It has been a long and tiresome hunting season for the Predator; two films and two rotten-to-the core crossovers later, and the titular alien menace is still being called up by Hollywood to don the ol’ metal faceplate and perm the dreadlocks. The good news for our alien trophy-seekers is that Nimrod Antal’s Predators is as close as they have come to a worthwhile fight since the original. Not as perfectly paced or creatively charged as John McTiernan’s 1987 action classic, Predators is still up for giving die-hard audience members a chase worth getting in line for.

Producer Robert Rodriguez has long talked up his concept for a third Predator film, with the humans being beamed directly to an alien game preserve where they could be hunted at leisure by faster, shinier, more menacing variations of the same sinister species that provoked Schwarzenneger all those years ago. As it turns out, this idea works well for rebooting the franchise and wiping away the sting of Predator 2 and the dual tragedy of Alien Vs. Predator and AVP: Requiem (cue snickering). The script even remembers those events from Predator 87, but mercifully it seems amnesiac on the rest of the lot.

Falling one by one out of the sky, a varied and mysterious team of death-mongers—Yakuza, death-row inmates, mercs, and a wayward scientist—find themselves in a place that looks similar to a jungle on Earth. Adjusting to their surroundings and each other, it isn’t long before the revelation of multiple moons and vicious, other-worldly fauna cause them to question exactly where in the universe they are.

When they start getting gruesomely picked off by shadowy creatures in the dark of the jungle, the movie ramps up and delivers the thrills and kills the faithful have been waiting for. Those looking forward to intergalactic bloodshed won’t be disappointed; spinal cords are ripped, green blood runs as freely as red, and there’s even time for some predator on predator violence. When it comes to full-bore mayhem, the contained hunt of Predators easily bests the near apocalyptic onslaught of other blockbusters.

The cast pulled together here does a commendable job of portraying individual grit and together as a team, begrudging endurance as a fighting unit. Danny Trejo, Alice Braga, and Topher Grace sound like an unlikely group, and that in many ways is the point. With Brody’s loner mercenary at the forefront, this eclectic assembly isn’t by accident.

The predators have rigged the jungle, rallied their alien bloodhounds, and even remembered to internally snag their prey by hand-picking not just for battle aptitude but for disparity that might detonate them from within. When Laurence Fishburne’s crazed survivor, too long hiding out in the jungle shows up, Antal and company explore another dimension to the picture that focuses on the predators themselves and the curious tribalism that defines their species.

As an action director I really dig the style of Nimrod Antal, but I’d much prefer to see him tackling films in his own country again, since his debut, Kontroll, is far more powerful and hard-hitting than anything he’s done over here. Antal is the very definition of a journeyman director, taking big gigs and doing a solid but often unremarkable job of them. He gets the pacing, the special effects, and the character interaction down perfectly, but he’s also not bringing anything extra or inspiring to the table. This is less his fault and more the work of the scripters who came before him and decided to write Predators so closely to the original film that almost any legitimate suspense or ingenuity has been wiped away.

The monsters are well designed, and the alien critters who run down the survivors for their Predator masters are believable and threatening. Breaking the predators into two camps, one an older, more worn down caste (the dude who fought Arnold was one of these) and the other a virile and more aggressive contingent, is pure fan boy pandering all the way. Here’s the thing, though. It works.

Adrien Brody, who seems miscast at first, gives his mercenary a welcome sense of cold humanity. Physically, he’s not as imposing as the big Austrian who tussled with these guys the first go-round, but he’s toned up not just his body but also his adrift nice-guy persona to give a turn as a man who doesn’t need to fight the predators with brawn if he can utilize his wits and the predators own cultural hang-ups against them. It’s never going to come down to a one on one fight this time, so Brody stacks the deck in another way, and it leads to the goofy fun third act that betrays the slow build of the earlier sections at the same time it’s giving us just what we want from a movie about alien game hunters tracking hapless human prey.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Illumination’s Despicable Me is a wholly enjoyable foray into the same family friendly animation sandbox that Pixar usually plays in. It’s a testament to both Carell’s voice-acting and the gifted work of the art team that Despicable casts off the moniker of rip-off and begins to ascend to the status of equal. It never quite gets there, trading in its frantic, comic set-pieces for some unsuccessful sentiment a bit too soon, but this will do nicely as a fine debut for the fledgling animation studio. 

Carell is voicing the evil super-villain Gru, who yearns more for the status of world’s greatest baddie than he does for any real gleeful destruction.  Toiling for years in relative obscurity (in the basement of his mom’s house no less), always one step away from taking the crown, he’s finally got a plan, hatched with the help of his senile and hilarious inventor, Dr. Nefario and an army of yellow glove-people known only as ‘minions’. Using a shrink ray, Gru plans to steal the moon itself, ambitious even for one so satirically carved from the Bond-esque mold of megalomania. Unfortunately for Gru, the dorky but scheming Vector—his primary competition–steals the weapon and with it all of the ‘old guy’s’ thunder.

Up until this point, the film is soaring along as a kind of milder version of the old Mad Magazine comic strip, Spy Vs. Spy, replacing the more violent bits with a wonderfully playful wit. Julie Andrews voices Gru’s mother, and some of her lines, although hurtful in the context of the story (yes, it has a story!), are both acerbic and hilarious. The artists make Gru a kind of stilt-legged penguin, like the deranged parody of a Batman villain, and the soft-edged, colorful animation technique brings him to a fluid life that works for the bursting personality Carell has prepared for him. Jason Segal skirts the edge of annoyance as Vector, but he’s throwing himself into this so completely, that by the close, he had really grown on me. Extra points for Russell Brand’s Q-like inventor, who’s hitting the comedy button better and more often than Brand’s live-action persona did in the more adult Get Him To The Greek.

Not only borrowing the vibrant and crisp visual palette of a Pixar film, Despicable Me also attempts to duplicate the story depth and emotional heart that many associate with that other studio. For the most part, they succeed, giving Gru more complexity than we could expect or even conceive of, given the basic premise. What doesn’t work so well are the three young orphan girls that enter the story at mid-point. For narrative purposes, this happens because Gru needs some unsuspecting innocents to infiltrate Vector’s home and steal back the shrink ray. Their manifest cuteness and the resulting impact it has on Gru’s soul happens because the movie needs to get away with having a super-villain as the central character in a family film.

The catalyst for Gru’s eventual and obvious conversion, including an in-road to deal with his monster mommy issues, the three young girls are carbon copies of precocious children that would pop up in a lesser animated picture. They don’t capsize the movie, and they give Carrell’s zaniness an opportunity to reflect a gentler, more somber side, but their presence forces Despicable Me down a less despicable path, and as it turns out, less despicable means more boring.

 Illumination nearly hits it out of the park on their first try, and they might have managed a great, nimble comedy surrounding sinister deeds and whiz-bang technology. Instead they try to force a bright concept into a dimmer screenplay than it deserves. The result is akin to almost stealing the moon; you didn’t get away with it, but it is the moon after all, and it’s a grand thing to even attempt.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

As a film fan, I’m always refreshed and inspired when I get to see great actors commiting themselves to a worthy project, and watching their partnership with directors who understand instinctively what they want to achieve. Granted, it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, but I’ve got good news to report this time. The new dark comedy Cyrus is such a movie. Taking John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei and giving them a middle-aged movie romance that’s worth ten or twelve dopey Hollywood rom-coms, the Duplass brothers throw in an unexpected surprise; a strong, intelligent performance by Jonah Hill as Tomei’s creepy, emotionally stunted 21 yr old son who’s dead set against ever calling Reilly ‘dad’.

There are an untold number of independent films chronicling the sometimes rocky road that comes with the territory of unconventional family pairings. There’s nothing terribly unconventional about seeing Reilly’s John or Tomei’s Molly come together as two people seeking out love later in life, nor in forming a family unit with Tomei’s grown son, Cyrus. What’s strange here is the less than wholesome emphasis and focus that Cyrus seems to put on his relationship with his mother. It isn’t an incestuous one, but it is a one that encompasses an unwelcome and unsavory physical and emotional intimacy that is inappropriate for a guy of Cyrus’ age. His mother is his world, and his confidant, and his best friend. He has scarcely even considered that human interaction exists beyond his connection with her.

With such a sturdy and long psychological umbilical tethering the two of them, Cyrus and Molly are both suffering, although neither is aware of it. When Molly meets the hapless and goofy John, a lonely divorcee, he threatens to sever this umbilical and it sends Cyrus into an emotional tailspin. It isn’t long before he’s challenging Reilly to an Oedpial confrontation with Molly as the prize.

This could go wrong in all sorts of ways, and yet Cyrus isn’t just a funny movie, it’s also a suprisingly warm-hearted and engrossing drama that never seems as sour as we expect it to be. Part of this is on the part of the Duplasses themselves, who have decided beforehand exactly what kind of movie and tone they are going for and stick the landing by casting all the right actors and structuring the movie so that each character has a segment where they are allowed to blossom and shine. This is essentially a three character drama, and each one is saved from being typecast as a generic placeholder, i.e. hero, villain, damsel in distress. All three of them are flawed, all three have been broken in some way, and all three have some legitimate claims to the things they want. The challenge that lies at the heart of Cyrus is whether or not they came come together and make a better future without sacrificing everything to do so.

Give it up for John C. Reilly, because his John is one of the best characters he’s ever done; it’s a perfect balance of the sensible everyman Reilly played early in his career and the kind of eccentric nutballs he portrays in films that usually costar Will Ferrell. John has his moments of insanity including a terrifically funny drunken karaoke scene where he serenades Molly with ‘Don’t you want me Baby!’ or the scene where he quietly and clearly states to Cyrus that he will destroy him if he continues to meddle in his relationship. But in the midst of those mishaps, Reilly makes John a likable and sympathetic guy. He’s had a hard time of dealing with his divorce from Jamie (Catherine Keener), who is still his friend, and being thrust back into the dating scene because she’s getting married and feels sorry for him is also difficult. When he meets Molly and she gives him honest and warm affection, he’s not one to balk at it, and he starts trying again. When he meets Cyrus, he does what he can to give both he and Molly what they need, but he doesn’t anticipate Cyrus’ contempt and desire to dispatch him. When he finds himself being rejected again, by Molly’s son no less, his defense mechanisms kick.

Marisa Tomei is possibly the only actress I can think of that could pull off the role of Molly, because we have to believe that this woman is both an intelligent and put together gal and still capable of holding her twentysomething son in an accidental thrall of which she isn’t aware. Tomei can do this because of her latent warmth and nurturing presence. She’s a great foil for Reilly,and the two have a really cute chemistry together that makes the early chapters worth cheering for. When Cyrus shows up, she makes us believe that Molly is an enabler for Cyurs, but a well meaning one that has been doing so much to protect her son that somewhere she forgot to take inventory of whether or not the job was done.  She’s never less than endearing and she’s the solid, sympathetic center of the film; it’s not surprising to see why John and Cyrus would be competing for her attentions, regardless of what form they take,

The surprise for me was Jonah Hill. He’s struck me in the past as a surprisngly one note character, playing a rendition of that drunken fratboy theme that guys like John Belushi specialized in years ago. Here, he’s got to do a lot more than that, and he has a tricky character. The suspense of the film is based on not knowing exactly what the unpredictable Cyrus is going to do, but at the same time, this is a comedy drama not a horror movie, and Cyrus can’t be such a sinister wildcard that he scuttles all of the other subtle work going on. To Hill’s credit he manages to avoid making the kid a villain, or a one-note mama’s boy.

There’s a certain sense of sadness to Cyrus, and we see that he honestly and genuinely loves his mother. He has no specific beef against John either, other than the obvious one; he threatens to take his mother away from him. Watching Hill explore the ways in which Cyrus is both scary intelligent and emotionally stupid is like watching an actor really take inventory of his craft for the first time. I hope to see Jonah in more intelligent fare like this and less scataological explorations of Judd Apataow’s headspace.

For everyone who’s been a bit burned out with the lack of substance in this season’s big entries, here comes Cyrus. It isn’t a deep or dramatically sweeping film, but it tells us an odd, believable story in a delicate and wise tone, with actors who make it all come alive. That’s as close as we’ve come to a knockout in several weeks.

M Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender is a failure that sometimes offers glimpses of what it could have been. For fans of the popular cartoon series upon which this is based, it is sure to be a frustrating experience. There are the buried hints of potential in the picture’s presentation of an Eastern-influenced fantasy landscape, but what ends up on screen is little more than a flurry of images, half-baked genre tropes, and stilted, embarrassing dialogue.

 I enjoyed the overall aesthetic of Airbender, but was consistently distracted by the amateurish directing and film tech credits. Shyamalan, who once compared himself to Hitchcock and Spielberg, has recently proven that his very specific bag of cinematic tricks has finally come up empty; he botches what could have been a compelling new franchise.

An opening scroll informs us that the elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth have manifested themselves as nations of people, survivors of a world torn apart by war. Whether this is a post-apocalyptic landscape or a separate universe altogether is never made entirely clear. All that is known is that the Fire Nation, fearing a prophecy that predicted a God figure known as the Avatar would rise from the line of airbenders, sent their weapons against the Air Nation. At the start of this film, the Airbenders have been destroyed and scattered to the wind, and the Water and Earth Nations are under the tyranny of the militaristic Firebenders, who command monolithic sailing vessels that look like Nemo’s Nautilus on steroids. The world is in despair and ruin, and then the last, lost member of the Airbenders resurfaces in the frozen tundra of the Water Nation.

If the film’s set-up sounds silly, that’s because ostensibly it is. However, in the hands of a gifted set of animators and writers, Avatar: The Last Airbender told a good and nuanced story on the small screen.  It had an eye for small details and made it’s protagonist, Aang, a likable but conflicted hero.

 In Shyamalan’s hands the nuance disappears in favor of dialogue that feels completely improvised and a broad, messy adventure that uses the effects well enough but can’t muster much passion about the sights it wants to show us. Also, for a film that wants to be a franchise, Airbender is terribly choppy and truncated. It’s as if the editors kept taking away pieces until they had ensured they had enough left over for a sequel.

 Using a narrator to fill in the bits we need explained, Shyamalan tries to give us the cliff notes version of the story, but with his own laconic pace added in. Events happen in an order that occasionally defies logic, and the narrative progression is that of a tale told by a child. You know the kind, the ones that use ‘and then’ as a transition. In a particularly bewildering example, the love affair between two central characters is summed up in a few lines, and we the audience, are left to infer the rest. There is a late-in-the game sacrifice that has zero impact because the film has failed to properly introduce that character or their impact on the rest of the story.

It’s hard to decipher Shyamalan’s stylistic devices enough to comment accurately on the acting. Noah Ringer is Aang, the titular airbender who shows up frozen in the ice with his giant flying pet buffalo, Appa. Aang is essentially just a child, and Ringer has an expressive face that works well for suggesting world weariness and innocent trepidation. Unfortunately Shyamalan requires him to speak some of the most unutterable garbage this side of a George Lucas movie, and the young Ringer often looks like a deer caught in the headlights in these scenes. During the action bits he can convince as a diminutive but fearsome warrior, but in close-ups he comes off like a lost child shouting at the screen.

Twilight’s Jackson Rathbone is completely wasted as Sokka, and the same goes for Nicola Peltz as his sister Katara. They stand around at the edges of almost every scene, but outside of finding Aang and deciding too try and protect him, their roles are mostly filler. The romance between Rathbone and a Waterbender is not convincing in the least. Cliff Curtis, Shaun Toub, and the Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi are all miscast as the villainous members of the Fire Nation. Dev Patel is Prince Zuko, and he begins to suggest a layered character in the banished aristocrat but ultimately it’s just too much for him to pull off. Most of this is because the film is afraid to let him progress beyond the confines of the first installment, so that there’s something left over for next time.

Between you and me, I don’t think there will be a next time. Visually, Airbender can be kind of fun and goofy, with the frames arranged like a comic book or video game, and there are a few set pieces like the climactic battle of the elements that includes a tidal wave that would make Roland Emmerich envious. There are a few interesting creatures, some impressive steampunk machines, and some genuinely awesome fantasy backdrops.

However, none of these pieces make a cohesive whole, and what’s worse is that Shyamalan doesn’t even seem to be interested in making the picture complete. Widely know for building twists into his films, M Night delivers one of his most insidious yet by merely refusing to end the movie. Tricking all of us into thinking we were watching a self-contained story, he yanks out the rung and shows us that Airbender is not the last at all, but only the tip of a cinematic iceberg that will likely never be revealed once the movie going audience lays eyes on this one.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

‘Twilight: Eclipse’ is going to make a lot of young fans very happy. Easily the most well made and thematically satisfying of the three adaptations of Meyer’s popular books, Eclipse boasts better effects, better acting and better direction either Twilight or New Moon. The three leads, Lautner, Pattinson and Stewart, like the leads in the Potter films, have grown as actors and do what they can to give the triangle between Bella, Ed and Jake some kind of weight and pathos. With Bryce Dallas Howard creepily smirking her way through the role of Victoria this time out, there’s plenty in this blockbuster to satiate the raving legions who worship at the altar of all things Ed and Bella.

For everyone else, this one is still a giant bust.

Bella Swan has been back and forth over the issue of whether or not Ed Cullen, the pasty vampire with the hair that won’t quit, is her destiny. At the opening of this film, which includes poetry in a field of wild flowers, Bella longs to be ‘changed’ by Ed, and Ed wants her hand in marriage in exchange for this. Although she’s quite clearly ready to give up her human life and trade it in for an unnatural one (one even Ed seems loathe to give her), she actually recoils at the thought of marriage. Strange that she would find that marriage has a permanence that being undead doesn’t.

On the Edward/Bella front, that’s the film’s main dilemma. Bella, who doesn’t seem to mind leading on two supernatural creatures at the same time, also has to deal with Jacob Black, the Native American werewolf who thankfully traded up his fright wig for toned pectorals. So excessive is her shirtless prancing in this film that even Ed has to ask ‘Don’t you ever wear a shirt?’ Easy for Ed to say. If the series ever saw him without a shirt, audiences would need special order sunglasses just to cut the glare.

Jake believes that he and Bella should be together and he does everything he can to ensure that she won’t be turned at the end of the month, after graduation, where she’s ready to leave everything and everyone she knows behind. Strangely, it’s Jacob in this film who comes off more than a little possessive and creepy. Bella never really calls him on it, but he simply won’t relent. While she does slap him for forward intimate advances, in the end Bella justifies his irrational pursuance by reciprocating feelings. Of course, by this time, she’s already more serious with Ed than she’s ever been.

For those who thought they were showing up to a fantasy adventure and not just the detailed fever dream of a teenage girl, there’s a subplot involving a roaming pack of vampires in Seattle who seem to be amassing an army for the purposes of tracking down Bella. It is suspected by Ed and the rest of his clan that the vampire Victoria, whose mate Ed killed, is behind this army.  As they approach the final showdown, Ed and Jacob, and the vampires and the werewolves, must join forces to protect Bella.

David Slade is a welcome change as a director, and he brings a darker sensibility to the evil vampires that is welcome for a series that has mostly been milquetoast to this point. For the most part, he also gets some mileage from the beautiful wilderness scenery and under his watch, the special effects look markedly better, although those wolves still seem a bit ‘plush’ for my taste. Where he gets hung up is on the romantic relationship which still demands to be taken seriously even though it exists on such a level of imaginary feeling that it could be a satire of itself. Take, for example, the scene in a tent between Ed, Bella and Jake. Bella is freezing and she needs the shirtless Jake to warm her up. So that’s what he does, cuddling and cradling Bella, while sitting there talking with Ed. The scene is ridiculous for any number of reasons and it has no purpose for existing other than to set up a scene where Bella gets to have both men fawning over her.

At the end of the day, that’s where I get off the bus regarding the Twilight saga. It’s poorly constructed as a story, albeit well made as a movie. For its target audience, who made the decision long ago on whether or not to join this world of chaste vampires and amorous werewolves, it might just be the movie event of the season.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

If there’s one thing that has significantly changed the landscape of escapist filmmaking, it’s the move away from star-driven vehicles to franchise driven ones.  Special effects, easily branded imagery and familiar rhythms are the elements that sell an audience on a franchise. Often there is a lack of energy and unpredictability that comes as a result of this trade-off. Filmmakers aren’t eager to break that contract with the viewer that promises what they are going to get is what they paid to see. Unfortunately, for the movie going audience, what we often get are pictures where the leads could be interchangeable.

Even in Avatar, which falls outside of my complaints above, Jake Sully could have been played by literally anybody. There was a time, even not so awfully long ago, when popcorn films were structured around actors and, more specifically, movie stars. Many years ago it was Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart standing in as their own special effects and providing emotional pyrotechnics. Now, in James Mangold’s effortlessly fun new summer fling, Knight and Day, a newly recharged Tom Cruise and a playful Cameron Diaz remind how much a good set of actors can really bring to the table.

The film they are in is completely ridiculous, although significantly less so than the battiness of The A-Team or the solemn absurdity of Robin Hood. With Cruise as Roy Miller, an agent who’s maybe gone round the bend, and Diaz as the hapless young woman who falls into his orbit. Knight opens in an airport, moves onto a doomed airplane, careens down a large stretch of highway, and barrels through Austria on a train. Towards the end, all of the main players, incljuding the villainous Fitzgerald (Peter Skarsgaard), are chasingeach other through Spain, in search of  a powerful device known mysteriously as the Zephyr. As is wont to happen in movies like this one, Roy and June are forced to flee on a motorcycle, with Diaz wrapped firmly around Cruise, as they careeen in between the running of the bulls, with the bovine brutes trampling up and over speeding cars. I would have rolled my eyes, but by this point we’ve already watched Roy fall off a motorcycle and onto the hood of a vehicle, spraying machine gun fire down the freeway as other cars fly through air past his head.

All of the action scenes have a kind of gee-whiz, tongue-in-cheek quality to them. We aren’t supposed to take them seriously or have them jar the back of our skull loose. They have been so skillfully constructed to reveal the seams, that we can only conclude–following the smirking lead of Cruise–that we are meant to be amused by them, and to laugh at the over-the-top nature of it all. Either way, it doesn’t matter much. Unlike the crunch and munch of Michael Bay’s insanely loud and depressingly stupid blockbusters, James Mangold’s movie pops, snaps and zings it’s way to the finish line, like a pinball machine with real human beings at the center.

As I said up front, this movie stands or falls based on what Cruise and Diaz can bring to the table. Here, they bring alot. They make Roy and June not deep people, but realistic enough that we can connect with them, and once that happens, everything including the big explosions has a little more bite and kick to it.

 Tom Cruise comes out of the gate smirking here, and every nod of the head, half-smile, or sideways glance has been calibrated to remind his fans of an image of the Cruiser we haven’t seen in awhile. This isn’t the odd, egomaniacal persona that alienated fans a few years ago, but is much closer to the more self confident, but not self-absorbed, Cruise that did Mission Impossible. Diaz has a really appealing and straightforward quality that shines in the character of June. Together, they are both made better and they sell the angle that these two characters would be drawn to one another, even as the rest of the world seems intent on killing them.

A modern action movie might not require us to believe in any kind of a bond between characters who are on the run and are required by the script to face off with the villain at the end, and achieve a happy resolution. In the end, though, I’m thankful that Knight and Day does. It’s the best big budget, live action film to heat the theaters so far this summer and I hope it finds the audience it deserves.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

After months and months of speculation and casting announcements, it seems that Disney, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and new director Rob Marshall are finally done with prepping the new Pirates of the Carribean installment and are ready to leave port with it.

Walt Disney Pictures just issued a press release today stating that filming is finally getting underway on location in Hawaii, the United Kingdom and Los Angeles. Subtitled On Stranger Tides, this Pirates film has the interesting of distinction of a clear lack of Kiera Knightley and Orlando Bloom and better yet, no obvious replacements for them either. Instead of orbiting someone else’s story, as he did in the first three films, Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow will presumably take center stage, as he rightly should have for the two sequels.

Bringing back the liveliest of the supporting cast, including Geoffrey Rush as the bombastic and sometimes villainous Captain Barb0ssa, Stranger Tides sets it’s sights not on cursed Incan gold but the fabled fountain of youth. Throwing in Penelope Cruz as a love interest for Depp and Ian McShane as the historically notorious Blackbeard, Pirates looks like it’s headed in the right direction as far as a new adventure is concerned.

The biggest question mark now is how well Rob Marshall will fill the shoes of Gore Verbinski, who delivered splendidly with the first film and did a rather admirable job of juggling the many massive pieces of the second and third pics.

For all of the details on the start of filming, check out the full release below:

BURBANK, Calif. (June 21, 2010) — Production has commenced on location in Hawaii, the United Kingdom and Los Angeles on Walt Disney Pictures’ and Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ sweeping comedy adventure “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” directed by Rob Marshall (“Chicago”), the fourth entry in the blockbuster franchise which has already reaped $2.7 billion in worldwide box office from the previous three films, and the first to be filmed and presented in Disney Digital 3D™.   Johnny Depp returns to his iconic, Academy Award®-nominated role of Captain Jack Sparrow, newly joined by Academy Award winner Penelope Cruz (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” Rob Marshall’s “Nine”), Ian McShane (HBO’s “Deadwood”) and newcomers Astrid Berges-Frisbey and Sam Claflin.  Also rejoining Johnny Depp and Captain Jack are Academy Award-winner and three-time nominee Geoffrey Rush (“Shine,” “Shakespeare in Love”) and Kevin R. McNally (first three “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, “Valkyrie”).  The film is slated to open May 20, 2011. 

“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” captures the fun, adventure and humor that ignited the hit franchise —this time in Disney Digital 3D™. In this action-packed tale of truth, betrayal, youth and demise, Captain Jack Sparrow crosses paths with a woman from his past (Penelope Cruz), and he’s not sure if it’s love—or if she’s a ruthless con artist who’s using him to find the fabled Fountain of Youth. When she forces him aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the ship of the formidable pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane), Jack finds himself on an unexpected adventure in which he doesn’t know who to fear more:  Blackbeard or the woman from his past. 

Rush reprises his role as the vengeful Captain Hector Barbossa, and Kevin R. McNally returns as Captain Jack’s longtime comrade Joshamee Gibbs. Claflin stars as a stalwart missionary, while Berges-Frisbey is transformed into a mysterious mermaid. 

“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” is written by “Pirates” veterans Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio.  The executive producers are Mike Stenson, Chad Oman, Barry Waldman, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio and John DeLuca.

Joining Bruckheimer and Marshall for the new voyage is a top-flight group of  award-winning behind-the-scenes artists, including director of photography Dariusz Wolski (first three “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”), production designer John Myhre (two-time Academy Award® winner for Marshall’s “Chicago” and “Memoirs of a Geisha”), costume designer Penny Rose (all three “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”), visual effects supervisor Charles Gibson, who won an Academy Award for “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” Oscar® winner and eight-time nominee special effects supervisor John Frazier (“Pirates of the Caribbean” films,” “Pearl Harbor”) and stunt coordinator George Marshall Ruge, who also devoted his talents to the previous three “Pirates” films as well as Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer’s “National Treasure” franchise.  The editors include two Oscar winners, Michael Kahn (“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”) and David Brenner (“Born on the Fourth of July”), as well as Wyatt Smith (Marshall’s “Nine”).

Rob Marshall’s first three films, “Chicago,” “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Nine,” have been honored with a total of 23 Academy Award® nominations.  For his work on “Chicago,” winner of six Oscars® including Best Picture, Marshall received the Director’s Guild Award, an Oscar nomination, a Golden Globe Award® nomination, a BAFTA nomination, The National Board of Review Award and the New York Film Critics Online Award.  A six-time Tony Award® nominee and George Abbott Award winner, Marshall’s extensive work on Broadway includes co-director and choreographer of the worldwide award-winning production of “Cabaret” and director/choreographer of the Broadway revival of “Little Me,” along with many others. He also produced, directed and choreographed the NBC television special “Tony Bennett: An American Classic,” which earned seven Emmy Awards®, including three for Marshall, and directed and choreographed Disney/ABC’s critically acclaimed movie musical “Annie,” which received 12 Emmy nominations with two wins, including Marshall for Outstanding Choreography; it also won the prestigious Peabody Award. 

First in partnership with Don Simpson, and then as the chief of Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Bruckheimer has produced an unprecedented string of worldwide smashes, impacting not only the industry, but mass culture as well.  Bruckheimer’s films include (producing with Don Simpson) “Top Gun,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Beverly Hills Cop 2,” “American Gigolo,” “Flashdance,” “Bad Boys,” “Dangerous Minds,” “Crimson Tide,” “The Rock,” and (producing solo) “Con Air,” “Armageddon,” “Enemy of the State,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” “Coyote Ugly,” “Remember the Titans,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” “Bad Boys II,” “Veronica Guerin,” “King Arthur,” “National Treasure,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” “G-Force,” “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”

On television, Bruckheimer had an unprecedented 10 television series airing in the 2005-6 season, a record in the medium for an individual producer.  JBTV’s series have included “C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation” and its spinoffs “C.S.I.: Miami,” “C.S.I.: NY” and “Without a Trace,” “Cold Case,” “The Amazing Race” and “Dark Blue.”

Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Television have been honored with 41 Academy Award^® nominations, six wins, eight Grammy Award^® nominations, five wins, 23 Golden Globe^® nominations, four wins, 88 Emmy Award^® nominations, 18 wins, 23 People’s Choice nominations, 15 wins, numerous MTV Awards, including one for Best Picture of the Decade for “Beverly Hills Cop” and 20 Teen Choice Awards.

“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” will film on the islands of Kauai and Oahu, Hawaii, followed by locations and studio work in the United Kingdom and Los Angeles.

Today, we have got the first images from Dreamworks upcoming fall sci-fi drama, Real Steel for you. From the looks of things, everyone’s favorite X-man, Hugh Jackman is playing Mickey to a giant battling bot’s Rocky. The pics showcase some of the sets and the look of the robots that will appear in the film.

The plot? It really is an underdog story with a basic character arc that we have seen before (and the kind that John G. Avidsen was more than happy to give us back in the 70’s/80’s); the retired athlete who gets his chance to reconnect with his family and his former life when he bets his cards on a darkhorse up-and-comer.

The big switch here is that the ex-boxer’s meal ticket is a giant battling robot, a discarded model that Jackman’s Charlie will rebuild and train with his estranged son (Dakota Goyo) in a future world where mechanical fighters have replaced human one’s in the boxing ring.  

Eerily reminiscent of an old Twilight Zone episode with Lee Marvin (incidentally titled ‘Steel’) and more than a little evocative of the old table-top game, Rock’em, Sock’em, Robots’, Real Steel has ‘Date Night’ director Shawn Levy in the driver’s seat, and joining Jackman is a cast that will include Evangeline Lily, Kevin Durand, Hope Davis, Anthony Mackie and James Rebhorn.

Will it work? Hard to say. The pics give us a little of the flavor of the film, including Jackman giving instructions to his bot, ‘Noisy Boy’, who is apparently about to go up against ‘backroom brawler’ Midas. Not sure where this falls within the film’s structure, but I imagine it’s one of those early fights that establishes the underdog nature of this team-up. The second pic shows Levy and Jackman discussing a scene on the same set, which is ‘Crash Palace’, an underground robot fight club that is probably the equivalent of seedy street fights in more human-themed fighting films.

Jackman has an erratic history when it comes to sci-fi/fantasy films. He’s done some really interesting and odd pictures like The Prestige and The Fountain, and then he’s also cashed paychecks with the likes of Van Helsing and the last two X-Men movies. Which will Real Steel be?

Sci-fans eager to find out will just have to wait until November 18^th, 2010 when Real Steel releases nation wide. Stay tuned to Atomic Popcorn for the first trailer of the film later this year.