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There's no escaping James Franco. In little more than a decade, the 30-something actor has risen up from relative obscurity to become a worldwide sex symbol and Hollywood leading man with tremendous star power, despite making some career choices — after receiving critical acclaim for his performance in Milk (2008), Franco returned to TV in 2009 with recurring roles on 30 Rock and the soap opera General Hospital — that would have derailed the careers of other actors.
Passed over for several major roles earlier in his career, Franco was chosen to bring Fox's Planet of the Apes franchise back to life and to headline Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful, which is currently the highest grossing movie of the year by a wide margin. How did Franco go from being a TV "geek" to the king wizard of the box office? Just watch the movies on the list we've put together for you and, in under eight hours, you'll be able to dazzle your friends and co-workers with your understanding of the ascension of Franco.
Be conversant in James Franco >> Posted 04.09.13 by BrentJS -
"Hermoine just stole all of our s**t."
After the release of an April Fool's joke trailer for a sequel to 2008's Pineapple Express, an actual, red-band trailer has been released for the upcoming, apocalyptic comedy This is the End.
The movie follows Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill and Jay Baruchel as fictional versions of themselves trying to stay alive while living in Franco's house after an apocalypse hits the planet. The NSFW trailer shows the movie's many cameos, including Michael Cera, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Aziz Ansari and a not-messing-around Emma Watson, whose apocalypse survival instinct is take what's hers.
watch the trailer >> Posted 04.03.13 by Ryan -
"We should make more sequels to our movies."
For those that loved the 2008 comedy Pineapple Express, you're in luck: Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson, along with Jonah Hill, have teamed up for a sequel, sort of.
In what is clearly a April Fool's joke, Sony Pictures has released a trailer for Pineapple Express 2, reuniting Dale (Rogen), Saul (Franco), Red (McBride) and henchman Matheson (Robinson), that quickly revealed to be the trailer for This is the End instead. The upcoming comedy sees those same actors (plus Jay Baruschel) play fictional(?) versions of themselves as they live together in a single apartment while a global apocalypse destroys the Earth.
watch the trailer >> Posted 04.01.13 by Ryan -
The Cold War was one of the most frightening periods of American history, a roughly 44-year period marked by tense relations with the Soviet Union and the constant threat of mutually assured destruction. During the 13-day Cuban missile crisis, the standoff between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. brought the world closer to the brink of global nuclear war than ever before or since, with President Kennedy and Soviet Premiere Khrushchev "eyeball to eyeball" until Khruschev "blinked" and war was averted.
By the '80s, economic stagnation and the rise of strong nationalist and separatist moviements combined to tear the Soviet Union apart, finally putting an end to the Cold War. But, would Khrushchev have blinked at all if he had had an army of obedient, tireless, super-strong soldiers at his command? The world we live in today would be a very different place indeed had the Soviet Union's experiments in breeding humans with non-human apes come to fruition. Think Red Dawn meets Planet of the Apes, but for real!
Hybrid humanzees and chumans! Oh, my! >> Posted 03.21.13 by BrentJS -
"Some kids want to be doctors, some kids want to be President, I just want to be bad."
Cinematically-speaking, March is going to reveal two very different sides of actor James Franco. First up is Disney's Oz The Great and Powerful, where Franco will play circus magician-turned-Wizard of Oz. Immediately following that PG-rated performance will be Franco's very R-rated turn in the indie crime drama Spring Breakers, where the actor will play dreaded gangster rapper Alien, who wishes for nothing more than to cause trouble with a group of best friends (Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) after he bails them out of jail.
Franco's character takes much of the focus of the movie's newly-released red band trailer, which shows Alien's world of parties, drugs and a whole lot of guns, but whose adult content is very much NSFW.
watch the trailer >> Posted 02.25.13 by Ryan -
Who can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs?
Before we had more details about Disney's plans for its newly-acquired Star Wars movie franchise, we asked you who you thought would make a good replacement for Harrison Ford as Han Solo in the planned Star Wars: Episode VII movie. You chose Nathan Fillion by a wide margin — an excellent choice considering Joss Whedon based the character that Fillion played in Serenity on Han Solo — but the more we hear about Episode VII, the more we're convinced that Ford will be reprising the role himself. That doesn't mean that the hunt for Han Solo is over, however.
Last week, Disney announced that at least two spin-off movies set in the Star Wars universe are in development, in addition to the new trilogy that will begin with Episode VII. One of the spin-offs will be set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope and chronicle the adventures of Han Solo before his fateful meeting with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Sir Alec Guinness) on Tatooine. Considering Ford was 35 when he played Solo for the first time, Disney will likely be looking to cast an actor in his 20's or early 30's, which puts Fillion, at 41, out of the running for the gig. Put on your thinking caps once again and help us to choose the best actor to play the smuggler, gambler and scoundrel who will one day woo a princess and help save the galaxy.
Rate the Top 10 Actors Who Could Play Young Han Solo >>
Posted 02.11.13 by BrentJS -
How far would you go to have a good time?
Director Harmony Korine has never been one to follow convention, getting his start as the screenwriter for the 1995 cult, teenage skateboarding drama Kids before launching a career as a director with movies like 1997's Gummo, a loose pastiche of a stories set in the tornado devastated town of Xenia, Ohio, and 2009's Trashhumpers, which followed a group of Nashville, Tennessee, seniors who, um, really like garbage.
Korine's upcoming Spring Breakers may be his strangest yet, as it follows a group of best friends (Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) whose hedonistic pursuit of the ultimate spring break ultimately crosses paths with rapper Alien (James Franco), who employs the girls in some criminal activity.
party with the best trailersSaturdays 10:00a ET / 7:00a PT
watch the trailer >> Posted 01.19.13 by Ryan -
Which Actor Should Play the Space Pirate?
Unless you've been sentenced to hard labor in the Spice Mines of Kessel or frozen in carbonite for the past few weeks, then you know that George Lucas has sold Lucasfilm Ltd. and that Disney is pushing for a new Star Wars movie to be released in 2015. The details of Star Wars: Episode VII are a closely guarded secret at this point, but we do know that Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine) has been hired to write the screenplay and that Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher have all been approached about it, but whether the trio will be playing older versions of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa or simply signing away their likeness rights for digital proxies is anyone's guess.
As much as we would love to see the original actors come back in some way, shape or form, we would much rather see Disney reboot the characters the way Paramount did with Star Trek. After all, if James Bond, Batman and Sherlock Holmes can survive multiple interations, why not Han, Luke and Leia? We already asked you who you think has the right stuff to play the last Jedi; now, help us choose the space pirate, the scoundrel, the scruffy looking nerf herder.
Rate the Top 10 Actors Who Could Play Han Solo >>
Posted 11.16.12 by BrentJS -
"I might not actually be a wizard."
Director Sam Raimi has never been one to shy from including cyclone-shaped dimensional portals in his movies. 1987's Evil Dead 2 both starts and ends with such a device, and Raimi's latest movie, Oz: The Great and Powerful, utilizes one as well. However, while Evil Dead's Ash (Bruce Campbell) ends up in the past, Oz The Great and Powerful's Oscar Diggs (James Franco) heads to the same magical place depicted in 1939's The Wizard of Oz, likely the movie that inspired Evil Dead 2's whirlwind portal in the first place.
Based more on L. Frank Baum's Land of OZ books and less a prequel to The Wizard of Oz movie, mostly because Disney purchased the movie rights to Baum's 13 Oz books after The Wizard of Oz was released. As Raimi explained during the Disney panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, that means Oz the Great and Powerful won't have ruby slippers, but, as revealed in the movie's teaser trailer, the movie would begin in black-and-white and revert to color much like The Wizard of Oz did. What was not revealed was what Franco would be up to in the movie, outside of meeting several witches, played by Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams. The movie's latest trailer offers more details on what Franco's Oscar will be up against in the movie, including the entrance of a familiar villain.
we're off to see the latest trailersSaturdays 10:00a ET / 7:00a PT
watch the trailer >> Posted 11.15.12 by Ryan -
Who Should Wear the Cape & Cowl?
It's still unclear how Warner Bros. (WB) plans to proceed with the Batman franchise now that director Christopher Nolan has wrapped up his trilogy. If you've seen The Dark Knight Rises, than you know that Nolan handed the keys to the bat cave to someone from within the universe he created just in case WB wanted to continue the story. However, since the studio announced in June that Gangster Squad scribe Will Beall had been hired to pen a movie based on DC Comics' preeminent super-team, the Justice League — the team's current roster includes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Cyborg — it seems far more likely that a new Bruce Wayne/Batman will be chosen, one that has nothing to do with Nolan's universe.
It will be tough to fill Christian Bale's Academy Award-winning shoes, but there must be someone out there with the physicality to play a superhero and the acting chops to portray a man driven to prevent the kind of senseless violence that took his parents away from him. Help us choose the new Dark Knight.
Select the Top 10 Actors Who Could Play Batman >>
Posted 10.09.12 by BrentJS