Posted on Friday, January 27th, 2012 by Angie Han
Earlier this week, we reported on the apparent demise of the David Fincher-produced adaptation of Eric Powell‘s The Goon after star Paul Giamatti commented that the picture had run out of money. However, it now seems we were a bit too quick to give up on the long-gestating project. Powell has taken to his blog to address the issue, writing that “THE GOON FILM IS STILL ON THE TABLE,” and Giamatti and Fincher have since weighed in as well.
Long story short, the film’s still got a great many steps to go before it hits theaters — but it’s still very much clinging onto life. Read more after the jump.
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We’re still waiting for a new trailer for Marvel and Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers, but here’s a new batch of photos to tide you over. Well, not new exactly — these are clean versions of pics that showed up not long ago in Empire. You won’t see much here in terms of grand plot or character revelation here, as the shots are mostly of Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey, Jr. standing around and/or talking.
But there is that one shot of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) in which the scars spiderwebbing out from under his eye patch just don’t look healthy. Is that old wound infected, or can we take this as evidence that something happens to Fury in the film? It can’t be anything too bad, since he’s got to survive long enough to star in a movie of his own, right? Read More »
Like the dreams of Inception, The Words is a story about a story within a story. On the top level, there is a plot featuring Dennis Quaid and Olivia Wilde. In the middle, there’s Jeremy Irons, Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana. And on the bottom, there’s Ben Barnes and Nora Arnezeder. With direction by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, the film’s structure is its second most interesting aspect. When The Words is at its best, those three tales are weaving together to speak about the decisions people make and how living with them can be the hardest thing imaginable.
The Words will be the closing night film of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on Friday and while it won’t win any awards, it’s an entertaining, literature-centric story that will keep you interested and guessing. Read More »
Posted on Friday, January 27th, 2012 by Angie Han
With the exception of True Blood creator Alan Ball’s very serious-sounding Banshee, today’s TV Bits is all about the funny. After the jump:
- Dwight Schrute could leave Dunder Mifflin for Schrute Farms
- Paul Feig will direct Goldie Hawn in HBO’s The Viagra Diaries
- CBS orders a pilot written by and starring Bridesmaids‘ Rebel Wilson
- Alan Ball sells an Amish country-set action drama to Cinemax
- HBO decides to turn Indie Game: The Movie into a half-hour comedy
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While Sundance is best known for movies that sell for millions and stir up controversial topics, most of the movies are simple, well-written, well-acted films that are solid, but often get lost in the mix. Lynn Shelton‘s follow-up to Humpday, called Your Sister’s Sister, is one of those movies. Another is GOATS, the debut feature of Christopher Neil.
Your Sister’s Sister features Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt as estranged sisters Iris and Hannah who end up at their family’s old cabin when Iris’ best friend Jack (Mark Duplass) heads there to get over the one-year anniversary of the death of his brother. The three characters then develop what I’d like to call a “love triangle” but is more like a “love right angle” that flirts on and off with adding that third line.
GOATS stars David Duchovny, Vera Farmiga and Ty Burrell as the parental figures of a young teenager named Eliis, played by Graham Phillips. Ellis lives a care-free, hippie lifestyle in Arizona with his mom (Farmiga) and her groundskeeper named Goat Man (Duchovny) but when he decides to go back east to the prep school run by his estranged father (Burrell), he finds himself torn between two very different set of parental ideals.
Read more about both movies after the jump. Read More »
Craig Zobel‘s Compliance made me want to walk out of the theater. Not as a reaction to the film’s quality, however. On the contrary, Compliance is actually quite accomplished. Actually, it’s so effective it made me want to walk out because the real life events portrayed were so enraging, so unbelievable, so easily avoidable and painted such a bad light on humanity that I could almost not stomach sitting in the theater.
In the film, a man posing as a police officer calls a local fast food restaurant and accuses an employee named Becky (Dreama Walker) of stealing from a customer. The man asks her manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) to at first detain, and later search her employee. From there things devolve to almost unbelievable and upsetting depths. I say “almost unbelievable” because the film is based on true events that happened at a Kentucky McDonald’s in 2004. (In the film, however, McDonald’s isn’t mentioned for obvious reasons.)
At the first public screening of Compliance, Zobel was screamed at by audience members and accused of misogyny. Other Q&A’s also featured awkward and uncomfortable questions/comments as people wrestled with the disturbing events in the film. Read more about the film and its purpose after the jump. Read More »
Briefly: It is probably shallow to become more interested in a movie when the rating is R rather than PG-13. But then, the action/comedy/romance This Means War looks fairly shallow, so my slightly elevated interest in the movie might be a perfect match for it. The film stars Chris Pine and Tom Hardy as best friends who are also partners in the CIA. But their friendship is torn asunder when they fall for the same woman, played by Reese Witherspoon.
While Fox was hoping to get the film on screens with a PG-13 rating, the MPAA gave it an R, and upon appeal the board upheld the rating. Why is the film R? Does Chris Pine’s head explode? Nope — it is just R for “some sexual content.” Oh, that repressed MPAA! I can’t imagine the sex in the movie being all that crazy, but we’ll see what the story really is when the film is released on Tuesday, February 14. Or, the Valentine’s Day release was the plan; now that the film will go out with an R, perhaps it will be pushed back tpo the 17th once again.
Check out the trailer again after the break. Read More »
Posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 by Angie Han
With all the fuss about this spring’s The Hunger Games, I’d almost forgotten all about Josh Hutcherson‘s other blockbuster franchise, which began in 2008 with Journey to the Center of the Earth. But Hutcherson hasn’t, of course, and he’ll be reprising his role next month in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.
Hutcherson plays lead Sean Anderson, who teams up with his stepfather (Dwayne Johnson) to explore the fantastical, heavily CGI-ed wonderland of the title. Also along for the ride are a wacky helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) and his daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), as well as Sean’s adventurous grandfather (Michael Caine). Watch the new trailer after the jump.
