Free Fantastic Mr Fox Screening in Baltimore on Nov 24th

Matthew — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:27:24 +0000

Atomic Popcorn presents to Baltimore, Wes Anderson’s upcoming animated film, FANTASTIC MR. FOX, starring the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray. The animation on this film looks to be stunning and something that we haven’t seen the likes of before.

The screening will be on Tuesday, November 24th at 7:30pm at a local AMC Theater. Directed by Wes Anderson, FANTASTIC MR. FOX opens in area theaters on Wednesday, November 25^th!

Synopsis:

FANTASTIC MR. FOX is visionary director Wes Anderson’s first animated film, utilizing classic handmade stop motion techniques to tell the story of the best selling children’s book by Roald Dahl (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach).

Mr. and Mrs. Fox (Clooney and Streep) live an idyllic home life with their son Ash (Schwartzman) and visiting young nephew Kristofferson (Eric Anderson). But after 12 years, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr Fox’s wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but the whole animal community. Trapped underground and with not enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight against the evil Farmers – Boggis, Bunce and Bean – who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic Mr Fox at any cost.

Check out the trailer at http://www.fantasticmrfoxmovie.com/, or below of course:

Now on to the part that you all have been waiting for: how do I win? That is the easy part. The first 45 people to comment below “I want to see Fantastic Mr Fox for free in Baltimore w/ @atomicpopcorn!“, – wins a pass – good for two to the above screening. Again, if you want to bring a date you still only need to enter once! This is a pass good for two of you!

I do ask that due to the size of the screening that you try and be there by 6:30pm as this will guarantee you a seat. This will allow all of you fine folks to grab your passes and a great seat for the film. You will need to give me your email address (the one you used in the comments below) to validate that you indeed got a pass.

You will receive an email with the printable pass prior to the screening along with where the screening is.

Make sure you check out our other free screenings in the Baltimore Area.

Fantastic Mr. Fox Pictures Mister

The Mentalist – Season 2: ‘His Red Right Hand’

Jorden Beatty — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:38:39 +0000

Tonight’s episode begins with the CBI team being called to a graveyard very early in the morning where a body was found. Under normal circumstances, finding a body in a graveyard might be a normal occurrence. This body, however, was recently frozen into a pose and placed in a mausoleum naked, with a vase of flowers between his legs – certainly puzzling.

Meanwhile back at the CBI offices, Bosco and his team are burning the midnight oil on the Red John case. Rebecca, Bosco’s secretary, is asked to go get them coffee.

When the others arrive back at the office in the morning, they stumble upon a gruesome crime scene — Bosco and three of the CBI agents on his team have been shot. Only Bosco is still barely clinging to life as Jane and Lisbon scramble to get him help.

While Cho locks down the building right away, Van Pelt and Rigsby look into the security tapes to try and find the culprits to the devastating attack on Bosco and his team. One member of the team, Agent Hicks, is missing from the scene. While Cho questions Rebecca, the secretary, about what happened, Lisbon and Jane look into where Hicks might have gone.

While they are all straining to figure out who attacked the office, the ID on the man found at the graveyard comes in and Jane recognizes it right away. Suddenly he runs out of the office and tells the others to follow because he can link the graveyard case to the attack on Bosco’s team.

Jane eventually finds his way to a family doctor’s office, the office of the dead man from the graveyard. He spots a vase of the same flowers found on the victim near a chair at the door to the office. When he goes inside to investigate, he stumbles upon an exam room.

Through the blinds of the exam room Jane spots a symbol on the wall that is all too chilling and familiar. As he opens the door to the room and goes inside, he sees Agent Hicks dead on the table before him. As classical music loops on a stereo in the corner, Jane’s eyes are transfixed on the symbol before him – a face painted with blood.

Red John is back.

Later, Jane explains that he recognized the doctor’s name because he was a family member of one of the Red John victims. Because Bosco was working on the Red John case, he simply went on a hunch to the office.

Afterward, Jane goes to the hospital hoping to speak with Bosco, figuring he must know something important that Red John would kill for. When he arrives, however, he finds that Bosco was put into a medically induced coma with morphine to keep him stable. Obsessed with the case, he turns off Bosco’s morphine machine hoping to wake him so he can ask him what he knows. Lisbon catches him however and confronts him on his actions.

Back at the CBI offices, the team gets a lead from Bosco’s cell phone records. Apparently he was talking to an officer about a body that was recently found in a building foundation – the missing Red John victim. Jane and the team immediately head for the morgue where the body was being kept, hoping to get DNA evidence from it that might lead to Red John. When they arrive, however, the attending tells them that the CBI already picked up the body and all of the DNA evidence, an Agent Rojo. When they ask the attendant to describe the agent to them, he gives the exact description of Bosco’s secretary, Rebecca.

In a flashback, we see that the real attacker at the CBI office was in fact Rebecca. She hid a silenced pistol in a picnic basket and overcame all three agents, including Bosco.

In the next scene, Rebecca walks into Bosco’s hospital room with the same pistol to finish the job. Before she can kill him, though, Lisbon and Van Pelt bust in and disarm her, handcuffing her just as Bosco wakes up.

They allow Jane to interrogate Rebecca back at the CBI offices, but she won’t give up any information about Red John. She simply says that she is in love with him and he with her. She also tells Jane that the whole reason Red John directed her to attack Bosco and his team was so Jane could have the case back. According to her, Red John misses Jane.

As she is escorted away in handcuffs, an unidentified person passes her in the hallway and wipes a green substance on her wrist. Almost instantly she falls to the floor from the poison and is soon dead. Jane rushes to her realizing that Red John killed her and got away again.

Back in the hospital, Lisbon talks with a nurse outside of Bosco’s room. When she comes inside, he asks what his condition is and she tries to tell him is going to be fine. He calls her on the lie, however, and she confesses that the doctors don’t believe he will survive. After hearing this, Bosco admits his love to her – something she already knew. He asks Jane to come in later so he can speak privately with him as well.

Bosco tells Jane that Red John is finally making mistakes, and that Jane will eventually catch him. He also tells him that when he finally does catch Red John, he should kill him and not arrest him. He tries to tell Jane more but cannot and slowly, Bosco passes away.

At the end of the episode, Lisbon walks into Minelli’s office after Bosco’s funeral. He is packing his things and tells her that he is retiring from the CBI. Afterward in her office, she asks Jane what Bosco told her. Instead of telling Lisbon the truth, however, Jane tells her that he simply said to take good care of her.

Finally, the team gathers together and lightly sings “Amazing Grace” while polishing off a few bottles of tequila – Bosco’s favorite – before the curtain falls on the episode.

The Blind Side movie review

Plus1 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:18:23 +0000

In preparing to write this review I struggled with how I wanted to approach the movie and the review. For those of you that know me, I am a Baltimore native and a first-generation fan of the Baltimore Ravens. When the Ravens drafted Michael Oher in the recent 2009 NFL Draft it was all over ESPN and the NFL Network that a movie about his extraordinary young life was being filmed. From April till now I lobbied every month to be able to review this movie. When the trailer came out in September I started lobbying even harder. Eventually I was given the golden ticket to see the early screening. Why was this movie, out of all the other movies I have seen and will see, so big for me? Part of it was the civic pride of seeing one of my guys, a Baltimore Raven, have a story about him on the big screen. The other part was to see why so much was written and said about Michael Oher and to learn why his life turned out the way it is and lead him to Charm City (one of many nicknames for Baltimore).

Director John Lee Hancock takes the real life story of Michael Oher and brings it to the big screen not as a documentary but as a “based on true events” movie. Hollywood liberties were taken as the high school Oher attended and the name of the football team he played for were both renamed; the school is now the Wingate Christian School and the team is the Crusaders. JLH also made the character of Michael Oher appear slower and dumber then he really was at that time – I’m sure this was done to help bolster the drama of the movie.

Michael Oher’s story started at an early age when he was removed from his mother’s home due to her addiction to crack cocaine. He repeated both the first and second grade and attended eleven different schools during his first nine years as a student. During this time he was also in various foster homes and eventually would run away from the foster home to look for his mother. During his senior year of high school, Oher learned that his father, who he hadn’t seen in years, was murdered.

The Blind Side focuses on Michael Oher’s sophomore and junior years of high school. We first meet Michael Oher (played by Quinton Aaron) as he is being driven to the Wingate Christian School by the father of a friend with whom he was living, sleeping on his couch. At the school, his friend’s father Tony Henderson meets with the coach of the football team in hopes of getting his own son, Tony Jr., and Michael, into the school. The coach takes some interest in Michael but the school administrators don’t think that he fits, nor would he be capable of handling the school’s workload. His grades are below average and he was passed from grade to grade just so the next teacher would have to deal with him – no one took the time to try and help or teach Michael. One teacher, Mrs Boswell (played by Kim Dickens) fights to allow Michael into the school and says that she will help him learn and get his grade point average up to passing level.

During this time Michael leaves his friend’s house due to issues within that household. Because of this, Michael has been living at the school in the gymnasium or at the local laundromat in town. The night before Thanksgiving, Sean and Leigh Ann Tuohy (played by Tim McGraw and Sandra Bullock) with their son S. J. (played by Jae Head) are heading home from the school when they see Michael walking on the side of the road on a cold and rainy night heading in the direction of the school. Feeling sad for Michael, the Tuohy’s offer to take Michael back to their home so he can get a warm night’s sleep. Leigh Ann starts to help Michael by offering to take him shopping for new clothes as well as hire a tutor (played by Kathy Bates) to help him bring the GPA from 0.9 to 2.65 and get him the education he never received. The Tuohy’s oldest daughter Collins (played by Lily Collins) also helps Michael with his studying. The Tuohys know that Michael can do so much more when given a chance and are there to encourage and help him.

The Blind Side chronicles the hard times and new times that Micheal Oher experiences. Tim McGraw and Sandra Bullock do incredible jobs portraying the Tuohy’s and both show the warmth and compassion that is in the hearts of the real-life people they are playing. Both managed to become the Tuohys and you forget that this is a movie as you fall into the real-life struggles and trials that the family goes through in helping Michael Oher. Quinton Aaron does a great job at playing Michael Oher. He manages to capture the physical size and athleticism of the character. He also does a wonderful job in showing the softer side of Oher, although as stated earlier, the director does play on the “slowness” to help push the drama. The comic relief of the movie would be Jae Head as S.J which is short for Sean Tuohy Junior. S.J. manages to work up the laughs and isn’t the stereotypical cute kid/brat but is the light-hearted support that is needed to push the dark subject to the side. S.J. manages to help Oher with his college offers and eventual pick of which college he will attend. The Tuohys want Michal to go to Mississippi University, Ole Miss, as that is where they attended college, but let Michael hear offers from other colleges. Because this is based on real life you are treated to screen cameos of current and former college coaches as they try to get Oher to go to their college/university. It’s amazing to see what coaches will do and what deals are made to entice someone to play for their organization.

The Blind Side is an emotional roller coaster as there are laughs and teary moments throughout the movie. There is a very touching scene in the movie when Leigh Ann finds Michal’s mom and asks for permission to adopt Michael even though he has been a ward of the state for years. No matter how different the social class is between the two women, they are both mothers that have children and were able to relate with each other over the well-being of Michael.

The last scene of the movie was a great added bonus that helped complete the first chapter of Michael Oher’s story and lead into the next chapters of his life. The crowd that attended the screening was clapping and cheering when this scene came up on the screen and I have to admit, I joined in with the celebration. I’m left wondering how this will play out in other cities as I’m sure it will be big in Baltimore. I can’t wait to see The Blind Side again to compare the different audiences and see how they react to the last scene of the movie.

The Blind Side is rated PG-13 due to one scene of drug usage, violence, and sexual references. Some of the content is dark and not suitable for younger viewers (just saying, not telling you to not take your 3-year-old but hey, that’s up to you). After you’ve seen The Blind Side, post a comment and let me know what you thought. I know that I’ll be revisiting this review and adding some comments of my own once I’ve seen it a second time. The Blind Side is a movie so nice that you’ll want to see it twice.

★★★★½

Twilight New Moon Movie Review

jyates — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:39:42 +0000

New Moon: Introducing Team Jacob

For fans, the Twilight saga has become a sort of sporting event pitting one team against another. Team Edward was crazed upon the release of last year’s Twilight, and while New Moon is definitely geared toward “the other team,” there is more than adequate sexual tension and angst to satisfy both.

New Moon, the second movie/book in the series, centers on what happens when Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) leaves Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) after an event with his family threatens her safety. While the character tells Bella “You will never see me again,” Edward appears frequently through out the movie as a sort of ghostly consciousness trying to keep her from harm. Of course when she makes this connection, Bella goes looking for harm in order to see him.

While on her adrenalin search Bella rekindles an old friendship with Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), the rallying cry for Team Two. She brings him bikes to fix up so she can drive fast and loose enough to see Edward. However, on the way she develops a deepening connection to her friend and team Jacob holds its collective breath. Maybe this time she will get their man.

While Edward and Bella were the driving force in the first movie his disappearance for the greater part of New Moon does not kill this sequel. Instead we are given a new brooding monster (and his family) to love.

Originally, rumors circulated that Taylor Lautner would not be returning as Jacob in the second film. The producers feared he could not bulk up enough to visually play the part of the werewolf he becomes. However, Lautner was able to put on some very pleasing muscular weight. He worked hard for the part and his dedication shows in his acting. Viewers are not only rewarded by having the same actor back in character, but also by having one who could still be younger than Bella. New Moon gives a book-perfect Jacob.

While most film series have weak second installments I found New Moon to be better than the original. However, in the end, New Moon is still the sequel to Twilight. So don’t go to the theatre expecting some great dramatic work or art house film. That is never what these movies will be, but if you are going for a few laughs and some guilty pleasure, you just might enjoy yourself.

★★★☆☆

Free Armored Screening in Baltimore on Dec. 3rd

Matthew — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:20:57 +0000

Atomic Popcorn would like to invite you to get behind the wheel of an Armored Truck! Armored is the newest film staring Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Milo Ventimiglia and more. Tickets to the screening will be handed out at the door on Thursday, Dec. 3rd at 730 pm at a local AMC theater.

Make sure you get in on this action packed thrill ride of a film. It is sure to please!

Check out more about the film below:

A crew of officers at an armored-transport security firm risk their lives when they embark on the ultimate heist….against their own company. Armed with a seemingly fool-proof plan, the men plan on making off with a fortune with harm to none. But when an unexpected witness interferes, the plan quickly unravels and all bets are off.

ARMORED is rated PG-13 and opens in theatres Friday, December 4th.

What good is a movie without a trailer? Check it out and we will let you decide:

Now on to the part that you all have been waiting for: how do I win? That is the easy part. The first 20 people to comment AND tweet this post with a valid email (it’s displayed only to me) along with the words – “I want to see Armored for free in Baltimore w/ @atomicpopcorn!“, – wins a pass – good for two to the above screening. Again, if you want to bring a date you still only need to enter once! This is a pass good for two of you!

**IMPORTANT – your comment name MUST match your twitter name. If you have left a comment and NOT tweeted this you will not receive a pass! – IMPORTANT**

Look for us before the screening as we will be handing out your tickets!

Make sure you check out our other free screenings in the Baltimore Area.

Tim Burton Exhibit Opens at MoMa

Carly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:41:41 +0000

Tim Burton is lauded as being one of the most creative forces in Hollywood. His films have a distinct style that sets them apart, and characterizes Burton as a stand out director. Now, his work is being moved from the big screen onto the walls of the Museum of Modern Art.

In an exhibit opening Sunday and running through April, MoMa will have on display film memorabilia, movie posters, and drawings by Burton– some going as far back as his childhood. The exhibit will also include a film series showing Burton’s feature and short films, along with movies that influenced him.

This is the largest exhibit MoMa has ever put on that displays a retrospective view of the works of a filmmaker. At a press conference for the exhibit, Burton thanked “everybody that raided my closets” to find the material for the exhibit, and described the process of collecting work, and making sense of his life from that work, to be “a very positive experience.”

According to MoMa’s assistant curator, Ron Magliozzi, the museum first got the idea for the exhibit in 2005, and began collecting materials in 2008. Among some of the pieces they gathered are puppets from The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman masks, and an Edward Scissorhands statue. Along with these, the exhibit also includes Burton’s sketchbooks, concept art, drawings, paintings, photographs and amateur films.

During the press conference for the exhibit, Burton briefly mentioned his current project, Alice in Wonderland. According to the director, “I’m still working on it. I got a lot to do in a short period of time. … I shouldn’t even be here.” He also revealed his reason for tackling the beloved story to be that he has never seen film adaptations of Alice that he really liked.

The exhibit is being largely sponsored by Syfy Network, whose president, David Howe, called Burton “a role model…and a guru” for the network. Howe feels that no artist greater exemplifies Syfy’s goal of encouraging people to “imagine greater.”

The exhibit begins with Burton’s childhood in Burbank and spans to his most recent work, and also focuses on Burton’s years at the California Institute of the Arts and his time as an animator at Disney.

Forbes: Will Ferrell Isn’t Worth the Money

Carly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:40:19 +0000

There used to be a time, not so very long ago, when a film starring Will Ferrell would instantly draw in crowds and see box office success.

Whether Ferrell has simply been making poor project choices, or whether his reign as Hollywood’s leading funny man has just been passed on, one thing is for certain: His films aren’t bringing in the revenue they used to.

Forbes Magazine recently came out with a list of the 10 most overpaid actors in show business. And Ferrell had the unfortunate “honor” of being number one on the list.

Forbes created the list by looking at 100 of Hollywood’s top actors, based on films that were released widely over the last five years. The salaries of the stars were compared with the total operating income for each film (production costs vs. revenue brought in) to see how much each movie made for each dollar the stars made.

Ferrell’s films earned a meager $3.29 for each dollar he was paid to star in them. Not far off in the number two position was Ewan McGregor, whose films have seen only $3.75 for every dollar of his salary.

To contrast, Forbes also released a list of the 10 stars most worth their salary.

Topping that list was Shia LaBeouf, whose films brought in $160 for every dollar he was paid to star.

Head on over to the Forbes website to see who else made the lists.

Jason Lee to Make Directorial Debut

Carly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:38:40 +0000

Jason Lee’s television show My Name is Earl make have just been canceled, but don’t think Lee is going to be having any downtime because of that.

Lee will be sticking around the TV circuit for a bit, starring in the pilot for TNT’s Delta Blues where he’ll be playing a Memphis police officer who works as an Elvis impersonator at night. Lee is also working on a live-action series for Adult Swim. The show is to take place in the world of skateboarding, and Lee will both star in and direct the series.

As for the big screen, Lee recently finished filming A Couple of Dicks with director Kevin Smith, who Lee has worked with many times before. He will also be going back to his role as Dave in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

More importantly, Lee is going to be taking his first big swing at things from behind the camera. He’ll be making his feature film directorial debut with Get Back, a film about a couple of Beatles fans who time travel back to 1966 and meet the band. The twist? One ends up in a love triangle between John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Get Back will be produced by Matt Berenson.