JOSE MANUEL

"The Vow" Wins Pinoy Hearts, Grosses P34-M in 7 Days

The Vow Wins Pinoy Hearts, Grosses P34-M in 7 Days

Columbia Pictures’ touching romantic drama “The Vow” stole the hearts of Filipino audiences as it grossed an outstanding P34.08-million nationwide in its first seven days of release (February 10-16) and on only 61 screens.

This was announced today by Vic Cabrera, managing director of Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. which distributed the film.

Attracting a predominantly date-market, “The Vow’s” successful box-office performance benefited from a pre-Valentine and Friday opening – an irresistible formula for the film’s target audience.

“Our decision to launch the film on the same date as its U.S. bow has paid off,” said Cabrera. “We’ve always believed that `The Vow’ is a special love story that Filipinos can relate to, given our fondness for sentimental, romantic movies. Add to this the unmistakable screen chemistry of stars Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, and you have a clear crowd-pleaser.”

In North America, “The Vow” made it to the altar at No. 1 with a sweet $41.7 million gross, outperforming “Safe House” and “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.” It’s the biggest opening for Screen Gems (a unit of Sony Pictures) whose previous record-holder, “Dear John,” is also a romance tearjerker that starred Tatum.

Back in the Philippines, Trinoma posted the highest box-office receipts for “The Vow” at P2.79-M, followed closely by SM Mall of Asia (P2.21-M), Greenbelt 3 (P1.66-M), Glorietta 4 (P1.60-M), Power Plant (P1.45-M), SM North EDSA (P1.37-M), SM Megamall (P1.35-M), Ayala Cebu (P1.21-M), Gateway Cineplex (P1.07-M) and Alabang Town Center (P1.06-M).

Rounding out the Top 20 cinemas are Robinsons Ermita (P1.05-M), Greehills Cinema (P 917,490), Newport City (P 914,345), SM Cebu (P 901,280), Shang Cineplex (P 848,402), SM San Lazaro (P 785,797), SM Manila (P 752,793), Robinsons Galleria (P 733,666), Eastwood Cinema (P 706,372) and SM Baguio (P 588,714).

In “The Vow,” Paige (McAdams) and Leo (Tatum) are a young married couple, madly in love and living fulfilling lives as artists in Chicago. One snowy night, the two fall victim to a car accident. Leo survives intact, but a head trauma erases Paige’s entire memory of her relationship with her husband. When she comes out of her coma, Leo is a stranger to her. Suddenly Leo finds himself in the painful position of rebooting the relationship he’s waited his whole life for, and win his wife’s love all over again.

Still showing across the Philippines, “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

“This Means War” Based on Personal Account of Writer Marcus Gautesen

At the heels of the most unforgettable and most action-packed films “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “X-Men: First Class” and “X-Men: The Last Stand” comes “This Means War” - the latest romantic-action comedy making hilarious waves screening after screening starring Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy and Chris Pine.

Recent (and all) screenings of “This Means War” yielded outstanding scores, which revealed that it plays to men, women, singles, and couples.

Collaborated by filmdom’s most creative talents, director McG, scribes Simon Kinberg and Timothy Dowling and producers Will Smith, Robert Simonds and James Lassiter – “This Means War” is an original story by Marcus Gautesen based on his personal experience. While attending Putney School in Vermont, Marcus was living with his best friend in a two-bedroom apartment in New York City’s Little Italy. Both unemployed, they decided to move into one bedroom and rent out the other. A beautiful French woman took the second room, and the guy’s friendship quickly went south as they repeatedly submarined each other’s attempts to win her over – it was war.

Hence, “This Means War” came about involving childhood friends and CIA agents/partners FDR (Pine) and Tuck (Hardy). Inseparable since childhood, Tuck and FDR’s friendship suddenly goes from best to worst as they fall for the same woman, Lauren (Witherspoon). They are the world’s top spies who’ve been partners and best friends for many years. FDR and Tuck decide they’re both going to date Lauren and see which one she chooses. As each begins to fall for Lauren, they get increasingly competitive and employ their spy tactics and techniques to sabotage each other. Lauren, who just wanted to find the right guy, has no idea that FDR and Tuck are waging war for her love.

Director Mc (Joseph McGinty Nichol) shares on making “This Means War,” “I approach filmmaking with a great sense of what I want to accomplish, but also a great effort to stay fluid. I come from the world of music where you go into the studio to write a song, and you have to stay fluid. I haven’t had the opportunity to be that loose with a film, to be that artistic. That's the irony: because it's comedy you think the artistry is not at the highest level. I would say to the contrary: you have to be working to your absolutely sharpest instincts. I wanted the action to be on point and I wanted the romance to be sexy and welcoming, but I also wanted the comedy to be sharp.”

A must-see post-Valentine’s date movie –“This Means War” opens in Philippine cinemas (nationwide) on February 22 from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

Get Your Own BlackBerry Smartphones for Free and Experience BlackBerry Messenger Now!

BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), the rich and unique messaging platform for BlackBerry® users, is now more accessible than ever. For as low as PHP 99 per month, BlackBerry users can stay constantly in touch with their colleagues, friends, and loved ones, and enjoy unlimited BBM messages, photo-sharing, and group chats anytime. Other fun perks of BBM include adding contacts by swapping PINs and scanning barcodes, sharing multimedia, expressing yourself with profile photos and status messages, and knowing when your messages have been delivered and read.

If you are not a BlackBerry user just yet, you can get started on the road to experiencing BBM by participating in two exciting activities that will give you the chance to win BlackBerry smartphones and other amazing prizes.

BBMPhotoMe Contest

Get your creative juices flowing and join the BBMPhotoMe contest running from February 15 - 28, 2012 at the BlackBerry Pilipinas Facebook Fan Page (www.facebook.com/BlackBerryPH). Visit the contest tab and upload an original photo of yourself with the BBM speech bubble, demonstrating the contest theme “Show How BBM™ Lets You Express Yourself.”

Rally your friends to join the BlackBerry Pilipinas Facebook community to support you during the two week voting period from February 29 to March 11, 2012. All photos will be judged according to the following criteria: Online Votes 20%, Creativity: 30%; Originality: 30% and Relevancy to the Theme 20%. The 6 entries that garner the highest percentage will be declared winners.

BlackBerry Pilipinas is giving away the following prizes to the best entries per contest theme:

1st Place Prize (1 winner). A BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 smartphone
2nd Place Prize (3 winners). A BlackBerry® Curve™ 9300 smartphone
3rd Place Prize (2 winners). A BlackBerry® Curve™ 8520 smartphone

Dare To Do More: The Ultimate BBM Challenge @ Trinoma

BlackBerry smartphones, exclusive premiums, and other fun prizes are also up for grabs at the Dare To Do More: The Ultimate BBM Challenge happening on February 18, Saturday, at the Activity Center of Trinoma, Quezon City. Gather your whole barkada, have fun at the experiential booths, and purchase the latest BlackBerry smartphones in the Philippines today. Discover just why BBM is the ultimate messaging platform by participating in the BBM tournament from 1-4pm. Prove your mastery of BBM and advance to the finals from 6-8pm, which will pit your BBM skills with trailblazers and a mystery celebrity BBM user.

The BBM event in Trinoma officially kick starts the BBM mall tours in Metro Manila. Like www.facebook.com/BlackBerryPH, follow @BlackBerryPH on Twitter, and visit ph.blackberry.com for the latest information and updates on BlackBerry in the Philippines.

Shooting Two Adam Sandlers Together for ‘Jack and Jill’

To handle technical challenges of filming Adam Sandler opposite himself playing the titular twins “Jack and Jill,” the filmmakers turned first to director of photography Dean Cundey, the cinematographer who shot “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “The Parent Trap,” “Back to the Future,” and “Jurassic Park.”

“When an actor plays two characters in the frame at the same time, there are a lot of tricky things that occur – tricky, because the process usually requires you to do a shot with one character in the frame and then repeat the shot with the other character also in the same frame,” Cundey explains. “Sometimes, it’s a fairly simple process, as simple as a split. In those shots, the camera doesn’t move. In those, you film it twice, with the actor playing one character on one side of the frame, and then again, playing the other character on the other side of the frame. Then you go into the computer and put them together, almost like you’re taking two photographs and cutting them in the middle and pasting them down.”

From those simple shots, the process can get increasingly complicated. “We’ll move the camera, have them touch each other, hand each other objects – it’s a great way to keep the audience engaged,” Cundey continues.

Cundey describes a typical shot: “We’d shoot Adam as Jack. Then he’d go and get made up as Jill; we’d relight the set and we’d have to make sure that the lighting was right for where Adam would be standing as Jill. Adam would come in and we’d give him a little ear bud, so he could hear his performance as Jack, which he’d just done. We had a monitor set up so he could see what Jack was doing. Dan DeLeeuw, the visual effects supervisor, would make sure that the shots were going to work. The motion control technicians made sure we were getting the exact camera movement over and over again. Finally, the on-set compositor could put it together as we did it – show us how it’s going together so we could evaluate it and judge it. It was a very team-heavy process.”

“We used a computer-controlled camera – the computer is programmed to do the exact same move multiple times,” says DeLeeuw. “We could shoot once for Jack and do the same move again with Jill.” A good example, he notes, is the scene in which Al Pacino falls for Jill at a basketball game. “Not only do you have Jack and Jill, but the basketball players and the crowd behind them. As the setting gets bigger, so does the difficulty.”

It fell to DeLeeuw to create the illusion that Adam Sandler really does have a twin sister. “These effects took a lot of planning, right from the storyboard stage – but it’s also a comedy, so we all had to stay on our toes,” he says. “For many shots, we’d shoot Adam with a body double for Jill – the double would wear a green hood over his head, which we could remove later and replace with Adam, as Jill.”

Cundey explains how he worked in tandem with DeLeeuw: “The on-set process is the gathering of the pieces of the puzzle – the mosaic that is later put together by the compositors and post-production team. I had to make sure that the pieces are the right pieces – as the audience gets more and more sophisticated, you can’t do anything simply. You have to give them the pieces so they can do something interesting and unique.”

Cundey says that the production had a great asset in Adam Sandler. “As we got through the process, Adam learned more and more about how to do what we wanted to do, and he was a fast learner,” says Cundey. “The great thing about Adam and his creative process is that every new shot is an invention. We’d rehearse a shot and have a very good idea of what we wanted to do, but everything was subject to rehearsal and seeing how it played. The coolest thing about this production was being able to think on your feet – there’d be a new idea, and it would be up to [director] Dennis [Dugan], me, and the assistant director to figure out how we were going to do it.”

Opening across the Philippines on February 22, “Jack and Jill” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

Taylor Kitsch, Screen’s Newest Action Hero in ‘John Carter’

It isn’t often that an actor gets the opportunity to play a Civil War veteran who gets transported to the planet Mars and meets a beautiful, strong-willed princess so that he can help her fight a civil war of her own.

For Taylor Kitsch, who put himself on the map playing Riggins on the highly acclaimed TV series “Friday Night Lights,” the chance to play the title role of John Carter in Academy Award®–winning writer/director Andrew Stanton’s “John Carter,” was something he was not going to pass up.

“When I first read the script, I was drawn to the character-driven story and the fact that it will benefit from being a big studio movie,” he says. “It gave the filmmakers a chance to make the film in an amazing way. You get to know John Carter’s background with his family, the Civil War and everything. It’s heavy to play but it gives me such a base to draw from through the whole movie. For example, in one scene, you’ll see Carter playing with his rings and you’ll know what that truly means to him. It’s great as an actor because it’s something to really dive into.

“The grandeur, and what Stanton’s done, and how it works and how it’s all intertwined is quite epic and I felt that as an actor,” he continues. “My character is definitely on an epic adventure. We go from the 1800s on the streets of New York to the Arizona Territory in the West to the plains of Mars—all in one movie. As an actor I experienced my character John Carter in many different settings that had specific emotions and needs that I had to evoke.

“I can’t recall any movie that’s done it the way we have. The ending brings the adventure full circle brilliantly, but you’ll have to see it to understand what I mean.”

Like all of the other actors working on “John Carter,” Kitsch loves working with Stanton. “Andrew Stanton’s vision was very infectious,” he says. “He’s just brilliant and you just have to go along with it. You have to believe in it because it’s such an incredible vision that if you don’t, you’re not doing the story and the character justice.

“Our first meeting was great. I was so excited because I am a huge fan of ‘Wall-E’ and, come to find out, he’s a fan of ‘Friday Night Lights.’ It’s just been a great relationship from the get-go and trust has been there from day one. It was great to be able to have him explain his vision and then to become part of it.”

Kitsch also credits Edgar Rice Burroughs, who created the character of John Carter in 1912, with the power of the story and of his character’s journey. “I think Burroughs was way ahead of his time, especially for his first science-fiction novel,” Kitsch states. “It relates to what we’re living and doing right now—the lack of natural resources, the energy problems, the wars going on from racism to religion. He was hitting it all almost 100 years ago.

“And even in the film we address all those things,” he says. “What Stanton has done is taken the base of John Carter from Burroughs and definitely gone into more depth of who John Carter really is and where he comes from.

“Stanton has given me so much more to dive into with the character that wasn’t realized in the books. It’s been really great, script wise, to draw from that.”

The love story in “John Carter” has also been a great experience for Kitsch to play. His co-star, Lynn Collins, plays Princess Dejah Thoris and their relationship has taken on a full, exciting life of its own. Kitsch credits Stanton and his screenplay for this. “In the books it’s almost love at first sight and John would do anything for Dejah, but in the film you follow an arc that happens with John and Dejah as their relationship develops,” he explains. “I love the banter back and forth. We rib each other and we challenge each other through different scenes and finally the truth just comes out. It’s a love story with everything else going on but it means so much to the film. It’s quite the backbone of it.

“Our characters’ relationship at first is about pushing each other’s buttons to see how we’ll each react. That changes as we grow and she stops trying to test him and begins to see the real John, the part he can’t even see himself.

“But through the relationship, Dejah and John have so much going on that those moments become very special and, in a sense, earned. It would be unreal just to play that relationship as it is in the moment. You have to understand that the stakes are always so high, so you have to create these small moments that are earned and not just like, ‘Oh, you’re pretty today.’ You definitely have to work and earn those moments, which make them that much more special in the film.”

In the end, Kitsch has never worked harder or been more grateful for an experience as he is for his work on “John Carter.”

“Honestly, no job will ever be as physical and exhausting, yet rewarding, as this one,” he says with a smile. “I’ve been tested on every level and then some. The pure physicality of it, to the arc of the character, to the emotional spectrum he has. I’ve had to keep up my endurance this whole time, but again what you put in is what you hopefully get out. And I think that will be very specific to this role.”

Opening across the Philippines in March 2012, “John Carter” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.

Jonah Hill, From Comedian to Oscar-Nominee with “Moneyball”

Moments after the Academy Award nominations were announced several weeks ago in Beverly Hills, “Moneyball” star Jonah Hill still seemed stunned upon learning of his Oscar nomination.

“I saw it on TV and started freaking out,” Hill admitted. “My mom was the first to call and then [producer] Scott Rudin shortly after that. This whole thing… it doesn’t feel real yet.”

Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor, Columbia Pictures’ sports-oriented film “Moneyball” is based on the true story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) – once a would-be baseball superstar who, stung by the failure to live up to expectations on the field, turned his fiercely competitive nature to management.

Billy Beane’s radical revamping of his team, the Oakland A’s, was a collaborative effort, one that relied on his recruitment of a team of economic analysts who replaced baseball’s hunches and gut instincts with a fresh skew towards science. To capture the essence of the math brains who changed American sports, the screenwriters created a character: Peter Brand.

As played by Jonah Hill, Brand is an Ivy League economist turned unlikely baseball analyst – a guy who in any other field might be among the best and brightest, but in baseball has been relegated to outsider status. It is Brand who keys Beane into one of the main insights behind the “moneyball” concept: that the value of a baseball player isn’t something you can see or sense, but something you find lurking in the numbers. When Beane hires Brand away from the Cleveland Indians with the intention to put his stats-based approach front and center for the A’s – no matter the fallout — he sets the two men on a collision course with baseball orthodoxy.

“Peter Brand is an outsider,” says director Bennett Miller. “He’s an Ivy League kid with a degree in economics and a perspective on the game that nobody in baseball could possibly have had. Billy plucks Pete from a cubicle in Cleveland and weaponizes him.”

Best known for his comedic performances, Hill welcomed the chance to sink his teeth into a subtle, dramatic performance. He approached the character as a baseball interloper driven by a true love of the game, and a man who grows on the job. “Peter Brand is the kind of guy who really should be a billionaire on Wall Street, except that he loves baseball,” observes Hill. “Because of his background, he judges players in a different way than the system supports. He’s all about the facts. He realizes it’s not about how a guy throws, how fast he runs or what he looks like. It’s about how often he gets on base.”

Yet what seems perfectly logical to Brand, comes across at first to the rest of the baseball world as a threat to a grand tradition. “It’s a natural reaction,” notes Hill. “Any time you try to change the way things are done, people from the previous generations are going to be upset, especially if you’re saying what they’re doing is unproductive. You can understand why they think ‘who is this kid using a computer to tell me who the players should be?’”

While Beane and Brand couldn’t be more divergent personalities, Hill says one attitude unites them. “For both men, it’s them versus the world,” Hill explains. “These are two guys with their backs against the wall who find the guts to fight for what they believe in.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Moneyball” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

Q&A with Michelle Williams on “My Week with Marilyn”

Michelle Williams takes on the iconic role of Marilyn Monroe in The Weinstein Company's critically acclaimed "My Week with Marilyn." Earning for Williams a Best Actress Oscar nomination, the film is based on Colin Clark's book of the same name and chronicles his time spent working with Monroe while she was in England shooting the romantic comedy "The Prince and the Showgirl" in 1956.

Williams sat down with journalists to talk about portraying Monroe, the film, shooting her current role of Glinda the good witch in Sam Raimi's "Oz: The Great and Powerful" and her six-year-old daughter Matilda with late actor Heath Ledger.

Question: Did you have an awareness of Marilyn Monroe and her starpower when you were younger?
Michelle Williams: "I was interested in her, but then I kind of lost track of her over the last 10 years or so. I had a poster of her up in my room. It wasn't a picture of her as the icon, it was a picture of her looking like an ordinary joyful girl. So I definitely had some kind of connection. (Working on this film) reignited whatever initial, sort of, attraction I had to her when I was a teenager."

Q: Did you do your own singing in the film?
Williams: "Yes and my mother is going to be so excited when she sees this. She always wanted me to sing and dance. I had so much fun doing that!"

Q: So doing a musical could be in the cards for you?
Williams: "I would love to. What's so liberating about singing and dancing is that it turns your head off. You coast on this wave of muscle memory. You literally can't think while you're performing. There's a kind of transcendence to it. I think maybe that's why Marilyn was so especially talented at it. Her singing and dancing are unparalleled and her musical numbers are just breathtaking."

Q: The film used many of the same locations in shooting "Prince and the Showgirl." Did that add to the production?
Williams: "There was a lot of synchronicity. We shot in the actual Parkside house (that Marilyn lived in). My dressing room at Pinewood was Marilyn's actual dressing room. That was so special. The stage where she shot that song and dance number was the stage where I shot mine. So many of the props in our movie were in the original 'Prince and the Showgirl' movie."

Q: Did it ever feel ghostly?
Williams: "Well, it's all energy. And it's what you make of it. I like to make things out of nothing! (laughs) I like to spin things out of thin air, so that stuff works for me."

Q: Did you wear wigs for the part, or grow out your hair?
Williams: "I wore wigs, but I had to keep my hair really bleached underneath because it would show through the wigs. My eyebrows had to be dark and they were reshaped. You go through so many grotesque phases making movies (laughs). I never really feel quite like myself. I just feel like a mutant -- always halfway in between some other person and myself. I don't know what belongs to me and what doesn't!"

Q: After filming ended was it hard to let go of Marilyn?
Williams: "I think when you work in a way that really gets under your skin, its not an easy break. You make a little extra room for these people that you play and then they leave. You're left with this hollow space. I wish I could play her again."

Q: Does your daughter Matilda come to set?
Williams: "She comes with me everywhere."

Q: How do you balance getting into character and then going home at the end of the day to be a mom?
Williams: "What works for me is to have a commute from where we live to where I work. So that in the morning, I leave the house behind and walk clean and fresh into my professional life. And then the same thing on the way home. I find that a 20 or 30 minute commute makes a kind of passageway for me that I need."

Q: You're currently shooting "Oz," playing Glinda. Matilda must love coming to that set.
Williams: "It's the best thing professionally that's happened to us. It has brought her on board my work in a way that wasn't possible in a movie like 'Marilyn' or 'Blue Valentine.' On those, there was no space for a kid to come visit and be a kid. (With 'Oz') she comes every single day after school because it's like a playground. She says, 'There's only one good witch and it's my mom.' She's very excited about it."

Q: It's interesting that you said the project was the best thing to happen professionally to "us" not "me."
Williams: "Definitely. Every choice that I make is about how it's going to affect our life -- where it films, how long it is, what else is going on in her year, what's the last job I did, how much time I've had off in between, how much time we had to really deeply connect and how long can we sustain a period of time where I'm working. So when 'Oz' came along, it was very clear to me that it was the right decision for us."