August 2013: Movie Release Highlights

Posted on August 1, 2013 at 8:00 am

Studios often wait for August to release the films they think won’t get much of an audience, but this year August has some releases that could end up on the end of the year top ten lists. I’m especially looking forward to:

August 9

“The Spectacular Now” Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley star in this teenage romance, one of the most acclaimed independent films of the year.

“Elysium” this dystopic sci-fi film from director Neill Blomkamp (“District 9”) stars Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in a story that addresses contemporary issues like globalization, immigration, and income inequality.

August 16

“Lee Daniels’ The Butler” Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whitaker star in the story of an African-American butler in the White House who sees history as he works for eight Presidential terms, from Eisenhower to Reagan.

“Jobs” Ashton Kutcher stars in this biopic about the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs.

August 23

“Austenland” Keri Russell visits a Jane Austen theme park. I want to go to there.

“The World’s End” The “Shawn of the Dead”/”Hot Fuzz” crowd present a pub crawl to the end of the world.

And there are some that just look like a lot of fun like “2 Guns” with Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, “Paranoia,” based on the Joseph Finder novel, and the new Percy Jackson film.

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Trailer: Anything Is Possible

Posted on July 31, 2013 at 3:54 pm

The gifted young pianist Ethan Bortnick stars in “Anything is Possible,” about a young boy who becomes separated from his mother, Army Lieutenant Margaret Peters (Lacy Chabert), when she goes missing during a tsunami rescue mission in Japan. Back home in Detroit, Child Care Services threatens to take him away from the only father he knows (Jonathan Bennett) because he isn’t his biological father. Nathan runs away, discovering his musical gift, a sense of belonging and his purpose along the way.

Bortnick also co-wrote all of the songs in the film and scored all the background music. The film and soundtrack will be available on DVD September 24.

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Trailer: The Box Trolls

Posted on July 31, 2013 at 8:00 am

Laika, the stop-motion animation studio behind two of my favorite films of the past ten years, “ParaNorman” and “Coraline,” has released the teaser trailer for its 2014 release, “The Box Trolls,” and it looks amazing. Nice nod to non-traditional families as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NqKFVOB_6o

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Trailer: “Terms and Conditions May Apply” — a Documentary About What Corporations Know About You and How They Use It

Posted on July 30, 2013 at 3:59 pm

Are you worried about what the NSA knows about you? Then this is ten times scarier.

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Trailer: When Comedy Went to School

Posted on July 29, 2013 at 8:00 am

This documentary is a portrait of the generation of the mid-century Jewish comics that includes Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Jackie Mason, Mort Sahl, and Jerry Stiller, who appear telling jokes and telling their stories. And it is the story of the culture that produced them, starting in upstate New York’s Catskill Mountains, aka the Borscht Belt (think “Dirty Dancing”), where Jewish immigrants transformed lush farmland into the 20th century’s largest resort complex. Those Catskill hotels and bungalow colonies provided the setting for a remarkable group of young Jewish-American comedians to hone their craft and become worldwide legends.

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