Though a Paramount release, Flight did not take the trajectory of a typical studio concept plucked from an internal idea bin. Screenwriter John Gatins began working on what would become the feature starring Denzel Washington and directed by Robert Zemekis earlier last decade on his own. While still new to Hollywood, Gatins, who first hit the scene as a writer on sports pics including Summer Catch and Hard Ball, sobered up. He took that experience and his fear of flying, to quietly craft the story that would evolve into Flight.
The film, which debuted at the New York Film Festival in the fall and debuted in theaters in early November has cashed in with nearly $91 million at the domestic box office on a relatively modest budget – at least for Hollywood with a big star – of $31 million. On the Awards Circuit the film has won some attention including a Golden Globe nomination for Denzel Washington for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama and he may well be on the road to a nomination for Best Actor next month when the Oscar nominations are revealed. Gatins has also received some attention including Best Original Screenplay by the Broadcast Film Critics Association and a nomination from the Image Awards.
Flight’s plane crash makes for good imagery in a trailer, but it really serves as a set-up for one man’s personal struggle with addiction and denial, which forms the crux of Flight. Washington plays pilot Whip Whitaker, who successfully guides a plane that experiences a mid-air mishap to the ground, saving nearly everyone on board. He’s hailed for his heroism by the media, but what eventually percolates to the surface during the investigation is missing on-board alcohol and…
Full Story »Judd Apatow knows that in casting his real life wife and children in his latest film, the seriocomic Knocked Up spin-off/sequel This Is 40, he’s inadvertently invited the world to peek into his own life, marriage, issues, and neuroses. Still, despite the many parallels one might draw between Paul Rudd’s Pete (now a struggling indie record label owner) and Leslie Mann’s Debbie (whose own small business and marital woes are nothing compared to impending big 4-0), Apatow insists most of This is 40 is fictionalized. Okay, much of it. Well, he doesn’t escape to the bathroom to play games on his iPad like Pete does. “I’m more about reading the Huffington Post,” Apatow joked.
Apatow may have built his comic empire on R-rated man-child tales rife with fart and dick jokes (not to mention sweet, sweet bromance) but with This is 40 the writer-director takes a considered look inward at marriage and relationships. They’re never perfect — even between Hollywood creatives like Apatow and Mann, whose daughters Maude and Iris play heightened versions of themselves in the film — but as Apatow mused in our conversation rife with relationship real talk, personal reflections, and necessary tangents about Maude’s real life LOST obsession and Apatow’s 1995 kids’ camp movie Heavyweights: “Imagine that you had to spend every second of the rest of your life with your best friend. How often do you think they would annoy you?”
Out of all the characters you’ve created onscreen, you spun off Pete and Debbie into their own film — the two characters whose lives are closest to your own. What was the impetus for wanting to explore this particular relationship further?
I have two interests; I’m trying to make funny movies and I also want to…
Writer/director Chad Hartigan scored a coveted spot at the Sundance Film Festival with his sophomore effort This Is Martin Bonner. The festival is just under a month away, but images are trickling in including the debut of this poster for the drama screening in Sundance’s NEXT section.
[Related: Sundance Film Festival Reveals 2013 U.S. & World Competition and NEXT Slate]
NEXT is officially set for films that “stretch limited resources to create impactful art,” according to the festival. Only time will tell how these ten titles will do after they premiere, but some early word has been positive for this year’s crop…
Official This Is Martin Bonner description follows. Who can guess what land mass that is?
The striking sophomore film of writer/director Chad Hartigan, This Is Martin Bonner is a warm and perceptive meditation on friendship, human connection and getting a second chance at life. Fifty-something Martin Bonner (Paul Eenhorn) leaves his old life behind and relocates to Reno, where he finds work helping released prisoners transition to life on the outside, while trying his hand at speed dating and passing time as a soccer referee on weekends. Meanwhile, Travis Holloway (Richmond Arquette) has just been released from prison after serving 12 years. Surprising both of them, Travis and Martin form an unlikely friendship that offers them reciprocal support and understanding. Quietly observational and naturalistic, the film features noteworthy breakthrough performances from Eenhoorn and Arquette who approach their characters with a lived-in sense of low-key restraint.
If you loathe Transformers-Michael Bay but have a soft spot for the Bay who made not one, but two Bad Boyses, then the first trailer for his true crime pic Pain & Gain is going to push all the right buttons: Beefy macho men, fast cars, a slick Miami setting, Mark Wahlberg hitting that Dirk Diggler sweet spot of dumb overconfidence, and everyone’s favorite muscleman, The Rock… it’s enough to make the truly disturbing real life saga of a gang of bodybuilding thugs-turned-killers who bungled their way through unspeakable acts of torture and murder into a feelgood American Dream antihero tale!
Wahlberg stars as real life ringleader Daniel Lugo, a small time Florida dreamer/short shorts enthusiast who tapped his workout buddies to pull the most inept — and, don’t get it twisted, unforgivably violent — extortion attempt in recent history. Things didn’t turn out so well for the Sun Gym gang, and things certainly didn’t shake out in slo-motion hero shots and hilarious sound bite quips for their victims.
The trailer is CSI Miami-slick and stuffed with all the usual Bay signatures that made him the commercially successful bombast-specialist auteur that he is, but I can’t help but wonder if, after making relatable Lugo & Co.’s yearning for more, and glorifying the bromantic shenanigans that unfold as they cook up a scheme to steal money from Monk, Bay will flip the table on his audience and shine a harsher light on the crimes that put these “heroes” on death row in real life. Since this is Michael Freaking Bay we’re talking about here, I have no idea what to expect on the moral ambiguity tip, but best case scenario, this could be his most mature and complex look…
Full Story »Get out your passports, kids, because we’re seeing the world. Director Godfrey Reggio’s epic Qatsi Trilogy, filmed around the world, will kick your home theater to the next level with its stunning visuals and complex soundtracks. Then it’s off to the Caribbean, where Michael Caine embarrassed himself in a Peter Benchley adaptation several years before starring in that really terrible Jaws sequel. Some people never learn.
HIGH: The Qatsi Trilogy (The Criterion Collection; DVD or Blu-Ray, $79.95)
WHO’S RESPONSIBLE: Three films from screen artist and environmental activist Godfrey Reggio: The legendary Koyaanisqatsi (1983), and its equally impressive follow-ups Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). (All three titles are words from the Hopi language; respectively, they mean “life out of balance,” “life in transformation,” and “life as war,” so basically this set is “The Life Trilogy.”)
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT: All three of these films defy easy synopsis, but here goes: Reggio uses compelling imagery and the music of Philip Glass to portray the stark contrast between the natural order and man’s inflicting of industry upon the planet (and upon his fellow men). A slow pan across a desert plain or along the face of a cliff might be contrasted with sped-up footage of cars driving through cities or hot dogs and Twinkies being processed in factories. One of the signature moments of Powaqqatsi shows a small child walking along the road, only to be engulfed in the sand cloud kicked up by a passing 18-wheeler. There’s no narration or dialogue, so what you take from these film is purely up to you.
WHY IT’S SCHMANCY: This sort of non-verbal, non-narrative film generally gets relegated to museums and art installations, so for Reggio to have gotten mainstream theatrical (and DVD) distribution is something of a miracle.…
Full Story »How do you wrangle a movie set packed with Channing Tatum and dozens of his actor friends playing high school classmates catching up, knocking a few back, reuniting with lost loves, reliving teenage hell, and experiencing the awesome-to-mortifying highlights of any class reunion? You “embrace the chaos,” says 10 Years director Jamie Linden (Dear John). “There were 15 28-year-old actors running rampant,” he explains in Movieline’s exclusive clip from the 10 Years DVD/Blu-ray, in stores today. “There wasn’t much of a way to keep control.”
But Linden put the chaos to good use, filtering that ensemble energy into the film, which plays out over the course of one night as Jake (Tatum) comes face to face with the one that got away while his old classmates (Chris Pratt, Justin Long, Kate Mara, Oscar Isaac, Scott Porter, Brian Geraghty, Anthony Mackie, Max Minghella, Aaron Yoo, Lynn Collins, Ari Graynor) deal with their own drama.
If you missed the indie pic in theaters, now’s a good time to catch up. Not only does it feature just about every single rising star of young Hollywood (in addition to the above: Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Aubrey Plaza, Nick Zano, Ron Livingston, and Rosario Dawson), it rounds out the year that marks Tatum’s graduation from heartthrob to legit thespian. Plus, there’s a lot of love between the cast evident onscreen and it features a karaoke after party in a dive bar called Pretzels, which exists in real life, and has 35-cent wing Tuesdays, so let’s all head there now mmkay?
And for you Oscar Isaac fans (so, everyone): He plays guitar and sings. Prepare to swoon.
Check out more behind the scenes clips on the 10 Years DVD/Blu-ray release, out today. …
Full Story »The Sundance Film Festival completed its 2013 roster with 65 short films announced Tuesday. Veteran filmmakers Albert Maysles and Morgan Spurlock are among the filmmakers that will screen their latest in shorts programs or before features at the celebrated event. The list includes titles that will screen in the U.S. and International Narrative, Documentary, Animated and New Frontier short films.
[Related: Sundance's U.S. and World Competition Films & NEXT Lineup]
Sundance received 8,104 shorts submissions, 427 more than 2012 vs 4,044 feature-length submissions.
“The Short Film section of our 2013 Festival is comprised of bold works by adventurous filmmakers who have mastered creative ways to embody their unique perspectives in the short form onscreen,” said Sundance Director of Programming Trevor Groth in a statement. “The selections represent the immensely varied and dynamic approaches to storytelling that will inspire audiences with their huge accomplishments within a limited timeframe.”
[Related: Sundance's 2013 Premieres and Documentary Premieres lineup]
Sundance Film Festival Shorts lineup follows with information provided by the event:
U.S. NARRATIVE SHORT FILMS
The Apocalypse / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Andrew Zuchero) — Four uninspired friends try to come up with a terrific idea for how to spend their Saturday afternoon.
Black Metal / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kat Candler) — After a career spent mining his music from the shadows, one fan creates a chain reaction for the lead singer of a black metal band.
Boneshaker / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Frances Bodomo) — An African family lost in America travels to a Louisiana church to find a cure for its problem child.
Broken Night / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Guillermo Arriaga) — A young woman and her four-year-old daughter drive across desolated hills.…
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Singer and actor Lenny Kravitz is planning to take on playing late performer Marvin Gaye in a feature that has caught the eire of the “Let Love Rule” musician’s former classmate, Marvin Gaye III.
“The producers and directors of this film are very wrong and shameful,” Marvin Gaye III told TMZ. “[They're] trying to do a film about a low period in his life. They don’t even know the whole story.”
Kravitz will play the late singer under the working title, Sexual Healing, which reportedly centers on Gaye’s life in the ’80s, a period in which he battled drug abuse and depression.
Gaye’s father shot and killed him in 1984.
Gaye III said that he and Kravitz are schoolmates and continue to be friends, but said he wants to meet with Kravitz and “talk to him about why he would do this.”
Family members including Gaye III have reached out to lawyers to try and halt production and expressed his hope that Kravitz is pursuing the project without realizing the extent of opposition coming from the Gaye side.
“I would hope [Kravitz] doesn’t have any idea that we are against this film being done,” said Gaye III.
Kravitz, whose credits include Precious and more recently in The Hunger Games is taking on the role of Marvin Gaye for director Julien Temple (London: The Modern Babylon).
[Sources: Huffington Post, TMZ]
Many have tried and failed to reboot Wonder Woman for contemporary audiences (some rather famously – looking at you, David E. Kelley). If The CW succeeds with “Amazon,” their origin series will envision the Amazonian warrior princess as a tough twentysomething fish-out-of-water named… Iris.
According to Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva, a casting breakdown calls for Wonder Woman/Iris (maybe that’s just a code name, let’s hope) who’s at least 5′8″ and looks to be in her twenties; the character “comes from a remote, secluded country and until now has spent most of her life as a soldier and a leader on the battlefield.”
Wonder Woman may be a leggy Amazonian goddess who’s handy in a fight, but her journey is so Beastmaster 2: “Because of relentless brutality of her life at home, Iris looks at our world with absolute awe and astonishment. She’s delighted and just as often horrified by the aspects of everyday life that we take for granted: skyscrapers, traffic, ice cream. It’s all new and fascinating and sometimes slightly troubling to her.”
This Wonder Woman is a tactless heroine with no social skills who’s an overachieving idealist who “can tell when you’re lying to her,” although it’s unclear whether that’s because she has a Lasso of Truth or if that iconic accessory has been metaphorically internalized.
“Iris is completely unschooled in our world, our culture, our customs,” continues the breakdown. “And she’s completely inexperienced at interpersonal relationships. She has no social filter, does not suffer fools, and tends to do and say exactly what’s on her mind at all times. She’s bluntly, refreshingly honest. She can tell when you’re lying to her. And she doesn’t have time or patience for politics or tact because she’s too busy trying to experience everything our world has…
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