At age 74, Jane Fonda still beams with a dogged courage that has fueled her cinematic, political, and entrepreneurial endeavors. Biographer Patricia Bosworth would know firsthand, having met the two-time Oscar winner during their thespian days with Lee Strasberg in New York City’s Actors Studio. For four decades Bosworth has studied the shapeshifting Fonda, and when it came time in the early 2000s to write her biography, Fonda agreed to interview with the woman who had, by that time, written tomes about Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando.
What is it with hometown reunions and high school sweethearts this week? Already, we’ve seen Hilary Duff try to hijack Mark Polish before he can rekindle the flames with his teen crush (Winona Ryder) in Stay Cool . We’ve seen artwork for Diablo Cody’s Young Adult , which features a teen lit novelist (Charlize Theron) who tries to reclaim her happily-married high school honey (Patrick Wilson). And now, we get a clip of Channing Tatum zeroing in on his love interest of yester-decade (Rosario Dawson) in a snippet from the star-packed Ten Year .
Jason Biggs, who was already our favorite Twitter celebrity (er, celebrity on Twitter?), put the news of Reese Witherspoon getting hit by a car and sustaining minor injuries in perspective last night. Since the Oscar-winner is out of the hospital and hopefully in tiptop Tracy Flick form, we like to think Mr. Biggs’s quip registers as playful sarcasm. Ahem: “I just heard the news about Reese Witherspoon doing a voice in ‘Cars 3’. Wow!” [ @BiggsJason ]
Though Anne Hathaway is still just rumored to be a potential addition to Tom Hooper’s musical film adaptation of Les Miserables , star Hugh Jackman is already getting some company for the December 2012 release. According to Variety, Russell Crowe will play foil to Jackman’s Jean Valjean as Inspector Javert. Could Crowe’s past experience singing with his bands 30 Odd Foot of Grunts and The Ordinary Fear of God have given him the casting edge?
Congratulations to Mary Tyler Moore, the TV icon, Oscar nominee, humanitarian firebrand and all-around screen legend who was announced this morning as the recipient of the Screen Actors Guild 2011 Life Achievement Award. Moore will get her hardware at the SAG Awards ceremony to be held Jan. 29, 2012; the fight to get Six Weeks quietly scrubbed from her tribute reel begins now. Kidding! Or… not . Anyway, congratulations to Ms. Moore! Read on the SAG’ s full press release.
At first glance, the formidable cast of Main Street appears to have gathered for a chance to work off the final original script from Horton Foote, the Pulitzered playwright and two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter (for 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird and 1983’s Tender Mercies ) who passed away in 2009. But as the film creeps along with few signs of life, one begins to suspect the real reason they’re all there is to show off that most treasured item in any actor’s toolkit — the Southern accent. Main Street is an ensemble drama that functions as a display case for a range of regional drawls, from the authentic to absurd. Patricia Clarkson, playing Willa, a divorcee who’s returned to her hometown of Durham, North Carolina, easily walks away with best in show, but coming from Louisiana she’s in slightly more familiar territory than Colin Firth, who, as Gus Leroy, a representative of a toxic waste management company, is a sorely unconvincing Texan.
It’s that time again — time for actors and filmmakers to cross their fingers, for studios and distributors to get out their checkbooks, for bleary-eyed audiences to get their running shoes on, and for all of them to meet up north for the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. As always, their confluence will yield a handful of big-screen surprises, some bitter disappointments, and the usual all-night wheeling and dealing for the best of the fall crop premiering in the week ahead.* Per annual TIFF custom , let’s have a browse through the catalog (and a listen to the buzz) at five particular titles you should expect to hear about early and often.
“Even with all the Norbit -level garbage he’s been in, all the shit that he’s done to hurt his career (like when he stormed out of the Academy Awards after not winning the Best Supporting Actor award in 2007), I still root for Eddie Murphy, hoping he’ll return to the glory days of Beverly Hills Cop and Trading Places and Delirious , the same way I still listen to every Weezer album, hoping they’ll record one more song as good as ‘Jamie.'” Totally fair. Will you settle for Beverly Hills Cop 4 ? [ SplitSider ]
If last year’s opening night was a favorite festival memory for AFI Fest director Jacqueline Lyanga, one can only imagine the blast she’s going to have on Nov. 3: The 25th annual incarnation of the festival has announced the world premiere of Clint Eastwood and Leonardo DiCaprio’s hugely anticipated biopic J. Edgar as this year’s opener.
Happy Wednesday! Also in this edition of The Broadsheet: Abigail Breslin takes the Virgin route … Auction mania for Liz Taylor and John Wayne devotees … The jewel of post-communist Bulgaria is awaiting your low-budget genre/schlock movie endeavors … and more.
