Ang Lee’s Life of Pi is a doubled-edged argument for the transcendent capabilities of film. Its central section uses the latest technological achievements to transform the fantastical, fable-like tale of Yann Martel’s award-winning novel into some of the most innovative and wondrous images to flicker across the big screen this year. And in its framing story, one it returns to periodically as if needing to keep the audience from getting too caught up in the gorgeous abstraction of its narrative at sea, it provides a reminder of why we should trust more in those images, as it ploddingly trots out its source material’s heavy-handed and unnecessary delineation of its own themes.
Those themes include faith and what fuels it. And in case anyone watching is in danger of not picking that up, Rafe Spall, in the role of a fictionalized version of Martel coming to interview the title character (played by Irrfan Khan as an adult) at his home in Canada, announces that he’s been promised a story that will make him believe in God. The nature of that God is a general one — Martel, and David Magee, who wrote the screenplay, are more interested in the idea of religion rather than one in particular. As a young boy, played by Ayush Tandon, Pi Patel becomes enchanted by Hinduism, then Christianity, then Islam, practicing them all with no sense that they need clash. As a grown man sharing his extraordinary tale of survival with a stranger who has come his way by chance, Pi remains a figure of strong but vague spirituality, though the film’s ultimate assessment of why people choose to believe in a higher power seems unlikely to please the devout.
Life of Pi is also, more compellingly, about storytelling: the way we choose to present and frame the events…
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He is the most glamorous four-legged A-lister alive, and Uggie isn’t wasting any dog years to cash in. The celebrated Jack Russell who stole the limelight in last year’s multiple Oscar-winning film The Artist is pushing his memoirs. The book titled simply, Uggie: My Story just came out and the lovable pooch headed to the City of Lights for a signing and photo call – naturally.
Uggie even gave a couple of woof woofs for French newspapers at an event on the famed Champs Elysées, and used the Arc de Triomphe as a backdrop for photos. The famous pooch then headed to the world-famous Left Bank Brasserie Lipp for some gastronomic indulgence. Lipp counted fellow author Ernest Hemingway as a regular in addition to fellow actors Harrison Ford, Gérard Depardieu, Gregory Peck, Sharon Stone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even French Presidents Francois Mitterand and Jacques Chirac dined there – maybe another career goal for Uggie?
Published by HarperCollins, Uggie shares about his love for Reese Witherspoon, with whom he starred in Water for Elephants and his much less glitzy start as an unwanted puppy at the dog pound.
“Uggie is doing wonders for Franco-American relations,” his co-author Wendy Holden said via The Guardian. “After all his favorite word is ‘moi’ and he is a huge fan of saucisse. If only Mitt Romney had such charisma.”
Uggie already has a product line, including an iPhone/iPad app. He’ll likely be well-off as he settles into his golden years at age 11 (that’s 77 to you and me).
He’s travelling in style and the hotels have been kind enough to ask what he requires, but his needs are simple: clean water and the occasional fresh patch of grass. He was born to be a star,” added Holden. “The fact…
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According to TMZ, a diver working on a water tank on the set of The Lone Ranger drowned this morning in Los Angeles: “Law enforcement sources tell TMZ the movie wasn’t being shot today, and the person who died in the tank was prepping it — possibly cleaning it — when someone noticed no bubbles from the gear were surfacing. That’s when they pulled the man out of the water.” The Johnny Depp blockbuster is filming for a July 3, 2013 release. More info to come. [TMZ]
Because it didn’t screen for critics, and because of a water-main break in the only New York theater showing the film today, it took me three tries to see John Gulager’s Piranha 3DD. That means I had to walk up to the ticket booth and say “One for Piranha 3DD, please” exactly 3DD times.
That was three times too many.
Piranha 3DD is the hardly-at-all awaited follow-up to Alexandre Aja’s 2010 schlockerpiece Piranha 3D, in which hordes of mutant killer fish found their way into a lake favored by scantily clad cuties just as spring break was kicking in. Boobs and penises were chomped upon mercilessly; asses hanging through the doughnut holes of innertubes became low-hanging fruit for these bloodthirsty carnivores, giving new meaning to the term “bottom feeder,” not to mention “buttmunch.” Piranha 3D was ridiculous, gory and fun, everything Piranha 3DD is not.
Piranha 3DD takes place not near a lake or an ocean, but around an Arizona water park run by an unapologetic sleazebag (David Koechner) who believes he’s going to rake in the dough with his new enterprise, a sort of chlorinated strip bar where women are invited — nay, encouraged — to swim topless. And so they do. The sleazebag’s step-daughter, a smart, pretty marine biologist (Danielle Panabaker), catches wind of this plan and doesn’t like it one bit — she’s half-owner of the park and would prefer to see it as a locale for good, old-fashioned family fun, as it has been for years. But that’s the least of her problems, as you can imagine. Massive numbers of finned, fanged nasties have found their way into a nearby lake and you can bet your innertube-encircled ass that it won’t be long before they show up in…
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Don’t worry, no Prometheus spoilers here, just a peek into the brain of Sir Ridley Scott, who opened an interview with press by musing on… tape recorders. And Star Trek. And light speed. Naturally.
From Bloody Disgusting:
Ridley enters and sees our tape recorders.
“Look at this technology. Jesus Christ. 40 years ago when Kirk said ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ we used to think that was fucking ridiculous, remember? Seriously, that’s been 40 years and then when he says the ‘disintegration’ of his matter into the ‘reintegration’ of his matter in the next space, that right there is light speed. So they touched on light speed. I’ve talked to NASA about this and they’ve said that’s light speed. So ‘Can you do it?’ They said ‘Yeah. Have you got seven glasses of water?’ I go ‘Not the seven glasses of water trick, please.’ There were all scientists in the room and he started to explain to me the relativity and the speed of light. ‘Can you do it?’ ‘Yeah.’ He said the only barrier is ‘us.’ He said, I can mathematically explain how, but we haven’t gotten there with that.”
Actual Prometheus spoilers and hints, discussion of the film’s evolution from Scott’s idea called Alien: Paradise, and the moment when he forgets Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s name (you know, “the Frenchman”) in the full chat courtesy of Bloody Disgusting, if you dare…
Most actors might think twice about playing dark and depressed versions of themselves on the big screen, parodying their most cringe-worthy moments of cheeseburger-craving internet fame for all to see in movies — like this week’s Piranha 3DD — more concerned with seeing big-bosomed babes being eaten by fish than with exploring the existential pains of celebrity. But then most actors don’t refer to themselves in the third-person with nicknames like “The Hoff” ™, a la David Hasselhoff, who spoke with Movieline last week about his Piranha 3DD cameo, that one time Leonardo DiCaprio went out for Baywatch, and how he’s learned to just “get on the Hoff train and ride.”
Two decades after introducing the dashing L.A. County lifeguard Mitch Buchannon to audiences on the sun-soaked series Baywatch, Hasselhoff is back on the beach in Piranha 3DD playing “David Hasselhoff” — a bitter alternate version of himself who, while making an appearance at an adults-only water park, is finally called upon to live out his on-screen persona and actually, you know, save people.
Questions? Movieline had so many. Like: Has the real David Hasselhoff ever rescued someone from the ocean? What did Bob Weinstein have to promise him to get Hasselhoff onboard for Piranha 3DD? What did The Hoff think of Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury? And did Leonardo DiCaprio really once audition to play young Hobie on Baywatch?
You’ve played yourself before many times and are comfortable riffing on your public persona and poking fun at yourself, but how exactly did they get you to play this dark version of David Hasselhoff in the first place? Did they already have it written?
They had it written and Bob Weinstein called me and said, ‘Come on, man — if you do…
Cinco de Mayo weekend will surely belong to Marvel’s The Avengers, which has already racked up $18.7 million in U.S. grosses courtesy of last night’s midnight screenings. The superhero filled adventure has been pegged as possibly this year’s biggest box office draw — time will tell. But for those who want to check out something else besides superheroes (or want to resuscitate from its aftermath) there are plenty of specialty releases opening this weekend including Fox Searchlight’s India-set The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Sundance Selects’ dance doc First Position, ATO’s water doc Last Call at the Oasis, Kathleen Turner starrer The Perfect Family. And, if you need a little more Samuel L. Jackson in your life post-Avengers, check out his other opener Meeting Evil.
Marvel’s The Avengers (Opening Wide)
Director: Joss Whedon
Writers Zak Penn (story), Joss Whedon (story and screenplay), Stan Lee (comic book), Jack Kirby (comic book)
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson
Destined to be the big box office draw of 2012 (so far), Marvel’s The Avengers features a “Super Hero team of a lifetime. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow battle an enemy that threatens global safety. The director of the international peacekeeping agency – S.H.I.E.L.D. – assembles the team to save the world from certain disaster.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Limited Release)
Director John Madden
Writers: Ol Parker (screenplay), Deborah Moggach (novel)
Cast: Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith
Distributor: Fox Searchlight
The feature revolves around a group of British retirees who move to India to “outsource” their retirement in a less expensive but exotic locale. They’re drawn by advertisements to the newly refurbished Marigold Hotel,…
Full Story »The entire county of Los Angeles has been put on flood alert and every citizen has been given a pair of water wings and told to watch out for floating bits of undigested Slutty Brownies. This happened after Jessica Simpson went on Jimmy Kimmel last night and told him that the reason why she looks like a SpongeBob hot air balloon in a yallaw wig is because she’s got three lakes full of baby water up in there.
“I feel like I have a bowling ball sitting on my hoo-ha…. Apparently I have a lot of amniotic fluid, so whenever my water breaks it will be like a fire hydrant!”
Does that mean when Jessica farts, her three ton belly makes the same gurgling sound a Sparkletts water cooler makes when you flip it over?
I can deal with Jessica naming her baby Maxi Pad and I’m even okay with her going on about how she’s giving her 10 pounds baby the dizzies with her non-stop pregnant fucking, but now she’s gone too far. I mean, I’ve always figured that Papa Joe was seriously into squirter porn and now Jessica is telling me she’s about to deliver the geyser squirt of all geyser squirts? Fuck you, Jessica, for giving me the image of Papa Joe waddling around in flippers, a scuba mask and a giant smile. SUCIO!
Detective La Toya has hung up her magnifying glass now that she’s officially gotten to the bottom of EVERYTHING and I’ve been waiting to see who would inherit to her deerstalker cap. Enter crazy ass bitch Nancy Grace who wants to get to the bottom of EVERYTHING, everything being Whitney Houston’s death. It’s looking like Whitney’s Calgon nightmare happened because she overdosed, but Nancy Grace isn’t buying it. During an interview with CNN the other day, Nancy said she wants to know who gave Whitney those pills and who let Whitney drown in the tub. Dun dun dun…
“I’d like to know who was around her, who, if anyone gave her drugs…and who let her slip, or pushed her, underneath that water? Apparently, no signs of force or trauma to the body. Who let Whitney Houston go under the water? They were medicating her out the yin-yang.”
“Is this going to medicate me out of the ying-yang?” is what I’m going to ask the clerk at CVS when I buy my next box of Claritin, because that is a phrase that needs to be used more often.
I’m happy that Detective Nancy is searching the foggy cobblestone streets for clues into the death of Whitney Houston since somebody has to, but somebody should also investigate why Nancy Grace suddenly cares about a case that doesn’t involve a missing white woman. Something in the milk ain’t clean about that.
via HuffPo
“Hey, churros! Who else is into water sports???!” #JulioCCLopez – MATTDingo
Runners-up:
After Seal Team 6 took out Bin Ladin, Seal Pup Team 6 went in after his mangy cats. – OurMissC
After adopting all of them, Paris was extremely disappointed that she misunderstood the description of their favorite hobby – Jintess
This was not what Mark Sanchez had in mind when Kim convinced him to “bail on the Super Bowl” with promises of “water sports with my sister bitches” – phungi
(Thanks Ben)
