Also in Friday morning’s Biz Break, the Weinsteins go for a sneak of their latest French release paired with Oscar-winner The Artist, the Time Warner chief’s recipe for how to combat movie piracy, and more. Robert De Niro and Michael Douglas Team for CBS Films’ Vegas Last Vegas is a comedy about four old friends who decide to throw a Las Vegas bachelor party for the only one of them who has remained single. De Niro will play the party-averse Paddy Connelly, who reluctantly agrees to fly to Vegas at the request of his friends. Douglas will play Billy Gerson, a lifelong bachelor, who has finally decided to take the plunge. Good Universe, which launches its global sales operation in Cannes this month led by principal Joe Drake, is handling international sales. Around the ‘net… Rachel McAdams to Star in About Time McAdams is in negotiations to star in the latest romantic comedy from British filmmaker Richard Curtis. McAdams would play the dream girl, a role Zooey Deschanel had once been attached to play, THR reports . Zooey Deschanel to Play Loretta Lynn on Broadway Lynn introduced Deschanel on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville Thursday night. Back in 1979, Lynn introduced Sissy Spacek on stage at the Grando Ole Opry in the movie Coal Miner’s Daughter , which would eventually win Spacek an Academy Award. THR reports . Weinsteins Sneak Intouchables with The Artist Six theaters in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles will host a sneak of French-language hit The Intouchables tied to The Weinstein Company’s re-release of The Artist on Saturday. Intouchables opens May 25th in the U.S., Variety reports . Movie Windows Must Collapse to Combat Piracy Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes told Charlie Rose on PBS that the days of having releases appear in theaters a few months before they’re available on home video are numbered, Deadline reports .
Given the kind of vampire that’s dominated pop culture in recent years – hunky, as down in Bon Temps, or sparkly, like the eternal teens of Twilight — it’s no surprise that some folks may long for the bloodsucker of olde. Well, count Johnny Depp among the ranks of the traditionalists. His latest collaboration with director Tim Burton, an adaptation of the 1970s supernatural soap Dark Shadows , sees Depp in ghostly make-up and fangs as undead hero Barnabas Collins in what he describes as a counterpoint to movies about “vampires that look like underwear models.” And underwear models are the last things Depp brings to mind as Collins: Freed after centuries of imprisonment, the 18th century New England vampire returns to his ancestral home only to find himself — pasty white (via theatrical make-up), with long pointy vampire fingers, chompers, and a wardrobe like a Goth Liberace’s – a fish out of water in the groovy ’70s. So why the reactionary vampirism? Depp and Burton were both fans of the original Dark Shadows series as kids, as they told press last week in Los Angeles. (Co-star Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays Collins family descendant and matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, was the only other cast member who was also a previous fan of the show — so much so that she called her Batman Returns director Burton to lobby for a part.) But the idea to make a film adaptation from the cult series didn’t strike until the two were on the set of another film. “I think it was during Sweeney Todd where I just blurted out in mid conversation, ‘God, we should do a vampire movie together,’” Depp recalled, “’where you actually have a vampire that looks like a vampire.’” Depp says he’s always been fascinated by monsters, and the erotic nature of bloodsuckers adds “a darkness, this mystery, this intrigue.” But of course, Dark Shadows is a family-friendly comedy-actioner to boot. “It was a real challenge, more for Tim than me, to make that guy, that vampire, fit back into this odd society and this dysfunctional family,” he said. “I think he did it seamlessly.” In addition to wearing finger-extending vampire nails that required delicate treatment between scenes, Depp donned other vampire accoutrements. “When I had the fangs, you had to be careful that you didn’t actually pierce the jugular,” he explained. “Kind of like my experience shaving Alan Rickman — which, by the way, neither of us wants to do again.” As for Barnabas Collins’s stilted, out-of-the-past mannerisms, Depp and Burton agreed: They had to include some measure of original series actor Jonathan Frid in the performance. “It just had to be this sort of classic monster, like Fangoria Magazine or that kind of thing,” Depp said. “In terms of that Jonathan did have a rigidity to him, this elegance. It was always there.” “Tim and I talked early on,” he continued. “I did believe that a vampire should look like a vampire.” He paused. “It was a kind of rebellion against vampires that look like underwear models.” Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
WELL! Thank you Wonkette operative “OkieDokieDog,” for passing along this film of great beauty and poetry. It is of a Nebraska lady getting all hot and nasty about Gay Sex Orgiers, with their P-E-N-I-S-es. They are Homiciders. And the UN/UNESCO, somehow. We do not know. But it should certainly have more than 313 views, so Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Wonkette Discovery Date : 10/05/2012 18:19 Number of articles : 4
What if The Sting ‘s Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker could be your surrogate parents? And what if they were also SoCal slackers? That seems to be the thought at the center of Brian Crano’s directorial debut, an uneven but appealing dramedy about two car thieves and petty con-artists who end up taking charge of an abandoned 12-year-old boy. It’s a film that should be appallingly twee, but more often than not is actually scruffy and sweet, thanks to a nicely underplayed turn by Chandler Canterbury as the kid, Kelsey, and the chemistry between Jason Ritter and Jake Sandvig (who co-wrote the film with Crano) as hipster grifters Ben and Alan. The pair are incredibly unconvincing as criminals, which is partly the idea — they dress up in hideous bow-tied uniforms and stand outside funerals with a notice offering complementary valet parking. It works because they look like schmucks — why would anyone wear formal shorts and stand outside in the sun for hours if they weren’t getting paid to do so? When someone bites, they take his or her car, throw their sign in the back and drive straight to a shady garage run by Marty (Todd Louiso), the least threatening stolen vehicle fence imaginable. This low-key illegal operation is barely sketched out — wouldn’t someone eventually spread news of this scheme? — and ends up being more symbolic of the man-child refuge the two have created for themselves. Ben and Alan live in the guest quarters in the backyard of a larger house they rent out to tenants; they have cookouts on the porch, on which they also like to sit in fancy bathrobes; and they pay regular visits to Alan’s sister Mel (Rebecca Hall), who works at a chain diner that requires employees to do a dance to welcome their customers, and who’s in school and disapproves of their illicit moneymaking schemes. It’s hard to say whether A Bag of Hammers is deliberately stylized or simply so lo-fi it inadvertently comes across that way, but the simplicity of its elements works. (It resembles last year’s Bellflower in that it creates a sense of an enclosed alt Los Angeles universe by stripping away all the mundane details and consequences.) Ben and Alan have created a loafer’s Neverland in their Burbank back house, an easy life that’s far from the troubled childhoods they mention in passing. They don’t have any further plans to expand their criminal enterprises — when presented with a gun by Marty, Ben looks shocked. And they have no desire or motivation to change, until Kelsey comes into their lives. Kelsey and his mother Lynette ( True Blood ‘s Carrie Preston) are the front house’s current tenants, driven, according to Lynette, from their home in Louisiana by Katrina. Kelsey’s a serious kid, but his mother seems scattered and frazzled. While Ben and Alan are idly talking about who would win in a fight (the Ultimate Warrior being the answer to all scenarios) or accidentally stealing the car of Ben’s ex girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried) while leading charmed lives (“What if our luck runs out?” one asks, to which the other replies “Our con luck or our regular person luck?”), Lynette goes from job interview to job interview. In her desperation for cash, she completely neglects her son — and things get worse with child services and a concerned teacher (Gabriel Macht) lurking in the wings. The shift between quirky comedy and emotionally scarred drama doesn’t really work out, but A Bag of Hammers remains fairly light despite some serious developments threatening to encroach on the boys’ bubble. When Kelsey ends up in their care, Alan is ready to commit to raising him (despite being utterly unprepared to care for a child), while Ben is alarmed — “We can’t even keep fish!” — and Mel is the voice of reason, a voice pointing out that they’re being ridiculous. A Bag of Hammers ‘ mistrust of systems and authority figures — who tend to either be abusive or too caught up in their own problems to pay attention — seems strange given the bromantic whimsy with which its main characters have chosen to live their lives, like eternal kids whose parents are away. But Lynette’s dilemma comes across as genuinely distressed and free of bathos, conveying the despair of running up against an unmovable wall again and again. The title comes from the name Ben has for the difficulties life hands you — you’re burdened with “a bag of hammers” representing the poverty in which you grew up, or the cancer that claims your loved ones, or the accident in which your brother died, or the divorce that splits up your family. “The thing is what you do with these hammers,” Ben explains. As metaphors go, it doesn’t make much sense — isn’t the saying “a box of hammers,” and doesn’t it refer to someone’s idiocy? — but then, neither does the world in which the movie takes place. That it works as well as it does is a pleasing accident. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
It’s really easy to be cynical about horror movie posters. Most of them are garish, Photoshop nightmares unworthy of a second look. But we really owe it to ourselves to bask in the sublime surrealism of the one-sheet for The Possession . A poster like this one, for a low-budget horror film with a decent pedigree (Sam Raimi is among the producers) that will play as late-summer counterprogramming in multiplexes around the country, comes around, oh, never. I’ll grant you that it is of questionable construction. It’s flat and nearly monochromatic, the Photoshop is sloppy in spots (especially where the wrist meets the mouth), and it feels like a detail from the poster for another Raimi film, Drag Me to Hell : Still, there’s beauty in the simplicity. Take away the title, taglines, and credit block and you instantly know this is a person-possessed movie. No weird upside-down people , no impossible-for-even-the-most-elastic-yogi posing , no one stuck to the ceiling — just a person being mauled from the inside out by a demon clawing its way out of that person’s maw. Any other image meant to illustrate “possessed” looks like unicorns and rainbows in comparison. And why not? Reality is always stranger — and scarier — than fiction, and, my God, this really happened! Somewhere, out in the world, someone is telling the story about that time a girl they knew vomited up a gnarled ghoul hand that then ripped her face off. That’s the takeaway, anyhow, when “Based on a True Story” is placed above the poster’s horrific, inspired image. It’s an audacious juxtaposition. For nearly a decade, horror movies brandishing their ripped-from-reality bonafides have hewed to relatively realistic depictions of their content. The Exorcism of Emily Rose , for example, is atmospheric and unsettling in its depiction of a girl lost in foggy desolation. Similarly, the remake of The Amityville Horror exists in a scuzzy, off-balance suburbia, but it’s one that feels relatively in-step with our world. Even the ridiculous, porny poster for The Devil Inside feels grounded in some perversion of reality. Not so for The Possession . It’s a true story spewed forth from the interior worlds of Lovecraft and Dalí. Our first instinct is to laugh at the absurdity of selling a movie using this image as “based on a true story.” But disbelief quickly gives way to something like awe. On one hand it’s a complete inversion of how to market a real-person-possessed movie. Instead of people contorted by unseen supernatural forces — that is, something we can go in believing actually happened — we’re getting a person brutally face-hugged by a tangible hellspawn, a practical and realistic impossibility that subverts the scare power of these sorts of movies. It’s not frightening, after all, if we know it can’t really happen. (Shock cuts only go so far.) On the other hand, it’s a deft commentary on these kinds of films. We all know they’re ridiculous. But you’d never know it to look at their posters. From the images to the copy, they’re humorless voids of self-righteousness, like an ad for a sanctimonious documentary or a foreign art-house film. Except these are ads for movies about a kid puking, what, smoke? A scarf? Oil? Liquid gold? Or being suspended upside down, against one’s control . And on and on. The Possession one-sheet, in the grand Raimi tradition, is self-aware and calls attention to how ridiculous it all is while simultaneously giving us a good, solid modern horror movie image. I’d be surprised if the image on this poster is ever brought to life in The Possession (but here’s hoping!), and time will tell how grossly it misrepresents the tone and content of the film. But all that seems beside the point when you have a poster of such sly wit and artistry. PREVIOUSLY IN ONE-SHEET WONDER The Simple, Fan-Driven Pleasures of Moonrise Kingdom ‘s First Poster Dante A. Ciampaglia is a writer, editor and photographer in New York. You can find him on Twitter , Tumblr , and, occasionally, his blog .
Also in Wednesday afternoon’s Biz Break: A Taken star takes on another thriller in L.A., Logan Marshall Green gets set to play Tennessee Williams, and Matthew McConaughey and Cuba Gooding, Jr. take a look at White House historical drama. Elizabeth Olsen Begins Production on Erotic Thriller Thérèse Oscar Isaac, Tom Felton and Jessica Lange join Olsen who plays Thérèse Raquin, a sexually repressed young woman trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin and domineered by her aunt. She meets her husband’s alluring friend (Isaac) and embarks on a dangerous affair. The film is set in 1860s Paris. Shooting is taking place in Belgrade and Budapest. Director John Suits Begins Thriller The Scribbler Katie Cassidy ( Taken ) stars in the feature, adapted from the U.K. graphic novel. Produced by New Artists Alliance and Caliber Media, the film also stars Garret Dillahunt, Michelle Trachtenberg, Eliza Dushku, Gina Gershon and Michael Imperioli about a a young woman confronting her destructive mental illness using “The Siamese Burn,” an experimental machine designed to eliminate multiple personalities. But the closer she comes to being “cured,” what if the last unwanted identity turns out to be her? Production begins this week in L.A. Logan Marshall Green Set to Play Tennessee Williams He will portray the playwright in Lonely Hunter by director/writer/producer Deborah Kampmeier, a feature based on the life of Southern gothic writer Carson McCullers, which Jena Malone is already attached to play. Williams was McCuller’s longtime confidant. Shooting will begin this year with Troy Johanson and Blair Breard as producers. Green stars in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus . Holly Herrick Named to Austin Film Society Post Herrick will serve as Associate Artistic Director of the organization founded by filmmaker Richard Linklater. Her background includes work at the Hamptons, Sarasota and Newport film festivals. She succeeds filmmaker Bryan Poyser, who is currently in production with his new indie feature The Bounceback . Around the ‘net… Roman Polanski To Direct D The political thriller is based on the Dreyfus affair, one of the most sensational political scandals in history. The project reunites the team behind Polanski’s previous film The Ghost Writer , Deadline reports . Universal to Open Harry Potter Theme Park in Japan The first Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction overseas will open at Universal Studios Japan in 2014 at its Osaka facility,” Variety reports . Matthew McConaughey, Cuba Gooding Jr. Circle The Butler Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack and Jane Fonda are already set for director Lee Daniels’s White House historical drama headlined by Forest Whitaker. The film will be at the upcoming Cannes Film Market where IM Global will sell international rights. Daniels’s The Paperboy will have its world premiere in competition in Cannes. THR reports . Revenge Actor Gabriel Mann Boards Chavez Mexican filmmaker/actor Diego Luna will direct the indie biopic — not to be confused with Luna’s 2007 boxing documentary Chávez &mdash this summer, featuring Michael Pe
Trailblazing hair and fashion icon Vidal Sassoon has died at the age of 84, according to the L.A. Times , following reports in recent years that he’d been battling leukemia. The hair styling legend had built an empire after making a name for himself with game-changing designs for women in the 1960s, including bold coifs for the likes of movie stars Nancy Kwan and Mia Farrow. Actress Nancy Kwan shot to fame with 1960s’s The World of Suzie Wong , which is often incorrectly credited as the film for which Vidal Sassoon gave her this iconic slanted bob. Rather, the Sassoon cut was done for Kwan’s 1963 comedy The Wild Affair . (Kwan’s famous photo, below, was shot for Vogue.) Years later, he remembered the design in a chat with NPR : “I looked at her bone structure, and I thought we could do almost anything with Nancy. And I started to cut at the very back of her head and I said, ‘Great neckline; I’ll go shorter.’ And I went short in the back and graduated into more length at the sides, and I suddenly realized we had a bob that could be international.” In 1967, Sassoon and his scissors were tapped to transform another ingenue for the screen with Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby , for which he gave Mia Farrow the close-cropped pixie cut that would become her trademark. Sassoon, a London native who was a member of the anti-fascist 43 Group following World War II, was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2009. His life and legacy was the subject of the documentary Vidal Sassoon: The Movie , which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival and opened in limited release in 2011. [via LA Times ]
Facebook.com – Become a Fan! Twitter.com – Follow Us! Tonight, Cameron Diaz, Elizabeth Banks, Brooklyn Decker, Chance Crawford, Chris Rock, Rodrigo Santoro, Kirk Jones, Nina Garcia, and Heidi Murkoff graced the red carpet of a special advanced screening of the film “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” at the AMC Lincoln Square Theatre in New York! We hear from Brooklyn Decker about her babysitting past, Kirk Jones tells us about his directorial struggles, Rodrigo talks about his character, and much, much more!
Kris Jenner is simply incensed that a new tabloid cover screams that the Kardashian sisters are all DITCHING THEIR MONSTER MOM. Just how enraged is the family matriarch over this claim? She’s posted a photo of the cover in question on her personal website . That won’t drive sales or mask the obvious relationship Kris has with In Touch Weekly or anything! The story alleges that Jenner threw a party in NYC late last month in order to celebrate the clan’s $40 million deal with E! , but Khloe left early, Kim skipped the event and Kris “started a fight with [Kourtney] about how she was raising her son… Kourtney was telling her to mind her own business. She said Khlo
Are Rihanna and Darren McFadden of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders dating? The singer made no secret of their connection during a late-April trip to Honolulu, Hawaii, during which she also promoted her film, Battleship . The question is whether it’s a real relationship or just a typical fling. In any case, it sounds like the two hit it off quite nicely there. “Rihanna rushed into the ocean, but Darren had to be coaxed,” an onlooker reveals. “She kept calling his name, and at one point, she discreetly flashed him. That did the trick. He ran into the water, and they started kissing.” While they’ve only been “dating” a few weeks, the couple was spotted holding hands in the lobby of their hotel, The Kahala Hotel & Resort. Later, they were dancing at a club and cuddling in a lounge chair. But a source also says that there could be other motivations … like getting in Chris Brown ‘s head: “She’s using Darren to make him jealous.” On May 2, she made a point of wearing a Raiders shirt to a strip club, and tweeted numerous pictures in the hopes that Chris would see. Maybe she just likes silver and black attire? [Photo: WENN.com]
