Coming Soon
- This Week: Jun 17
- Monsters University (Jun 21)
- World War Z (Jun 21)
- Next Week: Jun 24
- The Heat (Jun 28)
This Week: Jun 17
Monsters University
Opens Jun 21, 2013
When it comes to animated high jinks in college, you usually think of keg stands and panty raids. With the prequel Monsters University, though, Pixar is matriculating two of its most beloved creations. Blue fur ball Sulley (voiced by John Goodman) and walking martini olive Mike (Billy Crystal) weren't always the best of buddies, especially when they were first learning how to frighten youngsters. ''Mike goes about scaring from an academic standpoint,'' says Goodman, ''and Sulley's more of a natural.''
Goodman was glad to return to the recording booth with Crystal. ''I just try to hang on and follow Billy. It usually winds up with me trying to hold in my laughter,'' he says. And just because they're off camera doesn't mean things don't get physical. ''I put my whole body into it. There's a lot of what I call 'grunt work,' which is literally grunting and falling down.'' The story — which features familiar college tropes like fraternity pranks and a hard-nosed dean (Helen Mirren) — draws on numerous cinematic college romps, including one that Goodman starred in nearly 30 years ago. ''I'd say it's more Revenge of the Nerds than anything,'' he says.
World War Z
Opens Jun 21, 2013
A six-year odyssey will finally come to an end on June 21, when Brad Pitt's $170 million World War Z hits theaters. On a recent day in Los Angeles, Pitt, who stars and produces, was looking forward to crossing that finish line. ''We're still shaping it, getting close,'' he said with a weary survivor's smile during a break from editing. ''It looks good. It feels good too — at least at the moment.''
Directed by Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) and based on the 2006 novel by Max Brooks, this sci-fi pandemic film runs in a different direction from AMC's The Walking Dead. It's closer to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later in its viral rhythms, and even dovetails with Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The movie follows Pitt's character, a former U.N. ''hot zone'' specialist, as he circles the globe looking for the origins of a virus that kills its victims and then reanimates their cadavers as rasping vessels of infection. Instead of lurching, these zombies move with savage predatory crispness and eerie unison; they pile atop one another like ants in a tower. ''We looked to nature,'' Forster says, ''to find something new, something we haven't seen in a zombie movie.'' The result: a more lively undead.
Today's Most Popular
-
Inside TV Daytime Emmys: Complete Winners List
