I know that Arnold’s return to action is all anybody’s talking about when it comes this movie, but after seeing these pictures from the LA premiere of The Last Stand , I’m pretty sure there’s a much bigger story here: how damn hot Genesis Rodriguez is. Seriously, I think this girl’s got a bright future ahead of her. Especially once she learns the importance of knowing bloggers in high places. Call me. » view all 13 photos Photos: Fameflynet , WENN.com
On Friday (January 11), Common was in Atlanta to screen his upcoming film, Luv. The venue was Frank Ski’s restaurant and a number of familiar reality stars, including Joseline Hernandez and Stevie J of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta came through to watch and discuss the movie… Continue
Movie goers were engrossed this weekend by the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, as Zero Dark Thirty topped the box office on Friday and Saturday. Zero Dark Thirty Trailer The controversial drama – up for five Oscar nominations – from Kathryn Bigelow led all competitors with a $24.5 million haul, even as many argue over the film’s authenticity and focus on torture. Or perhaps because they argue over its authenticity and focus on torture. Here is a look at the weekend’s top five: Zero Dark Thirty – $24.5 million A Haunted House – $18.8 million Gangster Squad – $17 million Django Unchained – $11 million Les Miserables – $10 million
He’s young, he’s hot, he’s talented – and he’s today’s featured THG birthday boy. Oh yes, One Direction fans, Zayn Malik is now 20 years old! Why do followers have such affection for Malik? The Bradford native is known as the group’s leading prankster. He’s also especially close to his family and he has an admitted dark side, telling Seventeen recently: “I am a bit of a bad boy. I have tattoos and I mess around. That’s part of my image.” And a hot one it is! Wish Zayn a happy birthday now and then watch him in action via our One Direction videos section!
Porn star turned actor James Deen is heard being cursed out by the volatile Lindsay Lohan in a leaked audio clip from the set of The Canyons last year. Apparently convinced he wasn’t taking things seriously, Lohan – whose Canyons set antics were legendary – instructs Deen to “do your f**king job” … Lindsay Lohan Canyons Outburst Despite the clip, and a New York Times expose proving Lohan is a drunk, unstable mess and a terror to all who work with her, Deen has her back. James says he had a misunderstanding with Lindsay just before the indie film shoot, which put her in a bad mood while that audio was recorded: “Hours before the rant she asked why I was doing this movie and I said ‘For fun.’ I meant for experience and enjoyment of working on a Bret Easton Ellis movie.” “I don’t think she understood my intention behind saying ‘for fun’ and thought it meant that I wasn’t going to try,” says Deen, justifying LiLo’s response. Deen, whose day job is working in porn, believes the 26-year-old starlet took his explanation as a shot at her craft, which was definitely not his intention. Asked if he was upset about being cursed at when the incident unraveled, James Deen told TMZ, “Not at all. You didn’t hear me laughing on that clip?” He adds that despite all the bad press she gets, he’s a big fan of hers. Yeah, those two TOTALLY hit it at some point during filming. Right?
Until today, I thought Legendary Pictures ‘ effort to make yet another contemporary Godzilla reboot was a seriously misguided idea. I know that almost 15 years have passed since Roland Emmerich’s 1998 take on the reptilian Japanese scream queen hit theaters, but that movie was such a dark, senseless and empty mess that it effectively killed my once fervent love of the big-ass monster genre. Okay, so there were other contributing factors, too, like terrorists in planes who managed to knock down the two largest buildings in New York. When that happens, big mutant lizards don’t exactly cut it anymore. But I digress. Emmerich’s Godzilla debuted three years before 9/11, and the thing that’s most infuriating about the movie is his tiresomely conventional attempt to top the original Japanese movies by just making his reboot bigger, noisier and more Godzilla -ier. The same goes for Diddy, then Sean Puff Daddy Combs, who contributed an equally bombastic song to the soundtrack, “Come With Me,” that, as far as I’m concerned is a sacrilegious use of Jimmy Page’s great guitar riff from Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.” (Page apparently didn’t think so at the time. He appeared in the crap-tastic video for the song, which references the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.) The more ambitious thing to do would have been to mine the campier, Mystery Science Theater 3000 – worthy elements of the Godzilla movies, such the Peanuts, the Japanese twin-sister singing group who played the tiny priestesses that were able to communicate with Godzilla’s winged rival, Mothra . But who am I kidding? Emmerich doesn’t deal in subtlety or wit. The reality is, that whether it’s Emmerich’s fault or not, movies about giant mutant creatures terrorizing a city or town don’t move the needle anymore unless they think smaller — on a human scale. J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 and the Abrams-produced Matt Reeves-directed Cloverfield worked for that very reason. The monsters in those films were really catalysts for interesting human drama. To a lesser extent, I felt the same way about Gareth Edwards’ Monsters , so my interest was piqued when he was hired to direct Godzilla and, at Comic Con last summer, promised “a grounded and realistic film that isn’t particularly sci-fi,” according to a CinemaBlend post at the time. Well, to paraphrase Leonardo DiCaprio’s signature line in Django Unchained , Legendary had my curiosity, but now they have my attention with the news, reported by Deadline , that Frank Darabont is rewriting the Godzilla script. The beauty of The Walking Dead under Darabont was that the human conflict and relationships taking place over the first two seasons of the AMC series was way more compelling than the creative zombie deaths. Each of the survivors was a distinct, fully fleshed character that I grew to care about over the course of the series, and that made their peril all the more intense and terrifying. Factor in the excellent script Darabont wrote for The Shawshank Redemption and, although the odds are pretty steep, if anyone can make me care about big-ass mutant lizard again, it’s him. [ Deadline , CinemaBlend ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Steven Soderbergh has pushed against the limits of Hollywood’s sexual mores his entire career. His debut, sex, lies, and videotape , was a study in voyeurism and sexual dysfunction. He blurred the line dividing the feature film and porn video worlds with The Girlfriend Experience , which starred adult actress Sasha Grey. His last film, Magic Mike , subverted the male gaze by turning all eyes, male and female, on the rock-hard and very hairless abs of dude-strippers. Yet even Soderbergh has had trouble financing his next and rumored-to-be-last project, Behind the Candelabra , a biopic of Liberace starring Michael Douglas as the flamboyant pianist and Matt Damon as his significantly younger live-in lover. The veteran director only wanted $5 million to make his long-delayed film, but, as he told The Wrap , “They said it was too gay. Everybody. This was after Brokeback Mountain , by the way. Which is not as funny as this movie. I was stunned. It made no sense to any of us.” Luckily for Soderbergh, HBO believed enough in the project to greenlight it. But that still leaves the question: What does “too gay” mean in the Hollywood of 2013? Sadly, it doesn’t seem too different from what it meant fifty years ago in the Hollywood of 1963: Few gay protagonists can be normal, relatable people living in a world we recognize. In the real world, gay men and women are our friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. But in the movies, that might be “too gay.” So screenwriters have come up with a multitude of ways to make homosexuality less immediate and less “threatening.” When they are the protagonists, gay characters vanish from everyday life: by dying, by disappearing into history, by rarely having sex, by committing evil, by being more flamboyant than pink rhinestones on a drag queen’s tiara. They may be admirable, certainly sympathizable, but they still too frequently lack ordinary humanity. The supposed breakthrough film Brokeback Mountain , for instance, marginalized homosexuality by situating its characters in a faraway setting and in a culture that was on the cusp of disappearance. And it fatally asserted its heterosexuality by having straight actors play gay, so that audiences never forget that a man kissing another man is all just play-acting. Little seems to have changed since Brokeback . The majority of studio movies with a gay male protagonist since has either taken place in Mad Men days ( Milk , Howl , A Single Man ) or featured same-sex sociopaths ( I Love You Philip Morris , Bruno ). It’s no better for lesbians, who watched one of their filmic counterparts in The Kids Are All Right have sex with a man, because of course that’s exactly what the female gay experience is all about. Equally alien to the lives of average gay women is the romance Jack and Diane , which finds one of its two budding lovers turning into a werewolf. And, it bears repeating, all of the main characters in these movies are played by straight actors. Luckily for gay viewers, the indie world is brimming with movies that are “too gay” and proud of it. The last two years alone have seen critical darlings like the sweet romance Weekend , the addiction drama Keep the Lights On , and the gay adoption saga Any Day Now . Also welcome and necessary are the coming-of-age tale Pariah and the Sex and the City -style Noah’s Arc , which feature all-too-rare gay characters of color. It’s almost surprising that Soderbergh’s biopic got the “too gay” chuck, since the subject matter – a mincing narcissist with a love of glittered capes and a barely legal pool-boy dying tragically from AIDS – is brimming with the usual defenses Hollywood is always eager to employ against normal gay existence. So one has to wonder if it isn’t the flamboyance that studios found “too gay,” but Soderbergh’s refusal to turn Liberace and his partner Scott Thorson into caricatures, to “take the relationship seriously.” After all, that might be too revolutionary for Hollywood. Maybe in 2063? Inkoo Kang is a film critic and investigative journalist in Boston. She has been published in Indiewire, Boxoffice Magazine, Yahoo! Movies, Pop Matters, Screen Junkies, and MuckRock. Her great dream in life is to direct a remake of All About Eve with an all-dog cast. Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Slaves for sale! Django Unchained Slave Action Figures Released Via NewsOne reports: The criticism levied at Quentin Tarantino for his so-called humorous take on slavery in “ Django Unchained ” has been intense as critics claim that he is exploiting a traumatic, ugly period in this nation’s history so far reaching, that the effects are still felt today. Last fall, the National Entertainment Collectibles Association, Inc. (NECA), in tandem with the Weinstein Company, announced a full line of consumer products based on characters from the movie. First up are pose-able eight-inch action figures with tailored clothing, weaponry, and accessories in the likeness of characters played by Foxx, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Remar and Christoph Waltz. The dolls are currently on sale via Amazon.com. Do you find these action figures off the chain or just plain ole’ offensive??
We all remember Good Will Hunting as the touching drama about a troubled genius who works as a janitor (and something about apples, right?) The combination of an Oscar-winning script by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon , and Gus Van Sant , a director who, up to that point, had a career consisting of expert societal button-pushing, made magic. But as touching as the movie turned out, it’s important to note how different it could have been. Violently different. It’s well known that the original screenplay for Good Will Hunting was a thriller in which the genius main character was recruited by the FBI. Thank the gods that changed, but perhaps it was that genesis which led to Mel Gibson being first at bat to direct the film. Yep, it’s true. The news comes courtesy of Boston Magazine (via Movies.com ), which has published an extensive conversation with the cast and crew of the film in honor of its 15 th anniversary. Initially, Affleck and Damon, desperate to get the thing made, asked Kevin Smith if he’d direct it. Smith turned it down, but he passed the script to Harvey Weinstein , who positively flipped for it. From there, Gibson was brought into the project. “We met with Mel Gibson,” Affleck, who’s been doing a spot-on Weinstein impersonation since he made Good Will Hunting , said, “and Braveheart had just come out, and was as hot as could be. But we hadn’t seen Braveheart and Harvey was like, ‘YOU HAVEN’T SEEN BRAVEHEART? F*CKING LIE TO HIM AND TELL HIM YOU LOVE BRAVEHEART .’ So the first thing we said was, ‘We just want to tell you how much we loved Braveheart !’” Knowing what we now know about Mel’s mood swings, they probably made the right choice. Alas, a Gibsonized version of Good Will Hunting wasn’t in the cards. Mel dragged his feet developing the script for several months and Damon eventually had to ask the volatile filmmaker to let them take it elsewhere. “Matt at one point said directly to Gibson, “Look, man. We’re getting too old. If this keeps going by, Ben and I can’t play these parts. Is there any chance you’d just let it go?” And to Mel’s credit, he said, “I totally understand what you’re saying.” That was a real stand-up thing to do.” Well yeah, but Mel knows a thing or two about the dangers of getting too old for this shit. Obviously, this turned out to be for the best, at least if the film’s two Oscars are any measure. But I can’t help but feel that the world was denied something kind of magical on the day Gibson let them take their script to another director. Let’s have a moment of silence then, for the hyper-patriotic revenge obsessed version of Good Will Hunting that never happened. 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. [ Boston Magazine , Movies.com ] Follow Ross Lincoln on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
