The film played to a mixture of reactions when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and this latest film by Andrew Dominik, starring Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta packs a wallop of gun shots, fights and explosions. Harvey Weinstein recently suggested a violence summit might be in order to take place among Hollywood types in the wake of the tragedy in Aurora, CO. If so, this Weinstein Company release may be a good example of what he’s talking about. But in Cannes, both Dominik and Pitt took exception to suggestions the film had “too much violence.” “I don’t understand the obsession with violence,” Dominik said. “It’s like people who don’t want to show children fairy tales. But fairy tales dramatize children’s concerns and emotions.” Added Pitt: “Violence is an accepted part of the gangster world. It’s an accepted possibility when dealing in crime. I’d have a much harder problem playing a racist for instance than, say, shooting someone right in the face.” Pitt’s character in Killing Them Softly is centered on self-interest. He doesn’t particularly crave violence, but uses it as a means to an end. He’s not bloodthirsty nor does he particularly find murder palatable, but he’s willing to do it as painlessly as possible in order to get ahead. “It’s a metaphor for business — it’s cutthroat but has to be done,” he said. The trailer opens with a robbery pulled off during a mob-packed back room card game. The trailer continues with intermittent moments of Pitt’s character, Jackie Cogan, meandering sveltely through hails of bullets and high-stakes banter. Watch the trailer on YouTube .
Celeste and Jesse Forever star Rashida Jones and director Lee Toland Krieger at the after-party for their film Wednesday night in NYC. Photo by Amanda Schwab/Starpix . Indie pic Celeste and Jesse Forever played Sundance back in January and achieved that much sought-after hallmark of success: an acquisition deal with a big-name distributor – in this case the venerable Sony Pictures Classics. But the movie that had some false starts before shooting began did make it to the screen and if a gala screening of the film last night in New York is any measure, it should see more success. In addition to cast members Rashida Jones (who also co-wrote the film) and Rebecca Dayan as well as writer Will McCormack and director Lee Toland Krieger, Anne Hathaway , Paul Rudd , David Schwimmer , Amy Poehler , Aziz Ansari , Andy Cohen and Max Greenfield turned out for the event, hosted by The Peggy Siegal Company and the International Rescue Committee. A second-floor bar with a view of the Williamsburg Bridge at the Hotel Chantelle in Manhattan’s Lower East Side played hotspot for the after-party where Hathaway and others mingled with cast and invitees. Krieger told Movieline that producer Jennifer Todd approached him with the Celeste and Jesse Forever script back in 2010. “I thought I’d just read it, but then I fell in love with it,” he said. “I am a big Woody Allen fan and especially love Husbands and Wives . Both movies are full of comedy, but they’re about heartbreak.” Earlier at the screening, Sony Classics co-president Michael Barker praised Krieger and the cast. “We came to realize they’re major talents,” said Barker. “We think with this movie, you’re in the hands of a major American independent filmmaker.” Also in the crowd were Brady Corbet ( Simon Killer ), Olivia Culpo (Miss USA), Nadia Dajani ( Delocated ), Abby Elliott ( SNL ), Alex Karpovsky ( Girls ), Matthew Settle ( Gossip Girl ), Joey Slotnick ( Too Big to Fail ), Tennessee Thomas, ( Scott Pilgrim vs the World ), Mike Nichols & Diane Sawyer. Sony Classics will open Celeste and Jesse Forever in New York and Los Angeles beginning this Friday; stay tuned for our Movieline chat with Rashida Jones. Plot: Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) met in high school, married young and are growing apart. Now thirty, Celeste is the driven owner of her own media consulting firm, Jesse is once again unemployed and in no particular rush to do anything with his life. Celeste is convinced that divorcing Jesse is the right thing to do, and if they do it now instead of later, they can remain supportive friends. While navigating the turbulent changes in their lives and in their hearts, these two learn that in order to truly love someone, you may have to let them go. View the trailer on YouTube .
Revenge star Ashley Madekwe and actor Iddo Goldberg married Sunday in the English countryside, according to reports. They couple of five years tied to knot in front of famous pals including Mischa Barton, Christa Allen, David Schwimmer and David Walliams. The pair met as costars in the Showtime series Secret Diary of a Call Girl . “Me and David Schwimmer just made a best man’s speech at a wedding. We were in competition to be our friend Iddo Goldberg’s favourite David,” Walliams said. Barton was impressed with the David’s speech at the wedding as well. She tweeted, “What an incredibly funny + amazing speech by David Walliams & David Schwimmer @smashleybell + @iddo Goldberg’s wedding” Madekwe’s Revenge co-star Allen wrote “They have the most incredible love, what a treasure to witness! A huge congratulations to @smashleybell and @IddoG”
Also in Monday morning’s mostly Cannes news briefs: Samuel Goldwyn picks up Un Certain Regard debut for U.S., James Franco’s collaborator heads to premiere documentary festival, Thomas Vinterberg resurfaces in Cannes with his latest, and for those lamenting a “No-Cannes-Do” this year, the weather has been pretty abysmal. Sean Penn’s Haiti Charity Raises $2M in Cannes The weekend’s “Haiti: Carnival in Cannes” event raised over $2 million for Sean Penn’s J/P Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO), Paul Haggis’ Artists for Peace and Justice (APJ) and Petra Nemcova’s Happy Heart’s Fund (HHF). Guests included Gerard Butler, Diane Kruger, Jessica Chastain, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Ewan McGregor, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tom Hardy, Robert De Niro, Sean Combs, Joshua Jackson, Michelle Rodriguez, Harvey Weinstein, Lyle Lovett (who performed 3 songs) and more. Items up for auction included a meet and greet with Bono and lunch with a Victoria’s Secret “angel.” Jim Sturgess and Susan Sarandon Tapped for The Big Shoe The Big Shoe is described as “a sexy comedic drama” directed by Steven Shainberg ( Secretary ), from a script by Shainberg and Mickey Birnbaum. The film will star Sturgess and Sarandon, who can next be seen together in Cloud Atlas . AngelWorld Entertainment (AWE), which on Saturday in Cannes announced the launch of its $150m equity fund, will finance and produce. Samuel Goldwyn Films Confirms Renoir Pick Up Directed by Gilles Bourdos, the film will have its world premiere as the closing night film of the Cannes Un Certain Regard this Friday, May 25. Based on a true story, Renoir is a love story about the famed painter, his son Jean (the famed director) and their muse. The film will be released in the U.S. in spring 2013. Content Gets Complicit The film, which will debut on Britain’s Channel 4 followed by a worldwide theatrical release, explores the moral compromises and dilemmas that underpin the war on terror, as an (British secret services) MI5 agent becomes embroiled in the torture of a suspected terrorist in order to prevent a major attack in the UK. James Franco Collaborator Douglas Gordon Set for Denmark Fest Award-winning contemporary film and video artist Douglas Gordon, who most recently featured work in James Franco’s Rebel exhibition at MOCA’s new L.A based venue, will be curating a special film series at the doc festival CPH:DOX from November 1-11 in Copenhagen. Around the ‘net… A Very Wet Scene in Cannes Thrashing wind and rain have been streaming steadily all day today after an on-and-off couple of days that haven’t been much better. And if forecasts are to be believed, there’s no sign the deluge will end before Thursday, Deadline reports . Cannes Welcomes Back Thomas Vinterberg After 14 years, Cannes has welcomed back its lost son with Jagten ( The Hunt ), which explores the territory of child sexual abuse and with its story of an innocent man almost destroyed when he is falsely accused by a small child. The Guardian reports . Palme d’Or Likely to Go to a ‘Bookworm’ It is a bookworm’s Cannes, with directors as likely to have had their noses buried in novels as dreaming up original ideas. All eyes are on Walter Salles’s adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s modern classic On the Road , which premieres Wednesday. Meanwhile, David Cronenberg’s version of Cosmopolis , based on Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel, is also one of the festival’s eagerly anticipated films, The Guardian reports .
For nearly three years, Movieline’s Verge feature has introduced you to the likes of Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Armie Hammer, Emma Stone, Chris Hemsworth and dozens of other bright young screen talents on their ways to the big time. 2011 was no exception, so wind down the year with a look back at — and a word with — a few major new players you’ll be seeing plenty of in the future. John Boyega AGE: 19 THEN: Fought off alien invaders in South London in the cult favorite Attack the Block NOW: Leading the Spike Lee/Mike Tyson/John Ridley HBO series Da Brick ON COMING TO HOLLYWOOD “McDonald’s is a big highlight for me. [… Y]ou do things differently. Seriously. I mean, I asked for a burger and they give me a tank. It’s like, ‘Wow, you guys eat!’ I really respect that. We don’t have the little thing where you can refill your drinks. We don’t have that! So yeah, it’s been fun. Seeing the history, seeing the Hollywood sign. I’ve been on Sunset. I went to the Griddle Cafe. Oh, man. I had an Oreo pancake. It was heavenly. I don’t want to go back now, just because of that pancake.” Joel Courtney AGE: 15 THEN: Made film debut in J.J. Abrams’s Super 8 NOW: Will appear as the former Twain hero in upcoming Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn ON THE SPIELBERG FACTOR : OK, I have to tell you. The first time Riley [Griffiths] and I were doing a scene, and [Steven Spielberg] came in, I didn’t know if Riley saw him, but I did. I was like, ‘Dude!” He was like, ‘Yeah, I see him!’ It was so funny because during this scene we were trying not to break character because he was there but we really wanted to talk to him and meet him. And it pushed us to do better in the scene, because he was there. That’s one of our better scenes together. It’s the one where we’re watching the TV, watching the newscast, and he was there during that scene. While we were at Bad Robot watching [the film] with J.J., I was like, “Riley, that’s the scene Steven was there for!” He was like, ‘I know, it’s awesome!’” Jeremy Irvine AGE: 21 THEN: Made big-screen debut as Albert Narracott in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse NOW: Will play younger version of Colin Firth’s character in The Railway Man , appear as Pip in Great Expectations , and co-star with Dakota Fanning in Now is Good WORDS OF ADVICE : “You’ve got to get away from the crowd. If you stay with everyone else, then you’re just going to be another one. But there’s no set way. At the end of the day, what it all comes down to is being in the right place at the right time.” Brit Marling AGE: 28 THEN: Co-wrote and starred in the Sundance darling Another Earth NOW: Appearing opposite Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon in Arbitrage and in the all-star Robert Redford-directed thriller The Company You Keep ON EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS : “When we were making this movie, we were saying at the beginning, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll have a screening at our house. How many people can we fit into the living room? If we bring in chairs and we borrow this person’s couch, we can fit 20 people in here to watch the movie!’ That’s kind of how we went about making it; we just wanted to make something, you know? The desire to just make something is so strong, you’re not even thinking about how it could enter the world. Getting to go to Sundance, and [Fox] Searchlight taking the film into their hands — which are the most capable hands in independent filmmaking — they put so much thought and feeling behind bringing this work into the world that basically, it’s every day a state of shock and awe.” Elizabeth Meriwether AGE: 30 THEN: Wrote the screenplay for the Natalie Portman/Ashton Kutcher comedy No Strings Attached NOW: Created Fox’s hit New Girl , has projects in development with Fox, Paramount and Universal ON THE MASTERPLAN : “This has just been a kind of unbelievable process. I just want to keep writing characters who are interesting and complicated people and interesting roles for women, in TV or film or in theater. I think that’s like my Blues Brothers mission.” Elizabeth Olsen AGE: 22 THEN: Wowed Sundance and stirred awards talk with her breakout role in Martha Marcy May Marlene NOW: Will appear in Peace, Love and Misunderstanding (with Jane Fonda), Red Lights (with Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver) and Very Good Girls (with Dakota Fanning) ON THE ART OF READING SCRIPTS : “There’s something that was really interesting that happened as I was reading it that I actually hadn’t experienced with other scripts, because it was also within the first six months of reading scripts and auditioning. Like when you’re reading a book in your head, you create this imaginary character, naturally. And it was my first time reading a script imagining myself instead of another character. Now, every time I read a script I try and make that happen, because it helps a lot to figure out or tell yourself, ‘Oh, I can do this,’ and then you end up reading it in a way that you would do it.” Corey Stoll AGE: 35 THEN: Stole scene after scene as Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen’s monster hit Midnight in Paris NOW: Will appear in The Bourne Legacy and the Samantha Morton-led ensemble film Decoding Annie Parker ON THE AUDITION OF A LIFETIME : “It was like a two-page sentence with no punctuation. It was a lot to prepare in five or 10 minutes. But then I came in and did it, and he seemed really happy. He gave me one little adjustment, and I did it again. And that was it. It was a great audition — the best audition of my life in terms of the sense of not having to feel like I was auditioning, even. It was just this sense of, ‘Here, just read this. What does this sound like? Is this going to work?’ I was shockingly un-nervous for what the stakes were, because you look at it and think, ‘Wow. There are so many actors who would kill for this role.’ And it’s so well-written, and it’s such a juicy character, and you know that Woody Allen is going to direct it perfectly. It was just up to me to not screw it up. [Laughs]” Juno Temple AGE: 22 THEN: Had first leading role in the ’80s-era dramedy Dirty Girl NOW: Has a half-dozen projects in line for 2012, including the The Dark Knight Rises , Lovelace and Jack and Diane ON HER INSPIRATION : “I was 4 years old. It was L.A. – my parents lived in L.A. – and I was sitting on the couch. They had this great striped couch in the living room. My dad had a laser-disc machine. I remember the dress I was wearing, too: This little short, bright blue corduroy dress with red trim, buttoned up the front. I was wearing that. And my dad put on La Belle et la Bete , by Jean Cocteau. And I legitimately had my mind blown. I was in love with the beast. I wanted to be Belle more than I know how to put into words — still to this day, and I’m 22. I wanted to do that — anything I could do to make that stuff happen. So I started doing plays. I was always in fancy dress. It just became something I was obsessed with. I’ve always had a crazy, vivid imagination.” Shailene Woodley AGE: 20 THEN: Appeared as George Clooney’s daughter in The Descendants NOW: Navigating awards season (likely all the way to Oscar night) and upcoming fourth season of her hit TV show The Secret Life of the American Teenager ON FAME, THE NECESSARY EVIL : “As a kid, I never wanted to be in magazines. I never wanted to be that stupid ‘F’ word, famous. I never wanted to be an ‘S’ word, star. For me it was all about the art of acting. I remember being an 8-year-old and saying, “I’m going to be a third-grade teacher and on the side, I’ll act.” [Laughs] I don’t want to be a third-grade teacher anymore, but I do want to always acting be my hobby and it be fun. The day it becomes tedious or the day it becomes something I feel I have to do for money, or because of the industry, or because of some silly image, is the day I quit. If it’s not fueling something, why would I do it?” Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Surprises too are often tied to expectation, or lack of it. The first film I saw in 2011 surprised me in part because it was the first film I saw in 2011 — that is, a film shunted onto the whistling heath of the January release schedule. It was Shana Feste’s Country Strong , and it got a raw deal. Casting Gwyneth Paltrow as a country superstar is either a brave decision or an incredibly timid one — regardless, Paltrow stepped into an outsized role and very nearly filled it out. The supporting cast of Leighton Meester, Tim McGraw, and especially Garrett Hedlund give the celebrity melodrama human ballast, and Feste manages to pace a pretty slick story with moments of believable intimacy and alienation. When it comes to horror films and especially on-screen gore (I suppose off-screen gore as well), I am — as Justin Timberlake’s character pronounced it in the reasonably surprising Friends With Benefits — a huge pu-ssay. Seeing Final Destination 5 next to my name on the assignment slate was a definite short straw situation, but I fancy myself a professional, and so cleared my schedule and my appetite and headed to midtown. I had never seen a Final Destination , which accounted for the formula’s novelty for me — the villain here is death itself, manifested in the trickle down economics of excruciating coincidence — but the film, shot in 3-D, is also brilliantly choreographed and possessed of the kind of tension — outrageous but not totally gratuitous — that directors rarely bother with anymore, when splatters and shakey cams do just as well. Not that there aren’t — heaven knows — plenty of guts a-squishin’ in Final Destination 5 . But it was worth a few pounds of flesh to be reminded how pleasurable it is to be both really and truly scared and perfectly safe in a crowded movie theater. So a quick check-in on the Friends alumni: Most promising cast member Jennifer Aniston seems resigned to debasing herself in Adam Sandler shitshows like Just Go With It ; Matthew Perry, always rebounding in my heart, is as ever poised for a comeback; Lisa Kudrow keeps launching hothouse comic series that feel too cringey to last; Courtney Cox has a network show and yet seems to spend her days fastened to a mirror; Matt LeBlanc came up with something interesting in the meta-TV cable series Episodes ; and David Schwimmer pretty much killed it directing his second feature film, the internet predator drama Trust . Clive Owen gives a powerful and difficult performance as a father reckoning with his daughter’s role in her own victimization and Liana Liberato makes a frankly astonishing debut as a young girl drawn into the emotional confusions of abuse. In deploying real emotional toughness against easy accusations of after-school special-dom, it is Schwimmer who emerges as the mature and still-promising talent. I was surprised, anyway. Though it’s not strictly movie-centric, I feel compelled to note one of the most pleasant surprises of my favorite new television series — the venue, after all, to which so many of our movie stars have migrated. Luke Wilson hit an inexplicable rough patch in the late aughts, his endearing, chronically bedazzled comic presence and magma-deep melancholy wasted on minnow-ish indies like Middle Men and I Melt With You director Mark Pellington’s Henry Poole Was Here . And then his disheartening appearance in the ads that cannot be named. But in playing the innocuous waster Levi Callow in Mike White’s HBO series Enlightened , Wilson seems to have not only returned to form but raised his game. White cast the role perfectly, and dispenses the character of Levi in precise and exact-right doses: Initially seen through the warped lens of Laura Dern’s Amy — a recent inductee into the narcissistic cult of well being — he emerges as more than a pathetic fallback and projection screen for his ex. In the exquisite Robin Wright episode, by making Levi’s exasperation his own White brings Amy’s desperation into clearer view. In a later confrontation with Amy’s mother (Diane Ladd) Levi is finally unleashed as a whole, seething person. Wilson makes what might be an ordinary role feel risky, and in his fringy yet essential presence sets up the question of whether Levi is a poignant satellite in Amy’s orbit or she is a moon to his Melancholia. I’m really happy to be watching Luke Wilson again, is mostly what I’m saying — on any screen. Happy and a little bit relieved. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Wondering how Paul Thomas Anderson and David Schwimmer could be forever connected? Try Upton Sinclair. In a new interview with Empire Online , Schwimmer confirmed that he has “commissioned an adaptation of The Jungle ,” Sinclair’s 1906 novel about immigration and the meat-packing industry. Fingers crossed this latest Sinclair film adaptation works as well as There Will Be Blood . [ Empire ]
Director Duncan Jones was inspired by everything from ‘Grand Theft Auto’ to ‘Quantum Leap.’ By Eric Ditzian Jake Gyllenhaal in “Source Code” Photo: Summit Entertainment “Moon” wasn’t some slick Hollywood production. Director Duncan Jones didn’t have a studio’s deep pockets to dip into for “Avatar”-level visual effects. Instead, he built a miniature replica of a lunar base on which star Sam Rockwell got up to his strange activities. And it worked. The movie was a sci-fi stunner. So it’s no surprise Jones eyed a similar approach for his next feature, the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring “Source Code.” “We talked about using model miniatures for ‘Source Code,’ but the time frame was working against us,” Jones said, citing his star’s schedule. “So we used a lot of CGI.” Thus all those train explosions in the film — and there are a dizzying number — were created in a computer rather than in the real world. That’s rather fitting, after all, based on what the film is all about. “Moon,” though, is just one of the pop-culture influences on “Source Code” that Jones alerted us to in a recent chat. Read on for four more (and check back Monday for five secrets about the production that were simply too spoiler-filled to reveal before opening weekend). The Michel Gondry Connection Gyllenhaal plays a helicopter pilot named Captain Colter Stevens who’s part of an ultra-secret government program that sends him into the past — in another man’s body, eight minutes before a terrorist detonates a bomb onboard a commuter train, to be precise — again and again in an effort to discover the bomber’s identity and prevent the next attack. As a practical matter, that means the story revisits the same eight-minute sequence over and over and over. Jones’ challenge was to make this recurring event never seemed repetitious. For inspiration, he turned to Michel Gondry. “I remember hearing about how Gondry used to do music videos — he did Daft Punk and stuff like that,” Jones said. “He used to graph everything out and had these intricate diagrams of how to do things. So I took a shot at it that way and lifted out all of the repetitions that occur in the film, and then created a camera map about how I can revisit this event in a different way each time. That was the technical level. “Then on a narrative level,” he added. “I ensured new characters were introduced for each one. You never see the same thing twice.” The “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” Connection The “Source Code” link to Gondry doesn’t end with music videos. Jones also tapped Louis Morin, the visual-effects supervisor on “Eternal Sunshine,” to oversee the CG work on the new movie — in particular, those recurring train explosions. “He’s got that beautiful blend of being a real technical expert and also an artist,” Jones said. “We worked out how to make each of the explosions have its own personality and be visceral and scary. In the storyboards, we made sure the camera angles made the explosions feel up close and personal to the scale of the effect. Then in the animatic phase, where the objects are moving, you start to get a sense of textures and how much dirt is thrown in the air. You start to tweak it and get the visceral impact.” The “Grand Theft Auto” Connection For all the high-intensity train explosions, perhaps the film’s single-most astonishing shot is one of Gyllenhaal jumping off a moving train. Simple enough. But what makes it extraordinary is that the camera never cuts away and you see Gyllenhaal tumble and spin and wind up bloodied and bruised on the pavement. “It’s a tribute to ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ ” Jones explained. “When you’re driving around at high speed in that computer game and you open the door and jump out of the car, the camera doesn’t cut away; it stays with you as you roll. I wanted to do that shot because I’d never seen it in a movie before. “That was some cutting-edge post-production effects,” he continued. “We played a game of chicken with the technology to make sure it was capable of doing that by the time we were ready to do the effect. Fortunately, things meshed at just the right time.” The “Quantum Leap” Connection Of all the sci-fi productions to come before it, “Source Code” might put viewers most in the mind of “Quantum Leap.” Jones, too, immediately thought of that NBC series when he read the script. Ever the playful auteur, the director decided to recruit the show’s star to get what he called “a little tip of the hat in there.” “I don’t know if you noticed, but Scott Bakula does a little cameo,” he revealed. “He’s the voice of Colter’s father. He even says, ‘Oh boy,’ in the middle of their phone conversation, as a little clue!” Check out everything we’ve got on “Source Code.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Source Code’ ‘Source Code’ Exclusive Clips
David Schwimmer-directed drama made to raise awareness, actor says. By Kara Warner Clive Owen Photo: MTV News In the new film “Trust,” directed and produced by David Schwimmer , Clive Owen stars alongside Catherine Keener and newcomer Liana Liberato as a distraught father trying to deal with rebuilding his family after his daughter is victimized and sexually assaulted by a man she meets online. It is a tense, emotionally charged film that addresses an important issue facing kids and parents today. When MTV News caught up with Owen during the press day for “Trust,” we asked him what conversations he’s had with his own daughters and how much they know about this film in particular.
Trust is the rare film that feels longer than its 106 minutes without having exceeded its narrative limits or strained the viewer’s patience. Patience is one of the few things director David Schwimmer doesn’t test, in fact, over the course of a story that seems to span a lifetime and a few scenes that stop time altogether. An indelibly rendered portrait of what lives behind a “News At 11” headline, Trust explores the various boundaries — at home, online, and within the psyche — sent into flux when a young girl reaches adolescence, and what can happen when the resulting vulnerabilities are exploited.
