Tag: Cinema
007 MIA.
“Broccoli liked ‘Layer Cake’ star Daniel Craig, 37, but Wilson didn’t. Broccoli also thought Australian star Hugh Jackman, 36, who in addition to playing Wolverine in ‘X-Men’ has appeared in Broadway musicals, wasn’t masculine enough. Colin Farrell, 29, was judged too much of a bad boy. Eric Bana, 37, star of ‘Troy’ and the upcoming ‘Munich,’ wasn’t good-looking enough. Ewan McGregor, 34, was too short.” The Hollywood Reporter examines in depth the current state of the new Bond search.
Tales of the South.
SNL alums Cheri Oteri and Amy Pohler fill out the cast for Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, his followup to Donnie Darko (notwithstanding a writing cred on Domino.) Besides boasting a strange, Darko-ish website, Tales also features a cast that’s multiplying faster than transdimensional zombie bunnies, including the Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Miranda Richardson, John Larroquette, Jon Lovitz, Jill Ritchie, Will Sasso, Wood Harris, Bai Ling, and Wallace Shawn.
Murrow, Mines, Mobsters, Menage, and Monkey.
Soon after posting the last entry, I found a new cache of trailers for films around the corner over at Coming Soon: First off, Edward Murrow takes a journalistic stand against McCarthyism (with much explicit contemporary relevance) in the trailer for George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck, starring David Strathairn, Clooney, Patricia Clarkson, Robert Downey, Jr., Jeff Daniels, and Frank Langella. Then, Charlize Theron braves borderline winds, the mining life, and sexual harassment in the preview for North Country, also with Frances McDormand, Sissy Spacek, Woody Harrelson, Sean Bean, and Richard Jenkins. Meanwhile, law partners John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton look for the big score in Harold Ramis’ The Ice Harvest, with Randy Quaid, Connie Nielsen, and Oliver Platt. And, finally, journalist Alison Lohman looks into the racy reasons behind the demise of comedy team Bacon & Firth in Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies (recently saddled with a NC-17), and video gamer Allen Covert pays respect to his elders in the trailer for the Adam-Sandler produced Grandma’s Boy. (To be honest, I’m only blogging this last one for the “don’t judge me” monkey bit and the too-brief glimpse of the lovely Linda “Lindsey Weir” Cardellini.) Update: Ok, one more: Tilda Swinton, Vincent D’Onofrio, Vince Vaughn, Benjamin Bratt and Keanu Reeves try to help newcomer Lou Pucci stop a nasty habit in the trailer for Thumbsucker, due out in just over two weeks.
Blood, sweat, and dust.
In the trailer bin, Philip Seymour Hoffman channels In Cold Blood-era Truman Capote — I presume that’s how he actually sounded — in the preview for Capote, also with Catherine Keener and Chris Cooper. Elsewhere, 1880s Aussie Guy Pearce gets an offer he probably should refuse in The Proposition, written by Nick Cave and also starring Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Danny Houston, David Wenham, and Emily Watson. Finally, I should’ve posted this before, but only now found it: the trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Dylan-doc No Direction Home, appearing on PBS Sept. 26th and 27th.
Pirates of Skull Island.
“‘I don’t believe piracy can be easily beaten; fighting fire with fire by releasing movies on DVD at the same time as cinemas is probably where the industry is heading in the next few years,’ said Mr. Jackson”. The NY Times discusses King Kong and the current industry effort against movie piracy.
Narn!
A number of new Chronicles of Narnia images materialize online, including several of Tilda Swinton’s White Witch, James McAvoy’s Mr. Tumnus, and Jim Broadbent’s Professor.
La coupe de feu.
The Leaky Cauldron procures the international trailer for HP and the Goblet of Fire (Scroll down.) With the exception of that truly terrible falling sequence near the end there, this looks like it could be as entertaining as Azkhaban.
The Imperial March.
In a bid to spend a few hours out of the unrelenting Maui sunshine this past weekend, we exchanged Aloha for Antarctica and caught the well-received March of the Penguins. Brimming with impressive footage of the Emperor Penguins’ arduous yearly breeding cycle in the world’s most inhospitable place, and presided over by an avuncular Morgan Freeman, March definitely makes for a pleasant and diverting moviegoing experience, and seemed a great movie to take the kids to. Yet, as appealing as it is, March seems somewhat misplaced on the big screen, given that — ultimately — it’s not all that different from what you can catch on the Discovery Channel most times of the day…but given the particularly lousy crop of late-summer movie fare at the moment, perhaps there’s something to be said for quality nature docs writ large. Regardless, big-screen or small-screen, March of the Penguins is worth viewing, if only to appreciate anew how strange, delicate, unforgiving, and surprising our world can be (and to discover that there’s much more to penguins than Opus and Oswald Cobblepot.)
Casino Jack in Hollywood.
“The film was to be a manifesto for Abramoff; a Rambo-like morality tale and a grand indictment of communism — his Reagan Doctrine parable in action-packed Technicolor. And in the process of conceiving of and making it, Abramoff helped groom an African despot, rose to high levels in the K Street food chain, and got to play international spy.” Salon‘s James Verini discloses the sordid tale of Red Scorpion and GOP bagman Jack Abramoff’s brief flirtation with the movie biz.