Friday, November 22, 2013

Emma Watson tells ‘icky’ movie joke


Emma Watson tells the 'most icky' joke in This Is the End
The 23-year-old actress plays a fictionalised version of herself in the black comedy about a group of friends in the aftermath of a global apocalypse.
Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson and Michael Cera all star as themselves in the movie, with co-writer and director Seth praising Emma's unknown comedic abilities.
'We wanted to have some people nobody would expect to be with us and every time someone asks, ‘Why the hell is Emma Watson in the movie?’, that’s why Emma Watson is in the movie. We thought it was funny to have someone who was the last person you would expect to be associated with us. And she was great,' he gushed in an interview with British newspaper The Telegraph.
'On her first day I think she was a little thrown by how loose we are with our material because I don’t think they did a lot of improvising on those Harry Potter movies, but she very quickly got in the swing of it and was improvising as much as everyone else. One of her jokes is probably one of the most icky in the entire movie and she fully commits to it and it’s one of the biggest laughs.'
Seth has starred in a string of hit comedy movies including Knocked Up, Superbad and Pineapple Express.
The actor has revealed the secret to his success.
'We make movies for us. When we made Superbad we were like 18 or 19 years old and we were the people that the movie was intended for. Pineapple Express is about guys in their late twenties who don’t know what to do with their lives and that’s who we were when we made that movie. This movie is about guys in their thirties who are kind of stuck between their old lives and their new lives,' he said.
'So it’s important to us to make movies that are targeted towards us and not towards other people.'

Pakistan bans Indian Hindu-Muslim romance film ‘Raanjhanaa’


ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has banned an Indian film about the love affair of a Muslim-Hindu couple on the grounds that it could offend viewers in the conservative Islamic republic, officials said Friday.
"Raanjhanaa" was scheduled for release in June, but Pakistan's Film Censor Board refused to clear it for cinema showings.
"The censor board did not clear this movie because of its controversial story," Arshad Ali, a senior government official and chairman of the board, told AFP.
"The board recommended that the movie's storyline could offend the majority Muslim population in the country and a law and order situation could arise in response," he said.
According to press reports the film is the love story of a Hindu man and a Muslim woman.
While a huge array of Western and Bollywood films can be bought over the counter on pirated DVD in Pakistan, the censor board routinely bans productions deemed too sensitive for cinemas.
Pakistani movie distributors boycotted Hollywood film "Zero Dark Thirty" about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US troops in Pakistan on May 2, 2011 to the country's humiliating.
In 2012, Pakistan banned Agent Vinod, India's answer to James Bond in which an Indian secret agent thwarts Pakistani spies from detonating a nuclear bomb in Delhi.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from British rule in 1947.
In 2010, censors also refused permission for Indian film "Tere bin Laden", which poked fun at bin Laden. The board claimed it would incite suicide attacks.
Pakistan's own film industry declined in recent years, finding itself unable to compete with the huge popularity of Bollywood productions. (AFP)

Cameron to release three ‘Avatar’ sequels


LOS ANGELES: Canadian director James Cameron is making three sequels to his film "Avatar," which will be released between 2016 and 2018, Fox Studios announced Thursday.
The 2009 film is the highest-grossing movie on record, having netted $2.8 billion at the box office worldwide.
Cameron had originally planned for only two sequels. "In writing the new films, I've come to realize that 'Avatar's' world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen," Cameron said in a statement.
The movie featured Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana and told the story of a paraplegic soldier sent to the fictitious planet of Pandora, which is coveted for its natural resources.
The three sequels will be filmed simultaneously beginning in 2014, Fox said in a statement. They will be released in December of 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Cameron, who wrote "Titanic" and "Avatar" by himself, has taken on four screenwriters for the project. Josh Friedman ("War of the World"), Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver ("Dawn of the Planet of the Apes") and Shane Salerno ("Armageddon" and "Savages") will work on the sequels.
"We at the studio have no higher priority, and can feel no greater joy, than enabling Jim to continue and expand his vision of the world of 'Avatar,'" said Fox Film chief Jim Gianopulos in a statement.
According to trade magazine Variety, the budget for the three films could reach $1 billion.

Chennai Express’ smashes Indian box office records


MUMBAI: Bollywood movie "Chennai Express", starring Shah Rukh Khan, has smashed box office records in just 21 days since it opened to become the most profitable movie in India, data showed Friday.
The film, which has a typical Bollywood mix of action, romance and comedy, has overtaken previous record-holder "3 Idiots" which appeared in 2009 to collect at least 2.11 billion rupees ($30 million) domestically, according to trade weekly Box Office India.
The co-producers of "Chennai Express", Disney UTV, put the figure at a slightly higher 2.18 billion rupees.
In India, unlike Hollywood, there is no central data service for box office takings so there is often a discrepancy in the figures, but both estimates surpass the domestic collection of "3 Idiots", which made a net total of 2.02 billion rupees.
"'Chennai Express' has broken all records for domestic business and is still gong strong in its theatrical run. A good film, good timing and good luck have contributed to its success," Vajir Singh, editor of Box Office India, told AFP.
He said sales were buoyed by a number of public holidays in the first three weeks of release and a strong promotion effort by superstar Khan.
Also starring popular actress Deepika Padukone, the film tells the story of a 40-year-old man who gets embroiled in the dealings of a south Indian don when he rescues his runaway daughter from thugs aboard the Chennai Express train to southern India.
Directed by Rohit Shetty, the film was released in more than 3,500 cinemas in India -- more than double the number in which "3 Idiots" opened in 2009.
"We have pushed the film across language barriers into regions like Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala where Hindi is not the primary language. This film has been appreciated by families and has a repeat audience," said Gaurav Verma, director of Indian distributions at Disney UTV.
The film may also break international Bollywood records. It is reportedly the mostly widely released Bollywood film of all time, and has already made $16.8 million abroad in gross box office collections, according to the producers.
"3 Idiots", a coming-of-age comic-drama starring Aamir Khan, collected $23.90 million abroad, according to Box Office India, making it the Indian highest grosser abroad and overall.
In a recent interview with AFP, Shah Rukh Khan said he was not concerned with box office records.
"I cannot be going by that standard. I am the creative guy. I am an actor first and last, I don't think like that," he said. (AFP)