Saturday, August 17, 2013

New Posters for 'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire'; 'Plush', 'Mother of George', and More



Two new viral posters have been released for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and they've got nothing to do with the growing rebellion led by Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) or the evil plot by President Snow (Donald Sutherland) to stop her. Instead they're Capitol Couture ads for perfume and sunglasses, another glimpse at the celebrity and fashion-obsessed culture for the privileged, while the rest of Panem live in relative squalor. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is directed by Francis Lawrence and opens November 22nd.


Once set as a reteaming of Thirteen duo of director Catherine Hardwicke and Evan Rachel Wood, the erotic thriller Plush is now led by Emily Browning, and features a pair of Twilight hunks in Cam Gigandet and Xavier Samuel. The first poster gives us a glimpse of Browning as a distraught rock star, still reeling from the death of her brother and bandmate from a drug overdose. She finds new creative heights and a sizzling, boundary-pushing relationship with Enzo (Samuel), a new guitarist who may not be all he seems to be. As for Gigandet, I have no idea what he's doing here, but he and Samuel look extremely cheesy reflected in Browning's shades. Hitting theaters on September 13th, we should be getting a trailer for Plush in the next few days.

An expected pleasure from Comic-Con was the Women Who Kick Ass panel, which featured a number of awesome ladies that could probably beat the snot out of me if they so desired. On that panel was Danai Gurira, who most know as Michonne on The Walking Dead. She was a terrific actress long before that, though, and in Mother of George she gives a performance no less fearless. Reuniting with Restless City director Andrew Dosunmu and joined by co-star Isaach de Bankole, she plays half of a Nigerian-American couple in Brooklyn dealing with nosy families and struggles with fertility. The film won Best Cinematography at Sundance, and assuming it gets a halfway decent push, should turn a few heads when it opens September 13th.  If you're interested, check out the stunning trailer here.

Here's one I completely forgot about. Last October we learned that Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan) was producing Minsdcape, a Spanish thriller starring Mark Strong, Brian Cox, and Taissa Farmiga. The film is wrapped and debuting in Spain on October 31st, and now we have the first poster for it. Marking Jorge Dorado's feature directing debut, the film has Strong as a telepathic detective who takes on the case of a 16-year-old girl to determine if she's a psychopath.


Before Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger gear up for The Expendables 3, they'll need to plot a prison break first. Two new posters have debuted for Escape Plan, which has Stallone as a security expert convicted of a crime and thrown in a presumably inescapable prison of his own design. Schwarzenegger is a soulful inmate who gets in on the plan to escape. Audiences didn't really give a crap about their recent solo efforts, but they seem to like these two as a tandem. However, with a cast that includes Jim Caviezel, 50 Cent, and Vinnie Jones, plus the spotty Mikael Hafstrom directing, it's tough to have a lot of confidence.


It's already amazing that Wadjda marks the first feature film ever directed by a Saudi Arabian woman, but critics have absolutely adored it, granting it numerous awards on the festival circuit, including three at Venice. It's a remarkable achievement for director Haifaa al-Mansour, and hopefully it gets some love here when it opens on September 13th. The new one-sheet puts star Waad Muhammad center stage as the title character, an 11-year-old Saudi girl pursuing her dreams of owning a bicycle, even as tradition frowns upon girls riding one, while her mother tries to prevent her husband from taking a second wife.

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