The critics blurbs in this clip say “romantic comedy” — as does the purple sex-toy scene — but the melancholy soundtrack and the sad, pensive looks on Lizzy Caplan and Alison Brie’ s faces say bring some Puffs when you see Michael Mohan’s Save the Date . Caplan is fast becoming the go-to girl for indie comedies that scrutinize the meaning of love, particularly as it relates to the institution of marriage. This past summer, she was part of the ensemble in Leslye Headland’s wickedly honest Bachelorette , and in Save the Date she plays Sarah, who learns something about herself when she gets caught up in a rebound romance after turning down her boyfriend’s marriage proposal. Brie plays Caplan’s sister Beth who is caught up in the details of her own wedding. Hand me a tissue, please. I’m feeling weepy already. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
I’ll admit I was a bit iffy on this whole live singing concept in Tom Hooper’s epic Les Miserables film adaptation… until now. The new international trailer swells with emotion as everyone from Hugh Jackman to Anne Hathaway to Amanda Seyfried , Russell Crowe , and Eddie Redmayne warble Claude-Michel Schönberg’s iconic tunes like their Oscar hopes depended on it. Which they do. Hathaway’s got the showy role in Fantine, whose “I Dreamed A Dream” was one of the first bits to leak onto the internet months back. Thank goodness for the new trailer, which shows that the rest of the ensemble is bringing their singing game to the streets of 19th century France, too. We’ve got Jackman as Valjean, Crowe as Javert, Seyfried as Cosette, all of whom have been known to flex their vocal chords from time to time. Redmayne, who starred most recently in My Week With Marilyn and plays Marius, has yet to show off his pipes but apparently was a chorister at Eton College – not too shabby. Then there’s Samantha Barks as Eponine, who’ll probably blow everyone else in the cast away seeing as she’s an actual West End star. (Remember when we thought Taylor Swift had the role in the bag? Oh, Internet .) In any case, hope! Optimism! I know Les Mis is already going to steal all the Christmas movie-going dollars, but now I’m more convinced it’ll be a repeat-view Oscar contender and not just a must-see for Broadway nuts. Color me a believer. Read more on Les Miserables . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Tony Scott’s dramatic and still-mysterious leap to his death in August has grounded the Top Gun sequel . The New York Times reported that the film, which was being planned by the filmmaker, the star of the original, Tom Cruise, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, has “fallen apart” in the wake of Scott’s suicide . If there is a silver lining to the story, it’s that a 3D version of the original Top Gun may be released in February 2013. Earlier this year, Legend3D, which specializes in converting two-dimensional films into the more eye-popping format, completed a conversion of the film, which, the Times notes, “as a way to whet the world’s appetite for a sequel.” Since Scott leapt to his death from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles on Aug. 19, however, Paramount, the studio behind both the original Top Gun and its sequel, is “considering a release in February, perhaps beginning with a one-week exclusive showing on domestic Imax screens.” [New York Times] The paper also reports that the studio is treading carefully because it does not want to seem insensitive or exploitative. Although the Los Angeles coroner officially ruled Scott’s death a suicide, questions remain about his reasons for taking his own life. According to the Times , the filmmaker’s brother, Prometheus director Ridley Scott has asked a number of people who knew and worked with his sibling not to discuss his “life or demise.” Tony Scott’s last work appears to be the below Diet Mountain Dew commercial featuring Dallas Mavericks and HDNet owner, billionaire Mark Cuban . Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
It’s easy to draw parallels to President Obama in Steven Spielberg ’s historical Oscar hopeful Lincoln , a portrait of the 16th American President who stood tall, orated well, united a divided nation across color and party lines, and was re-elected to office for a second term. But Spielberg insists he had no specific political agenda in mind when the long-gestating Lincoln came to fruition. “I would have been very glad to have made Lincoln in the year 2000,” Spielberg explained recently in Los Angeles, “the year after I met [author Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln was adapted by Lincoln scribe Tony Kushner]. It took her a couple years to write the book. It took us more than a couple years to get the screenplay written. So, I wasn’t waiting for a certain time.” The divided politics of Lincoln’s presidency, as explored at length in Spielberg’s film, find pointed parallels in President Obama’s tenure in the White House: A President with a humanistic streak tasked with bringing war to an end, Lincoln is depicted wrestling with military crises, huge wartime losses of life, moral questions of personal freedoms, Constitutional history-making, all-too eager rivals, and, notably, his own family issues at home. Still, Spielberg says the Obama-Lincoln parallels have nothing to do with it. “At one point I flirted with coming out on the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, but we weren’t ready to make the picture then,” said Spielberg, who spent years wooing star Daniel Day-Lewis and had even resigned himself to not making Lincoln without the actor. “People say ‘Oh, you made it because of what’s happening in politics today.’ No, we were ready to make it during the Bush administration. It had had nothing to do current politics.” That’s not to say no inference at all should be drawn into Lincoln ’s messaging as a reflection of modern politics; it’s just that, despite “tremendous similarities” between politics in the time of Lincoln and today, reading too much into the details might be confusing because of how much the intervening 14 decades have altered America’s political system. “There’s a lot of confusion about the political ideologies of both parties, [which] have switched 180 degrees in 150 years,” he explained. “It’s just too confusing. Everybody claims Lincoln as their own. And everybody should claim Lincoln as their own, because he represents all of us, and what he did basically provided the opportunities that, that all of us are enjoying today.” So while a theatrical release on Friday should bring President Lincoln and his legend to vivid life in the wake of Tuesday’s Obama re-election, those few extra buffer days allowed Spielberg to get some distance from the real-life Presidential race. “I just wanted people to talk about the film, not talk about the election cycle. So I thought it was safer to let people talk about film during the election cycle in this run-up with ads on TV and posters going up and all that, but the actual debut of the film should happen after the election’s been decided. That was my feeling.” Despite peeling the curtain back on Lincoln — the film reveals intimate glimpses of his home life and career, but leaves ambiguous the fringe theories of his sexuality, as hinted at by Kushner in an interview with Metro — Spielberg is happy to continue letting people talk and wonder at any deeper messages seeded within what he otherwise says was meant only to be a portrait of a great figure in American history. “I’m really excited to see how deeply people will reach to contemporize our film,” he said with a smile, “far beyond how it deserves to be contemporized.” Read more on Lincoln , in select theaters Friday . Lincoln closes the 2012 AFI Fest on Thursday. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Brad Pitt faces off against zombies in the first peek at World War Z , the anticipated and notoriously troubled book adaptation that has Hollywood aflutter. Are those notorious behind-the-scenes woes evident from these 30 seconds of footage? More importantly: Will Pitt’s gloriously shaggy mane keep its luster as he flees from these hordes of CG zombies? Entertainment Tonight has the first look (they’ll debut a full peek on November 8): Even compensating for the annoying infotainment voice-over and terrible picture quality, this just a little… underwhelming. This is the kind of I Am Legend -esque zombie CG $170 million and counting buys you? That said, I do love me some Mireille Enos even if my brain isn’t ready to accept the idea of her and Pitt as a couple. Does not quite compute. I look at her frantically on the phone with Pitt in this trailer tease and think of Linden frantically on her flip phone with her neglected teenage son, chewing Nicorette, hunting down perps in Seattle while being the worst mother ever. And then I think back to The Killing , which I loved even if it was two seasons of red herrings and Holderisms, because remember Holder? God , I loved him. I’d like to think Holder would survive a zombie apocalypse. Hiding out underneath a hoodie, calling zombies names like “home slice.” Yeah. Give me that movie. World War Z zombie-runs into theaters on June 21, 2013. Let’s hope seven months is enough time to make those CG effects look vaguely realistic. Leave your thoughts below. [ Entertainment Tonight ]
Oscar hopeful Beasts of the Southern Wild and Artifact , actor Jared Leto ‘s documentary — he’s credited as Bartholomew Cubbins — about his band 30 Seconds to Mars, are among the five films that have made it to the final round of IFP’s Gotham Independent Film Audience Award contest. Beasts, which was directed by Benh Zeitlin , turns out to be the only non-documentary nominated: The other three contenders include Kirby Dick’s Invisible War , about rape in the military; Burn , Brenna Sanchez and Tom Putnam’s documentary about Detroit firefighters, and Jonathan Kalafer’s Once in a Lullaby: The PS 22 Chorus Story , which tells the story of how the fifth-grade chorus at a Staten Island public school came to perform at the 2011 Oscars. The first round voting took place from October 18 – 31, during which 31 audience award-winning films from the top 50 US and Canadian film festivals were narrowed through online voting to the five films with the highest number of votes. Round two of voting will take place until Nov. 18, and the winner will be announced at the Gotham Awards in New York on Nov. 26. Filmgoers can vote online for their favorite film . Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Oscar hopeful Beasts of the Southern Wild and Artifact , actor Jared Leto ‘s documentary — he’s credited as Bartholomew Cubbins — about his band 30 Seconds to Mars, are among the five films that have made it to the final round of IFP’s Gotham Independent Film Audience Award contest. Beasts, which was directed by Benh Zeitlin , turns out to be the only non-documentary nominated: The other three contenders include Kirby Dick’s Invisible War , about rape in the military; Burn , Brenna Sanchez and Tom Putnam’s documentary about Detroit firefighters, and Jonathan Kalafer’s Once in a Lullaby: The PS 22 Chorus Story , which tells the story of how the fifth-grade chorus at a Staten Island public school came to perform at the 2011 Oscars. The first round voting took place from October 18 – 31, during which 31 audience award-winning films from the top 50 US and Canadian film festivals were narrowed through online voting to the five films with the highest number of votes. Round two of voting will take place until Nov. 18, and the winner will be announced at the Gotham Awards in New York on Nov. 26. Filmgoers can vote online for their favorite film . Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Documentary nominees take the deserved spotlight with 2012 non-fiction nominations unveiled by organizers of the Cinema Eye Honors Friday at AFI Fest with The Imposter and Searching for Sugar Man each receiving five nominations. Six films will compete for Cinema Eye’s Outstanding Achievement in Non-fiction Feature Filmmaking prize. Included are Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s 5 Broken Cameras , Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Detropia , Bart Layton’s The Imposter , Matthew Akers’ Marina Abramović The Artist is Present , Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims’ Only the Young and Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching for Sugar Man . The 6th Annual Cinema Eye Honors will take place January 9 as Cinema Eye at New York City’s Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking 5 Broken Cameras , directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi Produced by Christine Camdessus, Serge Gordey, Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi Detropia , directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady Produced by Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady and Craig Atkinson The Imposter , directed by Bart Layton Produced by Dimitri Doganis Marina Abramović The Artist is Present , directed by Matthew Akers; Produced by Jeff Dupre and Maro Chermayeff Only the Young , directed by Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims Produced by Derek Waters Searching for Sugar Man , directed by Malik Bendjelloul Produced by Simon Chinn Outstanding Achievement in Direction Detropia , Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady The Law in These Parts , Ra’anan Alexandrowicz Only the Young , Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims Planet of Snail , Seungjun Yi Tchoupitoulas , Bill Ross and Turner Ross ¡Vivan las Antipodas! , Victor Kossakovsky Outstanding Achievement in Production Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry , Alison Klayman and Adam Schlesinger Big Boys Gone Bananas!* , Margarete Jangård The Imposter , Dimitri Doganis Searching for Sugar Man , Simon Chinn ¡Vivan las Antipodas! , Heino Deckert Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography Chasing Ice , Jeffrey Orlowski The Imposter , Erik Alexander Wilson & Lynda Hall Only the Young , Jason Tippet & Elizabeth Mims Samsara , Ron Fricke ¡Vivan las Antipodas! , Victor Kossakovsky Outstanding Achievement in Editing 5 Broken Cameras , Véronique Lagoarde-Ségot & Guy Davidi Detropia , Enat Sidi How to Survive a Plague , T. Woody Richman, Tyler H. Walk & Jonathan Oppenheim Room 237 , Rodney Ascher Tchoupitoulas , Bill Ross Audience Choice Prize 5 Broken Cameras , directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi Beauty is Embarrassing , directed by Neil Berkeley Bully , directed by Lee Hirsch How to Survive a Plague , directed by David France The Imposter , directed by Bart Layton Jiro Dreams of Sushi , directed by David Gelb Kumaré , directed by Vikram Gandhi Marina Abramović The Artist is Present , directed by Matthew Akers Searching for Sugar Man , directed by Malik Bendjelloul Trash Dance directed by Andrew Garrison Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry , directed by Alison Klayman How to Survive a Plague , directed by David France Marina Abramović The Artist is Present , directed by Matthew Akers Only the Young , directed by Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims Room 237 , directed by Rodney Ascher Searching for Sugar Man , directed by Malik Bendjelloul The Waiting Room , directed by Peter Nicks Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Score Detropia , Dial.81 The Imposter , Anna Nikitin Into the Abyss , Mark De Gli Antoni Room 237 , Jonathan Snipes, William Hutson, The Caretaker (James Kirby) ¡Vivan las Antipodas! , Alexander Popov Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design or Animation Beauty is Embarrassing , Neil Berkeley, Anthony Maiuri Herman’s House , Nicolas Brault, Tom Hillman Indie Game: The Movie , James Swirsky Room 237 , Carlos Ramos Searching for Sugar Man , Oskar Gullstrand, Arvid Steen Urbanized , Brooklyn Digital Foundry/John Szot Spotlight Award Argentinian Lesson , directed by Wojciech Staroń Bestiaire , directed by Denis Côté Downeast , directed by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin Meanwhile in Mamelodi , directed by Benjamin Kahlmeyer Vol Special (Special Flight) , directed by Fernand Melgar Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Short Filmmaking Cutting Loose , directed by Finlay Pretsell and Adrian McDowall Family Nightmare , directed by Dustin Guy Defa Good Bye Mandima (Kwa Heri Mandima) , directed by Robert-Jan Lacombe Into the Middle of Nowhere , directed by Anna Francis Ewert Paradise (Paraíso), directed by Nadav Kurtz
You think navigating a press junket after a personal controversy goes public is potentially awkward? Try braving throngs of journalists clamoring for an answer to The Twilight Saga ‘s curious “imprinting” storyline , as Taylor Lautner did today when the franchise-ending Breaking Dawn Part II press tour kicked off. For the record, both parties in the reportedly reunited Robsten supercouple acquitted themselves ably and congenially in back-to-back press conferences as they discussed their four-year journey with the vampire franchise. [ Mild spoilers follow, if you haven’t read the books .] But Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson aren’t the only Twilight kids who’ve matured in the interim as the worldwide phenomenon has turned them and their cast mates into global megastars. Twenty-year-old Lautner came off with charisma even as he broached the subject of his character’s eyebrow-raising onscreen soul mate attachment to a child in Breaking Dawn . “It’s a fine line, and I was worried about it,” Lautner admitted of Jacob Black’s supernatural, (platonic — for now) love at first sight connection to the half-human, half-vampire offspring of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. (By comparison, Edward’s a century older than Bella, so in the grand scheme of things it’s not that bad…) Played by 9-year-old Mackenzie Foy, Renesmee grows from infant to school-age girl in a superhuman span of time — and as in the books, Jacob is compelled by his Quileute legacy to instantly “imprint,” or attach, himself to her side in a manner that eventually will take on romantic undertones. Understandably he had concerns, so he went to the source for advice: Stephenie Meyer. “There was nobody better to ask about it than her,” Lautner said. “And she basically told me, ‘Stop overcomplicating it. Think here and now, that’s all you really have to focus on.’” “It’s simple — she said it’s a lifelong bond between two people and that’s it,” he continued. “At this point the girl’s like, what, ten years old? So it’s more of a protective thing, like a brother-sister. That’s really all it is. I couldn’t allow myself to think ahead and go beyond that, so that’s kind of the zone I had to stay in.” The weirdness of the Jacob-Renesmee bond is not lost on Jacob in the film, who encounters a furious Bella when she awakens from human death to find her best friend has imprinted on her newborn baby. But Lautner’s Jacob finds himself in a more than few awkward situations in Breaking Dawn . Another scene found Lautner stripping down in front of Billy Burke’s Charlie in one of the surprisingly comical moments sprinkled throughout the film. “It actually was pretty funny in person,” Lautner laughed. “I love Billy Burke to death and he’s one of the coolest people alive, so it was a little uncomfortable for me — it’s always uncomfortable when I have to take my shirt off or something because I’m always the only one doing it!” “The weather conditions we film in, and everybody’s bundled up in like seven layers and I’m the only one in jean shorts… that was a new one,” he said. “I think the pants came off in that one too. But it was a funny, funny scene. I was so nervous to film it because it was written so hilariously and I wanted it to come across that way and I hope it does, but it was a blast to shoot.” Stay tuned for more on The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. II , which hits theaters November 16. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Also in Thursday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs: Christoph Walt is in talks to star in a Muppets sequel; Kathryn Bigelow ‘s Zero Dark Thirty officially gets new nationwide release; And a Brad Anderson thriller finds a U.S. release. Harrison Ford, Zac Efron Eye You Belong to Me Directed by Rob Reiner, Ford would play a psychiatrist who faces hard times after one of his female patients commits suicide. But he bonds with her brother James (Efron), but the situation becomes complicated when he lets James into his life and he begins seducing his wife and daughter. Rob Reiner will direct, The Wrap reports . Jennifer Garner Eyes Drama Dallas Buyers Club Garner is in talks to star in the drama alongside Matthew McConaughey. The story revolves around a man who was given six months to live after contracting AIDS in 1986, but lived another six years by illegally smuggling medicine into the U.S. and giving drugs to other sufferers too, Deadline reports . Christoph Waltz Eyes The Muppets Sequel Waltz would play an Interpol inspector in the Europe-set comedy. James Bobin who directed the 2011 Muppets film is returning to direct the follow-up, THR reports . Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty Goes Wide in January The Osama bin Laden pic will do awards season qualifying runs in New York and Los Angeles on December 19th in order to build word of mouth. It will add markets January 4th before going nationwide on January 11th. The title will now avoid the Christmas crush, including five high-profile roll outs, THR reports . Thriller Eliza Graves Heads to U.S. Theaters Directed by Brad Anderson ( The Machinist ), the movie is about a new physician who arrives to apprentice at a mental institution where he falls in love with a patient under circumstances that are more complicated than they seem. Production begins in 2013, Deadline reports .
