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The new mystery drama “Heaven Is For Real”

admin — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 01:53:00 +0000

Opening across the Philippines on Black Saturday, April 19, “Heaven is for Real” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

The new mystery drama “Heaven Is For Real”

The crux challenge of casting TriStar Pictures’ new mystery drama “Heaven Is For Real” was the search for a very special child who could play real-life character, Colton Burpo, with the natural, easy-going innocence that made his story so persuasive.

In the film, 7-year-old Colton is rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery and miraculously survives. But his family is wholly unprepared for what happens next — Colton starts to matter-of-factly recount what he says was an amazing journey to heaven and back.

“Finding Colton was a huge challenge because the movie could not succeed if Colton seemed artificial. If you believed that he was just reciting lines, you would never believe any of what he was saying,” director Randall Wallace explains.

Casting director Sheila Jaffe launched a search across America – but it wasn’t until the very end that they found their Colton. “We saw a lot of tapes and finally got down to eight boys. Seven boys were very similar to one another but one boy was different,” remembers producer Joe Roth.

That one boy was then five year-old Cleveland native Connor Corum. “He was incredibly natural, and he wasn’t thrown by anything. Once we saw him there was no choice – he was the kid,” Roth continues.

When actor Greg Kinnear started working with Connor he was enthralled by his lack of artifice. “He’s kind of the greatest version of an actor, in the sense that everything that he does is on instinct, it’s effortless, it’s just kind of there without any artificiality to it. It really makes me mad,” he quips.

Much as this opportunity was a thrill for Connor, his mother Shannon says they were cautious about it at first. “Initially, it was a mixed bag of emotions. There was certainly some concern about whether we were thrusting our son into the limelight and also about whether he would be able to stay grounded and enjoy his childhood,” she recalls. “On the other hand, it was pure excitement and joy and something really positive for our family. My grandfather, who turned 95 last October, was thrilled. He’s a very spiritual man and I really feel like this has given him something wonderful to focus on in his life.”

Working with Connor came naturally for Wallace, who helped to set the family at ease. “I’m the father of sons and I’m a little boy myself still, at heart, so I wanted Connor to come onto the set and feel that he was part of a great, big family,” he says.

Wallace continues: “He’s a brilliant young man. He always came to set prepared and Greg was wonderful working with Connor. Sometimes I would say ‘action’ and we’d film the scene and the magic would happen right there. Other times Connor would be full of energy, distracted and bouncing off the walls and we’d have to wait and let him calm down. What ultimately happened, when he forgot that it was a movie, he just began to be that character in that space, which is what we want of any actor, and then he was riveting.”

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“Saving Mr Banks” exclusive at Ayala Malls Cinemas starting February 26, 2014

admin — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 06:38:00 +0000

“Saving Mr Banks” exclusive at Ayala Malls Cinemas starting February 26, 2014

“Saving Mr Banks” exclusive at Ayala Malls Cinemas starting February 26, 2014

Press Release:

From the director of the Oscar-winning “The Blind Side” comes the critically acclaimed “Saving Mr. Banks,” a film inspired by the extraordinary, untold back story of how Disney’s classic “Mary Poppins” made it to the screen.

Starring two-time Academy Award® winner Emma Thompson, fellow double Oscar® winner Tom Hanks and talented actor Colin Farrell, “Saving Mr. Banks” will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas nationwide starting Feb. 26.

In 1961, Walt Disney invited “Mary Poppins” author P.L. Travers to his studio in Los Angeles to discuss, in person, his continued interest in obtaining the movie rights to her beloved book and character—a pitch he first made to her in the 1940s. Still hesitant and disinterested after all those years, Travers wanted to tell the Hollywood impresario to go fly a kite but with dwindling sales of her books and a bleak economic future looming, P.L. Travers said yes and embarked on a two-week sojourn in Los Angeles that would ultimately set the wheels of the beloved film in motion.

“This story offers incredible context to what the author P.L. Travers went through in her own life that led to the birth of the character of Mary Poppins,” says Colin Farrell, who plays Travers’ troubled father in the 1906 flashback sequences. “The tragedies that befell her at a very young age and the emotional pain and trauma that she went through that came out in her work…this story goes back to show you Emma’s character, P.L. Travers, the writer of ‘Mary Poppins,’ as a child in rural Australia in 1906. Kelly’s ability with clarity of narrative in these two aspects of P.L.’s life, the flashbacks and contemporary story in 1961, is amazing. Just like her script, which achieves a level of emotion that is not self-indulgent or preachy, but quite astonishing.”

“Disney spends a lot of the movie trying to figure out what P.L. Travers’ issues are, beyond the fact that she doesn’t like animation,” director John Lee Hancock goes on about the story and relationship between his two protagonists. “Trying to figure out where she’s coming from and why she’s making this negotiation so incredibly difficult.

“And, when he does figure it out, he spends a lot of time trying to win her over, manipulating her to get his way, and she wins over and over again,” Hancock continues about the story’s arc. “He capitulates, which was so unlike Walt, and which he is not necessarily happy about, trying to get her to come on board. He then realizes that he’s been talking to the wrong person. He needs to find out more about her, who she is, and what her relationship with her father was, and that becomes the key. He realizes that they have a somewhat shared past in their relationships with their fathers. He must convince her that the idea of turning something dark or even tragic into something that has a message that lives on and saves you from that dark past is the stuff of storytellers. And that’s what they have in common.”

“P.L. Travers is burdened by her past in our film, one that she cannot escape,” adds actor Tom Hanks, who plays the iconic Walt Disney, picking up on Hancock’s comments. “There is an aspect to the pain and the guilt that she feels from the memory and loss of this very special man, her father. When Walt is able to verbalize to her how he dealt with such pain in missing his own father, that’s when she finally understands.

“Walt Disney is so different from her, with his money and Disneyland and his dancing penguins, that I think she felt that she had nothing in common with him, so therefore this was never going to work out,” Hanks elaborates. “But then, she realizes that his reasons to make the movie equal the reasons she wrote her books. I think she then makes her peace with the reality of giving up control. Never in the movie does she talk to Walt Disney as an equal, until that moment. I think the movie attempts to interpret our past and how the jobs we do, in this case the art that these two create—Walt Disney with his films, P.L. Travers with her books—address and heal those scars and those wounds by taking on the past and turning it into something that is not a burden.”

Adds Emma Thompson, who plays the prickly author, “I think that P.L. Travers felt that Disney was making her version of the world somewhat dishonest because he was denying the darkness. Disney, who had experienced enough darkness of his own, wanted to create a world for children that was not dark. The books have a very particular atmosphere and are rather different to the movie, which has Disney’s and the Sherman brothers’ extraordinary, bubbly-champagne-like life force. Americans have a kind of energy and life force that’s very, very different to P.L.’s and to her designedly and forcefully British outlook.”

“Saving Mr. Banks” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.

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The Making of “Robocop’s” Suits and Motorcycle

admin — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 03:45:00 +0000

The Making of “Robocop’s” Suits and Motorcycle

Opening across the Philippines in Feb. 05, 2014, “RoboCop” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

Press Release:

Even if Columbia Pictures’ new action-thriller “RoboCop” has an existential element, there’s still plenty of cool factor. For the filmmakers, dabbling in robot technology was like an open playground. “One of the most exciting things to us – as filmmakers but also fans – was to create all the robots,” says producer Eric Newman.

Production designer Martin Whist, who designed the various iterations of RoboCop says that even as they let their imaginations run wild, the truth was right there to back them up. “Every idea we had for something RoboCop could do, it turns out, somebody is researching it now, in real life,” he says. “For example, there are people out there right now in the lab, who have sensors on their brains that allow them to move a robotic hand with their thoughts. We had this idea for a high-powered Taser gun – and it turns out that it’s being developed. Everything in the movie is based in reality.”

RoboCop himself has two separate and very different suits in the film. “The first suit was intentionally a tip of the hat to the original film and the original design,” Whist explains. “I wanted to stay with the coloration of the original design; the overall impression is silver, but – just like they did on the first film – we used a technique where there were multiple colors in it: there are magentas and deep blues in it. It’s a little less sophisticated than the second suit, a little boxier, a little less agile, and that was intentional to show the evolution from one RoboCop to the next.”

In designing RoboCop’s suits, Whist says that the second suit – the black suit – got the bulk of the attention from the designers. “The second suit was black, more visually sleek, designed, thought out, and a little more elegant and aggressive.”

To build the physical RoboCop suits, Whist worked with the team at Legacy Effects, one of Hollywood’s go-to sources for making visions become a reality as the creators of the Iron Man suit and other effects work.

RoboCop has two main weapons: a high-powered Taser that comes out of his thigh (again, a nod to the original film) and a gun that deploys from his forearm. Whist says that it was important to him to maintain a certain level of verisimilitude, even though he was obviously working in the realm of science fiction. “When we designed the Taser, I wanted it to truly make sense how it would come out, how it would deploy, how it would fit, and how that would translate to a real gun in his hand. We wanted it to seem real, to have a logic to it. It had to be a certain size – after all, it had to fit in the leg. And then we had to figure out how it would deploy in a cool way that he could grab onto.”

In designing a futuristic Taser, Whist wanted a design that would not involve a cord. “The Taser gun fires pellets, little flat discs. When you fire, the discs extend like a camping cup, and little fins come out as it propels through the air. When the pellet strikes something, it recompresses, and that compression pushes out a spike. The whole thing is an advanced battery that gives the victim a shock. It was a lot of fun figuring out the mechanics of how it would work.”

RoboCop’s other main weapon is a more traditional pistol that comes out of his forearm. “His arm plate flips open into a gun – it has a brace that goes onto his forearm, near his elbow, and then the gun goes into his hand – the idea is that when the gun recoils, it wasn’t putting all that pressure on his wrist. When I design things like that, I like to be as practical as possible, even though what I’m designing is far from practical. I want it to fit into the world – even though a high-powered Taser gun that pops out of a robot’s leg is a crazy idea, it should have some logic to it.”

Whist also designed the vehicles in the film, including RoboCop’s motorcycle. Based on a Kawasaki 1000, the design team made major modifications. “We modified the frame, extending the wheel base. It’s quite a bit longer than a normal bike, because I wanted RoboCop to take a leaning forward attack position when he’s on the bike. He’s quite big, and the normal bike looked too small under him. Then, we reclad the whole bike in armor, similar to the suit. He merges with the bike when he’s riding it – it looks like one unit. And finally, we redid all the lights and graphics, of course.”

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Saving Mr. Banks opening across the Philippines on February 26, 2014

admin — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 03:47:00 +0000

Saving Mr. Banks opening across the Philippines on February 26, 2014

Saving Mr. Banks

Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 26, “Saving Mr. Banks” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.

Press Release:

Now, Walt Disney Pictures presents “Saving Mr. Banks,” a film inspired by this extraordinary, untold back story of how Disney’s classic “Mary Poppins” made it to the screen, starring two-time Academy Award® winner Emma Thompson, fellow double Oscar® winner Tom Hanks and acclaimed actor Colin Farrell.

“Mary Poppins’” journey to the screen begins the moment Walt Disney’s daughters beg him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers’ “Mary Poppins.” Walt makes them a promise to do so, but it is a promise that he doesn’t realize will take 20 years to keep. In his quest to obtain the rights, Walt comes up against a curmudgeonly, uncompromising writer who has absolutely no intention of letting her beloved magical nanny get mauled by the Hollywood machine. But, as the books stop selling and money grows short, Travers reluctantly agrees to go to Los Angeles to hear Disney’s plans for the adaptation.

For those two short weeks in 1961, Walt Disney pulls out all the stops. Armed with imaginative storyboards and chirpy songs from the talented Sherman brothers, Walt launches an all-out onslaught on P.L. Travers, but the prickly author doesn’t budge. He soon begins to watch helplessly as Travers becomes increasingly immovable and the rights begin to move further away from his grasp.

It is only when he reaches into his own childhood that Walt discovers the truth about the ghosts that haunt her, and together they set Mary Poppins free to ultimately make one of the most endearing films in cinematic history.

Expounding on the premise of the film, director John Lee Hancock says, “It’s really a fantastic story, but it’s not the behind-the-scenes look at the making of ‘Mary Poppins.’ You’re not on a soundstage with a young Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Our story takes you back two to three years before the actual production of the movie began.

“Walt Disney saw the promise of that movie, which made it worth dealing with P.L. Travers to secure the rights. That’s our story, a fantastic story, about a beloved movie, its own story and characters, and the origins of how it became this amazing, groundbreaking film. On a deeper level, it’s also about two storytellers and Disney’s journey trying to discover why P.L. Travers holds on so dearly and protectively to her story and the image of this father she adored,”Hancock concludes.

Colin Farrell co-stars as Travers’ doting dad, Travers Goff, along with British actress Ruth Wilson (Disney’s “The Lone Ranger”) as his wife, Margaret; Oscar® and Emmy® nominee Rachel Griffiths (“Six Feet Under”) appears as Margaret’s sister Aunt Ellie (who inspired the title character of Travers’ novel); and a screen newcomer—11-year-old Aussie native Annie Rose Buckley—is the young, blossoming writer, nicknamed Ginty, in the flashback sequences.

The cast also includes Oscar® nominee and Emmy® winner Paul Giamatti (“Sideways”) as Ralph, the kindly limousine driver who escorts Travers during her two-week stay in Hollywood; Jason Schwartzman (“Rushmore”) and B.J. Novak (“Inglourious Basterds”) as the songwriting Sherman brothers (Richard and Robert, respectively); Emmy winner Bradley Whitford (“The Cabin in the Woods”) as screenwriter Don DaGradi; and multi-Emmy winner Kathy Baker (“Edward Scissorhands”) as Tommie, one of Disney’s trusted studio confidantes.

“Saving Mr. Banks” is directed by John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side”) from a screenplay written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith.

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