City Times takes to the multiplexes to find out what’s in store for movie buffs this week

Fast Five

APPARENTLY, THERE ARE plenty of things movie buffs will get to see in the latest installment of the car-crazy Fast and Furious series that won’t sit well with their sensible side: for instance, one sequence in Fast Five has everyone’s favourite former cop-car thief duo engaging in a high-speed chase with Rio’s police force whilst hauling around a large, heavy bank vault with their sedans.

Nevertheless, it’s hard not to look forward to the film. Helmed by the director of the last three features in the franchise, Justin Lin, the action movie stars an ensemble cast of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson.

In Fast Five Dominic (Diesel) and his crew - Brian (Walker), Mia (Brewster), Tej (Bridges), Roman (Gibson), Han (Kang) and Gisele (Gadot) – come together for one last job. They have to steal $100 million from a drug lord.

Film critic Roger Ebert writes in his review of Fast Five for the Chicago-Sun Times, “What it all comes down to is a skillfully assembled 130 minutes at the movies, with actors capable of doing absurd things with straight faces, and action sequences that toy idly with the laws of physics.”

Trivia

· In the United States the title of this installment was changed to Fast Five in order to avoid confusing the film with the latest one from the Kung Fu Panda franchise, Furious Five

· The first trailer of the film was released on Vin Diesel’s Facebook page, while the remaining teasers were released on the pages of the other cast members by turns.

Scream 4

THE ULTIMATE SLASHER franchise, Scream returns to the screen this season with its fourth edition, nearly 11 years after the third one. Question is, will director Wes Craven be able to recreate the thrills and chills induced by his lucrative series? According to early reviews, while Scream 4 does deliver the basics, it also leaves a lot to be desired.

Helmed once again by Craven and scripted by Kevin Williamson, writer of the first two Scream films, Scream 4 features David Arquette, Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox reprising their roles. This time the trio is joined by Emma Roberts and Hayden Panettiere.

The plot follows series protagonist Sydney Prescott (Campbell), now a successful self-help author, as she returns to her hometown of Woodsboro to promote her latest book. Unfortunately, he arrival triggers off a whole new set of gruesome murders in the town by a new Ghostface killer.

Todd McCarthy writes in his review of the 111-minute Scream 4 for The Hollywood Reporter, “Strong anticipation by series fans and a high body count all but guarantee an opening weekend box office killing, followed by fairly rapid theatrical fall-off and robust home viewing life.”

Trivia

· In an early draft of Scream 4’s script, Gale and Dewey had a baby, but it was changed after it was decided bringing a baby into the film would make shooting “impossible”.

· At one of the first few table reads for the film, the actors were told to stop reading at page 75 to prevent the cast from knowing the climax.

Also out this week is comedy flick The Chaperone, starring WWE wrestler Triple H (Paul Levesque), Yeardley Smith and Ariel Winter and directed by Stephen Herek. The plot follows an ex-con as he tries to hide from those he ratted on by stowing away on his daughter’s field trip as a chaperone. New York Times reviews the film as a, “comedy aimed, presumably, at tweeners and fans of World Wrestling Entertainment, whose film division generated this project.”

You can catch romantic comedy Something Borrowed helmed by Luke Greenfield (The Right Hook, The Animal and The Girl Next Door) this week. Based on the novel penned by Emily Giffin and starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson and John Krasinski, the movie follows single, New York attorney Rachel as her long-term crush on her best friend Darcy’s boyfriend culminates in a one-night stand. Kirk Honeycutt labels Something Borrowed in his review for The Hollywood Reporter, “clichéd, predictable and exasperating”.

Lyrical pause

When she lost her husband to her best friend, Shania Twain lost her voice too

COUNTRY SINGER SHANIA Twain said on Tuesday that she was so shattered by the collapse of her marriage that she feared she would never sing again.

In her first TV interview in five years, Twain told Oprah Winfrey that she became “an emotional mess” when she found out in 2008 that her best friend and her husband had fallen for each other.

“I figured mentally that I would never sing again,” the five-time Grammy Award winner told Winfrey. Twain said she not only lost her husband, but her producer and co-writer when she split with in Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange.

“I hadn’t written a song without this man in 14 years....How do I even get started?,” she said in an interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Twain, whose 1997 album Come on Over was a huge crossover hit, revealed that she also suffers from dysphonia, an ailment where the muscles squeeze the voice box.

“My fears and anxieties throughout my whole life have been slowly squeezing my voice,” Twain told Winfrey. “I was losing it slowly and progressively.”

Twain chronicles the demise of her 14-year marriage and her fight to get her voice back in a new book From This Moment On and a documentary series Why Not? that debuts on Sunday on Winfrey’s cable TV network OWN.

She also announced on Tuesday that she would be attending the Country Music Association festival in Nashville in June — and handed out passes to Winfrey’s studio audience.

In her memoir and TV documentary, the Canadian singer recounts how she grew up poor and witnessed her step-father physically abuse her mother on a regular basis only to see them both die in a car accident, leaving Twain to raise her siblings.

Twain called her husband’s betrayal “a trigger crisis,” and “the straw that broke the camel’s back of something that had already been building.”

Eventually, Twain found solace with Frederic Thiebaud, the husband of the woman who was once her best friend. The two married on January 1.