Katherine Heigl's Movie Life As We Know It

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl don't like each other. Boy and girl are forced to raise a child together. What will happen next? That's the premise of the new movie Life As We Know It (in theaters Oct. 8), starring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. After their mutal best friend dies, Holly (Heigl) and Eric (Duhamel) -- who previously went on one really terrible first date -- must put their differences aside, move in together and raise their goddaughter Sophie.

Heigl seems to be a natural fit for this movie. She's proven her comedy chops before (did you see the orgasm scene in The Ugly Truth!?) and she can make you cry at the drop of the hat (remember the Denny Duquette death scene in Grey's Anatomy?). And as for Josh Duhamel, well he's extremely easy on the eyes, and, if you saw Ramona & Beezus, you know he has the perfect charisma around kids.

Toy Story 3: The highest grossing animated film ever

His catchphrase is to go "to infinity, and beyond" and, if his box office receipts are anything to go by, Buzz Lightyear is on course to set sky-high standards of success for any big-screen animated character to follow.

Toy Story 3, in which Lightyear stars, is set to become the first animation to take $1bn at box offices globally after becoming the highest grossing animation ever, this weekend.

Its characters, including spaceranger Buzz, cowboy Woody and resourceful Barbie, helped Disney/Pixar gross $920m in global ticket sales since it opened in June. The previous record holder was DreamWorks Animation's Shrek 2, which raked in $919.8m.

Toy Story 3's success makes it the fourth highest grossing Disney movie ever, behind Johnny Depp blockbusters Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($1.07bn), Alice in Wonderland ($1.02bn) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ($961m).

Cinemagoers' love affair with animation shows no sign of waning. Shrek Forever After is currently pulling in viewers across the country, while Lionsgate's 3D wolf animation Alpha and Omega hits the big screen in October. Universal's Despicable Me, which knocked the latest Twilight instalment off the top of the box office on its release in the United States last month, is also due out in the UK in October.

Charles Gant, film editor at Heat magazine and a box office analyst, said studios had invested in their own animation divisions over recent years after seeing the success of DreamWorks Animation in rivalling Disney. "3D has been fantastic for animation and also the family market just keeps getting bigger," he added. "It's very rare a big studio loses money on a family film."

Toy Story 3 is the latest in a line of hits for Pixar, which also created Up, Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. The film has been credited with reducing grown men to tears with its themes of growing up, separation and loss.

Helen Nabarro, head of animation direction at the National Film and Television School, said the success of the Toy Story franchise and feature-length animations such as Oscar winner Up was down to sophisticated scripts and strong stories. "It can be a recognisable human world but with this extra fantasy that you believe," she explained.

Ms Nabarro, who was an executive producer on the BBC's Robbie the Reindeer films, said animation was "very much mainstream" now. It may have been viewed as "kids' stuff" in the past but now targeted adults.

Aardman's Wallace & Gromit did animation a "massive service" in showing that the genre could work for both adults and children, she added.

Hollywood's top actors are increasingly keen to voice animated characters. Steve Carell features as Gru in Despicable Me, while Brad Pitt will voice hero Metro Man opposite Will Ferrell's villain in DreamWorks Animation's Megamind this December.

The Expendables

A 101 percent action packed movie which brings together the greatest action stars. You have action veterans Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, and Jet Li; plus you have new age action stars like Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Steve Austin.

The movie is full of blood and gore and lots of fighting and explosions. You will surely remain glued to your seats till the every end and gasping at the amount of action and killing the movie has.

Though, “The Expendables” is a far match against Ninja Assassin and other Japanese-made hardcore action movies, this is the first American Hollywood film that shows a seeming hardcore action.

The Expendables is not only action though for it has a crisp comedy and fun side to it. The dialogue of the characters are at point very hilarious. Two of the dialogues I remember are one from the scene between Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis and another between Jet Li and Stallone.

“Never mind him, he wants to be President,” says Stallone when Schwarzenegger refused the job in Vilena, South America.

Then there is the dialogue where Jet Li is trying to justify a raise in pay because he thinks he works harder because he is smaller. Then, when Lundgren tries to chase them and kill them, Stallone asks Jet Li to go to the back of the car and shoot the enemies. Stallone reasons out that he needs to do that because he is small.

For those who are seeking an intelligent and a movie with depth, well you will be frustrated with The Expendables. The plot of this movie is very typical and I would say shallow. It fails to even stir someones imagination and the love story also fails to excite the audience.

Do not expect awesome storyline and dialogue from The Expendables since this movie is probably done just to give us a taste of all the action starts packed in one movie doing what action stars do.

The musical score for The Expendables is also great and it fits every sequence. It is like you are being driven inside the movie in every music played on the action-packed scenes.

I do recommend this movie since it is one action act that someone should not miss.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Having retooled and neatly anglicised the zombie movie on Shaun of the Dead and the cop thriller in Hot Fuzz, director Edgar Wright finally has the Hollywood budget his imagination so richly deserves.

But he's not done with his genre-splicing yet.

In fact, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is quite the mash-up, a post-adolescent romantic comedy combined with a videogame fantasy and shot through with indie-rock cool and all sorts of editing sleight-of-hand.

Its closest cinematic cousin is this year's Kick-Ass, another Brit-directed geek empowerment fantasy coming, as this does, from a left-field graphic novel - Canadian Bryan Lee O'Malley's manga-influenced series about 22-year-old Toronto slacker-bassist Scott and the pursuit of the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers.

Here Wright has compressed that six-part series into one mad fireworks display of a movie. One which runs on videogame logic, breaking out into high-flying chop socky - complete with points and power-ups - at every possible opportunity.

It also references everything from 90s sitcoms to 60s supergroups (there are characters called Stephen Stills and "Young Neil"), plus superhero movies - Chris Evans of the Fantastic Four turns up looking like Wolverine while Brandon Routh, the last big screen Superman, is now possessed of vegetarian superpowers.

And it's set in snowy Toronto. Though you'll only hear Scott say "Ay?" once.

So it doesn't lack for style, energy or - even with its magpie tendencies - originality.

Underneath all the flash, its story is an old one: Boy has to fight for the girl of his dreams.

Only Scott must fight Ramona's "seven evil exes" Mortal Kombat-style. They come in all shapes and sizes - fortunately, for running times' sake, two of them are twins.

Good thing he's put his time in at the arcade with Knives Chau, his teenage girlfriend who is about to have her heart broken by this lethargic lothario, even if she is the number one fan of his pop-punk band Sex Bob-Omb which is aiming at the big record deal at an upcoming contest.

That battle of the bands finale scene is something. The opposing groups' music becomes transformed into giant game monsters which fight for supremacy.

All of which might say something about how the joystick generation has displaced music from the centre of pop culture. Though this isn't exactly striving for deeper meaning, just flashy geeky cool and yet more of those fight scenes which leave the defeated decimated into a pile of coins.

Yes it does become wearying along the way and there are one or two evil exes too many. And despite Michael Cera employing his much-practised dweebish charm as Scott, he's more convincing as a virtual fighter than a lover. Mary Elizabeth Winstead certainly makes Ramona feisty and alluring. But while little cartoon hearts flutter from the pair's embraces, there's just not enough to make you care about whether they end up together.

The film certainly kicks bottom and stays amusing as Scott progresses through the levels.