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February 2013

The Lone Ranger

Gore Verbenski reteams with the Pirates of the Caribbean dream-team for one of the Summers biggest movies!

2013 Preview
Our predictions for the highest grossing movies of the year, as well as our most anticipated movies of the year!

Reviews
This is 40, Flight and Les Misrables are in cinemas this month, and we have exclusive reviews of them!

Oz The Great and Powerful

Sam Raimi and Disney take on Frank L. Baums classic tale in a massive fantasy blockbuster!

a sort-of sequel to Tim Burtons dreadful but record- breaking Alice in Wonderland, released in early March and featuring a cast of Oscar-nominees, but not exactly box office favourites, like James Franco, Michelle Williams, Rachael Weisz and Mila Kunis. Oh yeah, and Zach Braff as a monkey! What could possibly go wrong? Oz is released March 5.

Sam Raimi hasnt directed a major film since 2007s terribly received Spider-Man 3. So, what does he choose as his comeback to filmmaking? How about a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, marketed as

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WE GO BEHIND THE MASK AS THE TEAM BEHIND PIRATES BRING TVS MOST BELOVED WESTERN TO THE BIG SCREEN WITH ONE OF THE BIGGEST BUDGETS EVER!
In 2003, a young director named Gore Verbenski was handed a very big project. He had only made two films, the low-budget Mousehunt and the US remake of The Ring, starring Naomi Watts. As they have always done and continue to do, Disney took a major gamble on Verbenski and gave him the job of directing their big Summer tentpole for 2003, a film based upon one of their most successful, age-old theme park rides. This project was Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Johnny Depp, who at this point was a fairly big name, was cast in the lead role of Captain Jack Sparrow, a character that would later become one of cinema's best known and most recognised. This film was an absolutely massive success, and changed Depp and Verbenski's lives forever. They went on to make two more Pirates films together (Depp made a third, On Stranger Tides, with director Rob Marshall), both of which are in the list of the 15 biggest movies of all time. Whilst making 2011's Oscar-winning animated film Rango, with Depp providing the lizard's voice, Verbenski was inspired to make a western on a larger scale... a much larger scale. Disney had been planning a Lone Ranger movie for a while, but had failed to find a director or star. Even after Verbenski was given the job, and Depp cast in the (for once) secondary role as Tonto, the film suffered major delays due to overbudgeting. Now, the film is just months away from release, and it is clear that Depp's Tonto will be no secondary character, as the star's face and name take centre stage in all the promotion. Speaking of promotion, a trailer for the film will be screened during the Superbowl- the ultimate advertising spot in the US TV calendar. All of this would suggest that Disney are desperate for this to be a hit, but does it need to be. I mean, just look at their release schedule. In the next two years they've got Avengers 2, Star Wars 7, Pirates 5 and countless animated films. All that said, Lone Ranger looks excellent, and we can't wait to see what Verbenski has produced! 3

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This sequel to the hilarious 2010 animated film has Al Pacino voicing the villain, which is great, but promotion suggests it is minion-heavy, and were not their biggest fans! 15. RIPD Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges team up for this comic-book adaptation, which is a bit like Men in Black crossed withummmm. Men in Black 2? god.

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7. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug As you can tell from this first image, this will be a very different film from An Unexpected Journey, but not so different that wed be fooled into looking forward to it as much as we did Peter Jacksons disappointing first film.

10. Oz The Great and Powerful Sam Raimis first film since Spider-Man 3 looks a little too much like Tim Burtons Alice for our liking, but still should be one of (if not the) most visually stunning films of the year.

6. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Although we werent the biggest fans of the first film (it placed #12 on our films of 2012), this sequel has a much stronger supporting cast (Philip Seymour Hoffman is in it) and is adapted from a much better book. Plus, Jennifer Lawrences quarter quell wetsuitsweeeeeeeeettttttt!

14. The Smurfs 2 This sequel to the enjoyable 2011 animated comedy has the same great cast as its predecessor, and some new French Smurfs!

9. Man of Steel Considering what a big deal this is, it should really be higher up on this list. However, Zac Snyder is a terrible director, Henry Cavill has failed to proven himself a good actor yet, Michael Shannon is terrible and the awful trailers make it look like a bad Tree of Life remake. Not cool, man! Superman!

13. The Great Gatsby The chance of Baz Lurhmann not making a fool of himself with this film is very low, but itll still be interesting to see how a cast including Leo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire get on at the Fitzgerald classic!

8. Thor: The Dark World 12. The Wolverine This latest entry in the X-Men franchise looks set to be a massive flop, with few stars, a very strange plot involving samurai and barely any connection to its predecessors. It does sound interesting, though! We know this is a whole year away, but the fact we havent gotten one official image or poster yet suggests this may be pushed back to July/August 2014, getting in the way of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. If it does come out next November, it should be great fun, with Natalie Portman and Tom Hiddleston retuurning alongside Chris Hemsworths

11. Despicable Me 2

MAKE SURE TO DOWNLOAD THE OFFICIAL MOVIE TACO PODCAST, REVIEWING ALL THE LATEST RELEASES AND DISCUSSING THE LATEST NEWS!

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5. Star Trek Into Darkness Boo that Benedict Cumberbatch! Hes abandoned Sherlock to focus on this and The Hobbit, and were not happy! Although, this does look awesome!

4. Anchorman: The Legend Continues We didnt realise how much we wanted this until we cried at the trailer. All the cast are back, plus Kristen Wiig, and its December 21 release date will make it a surefire Christmas hit!

3. The Lone Ranger The recently released second trailer for this Pirates of the Caribbean in the Wild West flick was probably the best trailer of the year, and made us very, very excited for this massive-budget epic.

2. Grown Ups II We suspect we will be the only website on the internet putting this on their list, but we loved the first one! Recent comedy sequels have tended to be horrible and unfunny, but Sandlers never made one before, and he might be able to pull it off! Plus, Taylor Lautner and Alexander Ludwig guarantee a young audience will be interested, making it one of the most bankable films of 2013. 1. Iron Man 3 The fact that this is our No.1 movie shows what a disappointing year 2013 is going to be compared with this year, when The Avengers, which featured Stark + Thor + Black Widow + Cap, wasnt even our No.1 most anticipated! This is the best of a mediocre bunch, beating out Grown Ups II only because we dont want death threats from Adam Sandler-haters! Anyway, it does look great.

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REVIEWS

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THIS IS 40

udd Apatows 2009 Funny People is one of my favourite films ever. Its a comedy-drama epic, packed with hilarious characters, a heartbreaking and warming story and a magnificently clever script. Leslie Mann stars opposite Adam Sandler in the film, and her children are played by Mann and Apatows real-life kids, Iris and Maude. In This is 40, which is oddly being marketed as a sequel to Knocked Up, which it most certainly is not, Mann plays her kids mother once again, with Paul Rudd taking the place of Apatow as her husband. The film also features a massive cast including Jason Segal, Chris ODowd, Melissa McCarthy, Lena Dunham, John Lithgow, Albert Brooks and Megan Fox. What surprised me about Foxs role is how she seems to realise that, as an actress, the only role she can actually play is that of a prostitute. In this, she at first pretends not to be, but eventually is revealed to be, a prostitute. In one seen, she strips down to her underwear, and I was surprised that this image has not been used in trailers and on posters, as if this film was marketed under the tag Megan Fox Takes Off Clothes, it would be a record-breaking hit. The script is absolutely hilarious when it tries to be. Some of the scenes, especially those with McCarthy and Brooks, are brilliant, and there are some great running jokes, including one about the kids watching Lost. Albert Brooks and John Lithgow, the least comical characters in the film, are both superb, and deserving of award nominations, as Rudd and Manns fathers. Super 8s Ryan Lee turns up as McCarthys humiliated son, as she swears and shouts her way through some of the films best scenes. Actors like Segal and Dunham appear to be turning up in cameos, and dont really need to be in the film, but add some humor. The storys depressing midlife crisis theme and the constant jokes about One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Graham Parker suggest the film isnt sure if its directed at middle-aged men or teenage boys (the Megan Fox scenes). This is one of few problems with what is a really good and funny follow-up to a fairly unbeatable 6 masterpiece. Its basically The Dark Knight Rises of comedies!

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LES MISRABLES
As with many great epics, Tom Hoopers excellent adaptation of the musical version of Victor Hugos Les Misrables begins on a boat. In this case, a prison boat, on which Hugh Jackmans Jean Valjean is a prisoner, sentenced to 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. The first sweeping shots of this ship as it bounces around in the ocean inform us that this film is going to be BIG. It covers much ground, following Valjean and his nemesis, police commissioner Javert (Russell Crowe) over an 18 year period prior to his exit from the prison, as they chase one another across France with various supporting characters in tow. I had never seen any version of the musical, which first opened on the West End in 1985 and has played there, in New York, Paris and many other cities, ever since, prior to seeing this film. I had, however, devoured Hugos magnificent novel many years ago, and so judged this film based on that. The main things that I noticed, obviously, were the things from the book left out of the film, and most likely the stage musical also. Examples of this would be a lack of any backstory for Marius (Eddie Redmayne), and the leaving out of the tense apartment confrontation between Marius, Thernadier (Sacha Baron-Cohen), Valjean and Javert that takes up a good 20 pages of the novel. Something I noticed watching this film that I failed to even think about whilst reading the book was all the similarities between the stories of this and Charles Dickens Oliver Twist, a novel written a few decades before Hugos. Young Cosette is like Oliver, an orphan mistreated by her guardians and used for work by a scheming, hilarious and camp villain, in this case Thernadier (and his wife, played brilliantly by Helena Bonham Carter, reunited with her Kings Speech director Hooper), in Olivers, Fagan. Fantine (Anne Hathaway) is very like Nancy, who ironically was played in a West End version of Oliver by Samantha Barks, who plays Eponine in this. Anne Hathaways unfortunately quite short performance in Les Mis is astonishing. Its actually better than everyones been telling you it is, and if for some reason she doesnt bring home Gold on Oscar night, something is not right with the world. Within 15 minutes, her character Fantine goes from having a

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decent, well-paid factory job (despite being constantly harassed by her boss, who clearly enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises and Love and Other Drugs) to being forced to sell her hair and teeth, become a prostitute, and eventually have snow dumped down her back, which results in her attacking a potential customer and almost being jailed by Javert. Her performance of I Dreamed A Dream would make Susan Boyle ashamed to have ever sung it, and despite what you may have read, the live singing really did add extra emotion to the performance, and bring me to tears. Amanda Seyfried, a far better singer than actress, plays adult Cosette in the third act of the film, but is oddly underused, appearing onscreen for no more time than Hathaway, despite being always present in the location. Her boyfriend Marius, however, has a very large role, and gets a number of major songs to himself. Eddie Redmayne is a surprisingly good singer, putting Russell Crowe, who simply sings the same three notes over and over throughout the film, to shame. Jackmans performance as Valjean is outstanding, and deserving of an Oscar, but we all know thats not going to happen (thanks, Daniel DayLewis!) The whole cast is great, and although the filmmaking aspects, such as cinematography and set design arent AMAZING, and some of the songs (and the character of Eponine, whom I found very irritating) arent entirely necessary, these weaknesses are made up for by the great acting and singing from most of the cast, and the brilliant pacing, which prevents even a non-die-hard fan such as myself from getting bored at any point!

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Flight
In my opinion, Robert Zemeckis is the best director of his generation. He was born to stand behind a movie camera, telling actors what to say and do, and choosing what should be displayed on a cinema screen. From Back to the Future to Forrest Gump to The Polar Express, he has more films on my Top 100 list than any other living director (Hitchcock and Minelli have more). Flight is his first live-action film since Castaway, which is probably is worst liveaction film, so my expectations werent extremely high. However, this is a tremendously compelling and moving achievement in filmmaking. Denzel Washington gives probably his best performance ever as Whip Whitaker, an alcoholic pilot who crash lands a plane one morning, saving 96 of the 100 souls on board. At first he is greeted as a hero, but when suspicions are raised that he may have been drunk or high the morning of the flight, his life is thrown into turmoil. He is helped along the way by the friends, John Goodman and Bruce Greenwood, both excellent as always, and his attorney Don Cheadle, who gives a particularly notable performance. Newcomer Kelly Reilly gives a heartbreaking turn as Whips sometime girlfriend, and really deserved a Supporting Actress nomination. At times, the film feels a little too long, and the crash sequence at the beginning is ridiculously drawn-out. Some of the scenes of Whip intoxicated or under the influence of other substances are a bit corny, with Marvin Gaye accompaniment in one particular sequence. The last half hour is incredibly moving, and had me in tears more than anything else ive seen this year. You see, thats what Robert Zemeckis is good atmaking me cry, and hes done it again! 9

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Stand-Up Guys
Its not that often that a film comes around which is purely a vehicle for the leading actors to appear together in. Sure, Zero Dark Thirty was made, in part, to show off Jessica Chastains acting talent, but rather than showcase the skills of a newcomer, Stand-Up Guys showcases the skills of some actors who are certainly not newcomers. Within two minutes of this film, we get to see Christopher Walken and Al Pacino onscreen together. Seeing this, we realise that no matter what the story, script or supporting cast are like, this will be a fun watch. To be fair, the story isnt great and isnt the slightest bit original. Pacinos character Val has just been released from jail after 28 years and is greeted by him only friend, Doc (Walken). However, he soon realises that Doc has been told to kill him before the next morning, and he agrees to allow Doc to shoot him. They spend the night enjoying themselves, dropping in on a brothel run by Lucy Punch, a restaurant waitressed by Docs niece, and their only other friend, Alan Arkins care-home abandoned Hirsch. All the actors are clearly having fun on screen, and there isnt one shot in the film that doesnt feature one of the main three. The filmmakers got their moneys worth. This is under no circumstances an awards film, but its a lot of fun to watch, just to see these incredible stars together. Its The Avengers for 70s tough-guys (and Alan Arkin). 10

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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug First Look

THERE BE DRAGONS! shouts Peter Jackson as he shows us this very exclusive first image of Smaug the Dragon. You will have seen this before if you saw An Unexpected Journey in cinemas, as this features in the prologue, but this is the first time it will be published on paper. Jackson is very excited about the second Hobbit film, released this December, and being able to fully reveal the Benedict Cumberbatch-voiced beast to the fans. The Hobbit 2 is released on December 13, 2013 and will feature on an upcoming Taco

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