Hobbit stars pour into Wellington SOPHIE SPEER (STUFF.NZ)

Hobbit actors Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman, Zealandia's Lauren Schaer, Elijah Wood and Richard Armitage pay a visit to Wellington's Zealandia.

The stars of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey are pouring into Wellington ahead of tomorrow's world premiere.

Actors Martin Freeman, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis and Richard Armitage flew into the capital on Sunday and spent yesterday with Hugo Weaving at Zealandia.

Zealandia spokeswoman Lauren Shaer said the group were filming an interview for an American show at the wildlife sanctuary.

"They were all really lovely. Hugo was especially interested in our conservation work as he is involved with similar projects himself.

READ MORE: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/8002657/Hobbit-stars-pour-into-Wellington

New Poster For ‘Cloud Atlas’ Unveiled Posted about 21 hours ago by Ben Silverio (SCIENCE FICTION)

‘Cloud Atlas’ is an epic story of humankind in which the actions and consequences of our lives impact one another throughout the past, present and future as one soul is shaped from a murderer into a savior and a single act of kindness ripples out for centuries to inspire a revolution.

Starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, Ben Wishaw, Keith David, Jim Broadbent, and James D’Arcy, ‘Cloud Atlas’ will be released in theaters on October 26th.

READ MORE: http://sciencefiction.com/2012/09/18/new-poster-for-cloud-atlas-unveiled/

Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent: First Look: 22 Pictures from the Wachowskis' 'Cloud Atlas' BY: BRAD BREVET PUBLISHED: WEDNESDAY, JULY 25TH 2012 AT 7:17 PM (ROPE OF SILICON)

Based on the novel by David Mitchell, the film explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution. The cast includes the likes of Tom Hanks, Ben Whishaw, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, James D'Arcy, Halle Berry and Keith David and the pic is set to hit theaters on October 26 following its Toronto premiere.

Today Warner Bros. has released 22 individual images from the film, giving you your first official look at the world we will be playing in and the number of eclectic and diverse images make me that much more excited to see it.

The pics feature a variety of cast members, some are obvious, some not so much. Many of the actors were asked to play multiple roles in the film such as Hugh Grant who says he has "six cameo parts in this strange, ambitious film" including a "cannibal, about 2000 years in the future". David Whishaw will play three different roles, saying he will play "Frobisher in the thirties; a female American in the seventies, in the Luisa Rey section; and a smallish role, where I'm basically an extra, in a modern-day nursing home, in the Timothy Cavendish section." Jim Sturgess will have six roles in the film, including that of Adam Ewing, a character whose part in the story bookends the novel from which it's based.

READ MORE: http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/cloud-atlas-pictures-first-look/

‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ Comic Con Poster Revealed POSTED BY SARAH ANNE LUOMA ON JULY - 8 - 2012 (SHOCK YA)

A new poster for The Hobbit’s forthcoming installment entitled ‘An Unexpected Journey’ has been revealed for San Diego’s Comic Con. The image was released by director Peter Jackson with a message for eager fans. “We made it! Shoot day 266 and the end of principal photography on The Hobbit. Thanks to our fantastic cast and crew for getting us this far, and to all of you for your support! Next stop, the cutting room. Oh, and Comic Con!”

The panel for ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ will take place at the annual event this coming July 14th. The movie will finally open in theaters this coming December 14th with a cast line-up of Martin Freeman, Elijah Wood, Billy Connolly, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Luke Evans, and Hugo Weaving. One year later Journey’s follow up, The Hobbit: There and Back Again’, will debut on December 13, 2013. Get a closer look at the poster that shows Gandalf the Grey as he makes his way through the Hobbits’ Shire and check out the full synopsis below per IMDb.


Read more: http://www.shockya.com/news/2012/07/08/the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey-comic-con-poster-revealed/#ixzz2048qw1Ow

Hugh Grant Reveals One Of Halle Berry's Roles In Cloud Atlas 0 Comments published: 2012-04-24 10:16:19 Author: Katey Rich (CINEMA BLEND)

It's kind of hard to get any specific details about the upcoming adaptation of Cloud Atlas-- and even if you got them, it'd be hard to know what to make of them. David Mitchell's famously sprawling, genre-bending novel has been adapted by the trio of the Wachowski siblings Lana and Andy and Tom Tykwer, along with an all-star cast that includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Ben Whishaw, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess and Hugh Grant. Each of the actors will play at least six different parts in the inter-weaving narratives, which range from the adventures of an American intellectual traveling in the South Pacific in the 19th century to a futuristic society in Hawaii, where the last remaining humans live like early natives after the rest of humanity self-destructs.


READ MORE:  http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Hugh-Grant-Reveals-One-Halle-Berry-Roles-Cloud-Atlas-30591.html

Movie Review - HUGO

Hugo – review

Martin Scorsese leaves his mean streets behind for this exhilarating family tale inspired by the birth of cinema

• 
• • Philip French
  • The Observer, Saturday 3 December 2011
  • Article history

Asa Butterfield as the eponymous 'crafty Dickensian orphan' in Hugo.

The families we most associate with Martin Scorsese are the five criminal ones that make up the mafia in the United States, and both they and Scorsese's films deal in violence involving pain and death. His new film, however, aims to entrance every member of every family, and it centres on the great art form that over the past century became the great family entertainment: the cinema. A dramatic pursuit many see as essentially violent and once described by the art theorist Herbert Read as "a chisel of light cutting into the reality of objects", it is created with a demand for "Action!" and ends with the order "Cut!". Based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a beautiful book, half graphic novel, half prose tale, by Brian Selznick, the movie is a delightful fable. Its various subjects include magic, tradition, respect for the past and affection between generations, all bound up in the history of the cinema and the machinery invented to capture images on strips of film and project them on screens.

1. Hugo
2. Production year: 2011
3. Countries: France, USA
4. Cert (UK): U
5. Runtime: 126 mins
6. Directors: Martin Scorsese
7. Cast: Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Chloe Grace Moretz, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Lee, Emily Mortimer, Frances de la Tour, Helen McCrory, Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Richard Griffiths, Sacha Baron Cohen, Sir Ben Kingsley
8. More on this film

Hugo is set in Paris in 1931 and begins with a breathtaking shot of the city, as the camera swoops down on to a busy railway station. It flies along a narrow platform between two steam trains, crosses a busy concourse and ends up on the 12-year-old Hugo, who is peering at the world from behind the figure "4" of a giant clock. Hugo (Asa Butterfield) has inherited a love of tinkering with machinery from his late father, and has quite recently taken over the job of superintending the station's clocks from his drunken uncle. The boy lives in the hidden tunnels and passageways of the building, where he's repairing a 19th-century automaton. He's a crafty Dickensian orphan, a benign phantom of the opera, a blood brother of Quasimodo, a cinematic voyeur looking out on the world like the photographer in Hitchcock's Rear Window. Fate has brought him there, and it then draws him into the orbit of a querulous old man, Georges (Ben Kingsley), who runs an old-fashioned shop on the station selling toys and doing mechanical repairs, assisted by his 12-year-old god-daughter, Isabelle. Hugo becomes involved with the old man when he's accused of theft and has a cherished book of drawings confiscated. He is then assisted by Isabelle in retrieving the book, and in turn, when he discovers she's forbidden to go to the movies, he takes her on a great "adventure", a visit to the lost world of silent movies at a season of old films. She is overwhelmed.

The literate Isabelle is a great admirer of Dickens, and a succession of clever Dickensian twists ensue as the labyrinthine plot takes the pair on a journey into a mysterious past. They discover the origins of the movies in the late-19th-century careers of the Lumière brothers, who put on the first picture show in Paris in 1895, and Georges Méliès, the professional magician, who became obsessed after attending this historical screening. The Lumières photographed the world as it was and didn't believe the cinema had a future. Méliès turned his theatre into a picture palace, built his own studio and became a prolific producer of fantasy films that merged life and dream, before his business tragically collapsed and he disappeared into obscurity.


In following the example of his early hero, John Cassavetes, in making naturalistic pictures, Scorsese set out on the route pioneered by the Lumière brothers, but from time to time slipped into the parallel path taken by Méliès as, for instance, in New York, New York. Now, with this celebration of magic and the imaginative use of 3D, he is saluting what many will see as an alternative kind of cinema to his own. But Scorsese has always been fascinated by the all-involving experience of moviegoing and has a knowledge of and affection for film history matched by few directors of his generation. Since the 1970s he has used his influence and his money to campaign for the restoration and preservation of films.

Hugo is a moving, funny and exhilarating film, an imaginative history lesson in the form of a detective story. The film is a great defence of the cinema as a dream world, a complementary, countervailing, transformative force to the brutalising reality we see all around us. It rejects the sneers of those intellectuals and moralisers who see in film a debilitating escapism of the sort the social anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker impugned by calling her study of the movie industry Hollywood: The Dream Factory. As a commentary on this, Hugo at one point has a double dream, waking from one into the other, both of them forms of nightmares connected to the cinema.
Appropriately for a medium initially launched in France (where it is still taken more seriously than anywhere else) but developed almost simultaneously in a variety of countries, Hugo is an international movie with a wonderfully gifted team behind it. The photographer (Robert Richardson), editor (Thelma Schoonmaker) and screenwriter (John Logan) are American, the production designer (Dante Ferretti) Italian, the costume designer (Sandy Powell) and the cast British (except for the delightful young American Chloë Grace Moretz as Isabelle), and it was made in this country.

Georges Méliès, the ultimate hero of the film, became a magician while working in London and returned there to buy his first projector. One of the movie's endless felicitous touches occurs during a whirlwind chase, when Hugo is pursued by the vindictive station inspector through the crowded concourse. The camera briefly alights on a startled James Joyce, then a resident of Paris, who had returned in 1909 to Dublin to open the city's first purpose-built cinema, the Volta. Appropriately its premiere kicked off with a short called The First Paris Orphanage. At the time Hugo is set, Joyce was writing Finnegans Wake, a novel in the form of a dream in which he refers to the Marx brothers.

The Guardian

30 Cool Movie PIks for the Season

30 cool movie picks for the season

Photo credit: Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” (Jaap Buitendijk)

It's the time of year when big-name directors tackle kiddie fare - Martin Scorsese ("Hugo"), Cameron Crowe ("We Bought a Zoo"), Steven Spielberg ("The Adventures of Tintin"). If you're in the mood for something less PG, though, you have your choice of erotic dramas ("Shame," "A Dangerous Method") and edgy blockbusters ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," the next "Sherlock Holmes").

Here are 30 flicks on our radar.

Hugo
Martin Scorsese takes a break from gangsters and cops to direct this children's flick about an orphan boy who inherits a mysterious automaton. Let's see what Scorsese can do with 3-D. (Nov. 23)
The Muppets
Jason Segel and Amy Adams star in this big-screen musical revival of the Muppets, in which Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo and company try to save the Muppet Theater from a greedy oil magnate (Chris Cooper). Segel co-wrote the movie. (Nov. 23)
My Week With Marilyn
A lowly production assistant (Eddie Redmayne) has the time of his life when the star of the film he's working on, Marilyn Monroe, grows fond of him. The shining cast (Michelle Williams as Monroe, Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier) is the reason to watch this buoyant - and true - tale. (Nov. 23)
A Dangerous Method
Dialogue is king in this David Cronenberg-directed account of the friendship between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). (Nov. 23)
Rampart
The last time we saw Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster together was in Oren Moverman's affecting "The Messenger." Moverman pairs them up again in "Rampart," about a cop (Harrelson) whose life unravels after he's taped beating a suspect. Playing for one week, then opening wide in January. (Nov. 23)
The Artist
A black-and-white film with almost no dialogue? Seems like a hard sell for modern audiences, yet "The Artist" is a bona fide crowd-pleaser. Jean Dujardin (an Oscar shoo-in) plays a 1920s silent- film actor whose career suffers when talkies take over. (Nov. 25)
Shame
If you've ever wanted a glimpse into the life of a man with a debilitating sex addiction, here's your chance. Michael Fassbender bares all for this intense NC-17 character study. Carey Mulligan co-stars as his younger sister. (Dec. 2)
Coriolanus
Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in this Shakespeare drama about a Roman general (Fiennes) who aspires to political office in Rome and fails. He then joins forces with his enemy (Gerard Butler) to seek vengeance on the city that spurned him. (Dec. 2)
Sleeping Beauty
A cash-strapped college student (Emily Browning) takes an unusual job. One of her duties: getting drugged into slumber and letting male customers ... well, we won't spoil it. (Dec. 2)
The Sitter
A college dropout (Jonah Hill) agrees to babysit his neighbor's bratty kids, then takes them on an R-rated adventure through New York City. Think "Adventures in Babysitting" with profanity and drugs. Directed by David Gordon Green ("Pineapple Express"). (Dec. 9)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
John le Carre's Cold War spy novel finally makes its way to the big screen. MI6 agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) tries to track down a mole within the agency. Colin Firth, Toby Jones and Ciaran Hinds all play suspects. (Dec. 9)
Young Adult
"Juno" director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody reunite in this dark comedy about a young-adult novelist (Charlize Theron) who tries to win back her high school boyfriend (Patrick Wilson) - never mind the fact that he's married and about to become a father. (Dec. 9)
We Need to Talk About Kevin
When a teenager (Ezra Miller) commits a high school massacre, his mother (Tilda Swinton) falls apart from the guilt of having raised a bad seed - was it nature or nurture? Helping her cope is her estranged husband (John C. Reilly). (Dec. 9)
W.E.
Madonna tries her hand at directing. Her subject: the scandalous romance between Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) and King Edward VIII (James D'Arcy), who gave up the British throne in 1938 so that he could marry the American divorcee. (Dec. 9)
New Year's Eve
In the same vein as "Valentine's Day," "New Year's Eve" - also directed by Garry Marshall - weaves in and out of New Yorkers' lives on the last day of the year. The ensemble cast includes Ashton Kutcher, Lea Michele, Halle Berry and Jon Bon Jovi. (Dec. 9)
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law return as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, respectively, and this time they're up against arch- nemesis Professor Moriarty (played by the talented Jared Harris). Guy Ritchie directs again. (Dec. 16)
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Yes, it's another "Mission: Impossible" movie. The twist? It's directed by Brad Bird. If he brings as much emotion to this as he has to his animated movies ("The Iron Giant," "The Incredibles," "Ratatouille"), we're sold. (Dec. 16)
Carnage
Roman Polanski recruited only the best for this entertaining adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play "God of Carnage." Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz star as Brooklyn parents who clash over a playground incident between their sons. (Dec. 16)
Albert Nobbs
Glenn Close plays the titular character, an odd but endearing employee at an upscale inn in 19th-century Ireland. She's dressed as a man her entire life - and her repressed identity is tragic to behold. Comical moments abound as well. (Dec. 21)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
David Fincher directs one of the season's biggest and most intense films, adapted from Stieg Larsson's ubiquitous best-selling novel. Rooney Mara ("The Social Network") plays computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, who teams up with a journalist (Daniel Craig) to investigate an unsolved missing-woman case. (Dec. 21)
The Adventures of Tintin
Tintin comes to life in this motion-capture animated flick from Steven Spielberg. The cowlicked boy reporter adventures around the world to solve the mystery of a sunken ship. (Dec. 21)
We Bought a Zoo
A single father (Matt Damon) buys a house in the middle of a zoo, much to the delight of his two children. "We Bought a Zoo" marks Cameron Crowe's first foray into kid-friendly territory, and also stars Scarlett Johansson and Thomas Haden Church. (Dec. 23)
In the Land of Blood and Honey
Angelina Jolie makes her directorial debut with this tale of star-crossed lovers set during the Bosnian War - he's a Serbian soldier, she's a Bosnian captive. (Dec. 23)
Pina
Wim Wenders' 3-D documentary affords a close-up look at the choreography of the late Pina Bausch. The 3-D camera captures the kineticism of Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal ensemble - and the inventive set designs. (Dec. 23)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
A young boy scours New York City for the lock belonging to a key left by his father, who died on 9/11. Adapted from the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, and starring Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and James Gandolfini. (Dec. 25)
War Horse
In his second movie of the year (see "Tintin"), Steven Spielberg adapts the play (currently at Lincoln Center) about a horse's journey through World War I. The star is a horse, but the story revolves around the people who cross its path. (Dec. 25)
The Darkest Hour
Nothing like a 3-D alien-invasion movie to celebrate Christmas Day. The extraterrestrials in this case are invisible, and they're sucking up Earth's power supplies. Stars Emile Hirsch and Olivia Thirlby. (Dec. 25)
Pariah
Breakout actress Adepero Oduye stars in this coming-of-age drama about an African-American lesbian teenager living in Fort Greene. She's determined to find a girlfriend, even as her sexual identity remains a secret on the homefront. (Dec. 28)
A Separation
A woman tries to convince her husband to leave Iran with her. When he refuses, she files for divorce - unsuccessfully. What follows is a tense thriller. (Dec. 30)
The Iron Lady
Meryl Streep portrays Margaret Thatcher in this biopic of the U.K's only female prime minister. Did someone say "Oscar"? (Dec. 30)

AM New York

The Hobbit To Premiere In New Zealand

 

Female First

28 October 2011

 

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is to premiere in Wellington, New Zealand it has been announced.

The movie marks Peter Jackson's return to Middle Earth as he has adapted The Hobbit for the big screen, the movie will be split into two parts.

One again filmed in and around New Zealand the country has been rewarded for it's support.
Speaking to journalist Jackson said: "No-one I don't think in the international industry could quite believe how the country got behind that moment.

"I think everyone involved is quite honestly keen to let New Zealand have the premiere of the first Hobbit movie."

Martin Freeman will lead the cast as Bilbo Baggins with Luke Evans, Evangaline Lily and Richard Armitage on the cast list.

There will also be some familiar faces on the cast list as Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis and Ian McKellan will all be reprising their role from The Lord of the Rings.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is released 14th December.

Hugh Grant Joining the Impressive Cast of Wachowskis' 'Cloud Atlas'

Hugh Grant Joining the Impressive Cast of Wachowskis' 'Cloud Atlas'

September 13, 2011
Source: Screen Daily
by Ethan Anderton

With a cast that already includes the likes of Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Keith David, David Gyas and Susan Sarandon, you'd think that the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer would be done rounding up talent for their adaptation of Cloud Atlas. However, Screen Daily has word that Hugh Grant is now signing on to join the big screen version of David Mitchell's complex novel of the same name. The project is certainly much more promising than his last big screen endeavor, the painfully generic romantic comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Likely Grant will be taking on multiple roles like the rest of the cast as the story follows six plot threads across time—a 19th century notary on a Pacific expedition, a bisexual musician in the 1930s, a female journalist in a thriller in 1970s California, an aging publisher in London in the present, a clone in a futuristic dystopia, and a Pacific survivor in a post-apocalyptic world. What makes this even crazier is all these worlds fold in on themselves. Grant is certainly a welcome addition to this already impressive cast, and I just can't wait to see what the Wachowskis and Tykwer doing with such complex source material.