Here’s a last bit of breezy entertainment as you head into the weekend: The first trailer for Miami-set dance sequel Step Up 4, AKA Step Up: Revolution, in which a new pair of star-crossed lovers leads their crew into syncopated battle against prejudice rival gangs foreclosure evil land developers. This series has wound a long, glossy path since the days of Channing Tatum b-boying in the parking lot, but hey: It’s a new Step Up movie! As long as that Moose kid and Madd Chadd show up, I’m good to go.
Of course, Jon M. Chu has moved on from the Step Up films to helm the G.I. Joe sequel (Chu directed the second and third installments of the series, making the franchise a hit) but he remains a producer with music video veteran Scott Speer in the director’s chair. (Speer previously directed the “Duet” episode of Chu’s online dance series The LXD, which inspires some faith in his eye for movement and storytelling.)
My biggest hangup about Step Up 4, however, isn’t that the two new leads, Kathryn McCormick and Ryan Guzman, are unknown — following in Step Up tradition — or that the trailer is almost too-slick looking, or that dancers on pogo legs don’t really do much for me. It’s that flash mobs are so tired already; once Justin Timberlake used them to woo Mila Kunis last year and Howie Mandel hosted a reality TV show about real people springing grandiose flash mob-gestures upon their estranged loved ones, I was kind of done with them.
Also: What is Peter Gallagher doing in this movie playing the evil…
Full Story »Oh, God, here we go again: “‘Katniss’s act of self-sacrifice [volunteering to take her sister’s place in the games] is a trigger for an entire revolution. She draws an ethical line that she won’t cross over and it serves as such a beautiful example for people,’ [director Gary] Ross said. ‘That assertion of her own individual ethics ultimately triggers a revolution just as it was one Tunisian flower vendor that led to the revolt that rifled through the Middle East last year. Or Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus. It usually comes down to an act of individual ethics that can trigger something like that.’” [LAT]
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Twentieth Century Fox debuts its first big summer blockbuster in X-Men: First Class on Friday, and it appears the studio will use that as an occasion to premiere the trailer for its other big summer blockbuster: Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Apes! Will! Rise! Click ahead to watch the evolution of the revolution.
“We call it… the cure.” Sounds serious, believable scientist James Franco! Of course, the sympathetic and ill-advised doctor that Franco is playing in Rise of the Planet of the Apes probably doesn’t realize that his research will unwittingly start the end of the world, but who’s keeping track?
Well, Ceasar, probably. For what it’s worth, the much-discussed motion-captured monkey effects done in the film to create the lead primate (played by Andy Serkis) look both silly and terrifying, sometimes within the same frame. Not that any of it really matters — when all hell breaks loose at the end of the trailer, the uncanny valley is long forgotten. In its place? Wonder about how the United States would handle an ape revolution. Seriously — would riot-gear wearing police officers really be society’s best tactic against Ceasar and his super-smart, helicopter attacking, primate buddies?
VERDICT: Not funnier a barrel of monkeys, that’s for sure.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes lifts into theaters on Aug. 5.
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