This weekend, Brad Pitt announced that he plans on retiring from acting in three years. Sure, a declaration like that should be taken with a grain of salt, especially considering the similar threats made by actors like Ryan Gosling and drunken directors like Steven Soderbergh , that turned out to be mere fantasies rather than concrete plans. Regardless of the sincerity of this statement though, Movieline wonders: Is it time for Brad Pitt to quit acting?
“How am I going to market a black-and-white silent movie? I’m praying. I’m going to church and to synagogue. And if that doesn’t work, I’m going Buddhist. And if that doesn’t work, I’m going Islam. Saturdays and Sundays are very busy in the Weinstein household.” [ NYM ]
Despite what could only be described as the week from PR hell, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had to take at least a little comfort — OK, a lot of comfort — knowing that it had its second most vital annual event to look forward to during the weekend: The Governors Ball, where Oprah WInfrey, James Earl Jones and makeup artist Dick Smith were bequeathed honorary Academy Awards.
In this weekend’s Melancholia , Kirsten Dunst stars as a conflicted bride anticipating the end of the world only hours after her wedding. So just how did Dunst transform herself from a child vampiress vixen to a Lars von Trier muse?
The 2011 AFI Fest drew to a close Thursday night with the North American public premiere of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn , directed, appropriately enough, by AFI -associated Steven Spielberg . Though he was unable to attend in person (much of the crew of Tintin , including Spielberg, was on location filming Lincoln ), he sent star Jamie Bell in his stead to introduce the film and play a pre-recorded message for the audience at the Grauman’s Chinese, which became so packed festival goers spilled over into a second overflow theater for the premiere.
It’s been a while since the critical establishment really, really hated something enough for Movieline to feature a customary ” Scathing Responses ” round-up. But they have emptied their spleens today for Jack and Jill , the new Adam Sandler “comedy” that our own critic Alison Willmore described as “a film whose star often seems moments away from turning to the camera and yelling ‘ARE YOU LAUGHING NOW ?'”
In the new Jason Statham thriller Safe , which comes out on the Oscar-unfriendly date of March 2, our gritty hero must protect a 12-year-old girl who can “memorize anything.” Would you beat up a bunch of trained hoodlums to protect a preteen with savant tendencies? Is memorization that necessary a skill anymore? I would just buy an almanac or a flash drive and let the girl fend for herself. But Jason chose differently! Click through for the trailer’s carnage and some of Statham’s old-fashioned testicle touting.
There’s something almost endearing about the creakily lo-fi quality of 11-11-11 , the latest feature from Darren Lynn Bousman, director of Repo! The Genetic Opera and _Saw_s II-IV. The film has the feel of something conceived and whipped together in very little time, perhaps to make its own built-in deadline. It struggles with big ideas — about the apocalypse, the changing nature of faith and, of course, how a certain date allows for the passage of possibly demonic beings between the worlds — that it can’t possibly accommodate on its small scale. It’s a film with maybe a dozen speaking parts and supernatural beings that are clearly dudes in black robes wearing rubber masks that nevertheless tries to suggest seismic spiritual changes are afoot, thanks to the events it chronicles in a beach house in Spain (a country from which I can only assume the film received funding, as there’s no other reason for it to be set there and the travel opens up problematic time zone questions).
When you first wept through the Jack and Jill trailer , you probably figured that Al Pacino’s role as Al Pacino would just be a brief cameo. He falls for Adam Sandler in drag at a Lakers game and sends her a hot dog with his phone number squirted in mustard. Classic meat cute! Judging by a few new clips from the Razzie front runner though, Al Pacino co-stars in multiple scenes as Jill’s overeager love interest.
