Month: January 2010 (Page 18 of 25)

Blu Tuesday: The Hurt Locker, Moon and 8 1/2

January 12, 2010 /

After the craziness of the holiday shopping season, the home video market tends to slow down considerably for a few weeks. Now that we’re all back in the swing of things, however, the studios have commenced their usual release schedule, and with the holidays leading to a significant increase in Blu-ray ownership, it’s going to get really crazy. This week’s selection features two of the year’s best films, an old favorite, and much more.

“The Hurt Locker” (Lionsgate)

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq war thriller is one of the most suspenseful movies I’ve ever seen, piling on the tension so high that you’ll literally spend the entire film on the edge of your seat. It also happens to be one of my favorite movies of the year and is a highly considered favorite to take home this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director. Jeremy Renner is a marvel to watch as the bomb squad thrill junkie at the center of the story, but the real star is Bigelow, who takes an otherwise barebones script and transforms it into a series of memorable set pieces that continually upstage the one before it. The included special features aren’t as great as they probably could be, but the audio commentary by Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boals (not to mention the Q&A track that plays over a 23-minute photo gallery slideshow) is definitely worth a listen.

“Moon” (Sony)

It wasn’t that long ago that Sam Rockwell was being hyped as the next big actor of his generation, and although his career never really reached the level that many expected, the guy has been turning out great performance after great performance for years. However, in Duncan Jones’ directorial debut, “Moon,” Rockwell delivers the performance of a lifetime as a contract astronaut working on a moon-based space station where he monitors the mining of a green-energy source called Helium-3. The indie sci-fi flick takes a trippy but exciting turn when Rockwell’s character discovers a doppelganger tasked with the same mission. With no one else to play off but himself (and Kevin Spacey’s voice as a HAL-like computer called Gerty), Rockwell takes an already good story and makes it that much better. Yet another great sci-fi film to add to 2009’s ever-growing list.

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Action Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movie DVDs, Movies, Sci-Fi Movies

Raimi & Spidey part company; Hanks to direct again with Roberts in tow; history repeats on “Thor”; an auteur departs; ASC, WGA, and ACE noms; Nikki Finke makes a friend

January 12, 2010 /

Spiderman

My highly esteemed colleague Will Harris has been right on top of  the huge small screen stories that seem to be breaking right and left at the TCA conference this week. Still, it’s not like there hasn’t been any news in movieland. It’s almost hard to know where to start.

* The Hollywood Reporter as well as Nikki Finke and new stablemate Mike Fleming (more on that below) are carrying the news that, in the wake of ongoing script problems, the kibosh has been put on Sam Raimi’s “Spiderman IV” with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and a 2012 reboot, written by James Vanderbilt (“Zodiac“) announced. The new film will feature a once-again teenage Peter Parker, so Taylor Lautner is no doubt already in touch with his agent.

THR says the script problems had something to do with a disagreement over supervillains between Raimi and Sony and/or Marvel Studios. Finke also notes that the fourth installment would probably not have been in 3-D and it seems reasonable that that might have been a factor, given the current mania for the process.

* In another apparent scoop for new Deadline team member Mike Fleming, Tom Hanks is returning as a writer-director for the second time since making his 1996 charmer, “That Thing You Do!” A comedy, “Larry Crowne” will reteam him with his “Charlie Wilson’s War” co-star, Julia Roberts. Like “Up in the Air,” according to Fleming it’s somewhat topical in that’s it’s about a middle-aged guy forced to reinvent his career at a time when past generations where just starting to settle down.

While he’s at it, Fleming also has the word on Shia LaBeouf not going agentless after all and signing with CAA. Agents around the world can all breathe easier now.

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Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

Breaking TCA News: Simon Cowell to leave “American Idol”

January 11, 2010 /

Fox’s executive panel at the TCA Press Tour was very late beginning this afternoon, but as Peter Rice (Chairman of Entertainment) and Kevin Reilly (President of Entertainment) took their seats, Rice assured the gathered group of television critics, “We have a good reason for keeping you waiting.”

He was right.

Minutes later, surprise guest Simon Cowell had stepped onto the stage, taken pen in hand, and officially signed the paperwork to bring his popular UK series, “The X Factor,” to Fox in 2011. He will serve as the show’s executive producer as well as a judge. There is, however, a down side to this development: it means that this will be Cowell’s final season as a judge on “American Idol.”

Prior to Cowell’s surprise arrival, Rice had acknowledged that Cowell’s future on Fox was directly connected to whether or not the network would pick up “The X Factor,” a series for which he has long established considerable passion.

“There has been a lot of speculation, partly because we didn’t have an an agreement,” said Cowell, after taking his seat. “We reached an agreement at about half past ten this morning.”

“More like half past eleven,” corrected Rice, with a laugh.

“I’ve always had a fantastic relationship with Fox,” Cowell continued. “We did talk about me staying on both shows, but then when we looked at the practicalities of that, it was just impossible. I made a commitment to staying on the show in the UK, and I didn’t think it was right for me to also do two shows in America. I can barely manage to do ‘American Idol’! We had a lot of discussions about it, a meeting with Peter in October, but it was done very gentlemanly, the whole thing.”

As far as Cowell’s departure from “American Idol,” he likens it to having a good player on a good football team: they work well together, but when the player retires, the team is still successful. In the end, it comes down to the fact that “American Idol” is not Cowell’s show, whereas “The X Factor” is.

“It’s still close to me,” he said, “and I made sure that ‘Idol’ would be protected. The show could last for ten or twenty more years. I’m confident that it will continue to be the #1 show, and everyone’s committed to keeping it that way.”

Rice described Cowell as “irreplaceable,” taking a pass on making any comment about who the network might be pursuing to fill his spot on the series while offering assurances that the network is fully aware of the necessity of maintaining the same level of energy for “American Idol.”

American Idol, External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, News, TCA Blog 2010, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Reality

TCA Tour: Undercover Boss

January 11, 2010 /

During her comments in the executive session, CBS’s President of Entertainment, Nina Tassler, couldn’t say enough good things about the network’s new reality series, “Undercover Boss,” which they’re opting to premiere immediately after the Super Bowl. It’s an act that’s either a sign of unabashed confidence in the series or a total Hail Mary pass, but despite how apropos the latter might be for the timeslot, having seen the pilot episode, I can absolutely see why they would be confident. Tassler said that “everybody who is sitting and watching the Super Bowl, be you 8 or 80, can stay right there and enjoy the program,” and she’s on the money with that assessment: who can’t get behind the idea of a boss coming down from his or her ivory tower and mixing it up with the frontline employees in the company? Everyone can relate to that…which, as it happens, is exactly what its creator, Stephen Lambert, had in mind.

“I was very keen to do something in the world of the workplace,” he said. “There’s so many scripted shows that are set in the workplace, but not that many set in the real workplace in the reality space on network television, and it seemed to me that it’s very relatable. Anybody who has had a boss who has worked in the company will understand this show, and for the person in charge to be able to see what their workers, their employees, are really doing seemed like an exciting idea.

“This is a show where the boss is on a dual mission,” Lambert explained. “One, he wants to find out what’s really going on on the front line, things he can’t see when he’s back at headquarters. Second, he’s looking for the unsung heroes of the company, so he’s looking for people that deserve some kind of thanks, maybe a promotion. It’s the mixture of kind of comedy that comes from the boss trying to do the front-line jobs and the emotion of these people, these coworkers that he spends time or she spends time with having that recognition that can be extremely emotional, and that was the idea behind the show.”

The first boss to go undercover on the show is Larry O’Donnell III, the President and COO of Waste Management (you’ve no doubt seen their trucks cruising around your neighborhood at one point or another), and when you watch the episode, you’ll see him doing everything from picking up trash to cleaning out Porta-Potties. Now, if you’re wondering how undercover he really is, given that he clearly has a camera crew following him, all they know is that he’s just this guy who’s working these frontline jobs…and, to hear him tell it, they got used to the camera’s presence pretty quickly.

“When I first went into this and I actually talked to our senior leadership team, I thought the most difficult part was going to be for me to be able to maintain my undercover status where the employees didn’t figure out who I was,” he said. “There were some managers along the way that recognized me, and I was able to get them off to the side and tell them to go home or stay in their office. You know, people ignored the cameras within about…it seemed like certainly within the first half hour. It was like they weren’t even there.”

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External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, News, TCA Blog 2010, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Reality

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