“Production on the movie was delayed last winter with Legendary reportedly looking to trim the $100 million-plus budget by 10 to 20 percent. The intricate special effects needed to bring a celestial battle between heaven and hell to life required a substantial investment in technology that made the cuts impossible, the individual told TheWrap. Even the addition of rising stars like Bradley Cooper, Casey Affleck and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter actor Benjamin Walker was not enough to secure a greenlight.” No shit . [ TheWrap ]
In The Vow , Rachel McAdams plays Paige, a Chicago sculptor who’s wife to Leo (Channing Tatum), the owner of a recording studio. The two are talking about starting a family, clearly giddily in love, when they get into a car accident that results in Paige taking a slow-motion header through the windshield. She sustains a brain injury that leaves her with amnesia, losing all memory of meeting and having a relationship with Leo. He finds himself having to convince the woman he married of the depth and strength of their connection when to her he might as well be a stranger. While all of the above is true of the film, the second from Michael Sucsy (who also directed the 2009 Drew Barrymore/Jessica Lange Grey Gardens ), it buries the lede, which is that Paige is missing everything that happened in the last few years — not just Leo, but moving to the city from the upscale suburb of Lake Forest in which she grew up, leaving law school to become an artist, breaking off her engagement with smarmy attorney Jeremy (Scott Speedman) and cutting ties with her family after a giant fight, the details of which we don’t learn until late in the film. She’s shocked to find that she gave up straightening her hair, that she lives in a funky loft and wears boho clothing, that she’s become a vegetarian and, if the gasp she gives when told that Barack Obama is president and she voted for him is any indication, that she only relatively recently became a Democrat. Indeed, Paige has forgotten how to be a hipster. Post-trauma, to Leo’s bemusement, she orders blueberry mojitos, wears prim dresses, gets highlights and declares her favorite book to be The Beach House by James Patterson. Leo first encountered Paige after a series of major life changes (we see, in flashback, how they met at the DMV) and had never met her parents, played by Sam Neill and Jessica Lange, before their arrival at the hospital shortly after she comes out of her coma. Stuffily dressed and taut faced, they have a campy suburban gothic air to them, and are delighted to be able to welcome their daughter back into their lives as if they’d never fought in the first place — which they essentially didn’t, since she has no memory of it. The two parties wage cultural warfare over the dazed Paige, one side offering the comforts of the familiar, including her family and posh childhood home, the other the urban life and love she chose instead. These themes of what makes up one’s identity, and whether Paige is still the woman with whom Leo fell in love without the experiences that came to define her, are a lot more solid than the romance aspects of The Vow . McAdams can turn up the charisma and make (almost) any role grounded and watchable, even multiple ones involving time travel and memory loss. Tatum is like a very handsome steak. Unfortunately, he’s the one saddled with the swoony, Nicholas Sparksesque burdens in the story, from a voiceover about love and fate delivered in an earnest monotone, to spelling out “MOVE IN?” in blueberries when serving Paige breakfast, to accidentally complementing the aesthetic merits of her scrap pile instead of the sculpture in progress she’s working on. He just isn’t expressive enough an actor to carry all of Leo’s pining and heartbreak, as he suffers through Paige’s unintended cruelty as she tries and fails to connect with him and the person she used to be. “I’m so tired of disappointing you,” she tells him after he reacts with exasperated sadness to her inability to remember their past, and it’s an unintended consequence of the casting that she seems reasonable and right in considering moving on, and that one doesn’t feel the need to blubber in response, “But you’re meant to be together !” The Vow, which is based on the story of real-life couple Kim and Krickitt Carpenter, doesn’t turn out to be as gauzily sentimental as its beginning (or its marketing materials ) suggests; though this probably isn’t intentional, it ends up making the argument that one’s romantic memories don’t tend to translate well when shared, as Leo walks Paige through the things they used to do as a couple, from the restaurant in which they used to eat (named, heh, Cafe Mnemonic) to the lakeside spot where they would skinny dip. But the most loving gesture in the film is its consideration that what may be best for someone’s happiness is letting them go, no matter how painful that may be. The ending is — spoiler alert? — an upbeat one, but it’s one the film drifts into, no last-minute gallop through an airport or desperate clinch in the rain. It’s a more grown-up conclusion than you’d expect, but feels anticlimactic when taken in the context of the story’s wobbles between realism and glossy, larger-than-life love story. Seriously, couldn’t he have restored a house for her or something? Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The Proust Questionnaire — the renowned personal inquisition perhaps best known around these parts for concluding issues of Vanity Fair and episodes of Inside the Actors Studio — has finally found its way to the dogs. Or at least to the dog. Trust me, you’ve heard of him. None other than Uggie, the Artist wonder dog, is the subject of the questionnaire featured in the latest edition of TheWrap ‘s awards-season print edition. There’s even a question for the haters! (“How does Uggie wish to die?”) They thought of everything! I mean, I guess Proust actually thought of everything, but the Weinsteins thought of this . Take that, Blackie. [ TheWrap ]
Sometime after getting her start on NBC’s short-lived but well-loved cult series Freaks and Geeks , starring in two live-action studio Scooby-Doo movies, appearing for six seasons on ER , and turning in various screen performances (including a role as Ennis del Mar’s waitress fling in Brokeback Mountain ), Linda Cardellini took a break to reassess her career. “I wanted to step back and reevaluate myself as an actress and find out what I was capable of,” she told Movieline, describing her turn as a shell-shocked female soldier readjusting to life at home in this week’s Return , “and this was sort of the perfect role for that.” Return brought the actress in close collaboration with filmmaker Liza Johnson, who wrote and directed the drama about Kelli (Cardellini), a wife and mother who’s recently come home to her suburban Ohio town after a tour of duty in the Middle East with the National Guard. Despite the fact that she suffered no notable trauma overseas, Kelli finds that her familiar world has been utterly changed nonetheless; nothing seems to be in its right place anymore, in her home and in her mind. Despite her best efforts, Kelli’s emotional dislocation begins to sabotage her relationships and threaten her marriage as she grasps to keep control of it all. It’s an unusual perspective on war and its tragic effects, and one that Cardellini eagerly poured herself into. And it’s a performance that’s garnered new acclaim and attention for the actress, who also added roles in Kill the Irishman and Super to her post-break resume. Cardellini rang Movieline last week – expecting her first baby any day, she joked that both of her big projects could debut at once – to discuss Return , her career moves, and more. The director, Liza Johnson, workshopped this film for a while – how did it come to you and why do you think you tapped into it? After I finished ER I went to New York and I was thinking about doing a play, I sort of took a step back and thought I wanted to do something different than what I had been doing for so long. While I was in New York I was sent this script, I read it that night, and the next day I met with Liza. Really, I just sort of fell in love with the role because even though it’s a giant undertaking it’s a fantastic role for an actress, and I just thought it was an unusual way to take a look at a soldier returning, especially from a woman’s perspective. What kind of impression did Liza and her vision for the film make on you? When I met with Liza I thought she really had an interesting voice; she had a lot of ideas about the silences and the small details that have caused the unraveling in this person’s life, rather than the one big traumatic and catastrophic event, which was a really interesting way to play it and hopefully for people to relate to this type of character. She had things written in the script about the way things smelled, and the way things felt on her feet, and it was different than other scripts that I had read. Liza’s idea of how to shoot it and who this person was, we really just fell in sync close to immediately. I was very lucky that she chose me! We had the luxury of time because it’s so hard to put together a truly independent film – we had a little over a year together, talking about the film, obsessing over the film. For me and for Liza, we really enjoyed educating ourselves as much as we could about people returning and their stories, and people’s stories surrounding them. I’m onscreen the entire time – I’ve never had such great trust between myself and a director, and that was a wonderful feeling. We very rarely hear about, let alone see depicted, the experience of a female soldier. How did you learn about that world and that unique point of view, through talking to real life servicemen and women? We tried to find as many people as we could that would talk to us, and people were very generous in speaking to us. People’s experiences were very different. There was one woman who was happily returning to her third or fourth deployment, and I spoke with another girl who, after one deployment, her life had been turned completely upside-down. The differences between those stories, and also the common threads – and I spoke with men as well, to get the generalized version of the story and to understand things that weren’t necessarily gender-specific, things that were common threads for men and women, so that the story could be accessible to many people since it wasn’t based on one person’s actual story. We spoke with psychologists and vets from other wars, people who had family members returning – and what it was like to be shut out from that – and went to places where we thought she’d have grown up. We went to places she’d have visited with her family; we did things she would have done in basic training even though you never saw them in the film. We just tried to fill her life as much as possible, especially because there are so many silences and so many small details and there’s so much restraint in her character, I wanted to be able to seed those silences with all the details I had learned. There are many instances where we realize, after the fact, that she’s felt off despite being back home and in her “normal” routine – and many small details that are not verbalized, but come through in quiet, subtle cues. Yeah. And the script didn’t tell me what to think, or how to think, but also as Kelli I don’t know how to say the things that I’m feeling, which is what I think happens in life. I don’t think that we’re always the most articulate we can be when we’re going through something traumatic or life-changing. Hindsight is 20/20 – you don’t realize for years to come that you’re going through and how they affected you. I imagine that Kelli, in the years to come, will understand more about herself than she does at the moment. Things are very jarring for her from the moment we meet her; she’s just come home from a tour of duty and trying to readjust to her old life, not quite sure why things feel different. How would you describe her headspace? She frequently explains, when people ask her what happened “over there,” that “other people had it a lot worse.” She’s in denial, for sure… I think she’s in denial, I think there’s some guilt, I think there’s some sadness…loss at her perspective of the world right now, I think there’s an innocence lost. I think she’s going through a lot of things that she doesn’t quite know how to put into words, but she certainly didn’t lose a limb like people that she saw, she didn’t lose her life, she didn’t get raped – she’s forced to count her blessings based on some of the things she’s seen but still does not feel her old self, and still feels changed by everything that’s happened, so it’s confusing. We spoke to this psychologist and she said sometimes people don’t have one specific trauma, but the idea of being in a broken and war-torn world where you see things that change your opinion of what mankind can be like is enough to cause trauma in your life. I think that’s an interesting thing; a lot of returning soldier stories have one big catastrophic event where someone gets hurt or there’s an outburst of violence, and I think those things do, of course as we’ve seen, really happen. And I think there’s another version of that, with people returning with stories that aren’t quite as explosive but that can be life-changing for them as well. I think that’s something that people come home with and can be healed from, but also some people are healed from it and some people are not. The idea of “returning” is made exponentially stressful given the possibility of redeployment for many soldiers like Kelli, and that constant feeling of being torn between two worlds seems even worse than having to adjust even once back to normal life. Absolutely. And what do you do with that commitment that you’ve made and the duty that you have – and the duty you have to your family? And what are your alternatives? Not to mention that in focusing on a female soldier’s perspective you get the added element of maternal demands – Kelli’s husband at one point asks her to try to be a mother to her children. The idea of these two potentially conflicting duties, service and motherhood, pulling a woman in two different directions is even more complex. Yeah, and I think it’s maybe just as difficult for men to do the same but we’re used to it. The idea of a woman leaving her children [to serve in the military] is a newer concept for people, so dealing with the fallout of that is something I think she has to deal with as well. Because the expectations of her returning home are different than they would be if she were a man. And the expectations of the man staying home are different as well, and Michael [Shannon]’s character is really interesting in that way too, in that he’s been holding things together waiting for her to come back and be normal and that just can’t happen. It’s really, really sad. Did Michael come to the project after you were attached? No, I think he was first! I don’t know if Liza knew him before or what, but he was attached first and very, very early on – it took at least a year after that, if not two, for the movie to be made. Then I came on and everybody else after that. What was it like playing opposite Michael and, by contrast, John Slattery, who plays an interesting character in that he and Kelli seem to get each other through their similar military experiences even if it doesn’t exactly work out… No, and I think he’s a surprise to her, too. I think she feels that she’s finally found somebody that maybe she can trust, and you get a glimpse of Kelli when she’s a little more carefree. She’s laughing, she’s having a good time, she’s talking, and she actually opens herself up a bit more before you realize how quickly that is an illusion, and how quickly she shuts down. Things are still not as she hopes them to be. I think it’s interesting, too, how he deals with his return – he’s a returning vet from a different war, versus her coming home from a more recent war, and it’s a common thread yet they have very different approaches to dealing with it. But John’s great; it was really fun to be able to play on set. It was very fun to have a different version of Kelli come out in those scenes, and I wanted people to understand what she was like when she could smile easier, and laugh, and relate to people a little bit better. With Michael, I had been on set a long time shooting by myself and when he showed up there was this whole family dynamic that came with him. For all the crazy parts he plays he’s a really wonderful, good person. Such a dynamic and amazing actor, it was a thrill to work with him and we had such a good time. We had this chemistry that just worked in terms of the opposition and the affection we had towards each other. How has your process evolved over the years in terms of the projects and characters that you choose? You know, it’s hard to say. It’s a good question. I’ve always tried to choose things where I could be different than what I have been doing, and I really like to be able to surprise people with what I’m able to do. I sometimes can shy away from the limelight a little, and I took a break after ER . I could have done several things but I just waited until I found a role… I wanted to step back and reevaluate myself as an actress and find out what I was capable of, and this was sort of the perfect role for that. I’m lucky that Liza trusted me with such a giant undertaking. It’s the first time someone’s been able to hand me a role like that, and it felt so good to sink my teeth into that and really understand myself again as an actress. But I love to do comedy too! I like to choose things that excite me and challenge me, and this was definitely one of them. [Laughs] It was very fast and furious shooting, too. And also I wanted to know more about that subject matter, so it was an education as well. You mentioned those few years that you took off to re-assess your career direction and the kind of projects you wanted to take on. When you look back on Freaks and Geeks , it has such an enduring legacy and even Paul Feig, for example, has had huge recent success. Yeah! It’s so great. When you look back on that time, how do you feel about the fact that many people still associate you with Freaks and Geeks and have such a love for the series, even now? It’s amazing. It really speaks to the power of the DVD because while we were on network television we got very much ignored, like the freaks and geeks of the industry. [Laughs] But I love it. I’m so proud of the show, I’m so proud of everybody who went on to do all the different things that they’ve done. It was such an interesting and unique group of people. Our [2011Paleyfest celebration] was like a high school reunion. We drove up and I said, ‘God, what are these people waiting for?’ And we realized they were here for Freaks and Geeks , to be part of the event, and I thought, wow – what a change, from being cancelled and not even getting to a full season! A line around the block a decade later. And I run into people who are still discovering the show. I think we’re all pretty proud of it. You followed Freaks and Geeks with a number of roles in big mainstream films – the Scooby-Doo movies, for instance. Considering this more recent career refocus, are there any earlier roles that you might reconsider doing if you had to do them over again? You know, everything I’ve done has brought me to where I am. Some people wonder where that is, but to me it’s the story of my life and I’ve had a pretty good life, so I’m pretty happy. And this latest role, if I would have stepped in a different direction I wouldn’t be in this film now, and to me it’s one of my greatest accomplishments so far. Return is in select theaters this Friday. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Look, I don’t know about you but I’ve often wondered what Phil Lord and Chris Miller ‘s excellent animated tale Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs would look like as live-action film. I mean come on, an ice cream snow day? How can we make this happen, world?! Well, one enterprising filmmaker went ahead and actually managed to recreate Cloudy using live actors and some fantastic CG work, nailing details like spray on shoes and the Jell-O mansion with impressive panache. (One glaring exception: Where is Steve??) Watch the short, created by Megasteakman for Virgin Radio’s 2012 Fake Film Contest, and throw ’em a vote for making the streets rain with ginormous, terrifying, and deliciously realistic-looking donuts. More info here . Lord and Miller, meanwhile, graduated from Sony’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to the new 21 Jump Street remake, which has earned terrific buzz so far and debuts next month at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival . Somehow these guys have a knack for making tasty treats leap off the big screen, by which I mean Channing Tatum, who I consider some sort of equivalent to an ice cream blizzard in 21 Jump Street . [ Virgin Radio 2012 Fake Film Contest via @chrizmillr ]
Sunday night, hacker group Anonymous worked its way into 78 email accounts belonging to Syrian President Bashar Assad and his ministry officers. Among the discoveries: Damning emails that suggest Assad was trained to manipulate facts in his ABC News interview last year with Barbara Walters, in which he denied that his government was targeting its own citizens in violent clashes that have rocked his country for nearly a year. And to think, it all might’ve been prevented if Assad and his tech guys had heeded the lessons of information security learned from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs … In the least, they could’ve made it a bit harder for Anonymous to break in; according to reports, many of the hacked email accounts were protected with the password “12345.” Sound familiar, King Roland? Take it away, Dark Helmet! Meanwhile, head to Haaretz for more on the leaked emails, including point-by-point lessons in spinning the ongoing Syrian conflict for American media sent to Assad by a press attache. [ Village Voice , Haaretz ]
Chances are at least a few of your casual conversations about Bridesmaids have revolved around the scene in which Melissa McCarthy is forced to use a bridal shop sink as a toilet. The true beauty of that scene was Kristen Wiig’s Annie, sweat-drenched, trying to stay composed while she was berated over choosing a restaurant that caused some serious gastrointestinal horrors for the ladies. Not to suggest that McCarthy doesn’t deserve the praise; she’s a terrific actress (Sookie forever!). Come Feb. 26, McCarthy will go up against fellow supporting actress Oscar nominees Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer from The Help , Janet McTeer , playing a cross-dresser in Albert Nobbs , and Berenice Bejo of silent juggernaut The Artist . Though it’s highly unlikely the shot of McCarthy perched on a bathroom countertop will play on the big screen when her name is announced inside the Kodak Theatre, the image probably won’t be too far from viewers’ minds. The Bridesmaids scene-stealer is far from the only nominee in history who grabbed the attention of moviegoers and the Academy with a role that involved a squirm-inducing scene. Below are a handful of others. Linda Blair, The Exorcist Blair was barely a teenager when she took on the twisted role of Regan in the scariest movie of all time. As far as which scene is most revolting, take your pick: the crucifix-crotch-stabbing, the convulsions, the levitating, the pea soup projectile vomiting. The most enduringly troubling, though, was actually cut from the movie in 1973 but reinstated for the 2000 rerelease: the spider-walk staircase scene. Regan’s freakish contortion is spine-tingling, and seeing it made me wonder what possessed me to catch the rerelease in the theater, with no blanket to duck under. Sissy Spacek, Carrie It takes guts to stand, caked in fake blood, and telekinetically massacre a bunch of kids and teachers at the prom. When Carrie’s suffering finally turns to rage, it’s most remarkable for her silence. Wordlessly, she burns down the auditorium while drowning in the echoes of her deranged mother’s declaration “They’re all going to laugh at you.” The catchphrase stuck, and also serves up chills thanks to the acting finesse of Spacek (and fellow 1977 Oscar nominee Piper Laurie as Carrie’s mother). Glenn Close, Fatal Attraction Before she became a nominee this year for playing a taciturn woman pretending to be a man in Albert Nobbs , Close was a nightmare that Michael Douglas couldn’t shake. Sure, it’s just a punchline now, but 25 years ago, the revelation that Close’s Alex had gone so far as to boil a pet rabbit in her stalkee’s home really struck a nerve and dominated talk of the movie. Close lost the Oscar to Cher in Moonstruck , who sported a similar crazy mane of hair but who had fewer aggressive tendencies (“Snap out of it!”). Kathy Bates, Misery Bates took home the Oscar in 1991 for playing writer- and figurine-obsessed Annie Wilkes, who holds author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) captive until he can produce a new novel that’s to her liking. The film’s infamous hobbling scene is effectively creepy because, really, no one’s ever that perky while wielding a sledgehammer. Bates’ calm demeanor before, during and after the attack is unusually winning. Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs All sorts of perversions lead up to this scene, but nothing really prepares us for the moment when Hannibal Lecter finally gets his meal and escapes from prison. “Fava beans and a nice chianti [slurp]” is the big Lecter quotable, but for shock value there’s no match for the sickening sight of him peeling away the face he carved off a prison guard and wore as a mask. Hopkins, who won the best actor Oscar in 1992 for the role, keeps us on edge through the whole sequence.
“We must treat these dog characters with the same respect we show human characters… no condescension, no looking down, no breaking character for the sake of a gag.” And that, my friends, is part of the reason why Walt Disney’s legacy on film has stood the test of time. After the jump, find deleted scenes and a nifty video culling notes from Disney’s story meetings with collaborators on 1955’s Lady and the Tramp . In newly released deleted scenes (found on the Lady and the Tramp Diamond Edition DVD and Blu-ray, out today), envision what might have been via sketched storyboards for moments that didn’t make it into the final cut. Scrapped from the final film, Russian wolfhound Boris was at one point to em-bark (groan!) in a love triangle with Lady and Tramp. At this point in development, the character of Tramp was called Homer. Deleted Scene: “Boris meets Lady” Lady’s troubles begin when owners Jim Dear and Darling find they’re expecting a baby and no longer can give her their full attention, but in this deleted scene Lady shares in her master’s excitement. Deleted Scene: “Waiting for Baby” Fascinating character development chat abounds in this dramatic recreation of Disney’s story meetings on crafting the character of Lady, based on original transcripts. “Creating Lady” And a brief peek inside the process of developing the Beaver character, envisioned as a near-sighted salesman caricature — “A satire on the 21st century and what they think up…” “Creating Beaver” Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Actor and multimedia DIYer Joseph Gordon-Levitt is set to make his directorial debut opposite fellow newbie director Scarlett Johansson in an untitled comedy co-produced under his own hitRecord Films banner. The pic, shooting in April, also stars JGL as a Don Juan-type ladykiller seeking to reform his ways; the actor-director also wrote the script. So yes, it’s time to face facts: That kid from Third Rock from the Sun is officially way, way more accomplished than you. [ Deadline ]
In director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s horror tale The Intruders , Clive Owen investigates spooky happenings at home and discovers that something supernatural may be haunting his young daughter. How scary is this mystery perpetrator who makes things go bump late at night? Well, just hit the jump to get a good look at what it did to poor Owen’s handsome face. Ready? BOOM. What. The. Hell. The Intruders , in theaters March 30, involves a creepy faceless entity known as “Hollow Face” who comes for Owen and his daughter (Ella Purnell) at night. Good luck getting Clive Owen’s scruffy no-face face out of your nightmares. [via Millennium Films]
