First Look: The Other Woman Trailer

“The Other Woman” stars a powerhouse cast of women led by Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton and Nicki Minaj.  In the movie, a woman learns that she’s part of a love triangle, so she teams up with the spurned wife in order to exact revenge on the cheating husband.

Kim Basinger In the Grudge Match

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KIM BASINGER, TORN BETWEEN TWO BOXERS IN “GRUDGE MATCH

Oscar-winning actress Kim Basinger (“L.A. Confidential”) stars in Warner Bros. Pictures' new comedy “Grudge Match” as Sally Rose, whose history with retired heavyweight boxers Razor (Sylvester Stallone) and Kid (Robert De Niro) changed all of their lives. 

 

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

In “Grudge Match,” Billy “The Kid” McDonnen and Henry “Razor” Sharp are two local Pittsburgh fighters whose fierce rivalry put them in the national spotlight. Each had scored a victory against the other during their heyday, but in 1983, on the eve of their decisive third match, Razor suddenly announced his retirement, refusing to explain why but effectively delivering a knock-out punch to both their careers. Thirty years later, a boxing promoter, seeing big dollar signs, makes them an offer they can’t refuse: to re-enter the ring and settle the score once and for all.

Once the love of Razor’s life, Sally re-enters the scene when news of the rematch breaks.

Interestingly, Stallone knew Basinger from a gym where they both worked with the same trainer. Stallone says the two had been looking for a project to do together and suggested her to director Peter Segal and the producers, who agreed. 

“She was perfect for the role,” says producer Bill Gerber. “It was one of those things where we cast her, but hadn’t really seen her together with Stallone. One day we were doing some camera tests and both Kim and Sly were there, so we decided to get them together and see…And when they walked in and everybody was standing there, it was wow! They looked like a fantastic couple.”

Segal admits when he met Basinger to discuss her role in “Grudge Match,” it was the fulfillment of a long-held crush. “She is still so absolutely stunning,” he says, “and she was so great because she wanted to come and play in the sandbox. She hadn’t done a comedy in a long time and she wanted to let her hair down.” 

Basinger seemed to enjoy the spontaneity and fun Segal encouraged. He relates, “She said, ‘It’s wonderful for me when people just tell me what they want. Tell me what you want and I’ll do it.’ So as soon as I knew that, we had a ball. Because we could just play, we could try things, throwing jokes at her, taking things away, giving her other things. Whatever it was, she was a great sport.”

When asked how was that working with Stallone and De Niro, Basinger says, “It was quite a ride because they work very differently. And they’re both hilarious. So I had a really great experience with them. It was great. Stallone’s a jokester. Di Niro’s quiet and sneaky. [laughs] So just different layers.”

On a more serious note, Basinger shares what she took away from the experience working with her costars. “You learn from every experience, and you take a lot from that. No one knows everything and it’s always a new camera and a new day. The first day of shooting is always the first day of school. So you’re a little nervous. If I wasn’t nervous I would quit. That’s the excitement of it. But, yeah, to work with all these people, you always learn from everyone, and you take it.”

Kim Basinger starred opposite Robert Redford in Barry Levinson’s “The Natural,” receiving a Golden Globe nomination for her supporting role, and has appeared in more than 40 feature films, earning an Academy Award® in 1998 for her role in the critically acclaimed film “L.A. Confidential.” Based on the James Ellroy classic crime novel of the same title, the film, directed by Curtis Hanson, earned nine Academy Award® nominations. Basinger also received a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award® (SAG), as well as a BAFTA Award nomination.

Basinger will next appear in “The Third Person,” written and directed by Paul Haggis and co-starring Liam Neeson and Maria Bello, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year. In 2014, she will star in “Unborn,” in which she plays the role of a successful career woman who cannot have children. Produced by Lars Von Trier and written and directed by Anders Morgenthaler, the film also stars Peter Stormare, Jordan Prentice and German actors Sebastian Schipper and Sophie Rois.

Opening across the Philippines in Jan. 15, 2014, “Grudge Match” will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Oscar Winner Sean Penn in The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

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Ben Stiller’s reimagining of James Thurber’s original story is highly entertaining and inspiring, revolving around a man who loves to daydream, frequently retreating into an imaginary world in which he is the hero.   A photo editor at LIFE Magazine in New York, he enjoys his job but longs for passion and excitement.  As he was about to lose his job as the company shifts and downsizes, Mitty finds himself out of his office in no time.  The final issue of the prestigious magazine will soon be on newsstands, but a worried MItty cannot find an important negative that has mysteriously gone missing.

 

Photo courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

                The picture was taken by the iconic and elusive photographer Sean O’Connell played by Sean Penn. Sean is the only one who knows where it is. But where is Sean?  

                For all his fantasies of becoming a hero, Walter Mitty has his own very real hero:  the famed LIFE photographer Sean O’Connell, an elusive adventurer who has become a kind of rock star of the photographic world, renowned for his relentless commitment to chasing a story no matter the cost. 

                It seemed just the right match to cast Oscar®-winning actor and director Sean Penn in the role of the mysterious icon who beckons Walter Mitty into the big, wide open world.  “Sean O’Connell is a guy who represents creative integrity and he had to have this amazing presence that the audience connects with instantly when Walter finally meets him.  That’s why Sean Penn was really my first choice because Sean embodies all that in life for me,” says Ben Stiller.  Stiller was also keen to cast Penn in the kind of role where one of the leading dramatic actors of a generation wouldn’t normally be seen.  “Sean actually has a really great sense of humor,” he notes, “which I think doesn’t get showcased that often in his film work, so it was fun to give him a chance to do something different.” 

                Adds producer Stuart Cornfeld:  “Sean O’Connell has a certain kind of mystique, as does Sean Penn.  What was amazing about his performance and the way the character is written is that when Walter finally does meet Sean, he's everything that Walter was looking for, but he's also completely different at the same time.  For all of us, Sean was just amazing to watch in action.” 

               

                A two-time Academy Award winner, Sean Penn has become an American film icon in a career spanning more than three decades. Penn has been nominated five times for the Academy Award, as Best Actor for “Dead Man Walking,” “Sweet and Lowdown” and “I Am Sam,” and won his first Oscar in 2003 for his searing performance in Clint Eastwood's “Mystic River” and his second Oscar as Best Actor in 2009 for Gus Van Sant's “Milk.” The performance as gay rights icon Harvey Milk also garnered Penn Best Actor awards from The Screen Actors Guild (SAG™), New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

                As a journalist, Penn has written for Time, Interview, Rolling Stone and The Nation magazines. In 2004, Penn wrote a two-part feature in The San Francisco Chronicle after a second visit to war-torn Iraq. In 2005, he wrote a five-part feature in the same paper reporting from Iran during the election which led to the Ahmadinejad regime. Penn's landmark interviews with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuba's President Raul Castro were published in The Nation and The Huffington Post. Penn's interview with President Castro was his first-ever interview with an international journalist.

                His humanitarian work found him in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and, more recently, in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. In January 2010, Penn established the J/P Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO). J/P HRO has become a leader in Haiti across multiple sectors, working to improve living conditions in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps and surrounding neighborhoods by clearing rubble and providing medical services, education and enricmment programs, housing construction, and neighborhood redevelopment. J/P HRO's main objective remains to help displaced people get back to durable, safer, and permanent homes in revitalized neighborhoods.

                Be a part of a man’s transformational journey in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” as it hops from the four corners of one’s office to Greenland, Iceland, Himalayas and ultimately to self-discovery when it opens January 22 in the Philippines from 20^th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

PETER BERG TURNS “LONE SURVIVOR” BOOK INTO SEARING FILM

When retired Petty Officer First Class Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson’s book Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 was published in 2007, it quickly rose to the top of The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list. 

This true story of duty and honor in the face of extreme adversity and the heroic deeds of fallen comrades caught filmmaker Peter Berg’s attention when his production partner, Film 44’s Sarah Aubrey, gave him a copy of the book and insisted that he read it. Although in production on his then-upcoming blockbuster “Hancock,” Berg began to flip through it during a lunch break. After a few minutes, he was transfixed, locking the door to his trailer and reading the book cover to cover. Determined to win the rights and adapt “Lone Survivor” into a film, Berg became a man obsessed.

Berg offers: “When I first read Marcus’ book, what got me the most was the dilemma that these men faced: being compromised by three goat farmers and knowing that if they let them go, there was a very good chance they were going to get into a dangerous gunfight with a lot of guys.”

Inevitably, the SEALs’ journey struck the themes that the director has returned to over and over again in his projects. Says the writer/director: “This story is about working together for something bigger than our ego, bigger than our individuality. It’s about coming together as a group—protecting each other, loving each other, looking out for each other—and finding a greater strength as a team than you could ever find as an individual. Marcus wrote a book that, as much as it’s about 19 people being killed on a tragic day in Afghanistan, is about brotherhood, sacrifice and team commitment.”

Berg and Aubrey reached out to Luttrell to discuss the possibility of adapting the SEALs’ story into a film. Luttrell appreciated the filmmaker’s military-like attention to detail and guerilla-style of filmmaking and insisted to Berg that he would only grant him rights to the story if Berg truly respected and honored his brothers’ sacrifice. Indeed, Luttrell hoped that audiences around the world would begin to understand the decisions made on that mountain. After a bonding experience over many beers, and a not-so-thinly-veiled threat that Berg would have to answer to more than 1,000 SEALs if the director messed up the interpretation, Luttrell was on board.

The former SEAL discusses why he chose Berg: “There were so many directors and studios that came in and wanted to make the movie, and I interviewed with all of them. But when I saw Pete and talked to him, he’s the one that I got that certain feeling about. He was the one I thought could get it done.” Luttrell was impressed by the filmmaker’s dedication. “Pete went above and beyond. He’s done all his homework, studied it for years to get this right, and it paid off. You can tell somebody who puts the work in and you can tell somebody who didn’t. He did, and I love him for it. He’s a good man, and it’s a privilege to have him in my life.”

While Luttrell’s book is a chronicle of many events, including his 1999 enlistment and training prior to his mission in 2005, Berg realized that the screen adaptation would need to concentrate on the more dramatic tale that unfolded once Luttrell was deployed to Afghanistan. His focus for the screenplay became the unbreakable camaraderie of the team members, their valor under fire and the tragic turn that forever changed the life of sniper, hospital corpsman and SEAL Luttrell.

While Berg knew that there would be significant pressure to get their story just right, he couldn’t anticipate the depths to which he would become emotionally involved in the lives of these elite warriors and their relatives. He pauses: “There was pressure from the families, the SEAL community, and then Marcus—whether I liked it or not—announced that he was moving into my house for a month. He was going to make sure I understood what happened on that mountain.”

Just as they were about to cast the film and begin production, Berg was given more pressure than he had expected. Luttrell recalls: “I felt so sorry for Pete because he got it so bad from every team guy, from every widow. We just kept saying, ‘Don’t mess this up.’ But I think that’s also something that fueled him. That’s why the movie is great and why people are responding to it so strongly, because he put 110 percent into it…probably because he knew his life was on the line.”

Opening across the Philippines on Jan. 8, 2014, “Lone Survivor” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.