You are browsing the archive for September 2011.
Every month at Movieline, we collect the best interviews, smartest features, and most compelling reviews we’ve produced, and curate them in one easy-to-use table of contents called the Virtual Newsstand, which pays tribute to our print magazine history. Here’s the Virtual Newsstand for September 2011.
ENTERTAINMENT AS A WAY OF LIFE
MOVIELINE
September 2011
INTERVIEWS
Friends For Life
Seth Rogen and Will Reiser on 50/50 and why sometimes life needs a rewrite
Taylor Power
Taylor Lautner breaks down love scenes, stunts and the rest of his living dangerously in Abduction
Byrne Notice
One good Bridesmaids turn deserves another for Movieline favorite Rose Byrne
Dream Weaver
Sigourney Weaver talks Abduction, Ghostbusters 3 and the joys and pleasures of studying Twilight
‘Real Life is Kind of Hard For Me’
A candid Nick Nolte opens up about falling off the wagon for Warrior
Huston Electric
Dynastic dynamo Anjelica Huston on 50/50, discovering her grandfather’s films, and Oprah’s Oscar grudge
File Under Gus
Gus Van Sant on Restless, test-screening nightmares and why he really did want to direct Breaking Dawn
Heart to Hartnett
Where’s Josh Hartnett been lately? Let’s start with Bunraku
Ask an Adult-Film Superstar
Joanna Angel guest reviews the porn comedy Bucky Larson with our own intrepid Julie Miller
Having a Moneyball
What was director Bennett Miller’s secret for turning around the troubled baseball flick? Keep it personal
Dear John
Director John Singleton isn’t messing around with his franchise-hopeful Abduction
The Y Factor
Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski makes a break for movie stardom in Killer Elite
Tyrese Time
His 2011 films combined to gross a total of $1.7 billion worldwide. But wait until you hear his…
Looks like Quentin Tarantino’s reaching into his own well to fill the shoes of his Django Unchained baddie. The Wrap reports that none other than Kurt Russell, who played Tarantino’s Death Proof villain Stuntman Mike, is negotiating to replace Kevin Costner as Ace Woody, a plantation henchman who works for Leonardo DiCaprio’s big bad. Battling against Kurt ‘n’ Leo will be Jamie Foxx as the titular slave-turned-bounty hunter and his German mentor Christoph Waltz (who recently injured himself training on horseback for the role). This Django’s turning into quite the QT party! [The Wrap]
According to Variety, Christopher Nolan tops the shortlist to helm Warner Bros.’ Twilight Zone reboot, but he’s not alone on the list of potential candidates; Michael Bay, Alfonso Cuaron, and Rupert Wyatt are also in the mix to direct the big-budget, single-story version based on Rod Serling’s original sci-fi television series. Nolan may have an in with producer Leonardo DiCaprio and the studio that released his last five films, not to mention the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. But should he get the gig?
It might all be much simpler if each director was given a portion of the film to shoot, a la 1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie, which split duties between John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller. Then again, probably not; could you see Nolan, Bay, Cuaron, and Wyatt sharing the same bill, let alone working together to create a balanced omnibus film?
Meanwhile, there’s the question of each director’s upcoming schedule. Nolan and Bay already have other projects on deck, and it’d certainly be refreshing to see Bay go the small-scale route with his Pain & Gain crime pic than take on another huge franchise. Wyatt earned a bump with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which earned critical acclaim, but would he just go straight into prepping its inevitable sequel?
Which leaves Cuaron. He’s certainly got the sci-fi/fantasy chops, with Children of Men, Harry Potter, and the upcoming Gravity under his belt. But is he the right guy for The Twilight Zone?
Chime in below.
• Nolan, others may be slipping into ‘THE TWILIGHT ZONE’ [Variety’s Showblitz]
Did you guys realize that Mark Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale were starring in a little heist movie called Contraband? Me neither, but that’s probably because Universal has quietly scheduled the film, from Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, for a quiet box office death release next January. But we’re going to need something to watch during that winter wasteland month so let’s take a look and see if super-angry Mark Wahlberg, his abs, and and Kate Beckinsale undressing for the camera can’t motivate us to buy tickets.
It kind of looks like a poor man’s Ocean’s Eleven, right? Instead of Brad Pitt and George Clooney casing casinos for hundreds of millions of dollars via ingenius scams involving expensive copycat vaults, world class pick pockets and tiny Chinese gymnasts who can navigate security laser beams, Mark Wahlberg points a gun at someone’s head and then duct tapes fat stacks of cash to his abdomen. Problem. Solved. The problem being that his brother-in-law got him into some trouble and now he owes Giovanni Ribisi’s character (who can place that accent?) a lot of money that he doesn’t have. Looks like it’s time to return to his criminal ways!
Look for Contraband, which also co-stars J.K. Simmons, Diego Luna and Giovanni Ribisi, in theaters January 13.
[Yahoo!]
I’m not a huge supporter of remaking great foreign films; the trend runs from enticing (Fincher’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) to unnecessary (Let Me In). But because it’s inevitable that Hollywood will keep borrowing ideas from the outside world — and since the aptly named Fantastic Fest played host to so many of them over the past week — here are five international offerings I could see studios attempting to re-envision. Let’s just hope they don’t muck it up.
Sleepless Night (Nuit Blanche)
One of many Toronto hits that made it down to Austin (The Raid was a Fantastic Fest hopeful that couldn’t be secured to screen after all), Frederic Jardin’s taut French thriller is simple, but effective: A dirty cop (Tomer Sisley) navigates a sprawling, serpentine nightclub searching for his kidnapped son, who is being held ransom in exchange for a duffel bag full of stolen cocaine, while evading gangsters and internal affairs agents. Tight action, brutal fight choreography, Taken-esque paternal stakes, and a claustrophobic mastery of the single location set-up make for a thrillingly executed adrenaline ride that makes the most of its relatively simple premise; Warner Bros. is already planning an English-language remake.
Who should remake it: Bradley Cooper, since he’s Sisley’s American doppelganger.
Clown: The Movie (Klovn)
Curb Your Enthusiasm meets Danish comedy in this feature-length film installment of the Danish sitcom Klovn, in which semi-bumbling comedian Frank (Frank Hvam) joins his friend Casper (Casper Christiansen) on an annual canoe trip away from their significant others. Casper’s meant their adventure…
In olden times — as far back as 1993, even — I’d sometimes see screenwriters quoted in defense of their craft, asserting that the script is always the backbone of a good movie. I don’t see screenwriters saying that so much anymore, perhaps because they’re so used to seeing their efforts mucked with that they don’t even expect whatever good work they’ve done to shine through. Still, it’s painful to watch a movie like Dream House — well-acted, beautifully shot and directed with extraordinary care and attention to craft — only to realize that the story, the alleged backbone, is absurd.
I don’t even blame the screenwriter, David Loucka (whose previous credits include the 1989 The Dream Team), for Dream House’s big problems. Somewhere along the way, this project took — or was forced to take — a wrong turn and couldn’t find its way back. Today, there are so many movies churning through theaters week after week. Some are good, some are lousy, and many are just middling — it’s easy to forget last week’s pictures when the new ones sweep in the following Friday. But there’s something very fishy about how almost-great Dream House is. This movie is a house with its own back story, and it’s not telling.
And still, director Jim Sheridan and his actors make you believe in it. In Dream House, Daniel Craig plays Will, a high-level big-city editor who leaves his job to spend more time with his family and help renovating the small-town fixer-upper he’s recently bought. When he…
Another still from Simon Curtis’s drama My Week with Marilyn has surfaced, this time showing Michelle Williams swimming as the iconic bombshell. Click through to see the latest, semi-scandalous photo and hang around for more Buzz Break.
[via CinemaBlend via DailyMail]
· Steve Carell will go very dark for his next project Foxcatcher, which will be directed by Moneyball’s Bennett Miller. Carell will star as paranoid schizophrenic John du Pont — the heir to the du Pont dynasty who was convicted of murdering Olympic wrestler David Schultz. Miller’s breakout feature Capote won Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar. Moneyball is earning Brad Pitt early Oscar buzz. Do you think Foxcatcher will be Carell’s shot at an Academy Award? Discuss! [EW]
· If you’ve considered collaborating with Seth Rogen, consider this first: “I either get people started smoking weed or I put them out of business smoking weed,” the 50/50 star said in an interview recently. “I’m either your first or last.” [MTV]
· Here’s your first look at Malin Akerman and Tyler Labine in the dark comedy Cottage Country. [indieWire]
· If you don’t have plans tonight or Saturday, consider seeing Bad Teacher on Sony’s dime. [Sony]
The Hangover Part II may have been wildly popular everywhere else in the world — in part thanks to the sexually-suggestive shenanigans its heroes get involved in, transvestite genitals and all — but there’s one place where those hijinks don’t fly: Utah. Good old morally-stringent Utah, where one theater was fined $1,627 for screening the R-rated blockbuster comedy on account of its “attire and conduct violations.” (That’s $400 more than what a local restaurant was fined for serving alcohol to a minor, by comparison.)
The Brewvies Cinema Pub is a Salt Lake City theater that serves beer in movie screenings, which is how they got popped; under the jurisdiction of Utah’s strict liquor laws, the pub is subject to Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control rules against mixing alcohol with “certain sex acts and full frontal nudity.” And boy, does The Hangover Part II have plenty of both.
From the Salt Lake Tribune:
The Utah Highway Patrol’s liquor enforcement team conducted the sting against Brewvies in June at the request of the liquor-control department, said UHP spokesman Dwayne Baird. The liquor department’s request was based on a complaint by a strip club that it had been cited for sexually explicit violations while Brewvies was getting away with showing equally explicit films.
Thanks a lot, strip club guys!
[Salt Lake Tribune via CinemaBlend]
