Shot in Istanbul, Turkey and directed by Olivier Megaton , “Taken 2” reunites Liam Neeson with his co-stars Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace in this rocket-paced action sequel that rivals some of the greatest gun-handlers in cinema history.

Neeson reprises the role of Bryan Mills, a father and an estranged husband who would do anything for his family in the movie.  Mills’ daughter having been kidnapped the first time. But he faces a different kind of conflict in “Taken 2.”  Liam Neeson returns as Bryan Mills, the retired CIA agent with a particular set of skills who stopped at nothing to save his daughter Kim from Albanian kidnappers.  When the father of one of the kidnappers swears revenge, and takes Bryan and his wife hostage during their family vacation in Istanbul, Bryan enlists Kim to help them escape, and uses the same advanced level of special forces tactics to get his family to safety and then systematically take out the kidnappers one by one.

“In the first movie he’s really a guy with nothing to lose. He’s divorced, he’s lost his daughter, and you see his reaction when she’s kidnapped,” explains Megaton. “In this movie, he’s got that relationship back and he’s even flirting with his ex-wife. It’s almost cheesy, but that makes him all the more human at the beginning of the movie, because he’s not thinking about his training, he’s thinking about his family.”

But being kidnapped once is unfortunate; twice is just careless. Rest assured, then, that things play out differently in this sequel. “The powers-that-be–namely our gracious leader Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen—have come up with a much better plot than that,” assures Grace. “Someone has the notion of attempting to abduct Bryan. It’s a personal vendetta; someone bent on extracting recompense from a man with a particular set of skills, as ill-advised as that might be. So it’s not a random second abduction of my character, Kim, which I think would be everyone’s first concern.”

“Taken 2” opens October in theaters from 20^th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

The directors and creative talents behind the hugely popular Ice Age movies set the pack into the most exciting film in the franchise so far, “Ice Age 4: Continental Drift” where they face a perilous adventure on the high seas.  This time, Manny, Sid and Diego face formidable foes: a crew of swashbuckling pirates.  And one feisty but crochety old sloth:  Sid’s own granny.

The drama begins when catastrophe strikes and the earth shifts.  Finding themselves adrift, our three intrepid sub-zero heroes are out on the raging seas batting pirates.

“Ice Age: Continental Drift” opens July 12 in theaters nationwide from 20^th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

Ridley Scott’s upcoming sci-fi action movie “Prometheus 3D” brings explorers and scientists to an inhospitable, barren environment. With a strange and vast alien structure, Scott assures the audience that it looks like nothing that has been seen before in science fiction.

“What if you could meet God but God turned out to be the Devil?” So asks PROMETHEUS Executive Producer Michael Ellenberg of the themes at the heart of Ridley Scott’s first return to science fiction since his seminal work on “Alien” and “Blade Runner.”

At the core of Scott’s story are the eternal questions of human existence: Who are we and where do we come from? As Michael Fassbender who plays the android David in the movie summarises: “It’s basically about trying to find out if there was intervention in the birth of civilisation on planet Earth by other beings, which we come to know as Engineers, and whether they had a master plan in mind for us.

For director Ridley Scott, the themes of PROMETHEUS are a reaction to an abundance of post-apocalyptic cinema. PROMETHEUS isn’t necessarily about looking forward, at what we might become, but it’s about looking back, at where we might have come from.

Shot in Iceland, “Prometheus” production designer Arthur Max reveals that Morocco was the first choice of location for the movie. “We were planning to shoot in Morocco,” shares Max. “But with all the geopolitical turmoil in North Africa, we weren’t able to do so. So we had to rethink.” The change means a

very different aesthetic to the look of the planet – Morocco’s deserts have been replaced by the cold, icy rock of the Iceland location.

In addition to shooting on location in Iceland, the production took over the 007-Stage at Pinewood Studios, just outside London. At 374ft long, it is the largest soundstage in Europe and boasts more than 59,000 sq ft of usable space. For PROMETHEUS, it wasn’t big enough by half.

The production started on the backlot behind the stage, constructing the Prometheus’s cargo bay and a small replica of the planet surface. This spilled onto an extension built to house more of an alien pyramid mound interior set, before finally connecting, and filling, the main space inside 007-Stage.

In the end, the production added 150ft to the stage’s length. “I knew, looking from end to end, it was never going to be big enough for this set,” says Scott. “I hate working with green screen. I like the actors to have their proscenium and see what they’re doing; see the arena they’re in. It’s partly that. To do that blue screen thing and say, ‘the monster’s coming down the corridor!’ It’s really boring.”

“The scale meant we could do a nice, big exploration scene in there,” explains Max. “We’ve got a 250ft network of tunnelling in there, 150ft of chambers and 25ft high doors.”

For Michael Fassbender, Scott’s attention to detail in the set design of the planet surface was second to none. “Have you gone into 007-Stage yet?” he exclaims with disbelief. “You have to see the space colon, as I call it!”

The practicality of the set makes his job easier as an actor, he explains. “What’s great is Ridley will do something on a piece of fishing line if it works, and stick a bit of green screen up in the corner. He knows technology but what’s great about him is he’s very primal. Even the technology in the film, you’re like, ‘That’s totally feasible.’”

Arthur Max says he and Ridley Scott have learnt, over many years of working together on films like GLADIATOR, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, and BLACK HAWK DOWN, that sometimes it’s better to achieve something practically than with CGI. “I think balance is the key in how much you build,” he says. “You have to get a convincing base, and when you speak to the visual effects department, they’ll tell you that they want enough reference material to work from. It’s especially tough on this, because almost every shot has a visual component and everything has to be constructed from scratch. You can’t go to a backlot and you can’t go to a prop house.“

The centrepiece of the alien set at Pinewood was a 32ft tall monolithic head, which can be glimpsed in posters for the film. This was built practically by Arthur Max’s team. “The idea there is that it’s part of the culture of the Engineers,” says Max of the race of aliens at the heart of the story. “This race of interplanetary visitors who have given us upgrades – mentally and physically – over the millennium.”

Max summarises the key challenge of envisioning the alien environment: “The people who inhabit this planet, called the Engineers, and their technology, is beyond anything we’re able to know or understand, but it has to be visually interesting. That’s, I think, the hardest challenge, too, because we have to compete with the most iconic science fiction creature ever. Trying to come up with something that’s going to rival that is the real trick.”

“PROMETHEUS 3D” lands very soon on June 7 in theaters nationwide from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

One of the fastest-rising stars in the business, the 34 year-old German-born, Irish-raised Fassbender has wowed multiplex and arthouse audiences alike over the past couple of years with searing, indelible turns in the likes of “Hunger,” “X-Men: First Class,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Shame,” which saw him reunite with Steve McQueen. A passionate, instinctive actor, who better than Fassbender to breathe humanity into David’s cold hard exterior in the highly anticipated sci-fi adventure “Prometheus (3D)”?

From Ian Holm’s duplicitous Ash to Lance Henriksen’s dependable Bishop, androids have played a huge part in the Alien franchise. So it’s not a huge surprise to find that Prometheus also has an artificial humanoid on board its eponymous spaceship, in the blond-haired guise of Michael Fassbender’s David.

The character of David represents Prometheus’ “company man.” An androgynous android with personality defects, David is the eyes and ears of the Weyland Corporation that funds the Prometheus mission.

Fassbender in the following q&a shares his take on humanity, working with Ridley Scott and Prometheus’ weighty themes.

Q:        Who is Dav-eed?

A:        He’s the robot. Or humanoid. Or android. Or whatever you want to call it. He’s like a butler. The first thing I wanted to do with him was to make him ambiguous. Should he be having emotions? I wanted to keep it ambiguous and have a lot of fun with it and enjoy it. I don’t know if that’s an easy description, but there’s so much comedy in him, actually, that I wanted to try to explore that as much as I could.

Q:       Comedy? Even in an intense film like this?

A:        Think Buster Keaton. Yesterday I kept banging my head off the screen on the ship and tripped over something else, and it was like a Buster Keaton moment! I also like the idea of treating him as a child, in certain respects. He’s been on this ship for two and a half years before everybody comes out of cryo-stasis.

Q:       What does he do in that time?

A:        He studies things, he watches films. There’s various things he soaks up. He’s been studying what Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) have come up with through their findings and research and the language that he thinks they [the Engineers] would speak, he’s been practicing that.

Q:       Is David dangerous?

A:        I think he knows his limits. He’ll know his limits when he gets there. Limit doesn’t exist for him. He will go until the point when he can’t go any further, physically. He doesn’t think about people’s suffering that much. He has an empathy and he’s developed that. But he’s more curious, like a child burning ants with a magnifying glass. There’s a cruelty there for sure, but it’s almost before a child comprehends cruelty. He does things for an end result.

But I don’t think he has any real moral compass. There’s something about him. He’s quite chuffed with himself. He’s very full of himself and he thinks he has most of the answers. In human company, he feels far superior.

Q:       It is a film about creators and their relationship with their creations.

A:        It’s about how the human beings are desperate in various ways to face this knowledge and get the answers to their questions, and not getting the answers to their questions. He’s never really been accepted and I think he does want to be accepted, very much so. But they always have that differential – we made you because we could. What’s interesting about him is that I do think this thing has been designed to behave like a human, but on a superior level, but it’s interesting that human personality traits start to bleed into the robot.

Q:       Can you talk about the big ideas that are being tackled here?

A:        What is the purpose of us being here? That’s the underlying question of the human race. That is why people are searching for heaven and for God, or Gods, as it was before. Why? There must be some purpose for us to be here, right? And that’s being explored in the film.

Q:       Were you aware of the Prometheus myth?

A:        I was. I do enjoy the greek classics and ancient history. The liver getting pecked away every night is a nasty affair, really.

Q:       How does that tie in to the film?

A:        Perhaps the fact that we keep going round in a circle, maybe that’s it. It’s a cyclical thing. There’s no resolution to the end of it, perhaps. It’s an ongoing quest.

Watch more of David in “Prometheus (3D)” when it opens June 7 in theaters nationwide from 20^th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” explores the secret life of one of the greatest US presidents, and the untold story that shaped a nation. Visionary filmmakers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (director of “Wanted”) bring a fresh and visceral voice to the bloodthirsty lore of the vampire, imagining Lincoln as history’s greatest hunter of the undead.

Based on the mash-up novel by Seth Grahame-Smith of which he also co-wrote the screenplay with Simon Kinberg (best known for his work in “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”), Benjamin Walker stars at the titular character on his quest for bloodthirsty vampires and trying to end a war where only the living can kill the undead.   Starring alongside Walker in this vein-thumping film are Rufus Sewell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Alan Tudyk  and Dominic Cooper.

Fangs beware when the hound starts June 21 in theaters! “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” –from 20^thCentury Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros. in local theaters.

Vampire Hunter

“PROMETHEUS 3D” is an original epic mythology from Ridley Scott whose previous works span the reality of futuristic realms such as “Aliens” and “Blade Runner” and whose classic unforgettable works also include “Thelma & Louise,” “Gladiator,” “Black Hawk down,” “American Gangster,” “Body of Lies,” “G.I. Jane,” “Legend” and “Black Rain.”

Acclaimed filmmaker Ridley Scott brings us to a future not too distant from the present in “PROMETHEUS 3D” with an impressive ensemble cast starring Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace, Idris Elba , Guy Pearce and Logan Marshall from a screenplay by Damon Lindelof (creator of tv’s phenomenal series “Lost”).

On June 7 in theaters, “PROMETHEUS 3D” will unlock the beginning of our end as a group of only the best of the experts in the field of science and technology trek an unknown environ in space trying to find answers to man’s beginnings. As their expedition brings them further and farther to the darkest corners of the universe, they begin to encounter a terrifying and vicious battle to save themselves and the future of human race. Shot entirely in 3D, Scott recently stated that he will never shoot in any other format again. “I will never be the same again.  Even with a dialogue scene, the arena in the room grows. There is no question that you can be drawn in further by the feeling that you are there,” Scott shares.

On March 15 and 16, a short video from the film’s major stars Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron will be up onhttp://www.youtube.com/20thcenturfoxph inviting everyone to check out the film’s online trailer debut.

Finally, on March 19 – log in to http://www.youtube.com/Prometheus6812  for the latest trailer of “Prometheus” – a peek on the most anticipated sci-fi action adventure from Ridley Scott.

“Prometheus 3D” is from 20^th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros. (in Phil. theaters) nationwide.

Return to the deep as 20^th Century fox brings back “Titanic” in 3D to the big screen on a global theatrical release on April coinciding with its 100^th anniversary since sailing.

Opening April 7^th in the Phils., the most celebrated film in history is presented to an untapped new generation of audience in 3D format.

James Cameron who pioneered the first and only truly immersive 3D in “Avatar” brings back timeless “Titanic” in its full glory with enhanced, never-before-seen experience re-mastered in digital 3D.  Starring today’s most admired and accomplished actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, “Titanic” first released in 1997 is an epic romance and disaster film.  A fictionalized story of what was then believed to be unsinkable, “Titanic” is the voyage of the most luxurious ship ever built, the RMS Titanic where Jack (DiCaprio) and Rose (Winslet) fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated maiden voyage.

Amid the thick crowd of well-wishers before the ship’s sail, Rose and Jack would soon meet that would change their lives forever.  Rose, a 17-year-old belonging to the upper class American society is suffocating under the rigid expectations of her class suddenly finds herself drawn to the free-spirited steerage passenger Jack.   Rose and Jack’s forbidden love begins a powerful mystery that ultimately echoes across the years into the present. Nothing on earth is going to come between them — not even something as unimaginable as the sinking of Titanic.

Prepare to board when “TITANIC”  3D sets sail once again worldwide on April 7 (Saturday) from 20^th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros. (in Phils.).

Currently invading the international mainstream audience and slowly carving her way as a household name is Chelsea Handler who plays the no-holds barred best friend of Reese Witherspoon in “This Means War.”

So far this year’s most enjoyable and hilarious romantic-action comedy to beat, “This Means War” is about two best friends, the best CIA agents use their incredible skills against each other in order to win a woman’s love.  Playing the trio trapped in the riotous fray of friendship and love are Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy.

Injecting an outsider’s view of the trio’s fray is Chelsea Handler whose character Trish is Lauren’s (Witherspoon) best friend.   The inimitable talk show host, comedienne actor and author Handler intimates on her role as herself except that she’s single in real life.  “Trish is basically me, but married,” says Handler.  “Trish is not the best advisor, but Lauren needs her to provide a jolt of energy. Trish is a wife and mother whose mission in life is to offer frank and explicit opinions on her single friend’s love life.”

In one of her outrageous lines in the movie on women empowerment, she tells Lauren “You better get out there and do the things that every woman wants to do!” relates Handler of one of her lines to get Lauren going on dating two gorgeous men at the same time.

Says Witherspoon:  “Everybody has one of those crazy friends who does wacky things and lives vicariously through their dating friends.  I’ve known Chelsea for a while, and it was fun that we got to make this movie together. She’s just perfect person for the role.”

Chelsea Handler has one of the most exciting careers in entertainment with a resume that includes bestselling author, talk show host, comedian, and actress to name a few.  Recently named one of Glamour Magazine’s 2011 Women of the Year, Chelsea is a permanent fixture in pop culture as she continues to build a multiplatform media empire.  In July 2007, Chelsea broke into the world of late-night talk shows with her E! Entertainment series, “Chelsea Lately.” Both Handler and the show have also been recognized as pioneers in late night with the show boasting five female writers to account for half of its writing staff.   This is unprecedented in the late night arena that has historically been dominated by male hosts and writers.

“This Means War” opens February 22 in cinemas nationwide from 20^th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.