Don Jon Trailer

UK Release Date: 15th November 2013

Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (also directing), Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Tony Danza, Brie Larson.

Plot: A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness and intimacy with his potential true love.

Don Jon (previously known as Don Jon’s Addiction) marks the feature length directorial and writing debut of Hollywood nice guy Joseph Gordon-Levitt, making it one of the most exciting movies yet to come (no disgusting pun intended) this year.

Reviews from films festivals have been positive with Don Jon being cited as making Gordon-Levitt one of the hottest new directors around. He’s already proven his versatility with all his work done through hitRECordJoe and he just looks amazing in this new trailer.

The trailer provides a great introduction to the life of Jon and his less than healthy addiction and provides some really good laughs, making it a must see for any fans of comedy films with heart and all fans of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. And if that’s not enough there are even cameo appearances from Anne Hathaway, Channing Tatum and Cuba Gooding Jr.

News of the Week (10/10/12) – Bale, Thurman & Hungry Hippos

Let’s get straight into it. American Bullshit. That was the original name of the film that Christian Bale has recently signed on for. The now untitled movie originally had Bale set to lead the ensemble cast but he dropped out, and now he has jumped back into the movie. When Bale dropped out he was replaced with the frankly quite obvious replacement Jeremy Renner. It has been announced that Renner and Bale will now both be in the project so everyone’s a winner! The film also stars Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper and will be directed by David O. Russell who previously worked with Bale on The Fighter.

Paul Dano, fresh from Ruby Sparks and Looper this past month has now signed on to what should be another film that will see positive press and Dano is fast becoming into a very recognisable and reliable face in the world of movies. The latest project he has signed on for is a revenge thriller entitled Prisoners. Prisoners is about a Boston man who kidnaps the person he suspects is behind the disappearance of his young daughter and her best friend. Hugh Jackman will be playing the lead role with Jake Gyllenhaal and Oscar winner Melissa Leo in support, so not half bad casting really.

A movie currently in production that is causing quite a stir is Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac. The reason for all of the attention on this project is because it revolves around a woman beaten up and found in an alley, then cleaned up by a bachelor who finds her and along the way she recounts all the details of her sex life from when it began up until her 50s (why?). And it has been announced that Lars Von Trier wants the sex scenes to be completely real – he wants his cast to ACTUALLY have sex on film. Anyway, this week has seen Uma Thurman sign up to a cast that already includes Stellan Skarsgard, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Shia LaBeouf.

And finally, after all of that casting news there is some absolutely ridiculous news coming out this week that after the unsuccessful Battleships film, Hollwood execs are now planning to turn several other games into big blockbusters. Along with a Monopoly film, which has been in the works for some time now, an Action Man movie is being planned (which should lend itself to the medium more easily than others, perhaps). But the weirdest news is that a Hungry Hippos movie is being planned. It’ll be interesting to see how that one turns out.

Why I Love… The Girl Next Door

Obviously, I mean the film… I am not about to randomly profess my love on the internet for some girl who lives on my street, that would be stupid. But The Girl Next Door is one of my favourite films and has been ever since the first time I saw it back in 2004. The Girl Next Door is a romantic comedy aimed at a male teenage audience and that genre of film doesn’t usually go down well with the target audience so it has to be something that will make them watch it so what’s the plot? Pretty much every stereotypical teenage boy’s fantasy: a high school boy starts dating a girl only to find out that she is, in fact, a porn star. Brilliant!

All the characters are really well thought out (if not a little stereotypical) but all of them seem to have layers and layers of character if you look for it in the right place. The casting really does go a long way in this film as well because you can’t imagine anyone else in any of the roles. Let’s start with the three high school friends: Matthew Kidman (Emile Hirsch), Eli (Chris Marquette) and Klitz ‘with a k’ (Paul Dano). These three characters encapsulate different three different parts of a teenage boy’s personality. Matthew is the one who is awkwardly and hopelessly romantic who falls in love, but he is also lost in his life and feels that he needs to really find out who he is; Eli is the one who just seems incredibly horny every second of every day and is obsessed with women and pornography; Klitz is the shy, reserved, quiet one who just sort of goes along with the ride rather begrudgingly and together their friendship is absolutely fantastic!

Elisha Cuthbert is Danielle the pornstar and as well as being really attractive Cuthbert really plays on the innocence of her character and her longing to be something more, whilst Timothy Olyphant as Kelly is probably one of my favourite movie villains of all time, he is hilarious! I like the fact his character’s name is Kelly; Kelly’s a girl’s name!

The Girl Next Door is one of the funniest films I have ever seen and I have watched it plenty of times (maybe more than any other film now that I think about it) but it still manages to make me laugh with every joke. There is great verbal humour and physical and Timothy Olyphant’s aggressiveness to the jocks is really funny. There are some absolutely fantastic lines, mainly from Eli, including “take her to a motel and bang her like a beast!”, “I just wanna bang hot chicks!” and the outrageous “I just gotta f**k something!”.  Eli’s phone conversation with Matthew whilst Matthew (rather really pervertedly) watches Danielle get undressed is top comedy too, as well as Matthew’s reaction.

The romantic element to the story holds it’s own against the comedy and it is really wonderful to watch the relationship grown between Matthew and Danielle. They are so perfect for each other; Danielle will push Matthew to be the person he wants to be and Matthew is her escape to the real world and a better life, keeping her on the right track. You can really feel for their relationship as they go through the ups and the downs together.

The end is particularly satisfying. I am a big fan of character development and I think that the majority of characters have completed a full arc in the entirety of the film: Matthew goes off to DC, taking Danielle with him, Eli has become a famous director thanks to the sex education video the group made, Klitz is pretty much the biggest thing in town (that’s a little pun you’ll get if you remember the end of the film) and I really like Kelly’s ending. Kelly on set making the porn movies he loves to receive a box of cigars from Matthew with the famous quote from the film “the juice was worth the squeeze”.

I love The Girl Next Door and everybody else should too!