Category: Actresses (Page 35 of 258)

Trailer for a Friday night: “Rabbit Hole”

October 22, 2010 /

I always like to say that no good movie really depresses me, no matter the subject matter, but that the happiest truly bad movie can really bring me down. Especially if it’s a hit. Still, when the topic is parents coping with the aftermath of the death of a child, even I might wonder if that’s pushing the sadness envelope, no matter how well handled. On the other hand, given strong material and a really good director anything is possible and this genuinely lovely trailer for “Rabbit Hole” starring Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart and directed by John Cameron Mitchell, hints that the movie might be a small miracle. Take a look, you’ll be okay.

Talking about walking a fine line. I wasn’t wild about Mitchell’s hardcore non-porn, “Short Bus,” though it had its moments. On the other hand, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” was the best musical of its decade in my book and also showed that humor and the worst human pain could coexist. Could this do for the subgenre of quality “depressing” movies with Oscar-friendly actors what Mitchell did for rock and roll musicals? Possibly.

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Dramas, Movies, Trailers

Box office preview: Can the ghostly demons of “Paranormal Activity 2” defeat the ghastly pranksters of “Jackass 3D”?

October 22, 2010 /

My Ouija board and jolly Carl DiOrio both agree that, yeah, Paramount’s “Paranormal Activity 2” has a very decent chance at unseating last weekend’s record setting debut of it’s “Jackass 3D.” While it may seem like an impossible-to-replicate one-off, apparently some care has been taken to avoid the kind of pitfalls that befell such unfortunate sequels as the non-mock-doc “Blair Witch 2.”

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Even more shockingly, 17 of the 21 Rotten Tomatoes critics that have so far reviewed this seemingly destined to (creatively) fail sequel are saying quite the opposite, praising the film for a reportedly clever set-up that ups the ante and even somehow manages the return of Katie Featherston from the original “Paranormal Activity.” Given they’re competing with themselves on two unconventional, low budget projects, it seems like a sure bet Paramount will have a very good weekend and there will be smiling faces on Melrose Monday morning. That’s especially so considering the $1 million reported budget for the horror sequel — which is huge compared to the $15,000 originally spent on Oren Peli’s smash, but tiny in a world where $20 million films are considered to be low-budget. The profits will come very quickly for this one.

“Jackass 3D” should suffer a significant drop as it’s the kind of movie that tends to blow it’s b.o. wad (boy, that sounds gross) on the first weekend. Still, given it’s $50 million opening weekend, that means that “Paranormal Activity 2” will have to get something well over $20 million to top it, assuming the drop isn’t truly catastrophic. A photo-finish — or in this case a creepy security camera finish — is far from impossible.

Matt Damon seeks out the Also dealing with otherworldly matters is Clint Eastwood‘s “Hereafter” from, as always, Warner Brothers. With Matt Damon leading an ensemble cast in another multi-story drama, the film is expanding from a very limited run last weekend to a wide 2000+ theater release. In a bit of critical topsy-turvy, the movie is not getting anyway near the critical goodwill of this week’s quickie horror sequel. It’s dividing reviewers, with “top critics” from major publications being significantly more friendly to the film. A good example would be Roger Ebert, whose written quite skeptically on his blog about an afterlife, a topic that’s he’s obviously been forced to deal with in the most personal way by real-life events. His conclusion about Eastwood’s movie, written by Peter Morgan of “The Queen” and the hugely underrated, “The Damned United,” are almost opposite to our own Jason Zingale and he’s given the film an outright rave review.

Things movie-wise are otherwise slow, with most of the activity this week in limited releases being in expanding films that have already been out for awhile. Among the movies adding scores of theaters nationwide are the very hot documentaries and meh-ish reviewed drama with a whiff of made-for-basic-cable to it, “Conviction.”

Sam Rockwel and Hillary Swank have

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

A roundtable chat with director Stephen Frears of “Tamara Drewe”

October 21, 2010 /

Stephen Frears on location for Anyone who thinks that the only interesting directors are the ones with obvious personal styles needs to take a long, hard long at the filmography of Stephen Frears. Something of a contemporary, English throwback to such versatile craftsmen of pre-auteur theory Hollywood as William Wyler, George Stevens, Robert Wise, and Michael Curtiz, the Cambridge-educated Frears began his career neck deep in the English New Wave cinema of the 1960s as an assistant director on Karel Riesz’s “Morgan!,” and Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 surreal youth revolt drama, “If…” Later moving on to directing for the BBC, his second theatrical feature, 1984’s “The Hit,” was mostly ignored despite an all-star cast, but did gain a cult following of which I am a proud member. Frears’ follow up collaboration with writer Hanif Kureishi, a then-bold cross-racial same-sex romance, “My Beautiful Laundrette,” co-starred a young Daniel Day Lewis and got more immediate results. It was a hit in arthouses on both sides of the Atlantic and helped make Lewis a star; it also paved the way for Frears’ smashing mainstream Hollywood debut, 1988’s Oscar-winning “Dangerous Liaisons.”

Since then, Frears has enjoyed success both here in the U.S. and at home in England with numerous BAFTAs and films as diverse as “High Fidelity” and “The Grifters” — for which he was nominated for an Oscar — as well as the ultra-English “The Queen” and “Mrs. Henderson Presents.” He’s dealt with modern-day cowboys (1998’s “The Hi-Lo Country”), English fascism (2000’s “Liam”), the monarchy (2006’s “The Queen”), and the illegal trade of human organs (2002’s “Dirty Pretty Things”). When George Clooney decided he wanted to try a live television remake of “Fail Safe” back in 2000, Frears handled the chore to no shortage of acclaim.

Frear’s latest, “Tamara Drewe,” has fared reasonably well with critics on the whole, though not so much with this particular longtime admirer. An adaptation of a graphic novel originally serialized in England’s The Guardian by cartoonist and children’s book author Posy Simmonds, the tale is a comic, modern-day homage to Thomas Hardy’s tragic 1874 novel, Far From the Madding Crowd starring Gemma Arterton as a formerly large nosed “ugly duckling” whose swannish post-operative return to her family’s estate sparks chaos at a writer’s retreat in ultra-picturesque rural England.

Apparently taking the casualness of California fully to heart, the 69-year-old Frears, who bears some resemblance to the late Rodney Dangerfield, arrived unshaven and in a t-shirt that had seen better days. If the “just rolled out of bed” look was disconcerting, however, we needn’t have worried. Frears was in good spirits and clearly enjoys sharing his views with the press.

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Actors, Actresses, Celebrities, External Entertainment, External Movies, Interviews, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News

Midweek movie news — the fatigue edition!

October 21, 2010 /

I’m overtired and miles from home in a West L.A. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and I probably should have just thrown up another embed and gone for home and some sleep, but the movie news is just not waiting tonight…

* Johnny Depp is apparently wanting to star in a new version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Thin Man,” or perhaps the series of really fun movies starring the great William Powell and Myrna Loy that the original 1934 movie adaptation spawned. I’ve no particular clue why he’d want Rob Marshall — not a bad director at all, but also not a great one and prone to ADHD editing — when he could have his pick. Of course, selecting a Nora Charles to go with his Nick will be half the fun — the possibilities are pretty endless though for some reason the only person I can think of right now is Cate Blanchett. She’s great, but don’t ask me why she comes to mind. It’s probably the fatigue. One big problem: Nick and Nora are a couple of merry alcoholics — or at least huge problem drinkers. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle that aspect of the property in today’s more abstemious world, although I suppose Nick Charles isn’t that far removed from Jack Sparrow or Keith Richard.

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* They worked mostly in other media, but they all had their moments in the movie sun: RIP Barbara Billingsley, Tom Bosley and, er, Bob Guccione.

* Cinephile’s cinephile uber-blogger David Hudson, who is based in Germany, gives us a fascinating post-mortem look at a writer and filmmaker I’ve never heard of until now, Thomas Harlan. The key fact here: Harlan’s father directed “Jew Suss,” the most notorious narrative antisemitic film produced by Joseph Goebbel’s Nazi UFA, and had been actively dealing with the legacy.

* Sometimes an actor blends so seamlessly into a part you wonder whether she is really even acting at all.

* In the battle of Hobbit-man Peter Jackson versus the NZ/Oz/U.S. unions, it sure looks like the unions blinked. This is probably the first such battle where I’m glad of it.

* “Giallo” is the name for the subgenre of bloody horror flicks from Italy that predated American slasher films with more mature characters and a heck of a lot more style from directors like Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Apparently wanting to get in on the whole self-awareness thing, Argento, who unbelievably is only just turning 70, made a movie actually called “Giallo” starring Adrien Brody. Brody says the producers didn’t pay him and is suing them and blocking the release of the movie for the time being. That’s always a mistake — not paying your star, I mean.

* Ben Affleck is considering switching from character-driven crime fiction adaptations to a character-driven fantasy-drama adaptation, “Replay.” I gather the book by the late Ken Groomwood is an old favorite of my highly esteemed colleague Will Harris and won a World Fantasy Award in 1987. Why have I never heard of it before?

* “Heckraiser“?

* Today’s tie for the “is this really news” prize: Robert Downey, Jr. “eyes” playing a really intense guy who gets involved in paranoid wackiness. Also, crazed lunatic Mel Gibson follows the path of reformed ear-biter Mike Tyson and will appear in “The Hangover 2” according to the totally awesome-in-my-book Jodie Foster, who seems to be doing whatever she can to try and salvage her widely discussed movie, “The Beaver” by trying to help repair his insanely in-shambles image. Talk about strange bedfellows.

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

Once more with whinging

October 19, 2010 /

It has yet to spawn a full on blogosphere geek tantrum though that may be just a matter of time, but the news is out tonight via Mike Fleming that “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy is “eying” a remake of, you guessed it, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Now, it’s anyone’s guess how much this story may be a cannily opportunistic exaggeration to pump up the ratings of the upcoming 10/26 “Glee” episode paying homage to Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien’s odd little musical. Russ Fischer is certain an actual film would be a “fool’s errand.” I don’t want to reiterate my standard defense of remakes in theory (though not always in practice, lord knows) for the millionth time, but I will say there’s absolutely nothing holy or perfect about this particular original. I actually think that “Rocky Horror” in a funny way became enormous not so much because it was partly great, but because it was also badly flawed. The first 30-45 minutes of the film are a complete hoot and really did touch a huge socio-political-sexual nerve, but the second half becomes increasingly morose and dull. Hence, the need to dress up, yell funny stuff back at the screen, throw stuff, etc. I certainly wouldn’t mind a version that actually worked without audience participation — like an actual movie.

On the other hand, there is one thing that any remake by anyone will find impossible to top, and that’s Mr. Tim Curry.

What a performance. Not that Barry Bostwick or especially Susan Sarandon were exactly chopped liver  — I’m also a pretty big fan of the late Charles Gray, who played the narrator about as perfectly as you could imagine. Meat Loaf wasn’t bad either, and I had a bit of a crush on Nell “Little Nell” Campbell’s tap-dancing Ruby Keeler homage, Columbia. (On the topic of redheads — I’m for them.) Where was I? Ah, never mind.

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies, TV

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