Tag Archives: films

REVIEW: Marion Cotillard Bares Everything In Exceptional, Bittersweet ‘Rust and Bone’

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Director  Jacques Audiard’s nifty 2009 prison epic  A Prophet   took a classic arc — the rise of a young man through a criminal world — and found in it something bracing and transformative: an anti-hero for a diverse and changing France. His deeply enjoyable new feature  Rust and Bone also feels like a fresh reworking of an older mode of filmmaking; the swooning romantic melodrama shaped by tragedy. The film has a beautiful heroine brought low by a terrible accident and a brutish hero who’s more eloquent with his fists than with words. It’s a pleasing film with old bones, though its surfaces are all brightly contemporary, including the unexpectedly emotional appearance of a Katy Perry  song. Adapted by Audiard and Thomas Bidegain from a short story collection by Canadian author Craig Davidson,  Rust and Bone is set in sunny Antibes in the south of France. It’s where Stéphanie ( Marion Cotillard ) works as an orca trainer at the local marine theme park and where Ali ( Matthias Schoenaerts ) washes up with the five-year-old son Sam (Armand Verdure) he inherited from a neglectful mother. Ali and Sam have come to stay with Ali’s sister Anna (Corinne Masiero), a supermarket cashier who, alongside her truck-driver husband, gets by with a combination of side gigs and expired food snuck home from work. Ali and Stéphanie first cross paths at a nightclub. He’s working as a bouncer, and she’s there to dance and to spite the lover she left at home. He comes to her rescue when a guy gets rough with her (while noting without censure that she’s dressed “like a whore”), but she shoos him away after he drops her off at home. Stéphanie is aloof and untouchable until an accident at the water park leaves her permanently changed: She wakes up in the hospital with both legs gone below the knee and a whole new life to learn. The next time our two leads meet, it’s because Stéphanie seeks Ali out, needing a semi-stranger and drawn to his bluff lack of pretense. Stéphanie is tentative and ashamed in her reshaped body, while Ali is all physicality. He’s a happy animal who takes up bare-knuckle brawling for cash on the side and who falls into sexual encounters with the comfortable ease of someone sitting down to a meal. There’s an evident class difference between the two, but it doesn’t bother Ali, who’s blithely indifferent to social niceties. And while Stéphanie might have cared once, her new reality has left her appreciative of Ali’s acceptance and lack of pity. Rust and Bone rests on its twin lead performances, and Cotillard daringly bares everything to play Stéphanie — her body, sure (this film rivals  The Sessions  for its frank, unruffled depictions of disabled sex), but also her unadorned face and the cool, distanced dignity she gives to her character who’s lost everything, including an aspect of the standard physical beauty that was part of her identity. “I liked being watched,” she tells Ali, as she struggles to deal with attracting stares for other reasons, and one of the film’s great satisfactions is watching her rebuild herself as a new and stronger person with the help of her companion and eventual lover. Schoenaerts, who played the lead in recent foreign language Oscar nominee  Bullhead , is a real find. His hulking build houses a disarmingly sweet nature (as well as the ferocious temperament of a brawler) but no gift for forethought. The scenes between him and his son are beautiful when they aren’t terrifying. Ali lives in the moment, and as a simple guy himself, he can get along well with the boy. But he’s got no paternal instincts and this leads to a visceral parenting nightmare that’s unforgettably staged on screen. The chemistry between his character and Cotillard’s is unusual, meanwhile. The attraction, while there, is less important than the ways they end up inserting themselves into each others lives, and how each begins to recognize the other’s importance. Rust and Bone is very aware of our flesh and how we inhabit it. It’s there in the unreserved way it depicts Stéphanie’s path back to mobility, from her ecstatic first dip in the ocean after the accident to her careful navigating of the stadium steps at her old place of work. And it’s there in Ali’s dangerous, bloody and exhilarating fights, as he batters someone in slow motion and afterward, too wired up to sit and talk, has to go for a run. The film has its soapy moments — as will any movie in which a character drags herself across a hospital floor crying “What did you do to my legs?” But its generous awareness of how our bodies relate to our sense of ourselves makes Rust and Bone both one of the year’s most exceptional (and bittersweet) romances and a remarkable portrayal of how two people change and grow after traumatic experiences. RELATED: Movieline’s Toronto International Film Festival Review of Rust and Bone. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter.  Follow Movieline on Twitter. 

See the rest here:
REVIEW: Marion Cotillard Bares Everything In Exceptional, Bittersweet ‘Rust and Bone’

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Bill Condon On That ‘Twilight’ Twist And The Shocking Character Fates Of ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 2’

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Readers of Stephenie Meyer ‘s Twilight books know what happens at the end of Breaking Dawn … or do they? Movieline sat down with director Bill Condon for an all-out, no-holds-barred, spoilery chat about the shocking changes at the end of Breaking Dawn Part II that had fans gasping in theaters around the globe over the weekend — including how the filmmakers decided who lived and who died, and why if you blinked you may have missed the most earth-shattering character fates of them all. Spoilers abound from this point on! Now that you’ve all had a chance to see Breaking Dawn in theaters, it’s time to dive into the bounty of spoilery riches that Bill Condon left us with when he spoke with Movieline about all things Twilight . Such as: — Deciding who lived and who died in Breaking Dawn ‘s horrific, head-rolling, jaw-tearing bloodbath of a (dream) battle sequence. — Walking the fine line between Uncle Jacob being just protective enough of Renesmee and being totally creepy. — Which character’s battlefield speech was left on the cutting room floor — and which scenes will we see on the DVD? — How much real world political commentary can viewers read into Aro’s weapons of mass destruction-seeking, warmongering ways? (Also — if Condon used the “smaller” take of Aro’s gleefully campy cackle, what in the world did it sound like when Sheen cranked it all the way to 11?) — And, most shocking of all: Did you realize that Edward and Bella were meant to die ? PHOTOS: Stars Hit The Premiere Of Breaking Dawn – Part II You had just finished the last of the effects prior to release, working on the Renesmee CG. Hers stand out because it’s a kind of CG effect we haven’t seen before — applying Mackenzie Foy’s face to her character from birth to adulthood. How challenging was it to achieve the desired effect? Bill Condon: You’re building on stuff that was done on The Social Network and Benjamin Button , but it had challenges beyond what they had. She is a special creature — she’s not entirely human — so that helps us, a little bit. It is a bit uncanny, that CG baby face. Condon: Yes, I agree. We briefly see a flash forward to the grown Renesmee, living happily ever after with Jacob once she reaches her full maturity a few years down the road — when Jacob finally gets to date Renesmee. Condon: Finally, yes! On La Push. What was the trick to figuring out how to include that happy romantic ending for Jacob and Renesmee without it being creepy? Condon: Well the thing is, obviously it was controversial the minute it was written. But as a filmmaker you have a great ally in Taylor Lautner, and Taylor was concerned about it. But Taylor is a pure soul. He is able to look at her with love and it doesn’t have another component to it, and I think another actor couldn’t have done that. I think there’s something so essentially sweet about him that it’s a generous love. The humor element throughout the entire film helps relieve the pressure and the far-fetched nature of much of the mythology — what spurred you folks to add in more levity for the finale? Condon: Any time you can add humor it’s great, because it makes something more real. You take Billy Burke; he had to play a scene which is so incredibly hard I called him “The Miracle Worker,” in which a father has to accept that his daughter has become a vampire, but he also has to accept that she can’t tell him anything about it. He can’t ask questions, but he’s a cop. Billy went through a hundred changes through that scene, and you see it all on his face – and he’s funny the whole time he’s doing it. That deadpan, “Are you kidding me?” look really gets you through some of this strange stuff. You filmed Parts 1 and 2 simultaneously, sometimes having Kristen Stewart play weak, dying Bella in the same afternoon as strong vampire Bella. Condon: I really do think that Kristen Stewart is amazing, but I feel like in terms of this series she doesn’t get credit for how much she accomplishes. I think if someone were to sit and watch these two movies that we made together at the same time and realize that Kristen shot that all together, it’s just another level of her gift. She was stepping out of her comfort zone, because there was so much Kristen in teenage Bella — and now this was someone who she was just creating. I think Kristen, who’s tough on herself, was able to step out of all that stuff and just really own everything. Readers of the books have been defending Twilight for years now, understandably; Bella is a passive character early in the franchise, and we only see her grow into her strength in Breaking Dawn . Condon: That’s right — and she always had this latent power. In the beginning it was the thing that made her remote, but I love the last scene in the movie; it’s such a beautiful idea. It’s the reason he was interested in her the moment that he met her, but it’s such a metaphor for love, that you trust a person enough to let them see inside of you. You inherited much of your primary cast from the previous films’ directors, but in Breaking Dawn Part II you got to cast a number of colorful new additions. Like Lee Pace… Condon: Dreamy, right? Yes, and so funny with such limited screen time. Condon: I know! These actors all have a couple of scenes to establish these characters, and we have 25 of them, so we had to get actors who really pop. And they also had to know how to mine as much comedy as you can possibly get out of something. Did you feel a lot of pressure to deliver with the action sequence? Condon: I did! I loved it. It was like making one big musical number, because it’s all about rhythm in an action scene. It’s all about the way it’s like, my god, this is happening so we’ll slow it down for a bit, and you take a moment to really take it in – then things are going well, then they’re going badly. It’s like a roller coaster. I loved working on that, but it was the hardest thing. It was a two-year effort. We had an editor who just concentrated on that. Once we stopped shooting it started all over; we put it in a different order and rearranged things, reshot a little bit of it, to really make it work. I didn’t realize it right away, but the battle scene ends on a much darker note than I thought, so please set the record straight — after killing Aro in that alternate future-flash, do Bella and Edward die? Condon: Yes. There’s a hint of it; it’s about to happen. Edward gets surrounded and they’re coming right at her with the fire. It’s very subtle and there’s the switch. I didn’t want to spend too much time in there; it’s just a little hint in there if you can see it. What do you expect fans will be most shocked by? Condon: The moment when Carlisle’s head comes off, I’d think. I’ve seen it with an audience and I love it. The collective gasp in the theater in that moment is pretty fantastic. Condon: I know — it’s fun, isn’t it? I love that. NEXT: Deciding who would live and die Breaking Dawn Part II ‘s big battle, DVD deleted scenes, and more

See the rest here:
Bill Condon On That ‘Twilight’ Twist And The Shocking Character Fates Of ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 2’

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

REVIEW: Roman Coppola’s ‘Charles Swan III’ Lacks Heart, But Charlie Sheen Brings The Tiger’s Blood

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Movieline is proud to kick off what we anticipate will be a fruitful relationship with our sister publication  Variety : Beginning this week, we’ll be hand-picking film reviews by the show business bible’s respected critics and presenting them for our readers’ enjoyment. And what better way to get this party started than with a movie starring  Charlie Sheen :   Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III , which debuted at the Rome Film Festival.— Frank DiGiacomo The carefree and glamorous existence of a Los Angeles graphic designer is thrown for more than a loop when the long-legged love of his life leaves him in A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III . This sophomore writing-directing effort from Roman Coppola ( CQ ) shares some of its oddball DNA and a few actors with Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom and The Darjeeling Limited , which Coppola co-wrote, though Swan lacks those films’ fastidious design and storytelling, and there’s no emotional undertow to speak of. The cast, headed by an in-form, post-meltdown Charlie Sheen, should help attract at least a few curious ticketbuyers. Swan is more of a doodle than a fully formed idea, though not necessarily less enjoyable for it, since it was clearly intended to be an undisciplined, anything-goes kinda story. It begins with a literal look at the contents of the brain of the titular protagonist (Sheen), shown onscreen in 1970s-style animated collage (he’s a graphic designer with a clear love for advertising and the look of the period). Unsurprisingly, a large part of Charlie’s gray matter is dedicated to women and sex, which is why he’s so troubled by the fact that his true love, blonde bombshell Ivana (Katheryn Winnick), has left him. When the devastated Charlie tries to get rid of a bag of shoes Ivana’s left behind, a chuckle-inducing if hardly uproarious chain of events follows, ending with his vintage car in a record producer’s swimming pool. This sequence is supposedly set in waking reality, but the pic frequently switches to what could be described as dreams (or nightmares) that populate the character’s subconscious, such as when Charlie rises from the grave to do some ballroom dancing with the women in his life, and goes on to win a “best bullshit award” from the Academy of Sexy Women. (Parallels to Sheen’s own life aren’t necessarily intentional, but they’re there for the taking.) Trying to help Charlie get his life in order are his best bud, Kirby (Jason Schwartzman), a comic with a Jewfro; his spare-tire-carrying business manager, Saul (Bill Murray); and his hippie-ish novelist sister, Izzy (Patricia Arquette). They also appear in his subconscious in various roles; Murray is especially strong as a John Wayne-style cowboy daring Charlie to face a horde of bikini-clad Indians headed by Ivana, and in an inspired sequence that describes a secret organization of ball-busting women, with Murray leading the charge against them. Coppola’s screenplay thus jumps from one idea to the other, and while quite a few of them are amusing, what’s missing in most scenes is a sense of purpose beyond potentially scoring a few giggles. The stories in Charlie’s subconscious don’t seem to advance or illuminate the real-life narrative that much, to the detriment of audience investment in the characters or overall story. Whereas Anderson’s best films slowly reveal a touching emotional core beneath their painstakingly constructed exteriors, Coppola fails to include such a heart here, though Sheen is certainly convincing as both the suave dream man and the clueless real Charlie. Supporting thesps are all solid but likewise boxed in by the screenplay’s limitations. Liam Hayes’ atmospheric songs and score further consolidate the ’70s/early ’80s vibe already suggested by the work of production designer Elliot Hostetter and costume designer April Napier, whose mixed-material approach clearly conveys Coppola’s ideas about the dual nature of Los Angeles and its inhabitants. Nick Beal’s lensing on the Arri Alexa, the lenses used by Francis Ford Coppola on Rumble Fish, adds another period touch. Follow Movieline on Twitter. 

Read the original:
REVIEW: Roman Coppola’s ‘Charles Swan III’ Lacks Heart, But Charlie Sheen Brings The Tiger’s Blood

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Liz-aster! 5 Critics Damn Lindsay Lohan’s performance in ‘Liz & Dick’ − With Faint Praise And Sheer Scorn

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Lindsay Lohan does not read reviews of her performances, according to TMZ , which is a smart move when it comes to her much-publicized turn as Elizabeth Taylor in the Lifetime movie, Liz & Dick .  The picture, which chronicles Taylor’s tempestuous love affair with Richard Burton , doesn’t air until Nov. 25, and already critics are carving into Lohan like she’s a Thanksgiving turkey. The reviews aren’t uniformly poisonous, and Grant Bowler, who plays Burton, is actually drawing good notices, but Lohan has not been so fortunate. Even the most charitable critics tend to damn her with faint praise, such as Variety’s Brian Lowry, who calls her performance “adequate.”  But that review sounds downright positive when you compare it to the Napalming Lohan got courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter.  Below are distillations of five reviews from most to least positive. That’s right. I saved the worst for last, and followed it with a trailer from the biopic. 5. Lohan certainly is adequate, barring a few awkward moments, thanks largely to the fabulous frocks and makeup (courtesy of Salvador Perez and Eryn Krueger Mekash, respectively) she gets to model.” — Brian Lowry, Variety 4. “Lohan, in character as Taylor, is often so believable you might think you’re seeing the real thing, but then every once in a while she’ll backslide and deliver lines that sound DOA.” — Linda Stasi, New York Post 3. “Elizabeth Taylor loved diamonds. This new movie about her life feels more like rhinestones….It’s tempting to say the movie’s big problem is that Lohan is no Liz Taylor. And she isn’t — though that’s not entirely her fault. There aren’t all that many actresses, or women, who can stop a room simply by walking into it. Liz Taylor in her prime could do that. She could make men melt. Lindsay Lohan’s Taylor does not.”— David Hinckley, New York Daily News 2. “Suffice it to say, Lohan’s no Taylor (not that anyone is or ever could be). But poor Linds doesn’t stand a chance. As seen here, her skills are rudimentary — made rustier by a long absence and a lot of other extracurricular activities. She delivers lines dutifully, competently, and at times woodenly, but she also looks like someone who has to think about what she has to say before she says it.” That’s usually called “sleepwalking through a role” instead of actually “occupying” one. Lohan is somewhere in-between most of the time, though closer to sleepwalking.” — Verne Gay, Newsday 1. “It should come as no great surprise that Lifetime’s  Liz & Dick  movie starring Lindsay Lohan is spectacularly bad…. Lohan is woeful as Taylor from start to finish. But, whatever you do, don’t miss  Liz & Dick . It’s an instant classic of unintentional hilarity. Drinking games were made for movies like this. And the best part is that it gets worse as it goes on, so in the right company with the right beverages,  Liz & Dick  could be unbearably hilarious toward the tail end of the 90-minute running time. By the time Lohan is playing mid-’80s Taylor and it looks like a lost  Saturday Night Live  skit, your body may be cramped by convulsions.”— Tim Goodman, The Hollywood Reporter [ TMZ ,  Variety , New York Post , New York Daily News , Newsday , The Hollywood Reporter ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.

More here:
Liz-aster! 5 Critics Damn Lindsay Lohan’s performance in ‘Liz & Dick’ − With Faint Praise And Sheer Scorn

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

‘Twilight’ Spoiler Talk: 9 Things ‘Breaking Dawn’ Gets Right

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

With The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part II finally in theaters, it’s time to get to spoiler-talkin’ — did Bill Condon & Co. blow minds with the Big Crazy Twist in their big-screen adaptation? How much sexy time do newborn vampires have? Is imprinting totally not creepy when the power of Taylor Lautner ’s abs is compelling you? Spoilers, obviously! Five films and a few billion dollars into Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight franchise, the Breaking Dawn crew have put together arguably the best film in the series. Whether you’re a Twi-hard or staunchly unconverted to the sparkly cause, sound off below on all the over-the-top vampire theatrics of the franchise finale, starting with these nine key moments, scenes, and changes from the book: The Battle Sequence Let’s shove the elephant in the room out of the way first: How about that battle scene? The X-Men -style mutant power stand-off that closes Meyer’s novel series was always going to be the film’s biggest technical challenge, with invisible vampire powers surging across the battlefield left and right. Harder still, in the books the battle was anti-climactic, a non-starter that never actually takes place on the page. I repeat: Nobody dies. No heads roll. Literally nothing happens. Enter screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and Meyer’s big cinematic fix. We now see what Alice sees, the future possibility of a Cullen-Volturi massacre that ends with Aro’s death, not to mention the certain doom of many beloved Twilight characters. The fake-out ending allows for the best action of the franchise, not to mention a key element seldom seen throughout the faithful films to date — surprise. Bella’s Fierceness Critics, feminists, and non-fans of the books have long complained about Bella’s passivity, with good reason; for the majority of the series she’s fragile, self-doubting, and almost always in need of protection by the men in her life. Where Breaking Dawn is most satisfying, then, is in Bella’s emotional and physical transformation. She’s strong. She can arm-wrestle and eat mountain lions. She has a temper. She has an appetite for blood, and for sex. After four years of watching Bella mope around Forks, she finally grows a pair — and while that is a reversal of the average-girl fantasy that made Twilight popular to begin with, and despite the fact that her superpower is a maternal and protective “shielding” talent instead of something more, y’know, awesome, it’s so much better to see Bella Swan strong than not. Jacob’s Abs They’re real, and they’re fabulous. They’re also, hilariously enough, integral to the scene at hand: Jacob strips down in front of Charlie to morph into wolfy form in order to keep the Cullens from leaving town. The exchange between Taylor Lautner and Billy Burke also injects a much-needed dose of levity to the franchise, which brings me to… The Humor Finally, the Twilight franchise has a sense of humor. That sidelong glance between Edward and Jacob before Bella learns her bestie has eyes for her new baby; the way newborn Bella hungrily grabs her man, ready to do it for forever now that she no longer has to worry about getting pregnant and being crushed to death/being eaten in the heat of the moment. And while we’re on the subject…

Read the rest here:
‘Twilight’ Spoiler Talk: 9 Things ‘Breaking Dawn’ Gets Right

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Jared Leto Sashays Drag In ‘Dallas Buyers Club’

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

He makes one helluva pretty boy, but the consensus may be a bit muddled as to his female manifestation. Images surfaced of Jared Leto dolled up as a drag queen prostitute. No, it is not a career change, he’s playing the character in Québécois filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée ‘s drama The Dallas Buyers Club . Sporting a shaggy retro hairdo, a hint of some red Victoria’s Secret undies knock-offs and a faux fur of some sort, Leto is barely recognizable, but a peek at his toned torso gives some tease of his sexy self. This is not the first image from the film to hit the internet in the last week to cause at least some stirs. Fans and mere observers alike were shocked to see pictures of Matthew McConaughey surface, which showed the actor’s new gaunt/sickly frame. The former Sexiest Man Alive lost 38 pounds, tipping the 6-foot actor on the scale at a slight 143 pounds. Based on a true story, McConaughey plays Ron Woodroof, a drug-taking womanizing homophobe who was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS in 1986. He nearly died when he started taking AZT, the only FDA approved drug at the time, but returned from the brink after he smuggled in non-toxic anti-viral drugs from around the world. Other AIDS patients sought out his medications, forgoing the U.S. approved AIDS regimen. With the help of his doctor and a fallow patient – played by Leto – he unintentionally created the Dallas Buyers Club, the first of dozens that formed around the country. McConaughey told Larry King: “I should not look healthy by the time I’m doing (the role)…I just kinda dared myself. I haven’t been this light since I was in the ninth grade. I’m kind of looking at it as sort of a cleanse, it’s a bit of a spiritual cleanse, mental cleanse.” Also starring Jennifer Garner, this is Jared Leto’s first time behind the camera in three years. The Requiem for a Dream actor has spent time as the frontman for his band 30 Seconds to Mars. [ Source: The Insider ]

Read more:
Jared Leto Sashays Drag In ‘Dallas Buyers Club’

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

WATCH: Kristen Stewart’s Come-Hither Invitation Sexes Up Fast-Moving ‘On The Road’ Trailer

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

If you’ve ever fantasized that Kristen Stewart invited you to bed by saying, “Hop in, water’s fine,” well, this is a trailer for your permanent collection. The actress and her Bohemian behavior in On The Road get prime placement — there’s even a quick glimpse of her talked-about double hand-job scene — along with co-stars Garrett Hedlund and Sam Riley , in this just-released trailer for Walter Salles adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel.  Although the trio appears to get the most screen time, the fast-paced clip  does a good job of introducing most of the name cast members, including Kirsten Dunst , Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams , Elisabeth Moss and Alice Braga.  The film gets a limited released on Dec. 21 if the world doesn’t end along with the Mayan calendar.  You can also head over to iTunes to download the trailer — for your permanent collection. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter.  Follow Movieline on Twitter. 

Read more:
WATCH: Kristen Stewart’s Come-Hither Invitation Sexes Up Fast-Moving ‘On The Road’ Trailer

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

‘Jupiter Ascending’ To Be Wachowskis’ First 3D Film

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

The Wachowskis are about to shoot their first film in 3D, which, after the complexity of Cloud Atlas ,  almost sounds like a comedown. FilmStage.com reports that the cinema siblings will utilize 3D for the first time to make their next science-fiction film, Jupiter Ascending , which begins shooting early next year.  The news is part of a Warner Bros . deal in which it plans to release up to 20 upcoming films, including Jupiter Ascending , in IMAX over the next three years. Last May, Vulture reported that Jupiter Ascending is set in a universe where humans are quite low in the evolutionary hierarchy.  There, Mila Kunis plays an immigrant cleaning lady who is targeted for assassination by the Queen of the Universe because she possesses the same genetic make-up and therefore poses a threat to the Queen’s rule.  Sounds like a very specific variation on the Engineers hatred of the human race in Prometheus , no? Word is Channing Tatum  plays a bounty hunter sent to eliminate Kunis’ character, who instead falls in love with her. Just guessing here, but I bet that means more bounty hunters are dispatched to track down the lovebirds. [ FilmStage.com, Vulture ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter. 

See original here:
‘Jupiter Ascending’ To Be Wachowskis’ First 3D Film

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

‘Breaking Dawn”s Nikki Reed On Rosalie Hate Mail And Life As A ‘Twilight’ Celebrity

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

After spending four years and five movies playing Bella Swan’s vampire sister-in-law Rosalie Hale in the Twilight series, Nikki Reed understandably has a bittersweet perspective on the billion-dollar franchise coming to a close in this week’s Breaking Dawn Part 2 . On the one hand, she won’t miss the hate mail from fans who have taken her character’s onscreen iciness to Kristen Stewart ‘s heroine to heart for four films. But few of Twilight ‘s central figures have been as close to the saga as long as Reed has, dating back to even before director Catherine Hardwicke had cast Stewart and Robert Pattinson in the roles that would skyrocket them, the films, and all of their cast, to global fame. “Catherine called me seven or eight months before it was happening and she was like, ‘Hey, do you like the vampire genre? Because there’s this thing I’m thinking about and there are actually some books, and some fans — I don’t know if you’re into it…’ It was that sort of conversation,” said Reed, who at the time had acted in a handful of indie films including 2003’s Thirteen , which she co-wrote with director Hardwicke. Tempted by the role of Edward Cullen’s disapproving adopted sister Rosalie, Reed decided against early retirement from acting and took the gig, joining Stewart, Pattinson, and their fellow Twilight cast mates at the film’s Portland shoot — the first and last time the cast would be able to make a Twilight movie in relative anonymity. “We were just kids, and no one knew who anyone was,” Reed remembered. “There were no stars, there was no celebrity. We were just people together.” Fast forward to 2012: Reed has four non- Twilight films in the pipeline, including turns in Empire State with Liam Hemsworth and Dwayne Johnson and In Your Eyes , from producer Joss Whedon. She recently launched her own jewelry line, Mattlin Era , featuring designs inspired by her mother and grandmother. And with musician husband Paul McDonald — who she met on the red carpet for Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood , another cosmically unpredictable byproduct of the Twilight saga’s success — Reed recently debuted her first album anchored by “All I’ve Ever Needed,” an original song they wrote for the Breaking Dawn soundtrack. PHOTOS: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson & Co. Premiere ‘Breaking Dawn 2’ How do you feel right now about Twilight and your experience with this franchise now that it’s coming to a close? Having us all together is such a special thing. As the movies have gotten bigger it’s become more rare. In the beginning when there wasn’t this kind of success or fan base for the films, we were all together more. Now there’s more isolation and we don’t get to all hang out in the same room like we used to. It feels really sad, and there are not many moments in your life when you can consciously close a chapter. You reach a milestone like you’re graduating college, and you’re like, oh — I’m aware that this is going to completely change my life when this is done. You normally look back on things in hindsight, but with this we’ve known that it’s been coming to an end since the beginning. It’s really sad for me. I feel really sad. Everyone else is like, “No, it’s fun and exciting!” and it’s all those things, too. But it’s hard to know what an experience this has been, and be conscious of that, and still know that it’s done. And don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about this film and I want it to come out so that the fans can see it. It’s a lot of mixed feelings. Is that why you’ve been driving by Elizabeth Reaser’s house, sending her photos when she’s not home? Isn’t that funny! We both live outside of Hollywood on the same mountain, but I live one mountain over and she lives on the street that I take to get into town. So I drive by her house four times a day, and sometimes when I’m feeling goofy I’ll pull over and get out and take a picture of her license plate and I’ll go, “This is how close I was.” It’s just silly! I see her all the time. Rosalie finally gets some nice, warm moments in Breaking Dawn Part 2 – she’s become basically like a godmother to baby Renesmee, able to exercise her latent maternal instincts. How happy were you to bring Rosalie to this point as a character? I think one of the greatest challenges with this franchise for me has been knowing that Stephenie [Meyer] wrote such multifaceted, dynamic character but only getting to play one aspect of that person. It sort of makes everything look a lot more superficial than it is; there’s so much depth to all of the characters she wrote. They all have incredible back stories. If you sit down with her and ask her questions, she has answers to everything — this is her world. Also, even if the fans have read the books and know the character and connect with the character, what we bring to life is so different than what’s in the books sometimes, and it’s almost impossible to portray. So I think I’ve been waiting for this moment, not just for myself but for Rosalie. It’s been so hard defending her for so many years and defending who she is – No, she’s not that, and she’s not this, and there are all these feelings inside! Subconsciously people in general have a hard time disassociating an actor from a character; people who play the villain — you look at John Lithgow on Dexter , playing that character on that show has changed my whole perception of him. Every time I see him in something else now, I can only think of that, and you don’t even know you’re doing it. If I had known going in that playing the outcast and playing the least-liked character was going to… how you’re perceived by the fans is different from how the rest of the cast is perceived because of how they connect you with your character. So I’m happy I didn’t realize that going in, because that would have given me a lot of anxiety about the next four years of my life. It’s interesting to see how the fans will connect with you more now that Rosalie is on Bella’s side. Now you’re playing the hero. That’s an interesting, unexpected drawback to being a part of the Twilight franchise — especially considering how much the popularity of the franchise has changed your lives, with screaming fans at events and paparazzi out in public. It’s bizarre, but I can’t cry about that because my mother would kill me. I’m so blessed to be in the position I’m in, and this is today — I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring, but I can tell you that being in this series, there’s no golden ticket here. Any of us who think that are crazy, because you have to constantly work hard. You’re constantly proving yourself. And even when you’ve done a great job, you have to do something else to show people that you can do something great in some other role. We’re always trying to grow and better ourselves, and I feel like I can’t complain. There are so many perks and so many wonderful things about being a part of this. Any time I get down — which I do, by the way. When I get hate mail I get really down on myself and I read it to my mom and my mom is like, “So what? Who cares? These people don’t know you, so you can’t take the praise or the hate to heart.” All of it comes from a very distant place, so you have to receive all of it that way. Even the love, you have to appreciate it but from a distance, because you don’t want that to be absorbed either. People actually send you hate mail? People send everyone hate mail. That’s the way the world works right now, I’m nothing special. [Laughs] Trust me. It’s just the way that the world communicates now, the way that everyone functions. I love this quote, and it was a friend of mine who told me this and I think about it consciously whenever I’m feeling like this: “If it’s not personal, you don’t take it personally.” If that person doesn’t know me, it’s not personal. Whatever you have to say about me doesn’t actually exist because this relationship doesn’t exist. You don’t know me.

See the original post here:
‘Breaking Dawn”s Nikki Reed On Rosalie Hate Mail And Life As A ‘Twilight’ Celebrity

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

REVIEW: Enjoyably Over-The-Top ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ Lacks A Certain Je Ne Suck Quoi

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Whether you’re a devoted Twihard, an absolute hater or someone who’s still just completely bewildered by  Stephenie Meyer ‘s oeuvre, you must give the  Twilight saga this — these stories are incredible, unabashed distillations of teenage (or just teenage-at-heart) female fantasy. Male equivalents, like, say, most superhero stories, have come to dominate the mainstream and fill the summer blockbuster schedule to such an extent that the  Twilight  films are striking simply in how very different they are. And how crazily well they target certain girlish pleasure centers with their themes of eternal romance, playing house with the advantages of unlimited vampiric wealth, and being the one that everyone wants without even trying . The wildest though hardly the best chapter of the series, franchise closer  Breaking Dawn — Part 2 will also be basically bulletproof in terms of box office. That leaves the film free to indulge in the giddy insanity that also colored  Part 1 , with its bruising, bed-breaking sex, accelerated monstrous pregnancy and Cronenbergian birth sequence. Like its predecessor,  Part 2  was directed by  Bill Condon . It picks up with Bella ( Kristen Stewart ) freshly vampirized by her husband Edward ( Robert Pattinson ) after the difficult birth of their daughter Renesmee  — initially a CG-enhanced infant and, later, Mackenzie Foy — and skips the surreal, semi-metaphorical treatments of sex and fecundity for more movie-friendly but less interesting action. Renesmee, you see, is aging rapidly, moving from baby to adorable little girl at an unusual rate — and when she’s spotted bounding high in the air the way only a mini half-immortal can, she’s mistaken for a child vampire, the creation of which is against the rules. The sinister Volturi, led by Aro (Michael Sheen, in a performance that goes beyond camp to a higher, gigglier level), prepare to descend on Forks, Washington to dole out punishment, while the Cullens, prompted by one of Alice’s (Ashley Greene) visions, go about gathering allies to their side from covens around the globe. Breaking Dawn — Part 2 ends with a credit sequence for the entire series, including actors who don’t appear in this installment, and watching Anna Kendrick and other actors who played Bella’s classmates flash on screen, it’s hard to think back to when the series was merely a dreamy supernatural high school drama. With its hybrid offspring, soulmate-bonding with babies, international array of bloodsuckers (including Lee Pace as a character I’m choosing to call Revolutionary War Vampire) and an outrageous battle sequence in the snow in which heads are popped off bodies like caps off of beer bottles, this film is very far from the normalcy of Edward and Bella meeting in biology class, or from anything that makes sense. PHOTOS: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson & Co. Premiere ‘Breaking Dawn 2’ At this point in the franchise our central couple is, after much pining and love triangulation, a done deal, and while the two obviously have troubles to deal with, they’re no longer of the impossible-romance variety. Bella and Edward are irrevocably in this together as they prepare to face a threat to their family and their home, which may be why this installment lacks the irresistibly overheated melodramatics of the earlier chapters. With clumsy CGI and awkwardly choreographed fights, these films have never handled action well, but it’s the main focus of the latter half of  Breaking Dawn — Part 2 . It’s Jacob ( Taylor Lautner ) — who obligingly doffs his shirt under cheerily contrived circumstances not far into the film — who’s left to carry the torch for difficult love stories by imprinting on and forever hovering around Renesmee, which is actually creepier when she becomes a girl than when he’s mooning over an infant. There’s no way for this development not to read as ridiculous, and the way Lautner chooses “mildly pained” from his limited array of expressions appears to indicate he agrees as he lingers near his potential child bride. Of course, a lot of  Breaking Dawn — Part 2 is ridiculous, often knowingly so, with its winking moments of fan service and a gigantic array of characters, many of them signaling their cultural identity with amusing broadness. (The Amazonian vampires were entertaining, but it’s the gothy Romanians who really won me over). The film actually packs in so many new characters and explorations of superpowers (Bella, it turns out, is a “Shield”) that it feels like it’s just trying to avoid having to deal with its protagonists, unsure of what to do with them now that they’re together and married. Aside from a tastefully shot sex scene and one closing affirmation of devotion, the film plays down their relationship now that it’s not plagued with reasons the two can’t be together. And there have been so many. As ludicrous and enjoyably over-the-top as  Breaking Dawn — Part 2  can be, it’s not a terribly satisfactory capper to the Twilight   franchise because it sets aside the strange undercurrents of desire and danger that defined the series and made it such a hair-tearing conundrum for feminists mystified by the appeal of its passive blank of a heroine. Bella’s an empowered badass in this last installment, wielding newborn strength while showing unusual self-control and learning to use her new abilities — and that’s why things feel off. Bella’s foremost qualities in this series come through in her being protected, being rescued, being adored — she’s a fantasy of finally being recognized as precious after always having been undervalued. And as Bella and Edward ride off into the glittery sunset together to live in their fancy cottage with their walk-in closets and mutant child, it’s nice to see Bella holding her own, but also a curious final twist on the  Twilight saga’s darkest appeal — the lure of being the thing that is fought over. READ MORE ON TWILIGHT : The ‘Twilight’ Scream-O-Meter: Notes From The ‘Breaking Dawn 2’ Premiere Taylor Lautner On Jacob And Renesmee’s ‘Breaking Dawn’ May-December Relationship: ‘I Was Worried About It’ Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .

See the original post:
REVIEW: Enjoyably Over-The-Top ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ Lacks A Certain Je Ne Suck Quoi

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,