One Day trailer

July 8, 2011

Starring Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson, Romala Garai, Jodie Whittaker and Rafe Spall. Directed by Lone Scherfig ( An Education, Italian For Beginners )

Premise: The story revisits the lives of Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess), who first meet as they graduate from the University of Edinburgh, on 15 July, St. Swithin's Day across twenty years.

Di Caprio to play Gatsby ?

What project has Leonardo Di Caprio have his eyes on after his recent take on the Clint Eastwood film J.Edgar which just finished wrapping... it looks like it will be in the remake of The Great Gatsby. So far others attached to the F. Scott Fitzgerald iconic novel, are Carey Mulligan ( as Daisy ) Toby Maguire, Isla Fisher, Hayley Atwell and rumor is that the producers are seeking Ben Affleck for a part in the film.

Baz Lurhman ( Moulin Rouge, Australia ) is directing the project, and has co-written the scrip with Craig Pearce ( Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge ) Costume designer and 3 time Oscar nomiee ( and one time winner ) Catherine Martin has been chosen to run costume design.

Pitt to team up with director Marc Forster

Hollyweird scuttlebutt has reports that Brad Pitt will team with Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland director Marc Forster, to star in an adaptation from Max Brooks 2006 novel Wolrd War Z.

In the film, Pitt will play a journalist documenting the aftermath of a bloody zombie-human war that took place a decade earlier. It's a bit of a departure from Max Brooks' hit book, which Pitt optioned three years ago; in the novel, the main character is an investigator for the UN trying to find out the history and back story to the dilemma. At this time Pitt is starring in Cogan's Trade ( more on this later )

The film is looking for a 2014 release date and won't get shooting for a year or two.

Sally Field to play Mary Todd Lincoln

In case you didn't know this by now, Steven Spielberg has cast two time Oscar winner Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln opposite another two time Oscar winner, Daniel Day-Lewis portraying the 16th President of the United States. The film will be based off the popular Doris Kearns Goodwin novel, Team Of Rivals: The Genius Of Abraham Lincoln. Oscar nominee Tony Kushner ( Munich ) is adapting the screenplay.

Filming will begin in the fall of 2011. The movie at this point is simply going to be titled Lincoln, but at this juncture, that could easily be changed. Most of Spielberg's regular crew will handle to production on the film.

What I find most interesting, is what must be the difficult process that Spielberg faces casting the supporting cast... the so called " team of rivals " . Definitely a project worth keeping your eyes on. Oscar bait is an understatement on this film.

Everything Must Go trailer

Premise: The movie is based off a Raymond Carver short story where you have alcoholic Nick Halsey (Ferrell) relapses, causing him to lose his wife and his job, he holds a yard sale on his front lawn in an attempt to start over. A new neighbor might be the key to his return to form.

The film also stars Rebecca Hall, Laura Dern, Stephen Root and Michael Pena.

Happy birthday to Al Pacino

Legendary actor Al Pacino turns 71 today. He is a 8 time Oscar nominee, with one win for his turn in Scent Of A Woman. His other Oscar nominations were for performances in The Godfather, Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, And Justice For All, Dick Tracy and Glengarry Glen Ross. He also has won two Golden Globes, one most recently for his portrayal of Jack Kevorkian in You Don't Know Jack and also in Angels In America. Other GG nods that weren't Oscar nominated are Bobby Deerfield, Author, Author, Scarface and Sea Of Love.

Later this year he can be seen co-starring with Channing Tatum in crime drama The Son Of No One.

Warrior trailer

Directed by Gavin O' Connor ( Miracle, Pride and Glory ) starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, Nick Nolte, William Mapother, Jennifer Morrison, Kurt Angle, Frank Grillo and some cameos by several other real life MMA fighters. Film is out September 9th of this year.

A former boxer (Nolte), whose alcoholism tore apart his family, welcomes back his youngest son (Hardy) and trains him to compete in a mixed martial arts tournament – a path that puts the son on a collision course with his older brother (Edgerton).

Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore reunite

Hot after his two Oscar nominations and a win to boot for Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore will reunite for a second time after their turn together in The Coen brothers dark comedy The Big Lebowski. This time for Russian director Sergey Bodrov ( The Rise Of Ghengis Khan ) called Seventh Son.

Seventh Son is about the seventh son of a seventh son who learns how to exorcise ghosts, contain witches, and bind boggarts in the 1700s.

Jerermy Renner is the new Jason Bourne ?

Two time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner ( The Hurt Locker, The Town ) has been offered and seems to be close to taking the role as Jason Bourne in the 4th in the series, The Bourne Legacy. Renner would take the role over that Matt Damon has made famous between 2002 to 2007. Damon has backed out on Legacy due to loyalty to director Paul Greengrass, who has decided not to direct the fourth film.

Oliver Stone begins to cast his new film

Last December I added an entry on the blog that director Oliver Stone is going to film an adaptation of Don Winslow's novel The Savages. Now we are seeing casting coming to fruition that is yet another all star cast which is usual for Stone films. It appears that Emile Hirsch, Uma Thurman and John Travolta have been added to a cast that has already included Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro, Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively. Here is a brief synopsis of the premise...

Premise: Ben and Chon are two Americans running a lucrative marijuana operation out of ritzy Laguna Beach, California. Their business is buzzing along nicely until members of the Mexican Baja Cartel decide they want a piece of the action. Ben, a charitable, environmentally conscious Berkeley grad, doesn’t want any trouble. Former Navy Seal Chon prefers peace as well but not if it means giving up primo weed. When Ben and Chon resist the Mexicans’ demands, the cartel kidnaps “O” (short for Ophelia), the boys’ close confidante and frequent bedroom playmate. Ben and Chon conjure clever schemes to outwit their adversaries and win back O, using everything from improvised explosive devices to Letterman and Leno masks. Edgar nominee and Shamus winner Winslow, who first evoked the violent world of the Mexican drug cartels in the best-selling narco-thriller Power of the Dog (2005), dispenses short chapters that drive his plot breathlessly forward. He also serves up plenty of savage wit. After Ben dons a Gerald Ford disguise for one of the pair’s heists, he smacks his head against the car door, quipping, “I’m a method hijacker.” Riddled with bullets and splattered with blood, Savages is not for the squeamish, but it’s a must for Winslow fans

Box office top 10 of the week

The animated film Rio topped the box office this weekend ranking in 26.8 million dollars at the gates making it gain a total of 81.3 million dollars thus far. Here is the rest of the cut...

Madea's Big Happy Family- 25.8M
Water For Elephants- 17.5M
Hop- 12.5M
Scream 4- 7.15M
African Cats- 6.4M
Soul Surfer- 5.6M
Insidious- 5.38M
Hanna- 5.28M
Source Code- 5.06M

Short Water For Elephants review

Thought I'd just shae a little retort I made on my site about Water For Elephants. Must admit ( like most of the time ) it didn't live up to the book ( but I did like Rosie ! )...

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Short Water For Elephants review

I didn't dislike the film, but it didn't live up to the book by far. I really liked the novel. I connected with it. There were many scenes that felt disjointed and didn't flow in the movie version. And I felt they could have did more with the elder Jacob played by Hal Holbrook too. I will admit the production values on the film were top notch, especially production design and cinemastography by Jack Fisk and Rodrigo Prieto respectively.

I didn't like the idea of combining a few charatcers from the book into one in the movie. I don't see the need for that. It weakens the original story, because some of those other character's were interesting as their own entity.

I thought the acting was decent to good. I never thought I would say this, but I think Robert Pattinson performed more convincingly than his Oscar winning co-stars Reece Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz. I thought Reece did a good job, just nothing to brag about. And even though I really admire the talents of Waltz, a few times I had a flashback that he was doing his Oscar winning charatcer in Inglourious Bastards, Hans Landa. I sincerely hope that he doesn't get type cast as that kind of character, because I felt the same way that he sort of channeled Landa in The Green Hornet as well. He's a better actor than just playing the villian over and over.

Overall...I didn't hate the flick, but it didn't live up to the book in my opinion, which happens more times than not with adaptations. I give it a C+.

More on Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud...

There has been more casting added to director Stephen Daldry's ( The Reader, The Hours ) new film, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, an adaptation from the 2005 Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. Eric Roth of Forrest Gump and Benjamin Button fame ( just to name a couple ) adapted the script. The film is seeking a 2012 release date.

The story has a main narrator by a nine year old child, Oskar Schell, an intellectually curious and sensitive child of Manhattan progressives. He is vegan, musical (he plays the tambourine), a pacifist, academically inclined, and above all, earnest. Two additional narrators, Oskar's paternal grandparents, tell the story of their childhood, courtship, marriage, and separation before the birth of Oskar's father; much of their story is presented as a series of letters addressed to Oskar or his father.

Tom Hanks ( pictured ) and Sandra Bullock have been casted first for more than 6 months, though the casting got even a little more impressive with long time veteran Max Von Sydow joining the cast, plus other acting luminaries such as James Gandolfini, John Goodman, Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright. The part of young Oscar will be portrayed by Thomas Horn.

Melancholia trailer

If you haven't come across it yet, here's the trailer from the latest film by controversial director Lars Von Trier, Melancholia.

The premise of the film begins with the destruction of Earth and then jumps back in time. The story will be about two sisters, Justine and Claire (Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg), who are becoming increasingly more distant from each other. There will be a wedding during the first part of the film between Justine and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård). Soon after the wedding Justine becomes melancholic, which makes her stay calm when Earth is threatened by a collision with another planet that has recently emerged from behind the sun, while Claire, on the other hand, becomes fearful of what is to come. Trier has said that he considers all of his previous films to end happily, and that this will be the first with an unhappy ending.

The film will see a May 26 release and also stars Stellen Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland and Brady Corbet.

R.I.P. to the great Sidney Lumet

A little late on this news... but given props out to one of the best directors in the last 50 years. Sidney Lumet directed into his 80's. He died from lymphoma on April 9th. Here's a quick list of some of the great films his directed and got 18 Oscar nominations for the actors in his films....

1957- 12 Angry Men
1962- Long Days Journey Into Night
1964- The Pawnbroker
1969- The Appointment
1971- The Anderson Tapes
1973- Serpico
1974- Murder On The Orient Express
1975- Dog Day Afternoon
1976- Network
1981- Prince Of The City
1982- The Verdict
1986- The Morning After
1988- Running On Empty
1989- Family Business
1990- Q & A
1999- Gloria
2007- Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

Cannes screenings announced for this year

Here's the list of what looks like to be some interesting films/filmmakers that look to have some strong potential. This Must Be The Place with Sean Penn and Terrence Malick's long over due The Tree Of Life come to attention first and foremost.


Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen
In Competition:

The Skin That I Inhabit – Pedro Almodovar
L’Apollonide – Betrand Bonello
Foot Note – Joseph Cedar
Paterre – Alain Cavalier
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia – Nuri Bilge Ceylan
The Kid With The Bike – The Dardenne Brothers
Le Havre – Aki Kaurismaki
Hanezu no Tsuki – Naomi Kawase
Sleeping Beauty – Julia Leigh
Tree of LIfe – Terrence Malick
La Source de Femmes – Radu Mihaileanu
Polisse – Maïwenn Le Besco
Harakiri – Takashi Miike
We Have A Pope – Nanni Moretti
Melancholia – Lars von Trier
Michael – Markus Schleinzer
This Must Be The Place – Paolo Sorrentino
Drive – Nicholas Winding Refn
We Need To Talk About Kevin – Lynne Ramsay

Un Certain Regard:

Restless – Gus Van Sant
Martha Marcy May Marlene – Sean Durkin
The Hunter – Bazur Bakuradze
Halt auf freier Strecke – Andreas Dresen
Skoonheid – Oliver Hermanus
Hors Satan – Bruno Dumont
Les Neiges du Kilimandjaro – Robert Guédiguian
The Days He Arrives – Hong Sang-Soo
Bonsai – Christian Jimenez
Tatsumi – Erik Khoo
En maintenant, on va ou? – Nadine Labaki
Ariang – Kim Ki Duk
Loverboy- Cătălin Mitulescu,
Toomelah – Ivan Sen
Yellow Sea – Na Hong-Jin,
Miss Bala – Gerardo Naranjo,
L’exercice de l’Etat – Pierre Schoeller,
Oslo, August 31st Joachim Trier
Travailler fatigue – Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra
Out of Competition:

The Beaver – Jodie Foster
The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – Rob Marshall
La Conquete – Xavier Durringer
Kung Fu Panda 2: The Kaboom Of Doom – Jennifer Yuh
Special Screenings:

Labrador – Frederikke Aspock
Le maître des forges de l’enfer – Rithy Panh
Un documentaire sur Michel Petrucciani – Michael Radford
Tous au Larzac – Christian Rouaud
Midnight Screenings

Wu Xia – Peter Chan Ho-sun
Dias de gracia – Everardo Gout

Catherine Zeta-Jones joins Rock Of Ages

Zeta-Jones has been added to the already impressive cast of the popular Broadway musical, the New Line production, which is scheduled to begin shooting May 19 in Miami, is also set to star newcomer Diego Gonzalez Boneta along with Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Mary J. Blige, Paul Giamatti and Julianne Hough. We all know she has already proven her singing ability from winning the best supporting actress Oscar for her turn in the musical Chicago.
Ages tells the story, replete with hair-band music, of a small-town girl (Hough) who comes to Hollywood for the 1980s music scene and is nearly destroyed by it. Although she falls for a budding musician named Drew (Boneta), she also catches the eye of Stacee Jaxx (Cruise), an arrogant rocker at the height of his career, ends up as a stripper in a club run by Blige but also finds true love at the end.

Director Gus Van Sant's Restless to hit Cannes

Renowned indie director Gus Van Sant (Milk, Good Will Hunting ) will be premiering his film next month at the Cannes film festival on May 12. The film stars Henry Hopper ( the late Dennis Hopper's son ) and Mia Wasikowska.

The story of a terminally ill teenage girl ( Wasikowska ) who falls for a boy ( Hopper ) who likes to attend funerals and their encounters with the ghost of a Japanese kamikaze pilot from WWII.

The film will go wide nationally in September. I'm looking forward to seeing it. It's a original and quirky premise and it's nice to see independent film still getting it's shot compared to all the remakes and reboots flooding Hollywood studios. Van Sant shot the film in Portland, Oregon on a modest 8 million dollar budget.

X-Men First Class trailer

June 3



Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, January Jones, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, Oliver Platt and Jason Flemyng.

The film is a prequel to the first three movies,[ set during the early 1960s, with John F. Kennedy as president of the United States. X-Men: First Class parallels the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Civil Rights Movement. The villains of the film will be the Hellfire Club. The plot is as follows:

"Before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Before they were archenemies, they were closest of friends, working together, with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to stop the greatest threat the world has ever known. In the process, a rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto's Brotherhood and Professor X's X-Men."

Happy birthday to Jessica Lange

6 time Academy award and one time winning actress Jessica Lange turns 62 today. She can next be seen in the western The Big Valley sometime later this year.

Water For Elephants preview/synopsis

April 22

Directed by Francis Lawrence ( I am Legend ) starring Robert Pattinson, Reece Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz, Hal Holbrook and Paul Schneider. Written by Oscar nominee Richard LaGravensese ( The Fisher King ) cinematography by Oscar nominee Rodrigo Prieto ( Brokeback Mountain ) editing by Alan Edward Bell ( 500 Days Of Summer ) original music by multiple Oscar nominee James Newton Howard ( The Dark Knight, Defiance )

Premise: Film adaptation based off the book by Sarah Gruen that was on the New York Times best seller list for 12 weeks... story centers on a young man, Jacob Jankowski (Pattinson) was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the Great Depression, and for Jacob (Holbrook), now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie.

It was there that he met Marlena, (Witherspoon) the beautiful equestrian star married to August (Waltz), the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant and the only hope for this third-rate traveling show.

Rated PG-13 for moments of intense violence and some sexual content. 122 min.

Crazy, Stupid, Love trailer

June 29, 2011

Directed by Glen Ficarra and John Requea ( I Love You Philip Morris ) starring Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei and John Carroll Lynch.

Mr. Popper's trailer

June 17, 2011

Directed by Mark Waters ( Mean Girls, The Spiderwick Chronicles ) Starring Jim Carrey, Carla Gugino, Angela Lansbury, Philip Baker Hall, Dominic Chianese.

Premise: Jim Carrey is Mr. Popper, a driven businessman who is clueless when it comes to the important things in life—until he inherits six penguins. Popper's penguins turn his swank New York apartment into a snowy winter wonderland—and the rest of his life upside-down. Filmed on a refrigerated soundstage with real Gentoo Penguins, "Mr. Popper's Penguins" is a contemporary adaptation of the classic book by Richard Atwater.

Up to date latest approval ratings for new movies

Here is the consensus of the latest overall critical approval ratings for the most recent films as of late. More to come soon...

Rango- 89%, Source Code- 89%, The Lincoln Lawyer- 83%, Hanna- 80%, The Adjustment Bureau- 72%, Paul- 71%, Limitless- 69%.

Hanna preview/synopsis

April 8, 2011

Directed by Joe Wright ( Atonement, The Soloist ) starring Saorise Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng. Written by Scott Lochhead and David Farr, cinematography by Alvin H. Kulcher ( Solitary Man, Proof ) Editing by BAFTA nominee Paul Tothill ( Atonement, Perfect Strangers ) and original music by The Chemical Brothers.


Premise: This action/adventure filnm is about title character Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) a teenage girl with the strength, stamina, and smarts of a soldier; these come from being raised by her father (Eric Bana), an ex-CIA agent, in the wilds of Finland. Her upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding several agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative (Cate Blanchett). As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces even more startling revelations about her existence and unexpected questions about her humanity.

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and some sexual material and language.

Oscar chances ? On this one you may never know, though the genre is one of the least likely to get awards attention. Interesting to see Ronan growing up in front of our eyes. I think she's is going to be a fine adult actress. She's impressed me in her youth with turns in Atonement and The Lovely Bones. This is definitely something different for her. And I never tire of Cate Blanchett either.

Midnight In Paris trailer

Here's a trailer from yet another romantic comedy set in France written and directed by Woody Allen called Midnight in Paris. It stars Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Adrien Brody, Kathy Bates, Carla Brunbi and Alison Pill. Decent/good cast.

Personally, I haven't really been into the the Woodman's stuff in awhile. The last film I really liked of his was Sweet and Lowdown with Sean Penn and Samantha Morton. But... you do have to see the movie for yourself to make a fair assesment about it. Maybe this one will be different. Thought the trailer really didn't do much for me. But a trailer is a trailer and you can just go by that. The film hits theaters May 20.

Hangover II trailer

I'm sure 80-90% of people who really liked the first film ( which I did as well ) will probably like the sequel. I just have one concern and that's how far they can take the stuff they did in the first film and make it originally funny in the next.
I do feel safe on one prediction for Hangover II though, and that is guarantee that it's going to clean up at the box office and make a ton of cash.