CliqueClack

Win passes for Dumb and Dumber To in Boston or Plainville

ALL PASSES HAVE BEEN CLAIMED. WINNERS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY EMAIL. COMMENTS ARE CLOSED.

CliqueClack has partnered with Universal Pictures to offer readers in Boston and Plainville an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new comedy Dumb and Dumber To starring Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden, Rachel Melvin and Kathleen Turner.

Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels reprise their signature roles as Lloyd and Harry in the sequel to the smash hit that took the physical comedy and kicked it in the nuts: Dumb and Dumber To. The original film’s directors, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, take Lloyd and Harry on a road trip to find a child Harry never knew he had and the responsibility neither should ever, ever be given.

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Win passes to see The Theory of Everything in Baltimore or DC

ALL PASSES HAVE BEEN CLAIMED. WINNERS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY EMAIL. COMMENTS ARE CLOSED.

CliqueClack has partnered with Focus Features to offer readers in Baltimore and DC an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new biographical drama The Theory of Everything starring Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney and David Thewlis.

This is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde. Once a healthy, active young man, Hawking received an earth-shattering diagnosis at 21 years of age. With Jane fighting tirelessly by his side, Stephen embarks on his most ambitious scientific work, studying the very thing he now has precious little of – time. Together, they defy impossible odds, breaking new ground in medicine and science, and achieving more than they could ever have dreamed.

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Win passes to an advance screening of Rosewater in San Francisco

ALL PASSES HAVE BEEN CLAIMED. WINNERS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY EMAIL. COMMENTS ARE CLOSED.

CliqueClack has partnered with Open Road Films to offer readers in San Francisco an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new drama Rosewater starring Gael García Bernal, Kim Bodnia, Haluk Bilginer, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Golshifteh Farahani.

Rosewater follows the Tehran-born Bahari, a 42-year-old broadcast journalist with Canadian citizenship living in London. In June 2009, Bahari returned to Iran to interview Mir-Hossein Moussavi, who was the prime challenger to controversial incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As Moussavi’s supporters rose up to protest Ahmadinejad’s victory declaration hours before the polls closed on election day, Bahari endured great personal risk by submitting camera footage of the unfolding street riots to the BBC. Bahari was soon arrested by Revolutionary Guard police, led by a man identifying himself only as “Rosewater,” who proceeded to torture and interrogate the journalist over the next 118 days.

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Citizenfour asks is Edward Snowden a hero or traitor?

In May 2013 Laura Poitras, award winning director, producer and cinematographer, began receiving encrypted anonymous emails from someone calling himself Citizenfour. She became intrigued by allegations that the NSA along with other government entities were monitoring communications worldwide. US communications giants like Verizon and AT&T were also involved by giving access to their customer records. Was there risk in finding out the truth to these allegations? Yes there was. Was Laura Poitras willing to take these risks? Hell Yes.

Citizenfour tells the incredible true story of Edward Snowden, the infamous whistleblower who blew the lid off of the United States’ covert monitoring operations, and the journalists, including Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, who risked everything to verify and report the story even as Snowden was being labeled an enemy of the United States.

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The Newsroom’s second season Blu-Rays leave you wanting more

HBO generally produces high quality DVD/Blu-Ray sets. The annual Game of Thrones release could win awards (Are there such things, and if not, why? I found none of particular note in a 30-second Google search). Last year’s release of The Newsroom’s first season was solid, but left me wanting more – not unlike the show, as I am admittedly a huge Aaron Sorkin-nut. The features in the second season set, available this week, were great, but I wanted more.

I’ve got to be honest: I’ve never been able to wrap my head around why it seems to be so difficult to record commentary tracks. Season two comes with four commentaries (compared to the five out of ten in the season one set), recorded with a mix of cast and crew. The participants recorded simultaneously in different locations, causing some interesting scheduling challenges (Aaron Sorkin left midway during one track, Jeff Daniels joined late in another). But as someone who records a weekly Podcast, I do know it isn’t that hard to find an hour to sit in front of a microphone and blather on about any particular subject. Continue reading 'The Newsroom’s second season Blu-Rays leave you wanting more' »

Download free passes for Dumb and Dumber To in Chicago and Indianapolis

CliqueClack has partnered with Universal Pictures to offer readers in Chicago and Indianapolis an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new comedy Dumb and Dumber To starring Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden, Rachel Melvin and Kathleen Turner.

Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels reprise their signature roles as Lloyd and Harry in the sequel to the smash hit that took the physical comedy and kicked it in the nuts: Dumb and Dumber To. The original film’s directors, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, take Lloyd and Harry on a road trip to find a child Harry never knew he had and the responsibility neither should ever, ever be given.

Continue reading 'Download free passes for Dumb and Dumber To in Chicago and Indianapolis' »

Download free passes for Big Hero 6 in Baltimore, DC and Virginia Beach

CliqueClack has partnered with Walt Disney Animation to offer readers in Baltimore, DC and Virginia Beach an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new movie Big Hero 6 starring Maya Rudolph, James Cromwell, Damon Wayans Jr., T.J. Miller, Alan Tudyk, Jamie Chung, Genesis Rodriguez, Daniel Henney, Ryan Potter, and Scott Adsit.

From Walt Disney Animation Studios comes Big Hero 6, an action comedy adventure about brilliant robotics prodigy Hiro Hamada, who finds himself in the grips of a criminal plot that threatens to destroy the fast-paced, high-tech city of San Fransokyo. With the help of his closest companion — a robot named Baymax — Hiro joins forces with a reluctant team of first-time crime fighters on a mission to save their city. Inspired by the Marvel comics of the same name, and featuring comic-book style action and all the heart and humor audiences expect from Walt Disney Animation Studios, the CG-animated Big Hero 6 hits theaters in 3D on November 7, 2014.

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Nightcrawler may have you rooting for a charismatic sociopath

The concept of an anti-hero is a fascinating one. You can go to several extremes when constructing such a character. They can be your “Wolverine” types, loners with hearts of gold and a willingness to kill as necessary. Perhaps they could also be a vigilante fighting against a corrupt system. Or they might be a gangster who’s just not as bad as other gangsters. But it’s always curious why people are so willing to follow along and even empathize with people that seem like they would be villains in another movie. Sometimes it’s just that we see things from their perspective so it’s easy to find them interesting.

Nightcrawler comes from first time writer/director Dan Gilroy and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom, an odd, intense small scale thief living in LA. He’s on the lookout for jobs with a brazen attitude aping self-help seminars but without any real people skills. But it’s luck that he stumbles across when he finds a guy, Joe (Bill Paxton), filming the aftermath of a gruesome automobile accident. Apparently, he discovers, news stations pay for gory and brutal firsthand footage of such things, accidents, crimes, and the like. And Lou has been looking for a job.

He learns quickly, and develops a weird but mutually beneficial relationship with Nina (Rene Russo) the nighttime news director of a local news show. Nina praises Lou’s first attempt, and that’s enough for him to discover his new passion in life. Soon he recruits Rick (Riz Ahmed), a desperate guy who is living out of a garage, paying him chump change for his help speeding his way through the streets of LA. They search for the juicy stuff; the crimes in nice neighborhoods so the news people can push their narratives of panic and terror. Rick seems like a nice guy, put off by Lou’s intensity and oddness, but he needs the work.

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Birdman swoops in for Oscar gold

Between the first of October and the end of January, you can usually count on one or more movies that quickly make you forget all of the flash and bombast of the movies that had been out just a few months before. The time of superheroes, teenage dramas, special effects extravaganza and their kin is over. Now it’s time for the more thoughtful, adult, “meaningful” movies to light up the silver screen in the hopes of attaining good critical notices, big audiences and major awards. (Of course, there is another Hobbit movie coming so it won’t all be quiet dramas until 2015.)

One of those movies that critics love to dub “Oscar bait” has been slowly rolling out to theaters in major markets and is going wider now. That film is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough and Zach Galifianakis. That the film is being released during Oscar season is understandable because, well, it’s simply a brilliant piece of filmmaking.

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Deliver Us From Evil offers a few weak chills

It’s that time of year when movie fans like to pull out a classic horror film or check out something new in the genre. Times have changed over the years when it comes to horror. Before John Carpenter’s classic Halloween hit the big screen and spawned a slew of imitators that focused more on blood and gore than pure horror, scary movies were more about the supernatural. There was a spate of Devil movies in the 70s after the success of The Exorcist, and before that it was mostly monsters and ghosts that came out to spook audiences.

Recently, horror movies have moved away from blood and gore (for better or worse, mostly because of studio imposed PG-13 ratings) for more supernatural spookiness with films like the Insidious movies, The Conjuring, Annabelle and Ouija, and the July release of the 70s throwback Deliver Us From Evil, now available on home video.

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