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As the midseason finale of “The Walking Dead“‘s fifth season approaches, fans are left wondering just how things will shake out for our band of survivors. Last week’s penultimate episode before the hiatus left the gang splintered into several different groups, all in various states of disarray.
The death toll so far this season among major characters has been small, with only Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) biting the big one (after getting bitten by both zombies and cannibals). As longtime fans of “The Walking Dead” know, a lack of loss is never a good sign, since lives are fairly expendable on this show; the longer someone sticks around just seems to prolong the inevitable.
With that grim thought in mind, here’s a breakdown of where each character stands heading into the last episode of 2014. Who’s safe, who’s on the bubble, and who’s definitely going to die? Read on for our predictions.
Rick (Andrew Lincoln)
Sheriff Grimes seems the least likely of the group to be a goner, solely because he’s been the main character since day one. And while Rick has undergone several different personality changes throughout the series, this current iteration - out for blood, and out for the core group of survivors, no matter what - seems to be the most logical. After all, you’d be pretty warped, too, after going through what he has, and you’d want to protect yourself and your friends at all costs. He’s been undermined by Tyreese and Daryl in the plan to spring Carol and Beth from Grady Memorial Hospital, a plot that’s quickly unraveling thanks to that latter pair’s last-minute switcheroo. We’re thinking the good sheriff is going to take charge right quick, and carry out his uber-bloody (but ultimately effective) original gameplan.
Daryl (Norman Reedus)
Daryl didn’t exactly do the group any favors by changing Rick’s strategy, and now, it seems like rescuing Carol and Beth - the two most important people in his life - may be a lot harder than he originally planned. Reedus has gone on record recently saying that this episode made him cry, and that can only mean one thing: either Carol, Beth, or both are going to die. None of those options will leave Daryl in a very good frame of mind; just how much his mistake of backing Tyreese’s half-assed plot will affect those women’s fates is yet to be determined. We expect Daryl to survive the showdown at Grady; his psyche, on the other hand, may never recover.
Carol (Melissa McBride)
Carol has also been through a lot this season, grappling with her place in the group, and in the world, ever since she rejoined Rick and co. Her conversation with Daryl while scouting out Beth in Atlanta was telling: she’s not sure who she’s supposed to be, only that she keeps changing, and doesn’t know whether it’s for the better. That type of existential crisis seems to make Carol a marked woman, especially now that she’s in bad physical shape at Grady, and at the mercy of Dawn (by way of Beth’s attempts at medical care). Her death isn’t a certainty, though it’s a strong possibility.
Beth (Emily Kinney)
In the same boat is Beth, who’s been separated from everyone since the end of season four, when she was snatched by some cops from Grady. She’s come into her own as a character over the past season and a half, and that could be the precise reason why her days are numbered. Will she sacrifice herself in order to ensure Carol’s escape? Will someone other than Dawn or Dr. Edwards catch her administering medicine to Carol? The odds of the show offing her are strong, though the writers may want to trade Carol for her to show that the older woman has already accepted her fate in life, while the younger woman is just beginning to understand her own.
Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman)
Tyreese made a bad move in changing Rick’s plan, and with Sasha unconscious after getting tricked by one of their captives, he may be too overcome with guilt for that mistake - making him an easy target for someone to pick off at Grady. Tyreese has been through plenty of strife already with the loss of Karen at the prison in season four, and then dealing with the maniacal Lizzie. It would seem awfully cruel to off him now, too - but we can’t imagine he’d cope too well with the loss of his sister, either. It may be more humane to put him out of his misery should Sasha meet her demise.
Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green)
Speaking of Sasha, she was knocked out cold by Bob 2.0 at the end of last week’s episode. We’re betting she survives that scuffle, but in her haste to make up for her foolishness, she may just commit even more errors. Her character could really go either way, though if she’s anything like her late boyfriend, her suddenly adopting an optimistic attitude doesn’t bode well for her.
Michonne (Danai Gurira)
Sadly, Michonne hasn’t had much to do this season, though taking a backseat to characters like Carol or the more-recently-introduced Abraham and Eugene isn’t such a bad thing. She’s back at the church with Carl and baby Judith, though they’ve just been ditched by Father Gabriel. Whether the trail of blood he left behind from a foot injury leads zombies to swarm the place remains to be seen, but we think this sword-wielding badass will live to chop off heads another day.
Carl (Chandler Riggs)
Another character that hasn’t really done too much this season, Carl also seems like a safe bet for survival. Rick has been through a lot since losing Lori; killing off his kid may send him off the psychotic deep end again, something the viewers definitely don’t want to see (and a stupid character flaw that the writers no doubt want to try to avoid repeating if possible). He’ll keep wearing his dad’s hat, and keep watching over his sister, for the foreseeable future.
Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan)
These two have been linked since their first meeting in season two, and their fates on this show are as well. The happy couple spent so long searching for each other last season that it wouldn’t seem fair to just off one and leave the other to mourn; either they both die, or neither of them does. Maggie was last seen rushing to the aid of Eugene, who was heard gasping for breath off-screen. Since we don’t know definitively yet whether or not he’s alive or undead, Maggie’s future depends on whether she becomes zombie Eugene’s first meal. We’re hoping she and her husband live happily ever after (or as happy as they can be in the zombie apocalypse), but we wouldn’t be surprised if something bad befell them, either.
Abraham (Michael Cudlitz)
He was in a pretty fragile state of mind following the revelation that Eugene was a fraud. He’s been almost catatonic since, though his acceptance of water from Maggie toward the end of the last episode indicates that he still has some fight left in him. But will that fight cost him his life? It’s hard to say now, since the D.C.-bound crew is still stuck in limbo trying to decide its next move. If Abraham can keep his head, he’ll be an asset to the group for years to come; if not, he’ll be one of its next casualties.
Eugene (Josh McDermitt)
As mentioned above, we don’t really know what’s happening with Eugene, since he was knocked out cold by Abraham after spilling his big secret. He spent all of last episode lying on the ground, and only began to stir off-screen toward the end. It wouldn’t be the first time “The Walking Dead” faked us out if that zombie-esque grunt turned out to be nothing more than a man gasping for air, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the worst came true, either. But Eugene is too much fun to toss aside just yet, we think; he may live to quip about his Tennessee Top Hat another day.
Rosita (Christian Serratos)
Finally, Rosita gets a bit of a personality. After basically being the living embodiment of Zombie Apocalypse Barbie, this belly shirt-clad babe stepped up in the last couple episodes, squaring off with Abraham and showing off her survivalist skills. Before last week, we would have said she’d be easily expendable. Now, we kind of hope the spunky chick sticks around. But that all depends on what the group decides to do now that its mission to D.C. has ended prematurely - and if Abraham still has her back.
Tara (Alanna Masterson)
I’ve been kind of hard on Tara this season, and not without good reason: the writers just don’t seem to know what to do with this character, and that makes her non sequiturs and overly-jokey one-liners fairly grating. She’s extremely childish but also thinks she’s extremely tough; she wants to fist bump everyone she meets and come up with mnemonic names for the group while the others are off catching fish and filtering water. In short, Tara just doesn’t seem like a character worth saving, and that’s why she’s first on my list to go. Whether the writers care enough to script her a fitting ending remains to be seen.
Gabriel (Seth Gilliam)
Father Gabriel started out more promising than he’s become, and I’m still waiting for him to do more than just freak out at every opportunity. His lack of ability to kill walkers will hurt him in the long run, and leaving a trail of blood that leads straight to the church may also hurt those inside it. He seems like an easy, obvious mark for death - almost too obvious. I’d say the writers will almost certainly off him, if I didn’t have a sneaking suspicion that they’re saving him for another twist down the road.
The midseason finale of “The Walking Dead” airs Sunday, November 30 at 9 p.m. on AMC.
Photo credit: Gene Page/AMC
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Days after he fatally shot an unarmed black teen in August, Officer Darren Wilson was cutting grass when he was told his home address was circulating online.
With both an Oscar and a Grammy on his mantle, Jamie Foxx is a one-man entertainment empire.
Foxx began his career as a stand-up comedian before landing his own sitcom just a few years later — and then he awed the world. His portrayal of Ray Charles in “Ray” (2004) earned Foxx one accolade after another and even relaunched his music career. Fresh off his Oscar win, the multi-hyphenate teamed with Kanye West and took home a Grammy for the Ray Charles-inspired “Gold Digger.” This fall, he’s back on the big screen as Dean “MF” Jones in the star-studded comedy “Horrible Bosses 2" (you can also catch him in "Annie" December 19).
From his real name to the dare that launched his career, here are 33 things you probably don’t know about Jamie Foxx.
1. Jamie Foxx was born December 13, 1967 in Terrell, Texas to Louise Annette Talley and Darrell Bishop.
2. He was adopted by his maternal grandparents after his parents’ relationship came to an end when he was just seven months old.
3. Foxx’s grandparents had also adopted his mother when she was a child.
4. Foxx had a very strict Baptist upbringing. He credits his grandmother’s influence in his life as a primary reason for his success.
5. Growing up, he played basketball and football. Foxx was the first player in the high school’s history to pass for more than 1,000 yards.
6. Foxx also began playing piano at the age of 5 and was a choir leader and pianist in the local New Hope Baptist Church.
7. His musical talent helped him land a scholarship to Alliant International University for classical music and composition.
8. While his musical career has been overshadowed by his acting, Foxx released his debut album “Peep This” in 1994.
9. His follow-up album — released in 2005 — debuted at No. 2.
10. The album followed collaborations with Kanye West, in particular the song “Gold Digger” that featured a Ray Charles hook (“I Got a Woman”) and went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 2005.
11. The song earned Foxx and West the Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance.
12. In 2010, he won a second Grammy with T-Pain for the song “Blame It.”
13. Before his Grammys, however, Foxx’s acting career began as a stand-up comic — on a dare. In 1989, a girlfriend egged Foxx on to participate in a comedy club’s open mic night.
14. Foxx was no stranger to making a room laugh, though. In second grade, his teacher would often reward the class by letting a young Foxx tell his classmates jokes.
15. When Foxx found out that female comedians often performed first, he took up the ambiguous sounding stage name — Jamie Foxx — to avoid biases.
16. His birth name is Eric Marlon Bishop.
17. The surname “Foxx” was a nod to comedian Redd Foxx.
18. Foxx’s successful stand-up led to roles on “In Living Color” and “Roc” in the early ’90s.
19. By 1996, he had his own TV series — “The Jamie Foxx Show” (1996 - 2001).
20. While starring in his show, Foxx’s film career began to pick up. His first starring role was in “Booty Call" (1997).
21. A couple of years later, he landed his first dramatic starring role in Oliver Stone's “Any Given Sunday" (1999).
22. Foxx’s first screen role, however, was also his film debut. In 1992, the actor had a minor role in the Robin Williams-starring “Toys" (1992).
23. From “Booty Call” to Oscar glory. In 2004, Foxx became a bona fide star after receiving two Oscar nominations in the same year for “Collateral" and "Ray." He’s only the second male in history to receive two acting Oscar nominations in the same year. The other was his "Any Given Sunday" co-star Al Pacino.
24. Although he didn’t win the Best Supporting Oscar for “Collateral,” Foxx won Best Actor for his portrayal of the late musician Ray Charles in “Ray.”
25. He hasn’t been nominated since.
26. He’s one of only five people to have both an Oscar for acting and a No. 1 hit on the Billboard charts. The others are Cher, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby.
27. Foxx wore prosthetic eyelids for the production of “Ray” so he could better play the blind pianist. The prosthetic eyelids made him virtually blind for the majority of each day.
28. Oddly enough, the actor did impersonations of Ray Charles when he was working on “In Living Color.”
29. Kerry Washington played Jamie Foxx’s wife in “Ray” and, then again, eight years later in Tarantino’s “Django Unchained" (2012).
30. In real life, Foxx has never been married.
31. Although he’s never tied the knot, Foxx has two children: Corinne (b. 1994) and Annalise (b. 2009).
32. Corinne accompanied him to the Oscars in 2005.
33. Bonus Fact: Jamie Foxx once hijacked a Moviefone Unscripted! See the hilarious video below.
[Sources: IMDb, Wikipedia]
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The first “Horrible Bosses" landed as a solid hard-R hit back in 2011, thanks to audiences falling for Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day as a lovably bumbling trio of would-be criminals. Well, that, and the appeal of watching Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston saying dirty words.
So Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day) are back again for “Horrible Bosses 2,” having ditched the nine-to-five to start their own business. But even though they’re their own horrible bosses now, they’re still having problems with upper-management types, in the form of the father/son team of potential investors Bert and Rex Hanson, played by Christoph Waltz and Chris Pine.
Of course, comedy sequels haven’t always had the best track record; it’s a delicate balance recapturing what worked in the first film without just delivering the same movie with new punchlines. (See: “The Hangover Part II.”) Not to mention, three idiots attempting to commit major felonies doesn’t exactly scream “franchise potential.” But turns out, “Horrible Bosses 2” isn’t as horrible as it might sound (or, maybe more accurately, as it could’ve been). Here’s a few reasons why the foul-mouthed sequel seemingly shouldn’t work — even though it mostly does.
Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Spacey are back, just because.
The first rule for any comedy sequel is to get the gang back together — even when it doesn’t make any sense — so most of the cast (who’s still alive) from the first “Horrible Bosses” is back for Round 2, from Aniston and Spacey to Jamie Foxx reprising his role as the gang’s criminal consultant Motherf***er Jones. Some of these shoehorned cameos make more sense than others; the three ostensibly visit Spacey’s character in jail for “advice,” which basically amounts to verbal abuse and an excuse to check out his new diamond earring. Hilarious! Meanwhile, working Aniston’s sexual predator/dentist back into the story takes some pretty admirable plot gymnastics. Still, if and when “Horrible Bosses 2” works, it’s because of the central trio of Bateman, Sudeikis and Day, whose comedy strengths mesh just as well the second time around.
They put an action hero up against three professional comedians.
Anyone who’s sat through “This Means War” knows that casting Chris Pine isn’t exactly a surefire recipe for comedy gold. But the current Captain Kirk turns in a surprisingly solid performance as the spoiled son of Waltz’s double-crossing businessman. When the three hapless businessmen-turned-hapless criminals decide to kidnap Rex to get revenge on his father, Pine’s charms and can-do attitude towards the harebrained scheme keeps both the guys and the movie going long after both should’ve known better. Waltz may seem like the more obvious ringer here, but it’s Pine who actually manages to steal the most scenes.
It’s from the director of “That’s My Boy.”
To be fair, it’s not like the first “Horrible Bosses” was a flawless comic masterpiece, and you can easily engage in the same kind of resume cherry-picking with that movie’s director Seth Gordon. But even so, replacing Gordon with the director of “That’s My Boy” and the co-writers of “Dumb and Dumber To" doesn’t exactly inspire a ton of confidence. And a lot of "Horrible Bosses 2" feels frustratingly lazy, over-reliant on slick montages set to Top 40 hits to move the plot along, making the movie seem oddly dated at times. Or to put it another way, Katy Perry's “Roar” stars as a major recurring gag. And while Sean Anders seems to have a better handle on the action scenes and car chases than his predecessor, once again, this would-be franchise is at its best in the downbeats, when the three leads are engaging in some semi-improvised bickering, not pulling off second-rate heists.
It ends with outtakes over the end credits.
Seriously, this is rarely ever a good sign for a comedy’s prospects. At best, it’s a lazy move that signals to moviegoers that even if you didn’t have a good time watching this, not to worry, because everyone had a blast making it. And sure, watching funny people flub lines helps ensure that audiences leave the theatre smiling, in case they weren’t before the credits started rolling. But it’s a far cry from “22 Jump Street" ending on a gloriously meta high note.
It’s basically the first movie all over again.
This isn’t exactly a big surprise: even the film’s poster boasts “New crime, same tools” — which might as well be trumpeting “New jokes, same movie.” Although to the filmmakers’ credit, kidnapping does lend itself a little better to comedy than attempted triple homicide. That said, “Horrible Bosses 2” isn’t quite a Mad Libs recreation of the first movie beat for beat, and not every sequel has to be a winking, ultra-meta acknowledgement of its sequel-dom like the more recent “22 Jump Street.”
Instead, it features slight variations on what worked best the last time, which means really, it’s all just an excuse to watch three funny comedians riff in the face of increasingly absurd situations. “Horrible Bosses 2” may not be an upgrade from the first film, but by generating some legitimate laughs despite a few rough patches, it turns out a lot like Nick, Kurt and Dale’s criminal enterprises: much better than things could’ve otherwise ended up.
"Horrible Bosses 2" is now playing in theatres.
In Charles Dickens’s immortal “A Christmas Carol,” Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts: the ghost of Christmas present, the ghost of Christmas past, and the ghost of Christmas future. When it comes to Christmas movies, there are plenty of titles that you’ve watched in the past, a few that you watch now, and even less that you’d watch in the future. Somehow, this analogy made more sense before I downed several jumbo-sized cartons of egg-nog.
What we’re trying to say is that there are Christmas classics, Christmas movies that you maybe watch if it’s on television but don’t think about, and then there are Christmas movies that have just aged horribly. The very notion of a Christmas movie is one that has an air of timelessness, since you want to be able to watch those movies once every year (tis the season); we’ve decided to choose some of the ones that are painfully showing their age. And no amount of anniversary re-releases or Blu-ray reissues is going to change that fact. These have aged poorly. And with good reason. (If you’re looking for timeless holiday movies, here are the best Christmas movies ever made.)
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