2011 has come and gone and left quite the assortment of movie news in its wake. There’s been poster after poster, trailer after trailer and more casting updates than we can count. With so much news out there, how can anything possible be memorable enough to stick even after the year comes to a close? Well, turns out, there is a way and actually, more than one of them. Controversy, notoriety and sheer good filmmaking, the very first Movie New Cheat Sheet of 2012 takes a look back at some unforgettable Cheat Sheet items of 2011. 1. Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen: We get a ton of big casting news…

Better late than never, right? Thanks to a certain hurricane that shall remain nameless, your weekly Movie News Cheat Sheet comes a day late, but gives you all of the movie discussion topics necessary to help you ride out the rest of the work week with ease. We’ve got some big casting news in the mix, ranging from solid confirmations to rumors. Alexander SkarsgÃ¥rd is all set for Henry-Alex Rubin’s Disconnect, but Simon West is still merely working with a wish list when casting The Expendables 2. Joe Kosinski has a nice group of ladies all vying to star in Horizons opposite Tom Cruise and Rob Corddry is close to…

The box office results for the weekend of August 26th – 28th sees mother nature destroy many new release hopefuls chances at profitability. With the east coast on lockdown due to hurricane Irene, The Help survived another week at the top spot. Here are the studio estimates: 1. The Help ($14.3 million) 2. Colombiana ($10.3 million) 3. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark ($8.6 million) 4. Rise of the Planet of the Apes ($8.6 million) 5. Our Idiot Brother ($6.5 million) 6. Spy Kids: All The Time in The World ($5.7 million) 7. The Smurfs ($4.8 million) 8. Conan the Barbarian ($3.1 million) 9. Fright Night ($3 million) 10. Crazy,…

We’ve got three new wide releases arriving this week, but all are getting rather modest openings. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark tops the bunch with 2,760 theaters. While it’d be nice to see it have as strong an opening as The Last Exorcism with a $7,087 per theater average, it’s more likely to come in on par with Insidious at $5,511 per location, which would give it a total of $15 million for the weekend. Colombiana is set to debut with 2,614 theater and after the action disaster that was last weekend’s Conan the Barbarian, Colombiana will be lucky to post a $3,000 per theater average and snag $7…

“Conan the Barbarian” is a remake that of the iconic 1980s film that made use of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s muscles to their best advantage, but it would seem that this 2011 version starting Jason Momoa doesn’t have the charm the original did. The film has been given a sad rating of 24% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience was kinder but not by much, giving the film a 47%. Here’s what the critics had to say: “The screenplay is where ‘Conan the Barbarian’ stumbles its most mightily. For a movie of this sort to work, it needs scope, but there’s nothing here for the viewer to latch onto. The characters are…

As part of a busy press day schedule (but nowhere close to her personal record, which would be the 96 five-minute one-on-one interviews she did for “Grindhouse” in a single day, after roundtable interviews), ShockYa recently had a chance to chat one-on-one with a dazzlingly made-up Rose McGowan, about portraying strong women, the appeal of a “proper man,” upcoming projects, a personality that hasn’t changed much since childhood, and why her crazily wardrobed “Conan” character is, in her words, ”much cooler” than Freddy Krueger. The conversation is excerpted below: ShockYa: So maybe you can illuminate something that came to my attention earlier in roundtable interviews – that apparently there’s a junket game some actors play…

If one constructed in their mind a picture of German-born director Marcus Nispel based solely on his filmography — which includes grisly reboots of the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Friday the 13th” franchises, plus the R-rated “Pathfinder” – it could not possibly be more different from the reality of the man, who abhors shoes, probably owns no black clothes at all, and in person favors pastel cargo pants and billowing, open-necked cotton painter’s shirts. Looking more like a Venice Beach artist than a brooding purveyor of brutal horror and head-hacking action, Nispel has a gregarious personality seemingly at odds with his knack for wringing catharsis out of grim places. With his latest big screen…

Happy Sunday, Shockya.com readers! Yes, another weekend has come to an end, but we’ve got quite the list of movie news to send you back to work with. The biggest of the bunch is certainly all of the updates pouring out of Disney’s D23 Expo. The event revealed details on a number of projects including The Muppets, The Avengers, Monsters University and so much more. We’ve also got some extensive casting news from some non-Disney productions like the G.I. Joe sequel as well as Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike. There are even some inspirational stories in the mix this week; not only did Tom Hanks step up and make amends for…

The Box office results for the weekend of August 19th – 21st sees “The Help” tame Apes, Spy Kids, a Barbarian and some vampires. Meanwhile, the new releases all underwhelm. Here are the studio estimates: 1. The Help ($20.4 million) 2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes ($16.3 million) 3. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World ($12 million) 4. Conan the Barbarian ($10 million) 5. Fright Night ($8.3 million) 6. The Smurfs ($8 million) 7. Final Destination 5 ($7.7 million) 8. 30 Minutes or Less ($6.3 million) 9. One Day ($5.1 million) 10. Crazy, Stupid, Love ($4.9 million) Analysis The Help is cleaning up (yeah, I just…

Jason Momoa has the biceps, vocal timbre and alpha-male attitude to seemingly carve out a successful career as an action movie hero. But before his commercial audition with the public in “Conan the Barbarian,” his leading man debut, there comes something even more potentially nervousness-inducing – the requisite pre-release juggernaut of press commitments. Momoa recently made his debut on “The Tonight Show,” chatting cars with host Jay Leno (he favors an old Cadillac) and suffering the characteristic new-guest embarrassment of having an old clip from early in his career (in this case, from “Baywatch”) pulled out and showcased. Amidst a packed itinerary that necessitated some rescheduling, he recently graced ShockYa with some…