Eat Pray Love

This weekend, the chickiest chick flick of all time-- Julia Roberts' Eat, Pray, Love-- will be unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. The film stars Roberts as a woman whose life has fallen apart: her job's in jeopardy, her bills have stacked up to an unreasonable past-due amount, something bad happens with her marriage-- you get the idea. Well, what else can this woman do but the most likely, reasonable, relatable thing in the world: she packs her bags, heads overseas, and just kinda spends a stretch of time "finding herself" while eating a lot of gelato. Yeah, it's that kinda movie. Anyway, comedian Jim Norton took a crack at reviewing the film, and we're willing to bet that this is the best review we're ever going to see for Eat, Pray, Love. See it for yourselves below, my gentle Examiner readers...

If you're a comedy fan, then you know who Jim Norton is. If you're a filmgoer, then you've probably already been exposed to the trailers for Julia Roberts' Eat, Pray, Love (or if you're a TV viewer, as commercials for this film air approximately every six seconds on some channel, somewhere). If you're a guy, you're probably dreading your girlfriend dragging you to see the film-- instead of Scott Pilgrim VS. The World, which you wanna see-- this weekend. If you're a girl, you may have already fallen for this nonsense. Luckily, comedian Jim Norton's here to straighten everyone out:

Flipped

Reverse is a soft, history overwhelmingly safe and innocent little about this critical moment between childhood and adolescence. It follows a boy and a girl, each about 13 years, grew up in the 1960s.

Even if they have been neighbors for years, they realize they know nothing of each other, simply because they have never taken the time to ask, which adds to their already mixed romantic feelings. The recurring theme throughout the film is that perception evokes different truths and truths are much more difficult to decipher when youare a child.

The film is directed and co-author: Rob Reiner, working on a novel by Wendelin Van Draanen. Reiner as a director is accustomed to this time. His Stand by Me (1986), based on the novel by Stephen King, took place in 1959 and focuses on four young boys searching for the body.

This film is darker and more dramatic shades and flipped though not as emotionally compelling or serious the subject is also lighter. The key to the success of the film is the way Reiner makes the story of his people, and not its validity.

He could have easily succumbed to the temptation of showing all the characteristics that place in 1960 – sets, costumes, soundtrack – but he uses these factors, only the state of mind and mood, while the characters in the story-driven.

Megan Fox Says 'Fathom' Film Will Happen

Speaking with MTV News, Fox confirmed that "Fathom" (based on the Aspen Comics series created by the late Michael Turner) is still in the works and will eventually get made — even if that means someone else has to take on the lead role of Aspen Matthews.

"That's going to happen even if I have to step away from it and give it to someone else," she told MTV. "That movie will happen, just because I love it and it needs to happen."

Of course, none of that's to say that Fox has left the production — and if she did, you can be sure that she wouldn't surrender the role to "someone who doesn't give a s--- about it." But things seem to be moving along just fine at the moment, as the actress revealed that "Fathom" is currently in the scripting stage.

"They're still working on the script and getting that together," she said. "That's in the early fetal pre-production stages."

Beyond "Fathom," Fox addressed the recent rumors of her involvement with "Red Sonja," the delayed (and possibly scrapped) comic book adaptation from producer Robert Rodriguez and actress Rose McGowan.

"Is that coming back around? There were talks of it a while ago, but as far as I knew, someone else was already doing it," she said, speaking of the Rodriguez/McGowan version. "I didn't realize that was open again."

I am curious to see what will happen to the possibly soon-to-be-careerless Megan over the next few months. As you know, she was recently let go/quit from "Transformers 3." Not surprisingly, she didn't have a draw outside the robot franchise with "Jennifer's Body" (although that could also be blamed on the quality of that film). And "Jonah Hex" has really bad buzz surrounding it (although Warners is now trying really hard to take that bad buzz away).
Megan is not really a great actress, so once you get past her looks, I'm afraid that she just won't be around for much longer. Losing out on the sure thing that is "Transformers 3" just might be the end of her career. She seriously should just pose nude somewhere or show her bobbies in a flick or sleep with me for five bucks. Might as well go out in style (there's a really nice Del Taco by my apartment, Megan).

Equalizer

Russell Crowe may soon go back to making movies people want to see. Or at least he’ll make movies we haven’t already seen like, you know, Robin Hood. The LA Times says he’s set to star in The Equalizer, and yep, it’s based on the TV series from the 80s.

Hold on, before you start complaining about television shows being turned into movies. The Equalizer isn’t exactly The A-Team. There’s nothing iconic, or even particularly memorable about it. That means they’ll have plenty of room to do pretty much whatever the hell they want with it. And the premise of the show, well that’s good.

The series was about an aging New York vigilante named Robert McCall. His background was mysterious, but suitably violent, resulting in a show where a man sought penance for his vicious past by righting wrongs, usually with a gun. It’s a part that screams Russell Crowe, and it seems like just the part he needs after forcing us to watch him do increasingly lame movies recently. This could be Russell Crowe’s Batman, and to me that sounds pretty badass.

The movie isn't ready to go quite yet. They don't have a director or even a studio, for that matter. But with Russell Crowe's name to put on the marquee, that seems sure to follow in short order.

Halle Berry to Face Sharks in Dark Tide

Halle Berry is in talks to go swimming with the fishes — Great White sharks, to be precise. The next project she's looking at is Dark Tide, an action-thriller that will follow "a diving instructor who returns to the deep after a near-fatal incident with a Great White shark." The movie will begin filming in South Africa later this year.
The last movie I saw that starred Halle Berry was Things We Lost in the Fire, which I think showcased her talent well, but I'll be excited to see her in new projects. It looks like the next one to hit theaters will be Frankie and Alice, in which Berry plays "a young woman with multiple personality disorder who struggles to remain her true self and not give in to her racist alter-personality." Yikes. From that to swimming with Great Whites, Berry's life is all drama.

Empires of the deep

New set photos of the upcoming 3D underwater-based fantasy film, Empire of the Deep have been released. The photos show the colorfully dressed mermaids and many other underwater creatures, including the good and the bad in their unique costumes.
Starring Jae Choe, Sam Voutas, Alec Su, Steve Polites, Maxx Maulion, Jean-Michel Casanova, William Shriver and Liang Yanfei, it directed by Michael French under the script of Randall Frakes and Jiang Hongyu. It is scheduled for limited release somewhere in 2011. The movie follows the mermaid legends which have existed for over thousands of years in this world, magic and demons and about one man’s struggle against his own destiny. Many of us still have a feeling that they exist and we could meet them some day, although we do know for a fact that it is unlikely.
As far as the legends are concerned this beautiful race displays their seductive nature when it comes to humans via their songs. However many questions have remained unanswered, about them. Empires of the Deep will provide these answers, reveal the hidden secrets and disclose much more relevant fantasies. Empires of the Deep involves underwater creatures like mysterious mermaids, giants, an evil mage and numerous undersea kingdoms and races.
A young man with a hidden power meets the mermaid by coincidence when he searches on a temple that vanished overnight. The meeting gives rise to a series of events that leads to the very foundation of these exquisitely beautiful creatures’ world and an unlikely love story between them begins. Furthermore, the movie also explores the characteristics and capabilities of mermaids like how their love could turn out to be true, bewitching or deadly.
Empires of the Deep will, all in all, keep the attention of audience drawn with its amazing choreography and tremendous underwater fight scenes which have been shot using a new style of huge action set-pieces. It is being said that the movie will franchise comic books, animation and online games and also gifts and theme parks which are currently under development.

Wikus Packs His Bags for District 10

The boys and girls over at MarketSaw have an insider deep within the walls of WETA it would seem. If you’re new to movies, WETA is the digital effects house kick-started by Peter Jackson that handled the Lord of the Rings trilogy and pretty much every awesome effect since then that wasn’t done by LucasFilm.
Rumor is the WETA Workshop is getting ready to explore (working title) District 10, the sequel movie and relocation camp of District 9. All we really think we know right now is that Peter Jackson will produce and Neil Blomkamp will be back in the director’s chair come October.
Now, considering that this is still April, we can probably assume that District 10 is only in some level of scripting. Pre-production usually doesn’t kick in this far out (six months) unless you’re making something huge. Likely an early draft of the script or a detailed outline has been approved and a start date set. Over the next few months the script will undoubtedly be rewritten, or written.
When District 9 first blew us away, talk of a sequel began immediately thanks to Blomkamp’s expressed desire to make on. My opinion then, as now, is that if the original producer (Jackson), the original writer (Blomkamp), the original director (Blomkamp again!), and the original star (Copley) want to make a sequel, then hell yeah let’s do it.

Trailer