Movies

Here’s another reason why we love Jennifer Lawrence.

The Silver Linings Playbook actress photo-bombs Sarah Jessica Parker at the Met Ball to the amusement of Marion Cotillard and Lena Dunham.

Paranormal Activity 4 is out on DVD and stars child actor Brady Allen as Robbie.  Allen’s credits include roles in a short film, and guest roles on a halloween special of The Middle and American Horror Story.

Playing the creepy kid seems to be a dream come true for this 9 year old who considers a movie set as his favourite place in the world.

The fourth Paranormal Activity movie is a sequel to the second and first films and also features Katie Featherston (The River) who starred in the first movie as well as Kathryn Newton (Gary Unmarried).

All of the activity has led to this! When Katie disappeared with her nephew Hunter, there were no survivors. Five years later she’s returned with a mysterious boy, ready to target new victims with her demonic rage. Now using computer cameras and cell phones, an innocent family’s young daughter will capture every one of the terrifying occurrences that began with her new neighbors’ arrival.

The movie grossed a world-wide box office take of $140,706,358 and there is a fifth movie in the franchise due out in October 2013.

Here is one of the trailers from the movie to watch if you’re not afraid of getting a little scared.

This is a sponsored post but opinions are my own.

8:30pm – Thursday, December 27 on ABC1

Following the death of his wife in an accident, Joe (Colin Firth) leaves behind his home in the US in search of a new start. He relocates himself and his two daughters to become a professor in the exotic town of Genova, Italy.

They move into a flat in the crowded centre of Genova, and as Joe settles into university life, his daughters occupy their time by taking piano lessons and exploring the labyrinth-like laneways of the old city. They soon adapt to the local way of life, taking day trips to the beach and exploring their surrounds.

But 16-year-old Kelly (Willa Holland) is drawn into the sexy and dangerous underbelly of this mysterious world, speeding around on Vespas and partying with the local boys, while 10-year-old Mary (Perla HaneyJardine), who is clearly in acute emotional pain, begins to have visions of her mother.

Meanwhile, Joe has to deal with the demands of being a single parent and balancing his re-emergent love life. Barbara (Catherine Keener), an old colleague, tries to get close to the family, but crosses the line between good advice and intrusion; while one of his brash and idealistic young Italian students quickly makes her intentions known to the suddenly-single professor.

As the girls deal with their mother’s death in very different ways, matters come to a head when Joe makes a lunch date with the Italian student, and spurns his much older colleague, and Kelly is late picking up Mary from her music lessons, forcing her to walk home alone.

7:30pm – Monday, December 24 on ABC1

Having given up his career as a frustrated, under-achieving actor, Mr Maddens (Martin Freeman) has become a frustrated, under-achieving primary school teacher.

Each Christmas, his school and that of his long-time adversary, Gordon Shakespeare (Jason Watkins) of the posh independent school up the road, compete for a 5-star review of their respective nativity plays.

Every year the privileged Oakmoor students thrash the underdogs at St Bernadette’s. Maddens is resigned to this. Since receiving a vicious review from the local drama critic (Alan Carr) for his last production, he refuses to have anything to do with the annual festive fiasco. Five years ago his girlfriend, Jennifer (Ashley Jensen), dumped him under the mistletoe and left for a new life in California. Maddens’s headmistress (Pam Ferris), however, has plans of her own. She wants a proper Nativity in her last year before retirement, and she wants him to direct. He is still thinking of ways to wriggle out of it when he runs into Shakespeare at the garden centre.

Goaded by his rival’s arrogance, Maddens makes an idle boast: not only is St Bernadette’s preparing a barnstorming Xmas Xtravaganza but their production has already attracted the attention of Hollywood!

8:30pm – Saturday, December 15 on ABC2

Corie (Jane Fonda) and Paul (Robert Redford) are madly-in-love newlyweds. Emerging from the rapture of a six day honeymoon at the Plaza Hotel, they are in the process of setting up housekeeping in a five floor walk-up apartment in a dilapidated Greenwich Village building.

Mrs. Banks, Corie’s mother, drops in and like Paul can’t believe her eyes how barren and freezing the apartment is. The radiator doesn’t work and there’s a hole in the skylight. Corie invites her mother back for a dinner the following Friday.

Paul becomes more agitated when he talks to the kooky tenants in the building. One in particular is Victor Velasco, who lives on the roof. Corie has a run-in with Velasco in the middle of the night and he makes a bid for a dinner invitation. Corie, a plan drawing in her mind, invites him for Friday night.

Barefoot In The Park is directed by Gene Saks.

8:30pm – Saturday, December 8 on ABC2

The Alps in winter – the top American skier is hurt, so Coach Eugene Claire (Gene Hackman) sends for two replacements, one being David Chappellet (Robert Redford). David is a tough, undisciplined loner from Colorado who has never had anything of value but his skis.

David’s first big race is the Lauberhorn but he’s given the 88th starting position and refuses to run. Claire believes in David’s value to the team and in the next big race Claire gets him a lower starting number. David turns a fantastic performance and meets Carole (Camilla Sparv), a ski manufacturer’s assistant, at the postrace party.

David becomes the U.S. team’s best hope after top downhill racer Johnny Creech (Jim McMullan) is injured in a pre-Olympic race. This is David’s chance to become immortal, or return to anonymity.

8:30pm – Saturday, November 24 on ABC2

This program is a dramatisation of events in the life of St. Francis of Assisi from before his conversion experience through his audience with the pope, including his friendship with St. Clare.

The son of a rich merchant, Francesco Bernardone (Graham Faulkner), comes back ill from war. In his delirium, he goes back in his memories to the days when he spent time on parties and carnal pleasures. Yet, the shadow of the cross that he sees in fever brings an end to his old life. The armour which he calls ‘my death mask’ appears to be the final clothing of his old human existance.

He slowly recovers, but after the illness there is no longer the old Francesco formally known to everybody.

Instead of spending hours in taverns, he spends them in meadows; instead of drinking, he meditates upon the beauty of God’s creatures. Once, he encounters a ruined little church. There, from the old cross, Christ changes his life forever. Francesco renounces riches and family and starts to rebuild the church as ‘il Poverello – the poorest of the poor’. Soon, he gathers many people who willingly become part of a powerful new spiritual temple.

Will the king-like pope accept a new order of beggars and the poorest of the poor.

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, Brother Sun, Sister Moon stars Graham Faulkner and Judi Bowker.

8:30pm – Saturday, November 17 on ABC2

Alan Newell (Sidney Poitier) is a Seattle college student volunteering at a crisis centre. One night when Alan is at the clinic alone, a woman calls up the number and tells him that she needs to talk to someone. She informs Alan she took a load of pills, and he secretly tries to get help. During this time, he learns more about the woman, her family life, and why she wants to die.

Can Alan get the cavalry to save her in time before it’s too late.

Directed by Sydney Pollack, The Slender Thread stars Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft

8:30pm – Saturday, November 10 on ABC2

It is 1890 in Wyoming where a group of homesteaders are battling ruthless Rufe Ryker (Emile Meyer) and his band of cutthroat hirelings. Shane (Alan Ladd), buckskin-clad and mysterious, stops at the ranch where Joe Starrett (Van Heflin), his wife Marian (Jean Arthur), and their son Joey (Brandon De Wilde), are trying to establish a home for themselves.

At first the Starretts are wary of the stranger. However, when Shane doffs his gun-belt and joins Starrett in working the ranch, they accept him as one of the family. This seems to be the refuge that Shane, who has decided to give up gun-fighting, is looking for.

However, when the homesteaders are goaded into action by Ryker, there is open warfare. On one occasion Shane is joined by Starrett and together they outslug the entire band of cattlemen. Desperate, Ryker brings on Slick Wilson (Jack Palance), a professional gunman.

Shane is now forced to strap on his gun again and try to rid the range of the menace.

8:30pm – Saturday, November 3 on ABC2

Step back into the real, dour and chilling world of spies and counterspies. Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) is a burnt-out British agent who refuses to ‘come in from the cold’ to take a desk job – but instead launches into the most dangerous assignment of his career, stalking East German agent, Fiedler (Oskar Werner).

John Le Carre’s best-selling novel provides the basis for this breathtaking thriller of espionage, intrigue, crosses and double crosses. First-rate performances from the entire cast are matched by a tension-packed and brilliantly-plotted screenplay, with masterful direction from Martin Ritt.