Steve Carell returns as Super villain Gru in Despicable Me 2

Steve Carell has returned as for Despicable Me 2 one of the world’s greatest super-villains, has given up his despicable ways and is now on a quest to become the perfect dad. While juggling all that, he is recruited by a super-secret crime-fighting organization, which puts him in the unlikely position of having to work with the good guys to help save the world. Usually fearless, Gru is now coping with the challenges of his girls growing up and wanting desperately to ask a woman out on a date. Both of which cause him to totally freak out.

It's no surprise considering the first Despicable Me movie was a $542 million mammoth success - landing it among the top ten most successful animated films of all time.

What attracted Steve Carell to the role of the curmudgeonly, oddly-accented super-villain with a heart of gold was that Despicable Me offered something for children and adults alike. He reflects upon why he chose to voice Gru, a character who finds that raising children is not all sunshine and lollipops: “I’m a parent with two little kids, and I identified with the story in the first film because it was honest in its depiction. Having kids completely changes a person’s life, in all the best ways.”

When the first movie was released to worldwide acclaim, Carell was thrilled that audiences wholly embraced the tale he so loved upon first read. He enjoyed bringing Gru’s idiosyncrasies to life, noting: “Kids could relate and enjoy the humor; parents related to what kids bring to the equation. In that sense, it’s universal. But it was also funny, exciting and silly at times.”

Whereas so many animated films are designed as a delivery mechanism for pratfalls and go for the cheap joke, the first adventure surprised many with its mix of heart and humor. Notes Carell: “These films are animated but very human. Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 are smart, funny and heartfelt without being cloying overly sentimental. They tug the heart strings just enough without going too far. The writers did such a great job creating something special and unique.”

As the characters in this nontraditional family evolved, so did Carell’s perception of them. E.g., the performer identified with Gru’s struggle to let Margo begin to grow up and go out on a date with Antonio. He explains: “One of Gru’s daughters starts to enter the dating scene, and that is an enormous transition for him, as it is for most dads. When they see their daughters maturing and becoming interested in boys, suddenly they’re not the apple of their daughter’s eyes. There is, I wouldn’t even say a ‘jealousy’ but there is a tension that comes about between a father and a potential suitor.”

Meledandri commends that there would be no series without the stellar performance work of Carell. He gives: “From the early days of the first film, Steve has been a creative partner in the making of Despicable Me. We were so drawn to him for this role because we wanted an actor who brought empathy in his voice and performance. Not only was Gru a villain, but he is grouchy and acerbic and edgy. Yet, we knew that in order for the film to work, that audiences needed to like him. Steve has helped to forge this and define the character. There has been tremendous writing in response to many of his instincts about how Gru should evolve and the specific definition of his personality.”

When last we met Gru, the only thing about him that was unchanged was his dark wardrobe. Gru was not only adjusting to life post super-villainy, he was balancing his time as new father to three young girls and the last thing he thought he’d have time for is a burgeoning romance. But that’s exactly what he finds when he meets Special Agent Lucy Wilde, the AVL’s most energetic agent. While they’re both focused upon solving a case and finding a super-villain who could put the entire world in peril, they find an unexpected, but not altogether unwelcome, romance.

“Despicable Me 2” is released and distributed by Universal Pictures and United International Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.

SHOWING ON JULY 3. NATIONWIDE!

From ‘Bridesmaids’ to ‘Despicable Me 2’ Kristen Wiig shows her thousand faces and voices.

The comedienne who brings life to Lucy is the same actor who played a pivotal role in Despicable Me. The producers and directors were so delighted by Kristen Wiig’s work as Southern belle Miss Hattie, the acerbic orphanage matron in the first film, that they asked her back to play the female lead in this chapter. Wiig explains how her participation in the project came about: “I was so happy that I was able to be in both films, and when I heard that they wanted me to play a different character in the second one, I was beyond thrilled that they would give me the opportunity.”

As was Steve Carell, Wiig was a bit taken aback by the global success of Despicable Me. She relays: “The first film was unexpected, and I loved that the lead character is this horrible villain. Still, it’s a sweet, funny story with great music about this awkward guy opening his heart and finding himself, as well as a family. It has a great message and has a lot of action and comedy.” Discussing this chapter, she offers: “People want to see where it left off. At the end of the first film, you wonder how it’s going to work with this new family. Now, you see them as a unit and you see them evolve. Despicable Me 2 is funny and has lots of action, and it’s a smart, sweet story.”

While the actress is known as the woman of a thousand faces and voices on Saturday Night Live—as well as from a film career that skyrocketed with the release of Bridesmaids (which she also co-wrote)—Wiig admits there is a freedom to vocalizing animation. She says: “Physically you can be doing anything with your face or body because it isn’t about how you look. The scripted lines and the story were so smart that you could just have fun with it.”

Her filmmaking team was thrilled with her vocal work for the quirky heroine who immediately bests Gru upon first match up. Provides Meledandri: “Lucy is one of the most surprising and distinctive female characters that I have seen in an animated film. She is incredibly self-directed, and though she may look a bit nutty, she is actually quite powerful when it comes to getting her way. I can’t imagine anybody other than Kristen Wiig portraying her. Lucy is unlike any Kristen character I’ve seen before, and when you watch her in the film, you realize that the animators and our directors were taking great inspiration from the voice track that she provided.”

The producer appreciated the arc that Paul and Daurio created for Gru and Lucy. He says: “A wonderful thing happens through the course of the movie. As Gru begins to realize that he actually likes his new partner, and these are feelings that sneak up on him, the audience’s response is moving in sync with Gru’s response. The chemistry of Steve’s and Kristen’s performances is undeniable.”

Kristen Wiig starred in the critically acclaimed summer breakout film Bridesmaids, she. Bridesmaids is currently the top “R”-rated female comedy of all time. Directed by Paul Feig and produced by Judd Apatow, Bridesmaids has become Apatow’s highest-grossing production. Wiig was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture—Comedy or Musical. The film has also received significant awards recognition, including a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture—Comedy or Musical and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Wiig captured the audience’s attention with universal high praise as Katherine Heigl’s passive-aggressive boss in Apatow’s smash-hit comedy Knocked Up. Wiig is currently starring in Cartoon Network’s reboot of The Looney Tunes Show, supplying the voice of Bugs Bunny’s gal pal, Lola Bunny.

“Despicable Me 2” is released and distributed by Universal Pictures and United International Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.

THE HEAT - GOOD COP BAD COP

Director Paul Feig reinvigorates the buddy cop genre by pairing Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock and breakout star Melissa McCarthy as law enforcers with wildly different styles in “The Heat.”

Set in Boston, the movie follows Sarah Ashburn (Bullock), a by-the-book FBI agent forced to team up with Shannon Mullins (McCarthy), a brash undercover Boston street cop to track a ruthless drug lord. This wildly dysfunctional duo must try to catch this high-powered criminal without killing one another in the process.

Rated R-13, “The Heat” opens in cinemas on June 27 from 20^th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

Hugh Jackman returns in THE WOLVERINE: the definitive story about the hugely popular adamantium-clawed hero.

From director James Mangold, this thrilling, 3D epic adventure is set against a backdrop of intrigue and betrayal in Japan.At his most vulnerable,Logan/Wolverine travels to Tokyo, reconnects with a mysterious individual from his past and faces a host of deadly enemies.

 

"THE WOLVERINE" opens July 25 (Thursday) in theaters nationwide from 20th Century Fox.  Available in 3D and 2D format.

BREAKOUT ACTRESS MELISSA Mc CARTHY IN “THE HEAT”

FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) – the Fed – and Boston cop Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) – the Fuzz – couldn’t be more incompatible. But when they join forces to bring down a ruthless drug lord, they become the last thing anyone expected: buddies.

At the helm of “The Heat” is Paul Feig, the movie takes a look at the odd couple pairing of two law enforcement officials who, to their everlasting shock, slowly find themselves on the same page. The Ashburn-Mullins dynamic is akin to that eternal physics problem about an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. Only, here, it’s hard to tell who is which. Ashburn is ambitious, talented, brainy, and possesses Sherlock Holmes-like powers of deduction and intuition. She’s always the smartest person in the room, and isn’t shy about letting everyone know it. Mullins grew up on the streets of Boston, and has a shoot-from-the-hip (and mouth) style of dealing with crime and its perpetrators. She’s the “yang” to Ashburn’s “yin.”

To cast Mullins, Feig looked no further than his Bridesmaids breakout star, Melissa McCarthy. “On Bridesmaids, Melissa became my hero,” he says. “So, about 15 pages into reading THE HEAT, the idea of casting her just snapped into my head. The script, which was already hilarious, got ten times funnier when I read it while imagining Melissa as Mullins. “Melissa will commit to a role so hardcore it will shock you,” Feig continues. “It’s hard to realize that it’s Melissa inside that character.”

The tightly-wrapped Ashburn isn’t Mullins’ only headache. She’s also dealing with her out-of-control family. After arresting her own brother (played by starring cast member Michael Rapaport) for dealing drugs, Mullins is ostracized by the other members of her clan, including her mom, dad, four brothers, and for good measure, her brothers’ girlfriends. Says Feig: “Mullins arrested her brother and threw him in jail, in order to save him – sort of a forced rehab. But to the rest of her family, this is an unforgivable betrayal, and she’s a traitor. It’s a very tight-knit family, but they have a very interesting way of showing it.”

“I’ve been beating people up for two months; it’s very cathartic,” joked Melissa McCarthy during the production of THE HEAT. The chemistry between Bullock and McCarthy was evident from the first table read. “When we read the script [together] for the first time, Melissa and I would make the same faces, simultaneously,” Bullock recalls. “Our rhythms are different, but we worked so well together, they began to click. We made so many connections; it’s something I never thought I would have on this level.”

The strength of the Bullock-McCarthy dynamic, evident even then, inspired additional script fine-tuning. “By the end of that first read, it was obvious that Sandy and Melissa really inhabited these characters, and that it was up to Katie Dippold and me to take all that magic and get it into the script – and really let the women fly,” says Feig.

For screenwriter Dippold, the process was liberating. “Sandy and Melissa took what was on the page and made it funnier than I thought it could ever be,” she says. A particular favorite came during a Mullins’ tirade against her captain (played by Tom Wilson) – accusing him of lacking a set of testes – when he refuses her demand to boot Ashburn from the case. “Melissa really ran with the one scripted line, ‘Have you seen the captain’s balls?’ and turned it into something spectacular.”

“The Heat” opens June 27 in theaters nationwide from 20^th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

DESPICABLE ME 2: They are BACK !!!

Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment’s worldwide blockbuster Despicable Me entertained audiences around the globe in 2010, grossing more than $540 million and becoming the 10^th-biggest animated motion picture in U.S. history. Get ready for more Minion madness in Despicable Me 2. 

Chris Meledandri and his acclaimed filmmaking team create an all-new comedy adventure featuring the return of (former?) super-villain Gru (Steve Carell), his adorable girls, the unpredictably hilarious Minions...and a host of new and outrageously funny characters.

Now that the ever-entrepreneurial Gru has left behind a life of super crime to raise Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and Agnes (Elsie Fisher), Gru, Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) and the Minions have some free time on their hands.

But just as he starts to adjust to his role as a suburban family man, an ultra-secret organization dedicated to fighting evil around the globe comes knocking. Now, it’s up to Gru and his new partner, Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig), to discover who is responsible for a spectacular crime and bring him to justice. After all, it takes the world’s greatest ex-villain to catch the one vying to take his place…

Joining the returning cast for Despicable Me 2 are Ken Jeong as Floyd Eagle-san, proprietor of the local hair replacement club for men and key suspect in the most despicable crime to hit the globe since Gru departed the game; Steve Coogan as Silas Ramsbottom, Lucy’s boss in the Anti-Villain League and a superspy whose surname offers an endless source of amusement to the Minions;

Moises Arias as Antonio, the oh-so-suave object of Margo’s girlhood affection (and Gru’s supreme annoyance); and Benjamin Bratt as Eduardo Perez, Antonio’s father, owner of Salsa & Salsa restaurant, and the man who may or may not be the most macho super-villain who ever villained, El Macho.

“Despicable Me 2” is released and distributed by Universal Pictures/United Intl. Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.

TOYCON 2013: Philippines

It’s a clash of two gigantic events in the metro! A crossover event you’ll never dare miss. Collectibles Unlimited and HERO TV present TOYCON 2013 Year 12 and HERO FACE OFF 2013: The Ultimate Cosplay Battle!

Worlds will collide when two of the biggest events in the country meet in a spectacular fashion and merge to make one mega crossover celebration.  The biggest pop-culture event in the Philippines, the 2013 TOYCON, now on its 12^th year, joins forces with the biggest Cosplay event in the country: the HERO Face-Off, the Philippines Cosplay qualifier to the World Cosplay Summit.  Get ready to witness true awesomeness as your senses are bombarded with the best of the pop culture scene in film, animation, comics, gaming, toys and collectibles, art and music.

The event culminates in the best of anime and cosplay as HERO TV gathers high caliber cosplayers all over the country to face off onstage and compete for the top prize to experience an all-expense paid trip to Nagoya Japan to attend the World Cosplay Summit 2013 in August.

HERO TV Face Off 2013: The Ultimate Cosplay Battle, now on its 4^th year celebrates Pinoy creativity through costume playing and annually sends globally competitive cosplayers to prestigious cosplay events outside the country. Watch out as cosplayers from all over the Philippines duel each other in three categories: The Kids Squad Category, League of Heroes Category and Face Off Category on June 16 at SM Megatrade Hall 3.

TOYCON 2013 will also feature the most-anticipated Hollywood movies.  Blast off with the first and the greatest superhero as we celebrate Superman’s 75^th anniversary with the Man of Steel exhibit and merchandise.  Go big, or go extinct with the earth-shattering Pacific Rim display.

Feast your eyes on the finest samples of toys and collectibles as the TOYCON gallery features the best of Hot Toys, Enterbay, Revoltech, Play Imaginative, Sideshow and other high-end collectible brands.  Also celebrate the best of Philippine toy art with the top local collectibles creators.

Get inside the talent, as artists and creators from the local comic book scene mix it up with the best toy customizers, game designers and animators to come up with truly unique offerings.   The TOYCON will feature guest local artists who have worked on DC, Marvel and their acclaimed creator-owned titles.  Panel discussions on comics, toy collecting and customizing, cosplay and gaming will bring the fans into an interactive adventure with the creators.

It’s cowabunga time when you meet and greet two of the world famous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in an activity booth put up solely for them at the TOYCON by Bates Licensing and Nickelodeon. 

And for our gaming fans, Cherry Credits, developers of the online hit games, Dragon Nest and Avatar Star will be introducing new games and platforms at their gaming booth.

And off course, TOYCON would not be complete without the biggest exhibitor floor of all pop culture merchandise in terms of apparel, collectibles and memorabilia, graphic novels and comics, cosplay paraphernalia, and toys, toys, TOYS!

The Philippine TOYCON 2013 will be held on June 14-16, 2013 at the SM Megatrade Halls 1, 2 and 3, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City. 

This is co-presented by Collectibles Unlimited, HERO TV and the SM Megatrade Halls, and sponsored by Maxi Collector, Toy Kingdom, Toy Empire, Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Warner Brothers Pictures and Pacific Licensing.  With special thanks to Big Boys Toy Store, Great Toys, Revoltech, Comic Odyssey, Comicxhub, Buhawi Studio, CIIT, Bandai, Oreo, Loctite, Mozilla, and Resorts World Manila.  With media partners, ABS-CBN and 99.5 PLAY FM.Also supported by Anime Alliance, One Sixth Republic and Komikon.

For more information on schedule of activities and event details please visit:

www.toyconph.com   www.myheronation.com   www.animealliance.asia