In 2000, The Wonderful World of Disney aired a doll movie that was more terrifying than Talking Tina and Child’s Play combined and that doll movie was called Life-Size. In Life-Size, a young faced Lindsay Lohan plays a girl who uses magic to try to bring her mother back from the dead, but ends up giving life to the plastic doll her dad’s new piece gave her. It was Mannequin for little girls and gay boys, and it was the greatest thing both Tyra Banks and Lindsay Lohan have ever done.
Ty Ty knows Life-Size is the best thing she’s contributed to the world, because she’s coming back for more. Entertainment Weekly says that Ty Ty will executive produce and star in a sequel for the Disney Channel.
No word yet if Life-Size 2 will star Elizabeth Taylor’s #1 enemy Lindsay Lohan, but it better. How can you do a sequel to Life-Size without LiLo? My guess is that LiLo’s character grew up to become a major mess and was reunited with her Eve doll after breaking into her dad’s storage unit to look for stuff to sell for drug money. Then LiLo’s character realizes that the Eve doll was discontinued years ago and is probably worth a lot. So she trades her Eve doll in for a bump. What I’m saying is that I really hope Life-Size 2 takes place in a crack house.
And it better have a full-length version of this masterpiece in it:
While the makers of the forthcoming live-action Captain Planet movie piece together the remnants of your childhood, the folks at Funny or Die are owning the Planeteer game with yet another video featuring Don Cheadle as the terrifying enviro-hero gone mad with green power.
Since we last saw him shooting magical nature lasers out of his junk, Captain Planet has turned all of the Planeteers into trees save for poor Ma-Ti (Efren Ramirez), who now lives a life of indentured servitude to the Captain as the blue-skinned superbeing continues his quest to replace the humans of Earth with plants and bunny rabbits.
At this rate when the actual official Captain Planet movie comes along I’ll never be able to take it seriously. How many internet views do we need to make Cartoon Network and the guys who made Transformers cast Cheadle and go full Planet Terror?
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Given the off-the-charts camp factor in the tantalizing prospect of Lindsay Lohan playing Elizabeth Taylor, Lifetime might prize descriptions of Liz & Dick as “trashy” or “awful.” So the network might harbor mixed emotions in reading that the movie about Taylor and her tumultuous romance with Richard Burton is actually pretty good, all things considered, despite an inevitably episodic nature and one glaringly unnecessary device. Such fact-based TV movies are rare these days, but this post-Thanksgiving telecast is just hammy enough to generate numbers rivaling the hordes of paparazzi that dogged the not-always-happy couple.
The movie’s secret weapon, it turns out, isn’t Lohan at all, but rather New Zealander Grant Bowler (barely recognizable from a small part on True Blood) as the dashing, often-drunken Burton, who classes up the movie in much the way Burton’s classically trained Shakespearean actor played off Taylor’s lifelong movie star.
Directed by Lloyd Kramer from a script by Christopher Monger, the narrative is framed, somewhat unfortunately, by having the two speak directly to the camera against a stark black backdrop, in what approximates a kind of posthumous interview about their relationship. While it offers another means of getting inside their heads, it has a certain beyond-the-grave quality — exalting their epic love, yes, but feeling too much like something from one of the Mitch Albom movies Kramer helmed.
“I fell for you the moment I saw you,” Burton tells her (and Bowler has the rich Welsh baritone down pat), one of several lines of dialogue — including “My heart is broken, and you have the smashed pieces” — seemingly calibrated to appeal both to those willing to embrace the romance and those eager to approach the movie like a screwball comedy.…
Full Story »If you thought Japanese animation was all horny teens and laser guns and rocketships, prepare to have your mind blown by a tragic tale of wartime and lost youth (Grave of the Fireflies). And if you thought French star Alain Delon was known only for his work for art-house directors like Luchino Visconti and Jean-Pierre Melville (and for appearing on the cover of The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead album), get ready to watch him buckle his swash (Zorro).
HIGH: Grave of the Fireflies (Section 23; $19.98 DVD, $29.98 DVD)
WHO’S RESPONSIBLE: Written and directed by Isao Takahata, based on the novel by Akiyuki Nosaka.
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT: Teenage Seita and his young sister Setsuko are on their own after their mother dies in the firebombing of Tokyo in the waning days of World War II. There’s never a good time for children to be separated from their loving parents, but there are few junctures of history worse than being in Japan in the final months of that bloody conflict. The two do what they can to survive, but hopelessness is hard to overcome.
WHY IT’S SCHMANCY: My friends in the cartoon biz love to say “Animation is not a genre,” so even though this is an animated movie, and one about kids no less, Grave of the Fireflies is an intensely moving (and often disturbing) film that’s definitely not for the youngest of viewers. Director Takahata doesn’t have the PR in the Western world of his Studio Ghibli partner Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro), but he’s made two movies (this one and Pom Poko) that leave me a sobbing wreck every time. Fireflies deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with other antiwar classics like Forbidden Games and Spirit of the…
Full Story »Bradley Cooper says it wasn’t a stretch to call Robert De Niro “Dad” in Silver Linings Playbook. The Hangover actor plays Pat Solitano, the bipolar son of De Niro’s extremely OCD Pat Solitano, Sr. in the film, and at the New York premiere party, Cooper told us that his prior working relationship with De Niro on Limitless, which blossomed into a friendship, made it easy to channel that familial bond with the Taxi Driver actor.
At a press conference for the movie earlier that day, Cooper, who lost his actual father in 2011, told the gathered media that he had trepidations about playing the role of a Philadelphia area man struggling with bipolar disorder. “He really did champion me” to get the part, Cooper said of De Niro, adding that he decided to take the role, in part, because, “I knew that I could say ‘Dad’ and look at him and it would come from a real place.”
During the party at the Royalton hotel in midtown Manhattan, I asked Cooper to elaborate upon that comment, and he replied that because of his work with De Niro on their last movie, ”We sort of became great friends,” adding: “I love him.” That relationship, he explained, became “a real bonus” when it came to the onscreen dynamic of the two actors in Silver Linings Playbook. With any movie role, Cooper explained, “You need certain anchors, and when I would say say the word ‘Dad’ to him, it just felt very deep and grounded.”
In the David O. Russell-directed movie, De Niro gives his most authentic performance as a father since he directed himself in the 1993 picture A Bronx Tale. He even weeps in the movie — an…
Full Story »After a five-year absence from the movie business, comic Chris Tucker makes his return to the big screen this weekend in a quasi-dramatic role in David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook. But he’s not leaving comedy behind. At the New York premiere party for the film on Monday night, Tucker told me that he’s producing a film of his stand-up act.
At the party, which took place in the lobby of the Royalton hotel and its restaurant Forty Four and drew Silver Linings cast members Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, Jacki Weaver, Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Stiles and Russell, Tucker told me that one of the reasons he hasn’t been in a movie for so long is that “I wanted to go back and do stand-up.” When I asked if a TV special would result, he explained that he’d just shot a “stand-up movie” over the weekend in Atlanta, Ga. ”We don’t have a name for it yet, but it’s a movie like Eddie Murphy’s Raw and Delirious,” he said. The Rush Hour 3 actor said that he was producing the picture himself and that it’s “coming out early next year.”
In Silver Linings Playbook, Tucker plays Danny, a friend of Bradley Cooper’s character, and a former mental institution patient.
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Now under the guiding force of Disney, Star Wars‘ next director is becoming a source of intrigue. Last week one major rumored contender – Steven Spielberg – said he is a no-go and now two other front-running prospects have weighed in with their interest. The studio, which recently nabbed Star Wars creator George Lucas‘ Lucas Films recently for $4.05 billion and tapped Arndt to lead the way on Star Wars: Episode VII, which is set for 2015.
Spielberg, JJ Abrams and Brad Bird were reportedly sent extended treatments written for all three planned Star Wars installments. He is in talks to write Star Wars: Episode VII, which will go into production in time for its 2015 target release.
But the initial batch of front-running possible directors seem to be whittling down on their own volition, though the talk-downs may always be more about containing expectations than actual intent. But on the surface, J.J. Abrams appears to be bowing out, while another contender, Jon Favreau, is being less resigned to the prospect of taking on the reboot.
“I frankly feel that – I almost feel that, in a weird way, the opportunity for whomever it is to direct that movie, it comes with the burden of being that kind of iconic movie and series…,” said Abrams to HollywoodLife. “I am looking forward more then anyone to the next iterations of Star Wars, but I believe I will be going as a paying moviegoer!”
Favreau, however, walked the fence, noting that he’s worked on the Skywalker Ranch with Lucas on Clone Wars and Iron Man to great success, adding to HollywoodLife: “I am just giddy, first and foremost as…
Full Story »Is Wreck-It Ralph a video game flick for kids, or the saga of a destructive 30-year-old loner on an existential journey of rediscovery? We put the bigger questions to John C. Reilly, whose smash-happy villain Wreck-It Ralph goes game-jumping through his arcade world in search of his inner hero — crashing a first-person shooter and a candy-colored racing game in the process — in the Disney animated adventure.
There’s a lot for children to enjoy in Wreck-It Ralph, but adults may find even more to grasp onto in Ralph’s story – he’s basically just turned 30, is having an existential crisis, unsure of his destiny and his job and what he’s supposed to be doing with his life.
It’s no accident that Disney is over the moon with the age range of people that are enjoying the movie already. Yeah – there are some deep things said in the movie, in a very fun, video game world kind of way.
The kids watching it may not understand some of these life crises for a few decades.
They will one day!
Was that something you had in mind as you gave voice to Ralph? Did you see him as a 30-year-old in crisis?
I wasn’t so focused on the time span of it, and I wasn’t thinking of it so much as a mid-life crisis or existential crisis kind of thing. It was much more emotional, and it was immediate, too – “Why doesn’t anyone like me?” “Because you smash things!” I know, but that’s just what I do for a living! Give me a break! To me, the thing I was most conscious of was someone in the beginning of the story who doesn’t know himself, and he can’t accept who he is, because he…
Real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren will finally get their own movie with The Conjuring. The controversial ghost hunters, who found ed the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952 and, most famously, were involved in the Amityville Horror case that led to the 1979 and 2005 movies of the same name, will be played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. Saw filmmaker James Wan is directing.
Wan, Wilson and Ron Livingston — who plays the father of a family the Warrens try to help — were all on hand at this month’s New York Comic-Con to talk up the spooky flick which Warner Bros will release in the summer of 2013.
Check out the video below to learn how The Conjuring finally got made, and how Livingston feels about making his first horror movie!
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Maybe it’s my hairline, but I’ve always been partial to John McClane’s brand of bald (and smirky) heroism. So, it’s good to see my favorite hairless hard-ass Bruce Willis shooting up Russia with his cinematic son Jai Courtney (Spartacus) in the latest trailer for A Good Day to Die Hard. I’m not sure how I feel about Courtney as a potential heir to the McClane Yippie Ki Yay legacy. (For one thing, the kid has got way too much hair.) Then again, I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep over this because a Die Hard movie without Willis is not a movie I want to see.
No pressure, John McClane Jr., though I give Courtney props for his delivery of the punch line to this mayhem-heavy trailer set to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” (I’m not going to spoil the fun. Check it out below.) A Good Day To Die Hard finds Willis’ unflappable former NYC policeman fighting terrorists with his estranged son in Russia. John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines and Max Payne) directed the script by Skip Woods (Hitman). The film opens on Valentine’s Day 2013, which is pretty savvy logic on distributor 20th Century Fox’s part: A Good Day to Die Hard sounds like it could work as both a cuddly date movie and entertainment for single guys who want a whole bunch of explosions and one-liners to help them forget that they’re incredibly alone in this world.
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