AnnaSophia Robb Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In fulfillment of the prophecy that Disney will eventually remake every single one of its live-action movies, here is Race to Witch Mountain. It bears a passing resemblance to 1975's Escape to Witch Mountain, but it's more reminiscent of a tiresome carnival ride whose operator abandoned it and left it to run for 90 minutes. Whatever fun there is in it quickly gives way to tedium.

Appropriately, it's set in loud, gaudy Las Vegas, where Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) works as a cab driver. In the past he has freelanced his services for one Mr. Wolf, a shady underworld figure whose goons regularly visit Jack trying to re-enlist him. Maybe I shouldn't bother mentioning that, though, because it ultimately has nothing to do with the story. For that reason, I'm also not going to mention Jack's lifelong desire to own a particular Ford Mustang, since that detail was clearly added only after someone read a screenwriting book and paused at the chapter that talked about giving your characters hopes and dreams. It's extraneous.

But back to the actual story. Jack encounters two strange preteens, a brother and sister named Seth (Alexander Ludwig) and Sara (AnnaSophia Robb). They are extraterrestrials whose spaceship crashed in the desert when they came to Earth in search of a MacGuffin, and now they must get the item and return to the ship -- which is problematic, because the U.S. government, led by heartless Henry Burke (Ciarán Hinds), has recovered the craft and hidden it away somewhere. There's also an alien assassin pursuing the kids, though that's another thing that's ultimately not particularly relevant.

From the star, director and studio behind The Game Plan comes... another movie pairing up Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson with kids! Okay, this one -- Race to Witch Mountain, a remake of Disney's own Escape to Witch Mountain from 1975 -- seems a fair bit more tolerable than that one was, as cab driver Johnson is forced to team up with UFO expert Carla Gugino on an unexpected mission to get two unique children (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig) to the above-mentioned location of their spaceship.

A couple of things should be said for the trailer, which we've included after the jump.

1. There is an unavoidable watermark on it, but other than that, it seems to be a fully digital trailer and not bootlegged from sneaks of Bolt this past Saturday. (Okay, I get it: Star Trek is Star Trek... and you know who else pulls a very similar 'letting a vehicle crumple around you' trick? Bolt does.)
2. Said watermark and the YouTube premiere suggests that this hasn't been officially released by the studio yet, so I'd be willing to bet that this trailer gets taken down by the end of the day. Good luck!
3. More power to Johnson for throwing himself wholly into work like this, even if we can already see his character growing out of skepticism and towards accountability over the course of these two minutes. (Besides, Brendan Fraser can't hold a monopoly on all the family adventure hero roles.)

With that said, thanks to Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel for digging this up, and onto the trailer! Race to Witch Mountain opens next March.

One of the things I hate most about wannabe indie movies is the fallacy of the two-day scruff. That's when a male character wakes up every day with exactly two days' growth of beard, even if the movie takes place over the course of two weeks and even if he lacks the means to shave. That's a small thing, I know, but it indicates that the director is grasping at straws trying to come up with a visual look for his story, perhaps a kind of cool, grungy look. The new Sleepwalking, directed by Bill Maher (not the Comedy Central guy) is filled with such things, like a spookily serene shot of a girl swimming underwater with weird sunglasses on, or swirls of powdered snow wisping across a lonely highway. These images may fill out a 2-1/2 minute trailer, but they're out of place in Maher's feature film.

Nick Stahl plays the "sleepwalking" James, a dead-eyed slacker who works a construction job and goes home to a dreary apartment. One day his sister Joleen (Charlize Theron) disappears and his 11 year-old Niece Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) turns up looking for help. Even though he can't drive, James attempts to maintain a schedule, driving her to school in the mornings, before turning up at his job. One day he's late, and the next he calls in sick to look for his sister. On the third day, they oversleep, just as social services turn up. James loses his job and Tara is shipped off to a home. But the first chance she gets, she coaxes her uncle to help her skip town. Their money carries them only as far as James and Joleen's father's farm, which looks permanently chilled and dried and wind-blown (only scraps of paint remain on the outside walls).

We're now two steps closer to Disney's 're-imagining' of the kid's classic, Escape to Witch Mountain. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Ciarán Hinds (Stop Loss) and Alexander Ludwig (The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising) are signed to star in Race to Witch Mountain, the update of John Hough's 1975 film. Witch Mountain focused on two orphans with paranormal abilities, and was based on the 1968 sci-fi novel by Alexander Key.

For those who didn't come of age wishing to be witchy orphans, the storyline focused on mind-bending siblings Tia and Tony, whose alien origins had them on the run from an evil millionaire. This will mark the second attempt at a remake, with the first being for TV back in 1995. Matt Lopez (She's the Man) was in charge of the re-write and Andy Fickman was signed to direct back in July. Casting for Race to Witch Mountain started back in August, when Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson signed on for a role as a part time cab-driver and protector to the siblings. A little while later, Anna Sophia Robb was hired to play one of the 'spooky kids'. I can only guess that now that Ludwig is on board he will be taking over the part of Tony and Hinds will play the evil millionaire.

When the book was first adapted, there were plenty of complaints that Disney ignored most of the darker elements of the story. But Fickman has promised that this time around he is going to make, "a pretty bad-ass ride." Probably not how I would have described a movie from the man who directed The Game Plan; but you never know. Race to Witch Mountain is scheduled for release March 13th, 2009.

Walden Media is trucking on with its numerous book adaptation projects. Heck, in the last 7 months, there's been word about Clive Barker's Edgar Allan Poe thriller for kids, The Screwtape Letters, The Dark is Rising, Edward Gorey's The Doubtful Guest and Bill Murray starring in City of Ember. That's not including projects they've bowed out on, like The Giver and the American Girl adaptations. Now Variety is reporting that the company will adapt Lauren St. John's children's book, The White Giraffe, for AnnaSophia Robb to star in. Robb was most recently in the Hilary Swank thriller The Reaping, but she's also the gal who played Leslie in Bridge to Terabithia and Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The movie will be directed by Gabor Csupo, who worked with Robb in Terabithia and it will be adapted by Ann Peacock, who not only adapted The Chronicles of Narnia and the Kit Kittredge film, but is from South Africa, where the book is based.

Giraffe is about a young girl named Martine who is orphaned and sent to live with her grandmother on a game reserve in South Africa. She doesn't feel welcomed by her grandmother or school, but finds two friends, one of whom "instantly senses there is something special about Martine." After hearing about a fabled white giraffe, she ends up spotting one and begins a series of "mysterious and magical adventures." And somehow in there, she discovers that she has a gift for healing. Barely into her teens, it's pretty obvious that Robb is going places. Beyond the high-profile work that she's been in recently, she's also got a slew of films coming our way, including Have Dreams, Will Travel and Jumper. However, much of her work is family-oriented so the only question that remains is whether this is the start of a long, cinematic life, or be a child-star-turned-unknown.

Considering all the women I know who love Colin Firth, I am shocked that he doesn't get more romantic leading roles. But then, maybe that is his choice? Seeing as he appears in such a diverse range of films these days, it could be that he is perfectly in control of what he wants. And apparently he wants to do the occasional movie for the kids. After making himself familiar to the tweens by showing up in What a Girl Wants and Nanny McPhee, he is now further increasing his chances of one day winning a Kid's Choice Award by signing on to The Moon Princess. Formerly titled The Little White Horse, which is the name of the book that is based upon, The Moon Princess is a live-action family-friendly fantasy about a 13-year-old girl who enters a magical world in order to put an end to an ancient curse. Firth will be playing the girl's eccentric uncle (though the IMDb lists his part as a dual role).

The Moon Princess will be directed by Hungarian-born filmmaker Gabor Csupo, who earned his cred with the kids and the studios this year with the very successful adaptation The Bridge to Terabitha, his directorial debut. If he does just as well with this similar-sounding follow-up, I bet he'll be offered a chance at a whole fantasy franchise. If it isn't that good, Csupo will probably still be okay. As a producer/co-creator of the cartoons Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys, as well as one of the original animators for The Simpsons, he isn't really that new to Hollywood. No other casting choices have been announced yet, but hopefully Terabitha's AnnaSophia Robb will be chosen as the lead since I can't think of any other 13-year-old with as much appeal or talent right now (forget Dakota Fanning who should never be cast in a fantasy film). Regardless of who else is involved, though, I'm enough interested thanks to Firth. If I could watch part of What a Girl Want because of him, I can watch anything because of him.

The Next Karate Kid is no longer the embarrassing thing on Hilary Swank's resume. The Reaping is a movie that skates close to total incompetence, neither following its own rules, or seeming to care one way or the other. It focuses on the adventures of Katherine Winter, (Swank) who is something of a gymrat Amazing Randi, turning up at sites where local yokels think they've witnessed a miracle and spoon-feeding them some good old fashioned, God-hating science. When a Southern Caricature named Doug (David Morrissey) asks Amazing Hilary to come down to his town because, um, they're undergoing the ten biblical plagues down there, she doesn't snare him in a butterfly net but happily packs her bags. Let me stop here and mention that, having never seen or heard of actor David Morrissey before this film, I wrote in my notes: "If this guy is Southern, why the English accent?" When I got home, I looked up Morrissey's IMDB page and saw that he was, in fact, English. That's how much The Reaping cares about its details.

Once arrived in Mississippi Burningville, Swank and her overtly-religious partner, played by Idris Elba, begin to take notice of a local family that is being shunned by polite society because of a hazy perception that they are devil-worshippers, and have caused the local river to turn red. The little girl of the family, Loren (AnnaSophia Robb) is so feared by the local rubes, in fact, that at one point they are ready to set off in pickups to kill her. Swank and Co. must set about rowing through the river, colored a convincing shade of red through impressive special effects, in order to determine the scientific reason for the discoloration and calm down the God-fearing populace. At one point a few frogs also plop down from the sky into the river, but I couldn't figure out if that was supposed to count as a separate plague or the same one. And by the way, if a biblical plague is town-specific, which it apparently is, can't you just move one town over?

I saw Bridge to Terabithia this past weekend with my nine-year-old daughter, who is also a huge fan of the book on which the film is based. I'll have a full review and an interview with screenwriter David Paterson to come soon, but for now, suffice it to say that any concerns I had about Disney getting away from the heart of the story and focusing too much on effects have been laid to rest. If you, like me, were a fan of the book when you were growing up, you've probably been waiting to see this film for a while, and you're going to really love what they did with the film. If you've never read the book, that's okay, you don't have to have read it to see and appreciate the film -- it's good enough to stand on its own.

To keep you satisfied until the film opens this weekend, we have some goodies for you:

TRAILER: Bridge to Terabithia Trailer on Moviefone

VIDEO: Behind-the-Scenes of Bridge to Terabithia on Moviefone:

Zooey Deschanel chats in AIM with Moviefone about Bridge to Terabithia

Also, Disney has made available lots of images of really cool concept art from the Terabithia sequences. One of the images is above; you'll find a ton of other Terabithia images, after the jump.

SPOILER ALERT: If you've never read Bridge to Terabithia, and you don't want to know anything about it before seeing the movie, stop reading. Now. Then drive to the nearest bookstore, buy a copy, and read it. Laugh. Cry. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson's classic novel about two kids who form an unlikely friendship, is one of my favorite books ever, so when I heard a new movie was in the works earlier this year, I was filled with both excitement and trepidation. On the one hand, I just introduced my nine-year-old daughter to the book over the summer, and I knew she'd be excited about the film. On the other hand, though, what if "they" screwed it up? I know, I know, it's just a movie, right? I shouldn't get so worked up. But seriously, this book was one of the literary bedrocks of my childhood; I read my first copy to pieces, and have read it countless times since. I still cry every time.