I missed Stoker at the Sundance Film Festival , where the buzz was decidedly mixed, but based on the first GIF posted the below the jump, Chan-wook Park ‘s thriller looks like it may be the second movie of that last year that stars Nicole Kidman and features a weird urination scene. Unlike The Paperboy , in which Kidman pees on the face of Zac Efro n to treat him for a jellyfish sting, Mia Wasikowska appears to be the one shaking the dew off her lily, so to speak. That’s an educated guess, though because all that’s seen in the GIF are a pair of saddle shoes and a puddle. Fox Searchlight is posting these clips — and correspondence depicting memorable lines from the movie — at letterstoindia.com , (Wasikowska plays India Stoker in the movie, and the website helps establish why, as the trailer shows, she’s going to be a barrel of fun by the time she’s an adult. Here are some of the more unusual GIFs from the site: I don’t see any jellyfish there, do you? And here’s the devil-in-training making a snow angel on her bed: And here, Wasikowska manages to even chew her food with smoldering malevolence: Put those all together, read the postcards and letters on the site, and you won’t be surprised when you see young India is shouldering a sniper rifle in this trailer. MORE ON STOKER: SUNDANCE REVIEW: Splendidly Demented ‘Stoker’ Should Quench Park Chan-Wook Fans’ Thirst Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Hollywood.TV is your source for all the latest celebrity news, gossip and videos of your favorite stars! bit.ly – Click to Subscribe! Facebook.com – Become a Fan! Twitter.com – Follow Us! Amy Poehler and Adam Scott hit the red carpet in Park City promoting their movie ACOD at the Sundance Film Festival. Amy and Adam shared with Hollywood.TV what makes Sundance and the the movies there special and also what drew them both to ACOD Hollywood.TV is the global leader in capturing celebrity breaking news as it happens. We cover all the major Hollywood events including The Golden Globes, The Oscars, The Screen Actors Guild Awards, The Grammy’s, The Emmy’s and the American Music Awards, as well as all the red carpet movie premiers in Los Angeles and New York. HTV is on the streets 24/7, at all the industry events and invited by the stars to cover their every move in Hollywood, New York and Miami. Hollywood.TV is currently the third most viewed reporter channel on www.youtube.com YouTube with over 400 million views, and our footage is seen worldwide! Tune in daily for all the latest Hollywood news on www.hollywood.tv and http like us on Facebook!
From yester-year – in this case, 1952 – to tomorrow, Disney is so far only offering a glimpse into Brad Bird ‘s live-action feature in the form of a new title. Previously known as 1952 , the studio said it will now be titled Tomorrowland , just like the land meant to be a peak into the future. Tomorrowland was one of the five “original lands” that debuted with the Disneyland park in Anaheim, California in 1955. George Clooney will star in the film, which Damon Lindelof ( Prometheus ) and Bird co-wrote and is slated for a mid-December 2014 release. Home to famed attractions, Space Mountain and Star Tours, perhaps Tomorrowland holds secrets about the film version of its namesake. But the studio is maintaining a shroud of mystery though throwing out tidbits. Its official announcement follows: The Walt Disney Studios has announced that its live-action release previously known as 1952 will be titled Tomorrowland. The film will be released domestically on December 19, 2014. George Clooney ( The Descendants ) is set to star. Tomorrowland is written by Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird from a concept by Lindelof and Jeff Jensen. Lindelof ( Star Trek , Lost , Prometheus ) will produce and Bird ( The Incredibles , Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol ) will produce and direct. Disney attractions have begat Disney blockbusters through the years. Longtime classic ride Pirates of the Caribbean of course morphed into a long-running franchise that has starred Johnny Depp worth billions and Guillermo del Toro is working on a second installment of the Haunted Mansion , which first hit theaters in 2003. Classic mountaintop attraction, the Matterhorn in Disneyland’s Fantasyland is said to be the basis for a project titled The Hill . [ Source: THR ]
I’ve noted this a few times now, but of all the jokes that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler told during their killer Golden Globes performance , the one that resonated most with me was their jab at Avatar director James Cameron : “I haven’t been following the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty , ” Poehler said name-checking director Kathryn Bigelow . “But when it comes to torture, I trust the woman who spent three years married to James Cameron.” I loved the joke because it was daring — a tough one to pull off in an industry crowd that tends to protect its own even when they may despise that person behind his back. ( Jessica Chastain’s televised gasp said volumes.) Poehler pulled it off beautifully and, in an interview that was posted on Friday in The Huffington Post , she finally revealed the author of the joke. The Parks and Recreation actress and her series co-star and Adam Scott t alked to the site about the movie that they premiered at Sundance, A.C.O.D ., which stands for Adult Children of Divorce, and in the process, Poehler revealed that the Cameron line was the work of 30 Rock writer Sam Means . Here’s the excerpt that appears on HuffPo. You did a great job co-hosting the Golden Globes. Scott: Didn’t she? Poehler: Thank you. I do feel that you may have been taken off the short list for “Avatar 2.” Poehler: [Laughs.] Perhaps! Perhaps. Not just with the James Cameron joke, but anytime you do a joke like that, can there be repercussion? Or do people take that in stride? Poehler: I hope so. There was nothing in that moment that we walked away from feeling bad about. There was never a moment that we walked away going, “Was that too … ” You know, we vetted our own jokes with each other. Tina and I have had a lot of experience doing those kind of jokes, so we know when things feel too “something.” That room was a special kind of room, so we had to think about how to play to that room. So, we didn’t regret anything that we had said or felt like we were coming in a weird way. And if it’s funny, you can get away with a lot, hopefully. Scott: And I was saying before, James Cameron … even he has to appreciate what a beautifully crafted joke that was. Poehler: Written by a gentleman named Sam Means — a writer for “30 Rock.” He wrote that joke. I’m assuming there was no hesitation when you heard that joke. Poehler: Oh, no. It’s a great joke. Good work, Mr. Means. Now, if you happen to notice a non-descript black van following you, here’s a little advice: run. Read More of Movieline’s Golden Globes Coverage: Do The Tommy Lee Jones! 5 Top Golden Globe Moments WATCH: The Best Of Tina Fey & Amy Poehler’s Golden Globes Performance [ Huffington Post ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Dare I say that, based on this trailer, Melissa McCarthy looks like she could actually be funnier in The Heat than she was in Bridesmaids ? Okay, so I’m one of the minority who didn’t think that the latter film was as hilarious as everyone found it, so I was pleasantly surprised when this international trailer for Paul Feig and McCarthy’s latest collaboration made me laugh out loud a few times. The plus-sized actress plays a “bad-ass” maverick Boston cop who teams up with “tight-assed” FBI agent Sandra Bullock . If you guessed that this is one of those movies where McCarthy’s character shows Bullock’s character how to walk on the wild side, you’d be right, but I’m willing to overlook the formulaic conceit based on the scene in which McCarthy proceeds to look for her captain’s “little girl balls” and the one in which she discovers Bullock is wearing Spanx. (As if!) “They hold everything together,” Bullock tells McCarthy. “Why? What’s going to come fuckin’ popping out?” sputters McCarthy. My thoughts exactly. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
I couldn’t have guessed back in 1995 that Richard Linklater ‘s charming Before Sunrise would spark one of the most beloved trilogies of the next few decades, but anticipation has been so high for the latest chapter in Jesse ( Ethan Hawke ) and Celine’s ( Julie Delpy ) arrested romance that it was only natural we’d be longing for more after 2004’s Before Sunset . Shot in secret, the third film in the series, Before Midnight , premiered last night at Sundance to rave reviews and today brings a few new photos that’ll have you pining even harder for whenever it’s delivered to theaters. Via The Playlist : Without walking and talking into spoiler territory, let’s just say Sundance critics were largely over the moon for the pic, which was also written by Delpy, Hawke, and Linklater. Slate goes so far as to say it’s “not only good, but so good it approaches perfection.” Perfection , people! THR calls it “funny and harrowing,” for what it’s worth, which sounds… promising? Indiewire lauds it “Linklater’s most refined achievement,” although The Guardian goes against the grain, labeling it “forced and unnecessary.” Read more from the Sundance Film Festival : ‘The East’: How Marling & Batmanglij’s Dumpster-Diving Freegan Summer Inspired The Eco-Anarchist Sundance Thriller ‘Austenland’ Director’s Note: Jerusha Hess On Her ‘Girlishly Indulgent’ Sundance Rom-Com SUNDANCE: ‘Sound City’ Premiere Finds Dave Grohl Rocking With Rick Springfield Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“Welcome to Sommerton!” growls Arnold Schwarzenegger in his comeback flick, the ultra-bloody shoot-em-up The Last Stand . As Arnie catchphrases go, it’s no “Hasta la vista, baby” — hell, it’s not even a “Consider this a divorce” — but it’s been 10 years since the Terminator starred in a movie and we’ll take what we can get. In this violent modern Western, Arnold plays Sheriff Ray Owens, guardian of Sommerton Junction, a hamlet on the Arizona border that’s just a corn field away from Mexico. (Casting a bodybuilder with an impenetrable Austrian accent as a small-town American sheriff seems like a stretch until you remember that in real life, Californian voters cast one as their governor.) As in every Schwarzenegger flick, the residents of Sommerton never quite seem to notice that Sheriff Ray is big, strong and scary. The mayor treats him like he’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop and the waitress at the diner on Main Street pesters him at 4 am to ask why the milk man is late. But Ray takes these insults in stride: he’s old, and he doesn’t care who knows it. As did Sylvester Stallone ‘s Barney Ross in the first Expendables , he tempers expectations by being the first to declare — repeatedly — that his deltoids have seen better days, like he’s a King Lear who’s forced to kill. The world weariness plays better here, as unlike Stallone’s paid mercenary, Sheriff Ray, an ex-LAPD narcotics officer, just wants to keep the peace. When he sighs, “I’ve seen enough blood and death,” you believe him. The set-up of Andrew Knauer’s screenplay is classically simple: Three hundred and fifty miles away in Las Vegas, evil drug baron Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega of the Spanish twister Abre los Ojos ) has escaped FBI custody with the help of a giant magnet (seriously) and is zooming toward the Mexican border. Cortez has lined the freeways with hired goons who’ve out-thought the Feds’ panicked responses — the way he bursts through a police blockade in a speeding car is worth the price of admission — and now the only thing standing between North America’s most dangerous cartel boss and his freedom is 250 lbs of Austrian, er Arizonan , muscle who has just hours to prepare for a bloody showdown on his town’s literal Main Street. South Korean director Kim Jee-woon has toyed with wild west conventions before. His slapstick 2008 film The Good, The Bad and the Weird was like a Clint Eastwood movie with a pounding soju hangover. The first third of The Last Stand is a bit of a slog — Arnold still can’t act, but who cares? — and Kim doesn’t spring to life until people start dying. His favorite kill? The headshot. For a film that doesn’t star Tobin Bell, the screen is drenched in brain goo (too bad Stallone already squatted on the title Bullet to the Head ) and when the plot starts running out of craniums Kim summons a pick-up truck full of watermelons and takes aim. The Last Stand is an ill-timed love letter to weaponry. It’s so trigger-happy that a man gets shot in mid-air when he’s already falling to his death. There’s a gun so big that it’s simply referred to as “The Gun,” another that’s affectionately called a “little bitch,” and when a gun’s not in reach, there’s a flare gun handy. It makes sense that Kim might be pro-militia; unlike the current members of the NRA, Kim’s actually lived through a coup d’etat in his home country. Still, there’s something queasy about a film that celebrates local nut Johnny Knoxville’s illegal gun stash — and as someone who hopes Barack Obama ‘s gun control bill gets passed, I felt guilty cheering when a bonnet-wearing granny whips out her personal shotgun and gets in on the action. Besides Knoxville, who doesn’t get enough screen time to be annoying, Schwarzenegger teams up with fellow cops Luis Guzman and Jaimie Alexander (Lady Sif of Thor ), while Cortez’s crew is headed by a hilariously accented Peter Stormare, who sounds as convincing as a Southern trucker as Guzman would mimicking Queen Elizabeth. But Arnold’s real co-star in The Last Stand isn’t one of the humans hanging around in the margins. It’s Cortez’s escape car: a $120K Corvette with a fictionalized horsepower of 1000, 30 percent mightier than the fastest Lamborghini on the market. The Corvette’s curves are so seductive that you’d rather gawk at the dashboard than sexy hostage Genesis Rodriguez, who’s strapped into the passenger seat, and when it blitzes by a donut-eating cop (the flick traffics cheerfully in cliches), he mistakes it for a plane. Kim doesn’t just sit back and watch it roar — he gives the Corvette a true star moment with an inventive car chase set in a disorienting corn field. Fast and the Furious 6 (or as I prefer, Fa6t 6ix ): your move. A machine himself, Schwarzenegger is using The Last Stand to scrape the rust off his reputation. It’s a smart choice: it’s just bold enough, brutal enough, and dumb enough to feel like a return to form. In 2002, the year before Arnold took office, Jason Bourne kick-started ten years of soul-searching, shaky cam hijinks that annoyed action fans who like to appreciate blood squibs and stunts. But in The Expendables 2 , Jack Reacher , and now this, we’re seeing a cinematic return to men who crack quips, fight with their fists, and swagger around without having to carry the weight on the world on their over-developed shoulders. Is it a coincidence that classic action is making its comeback at the same time Schwarzenegger is making his own? Hey, he warned us he’d be back. Amy Nicholson is a critic, playwright and editor. Her interests include hot dogs, standard poodles, Bruce Willis, and comedies about the utter futility of existence. Follow her on Twitter . Follow Amy Nicholson on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Bananostriches! Fruit cockatiels! The sentient foodstuffs that populate the animated sequel Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2: Revenge of the Leftovers are just delectable… especially if you haven’t eaten lunch yet. It’s hard to believe it’s taken Hollywood this long to borrow these kinds of meme-tastic confections from the internetz. Watermelophants! Wild scallions ! Take a peek at the foodie creatures from the September sequel after the jump. Directors Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn take the reins from 21 Jump Street co-helmers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who made a delightful flick about a would-be scientist who figures out how to make it rain giant foodstuffs, based on the popular children’s book of the same name. Cloudy 2 returns voice cast members Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Andy Samberg, and Neil Patrick Harris (who turned in compelling work as Steve the lab monkey); Will Forte, who voiced “Joe Towne” in the first film, brings Flint Lockwood’s idol Chester V to life. The film hits theaters on September 27. Below, check out first look peeks from USA Today (via Collider ): [via USA Today ] Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
To paraphrase James Brown , I don’t feel good after reading Rolling Stone magazine’s interview with producer Brian Grazer about the status of the biopic that he and Mick Jagger are producing on the late soul singer. Now that the Hardest Working Man in Show Business’ estate has been put in order, Grazer says the picture is moving forward again after being in limbo for some time. Jagger has come on board as producer, which is a smart move given that he’s a student of Brown, but Grazer’s explanation of director Spike Lee’s departure from the project last fall and the subsequent hiring of The Help helmsman Tate Taylor doesn’t exactly boost my confidence level. Here’s what Grazer says: What happened with Spike Lee, who was said to be directing the original movie project before Brown’s death? He was the choice when I had the rights. I had just produced Inside Man with him. When the rights left me, I didn’t have any control, and I couldn’t make director choices. So when it came later with new people and new rights holders, we weren’t doing it with Spike Lee anymore. The world was different then. Now you have to make movies for less money. When it was announced that Lee was no longer involved and that a white director, Tate Taylor, was on board, the blogosphere went nuts. How do you respond to those comments? What would I say? I view that a bunch of different ways. Mick and I don’t see the world that way. I started my career making Boomerang and CB4 . I’ve made so many movies where I’ve supported black artists. Tate made The Help, and that had almost an entirely black population. I just want to try to make the best movie. Were you surprised by those reactions? Well, I didn’t read them! I can’t make movies like that, where I’m going to look at some blog and change the course of the whole movie. I also think Mick is so amazing. For him to decide he’s going to participate and split half the money – he’s a man of integrity, and I feel pretty good about that. I get that Grazer and Jagger want to make this an Important picture, which Brown most certainly deserves, but I fear that, given the creative path they’ve chosen, the grit of Brown’s life, which is so key to his portrayal, will be sacrificed for something more sanitized. I hope Spike tweets his thoughts on this. Then again, as the saying goes, “shoulda, coulda, woulda” — the project is moving ahead with Taylor and Fair Game screenwriters John-Henry and Jez Butterworth, and Grazer says casting is about to begin: Do you think you’d cast a pop star or an actor who can sing or dance? We haven’t made any decisions yet. We’re going to start casting and we’re going to have to test lots of actors and be determined to pick the right one. No movie starts in a day. I’ve never loved a subject and not made the movie. Friday Night Lights took 13 years. American Gangster took seven or eight. Who do you think should play Brown? Put your picks in the comments section. ( Jamie Foxx , you can stop raising your hand now.) Whoever it is, I hope Grazer and Jagger hire Prince to consult on this picture because he’s the only contemporary artist I can think of whose performances match the intensity, complexity and virtuosity of the ones Brown gave in his prime. [ Rolling Stone ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Twenty years after its production abruptly halted, the North American premiere of director George Sluizer’s Dark Blood starring River Phoenix, Jonathan Pryce and Judy Davis will screen at the 30th edition of the Miami International Film Festival. Dark Blood was 80% finished when Phoenix died of an overdose in Hollywood in 1993. Footage from the film sat in a vault for years until 1999 when Sluizer learned that the uncompleted film was going to be burned. With less than 48 hours notice, he obtained the footage, according to festival organizers, and had it moved to The Netherlands where it remained for over ten years. Sluizer then set out to complete the film last year and had its world premiere at the 2012 Dutch Film Festival ” Dark Blood is a film of legend, one of Hollywood’s great mysteries,” said MIFF Executive Director Jaie Laplante in a statement. “The tragic loss of River Phoenix’s outstanding talent is still profoundly felt 20 years later. We are proud that George Sluizer has honored Miami as the place to finally share his remarkable collaboration with Phoenix and the other great artists involved with Dark Blood .” The complete lineup of the 30th Miami International Film Festival will be unveiled later this month. The description of Dark Blood provided by the Miami International Film Festival: Jet-set Hollywood couple Harry (Jonathan Pryce) and Buffy (Judy Davis) travel through the desert on a second honeymoon, trying to save their marriage. Their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere leaving them to find shelter in Boy’s (River Phoenix) beaten down shack, unaware they will become his prisoners. Boy’s wife died of leukemia after nuclear tests occurred in the desert leaving him alone and far away from society. Buffy is seduced by Boy’s honesty and vulnerabilities, while Harry represents everything Boy hates about the civilized world and its culture. Buffy decides to sleep with Boy to buy the couple’s freedom, but these circumstances will push Harry to the edge, leading to a terrible tragedy. Follow Movieline on Twitter .
