Hitch a ride on The Magic Bus

I had come across the The Merry Band of Pranksters on my travels around the Internet. They were a bunch of, well... That's had to describe so just watch the trailer below.

In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus. Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, shooting footage on 16MM, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. With MAGIC TRIP, Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage by the Kesey family. They worked with the Film Foundation, HISTORY and the UCLA Film Archives to restore over 100 hours of film and audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history.

Tripping into UK cinemas 18th November, and DVD and Blu-ray 28th November.

Are you up to the Tower Heist Challenge?

Can you work your way to Arthur Shaw’s penthouse by completing all 4 levels of the Tower Heist Challenge? Crack the safe and walk away with the ultimate prize.

You could be in the chance of winning a luxury weekend in London, including travel, 2 nights stay at a top hotel and £250 spending money!

The Tower Heist Challenge is a four step interactive Facebook game which requires users to complete a series of tasks in order to work their way up the tower to Arthur Shaw’s Penthouse.

Levels will be unlocked over the coming weeks. Level 1, ‘Select your team’ is live now! Subsequent levels will test players memory, detective skills and safe cracking ability!

Everyone that completes all four levels and cracks the safe will be entered into a prize draw to win a luxury weekend in London!

In addition you can even win a home entertainment system now with The Sun Online! Enter The Sun competition here!

Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy lead an all-star cast in Tower Heist, a comedy caper about working stiffs who seek revenge on the Wall Street swindler who stiffed them. After the workers at a luxury Central Park condominium discover the penthouse billionaire has stolen their retirement, they plot the ultimate revenge: a heist to reclaim what he took from them.

Queens native Josh Kovacs (Stiller) has managed one of the most luxurious and well-secured residences in New York City for more than a decade. Under his watchful eye, nothing goes undetected. In the swankiest unit atop Josh’s building, Wall Street titan Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is under house arrest after being caught stealing two billion from his investors. The hardest hit among those he defrauded? The tower staffers whose pensions he was entrusted to manage.

With only days before Arthur gets away with the perfect crime, Josh’s crew turns to petty crook Slide (Murphy) to plan the nearly impossible... to steal what they are sure is hidden in Arthur’s guarded condo. Though amateurs, these rookie thieves know the building better than anyone. Turns out they’ve been casing the place for years, they just didn’t know it.

Find out more on facebook or at the official website
Breaking into UK Cinemas November 4, 2011
 © UNIVERSAL PICTURES 2011

A little more Haywire

Momentum has just sent over the first UK version of the trailer. We have already seen one trailer for the film. That one I have to guess was the US, domestic, version.

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Mallory Kane (Carano) is a highly trained operative who works for a government security contractor in the dirtiest, most dangerous corners of the world. After successfully freeing a Chinese journalist held hostage, she is double crossed and left for dead by someone close to her in her own agency.

Suddenly the target of skilled assassins who knew her every move, Mallory must find the truth in order to stay alive.

Haywire hits UK cinemas January 20, 2012 from Momentum Pictures.

Dr Seuss' The Lorax

The images below first appeared yesterday as an exclusive on The Sun's website. now us mere mortals have the opportunity to show you the images.

I do love Dr Seuss' books but some of the films have been quite a let down. When The Grinch came out in 2000 I was overjoyed that they got it right. Then Hollywood tried to do The Cat In The Hat as a live action film and that failed totally - how do you translate a dozen pages into a 90 minute film? Answer - so badly that it got nominated for multiple Razzie awards! Not only that, and to add insult to injury,  the Seuss family has stated that there will be no more live action films based on his work.

Seuss works best as animation as you can get the characters exact and we then don't need to worry about getting them to interact with "real" characters.

 

 

The 3D-CGI feature Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax is an adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ classic tale of a forest creature who shares the enduring power of hope. The animated adventure follows the journey of a boy as he searches for the one thing that will enable him to win the affection of the girl of his dreams. To find it he must discover the story of the Lorax, the grumpy yet charming creature who fights to protect his world.

Danny DeVito will lend his vocal talents to the iconic title character of the Lorax, while Ed Helms will voice the enigmatic Once-ler. Also bringing their talents to the film are global superstars Zac Efron as Ted, the idealistic young boy who searches for the Lorax, and Taylor Swift as Ashley, the girl of Ted’s dreams. Rob Riggle will play financial king O’Hare, and beloved actress Betty White will portray Ted’s wise Grammy Norma.

Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax is the third feature created by Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment (Despicable Me, Hop).

The Lorax is in UK cinemas from July 27, 2012

Breaking Dawn, the new images

E1 Entertainment has just released a new set of images for the first part of the final Twilight films.

They met in TWILIGHT, parted in NEW MOON and fought together in ECLIPSE...

Now, in the penultimate film in the epic saga, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) will finally vow to be together forever as they become husband and wife.

In The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 , Bella is awkwardly adapting to life as Edward’s fiancée. As Alice, the Cullens and even Renee happily get swept up in preparations for the wedding of the century, the 18-year old Bella contemplates life as an immortal and the realisation of leaving behind her friends and family.

During an idyllic honeymoon, the happy couple finally succumb to passion but the unexpected happens as Bella discovers she’s carrying a baby and this pregnancy is accelerating fast. As Jacob instinctively protects his friend, his wolf pack divides and Jacob, Bella and Edward all have to make decisions that will change their lives forever whilst contending with a threat that could destroy their world.

The suspenseful and deeply romantic Breaking Dawn Part 1 continues the epic tale of supernatural fantasy and passionate love that has made The Twilight Saga a worldwide phenomenon.

Ripping into UK cinemas on November 18, 2011

Arthur Christmas get even more images

Sony has released, probably, the last set of images before the film hits UK cinema screens. As always, click on any of the images to embiggen them.

The 3D, CG-animated family comedy Arthur Christmas, an Aardman production for Sony Pictures Animation, at last reveals the incredible, never-before seen answer to every child's question: 'So how does Santa deliver all those presents in one night?' The answer: Santa's exhilarating, ultra-high-tech operation hidden beneath the North Pole. But at the heart of the film is a story with the ingredients of a Christmas classic - a family in a state of comic dysfunction and an unlikely hero, Arthur, with an urgent mission that must be completed before Christmas morning dawns.

Voiced by James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy.

In UK and Irish cinemas November 11, 2011
© Sony Pictures

Sherlock gets a new trailer

It's Sherlock Day today. Not only do we get new character posters but a brand new trailer to go with them.

Robert Downey Jr. reprises his role as the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, and Jude Law returns as his formidable colleague, Dr. Watson, in “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.”

Sherlock Holmes has always been the smartest man in the room…until now. There is a new criminal mastermind at large — Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) — and not only is he Holmes’ intellectual equal, but his capacity for evil, coupled with a complete lack of conscience, may actually give him an advantage over the renowned detective.

When the Crown Prince of Austria is found dead, the evidence, as construed by Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan), points to suicide. But Sherlock Holmes deduces that the prince has been the victim of murder—a murder that is only one piece of a larger and much more portentous puzzle, designed by one Professor Moriarty.

Mixing business with pleasure, Holmes tracks the clues to an underground gentlemen’s club, where he and his brother, Mycroft Holmes (Stephen Fry) are toasting Dr. Watson on his last night of bachelorhood. It is there that Holmes encounters Sim (Noomi Rapace), a Gypsy fortune teller, who sees more than she is telling and whose unwitting involvement in the prince’s murder makes her the killer’s next target. Holmes barely manages to save her life and, in return, she reluctantly agrees to help him.

The investigation becomes ever more dangerous as it leads Holmes, Watson and Sim across the continent, from England to France to Germany and finally to Switzerland. But the cunning Moriarty is always one step ahead as he spins a web of death and destruction — all part of a greater plan that, if he succeeds, will change the course of history.

Find out more at the official website or on Facebook
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows sneaks into cinemas December 16, 2011
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