?

In the 3D animated comedy, The Angry Birds Movie, we’ll finally find out why the birds are so angry.

The movie takes us to an island populated entirely by happy, flightless birds – or almost entirely.  In this paradise, Red (Jason Sudeikis, We’re the Millers, Horrible Bosses), a bird with a temper problem, speedy Chuck (Josh Gad in his first animated role since Frozen), and the volatile Bomb (Danny McBride, This is the End, Eastbound and Down) have always been outsiders.  But when the island is visited by mysterious green piggies, it’s up to these unlikely outcasts to figure out what the pigs are up to.

Check out the trailer and see if you’d line up to catch the full film.  Gotta admit the voice actors here are top-notch.  Fingers crossed this won’t bomb like, well, Bomb.

Angry Birds piledrives into theaters May 20th, 2016.


 

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Baltimore Screening Pass-palooza: The Walk!

Posted on September 24, 2015 by Denise

the walk onesheet

The Twin Towers. Tall. Majestic. Deeply missed. But in 1974, just a year after the World Trade Center opened, Philippe Petit wire-walked between the towers. His feat was covered in the documentary Man on Wire, and now in the biodrama The Walk.

Twelve people have walked on the moon. Only one has ever, or will ever, walk in the immense void between the World Trade Center towers.

Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), guided by his real-life mentor, Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), is aided by an unlikely band of international recruits, who overcome long odds, betrayals, dissension and countless close calls to conceive and execute their mad plan. Robert Zemeckis, the master director of such marvels as Forrest Gump, Cast Away, Back to the Future, Polar Express and Flight, again uses cutting edge technology in the service of an emotional, character-driven story. With innovative photorealistic techniques and IMAX® 3D wizardry, The Walk is genuine big-screen cinema, a chance for moviegoers to viscerally experience the feeling of reaching the clouds.

It is also one of the more rare live-action films that is a PG-rated, all-audience entertainment for moviegoers 8 to 80 – and a true story to boot. It is unlike anything audiences have seen before, a love letter to Paris and New York City in the 1970s, but most of all, to the Towers of the World Trade Center.

Passes?  Right up here…er, down here. Continue reading →

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Baltimore Screening Pass-palooza: The Martian!

Posted on September 22, 2015 by Denise

the martianY’know, Matt Damon stranded on a planet kinda echoes last year’s Interstellar (SPOILER ALERT for the 3 people who haven’t seen that movie yet.)  So while I’m still enjoying the karmic payback his character got in that film, I’m gonna have to seriously reboot for The Martian.  Because here, we want Damon’s Mark Watney to come home.  Luckily, the trailer for the film helps get me into that head space. Plus, they’ve already screened the film in space. “IN YOUR FACE NEIL ARMSTRONG!”


So? Ready to take a trip? Right this way… Continue reading →

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“The Big Short” busts the housing boom

Posted on September 22, 2015 by Denise
(Image: Paramount Pictuers)

(Image: Paramount Pictuers)

“That’s not stupidity.  That’s fraud.”

And that’s the housing bubble of the Aughts. Based on the nonfiction book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, this film looks at the housing boom, and the handful of folks who knew things weren’t gonna stay high cotton for long.  C’mon now.  I knew this years before the crash, and I can’t add without a calculator. So I’m pumped to see this film. Synopsis!

When four outsiders saw what the big banks, media and government refused to, the global collapse of the economy, they had an idea: The Big Short. Their bold investment leads them into the dark underbelly of modern banking where they must question everyone and everything. Based on the true story and best-selling book by Michael Lewis (The Blind Side, Moneyball), and directed by Adam Mckay (Anchorman, Step Brothers) The Big Short stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt.

Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment has been cranking out some pretty sweet stuff — including Moneyball, based on another of Lewis’ books.  This trailer looks like more of the same awards-fodder quality.  And the use of Led Zeppelin’s When The Levee Breaks is perfection. The Big Short hits theaters December 23, 2015.

 

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Baltimore Screening Pass-palooza: Sicario!

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Denise

sicarioAlright y’all.  Moveeeeez!  Here’s the synopis for Sicario, a film that’s already getting major awards buzz:

In Mexico, SICARIO means hitman.

In the lawless border area stretching between the U.S. and Mexico, an idealistic FBI agent [Emily Blunt] is enlisted by an elite government task force official [Josh Brolin] to aid in the escalating war against drugs.

Led by an enigmatic consultant with a questionable past [Benicio Del Toro], the team sets out on a clandestine journey forcing Kate to question everything that she believes in order to survive.

A Lionsgate presentation, a Black Label Media presentation, a Thunder Road production, a Denis Villeneuve film.

Want passes?  Yeah you do… Continue reading →

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Elsewhere Review: Everest hits the heights

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Denise
Yeah, I should whip something up just for this blog.  But I so tired.  Read on…

“Everest” succeeds in hitting the heights

everest onesheet

Everest manages to tell a true story without stooping to creative license add-ons.  The characters may lack depth, but the mountain’s majesty — and the story’s horrifying heartbreak — more than make up for it. Grade: B+

First things first; Everest is not the feel-good movie of the 2015 awards season.  The film — based on the nonfiction book Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer — is relentless, frightening and unnerving.  Director Baltasar Kormákur gives no quarter, and there’s no rest from the horrors unfolding once the trek up Mount Everest goes wrong.

Another plus; the screenplay doesn’t stray far from the true story.  William Nicholson’s work on Gladiator, Les Misérables and Unbroken and Simon Beaufort’s on 127 Hours and Slumdog Millionaire are evident here.  Though the plot jumps from one group to another, it’s easy to follow and the tension doesn’t let up for a second.
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“Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials” is videogame-tastic

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Denise

maze runner scorch trials

Nutshell: dig 28 Days Later, Dune and The Hunger Games?  Why not have a movie that puts those three films in a Waring and hits pulse?  Pour into a popcorn bucket, brush off the lack of character/story development, and enjoy. Grade: B

YA trilogies FTW!  Or at least that’s what Hollywood has been saying lately. I don’t disagree.  The latest “kids running for their lives” film is Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.  Part two of the Maze Runner series, it takes up almost exactly where the first film left off; as Thomas as his friends are being rescued from the Glades.  Things seem cool at first, with their saviors giving them three hots and a cot — and also showers, yay! — but with Aidan “Littlefinger” Gillen as their new found BFF/rescuer Janson, can that last for very long?  Hint: NOPE.

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