Birthday's to share this week : 7th - 13th February 2016

Do you celebrate your Birthday this week?

Chloe Grace Moretz does on 10th February - check out my tribute to this Birthday Girl, turning 19, at the end of this feature.

Do you also share your birthday with a well known, highly regarded & famous Actor or Actress; share your special day with a Director, Producer, Writer, Cinematographer, Singer/Songwriter or Composer of repute; or share an interest in whoever might notch up another year in the coming seven days? Then, look no further! Whilst there will be too many to mention in this small but not insignificant and beautifully written and presented Blog, here are the more notable and noteworthy icons of the big screen, and the small screen, that you will recognise, and that you might just share your birthday with in the week ahead. If so, Happy Birthday to you from Odeon Online!

Sunday 7th February

• Ashton Kutcher - Born 1978, turns 38 - Actor | Producer | Writer
• Chris Rock - Born 1965 - turns 51 - Actor | Producer | Writer
• Eddie Izzard - Born 1962, turns 54 - Actor | Producer | Writer
• James Spader - Born 1960, turns 56 - Actor | Producer

Monday 8th February

• John Williams - Born 1932, turns 84 - Composer | Songwriter
• Nick Nolte - Born 1941, turns 75 - Actor | Producer
• Seth Green - Born 1974, turns 42 - Actor | Producer | Writer | Director
• Mary Steenbergen - Born 1953, turns 63 - Actress | Producer

Tuesday 9th February

• Mia Farrow - Born 1945, turns 71 - Actress
• Michael B. Jordan - Born 1987, turns 29 - Actor
• Tom Hiddleston - Born 1981, turns 35 - Actor
• Ciaran Hinds - Born 1953, turns 63 - Actor
• Joe Pesci - Born 1943, turns 73 - Actor

Wednesday 10th February

• Robert Wagner - Born 1930, turns 86 - Actor | Producer
• Michael Apted - Born 1941, turns 75 - Director | Producer
• Laura Dern - Born 1967, turns 49 - Actress | Producer | Director
• Elizabeth Banks - Born 1974, turns 42 - Actress | Producer | Director
• Chloe Grace Moretz - Born 1997, turns 19 - Actress

Thursday 11th February

• Jennifer Aniston - Born 1969, turns 47 - Actress | Producer
• Burt Reynolds - Born 1936, turns 80 - Actor | Producer | Director
• Damian Lewis - Born 1971, turns 45 - Actor | Producer
• Taylor Lautner - Born 1992, turns 24 - Actor

Friday 12th February

• Joe Don Baker - Born 1936, turns 80 - Actor
• Michael Ironside - Born 1950, turns 66 - Actor | Producer | Writer
• Josh Brolin - Born 1968, turns 48 - Actor | Producer
• Darren Aronofsky - Born 1969, turns 47 - Director | Producer | Writer
• Christina Ricci - Born 1980, turns 36 - Actress

Saturday 13th February

• Stockard Channing - Born 1944, turns 72 - Actress
• Mena Suvari - Born 1979, turns 37 - Actress
• George Segal - Born 1934, turns 82 - Actor
• Neal McDonough - Born 1966, turns 50 - Actor | Producer

Chloe Grace Moretz was born in Atlanta, Georgia to mother Teri Duke, a nurse, and father McCoy Lee Moretz, a plastic surgeon. Raised in very Christian surroundings, she has four older brothers - Brandon, Trevor, Colin and Ethan. In 2002 the young Moretz moved to New York City with her mother and Trevor, as her parents had separated and her brother had gained a place at the Professional Performing Arts School, which first sparked her interest in acting, and she would often help her older sibling with his lines.

As a result of her interest she gained a role on  the television series 'The Guardian' in 2004, with an episode on 'My name is Earl' a year later. She gained her big screen debut in 2005 on 'Heart of the Beholder' and then a made for TV movie, 'Family Plan' later that same year, but it was in the remake of 'The Amityville Horror' also in 2005 that brought her more widespread recognition and a Young Artist Award nomination for her role as the young Chelsea Lutz - she was just eight years old. 

From here with acclaim gathering as a child actress Moretz gained small roles in such film fare as 'Big Momma's House 2', horror film 'Room 6', zombie horror 'Wicked Little Things', straight to video horror 'Hallowed Ground' and the supernatural horror remake 'The Eye' in 2008' . . . do you see a pattern emerging here? In 2008 though there was a break from more recent genre specific tradition with crime drama 'The Third Nail' and drama 'The Poker House' with Jennifer Lawrence.  In 2009 'Not Forgotten' saw her team up with her one time 'The Guardian' star Simon Baker, and then '(500) Days of Summer' with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In the meantime, there had been episodes on 'Desperate Housewives', 'Dirty Sexy Money' and the voice of Darby on 87 episodes of 'My friends Tigger & Pooh'.

2010 saw Matthew Vaughn's comic book adaptation to the big screen of 'Kick Ass' to widespread critical acclaim for her role as Mindy McCready/Hit-Girl alongside Mark Strong and Nicolas Cage. That same year she returned to the horror genre with the remake of the Swedish cult classic supernatural horror from 2008 'Let The Right One In' with its Hollywood cousin 'Let Me In'. Now aged 13 she was described as one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood with a string of film and television roles already behind her and plenty more on the slate.

The next year came the crime thriller 'Texas Killing Fields' with Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain, and 'Hick' with Eddie Redmayne, Alec Baldwin and Juliette Lewis before Scorsese's highly acclaimed 'Hugo' which won five Academy Awards and a further six nominations, as well as another 47 award wins and 156 other nominations from around the traps. 2012 saw her star in Tim Burton's 'Dark Shadows' with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Michelle Pfeiffer.

2013 brought with it a segment on the critically panned 'Movie 43', and a reprisal of her role as Hit-Girl on 'Kick-Ass 2'. 'Carrie' that same year was a return to the horror genre with a remake of the classic Stephen King novel which saw Moretz in the Sissy Spacek role from the earlier 1976 film.

The following year was another busy one with 'Laggies', 'Clouds of Sils Maria', 'If I Stay' and 'The Equalizer' with Denzel Washington in the title role. 'Dark Places' came next in 2015 with Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult and Sci-Fi actioner 'The 5th Wave' released very recently and a possible trilogy in the making if it performs well enough having made US$67M already off its US$30M budget.

Currently in post-production for release later this year is 'The November Criminals' with Ansel Elgort and David Strathairn, 'Neighbours 2 : Sorority Rising' with Zac Efron, Seth Rogen and Dave Franco, and 'Brain on Fire' with Carrie-Anne Moss and Richard Armitage, with 'The Little Mermaid' announced for 2017. To date Moretz has 57 acting credits to her name, 27 award wins and a further 39 nominations - not bad at all for a 19 year old!

Aside from carving out an acting career, Moretz has also appeared inside and on the cover of numerous fashion and lifestyle magazines including 'Vogue', 'Marie Clare', 'Elle', 'InStyle' and 'Flaunt'. In 2012 she was crowned with the 'Max Mara Face of the Future' Award, and 'Elle' gave her the 'Next Future Icon' Award in 2013.

Moretz resides in Los Angeles, brother Brandon is her Business Manager, brother Trevor is her acting coach, she starred alongside brother Colin in 'Let Me In' and with brother Ethan in 'The Third Nail'. She supports LGBT equality rights, and in 2014 Time Magazine named her as one of the 25 Most Influential Teenagers of the Year.

Chloe Grace Moretz - beautiful and clearly talented, an amazing track record already at just 19 years of age, a diverse range of roles in your acting choices, has starred in seven remakes, a fan of the comedy genre yet hasn't starred in too many, a lover of dogs and of sports especially football, basketball, ice hockey and gymnastics - Happy Birthday to you Chloe Grace, from Odeon Online.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

What's new in Odeon's this week - Thursday 4th September 2014.

This week with Spring in the air, a spring in our step and the promise of longer days, warmer evenings and more new cinematic offerings to tempt us, we have another diverse palette ranging from the comedic horrific, the big action disaster epic, a fly-on-the-wall real life fictional doco-drama charting the growing pains of one family (and yes, you read that right!), and a story of a life or death decision . . . literally! Of course, there is plenty of filmic content still doing the rounds from previous weeks, which when combined with this weeks latest releases will give you plenty of reasons to visit a warm dark place with a bunch of strangers and sit in wonder at the oral, aural and visual wonder unfolding on a giant screen right there in front of you! What's not to like?

So get out there sometime over the coming week - do your part to keep cinema alive, and then drop me a comment at Odeon Online to share your moviegoing experience with my other reader! Enjoy your big screen experience!

INTO THE STORM (Rated M) - of course this is another Mother Nature doing her thing disaster flick that uses the full force of the elements to destroy property, landmarks, crucial infrastructure, whole city blocks, towns, villages, and needless to say human and animal collateral damage too. You'll be thinking that we have seen this before in 'Twister' - that 1996 offering that perhaps set the tone of tornadoes rampaging across the US countryside. Then there was 'The Perfect Storm' in 2000 that did the same thing out in the Grandbanks with giant tides and hurricane winds trashing a local fishing community and a few of its favourite sons! And of course you would be right when you throw this into the mix with '2012', 'The Day After Tomorrow', 'Dante's Peak' etc. etc. etc. So how is this any different? Well to start, we are further advanced in our CGI technology now than we were then so bringing the effects up closer, making them bigger, bolder and more brazen, and at the helm of this wet & windy movie we have Steven Quale who has learned his craft from a certain James Cameron shooting second unit on 'Avatar' . . . not bad credentials really!

This story centres around a 24 hour period in the town of Silverton, Oklahoma that gets hit with the full force of several tornadoes and cyclones, and the ensuing fall-out on the townsfolk - those that try to take shelter and find some refuge, and those thrill seekers who want to face the action and record it for posterity. It is this point upon which the 'found footage' visuals of this film are conveyed - through the CCTV, video cameras, mobile phones, and GoPro's of those caught in the maelstrom. Along the way are a band of storm chasers of course, and other principle characters who have to run, hide, chase, save and brave it out until the storm passes - most notably Richard Armitage (Gary Fuller - the Vice-Principal of the local High School) and Sarah Wayne Callies (Alison Stone, storm chasing Meteorologist). The shorts look impressive enough up on the big screen, and if you like this kind of thing - then this is for you! Take your raincoat!

If I Stay (Rated M) - the young and talented Chloe Grace-Moretz stars in this drama of young and talented cello player who needs to decide to pursue her musical aspirations at Juilliard, or pursue her life with her true love, Adam. One day, out on a drive in the country with her family everything changes for ever when a head-on collision hurls Mia Hall (Moretz) out of the car and leaves her in a coma. Mia however, is caught between this life and the next, between life and death for one day in which she must decide her own fate. She is having an out of body experience during which she witnesses her family unravel at the sight of her still comatose body, learns of the fate of the other family members, undergoes surgery, and must reconcile her relationship with Adam (Jamie Blackley) amongst all of this tragedy before deciding on her ultimate fate to stay in this world, or cross-over into the next!

BOYHOOD (Rated M) - Director and Screenwriter Richard Linklater has been working on this opus for some twelve years now having conceived the idea back in 2001 or so. Since then he has filmed at regular intervals the growing up of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) who we join at the films outset at the age of six. He lives with his mother (Patricia Arquette) and sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), and dad (Ethan Hawke) has left the relationship only recently. The film therefore charts the fictional life of the family, but at the same time we see Mason grow up on screen in front of our eyes over  twelve year period. This family experiences what every family experiences - love, loss, drama, good times, bad times, birthdays, Christmas, school, discovery, excitement and so much more besides, and we see this too through Mason's eyes as he too experiences these things as he grows from young childhood through adolescence and onto young adulthood. This has had big reviews so far for this rare achievement in film making, it's subject matter and what it explores and reveals about all of us.

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (Rated M) - set in a quiet peaceful suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, this comedy horror brings together a trio of Vampires  - Vladislav (Jemaine Clement), Viago (Taika Waititi) and Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) - each  of them still very much human-like but centuries old and living together in a shared house with all the mundane rituals associated with 21st Century life - except that their blood lust lives on in their immortality, which they must conduct behind closed doors for fear of venturing out into the sunlight or catching themselves reflected in a mirror.  When various human interlopers arrive they are either dispatched via puncture wounds to an accessible artery to provide the necessary sustenance, or are welcomed to provide support to the cosy homestead. But lurking in the cellar is a fourth inmate - the 8,000 year old inhuman vampire Petyr (Ben Frensham), that becomes the subject of a Vampire search & destroy. . .  and is! Later on at a ball - our trio meet other Wellingtonian night crawlers - zombies, werewolves, witches and warlocks, with whom they at first fight, but then reconcile themselves together to fend off the trials and tribulations of their 21st Century existence with some degree of understanding and harmony. This is Directed, Written and stars 'Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi and is therefore sure to resonate with those followers of this troupe and their unique brand of comedy . . . and a good dose of horror and gore thrown into the mix!

There you have it for the week ahead! Four very differing offerings that are sure to please, surprise and delight, and tempt you out to a multiplex or local independent cinema on an early Springtime afternoon or evening. Get amongst it and let me know what you thought.

Movies . . . see as many as you can!

-Steve, at Odeon Online-