New to On Demand & DVD Archives - Page 74 of 90

VOD Spotlight: the eerie truth behind “Chernobyl Diaries”

October 16, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

You have to admit that it’s a pretty creepy setting. Chernobyl Diaries is set in the town of Pripyat, in the Ukraine. Back in the waning days of the Soviet Union, Pripyat was the location of the world’s most infamous nuclear plant disaster. Since then, the site has become famous as a ghost town, virtually untouched except by whatever nature chooses to visit upon it. The author of the film’s screenplay, Oren Peli, recalls his moment of inspiration for a horror story based in this notorious locale. “The idea came to me when I saw a photo blog posted by […]

VOD Spotlight: “That’s My Boy” teams Sandler and Samberg

October 16, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

Anyone who’s grown up and lived through Thanksgiving dinner knows how challenging family can be. In some cases, family is often its own situational comedy, as it is in the film That’s My Boy. Pairing Adam Sandler with Andy Samberg, That’s My Boy tells the story of a particularly screwed-up father/son relationship and how they come to terms with each other. Donny (Sandler) was in high school when he fathered Todd (Samberg) in an ill-advised — and illegal — affair with his sizzling hot teacher, who went to jail for the caper, leaving Donny to parent all by himself. Now […]

VOD Spotlight: An incredible cast: “Rock of Ages”

October 9, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

According to director Adam Shankman, Rock of Ages’ journey from stage to screen got its start when he found himself swept up by the crowd’s enthusiasm for the stage version. “The audience was having the best time I’d ever seen at a show,” he recalls. “Everybody knew the lyrics to all the songs and was out of their seats and singing along and having the time of their life. That enthusiasm, that sheer emotion, convinced me to make the movie.” The golden era of Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip, when hair bands ruled the rock scene, is a part of Shankman’s […]

VOD Spotlight: In the shadow of “Dark Shadows”

October 3, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

It’s always a dicey venture taking a bit of revered pop culture and turning it into a new, full-blown film. Not only do you risk alienating the cult audience that found the original work so endearing, but also you risk souring a new generation on the brand overall even before they may have heard of what you’re basing your film on. Director Tim Burton kept all of this in mind when working on his update of the ’60s vampire soap Dark Shadows. His take on the story — about a man who betrayed the love of a witch only to […]

VOD Spotlight: Kristen Stewart talks “Snow White and the Huntsman”

September 11, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

A number of fairy tales of old have been revisited on both the big and small screens in recent years, from the retelling of “Rapunzel” in Disney’s Tangled to the various tales that are touched on in ABC’s Once Upon a Time. But few are recast as darkly as Snow White & the Huntsman, starring the Twilight saga’s Kristen Stewart. A far cry from the 1937 Disney-animated film that set the standard for virtually all fairy tale motion pictures to follow, this reimagined version tells the story of the fairest woman in all the land whose beating heart is the […]

VOD Spotlight: Getting into “The Five-Year Engagement”

September 4, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

It’s usually the ending point of a romantic comedy. Whether overtly stated or merely implied, the pairing up of the two romantic leads on their way to “happily ever after” is a sort of cinematic engagement that we typically take for granted. In the Jason Segel/Nicholas Stoller-penned film The Five-Year Engagement, the big moment takes place at the start of the story, with Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) getting engaged after a year together. And it all skates downhill from there, as circumstances conspire against their walk down the aisle, even as everybody else around them pairs up […]

VOD Spotlight: Bringing “Think Like a Man” to the screen

August 28, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

Few people who see a self-help book think to themselves, “Gee, that would make a terrific movie!” but when producer Will Packer (Stomp the Yard, Obsessed) noticed Steve Harvey’s book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man in women’s hands, his filmmaker’s curiosity was piqued. “Everywhere I went I would see women with this book and it intrigued me, so I had to find out about it. I read the book,” says Packer. “I didn’t know Steve was giving away all the secrets. After my initial reaction of ‘Steve, what are you doing?’ I thought that this would make […]

VOD Spotlight: Think you could sink this “Battleship”?

August 28, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

It’s been well known and publicized that Hasbro has an ongoing campaign involving making numerous Hollywood films of some of its more enduring toy properties. Like G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and the Transformers films, Battleship takes the world imagined by anyone who’s ever played the game and interprets it for the screen. And it would seem like nothing but a big commercial if so much care and talent weren’t poured into it, starting with producer/director/actor Peter Berg. In his vision for this particular project, Berg is compelled to explain why the title actually is a bit of a […]

VOD Spotlight: “The Pirates! Band of Misfits”: a ship-to-shore-up operation

August 28, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

Working on a stop-motion animation film like The Pirates! Band of Misfits presents its own brand of troubles. One major problem the filmmakers encountered on this particular set was the fact that the action was to take place largely at sea, but they were to shoot in a studio setting — which meant they had to devise themselves water. “How do we make the pirate ship sail with no water?” Morgan Roe, the mechanical engineer on the film, asked at the time. “It may be shocking, but ships don’t just rock. They rock, they roll, and they rise and fall; […]

VOD Spotlight: Bringing “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” to life

August 21, 2012 Channel Guide Staff Comments Off

It’s always a touchy business, taking a revered children’s book and bringing it to the screen in full 3-D. When it’s a story as stylized and personal to its author as The Lorax is, just suggesting the attempt can border on hubris. But in the case of this particular story, producer Chris Meledandri says the idea wasn’t theirs to begin with. “The genesis of the decision to do The Lorax as the follow-up to Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! actually came from [Seuss’ widow] Audrey Geisel,” he recalls of the conversation. “We had talked about wanting to do another […]