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A new movie from director, Paul Thomas Anderson is normally a cause for celebration. In Boogie Nights, Magnolia and There Will Be Blood, he has combined great acting and story telling, with beautiful cinematography and music. His films can be eccentric and puzzling, but they are never dull; until that is, his latest movie - The Master. Yes, there are great performances from Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams; Yes, the movie is beautifully made and looks great; But, because of the directors decision to eschew any form of narrative, The Master is one of the dullest movies I've seen in a long time.
Here are a few more movies that are loved by critics, but also a good cure for insomnia.
There is an interesting story about a 1950's Texan family in The Tree of Life, unfortunately it only lasts about thirty minutes. The rest of the movie is about as pretentious as cinema can get.
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Here is the trailer for David Fincher's US TV adaptation of House of Cards. The Michael Dobbs book was previously made into a highly successful BBC television series in the 1990's. This latest version stars Kevin Spacey. All 13 episodes will be released on Netflix on February 1st. A second season has already been ordered.
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There were predictable howls of protest at the news earlier this week, that The Walt Disney Company had acquired Lucas Film, the people behind Star Wars. The announcement was accompanied with the news that the next Star Wars movie will be released in 2015.
Long time watchers of Disney will be a little less surprised at this news, than most. Star Wars has had a presence at the Disney parks for 25 years, through the Star Tours attraction. Since 2010 Disney has been rolling out a revamped version of the ride at its parks across the globe.
In addition to that relationship, this deal comes at a time when Disney has been increasingly acquisitions focused in the past few years. In particular they have been acquiring properties with IP that can work across movies, TV and theme parks.
In 2006 they grabbed Pixar, apparently because their Chairman was visiting a Disney park and noticed that the most popular characters in one of the parades, were all from Pixar movies. In 2009 they purchased Marvel, as part of an effort to broaden Disney's appeal to more boys. One of the perils of buying a company like Marvel, is that they may have already licensed their properties to rival studios and theme parks - that's why you will continue to watch Spider-man movies made by Sony, and enjoy an awesome Spider-man ride at Universal Studios Florida, for many years to come.
Naturally there are a lot of scare stories about the impact this deal will have on the quality of future Star Wars movies- but lets be honest, the prequels didn't exactly benefit on the quality front, from their currant owner. There was a similar level of apprehension when said Disney took control of Marvel, but the release of the very decent Avengers Assemble movie, this summer - should have allayed any fears of a potential disnification of Marvel product. There is no reason to suggest that an acquired Lucas Film will managed any differently.
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Following its successful introduction at Universal's theme parks in Singapore (2011) and Hollywood (2012), it was confirmed today that Transformers: The Ride will open at Universal Studios Florida in 2013.