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The Close-Up Poster Answer

Aw, here I thought I was being tricky, but most of you had no problem. Almost everyone nailed it, though there was one guess of Encino Man. Um, no.

Jessica was first with the right answer, followed by Paul N. in second (Paul's closing in on a win one of these days!) and Christopher Welch in third.

Here, take another look at the close-up view of this movie poster:

Hang on, I'm about to make it way too easy for you:

Follow me over the jump for the full poster and some fun, informative facts!

Enjoy Yourself Some Close-Up Poster Contest!

Let's make it a little trickier for a change, eh?

All you have to do is study the image below, a close-up bit of the original poster for a famous movie. Then just enter the correct title of the film in the comments section below this post.

I won't post any of your guesses until I put the answer up and announce the winners tomorrow.

Take a look and take your best shot:

 

A redblog Q&A with Pirate Radio Star Tom Sturridge

Earlier this week, I and others sat down for a short talk with 23-year-old British actor Tom Sturridge, who plays the central character in Pirate Radio, opening this weekend. Though he grew up around show business, Sturridge has so far only appeared in a handful of films, including 2004's Being Juilia and Vanity Fair.

Written and directed by Richard Curtis (Love Actually) and originally known as The Boat That Rocked when it was released last spring in Britain, Pirate Radio tells a fictional story based on the real-life outlaw disc jockeys who quasi-legally broadcast rock and roll radio to England in the late 1960s from ships anchored in the North Sea. The rag-tag DJ crew is led by Curtis regular Bill Nighy as the owner and ship’s captain; Phillip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, the station’s sole American voice and most passionate believer in the power of rock; and Rhys Ifans as the preening Jagger-esque hedonist Gavin. Introduced into the middle of all this floating summer of love madness is Young Carl, played by Sturridge. 

(You can read my  Q&A with Pirate Radio director Richard Curtis here.)

The following are some highlights from our chat with Sturridge:

On Being the Child of Filmmaker Charles Sturridge and Actress Phoebe Nicholls

Sturridge: In a weird way, it was kind of the opposite of a show-business childhood. I was a very clichéd, rebellious child, and I really didn’t want to have anything to do with what they did. I didn’t see my mom in a play until about a year and a half ago for the first time. There was no sort of fracture on any side of our relationships, but I wasn’t somebody who spent time on sets. I did a film when I was seven, Gulliver’s Travels directed by my dad, which was more due to the fact that he was out of the country and wanted a way for his son to be with him and so he put me in it. I wouldn’t really call that acting, I’d call it standing.

And so it wasn’t until when I was 17, when they were casting Being Julia that I got involved in the business. I was quite a big cinephile when I was a kid, and I really wanted to meet the film’s director, Istvan Szabo. And the casting director was my friend’s mother and she kinda showed him all the professional 17-year-old actors, and he didn’t like any of them. So after that the only other 17-year-old boys she knew were her family friends. And so she started getting them in, and I really wanted to meet Istvan. It was that experience meeting him and by chance getting the job and the experience of making the film that got me into acting more than anything.

On How Twenty-Somethings Today Feel About the Sixties

Sturridge: I think every contemporary band and musician has in some way been influenced or is referencing music that began in the ‘60s in the same way that the Stones were referencing the blues. It’s not an alien idea, this music—unlike any other period, it still abounds in our culture: Beatles music, Rolling Stones music, The Who, especially in England. You can’t watch a film or a TV advert or a television program without listening to them.

My dad gave me his record collection when I was younger, so I was very familiar with the music. The story itself, the idea of pirate radio and what was happening on these boats, I was completely ignorant of, and learned about when I read the script. But in England, it’s so pervasive, this music, that you can’t not know it. Richard Curtis has a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of pop music from 1956 to the present day so it was an education because he would bring out weird B sides everyday that no one had ever heard of.

What’s amazing about it, I think, which is very different from being young now, is how the music of the ‘60s was born of an energy created by this postwar conservatism, and young people not having a framework to express how they feel. Especially in England, the ‘50s were very, very repressed; people were recovering from what had happened in World War II. You didn’t tell your mother what you felt about love and sex and how to live, and so this kind of energy built up that exploded with this music, and I think that’s something that any young person can empathize with.

Give It Up for our Friday the 13th Twitter Contest Winners!

Over the past few days, @redbox ran a contest on Twitter -- we asked our followers to tweet us their favorite lines from scary movies in honor of Friday the 13th. Tonight, we drew thirteen usernames out of a hat to determine the winners... and to prove that this supposedly unlucky day isn't always so bad. 

The twelve players below will receive a Horror Film Prize Package, consisting of some creeptastic DVDs and 2 free redbox rentals.  Those lucky peeps (and their favorite scary lines) are:

1) @capii with “Hello, Clarice” from Silence of the Lambs

2) @ekatz14 with ”They're hee-eeree!” from Poltergeist

3) @Zuneaholic with “I’m every nightmare you’ve ever had. I’m your worst dream come true. I’m everything you ever were afraid of" from It

4) @davebillsfan with "I'll be right back..." from Scream
 
5) @757princess with “The power of Christ compels you” from The Exorcist

6) @Droolman7 with “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum” from They Live

7) @vitali002 with "Here’s johnny!" from The Shining

8) @anothertomorrow with "I want to play a game" from Saw

9) @debbietarr with “1,2 Freddys comin 4 U 3,4, better lock ur door 5,6 grab ur crucifix 7,8 better stay up late 9,10 never sleep again”  from A Nightmare on Elm Street (We appreciate how hard that was to do in under 140 characters!)

10) @AZcomm with "Playtime’s over!" from Child's Play

11) @Kurometarikku with “The call is coming from inside the house!” from When a Stranger Calls

12) @Grantkimm with "They’re coming to get you, Barbara!" from Night of the Living Dead

AND NOW... DRUMROLL, PLEASE

The Grand Prize Winner, who will be sent not only a Horror Film Prize Package, but also a month's worth of free DVD rentals from redbox, is...

@dkillackey with “We all go a little mad sometimes" from Psycho

Congratulations to all of our winners!  And thanks for entertaining us with your favorite quotes... though we're guaranteed to have some nightmares tonight. 

If you want to keep up on latest redbox news and be a part of future contests, make sure you Twitter users out there are following us at @redbox.  (Is that redundant?  At @?  We digress.)

To everyone who played but who wasn't one of our lucky 13: you might want to throw a pinch of salt over your back, and steer clear of ladders, mirrors and black cats.  You know, just in case.

Got 7 Minutes? Hear E's Take on 2012, Pirate Radio, The Ugly Truth and Up

This morning I chatted with the team at KPAM's 'Bob Miller in the Morning' show about two films that hit theaters today -- 2012 and Pirate Radio -- as well as two new DVDs now available at redboxes everywhere -- The Ugly Truth and Up. 

Take a listen!

Where? 

Why, right here.

A redblog Q&A with Pirate Radio and Love Actually Writer-Director Richard Curtis

Earlier this week, I and others sat down for a short round-table conversion with Richard Curtis, the writer-director of Pirate Radio, opening this weekend. Curtis is the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the writer-director of my number-one rom-com of all time, 2003's Love Actually. (In the '80s, he also helped create one of my favorite British comedies, the twisted historical Blackadder series starring Rowan Atkinson.)

Originally known as The Boat That Rocked when it was released last spring in Britain, Pirate Radio tells a fictional story based on the real-life outlaw disc jockeys who quasi-legally broadcast rock and roll radio to England in the late 1960s from ships anchored in the North Sea. The rag-tag DJ crew is led by Curtis regular Bill Nighy as the owner and ship’s captain; Phillip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, the station’s sole American voice and most passionate believer in the power of rock; and Rhys Ifans as the preening Jagger-esque hedonist Gavin.

Other familiar comic faces in Pirate Radio include Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) as a “chunky” (and gloriously hairy) ladies man, and Rhys Darby, best known as the Flight of the Conchord’s manager Murray. Kenneth Branagh plays a British government official trying to shut the pirate radio stations down, and Mad Men's January Jones shows up as a dazzling love interest. Introduced into all this floating summer of love madness is Young Carl, played by Tom Sturridge. (A Q&A with Sturridge will be published tomorrow.)

The following are some of the highlights from our chat with Curtis:

On Youth and Music, and the Freedom to Live with People You Hate

Curtis: England was hilarious in the ‘60s. I went to a boarding school and it really was like 1949. All the hair was unbelievably short, you couldn’t run in the corridors, you couldn’t talk after lights out, you sung endless hymns with the word “pilgrim” in them. And that’s why it was so fantastic to listen to rock ‘n’ roll—it was undisciplined.

I had a tiny little radio, and you were like a safe cracker, turning the dial—they were hard to get, these stations because they only had very small frequencies. And it was the thing about volume level as you listened. It was too quiet you couldn’t hear it, but if it was too loud the matron who would stalk along the corridors could hear it, so you had to get that perfect level.

I’ve got very passionate memories of “Reach Out I’ll Be There” by the Four Tops. It was the first single I bought, and you know the way you can remember weird moments from your youth? I remember chapel was compulsory and a guy and I were hiding in the music rehearsal room and remember the DJ saying that "I’ll be There" had gone from 16 to number two, and how unbelievably excited I was. I was locked in a boarding school and sort of sensed this amazing world of freedom.

Also I think Pirate Radio is actually a film partly about being 24. At that age, most people end up in a flat with too many people, one of whom has had sex with everybody, one of whom has never had sex…with dreadful food, bad hygiene, and listening to music all the time. For me that was Camden Town, 1979: The Specials, Madness, Blondie, The Pretenders. And in a way it’s a movie about that nostalgic thing, about the freedom of our 20s when money doesn’t matter, you do the job you want to do, you don’t have any children. The weird thing is you often end up living with people you don’t like, ‘cause it’s a bit random. It’s the one person who can afford to live there, or the guy who owns the place, it’s some girl who’s a friend of his mother’s who has to move in. I hated the four people I lived with, but we were happy.

The Close-Up Poster Answer

I didn't think this one would give you guys too much trouble--in fact we may have gotten the most correct guesses of any Close-Up Poster Contest so far, though we did get a few stray answers. (Hamburger Hill, We Were Soldiers, Glory, Pearl Harbor, Starship Troopers, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra,and one Easy Rider.)

Angel was first with the right answer, followed by Donna in second and Kim A. in third. Good job, all.

Here, take another look:

And in case you need it made really easy for you, here's a wider shot:

Got it? Follow me over the jump for the full poster and a special (post) Veteran's Day video clip.

Happy Close-Up Poster Contest!

Another easy one for you folks this Wednesday evening.

All you have to do is study the image below, a close-up bit of the original poster for a famous movie. Then just enter the correct title of the film in the comments section below this post.

I won't post any of your guesses until I put the answer up and announce the winners tomorrow.

Here you go!

  

Redblog On the Radio: Locke's Turn This Week

Take a listen as I discussed G.I. Joe, The Taking of Pelham 123, A Christmas Carol, and The Men Who Stare at Goats on KPAM's Bob Miller Show last Friday.

It's just like reading my reviews, only with a lot more "um"s and a lot less reading.

The Close-up Poster Answer

No problems this time--I said the poster clue was easier this week and sure enough a bunch of you got it right.

Up first was Donna, followed by Scott and Michelle. Well done, guys and everyone else who nailed it!

So what movie's poster is this image from?

 

I'm guessing you really don't need a second clue this time, but what the hey, here ya go:

That should do it for anyone still struggling. Follow me over the jump for the full poster.