PH BLOG ➹

E very age has its visionaries who leave, in the wake of their genius, a changed world – but rarely without a battle over exactly what happened and who was there at the moment of creation. In Columbia Pictures’ The Social Network, director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin explore the moment at which Facebook, the most revolutionary social phenomenon of the new century, was invented -- through the warring perspectives of the super-smart young men who each claimed to be there at its inception. One drunken night in October of 2003, having just broken up with his girlfriend, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg hacks into the university’s computers to create a site that forms a database of all the women on campus, then lines up two pictures next to each other and asks the user to choose which is “hotter.” He calls the site Facemash, and it instantly goes viral, crashing the entire Harvard system and generating campus-wide controversy over the site’s purported misogyny, and charge...

M ark Wahlberg, the Academy Award®-nominated actor known for his tough-guy action movie roles, in a comedy opposite Will Ferrell? This can only happen in Columbia Pictures' new action-comedy The Other Guys. “I’ve been looking to do a comedy for a long time,” says Wahlberg. “I just wanted to make sure I was in the right hands. There were comedic elements to certain performances that I’ve done, but to do a full-blown comedy I wanted to make sure I was protected and who better to work with than the funniest guys in movies in my opinion, Will and [director] Adam [McKay.] They invited me to dinner and said they wanted to do a movie. I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me.’ I said, ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’” Ferrell added, “We – Adam and I – are such big fans of Mark’s. We always thought he would be great in a comedy, playing a character that maybe is similar in some ways to the role he had in The Departed, but to utilize that intensity he has and play it for laughs.”

J oining Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel in the wacky romantic comedy Life As We Know It is top actor Josh Lucas (Sweet Home Alabama) who further complicates the already messed up arrangement of the two lead characters. In the film, Holly Berenson (Heigl) is an up-and-coming caterer and Eric Messer (Duhamel) is a promising network sports director. After a disastrous first date, the only thing they have in common is their dislike for each other and their love for their goddaughter, Sophie. But when they suddenly become all Sophie has in the world, Holly and Messer are forced to put their differences aside. Juggling career ambitions and competing social calendars, they’ll have to find some common ground while living under one roof. Lucas plays the other man in Holly’s life, Sam. “There were Joshes everywhere on this film,” says director Greg Berlanti, referring not only to two of his stars, but also to Heigl’s husband, Josh Kelly, who occasionally came to set. “You threw a roc...

F rom playing the socialite Serena in the hit series Gossip Girl , Blake Lively does a turnaround as she portrays the blue-collar working girl Krista, in Warner Bros.’ new U.S. No. 1 hit thriller The Town. Indeed, Lively is interested in lives that are worlds apart from hers. "I love this character because of the challenge," she says. "She was written to be a 37-year-old, OxyContin-addicted, drug-muling mother from Boston. It was a character that they didn't want to read me for because I was 21 and had been acting for a few years but hadn't proven myself much." In the film, Krista is the ex-childhood sweetheart of Ben Affleck ’s character, Doug -- the de facto leader of a group of ruthless bank robbers who wants to leave town and turn a new leaf. “All Krista wants is for Doug to love her and take her away from there,” Lively says. “She’s grown up around these tough guys who are doing everything wrong, but they were her only role models. Now she’s a ...

P opularly known as the amorous Jason Stockhouse in the HBO original hit series True Blood, Ryan Kwanten now provides the voice of wayward owl, Kludd, in Warner Bros.’ fantasy adventure in 3D, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. The film follows Soren (voice of Jim Sturgess), a young owl enthralled by his father’s epic stories of the Guardians of Ga’ Hoole, a mythic band of winged warriors who had fought a great battle to save all of owlkind from the evil Pure Ones. While Soren dreams of someday joining his heroes, his older brother, Kludd, scoffs at the notion, and yearns to hunt, fly and steal his father’s favor from his younger sibling. But Kludd’s jealousy has terrible consequences—causing both owlets to fall from their treetop home and right into the talons of the Pure Ones.