Whether you love or hate the idea of Disney acquiring and expanding the Star Wars franchise, you can’t say the House of Mouse isn’t treating Episode VII like the prestige project is deserves to be. Vulture reports that screenwriter Michael Arndt, who won an Oscar for his Little Miss Sunshine script, and was nominated for another with Toy Story 3 , is the leading candidate to write the new Star Wars script The website cites insiders who say that Arndt, who’s also the screenwriter for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire , has written a 40- to 50-page treatment, and will probably be one of the screenwriters on board when shooting begins in 2014. In addition to being a successful screenwriter who’s worked successfully with Pixar, Vulture notes that Arndt has lectured extensively on “why the original Star Wars ending is so creatively satisfying.” Turns out it’s not because there’s a big explosion at the end. Although the plot of Episode VII remains the subject of much speculation , Vulture indicates that Disney wants to bring back the three main characters from the original Star Wars : Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo. Reportedly, Harrison Ford is “open” to reprising that last role , despite his apparently conflicted feelings about the character that made him a bankable actor. More ‘Star Wars 7’ News: Harrison Ford Might Return As Han Solo − And Die Happy Luke Skywalker & Princess Leia Knew Of More Star Wars Episodes; Surprised By Lucasfilm Sale ‘Leaked’ Disney ‘Star Wars Episode VII’ Posters Revealed By Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Whether you love or hate the idea of Disney acquiring and expanding the Star Wars franchise, you can’t say the House of Mouse isn’t treating Episode VII like the prestige project is deserves to be. Vulture reports that screenwriter Michael Arndt, who won an Oscar for his Little Miss Sunshine script, and was nominated for another with Toy Story 3 , is the leading candidate to write the new Star Wars script The website cites insiders who say that Arndt, who’s also the screenwriter for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire , has written a 40- to 50-page treatment, and will probably be one of the screenwriters on board when shooting begins in 2014. In addition to being a successful screenwriter who’s worked successfully with Pixar, Vulture notes that Arndt has lectured extensively on “why the original Star Wars ending is so creatively satisfying.” Turns out it’s not because there’s a big explosion at the end. Although the plot of Episode VII remains the subject of much speculation , Vulture indicates that Disney wants to bring back the three main characters from the original Star Wars : Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo. Reportedly, Harrison Ford is “open” to reprising that last role , despite his apparently conflicted feelings about the character that made him a bankable actor. More ‘Star Wars 7’ News: Harrison Ford Might Return As Han Solo − And Die Happy Luke Skywalker & Princess Leia Knew Of More Star Wars Episodes; Surprised By Lucasfilm Sale ‘Leaked’ Disney ‘Star Wars Episode VII’ Posters Revealed By Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
The release of Lincoln , the new film from Steven Spielberg , is intended to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the days leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation and not the recent election; it doesn’t try to make a metaphor out of its portrayal of the 16th President or to force comparisons to our current commander-in-chief and the state of the country he’s overseeing, but it still couldn’t feel more timely. Written by Tony Kushner, the film covers the last four months in the life of Abraham Lincoln ( Daniel Day-Lewis ), as he battles to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment and bring an end to the Civil War, and up until an overly soft coda it is a magnificently warts-and-all portrait and appreciation of democracy at work in all its bickering, lively messiness. The difficulty of getting consensus on what’s clear now to be the righting of a massive ethical wrong allows for unlikely suspense and drama in what would be, had it existed back then, the domain of C-SPAN. The stakes are considerable, but Spielberg has no need to convince anyone of the awfulness of slavery. Instead, he makes a case for the democratic process, despite its flaws — as the best way for these decisions to be examined and hammered out, a place for moral purpose to meet practical concerns. A composition of browns and grays and dark rooms illuminated by dim period lighting, Lincoln opens with two scenes that establish it has little desire to gaze at its subject or era with starry eyes. A glimpse of the war shows men floundering and dying in the mud, jabbing bayonets in each others’ guts. (Spielberg has no use, these days, in prettying up battle.) In the scene following, we watch soldiers greet Lincoln, all adoring, though not all content to simply praise: While two young white soldiers gawk over how tall he is, an African American one questions why there are still no commissioned officers of color as his friend tries to shush him. Lincoln receives and jokes with them all with characteristic unhurried equanimity, a quality that sees him through subsequent larger version of this interaction, in which even those who are firmly on his side have their own requests and additional needs to be pursued. With the help of a very good, fundamentally restrained performance from Day-Lewis, Lincoln offers up its protagonist as a flesh-and-blood being while allowing us to understand why his status in the country is already, as one of his officials puts it, “semi-divine.” Wielding a folksy charm and remaining even-keeled in the most tense of situations — his Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Bruce McGill) storms off in frustration at one point when he realizes the President is about to launch into another anecdote — Lincoln’s nobility shines through in his unswerving conviction for what is right and his unfussiness about how to achieve it. Certain that the amendment must go through before the war ends, or risk not getting passed at all, Lincoln has Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) hire a slightly disreputable trio (James Spader, John Hawkes and Tim Blake Nelson) to offer up patronage jobs to the outgoing Democrats in the House of Representatives in exchange for their votes. In his own Republican party, he tries to placate the conservatives, led by Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook), who are afraid of chasing away support with “extreme” views on things like freed slaves getting the vote, while winning over the radicals, led by the prickly Thaddeus Stevens ( Tommy Lee Jones at his most wonderfully irascible ), who consider compromise to be a betrayal of their beliefs about equality. Half the working character actors in Hollywood don wretched period facial hair and show up in small but memorable roles in Lincoln — Jackie Earle Haley, Jared Harris, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Walton Goggins are just a few, while more famous faces like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Sally Field show up as son Robert and wife Mary Todd Lincoln, who push and pull their patriarch over Robert’s desire to enlist. But this is Day-Lewis’ movie, and he does with the meditative inner stillness of his character a wonderful thing — he finds a type of heroism that runs counter to all of the usual showy movie signifiers of such a quality. The climactic vote in Lincoln , a rousing scene in which each congressman calls out his vote to the roar of his colleagues and the observers, takes place with the title character playing quietly with his young son in the White House, having done all he can. After months of a presidential campaign that illustrated the United States as a nation in which communication between parties and points of view has largely ceased, Lincoln feels like a work of legitimate importance, and not only because it shows that people did just as much snarky, politicized yelling back in 1865. Spielberg has made a film that shows the legislative process as work but also as an ongoing conversation, one in which individual contact and shifts in perception can add up to gradual change, that argues multiple differing points of view needn’t leave the country immobile. Democracy is such that there will always be those who are displeased with the way votes went, but this was the moment in our history in which we declared that it didn’t mean they were allowed to secede and start their own country — that we were going to be in this together, one quarreling, diverse whole united in this national identity. As divided as the present can feel, there’s something unaffectedly patriotic about this sentiment, one that lightens this very fine film from within. Read more on Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln . Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The release of Lincoln , the new film from Steven Spielberg , is intended to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the days leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation and not the recent election; it doesn’t try to make a metaphor out of its portrayal of the 16th President or to force comparisons to our current commander-in-chief and the state of the country he’s overseeing, but it still couldn’t feel more timely. Written by Tony Kushner, the film covers the last four months in the life of Abraham Lincoln ( Daniel Day-Lewis ), as he battles to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment and bring an end to the Civil War, and up until an overly soft coda it is a magnificently warts-and-all portrait and appreciation of democracy at work in all its bickering, lively messiness. The difficulty of getting consensus on what’s clear now to be the righting of a massive ethical wrong allows for unlikely suspense and drama in what would be, had it existed back then, the domain of C-SPAN. The stakes are considerable, but Spielberg has no need to convince anyone of the awfulness of slavery. Instead, he makes a case for the democratic process, despite its flaws — as the best way for these decisions to be examined and hammered out, a place for moral purpose to meet practical concerns. A composition of browns and grays and dark rooms illuminated by dim period lighting, Lincoln opens with two scenes that establish it has little desire to gaze at its subject or era with starry eyes. A glimpse of the war shows men floundering and dying in the mud, jabbing bayonets in each others’ guts. (Spielberg has no use, these days, in prettying up battle.) In the scene following, we watch soldiers greet Lincoln, all adoring, though not all content to simply praise: While two young white soldiers gawk over how tall he is, an African American one questions why there are still no commissioned officers of color as his friend tries to shush him. Lincoln receives and jokes with them all with characteristic unhurried equanimity, a quality that sees him through subsequent larger version of this interaction, in which even those who are firmly on his side have their own requests and additional needs to be pursued. With the help of a very good, fundamentally restrained performance from Day-Lewis, Lincoln offers up its protagonist as a flesh-and-blood being while allowing us to understand why his status in the country is already, as one of his officials puts it, “semi-divine.” Wielding a folksy charm and remaining even-keeled in the most tense of situations — his Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Bruce McGill) storms off in frustration at one point when he realizes the President is about to launch into another anecdote — Lincoln’s nobility shines through in his unswerving conviction for what is right and his unfussiness about how to achieve it. Certain that the amendment must go through before the war ends, or risk not getting passed at all, Lincoln has Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) hire a slightly disreputable trio (James Spader, John Hawkes and Tim Blake Nelson) to offer up patronage jobs to the outgoing Democrats in the House of Representatives in exchange for their votes. In his own Republican party, he tries to placate the conservatives, led by Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook), who are afraid of chasing away support with “extreme” views on things like freed slaves getting the vote, while winning over the radicals, led by the prickly Thaddeus Stevens ( Tommy Lee Jones at his most wonderfully irascible ), who consider compromise to be a betrayal of their beliefs about equality. Half the working character actors in Hollywood don wretched period facial hair and show up in small but memorable roles in Lincoln — Jackie Earle Haley, Jared Harris, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Walton Goggins are just a few, while more famous faces like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Sally Field show up as son Robert and wife Mary Todd Lincoln, who push and pull their patriarch over Robert’s desire to enlist. But this is Day-Lewis’ movie, and he does with the meditative inner stillness of his character a wonderful thing — he finds a type of heroism that runs counter to all of the usual showy movie signifiers of such a quality. The climactic vote in Lincoln , a rousing scene in which each congressman calls out his vote to the roar of his colleagues and the observers, takes place with the title character playing quietly with his young son in the White House, having done all he can. After months of a presidential campaign that illustrated the United States as a nation in which communication between parties and points of view has largely ceased, Lincoln feels like a work of legitimate importance, and not only because it shows that people did just as much snarky, politicized yelling back in 1865. Spielberg has made a film that shows the legislative process as work but also as an ongoing conversation, one in which individual contact and shifts in perception can add up to gradual change, that argues multiple differing points of view needn’t leave the country immobile. Democracy is such that there will always be those who are displeased with the way votes went, but this was the moment in our history in which we declared that it didn’t mean they were allowed to secede and start their own country — that we were going to be in this together, one quarreling, diverse whole united in this national identity. As divided as the present can feel, there’s something unaffectedly patriotic about this sentiment, one that lightens this very fine film from within. Read more on Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln . Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Well, maybe Brad Pitt won’t save all of us. As you can see in the first full trailer for Marc Forster’s big-budget action pic World War Z (via Apple), a few billion Earthlings will kick the bucket (but will probably reanimate, so there’s that) when the undead rise against us. Watch the trailer to get a look at Pitt’s shaggy-maned family man hero, who must to leave his wife (Mireille Enos) and their kids to go fight the zombie apocalypse for the sake of humanity in next summer’s World War Z . Head to Apple for the trailer debut. The full trailer has me breathing a sigh of relief after this week’s rather underwhelming trailer tease ; I can get used to World War Z ‘s superfast undead swarms, pouring through streets and leaping like lemmings off of buildings chasing desperately after Pitt’s delicious, delicious body. I mean brain. Or whatever these zombies eat. It must be high in protein to keep this kind of zombie metabolism going. Despite the departures from the book that will have lit fans up in arms, and the vaguely I Am Legend / War of the Worlds vibe this gives off, World War Z has me excited to see Pitt as an action hero. And how great is it that he’s doing a rare action turn while looking like a long-haired crunchy hippie dad? World War Z hits theaters June 21, 2013. How’s it look to you, Movieliners? Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Well, maybe Brad Pitt won’t save all of us. As you can see in the first full trailer for Marc Forster’s big-budget action pic World War Z (via Apple), a few billion Earthlings will kick the bucket (but will probably reanimate, so there’s that) when the undead rise against us. Watch the trailer to get a look at Pitt’s shaggy-maned family man hero, who must to leave his wife (Mireille Enos) and their kids to go fight the zombie apocalypse for the sake of humanity in next summer’s World War Z . Head to Apple for the trailer debut. The full trailer has me breathing a sigh of relief after this week’s rather underwhelming trailer tease ; I can get used to World War Z ‘s superfast undead swarms, pouring through streets and leaping like lemmings off of buildings chasing desperately after Pitt’s delicious, delicious body. I mean brain. Or whatever these zombies eat. It must be high in protein to keep this kind of zombie metabolism going. Despite the departures from the book that will have lit fans up in arms, and the vaguely I Am Legend / War of the Worlds vibe this gives off, World War Z has me excited to see Pitt as an action hero. And how great is it that he’s doing a rare action turn while looking like a long-haired crunchy hippie dad? World War Z hits theaters June 21, 2013. How’s it look to you, Movieliners? Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Brad Pitt headed to WeHo in support of a documentary he produced and took a swipe at the decades-old war on drugs. Pitt apparently just said ‘yes’ back in the day, but said his days dabbling in illegal substances have long gone. Why We Fight director Eugene Jarecki bowed his latest The House I Live In and stopped in a West Hollywood theater for a Q&A with his super-star producer who flew in from Europe for a chat. “My drug days have long since passed,” Pitt told THR as reported by The Guardian . “But I could probably land in any American city and within 24 hours find whatever you want. But we still support this charade called the drug war. We spent a trillion dollars over 40 years and a lot of people have lost their lives over it.” Pitt felt compelled to get involved with the project which won a grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January. He said that the “subject has bugged me for a long time. It’s a backward strategy. It makes no sense and we keep going on the path like we’re winning, when it perpetuates more drugs being used.” Jarecki added his two cents and jokingly called Pitt “a drug addict,” and likened the U.S. government’s anti-drug crusade to Prohibition. “After prohibition, we regrouped and said it was a bad idea what we’re doing. Now we have a system where alcohol is illegal for children; the government profits off it; grownups can use it responsibly, which means if I go out in my car and kill some one it’s manslaughter. But if I’ve been drinking, it’s an aggravating prosecutorial factor. So why is it that drugs – which are less damaging to public health than alcohol – why is it we treat them more severely?” [ Source: The Guardian ]
Now that Jennifer Aniston is engaged to Justin Theroux , the question is when they’ll get married – and whether they’ll beat Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie! Not that it matters, of course – both Jen and Brad wish each other the best and don’t play into the supposed rivalry celebrity gossip magazines love. But it’s fun to speculate, and it seems hard to believe that Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux won’t get hitched first, even if they’ve been engaged for 48 hours. Brad and Jen got together in 1998, then married in 2000. In 2005, they announced their separation after 4 1/2 years of marriage – the first marriage for both. Brad first met Angelina on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith in 2003. While the couple have six children – Maddox, 10, Pax, 8, Zahara, 7, Shiloh, 5 and twins Knox and Vivienne, 3 – Brad only popped the question earlier this year. Pitt claimed for years that he wouldn’t get married again until gay marriage was legal everywhere, but then proposed in something of a surprise move. There was talk that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie would get hitched this past weekend, actually, though it turned out to be just that … talk. Bogus talk. Anyway, which couple do you think will wed first?
Also in Thursday morning’s round-up of news briefs: Warner Bros passes the domestic $1 billion mark again. A Prometheus sequel is moving forward, Christopher Eccleston is a Marvel villain and Broadway to honor Gore Vidal. Nicole Kidman to Join Lars von Trier’s The Nymphomaniac Kidman revealed she’ll work a “few days” on Danish director Lars von Trier’s two-part The Nymphomaniac , which is set to star Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard and Willem Dafoe. She starred in the director’s Dogville , The Playlist reports via AlloCine . Warner Bros Passes $1 Billion at Domestic Box Office The milestone has been reached 12 years in a row, which makes Warner Bros. the only studio to have accomplished the feat. The Dark Knight Rises lead this year’s pack with $304M in its first 12 days. Also scoring well is Magic Mike ($108.5M), Deadline reports . Prometheus Sequel Planned by Ridley Scott Scott is moving ahead with plans for a sequel, his return to the Alien universe. His return to the genre after three decades grossed over $300 million worldwide from a budget of $130 million, The Guardian reports . Paz Vega Joins Grace of Monaco as Maria Callas Vega will play the haughty opera singer in the film, which stars Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly. The director of Edith Piaf biopic La vie en rose , Olivier Dahan, will direct Grace of Monaco from a script by Arash Amel. The story centers on a six-month period in 1962 when Monaco had a dispute with France and Princess Grace worked behind the scenes to prevent a coup. THR reports . Christopher Eccleston to Play Thor 2 Villain Eccleston will star opposite Chris Hemsworth in the told of Malekith The Accursed in Marvel Studios’ Thor: The Dark World . Malekith is a “super-villain in the Marvel Universe, the ruler of the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim, Deadline reports . Broadway to Dim Lights in Memory of Gore Vidal Broadway theaters will dim their lights August 3rd in memory of Gore Vidal who died this week . His play The Best Man is currently playing at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. The cast is dedicating its performances next tweak to his memory, The Guardian reports .
The film played to a mixture of reactions when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and this latest film by Andrew Dominik, starring Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta packs a wallop of gun shots, fights and explosions. Harvey Weinstein recently suggested a violence summit might be in order to take place among Hollywood types in the wake of the tragedy in Aurora, CO. If so, this Weinstein Company release may be a good example of what he’s talking about. But in Cannes, both Dominik and Pitt took exception to suggestions the film had “too much violence.” “I don’t understand the obsession with violence,” Dominik said. “It’s like people who don’t want to show children fairy tales. But fairy tales dramatize children’s concerns and emotions.” Added Pitt: “Violence is an accepted part of the gangster world. It’s an accepted possibility when dealing in crime. I’d have a much harder problem playing a racist for instance than, say, shooting someone right in the face.” Pitt’s character in Killing Them Softly is centered on self-interest. He doesn’t particularly crave violence, but uses it as a means to an end. He’s not bloodthirsty nor does he particularly find murder palatable, but he’s willing to do it as painlessly as possible in order to get ahead. “It’s a metaphor for business — it’s cutthroat but has to be done,” he said. The trailer opens with a robbery pulled off during a mob-packed back room card game. The trailer continues with intermittent moments of Pitt’s character, Jackie Cogan, meandering sveltely through hails of bullets and high-stakes banter. Watch the trailer on YouTube .
