Richard D. “Dick” Zanuck, a scion of old Hollywood who produced blockbusters like Jaws and such Oscar-friendly fare as Driving Miss Daisy , died today after suffering a heart attack. He was 77. Zanuck took the production reins of 20th Century Fox — which his legendary father Darryl had helped bring to prominence before him — by the time he was 28. He would later team with partner David Brown to shepherd the work of Steven Spielberg to prominence before working with a deep roster of filmmakers including Sidney Lumet ( The Verdict ), Ron Howard ( Cocoon ) and frequent collaborator Tim Burton. Zanuck is survived by his wife Lili Fini Zanuck (with whom he shared Best Picture Oscar honors for Driving Miss Daisy ) and sons Harrison and Dean. [ Deadline ]
Red Lights , the new film from Buried director Rodrigo Cortés, weds an earnest, simplified exploration of the nature of faith with a goofy, gussied-up B-movie plot about a pair of academics who travel around debunking extrasensory phenomenon. As marriages go, it’s a troubled one, but it certainly makes for some interesting fights across the dinner table. Red Lights has formidable resources at its disposal, including an almost preposterously talented cast made up of Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy, Robert De Niro (showing rare flickers of life), Elizabeth Olsen and others, as well as Cortés’s own undeniable filmmaking talent. This is a man who managed to draw suspense out of an hour and a half of Ryan Reynolds trapped in a box without even letting the guy take off his shirt . Set free to wander through a genre-inflected landscape filled with would-be clairvoyants summoning spirits in creaky buildings and alleged mystics calling people out of audiences to heal them, he manages to sustain an unsettling tension that lasts until you realize it’s a misdirect. As the film moves from a wry but jolt-filled journey with a pair of professional skeptics to a clash between one of them and the world’s foremost self-proclaimed psychic, it loses momentum and the sense of the unexpected that gave it fuel. Its most operatic moments are actually its weakest. That battle escalates between academic Tom Buckley (Murphy) and Simon Silver (De Niro), a famous phenom who’s returned to the public eye after years of retirement. Tom is a physicist who, for personal reasons, has ended up as the protégé and sort-of surrogate child of Dr. Margaret Matheson (Weaver), a psychologist and paranormal investigator. Such is the lightly warped reality the film inhabits that the two work in an underfunded branch of a university department called the Scientific Paranormal Research Center, an endeavor more interested in supporting the research led by Paul Shackleton (Toby Jones) to prove the existence of telepathic abilities. The underlying theme of Red Lights is that the frauds and hustlers Margaret and Tom encounter succeed in duping people because we want to believe them, to see in them evidence that there is something beyond the world as we perceive it. The film generally steers clear of religion (though it contains a nod to phony faith healer Peter Popoff), allowing, for better and worse, table-levitating mediums and spoon-bending telekinetics to augur the potential mysteries of the universe. It’s a decision that frees the movie from heavier metaphysical obligations, but it also sets the story wackily off-balance by having as its primary symbols of faith musty ESP stunts like the reading of Zener cards or thoughtography. When Margaret reveals to Tom that the reason she’s kept her long-comatose son alive despite the near-impossibility of his waking is that she doesn’t believe there’s anything beyond death, it feels flimsy that the way she channels this is by proving to the gullible that their houses aren’t really haunted. Weaver and Murphy are good together, their characters’ interactions belying fondness, familiarity and trust under the professional reserve. They share a sincere drive to disprove claims of psychic phenomena, though because of what they do they’re perceived as wet blankets — “I just hope he shows those smart-ass college know-it-alls,” one Silver follower spits when the telepath agrees to let Shackleton and his coworkers test his abilities in a lab. Before Silver swallows the second half of the movie, Margaret and Tom travel around to different sites of reported paranormal activity, scenes Cortés winkingly stages as convincing brushes with the beyond — a seance, a child who can channel spirits, a man with the power to cure illness — before allowing our protagonists to reveal the prosaic reality of what’s underneath. Cortés’s restless, circling camera (the cinematographer is Xavi Giménez) gives the film a sense of tension even when little actually comes of it — a jump scare in a scene of Margaret at home seems to exist mainly to show that even a skeptic can be vulnerable to the willies. And Silver, who’s blind and escorted everywhere by a smirking assistant played by Joely Richardson, understands that weakness and targets it. Whether or not Silver has actual power is an open question throughout the latter part of the film — he left the public eye after one of his foremost detractors died ominously of a sudden heart attack at one of his shows — but what’s certain is that he’s a master manipulator. The “red lights” of the title are the signs Margaret searches for that indicate trickery — hidden motivations, advanced groundwork, glimpses of susceptibility. Silver doesn’t seem to show any red lights, though as Tom becomes the film’s focus and obsesses with unveiling the man as a fraud, he seems himself less a reliable agent and more one with his own biases to prove. De Niro, preening and smug in his sunglasses, makes for an enigmatically despicable antagonist, but Tom’s unbalanced need to take him down feels dictated not by motivation but by the movie itself. Dead birds turn up outside his house, electronics short out in sprays of sparks — coincidence or evidence of Silver’s paranormal aggression? The movie muddles to a rug-pulling ending that doesn’t, despite its efforts, shed new light on what’s come before. Instead, it feels like an unsuccessful attempt to yank the two diverging aspects of the film — its thoughts on faith versus its psychic explorations — together for some finality when they’ve actually drifted even further apart. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The Dark Knight Rises director heaped praise on actress Anne Hathaway ahead of the final Batman installment, which opens July 20th. He said Hathaway performed so well as the human-feline-vixen that she deserves her own spin-off movie. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the British-born filmmaker will spearhead a Catwoman enterprise himself. “Anne is incredibly precise and articulate about the psychology of the character. She’s really built it from the ground up, it’s just a delight to watch her perform,” he said to Access Hollywood as reported via The Guardian. “The thing she does in those heels is not to be taken lightly. She’s an incredible character and we’re very excited to see her and hopefully we’ll leave people wanting more.” But as far as Gotham, Batman and the like are concerned, Nolan said he’s ready to do something else. “I’m done. I’ve told our story and I’m moving on [but] I certainly think she deserves it – she’s incredible.” Anne Hathaway’s character revises Michelle Pfeiffer’s version from 1992’s Batman Returns in which she plays Selina Kyle. The Dark Knight Rises is the third and final installment of Nolan’s Batman series which opened in 2005 with Batman Begins . The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale as Batman as well as Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman. Newcomers include Hathaway as Catwoman/Selina Kyle, Tom Hardy as the villain Bane and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a Gotham policeman. The film takes place eight years after where The Dark Knight left off. [Source: The Guardian ]
Also in Thursday morning’s round-up of news briefs, DreamWorks Animation will lend its characters to a new theme park; director Joe Cornish is set to adapt a robot comic-book; James Cameron takes his mini 3-D camera to L.A.’s X Games and China cracks down even harder on internet movie and video content. Darren Aronofsky Tweets a Noah Teaser The Black Swan director tweeted what presumably looks like construction of the ark that carried all life forms to safety from the earthly flood. He said: I dreamt about this since I was 13. And now it’s a reality. Genesis 6:14 #noah: http://t.co/QLaIuqXh. The film is slated for release in Spring 2014. Around the ‘net… DreamWorks Animation Theme Park Heads to New Jersey DreamWorks Animation will bring its movie characters to a planned in-door amusement park in the New Jersey Meadowlands, ten miles west of New York City, Deadline reports . Fangirls Fuel Comic-Con Growth Long lines of women camped out to get into the Twilight panel. The movie has increased attendance to around 40%, which has resulted in Hollywood sending over more femme-friendly fare, Variety reports . Joe Cornish to Direct Graphic Novel Rust Attack the Block director Joe Cornish is set to adapt Royden Lepp’s comic-book robot on the prairies story Rust for 20th Century Fox. Fox’s synopsis reads: “”Life on the Taylor family farm was difficult enough before Jet Jones crashes into the barn, chased by a giant decommissioned war robot!” The Guardian reports . James Cameron Debuts Ultra-Mini 3-D Camera at X Games Cameron used the camera in March when he explored the Mariana Trench and is now taking the device to ESPN’s X Games in Los Angeles, THR reports . Internet Content Faces More Chinese Scrutiny A new push by Chinese regulators will force internet video providers to pre-screen programming including drama series and mini-movies before they’re posted, Deadline reports via A.P.
The ever-expanding Crowdsource Era has a new milestone: Charlie Kaufman needs $200,000 to help make a 40-minute stop-motion animated film called Anomalisa , and he’s inviting exiled Community creator Dan Harmon — and you — along to help. The project, which has already raised $80,000 on Kickstarter , brings Kaufman, Harmon, and the animators at Starburns Industries ( Moral Orel , the stop-motion Community Christmas episode) together to tell the story of a motivational speaker who is “crippled by the mundanity of life” until “suddenly one day, a girl’s voice pierces through the veil of nothingness. She fills him with such a rush of ‘aliveness,’ he’s willing to abandon everything and everyone, including his own family, and escape with her to a better life.” Duke Johnson will direct, and apparently you will pay for it — though you can’t really argue with the incentives: A 20-page screenplay about you, written by Dan Harmon? Hand-crafted puppets and/or sets? Executive producer credit? Skype chats with the filmmakers? Pretty amazing, and not cheap: The really good stuff will run you $1,000 and up, with some of the top prizes already spoken for. Maybe there is an aftermarket eBay kind of thing to auction off Kickstarter rewards? Someone should get on that. Anyway, good luck to all! [ Kickstarter via Gawker ]
At first glance, Mira Sorvino’s character in Union Square , a claustrophobic but well-acted sibling chamber piece, bears a striking resemblance to Linda Ash, the tacky hooker with the heart of gold from Mighty Aphrodite . The latter role won Sorvino an Oscar in 1996, and though she has worked steadily since that time the actress has suffered from that vague but chronic condition of feeling under-seen. With its small cast and focus on performance, Union Square promises to be a welcome showcase for Sorvino, and the early rhymes with Miss Linda are intriguingly open-ended. Lucy (Sorvino) is a character, all right. After the opening 10 minutes, in which we watch the Bronx-dwelling, stack-heeled, short-skirted, generally disheveled blonde arrive in Union Square, fine-tune a text message, take a spin around Filene’s Basement, then have a colossal meltdown when the object of her visit – a shadowy lover – refuses to see her or take her next dozen calls, the idea of spending an entire movie with Lucy fills one with dread. If you saw her smeared face coming on the subway, you’d switch cars. Director Nancy Savoca (who co-wrote the script with Mary Tobler) leans heavily on Lucy’s repellent qualities right up front. She’s unstable, unseemly, un-self-aware, a guileless garbage-mouth; at the same time, she’s streetwise and an exposed nerve out in the world. As a fallback Lucy shows up at the door of an estranged friend who we soon learn is her sister. Jenny (Tammy Blanchard) is Lucy’s direct inverse: She runs a holistic product business with her fiancé Andy (Christopher Backus), and her sleek Manhattan apartment has pointed ground rules: No noise, no shoes, no dogs, and no smoking. No sooner is she introduced to share our Lucy-generated dismay than Jenny starts to seem like a piece of work herself. Savoca spends too much time inviting us to gawp at Lucy’s hot messiness, and the contrast between them is neat and condescending. Jenny and Andy (who looks, as Lucy observes, just like Superman) live meticulously, down to the ginseng and the running log, and Lucy’s arrival seems to paralyze her sister. They have passed three years without contact, and no trace of the Bronx can be detected in Jenny’s voice or bearing. This, it is later revealed, is quite deliberate. As far as the blithely incurious Andy is concerned, Jenny is a sweet girl from Maine with no family to speak of. Thus a dilemma is set up, and through its resolution we hope Lucy and Jenny will emerge as something more than counterpoint caricatures of hysteria and Stepford catatonia. Which is not to say the actresses aren’t involving: Sorvino in particular develops a depth and pathos to shore up her city-girl charisma. Lucy decides to protect her sister’s secret, for as long as it lasts, and keeps several of her own close at hand. One involves their wayward mother (played, in a brief vignette, by Patti Lupone), and once it is divulged Lucy and Jenny begin to emerge as human beings with a history. The script can’t bring their relationship into a more complex, convincing relief, but Union Square comes closer to that than you would first imagine. Its best moments find Sorvino and Blanchard out of the apartment, where the direction and the writing feel more stagebound. Wending through the Union Square market, losing each other in a light-pulsing nightclub, and falling apart at the pier, they feel most like what they are: Bewildered sisters living in two kinds of reaction to their roots. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Michael Winterbottom, one of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic filmmakers of our age, makes so many movies that some of them creep into festivals very quietly and, just as quietly, creep out, never to be seen again. That wasn’t the case with The Trip , for my money one of the most intriguing pictures of 2011, a woolly exploration of middle-aged angst that featured Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (as themselves) bickering and trading Sean Connery impersonations as they made their way through the English countryside. But two years before that, in 2008, Winterbottom brought a picture called Genova to the Toronto International Film Festival. The picture, a mildly engaging drama in which Colin Firth plays a father who moves his family to Italy after the death of their mother, never got a U.S. release, fading like the worn face of a stone saint on a medieval church. Fortunately, Winterbottom’s latest, Trishna , a retelling of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles set in contemporary India, hasn’t met the same fate. And though it’s a bit of an oddity, it’s an affecting curio suitable for both Hardy enthusiasts and Winterbottom fans alike. Freida Pinto is Trishna, the Tess character, who comes from an impoverished family living in a small village. Jay (Riz Ahmed), is her Angel/Alec (Hardy purists should be warned that the two characters have been condensed into one, perhaps a bit clumsily), a man who sweeps her away from her life of poverty, only to end up resenting and degrading her. Even if Winterbottom has taken what some might consider unforgivable liberties with the story, Trishna works: Winterbottom has a feel for the story’s landscape, including the hardscrabble beauty of the countryside, all yellow dust and scrubby trees. It’s both a place Trishna needs to escape from and it’s home — there’s no safety or freedom there, but it’s the only place she’s truly herself. Pinto gives a lovely performance here. No other role she’s been given — as the hero’s dream woman in Slumdog Millionaire, or as a Palestinian orphan girl in Julian Schnabel’s deeply disappointing Miral — has asked as much of her, and she greets the challenge boldly. In the barest terms of the plot, Trishna is a victim, a tragic heroine, but Pinto always lets you see the character’s immovable self-assurance shimmering beneath the surface — that’s the very thing that threatens her lover and tormentor, and brings about her downfall. In Winterbottom’s scenario, Jay’s sudden turn against Trishna isn’t believable or readable in movie terms — his love for her appears to be operated by a switch that turns off abruptly without cause or reason — but it makes sense in the grander scheme of the impossibility of love. The dialogue here is mostly improvised — this is a casual, hip-pocket approach to a revered classic — but Winterbottom keeps the story moving deftly. We might appreciate Winterbottom more if he worked less, but he’s unlike any other filmmaker on the landscape, trying something new just about every year. Some of it sticks and some of it doesn’t. But almost always, he gives us something worth looking at. Editor’s note: Portions of this review appeared earlier in Stephanie Zacharek’s Toronto International Film Festival coverage.
We’ve certainly got no issues with these bodies! Hardeeharharhar. All jokes aside, ESPN The Magazine released its fourth annual ” Body Issue ” this week, and it is stacked with supremely fit female basketball players, pro golfers, surfers, swimmers and even the US Women’s National Volleyball Team posing nude (sounds like a dream we had once), with MMA fighter Ronda Rousey covering the issue. Unfortunately these professional athletes keep their front courts and chest protectors covered in the photos, but there’s still plenty of opportunity to admire their fine physiques…and the occasional back 9. See some highlights of ESPN Magazine’s 2012 Body Issue after the jump!
I don’t normally post pictures of hot chicks playing in a swimming pool with their kids, the local pool doesn’t allow me to bring my camera anymore after the “incident”, but when the mom in question is Jessica Alba … I’m all over it. Here’s the hot momma showing off her awesome mom body in a rockin’ little bikini. So hot. I don’t know why she doesn’t show that thing off more often, it’s perfect, she should be walking around every day looking like this. I guess I’d never get any work done if she did. Still worth it.
Say what you will about Michael Jackson. He was the self-anointed King of Pop, but legions of fans around the world were his willing subjects for decades, crossing generations. So there is at least a reasonable in-house audience just itching for more about the moon-walker and Spike Lee is just the man to deliver. Lee and Jackson were friends in life and the filmmaker, whose Red Hook Summer opens next month, is working on a documentary tied to the 25th anniversary of the release of Jackson’s Bad album. And Lee has apparently come across a lot of material for the film-in-progress. He told the A.P. it’s a “treasure chest of findings” including footage the star shot himself from behind-the-scenes. “We had complete access to the vaults of Michael Jackson,” Lee said. “He wrote 60 demos for the Bad record. Only 11 made it. So we got to hear a lot of that stuff, too, so it was just a great experience.” Still untitled, Lee said that the film will be appealing to those who are not Michael Jackson fans. The doc will also show a personal side of the pop legend. “He had a great sense of humor and he was funny,” said Lee who interviewed Kanye West and Mariah Carey for the film. He also spoke to Sheryl Crow who was a background singer during Jackson’s Bad tour. “We really divided it into two things: Artists today who were influenced by Michael and then people who worked side by side…” Loyalists and new converts have been gobbling up Michael Jackson’s music since his death in 2009 at age 50 and the powers-that-be are very happy to oblige. The follow-up to the singer’s Thriller album, Bad includes hits “Smooth Criminal” and “The Way You Make Me Feel.” It will be re-released with additional tracks, a DVD and other goodies September 18th. Jackson would have turned 54 on August 29th. [Source: A.P. ]
