South Korea’s Joon-ho wrote the script, with Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) producing. Joon-ho’s last film was the highly acclaimed Mother, which picked up a bevy of statues for the film and its star Kim Hye-ja. The trade mag says that Snow Piercer is “Set in a world covered in snow and ice, the story follows a train full of travelers who struggle to co-exist”.
Joon-ho is the latest Korean director to try a US production, with his producer Park Chan-wook’s Stoker due out later this year. Produced for Ridley and Tony Scott’s Scott Free productions, it will star Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew William Goode and Australia’s Jackie Weaver.
Evans got to flex his dramatic chops in last year’s Puncture (pictured), and will next be seen The Avengers. He is also working on The Iceman with director Ariel Vromen.
Disney Australia and Marvel have released eight (count ’em) new character banners for next year’s event The Avengers, finally offering unobscured portraits of the main characters glimpsed in the earlier character pieces.
Continuing the epic big-screen adventures started in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk,Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel’s The Avengers is the superhero team up of a lifetime.
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Samuel L. Jackson, and directed by Joss Whedon, Marvel’s The Avengers is based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series The Avengers, first published in 1963.
The Avengers is released in Australia on 25 April 2012 from Disney. It will be released in the US a week later on 4 May 2012.
Walt Disney Studios Australia and New Zealand has revealed two new banners for Marvel’s forthcoming super-powered The Avengers, now confirmed to hit Australian cinemas on 25 April 2012.
Continuing the epic big-screen adventures started in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel’s The Avengers is the superhero team up of a lifetime. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as SHIELD, findshimself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins.
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Samuel L. Jackson, and directed by Joss Whedon, Marvel’s The Avengers is based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series The Avengers, first published in 1963 and a comics institution ever since. Prepare yourself for an exciting event movie, packed with action and spectacular special effects, when Marvel’s The Avengers assemble in April 2012.
The Avengers is released in Australia on 25 April 2012 from Disney. It will be released in the US a week later on 4 May 2012.
The HD Room has interviewedCaptain America: The First Avenger screenwriters Scott McFeely and Chris Markus as part of the Blu-ray release of the film. As they have both signed on to script the sequel as well, they spill a few beans about the sequel.
Scott McFeely is pretty clear on the setting: “I think it’s safe for us to say that it’s primarily set in the modern day. That seems to have been the biggest question people have been wondering about regarding the sequel. Most people know the story of Captain America as the story of this man out of time, and because The Avengers is such a big movie, and because [Avengers director] Joss Whedon has so many moving pieces, we’ve been left with room to explore Cap entering the modern day wondering, “What is all this? What’s happened to the world” and so on“.
Markus adds “We made a movie where the world was in context for Steve Rogers. It was a movie where it was a more pure time, where there were clearly black-and-white, right-and-wrong, good-and-evil scenarios. And Cap is a guy who symbolizes that. Now he’s in the now, and there is nothing black-and-white. So what do you do with that guy? How does he react to a much more uncertain time? So you’re given this huge new palate to work with, but you can keep him the same”.
“And that’s the fun of getting to do a sequel. Captain America, Steve Rogers, he’s pretty firmly established. Now we can take him through some different places”.
Captain America will next be seen in The Avengers, due out in Australia and the UK in late April 2012, and on 4 May 2012 in the US from Disney. Captain America 2 is not expected out until at least 2014, with Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 due in 2013.
Captain America: The First Avenger will be available in the US on Blu-ray/DVD from 25 October in the US, and from 1 December 2011 in Australia from Paramount.
‘Romantic comedy’ has become a bit of a misleading label of late, with the romance being synonymous with foreplay as the focal point of the story. Gone are the days in which a romantic encounter atop the Empire State Building would suffice, or a cross-country trip between two mismatched soul-mates would result in true love, with everything from No Strings Attached to the identical Friends With Benefits attempting to stick a square peg into the mainstream’s all-too-willing hole. Not for nothing either: the success of risqué comedies Knocked Up and Bridesmaids have established the public’s craving for something they can enjoy with their best mates and their favourite squeeze equally.
In What’s Your Number?, based on Karyn Bosnak’s novel 20 Times a Lady, Ally Darling (Anna Faris, Yogi Bear) breaks with the latest in a long line of bad relationships and discovers, in the pages of a women’s glossy magazine, that she has slept with more men than double the national average. Concerned she will exceed twenty lovers without ever finding “the one”, she enlists the help of the promiscuous Colin (Chris Evans, Captain America: The First Avenger), who lives in the apartment across the hall. In exchange for using her apartment to hide out from his endless string of morning after girls, he aids her in tracking down past lovers in the hope that one of them will be what she has been looking for.
Every romantic comedy has a conceit that needs to be overcome. Without these arbitrary rules, there would be no conflict and the two people on the poster would probably get together in the first reel. What’s Your Number? has the particularly obnoxious setup of using the number of sexual partners a woman is “supposed” to have before finding the true man. The aim appears to be to present Ally Darling as a modern woman, fully in control of her destiny, but just blind to the fact that she has always been best when beating her own drum. That’s not the euphemism you think it is. Instead, before Ally comes to her final and inevitable realisation, it is almost as though the film is punishing its lead for having a less than “virtuous” history. Is that really the message behind this film? Too much sex might stop you from bagging a man? Indeed, several gags about worn-out vaginas seem to subtly suggest so.
Anna Faris continues her trend of spotty film role selections, despite the fact that we know she is capable of so much more from Brokeback Mountain, Lost in Translation and her appearances on TV’s Entourage. Here she does nothing to redeem the endless parade of Scary Movie films or rom-coms that someone in her talent agency needs to be shot out of a canon for. Meanwhile, genuine megastar Chris Evans, fresh from Captain America and soon to return to the role in The Avengers, is too good for this slender material. Is he still paying penance to Fox for the Fantastic Four films? That said, his previous experience doesn’t go entirely to waste. Shots in which he wears little more than a hand-towel are sure to please all the right demographics.
It’s not a complete disaster, with a handful of genuinely funny lines throughout. One of the best Twitter jokes to grace the screen comes in Ally’s enquiry to Colin as to the location of her coffee pot. “I broke it. If you were on Twitter you would know that already,” comes the knowing reply. Of course, this is all ruined by Ed Begley Jr’s role as a Twitter obsessed father, who perpetuates the bad rep that Tweeters get. It’s the dick jokes that are the real zingers, including a bit from Anthony Mackie as a closeted ex with political aspirations, but as with many recent rom-coms, it falls short of genuine edge with its reliance on coy winks over outrageous zingers.
[stextbox id=”custom”]What’s Your Number? is a question that should be answered in single digits, although if nudge-nudge-wink-wink references and naked Avengers are a thing, this is your movie.[/stextbox]
With all of the set photos floating about, not to mention the snaps that EW released last week, Disney have finally decided to release a chunk of official hi-res photos from Marvel’s The Avengers.
These photos are now all over the Interwebs, but these come to us via Coming Soon and Collider.
Continuing the epic big-screen adventures started in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and CaptainAmerica: The First Avenger, Marvel’s The Avengers is the superhero team up of a lifetime. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as SHIELD, finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins.
There are three on-set photos, followed by six character profile shots of the leads: Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, and Chris Evans’ Captain America, Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner (aka The Incredible Hulk), Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.
Continuing the epic big-screen adventures started in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk,Iron Man 2, Thor and CaptainAmerica: The First Avenger, Marvel’s The Avengers is the superhero team up of a lifetime. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as SHIELD, finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins.
He may be fighting the forces of evil as Captain America around the world’s cinemas right now, but Chris Evans will portray a lawyer out of his depth in the classic-style “David and Goliath” courtroom drama, Puncture.
Based on a true story, Evans will play Mike Weiss, a tattooed and functioning drug addict who takes on the case of Vicky (Vinessa Shaw, The Hills Have Eyes), a local ER nurse who is accidentally pricked with a contaminated needle.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY-U5p0n09Y
ComingSoon has also secured this exclusive poster:
Puncture does not currently have an Australian release date.
A group of specially selected international journalists were lucky enough to attend a set visit for Marvel Entertainment’s Captain America: The First Avenger in London last year. As part of the day, and fresh from filming, they were treated to a group interview with lead actor Chris Evans in full Captain America costume. Chris was more than willing to answer any questions thrown at him.
Paramount has sent us over some of the highlights from that interview*:
Q: Did putting the Captain America suit affect your performance in any way, it being such an iconic costume?
A: “Sure. I think wardrobe in general is a pretty big deal for any character and that’s not to knock the magnitude of the suit down. Whenever you put on the clothes, it helps to bring any character to life. Of all the characters I’ve played, superhero or not, I was most excited about putting this suit on. There was a lot of build up for me to do this, a lot of sleepless nights, and then finally putting it on felt fantastic – I never want to take it off. I have real trouble with the fly though!”
Q: What was the cause of those sleepless nights?
A: “I’ll be candid, there was a couple of factors. One, I’d already done the superhero thing and I wasn’t sure how people were going to respond and I was in a really good place in my life in terms of navigating this profession. And there’s no guarantees, but this could be a potential game changer and theoretically based on the potentially planned movies, I could be doing this into my forties and that’s just a crazy thing to wrap your head around. That’s a very stressful thing to pull the trigger on, it’s a big chapter in your life to say ‘yes’.”
Q: Has there been anything that informed the way you created the character of Steve Rogers and Captain America?
A: “Well I started by reading as many comic books as I could find. I think the most helpful thing in the comic book world was finding out who he was before, especially as this is an origin tale. I think if at the end of the movie you can still see skinny Steve in Captain America, then that’s what the audiences will like and that’s what I like. On a personal level I have a friend who is a comic book nut and he is the best human being I know, he does the right thing and his morals are intact and I told him I was basing the Captain America character on him – I wish I could do his reaction!”
Q: As an actor, how do you feel about being modified by CGI?
A: “It’s certainly a different animal, sure, but you can have a lot of fun with it. I think most actors probably started out running around in their backyards playing make believe, so you just have to let yourself go but it’s kind of fun. I feel 8 years old again and I’m running around in a Captain America suit, you’re a kid all over again.“
Q: How’s it been using the shield?
A: “It’s good, it’s tricky, they have a bunch of different shields. Some of them are the real heavy legit shields that look good on screen, some are the rubber ones for stunts. But it’s cool and it’s great seeing the stuntman dressed up and thinking ‘is that what I look like? Cool!’. No, the shield is the icing on the cake.
Q: Could you tell us about the scene you’re shooting today?
A: “Sure. Today is towards the end of the film, it’s like my final big battle with Red Skull on his giant plane. I can’t say too much about why he’s on the plane but that’s where he is. So, it’s a lot of stunt work and bumps and bruises. And the set is on hydraulics so we’ll be having a lot of fun with that. Long days!”
Q: Could you talk about Steve’s relationship with his friend Bucky?
A: “It’s great, it’s a little different to the original Captain America comics where Bucky is more of a young sidekick but the relationship is still really well developed and you really care about these guys. You know they’re friends before Steve gets the injection. But I don’t want to give too much away”
Q: How grounded in reality is the action?
“That’s a good question and one that I had. I mean, what are the extent of his abilities? Can he jump over mountains? You want the guy to be superior but you don’t want him punching through brick walls. Basically, they equated it to the fact he would crush the Olympics and win every event, he could lift more, run faster, jump higher but he’s not perfect, he’s not untouchable. Which, humanises it I think, when he punches someone he’s not going to fly back on a cable or anything but he probably won’t get back up!”
*This is a syndicated interview, and not original content from The Reel Bits
Captain America: The First Avenger is released in Australia on 28 July 2011 from Paramount.
The Reel Bits is the cinema arm of DVD Bits. Richard can be found on Twitter @DVDBits. The Reel Bits is also @The_ReelBits
The perfect penultimate piece to the Marvel cinematic universe, and a rousing adventure story. A timely reminder of why we love comic book heroes, and one of the best superhero films of the year.
With 2008’s Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, Marvel Comics began a cinematic journey unlike any other. Where other studios were scrambling to find the “next big thing” from decades-old superheroes, Marvel Studios self-produced their own characters as part of cinematic universe establishing all the major players in their tent-pole 2012 release The Avengers. Following the success of last year’s Iron Man 2, and this year’s Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger is the last piece in not only the cinematic puzzle Marvel has been forming, but the most crucial element in the success of next year’s unprecedented box office drawcard.
In the present day, scientists discover a large craft in the Arctic and a mysterious red, white and blue object buried deep inside it. Flash back to 1942, and scientist Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving, Transformers: Dark of the Moon) leads the Nazi science division HYDRA in an assault to recover a mysterious and powerful object that he believes possesses the power of the gods. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, the frail Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World) is rejected from military service for the fifth time, but the scrappy and honest citizen is spotted by expatriate German scientist Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci, Burlesque) as a potential candidate for the US super soldier program. Undergoing a radical experiment, Rogers is transformed into the super-human Captain America, and becomes a powerful weapon in the US arsenal under Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones, In the Electric Mist) and SSR officer Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell, The Duchess) in the fight against HYDRA and the Red Skull.
The international appeal of a character named Captain America was always going to be a dicey prospect, as the man is quite literally a human flag. In the world of Marvel Comics, he is their Superman: the symbol of all things truth and justicey, quite literally born of the Second World War in a 1941 comic that depicted him punching out Adolf Hitler, an act parodied in Captain America: The First Avenger. The film treads a thin line between being an overtly jingoistic and mass-appeal action film, and in many ways the film has to have elements of the former in order to stay true to the character. Like this year’s X-Men: First Class, much of the pull of this outing is in the retro chic of the character. Like X-Men, this film functions principally as a period piece, recreating both the battlefields of the 1940s and the sentiment on the home front. Some of the most appealing scenes come in the USO performances that the Cap is drafted to perform initially, reminding us that a very different relationship existed between the American people and their government prior to the Vietnam War.
When Rogers takes to the field in full uniform, the film takes on a different shape entirely, becoming the boys-own Dubya-Dubya-Two adventure that we secretly hoped it would be. Clichéd to be sure, but it is a spectacular one, with the historically uneven director Joe Johnston (who was last seen on The Wolfman) handling both the action sequences and the dramatic elements with equal confidence. Using the contrivance of the high-tech weaponry powered by the otherworldly energy of Odin’s realm (in a nice nod to Thor), audiences get the best of both worlds in period thrills and modern-day cataclysmic explosions in one neat package. Evans, no stranger to super-powered beings after two stints as Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four films, brings equal parts earnestness and bravado to the iconic character. Weaving delights in chewing his way through the scenery and almost stealing them away from the hero in a pitch-perfect performance, while Tommy Lee Jones brings the considerable weight of his established persona to an integral role. Haley Atwell will undoubtedly break some hearts during the film, with the (largely) television actress set to go on to big things after this star-making and fiery performance.
It is only in the final reels of the film that Captain American: The First Avenger falters for the first time, struggling to find the right way to reach its predetermined conclusion. This is, after all, the last film by which audiences will measure their expectations of The Avengers team-up, and it needs to tie up a certain number of threads in preparation for that monolith. Filled with knowing references to the films that have come before (including Dominic Cooper as a young Howard Stark, father of future Iron Man Tony Stark) and sly winks at the audience hinting at what is to come, and you really need to stick around for the end credits this time. Captain America:The First Avenger provides viewers with a timely reminder of why these comics were so integral to the American psyche for so many years, and why (despite repeated attempts on page and screen) they will never die.
[stextbox id=”grey”]USA | 125 minutes | Director: Joe Johnston | Starring: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Haley Atwell
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Captain America: The First Avenger is released in Australia on 28 July 2011 from Paramount.
Variety reports that Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers star Chris Evans is in talks with The Host director Bong Joon-ho for his US debut Snowpiercer.
of the film. As they have both signed on to script the sequel as well, they spill a few beans about the sequel.
