Worst. Poster. EVER: Takers

I almost never talk about poster art. I usually just toss them out for people to look at but I can't help myself with this one. ComingSoon (via FirstShowing) points us to this God awful poster from Takers, starring Paul Walker, Hayden Christensen, Idris Elba, and Matt Dillon. Oh and that douche Chris Brown is in this as well. The movie has something to do with bank robbers on their last job (gee, I've never heard this plot before). The photos of the actors in the foreground has got to be the worst Photoshop job I have ever seen. The film opens on February 19, 2010.

New release dates: The Road, Up in the Air, The Lovely Bones and more

There's been a lot of date changes and date announcements over the last day or so.


John Hillcoat's The Road is getting moved yet again. It was to have been released last fall, but it got pushed back. It finally premiered at the Venice Film Festival last week, but The Weinstein Company has pushed it back once again - this time by a little over a month. The film is now set to open on November 25 instead of October 16. With the new Thanksgiving weekend release The Road is going to have to contend with Disney's Old Dogs, Ninja Assassin, another Oscar hopeful Nine (also from The Weinstein Company), and Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox which will be going wide.

Jason Reitman's Up in the Air still has a wide release date of December 4, but it will likely have a limited release date of November 13 - probably in New York and L.A. The film will slowly expand and start to go wider on November 25. This means it will have to contend with The Road and Nine.

Also opening on November 25 is Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles starring Zac Efron and Claire Danes. It had premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year, but it's only now getting a theatrical release date.


Fantastic Mr. Fox will be in limited release on November 13 before its wide release on November 25 as previously mentioned.

Michael Moore's documentary Capitalism: A Love Story is being moved to October 2.

Low-budget horror film Paranormal Activity is getting a limited opening on September 25 and will expand based on how well it does. According to ComingSoon the film is about a young couple who "suspects that their house is haunted by a malevolent entity. They set up video surveillance to capture evidence of what happens at night as they sleep. Their surveillance and home videos have been edited into the 99 minute feature film." Apparently the film is terrifying.

Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones will be in limited release on December 11 and then expand on Christmas Day. It goes wide on January 15.

The latest film from the Coen brothers, A Serious Man is still scheduled for its limited release on October 2, but its U.S. premier is now set for September 24 in New York City at the Ziegfeld Theater.

The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Evans has been picked up by Paladin and will screen at a few fall festivals before its limited release in late December in New York and L.A. It should expand in early 2010, but no word yet on an exact date.

The 100 most memorable characters of the decade - part 4

We're nearly halfway through the list. It's been tough to narrow things down, and as usual, there weren't really any rules, and I tried to balance the characters as much as I could. Here's the next batch for you:

70 - Paikea Apirana (Keisha Castle-Hughes) Whale Rider - I said earlier that there won't be many teenagers on this list, and there will be even fewer pre-teens. Pai will end up being one of a handful of memorable children. Fueled by the strength of Castle-Hughes, Pai is the poster child for female empowerment - the ultimate personification of girl power. Sometimes it's hard to believe she's just a child.

Pai is the only available heir to her grandfather, the chief of her tribe, though customs demands that the chief be male. But she stands up to her grandfather, who would rather Pai had been born a boy, or perhaps, not even born at all (''There was no gladness when I was born.'')


Keisha Castle-Hughes on her role in Whale Rider:

''It's about a girl who's trying to find who she is in a male-dominated society,'' explains Keisha Castle-Hughes, the 13-year-old star of Niki Caro's inspiring coming-of-age film, ''Whale Rider"... The tale of the Maori in New Zealand has been embraced around the world, proving that it's more than a chick flick. ''One man said he saw his grandfather in Koro, the patriarch,'' Castle-Hughes says, happily surprised. ''He could relate, even though he was an Italian from New Jersey.''...The movie's message is a universal one: ''If you want something, you've got to go out and grab it with both hands..."

More on Whale Rider:

Keisha admits there are certain parallels between the young actress and this remarkable character she has played so effortlessly. "I think we're both strong willed and independent, and Pai has a great unique quality about her. She's an 11-year-old girl who's confident about who she is and knows exactly who she is. Not many 11-year-old girls are like that. She's a great role model for young girls. I think I'm like that too."

69 - Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett) I'm Not There - I don't remember much about the film - messy plot and all. But I do remember Blanchett as Jude Quinn, an incarnation of Bob Dylan, circa the mid 1960s and his electric uprising. I don't know what's scarier - a movie made up of six different Bob Dylans that I have to keep up with, or the fact that Cate Blanchett might make a better Dylan than Dylan.


Stephanie Zacharek from Salon explains why Blanchett as Dylan is so good:

...Cate Blanchett, as the Royal Albert Hall-era Dylan (there we go again with the pushpins), is the most hypnotic, capturing the spirit of Dylan -- or, more accurately, one of his many spirits -- in her willowy frame. This could be the performance of the year, in one of the most inventive and joyous movies of the year.

And more from Jeff Beresford-Howe at Film Threat:

Cate Blanchett gets all the attention and awards talk for her cross-dressing portrayal of Dylan at his most scathing and magnetic, and she deserves it. You can’t take your eyes off her as she staggers through Dylan’s best-dressed, most confrontational and most fucked up time in his life, what was essentially a long-playing nervous breakdown. It’s an over-the-top performance rooted firmly in the truth.

68 - Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) Frida - Sometimes the media goes crazy for good looking actresses who get ugly for their roles. But in Hayek's case all the attention was deserved. While Frida reads like a standard biopic, on the screen it isn't. And that is largely due to the directing, and Hayek's ability to make a legendary artist into a flesh and blood person.



Frida's like a human hurricane; tempestuous one moment, and suddenly calm, and then tempestuous all over again. Hayek's performance is so brave, I think that she isn't afraid to show the Hayek beneath the Kahlo. It's not just Kahlo you're seeing there. You're seeing Hayek's years-long obsession with Frida and the guts she had to be able to bring Frida to the big screen (in the early 1990s 'when Hayek was told she was too young for the part, she replied "Then you are going to have to wait until I'm old enough"'). You can see it all somewhere in the eyes, beneath those striking eyebrows.



On the challenge of playing Frida:

...it's apparent that the role of Frida may easily be the most challenging role Hayek has ever undertaken. The part shows that Hayek is much more than just a pretty face. She mesmerizingly portrays Frida throughout all stages of her life – young girl, budding woman, old and dying. Not to mention that she has to convey the horrible physical pain Kahlo endured as a result of a crippling childhood accident. Additionally, prosthetics ranging from aging make-up, numerous scenes in full body casts, and of course Frida's omnipresent unibrow were heaped upon Hayek. "Honestly, it is definitely by far the most complex character I have ever played and maybe the most complex character I will ever play," exclaims Hayek. "But it was not the most challenging one. When you are so passionate about something and when you love someone so much, it's easy to feel their pain."

67 - Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) Capote - I've always found the character memorable mainly because I find him unbearable. I've been trying to figure out if there is anything more than the fact that he gets on my nerves that has made me remember him all these years. Maybe it boils down to the obvious. The character annoys me, but Philip Seymour Hoffman does not. In fact I really like Philip Seymour Hoffman, so I suppose it's a testament to just how brilliant he is in the role.


Maybe Ebert's review helps give me an explanation:

...As he talks to the killers, to law officers and to the neighbors of the murdered Clutter family, Capote's project takes on depth and shape as the story of conflicting fates. But at the heart of his reporting is an irredeemable conflict: He wins the trust of the two convicted killers and essentially falls in love with Perry Smith, while needing them to die to supply an ending for his book. "If they win this appeal," he tells his friend Harper Lee, "I may have a complete nervous breakdown." After they are hanged on April 14, 1965, he tells Harper, "There wasn't anything I could have done to save them." She says: "Maybe, but the fact is you didn't want to."

66 - Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol) The Notorious Bettie Page - This is arguable one of the best examples of perfect casting in a biopic. Gretchen Mol, with her huge eyes, big black bangs, and dazzling smile plays the sweet, innocent pin-up girl of the 1950s with so much charm and vulnerability. She's just as comfortable dressed in high heels and leather as a dominatrix as she is being bound and gagged - or even completely nude.


The perfect description of Bettie Page:

It has often been said that Bettie Page, the legendary '50s pinup with the pert features framed by those famously severe black bangs, was the rare American sex goddess who was equally at home projecting the image of a good girl or a bad girl. Frolicking, naked, in the ocean foam, her leg extended with playful pleasure, she was all dazzle and sunshine: the girl next door who said yes yes yes. In her scandalous underground bondage photos, where she posed as a dominatrix with a whip held high, or as a masochist with a ball in her mouth, she vamped like a pussycat from hell, her eyes narrowing with mean delight — or widening in mock terror. Yet the mysterious alchemy of Bettie Page isn't just that she could turn on a dime from light to dark, saint to sinner, virgin to vixen. It's that she was somehow able to project both qualities at once. In the bondage photos, so shocking for their time, her warm, spirited, peekaboo vibrance doesn't disappear; it's there just beneath the surface aggression of her poses. As for her all-American cheesecake shots, they have a quality of delirious, laughing abandon, as though she were winking at the she-devil inside. What Bettie Page conjured — always — was the promise of pleasure without limits. She was a one-woman orgy in centerfold form.

65 - Alice (Natalie Portman) Closer - Alice is an intelligent, sexy, 20 year old, who deals in deception ("Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off...but it's better if you do.") It's easy to be fooled by her innocent face, but even when Alice tells the truth it is to hurt her partner, not to unburden herself of guilt. She talks a good game about love, but one wonders at the end of it all if she's ever really felt it.



Why Portman's performance is so good:

Portman, who digs so deep into the bruised core of her character that they seem to wear the same skin. It's a blazing, breakthrough performance.

And:

As for the elfin Portman, it's far and away the best performance of the adult portion of her career. Gone is that kid-genius preciousness; she seems like someone abused by men and self almost to the breaking point.

64 - Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) Donnie Darko - The title character in the film is a puzzle. He goes to a nice school and he's walking around with Jake Gyllenhaal's angelic face. But on the inside, he is gloomy, tormented, lost. He is a paranoid schizophrenic dealing with the mundane aspects of teenage life. He's more than just an angst-ridden teenager. He hears voices in his head, hallucinates, has visions of the future - he's often visited by a giant rabbit with an injured eye. He's an oddball with the guts to ask out the new girl.

Jake Gyllenhaal on his experiences working on the film:

I remember that when [Richard] was in the bunny suit that we shot that at night and that there was pizza behind the camera, because we were going over, and all I wanted was a piece of pizza, that was my main motivation for that... I couldn't agree more with Steven. When I read it, I just immediately responded to it, even though I didn't read it all the way through when I met [Richard]. I had ten pages to go and I had five minutes before the meeting and I knew I already wanted to do it. Good to know that I didn't know what happens in the end because I still don't know what happens in the end. But it was an amazing experience for me and a familiar one too because this was hopefully not the last time that I work with my sister, but everyone sort of became family from that experience and I'm so proud of it.

63 - Latika (Freida Pinto, Rubina Ali, Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar) Slumdog Millionaire - Latika isn't like other love interests, though, like most of them, she's beautiful. Even as a child she is street smart and tough. Latika knows how to survive. She starts off as Jamal's friend - the unnamed third musketeer. But as time moves forward, she's snatched away, and she comes in and out of our hero's life - she's more of a vision than anything real.


Freida Pinto discusses the character:

Two younger actors play Latika at earlier ages, so she drew from that work. However, most of the adult Latika was intuitive from the script. "I read the script first and I read little Latika's part. I was like, 'That's the character. That's the Latika that I can relate to because she's a spicy, stubborn girl. She's got this zest for life and she's playful.' She's a fighter and the moment you come to the girl in the middle, she automatically gets submissive and she's kind of grown before her time. She's 14 but she looks like she could be 18, 20. So it was really important to watch the kids to see how they had grown so I could grow beyond that as well. So Danny had already shot scenes with the two characters and I watched it and it was such an immense amount of pressure because they were so good. They just seemed so effortless. It just makes it kind of simpler to have watched it, so the growth seems not disconnected. It just seems fluid."

62 - Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) Transformers & Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Sam starts off as an awkward high school kid hell bent on trying to impress Mikaela, the hottest girl in school. He is the unconventional hero. He isn't that strong, has no useful skills, and he's more of a smart aleck, than actually smart. He's kind of cool though, in a dorky sort of way. There is also courage deep down, even though at times, one wonders if the kid is just stupid. But he has that quality every film hero ought to have - he is sympathetic. He's the everyman.



On Shia LaBeouf as Sam:

...things get infinitely better when Shia LaBeouf appears as Sam, a smart-mouthed teen who discovers the Transformers with his would-be girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox).

LaBeouf is a good choice to act out the lively script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who never forget that they're writing a movie about robots from outer space that can turn into helicopters and boom boxes. The rising young actor, who will play Indiana Jones' sidekick in next summer's big movie, has a geeky charm that recalls a young John Cusack or Patrick Dempsey.

61 - Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) Forgetting Sarah Marshall - We spend most of Forgetting Sarah Marshall feeling sorry for the hero. It's bad enough that his girlfriend dumps him, but having to deal with her self-centered, cool, rock star boyfriend while on vacation sucks even more.

Russell Brand does, sort of steal the show:

Brand, a Brit stand-up, radiates star quality and ace comic timing as the sexually insatiable lead singer of Infant Sorrow, a rocker so self-involved that he doesn't see why Sarah wouldn't want to join his groupies, the Sorrow Suckers, on tour. Brand is priceless when a pushy waiter (Hill is perfecto) asks if Aldous has listened to his audition CD. "I was going to," says Brand in an accent that blends Keith Richards with Monty Python, "but then I just carried on livin' my life."

But, Aldous Snow doesn't end up being the stereotypical vapid rocker though he does screw around. He's funny, charming (mostly because Brand is playing himself) and he eventually becomes friends with his rival. Aldous isn't really a villain ("Fuck you're cool! It's so hard to say, because, like, I hate you in so many ways.") It's not that surprising that Aldous will be getting his own spin-off movie.

There are still a lot more characters left, and hopefully I'll have the next part up next week.

New clip and teaser trailer from Up in the Air

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 characters played by George Clooney and Vera Farmiga are superficial, always traveling, and addicted to their frequent-flyer miles. I suppose it's the chemistry between them in the clip that has me interested - they look like they're made for each other. A brand new clip (also via Awards Daily) from the film is posted at the bottom of the page.

The reviews are in from Telluride, which give us more on the film.

Todd McCarthy from Variety:

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.

Indiewire's Anne Thompson:

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.”

Stephen Farber from The Hollywood Reporter:

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.

Kris Tapley from In Contention:

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.

Up in the Air opens December 4.

Behind the scenes footage from Clash of the Titans

There's some video from the set of the Clash of the Titans remake. Star Sam Worthington discusses his role in the film:

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Video from MTV

Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the Inception set

More on set photos via ONTD!

Joseph Gordon-Levitt discusses working on Inception, and has some pretty cool things to say about Leonardo DiCaprio:

It’s so great. I am just really honored and grateful to be working for Mr. Nolan. He has such integrity and what’s really cool about Inception is that he’s getting to make this enormous movie that’s just his own brainchild, just his own idea that he wrote out of his head. I’ve looked up to Leonardo DiCaprio ever since I was very little. He was an actor at a young age, always doing it with such integrity and sincerity. So much of what happens in Hollywood is for all the wrong reasons. That guy does it because he loves it and believes in the art and the craft of it, which shows in his work and his choices. It’s something I have always aspired to and to get to work with him and be in scenes with him is really special. [The Press Association via Nolan Fans]

Inception is currently shooting in Los Angeles after shoots in Japan, England, France, and Morocco. According to Nolan Fans the crew will be filming in LA on Thursday, September 3rd, Friday, September 4th, and Wednesday through Friday, September 9th through the 11th. Address: 1745 E 7th St, Los Angeles. There might also be filming around N. Spring St from College St- Baker St.

The word from Venice: Bad Lieutenant might not be that bad

Anyone who knows me is aware of my loathing of Nicolas Cage and his films. He's annoying and his films usually suck. But the trailer for Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans revealed that this would be one of the few movies that didn't have Cage racing through fire, manically trying to save the world from certain doom. Which is a good thing.

Variety's Todd McCarthy shows that maybe my instincts were right and the film does not entirely suck:

From the moment it was announced, there was something a tad loony about the idea of remaking -- or revisiting or reinventing or whatever they want to call it -- Abel Ferrara's 1992 "Bad Lieutenant," with Werner Herzog, no less, directing. Well, lo and behold, there's also something rather loony about the finished film itself. But there's also a sort of deadpan zaniness, stemming from a steadfast conviction in its own absurdity, that gives "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" a strange distinction all its own. Not at all an art film, the picture lacks sufficient action to sate the appetites of sensation seekers, but star Nicolas Cage's name means enough to offer some short-run B.O. traction and good home-viewing market returns.

...New Orleans is a bright, if blighted, city, and Herzog approaches it, as well as the depredations of the title character, with a straight face and unblinking lens, the better to catch a glimpse of the links connecting Katrina, the corruption of authority as seen through the outrageous behavior of the lieutenant, and the money, which lands mostly in the wrong places.

The film is offbeat, silly, disarming and loopy all at the same time, and viewers will decide to ride with that or just give up on it, according to mood and disposition.

New trailer for Confucius biopic + 1st photos from A Single Man

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.

Tom Ford's A Single Man stars Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode, and Ginnifer Goodwin.

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!]

A Single Man is in the TIFF and Venice lineup, so we'll have word on it after it premiers in Venice next Friday on September 11.

The word from Venice: reaction to The Road is mixed

The first day of the upcoming glorious month of film (Venice, Telluride, Toronto, Austin!) kicked off yesterday with the opening of the 66th Venice Film Festival. The adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed novel, The Road had its world premier earlier today.

Let's start with the good from Geoffrey MacNab at the Independent:

In the event, John Hillcoat has made a film of power and sensitivity that works remarkably well on the big screen. It plays like a Dystopian version of Huck Finn. "Tattered gods slouching in their rags across the waste," was how McCarthy described the father and son on their grim odyssey south across America toward the coast.

The film captures well the strange mix of heroism and seeming futility that characterises the journey. What is most impressive is the restraint the filmmakers bring to their material. The look of the film is muted and grey other than in the flashbacks to the pre-apocalyptic moments that the man (Viggo Mortensen) enjoyed with his wife (Charlize Theron) before the world ground to a halt.

Deborah Young from the Hollywood Reporter calls the film "intense":

VENICE -- In "The Road," director John Hillcoat has performed an admirable job of bringing Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the screen as an intact and haunting tale, even at the cost of sacrificing color, big scenes and standard Hollywood imagery of post-apocalyptic America.

Shot through with a bleak intensity and pessimism that offers little hope for a better tomorrow, the film is more suitable to critical appreciation than to attracting huge audiences though topliners Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron will attract initial business.

...Hillcoat and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe create a frighteningly barren world virtually devoid of color, where everything is covered with fine gray ash and even the sea has become gray. Occasional flashbacks to pre-disaster life offer momentary visual respites of color, music and warmth.

Now, on to the bad from Variety's Todd McCarthy:

This "Road" leads nowhere. If you're going to adapt a book like Cormac McCarthy's 2006 bestseller, you're pretty much obliged to make a terrific film or it's not worth doing -- first because expectations are high, and second, because the picture needs to make it worth people's while to sit through something so grim. Except for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front. Showing clear signs of being test-screened and futzed with to death, the Dimension release may receive a measure of respect in some quarters but is very, very far from the film it should have been, spelling moderate to tepid B.O. prospects after big fest preems.

...But Hillcoat, who played with heavy violence in "The Proposition" and made some of it stick, shows no talent for or inclination toward setting up a scene here; any number of sequences in "The Road" could have been very suspenseful if built up properly, but Hillcoat, working from a script by Joe Penhall, just hopscotches from scene to scene in almost random fashion without any sense of pacing or dramatic modulation.

Dialogue that should have been directed with an almost Pinteresque sense of timing is delivered without meaningful shadings, principally by two actors who have no chemistry together. Unfortunately, Mortensen lacks the gravitas to carry the picture; suddenly resembling Gabby Hayes with his whiskers and wayward hair, the actor has no bottom to him, and his interactions with Smit-McPhee, whom one can believe as Theron's son but not Mortensen's, never come alive. Tellingly, both thesps are better in their individual scenes with other actors; Mortensen gets into it with Robert Duvall, who plays an old coot met along the road, while Smit-McPhee registers a degree of rapport with Guy Pearce, practically unrecognizable at first as another wanderer. Generally, the boy's readings are blandly on the nose.

Finally, the mixed reviews from In Contention starting with Kris Tapley:

There is a moment maybe three quarters into John Hillcoat’s “The Road” when it becomes clear that atmosphere may have been preferred over characterization: Viggo Mortensen’s character — known simply as “The Man” in Cormac McCarthy’s original fiction and nameless here — sits by a fire, wary of a cataracts-ridden old-timer (Robert Duvall) who couldn’t defend himself, much less harm a child.

...This should take nothing away from Viggo Mortensen’s work as an actor in the film, which is considerably moving. It isn’t his finest work yet and probably doesn’t deserve the claims of “tour de force” that are waiting to be tossed about, but it is a refined piece of acting nevertheless. However, the effect is muted by Mortensen’s co-star, Kodi Smit-McPhee, whose shrill embodiment doesn’t take on the messianic quality to which the role clearly aspires.

But ultimately, the tale itself feels doomed as a piece of cinema, forever confined to a more effective state on the page, where it knows only the limits of your imagination. Here, it is a wandering sort of entertainment that doesn’t know whether to be shocking or profound. Ultimately, it is neither, leaving merely a bleak residue of style in the shadow of potential substance.

And from Guy Lodge:

The film is by no means an embarrassment, and certainly puts the lie to the belief expressed by many that Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was “unfilmable.” John Hillcoat and his team have indeed fashioned cinema out of McCarthy’s ravished American landscape and sparse familial romance (Hillcoat and Viggo Mortensen both branded the film “a love story” in this afternoon’s press conference), and have done without making significant detours from the narrative course of the novel. (Fears provoked by the trailer that genre elements had been played up are largely unfounded.)

But where McCarthy’s prose made a virtue of its languor, snowballing urgency and desperation from its day-to-day slog, Hillcoat’s film plays weirdly disjointed and repetitive, as emotional beats (principally fear versus trust) recur without variation in nuance or context — losing the taut sense of continuity in McCarthy’s mammoth journey has been lost. Mortensen is as empathetic and physically committed to the material as you’d expect; regrettably, he lacks a sufficiently strong scene partner in young Kodi Smit-McPhee, whose subtler gestural details are too often outweighed by shrill emoting.

The Road has reportedly been added to the Telluride Film Festival, which kicks off Friday.

Carey Mulligan might win an Oscar for Bright Star?

Someone needs to tell the folks who designed Variety's screening schedule that Carey Mulligan isn't the lead actress in Jane Campion's Bright Star. Whoops:




It might be easy to confuse British actress Carey Mulligan and Australian actress, Abbie Cornish - as EW points out they're both attractive twenty-somethings who might be Oscar nominated for Best Actress come January. And both their films are from female directors. But maybe we should get their names under the right films - Carey Mulligan is the lead in Lone Scherfig's An Education while Abbie Cornish is the lead in Campion's Bright Star. Let's hope they don't make these kinds of mistakes when they announce the winners during awards season.

The Wizard of Oz goes Hi-Def

Makes me really wish I could see the Ruby Slippers on a giant screen in my own country:

NCM Fathom, Warner Home Video and Turner Classic Movies present The Wizard of Oz 70th Anniversary Hi-Def Event featuring the first ever High Definition presentation in movie theatres nationwide of The Wizard of Oz.

This One Night Event will take place in over 440 movie theatres nationwide on Wednesday, September 23rd at 7:00 p.m. (local time). In addition to the feature presentation of The Wizard of Oz, this exclusive event will include a special introduction by Robert Osborne, a classic film historian and host of Turner Classic Movies, followed by "To Oz! The Making of a Classic"; a look into how L. Frank Baum's classic novel was transformed into one of the most beloved films of all time including archival interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and rare musical outtakes. Also featured will be an exclusive clip of the Scarecrow, Ray Bolger, dancing in High-definition for the very first time.

DVD/BluRay on sale September 29.

Tickets on-sale NOW! Limited seats available.

Enter your zip code on their website. Tickets sold thru Fandango. [Fathom Events via ONTD!]

So, if they're playing The Wizard of Oz at a theater near you, will you watch?

Links for you: Blue Smurfs and Red Sonja

Get your first look at what CGI Smurfs will look like. (Hint: awful) [The Movie Blog]

ABC releases a 2 minute sneak peek of FlashForward. [ComingSoon]

New photos of the Volturi from The Twilight Saga: New Moon are online. The photos include Michael Sheen as Aro and Dakota Fanning as Jane. [Empire]

The Fantastic Four franchise gets a reboot. [Film Junk]

How would Marvel reimagine Disney heroines? [Jeffrey Thomas's Portfolio via In Contention]

A handy user's guide to the Academy's new best picture voting rules. [Film School Rejects]

Get your first look at Amanda Seyfried in Chloe. Seyfried plays Chloe, an escort hired to seduce Julianne Moore's husband (Liam Neeson). The film is on the Toronto Film Festival lineup. [FirstShowing]

Rose McGowan says Red Sonja begins shooting in 2010. Don't hold your breath. [Get The Big Picture]