Looper: Joe Vs Joe Mission

In the run up to the release of the awesome sci-fi thriller Looper starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis on Friday September 28, the filmmakers are giving you the chance to become a real-life looper by joining a UK-wide online race.

There are ten online missions dotted around the internet, with exciting spot prizes up for grabs for completing each mission. Complete all ten missions and you'll be entered into a draw to win a iPhone 5 and the chance to interview director Rian Johnson!

To get involved all you need to do is sign up at JoeVsJoe.co.uk. Once your profile is created, players will receive updates on the official site, Facebook and Twitter, telling them where to go to unlock daily missions. Missions will be hidden on websites, Twitter, Facebook and in cinemas. By completing the missions and entering their answers in the Joe Vs Joe website, the trainee Loopers unlock and receive a fragment of a map that will eventually reveal the location of their other self.

IGN's Mission

When you're a young Looper like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), you get the girls, the cars and the money as standard - but you've got to keep your eye on the ball. Test your own smarts by watching the below trailer and tell us: What colour is the lampshade that levitates?

Visit www.JoeVsJoe.co.uk to input your answer now.

Entering this ninth mission today on IGN will give you the chance to win a Storm Blackout watch, but if you've entered every mission over the past nine days - and play the final task tomorrow, you could win an iPhone 5 PLUS the chance to interview Looper-director Rian Johnson. The Storm Blackout watch, which is water resistant to 50m, has super matte black links and lazer dial which changes colour under different lighting. This watch also has a 3D dial with edge to edge glass and STORM’S signature rotating disc date feature.

Full competition terms and conditions can be found at www.JoeVsJoe.co.uk 

Source : ign[dot]com

Looper Review

Jumping between the years 2044 and 2074, the sci-fi thriller Looper is about a hit man whose next and final target is himself. In this near future, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) serves as a “looper,” a hit man tasked with killing and disposing of criminals who have run afoul of the mob. But these victims come from 30 years in the future where time-travel exists but is illegal. The mob, however, employs it to transport their victims into the past since getting rid of a body is just that much tougher in 2074.

Joe’s work is all very mechanical: kill, dispose, kill, dispose. Loopers are relatively low on the criminal totem pole (“Gat Men” are the more elite of the future mob’s henchmen). The worse thing a Looper can do is let their loop get away as that brings all sorts of hell down on them. And every Looper knows that at some point, the mob will “close your loop,” or send your future self back for you to terminate. Joe’s troubles begin when his older self (Bruce Willis) is sent back for him to kill, but promptly escapes.

Older Joe has his own very specific mission in 2044, one that leads him to a young mom named Sara (Emily Blunt) and her troubled little boy, Cid (an impressive Pierce Gagnon). That’s all we’ll give away for now suffice to say that the dilemma for both Joes is deciding between the life you can make for yourself now or the one you will have in the future.

Looper is sci-fi, but not garishly so. It’s set in a future that’s quite familiar and relatable, one determined by economic and sociopolitical woes. Sure, there are cool hover bikes, but only a few can afford them; otherwise, people drive 30-year-old cars since manufacturing appears to have ceased in this bleak future America. There are looters and homeless aplenty on the streets, and not much in the way of law enforcement. The most popular narcotic, which young Joe is addicted to, can be used like eye drops. This is a future where people make do with what’s left.

Even Loopers’ weapon of choice is decidedly old school: the Blunderbuss. The genetic mutation of telekinesis exists, but it’s not as exciting as you’d think, being deemed more of a tacky parlor trick than anything truly extraordinary. All of these choices by writer-director Rian Johnson (who previously directed JGL in Brick) and his team make Looper a decidedly understated sci-fi film where the emphasis remains on the characters rather than the genre trappings of the future world they inhabit.

Johnson weaves a taut narrative around his rather convoluted, but high concept premise; it’s a testament to his skill that you never find yourself picking apart how things exactly all click. You’re simply along for the ride since you care about these characters, which is even more impressive given how unsympathetic Joe is for much of the movie. He’s paid in silver like a Judas, kills people without any real qualms, and is ruthlessly self-centered. His older self is more sympathetic … until you learn his game plan. Both Gordon-Levitt and Willis never demand the audiences’ sympathy; they simply let you come to your own conclusions about Joe as being either an anti-hero or a villain.

No discussion of Looper and its two lead performances can be had without talking about the makeup worn by Gordon-Levitt throughout. It’s initially distracting to see the young actor’s face altered by prosthetics so as to resemble a young Bruce Willis, an illusion they never quite pull off. But it’s Gordon-Levitt’s replication of Willis’ mannerisms, attitude and low, slightly mumbling voice that sells you after a few moments of settling into things. Willis plays a supporting role here, but he has several key emotional scenes (often with minimal dialogue) that allow him to shine. Some of his best moments come in a diner scene with young Joe where the term “self abuse” takes on a whole new meaning.

Blunt is nicely cast against type as an earthy, American single mom whose complicated relationship with her little boy becomes even more so about halfway through. We’re used to seeing Blunt as a funny or somewhat prissy English rose-type, and she’s clearly having fun playing someone far more damaged and salt of the earth. Jeff Daniels steals his scenes as young Joe’s gruff, but amiable mob boss and father figure Abe, while Paul Dano and Garret Dillahunt have small, but memorable roles as colleagues of young Joe’s. Piper Perabo appears as a stripper and single mom young Joe is banging. (Go, Joe!)

Looper is one of the year’s most engaging sci-fi films, one that works as both a thriller and a character piece about people faced with making big life decisions (often at the business end of Blunderbuss). It could have all been insanely gimmicky, but Looper is instead tastefully executed.

Source : ign[dot]com

What if Looper Was a Retro Video Game?

Curious what the upcoming sci-fi thriller Looper -- starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a hit man whose next assignment is his future self, played by Bruce Willis -- would be like as an old school video game? Well, then this is for you:

Thanks to Kotaku for the heads up!

Looper opens September 28.

Source : ign[dot]com

Breaking Bad: "Fifty-One" Review

Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.

Rian Johnson, who directed this episode, is awesome. Brick is fantastic; see it if you haven’t. His next movie, Looper, looks good. Johnson’s ideas waffle between incredulous and bizarrely mundane, but the focus on the bare bones of a scene or story (e.g.: the dialogue; the acting) and getting into the heads of his characters can make even the most absurd story realistic.

You can see it in the way characters talk to one another; the close-ups on their faces; the subtle droning tones. It’s not manipulative, but it draws you in. When Walt, Hank, Marie and Skyler are all outside, having dinner together, the entire scene is about Skyler about to break; and when it comes to a head—when Walt describes how Skyler was there for him, taking care of him during the cancer, one year ago—the camera doesn’t shift to the table at all. It is entirely on Skyler, her face unmoved with a twinge of regret, cut-to her point of view of the pool, cut-to her face. Cut to her walking into the pool.

Got dang. Even if “distressed person jumping into the pool” is a cliché, it worked wonderfully here.

“Fifty One” is a beautiful episode. Compared to Johnson’s last directed episode of Breaking Bad, “Fly,” it fits a lot more seamlessly into Breaking Bad’s catalog and especially into this season.

There was a lot to love in this one.

First, Skyler melted down. While I think there’s been a lot of misguidance on her character throughout the series—a good deal of it because fan reaction to her was so oddly visceral—“Fifty One” took a second to explore the depths of her fear and articulated it perfectly in one of the best scenes in this show’s history.

Just before that scene between Walt and Skyler, Marie and Hank talked to Walt about Skyler and brought up taking care of the kids while they work out their differences and of course this is Walt’s soft spot. Though Skyler’s clearly been out of sorts in the last few episodes, Walt’s ignored it. Now that the kids were being taken away—and how about those early scenes where Walt and Walt Jr. were connecting?—Walt needed some answers. She’s breaking up the family.

And this is the scene that gets BB another few Emmys in hand. The entire scene is so natural and familiar, it’s less like we’re watching a show and more like we’re seeing into some family’s life. The line between Cranston and Walt was severely blurred in this one. Nothing is brought out into the open unnaturally.

The whole scene was almost cut from a brilliant play, which, for a series that’s so excellent on so many levels, is something we haven’t seen before. The conversation ebbs and flows, from an early “OK, we need to talk” sentiment to a pretty harsh tone of implied domestic abuse one-upmanship and backhanded, subversive threats. When Walt knew she had the upper hand, he attacked her ability to plan and she broke down: “I don’t know!! This is the best I can come up with! I’ll count every minute the kids are away from you as a victory.”

Anna Gunn was fantastic in this scene. She was fantastic in the whole episode. This was her finest work yet on the series.

Lydia returned in this one and she attempted to game the system. I like Lydia. It’s not because she’s smart or clever or mean or anything, but she’s so type A and stressful and the fingernail biting and the wrong shoe wearing and etc. etc. I love it. She’s not a good person, but hey, who is in this series?

Yo soy Heisenberg!

When she convinced Jesse (who, ya know, can get fooled like we can) that the can was lo-jacked by the DEA and Mike saw through it, you knew she was done for. What was kind of weird was when Jesse stopped him and Mike called him sexist for thinking she didn’t deserve to die, just like he was when Mike let her live. I haven’t seen many instances of character confusion in this series, but this was one—Mike let her live because his soft spot is for people who have one last wish to speak with family before they die.

Either way, I’m looking forward to where Lydia takes us.

Maybe most important was the Heisenberg hat is back to full throttle. I love that hat. It’s kinda dorky, but it makes Walt feel so empowered, you kind of want him to have it.

“Fifty One” packed a punch. It didn’t have any explosions, but it was cathartic and demonstrated just what Breaking Bad can do best: hard-hitting dialogue, powerful acting and cool directing and editing, with a few laughs and some fun here and there.

What’s most impressive this season is how everything has been building toward a crescendo. Yeah, Season 1 through 4 were all pointing to this season, but even the episodes within this season itself are pointing to something greater; some great cataclysmic ending. I don’t know if there’s anything that can match this kind of build-up, but the series has taken a turn for the epic and I think we all know it.

Source : ign[dot]com