Tom Hanks’ new movie, Larry Crowne hits UK DVD and Blu-ray shelves next Monday, 14th December and if you haven’t already seen it, we’ve got the chance for you to win a copy on DVD right here. Studiocanal have also given us this exclusive clip from the movie which shows Larry arriving at school on his moped for the first time when he bumps into a fellow student who shows him the ropes.

When appealing everyman LARRY CROWNE(Academy Award winner Tom Hanks – Forest Gump, Castaway) is inexplicably fired from his job as a Big Box store clerk, he realizes it’s time for some meaningful changes in his life. Deeply in debt and without direction, he returns to college where he befriends a group of scooter-riding students including Lamar (Cedric the Entertainer – Ice Age, Be Cool) and B’Ella (Taraji Henson- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Date Night) and eventually falls for beautiful speech class instructor, Mercedes Tainot (Academy Award winner Julia Roberts – Pretty Woman, Notting Hill).

Co-written by Tom Hanks and Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and produced by Philippe Rousselet (Source Code), Steven Shareshian (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and Jeb Brody (Little Miss Sunshine) the charming and smart LARRY CROWNE is the perfect optimistic and romantic comedy about how the hard knocks can inspire personal reinvention and show the power of new beginnings.

Check out the clip below.

To mark the release of Larry Crowne on DVD and Blu-ray 14th November, Studiocanal have given us 5 copies of the movie to give away on DVD.

When appealing everyman LARRY CROWNE(Academy Award winner Tom Hanks – Forest Gump, Castaway) is inexplicably fired from his job as a Big Box store clerk, he realizes it’s time for some meaningful changes in his life. Deeply in debt and without direction, he returns to college where he befriends a group of scooter-riding students including Lamar (Cedric the Entertainer – Ice Age, Be Cool) and B’Ella (Taraji Henson- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Date Night) and eventually falls for beautiful speech class instructor, Mercedes Tainot (Academy Award winner Julia Roberts – Pretty Woman, Notting Hill).

Co-written by Tom Hanks and Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and produced by Philippe Rousselet (Source Code), Steven Shareshian (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and Jeb Brody (Little Miss Sunshine) the charming and smart LARRY CROWNE is the perfect optimistic and romantic comedy about how the hard knocks can inspire personal reinvention and show the power of new beginnings.

To be in with a chance of winning the movie on DVD simply answer the following question using the form below:

Who plays Larry Crowne in the movie, Larry Crowne?

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

The small print:

• Open to UK residents only
• Only one entry per household will be counted
• The competition will close 14th November at 23.59 GMT
• The winner will be picked at random from entries received
• No cash alternative is available

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

A Tom Hanks’ film will usually follow the same sentimental pattern of ‘loser triumphs’, making them predictably feel-good, heart-felt and all-American. With Hanks in the title role, Larry Crowne is no exception as the amicable star brings his charismatic warmth and inoffensive humour to yet another human story.

The story cashes in on current times of austerity and looming cuts, with Crowne (Hanks), the hardworking and perfect employee of a retail company, being made redundant, as he cannot climb the corporate ladder into management without a college education. Struck dumb by his harsh treatment, he refuses to wallow in self-pity, and is determined to make a better man of himself by going back to college and getting qualified. What Crowne doesn’t vouch for is a completely new, youthful identity and the acceptance into a cool college scooter gang – or the growing affections of his attractive lecturer, Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts), who is in a dead-end marriage. Things are looking up.

Larry Crowne is textbook Hanks – not surprising as he wrote, produced, acted and directed it, which is a first for the star. This watchable if measurably prudent offering is inspiring, purely because it tugs at the heartstrings and triggers the emotions of most working folk who can sympathise with Crowne’s position in today’s temperamental job climate. It also positions the likable Hanks opposite his Charlie Wilson’s War co-star, Roberts, once more, in a successful screen partnership that shows both actors off in their best light.

That said Roberts will forever play a variation of her Pretty Woman Vivian Ward character, a smart, opinionated and misunderstood beauty, caught in a rut and going against her character’s appealing independent nature to fall back on a man to ‘complete her’. The actress has very little else on offer as she matures in her film roles. Again, Roberts plays up her character’s acidic, though witty retorts in this – hardly surprising, considering some of the pupils Mrs Tainot must deal with. But Roberts just comes across as more bitter than sassy in such a role as the years roll on, and this character will blend in with her other performances. Nevertheless it’s her partnership with Hanks that will be the film’s memorable and redeeming quality.

Larry Crowne is also great fun to watch Hanks in ‘mid-life crisis mode’, squeezing into tight trendy gear and having a (real-life) hoot learning to handle a scooter and getting out on the open road. Think Grease 2’s Michael Carrington, only much older, as the cute ‘nerd that turns’ gets the girl. As a result of its leads’ ages and the topics, this film is targeting an older, more established audience, though it translates perfectly well in an almost immature manner for ‘teacher crush’ value, whatever your age.

Hanks fans will revel in their hero’s hour in this innocuous tale that’s well intentioned for all its mediocre happenings and foreseeable ending. If nothing else, Larry Crowne could kick-start some serious soul searching and stalled existences.

***~~ (3/5)

Earlier this month I got invited to attend a round table with possibly my favourite actor of all time, Tom Hanks to talk about his new movie, Larry Crowne which hits UK cinemas today, 1^st July.

During the course of the interview, we got to find out a little about his working life and how he relates to Larry in the movie.

Read on for more info or click here to view all our coverage of Larry Crowne.

——–

Have you ever been sacked?

I have never experienced what poor Larry does where he walks in a room on top of the world and found out that he’s losing his job.  Once I thought I was doing a movie because the Producers, the Director and the Studio all told me I was and then had a meeting with them only to receive a phone call the next day from my agent who says ‘What happened’ because I’m not doing the movie anymore!? I don’t know what happened and no one explained.

Was that early on in your career?

Not as early as you’d think. You’ll never know what movie that was but it didn’t do that well!

How did you find directing your wife and how did she come up with that look?

She said ‘what should I do’? I said ‘Baby, do something wild’. I kept getting text photos of her trying on different wigs and I got red ones, black ones and when she put on that blonde one she looked exactly like her niece and I said ‘That it’s’. I told her to find herself a good tight power suit and soem stilettos which go clakity clac and she was constantly upbeat lady at the bank with a complementary coffee which says ‘you’re not getting the money’.

It was fun to direct her. It was a great scene because she powered it. We only shot for a day and we added the scene at the end where I give back the strategic foreclosure as I saw a news article on it the week before about people who say I can’t pay for myself and give it back to the bank and walk away.

Why’s it taken you so long to direct your second feature?

Directing is a constant test of your communicative powers. You’re constantly trying to explain to people a vision and want you want. I didn’t have those instinctive talents when I did ‘That Thing You Do’. I love that movie and loved everything about it and it came out pretty dang good but at the end of the day I wish I hadn’t been worried about things as much as I were and had paid more attention to some other things which were in my power.

I have that a little bit more at my disposal now so I’m not nearly as intimidated at the idea of directing. I have a certain degree of strengths. None of them are cinematic unfortunately. I think I know how to get a spirit of a scene together and there are some scenes which make themselves perfectly and other times where I need the help of the actors, the cinematographer and a few other people.

I’m not a director at the end of the day, I’m a storyteller, I run a company and I can direct but instinctively I’m an actor and that’s where I went in the 15 years between ‘That Thing You do’ and ‘Larry Crowne’.

What kind of ambition did the guy that made Bachelor Party have and how does the reality matched the dream?

The guy who made Bachelor Party couldn’t believe he was in a movie, being paid to come on and do this stuff. The guy was hoping he would get another job after Bachelor Party and that seems to have worked out ok. The guy in Larry Crowne hopes he’s going to have another job after that.

I still have the same amount of enthusiasm and fun. The day before we start shooing a movie I can’t sleep because I’m too excited about doing it. Whether it’s Road to Perdition, Apollo 13 or The Green Mile I still can’t wait to get up and do it. He’s a little slower, older and heavier but still has that enthusiastic boyish smile doesn’t he?!

How did you find writing the lessons scripts that we see in Larry Crowne?

We wrote so much of the speech class and then we did research by videotaping public speaking classes at Santa Monica City College and it was almost verbatim. We’d made it up! I thought a teacher might say something like this and she might get people up and saying something like this and it was literally the first day for public speaking with English as a second language.

Are you a natural on scooter?

I am now! It’s one thing to pass a written test but there is a question with multiple answers and I swear, all the answers work! The man who was testing me was so overjoyed to have me that I don’t think he was paying much attention to all the mistakes I was making!

Was there a point in your career where you thought you could take control of it?

There’s a period of time where you just can’t believe (Bachelor Party or what have you) where they offer you a job and you just take it. After I did A League of Their Own, I said ‘I’m 37, I’m not a young man anymore and I wanted to play men in bitter compromise rather than ‘the dad who did the thing’ or ‘the man who wants to fall in love’ or variations of those 80s movies, so many people made including me. It was the type of thing that I could control.

———

Larry Crowne hits UK cinemas today!

Last week I got to meet and interview the legendary Tom Hanks. It was a time that will stay in my memory for the rest of my days! I was interviewing him for his new movie, Larry Crowne which is released in the UK 1st July and is brought to us by Optimum Releasing. If you missed the trailers for the movie, you can have a watch here.

Directed by Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson’s War), Larry Crowne stars Hanks, Julia Roberts (Eat Pray Love), Bryan Cranston (Drive), Cedric the Entertainer (Be Cool), Taraji P. Henson (Date Night), George Takei (Star Trek) and Pam Grier (Jackie Brown).

After losing his job, a middle-aged man (Hanks) reinvents himself by going back to college.

Check out this new featurette from the movie which gives you a little look at what you can expect.

Source: Yahoo

There’s a new poster in town for the Tom Hanks directed Larry Crowne, and while it won’t win any design awards it does advocate riding on a scooter – look at how happy they are.

I’m in.

With Roberts and Hanks fronting the film there’s a good chance this one will draw in a huge crowd, and Hanks did a decent job behind the camera with That Thing You Do so when the 1st of July rolls around we can all enjoy his scooter riding antics.

Raise your hand if you want a synopsis,

Until he was downsized, affable, amiable Larry Crowne (Hanks) was a superstar team leader at the big-box company where he’s worked since his time in the Navy. Underwater on his mortgage and unclear on what to do with his suddenly free days, Larry heads to his local college to start over. There he becomes part of a colorful community of outcasts, also-rans and the overlooked all trying to find a better future for themselves…often moving around town in a herd of scooters. In his public-speaking class, Larry develops an unexpected crush on his teacher Mercedes Tainot (Roberts), who has lost as much passion for teaching as she has for her husband. The simple guy who has every reason to think his life has stalled will come to learn an unexpected lesson: when you think everything worth having has passed you by, you just might discover your reason to live.

Tap11 debuted the poster,

Optimum Releasing have posted the official UK trailer for Larry Crowne.

Directed by Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson’s War), Larry Crowne stars Hanks, Julia Roberts (Eat Pray Love), Bryan Cranston (Drive), Cedric the Entertainer (Be Cool), Taraji P. Henson (Date Night), George Takei (Star Trek) and Pam Grier (Jackie Brown).

After losing his job, a middle-aged man (Hanks) reinvents himself by going back to college.

Larry Crowne, written by Hanks and Nia Vardalos, will be released in the UK on July 1st.

Watch the UK trailer below:

MTV have released a nice new batch of images of upcoming movies this summer and we’ll show you each one in a series of posts over the next few days.

Title: Larry Crowne

Director: Tom Hanks

Cast: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Wilmer Valderrama, Bryan Cranston, Taraji P. Henson, Nia Vardalos, Pam Grier, Cedric the Entertainer

Synopsis: Until he was downsized, affable, amiable Larry Crowne (Hanks) was a superstar team leader at the big-box company where he’s worked since his time in the Navy. Underwater on his mortgage and unclear on what to do with his suddenly free days, Larry heads to his local college to start over. There he becomes part of a colorful community of outcasts, also-rans and the overlooked all trying to find a better future for themselves…often moving around town in a herd of scooters. In his public-speaking class, Larry develops an unexpected crush on his teacher Mercedes Tainot (Roberts), who has lost as much passion for teaching as she has for her husband. The simple guy who has every reason to think his life has stalled will come to learn an unexpected lesson: when you think everything worth having has passed you by, you just might discover your reason to live.

UK Release date: 1st July

Trailer: Click here to view

GYRE Entertainment have just released the brand new first trailer for Tom Felton’s new movie (no, not Rise of the Planet of the Apes) but another movie based all around golf called, From the Rough. The movie is directed by Pierre Bagley and stars, Taraji P. Henson, Michael Clarke Duncan, LeToya Luckett, Henry Simmons, Justin Chon, Robert Bailey Jr., Ben Youcef and Paul Hodge.

No US or UK release date as yet from what we can see but we’ll keep you posted.

FROM THE ROUGH is based on the true story of Catana Starks, a former swim coach at Tennessee State University who became the first woman ever to coach a college men’s golf team. With drive, passion, and guts, she took an unruly group of mismatched kids from around the world and guided them to an all-time record at the PGA National Collegiate Minority Championship.

Tasked with building Tennessee State’s first golf team and finding only one available African American golfer – Craig, a former caddy with plenty of talent but no confidence – Catana Starks pushes outside TSU’s Historically Black context, and, against huge resistance, opens up the roster to underprivileged kids from around the world: Edward, a lower class British youth with a rakish charm and a contempt for authority; Bassam, a French-Algerian from Paris, angry about the discrimination of his people, soft-spoken but likely to explode; Cameron, an Australian from a single-parent household with a childhood spent working, using golf as means to escape; and Ji-Kyung, a disaffected South Korean from Orange County with a love of hip hop.

Finding each of these wildly different players in places around the world is tough. Getting them to come together as a team is tougher. But Catana Starks relishes the challenge. At the end of the day, a person’s character is determined by the adversity she faces. Against all odds, Catana Starks takes her underdogs From the Rough and turns them into winners.

You can find out more about the movie on the official website which is now live here or scroll down to check out the new trailer.

Universal Pictures, via Yahoo! Movies, have unveiled the official trailer for comedy-drama Larry Crowne.

Directed by Tom Hanks, Larry Crowne stars Hanks, Julia Roberts, Bryan Cranston, Taraji P. Henson, Nia Vardalos, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Cedric the Entertainer, George Takei and Pam Grier.

After Larry Crowne (Hanks), a middle-aged man, is terminated from his job, he goes back to college, where he unexpectedly forms bonds with his fellow students and a romantic relationship with Mercedes Tainot, a professor (Roberts).

Larry Crowne will be released in the US on July 1.

Orlando Bloom has ridden the blockbuster roller coaster already, causing teenage chaos in Lord of the Rings and crossing swords in the Pirates trilogy. Now it seems he is to scale back his profile with a starring role in an indie movie directed by Lance Daly called The Good Doctor.

THR threw this one out onto the internets and their synopsis reads thus:

The script from John Enbom (“Veronica Mars”), described as a Hitchcockian thriller, centers on a frustrated doctor looking to impress his superiors and colleagues. When his 18-year-old patient, admitted for a kidney infection, provides him with the esteem he so craves, the doctor tampers with her treatment so that she’ll have to stay at the hospital with him.

So we’ll have Bloom stalking dark hospital corridors on a hell-bent ego trip, doing nasty things with repercussions of blackmail, suspicion and, no doubt, there’ll be some medicinal death thrown in for good measure.

I have to say I’m not familiar with Lance Daly’s work, but the casting of Bloom will contribute to the hype building around this project – whether Bloom can pull off Hitchcockian thrills (as THR put it) is yet to be seen. He will star alongside Michael Pena and Courtney Ford, Taraji P. Henson, Rob Morrow and the always fun J.K. Simmons are also in the mix.

Eyes and ears, as always, will be on this one.

Here’s the brand new trailer for what looks like a rom-com which then turns into an all out action flick. Date Night stars Steve Carrell, Tina Fey, Taraji P. Henson, Common and Mark Wahlberg, is directed by Shawn Levy and is scheduled for release 9th April 2010. The trailer looks pretty funny and although it’s not the most original story in the world, it looks like Steve Carrel has made another classic.

Check out the trailer after the jump or view in HD on Apple.

Synopsis: Claire and Phil Foster (Tina Fey and Steve Carell) are a typical suburban couple whose lives ““ including their weekly date nights of dinner and a movie ““ have become routine. To reignite the marital spark, they visit a trendy Manhattan bistro where a case of mistaken identity turns their evening into the ultimate date night-gone-awry. But as Claire and Phil take their unexpected walk on the wild side, they begin to remember what made them so special together.