Save the Date, the new film from director Michael Mohan (One Too Many Mornings), is a neat, lightweight little hipster romance about commitment issues between people barely ready to confront what they want, much less tell others about it. (I hate to use the h-word, but there’s really no avoiding it when talking about a film in which an artist/bookstore employee breaks up with a guy in a band and starts dating a marine biologist who’s been mooning over her at work.) Written by Mohan alongside Jeffrey Brown and Egan Reich, the film follows two sisters and the men they’re involved with. Sarah (Lizzy Caplan) and Beth (Alison Brie) are dating a pair of guys in an indie group called Wolfbird. The most sensible Beth and drummer Andrew (Martin Starr) are getting married, while responsibility-averse Sarah and lead singer Kevin (Geoffrey Arend) have just moved in together.
It’s a tidy arrangement that’s blown to bits when, in a fit of euphoria during a successful hometown show, Kevin decides to propose to Sarah in front of the crowd despite Andrew’s warning that the timing’s not right. She’s horrified, doesn’t accept, and soon Wolfbird’s off on tour with a broken-hearted frontman while she moves into a new place and tumbles too quickly into a relationship with the sweet Jonathan (Mark Webber), who’s been ordering books for his master’s degree at Sarah’s store just because she works there. Beth expects this to be a rebound relationship that will catapult her flaky sister back into Kevin’s arms, but as time goes on it starts to seem like that has everything to do with what she wants and not what Sarah does.
Save the Date, which belongs to a recent rash of films, from (500) Days of Summer to The…
Full Story »The critics blurbs in this clip say “romantic comedy” — as does the purple sex-toy scene — but the melancholy soundtrack and the sad, pensive looks on Lizzy Caplan and Alison Brie’s faces say bring some Puffs when you see Michael Mohan’s Save the Date.
Caplan is fast becoming the go-to girl for indie comedies that scrutinize the meaning of love, particularly as it relates to the institution of marriage.
This past summer, she was part of the ensemble in Leslye Headland’s wickedly honest Bachelorette, and in Save the Date she plays Sarah, who learns something about herself when she gets caught up in a rebound romance after turning down her boyfriend’s marriage proposal. Brie plays Caplan’s sister Beth who is caught up in the details of her own wedding. Hand me a tissue, please. I’m feeling weepy already. The movie is available on video on demand beginning today and opens theatrically on Dec. 14.
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Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott haven’t hung up their pink bow ties just yet.
Although cult hit Party Down has been off the air for two years, fans of the show split their time between making Party Downton (Party Down + Downton Abbey) memes and petitioning for a film. And while there have been mini-reunions on Children’s Hospital and web series Burning Love, none compare to Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott’s team-up as feuding former couple, Gena and Clyde, in Bachelorette, in limited release now.
Movieline chatted with the reunited pair, discovering that Caplan basically wrote Scott’s character into the film, and what the duo thinks Henry and Casey (their Party Down counterparts) are doing at this very second.
Bachelorette originated as a Leslye Headland’s off-Broadway play, and you had worked with her before, Lizzy. Did you get Adam on board?
LIZZY CAPLAN: [Adam and I] saw the play together because me and Jessica Elbaum, one of the producers of Bachelorette, hired Leslye to write a pilot for us. And so we were all in New York and we went to check it out. And then about a year later, we found out they were doing this movie. Adam’s character is not in the play, but I said he would be opposite me and it would really help me out if my buddy could join me and make me look good on camera. And he said yes!
Did you actually craft the character of Clyde for him, or did you two collaborate?
CAPLAN: No. It was in the feature version always, but I think everybody was allowed to bring their own flavor to it.
It felt like you two were the heart of the movie. Do you think your history made it…
Full Story »I slid into a booth at the Four Seasons recently to chat with Rebel Wilson, the comedienne and rising scene-stealer of this week’s Bachelorette and the upcoming toe-tapper Pitch Perfect, smitten with her work in Bridesmaids, in which she turned a brief turn as Kristen Wiig’s terrible British roommate into one of the more indelible comic Hollywood debuts in recent memory. Over the course of our conversation about everything — her dog show past, her law degree, gangsta rap, reality TV, her Bring It On obsession, WWII-era international relations, and why she considered The Grove her “happy place” when she moved from her native Australia to L.A. two years ago — I realized that Rebel Wilson is, indeed, the most interesting woman in Hollywood.
She’s so naturally funny she gets laughs even when playing the straight woman, as she does in Leslye Headland’s R-rated Bachelorette (in limited release today) opposite the bad-girl trifecta of Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, and Isla Fisher. In a wicked reversal of fortune it’s Wilson’s former freak/chubby bride-to-be Becky who’s eclipsed her cooler and prettier friends in life — and, even as they inadvertently threaten to ruin her wedding, Becky’s naive loyalty underscores the point: Mean girls finish last.
Wilson’s knack for memorable characters, honed by years in Australian TV and a stranger-than-fiction upbringing (“I try to do it take the tragic things in my life and make them into comedy”) led her to October’s college a capella comedy Pitch Perfect, in which she plays as a confident Aussie student who calls herself “Fat Amy.” “In the script the character is called ‘Fat Amy,’ so it’s really hard to send it to actresses,” joked producer Elizabeth Banks. “Rebel recognized what an iconic character Fat…
Full Story »Scarlett Johansson might have some competition from Lizzy Caplan in the Avengers world.
Although the short film Item 47, which stars Caplan, hasn’t officially debuted yet — it’s one of the many Avengers Blu-ray extras, due out September 25 — the actress had fun riffing on the possibilities if her appearance in the one-shot S.H.I.E.L.D adventure led to her suiting up as a Marvel superheroine.
“Well, I can definitely foresee Marvel not only asking me to be the star of one of their action movies from that short, but also [asking me] to cast the other people in the movie,” Caplan coyly replied during an interview for her latest picture, Bachelorette. “So I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I think we would be…” she trailed off before turning to Bachelorette (and former Party Down) co-star, Adam Scott, for assistance.
“I need to think of some Marvel character…” she whispered with a laugh, before adding enthusiastically, “Adam would be the She-Hulk, and I would just be a regular person!”
Her response suggests that in any future Marvel projects she would just be playing her Item 47 character, Claire, a human who (with Jesse Bradford) comes across an extraterrestrial weapon and goes on a crime spree — only battling a superhero instead of holding up banks. However, given her natural quick wit and the image of her toting a Chitauri gun in Item 47 we could envision her fitting right in with Iron Man & Co.
Think about it — how fantastic would it be to see Caplan and Robert Downey Jr. play off of each other? Since Caplan is already (literally) in the door at S.H.I.E.L.D., they could have her suited up and smashing box offices across the country in no…
Full Story »Bachelorette had my attention from the moment I saw that Lizzy Caplan is in it, but wait until you see the Red Band trailer. Caplan plays Gena, a secret romantic with a memorably filthy mouth — isn’t that always the case — who joins her longtime friends and fellow bridesmaids Katie (Isla Fisher), and Regan (Kirsten Dunst) for a wild night out in Manhattan after their bride-to-be bestie insists on a tame bachelorette party.
Adam McKay and Will Ferrell are producing the picture, which writer-director Leslye Headland adapted from her own play of the same name. Headland used to be movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s assistant, an experience which inspired her to write another critically acclaimed play called Assistance.
Fetching Diet Cokes for Weinstein has paid off in at least one more way: Weinstein’s Radius-TWC is releasing Bachelorette on video-on-demand on Aug. 10 and theatrically on Sept. 7.
Watch it on YouTube.
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Bachelorette had my attention from the moment I saw that Lizzy Caplan is in it, but wait until you see the Red Band trailer. Caplan plays Gena, a secret romantic with a memorably filthy mouth — isn’t that always the case — who joins her longtime friends and fellow bridesmaids Katie (Isla Fisher), and Regan (Kirsten Dunst) for a wild night out in Manhattan after their bride-to-be bestie insists on a tame bachelorette party.
Adam McKay and Will Ferrell are producing the picture, which writer-director Leslye Headland adapted from her own play of the same name. Hedlund used to be movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s assistant, an experience which inspired her to write another critically acclaimed play called Assistance.
Fetching Diet Cokes for Weinstein has paid off in at least one more way: Weinstein’s Radius-TWC is releasing Bachelorette on video-on-demand on Aug. 10 and theatrically on Sept. 7.
Watch it on YouTube.
Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter.
Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Starring in a short film that’s paired with a blockbuster movie seems sort of like being a pinch-hitter who sat on the bench but got invited to take a victory lap with the starting team; the glory is automatic, but it would have been great to be able to play in the big game. But for Marvel movies, short films are more like audition tapes, and Item 47, which accompanies the September 25 Blu-ray release of The Avengers, introduces two characters – played by Lizzy Caplan and Jesse Bradford – who may soon find themselves joining in on the superhero action, if they prove as appealing to audiences as their ingenuity does to S.H.I.E.L.D.
In the short, directed by Marvel co-president Louis D’Esposito, Claire (Caplan) and Benny (Bradford) find a Chitauri weapon and use it to rob banks following the events of The Avengers. Following a fan screening of Item 47 at Comic-con Friday night, Movieline sat down with Caplan and Bradford for a fun conversation about their past, present and (hopefully) future experiences with superhero movies.
Had either of you gone out for superhero parts in the past? The industry keeps making those movies in greater numbers.
Caplan: Yes, they do.
Bradford: Yes, I’d read for a couple, but just because I think this is funny, I read for Captain America. I was literally looking at the material, going, “What are they, crazy? I’m not right for this.” I got nothing to lose by going in there, but I know I’m not going to get it. And I’m walking in there going, “They should just give this job to Chris Evans – he’s perfect for this!” He’s my buddy, and as I was auditioning, I was picturing Chris Evans saying…
Full Story »The marketing noise at Comic-Con is always such a cacophony, it can be tough-to-impossible to get tiny movies noticed in the chaos unless they’ve got attention-grabbing hooks. Like, say, finding a thumb drive inside a condom that just happens to contain the first-look teaser at Ron Perlman as a transsexual named Phyllis greeting his Sons of Anarchy son Charlie Hunnam (both in town for this weekend’s Pacific Rim and SoA panels) and Bridemaids‘ Chris O’Dowd with a big, fat kiss. Movieline’s got your first look at the indie comedy Frankie Go Boom!
Hunnam stars as Frankie, O’Dowd as his terrible brother Bruce, and Perlman as Bruce’s terrifying old ex-con acquaintance Phil, now a terrifying ex-con lady named Phyllis. Lizzy Caplan earned raves for her turn as Lassie, whose one-night stand with Frankie leads to complications… involving a sex tape… and, well, I’ll let the film’s synopsis do the explaining:
3,2,1 … Frankie go Boom follows Frank Bartlett (Charlie Hunnam) who has been tortured, embarrassed and humiliated by his brother Bruce (Chris O’Dowd) – usually on film – for his entire life. Now that Bruce is finally off drugs and has turned his life around, things should be different. They are not. 3,2,1 … Frankie go Boom is a comedy about two brothers a girl with a broken heart, a sex tape, an angel and a pig.
Since Movieline was the first to debut Frankie Go Boom’s poster featuring Perlman as “Phyllis,” it’s fitting that we bring you this glimpse of his post-op vamping. Let Perlman’s “HER, MOTHAF***A!” terrify you into addressing the trans community with cowering respect. (Fun fact: I’m told it was Hunnam who suggested his Sons of Anarchy father figure play…
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