Travis Hopson and Tim Gordon are Addicted to Film!

Last night to a jam-packed studio audience (consisting of us and our producer), Tim Gordon and I debuted the first episode of our new show, Addicted to Film! It's something we've been planning for a long time, as a means of continuing what many of you see us do on WETA Around Town, only with a lot longer than 90 seconds to get our points across. And of course, we made fun of one another and went off into conversations about other things, but that's just what we do!

On this show we kicked things off by doing what we do best: talking about ourselves. Then we discussed Arnold Schwarzenegger in Sabotage and what the disappointing box office means for him; we then attempted to talk about Noah without descending into a theological debate; and then we weeped for Michael Pena in Cesar Chavez.

Addicted to Film airs live every Sunday night at 7pm, broadcasting from Listen Vision Studios in Washington, DC. Follow the show on Twitter, and subscribe to my Youtube Channel to get every episode sent your way! Check out the first episode below, and be sure to hit us up with any feedback!

Read More

Box Office: 'Noah' Sails Easily to #1; 'Captain America 2' Earns $75M Overseas

1. Noah- $44M
So much for those who thought Darren Aronofsky's big Hollywood production of Noah would flop after all the negative press. The film starring Russell Crowe as the ark-building animal tamer opened to a sizable $44M, plus another $51M internationally. The $95M debut puts a big dent in the $130M+ budget, and should also quiet the religious purists hoping it would fall short of Son of God, which currently stands at $57M after five weeks of release.
2. Divergent- $26.5M/$95.2M
The 51% slide of Divergent in its second week isn't so bad, and is actually pretty good for the sci-fi genre. The point is that Lionsgate should now feel fully confident in moving ahead with the sequel and wrapping up the entire trilogy.
3. Muppets Most Wanted- $11.3M/$33.2M
Slipping only 33% from last week, Muppets Most Wanted has bounced back well from a mediocre opening weekend.  It's still not likely to come close to matching the haul of the first film, though. 
4. Mr. Peabody & Sherman- $9.5M/$94.9M
5. God's Not Dead- $9M/$22M
The people who were openly bashing and rooting for the failure of Noah ended up at God's Not Dead, which has maintained an incredible hold in its second week. The faith-based drama stars Dean Cain and Kevin Sorbo, and could end up as one of the year's great success stories. The timing couldn't have been better considering all of the religious fervor surrounding movies of late, and it'll be interesting to see just how long this lasts.
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel- $8.8M/$24.4M
Adding an additional 673 theaters didn't slow down Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, which jumped 30% and managed an astounding $9K per site average.
7. Sabotage- $5.3M
Is Sabotage the last gasp of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a top name star? The David Ayer-directed action flick, which boasts a pretty solid cast surrounding the Governator, is one of the lowest grossing debuts in Schwarzenegger's career. Somehow it managed to do worse than The Last Stand, which nobody saw and fewer liked. One would think audiences would turn out to see the follow-up film from Ayer, who last directed End of Watch to great critical and box office success. To me, that means people aren't turning out specifically because of Schwarzenegger, which is sad because this is a different sort of movie for him. Unfortunately, it was marketed as a brainless shoot 'em up and only fans of those flicks turned out.
8. Need for Speed- $4.33M/$37.7M
9. 300: Rise of an Empire- $4.3M/$101.1M
10. Non-Stop- $4M/$85.1M

In other news, Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier opened in a few markets internationally, earning a whopping $75M. That bodes well for its domestic release next week, one that Marvel is expecting to far surpass Captain America: The First Avenger's final tally of $370M. If the trend following The Avengers continues upwards, it should squash those numbers easily.

The Raid 2, only the most anticipated sequel ever for a film few actually saw, opened in only seven locations and racked up a solid $177K. The roll out expands next week and goes semi-wide on April 11th.

The Diego Luna-directed, Michael Pena-starring biopic Cesar Chavez hit 664 theaters and earned $3M, a middling number for a film with middling reviews.

Read More

Cinema Royale #56- Noah; Sabotage

The controversy surrounding Darren Aronofsky's Noah has led some to write off the Biblical epic, but on this week's Cinema Royale "The Cinema Siren" +Leslie Combemale joins in to look at whether the film can be enjoyed by all audiences. Noah stars Russell Crowe, Emma Watson, Jennifer Connolly, and Anthony Hopkins.

Plus, Arnold Schwarzenegger gears up for Sabotage, the cop thriller from the director of End of Watch!

All this plus news on Terminator: Genesis, Chris Evans' future as Captain America, Indiana Jones, and more!

Cinema Royale is part of the Hashtag Studios Broadcast Network. Listen in and subscribe here to get the best in movie reviews, news, celebrity interviews, and more sent your way every single week!

Read More

Review: 'Sabotage' Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger

To put it bluntly, Arnold Schwarzenegger's post-politics comeback has been one Predator-sized flop. What has he really accomplished other than trampling over his former glory as an iconic action hero? Not even joining the equally grizzled stars of The Expendables could help, and the solo films he's starred in have been pretty embarrassing. Bet you already forgot Escape Planand that was barely six months ago. What Arnold needed, and quite badly, was to stop trading on his past (uh oh Terminator fans) and be a different type of bad ass. Fortunately, that's when End of Watch director David Ayer came calling with Sabotage, simply Schwarzenegger's best film in years.

Ayer has made a living off gritty cop thrillers, usually focusing on corruption and brotherhood, and Sabotage is no different. It allows for Schwarzenegger to be the leader of a group that aren't just a bunch of muscle-bound stereotypes, but characters with some pretty serious flaws. He plays John "Breacher" Wharton, the head gorilla in a special DEA unit full of rowdy hair-trigger animals. Mireille Enos, Terrence Howard, Josh Holloway, Joe Manganiello, Max Martini, Sam Worthington, and Kevin Vance make up his rough 'n tumble squad who specialize in vulgarity and gunning down drug cartels. During one particularly bloody raid, Breacher's unit makes away with a cool $10M in cash, quite literally flushing it down the toilet. But when they come back to claim it, the money is nowhere to be found. All they've got to show for the theft is the federal government breathing down their necks and a lengthy suspension.

Well, they do get one more thing: dead. Pretty soon after reforming, members of the team start dropping like flies. Breacher calls it an "occupational hazard" but when guys are having their entire homes plowed under by trains, or getting gutted like a fish and nailed to the ceiling, it's clear somebody is sending a message. Already on edge, the unit begins to turn on one another as they try to sort out who the bad guys are and if there's a traitor in their close-knit family.  Olivia Williams plays a dogged federal agent assigned to the case, and when she's not making off-color jokes with her partner (Harold Perrineau) she's trying to figure out what Breacher's team is hiding.

Ayer piles up red herrings quicker than the bullets and bodies stack up, and for the most part the mystery remains at barrel's length, throughout. You might be surprised to learn the story is based on an Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None, and it walks the line between whodunit and brutal action flick pretty well until the plot starts to unravel towards the end. While the less said about it the better, there's a major twist surrounding a character's deeply personal motivation that casts everything in a new light. It also serves to needlessly burden a film that wasn't built on the sturdiest of legs, and we see in the rushed shoot-out finale an attempt to just wrap things up neatly. Stacks of dismembered and splattered bodies, along with a healthy amount of torture, should fend off anyone with a nervous stomach. Safe to say this is the most violent film Schwarzenegger has ever been a part of, although it's not nearly as torturous as Jingle All the Way.

Mainly it's good to see Schwarzenegger as an authoritative, deeply intelligent and intimidating character; playing his age without making light of it. He gets a lot of help from a great supporting cast, better than a movie like this would normally bother to assemble. Enos is deadly as a squirrelly, drug-addicted member of Breacher's team who may be more trouble than her ass-kicking and smart mouth are worth. The mark of a great director is getting the best out of his actors, and Ayer has invigorated Schwarzenegger in a way we haven't seen in a long time. Hopefully we see him take on more films like Sabotage rather than trying to recreate the past.

Read More

Red Band Trailer for 'Sabotage' Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger

We've seen plenty of trailers for David Ayer's cop thriller, Sabotage, and the emphasis has been on Arnold Schwarzenegger and the intense action. While that's still prevalent in this new red band footage, there's more of an emphasis on the moral dilemma faced by his character as the walls close in around him.

Schwarzenegger plays the head of a DEA task force charged with taking down a ruthless drug cartel. When millions of dollars in cash goes missing after the bust, his team starts disappearing one-by-one, and we see that his family also become a target. This continues to look like the most promising Schwarzenegger film since his return, and he's surrounded by a great cast hat includes Mireille Enos, Terrence Howard, Sam Worthington, Olivia Williams, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, and Harold Perrineau.

Sabotage hits theaters March 28th.


SABOTAGE - Red-Band Trailer Restrited #2 [VO|HD] by Team Lyricis

Read More

Arnold Schwarzenegger Confronts Joe Manganiello in New 'Sabotage' Clip

So far all of the trailers and promos for Sabotage suggest this may be the first Arnold Schwarzenegger film worth getting hyped for in a long time. Directed and co-written by End of Watch's David Ayer, it looks like the sort of no-nonsense cop flick the director has always been successful with (he also wrote Training Day), and maybe he can help Arnie get back on track.

A new clip has been released, coming just a few days after a very promising UK trailer hit the web. Schwarzenegger leads a DEA task force that robbed a drug cartel for millions, only to get picked off one-by-one in the following days. In this clip we see a confrontation between Schwarzenegger and Joe Manganiello over "occupational hazards", like getting murdered and stuff. Never mind that Manganiello would probably hurl the Governator into the next county if this were real, it's still a pretty cool, intense piece of footage. It also gives us a look at the starry supporting cast that includes Sam Worthington, Mireille Enos, and Terrence Howard.

Sabotage locks and loads on March 28th.

Read More

New Bullet-Riddled Trailer and Clip from 'Sabotage' with Arnold Schwarzenegger

The combination of writer/director David Ayer and Arnold Schwarzenegger holds a lot of potential. Ayer is coming off his most successful cop flick yet in End of Watch, one that showed he has quite a few tricks up his sleeve. Schwarzenegger is in desperate need of a hit film that doesn't have the word 'Expendables' in the title, and perhaps the best thing for him to do is take on a no-frills thriller like Sabotage, from a director who specializes in them.

A new UK trailer and red band clip have been released, and if we've got people counting the number of F-Bombs in The Wolf of Wall Street, maybe we can get someone to count the number of spent bullets in Sabotage. Schwarzenegger stars as the head of an elite DEA unit that walks way from a successful drug cartel raid with millions in cash. But just as they think they've gotten away with it, their members start getting picked off one-by-one. Leave the kids at home for this one.

Also starring Mireille Enos, Olivia Williams, Joe Manganiello, Terrence Howard, Sam Worthington, Harold Perrineau, Max Martini, and Josh Holloway, Sabotage opens March 28th.

Read More

New Red Band Trailer for Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'Sabotage'

Nothing's quite been working out for Arnold Schwarzenegger of late. He teams up with Sylvester Stallone in Escape Plan and nobody shows up; he taps into his glory days with The Last Stand and audiences stay away in droves. Then when he agrees to come back for a Terminator reboot everybody asks if he's too old. So what's the former Governator to do? Drop all the baggage and get to a down 'n dirty action flick like Sabotage.

A new red band trailer for the film has been released, and one can see why it's been rated 'R' for "strong bloody violence". Believe it or not this was based on an Agatha Christie novel (And Then There Were None), Schwarzenegger stars alongside a cornrowed Joe Manganiello, Terrence Howard, Mireille Enos, Olivia Williams, Josh Holloway, Max Martini, Sam Worthington, and Harold Perrineau as the leader of an elite DEA unit who steal millions from a drug cartel during a bust. Thinking they've gotten away with the crime, they soon find themselves getting picked off one-by-one.

This one looks pretty straight-forward and exactly the sort of lean action film Schwarzenegger should be doing nowadays. Directed by David Ayer, Sabotage opens March 28th.

Read More

Arnold Schwarzenegger is Out to Destroy in New 'Sabotage' Trailer

After years of making movies about corrupt cops, David Ayer struck gold with End of Watch, which wasn't so much about corruption as it was about loyalty and friendship between partners. It was a great film, and Ayer is touching upon similar themes in his latest, Sabotage, although with a lot more explosions and 100% more Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger is backed by an impressive ensemble from top to bottom: Joe Manganiello, Mireille Enos, Terrence Howard, Olivia Williams, Martin Donovan, Sam Worthington, Harold Perrineau, and Max Martini, in a story about an elite DEA task force that robs a cartel safe house for $10M. Just when they think all is clear, they start getting picked off one-by-one. So the corrupt cop angle is there, as well, but this one is obviously more of a straight-arrow action movie.

Sabotage opens on April 11th.


Sabotage - Arnold Schwarzenegger by Teaser-Trailer.com

Read More

New Posters for '300: Rise of an Empire', 'Sabotage', 'Need for Speed', 'I, Frankenstein', and More

 
We haven't rounded up any posters of late, so let's just take a look at some of the latest one-sheets, shall we?

All week Warner Bros. has been releasing new character posters for 300: Rise of an Empire, which opens March 7th 2014 and stars Sullivan Stapleton, Jack O'Connell, Eva Green, and Lena Headey.

PLOT: Based on Frank Miller’s latest graphic novel Xerxes, and told in the breathtaking visual style of the blockbuster “300,” this new chapter of the epic saga takes the action to a fresh battlefield—on the sea—as Greek general Themistokles attempts to unite all of Greece by leading the charge that will change the course of the war.

“300: Rise of an Empire” pits Themistokles against the massive invading Persian forces led by mortal-turned-god Xerxes, and Artemisia, vengeful commander of the Persian navy. 

Here's the latest poster for David Ayer's ensemble action-thriller, Sabotage, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington, Joe Manganiello, Terrence Howard, and a cast of thousands. Opens April 11th 2014.

PLOT: In SABOTAGE Arnold Schwarzengger leads an elite DEA task force that takes on the world’s deadliest drug cartels. When the team successfully executes a high-stakes raid on a cartel safe house, they think their work is done – until, one-by-one, the ten members mysteriously start to be eliminated.

Aaron Paul straps in for high-speed action in Need for Speed, opening March 14th and co-starring Dominic Cooper, Michael Keaton, and Imogen Poots.

PLOT: The film centers around Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul), a blue-collar mechanic who races muscle cars on the side in an unsanctioned street-racing circuit. Struggling to keep his family-owned garage afloat, he reluctantly partners with the wealthy and arrogant ex-NASCAR driver Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper). But just as a major sale to car broker Julia Bonet (Imogen Poots) looks like it will save Tobey’s shop, a disastrous race allows Dino to frame Tobey for a crime he didn’t commit, and sending Tobey to prison while Dino expands his business out west.

Two years later, Tobey is released and set on revenge — but he knows his only chance to take down his rival Dino is to defeat him in the high-stakes race known as De Leon — the Super Bowl of underground racing. However to get there in time, Tobey will have to run a high-octane, action-packed gauntlet that includes dodging pursuing cops coast-to-coast as well as contending with a dangerous bounty Dino has put out on his car. With the help of his loyal crew and the surprisingly resourceful Julia, Tobey defies odds at every turn and proves that even in the flashy world of exotic supercars, the underdog can still finish first.
 

Aaron Eckhart brings back the classic movie monster in Stuart Beattie's I, Frankenstein, an epic fantasy starring Bill Nighy, Yvonne Strahovski, Miranda Otto, Jai Courtney, and opening January 24th.

PLOT: 200 years after his shocking creation, Dr. Frankenstein’s creature, Adam, still walks the earth. But when he finds himself in the middle of a war over the fate of humanity, Adam discovers he holds the key that could destroy humankind. From the co-writer of the hit supernatural saga, UNDERWORLD, comes the action thriller I, FRANKENSTEIN, written for the screen and directed by Stuart Beattie, screen story by Kevin Grevioux and Stuart Beattie, based on the Darkstorm Studios graphic novel “I, Frankenstein” created by Kevin Grevioux. The story is brought to life by a cast that includes Aaron Eckhart, Bill Nighy, Yvonne Strahovski, Miranda Otto, Jai Courtney, and Aden Young as Victor Frankenstein. 

Everybody's got issues on the new character posters for R-rated romantic comedy That Awkward Moment, which stars Zac Efron, Imogen Poots, Michael B. Jordan, and Miles Teller. The film opens January 31st.


PLOT: Zac Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan star in the R-rated comedy, THAT AWKWARD MOMENT, about three best friends who find themselves where we’ve all been– at that confusing “moment” in every dating relationship when you have to decide “So…where is this going?”

Written and Directed by Tom Gormican, THAT AWKWARD MOMENT co-stars Imogen Poots and Jessica Lucas. Scott Aversano is producing via his Aversano Pictures banner along with Andrew O’Connor, and Justin Nappi and Kevin Turen via the Treehouse Pictures Banner.  The film is executive produced by Manu Gargi, Zac Efron, Jason Barrett, Michael Simkin, John Friedberg, and Peter Schlessel and Lia Buman. The film is scheduled for release January 31, 2014.

Read More

Arnold Schwarzenegger Packs Tons of Guns in First 'Sabotage' Trailer

Let's just say that Arnold Schwarzenegger has had a difficult time getting back into the groove ever since his return to acting. Outside of his appearances in The Expendables, audiences have basically shunned other flicks like The Last Stand and Escape Plan, avoiding them like they were the video tape in The Ring or something. But that's not going to stop him from taking another shot at a hit, and he's going to get a lot of help doing just that in Sabotage.

After a handful of new photos emerged yesterday, the first trailer for Sabotage (formerly Breacher, Ten)  has been released and it packs quite an ensemble. Directed by David Ayer (End of Watch), the film co-stars Josh Holloway, Sam Worthington,Terrence Howard, Max Martini, Mireille Enos, Harold Perrineau, Olivia Williams, and Joe Manganiello in the story of a DEA task force that steals $10M from a recent drug cartel bust. The team think they're in the clear until each starts getting picked off one-by-one by a mysterious assassin.

It doesn't look too much different than everything else Arnie has been doing lately, but maybe having so much talent around him will change his luck. Sabotage kicks down the door April 11th 2014.


Sabotage (2014) - Official Trailer [VO-HD] by Eklecty-City.fr

Read More

Arnold Schwarzenegger is Armed to the Teeth in New 'Sabotage' Photos

First it was titled Breacher, then it was Ten, and now the bland titles for Arnold Schwarzenegger's next film continues with Sabotage. >yawn<  USA Today has dropped a handful of new images from the gun-crazy flick, and looking at them you might be surprised to learn it's loosely (like EXTREMELY loose) based on Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None.

Written and directed by David Ayer (End of Watch), the film centers on an elite DEA task that steals millions of dollars in cash from a drug cartel. Just when they think they've gotten away scott-free, the agents start being picked off one by one. Sam Worthington, Mireille Enos, Harold Perrineau, Terrence Howard, Olivia Williams, Josh Holloway, Max Martini, and Joe Manganiello co-star.

Sabotage hits theaters April 11th 2014. 

Read More