MOVIES: ONE OF YEAR'S BEST FILMS, “ARRIVAL” HOLDS SNEAK PREVIEWS FEB 6 & 7

Nerdist calls it, “The smartest blockbuster since The Dark Knight,” while NY Magazine describes it as “An eerie, tantalizing, altogether superb puzzler.”

The subject of these praises is Columbia Pictures’ Arrival – the critically acclaimed film that's up for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay.

And now, Philippine audiences can catch it in sneak previews on Monday and Tuesday, February 6 and 7 in selected cinemas everywhere. Tickets will be at regular admission prices. (Check your favorite cinema for details).

Arrival is a provocative science fiction thriller from acclaimed director Denis Villeneuve (Sicario, Prisoners, upcoming Blade Runner 2049). When mysterious spacecraft touch down across the globe, an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) - are brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

Also starring Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, Arrival is based upon the acclaimed short story by Ted Chiang titled Story of Your Life.

In its citation of Arrival as the No.1 Best Reviewed Sci-Fi/Fantasy film of 2016's, RottenTomatoes writes, “Arrival delivers a must-see experience for fans of thinking person's sci-fi that anchors its heady themes with genuinely affecting emotion and a terrific performance from Amy Adams.”

Concurring with this acclaim is Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times who says the film “is simultaneously old and new, revisiting many of these alien-invasion conventions but with unexpected intelligence, visual style and heart.”

Steve Tilley of Toronto Sun also affirms, “If you're yearning for a smart, thoughtful sci-fi film that wonders how first contact with aliens might go down, this tight little gem of a film is a gift from beyond the stars.”

Finally, The Atlantic's Christopher Orr proclaims, “The best film of the year to date, ambitious in conception and extraordinary in execution, has arrived.”

Opening across the Philippines on February 15, Arrival is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

MOVIES: WITH 8 OSCAR NOMS, “ARRIVAL” A RARE SCI-FI BEST PICTURE CONTENDER

Nabbing a best picture nomination January 23, Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival joined the short list of science-fiction films that have been nominated for the film industry’s top prize.

Reports Variety, previous to the Academy’s expansion of the category in 2009, sci-fi nominees were a rarity. The only two that come to mind are E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982 and Star Wars in 1979.

With eight, Arrival earned the second-highest number of nominations, clinching nods for director, adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound editing, sound mixing, production design, and editing — in addition to best picture.

Since 2009, movies such as District 9, Avatar, Inception, and Her have picked up best picture nominations. Gravity and The Martian have joined the fray as well, but purists might not consider their baked-in-reality premises strictly sci-fi.

The point is the Academy’s best picture expansion has been a boon for a genre that was largely ignored by the organization prior to the 21st Century.

In Arrival, when a mysterious spacecraft touches down across the globe, and an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) - are brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

Also starring Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, Arrival is based upon the acclaimed short story by Ted Chiang titled Story of Your Life.

Opening across the Philippines on February 15, Arrival is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

MOVIES: ARRIVAL” GETS NINE BRITISH ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS

Columbia Pictures' provocative science-fiction thriller Arrival continues its illustrious awards season run as the Denis Villeneuve film has just scored nine British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

It also landed Best Adapted Screenplay nod for screenwriter Eric Heisserer and Best Actress for lead star Amy Adams.

Rounding out the categories Arrival got nominated for are Music, Cinematography, Editing, Sound and Special Visual Effects. The winners will be known on February 12, 2017.


In Arrival, a mysterious spacecraft touches down across the globe, and an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Adams) - are brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

Also starring Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, Arrival is based upon the acclaimed short story by Ted Chiang titled Story of Your Life.


Opening across the Philippines on February 15, Arrival is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

Movies: FOREST WHITAKER IN CONSECUTIVE SCI-FI ADVENTURES “ARRIVAL,” “ROGUE ONE”

Oscar Best Actor winner Forest Whitaker casts a giant shadow in the science-fiction genre as he stars in back-to-back sci-fi thrillers in December: Columbia Pictures' Arrival and Lucasfilm's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

In Arrival, when a mysterious spacecraft touches down across the globe, an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) - are brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

Whitaker plays Colonel Weber who works in Military Intelligence and when we first meet him, he’s in the process of trying to find a replacement for a linguist that wasn’t able to deal with the pressure. “He goes to talk to Louise to see if she’s capable of doing this job,” narrates Whitaker. “That’s the first time we get to know him. He’s putting together a team, a linguist to break through the language barrier and a physicist to see if you can communicate through numbers, so that he has the proper tools to understand [the aliens].”

“We all know he's one of the best actors living today,” enthuses director Denis Villeneuve. “Forest Whitaker is a master, and I saw that, because he had the toughest part on this movie. Colonel Weber is a character that was difficultly written, because he is in scenes as an obstacle, as an abrasive character. He didn’t have a lot of depth on the page and Forest was able to bring a gravitas, wisdom and dimension to this character in a way that I was very impressed by. It was not an easy process for Forest, there was a lot of work on set and I'm very grateful. He was very generous.”

Villeneuve and Whitaker discussed the role. “When Denis spoke about Colonel Weber it was [often] about the fact that he plays out as a father figure, in some ways, to the characters in the film,” says Whitaker. “He’s watching out for them, overseeing and encouraging them, and helping them move past their fears and understand their own potential.”

Meanwhile, in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Whitaker plays the shadowy freedom-fighter Saw Gerrera, a figure with a surprisingly deep background in the Star Wars galactic history.

The warrior was actually first seen in season 5 of The Clone Wars animated series, when he was a young man on the planet Onderon, unleashing guerilla combat on the droid army of Separatists who took over his world.

By the time Rogue One takes place, just before the events of 1977’s original Star Wars, more than two decades have passed since the events of Revenge of the Sith. As played by Whitaker, Saw Gerrera is now bulkier, more battle-hardened with the years, and maybe a little shellshocked. He has continued to fight and he has become a man who has tried to do the right thing by occasionally doing questionable things.

“Consider him kind of a battered veteran who leads a band of Rebel extremists,” says Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. “He’s on the fringe of the Rebel Alliance. Even [they] are a little concerned about him. Saw is an ally to the Rebel squad in Rogue One, but he’s not really one of them. He’s off on his own.”

Arrival opens across the Philippines on Dec. 7, to be followed by Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on Dec. 15.

Movies: SCI-FI THRILLER “ARRIVAL” BASED ON ACCLAIMED SHORT STORY

In Columbia Pictures' provocative science-fiction thriller Arrival, a mysterious spacecraft touches down across the globe, and an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) - are brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity. Also starring Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker.

“I've dreamed of doing science fiction since I was ten years old,” explains director Denis Villeneuve, who fell deeply in love with the short story Arrival is based upon, Ted Chiang’s ‘Story of Your Life.’ “It’s a genre that I feel has a lot of power and the tools to explore our reality in a very dynamic way.”

“After producers Dan Levine and Dan Cohen first contacted me about doing a movie,” says Chiang, “they sent me a DVD of Denis' film, Incendies (2010), to give me an idea of what they had in mind. That played a big part in my taking them seriously. If they had sent me a copy of a conventional Hollywood science-fiction movie, I probably would have ignored them. It wasn't until a few years later that Denis was actually attached to direct, but he was the director they had in mind from the beginning.”

Villeneuve approached Arrival differently for a number of reasons. Even though he thought ‘Story of Your Life’ was “fantastic material” he simply didn’t have time to write the screenplay because he was in the middle of shooting Prisoners (2013). “I had no time to write a screenplay,” says Villeneuve, “and, to be honest, I didn't know how to crack that short story because it's very intellectual, in a strong and beautiful way, but from a dramatic point of view it's a bit difficult to articulate because it's about process.”

Villeneuve left it with the producers, including executive producer and screenwriter Eric Heisserer, who had already been working on an adaptation of the short story from early on in the production process. “They came back a few months later with a screenplay written by Eric Heisserer that was surprisingly good,” says Villeneuve. “I say surprising because Eric was able to crack it and create a sense of tension and a drama inside of that process of translation.” Villeneuve was on board.

Heisserer was equally taken by Chiang’s story. “Ted’s short story gripped me in a way that very few stories do,” recounts Heisserer. “It wasn’t that I felt that the qualities of the story were inherently cinematic, but it gave me something that I hadn’t had in a long time. It fed my brain and my heart. It made me think and feel, and it treated me with a lot of respect as an intelligent reader. At the end of the day I felt it gave an optimistic message about humanity, and in turn about myself.”

“Eric and I didn't talk about the script as it was being written,” explains Chiang. “He pitched me his idea for the script early on in order to get me to grant permission. I should note that when I wrote the story, I never envisioned it being made into a film and I had difficulty imagining what a film adaptation of it would look like. When I heard Eric's pitch I was able to visualize the film he had in mind and I liked it, so I let him go ahead and write a script. After he had finished it, I read it and offered a few comments. Over the years the script has undergone some changes, but in most ways it's still what Eric originally pitched.”

Opening across the Philippines on Dec. 07, Arrival is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.