Happy Thursday! Also in today’s edition of The Broadsheet: Gatsby goes Bollywood … An avant-garde legend passes away … Steven Spielberg takes on a partner for Robopocalypse … Hollywood’s latest plastic-surgery nightmare fuel … and more.
Happy Tuesday! Also in this edition of The Broadsheet: Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme get Expendable … Will Noah Baumbach and HBO make Corrections ? … Colin Firth is sick of Hollywood treating you like and idiot … and more…
Madonna’s latest effort as a filmmaker, W.E. , has not been the beneficiary of what you’d call especially glowing reviews out of the Venice Film Festival. Our own Stephanie Zacharek is among the more magnanimous critics to receive it there, calling it “at times comically bad. But it’s also criminally watchable.” At the other end of the spectrum are reviews citing its “galactic-level awfulness” and characterizing it as “inept, gauche and mendacious.” So what does the pop icon do when confronted with a fan ? Let’s go to the videotape!
Last week during Movieline’s Fall Preview , we repeatedly named Young Adult as one of our most anticipated autumn films. The Jason Reitman/ Diablo Cody collaboration stars Charlize Theron as a teen-lit author who returns to her hometown to reclaim her happily married high school crush (Patrick Wilson). And judging by the movie’s first poster, that hometown mission does not go so well.
Due to the four-day holiday frame, Sunday’s standard Weekend Receipts feature will not be seen today. Please return to this space on Monday for a full reading of Labor Day at the box office, and refer to our earlier dispatch for the preliminary figures shaping up the flaccid competition. (Spoiler alert: The Help wins! Again!) See you tomorrow!
It’s hard to believe that what started with a smash of Thor’s hammer back in May is ending meekly almost four months later with an orgy , a lost space mission and 3-D sharks . Alas, with Labor Day having arrived, summer is officially unofficially over. But! Before the crisp fall movie season begins in earnest, it’s time to look back on what transpired. Pour yourself one last glass of Country Time lemonade and click ahead to remember the highlights of the summer movie season with your bestest Movieline editors.
Contagion / Haywire / Magic Mike director (slash painter and future retiree ) Steven Soderbergh was indeed tapped by old friend Gary Ross to shoot second unit on the YA adaptation The Hunger Games , the challenge of which he explains in an interview with Moviefone: “I thought, ‘OK, I see what you guys are doing. I know what the tool kit is. I know what the rules are.’ And it’s fun in a way. I found it much more nerve-wracking than when you’re shooting for yourself. Because I was constantly thinking, ‘Oh, I hope that he likes this. I hope he likes that.’ May the odds be ever in his favor? [ Moviefone ]
It was an early morning yesterday; I was up before the dawn. And I really have enjoyed my stay; but I must be moving on. I bring up “Goodbye Stranger” not as a roundabout way of endearing myself to the more promiscuous readers out there , but to hackily inform you that my time at Movieline has come to an end. I’m very excited to announce that starting next week, I take over as the Vertical Editor at Moviefone — an opportunity that has me levitating three feet off the ground. Let’s have a group hug ahead.
Because of an early-morning badge snafu, I was unable to catch the press screening of Roman Polanski’s Carnage , the movie I was most looking forward to seeing here in Venice. Add that to the fact that I arrived here too late to see The Ides of March , and it’s a double bummer. But my consolation prize was not bad — at least in a so-bad-it’s-almost-good kind of way: I did get to see Madonna’s W.E. , which is in some ways just the kind of movie you’d expect from an artist who once, with a delightful lack of irony, declared herself a material girl.
Kenneth Lonergan has finally finished Margaret , his long, long, long delayed follow-up to You Can Count on Me , which stars Anna Paquin as a flirtatious teen who may or may not have caused a fatal bus accident. Allison Janney, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo and Matthew Broderick (who reportedly fronted Lonergan $1 million to finish the project) co-star. Let’s take a look at the trailer for the drama and decide whether it was worth the six-year wait.