Looking back at the original run of "Happy Days," it was far from obvious that Ron Howard was going to end up being one of the more prolific filmmakers of our time. Now it appears that his very own daughter is trying to pull off a similar sucker punch in her career. How very "Original" of her.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal and Imagine have picked up the rights for "The Originals," a drama written by Bryce Dallas Howard and Dane Charbeneau. Imagine will produce the project, and the senior Howard is expected to have some involvement as well. Read more...
Have you ever wondered if there's a dark side to the easygoing Mr. Nice Guy personality that actor Tom Hanks has cultivated for himself? MTV's own Josh Horowitz sure has, and he's not afraid to ask the tough question in this interview. Not that we can really trust Hanks' answer. After all, the interview did go down in Rome as part of the 'Angels & Demons' premiere.
What do you think? Is Hanks actually a wolf in sheep's clothing, despite what he says here? The idea of him even playing a villain seems outlandish to me. Sound off in the comments below.
by John Constantine
Dan Brown's "Angels & Demons" is a gripping tale in which a Harvard professor works to derail an Illuminati plot to blow up the Vatican. No problems with that, right Pope? Not blowing up is a good thing, even if Professor Langdon (Tom Hanks) wants to fling open some of your more skeleton-filled closets in the process!
Well... no. That's actually sort of a big problem, the whole hidden secrets being brought to light angle. Enough of a problem to have earned the film adaptation of "Angels" an official ban from the highest church. Which isn't to say that this is the only example out there of blasphemous filmmaking. Check out these Hell-bound gems of the silver screen. Read more...
FROM MTV.COM:
The hardest thing about wrestling a Dan Brown novel into submission for movie purposes would have to be the endless wads of undigested explication that clog the author's narratives. Brown and his reclusive wife/research assistant, Blythe, appear never to have encountered an arcane factoid they could resist cramming into one of his tales. It needn't even be factual. (Their inaccuracies have been widely derided.) The result of this book-crafting strategy has been to give Brown's wooden characters far too many things to explain and to instruct us in. This was already a problem for director Ron Howard in his film version of "The Da Vinci Code" three years ago. Now, taking a whack at "Angels & Demons" — the Brown book that preceded "Da Vinci," but has been extensively revised into a sequel here — Howard has thrown up his hands and gone native. Impatient viewers may want to go home.
Continue reading 'Angels & Demons': Talk Show, By Kurt Loder
by John Constantine
The Vatican will never again find a publicist as effective as Dan Brown. His books, "Angels & Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code," have garnered more positive interest in the Catholic Church than it has enjoyed in years. The New Testament definitely has its share of sex, intrigue, violence and mystery, but swords & sandals don't hold the same modern appeal of secret societies and antimatter. Really, the only way to make Brown's stories more popular is to film them and put Tom Hanks in the lead! No doubt the Vatican loves the press that Dan Brown's work brings in, even if they're not so thrilled with the content. It's okay though. There are plenty of other options available for those Friday night Vatican City screenings. They do have those, right? Read more...
Welcome to Bonus Content! You know how how Blu-ray/DVD releases these days simply aren't complete without an assortment of interviews, documentaries, trailers and so on packed in to accompany the movie? Well we're applying the same thinking here. MTV's archives are chock full of vintage footage, stuff that hasn't seen daylight in years. For this new feature series, we'll unearth the best nuggets we can find to tie into the week's coming releases.
Our first Bonus Content features Tom Hanks in a 1990 interview, hot off the release of "Joe Vs. the Volcano". The younger Hanks, still a number of years off from his consecutive Oscar wins for "Philadelphia" and "Forrest Gump," discusses his next role as well as his general attitude towards accepting roles, before diving into some thoughts on his work in director Penny Marshall's "Big". Enjoy.
Okay, so I'm a couple days late on this one. It's all still relevant though. I would even go as far as saying that you can no longer consider yourself a fan of film until you've listened to Tom Hanks nerd out about antimatter on The Daily Show. What's more, check out what the "Angels & Demons" star does with John Stewart's coffee mug. Prescient, somehow?
Have you been wondering what to expect from "Angels & Demons" at the box office this weekend? Or what the breakdown is between male and female viewers? Perhaps you're curious to know how many viewers are Catholic or what their average age is. What I'm getting at here is this: we've got some stats to share with you.
Online ticket broker Fandango has been polling its users for information about themselves and their viewing habits. We've got their latest tallies, recorded today at 9:00am PST. Want to know more? Read more...
This weekend, audiences will be perched on the edges of their seats as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) works to save Vatican City from the destructive potential of a single gram of antimatter in "Angels & Demons." Unless Hollywood’s power players lose their collective minds, it likely won’t be the last time the human race is threatened by a fictional destructive device either. It certainly isn’t the first. Just take a look at these other Hollywood-spawned weapons of mass destruction. Look at them and take heart in the fact that most of them won't ever exist. Probably. Read more...
Won't somebody help Robert Langdon? Watch as Tom Hanks' Harvard symbologist rushes to aid a man who is drowning in what turns out to be a surprisingly deep fountain. Like "The Da Vinci Code" before it, "Angels & Demons" hopes to put some spectacle back into religion. Antimatter, secret societies, hidden plots, threats to the world order... not quite as impressive as parting the Red Sea, but it sure sounds like Hollywood blockbuster territory to me.
