AntonYelchin Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Terminator Salvation roars to life on screen with enough gutsy firepower to literally shake you in your seat. She's a mean, loud metallic beast that hasn't eaten in years, and the only commands she understands come in the form of growls, snarls, bullets and explosions. You can't really ask for more from an action picture (well you can, but we'll get to that); with Terminator Salvation, director McG proves that he's more than a punchline for online jokes -- his action scenes are fierce and eye-popping; he gives us the post-apocalyptic Skynet world we've always wanted to see and then asks if we want seconds or thirds. This is the Terminator film for a generation that expects over-the-top; an audience who likes it rough, but still PG-13, so we don't get carded at the door.

And that's all well and good if you also don't need to care -- because while Terminator Salvation is a gnarly little actioner, this movie about robots lacks, well, life. There's a fantastic scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day when Sarah Connor runs right into her son John and the T-800 exiting an elevator in the mental institution, and her eyes pop as she drops to the floor; frightened to her core. She doesn't yet know that this T-800 is a good guy -- instead, all she sees is failure, death and desperation. And we feel that; we're so sold in that moment and our hearts do a freak-dance as the T-1000 closes in behind her. That scene is one of the single greatest of this franchise, and that panic, that momentum, that edge-of-your-seat, full-body experience is what's absent from Terminator Salvation.

She doesn't bleed when we kinda need her to.

You might have heard of a little summer blockbuster called Star Trek, which everyone has been raving about. I slid into my seat on Friday night, partook in all the space adventure, and came out with one strong thought: Anton Yelchin is seriously, almost criminally underused in Hollywood. Luckily, I think that may be changing, between his take on Pavel Chekov and his upcoming Kyle Reese for Terminator Salvation. At least, it better!

The 20-year-old is cinematic gold. He made Chekov a wonderfully sweet and smart part of the crew, but before that he was Charlie Bartlett. Where most kid movies consist of teen actors doing a specific part and doing it well -- the jock, the nerd, the beauty, etc -- Charlie Bartlett forced Yelchin into a pretty layered character for a high-school movie about the loser-turned-hero.

Layered how? He's smart, yet naive. Rational, yet idealistic. He's the Igby, the Harold, but with a distinct inclination towards contributing to society rather than merely mocking it. Or specifically for this clip: Charlie seems jerkish with his drama audition as a girl who got her period, but then he ends it with earnest eyes and not the slightest gleam of devilishness.

My dream: Someone teams Yelchin with Sam Rockwell for some kind of darkly comedic caper.

Curious about what's been happening at WonderCon in San Francisco this weekend? Me too! Let's see what the Internet says.

Cloverfield Sequel? J.J. Abrams acknowledged that ideas for a sequel "or at least a follow-up" to last year's big-grossing, doc-style monster movie Cloverfield are being kicked around. Insisting that a sequel "better not be a business decision," Abrams said: "We have an idea for something that's pretty cool ... It's something that would be related to Cloverfield and hopefully we'll do something sooner than later, because the idea's pretty sweet." Abrams appeared at WonderCon to premiere a new trailer for some space movie thingy. [Daniel Fienberg at HitFix.]

Terminator for Teens? Director McG continued to play the guessing game about the rating for Terminator: Salvation. Are they aiming for PG-13 or R? At a panel, he teased the audience with the prospect of a topless scene by Moon Bloodgood. (Alas, the new trailer does not include that scene.) Later, McG claimed that T:S was made without giving a thought to rating, while also referencing the Kate Winslet posing scene in the PG-13 rated Titanic. For her part, Ms. Bloodgood said: "I'm a woman, I have boobs, it's a beautiful shot." [Edward Douglas at Coming Soon.]

Green Lantern Goes Russian? Anton Yelchin, the Russian-born actor who has prominent supporting roles in both Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation, denied a rumor that he was being considered to play Hal Jordan in Green Lantern. "No one has said anything to me. I imagine I'm just too young. I mean, it's a great character but I don't know anything about it." Yelchin will turn 20 next week. [IESB.net]

After the jump: News on Disney's hand-drawn The Princess and the Frog.

Those attending VegasCon '08 saw four new character posters for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, which give us our first look at the reborn versions of Sulu, Chekov, Scotty and McCoy. The image above shows Karl Urban as Leonard McCoy and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov; you'll have to go to TrekMovie.com, which had the first photo of the posters, to see Simon Pegg as Scotty and John Cho as Sulu. It should surprise no one that these Starfleet officers are much more photogenic than their original counterparts, and not, I think, merely because they're younger. (I mean, look at this guy.)

This comes on the heels of the first screening of the complete film for Paramount execs, which apparently went very well, though since the source for that could really only be from inside Paramount, I'd take that with a huge grain of salt.

I came to Star Trek late, which led to oddball results like my liking Star Trek: Voyager. (I think that asking "What would Janeway do?" is a good way to lead your life.) So I'm likely to be less offended by canon alterations than die-hard fans of the original series. Thoughts on the new versions of these characters?

This was one of the panels I was most looking forward to because I desperately wanted to walk away from it with even more good vibes than I already had. Though I still chuckled every time someone prefaced a question with "This is for McG ...," the guy definitely "brought it" to Comic Con. You could tell this dude really wanted to sell the audience; he wanted to sell them on another Terminator flick, he wanted to sell them on it being directed by a dude named McG and he wanted to bottle up his enormous energy and sell that too. The guy was amped up to a level just beneath "Okay this is uncomfortable," and the panel audience was virtually high-fiving him the entire time.

The Footage

I wasn't sure what we'd be seeing as far as footage from the film went, since they were still right in the middle of shooting and, well, you wouldn't expect anything too polished. But to my surprise they managed to throw together an enticing little two-or-so-minute teaser that was gritty, grimy, familiar and --pardon the language -- pretty f**king rad. I was too engulfed to write down every second of the thing, but it basically consisted of a number of quick snippets of gunfire, Anton Yelchin (as a young Kyle Reese) saying stuff like, "Come with me if you want to live," a little of Sam Worthington (who seems like the kind of guy that'd clock you for staring at him for more than three seconds), Moon Bloodgood (hot name for a hottie actress), Common (who I assume plays the obligatory post-apocalyptic black dude) and, of course, those T-600 robots (the film takes place in 2018, 11 years before Arnold's T-800 existed).

Gallery of panel below; more after the jump ...

What we previously knew about the plot of Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins: Christian Bale plays an older John Connor; a young Kyle Reese shows up in the form of Anton Yelchin; Sam Worthington plays some guy named Marcus. After Skynet brings about a nuclear near-apocalypse, our heroes must keep the machines from wiping out the rest of humanity. That's it. Now, thanks to a Warner Bros. start-of-production press release we know a lot more -- or do we?

"In the highly anticipated new installment of The Terminator film franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet's operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind."

If you read that a couple of times, it doesn't really make very much sense ("the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part..."?). Studio marketing departments aren't known for lucid prose. It's not clear whether the human resistance Connor's going to lead (or so we keep being told) actually gets formed in this movie, or how Reese -- Connor's father -- enters the picture. But at least we have a sense of the storyline, and of who "Marcus" is. Parenthetically, we also learn that Charlotte Gainsbourg will take over as Kate Connor -- the Claire Danes role from Rise of the Machines.

After a lot of hemming and hawing, some hopeful casting news, and outrage over McG being attached to direct, it looks like Terminator 4 is good to go.

There are a few things to glean from this Hollywood Reporter story. First, obviously, is what's in the headline: Moon Bloodgood, who played Generic Love Interest in Pathfinder and starred in the canceled television series Journeyman, has been cast as the female lead, a survivor of the nuclear holocaust we witnessed at the end of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. She joins Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, and Anton Yelchin. Second, notwithstanding earlier reports to the contrary, the third sequel is apparently still called Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. Finally, the movie is scheduled to begin principal photography on May 5th, which means that barring some Terry Gilliam-scale disaster, this long-speculated-about project is actually happening.

Count me among the McG skeptics. Previous installments of this franchise have been helmed by world-class action movie craftsmen (disclaimer: I am a fan of Jonathan Mostow), and I'm not convinced that McG has either the chops or the instincts to fill their shoes. The mincemeat he made of a terrific story in We Are Marshall doesn't inspire confidence, and the pyrotechnics of the Charlie's Angels films don't tell me much. That said, I'm excited for the Terminator saga to continue, since there's a lot more of this story to tell (and since Google is currently building SkyNet). Has anyone been watching the Fox TV show?

Word from The Hollywood Reporter is that New Zealand actor Karl Urban has joined the cast of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek re-start. Fans of fantastical cinema will no doubt remember Urban from his work in Lord of the Rings, The Bourne Supremacy, Doom, The Chronicles of Riddick and Pathfinder. Mr. Urban will be playing medical officer "Bones" McCoy, a character made famous by the late DeForest Kelley. Plot details are still being kept under wraps, but here's what the all-new Enterprise crew looks like...

Captain Kirk (previously played by William Shatner) -- Chris Pine (27 years old)
Spock (Leonard Nimoy) -- Zachary Quinto (30)
Sulu (George Takei) -- John Cho (35)
McCoy (DeForest Kelley) -- Karl Urban (35)
Scotty (James Doohan) -- Simon Pegg (37)
Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) -- Zoe Saldana (29)
Chekov (Walter Koenig) -- Anton Yelchin (18)


...and Eric Bana as the villainous Nero. (With a special appearance from Leonard Nimoy!) Production on the film is expected to run from November to March. So what do you think of the whole crew?

Also, feel free to pick through our numerous reports on this flick. Like right here, here and here.

Last week we learned that Zachary Quinto would be playing the youthful version of Spock in J.J. Abrams' impending rendition of Star Trek -- and now we have a new cast member to contemplate. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Russian-born actor Anton Yelchin has been cast as the young Pavel Chekov. One need not be a hardcore Trekkie to recall that Chekov was played by the ultra-cool Walter Koenig in the original Trek series and the first series of theatrical flicks.

For his part, the 18-year-old Anton Yelchin is the offspring of two figure skaters -- and a rather solid young actor. You may remember him from such movies as Hearts in Atlantis, House of D and Alpha Dog, plus he also plays the title character in Jon Poll's Charlie Bartlett, which recently moved from a summer release to November 7. Mr. Abrams is presently hard at work trying to cast the rest of the young-sized Enterprise crew -- plus he aims to cast some big names as the villain and the "grown-up" captain. The as-yet-untitled 11th Trek flick is scheduled for release on Christmas of 2008. (Previous reports on this project can be found here, here and here.)

It was back in May that we found out about the next project from actor/director John Stockwell. He's the guy who has gone from a Crazy/Beautiful Kirsten Dunst film to three bikini-babe movies -- Blue Crush, Into the Blue and Turistas -- with some L Word eps thrown in for good measure. Now he's topping it off with Middle of Nowhere, a comedy penned by Michelle Morgan about an irresponsible mom who "blows her eldest daughter's college fun on her younger daughter's beauty pageant campaign." That being said, it's supposed to be "a bittersweet comedy about a clashing mother and daughter." That doesn't sound bittersweet; that sounds classless. When the deal was first made, Susan Sarandon was cast as the uber-classy mom, with Eva Amurri, her real-life progeny, playing her eldest daughter.

Now Variety has reported on the names that are following the famous mother/daughter pair -- there's Anton Yelchin, Justin Chatwin and Willa Holland. While none are big yet, each has had some roles with decent exposure. Yelchin recently played Byrd Huffstodt on Huff, Chatwin was Tom Cruise's kid who ran off to fight the aliens with no weapons in War of the Worlds and Miss Holland was Kaitlin Cooper on The O.C. There's no word on who each will play, but I imagine that Holland might be the younger, beauty-queen sister. There's also no mention of oceans, beaches or bikinis yet, but I imagine we'll at least get one healthy dose of the ever-important swimsuit competition.