Kristen Stewart describes her nude scene in On The Road not as “brave” as some call it, but merely as what was required of her as an actress and for the role. “I hate when people go, ‘Oh, wow, great performance. So brave,'” she told The Huffington Post . Kristen Stewart On the Road Clips “Oh, because I’m naked? That’s very annoying. But at the same time, if that’s what they’re focusing on , then On the Road probably isn’t for them anyway.” The 22-year-old said the occasional nudity of teenage bride Marylou in the movie adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic novel is not the main takeaway from the film. Stewart, having read the 1957 book, connected with it and wanted to do the role justice. “This book celebrates being alive and it celebrates being human, and if you want to cover up and deny any aspect of that, you are denying the spirit of the book,” she said. If it means feeling rewarded by a project, then getting nude and offering two guys hand relief at the same time, as she does in one memorable clip, is nothing for her. “I need to be so rocked by something, so moved by something that the idea of letting it down or ruining it is painful, and that’s what gets you through the shoot,” she said. “If you start considering what people are going to think, you’ll never make a movie.”
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl is heading to the Sundance Film Festival next month with his directorial debut Sound City and he’s wasting no time getting the pic out there. The film’s website is now taking pre-orders for the documentary that will be released via HD digital download and stream February 1st. It will also be released theatrically February 1. Sound City is the brainchild of Grohl who conceived the story after purchasing a custom-built 8028 recording console from Sound City Studios last year. The board was built in 1972 and considered to be a “crown jewel of analog recording equipment,” having recorded such artists as Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Cheap Trick, Guns and Roses, Fear, Grohl’s former band, Nirvana as well as Rage Against the Machine, Slipknot, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica and others. Grohl’s personal connection to Sound City began with the 1991 recording of Nirvana’s breakthrough album, “Nevermind”. Selling over 30 million copies worldwide. Grohl is getting personal with the feature, sending customers who pre-buy Sound City for $10 a letter, which follows: Hey there…. Thanks for scraping up your hard earned dough and buying the movie direct from our site! We’re stoked! Hope you love it as much as we do…. Ummm………Holy shit! I made a movie! I started this project a little over a year ago with ONE of my good old friends (Jim Rota from the band Fireball Ministry). That’s right….just me, my drinking buddy, and a crazy idea that we should tell the story of a studio we had loved hanging around for years, and our heartbreak to see it close. It soon blossomed into something truly epic! I don’t think either of us ever imagined our little project would become what it is now. Like all the best things in life, it just…….happened. From day one, it was the most incredible experience of my life. I swear. Sitting down with Neil Young talking about recording guitars, John Fogerty telling me about the day he decided to become a musician, Stevie Nicks telling me the story of how she joined Fleetwood Mac, Trent Reznor schooling me on the world of computers and digital technology, etc etc etc…..can you imagine? All I had to do was listen…I am the luckiest man on earth. And, being a completely independent film, no one told us how or what to do! Me and my crew of under 20 people did it OUR way. It was like a keg party with a camera. WE got to tell the story of a place we all held so dear. WE wanted to do it justice. And I think we did. But, SOUND CITY is only part of the story….. What is it that happens when 4 people turn on, plug in, and really play that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up? What is it about those moments when you hear something and it immediately puts its hooks in you, and you feel…..understood? What is it that will inspire the next generation of kids wanna do what I did when I was a little punk growing up in Springfield, Virginia? That feeling like, “Wait……I can do this too….. That’s what I’m talking about. That human connection. That human feel. That human sound…that isn’t perfect…but it’s sooooo good. I really feel like SOUND CITY is my life’s most important work. I hope you do too. Psyched that you get to see it! Show it to your friends! Get together, start a band, sound like shit, and change the world. GO! Thank you, thank you, thank you………Dave [ Sources: Sound City , THR ]
Mexican-American superstar, Jenni Rivera , died Sunday , when her plane crashed en route to Mexico City, after the twin-engine Learjet she was a passenger on lost contact and went down near Monterrey, Mexico. Rivera, the chart-topping “diva de la banda,” was a judge on Mexico’s reality TV singing competition, La Voz , and was set to make her feature film debut in the hip-hop drama, Filly Brown , a darling out of Sundance last year, opposite Lou Diamond Phillips and Edward James Olmos. It was Olmos who urged Rivera to make the leap into acting, she revealed earlier this year while doing press rounds for Filly Brown . “Sometimes people have a bigger vision than you have yourself,” she told Celebs.com’s Elliot Kotek. Rivera was tapped to play against type in Filly Brown , portraying the incarcerated mother of Gina Rodriguez’s aspiring rapper in a stripped-down role that ran counter to her glamorous public image, a la Mariah Carey in Precious .”When I go onstage and I do about 40 songs a night, each song I’m acting out as if I’m really living it,” she said of the transition from music to acting (watch the full Sundance interview below). Filly Brown is set to be distributed by Indomina Pictures, although a release date has not been announced. (Follow the film’s Twitter and Facebook pages for updates.) Until then, watch Rivera and Rodriguez in a brief clip from the film: Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
If, like me you’re horribly old and ready to be sent by the farmer to the local dog food factory, you might remember a 1981 science fiction book called ‘ After Man: A Zoology of The Future ,’ by Dougal Dixon. Now sadly out of print (I still have a battered copy with a half-torn cover, because bragging rights), it featured fantastic naturalist illustrations of creatures extrapolated, evolutionarily, from modern fauna 50 million years after humanity had gone extinct. Wolf-like beasts descended from rats and ungulates descended from rabbits are the least weird creatures you’ll see, and it’s a crime no one has ever seen fit to make a half-decent movie based on concepts from the book. We’ll have to wait much longer for that, but based on the new international trailer, we can at least see something of the book’s influence on M. Knight Shyamalan’s next film, After Earth . The Will Smith and Jaden Smith-starring sci fi movie concerns the adventures of “legendary general” Cypher Raige* (Will) who, along with his young son Kitai (Jaden) crash land on planet Earth a thousand years after humanity abandoned it and moved out into the stars. Critically injured in the crash, the General is in desperate need of help; now Kitai must venture out alone into a completely re-forested home-world teeming with creatures, so we’re told in the trailer, that have all evolved to kill human beings. The glimpse of what looks like slightly evolved baboons is promising, and I’m actually shocked to admit this thing looks good. Shyamalan has not earned any benefit of the doubt, however, and I am confident that by film’s end we’ll be treated to some kind of clunky twist. Maybe it’ll turn out that they’re on the Planet of the Apes and that Jaden is actually Cypher’s father. Here’s the trailer. Let us know what you think in comments. * Dear science fiction filmmakers: please, dear god, please stop with the ridiculous naming conventions. Ross Lincoln is a LA-based freelance writer from Oklahoma with an unhealthy obsession with comics, movies, video games, ancient history, Gore Vidal, and wine. Follow him on twitter Follow Movieline on Twitter .
I feel I have to confess to a certain partisanship. I grew up listening to Les Misérables . I’ve seen it performed twice and as a girl had the original Broadway cast recording down cold . It’s been years since I’ve heard it, but watching Tom Hooper ‘s adaptation of Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Herbert Kretzmer’s musical I realized with amusement and discomfiture that I could still sing along to just about every damn word, at least until whomever was sitting near me took it upon themselves to murder me for the greater good. These songs — and the bridges in between, for Les Misérables is a sung-through affair with almost no spoken dialogue — are permanently etched in my psyche, and I am as far from being able to look at this material with critical distance as a highly trained stage star is from an actual consumptive 1800s French urchin. That said, can we admit that Les Misérables is an absolute beast of a musical? It faces the impossible task of compressing Victor Hugo’s 1500-page novel into three hours (the screen version running a leaner 157 minutes), starting in a prison in the south of France in 1815 before leaping ahead to the town of Montreuil in 1823 and then Paris in 1832, where the main action takes place against the backdrop of the June Rebellion. It’s the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean ( Hugh Jackman ), but it has a notable array of other significant characters to be dealt with, ones who love and suffer and (quite frequently) die, and all with musical accompaniment. The signature staging of the play involved a giant turntable that allowed for more fluid scene changes. On screen, that can be accompanied efficiently with an edit, but then you have to deal with the fact that smooshing a whole storyline about Valjean giving up a chance to let a stranger go down for his crimes and choosing to go on the run again (“Who Am I? / The Trial”) looks incredibly rushed when taken out of the abstract. In staging Les Misérables for screen, Hooper has taken a relatively naturalistic and grounded approach to the musical, a choice that’s better suited to the subject matter of the story than to the fact that it takes place entirely in song. The vocals were recorded live on set, the backdrops are grimy in a poetic period Gallic style and the big numbers are frequently recorded in close-up, the camera holding on intimate shots of the performers as they stand or sit and sing. The film (which was shot by Danny Cohen, who also served as cinematographer on The King’s Speech ) treats its songs as it would dialogue, except that dialogue rarely involves spouting about one’s feelings at length out loud to no one, a tic that makes much more sense set to music. It’s an infuriatingly static way to shoot musical numbers, and it diminishes the bombastic grandeur many of these songs have. Éponine (singer and stage actress Samantha Barks) belts out her anguish about her unrequited love while huddled against a pillar; on the big sequence “One Day More” we cut abruptly between different faces as if everyone’s in their own individual music video. It’s only Russell Crowe in the role of Javert, the police inspector who’s devoted his life to chasing down Valjean, who gets the kind of grandiose staging the material demands in his two big songs, as he wanders along prominent Parisian landmarks and the camera swings out to take in the city. Crowe is, perhaps not coincidentally, the weakest singer, and despite his musical side career looks uncomfortable in the role of Javert, his concentration all seeming to go toward his serviceable warbling rather than acting. But much of the rest of the cast is terrific, particularly not-so-secret theater geeks Jackman and Anne Hathaway , who settle into their roles like they’ve spent their lives waiting for this opportunity. Hathaway’s in fact so good as Fantine, the factory worker forced into prostitution to support her daughter Cosette near the start of the story, that the film staggers a bit after her character departs, her killer rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” one of its emotional highlights. Eddie Redmayne’s a pleasant surprise as Marius, the idealistic student torn between his love for the grown Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and his desire to join his friends at the barricades for the uprising — the lovers tend to be the two blandest characters in the ensemble, but he finds a genuine gallantry and sweetness to the would-be revolutionary. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter , on the other hand, play designated comic relief couple the Thénardiers even broader than that description would suggest — though “Master of the House” is one of the most dynamically staged of the songs, the tonal difference between their appearances and the rest of the film is jolting. Even at a generous running time that matches this season’s other giant award candidates, Les Misérables seems like it’s in a hurry, skittering from one number to the next without interlude. After Hathaway’s early high point, it starts to feel numbing, an unending barrage of musical emoting carrying us through Valjean’s adopting of Cosette, the latter’s first encounter with Marius, the battle at the barricade and a last hour that can feel like it’s a non-stop series of death arias. But even if this isn’t a great screen adaptation of the musical, there’s no resisting the ending, which pairs the film’s two brightest stars and then has everyone join in on a reprise of “Do You Hear The People Sing?” Say, do you hear the distant drums? Maybe not, but at that moment the voices coming from the screen and the tune they’re crooning are rousing enough to draw a few tears. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
We at Movieline HQ were quick to cheer when Matthew McConaughey was named Best Supporting Actor by the New York Film Critics Circle for his work in Magic Mike and Bernie . After busying himself with forgettable rom-coms, the uncannily likable Texan has been on a tear, choosing unique projects in which he can strut his unique and undeniable talents. For the first time in his career, he is a genuine contender for an Oscar nomination. Movieline spoke to the man from the set of Dallas Buyers Club (the film that required him to drop tons of weight, so if the noms don’t come this year, he’ll be primed for 2014) about awards campaigns, how he’s perceived by fans, some of his classic lines and some possible film sequels. Normally we’d take laser focus in pruning our interviews, but with a guy as wonderfully laid back as McConaughey (who announces himself on the phone as “McConaughey”) you’d be a fool to ignore all the “man”s. Before we get to this terrific year, I should let you know I’m on the road and actually in your hometown of Austin and, no joke, in the shadow of a Moon Tower . Where it all began! Great shadow to be in, man. In Texas, that’s the place to be to hang out with your buds and get on a buzz. You gotta get rural on it. Okay, since we’re talking about Dazed and Confused , I mean, you’ve embraced that role — you named your company after a line from it, right? Yeah! On the football field when Randall “Pink” Floyd is deciding whether to play football or take a drug test and I say “you gotta just keep living.” That was my first film, and a week into it my father passed away. I was dealing with my Dad’s death, man. I was trying to figure out how to keep my spiritual relationship with my father. The line came to me. I didn’t make it up, but it really helped me deal with the grieving period. When we got into the scene it just came out. From that day on I kept “just keep living” and applied it — because you can apply it to anything! It’s a choice. Which choice has the most residuals? Which choice has the most delayed gratification? It’s the “just keep living” choice. It works down the road — it works for deciding what you are gonna’ have for a meal or how you are gonna’ treat yourself or how you’re gonna’ treat your woman. So I named my company that, and a record company and bumper stickers – I basically branded it on most things I have. It’s clear to me that you are too cool to give a shit about awards. [Laughs] I love it. You can’t measure art, it’s silly, but… Okay, I’m glad you are going with the “but,” because if there is such a thing as being too cool to give a shit about an award like [the New York Film Critics Circle] then I’m not nearly as cool as you think. It’s very exciting. Any artist wants to create something that translates, resonates and has a long shelf life. Something people will see, get entertainment from. We were talking about Dazed and Confused , the greatest compliment I get is when people come to me and say, “I know that guy, man! I know him!” He’s a character that lives on. People say, “I knew him, his name was Kelly Hernsberg!” So, with Dallas from Magic Mike and also Bernie and Killer Joe , these are characters that, if I can share them in a way that people recognize them and they stick — that is very exciting to me. Now, look: as far as awards for art goes, with a hundred yard dash, there’s a clear winner and there’s second and third. It’s a science. It’s not a science when you are judging art but we’d be remiss to say you can’t look at something and say this is more well done than that. I think we have the right, if you are equipped to do so and you are being honest, to judge things, and in that respect I am very honored about getting an award. So you are ready to dive in, then, and start shaking hands and going into campaign mode with the goal of an Oscar nomination for Magic Mike ? [whistles.] Well, this is brand new for me, I’ll tell ya that. I asked myself that question when this was proposed to me just a few weeks ago. My publicist said, look, you are getting some attention for Magic Mike and Warner Bros. is ready to roll a campaign. Do you want to support it, too? And I’m working right now and I think “jeez, how’m I gonna’ do that?” But this is one of those “j.k. living” questions. Engage or not engage? And I’m for engaging in some form of everything. Yes. I love the film. I love the character. I loved the process of making it. Yes. I’d love to go talk about it. I’d much rather talk about acting in the role rather than selling the movie, you know what I mean? The movie was already a hit, now you can celebrate it. Exactly. It’s a hell of a lot more fun than sitting at the junket and answering questions about the wardrobe or how it was to kiss so-and-so in a movie, right? The hard part is the compartmentalization. I’ve got the films going and I’ve got a family going, but I’m not afraid to engage. This movie I’m doing now is extreme, but we found a spot to talk. You and I were going to talk the other day, we couldn’t fit it in, so I’m talking to you now, but if we didn’t talk now, I wouldn’t be in the right space to talk after starting the day, so we worked on it and got a time. I can talk with you in the morning, then I can shut that door and get back to the role, you know? This is turning into a very meta conversation. I love that, man, meta dialogue. People say don’t talk to yourself, well bullshit. I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer. There was some chatter about a Magic Mike sequel. Would you be on board if your character was fit in? You said it. If there’s integrity in the script for the character, then yes. I’d love to put those leathers on again. If it’s written well, absolutely. Have there been other films you’ve done you wish there was a sequel for? Dazed and Confused: Where Are They Now? . Rick [Linklater] and I have talked about it. It’s really fun to talk to Rick and think what Wooderson would be doing now. Nothing’s solidified, but it is fun to think about. I say he’s got a couple of kids and he’s a local DJ. The midnight to six DJ. With a couple of kids at home, probably twins. Why twins? I dunno. But he’s got twins and a wife and he’s THE SAME GUY. Rick is not afraid to do a sequel when no one expects it. He’s got the next Before Sunrise at Sundance this year. I know it. He snuck off and did it, man. One day I was talking to him and the next day I called him and he was gone. I don’t hear from him for three months he calls back, “what’s up?” I say, “hey, man, where’ve you been?” and he says he was in Greece shooting. That’s how Rick rolls. But listen, the Dazed and Confused characters are very sacred, it’s gotta’ be done right. You are aware that if you mention the name Matthew McConaughey to many people and the first thing out of their mouths will be “all right, all right, all right,” right? “All right, all right, all right.” You know the story about that, right? It’s classic. I go to the set for a wardrobe test, I’m not supposed to work that night. I wasn’t written in the script, but Rick wonders if Wooderson might be riding around trying to pick up chicks this night. So I get in the car — this is my first scene ever on film — and I’m nervous. So I’m saying to myself “who is my man? who is my man?” I had been listening to a live album by The Doors and between songs he would bark at the crowd “all right! all right! all right! all right!” Four times. So right before Rick calls action I’m thinking, “Who is my man? What am I about?” And I realize Wooderson is about weed, women, his car and music. Now I figure I’m high, I’m in my ’70s Chevelle, and I’m rockin’ out to Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold.” And there’s the woman I’m gonna go get. So I hear action, and I say “all right, all right, all right.” Basically — I got three out of four, and now I’m gonna get the fourth! And that was the first thing I ever said on film. Follow Jordan Hoffman on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Terrence Howard joins a slew of stars in a cop caper. Also in Friday’s round-up of news, the weekend is not shaping up to be a kind one for Playing for Keeps at the box office; James Marsden is strolling toward a Walk of Shame with Elizabeth Banks ; Hyde Park On Hudson , In Our Nature and California Solo are among the weekend’s Specialty Release newcomers; and Rubberneck & Redflag head to theaters via Tribeca Film. Terrence Howard Joins Chain Gang in Prisoners Also starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Melissa Leo, Viola Davis, Maria Bello and Paul Dano, the film follows a small-town carpenter (Jackman) whose daughter and her best friend are abducted. The cops cannot find them and he takes the law into his own hands. In the process, he comes into contact with a detective (Gyllenhaal) who oozes confidence, Deadline reports . Weekend Box Office Preview: Playing for Keeps Likely a Flop Gerard Butler’s soccer romantic comedy Playing for Keeps with Jessica Biel, Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Dennis Quaid may only open in the $6 million range, THR reports . James Marsden Strolling a Walk of Shame Marsden will join Steven Brill’s Walk of Shame with Elizabeth Banks. Banks plays a news anchor who has a wild night out and is locked out on the street without money, phone, ID etc and has a series of misadventures while winding a path to the most important job interview of her life, TOH reports . Specialty Release Preview: Hyde Park on Hudson , In Our Nature , California Solo & More Oscar hopeful Hyde Park on Hudson with Bill Murray as Franklin Delano Roosevelt is this weekend’s highest profile debut in the specialty market. There’s also In Our Nature with Jena Malone and John Slattery, and Robert Carlyle headlines California Solo in a role written with him in mind. The late Ernest Borgnine stars in The Man Who Shook The Hand Of Vicente Fernandez in a role that turns the idea of celebrity upside-down, Deadline reports . Rubberneck and Red Flag Head to Theaters via Tribeca Rubberneck revolves around a workplace obsession gone wrong. Boston scientist Paul lusts after a co-worker and though at first it’s polite flirtation at first, things go south when the co-worker begins to date someone else on the job. Red Flag centers on a solipsistic filmmaker takes his independent film on tour. Hoping to escape the pain of his recent breakup. Tribeca Film picked up both films directed by Alex Karpovsky and will be released theatrically in February.
There’s a question that The Impossible , the new film from Juan Antonio Bayona ( The Orphanage ), demands be asked, and that is — is it easier for audiences to relate to tragedy when it’s filtered through white characters? This is not a new issue. The movies have a long tradition of approaching stories about people of color, both at home and abroad, through the experiences of Caucasian protagonists, a habit that speaks to both (probably not unfounded) ideas about audience preferences and prejudices and the linked reality of what most of our movie stars still look like. The Impossible is set during the 2004 tsunami that hit South East Asia the day after Christmas, killing over 230,000 people and devastating Indonesia, India, Thailand and other countries, but it’s about how one expat family on holiday weathers the tragedy, an uplifting tale of survival and endurance amidst the ruin. On one hand, yes, it feels undeniably strange and selective to approach the worst tsunami in history by way of vacationing foreigners, with representatives of the local Thai population limited to those who come to their aid. The film begins with the family — Henry (Ewan McGregor) and Maria (Naomi Watts), and their sons Lucas (Tom Holland), Simon (Oaklee Pendergast) and Thomas (Samuel Joslin) — arriving on a turbulent flight, and ends with their worse for the wear departure on another one, and the relief that accompanies that trip to safety comes with an awareness that many of the other people left behind do not have a home elsewhere to go back to. On the other hand, The Impossible , which was written by Sergio G. Sánchez, is based on the true story of a Spanish family (transformed here into a British one) who were some of the many visitors to the area whose trip abroad turned into a nightmare. Their experiences aren’t unworthy of being dramatized simply because they’re not representative of the underreported norm, and the film recreates the horrifying saga in ways that are startlingly visceral, including a masterful sequence in which the first wave arrives like a monster in a horror flick. This story being told doesn’t mean that others are silenced, and The Impossible benefits from taking a limited perspective on an awful larger incident rather than try for something more panoramic. What may be a more relevant question for The Impossible is what its aims are as a movie. It’s a thoroughly and effectively sappy effort about a family searching for one another after an incredible catastrophe in the trappings of traumatic gore film — or vice versa, but either way the two halves sit uneasily beside one another on screen. As in The Orphanage , Bayona demonstrates he has a talent for the disturbing or flat out frightening and a taste for the sentimental, and it’s perhaps because this is a film about a real and recent disaster that both feel amplified, the shock and suffering turned up to apologize for or counterbalance the unabashed drippiness that follows. From a pure filmmaking perspective, it’s the first half that really impresses and perturbs, as Henry, Maria and the kids arrive from Japan to spend their holidays in a gorgeous beachside resort in Khao Lak. They film themselves on Christmas morning opening presents on the veranda, they release a paper lantern on the beach at night, and they sit poolside getting sunburns with other Western tourists and talking about their careers while the boys frolic in the water. The tsunami takes them completely by surprise, as it did almost everyone affected, rumbling from the horizon and taking out everything in its path. We stay with Maria as she’s swept away in the chaotic mass of water, the camera sticking with her as she clutches a tree and howls in pain and upset, then cutting over to Lucas as he’s pulled in the current, the two trying to reach each other in a world suddenly upended. It’s a tour de force sequence, and one that manages to outdo a similar one in Hereafter with little effort. But it’s what follows that’s enough to evoke a physical reaction, as Maria trudges through the wreckage, too stunned to notice the tattered muscles exposed in the gaping wound in her leg. The suffering Watts portrays — she climbs, dripping blood and crying in pain, into a tree and in a later scene coughs up what looks like lung tissue — looks all too agonizingly real, and enabling that requires a committed and deeply believable bit of acting. But watching her ordeal is enough to make you feel shaky, and almost as troubling are the sequences that follow in which Henry trudges through the splintered remains of their hotel, looking for the rest of his family, either alive or dead. The Impossible drops you into the experience of living through the tsunami in specific, achingly realized detail, then pulls back to provide a happier ending. After so much anguish, the need to balance it out with something positive is understandable, but it’s difficult not to be aware of just how much Bayona is yanking on heartstrings as he arranges for near misses and hospital misunderstandings, teary phone calls and kindly old women (Geraldine Chaplin!) providing companionship to forlorn children. Any glimpses of good amidst the destruction are welcome, but after that jarring, unforgettably immediate account of the tsunami, the latter half of The Impossible is so disappointingly movie -ish, tying a bow on the events after portraying them too vividly to allow them to be wrapped so neatly. It wrings out tears with an industrious efficiency that leaves you feeling manhandled after the exhilarating, terrifying footage that’s unfolded before. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The Hunger Games , The Dark Knight Rises , The Muppets , Midnight In Paris and even last year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, The Artist are up for awards this year, but this time it’s for the 55th annual Grammy Awards. Theatrical titles dominated this year’s Grammy categories dedicated to visual media with The Hunger Games receiving two nominations for Best Song (“Abraham’s Daughter”) and Taylor Swift’s “Safe & Sound.” The Muppets also scored two nominations, including Best Song for “Man Or Muppet” in addition to a nomination for Best Compilation Soundtrack. Others in the category include this year’s Marley documentary and 2011’s The Descendants and Midnight in Paris . Trent Reznor received a Best Score nom for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo along with Hans Zimmer for The Dark Knight Rises and John Williams for The Adventures of Tintin – The Secret of the Unicorn . The Black Keys’ “Lonely Boy,” Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You),” Fun’s “We Are Young” Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout Your” and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” are the Grammys’ nominees for Record of the Year. The Grammy Awards ceremony will be broadcast February 10th on CBS. 55th Grammy Awards’ Visual Media-related nominees follow with information provided by the Recording Academy (for other categories, visit the Grammy’s website ). Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media : The Descendants (Various Artists) [Sony Classical/Fox Music] Marley (Bob Marley & The Wailers) [UMe/Island/Tuff Gong] Midnight In Paris (Various Artists) [Madison Gate Records, Inc.] The Muppets (Various Artists) [Walt Disney Records] Rock Of Ages (Various Artists) [WaterTower Music] Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media : The Adventures Of Tintin – The Secret Of The Unicorn John Williams, composer [Sony Classical] The Artist Ludovic Bource, composer [Sony Classical] The Dark Knight Rises Hans Zimmer, composer [WaterTower Music] The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, composers [Null/Madison Gate] Hugo Howard Shore, composer [Howe Records] Journey Austin Wintory, composer [Sony Computer Entertainment America] Best Song Written For Visual Media : Abraham’s Daughter (From The Hunger Games ) T Bone Burnett, Win Butler & Régine Chassagne, songwriters (Arcade Fire) [Universal Republic; Publishers: Régine Chassagne, Absurd Music, Win Butler, Henry Burnett Music, Baffle Music] Learn Me Right (From Brave ) Mumford & Sons, songwriters (Birdy & Mumford & Sons) [Walt Disney Records/Pixar; Publisher: Pixar Talking Pictures] Let Me Be Your Star (From Smash ) Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman, songwriters (Katharine McPhee & Megan Hilty) [Columbia; Publishers: Winding Brook Way Music, Walli Woo Entertainment] Man Or Muppet (From The Muppets ) Bret McKenzie, songwriter (Jason Segel & Walter) [Walt Disney; Publisher: Fuzzy Muppet Songs] Safe & Sound (From The Hunger Games ) T Bone Burnett, Taylor Swift, John Paul White & Joy Williams, songwriters (Taylor Swift Featuring The Civil Wars) [Big Machine Records/Universal Republic; Publishers: Sony ATV Tree Publishing, Taylor Swift Music, Sensibility Songs, Absurd Music, Shiny Happy Music, Baffle Music, Henry Burnett Music] [ Source: Yahoo ]
As a faithful rendering of a justly beloved musical, Les Misérables will more than satisfy the show’s legions of fans. Even so, director Tom Hooper and the producers have taken a number of artistic liberties with this lavish bigscreen interpretation. The squalor and upheaval of early 19th-century France are conveyed with a vividness that would have made Victor Hugo proud, heightened by the raw, hungry intensity of the actors’ live on-camera vocals. Yet for all its expected highs, the adaptation has been managed with more gusto than grace; at the end of the day, this impassioned epic too often topples beneath the weight of its own grandiosity. The Universal release will nonetheless be a major worldwide draw through the holidays and beyond, spelling a happy commercial ending for a project that has been in development for roughly a quarter-century. Since its 1985 London premiere, the Cameron Mackintosh-produced tuner (adapted from Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg’s French production) has became one of the longest-running acts in legit history, outpaced only by The Phantom of the Opera and Cats. Les Misérables has aged far more gracefully than those two ’80s-spawned perennials, owing largely to the lush emotionalism of Schoenberg’s score, the timeless sentiments articulated in Herbert Kretzmer’s lyrics, and the socially conscious themes, arguably more relevant than ever, set forth in Hugo’s much-filmed masterwork. In an intuitive yet bold scripting decision, scribes William Nicholson, Boublil, Schoenberg and Kretzmer have fully retained the show’s sung-through structure, with only minimal spoken dialogue to break the flow of wall-to-wall music. Not for nothing is “Do You Hear the People Sing?” the piece’s signature anthem; song is the characters’ natural idiom and the story’s lifeblood, and the filmmakers grasp this idea firmly enough to give the music its proper due. Even with some of the lyrics skillfully truncated, this mighty score remains the engine that propels the narrative forward. In visual terms, Hooper adopts a maximalist approach, attacking the material with a vigor and dynamism that suggest his Oscar-winning direction on The King’s Speech was just a warm-up. At every turn, one senses the filmmaker trying to honor the material and also transcend it, to deliver the most vibrant, atmospheric, physically imposing and emotionally shattering reading of the show imaginable. Yet the effect of this mammoth 158-minute production can be as enervating as it is exhilarating; blending gritty realism and pure artifice, shifting from solos of almost prayerful stillness to brassy, clunkily cut-together ensemble numbers, it’s an experience whose many dazzling parts seem strangely at odds. The film’s ambition is immediately apparent in a muscular opening setpiece that hints at the scope of Eve Stewart’s production design: In 1815 Toulon, France, a chain gang labors to tow a ship into port. Among the inmates is Jean Valjean ( Hugh Jackman ), overpunished for having stolen a loaf of bread nearly 20 years earlier, now being released on parole by Javert ( Russell Crowe ), the prison guard who will persecute him for years to come. With his scraggly beard, sunburnt skin and air of wild-eyed desperation, Valjean looks every inch a man condemned but, through the aid of a kind bishop (Colm Wilkinson, who originated the role of Valjean in 1985), vows in his soul-searching number “What Have I Done?” to become a man of virtue. In this and other sequences, Hooper (again working with Speech d.p. Danny Cohen) opts to bring the camera close to his downtrodden characters and hold it there. It’s a gesture at once compassionate and calculated, and it’s never more effective than when it touches the face of Fantine (Anne Hathaway ), a poor, unwed mother ejected from Valjean’s factory into the gutters. Hathaway’s turn is brief but galvanic. Her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream,” captured in a single take, represents the picture’s high point, an extraordinary distillation of anguish, defiance and barely flickering hope in which the lyrics seem to choke forth like barely suppressed howls of grief. Hathaway has been ripe for a full-blown tuner showcase ever since she gamely sang a duet with Jackman at the Oscars in 2009, and she fulfills that promise here with a solo as musically adept as it is powerfully felt. This sequence fully reveals the advantages of Hooper’s decision to have the thesps sing directly on-camera, with minimal dubbing and tweaking in post. As carefully calibrated with the orchestrations (by Anne Dudley and Stephen Metcalfe) in Simon Hayes’ excellent sound mix, the vocals sound intense, ragged and clenched with feeling, in a way that at times suggests neorealist opera. A few beats and notes may be missed here and there, but always in a way that serves the immediacy of the moment and the truth of the emotions being expressed, giving clear voice to the drama’s underlying anger and advocacy on behalf of the poor, marginalized and misunderstood. Hathaway’s exit leaves a hole in the picture, which undergoes a tricky tonal shift as Valjean rescues Fantine’s young daughter, Cosette (Isabelle Allen), from her cruel guardians, the Thenardiers. Inhabited with witchy, twitchy comic abandon by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, not terribly far removed from the grotesques they played in “Sweeney Todd,” these innkeepers amusingly send up their venal, disreputable and utterly unsanitary lifestyle in “Master of the House,” a memorably grotesque number that also marks the point, barely halfway through, when Les Misérables starts to splutter. As it shifts from one dynamically slanted camera angle to another via Melanie Ann Oliver and Chris Dickens’ busy editing, the picture seems reluctant to slow down and let the viewer simply take in the performances. That hectic, cluttered quality becomes more pronounced as the story lurches ahead to the 1832 Paris student uprisings, where the erection of a barricade precipitates and complicates any number of subplots. These include Javert’s ongoing pursuit of Valjean, their frequent run-ins seeming even more coincidental than usual in this movie context; the blossoming romance between Cosette (now played by Amanda Seyfried ) and young revolutionary leader Marius ( Eddie Redmayne ); and the noble suffering of Eponine ( Samantha Barks ), whose unrequited love for Marius is heartbreakingly exalted in “On My Own.” As the characters’ voices and stories converge in the magisterial medley “One Day More,” the frequent crosscutting provides a reasonable visual equivalent of the nimble revolving sets used onstage. Yet even on this broader canvas, the visual space seems to constrict rather than expand, and the sense of a sweeping panorama remains elusive. From there, the film proceeds through an ungainly pileup of gun-waving mayhem before unleashing a powerful surge of emotion in the suitably grand finale. Devotees of the stage show will nonetheless be largely contented to see it realized on such an enormous scale and inhabited by well-known actors who also happen to possess strong vocal chops. The revelation here is Redmayne, who brings a youthful spark to the potentially milquetoast role of Marius, and who reveals an exceptionally smooth, full-bodied singing voice, particularly in his mournful solo “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.” Jackman’s extensive legit resume made him no-brainer casting for Valjean, and he embodies this sinner-turned-saint with the requisite fire and gravitas. Whether he’s comforting the dying Fantine or sweetly serenading the sleeping Cosette (in the moving “Suddenly,” a song written expressly for the screen), Jackman projects a stirring warmth and nobility. He’s less at home with the higher register of Valjean’s daunting two-octave range; there’s more strain than soul in his performance of “Bring Him Home,” usually one of the show’s peak moments. Crowe reveals a thinner, less forceful singing voice than those of his co-stars, robbing the morally blinkered Javert of some dramatic stature, although his screen presence compensates. Barks, a film newcomer wisely retained from past stagings, more than holds her own; Seyfried (who previously flexed her musical muscles in Mamma Mia!) croons ever so sweetly as the lovely, passive Cosette; Aaron Tveit cuts a dashing figure as the impulsive student revolutionary Enjolras; and young Daniel Huttlestone makes a delightful impression as the street urchin Gavroche, bringing an impish streak of energy to the proceedings. More on Les Mis: Jackman, Hathaway & Co-Stars Are Masters Of The House At ‘Les Misérables’ Premiere Early Reaction: Oscar Race Heats Up As NYC Screening Of ‘Les Miserables’ Prompts Cheers & Tears Follow Movieline on Twitter.
