Hansel and Gretel 2.0

Remember the breadcrumbs? The ginger bread house? And those two little children?
Yeah, well, you can forget about that. There is a new version of Hansel and Gretel on its way.
The title is 'Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters' and it's exactly as (bad and weird as) it sounds. The story line says:

Catching up with Hansel and Gretel 15 years after their incident involving a gingerbread house, the siblings have evolved into bounty hunters who hunt witches.

Excuse me, but, they've evolved into bounty hunters? Seriously, that's what they make of Hansel and Gretel? Is Hollywood really so desperate for ideas that they trie just anything?

The leads of the two adorable children who are now apparantly Boba Fett and Domino Harvey will be played by Gemma Arterton (Tamara Drewe) and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker). On this I don't have much to say because I haven't seen any movies with either of them (I do see Gemma's G-Star Raw posters everywhere).

To not completely make this a complaint-post there is one thing I am excited about, Famke Janssen is going to play the witch. Now I'm not an extremely big fan of her but, she's Dutch, I'm Dutch; you've gotta have each others back, right?

Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane?

...No, it's every possible superhero you can imagine!

Following my last post, the 'Fairy-Tale Trend' now we have the 'Super-Hero Trend'!
This year four movies about guys in tight outfits who think that with 'great power comes great responsibility' are heading our way. It's: Superman, Spiderman, Batman and the X-Men (Go feminism!).
All these movies are part of an serie or of a serie reboot, and what is also a fun little detail is that despite that all these movies are American and based on American comics, all the hero's are played by men from across the ocean.
There is Henry Cavill (The Tudors) an Englishman who plays Superman in 'Superman: Man of Steel', the British Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) who will play Spiderman in 'The Amazing Spiderman'.
 Batman from 'Dark Knight Rises' is Christian Bale (from Batman, duh) from Wales and finally from X-Men: First Class we have the Scottish James McAvoy (Atonement) and the German Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Bastards) who will be playing Professor X and Magneto.

Both Spiderman and X-Men are prequels to the already existing series, and they take place when the main characters are still young and discovering their powers.
I am most looking forward to the X-Men, I've got a secret weakness for that serie, I think it's a very promising cast and I kind of like prequels; it's fun to see how they trie to explain how everything came about.

Check out the latest picture of the cast of the X-Men. At the right we have James McAvoy, the left one is Michael Fassbender and (for a little 'what the hell' moment) behind James, the blue one is Jennifer Lawrence, who's friends (I suspect) are really making fun of her now.

The 'Fairy-Tale' Trend?

 What's up with all the fairy-tale remakes? Is this the new Hollywood trend? Not one, not three but five real-life versions of classic fairy-tales are in development. Now, I don't have anything against seeing my favorite fairy-tales coming to life but what I do find a bit weird is that everybody choose the same fairy-tale! A little originality wouldn't hurt anyone!

Here I've listed the fairy-tale movies that are coming our way.

 

1.      Sleeping Beauty. This version is probably the first to come out. It is already completed and it stars Emily Browning (Sucker Punch) as Lucy. This is not the story as we all know it, the storyline reads:

‘A haunting erotic fairytale about Lucy, a young University student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of beauty and desire.’

Yeah, that definitely sounds like a kids movie.

2.      Sleeping Beauty. The second Sleeping Beauty is not in production yet. The only thing that we know is that is stars Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and that the story is told from her point of view.

‘The story is told from her point of view as she enters the dream world and has to find her way out.’

3.      Maleficent. Don’t be deceived by the name, it’s still Sleeping Beauty. This third version is set to come out in 2013 and it focuses more on the evil witch than on the sleepy princess. Nothing is set in stone but rumor has it that Angelina Jolie will play the title role.

4.      Snow White. The first Snow White stars Kristen Stewart (Twilight) as Snow White and Charlize Theron (Monster) as the Evil Queen. It is set to come out in december 2012 and the storyline says:

A huntsman is ordered to take Snow White into the woods and kill her but instead he chooses to let her go and the two are evidently chained together for part of the movie as they make their escape.

5.      Snow White. The second Snow White just recently has a lead, it's Lily Collins (The Blind Side). It will also star Julia Roberts (Notting Hill) as the Evil Queen and Armie Hammer (The Social Network) as Prince Charming, or in this case Prince Andrew Alcott. With this one, the storyline says:

A dark twist on the classic fairy tale, in which Snow White and the seven dwarfs look to reclaim their destroyed kingdom.

Which to me, sounds a little like Snow White is going to do some bad-ass fighting.

Of all these movies I’m most looking forward to seeing Sleeping Beauty 2, the version with Hailee Steinfeld. It seems like they took the classic fairy-tale, made it their own but not completely messed it up. Also, I’m a fan of Steinfeld and I’m really curious how she’s going to go from her star debut in True Grit to playing a sleepy princess.

No Strings Attached

It’s hard to criticise a romantic comedy, cause everything that is bad about it isn’t really the fault of the movie, it’s the fault of the whole genre.

No, let me rephrase that, it’s not the 'fault', it’s just the way it’s meant to be. Romantic comedies are meant to be predictable, unoriginal and packed with stars who just have to be pretty.

‘No Strings Attached’ is a perfect example of such a romantic comedy.

But even if you accept that you already know the ending and all the plot twists, it still isn’t that much fun. It has its moments, but those moments are rare and already shown in the trailer.

I don’t think that it’s the actors fault though, Ashton Kutcher is very capable of carrying a romantic comedy and I think Natalie Portman deserved to make an easy movie after ‘Black Swan’.

Nonetheless, I’m more curious about the almost exact same movie that is coming out on the 22^nd of July, ‘Friends with Benefits’ (Fun fact: ‘No Strings Attached’ was almost called ‘Friends with Benefits’, then it really would have been the same). The stars, Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, are probably slightly worse than Kutcher and Portman (Another Fun Fact: Kunis and Portman starred in ‘Black Swan’ together) but after Easy A I’m a Will Gluck fan and the trailer was simply funnier. I’ll compare them again in July.

Jennifer Lawrence stars in Hunger Games.

Jennifer Lawrence (20) is set to play in the Hunger Games.
It’s finally official.

First for everyone who doesn’t the Hunger Games (?!), it’s a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world where a Capitol suppresses all the people who live in poor districts. Every Year they force two kids from every district to compete in the Hunger Games to life and death until only one is left.

Jennifer Lawrence will play the main character Katniss Everdeen who (Spoiler Alert) volunteers for the Hunger Games in place of her younger sister.

Jennifer Lawrence’s star rose quite quickly after she was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Winter’s Bone. I’m not sure how I feel about her playing Katniss. Not that I don’t  like her. She’s a great actress who’s shown in movies such the Poker House, The Burning Plain and Winter’s Bone that she can pull of the whole dramatic thing very realistically. But on the other hand, and I’m saying this as a fan of the books, she is just so different than I imagined Katniss to be, she is older, blonder and whiter. But because I think

acting-wise her performance is going to be great  I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt. Let’s just see what hair and make-up does to her.

Before I Begin...

A couple of things about me that will explain a lot later on: I’m a girl, I’m seventeen and I’m from Holland. The fact that I’m a seventeen year old girl will explain the occasional drool over Robert Pattinson and the excitement about the last HP film. The fact that I’m Dutch will explain the inevitable grammar mistakes and lack of knowledge of English expression that will probably follow. Oh, and the weird times I post stuff (it's a 9 hour time difference).

So why am I writing this blog in English? 

Well, because I like English (believe me if you know Dutch you know that everything sounds better in English), more people speak English (actually more people speak Chinese but my Mandarin sucks) and most importantly practically everyone and everything that has to do with the two biggest film industries in the world (Bollywood, Hollywood) use/know English (I have to confess that I’m not that into Bollywood but it’s nice if there is room to expand someday).

This blog is going to be about movies (or films, I don’t know what’s the difference). Again why?

 There is probably no way to make this sound as if I also have a life but I Love Movies.

Not just in the way like: sure I like to see a movie once in a while, or sure I know who Steven Spielberg is. I’m talking about the: I watch a new movie everyday, IMDB is my homepage, tell me a movie I tell you trivia, cast, storyline and in what movies the actors have also been in, kind of way. If I didn’t have friends, social skills and other activities in my life I could have been in the Big Bang Theory of the movie nerds.

In my surroundings I’m a one of a kind, which is great because I get to awe people with my knowledge but sometimes the interest level is a little low. So I thought, on internet people are just a mouse click away from you and there are more of them, so there must be someone who is interested there….right?

In this blog I will write about films I’ve seen, events that happened in movie land or the stars I’m interested in.

(Warning: What you will not find here are posts about horror movies, I’m a chicken, kind of a wuss and I don’t watch movies with massacres of mutilations such as Saw (seriously, what’s the fun in that?!) and Scream.)