Directed and written by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternhall, The Words deal with awriter (Bradley Cooper) who becomes famous off a plagiarized manuscript, and then has to face his actions when he meets the original author (Jeremy Irons).

The cast is rounded up with Olivia Wilde, Zoe Saldana, Ben Barnes, Dennis Quaid and J.K. Simmons.

The Words was first screened at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. A wide release is scheduled for September 21, 2012.

The single, simply titled This, is one of these collaborations from Modeselektor’s 2011 studio album Monkeytown. The music video is directed by Andrew Jones, who wrote it with Jason Drew, who, along with Xander Marritt, was involved with the 3D and animation of the music video.

A Vimeo version is available.

Created by FutureDeluxe

Produced by FutureDeluxe & Fractured Films

Directed by – Andrew Jones
Written by – Jason Drew & Andrew Jones
3d & animation – Jason Drew & Xander Marritt
Girl character rigging & animation – Xander Marritt
Producer / Art Director – James Callahan
Titles – Ollie Aplin & Andrew Jones
Wardrobe – Skye Pennant

Actress – Sheryl Lee
Marionettist – Sarah Fitzpatrick

Fractured Films
Director of Photography – Dominic Jones
1st AD – Will Jewell
Producer – Daniel Nixon
1st Assistant Camera – Jason Oxley
Gaffer – Stefan Mitchell
Grip – Phil Richards
Make-up – Nathan McLaughlin
Runner – Lorena Wright

The standards are inexplicably high, nigh on unattainable. However, the grueling work ethic and thirst for perfection creates a seismic divide between those stars who make it and those who get passed around from group to group in a perpetual torrent of judgment and dissatisfaction. For those who reach that pinnacle, there’s a greater emphasis on certain aspects and expectations.

The competition then becomes a veritable battle of the sexes when you take into consideration the preparation and standard to which certain idols are held. Vocally, there are those whose talents are obviously astronomical, to the point of overshadowing even those artists lying outside the Kpop craziness. However, dance as a visual artform is semi-instantly gratifying. When the complexities of choreography are broken down, it becomes more about what dancing is going to get the most attention and for what reasons. Thus the double standard set in society entrenches itself in pop culture in stark fashion.

Original Title: 甜蜜蜜
Release date: November 2, 1996
Director: Peter Chan
Screenplay by: Ivy Ho
Cast: Maggie Cheung, Leon Lai, Kristy Yang, Eric Tsang Chi-wai, Christopher Doyle, Irene Tsu

Ever since I saw this film a week ago, I have been believing in love like I haven’t before — the complete experience, singing love songs at the top of my lungs and all.

What have you done to me, Teresa Teng?

Comrades: Almost a Love Story is a simple, realistic, long-winded love story set in the mid-80s and 90s, when Mainlander XiaoJun (Lai) arrives to Hong Kong for a better life without knowing a lick of Cantonese. He lives in the tiniest of rooms at his Auntie Rosie’s (Tsu) minuscule apartment, and works at whatever he’s able to without having to communicate much.

Diligently, XiaoJun spends his weeks writing back home to his girlfriend XiaoTing (Yang), telling her about the amazingness of Hong Kong life — and McDonald’s. When XiaoJun finally saves enough spare change to visit McDonald’s, having learned the Cantonese words for “hamburger” and “Coca Cola,” he meets QiaoLi (Cheung), who notices his language impediment and helps him in Mandarin.

QiaoLi is a girl that, in regards to working and making money, she goes at it at full speed. She has no time for sidetracking on silly things like feelings and relationships because she needs to make money… and if she had more time in her day, she’d spend it making more money. Working jobs like it’s nobody’s business, QiaoLi takes XiaoJun up and down to work him to make money.

Eventually, one thing leads to another, and things get complicated.

Of course, Comrades: Almost a Love Story is a love story (it really is, it’s not an almost). However, the story almost adds elements that take you to the precise time and place alongside these people, who stop being characters from a movie and become real people. The truthfulness and the complexities of XiaoJun and QiaoLi’s interactions ring so close to real life that is almost impossible to look away once you begin watching.

Director Peter Chan Ho-sun and scriptwriter Ivy Ho manage to develop a romantic story that avoids going over the line of dreamy Hollywood cliches… or maybe it does, but Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung’s performances are so natural that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a film. I also loved how it took turns and was able to include the 90s market crash, and of course, the inclusion of Teresa Teng was a huge plus [1], in between migration, the crashing of dreams, and all the harsh reality thrown at you.

I could have easily given this a near-perfect score if I hadn’t had issues with how many times I thought the movie was going to be over, but wasn’t. Not that I minded it much, because I wasn’t satisfied with what could have possibly been bitter endings.

Rating: ★★★★¼ 

Starring Elena Aglaja Amado and Andrea Rigazzi, the completely shot underwater clip was directed by Andrea Todaro with special effects by Yan Hirshbühl.

The video is really not explicit, but the couple does make out a bit and undress underwater, so we’re covering our bases.

There’s a Vimeo version available.

You can visit Stendeck’s official website at stendeck.com, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.

Release date: November 13, 1991
Director: Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise
Screenplay by: Brendan Chapman, Burny Mattinson, Brian Pimental, Joe Ranft, Kelly Asbury, Chris Sanders, Kevin Harkey, Bruce Woodside, Tom Ellery, Robert Lence
Cast: Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, Bradley Pierce

For the past week, I’ve been a romantic mess. I don’t know what it is, but I guess it was the perfect opportunity to catch the rerelease 3D-converted  version of Disney’s modern classic Beauty and the Beast — tale as old as time.

I will not bother to comment much on the 3D conversion, which I thought darkened the picture and lost contrast. But apparently, fans of the film weren’t bothered by it — though, yeah, the Be Our Guest sequence as well as the Beauty and the Beast ballroom dance, and some of those forest scenes looked kinda cool. This is also the first time I’ve heard the Español Latino dub consciously since I first watched the film back in 1992, so it was certainly a little bizarre having grown accustomed to the original English audio.

But let’s be honest here, Beauty and the Beast rocks. Barely scrapping the 1.5 hour mark, the pace of the film is really agile, presenting scene after scene that means something for the story. While the credits rolled, I sat there thinking if I had seen any scene that felt like filler content, and there was none. The writing team made good use of presenting their characters to us, giving us important information to push the plot forward and move to the next.

At the expense of that, giving it a second thought, Beauty and the Beast might seem like it’s a bit rushed, but in between the romance build-up, the comedy, and musical sequences — which are all sing-a-long worthy — it seems like enough. Sure the villains of the movie aren’t on par with other Disney villains like Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty), Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmatians), Ursula (The Little Mermaid) or Jafar (Aladdin), but who needs Gaston and Lefou when you have a redeeming Beast?

The art looks as distinctive as ever, a singularity in style that is seldom achieved in richly developed CGI animation, and makes you miss 2D animation every time we see a newly polished CG character that may look slightly like the previous version you just saw a month ago. Though, I think the first 30 minutes of WALL*E get as close to stylistic distinctiveness as it possibly could.

Before we were trying to get Pixar’s Brave, or had Rapunzel (Tangled), Tiana (Princess and the Frog), or Giselle (Enchanted), Belle was as close as we could get to a modern not-a-Disney-Princess.  Though, now that I’m older (I’M OLD!!), I did take Belle’s feistiness as a little annoying at times, so I could understand Beast’s grumpiness, which made it all the more funny to watch.

Overall, Beauty and the Beast is aging quite decently for a picture that’s a little over 20 years old now (EFF, I’M OLD), and it’s definitely a Disney staple for the fun musical aspect of it thanks to Alan Menken’s genius ;P

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

There’s a Vimeo version of the video available.

You can visit their official website at 99Injections.com, or follow them on Twitter, YouTube, listen to their music on Soundcloud, and friend them on Facebook.

Dax Shepard stars as Charlie Bronson, a former getaway driver who exits the Witness Protection program to drive his pretty girlfriend (Kristen Bell) to Los Angeles so that she can land her dream job.  The authorities and his former gang (led by Bradley Cooper) get wind of his reappearance and set out to chase him down.

The cast also includes Kristin Chenoweth, Beau Bridges, Michael Rosenbaum, Joy Bryant, David Koechner, Ryan Hansen and Tom Arnold.

Hit and Run premieres on August 24, 2012.

Now comes Inseparable, the first fully Chinese-financed film starring Daniel Wu and Kevin Spacey, about a man whose life is falling apart since the death of his daughter by poisoned foods. He contemplates suicide until he befriends a mysterious American expat, who unleashes his inner superhero — literally.

The cast is rounded out by Beibi Gong, Kenneth Tsang (Starry Starry Night), Peter Stormare (Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Dancer in the Dark) and Ni Yan.

Inseparable is currently in cinemas in Mainland China, and had its UK premiere at the third Terracota Far East Film Festival in April.

The first single of the album titled Souris Puisque c’Est Grave (Smile Because It’s Serious) is a duet with Inna Modja, a singer from Mali that debuted in 2009 with the album Everyday is a New World, and is most popular for the song French Cancan (Monsieur Sainte Nitouche) [MV], nominated for Video of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique 2012.