The trailer for Women in Trouble (via The Movie Blog) looks like the film has just as much tragedy as it does comedy. Which I didn't expect. I think it's worth it just for Josh Brolin's hilarious accent:
A serpentine day in the life of ten seemingly disparate women: a porn star, a flight attendant, a psychiatrist, a masseuse, a bartender, a pair of call girls, etc. All of them with one crucial thing in common. Trouble.
I admit, I haven't been paying much attention to this film. Mostly because the second Toy Story was a major disappointment for me. I hated it. Toy Story 3 is set to open in June of 2010 in 3-D, and the trailer looks surprisingly good.
I thought I would be taking a break from discussing this movie since I've been doing a lot of it lately. But, I couldn't pass up on sharing five minutes of the film. The billboards from ComingSoon are just a bonus.
Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody play a husband and wife research team who achieve fame by splicing human DNA with the DNA of different animals to create a new creature. In the process they ignore their society's ethical and legal boundaries. The scientists name their creature "Dren", which is initially a deformed female infant, however, rapidly develops into a beautiful but deadly winged human-chimera. [Wiki]
According to /Film Splice may be re-titled Hybrid and may not get a theatrical release at all, which is disappointing because I love sci-fi and Adrien Brody. Guess we'll have to look out for the DVD. Movie clip and cast interviews below:
Via ONTD!:
Paramout unveiled the new Shutter Island trailer today over at Apple. I wish they hadn't moved the release date to February because it looks really amazing.
Trailer via FirstShowing:
Mandy Moore recently talked to Empire about voicing Rapunzel in the upcoming animated Disney film. Disney is set to release its 50th animated feature, Rapunzel sometime in December of 2010. The project is 3D animation but even though it's 3D animation, the images are designed to look like a traditional 2D film. The visual style is said to be based on Jean-Honoré Fragonard's painting The Swing.
Kristin Chenoweth had been cast as the voice of Rapunzel but was replaced by Mandy Moore after the entire project was overhauled. Moore discusses Rapunzel's personality and her favorite Disney princess:
"She's sort of the quintessential sassy, feisty Disney heroine. She's quite modern, quite a curious girl as well," says Moore of the once-entowered princess. "She's just coming into her own and is anxious to figure out a way to see the world around her that she's been kept away from for so many years."
"I just feel honoured to be in such good company. Being a Disney Princess is kind of every girl's ultimate dream."
"I was always really fond of the Little Mermaid growing up, so I would probably have to go with Ariel."
Megan Fox will be hosting the season premier of Saturday Night Live tomorrow. I haven't really seen NBC promote the season opening, but hey, maybe they don't need to with Megan Fox and all. Anyway, you can check out all the promos in the video below.
This particular set of photos from David O. Russell's The Fighter have been online for a while, but nobody really noticed until /Film pointed them out. More than likely all the film festivals had our attention. There are also some video blogs as well.
This is the first time I've seen footage from the film (excluding the trailer). It's a black and white flashback scene with Matthew Goode and Colin Firth:
Imagining an alternative history in which Dean is now a Hollywood elder statesman, it shows the Rebel Without a Cause star on his family ranch, racing his own-brand sports car and receiving a lifetime achievement Oscar. Dean is also seen as film director, humanitarian ambassador and anti-Vietnam war agitator. In the final scene he has a car accident, just as in 1955, but when the smoke clears, he has survived.I'm half irked and half misty eyed over the whole thing. Using a long dead James Dean to hawk the services of an investment firm feels a bit wrong, especially considering what a mess the financial sector has gotten us into. It's manipulative, but all commercials are I suppose. Or maybe I'm just grouchy because they had to drag Brando into this as well. But it's a very effective ad - probably one of the best I've ever seen.Film critic Barry Ronge described the minute-long film as "the perfect blend of simple storytelling, superlative camera effects and the smartest use of a celebrity we have seen in a decade".
"Legend" was shot over 14 months with a cast of 300 and crew of 150. The producers carried out a worldwide search for a suitable actor, considering entrants in James Dean lookalike competitions in the American midwest. But they settled on Des Erasmus, a mechanic from Cape Town.
Keith Rose, director of the ad for Velocity Films, said: "Dean might have become a junkie and done a Marlon Brando, but we prefer to think he'd have lived a long and wholesome life." [The Guardian]
Carla Gugino plays adult entertainer, Elektra Luxx in Women in Trouble: "A serpentine day in the life of ten seemingly disparate women: a porn star, a flight attendant, a psychiatrist, a masseuse, a bartender, a pair of call girls, etc. All of them with one crucial thing in common. Trouble." Written and directed by Gugino's boyfriend, Sebastian Gutierrez (Snakes on a Plane), the film is the first in a trilogy that will include Elektra Luxx and Women in Ecstasy.
Women in Trouble has a pretty impressive cast (Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Simon Baker), but, it's the women who get the best roles in the film (Marley Shelton, Adrianne Palicki, Cameron Richardson, Connie Britton, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, and Emmanuelle Chriqui):
"Women in Trouble is a fun addition to the current trend of revisiting and reworking exploitation-film themes in a lighthearted way...There's a certain pleasure in seeing a movie where the men are relegated to the Supportive Spouse and Lust Interest roles, after I've seen so many films where those are the only roles for women." [Cinematical]
Stone started shooting in May, so it's amazing that they've gotten a trailer out this fast. The film is centered around a convicted arsonist (Edward Norton) looks to manipulate a parole officer (Robert De Niro) into a plan to secure his parole by placing his beautiful wife (Milla Jovovich) in the lawman's path.
We've heard every bit of bad news about Spike Jonze's upcoming Where the Wild Things Are: the skepticism about making a story made up of no more than 10 sentences into a feature film, delays, terrified children in test audiences, etc. Still, most of us are excited. Maybe it's the gorgeous photos or the footage. It's probably Jonze himself. 
Based on Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel, A Single Man "depicts one day in the life of George, a gay middle-aged Englishman who works as a college professor in Los Angeles and whose lover, Jim, has recently died." [Wiki] The film, directed by Tom Ford had its world premier earlier today in Venice.
Emma Pritchard Jones from Grazia:
Should Tom Ford have stuck to designing his impeccable Gucci suits? Not if “A Single Man’ is anything to go by. The screenplay – which Ford co-wrote, produced and directed – could win more than the Best Dressed award at the Venice Film Festival. That’s already in the bag for sure – from the moment Colin Firth strides onto the screen in Ford’s trademark black, his 50-something professor character George is turned out like an Italian billionaire. We follow a day in the life of George, some months after the death of his gay partner of sixteen years. It’s set in LA but Firth doesn’t do American – instead he’s the perfect stereotype of an English gentleman, silently devastated by his loss.
Ford should be praised for making a film which isn’t just pleasing to the eye – gay or straight, George’s predicament speaks straight to the soul. The only problem is, his surroundings are so perfect you’ll be mourning his sorrow one moment, and coveting his lampshades the next.
But just as you’re tempted to dismiss the film as a gorgeous vanity exercise, it reveals a keen beating heart beneath the decor — and the match of Ford’s precise sensibility to Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 literary examination of the effect of grief on an overly compartmentalized life begins to make perfect sense.
In a graceful, meticulous performance that easily ranks as his finest screen work to date — and merits serious awards consideration — Colin Firth plays George, a British academic living in Los Angeles who finds his life slowing to an impasse as he struggles to recover from the death of his lover Jim (Matthew Goode). As he bides his time with increasingly indifferent teaching and melancholy get-togethers with his boozy friend and neighbor Charley (a tart, affecting miniature from Julianne Moore), the film follows George through a single day, wherein a key life decision gradually veers off-course.
It’s a spare, moving narrative of only-connecting, through which Ford initiates larger enquiries into sexuality, loneliness and etiquette: it’s easy to read Firth’s intriguingly opaque characterization as a mirror for Ford’s own personal and social insecurities.
Wendy Ide from Times Online praises Tom Ford:
...it’s a work of emotional honesty and authenticity which announces the arrival of a serious filmmaking talent. There will be critics who will be unable to get past the director’s background, but rest assured: Tom Ford is the real deal.The film's new stylish trailer (via ONTD!) is below.
Isherwood’s novel...unfolds predominantly through an interior monologue, a device which is notoriously tricky to transfer to the big screen without resorting to pages of cumbersome voice-over. Ford sidesteps this by keeping the narration to a minimum and instead giving us vivid little glimpses into George’s bruised psyche with some well-chosen flashbacks.
In the role of George, Colin Firth gives one of the finest, most affecting performances of his career.
The trailer (via Awards Daily) will probably be taken down soon, so watch it before it does:
Update: I've replaced the trailer that was taken down.
The tale of an aloof, high-flying exec whose millions of frequent-flyer miles can't keep him permanently above the emotional turbulence he seeks to avoid, "Up in the Air" is a slickly engaging piece of lightweight existentialism highlighted by winning turns from George Clooney and Vera Farmiga. Just as "Thank You for Smoking" and "Juno" did in their own ways, Jason Reitman's third film cleverly taps into specific cultural aspects of the contemporary zeitgeist, although in a somewhat less comically convulsive manner. Unlike many of the characters onscreen, nobody is going to lose any jobs on the basis of their work here, as a buoyant commercial flight lies ahead.
Clooney has scarcely ever been more magnetic onscreen than he is here as Ryan Bingham, a gun-for-hire who specializes in the dirty work some corporate bosses don't like to do themselves, firing employees. He's great at his job, expert at suggesting to devastated workers that new horizons in life can now be explored, and he loves the lifestyle of spending most of his time in business class seats and upscale hotels; given that, at last count, he's on the move 322 days per year, his modest apartment in Omaha resembles an undecorated motel room.
The movie reveals where we are now. The opening credits set the tone, as a zingy cover of “This land was made for you and me” accompanies a montage of fly-over spots. Bingham starts up a flirtation with a fellow-traveler (Vera Farmiga) as they slap down rival credit cards and compare flier miles and mile high club banter. He wants to break the 10 million miles mark—in the past year he spent 43 days at home. The rest he was on the road. She seems to be his perfect match.
The movie does not offer easy solutions. Reitman interviews 25 real people who lost their jobs, who are genuinely moving. Over the closing credits he uses a song about job loss given to him by 50-ish Kevin Renick during filming on audiotape. “I like to ask questions with my movies,” Reitman said at the Q & A. “This is the most personal movie I’ve made and could be the most personal movie I’ll ever make.”
Cynicism and sentiment have melded magically in movies by some of the best American directors, from Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder to Alexander Payne. Jason Reitman mined the same territory in "Thank You for Smoking" and his smash hit, "Juno," and it's pleasing to report that he's taken another rewarding journey down this prickly path in his eagerly awaited new film, "Up in the Air." Boasting one of George Clooney's strongest performances, the film seems like a surefire awards contender, and the buzz will attract a sizable audience, even though some viewers might be startled by the uncompromising finale.
The film is a triumph. It drips with Reitman’s passion, his love for his wife and child, his assessment of his own journey into adulthood. He just finished telling the audience at the Chuck Jones Theater that it’s probably the most personal film he’ll ever make. One can certainly understand the sentiment.
I’ll get into this more later, but I consider it a four-star knockout that couldn’t have hit the country and, to speak personally, me, at a more perfect time.
There's some video from the set of the Clash of the Titans remake. Star Sam Worthington discusses his role in the film:
The 3-minute long, epic trailer has absolutely no dialogue (none of that horrid voice over stuff, thank God), but the score is amazing - it kind of distracts from how disjointed the trailer actually is. The biopic, starring Chow Yun-Fat as the famed Chinese scholar and philosopher is backed by the Chinese government and cost $22 million (150 million Chinese yuan). The biopic will screen this year to commemorate the People's Republic of China's 60th anniversary and Confucius' 2,560th birthday.
A Single Man is the story of George Falconer (Firth), a 52-year old British college professor who is struggling to find meaning to his life after the death of his long time partner, Jim (Goode). George dwells on the past and cannot see his future as we follow him through a single day, where a series of events and encounters, ultimately leads him to decide if there is a meaning to life after Jim. George is consoled by his closest friend Charley (Moore) a 48-year old beauty who is wrestling with her own questions about the future. A young student of George’s, Kenny, (Nicholas Hoult) who is coming to terms with his true nature, stalks his professor as he feels in him a kindred spirit. [IONCINEMA.com via ONTD!]
The comparisons between Avatar's recently unveiled footage and other films have been all over the Internet recently. There have been comparisons to Fern Gully, Jar Jar from Star Wars (guilty), and of course, Delgo.
There is now word that Delgo's creators may decide to sue Avatar over similarities between the films:
Fathom has been bombarded with emails on the topic and have now released a statement that says that the studio may actually consider suing. "From what we have seen, we are amazed by the visual similarities between the two films and we are reviewing what legal options may be available to us," said the statement. [Worst Previews via The Movie Blog]
A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning a slave who turns to the rising tide of Christianity in the hopes of pursuing freedom while also falling in love with his master, the famous female philosophy professor and atheist Hypatia of Alexandria. [IMDb]
A behind-the-scenes featurette from The Princess and The Frog surfaced a few days ago at Cartoon Brew and it gives us a look at the villainous Doctor Facilier.
Facilier's supervising animator Bruce Smith (Bebe's Kids, The Proud Family) talks about the character and the influences voice actor Keith David has on the character. Keith David is a character actor who has appeared in Platoon and next month's Gamer and All About Steve. If you still can't place him, you'll recognize his voice immediately from cartoons, commercials, and even another animated Disney film, Hercules. And while Facilier may not become one of the most iconic Disney villains - because as MTV Movies points out "he’s male and the majority of great Disney villains have been villainesses," - he'll probably still be a very memorable one:
David describes voodoo magicman Facilier as "a schemer, a conjuror, and a sorcerer of sorts. He's a delicious bad guy, on that roster of wonderful Disney villains." A quick burst of song reveals that Facilier has "friends on the other side" [Empire]The Princess and the Frog opens in New York and Los Angeles on November 25, and goes into wide release on December 11 in North America.
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