How to Train Your Dragon 2 Teaser Trailer

UK Release Date: 4th July 2013

Stars: Dean DeBlois (director), Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kit Harington, America Ferrera.

Plot: Five years after the events of the first film, the once land locked Vikings are now on the backs of dragons and their world has become bigger. As Hiccup’s curiosity grows the map expands and the Vikings come across new people and new dragons, discovering a larger conflict between mankind and dragonkind which Hiccup is inevitably at the centre of.

With sequels to animated films being all the rage these days with the likes of Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 it should come as no surprise that the universally adored How to Train Your Dragon is getting the sequel treatment (trilogy treatment really with a third installment slated for 2016 release). Out of the three original films (HTTYD, Monsters Inc. and Despicable Me) I felt that HTTYD was the weakest, but with the most potential for more stories to be told, leaving me with the feeling that this could be the best animated sequel since the Toy Story films.

However, the teaser trailer for How to Train Your Dragon 2 doesn’t give a lot away. As has become something of a trend recently, this is just one sequence from the film put into two minutes just to give the audience a peek at their old friends.

As we can see Toothless and Hiccup are still working together and Hiccup is clearly advancing Viking technology at a great pace. A glimpse at the new teenage Hiccup is something for fans to get excited about as the changed between when the original film took place and this one should be an interesting point. I look forward to seeing more beautiful footage and finding out more plot details.

Incredible Red Band Trailer for Movie 43

UK Release Date: 1st February 2013.

Stars: You name it, they’ve got it: Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Chloe Moretz, Seann William Scott, Richard Gere, Emma Stone, Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, Naomi Watts, Gerard Butler, Kristen Bell, Uma Thurman, Justin Long, Halle Berry, Stephen Merchant, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Josh Duhamel, Liev Schreiber… and the list goes on.

Movie 43 is an ensemble comedy intertwining the stories of several different characters. These types of movies almost never go down well with critics or audience’s alike, but that is because most of them are romantic films and romance requires backstory and depth that ensemble films don’t usually allow for. Comedy allows for people to come in, make a joke, then get out as quick as possible and they’ve had an impact on the audience so this could work!

It’s cast list is huge and is jam packed with stars of past and present, both huge blockbuster names and those actors you recognise from loads of different things but never actually bother to look them up. And with this huge cast comes plenty of directors too including Elizabeth Banks, James Gunn, Brett Ratner and and NINE more! Clearly a lot of effort has gone into this film and there must be something in the script that has attracted so many fantastic actors and actresses to the same project!

This is the red band trailer which are always better for adult comedies as it gives you a true sense of the jokes that will be flung at audiences; you’ve got everything in there from sex jokes, excrement jokes, puberty and even a little gentle racism. Like with the cast and directors, they’ve left nothing to the imagination. I found the trailer to be really really funny and I hope you all do too, but as always I have my doubts about comedy films and ensemble films but all signs suggest promise for Movie 43.

Is Matthew McConaughey Finally Taking His Acting Career Seriously?

Matthew McConaughey is a pretty big name actor if you think about it. If you think of romantic comedies then his name will be one of the first few you associate with the genre, along with Jennifer Aniston and Katherine Heigl. Funnily enough, if you also think of plain bad films (and I’m talking really bad, not bad but enjoyable, just bad) then Matthew McConaughey must also be synonymous with that too! He does however, have a huge legion of fans, mainly of the female gender and probably because of his looks rather than his acting ability, but you would be hard pressed to find a man who counts Matthew McConaughey among their favourite actors. Now it looks as though that may be set to change as McConaughey opts for more dramatic roles than we are used to seeing him in.

McConaughey began work as an actor in television adverts and the rare television episode appearance but then he got his big break back in 1991 in Dazed and Confused. Maybe, and I never thought I would say this, McConaughey put in a performance that was too good, because this is pretty much what made him a shoe-in for any male lead role in a romantic comedy. As an actor you don’t want to get pigeon holed into one genre but as a young emerging good looking man then you are always going to be wanted for romantic comedies (the same happened for Chris Pine and Chris Evans in recent years although not to the same extent).

Throughout the nineties Matthew McConaughey tried out many different genres including crime (A Time to Kill), drama mystery (Contact) and action (The Newton Boys) but didn’t have as much success in these as he did with his romantic comedies and at the turn of the century McConaughey really started to churn out the rom-coms. In 2001 McConaughey starred in The Wedding Planner alongside Jennifer Lopez and although he continued to try and be versatile with his career it is his rom-coms in this decade that are his most famous films: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, Fool’s Gold and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Now though, there seem to be no signs of Matthew McConaughey returning to make another romantic comedy as he has taken on more serious roles in recent years. This began with McConaughey taking on The Lincoln Lawyer which was a thriller that received great reviews from critics and McConaughey won high praise for his performance in the lead role. Killer Joe, a crime thriller in which McConaughey plays a contract killer/police detective, also won a lot of praise; then Magic Mike came out which also got surprisingly positive reviews from critics. Next up for Matthew McConaughey is Mud, which is already getting a lot of praise from early screenings and that is a drama so it appears that Matthew McConaughey is taking on more serious roles recently and these are really helping his reputation.

McConaughey’s next film project will be another drama The Dallas Buyer’s Club before taking on war film Thunder Run alongside Gerard Butler and Sam Worthington, two more actors who have a lot to prove in my opinion. McConaughey’s recent film choices do signal a more serious approach with his career and this can only be good news. I hope he succeeds.

 

A Look at Michelle Monaghan’s Career So Far

Michelle Monaghan is one of my favourite actresses of recent years. She is obviously a very beautiful woman but she also has the acting abilities to match, yet not many people would know who you meant if you mentioned her name. I consider her to be a much underrated and outrageously underused actress.

Michelle, as so many film stars do, began her career with a few small roles on television, most notable in Young Americans and Law and Order. She had small roles in the films Perfume and Unfaithful but her big break came in 2002 when she starred in the hit television series Boston Public.

Boston Public set up Michelle Monaghan’s return to the big screen. She starred in It Runs in the Family (2003), Winter Solstice (2004) and had a small part in spy thriller The Bourne Supremacy (2004). Although she filmed scenes for Constantine and Syriana, they did not make the final cut unfortunately. In 2005 Monaghan appeared in North Country and Mr & Mrs Smith.

2005 also brought us Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which is one of my favourite films. Not only does it feature one of my favourite actors in Robert Downey Jnr. it also features Michelle Monaghan. Here, Monaghan plays an aspiring actress caught up in a murder investigation and she brings the character to life with a sort of alluring innocence and cute humour. This performance gained Monaghan recognition as she was nominated for both a Saturn Award and Satellite Award for her performance.

After appearing in Mission Impossible III, Monaghan made another film that I really enjoy and consider to be one of the best written pieces of drama I have had the pleasure of viewing; the film I am talking about is Gone Baby Gone. Monaghan plays the female protagonist, Angie Gennaro opposite Casey Affleck as the two private detectives investigate the case of a missing child. Monaghan received plenty of acclaim for her performance.

She returned to comedy in The Heartbreak Kid opposite Ben Stiller before making Made of Honor with Patrick Dempsey. Her role in the drama Trucker won her an SDFCS Award for Best Actress and she then went on to star in Eagle Eye and had a part in Due Date, reuniting her with Robert Downey Jnr.

It seems like Michelle Monaghan has a taste for action films as she starred in Source Code, which I thought was a clever, very interesting film and again, she put in a fantastic performance. And before having a miniscule cameo in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol Monaghan made Machine Gun Preacher with Gerard Butler.

Looking over Michelle Monaghan’s career and at her upcoming projects it becomes clear that she is a very talented actress with a wide range of skills; be it comedy, drama, action or thriller you can guarantee that she will deliver a great performance. In my mind it is saddening that not enough people know about this woman. Monaghan has great acting ability and a couple of her films are among my favourites. I hope she can carry on at such a high standard and I recommend anyone to watch some of her films. It is impossible not to fall in love with this woman.

How to Train Your Dragon Review

***MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS***

 

No matter what they do, it seems as though Dreamworks will always be working in the shadows of Pixar in terms of animation, film quality and story but their 2012 effort, How to Train Your Dragon, is a fantastic outing from them which is just as enjoyable as most Pixar films.

How to Train Your Dragon tells the story of Hiccup Haddock III (Jay Baruchel), the son of the Viking leader (voiced by Gerard Butler) who aspires to be just like his father and learn to kill dragons with him. That is until a meeting with one of the most feared dragons of the time, a Night Fury, leads to the forming of an unlikely friendship where Hiccup learns that there is more to the fearsome creatures than meets the eye.

This is not a typical children’s film when it comes to story; the focus of the film does not lie within it’s morality of good versus evil, in fact the villain does not really appear until more than halfway through the film. Instead, How to Train Your Dragon prides itself upon it’s character and it’s spirit. It is a story that blurs the line between interpretations of good and evil respective to the dragons in particular and shows true triumph in it’s portrayal of family values and the real meaning of friendship.

The character’s really come to life and the friendship between Hiccup and Toothelss, as the Night Fury is named, is very believable and at times incredibly touching. The voice acting is pretty standard although why the Vikings tend to have Scottish accents rather than Scandanavian accents is baffling.

Dreamworks’ animation is top notch and it is clear they took a lot of time in making the film look aesthetically pleasing. Visually, the film is perfect. In particular, the final act where the young vikings are riding the dragons makes you realise how much effort has gone into the animation. There are clues all through the film about the final act and the dragons in the final act all resemble their riders. This is something that I did not realise until late on but was really impressed with.

Unfortunately, there are some scenes where the action or dialogue is below par and at times it seems to drag a little and on occassion I did become bored. There are some silences as Toothless does not talk and at times the silence is effective and you get a lot of information just from eye movement and body language but when used too much it makes the film boring.

Overall, How to Train Your Dragon is a fun film with a good heart but it idn’t quite have enough to sustain my interest 100% over the hour and a half which it lasts. Saying that, though, I would definitely watch it again.

My Rating: 7/10