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First Pic From Bridget Jones’s Baby Arrives – Renee Zellweger is back

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While there’s certainly not the buzz that there was when the first Bridget Jones movie went into production, the character is heading back to cinemas soon in Bridget Jones’ Baby, and to show us that Renee Zellweger is indeed back on set, the first image has been released.

It doesn’t exactly show us much, but it’s still out first look.

Not much is known about the film’s plot, although it is known that – unsurprisingly considering the title – it will see Bridget getting unexpectedly pregnant. Colin Firth will also be back, although there’s no Hugh Grant this time around. Patrick Dempsey also recently joined the cast.

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Taika Waititi In Talks To Helm Thor: Ragnarok – The Marvel movie may have found its director

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With the Marvel universe ever-expanding, the company is on a seemingly never-ending search for the right talent to put the movies together. Now they may have found one of the pieces for Thor: Ragnarok, as TheWrap reports that Taika Waititi is in talks to direct.

Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer was also apparently in contention, but Marvel decided to go for Waititi, who’s best know for indie fare such as Eagle vs Shark, Boy, What We Do in the Shadows, as well as being part of the team behind Flight of the Conchords.. It’s interesting that both men are known for being able to handle both comedy and drama, which may give a hint at Ragnarok’s tone.

Assuming be sign on Waititi will be calling the shots on set next year, with Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston and Jaimie Alexander all known to be returning. It’ll be in cinemas July 2017.

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Win A Rocky Horror Picture Show 40th Anniversary Blu-ray & A Party Pack! – Let’s do the time warp again

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Get ready to do the time warp again as The Rocky Horror Picture Show 40th Anniversary – the ultimate midnight movie – comes home on Blu-ray on 5th October from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

We want to give Rocky Horror fans the chance to corrupt a Rocky Horror Picture Show virgin (ie someone who’s never seen the film) with the help of a special RHPS party pack and a copy of the film, which you could win in this comp. Winners will be able to host their own interactive screening in the comfort of their own home with a series of themed props and a handy infographic which tells you what to do and when.

There’s also a possible additional prize, as winners who run their home screening before 23rd October and tweet pictures with #RockyHorror40th, will have the additional chance to win tickets to a special celebration screening at the Royal Albert Hall on 27th October (Note: this part of the competition is not exclusive to this website).

Since its 1975 release, The Rocky Horror Picture Show quickly made its mark as the most-beloved cult film of all time. Today, this iconic cult classic film is the longest running theatrical release of all-time and currently plays at weekly midnight showings around the world. Moreover, the film’s cultural exposure and acclaim has extended far beyond the theatrical release, as the original “Rocky Horror” stage show continues to delight audiences worldwide.

To be in with a chance of winning the copy of the Rocky Horror Picture Show 40th Anniversary and party pack that we’ve got to give away, sign in to the site below (or click here to register) and answer the multiple choice question (see below for more details on how to enter). The competition closes on October 13th, 2015, so get answering and good luck!

HOW TO ENTER: This competition is open to all registered Movie Muser members who live in the UK. It’s free to register and obligation free, and once you’ve signed up to the site, you’ll be able to enter any other competitions we run, plus post comments, join in on the forum or even have your own film blog. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER. If you’re already a member, sign in below and answer the multiple choice question in the grey box, click enter, and you’re done!

This competition closes at 11.59pm on October 13th, 2015. Competition open to UK residents aged 15 or over. (For general competition terms and conditions, privacy policy and site T&Cs, CLICK HERE)

The Prize Finder – UK Competitions

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Win The Al Pacino Comedy-Drama Danny Collins On DVD! – Annette Bening & Jennifer Garner also star

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Entertainment One is set to release the romantic comedy drama Danny Collins on DVD on 5th October 2015. We’ve teamed up with them to give away a copy in the competition.

Inspired by a true story, Al Pacino stars as aging 1970s rocker Danny Collins, who can’t give up his hard-living ways. But when his manager (Christopher Plummer) uncovers a 40 year-old undelivered letter written to him by John Lennon, he decides to change course and embarks on a heartfelt journey to rediscover his family, find true love and begin a second act. He soon warms to hotel manager, Mary (Annette Bening) with whom he develops an unconventional romance.

To be in with a chance of winning the copy of Danny Collins on DVD that we’ve got to give away, sign in to the site below (or click here to register) and answer the multiple choice question (see below for more details on how to enter). The competition closes on October 15th, 2015, so get answering and good luck!

HOW TO ENTER: This competition is open to all registered Movie Muser members who live in the UK. It’s free to register and obligation free, and once you’ve signed up to the site, you’ll be able to enter any other competitions we run, plus post comments, join in on the forum or even have your own film blog. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER. If you’re already a member, sign in below and answer the multiple choice question in the grey box, click enter, and you’re done!

This competition closes at 11.59pm on October 15th, 2015. Competition open to UK residents aged 15 or over. (For general competition terms and conditions, privacy policy and site T&Cs, CLICK HERE)

The Prize Finder – UK Competitions

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The Intern – Robert De Niro goes to work for Anne Hathaway

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I’ll come clean straight away, we have two problems here. In my humble opinion Nany Meyers’ The Holiday was a true low point in cinema, an absolutely wretched affair – lazy, clichéd, corny, utterly without charm and with dialled in performances. Problem 2 is the De Niro syndrome – what on earth happened to the actor who everyone agreed was the finest of his generation. Pacino has his many fans, but De Niro admirers simply mutter Raging Bull and that’s the argument won. So how has this man gone from that peak to decades, literally decades, of mediocre, middling dramas and simply unfunny comedies?

Actually there’s a third problem here, the film’s central idea, which has, in true Hollywood tradition, been done before, and very recently. It’s The Devil Wears Prada, but this time with Anne Hathaway in the Meryl Streep role, and De Niro in the junior position lately vacated by the over-promoted…Anne Hathaway!

Here it’s De Niro who is bored with retirement – ‘I tried everything, Mandarin, yoga’ – is that really everything? So he goes back to work, as the world’s oldest intern in Hathaway’s firm, and guess what? She is having a crisis and need a bit of guidance, a bit of help, a bit of – experience. Well, guess who can provide that?

Having said all that though, The Intern isn’t actually all that bad. De Niro and Hathaway do have some chemistry, and their characters remain sympathetic even though they don’t really deserve to – she is impossibly wealthy and spoilt, he is just dull with no real insight into the world. A man who takes his own bathrobe to a five-star hotel is an idiot, not an old-school charmer. There are some serious points lurking under the glossy surface too, the role of the 70-pluses in our ecommerce society, and how difficult it is for modern mums to juggle work and home life. The trouble is in Meyer’s world they are never seriously explored, just brushed on until we get into the next scene about the importance of a man carrying a handkerchief and, well, being a man.

The real problem here is that it just isn’t funny, mainly due to Meyer’s insistence on scenes dragging out far too long and going nowhere. One scene has Hathaway admiring her own house for about three minutes – eh? Then there’s De Niro’s revelation that he used to work in this very same building when it was a warehouse – wow! And…oh, that’s it. Another has De Niro breaking into her mother’s house to delete an email, presumably an attempt to inject some physical comedy into proceeding. The result is toe-curlingly unfunny, just like the rest of the film. When Rene Russo gives De Niro a massage and it is mistaken for a sex act you know the laughter barrel is having its bottom firmly scraped.

Meyers continually makes references to how hard it is for women to succeed in business, but the best advice she could be given is to write a decent script for once, then we’ll all take you seriously. She waffles, flannels and drones on for far too long, and it’s up to the charm of our two heroes to keep the thing moving.

De Niro actually bothers to keep his eyes open for this one, and turns on the charm, although the references to other films are wearisome. Hathaway too manages to avoid being completely annoying, difficult when her character is a pernickety, highly-strung clothes bore. Incidentally her company has been such a success because it makes clothes that actually fit women, but bizarrely she appears in several outfits with a very unflattering cut that make her look more like a student than a CEO. There’s also the usual Meyers waffle about marriages going bad, with Hathaway’s dorky house husband having a wandering eye. Even she admits ‘he’s acting out, right’ – yeah, duh.

Overall verdict: Despite the charm of its two leads this is a flabby, overlong bore of a film that goes nowhere very, very slowly. With 45 minutes cut out of it and a tighter script it could have made its mark, but sadly it remains a test for the most patient viewer.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

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The Walking Dead – Season 5 (DVD) – Back into the zombie world

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The mid-season finale of The Walking Dead’s fourth season was hands down one of the most electrifying, suspenseful and jaw dropping episodes of any TV show ever. After finally putting to bed the struggle between Nick and Woodbury’s charismatic but psychotic Governor, the latter half of the show saw our heroes heading towards a mysterious refuge known as Terminus.

As they headed towards salvation, the season finale unsurprisingly yanked the rug out, as Rick Grimes and co. discover the haven to be community of cannibals that’ve just trapped them in a storage container – presumably for when they’re feeling peckish later. With Rick proclaiming that their captors ‘don’t know who they’re screwing with’, this fifth season was always going to kick off with a bang. But while the season premiere kicks things off in predictably spectacular and grisly fashion, it’s all taken off the boil for the remainder of this comparatively directionless arc as gore-laden zombie action is eschewed in favour of shining a spotlight on the group members’ crumbling sanities.

As far as zombie-themed stuff goes, The Walking Dead has always been somewhat of an oddity. Sure, it can stump up enough viscera to make your last meal want to do an encore, but generally it’s one hell of a slow burner – albeit one that has always paid off by smashing the walls of your comfort zone down when you’re least expecting it. While Season five offers the characters plenty of flesh to chew on, the balance between calm and chaos that has made the show so engrossing is a little off. It’s not disastrous, don’t get me wrong, but it’s sometimes painfully slow as they continue to build suspense for a comparatively little payoff.

The crux of the season sees Rick sensibly deciding that maybe Terminus wasn’t the best place to settle down and try to rebuild society, leaving him and his cohorts to hit the road for an alternative settlement where they can wait out the whole zombie business in peace, all the while trying to regroup with the members of the group that got separated or went missing during the events of last season. With the bloodthirsty events of Season 4’s prison battle all chipping away at the heroes’ collective psyche, the season sees things getting darker and darker until we’re not entirely sure if the heroes are actually that heroic anymore. It’s a sensible, fresh direction in which to take the show considering the last two seasons saw the gang face off against another group with more villainous intentions.

The issue here though remains the pacing. It may be the right direction for the characters but, with little else going on around them, it becomes a case of watching a very slow degeneration of people as they edge ever closer towards savagery. It’s far from bad, but it could admittedly do with some more of the show’s trademark action just to pep things up a little. It’s particularly frustrating at two points when the show builds up to two massive confrontations that you’d expect to play out for the rest of the season – only for them to be dealt with within an episode or two. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just feels that, like the walkers themselves, the show seems to be ambling around without anything juicy to sink its teeth into for the most part, and two golden opportunities are pissed away.

In all though, Season Five is fascinating stuff and has been lauded by some as the best season of the show so far. In terms of character development that’s definitely the case, but in other areas it’s nowhere near the standard that’s been set before. It’s one that’s likely to polarise the show’s fans in terms of whether or not they’ll be happy with the change of pace, but the bloodlustier among them won’t feel too hard done by as The Walking Dead remains one of the best shows on TV right now.

Overall Verdict: A change of pace for a show that still offers greatness. Hopefully Season Six will see the groundwork laid here pay off.

Special Features:
Audio Commentaries
Deleted Scenes
The Making of The Walking Dead
The Making of Alexandria
Featurettes

Reviewer: Jordan Brown

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