Whether or not you buy into Dane Cook ‘s brand of humor, you must acknowledge that the Boston-born stand-up has cornered a sizable comedy market and successfully infiltrated the movie business. Up next, Cook attempts to make the most challenging transition of his career — from dependable funnyman to respected actor.
Way back in June, Spyglass Entertainment debuted the first trailer for The Vow , the latest Rachel McAdams romance film involving memory loss. It was depressing to see our former Notebook sweetheart diving headfirst into another melodramatic title. Like McAdams’s Vow character though — who is struck with amnesia after a parked car accident involving an overplayed Meatloaf single — I forgot about the former starlet’s downwardly spiraling filmography…until today’s new preview for The Vow reminded me, it’s about time someone stages a career intervention for Rachel McAdams.
PBS’ s American Masters series is shining their “Viewers Like You”-funded spotlight on Woody Allen, who is decidedly uninterested in being a part of Academy consideration this year. In the trailer for the star-studded doc, we field gushy soundbites from Diane Keaton, Sean Penn, Larry David, Scarlett Johansson, Mariel Hemingway, Mira Sorvino, and more. Oh, and Woody also shows up.
Sometimes directors with certain strengths try to stretch different muscles and you desperately wish they wouldn’t: Woody Allen getting all serious with Interiors comes to mind. But Roland Emmerich, taking a break from cavorting with woolly mammoths and blowing up the world, is onto something with Anonymous , an intricate — if not terribly convincing — historical thriller positing that a minor Elizabethan poet named Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and not William Shakespeare, wrote all those plays and sonnets that the world loves so well.
Some of Woody Allen ‘s best films have had simple, straightforward film titles ( Annie Hall ! Crimes and Misdemeanors ! Hannah and Her Sisters ! Even Midnight in Paris …). But you know, I thought there was really something catchy to Bop Decameron , the former title of his current Rome-set next flick. Apparently, I may have been the only one who liked it; as Anne Thompson reports, Allen’s changed the title to Nero Fiddled . Riiiight.
You might’ve realized it by now, but Real Steel is a ridiculous premise for a movie. So ridiculous it worked , in fact. Twitter blew up this weekend with comments about Hugh Jackman’s and the sweet science of robo-jousting, and Ryan Gosling’s effectiveness in The Ides of March . We tally the best five tweets after the jump.
“[T]he veneration accorded to Paris by Americans is puzzling. Like other grand cities, this one certainly has an aura — yet its cultural credentials are hardly the world’s most impressive. If anything, its most enduring characteristic is a distinct whiff of merde de taureau . It wasn’t Paris that delivered Bach, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Leonardo, Marx, Michelangelo or the Beatles. Instead, the city has given us the likes of bohemianism, deconstructionism, symbolism and the nouvelle vague. All of these were quite fun at the time, but in retrospect seem somewhat less than the real deal. The city’s aesthetic soul appears to have more to do with Gitanes, cafe society and elegant posturing.” Wait — symbolism is over? And Roman Polanski lives there? Sacrebleu! [ The Guardian ]
A week after its stirring season debut , Oscar Index returns to the scene with the latest scientifically observed developments in the 2011-12 awards race. Indeed, Movieline’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has issued the results from its latest zeitgeist biopsy, and they look… inconclusive. Naturally! It’s September .
If you haven’t yet seen Woody Allen’s fantastic Midnight in Paris , do yourself a favor and stop reading this now. (Then do yourself a bigger favor and go check it out.) Arguably the best way to enjoy the film is knowing little to nothing about its protagonist Gil (Owen Wilson) or his late-night exploits around the City of Light, which culminate in encounters with Gil’s literary and artistic heroes. Sort of . Corey Stoll knows what I’m talking about.
On an overcast day in New York City, Woody Allen, Steve Guttenberg and Patricia O’Connell emerge from the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway, where Woody’s “Relatively Speaking” production of three one-act comedies is in previews. We attempt to question the great writer and director about his pick of candidates presently contending on “Dancing With the Stars” but, sadly, Woody was taking an important phone call at the time.