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Esquire Slips Into Mary-Louise Parker's Bed for Story Time
10 July 2009 6:03 PM, PDT
I began to focus more attention on Mary-Louise Parker back in 2005, when she wrote a feature for Bust on Justin Theroux. In one opening paragraph, she slid from cross-pollinating blueberry bushes and pet pit bulls to a description of the actor himself: "His hair is ice-pond black, he could wash my windows with his eyelashes, and he has that rangy skateboarder's body that girls never grow out of going hormonal after." I was reading a lot of magazine intros that year, and hers was the first that didn't reek superfluous scene-drawing.
Now she's getting literary again, this time with Esquire. The site is doing a new weekly series of bedtime stories and seeing that they say "straight from the bedroom of a Woman We Love," I'm assuming every installment will feature the lovely Ms. Parker. She kicks off with Alice in Wonderland, and you can watch it for yourselves after the jump.
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Monika Bartyzel
Jodie Foster Directs Mel Gibson and his 'Beaver'
10 July 2009 5:03 PM, PDT
Back in April, I wondered if we can forget reality when watching actors on the big screen. Well, if there's any way to re-warm ourselves to thoughts of Mel Gibson, how about the story of a man and his beaver puppet?
That wacky story (the one that had Jim Carrey circling it back in May) is now in the hands of Gibson, with Jodie Foster officially signed as director, according to Variety. Kyle Killen's Blacklist script focuses on a depressed toy manufacturer (Gibson) who comforts himself with his beaver hand-puppet. There's no sexual innuendo in this -- he thinks of his faux beaver friend as a sort of "human creature with human feelings" -- a la Lars and the Real Girl.
On top of directing this puppy, her first film since 1995's Home for the Holidays, Foster will play his wife. And with that, I think this may be one
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Monika Bartyzel
Watch This: On Set 'Star Wars' Home Movies
10 July 2009 4:02 PM, PDT
If studios weren't incredibly anal about leaks and spoilers, we might be seeing a whole lot of videos like this on the web. David Berry worked as a rotoscope and animation artist for six months on Star Wars, shooting home movies when time allowed. He's put up a nostalgic compilation of some of those set to music, and it's a fun look back at the behind-the-scenes of George Lucas' space romp in the mid-70s when facial hair was common among men, and bras were not among women.
As one of the commenters points out, it's strange (and awesome) to see a workshop without a computer in sight, and to watch people working on things like a model of the Millennium Falcon or starfields by hand. Berry went on to work at Industrial Light and Magic on films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Empire Strikes Back,
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Kevin Kelly
Review: I Love You, Beth Cooper
10 July 2009 3:02 PM, PDT
How do you transform a very funny book into a dreadfully boring movie? I laughed more from reading the first five pages of Larry Doyle's novel than I did during the entirety of Chris Columbus' film version of I Love You, Beth Cooper, despite the fact that Doyle wrote the screenplay. Much of the dialogue is lifted directly from the book, but when spoken on screen, the lines fall painfully flat. That leaves the attempts at physical humor, which are constant, and will tickle to death only those who love to see pratfalls: "Look, Mommy, man fall down and cry out in agony! Ha, ha!"
Leaving aside the source material and the film's relative faithfulness to it, I Love You, Beth Cooper might have worked as either a joyful, gleefully mischievous, yet ultimately conservative rebel yell (a la Ferris Bueller's Day Off) or as a funny yet thought-provoking
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Peter Martin
Insert Caption: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
10 July 2009 2:02 PM, PDT
Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game that every boy wizard is instructed to play on Fridays while attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Last week we asked you to churn out some laughs for a photo from a very unfunny (but still awesome) film called The Hurt Locker. Congrats go out to our solo winner, who provided us with a caption too good (and hot and fuzzy) to pass up.
1. "You have no idea how badly I want to shoot this gun in the air and shout aaargh" -- Anthony T.
See full image and all captions
This week is a doozy ladies and gents, as it's finally time to celebrate the return of a dude named Harry Potter. Yes, on July 15th we'll all finally get to cram our sweaty summer selves into theaters and watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Tm.
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Erik Davis
The One Where 'Twilight' (Almost, But Doesn't) Ruin Comic Con
10 July 2009 1:00 PM, PDT
When the Wednesday/Thursday schedule for this year's San Diego Comic Con was released yesterday, those folks who attended last year quickly began to realize a pretty scary fact: that Summit Entertainment's panel for The Twilight Saga: New Moon was taking place 15 minutes after the panel for James Cameron's Avatar and roughly three hours after that giant 3D Disney panel featuring Tron, A Christmas Carol and Alice in Wonderland. So what's the problem, you might ask?
Well, last year Twilight caused an absolute Beatles-mania sh*t show with tween girls and their Twi-hard moms camped outside the convention center's Hall H for hours upon hours in order to get one of the 6000-or-so seats inside. Placing New Moon directly after Disney and Avatar will make it extremely difficult for fans of the latter two to gain entry to Hall H unless the convention sets up a line Just for Summit's panel Or,
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Erik Davis
Zooey Deschanel Will Be a Princess For 'Your Highness'
10 July 2009 12:03 PM, PDT
I am trying to keep my expectations very low for Your Highness, the medieval comedy headed by Danny McBride and James Franco, but it's so hard, especially since they keep adding such promising cast members. Now The Hollywood Reporter says they have added another fair maiden to keep the testosterone levels down: Zooey Deschanel.
To refresh your memory, Highness centers on a lazy, arrogant prince (played by McBride, naturally) who must go on a knightly quest to save his father's kingdom. Joining him is his heroic brother, played by James Franco. (And he's so perfect for this with those Pre-Raphaelite looks of his.) Natalie Portman plays a warrior princess, who wins the heart of McBride, while Deschanel plays Belladonna, Franco's virginal bride. It's not clear if she goes along on the quest, but something tells me she's probably left behind in a tower, and abandoning her chastity belt.
Directed by David Gordon Green,
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Elisabeth Rappe
FilmBuff Goes Online! Discover More Gems!
10 July 2009 11:02 AM, PDT
Every day seems to bring a new channel for delivering great, unheralded film right to your television or laptop. The latest is Film Buff, a video-on-demand channel run by Cinetic, and overseen by Matt Dentler, former producer of the legend that is Austin's SXSW. Variety has the details great and small.
I can't describe this channel better than Cinetic president John Sloss, who says its "as if your most film-literate friend programmed your Netflix queue and it was immediately available." They plan to offer as many as 15 first run films and classics per month, and the first slate is pretty tasty: The Carter (the Lil Wayne documentary that premiered at Sundance), Enzo Castellari's original The Inglorious Bastards, the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, Richard Linklater's Slacker, and Michael Almereyda's New Orleans, Mon Amour. Dentler stresses that they won't be limited to Cinetic repped titles, nor will they only showcase new releases.
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Elisabeth Rappe
Who Are Your Favorite Movie Professors?
10 July 2009 10:02 AM, PDT
You can't turn around in a movie without bumping into a professor. If it's not Nicolas Cage as the unlikeliest astrophysicist to be granted tenure at M.I.T. in Knowing, just released on DVD, it's the passel of professors that will undoubtedly be presented in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, due out in theaters next Wednesday. Which kind of professor do you prefer?
My early impressions were formed by seeing the distinguished, imposing Harvard law professor John Houseman dress down Timothy Bottoms in James Bridges' The Paper Chase: "Here is a dime. Take it, call your mother, and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer." My impressions changed dramatically when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones may have been more of a thrill-seeker than an academic, but he was driven by his love for archeology
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Peter Martin
Exclusive: 'Brothers' Poster Premiere
10 July 2009 9:02 AM, PDT
View the full poster by clicking gallery below
Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Brothers, starring Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal. Directed by Jim Sheridan (In America, In the Name of the Father), Brothers is an English-language remake of Susanne Bier's 2004 film of the same name, and it follows the intricate relationships between a marine, his wife and his fresh-out-of-jail brother.
Maguire plays Sam, a marine who goes missing overseas during his fourth tour of duty. When Sam is assumed dead, his wife Grace (Portman) tries to pull her family back together with help from Sam's black-sheep brother Tommy (Gyllenhaal). One thing leads to another, lines are crossed, and when it's discovered that Sam is actually alive, our marine returns home to a very interesting (and uncomfortable) family dynamic. A very solid trailer for the film just debuted earlier this week and this three-way cast
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Erik Davis
Get Ready for Lindsay Lohan's Production Company
10 July 2009 8:03 AM, PDT
Well ... this is coming out of left field. If there's one thing Lindsay Lohan has going for her, it's that she's a little red-headed train that could. After musing that she'd leave Tinseltown for the modeling world, and then picking up a quirky indie film, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Lohan and her fashion-line partner Kristi Kaylor have created Unforgettable Productions -- continuing her habit to name things after old icons. (6126, her fashion brand, is named after Marilyn Monroe's birthday.)
Yes, Lohan has entered the production world, with a plan to develop projects for both television and the big screen. They're in the process of optioning a few books, and creating some super-high-quality TV like an Entourage show for the fashion world -- and a dating game show.
One can assume that this new twist is to get Lohan back in the acting world. If she can't get gigs
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Monika Bartyzel
Ryan Reynolds, Bradley Cooper, Justin Timberlake Finalists for 'Green Lantern'
10 July 2009 7:03 AM, PDT
Hal Jordan might just be bringing sexy back. Or he might look an awful lot like Deadpool. Or he might just have a really wicked hangover.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros and director Martin Campbell have narrowed he who will wear the ring to three candidates: afore-mentioned Bradley Cooper , Ryan Reynolds, and Justin Timberlake. (Give one up for Ain't It Cool News, who had Timberlake in the suit on Thursday.) Lest you think these are just overblown screentests, THR reports that Timberlake, Cooper, and Reynolds all had holding deals with the studio, though all three expired Monday. That puts the clock to ticking and will force the studio to make a decision soon, as they'll be free to accept new roles. They've all done two rounds of screen tests, and survived the other finalists, including Michael Fassbender, Henry Cavill, and Jared Leto.
So, there you have it. My personal pick would be Cooper,
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Elisabeth Rappe
Cinematical Seven: Movies That Pull an All-Nighter
9 July 2009 8:02 PM, PDT
I've had my share of all-nighters, and sure, some of them were for a perfectly legitimate reason like studying, but I'll be honest with you: most of them were for reasons that for the sake of propriety, I shouldn't go into here -- and I know I'm not the only one. Who doesn't have a story about that one great night? Or that one party that couldn't be missed? Exactly, we all do, and maybe that's why we all love a good story about some wild and crazy all-nighter.
This Friday, audiences will be treated to another tale full of all-night shenanigans with I Love You, Beth Cooper, which follows a high school nobody who changes everything when he utters those five words during his graduation speech. So just like every 'all-nighter' film to go before it, Cooper is about breaking out of your comfort zone and watching the best
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Jessica Barnes
Review: Bruno
9 July 2009 7:02 PM, PDT
Given the kaleidoscopic venn diagram of contexts in which Bruno can and will inevitably be viewed, it's tough to know precisely where to start, and how far to go when deconstructing Sacha Baron Cohen's new comedy. Like the singular, groundbreaking Borat, it's a balls-out comedy, but it's also a social commentary; it's both the latest movie Cohen appears in, and the big-deal "next effort" from him as a performance artist and lead rather than costar or day-player; and finally, it's a lightning rod for controversy and also a generally innocuous goof on mainstream expectations of him and his character, a flamboyant homosexual. All of which suggests that the film is, or perhaps would necessarily be, richer and more substantive than its predecessor - the sort of galvanizing experience that leaves audiences buzzing, changes minds and perceptions, and transforms the face of entertainment forever.
And yet, Bruno is curiously ineffective,
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Todd Gilchrist
Our Favorite Summers: 1981
9 July 2009 6:02 PM, PDT
When you're ten years old, movies are the most magical place in the world. Anything can happen when those lights go down, and what now seems like a fleeting hour and a half seemed like an eternity at that age. It's also the age when your parents start dropping you off at the movies by yourself, as long as you went with a friend or a trusted family member. In my case, the first time that happened I was 11 and my older cousin took me and my little brother to see Tron ... and then skipped out on us to see The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas next door.
For this former ten-year-old, the movies were a seething pit of sex, action, adventure, laughter, and tears in the summer of 1981. These were the days that I used to buy those big one-shot movie magazines that were filled with photos and glib information.
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Kevin Kelly
New Zealand: Where Film Festival Awards Come Before the Festival
9 July 2009 5:02 PM, PDT
In some opposite-ish corner of the world right now (from me anyway), the New Zealand International Film Festival kicks off today for the rest of the month, before making further provincial rounds through next November. (Damn, now that's a film festival!) It makes all the more sense that people might want to plan ahead for the highlights, and what better way to do that than to bequeath some awards for the films right from the get-go?
Incredibly Strange programmer Ant Timpson (who's perfectly normal himself, I swear it; that's the name of their specifically oddball selections) has rightfully singled out SXSW '09 alums like Best Worst Movie, Drag Me to Hell, Grace, The Horseman and Winnebago Man for particular accolades (i.e. "Best Film to Show Filmmakers That Low-Budget Doesn't Mean Twenty-Somethings Sitting in Cafes Talking About Their Boring Relationships"), not to mention a couple of other picks.
Timpson sums
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William Goss
Yoo-Hoo! Mrs. Goldberg's Hitting the Big Screen
9 July 2009 4:03 PM, PDT
Did you know that Lucille Ball was not the first woman of sitcom television land? In fact, there was another who not only came before the famous redhead, but who should also be counted as one of the pioneers behind the screen? No? I didn't either.
Enter Gertrude Berg, who is the focus of Aviva Kempner's new documentary Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, which is hitting theaters this week in New York City before heading to DC on the 17th and La on the 24th. This isn't your heart-tugging, dramatic art doc, but rather a straight-forward account of someone we should know because, frankly, her success was impressive. (That picture to the right -- that's Berg with her scripts.)
Turns out that before I Love Lucy, there was a show radio show that hit television called The Goldbergs. It was Berg's own creation -- a brainchild she shopped around herself, wrote,
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Monika Bartyzel
Credits Report: Wall-e
9 July 2009 3:25 PM, PDT
Wall-e is such a good, sappy, funny, adventurous, touching, and enjoyable movie, that by the time you get to the end you're exhausted. Plus you probably have a single tear sliding down your cheek like Iron Eyes Cody. So by the time the end credits roll, you're looking for something to bring you back down to Earth, no pun intended. Aw, who am I kidding -- that pun was definitely intended.
Thankfully that thing isn't a Randy Newman song, although it does come via his cousin Thomas Newman who thank all the stars above wisely lets Peter Gabriel sing the outtro song "Down to Earth." Hey, it netted him an Oscar nod. The song is slow, beautiful, and plays out against visual images depicting the "new" history of mankind on the planet: cave drawings, hieroglyphics, mosaics, sketches, pointilism, Van Gogh skies ... and when it finally slides down underground and turns into a traditional credit crawl,
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Kevin Kelly
To the Calendar! Comic-Con 2009 Schedule Released
9 July 2009 2:40 PM, PDT
Cinematical will be hitting Comic-Con 2009 in San Diego again this year, bringing you the sights, highlights, and lowlights of the four-day geek mecca. A mecca that now officially has a schedule. Since cloning machines still haven't been invented, if anyone manages to do that in in the next couple of weeks please let us know. We're going to need to be at multiple locations during multiple simultaneous times.
But, that just about sums up the entirety of Comic-Con: dashing from panel to panel, catching a glimpse of the millions of costumes, stopping by booths, hitting parties, and then repeating. You can check out the full schedule right here (eventually -- it's Thursday and Friday only for now), and we'll be posting some of what's on our Cinematical Must See list as we work our way through the schedule with a highlighter, but here's a couple of standouts for Thursday:
11:
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Kevin Kelly
News Bites: Brooke Shields on the Big Screen & 'Motherhood'
9 July 2009 2:03 PM, PDT
It looks like Brooke Shields is making her way back to the big screen, and this time she won't be getting saucy in The Blue Lagoon. After a decade away, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Shields has signed onto the live-action comedy Furry Vengeance. Actually, considering the title, it's probably good to note that this is a family film. There's no word on what role she'll play in the Brendan Fraser flick, which follows a real estate developer who gets a hard time from a band of raccoons. One -- What's the obsession with coons lately? Davey Crockett on the brain? Two -- It might be the usual Fraser fair, but the cast does boast Ken Jeong, Samantha Bee, and Dick Van Dyke as well.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of Parenthood heading to the small screen, THR also posts that Freestyle Releasing has picked up Motherhood, and will release it this October.
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Monika Bartyzel
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