Congratulations are in order for Amber Tamblyn and David Cross. The actress, 29, and the actor, 45, exchanged vows yesterday after over years of dating. This is the first marriage for both Tamblyn and the Arrested Development star. Director Lance Bangs posted a photo of the couple slow dancing at their reception on Instagram, including with the romantic image: “Yo La Tengo playing Superchunk, Mission of Burma, and Pixies covers at David and Amber’s wedding.” We wish these two the very best!
The scene outside East Hampton’s usually civilized Guild Hall was almost as frenzied as a mosh pit on Saturday night when an overflow crowd turned up to watch Alec Baldwin interview fellow leading man Richard Gere . The spirited conversation, which focused mostly on Gere’s pre- Pretty Woman career, was a precursor to the Arbitrage actor receiving the Hamptons International Film Festival’s 2012 Golden Starfish Award for Lifetime Achievement in Acting. Over the course of the discussion, Gere talked about some of his more unusual moments working with such storied directors at Terrence Malick, Richard Brooks, Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader. For instance, he recalled his frustration working with Malick on Days of Heaven because of the lack of guidance that the filmmaker gave to his actors. Malick “is a really interesting guy,” Gere said, “but one of his quirks is that he doesn’t always know what he wants.” Indeed, during one frustrating scene, Gere said he found himself asking that very question of the director who then pointed to “linen curtains blowing” in the breeze of an open window. “I meant like that,” Gere said Malick told him, and in that case, the actor told Baldwin, “I knew exactly what he meant.” The silver-haired Gere also talked about Brooks’ secrecy regarding scripts. He recalled that when he asked the director if he could see the screenplay to Looking for Mr. Goodbar , Brooks invited him to his Los Angeles home, where the filmmaker’s wife, actress Jean Simmons greeted Gere and led the actor to a “romantically lit room.” There, Brooks gave him a half hour to read the script, which Gere implied, was not enough time, until he discovered that Brooks had “blacked out everything that was not my part.” The discussion took an amusing turn when Baldwin brought up the subject of American Gigolo and asked Gere if he was uncomfortable about his emergence as a sex symbol. The actor replied that it was an “interesting dilemma” and eventually invited his WME agent Andrew Finkelstein, who was sitting in the audience, to join the conversation. (Finkelstein was an assistant to the late ICM agent Ed Limato, who worked with Gere at the time of that 1980 movie.) Finkelstein replied that Limato “didn’t like” that the media was focusing on Gere’s “hunkishness,” adding: “You were a better actor than a hunk.” The line drew a big laugh from the audience, and Gere, wearing a wry smile on his face said: “I’m a better actor than a hunk. Thank you, Andrew.” Finkelstein recovered nicely by yelling out: “Richard is now looking for an agent.” Shortly before Gere was presented with his Golden Starfish award, Baldwin asked the actor if any of his leading ladies had ever fallen for him. “Someone told me that one of them had, and I said, ‘I wish they had told me!'” Gere replied. “But I’m not going to answer that question.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
The act of directing suggests, well, direction — that whether it comes together as planned or not, a filmmaker is pursuing a particular vision he or she wants to put on screen. But this is not the sense you get from The Paperboy , the new film from Precious’ Lee Daniels , a feature that feels like it’s been assembled scene by scene on whatever whims were guiding the director that day. No return to an opening framing sequence with narrator Macy Gray? Zac Efron ‘s face superimposed over the bright Florida sky? The already infamous jellyfish-enabled watersports scene? Another in which Nicole Kidman and John Cusack have mind sex in a prison visiting room in front of an audience? Check, check, check and check. The Paperboy is a nutty movie in terms of content, but it’s also assembled in a demented fashion — there’s a sense that literally anything could happen, and that its raunchy, heat-dazed story could wander down any path without regard to sense or an overall narrative. It resembles the relatively straightforward Precious far less than it does Daniels’ wild-eyed directorial debut Shadowboxer , which offered up Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren as stepson and stepmother turned assassin lovers. Like that film, The Paperboy doesn’t seem intended to be taken entirely seriously but also offers few signals as to how it then is meant to be taken — it’s an exploitation pastiche that never seems to be actually referencing anything, a campfest that approaches its most over-the-top scenes with a deadly straightforwardness. For better or worse — mostly worse — Daniels has made one of the most unpredictable movies of the year. Set in 1969, The Paperboy is narrated by Anita (Macy Gray), who works as a housekeeper for the Jansen family, owners of a local newspaper. Anita is being interviewed about a book about the events on screen that was written by Jack (Efron), the younger of the two Jansen sons, but that’s an element that, like the mystery around which the story theoretically revolves, fades away in the face of more fleshly distractions. Jack is definitely one of those, a college drop-out delivering papers for his dad W.W. (Scott Glenn) and spending a lot of time in the pool or lounging around in his tighty-whities. Efron gets ogled by the camera even more than Nicole Kidman, who makes a big entrance in a little dress as Charlotte Bless, a woman with a taste for dangerous men who’s fallen in love via letters with convict Hillary Van Wetter (a laudably greasy John Cusack). Charlotte’s convinced Hillary has been falsely imprisoned for the murder of the town’s sheriff, and has lured Jack’s brother Ward (Matthew McConaughey), a reporter working in Miami, back to town to investigate his story with his partner Yardley (David Oyelowo). But this is just a loose structure to allow Jack to spend time with his object of lust, Charlotte, who as Anita helpfully puts it in voiceover serves as “his mama, his high school sweetheart and an oversexed Barbie doll all in one.” If Jack’s love of Charlotte is pure pop psychology, so is Charlotte’s affection for the beast-like Hillary, sex and death in one white trash package — in a scene that makes the beach urination sequence look tame, the pair bring each other to mutual orgasm without touching in their first in-person meeting at the prison while Jack, Ward and Yardley look on, bemused, horrified and aroused. The Paperboy ‘s approach to sexuality is bold, unabashed and discomforting. The movie has a stupefying physicality to it, particularly when it comes to bodily fluids — the gloss of sweat everyone wears, the semen dampening Hillary’s pant leg, the piss Charlotte lets loose on Jack’s body when he’s stung by jellyfish, the blood that pools around a character’s face onto the plastic tarp he’s spread out to accommodate his particular desires. Everyone is shown to harbor dark animal impulses, and the movie coyly ducks away from its only affection-driven hookup, with Anita scolding in voiceover that we’re seen enough — rich, given what does make it onto the screen. The Paperboy provides a lurid spectacle, but it’s one that leaves you wanting to scrub yourself clean in the shower afterward. While Efron plays a primarily decorative role, Kidman gives it her all as the sultry, crazy Charlotte. It’s a certainly a brave and dedicated performance, if one that comes to no notable end other than to serve as a reminder that she capable of playing more than glacial or regal. It’s Gray’s grounded, rounded-out take on the mammy archetype who stands out as the only relatable, human character amidst all the outsized sleaze, a woman who’s cared for the motherless Jack and has become a friend to him. Like so many of the other elements in the film, racial tensions are raised and then allowed to drift away, but the scenes between Efron and Gray are poignant and funny, and provide a slight counterbalance to all the grotesquery in this otherwise offputting jumble. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
This week’s DVD releases include “lesser” but no less entertaining movies by two American mavericks working in their favorite genres: Robert Altman satirizing an American institution with an ensemble cast so large it practically needs the old Cinerama process to get everyone on the screen, and Joe Dante mixing laughs, jolts and teens in peril. HIGH: A Wedding (Anchor Bay; $9.98 DVD) WHO’S RESPONSIBLE: Written by John Considine, Patricia Resnick, Allan Nichols and Robert Altman; directed by Altman; starring Carol Burnett, Lillian Gish, Vittorio Gassman, Mia Farrow, Paul Dooley, Dina Merrill and Lauren Hutton. WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT: It’s the wedding day for Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz, Jr.) and Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker), but the happy couple don’t steal focus in Altman’s hilarious 1978 follow-up to Nashville . The class divide between the two families — Dino’s related on his mother’s side to the wealthy, snobbish Sloan clan while the nouveau-riche Brenners own a truck stop — provides the crux of the comedy, though all sorts of intriguing subplots, tropical storms, sexual secrets and all-around inappropriate behavior pop up throughout the happy day. With this many farcical goings-on in one huge mansion, it’s no surprise that Altman later turned this script into an opera. WHY IT’S SCHMANCY: While critics often dismiss A Wedding , given that it comes on the heels of the director’s masterpiece, it’s a biting, bracing comedy that ranks among the great screen satires of the 1970s. If you’ve ever been to a big wedding, you know the phenomenon of not knowing who everyone is, and this film requires at least a few viewings before you can nail down all the relationships among the 48 — twice as many as Nashville ’s 24 — characters. You’ll find those viewings to be rewarding, since there are so many hilarious performances and oddball supporting characters that you might miss the first time you watch. WHY YOU SHOULD BUY IT (AGAIN): This title was mostly lost in the shuffle for years. It was originally available on DVD only in a 2006 Altman box set with three other titles before becoming a solo release with little fanfare the following year. Now that Anchor Bay is giving A Wedding another go, movie fans who missed this gem in the Altman oeuvre have a chance to check it out. (Extras-wise, there’s but one featurette, and someone needs to release that opera on DVD, too.) LOW: The Hole (Big Air Studios; $14.99 DVD, $20.99 Blu-Ray) WHO’S RESPONSIBLE: Written by Mark L. Smith, directed by Joe Dante; starring Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Nathan Gamble, Teri Polo, Bruce Dern, Dick Miller. WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT: After moving into a new house, brothers Dane (Massoglia) and Lucas (Gamble) discover a trapdoor held shut with a half-dozen padlocks. Consumed by curiosity, they open it, only to find a seemingly bottomless cavern on the other side. They soon realize that the hole knows what you fear most, and with the help of next-door neighbor Julie (Bennett), they fight to overcome their deepest terrors. WHY IT’S FUN: The Hole has that overly-bright look you’ll recognize from cable movies and low-budget direct-to-DVD flicks, but nobody juggles comedy and horror like Dante, the man behind both Gremlins films, The Howling , Piranha and Matinee . Even if he’s working on the cheap, he’s still inventive and funny, and the film offers some effective frights and charming performances (particularly from Bennett and Gamble), all wrapped up in a moral not unlike the one currently being offered up by ParaNorman . WHY YOU SHOULD BUY IT (AGAIN): Minimally released in U.S. theaters, it’s more than likely that you missed this one during its all-too-brief run on the big screen. So, this DVD is your only chance to see the movie at all, even if the handful of extras offered here are pretty thin gruel. Alonso Duralde has written about film for The Wrap , Salon and MSNBC.com. He also co-hosts the Linoleum Knife podcast and regularly appears on What The Flick?! (The Young Turks Network) . He is a senior programmer for the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles and a pre-screener for the Sundance Film Festival. He also the author of two books: Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas (Limelight Editions) and 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men (Advocate Books). Follow Alonso Duralde on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis will take part in a live question-and-answer session on Yahoo! in New York following an early special multi-city screening of Lincoln on Oct. 10. Dreamworks Pictures, which will release Lincoln on Nov. 16, announced on Monday that the discussion with the director and star of the hightly anticipated film will take place in New York after a 7 p.m. screening at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The movie will also simultaneously screen in nine other cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, Washington DC, Seattle, Miami, Atlanta and Houston. The Q&A will stream live on Yahoo! Movies and audiences at the screenings will view it live via satellite after the film. Questions can be submitted via Twitter using the hashtag: #Lincolnmovie. Let’s hope this goes more smoothly than t he glitchy Google Hangout session with Spielberg and Joseph Gordon-Levitt that took place Sept. 4.
Research on the street drug known as “bath salts” has uncovered some disturbing findings… via UK Daily Mail : As lethal bath salts continue to take young lives, researchers have discovered the shocking strength of a key ingredient that leaves users struggling with the after effects for days. MDPV, commonly found in the street drug is ten times stronger than “yayo”, according to the National Science Foundation. It causes users to become paranoid, violent and agitated, at times leading to hallucinations. But unlike with other drugs, such as “yayo” or “molly,” doctors are noticing a worrying trend of people suffering these symptoms for days after snorting the legal high. ‘They’re selling time bombs,’ Louisiana Poison Control Center Director Dr. Mark Ryan told ABC News. ‘We’ve had some people show up who are complaining of chest pains so severe that they think they’re having a heart attack. They think they’re dying. They have extreme paranoia. They’re having hallucinations. They see things, they hear things, monsters, demons, aliens.’ One such victim was 21-year-old Dickie Sanders. He suffered severe hallucinations after snorting a packet of bath salts, labelled ‘Cloud Nine’, became convinced he was being hunted by police and sliced at his throat with a kitchen knife. Saunders survived his horrific injuries, returning home with stitches and telling his mother: ‘I can’t handle what this drug has done to me. I’m never going to touch anything again.’ The side effects persisted, Saunders’ father ended up having to sleep beside him, holding his son in his arms and trying to comfort him. He eventually calmed and drifted off to sleep. But hours later, suddenly and without warning, Saunders left the protective arms of his father and in the midst of another psychotic episode shot himself with a rifle. As Saunders’ tragic became mirrored in more and more incidents across the country, Ryan compiled a database of every bath salts-related case in Louisiana, hit especially hard by the problem, and Kentucky. Ryan noticed that upon snorting the powder, labelled with names including Hurricane Charlie, NOLA Diamond and Bayou Ivory Flower, users all suffered repetitive psychotic episodes. ‘Some patients were in the hospital for 5 days, 10 days, 14 days,’ Ryan said. ‘In some cases, they were under heavy sedation. As you try to taper off the sedation, the paranoia came back and the delusions.’ ‘MDPV is irreversible, it won’t let go,’ his colleague Louise De Felice said. ‘I don’t know of any other drug that has that same feature of not allowing you to escape from it.’ Scientists ran tests to try to determine the drug’s chemistry, finding it to be laced with MDPV, ten times the potency of cocaine. The dangerous combination of the drug’s ingredients ‘flood the brain,’ they said, leading to repeated episodes of psychotic behaviour. In December the Louisiana Poison Centre received more than 110 calls about bath salts, compared with four in October and 24 in November. That trend was being mirrored all around the states. Drastic measures were taken early January to ban the five ingredients commonly found in bath salts products: MDPV and mephedrone, methylone, methedrone and flephedrone. What’s worrying is that drug makers have simply tweaked the formula, skirting around the law. ‘What [drugmakers] are looking for is the side effects,’ said Jimmy Guidry, Louisiana State Health officer. ‘They just have to change the chemistry, and they’ve got something that’s not on the list, and it’s not illegal. They continue to make it legal to have these horrible side effects.’ ‘It’s like that arcade game Whac-a-Mole,’ Ryan added. ‘Every time you think you’ve got a handle on it — boom — it pops up in three different places.’ We never planned on trying bath salts in the first place, but this information is even more disturbing than we imagined — there is a drug that people can’t come down from — the side effects of this isht is PERMANENT! It seems like users either end up killing themselves or others before it’s all said and done. That said — who is making this stuff? Clearly not your average neighborhood drug dealer… So how did something that was made in a lab get into the hands of all these people across the country? That’s what we really want to know!
Roman Polanski will go French in his next project based on a Tony Award-winning stage-play and he’s tapping his wife to play the star. Polanski is adapting Avid Ives’ stage play Venus in Fur , relocating the setting to Paris from New York, casting his spouse Emmanuelle Seigner who auditions a role in a sadomasochistic drama. It is not clear if Polanski’s on-going warrant from a statutory rape charge dating back to 1978 prompted him to change the setting to France where he has lived since the alleged incident. Last year, he directed Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly in another play adaptation, Carnage , which was also set in New York, though directed from the safety of France. This will be Seigner’s the third collaboration with her husband, following Frantic , Bitter Moon , and The Ninth Gate , according to BBC . In the latest collaboration, she will star opposite French heart-throb Louis Garrel. “I’ve been looking for a chance to make a film in French with Emmanuelle for a long time,” Polanski said in a statement. “Reading Venus in Fur , I realized the moment had arrived.” The Lionsgate production will begin shooting in November, so perhaps a Cannes premiere is in the works. Quick synopsis from Wikipedia: The writer-director of a new play, an adaptation of the novel which inspired the term Masochism, is on the telephone lamenting the inadequacies of all the actresses who showed up that day to audition for the lead character. Suddenly, at the last minute, a new actress bursts in, the exemplar of every fault he has decried: needy, crude, compliant, desperate. Yet over the next 90 minutes, the balance of power shifts as the actress establishes total dominance over the director, exactly as in the novel. [ Source: BBC , Wikipedia ]
Also in Thursday morning’s round-up of news briefs, the Tokyo International Film Festival releases details of its films for its 25th anniversary edition. Universal has removed the director from an upcoming Keanu Reeves epic. And Mexico names its Oscar contender for Best Foreign Language consideration. Tokyo International Film Festival Sets Lineup Recent Toronto titles No by Pablo Larrain, What Maisie Knew by Scott McGehee and David Siegel and Nick Cassavetes’ Yellow will screen in the competition at the 25th anniversary of the festival, which will screen around 300 films. The Tokyo International Film Festival takes place October 20 – 28. Details about the lineup can be found here . Around the ‘net… Marion Cotillard to be Honored at 16th Hollywood Film Awards The Best Actress Oscar-winner ( La Vie en Rose ) will be feted at the first awards show of the 2012 Oscar season at a gala on October 22nd. In her latest film Rust and Bone by Jacques Audiard, she plays a paraplegic who finds help from an unlikely suitor, THR reports . Universal Removes Director of Keanu Reeves Film The studio assumed control of editing the samurai epic 47 Ronin from Carl Rinsch after the film’s budget ballooned to $225 million. The story is based on a Japanese legend in which a group of early 18th century samurai avenge the death of their master. The Hollywood 3-D version also adds fantasy elements such as giants and witches, The Wrap reports . Walt Disney Set for Flamingo Kid Remake Brett Ratner’s Rat Entertainment and Michael Phillips’ Lighthouse Productions will produce the remake of the 1984 feature that starred Matt Dillon. In it he played a high school grad who gets a job at the Flamingo Club and is mentored by the club’s owner. He soon grows disdainful of his blue collar roots and longs for the privileged life the club offers, but it comes with a price, Deadline reports . Mexico Names After Lucia as it’s Oscar Contender The film by Michel Franco had its world premiere in the Cannes Un Certain Regard section where it won a prize. The film centers on a father and daughter who move to a new town and face the challenges of change, THR reports .
Paul Dano says he plays “a bit of a prick” in So Yong Kim’s For Ellen , but pricks are humans, too. And in this making-of clip, Dano’s character — a rock musician who’s hit the skids named Joby Taylor — appears ready to regain some of his misplaced humanity. After agreeing to sign divorce papers in order to make some money off the sale of the marital home, Joby discovers that the agreement requires him to forfeit custody of his six-year-old daughter Ellen (newcomer Shaylena Mandigo). With his lawyer (Jon Heder) unable to modify the terms, Joby makes an eleventh-hour visit to his daughter and estranged wife’s home to figure out if he is able to walk away from his child or somehow reconcile with his wife. In this exclusive featurette, Dano and the director describe shooting one of the climactic scenes between Joby and his young daughter in For Ellen, which is available nationwide on video on demand beginning today . Spoiler alert: the crew had a serious cast of moist-eye after Dano and Mandigo shot the scene. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Jon Hamm randomly and sleazily stars in Aimee Mann’s new music video for “Labrador,” which is filmed as a remake of Til Tuesday’s 1985 hit “Voices Carry.” The video begins with a “behind-the-scenes” look from the Mad Men star, who portrays the song’s real writer and director, Tom Scharpling. Confused yet? Mann plays along in the video, basically saying she was duped into obliging the director. With that debonair mustache, it’s hard to fault the singer-songwriter. Watch the weirdness below (plus the original song for comparison): Aimee Mann – Labrador Til Tuesday – Voices Carry
