Sofia Vergara and fiance Nick Loeb were reportedly involved in a scuffle early Tuesday at Miami nightclub Story, which is owned by Sofia’s former flame Chris Paciello. According to Page Six , things got heated and Sofia’s dress was ripped … and not in a hot way like you’re envisioning (see Sofia Vergara bikini photos , dudes). “Nick seemed tense around Chris, who was hosting them in the VIP section, even though he and Sofia are just friends,” the insider told the New York Post . “In the early hours, Nick and Sofia were arguing before he got into a dispute with somebody at a neighboring table. Some pushing and shoving started .” “Sofia stepped in to try to calm the situation, but somehow ended up getting pushed and shoved. Her strapless dress was torn or pulled down in the melee.” The source says this inadvertently “exposed her cleavage in front of other people and her son Manolo, who was so offended … [he] left the club. It was crazy.” Sounds it. The source said that security guards dragged Nick Loeb , who got engaged to Vergara in July, “out of the VIP section and threw him out of the club.” The Modern Family star followed. Another insider told the newspaper that “things got pretty heated, but [Sofia] was never hit … Nick was pretty bruised from struggling with security.” “None of the drama was Sofia’s fault, but despite the big scene [Nick] created, they made up outside the club, and she took him back to their hotel.” All’s well that ends well?
Russell Crowe may have ruined Les Miserables for some, but at least the actor isn’t shying away from the criticism. In light of Adam Lambart lambasting the cast vocals last week – Tweeting how the “score suffered massively with great actors PRETENDING to be singers” – the Oscar winner has now responded. And you may be surprised by Crowe’s retort. After a follower sent him Lambert’s critique, Crowe took to Twitter and… mostly agreed with the former American Idol finalist. “I don’t disagree with Adam, sure it could have been sweetened,” Crowe wrote. “[ Les Miserables director Tom] Hooper wanted it raw and real, that’s how it is.” Fair enough, those also irritating enough according to many. What did you think of Les Miserables ? Grade it now: A B C D F View Poll »
I feel I have to confess to a certain partisanship. I grew up listening to Les Misérables . I’ve seen it performed twice and as a girl had the original Broadway cast recording down cold . It’s been years since I’ve heard it, but watching Tom Hooper ‘s adaptation of Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Herbert Kretzmer’s musical I realized with amusement and discomfiture that I could still sing along to just about every damn word, at least until whomever was sitting near me took it upon themselves to murder me for the greater good. These songs — and the bridges in between, for Les Misérables is a sung-through affair with almost no spoken dialogue — are permanently etched in my psyche, and I am as far from being able to look at this material with critical distance as a highly trained stage star is from an actual consumptive 1800s French urchin. That said, can we admit that Les Misérables is an absolute beast of a musical? It faces the impossible task of compressing Victor Hugo’s 1500-page novel into three hours (the screen version running a leaner 157 minutes), starting in a prison in the south of France in 1815 before leaping ahead to the town of Montreuil in 1823 and then Paris in 1832, where the main action takes place against the backdrop of the June Rebellion. It’s the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean ( Hugh Jackman ), but it has a notable array of other significant characters to be dealt with, ones who love and suffer and (quite frequently) die, and all with musical accompaniment. The signature staging of the play involved a giant turntable that allowed for more fluid scene changes. On screen, that can be accompanied efficiently with an edit, but then you have to deal with the fact that smooshing a whole storyline about Valjean giving up a chance to let a stranger go down for his crimes and choosing to go on the run again (“Who Am I? / The Trial”) looks incredibly rushed when taken out of the abstract. In staging Les Misérables for screen, Hooper has taken a relatively naturalistic and grounded approach to the musical, a choice that’s better suited to the subject matter of the story than to the fact that it takes place entirely in song. The vocals were recorded live on set, the backdrops are grimy in a poetic period Gallic style and the big numbers are frequently recorded in close-up, the camera holding on intimate shots of the performers as they stand or sit and sing. The film (which was shot by Danny Cohen, who also served as cinematographer on The King’s Speech ) treats its songs as it would dialogue, except that dialogue rarely involves spouting about one’s feelings at length out loud to no one, a tic that makes much more sense set to music. It’s an infuriatingly static way to shoot musical numbers, and it diminishes the bombastic grandeur many of these songs have. Éponine (singer and stage actress Samantha Barks) belts out her anguish about her unrequited love while huddled against a pillar; on the big sequence “One Day More” we cut abruptly between different faces as if everyone’s in their own individual music video. It’s only Russell Crowe in the role of Javert, the police inspector who’s devoted his life to chasing down Valjean, who gets the kind of grandiose staging the material demands in his two big songs, as he wanders along prominent Parisian landmarks and the camera swings out to take in the city. Crowe is, perhaps not coincidentally, the weakest singer, and despite his musical side career looks uncomfortable in the role of Javert, his concentration all seeming to go toward his serviceable warbling rather than acting. But much of the rest of the cast is terrific, particularly not-so-secret theater geeks Jackman and Anne Hathaway , who settle into their roles like they’ve spent their lives waiting for this opportunity. Hathaway’s in fact so good as Fantine, the factory worker forced into prostitution to support her daughter Cosette near the start of the story, that the film staggers a bit after her character departs, her killer rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” one of its emotional highlights. Eddie Redmayne’s a pleasant surprise as Marius, the idealistic student torn between his love for the grown Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and his desire to join his friends at the barricades for the uprising — the lovers tend to be the two blandest characters in the ensemble, but he finds a genuine gallantry and sweetness to the would-be revolutionary. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter , on the other hand, play designated comic relief couple the Thénardiers even broader than that description would suggest — though “Master of the House” is one of the most dynamically staged of the songs, the tonal difference between their appearances and the rest of the film is jolting. Even at a generous running time that matches this season’s other giant award candidates, Les Misérables seems like it’s in a hurry, skittering from one number to the next without interlude. After Hathaway’s early high point, it starts to feel numbing, an unending barrage of musical emoting carrying us through Valjean’s adopting of Cosette, the latter’s first encounter with Marius, the battle at the barricade and a last hour that can feel like it’s a non-stop series of death arias. But even if this isn’t a great screen adaptation of the musical, there’s no resisting the ending, which pairs the film’s two brightest stars and then has everyone join in on a reprise of “Do You Hear The People Sing?” Say, do you hear the distant drums? Maybe not, but at that moment the voices coming from the screen and the tune they’re crooning are rousing enough to draw a few tears. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Under the tutelage of Quentin Tarantino , Eli Roth , and all those Shaw Brothers martial arts pics he devoured in his pre-Wu Tang days, RZA ‘s put together a spectacular-looking kung fu actioner — and judging by the 20+ hi-res pics in Movieline’s The Man With The Iron Fists gallery , it will be quite the eye-popping (and very, very bloody) affair. Take, for instance, this gorgeous shot of Lucy Liu as femme fatale/brothel owner Madam Blossom. Vibrant and sumptuous, it lends Liu (who proved her badass quotient in Kill Bill ) the deadly grace of Hong Kong action goddess Cheng Pei Pei. More clearly drawn are parallels between Blossom’s house of alluring but deadly women, where the Blacksmith’s (RZA) love interest Lady Silk ( Jamie Chung ) lives… … and 1972’s Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan : And there’s something fun about this set pic of RZA and co-writer/producer Eli Roth working with Russell Crowe on his kung fu — or, perhaps, his Ol’ Dirty Bastard style ? Click images above or head here for the full Man With The Iron Fists gallery , which includes new looks at RZA, Liu, Crowe, Chung, and castmates Cung Le, David Bautista, Rick Yune, and more. And stay tuned for Movieline’s forthcoming interview with RZA! Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
RZA ‘s kung fu actioner The Man With The Iron Fists is already a must-see thanks to its pedigree (RZA co-wrote, directs and stars, Eli Roth co-wrote and produces, Quentin Tarantino “presents”), cast (Lucy Liu, Gordon Liu, Pam Grier to name a few) and stylistic influences (Shaw brothers meets Wu Tang? Yes please! ). Speaking with Movieline, RZA dropped another worlds-colliding tidbit that might blow minds when Iron Fists hits theaters November 2: Russell Crowe ‘s mysterious, dagger-twirling character Jack Knife was influenced by none other than the late rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard. That’s right — the spirit of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, AKA ODB, AKA Dirt McGirt, AKA Big Baby Jesus, lives on within Oscar-winner Russell Crowe. “When you see the film you will see a couple of ODB references and you’ll go, ‘Okay – that’s where he got that from,'” RZA promised when he rang Movieline (look for the full interview next month). “He does an ODB move exactly like ODB would do!” In the film’s press notes, RZA explains further: “My cousin’s not here anymore, but I wanted his spirit in the film. Russell and I talked about it, and he loved the idea.” The mysterious Jack Knife, an opium-addicted soldier enamored of China named for his weapon of choice, even has a signature jaw harp audio cue reminiscent of ODB’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.” But the ODB-Crowe connection extended further on set as RZA pointed to the spirit of his late cousin and collaborator when filming hit a snag. “When we talked about the character one day we had a little problem that we had to figure out on the set,” RZA told Movieline. “And it seemed like we were going to have a bad day so I had to go to his trailer and tell him what was going on. To get him to feel comfortable at the time, I told him a story about ODB.” He continued: “The story was, one day ODB walked into the studio late as hell. He was so late, he’s ruined a whole day and wasted all this money. The beat is playing, he walks in, and in one take he performs “Shame On A Nigga.” He does this song in one take and if you notice in the song there’s a part where he goes, ‘Shame on a nigga who tries to run game on a —’ He doesn’t really finish the hook.” “I was like, ‘Do it over.’ He said, ‘No — that’s it. I’m keeping it. That’s what I like!’ One take . And this one take idea, I explained to Russell, is sometimes just a moment we capture. It doesn’t have to be done over and over. ‘He’s a guy that would come in and do it in one take. So I know we’re out of time, but for today you might have to go one-take, ODB-style.’ Now of course Russell’s a master anyway and he’ll do it in one take. But I think telling him that story at that time helped because we were about eight hours late and it helped us capture a lot of things in that one day that it would have taken us two days to do.” Check back for more with RZA and his directorial debut, The Man With The Iron Fists , including our full discussion of his lifelong love of kung fu, working with idol Gordon Liu, learning from the Quentin Tarantino school of cinema, and more. The Man With The Iron Fists hits theaters November 2. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
After scoping out Noah cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s dark-but-revealing shot of the interior of the title character’s reptile-laden ark, I find myself praying for a cameo by Samuel L. Jackson in which he lives long enough to say, “I have had it with these mother-fucking snakes on this mother-fucking ark.” Libatique , who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on Black Swan , tweeted the photo on Tuesday, along with the line: “Pre lighting on the holiest day of the year,” an apparent reference to Yom Kippur. The photo appears to prove that Aronofsky won’t be following the part of the Noah story that Noah brought, depending on which Biblical interpretation you believe, at most seven pairs, male and female, of each animal on the planet. (“Unclean” creatures were limited to a single pair, and given the snake’s role in the fall of Adam and Eve — you know, the story where seeking and acquiring knowledge is deemed a really bad thing — I’m thinking snakes fell into that category.) By the way, according to one Biblical interpretation I found on the net, the animals agreed not to procreate on the boat. Apparently, they did not have a strong union at the time. Then again, this is not your Father Flanagan’s Noah , judging from the graphic novel series, Noah, For The Cruelty of Men , that Aronofsky created with executive producer Ari Handel and artist Niko Henrichon to help sell the film. If the movie follows the comic, Russell Crowe, who plays the title character, will be doing battle with such exotic creatures as “Watchers,” 11-foot fallen angels that have no wings but six arms. Here in New York, we call them panhandlers. Anthony Hopkins has been cast as Noah’s 900-year-old father Methuselah and Jennifer Connelly (who is welcome on our ark any time), Emma Watson, Ray Winstone and Logan Leman will co-star. And, with a little help from Above, Samuel L. Jackson! Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
This is not your mother’s Noah. A first look at actor Russell Crowe as the grizzled title character in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah has surfaced, and it’s not what you’d expect. As Movies.com reports , Crowe: “looks like a Mad Max out of the depths of time” and lives in a hostile world where “pity has no place.” Aronofsky’s film — which has an expected 2014 release date — does seem to jibe with the Biblical tale of Noah and his famous ark on one key point. According to Movies.com: Noah “is subject to visions which announce the imminent end of the earth,” which will be devastated by “the waves of an endless deluge.” Fan boys take note: Judging from the graphic novel series, Noah, For The Cruelty of Men , that Aronofsky created with executive producer Ari Handel and artist Niko Henrichon to help sell the film, Crowe’s character will be doing battle with some monstrous creatures. Hitfix writer Drew McWeeny reports that Noah’s opponents will include “Watchers,” 11-foot fallen angels have no wings but six arms. McWeeny also revealed that Anthony Hopkins has been cast as Noah’s 900-year-old father Methuselah and that Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Ray Winstone and Logan Leman will co-star. George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic will provide the CGI movie magic. “This isn’t a historical period piece,” Movies.com writes. “Noah’s is a story that exists outside of what we know to be, which sounds almost like a Stephen King/ The Dark Tower , ‘the world has moved on’ type post-apocalyptic scenario. It may not even be Earthly, it’s all just a vehicle for the Noah metaphor”. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Ron Howard’s adaptation of the Stephen King saga had lost previous star Javier Bardem. By Kevin P. Sullivan, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Russell Crowe Photo: Tommy Jackson/ WireImage
In Tuesday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs, the actor who played George Jefferson has died. Russell Crowe will direct a film about a cult comedian. Disney is moving a 3-D re-release to the holidays; NATO is taking donations for Aurora shooting victims and Netflix sees its shares dive. Actor Sherman Hemsley Dead at 74 He first came into America’s living rooms as Archie Bunker’s neighbor George Jefferson in All in the Family . The Jeffersons later spun off into a long-running and very successful sit-com in its own right making his character and his beloved Louise Jefferson, aka “Weezey,” household names. Hemsley died in what appears to be natural causes at his home in El Paso, TX, TMZ reports . Russell Crowe to Direct Biopic Crowe will direct a biopic about Bill Hicks, the cult comedian who died at 32. Originally it was thought Crowe would play Hicks, but the part is apparently up for grabs, The Guardian reports . Disney Ups Monsters Inc 3-D to December Originally slated for a January release, the 3-D re-release will now head into the holidays with a roll out set for December 19th. Finding Nemo 3-D is still due in September. Last year the studio cashed in on the 3-D version of The Lion King to the tune of $92M, Deadline reports . Exhibitors Begin Donations Drive for Shooting Victims in Colorado The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) sent a release asking for donations to help victims and families of the Aurora, CO shootings, Deadline reports . Netflix Shares Down 14% Revenue last quarter rose 12.8% to $889M, but profit fell to $6.1M vs $68M the year before, Variety reports .
Today Warner Bros. released the first teaser for 2013’s superhero reboot Man of Steel , an elegiac glimpse of Clark Kent ( Henry Cavill ), as a man and a boy, accompanied by memories of childhood paternal advice telling him of his destiny as Earth’s savior. But Clark/Superman has two dads — biological Kryptonian pop Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and adoptive farmer pa Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner), giving fans a neat double tease: One teaser, two voice-overs. From the looks of things in the Zack Snyder-directed, Christopher Nolan -produced Man of Steel , it appears that Clark Kent is taking some “me” time off from his superhero calling to moonlight as a deep sea fisherman, Deadliest Catch -style. That vocation should give him time to ponder the childhood advice gleaned from his two dads, one who tells him he’s destined to save humanity, another who tells him that destiny is his choice to make. “You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They’ll raise behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.” [Via MSN ] “One day, you’re going to have to make a choice. You have to decide what kind of man you want to grow up to be. Whoever that man is, good character or bad, it’s going to change the world.” [Via Yahoo ] The teaser had already been reportedly attached to prints of TDKR in theaters. I do like the idea of Hobo Superman slinging crawfish by day and hanging with a scruffy boatyard dog by night as he ponders life and stuff. But you tell me. Man of Steel will be released June 14, 2013. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
