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China's box office soared 27 percent in 2013

By Grady Smith on Jan 2, 2014 at 4:58PM

The Chinese box office continued its remarkable evolution in 2013 — and it thrived thanks to Chinese-made pictures, not just Hollywood films. According to Chinese market researcher Ent Group, the country’s box office revenues reached $3.6 billion last year, up 27 percent from 2012′s $2.7 billion mark. China, which passed Japan in 2012 to become the second-largest movie market in the world, is now poised to surpass the U.S. by 2020 as the most lucrative film market on Earth.

Domestically produced pictures made up the majority of China’s revenues, accounting for approximately 59 percent of grosses. Action comedy Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons was the top-performing film of the year, grossing $207 million total. Only three Hollywood films finished in the Top 10: Iron Man 3 ($121 million), Pacific Rim ($115 million), and Gravity ($73 milion). Notably, all three spectacles made a special point of incorporating Chinese elements into their plots — whether by shooting additional action scenes in China, letting a Chinese fighter-robot punch a slimy kaiju, or by having Sandra Bullock reach a Chinese space station.
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Check out the mayhem-filled trailer for 'The Raid 2: Berandal' -- VIDEO

By Clark Collis on Jan 2, 2014 at 1:42PM

Are you the kind of person who likes to start the year with calming thoughts of cute kittens, beautiful sunsets, and scenarios in which someone isn’t getting savagely beaten by a metal baseball bat? Well, good for you! We would, however, suggest that you don’t watch the new, mayhem-filled trailer for The Raid 2: Berandal, writer-director Gareth Evans’ follow-up to his much loved 2011 actioner.

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Producers Guild nominations: Who was left out?

By Jeff Labrecque on Jan 2, 2014 at 1:23PM

Image Credit: Warner Bros.

The Producers Guild of America has accurately forecast the last six Best Picture Oscar winners, so it was good news for 10 films that were nominated today for the PGA’s Darryl F. Zanuck Award. While Gravity, 12 Years a Slave, and American Hustle were among the films that made the cut, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Butler, and Fruitvale Station did not. Last year, eight of the 10 movies that received nods from the PGA went on to earn Oscar nominations for Best Picture.

Fruitvale will go home with a special award when the hardware is handed out on Jan. 19. The movie from first-time filmmaker Ryan Coogler is the recipient of this year’s Stanley Kramer Award. The Producers Guild will also honor Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson (David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures), Robert Iger (Milestone Award), Peter Jackson and Joe Letteri (Vanguard Award), Chuck Lorre (Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television), and Chris Meledandri (Visionary Award).

Click below for the entire movie list, as well as the PGA nominations in TV: READ FULL STORY

Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron find 'A Million Ways to Die in the West': See the first photo

By Hillary Busis on Jan 2, 2014 at 9:47AM

And now for something completely different: Seth MacFarlane wrote and directed a western! Starring Charlize Theron, Neil Patrick Harris, Amanda Seyfried… and himself!

A Million Ways to Die in the West, or Sausage Curls: The Movie, casts MacFarlane as Albert, a humble sheep farmer who finds himself humiliated when his girlfriend (Seyfried) leaves him for the dapper gent who runs their town’s local “moustachery” (Harris, natch). Luckily, he learns to find his courage when he meets a more age-appropriate love interest (Theron), the mysterious wife of an infamous outlaw.

Check below to see all four members of the film’s main love square in character. If we know MacFarlane — and we think we do — it’s safe to guess that this confrontation leads into a lavish musical number, right? (Perhaps an updated version of “The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends”?)

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Marvel unveils its 'Guardians of the Galaxy' -- PHOTO

By Jeff Labrecque on Jan 2, 2014 at 9:01AM

Image Credit: Marvel

They’re not the usual suspects when it comes to your conventional superhero movie, but Marvel has unveiled its Guardians of the Galaxy lineup. Zoe Saldana and Chris Pratt are recognizable enough as Gamora and Peter Quill. In the middle is Bradley Cooper — or at least a raccoon named Rocket voiced by the American Hustle star. Wrestler Dave Bautista is the guy who resembles Vin Diesel, aka Drax the Destroyer, while the real Vin Diesel plays Groot, the tree-like fella on the right.

Disney also released a synopsis to help get audiences up to speed long before the movie opens on Aug. 1. READ FULL STORY

Oscar-nominated actress Juanita Moore dies at 99

By Associated Press on Jan 1, 2014 at 6:23PM

Image Credit: Everett Collection

Juanita Moore, a groundbreaking actress and an Academy Award nominee for her role as Lana Turner’s black friend in the classic weeper Imitation of Life, has died.

Actor Kirk Kelleykahn, her grandson, said that Moore collapsed and died Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99, according to Kelleykahn. Accounts of her age have differed over the years.

Moore was only the fifth black performer to be nominated for an Oscar, receiving the nod for the glossy Douglas Sirk film that became a big hit and later gained a cult following. The 1959 tearjerker, based on a Fannie Hurst novel and a remake of a 1934 film, tells the story of a struggling white actress’ rise to stardom, her friendship with a black woman and how they team up to raise their daughters as single mothers.
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'The Amazing Spider-man 2' teaser debuts on New Year's Eve with glimpse of Times Square brawl

By Maricela Gonzalez on Jan 1, 2014 at 1:27PM

Your friendly neighborhood Spider-man kicks off the new year with a new teaser of The Amazing Spider-man 2, which debuted in Times Square during the New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Comics legend — and Spider-man co-creator — Stan Lee introduces the clip, which features Spider-man (Andrew Garfield) battling a plethora of villains including Electro (Jamie Foxx), the Rhino (Paul Giamatti), and a mysterious figure on a familiar-looking hover board.

Directed by Marc Webb, the superhero sequel stars Garfield as the web-slinger and young New Yorker Peter Parker and Emma Stone as scientist and Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy.

Check out the new footage here:
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Leonardo DiCaprio defends 'Wolf of Wall Street': 'We're not condoning this behavior, we're indicting it'

By Pamela Gocobachi on Dec 30, 2013 at 8:10PM

The public seems to be torn on Martin Scorsese’s latest film venture, The Wolf of Wall Street. While some are praising the three-hour film, which takes a hard look at American greed, naysayers fear that the film focuses too much on celebrating the shallow lifestyle of convicted stock market manipulator Jordan Belfort.

Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Belfort in the new Scorsese film, however, says that those who believe that The Wolf of Wall Street is condoning such behavior may be misunderstanding the true message of the film.
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Critical Mass: Bears and bulls wage war over 'Wolf of Wall Street'

By Jeff Labrecque on Dec 30, 2013 at 4:55PM

Image Credit: Mary Cybulski

“It’s too long!” “It’s obscene!” “It’s Marty’s best since Goodfellas!” “It’s shameful!” “It’s hilarious!”

By now, you probably know that Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is this season’s most polarizing film. Dropped on Christmas Day in the midst of Oscar season, the debauched tale about Wall Street swindler Jordan Belfort has pushed critics into two camps: it’s either a worthy companion piece to Goodfellas about white-collar greed, or a misguided, misogynistic opus that glorifies everything it claims to abhor. No one seems to be saying, “Um, it was okay.”

Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance, however, is something most everyone agrees upon. After Django Unchained and the Wolf, it’s going to be difficult for some to look at Titanic the same way again — but he’s great and fascinating in the way Jack Nicholson was great and fascinating during his historic early 1970′s run. As Belfort, “he gives a hell of a performance that’s electrifyingly loose, perversely funny, and dripping with jerk charisma,” says EW’s Chris Nashawaty. “It says something about DiCaprio’s oily charm that you almost want him to get away with it.”

Maybe you’ve already seen the movie and just want to see the pundits go at it. Or maybe you wisely chose Saving Mr. Banks for your family’s Christmas Day movie selection, slyly postponing Wolf for yourself the day after grandmom flies home. Either way, click below to see bull and bear critics wage war over The Wolf of Wall Street. READ FULL STORY

Road to Sundance: Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the 'Don' of the festival -- VIDEO

By Jeff Labrecque on Dec 30, 2013 at 2:18PM

Image Credit: Daniel McFadden

Every Monday until the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, EW is celebrating a great success story from independent film’s most prestigious showcase. So far, we’ve revisited Lee Daniel’s Precious , Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, Greg Mottola’s Adventureland, Today, we look back at Don Jon, the 2013 film from Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The Sundance Film Festival is the place first-time directors aspire to go in order to be discovered. But sometimes, a rookie filmmaker arrives in Utah with a certain amount of fame already to his credit. Take Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for example, who premiered his first feature, then-titled Don Jon’s Addiction, at the 2013 festival. If his name wasn’t enough — as director and star — the movie also featured Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore; so even though it was “independent” in scale, it wasn’t exactly a make-or-break venture by some guy living out of his car.

But in other ways, Don Jon (as it was renamed for its theatrical release) was the epitome of what Sundance is all about. Gordon-Levitt, for all his success, is a Sundance kid. Not only did he launch his hitRECord website at the festival in 2010, but he played the boyhood version of Robert Redford’s narrator in A River Runs Through It. Since then, he’s been a major Sundance player, starring in festival movies like Mysterious Skin, Brick, and (500) Days of Summer. Throw in the film’s provocative subject matter — porn addiction — and Don Jon was as “Sundance” as any movie in recent memory.

In our clip from Sundance below, Gordon-Levitt and co-star Tony Danza discuss their characters and how media shape our obsessions. READ FULL STORY

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