Every once in a while, I get a little present in my inbox and this morning I received some more Kaki West workout shots. I’ve posted her on the site before and you guys seemed to like her. You better because she’s my future ex-wife. Kaki’s got all the right stuff, in all the right places. And as you can see, she’s able to do a real man push up. Impressive! Although, I’d be more impressed if she could touch her elbows behind her back. That’s a challenge…
I can’t believe they’re still making Scary Movies. Here is Lindsay Lohan on the set of Scary Movie 5 looking like a cheap call girl in old lady negligee. The cigarette is a nice touch; it ties the whole ensemble together. Anyways, it’s nice to see her have the opportunity to utilize her “talents” once again. And by talents, I don’t mean the illusions Lindsay performs where items end up “misplaced” or “mysteriously disappear”. I was talking about the one’s right below her neck.
May-December romances “can be creepy” says Richard Jenkins , who’s part of the cast of Josh Radnor’s Liberal Arts , a movie about what might more appropriately might be termed a May-October romance on a college campus. In this particular case, Jenkins adds, “it isn’t.” The carefully groomed Radnor, who you may recognize from the TV sitcom How I Met Your Mother plays a guy in his 30s who goes back to his alma mater — the movie is set at Kenyon College in Ohio which Radnor actually attended — for a professor’s retirement party and ends up falling for a much younger student there played by Elizabeth Olsen . Movieline pal Grace Randolph talked to Radnor, Olsen and the always excellent Jensen about the fundamental of love at the Quintessentially-sponsored New York premiere of the film on Monday. Check out her report below. After the screening, premiere goers headed to Sons of Essex on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to engage in some college style drinking. Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“Directing a movie is not that much different than producing albums. It’s working with talent and guiding them,” says Jim Akin, who makes his directorial debut at 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday with the premiere of After The Triumph of Your Birth at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, California. Akin is better known as the husband and bass player for singer/songwriter Maria McKee, formerly of the alt-country band Lone Justice. She co-produced the movie and co-wrote its score with Akin, and though Martin Scorsese once directed her in Robbie Robertson’s “Somewhere Down The Crazy River” music video, she counts this as her first real acting role. What’s the movie about? That’s a tough question, Akin told me. “I’ve tried about a dozen times to come up with an answer, and I can’t do it,” he said. So, he asked his wife to do it for him. “It’s been called a road movie on foot,” said McKee. “It’s been called a tone poem. My Irish friends said it was Joycean — a man’s philosophical journey. And during his sojourning, he meets a number of surreal characters along the way.” Judging from the trailer, which is posted below, David Lynch and tough-guy poet Charles Bukowski are also influences, particularly when the protagonist is heard in voiceover saying: “I was a bystander doing a death waltz through the shit parade of suicide highway.” “I like the idea of a man working through his existence and his identity and his place in life, and trying to make peace with that,” Akin finally volunteered. That man is McKee’s drummer Tom Dunne, whose story arc takes him from the desert to the ocean on foot. The characters whose paths he crosses are local actors and friends of Akin and McKee who, the first-time filmmaker said, “wanted to be part of the experience.” Akin said that their generosity was one of the factors that enabled him to make the picture for the hard-to-believe sum of $550. “I did the writing, the shooting and the sound, the locations and the editing,” he explained. “Maria worked with me on the score.” Akin added that he kept the production costs minimal because “I didn’t want to borrow money or risk money because then I would feel more free about my ideas.” McKee, who plays a musician in After the Triumph of Your Birth calls the role “my first non-singing job in front of the camera,” although she does perform “One True Love,” which Akin wrote, at a piano, and an a cappella prayer. (She also sings on the soundtrack, on which Akin also appears as his recording alter ego, The Shootist.) People have been trying to get me to act since I was 16,” McKee said. “But I never wanted to be an actress per se because I wanted control over the material. My relationship with Jim is ideal. We were able to work together and shape the material in an intimate way.” After the premiere at the Aero, McKee and Akin will treat guests to a musical performance. If you can’t make it, the movie will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray disc on Sept. 18. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Also in Thursday morning’s round-up of news briefs, the U.K. readies for a tour of James Bond. A museum says it has found the earliest-made color film. And, Summit sets date for Divergent . Update on Anti-Muslim Filmmakers that Sparked Middle East Riots The supposed California-based writer, director and producer, Sam Bacile, has no credit with an industry database. Bacile said he raised $5 million from 100 Jewish donors to make the film. Steve Klein, a self-described militant Christian activist in Riverside, CA told CNN he worked with Bacile on the movie, but told The Atlantic Bacile is a pseudonym, Deadline gives more details . Dustin Hoffman and Led Zeppelin to Lead Kennedy Honors Dustin Hoffman, David Letterman and rock band Led Zeppelin will be feted by the Kennedy Center. The honorees will receive their Kennedy Center Honors medallions at a dinner hosted by Hillary Rodham Clinton and then they’ll join President Obama and the First Lady for the annual gala December 2, CNN reports . James Bond Anniversary Event 007 Days of Bond Tours U.K. Former Bond girls, including Eunice Gayson, Britt Ekland and Shirley Eaton, and villain Richard Kiel are also among the cast for the 007 Days of Bond tour. Roger Moore, 84, who starred in seven Bond films between 1973 and 1985, has officially launched 007 Days of Bond, BBC reports . Earliest Color Film Found The National Media Museum in Bradford, England said it had found what it contends are truly historic films from 1901/02, pre-dating what had been thought to be the first successful colour process – Kinemacolor – by eight years, The Guardian reports . Summit Sets Release Date for Divergent Summit has set March 21, 2014 for the release of their young adult novel, Divergent . Written by Veronica Roth, the story revolves around the future-set tale of a 16 year-old girl who must decide to join one of five ideological factions that control society, THR reports .
An advance screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master brought out the glitterati to New York’s Ziegfeld Theater on Tuesday night. Walking the red carpet before show time were cast member Amy Adams , actors Adrien Brody and Edward Norton , plus a few of our favorites from everyone’s latest HBO obsession, Girls . During the frenzied step-and-repeat, reporters referenced the film’s story — which involves an L. Ron Hubbard-like cult founder — to pose questions about Scientology. This didn’t exactly go over well, and a lot of those questions went unanswered. Given the film’s title, Movieline decided to let our interview subjects be the, um, masters of their own domains and asked them a single question: if you were going to start a cult, what would be its core idea or principle? Read on for responses from Master cast member Madisen Beaty – who plays the object of Joaquin Phoenix’s affection, Doris – fashionista Derek Blasberg and Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington. Also, make sure to check out the video of Movieline pal Grace Randolph’s interviews with Adams, who talks about playing Lois Lane in next year’s Superman movie, Beaty, and Across the Universe director Julie Taymor. Madisen Beaty Dylan Baker, actor: “Peanut-butter-and-jelly Fridays. Maybe chips, if you’d insist.” Geoffrey Fletcher, screenwriter: “Tolerance.” Madisen Beaty, actress (Doris in The Master ): “To accept people as they are. I know that might sound cliché but, a lot of times today, it’s all about your looks and what you do. I think it should be more about who we are as individuals. Whatever you believe, everyone should be accepting.” Olivia Culpo, Miss USA 2012: “A cult?! Confidently beautiful. It would be a cult of people trying to make everybody feel as beautiful as they can — not because of how they look but because of how they feel.” Derek Blasberg, writer/author: “ I’d make everyone dress up. I spend so much time in airports, so I get to see the really poorly dressed subsets of American culture. So, I’d ban sweat suits in airports. That would be the basis of the cult.” Emily Meade, actress: “Any ideas I would have would go against starting a cult, but maybe the cult would be anti-cult, finding your own inner path and whatever you feel is right is right. So, it’d be a very ironic cult.” Jennifer Missoni Albert Maysles, filmmaker: “Direct cinema!” Arianna Huffington: “It would be about reducing stress in our lives. I think we’re all too stressed out. It would be about unplugging and recharging.” Thomas Matthews, actor: [Guttural/maniacal laugh] “Metropology*: the worship of a city. You know how pantheism is the worship of nature? This would actually be worshipping somebody like Frank Lloyd Wright. So, you could actually pray to the city gods, for, like, the subway to come sooner and that kind of stuff.” *an invention of Matthews, we presume. Josh Hamilton, actor: “I’d start a cult of my son.” Jennifer Missoni, actress: “It would be about acceptance. Acceptance to surrendering to whatever is. But, then again, I could never define anything that I would do in terms of being in a cult because I believe in ‘to each his own’ and whatever makes anyone happy. But, for me, it would be generally about acceptance and allowing what is to just be.” Nell Alk is an arts and entertainment writer and reporter based in New York City. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Manhattan Magazine, Z!NK Magazine and on InterviewMagazine.com, PaperMag.com and RollingStone.com, among others. Learn more about her here . Follow Nell Alk on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Billionaire Robert Miller ( Richard Gere ) is a cheat. He cheats on his wife ( Susan Sarandon ) with his mistress, and on his mistress (Laetitia Casta) with his job. And for his job as CEO of one of those mysteriously mighty hedge funds that control the world in Arbitrage , he’ll cheat everybody : the IRS, his daughter and business partner ( Brit Marling ), the buddy who loaned him $412 million, and the fellow mogul Miller wants to acquire his company so he can, of course, spend time with his family, even though the idea confuses them. “I’m just trying to imagine what we would do?” laughs Marling. Clearly, Robert Miller swims with those economic sharks who nearly ruined the world in 2008, and writer/director Nicholas Jarecki (brother of Andrew and Eugene) is going to make him pay. But not for his actual crimes — no one’s going to jail for those — which means Jarecki has to invent a new sin. And so, late one night when the roads are empty, Miller whisks his mistress toward his lake house. He falls asleep at the wheel, skids into the divider, and comes-to next to her fresh corpse — a bloody metaphor for the lives he’s impersonally ruined, and a vicious end for Casta, a Normandy-born beauty so physically perfect there’s literally a bust of her in every French town hall. The quiet of the crash’s aftermath is chilling; the only sound is Miller screaming. But then he thinks of the millions he could lose if the cops, investors, and his wife look harder at his life and makes the cold decision to abandon her body and rescue his reputation. Hey, what’s a little furtive involuntary manslaughter to the baron of Manhattan? With the overconfidence of someone who’s Tivo-ed every episode of CSI , Miller calmly calls collect to Harlem and asks his ex-chauffeur’s son, a young ex-con named Jimmy (Nate Parker), to meet him at a gas station and shuttle him back to the city, no questions asked. Meanwhile, Detective Bryer (Tim Roth) arrives at the flaming wreck and resolves to find out who was really behind the wheel. This sounds like the set-up of a cat-and-mouse thriller. But Jarecki quickly establishes that Miller is screwed — the detective has him fingered by breakfast, and by lunch he’s got Jimmy in custody and threatened with a 10-year sentence for obstruction of justice if he won’t give testimony proving Miller’s guilt. As Miller’s lawyer warns, “The real world is different than television.” So, too, is this movie. Compared to an episode of your average television procedural, Arbitrage has double the runtime and half the suspense because Jarecki could care less about tension and theatrics. He doesn’t even care about Casta’s death — she doesn’t merit a single emo flashback. Jarecki is only interested in one deeply cynical question: What justice is fair to a billionaire? Money — not sex or death — is what fuels Arbitrage . It’s Miller’s excuse for refusing to confess (what’s 10 years to one innocent man if it protects thousands of employees?), and it’s what Miller offers Jimmy for his silence. Apparently, the going rate for a decade of jail time is $2 million, an insulting number considering it’s also what Miller drops to squire Sarandon’s status-conscious wife to a single Friday night benefit gala. And the detective’s resentment for Miller’s practically meaningless money is why the pinched and bitter Roth is so dogged about putting him in prison, vowing, “He doesn’t get to walk just because he’s on CNBC .” The performances are golden with Marling, Roth and Sarandon adding heft to their slender characters. It’s smart casting to have Vanity Fair impresario Graydon Carter pop up as the tycoon Miller so desperately needs to impress. And as the under-attack Jimmy, Parker works hard to make audiences want to remember his name. But this is a showcase for Gere, who has spent his career playing men who can afford a good scotch. (With that head of expensive silver hair, he could never play a fry cook.) At 63, his features have turned to steel: his eyes are small and watchful, and with his good looks he seems aggressively aware that he only has a few more years to grope Laetitia Casta before he has to holster his penis like Harrison Ford. Here, he’s at once charismatic and clueless, even getting a laugh when he asks Jimmy, “What’s an Applebee’s?” Gere does his best to give Arbitrage an agitated energy, but Jarecki’s fatalism works against the film. We can’t root for Miller; instead, we watch with dispassionate interest how the fallout of his misdeeds affects his friends, business partners and family. The smart surprise is that frankly, some of them don’t give a damn. Miller’s millions haven’t just corrupted him — they’ve corrupted everyone who wants a piece of him. And when Jimmy, the poorest and the purest in this ice cold drama, growls, “You think money’s going to fix this?” we’re forced to agree with Miller’s genuinely confused response: “What else is there?” Amy Nicholson is a critic, playwright and editor. Her interests include hot dogs, standard poodles, Bruce Willis, and comedies about the utter futility of existence. Follow her on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Also in Wednesday morning’s round-up of news briefs, American would-be filmmaker whose anti-Islam film sparked violence in Egypt and Libya reacts. And more Toronto titles head to theaters. Channing Tatum May Direct Magic Mike 2 Steven Soderbergh is on a bit of a filmmaking hiatus – he says for the moment (he’s now wrapped on what could be his final film, Behind the Candelabra ), which means there is a need for a Mike director, and Channing Tatum told German site Filmstarts (via AlloCine) that he could direct the film himself, possibly with screenwriter and producing partner Reid Carolin, The Playlist reports . Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing Heads to Theaters The Avengers ‘ director’s Toronto International Film Festival debut now has a home. Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate will team on Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing . The black-and-white movie features friends and actors he’s worked with over the years — including many Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly alums – starring in the adaptation of the Shakespearean play, THR reports . Anti-Islam Filmmaker In Hiding After Egyptian/Libyan Violence Writer/director Sam Bacile remained defiant after a YouTube trailer of his movie attacking the Prophet Muhammad sparked violence in the neighboring African countries, which resulted in the deaths of three American staff members in Libya including the US. Ambassador. Speaking by phone, Bacile said “Islam is a cancer” and that the 56-year-old intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion, A.P. reports . Norwegian Thriller Thale Heads to U.S. Theaters The Toronto International Film Festival’s Norwegian supernatural thriller Thale will open in U.S. theaters early next year via XLrator Media which picked up Stateside rights at the festival. Thale “tells the story of a mythical “huldra,” a beautiful, tailed female forest creature, who is discovered in a concealed cellar by two crime scene cleaners. The creature is unable to speak so she can’t explain how she came to be there, but the pieces of the puzzle soon come together,” Deadline reports . What Maisie Knew Headed to N. America Starring Alexander Skarsgard, Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan, the film revolves around the 7-year old title character, played by Onata Aprile. She is caught in a custody battle between her aging mother rock star and her art dealer father. Millennium Entertainment is closing a deal for the title for North American rights. It is playing in Toronto, Deadline reports .
There’s a scene in the Paul Thomas Anderson’ s enthralling new film The Master where Lancaster Dodd ( Philip Seymour Hoffman ) — founder and leader of a cult-like movement called The Cause — instructs his “guinea pig and protege,” the aptly named Freddie Quell ( Joaquin Phoenix ) to face another man hurling taunts and insults at him without losing his hair-trigger temper. I felt like I was being put through a similar test on Tuesday night when, after being invited to a hastily arranged 70-millimeter advance screening of The Master at the wonderful Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan, I arrived at the will-call table to find a crowd that, had they been carrying torches, would have been at home in the angry villagers scene of Frankenstein . The reason for their anger became apparent shortly after I joined the throng: A woman with bold eyeglass frames and a nervous look on her face announced to the mob that there were simply no more tickets left to hand out. Those who did not make the cut were instructed to sign up for a Thursday screening of the film. I managed to get Eyeglasses’ attention and explained that, as instructed on Monday, I had confirmed my attendance. She shrugged her shoulders and replied that the screening had been overbooked and my tickets had simply been given away. To add insult to injury, just a few seconds before Eyeglasses’ you’re-shit-out-of-luck announcement, one of Arianna Huffington’s minions slunk up behind me, invoked the HuffPo priestess’ name, and received an envelope with tickets. As a longtime observer of the Harvey Weinstein school of stealth marketing, I found the scenario more fascinating than infuriating because in New York preventing a large group of culture addicts from seeing a movie that everyone’s been talking about is actually a sneakily smart way of building interest in the all-important New York market. Now, I’m not saying the Weinstein Company hosed all those people on purpose, but New York is all about access, and last night, getting into The Master became a bit like getting into Studio 54 in the late 1970s. For most Gothamites, rejection is a tonic: When someone tells us we can’t do, see or experience something, we redouble our efforts and, better yet for people like Weinstein, in our quest to succeed, we recruit our friends and infect them with the same passion. Without going into details, that’s exactly what I did, and after seeing The Master , I’m glad I didn’t take no for an answer. (And, by the way, for a screening in which all of the tickets had been given out, I didn’t have any trouble finding a primo aisle seat at the front of the balcony.) To use a term from the film, I am still processing The Master. It’s an intelligent and emotionally complex film that doesn’t provide any easy answers the way that so many films do today. But if I can’t quite commit to saying it’s a great film, I can say that it has more than a few moments of greatness — and those usually occur when Joaquin Phoenix is onscreen. Phoenix gives the performance of his career so far as the feral Freddie Quell, a naval veteran, who can make moonshine out of torpedo fuel and anything else on hand. (“You can’t take this life straight, can you?” Dodd’s wife, played by Amy Adams, tells Quell at one point.) Freddie is the product of an alcoholic father, an institutionalized mother and a traumatizing war, and Phoenix literally embodies these psychic wounds while portraying a lost soul who is menacing, heart-breaking and darkly comic — sometimes all at once. The New York Times reported that Phoenix studied films of animals in captivity to prepare for his role, but his performance, which is pure id, brought to mind other references. The hunched, arms-akimbo way in which Quell stands recalled Martin Short’s Ed Grimley character from Saturday Night Live , and Groucho Marx. His squinting, sneering tomahawk-like face made me think of Hammerhead from The Amazing Spider-Man comics. When I wasn’t marveling at Phoenix’s performance, I found myself thinking that all of this talk about The Master taking on Scientology is a marketing MacGuffin. Yes, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a L. Ron Hubbard-like character, but this movie is really about the relationship between two kindred spirits who, in some respects, are Freudian polar opposites. Quell is pure id, while Dodd is mostly superego, and each seems to yearn for some of what the other man has. For me, one of the key lines of the movie comes near the end when Dodd tells Freddie that if he can find a way “to live without serving a master –any master,” he should report back. Like I said, I’m still processing The Master , and I plan to see it again as soon as I’m able. Thanks to Harvey Weinstein, I suspect I’ll be waiting in a long line. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter
Here is Vanessa Hudgens taking a time off from promoting her film Spring Breakers and getting back to the gym, which is important just in case there happens to be a Part 2. I highly doubt it, but even though I haven’t seen the movie, I’m already anticipating a sequel. I think a good storyline would be that the girls become strippers to support their coke habits and have sexual relations with their pimp/drug dealer “King Tuna”. It’s just a premise I’m throwing out there for the producers. Call my agent if you want me to write the script.
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