Now here’s a proper celebration of Roger Ebert’s life. Tilda Swinton, dressed like David Bowie and channeling Ellen DeGeneres rouses 1,500 people at Ebertfest in Champaign, IL to shake their money makers to Barry White’s “My First, My Last, My Everything” at the Virginia Theater on April 20. (That’s Ebert’s widow Chaz introducing the actress.)
The film festival, which is organized by the College of Media at the University of Illinois where Ebert was an alumnus paid tribute to its namesake, who succumbed to cancer on April 4.
When he was alive, his prose danced just like Swinton.
<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/64683468″>Ebertfest 2013 Dance Along</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user17148437″>Ebertfest</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
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When I take a long nap in public, the police wake me up and tell me to put on my pants and go sober up at home. When the humanized form of a unicorn horn Tilda Swinton does it, people wait in line to see it and they call it ART!!!
Starting today and continuing for the rest of the month, Tilda Swinton will take naps in a glass box at MoMA in NYC all day, on random days. Gothamist says that even the employees at MoMA don’t know when she’s going to show up. Tilda just glides into the museum in the morning, gets into the glass box and sleeps off her hangover. The only things in the box besides Tilda are a water jug and cushions. The piece is called “The Maybe” and Tilda first performed it in London in 1995. The museum said this about Tilda’s art piece:
An integral part of The Maybe’s incarnation at MoMA in 2013 is that there is no published schedule for its appearance, no artist’s statement released, no no museum statement beyond this brief context, no public profile or image issued. Those who find it chance upon it for themselves, live and in real—shared—time: now we see it, now we don’t.
Call this shit stupid and scream about how you do this every night, but this is the legendary Tilda doing it.
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Also in Monday’s early round-up of news briefs: Cloud Atlas may have had a slow start in North America, but it is possibly proving to be a big hit overseas; The Weinstein Company is grabbing a thriller starring Chris Evans, Jamie Bell and Octavia Spencer for theaters; And Chasing Ice tops out the Specialty Box Office over the weekend.
The Weinstein Company Nabs Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer
The thriller stars Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, John Hurt, Ed Harris, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner and Alison Pill and set in the future. After a failed experiment to stop global warming, an Ice Age kills off all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine. A class system evolves on the train but a revolution brews. TWC picked up rights in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Around the ‘net…
Dorothy’s Oz Dress Goes for $480K
Judy Garland wore the blue gingham when she was whisked away by a tornado landing her in Oz with her dog Toto. The wholesome frock was mismatched with a sparkling pair of ruby-red slippers which caught the eire of that wicked old witch. The dress sold for $480,000 at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills this weekend. Also selling, Steve McQueen’s racing jacket ($50K) and a prop watch worn by John Belushi in The Blues Brothers ($15K), Deadline reports.
James McAvoy Eyes WikiLeaks Pic
The Last King of Scotland director wil join Benedict Cumberbatch in the untitled project about the website that released classified information online. Cumberbatch will play WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while McAvoy is in talks…
Tilda Swinton (52)
Kevin Jonas (25)
BoA (26)
Alexa Chung (29)
Ryan Adams (38)
Danniella Westbrook (39)
Sam Rockwell (44)
Judy Reyes (45)
Famke Janssen (48)
Andrea McArdle (49)
Tatum O’Neal (49)
Bryan Adams (53)
Mo Gaffney (54)
Robert Patrick (54)
Kris Jenner (57)
Howard McGillin (59)
Sam Shepard (69)
Art Garfunkel (71)
Onetime collaborators Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach each have a new DVD release this week. The two last worked together on Anderson’s gorgeous and witty Fantastic Mr. Fox, and their idiosyncratic proclivities and points of view are very much on display at both ends of the High/Low spectrum. (As a bonus, both films feature Frances McDormand!)
HIGH: Moonrise Kingdom ($29.98 DVD; $34.98 Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital Combo)
Who’s Responsible: Written by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola; directed by Anderson; starring Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton and Bob Balaban
What’s It All About: Misunderstood lovers Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman) run away together. The fact that they’re both 12 years old and living on an island off the coast of New England doesn’t stand in the way of their plans. Their romantic escapade sets off a flurry of activity among the local adults, including Suzy’s parents (Murray, McDormand), Sam’s scoutmaster (Norton), the local law officer (Willis) and Social Services (Swinton), whom everyone calls “Social Services.”
Why It’s Schmancy: After turning off sections of his fanbase with the excessively twee The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson has definitely got his groove back with the one-two punch of Mr. Fox and this eccentrically charming love story. Our youthful protagonists take themselves and their relationship utterly seriously, and Anderson affords them the same dignity. From its tracking-shot close-ups to a memorable sequence of the lovers shimmying to ye-ye music, Moonrise Kingdom feels like Godardian amour fou filtered through Anderson’s visual (pop-up book) and emotional (Peanuts-esque melancholy) sensibilities.
Why You Should Own It: Given that Anderson’s first five features eventually got lovingly curated editions from The Criterion Collection, there’s a temptation not to shell…
Full Story »It’s not hard to imagine the big-screen version of scenes like this week’s epic takedown on the Australian Parliament floor, in which Prime Minister Julia Gillard eviscerated her opposition party rival Tony Abbott with a 15-minute speech on sexism and misogyny. (Watch it below and revel in the glorious wrath of Gillard’s pointed and passionate tirade.)
Somewhere out there a hundred screenwriters are furiously turning Gillard’s sermon into Oscar gold, so why don’t we go ahead and predict the five Academy Award-caliber actresses at the top of the casting list when Hollywood comes calling with the inevitable Iron Lady-esque Gillard biopic?
Tilda Swinton
The British Oscar-winner certainly has Gillard’s steeliness down, but she tends to go for more morally complex and ambiguous characters with hidden frailties bubbling beneath the surface. Perfect for politics! Plus, she can make even the most mundane things — say, parachute pants or a pair of socks or whatever — into High Art. (See pic at left.) Tilda’s would be the most fascinating Gillard, that’s for sure, but there’s also…
Cate Blanchett
She’s done Mamet, played Queen Elizabeth and earned the adulation of LOTR fans for all of time — Cate Blanchett is a sharp-tongued woman of the people, an ethereally regal figure with a presence that can command a room. Or a Parliament floor. Bonus: She’s Australian and a convincingly bad-ass Oscar-winner — and she’s already tangled publicly with Australian opposition leader/watch-checker Abbott before.
Toni Collette
The Aussie actress (who earned a Best Supporting nod for The Sixth Sense) has more of a seriocomic bent than her drama-pedigreed peers, but who wouldn’t love to see the…
Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett? I’m so on the spot: “Walter Hill is planning to write and direct a remake of 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which was directed by Robert Aldrich and famously starred rival acting legends Bette Davis, as the former child star Baby Jane Hudson, and Joan Crawford as her crippled sister Blanche. [...] The announcement is sure to trigger lots of speculation over which current actresses can step into the roles so vividly created by Davis and Crawford. ‘The two equal leads demand great performers – that is a given,’ Hill said. ‘The intensity of the gothic storyline makes a reconfiguration of the drama still a potentially searing experience. The idea is to make a modern film without modernizing the period. It needs to resonate the golden age of Hollywood.’” [THR]
A week and a half after its world premiere kicked off the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom arrives Stateside this weekend in limited release. Starring Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman and Bob Balaban, acting novices Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward steal the show kids on the cusp of their teens who fall in love on an island off New England in 1965. To stay together, the couple make a pact to make a dash for the wilderness, but the authorities are on their trail.
Movieline caught up with Anderson, who gave his insight on young love, how he cast two newcomers in the lead roles, not rehearsing a first kiss and why he wishes Moonrise Kingdom had been like his adolescence.
You’ve worked with Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman before, while Edward Norton, Frances McDormand and Bruce Willis are new to Wes Anderson movies. What made you decide which characters they should play in this film?
Yes, yes, Bill I’ve worked with so many times. If I can convince him to be in a movie, it always makes me happy. I liked the idea of him and Frances McDormand together. I thought that they seemed like they’d have great chemistry, you know? She’s great. And Edward Norton, I had this feeling he could be like somebody in a Norman Rockwell painting. Bruce Willis, I thought that it would be nice to use his persona a bit, and the character is itself sort of unlike what he usually is [in his roles], but he’s still a policeman. And Tilda Swinton is someone who I have loved since the very beginning of her career in movies, and so this was my…
After debuting at Cannes, Wes Anderson’s latest offering Moonrise Kingdom hits limited release in New York and Los Angeles this week. You’ve seen the twee snippets previewing the tale of young puppy love in flight, circa 1965. You’ve pored over the visual charm assault that is its poster. Now let co-star Bill Murray be your guide — wearing patchwork madras pants, with a little bit o’ rum in his belly — through the New England set of Moonrise Kingdom.
Among Murray’s observational insights: Anderson’s characters wear their pants flooded because that’s how the director dresses himself! It’s all clicking into place. “He likes everyone in the film to wear their pants really short to look just a little bit like the kind of person you’d like to mug.” Wes Anderson Chic, whittled down to its base elements.
Moonrise Kingdom is really quite lovely and charming and sweet, but then I’m a sucker for Wes Anderson and angsty adolescents and little girls who listen to Francoise Hardy. The synopsis:
Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing off-shore — and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in more ways than anyone can handle. Bruce Willis plays the local sheriff. Edward Norton is a Khaki Scout troop leader. Bill Murray and Frances McDormand portray the young girl’s parents. The cast also includes Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, and Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as the boy and girl.
Ahead of opening the 65th Cannes Film Festival with tonight’s red-carpet premiere, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom kicked off the frenzy this morning with a screening and press conference.
Starring Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman and Bob Balaban, the film really belongs to newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, two kids on the cusp of their teens who fall in love on an island off New England in 1965. The pair make a secret pact to run away together and head to the wilderness, but the authorities are on their trail. Meanwhile, a violent storm brews offshore threatening the enclave. The couple are astonishingly level-headed characters, being chased down by some offbeat adults.
“It’s been awesome, it’s been amazing, my life has really taken a turn,” Gilman said before a packed news conference after the official photo shoot Wednesday morning.
Anderson said he picked his two young stars after 10 months of searching, but found both in what the two-time Oscar nominee described as a magical moment. “There are many people who come along the way,” he explained, “but you always hope there’s this one moment and you say, ‘It’s this.’ I was very charmed by Jared [Gilman] immediately. He made me laugh. As for Kara [Hayward], I had seen so many people do the dialogue over and over and it was like she had just made the dialogue up herself.”
Suzy (Hayward) is surrounded by a large family, including her parents (played by McDormand and Murray). Sam, meanwhile, has no family and is not among the popular kids in his Boy Scout troop. But their union throws the whole island into a frenzy. “I used the memory of what I wanted to have happen as a young person,” said Anderson,…
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