Tag: DreamWorks

Hollywood has called on Hugh Jackman to portray a feral mutant superhero, a vampire hunter, a singing penguin and a dapper cartoon rodent, so you would think his latest project, “Real Steel,” which opens Friday, would be a cinch — how hard could it be to channel a former boxer on the ropes in his personal life? But according to director Shawn Levy, the hard-luck protagonist Charlie Kenton took the actor into a unexpectedly challenging corner: It demanded he be casually cruel to his on-screen son, Max, played by the cherub-faced 12-year-old Dakota Goyo. “After certain takes, Hugh would come up to me, concerned, asking ‘Are you sure I’m not being too harsh to this boy?’” Levy said. “I would assure him that … his fundamental kindness came through and, second, if we don’t set this character up as an ...

The impressive voice cast of “Kung Fu Panda 2″ — one which includes Jack Black as Po, Angelina Jolie as Tigress, Dustin Hoffman as Shifu, Jackie Chan as Monkey, Seth Rogen as Mantis, Lucy Liu as Viper and David Cross as Crane — is equalled by the film’s visual accomplishments, according to Times’ film critic Betsy Sharkey: There is much less of the comic book sketching-voice-over combo that was used liberally in the first “Panda” to fill in the blanks. And that is a good thing. For “Panda 2″ is not just wall-to-wall animation, it is artistry of the highest order. I don’t know whether it’s the technology that’s changed, or that the artists, most of whom worked on the first, have grown, but there is a striking new level of emotion in the characters themselves, particularly their eyes, that ...