Check out these wonderful minimalistic movie posters designed by Grischa Stanjek (Atomic Popcorn reader) who so graciously shared this personal project with us and now we’re sharing it with all of you! The goal Grischa set for this project was to “reduce each movie to one single object” and I’d say Grischa achieved that goal with flying colors! Thank you Grischa for sharing these with us! Keep up the good work!

If I had to choose a favorite out of this series it might be a Clockwork Orange, captures the movies sense of humor perfectly!

Remember if you’ve got any movie related artwork whether still images or videos send them to us and we’ll share them with the extended Atomic Popcorn family! Go movies!

On Thursday morning, Thierry Fremaux, head of the Cannes Film Festival, revealed the films that will be playing at this year’s Festival de Cannes.

American entries include Doug Liman’s (The Bourne Identity) Fair Game, a political thriller starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, which will be competing for the Palm d’Or as well as Inside Job, Kaboom, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Sundance winner Blue Valentine, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, which will open the festival, and Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

See the complete list of films below:

Michael Douglas and Shia LaBeouf in Wall Street 2

Opener
Robin Hood, U.S.-U.K., Ridley Scott

Competition
Another Year, U.K., Mike Leigh
Biutiful, Spain-Mexico, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Burnt by the Sun 2, Germany-France-Russia, Nikita Mikhalkov
Certified Copy, France-Italy-Iran, Abbas Kiarostami
Fair Game, U.S., Doug Liman
Hors-la-loi, France-Belgium-Algeria, Rachid Bouchareb
The Housemaid, South Korea, Im Sang-soo
La nostra vita, Italy-France, Daniele Luchetti
La Princesse de Montpensier, France, Bertrand Tavernier
Of Gods and Men, France, Xavier Beauvois
Outrage, Japan, Takeshi Kitano
Poetry, South Korea, Lee Chang-dong
A Screaming Man, France-Belgium-Chad, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Tournee, France, Mathieu Amalric
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Spain-Thailand-Germany-U.K.-France, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
You, My Joy, Ukraine-Germany, Sergey Loznitsa

Un Certain Regard
Adrienn Pal, Hungary-Netherlands-France-Austria, Agnes Kocsis
Aurora, Romania, Cristi Puiu
Blue Valentine, U.S., Derek Cianfrance
Chatroom, U.K., Hideo Nakata
Chongqing Blues, China, Wang Xiaoshuai
The City Below, Germany-France, Christoph Hochhausler
Film Socialisme, Switzerland-France, Jean-Luc Godard
Ha Ha Ha, South Korea, Hong Sang-soo
Les Amours imaginaires, Canada, Xavier Dolan
Life Above All, France, Oliver Schmitz
Los labios, Argentina, Ivan Fund, Santiago Loza
Octubre, Peru, Daniel Vega
Qu’est-il arrive a Simon Werner?, France, Fabrice Gobert
Rebecca H., France, Lodge Kerrigan
R U There, Netherlands, David Verbeek
The Strange Case of Angelica, Portugal, Manoel de Oliveira
Tuesday, After Christmas, Romania, Radu Muntean
Udaan, India, Vikramaditya Motwane

Out of Competition
Tamara Drewe, U.K., Stephen Frears
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, U.S., Oliver Stone
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, U.K.-Spain, Woody Allen

Midnight Screenings
Kaboom, U.S.-France, Gregg Araki
L’autre monde, France-Belgium, Gilles Marchand

Special Screenings
Abel, Mexico, Diego Luna
Chantrapas, France, Otar Iosseliani
Draquila — L’Italia che trema, Italy, Sabina Guzzanti
Inside Job, U.S., Charles Ferguson
Nostalgia de la luz, France, Patricio Guzman 
Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, Netherlands, Sophie Fiennes

This year’s competition jury is presided over by director Tim Burton and also includes Benicio Del Toro and Kate Beckinsale. The prestigious festival’s 63rd competition will take place from May 12th until the 23rd.

“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman opens with that portentous rhyme, lifted wholesale from the original 1940 film with Lon Chaney Jr. It’s the first sign that this new wolf will retain fidelity to its predecessor. Several others follow; there is a hulking Victorian mansion and moonlit moors, the make-up design and characters are remarkably similar, and Larry Talbot is once again a lost soul fearing the dread and torment that the next full moon brings.

What’s wrong here is the tone, which heads out into unintentional camp, and the script, that fails to make the audience feel Talbot’s pain and conflict.

On the level of recreation and re-invention, Johnston has done a stunning job with the surface details of his Wolfman. The film is actually set a bit later than the original, now moved to Victorian England, which provides endless scenes of horse drawn carriages careening over gray, wet country roads and characters scrabbling about in the dark, holding their oil lamps close to their faces so the shadows can dance sinisterly. Later in London, the werewolf scrabbles across gothic architecture to howl balefully at the moon.

Danny Elfman does a fine job with the soundtrack, creating screeching moments of diabolical terror and rising crescendos of melodramatic suspense. Rick Baker, the make-up artist who brought us that incredible transformation scene in American Werewolf in London, renders a wolfman instantly recognizable as the original beast, but decked out with a more savage, animal flare. There’s a stunning attention to detail in the features; you can see every mismatched tooth, and of course,  his hair is perfect.

On the acting front, there’s a team of great performers, some of which are wasted and others who break the chains of the script and run amok all over the film, mauling and tearing the scenery with a lupine glee. The wasted ones, unfortunately, are Benicio Del Toro as Larry Talbot and Emily Blunt as Gwen, Talbot’s late brother’s fiancee.  If you rewatch the original, and note Lon Chaney Jr’s nonchalant, laid-back performance as Larry, you can see what Del Toro was going for here. He captures Chaney’s look, and his mannerisms, but the script has him written as a cowering man-child, hiding in his father’s shadow and he never develops any further.

Emily Blunt is a beautiful and talented actress, and she looks stunning running through the woods, or dangling from a waterfall, or anytime the moonlight catches her frightened gaze (my, what big eyes you have!). Like, Del Toro though, she is left with very little to do but pretend that the proposed romance between them actually exists as anything more than a few throwaway lines.

The two actors who do come out on top despite the screenplay’s attempt to strand them are Hugo Weaving and Anthony Hopkins. They are working at the same level as the film’s visual effects and its surprisingly gory violence; way, way, over-the-top. Weaving is a Scotland Yard detective complete with bowler hat, mutton-chops and baffling ability to show up and make a complete and utter mess of things every single time. He sort of knows he is an after thought and he injects as much classic swagger into the character as possible. When he’s chasing the wolf through London he might as well be in one of those classic horror comics where characters stop and exclaim things like “Hark! Do you hear that? Silence!!”

Hopkins plays Lord Talbot, Larry’s father, and he’s one of the best reasons to see the new movie. When things start sagging in the middle, Hopkins puts on his best predatory grin, narrows his eyes, gnashes his teeth and starts making the elder Talbot as sinister as he possibly can. You get the feeling he only uses candles so he can sit in the shadows and leer out at his guests. He’s more paunchy and feral than I would have expected, and instead of channeling Lecter or Van Helsing, or any of his other notable madmen, he reminded me as nothing so much as a latter-day Orson Welles. Blustery, self-posessed and constantly sneering, I half expected him to growl the words ‘Rosebud’ before it was all over.

As a director, Johnston makes good use of those crazy performances and he tries to help the serious tone of the Larry and Gewn storyline, but the best he can come up with a repeated shots of a time-lapse moon racing behind billowing clouds or people galloping on horseback into the foreboding night. He does give us a few great action sequences, including a particularly effective assault on the gypsy camp where Talbot is bitten.

When the wolfman is finally seen in full, prowling about and ripping off heads and playing keep-away with the villager’s spleens, the visual effects are surprisingly good. It isn’t all cgi, and most of it is well used, save for the scenes where we see the wolf in full gallop across the rooftops or through the forest. Then, he’s nothing more than a furry animated ball, hopped up on Red Bull. When he pulls a Kong in London and starts leaping high into the air, the movie moves almost too close to a superhero tone.

Perhaps, that would have been the way to go; a completely over-the-top, comic-book approach. This new Wolfman is entirely too silly to work as a proper horror film, and right now there’s just too much ponderous dialogue and ham-fisted father/son melodrama to really enjoy the rest. I laughed through a great deal of the movie, but I am not sure that’s what the filmmakers wanted. For fans of the wolfman or of monster movies in general, I tend to think you will find things to like and admire here. I was entertained, but also sincerely disappointed. This was a missed opportunity, and the human soul that the first wolf had is absent in this one.

But, if you, like myself, are sometimes just in one of those moods that wants nothing more than to see a werewolf stalking his victims through the fog-shrouded forest, than The Wolfman might be what you are looking for. And if you too, come out disappointed, well, you can always go home and rewatch the original.

Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

When it was all said and done the New Orleans Saints were Super Bowl Champs and Hollywood had a bunch o’ movies that wanted to advertise during the big game. We already talked about Alice in Wonderland and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; joining those two were M. Night Shyamalan’s Avatar The Last Airbender

Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio (looks like he’s gone back to The Aviator color scheme)

Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman remake starring Benicio Del Toro

and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood remake starring Russell Crowe (reuniting the duo for the umpeenth time- Body of Lies, American Gangster, A Good Year, Gladiator)

What do you think of the ads? How did the movie ads compare to the beer, bank and chip commercials?

Hollywood is where I’ve had most of my werewolf encounters but enough about Robin Williams. Let’s explore this particular pack of Tinseltown werewolf as I wanna hear your pick for the alpha male to lead the pack.

Benicio Del Toro has his The Wolfman set for a very romantic Valentine’s Day weekend theatrical release (February 12, 2010) while you’ll have to wait a little longer to see Taylor Lautner’s abs and werewolf if you didn’t see the Twilight Saga’s New Moon in theater as the DVD and Blu-ray are due out late this March.

If you’re really hurtin’ for some lycanthrope cinema I’m sure you can find one of the Underworld films on cable television (if you’re an HBO subscriber then you’re probably watching Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf as I type) or Hugh Jackman’s Van Helsing in Walmart’s $5 DVD bin. John Landis the very same director of such classic comedies as Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Spies Like Us and ¡Three Amigos! also had a soft spot for the hairy and scary when he first gave us An American Werewolf in London followed by An American Werewolf in Paris (flag his passport already!).

Maybe the most famous actor to howl at the moon was Jack Nicholson in 1994′s Wolf but it was Lon Chaney Jr. that introduced most of us to the werewolf in 1941′s The Wolf Man. Now I know I haven’t mentioned every barking big screen portrayal and personally I’m more of a Cat People type of guy myself (I carry a dog whistle for protection) but who is your favorite big screen werewolf?

Atomic Popcorn has an awesome opportunity for 40 of you to attend a screening for Universal’s highly anticipated horror-action film, THE WOLFMAN starring Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt. THE WOLFMAN will hit theaters February 12^th and the promotional screening will be held Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at a local Baltimore theater.

For those of you not watching Atomic Popcorn or living under a rock, here is a short synopsis of the movie.

Inspired by the classic Universal film that launched a legacy of horror, The Wolfman brings the myth of a cursed man back to its iconic origins. Oscar® winner Benicio Del Toro stars as Lawrence Talbot, a haunted nobleman lured back to his family estate after his brother vanishes. Reunited with his estranged father (Oscar® winner Anthony Hopkins), Talbot sets out to find his brother…and discovers a horrifying destiny for himself. Lawrence Talbot’s childhood ended the night his mother died. After he left the sleepy Victorian hamlet of Blackmoor, he spent decades recovering and trying to forget. But when his brother’s fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), tracks him down to help find her missing love, Talbot returns home to join the search. He learns that something with brute strength and insatiable bloodlust has been killing the villagers, and that a suspicious Scotland Yard inspector named Aberline (Hugo Weaving) has come to investigate. As he pieces together the gory puzzle, he hears of an ancient curse that turns the afflicted into werewolves when the moon is full. Now, if he has any chance at ending the slaughter and protecting the woman he has grown to love, Talbot must destroy the vicious creature in the woods surrounding Blackmoor. But as he hunts for the nightmarish beast, a simple man with a tortured past will uncover a primal side to himself…one he never imagined existed. Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III) directs The Wolfman, and six-time Oscar®-winning special effects artist Rick Baker brings his design and makeup talents to transform Del Toro into the fearsome title character.

We have also included the trailer.

Now on to the part that you all have been waiting for: how do I win? That is the easy part. The first 40 people to sign up below wins an admit “two” 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! The only rule is that if you signed up for our last screening you are not permitted to attend this screening. If we have any doubts about a name it will be removed from our listing.

This screening is now closed. Thanks for signing up!

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.

Your email will be put on a “list” at the door and you will be notified of the theater and showing time via email!

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

The monster movies are back folks, and in a very big way. Going hand in hand with the recent release of James Cameron’s Avatar trailer is the trailer for The Wolfman. A remake on the 1941 horror film, this film directed by Joe Johnston stars Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving and many others. Due out for a February 12, 2010 release date, lets not keep you waiting any longer, look at it!

With all of the online banter and mayhem following the Avatar trailer release we have some pretty sweet shots of the upcoming film, The Wolman. Check them out below and let us know what you think.

This grim look at the newest Anothy Hopkins, Benicio Del toro film looks fanatsic. Admist all of the on set rumors and issues, it looks to be a sure winner.

Stay tuned to this post also as the trailer for The Wolfman gets seen today.