Iron Patriot, Tony Stark and more are on full view courtesy of Marvel . Marvel’s Iron Man 3 which is set for a May 2013 release and starring Robert Downey Jr. , Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce , Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall and Jon Favreau, may seem a long way off, but fans are getting a peek at the action/adventure/sci-fi with four new pics. Directed by Shane Black, the story centers on Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) who goes up against a powerful enemy: The Mandarin. New images depict the Iron Patriot armor (main photo), Rebecca Hall looking a bit scruffed up, Downey, Jr. as Stark in an immaculate goatee and a iron mask in-hand. Log line: Marvel’s “Iron Man 3” pits brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark/Iron Man against an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Stark finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy’s hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible. This journey, at every turn, will test his mettle. With his back against the wall, Stark is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts to protect those closest to him. As he fights his way back, Stark discovers the answer to the question that has secretly haunted him: does the man make the suit or does the suit make the man? Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Stephanie Szostak, James Badge Dale with Jon Favreau and Ben Kingsley, “Iron Man 3” is directed by Shane Black from a screenplay by Drew Pearce and Shane Black. Three additional photos follow: Tony Stark Rebecca Hall Iron Man 3 scene [Courtesy: Marvel ]
After an illustrious career playing intimidating characters, Ray Liotta got to see how the other half lives (and begs for mercy) in Killing Them Softly . I sat down with the actor to discuss his harrowing beating scene — which will be much-discussed after the movie’s opening weekend — and the underlying politics of Brad Pitt and director Andrew Dominik’s stylish film noir. Criminals who listen to NPR? During Oscar season, anything’s possible. Check out my full interview with Ray Liotta below: Follow Movieline on Twitter . Follow Grace Randolph on Twitter .
Once, Nicole Kidman barely had to raise an eyebrow to get awards attention. Now, she barely can raise an eyebrow and her best work in years is being completely ignored in the Oscar conversation. The Paperboy stars Kidman as Charlotte Bless, a damaged attention-seeker who becomes sexually obsessed with a convicted murderer ( John Cusack ), while cock-teasing the only man—or really, teenager—who truly loves her (Zac Efron). It’s Kidman’s bravest, boldest, and most committed performance ever, and no one cares for the short-sighted reason that the movie is terrible. How unfair. The Nicole Kidman of To Die For used to have a bright future before that bright future came true and blinded everyone to her comedic gifts. Once Kidman scored her first Oscar nomination for 2002’s Moulin Rouge , she became the prey of the Hollywood awards hunt, in which the chase for For-Your-Consideration goes like this: take one prestigious actress (see Kidman, Berry, Jolie, Swank), make her play someone vulnerable (see Cold Mountain , Things We Lost in the Fire , The Changeling , Conviction ), then cross your fingers. This is why we’ve had a full decade of Kidman drifting about in period costumes or, god forbid, stretching herself to play a movie star in Nine . And people, this is why the Oscar season is boring. This formula guarantees a chase to the middlebrow, and it’s why every Best Picture Oscar winner since Silence of the Lambs is something your grandma would see at an arthouse matinee. There’s only one thing we can do to save the Academy Awards: nominate Nicole Kidman for The Paperboy . Just because The Paperboy is bad doesn’t void the bravery it took to make it. Kidman’s Charlotte is a balls-out wonder. She’s pure sex and need, at once over-confident and fragile. Slithering around in her neon polyester pants, Kidman is fully alive for the first time since Baz Luhrmann murdered her with tuberculosis. And The Paperboy even has not one but two stand-out scenes that will live on in infamy—Sally Field standing on a table in Norma Rae can’t compete with Kidman peeing on Zac Efron or giving John Cusack an orgasm just by breathing at him from across a prison cell. Imagine if Oscar voters were able to parse the jewels from the schlock. Why should Les Misérables clutter up every acting category? What if this year’s ceremony didn’t just include the dull favorites like Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln and Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty —roles everyone respects, but no one loves—but made room for Michael Shannon in Premium Rush and Michael Sheen in Breaking Dawn – Part 2 . Imagine just being able to say, “The Academy Award-nominated bike messenger thriller Premium Rush .” Plus, this wouldn’t be the first time we’ve given an actor a statuette for good work in an awful film. We did it three years ago when Mo’Nique won for Precious . It’s no coincidence that Precious and The Paperboy were both directed by bizarro auteur Lee Daniels, a former casting agent and producer with the clout to get serious actors to take him seriously. He convinced the likes of Helen Mirren, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to star in his debut film, Shadowboxer —-and that’s despite a script which opens with Stephen Dorff shoving a pool cue up a guy’s ass. In fact, let’s go one step further. Not only does Nicole Kidman deserve a Best Actress nomination for The Paperboy , Lee Daniels deserves Best Director. He’s clearly one of the greats. Not because his films are any good, but because his actors would do—and do do—anything for him. Anthony Minghella, Sidney Pollack, Rob Marshall only wish they could pull as passionate of a performance out of Kidman, and Daniels behind-the-scenes alchemy is that powerful with every single one of his actors. He not only convinced Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr. to shoot a strip scene in Shadowboxer , he convinced them to commit to it like it was high art. And The Paperboy performs more stunt-casting miracles: An American sweetheart, John Cusack, is loathsome; Macy Gray is the next great actress and Zac Efron, convincingly, can’t get laid. Could Steven Spielberg swing that? Never. Luckily, we’re not alone in appreciating this wonderful, terrible gem. In October, a group of rogue cinephiles launched a For Your Consideration Facebook page flogging Nicole Kidman’s outstanding work in The Paperboy . As of today, the page has 10 fans. Let’s get that number growing.
An invitation-only crowd at the Hamptons International Film Festival got schooled on”The Secrets of Schamus” — that’s Focus Features CEO James Schamus — by his former producing partner Ted Hope on Friday night. Schamus, whose career includes screenwriting credits for The Ice Storm and an Oscar nomination as producer of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain , was the recipient of the festival’s Industry Toast at East Hampton Point. For A Good Time Call actress Ari Graynor emceed the event, which included toasts by Sony Pictures Classics Co-President Michael Barker and producer Christine Vachon and videotaped remarks from actor Gary Oldman , who got his first Oscar nomination starring in Focus Features’ 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. “He is a collaborator: an artist with his head in artists’ clouds and a business man with his business feet firmly in the box office,” Oldman said of Schamus before getting big laughs by poking gentle fun at the Focus exec’s mystique as a professorial indie-film rainmaker. (He’s not just a studio executive, he’s a Professor of Professional Practice in Columbia University’s School of the Arts.) “Did you know that he has won trophies for merely thinking?” said Oldman, adding: “He’s the only man ever to ace a Rorschach Test….Whenever he goes for a swim, dolphins appear….If he were to mail a letter without postage, it would get there.” Hope, who was honored with the festival’s Industry Toast in 2006, followed with a wry — and lengthy — recollection of his years spent working with Schamus at their seminal indie production company Good Machine. Under the guise of revealing the business “Secrets of Schamus” — which included “manufacture desire” and “make them want to pick up your phone call” — he amused the crowd with tales of how his bespectacled, bow-tie-wearing partner repeatedly managed to outshine him. “I’ve been a little competitive with James,” Hope said. “It’s hard to keep up with all those accolades.” The newly minted executive director of the San Francisco Film Society recalled how when they were bringing Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking to the Sundance Film Festival in 1996, Schamus convinced him to put the $17,000 cost of a private plane flight on his credit card after their eleventh-hour commercial flight to Utah was grounded. According to Hope, when they learned that the private plane could not accomodate all of their fellow travelers, Schamus stayed behind, leaving his partner to pull an all-nighter in Sundance in order to sell the film to then-Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein. The morning after the sale, Hope said, “I pick up the paper and see that James Schamus had sold the film to Harvey Weinstein.” Hope concluded his remarks by telling the crowd that when he got his business cards from the San Francisco Film Society, they read: “former partner of James Schamus.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Just in time for its World Premiere at the New York Film Festival this Friday, a new and more sweeping trailer for Ang Lee ‘s Life of Pi has hit the web, setting up the 3-D adventure based on the 2001 novel by Yann Martel. The fantasy-adventure follows “Pi,” an Indian boy who survives a shipwreck and is stranded on a boat in the ocean with a Bengal tiger along with some other charming critters. The trailer sets up the ship wreck that sees Pi (newcomer Suraj Sharma) survive the disaster at sea and finds himself in the company of the tiger, set to the tunes of Coldplay’s Paradise . Life of Pi, which also stars Irrfan Khan, Gérard Depardieu, Shravanthi Sainath, Suraj Sharma and Tabu, shot in Taiwan and India earlier this year. 20th Century Fox will release Life of Pi November 21st. Official log-line: Director Ang Lee ( Brokeback Mountain , Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ) creates a groundbreaking movie event about a young man who survives a tragic disaster at sea and is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While marooned on a lifeboat, he forms an amazing and unexpected connection with the ship’s only other survivor – a fearsome Bengal tiger.
Robert Zemeckis’ Flight starring Denzel Washington will screen as the Centerpiece of the Austin Film Festival & Conference . The 2012 event, taking place October 18 – 25 revealed some details of its upcoming event Tuesday including 10 films that will join this year’s lineup. AFF annually hosts over 180 film screenings and events, while the Conference welcomes over 100 speakers in its panels and roundtables. Among the films screened during the festival are numerous world and US premieres in a wide range of genres, from comedy to documentary, horror to drama. Also on tap for this year, X-Files creator Chris Carter will receive the event’s Outstanding Television Writer Award at AFF’s annual Awards Luncheon on Saturday, October 22nd. Carter will join Paul Feig and Brian Helgeland as part of AFF’s new “Guest Programmer” section of the festival, giving “highly regarded filmmakers” the chance to screen and discuss films they found influential. Carter will also participate in – fittingly – “A Conversation with Chris Carter,” where he will share stories from his long career in television and film. Carter will also present special retrospective screenings of The X-Files and Millennium episodes. There are also plans to screen an X-Files marathon at the Alamo Drafthouse. AFF will release the rest of its lineup in September. Details of AFF’s early 10 films follow with details provided by the festival : Flight – Centerpiece Film Writer: John Gatins Director: Robert Zemeckis In this action-packed mystery thriller, Academy Award winner Denzel Washington stars as Whip Whitaker, a seasoned airline pilot who miraculously crash-lands his plane after a mid-air catastrophe, saving nearly every soul on board. After the crash, Whip is hailed as a hero, but as more is learned, more questions than answers arise as to who or what was really at fault, and what really happened on that plane? Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the highly anticipated new film also stars John Goodman, Don Cheadle, and Melissa Leo. Free Samples Writer: Jim Beggarly Director: Jay Gammill A Stanford law school dropout named Jillian escapes to the anonymity of Los Angeles to figure out what she wants to do with her life, and on the day of her college boyfriend’s birthday, she finds herself stuck running an ice cream truck fending off locals and oddball friends alike. This one day spent in a truck on the streets of LA will wake Jillian from her aimless daze and make her see that life doesn’t stop just because you want it to. Starring Jess Weixler, Jesse Eisenberg, Halley Feiffer, Jason Ritter, this great new comedy is directed by Baylor University film school grad Jay Gammill. It’s A Disaster Writer/Director: Todd Berger Four couples meet for Sunday brunch only to discover they are stuck in a house together as the world may be about to end. StarringJulia Stiles, America Ferrera and David Cross. Julia Stiles and America Ferrera will present the screening at AFF. Last Will & Testament Directors: Laura Wilson, Lisa Wilson US Premiere This documentary explores the ongoing debate about the authorship of the works attributed to Shakespeare. Writers and critics, actors and scholars, including Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Charlie Chaplin, and many others have struggled to reconcile England’s “Star of Poets” with the grain dealer from Stratford. Why? – Featuring interviews with Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance, and other highly regarded Shakespearean actors. Pictures of Superheroes World Premiere Writer/Director: Don Swaynos A young maid is asked by her employer to pretend to be his wife as part of a highly questionable business scheme. Meanwhile, she meets the comic book superhero artist living in her employer’s home (seemingly without the employer’s knowledge or permission), and she begins to wonder if there is something more to life than fake marriages and carpet cleaners. Produced by Kelly Williams, and starring Kerri Lendo, John Merriman, Byron Brown and Chris Doubek. Rising From Ashes Director: T.C. Johnstone Two worlds collide when cycling legend Jock Boyer (first American to compete in the Tour de France) moves to Rwanda and teams with Tom Ritchey (inventor of the mountain bike) to help a group of struggling genocide survivors pursue their dream of a national team. As they set out against impossible odds, both Jock and the team find new purpose as they rise from the ashes of their past. Narrated by Forest Whitaker and directed by Austin native T.C. Johnstone, this remarkable story culminated at the 2012 Olympics in London when one of the subjects of the film, Adrien Niyonshuti, competed in the Games and became Rwanda’s first Olympic cyclist. Shadow Dancer Writer: Tom Bradby Director: James March Single mother Collette McVeigh is a Republican living in Belfast with her mother and hardliner IRA brothers. When she is arrested for her part in an aborted IRA bomb plot in London, an MI5 officer (Mac, played by Clive Owen) offers her a choice: lose everything and go to prison for 25 years or return to Belfast to spy on her own family. With her son’s life in her hands, Collette chooses to place her trust in Mac and return home, but when her brothers’ secret operation is ambushed, suspicions of an informant are raised and Collette finds both herself and her family in grave danger. Starring Clive Owen, Andrea Riseborough, and Gillian Anderson. Spinning Plates World Premiere Writer/Director: Joseph Levy Spinning Plates is a feature documentary film about three restaurants, extraordinary for what they are today as well as the challenges they have overcome. A cutting-edge restaurant named the seventh best in the world whose chef must battle a life-threatening obstacle to pursue his passion… a 150-year-old family restaurant still standing only because of the unbreakable bond with its community… a fledgling Mexican restaurant whose owners are putting everything they have on the line just to make enough to survive and provide for their young daughter. Features Chef Grant Achatz of Chicago’s Alinea and Chef Thomas Keller of California’s The French Laundry. To Kill A Memory World Premiere Writers: Dustin Rikert, William Shockley, Philip Tiboni Director: Dustin Rikert A respected US Marshal is imprisoned after being suspiciously involved in a bank robbery gone wrong. When he learns that the other bank robbers may be going after his wife, the Marshal must escape prison and catch them before it’s too late. This low budget indie Western features an astonishing lead performance from country western singer Kix Brooks of Brooks and Dunn. Kix Brooks will present the screening at AFF. Paul Feig Presents: The Human Tornado and Bringing Up Baby This year, AFF is excited to introduce an all new Guest Programmer section, which invites some of our highly regarded panelists and guest filmmakers to program and present films that inspired them. Paul Feig (director of Bridesmaids , creator of “Freaks and Geeks,” also directed episodes of “Arrested Development,” “The Office,” “Mad Men,” “30 Rock” and more) has chosen two very different films: the blaxsploitation Dolemite adventure The Human Tornado and Howard Hawks’ immortal screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby . Don’t miss an opportunity to hear how these two wildly diverse films influenced one of the most in-demand directors in Hollywood today.
Carly Rae Jepsen has owned the summer music scene. Case in point: this album full of Call Me Maybe covers . But Gotye has been right there with the 26-year old Canadian, as his “Somebody That I Used to Know” has remained near the top of the charts for weeks and has elicited its own share of user-made YouTube versions. Now, the artist himself has given fans one place to listen to snippets from each one. Said Gotye of the following video, which features various musical renditions of the hit track: “Reluctant as I am to add to the mountain of interpretations of Somebody That I Used To Know seemingly taking over their own area of the Internet, I couldn’t resist the massive remixability that such a large, varied yet connected bundle of source material offered.”
Alan Ritchson better start learning how to shoot arrows and throw hunting knives. He’ll need the practice. The actor ( Blue Mountain State , Supernatural ) has joined the cast of Catching Fire , coming on board the upcoming Hunger Games sequel as Gloss, a Tribute who ends up competing in the Quarter Quell with his sister Cashmere. “No words can express…To have the opportunity to portray Gloss in @TheHungerGames. To be a part of this great trilogy…just…so grateful,” Ritchson Tweeted today. Nearly every major Catching Fire role has been filled at this point, with Meta Golding also cast this week as Enobaria. She’ll be meeting Ritchson’s Gloss inside the arena. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire comes out on November 22, 2013. [Photo: WENN.com]
Heads up, fanboys and girls: Marvel has released a barrage of Avengers clips ahead of its September 25 Blu-ray/DVD street date, including the geek-baiting post-credits scene that had fans in a tizzy. No, not the one that boosted sales of shawarma around the nation ; the other Easter Egg, which revealed a menacing glimpse of the real orchestrator behind Loki’s invasion of Earth. The impending Blu-ray/DVD release has also given Marvel occasion to release a handful of additional clips from the film, reminding what life was like before The Dark Knight Rises came along and stole everyone’s thunder. I’d include a spoiler warning here, but if you’re reading this now and haven’t seen Avengers yet… well, I can’t help you there. The post-credits peek reveals Marvel baddie Thanos, who is believed to be the villain in the next Avengers pic. This might also be the closest we’ll come to another Hellboy sequel. (Kidding!) [via Badass Digest ]
