Category: Actors (Page 131 of 343)

Model Shop

October 6, 2009 /

Model Shop A shambling 1969 walkabout through the Venice and Hollywood sections of Los Angeles with music by proggy psychedelic band Spirit, “Model Shop” is not for everyone. Shot in gorgeous “Perfect Color” by the late Jacques Demy with dialogue by Carole Eastman (“Five Easy Pieces”), it’s a departure for the most traditional of French New Wave writer-directors who charmed the world with the great 1964 musical, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”

If you’re not fascinated by L.A.’s history and culture, you could quickly lose patience with “Model Shop.” There’s little story and Demy’s cast is mainly comprised of amateurs and two young working actors who might as well be. Still, you may want to stick around. “Model Shop” stars Gary Lockwood (“2001: A Space Odyssey”) as an aimless young unemployed architect who may or may not be contemplating dodging both the Vietnam-era draft and his live-in girlfriend (Alexandra Hay). Eventually, however, he spots a bewitching, somewhat older, woman played by Anouk Aimée (“8 1/2,” “A Man and a Woman”), who turns out to be recreating her role from Demy’s 1961 breakthrough, “Lola.” When Lockwood finally meets up with her in a model shop – where men would once pay to take their own non-nude girlie shots (life before the Internet!) – and then in her apartment, the film’s dramatic side is salvaged thanks to a wonderfully simple and very moving performance by Aimée, who shyly and beautifully takes over the movie. Slowly, an artful mess becomes a moving romance.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, Movie Dramas, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies

Entourage 6.12 – Give a Little Bit

October 5, 2009 /

After five seasons, “Entourage” finally lived up to its name this fall. While E, Turtle and Drama each enjoyed meatier storylines than normal this season, Vince’s role in the proceedings essentially amounted to an imaginary stalker and a random fuck scene of the week. But Vince’s marginalized contributions led to one of the strongest seasons of “Entourage” in a long time, culminating in one hell of a finale tonight.

Let’s hit the main arcs from least to most interesting, beginning with the saga of Turtle and Jamie-Lynn. I recently wrote in a comment on a different episode that Turtle’s UCLA co-ed was hotter than Jamie-Lynn, and I saw nothing tonight to make me alter that stance. I mean…good, GOD. And while it was nice to see Turtle resist her advances in the name of true love, I’m fairly confident that scene would have played out far differently in real life. Girls like that don’t get turned down that often, not by guys like Turtle, and especially not when they’re wearing outfits like that. I found it hilarious that they didn’t even bother to completely shut the vertical blinds in the room, but the topper was when Turtle offered his condolences for leaving after getting her worked up by asking, “You want me to go down on you or something?” Hey, Turtle is nothing if not generous. He’s also single now, after getting dumped right before his plane to New Zealand took off. May as well hop on over to Rome then, right?

I’ll lump Drama and Vince together here, if only because Vince’s auxiliary storyline couldn’t carry a paragraph by itself. Who would’ve thought that Turtle of all people would inspire Drama to figure out what’s truly important to him? You knew he wasn’t going to give up acting for good, but would he change his mind before the credits rolled tonight? Would it be too late? Turns out he killed at his “Melrose Place” audition but the network wants to go younger with the cast. I’ve got to say that the thought of building a show around Drama makes me chuckle. I just hope we get to see some of it next season. Of course, even better is that now Drama is free to go to Italy with Vince. Ah, but not before Matt Damon and his buddy LeBron James (um…what was with the glasses, LBJ?) railroad Vince into giving a bunch of hungry children $150,000. Actually, there were three great cameos tonight, if you include Bono showing up on Damon’s laptop. There were several classic lines in tonight’s episode, but one of the finest was when Damon bullied Drama into handing the phone to Vince. “Sorry, he Jason Bourne’d me,” Drama explained to Vince. Sounds reasonable to me.

I was tempted to rank Drama ahead of E but that would be underestimating just how shocked I was when E proposed to Sloan. In hindsight, maybe I should have expected it – I mean, what was so special about a lunch date at a restaurant the two of them used to go to? – but right up until E mentioned making a commitment to Sloan, I was oblivious. It was actually a pretty cool scene, capped by Sloan’s very believable reaction to the proposal. I feel almost embarrassed about the fact that I thought it was even remotely possible that they’d leave us hanging on Sloan’s answer until next season. I can’t remember an “Entourage” finale that didn’t have all the loose threads sewn up by the end of the episode, and tonight was certainly no different.

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Actors, Entourage, External Entertainment, External TV, TV, TV Comedies

Sony’s “Zombieland” and “Meatballs” satisfy at the box office

October 4, 2009 /

zombieland

“Zombieland” led our carnivorous movie weekend and met expectations almost on the nose with a horror-comedy-curse breaking estimate of $25 million on it’s opening weekend, thereby breaking the back of one of the most irritating box office canards of recent times. Another misunderstanding being promulgated by Nikki Finke, who is back with all vitriol-guns blazing this weekend, is that star Woody Harrelson was box office poison, but the “zom-com” was so appealing it did well anyway. Personally, I have a hard time with the whole notion of once popular stars becoming antithetical to good box office, but that’s a complicated rant for another day.

Cloudy With a Chance of MeatballsThe #2 spot went to “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” which showed some really meaty legs and dropped a terrific 33% in its third weekend with an estimated $16.7 million, says Andrew Stewart of Variety and everyone else. Once again, the only sure thing in Hollywood is a family film that parents enjoy watching themselves, and 3-D, at least for the time being, is a proven deal-sweetener for the right kind of movie. By the way, both “Zombieland” and “Meatballs” are from Sony, which means there’ll be delight at the old MGM lot in Culver City tomorrow.

And, as if the prove my point about family films and 3-D, this weekend’s third top grosser was the Disney/Pixar double-feature 3-D retreads of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2.” Not at all surprisingly, the combination of the two beloved animated features was an appealing entertainment value to parents and fun for kids, getting a very solid $12.5 million in just under 1800 theaters. It’s more impressive when you consider that the entire package runs 174 minutes, plus trailers. Considering the limited number of 3-D screens, both “Toy Story” and “Meatballs” doing so well is an interesting development.

After that, we have a bit of divergence from what I wrote in my preview post, in that the #4 film is the Ricky Gervais vehicle from Warners, “The Invention of Lying.” It brought in a modest — but possibly sufficient, given the budget — estimated $7.4 million via just slightly over 1700 screens. I’m going to guess that the growing cult of comedy demigod Gervais plus the film’s easy-to-grasp and inherently amusing premise, as well as the strong and well known supporting cast, gave it enough of a bump to beat the crowded low-end competition this weekend. Beaten by a pug nose was the much higher budgeted ($80 million) Bruce Willis science-fiction film “Surrogates,” with somewhere in the neighborhood of $7.3 million.

Ellen Page and Juliette Lewis in The well-reviewed and, you’d think, appealing sports comedy, “Whip It” disappointed with a mere $4.85 million estimated despite a strong cast led by Ellen Page, and Drew Barrymore’s involvement as both director and cast member. However, the studio is hoping that this underdog will benefit from word of mouth and ultimately win the big game with an unexpected surge. Who doesn’t love an underdog?

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

That Hamilton Woman

October 3, 2009 /

That Hamilton Woman

This 1941 historical biopic from producer-director Alexander Korda about the illicit affair between the heroic nemesis of Napoleon, Admiral Horatio Nelson (Laurence Olivier), and the vivacious Lady Emma Hamilton (Vivien Leigh) benefits from the magnificent production design of Vincent Korda and some extra acting oomph drawn from a real-life adulterous affair between its two A-list stars. On the other hand, there’s an idea out there that it has been unjustly dismissed ever since its release as ponderous wartime propaganda and an overblown romance. I might say exactly the same thing, minus the “un.”

Essentially commissioned by wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who later proclaimed it his favorite movie, “That Hamilton Woman” suffers from some ham-fisted parallels between Hitler and Napoleon as well as a certain amount of hypocrisy on the question of empire. (English colonialism good! French colonialism bad!) Far worse for the movie’s entertainment value, however, is its tediously stolid hero, an awful lot of gassy romantic dialogue, ponderous pacing, and an excessive 125 minute running time. On the plus side, the young Vivien Leigh, fresh off “Gone With the Wind,” is allowed to show her powerfully sexy and funny sides, and the film’s relative frankness in dealing with an open adulterous affair is something of a miracle considering that this British production was shot in the U.S. and made under American censorship. Nevertheless, the extras on this typically crisp Criterion DVD make the case that the making-of story here is far more engaging than the actual movie.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, Movie Dramas, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies

The kind of casting we really need more of….

October 3, 2009 /

If you’ve seen “Inglourious Basterds,” you may get a slight feeling of déjà vu here, but even Mr. Tarantino hasn’t quite gone to this place yet.

The man who embodied manly virtue as Tom Joad, Mr. Roberts, Wyatt Earp and young Abraham freaking Lincoln discusses how he came to take the part of the seriously unpleasant Frank in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.”

I’m dead serious in my title for this post, by the way, I’d love to see Tom Hanks or, I don’t know, Tobey Maguire, play a complete and total SOB. And I don’t mean merely “flawed,” characters — complete SOBs. James Bond villains, if need be! Actors love this stuff and it usually works.

Action Movies, Actors, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Dramas, Movies, test

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