It’s no secret that Chinese censors are tough nuts to crack when it comes to Hollywood imports like Men in Black 3 . And, sure — those scenes of aliens with reptilian tongues disguised as Chinatown restaurant workers serving up contraband foodstuffs played on easy jokes, and were reportedly excised from the Chinese release. But was there something more subtle and subversive at play when Agent J “neuralized” a crowd of innocent Chinatown bystanders? Per the Telegraph, Men in Black 3 ‘s Chinatown scenes were the focus of China’s censors, who took pains to cut out moments from the film that painted people of Chinese ancestry — well, aliens posing as Asians working in a Chinese restaurant, at least — in a negative light. Reports vary on just how much was cut out, with The Telegraph citing 13 minutes of edited footage. Sure, whatever. Take out the seemingly villainous Chinese folks. More interesting is the speculation surrounding why a scene depicting Smith mind-wiping a group of civilians right after his Chinatown brawl might have been removed. “This could have been a hint on the use of internet censorship to maintain social stability,” commented China’s Southern Daily newspaper (via The Telegraph ). Censoring the MIB neuralizer from audiences because it’s a form of insidious government mind control? Hilariously ironic. I’d like to think Barry Sonnenfeld and Smith and Co. had this kind of subversive agenda in mind, but YEAH RIGHT. All I want to know is, how can I neuralyze that hideous Pitbull song from my brain? [ The Telegraph ]
Oh, live television. You can’t hit rewind! Kathie Lee Gifford’s legendary on-air gaffe yesterday, in which she asked Today Show guest Martin Short how he keeps his marriage alive — unaware that Short’s wife Nancy passed away in 2010 after battling cancer, I mean seriously — blew up Wednesday as America caught wind of the cringe-worthy moment and Kathie Lee’s shame went viral. At least she had the good sense to apologize for making the most horrifying live-interview faux pas in recent memory. “I send my sincerest apologies to @MartinShort and his family,” Griffin tweeted. “He handled situation w/enormous grace and kindness and I’m so grateful.” Never mind the minor fact that @MartinShort is not the actor’s Twitter, either. But hey, it’s the sentiment that counts, right? Poor Short, there to promote Madagascar 3 ; he just wanted to chop it up about some animated animals. And then, the look of masked horror on his face as he plays along, politely… *shudder* [via Gossip Cop ]
His competition premieres fizzled a bit , but perhaps Harvey Weinstein controlled the message where it counts: “As I surveyed the room, I found that Gossip Girl ’s Kelly Rutherford also held the rather odd opinion that Weinstein was secretly the gala’s best masseuse. ‘I mean, there are guys that are really cute but you don’t know if they’d be good givers. And a massage, you have to be giving,’ she told me. ‘I bet Harvey would give a great massage. I think he’s so sexy and smart and he’s very giving. Plus, whatever he does, you know he’s going to do it well.'” [ Vulture ]
The Memorial Day frame wasn’t one quite worth remembering for Will Smith, who walked away with the holiday’s biggest opening almost by default as The Avengers waned — not a lot, but enough — in its fourth weekend. Meanwhile, the week’s other wide release suffered a catastrophic B.O. meltdown en route to sixth place overall. Your special holiday-edition Weekend Receipts are here. [All figures reflect four-day totals.] 1. Men in Black 3 Gross: $70,000,000 (new) Screens: 4,248 (PSA: $16,478) Weeks: 1 Will Smith ‘s first summer entry in four years didn’t exactly blow the roofs off America’s multiplexes — the third installment of the sci-fi/comedy mashups had a $55,000,000 three-day total that basically matched those of its franchise predecessors from 1997 and 2002. But that’s what foreign box-office is for: $133 million and counting, giving Sony a $200 million global total that it should be able to build on in the weeks ahead opposite the modest-looking Snow White and the Huntsman and the R-rated Prometheus . 2. The Avengers Gross: $46,878,000 ($523,563,000) Screens: 3,918 (PSA $11,965) Weeks: 4 (Change: -15.8%) In four weeks, Marvel’s blockbuster has settled into the fourth spots on both the all-time domestic and foreign gross lists. It’ll take the third spots from The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (respectively) in the next 24 hours. The Avengers , ladies and gentlemen! There are no words. 3. Battleship Gross: $13,769,000 ($47,274,000) Screens: 3,702 (PSA: $3,719) Weeks: 2 (Change: -46.1%) Don’t let the 46 percent decline fool you; the three-day total reflected a 57 percent plunge from its pillow-soft Stateside debut. Again, though, its foreign ardor persists — not quite enough to make the whole thing worth Universal or Hasbro’s while, but hey. At least there’s always G.I. Joe 2 ! Oh, wait . 4. The Dictator Gross: $11,755,000 ($43,603,000) Screens: 3,014 (PSA $3,900) Weeks: 2 (Change: -32.6%) I dunno, maybe this wasn’t the best weekend to be joking around about Middle Eastern despots at the movies? 5. Dark Shadows Gross: $9,405,000 ($64,888,000) Screens: 3,404 (PSA $2,763) Weeks: 3 (Change: -25.3%) Someone had to finish fifth. 6. Chernobyl Diaries Gross: $9,300,000 ($9,300,000) Screens: 2,433 (PSA $3,822) Weeks: 1 David Poland said it best : ” Oren Peli just isn’t a brand. Sorry.” Aren’t we all. [Figures via Box Office Mojo ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Después de Lucia by Michel Franco took the top prize in Cannes Un Certain Regard section this weekend. Also honored were Benoit Delépine and Gugstave Kervern’s Le Grand Soir , winning a Special Jury Prize, while Emilie Dequenne and Suzanne Clément both won Best Actress prizes for their performances in A Perdre La Raison and Laurence Anyways respectively. Djeca (Children of Sarajevo) by Aida Begic received a “Special Distinction of the Jury nod. Winners: Prize of Un Certain Regard: Después de Lucia by Michel Franco Special Jury Prize: Le Grand Soir by Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern Un Certain Regard Award for Best Actress: Suzanne Clément for her performance in Laurence Anyways directed by Xavier Dolan Emilie Dequenne for her performance in A Perdre La Raison directed by Joachim Lafosse Special Distinction of the Jury: Djeca (Children of Sarajevo) by Aida Begic
Michael Haneke’s Amour won the Palme d’Or Sunday night in Cannes, capping the 65th edition of the festival. The film follows Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emanuelle Riva) a couple in their 80s who must endure a long demise after Anne suffers an attack. This is not Haneke’s first time taking to the stage to accept Cannes’ top prize. He won the Palme d’Or in 2009 for The White Ribbon and he took a Grand Jury Prize at the festival in 2001 for The Piano Teacher and in 2005 won Best Director for Caché . In other prizes, Matteo Garrone’s Reality won the Grand Jury Prize, while Ken Loach’s Angels’ Share took the Cannes Jury Prize. Sundance 2012 Best Film winner Beasts of the Southern Wild by Benh Zeitlin won the Camera d’Or for Best First Film, while Beyond the Hills by Cristian Mungiu took two awards, including Best Actress and Best Screenplay. Garrone won the Grand Jury Prize in 2008 for Gomorrah , while Ken Loach won the Palme d’Or in 2006 for The Wind that Shakes the Barley . “Cannes shows us cinema is not just a diversion, but shows how we live together,” said Angels’ Share director Ken Loach. “In these dark times, let’s show our solidarity with those who resist austerity.” “This wasn’t just my first film, it was the first film for almost everyone who made it,” director Benh Zeitlin said from the Lumiére stage Sunday. “[Cannes] is a temple and you don’t know if you’re able to dance in the temple, and you can. Thank you, you’ve changed many people’s lives.” The List of 2012 Cannes Film Festival winners: Palme d’Or: Amour by Michael Haneke Grand Prix of the Jury: Reality by Matteo Garrone Prix de la Mise en Scene (Best Director): Carlos Reygadas for Post Tenebras Lux Prix du Scenario (Best Screenplay): Cristian Mungiu for Beyond the Hills Camera d’Or (Best First Feature): Beasts of the Southern Wild , directed by Benh Zeitlin Prix du Jury (Jury Prize): The Angels’ Share directed by Ken Loach Prix d’interpretation feminine (Best Actress): Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur for Beyond the Hills directed by Cristian Mungiu Prix d’interpretation masculine (Best Actor): Mads Mikkelsen for Jagten , directed by Thomas Vinterberg Palme d’Or (Short Film): Silence (Sessis-Be Deng) directed by L. Rezan Yesilbas Read more of Movieline’s Cannes 2012 coverage here . [Photo of Michael Haneke: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images]
A year after Lars von Trier was publicly castigated for making a Hitler joke at Cannes , the festival has banned a controversial comedy by French comedian/provocateur Dieudonné. Entitled The Anti-Semite , the film was scheduled to play not in the official festival but in the Cannes Film Market, but outrage over its content — including mockery of Auschwitz and Dieudonné in Nazi dress — led the organization to scrap screenings. According to Agence France-Presse, the film includes “images deriding Auschwitz,” “Dieudonne’s violent and alcoholic character dressed as a Nazi officer for a fancy dress party,” and “Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson [appearing] as himself.” Produced by the Iranian Documentary and Experimental Film Center, The Anti-Semite stars Dieudonné, who has been charged numerous times for violating European laws with his controversial statements and performances, including one recent show in France that was halted mid-performance by authorities “for breaking local defamation laws.” As for the Cannes screening, the Cannes Film Market’s Jerome Paillard explained the move thusly: “Our general conditions ban the presence of all films threatening public order or religious convictions, as well as pornographic films or those inciting violence.” [ AFP via The Wrap ]
Hollywood.TV is your source for celebrity gossip, news, and videos of your favorite stars! bit.ly – Click to Subscribe! Facebook.com – Become a Fan! Twitter.com – Follow Us! James Earl Jones, Jennifer Tilly, Jerry Stiller, Audra McDonald, Josh Gad, Tracie Bennett, and Tyne Daly attended the “62nd Annual Outer Critics Circle Awards” held at Sardi’s Restaurant in New York City. The event was a huge success as it held some of film and televisions biggest screen legends! Hollywood.TV was at the event to catch up with the stars as they left the award ceremony. Hollywood.TV is the global leader in capturing celebrity breaking news as it happens. Launched in 2008, we capture all the latest news, exclusive celebrity interviews, star videos and hot celebrity gossip from around the world every minute of everyday. 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 almost 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! 5FFA4105
This is Thursday in Cannes: Zac Efron in tighty-whities, Nicole Kidman as a luscious sex kitten, Matthew McConaughey as a journalist with a sexual secret and a very creepy John Cusack. Such was just the tip of the iceberg this morning in Lee Daniels’s outrageous The Paperboy , which will have its world premiere tonight as the festival hits its final swing. Opinions seemed to range wildly in all directions following the film’s early morning screening: Applause and cries of “Bravo!” mixed with boos, laughter and a swift rush out of the huge Lumière Theatre to get reaction from Daniels and the cast at the press conference. The conversation in the press room took cues from the film’s flamboyant flare, and then it went from there. What many girls (and some boys) may have secretly wished to see back in the High School Musical days they can now get a big dose of it here: Efron is tan, trim and spends a good chunk of his scenes in his underwear, at one point dancing in the rain in his briefs with a very platinum and seductive Nicole Kidman. Never one to mince words, Lee Daniels set the record straight when asked about Zac Efron being “eroticized” in the new film: “He’s good looking, the camera can’t help but love him… And I’m a gay man – you know!” “I don’t think I was supposed to feel comfortable,” said Efron, laughing after Daniels’s quip. “This character is learning the ways of the world and it is uncomfortable. It was a great character to play.” Based on a novel by Pete Dexter, The Paperboy is set in late ’60s Florida. Efron plays Jack, a young guy who’s aimless and living with his dad and soon-to-be step mother. His older brother (McConaughey) is a journalist who comes to town to investigate a death-row inmate (John Cusack) he believes is wrongly convicted of murder. Meanwhile, Cusack is corresponding with a platinum blonde (Nicole Kidman) with a fabulous wardrobe, fake eye-lashes and pillowy lips. She’s also the object of Jack’s raging hormones — and things get complicated. “I felt like I was let out of some cage,” Cusack said Thursday morning in Cannes about his role. “Lee [Daniels] and I talked at the Chateau Marmont about a film I made called The Grifters and then he looked at me and said, ‘I think you have more to give than you’ve been giving lately,’ and that is just music to an actor’s ears.” In 2010’s Rabbit Hole , Nicole Kidman earned an Oscar nomination as an upper middle-class mother in mourning following the untimely death of her young son. Her Paperboy character Charlotte Bless could not present more of a contrast: Simulating sex in a prison visitation room, wearing flashy outfits and playing an untamed seductress, she at one point comes to Jack’s rescue after he’s attacked by a swarm of jellyfish. While he lays barely conscious on the sand as welts appear on his six-pack, she gives him the remedy required to treat a jellyfish sting. “I had to step into the character and put myself in a place where I didn’t step out of it,” Kidman said. She explained that she met Daniels at a party while she was promoting Rabbit Hole and became curious about how she might fit one day into one of his films. “I haven’t seen the movie yet and I’m nervous about seeing it, but that’s my job – to give over myself to someone and have them bring out in me what I can give.” “I had the most lovely time in the world playing with Nicole,” Efron followed. “I’ve been in love with her since Moulin Rouge . It was the best opportunity in the world.” The Paperboy is loaded with laughs especially for audiences who appreciate a bit of camp, but the film also takes a darker, more serious turn and Thursday’s post-screening followed the movie’s lead. Daniels, who received a Best Director Oscar nomination in 2011 for Precious , said that all the characters in The Paperboy are real for him personally, from the young kid to the woman who writes letters to prisoners to the house servant (played by Macy Gray). He also said he knows the prisoner. “I live in the truth. Every character here I know,” he said. “My brother — I raised his children. He has been in jail for murder. So I know this cat and when [Cusack] did anything that’s not true, I said, ‘You have to come at me in a different way.'” Continuing, Daniels said: “I say this to all filmmakers: You never take no for an answer. Making sure my vision is executed means never taking no, never.” “Lee has a hyper-sensitive mind, and as soon as you nail it he says, ‘Now, where can we take it?'” McConaughey said. Daniels offered up that McConaughey will be in his next film, The Butler , as John F. Kennedy. Cusack will play Richard Nixon. Starring Forest Whitaker as the White House butler who served multiple U.S. presidents, the cast also includes Kidman and Oprah Winfrey. Lee said that the new film will be decidedly more PG-13 than The Paperboy . Read more of Movieline’s Cannes 2012 coverage here . [Top image of (L-R) Zac Efron, John Cusack, Lee Daniels, Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman and Macy Gray: AFP/Getty Images]
The Intouchables hits so many audience-pleasing buttons, meticulously and dutifully, that it ought to be called The Irresistibles . This is the French movie you’ve been hearing about, a megahit in its native country and currently spreading across Europe like a cheerful, robust strain of flu. Based on a true story about a wheelchair-bound rich guy and his caretaker, a small-time crook from the projects, The Intouchables is a movie about life, love and the enduring power of Earth Wind & Fire. You have been forewarned. Actually, The Intouchables isn’t bad — its merely shameless, but at least it’s overtly so. The picture, written and directed by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, stars François Cluzet as Philippe, the lonely wheelchair guy. Philippe is paralyzed from the neck down, the victim of a paragliding accident; he also lost his beloved wife years ago and is left with only a wiseacre teenage daughter who barely features in the story (she’s played, in a few fleeting, pouty scenes, by Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi) and a houseful of servants, some of whom — like the super-efficient Yvonne (played by the earthbound and appealing Anne Le Ny) — seem to actually care for him. But Philippe also needs a strong, masculine caretaker, and when a strapping Senegalese fellow named Driss (Omar Sy) applies for the job, he’s hired almost against his own wishes. (He’d shown up for the interview at Philippe’s tony Paris mansionette only to get his papers signed, showing that he’d attempted to find work, in order to receive state benefits.) Philippe is an aesthete, a lover of fine art and classical music, and he has everything money can buy. But he needs a pal and a few laughs, as well as a companion who will treat him normally and not like a freak. When a concerned friend, suspicious of Driss and his motives, warns Philippe, “These street people have no pity,” Philippe responds firmly, “That’s what I want — no pity.” Driss, for his part, provides Philippe with more Live! Laugh! Love! moments than you or I could possibly count, despite the fact that he comes from a tough neighborhood and has some unresolved family troubles. And even though he steals a precious Fabergé egg — one with great sentimental value — from Philippe’s collection of same, the two form an indissoluble bond. Driss cheers Philippe up with his bad puns, he grins and/or dances infectiously whenever he hears “September” or “Boogie Wonderland,” and he helps Philippe court a new lady love. Philippe gradually loses his glum demeanor (Cluzet is really good at the glum stuff) and becomes guardedly cheerful, enjoying life for the first time in eons. Not much else happens in The Intouchables , though not much else needs to. The movie has the carefully calibrated inner workings of a watch movement: As it efficiently ticks away, it speaks to everything we want and need to believe about human frailty and the importance of connection. Toledano and Nakache keep the gears running smoothly — to their credit, they don’t throw in any moments of serious endangerment in order to up the drama quotient. (They were inspired to make the film after seeing a documentary about the real-life Philippe, Philippe Pozzo di Borgo, and his relationship with a man named Abdel, a young guy from the projects who came to work for him and changed his life around.) The friendship between Philippe and Driss, as the filmmakers present it, certainly is solid and life-changing, on both sides. I hesitate to use the term “magical Negro” because I think the term is too carelessly slapped onto any story in which white people learn something from people of color. Even in our racially mixed world — particularly here in the United States — the reality is that most white people live mostly around other white people, and sometimes it really does take an encounter with someone whose life, and whose skin color, is not like yours to shake things up. If you ask me, those encounters are less magical than they are necessary. That said, there is something a little magical about Driss, but that could be just because Sy is a charming, criminally likable presence. Sy has worked extensively in French movies and television, and he appeared in a previous feature made by Toledano and Nakache, the 2006 comedy Those Happy Days . (He also appeared in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2009 whimsical windup toy Micmacs .) Sy makes The Intouchables worth watching, not because he adequately fulfills any perceived notion of the joyful person of color, but because he quite simply seems filled with joy. He earns bonus points for maintaining such boundless joie de vivre even as he spends so much time hanging around a French sourpuss like Cluzet’s Philippe. The Intouchables is not particularly complex, but it certainly hits its target. Whether or not you want that target hit is up to you. Meanwhile, Sy’s performance almost makes you forget how calculated the whole thing is. Plus, Driss is damn right about Earth Wind & Fire. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
