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6 items from 2012

30 October 2012 2:01 AM, PDT | Blogomatic3000 | See recent Blogomatic3000 news »

With all the terrible weather going on this week, here’s a list of “End of the World” movies you should watch. Hey- you’re stuck inside anyway and you might develop survival skills that could just help you get through the next End of the World scenario.

Outbreak

Now this one’s a favorite of mine- it features the absurd scenario of young, curly haired Patrick Dempsey stealing a monkey only to be bitten while releasing it, and then causing a 100% mortality-rate-virus from the 1970s to come back and haunt us now. (It makes sense if you watch the movie). The movie takes on the wild theory of how far the government is willing to go to protect the majority of its people, and where the line is drawn for the government to cross.

28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later

Another pair of epidemic movies, they go along in contract »

- Catherina Gioino

17 October 2012 1:01 PM, PDT | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

Is it weird that the director of Das Boot and Outbreak is also one of the men most responsible for shaping my love of films as a young child?Yes, Wolfgang Petersen has made some pretty great films, but the ones that will always stay with me are a pair from 1985, The NeverEnding Story and Enemy Mine. The NeverEnding Story was one that we'd recorded on VHS off of an HBO broadcast that got watched over and over again from the time I was six years old until I moved out of my parents house. It was one of the early films that helped me to understand the power that movies have to transport you to a different time and place, not unlike its protagonist »

3 September 2012 11:00 AM, PDT | Zap2It - From Inside the Box | See recent Zap2It - From Inside the Box news »

"Frankenstein" (1931): Since it involves a scientist's (Colin Clive) creation of a synthetic man (Boris Karloff), this most legendary movie version of Mary Shelley's story has to be considered one of the classic examples of this genre.

"The Satan Bug" (1965): An ex-government agent's (George Maharis) pursuit of two missing vials of a deadly virus fuels this gripping adaptation of an Alistair MacLean novel.

"The Andromeda Strain" (1971): In giving life (or, in the cases of some characters, death) to Michael Crichton's novel, director Robert Wise wisely uses a cast of frequent supporting players -- including Arthur Hill, David Wayne and Kate Reid -- as scientists fighting a lethal germ from a high-tech underground lab.

"Coma" (1978): Remade this week as an A&E Network miniseries, Robin Cook's best-seller -- first brought to the screen by the aforementioned Crichton -- casts Genevieve Bujold as a headstrong Boston »

- editorial@zap2it.com

22 April 2012 1:00 PM, PDT | Zap2It - From Inside the Box | See recent Zap2It - From Inside the Box news »

Working with, and learning from, other established actors has proved useful for Cuba Gooding Jr.

The "Jerry Maguire" Oscar winner makes a rare television appearance Sunday, April 22, in ABC's fact-inspired new Hallmark Hall of Fame drama "Firelight."

In playing Dwayne "DJ" Johnson, a counselor at a correctional facility for young women, Gooding is teamed with a number of actresses just starting to make names for themselves ... a situation he says he knew how to handle from his experiences with such stars as Laurence Fishburne (in "Boyz N the Hood"), Dustin Hoffman ("Outbreak") and "Jerry Maguire" himself, Tom Cruise.

"They are real artists, and they allow you to create without stifling your creativity," Gooding tells Zap2it. "That was the main lesson I took from them. Making 'Outbreak' with Dustin and Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey, we really kind of sang when we were on the set together. It »

- editorial@zap2it.com

2 April 2012 4:48 PM, PDT | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Jennifer Lawrence / Josh Hutcherson's The Hunger Games Box Office: $250M Milestone Not Reached Last Weekend. Another consequence of The Hunger Games' lower-than-expected weekend box-office performance was that its drop-off rate was slightly higher than originally thought. At close to 62%, The Hunger Games drop was about the same as that of Catherine Hardwicke / Robert Pattinson / Kristen Stewart's original Twilight movie in fall 2008 — even though Ross' film version of Suzanne Collins' novel received much better reviews. For comparison's sake, among non-sequels: James Cameron / Sam Worthington's Avatar was down a minuscule 2% on its second weekend. Sam Raimi / Tobey Maguire / Kirsten Dunst's original Spider-Man was down 38%. Chris Columbus / Daniel Radcliffe's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was down 36%. Michael Bay / Shia Labeouf / Megan Fox's Transformers was down 47.5%. Tim Burton / Mia Wasikowska's Alice in Wonderland was down 46%. When it comes to sequels, David Yates' Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 »

- Zac Gille

3 March 2012 4:07 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Contagion; Immortals; The Rum Diary

One of the most likable things about the prolific Steven Soderbergh is just how eager he is to embrace (and subvert) the traditions of genre cinema. While other Cannes-favourite "auteur" directors may claim flatulently that their work is too personal for conventional labels (ha!), Soderbergh flits nimbly from big-budget crime caper to hand-held docudrama (the Oceans franchise, Full Frontal), from head-cracking action to arty angst (sex, lies, and videotape), from conspiracy thriller to political biopic (Michael Clayton, Che) and from sci-fi to sexposé (Solaris, The Girlfriend Experience) with ease.

His current cinema release, Haywire, casts mixed martial arts star Gina Carano as a high-kicking secret agent, lending a big-screen sheen to the straight-to-video genre of which Cynthia Rothrock was once queen bee. Meanwhile his viral outbreak movie Contagion (2011, Warner, 12) hits the DVD shelves, taking its lead from such time-honoured disaster epics as Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, »

- Mark Kermode

6 items from 2012