Because the Duchess of Alba and Chantal Biya took themselves out of the running to give homelier hags a chance, Esquire named Mila Kunis as their Sexiest Woman Alive. Esquire tried to prove their point by publishing a cover picture of a topless and guilty Mila looking like you just caught her licking Ashton Kutcher’s butt essence from her finger. Mila needs to get that finger out of her mouth, because we all know where it’s been and none of us like it. You nasty, Mila!
Magazines only pull this “Sexiest Blah Blah Alive” stuff, because they want everyone to rage their b-holes off by screaming “She isn’t the sexiest! Rojo Caliente is! RECOUNT!” (that was me five seconds ago) and because it’s the easiest way to get their cover girl to take her top off for the photographer. But you know, for once I actually agree with Esquire, but only because I can’t argue with a magazine who put the words “Where To Eat Now” right next to Mila’s ass. Subtle. Those dirty ass lickers should win a Pulitzer for that alone.
And when is Esquire going to finally name their Sexiest Woman Dead? Anna Wintour and the Olsens need to be recognized for being sexy AND soulless.
With just under 300 features, the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival is a yearly behemoth that regularly churns out a number of films that will head to U.S. theaters and vie for the year-end awards race. In fact, Toronto is considered a launch pad for the long, long awards season that will culminate in the Oscar ceremony February 24th. Some recent Oscar winners that played TIFF before heading out to audiences in North America include The King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire. Over the next several days, ML will preview some of the titles we believe will be catching attention either with audiences, the awards race (or of course both).
The ten titles that follow range from returning auteurs like Terrence Malick and Noah Baumbach to Toronto veterans that have managed to surprise audiences with their unique vision and will likely do so again. And there are some newcomers we just found interesting. This week, ML will profile some of the top “high profile” titles we’ll be watching closely. Docs, Midnight/Genre and Foreign-Language titles will follow this week. Take a look and by all means, add your opinions.
To The Wonder, directed by Terrence Malick
Famously reclusive, Terrence Malick nevertheless shows his work ethic with many projects on tap. He received an Oscar nomination for Best Director for his last film, The Tree of Life as well as Best Picture and Best Cinematography. His latest film, To the Wonder is a romantic drama who reconnects with a woman from his hometown after his marriage to a European woman falls apart. The film stars Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck (who directed Argo, which is also screening at the festival) and Javier Bardem.
Yellow, directed by Nick Cassavetes
Nick Cassavetes…
Well, another power couple have locked lips and the result may be nothing short of earth-shattering. No longer relegated to the sidelines in this Summer filled with Batman and Spider-Man hoopla, Wonder Woman and Superman have hit the headlines with a snogging session that has turned the super-hero universe into a flutter – or at least some raised eyebrows and a little good-old fashioned gossip. Could their off-screen romance some day even make it to the big screen?
The smooch took place in the final throes of issue No. 12 of DC Comics’ year-old Justice League series which introduced new stories, costumes and even origins of the members of this longstanding super posse. (The publisher introduced the Justice League of America as they were called then in 1960, three years before rival Marvel unveiled its equivalent, The Avengers.)
DC Comics co-publisher Jim Lee told A.P. via ABC News that the kiss is not a “stunt or an alternate reality smooch.”
“This has been in the works for some time and we certainly wouldn’t have pulled the trigger without there being great creative benefit to the liaison,” he said in an email to A.P. “Beyond the joy and sorrows of new love, there are potentially huge ramifications and dramatic ways this single relationship between these iconic characters will change the entire political and interpersonal landscape of the DC Universe.”
All of that from a kiss? What happens when they finally hook up?
This is not the first time the super-hero power duo have had a fling, by the way. In the ’80s they had a short-lived moment of passion, but Superman ended up with Lois Lane. They also canoodled in Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Strikes Again a decade ago.
Beyond the…
Full Story »At one point, Kate Beckinsale remembers, director Len Wiseman thought of tapping her for a cameo as a three-breasted hooker in his Total Recall remake. Luckily for the actress, Wiseman (who directed the British beauty in Underworld and Underworld: Evolution — and happens to be her husband in real life) instead cast Beckinsale in the much juicier role of Lori, the adoring wife of factory worker Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) whom Quaid discovers is actually an undercover agent hellbent on killing him. Consider that a divorce, indeed.
Expanded considerably by scribes Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback as an amalgam of Sharon Stone’s duplicitous Lori and Michael Ironside’s ruthless Richter from Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 version, Beckinsale’s Lori — her first onscreen villain — is baddie Cohaagen’s (Bryan Cranston) loyal right-hand woman, embittered by the humiliating role she’s been assigned, but relishing in her dogged pursuit of Farrell’s Quaid with glee. (She also boasts unfailingly fantastic hair, in keeping with Beckinsale’s action cinema filmography.)
Beckinsale sat for a chat with Movieline about Total Recall, Lori’s inner psyche, how marriage lends insight to her working relationship with Wiseman, and how she resolves her “Kate Beckinsale” public image/action heroine reputation with her literary roots and lesser-seen work.
This version of Total Recall is quite different from the Verhoeven original in many ways, including its emphasis on a more geopolitical commentary. But the Lori character in particular, which is vastly expanded here, is a sharp, strong woman who literally rejects this domestic role that she’s been given, playing wife to Douglas Quaid at the behest of her employer.
I think she’s an extremely highly trained, highly intelligent, and very much at the top of her field operative, and the detail that…
During an interview on the Zarin household’s favorite show Bethenny, David Arquette showed everyone what’s he been up to ever since he dried out in rehab and his wife Courteney Cox filed papers to legally quit his ass. David has been spending a lot of time getting poked by the tattoo needle and he proved that by lifting up his shirt to show the gigantic mark of the nerd on his torso. Dude gave Wonder Woman a whole lot of real estate on his body. If nerds could cum tattoo ink, that’s what their cum shots would look like. Well, if David’s piece ever gets bored while riding him, she can open the flashlight app on her iPhone, lean to the left and read something to pass the time.
via DM
Watching a thriller requires a certain willingness to be a dupe. The whole idea is to give yourself over, and the ideal is to find yourself moving from scene to scene – as if you were cautiously exploring the rooms of a very mysterious house — asking, “And then what?” In the Paris-underworld thriller The Woman in the Fifth, director Pawel Pawlikowski is skillful enough to keep you wondering, from scene to scene, exactly what that what is going to be, and I was with the movie every step of the way, right until the final credits began rolling – at which point I realized that the whole thing made no sense whatsoever, and that none of my nagging questions about what the hell was going on would ever be answered. There’s a distinction to be made between being a dupe and being had.
I know, I know, I’m being way too literal – The Woman in the Fifth is one of those movies of the “It was only a dream!” variety, designed to tickle our imagination as we ponder the distinction between what’s real and what’s only illusion. Some “It was only a dream!” movies work beautifully — The Wizard of Oz is one of them; Femme Fatale is another. But The Woman in the Fifth leaves a tantalizing trail of breadcrumbs only to lead us to…one last breadcrumb. I enjoyed watching Kristin Scott Thomas shimmer through the picture as a sultry viper woman, and I felt a kind of embarrassed tenderness for Ethan Hawke as his character tried to express himself in stubby blurts of bad French. But by the end, I only wished I had some stinky cheese rinds to throw at them.
That may be less their fault than Pawlikowski’s. (Pawlikowski adapted the screenplay…
Full Story »“I feel like the real me is somewhere else…” Ethan Hawke is American writer Tom Ricks, flailing at a personal and professional rock bottom in the City of Lights. Kristen Scott Thomas is the mysterious widow with whom he strikes up an affair. But all in Pawel Pawlikowski’s moody thriller Woman in the Fifth (in select theaters Friday) is not what it seems; watch Hawke lay it all bare — in Scott’s bathtub — in Movieline’s exclusive clip.
Based on Douglas Kennedy’s novel of the same name, The Woman in the Fifth marks the fourth feature from Polish-born writer-director Pawlikowski (My Summer of Love). Star Hawke has earned critical praise for his turn as the haunted Ricks, whose dark past throbs with menace.
Full synopsis, courtesy ATO Pictures:
American writer Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) arrives in Paris to be closer to his young daughter who is living with his estranged ex-wife. Completely broke, he accepts a job as a night guard for a local crime boss. Stationed in a basement office, his only task is to push a button when a bell rings. The tranquility of the night, he hopes, will help him focus on his new novel.
His days become more exciting when he starts a romance with Margit (Kristin Scott Thomas), a mysterious and elegant widow who sets strange rules to their meetings: she will only see him at her apartment in the fifth arrondissement, at 5 pm sharp, twice a week and he should ask no questions about her work or her past life.
When people suddenly start dying around Tom, he begins to believe that a dark force has entered his life, punishing anyone who has recently done him wrong. After the police accuse him of murdering his neighbor,
…
Full Story »Jane Fonda shows up so infrequently in movies these days that it doesn’t matter if they look potentially good or dismal: Even when the performances (not to mention the movies around them) don’t quite work, Fonda always gives you something to watch. That’s certainly true in Bruce Beresford’s Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, an aimless if good-natured picture that casts Fonda in the role of a Woodstock-dwelling, ugly-art-making hippie-dippie mom who welcomes her estranged and very uptight daughter – played by Catherine Keener – back into her mother-earth arms. Her goal: To get her offspring, and her offspring’s offspring, to loosen up and start getting it on.
What’s that you’re saying? You really don’t want to see Jane Fonda in twirly Grateful Dead skirts and dreadful ethnic earrings, urging the younger folk to get in touch with their inner Alex Comfort? Neither did I. But the more I think about Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, the more I marvel that anyone would even cast Fonda, the most iron-willed of actresses, in this sort of role. None of it quite works, but it seems Beresford did his damnedest to try to pull it off.
As the movie opens, the marriage between rich city people Diane (Keener) and Mark (Kyle MacLachlan) is clearly on the skids. Mark is the kind of guy who proclaims at a dinner party that all of Eugene O’Neill’s plays could easily be cut in half. How anyone could share a bed with this boob, let alone not murder him in his sleep, is beyond me, but Diane is crestfallen when Mark asks her for a divorce. She packs up the couple’s two teenage kids, awkward adolescent Jake (Nat Wolff) and luminous alien child Zoe (Elizabeth Olsen), and heads to her mother’s house upstate – even though,…
Full Story »Pop star Kylie Minogue is in Cannes, and she’s showcasing a career move: Starring in a film. Not just any film mind you, but Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, which attendees here are calling the wackiest selection to hit the festival in years, a pretty amazing feat. With cyber-monsters, talking machines and a story that is a complete trip, Minogue plays two characters in Carax’s tale, which centers on Monsieur Oscar — who himself is in fact many characters: a captain of industry, assassin, beggar, monster, family man and a half-dozen more.
Taking on the role, Minogue said she decided to shed some of her persona and that she was thrilled to be in Cannes. “It feels like a dream to have a film here in Cannes and to be welcomed into this family with Leos,” she said Wednesday afternoon. “My involvement was deep and emotional and fun. I banned my entourage of coming with me. I stripped myself of ‘Kylie’ and wanted to be a blank canvas for Leos.”
In Holy Motors, Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) journeys from one role to the next, accompanied by Céline (Edith Scob), the woman driving a massive engine that transports him through Paris. He’s a “conscientious assassin,” going from one place to the next in pursuit of a mysterious driving force and the women and spirits of past lives.
“I pass bridges every day and this old gypsy woman with her bag; for years I’ve passed these women and rarely given money,” Carax said, adding, “So I thought there is no way to communicate with this woman — there is no way. So I’d imagine myself slipping into a café and changing into old woman clothes and becoming that woman and that’s how this whole story started.”
Carax and Minogue met a…
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