When a college student loses everything playing online poker, he believes he’s been cheated and hunts down the man responsible. That’s the just the start of Brad Furman‘s Runner Runner, which stars Justin Timberlake in the student role and Ben Affleck as the cheater. The two men team up, and before you know it, Timberlake’s character is in way over his head with the F.B.I. breathing down his neck.
The first trailer for the September 27th thriller is now online. Check it out below. Read More »
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It’s been six months since we heard that Ben Affleck‘s follow-up to Argo would likely mark the filmmaker’s return to Boston, as he targeted Dennis Lehane‘s novel Live By Night. Now there’s an actual timetable for the film that Affleck will write, direct, and star in. Appian Way will produce with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s company Pearl Street. It’s Affleck’s second turn with Lehane, who also wrote the book that became Affleck’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone.
Deadline reports that pre-production starts today. While Affleck is the only cast member at this point, things will likely pick up steam in a month or two as the film jogs towards a production start in August or September. The novel follows a police captains son, who becomes deeply involved in organized crime. The trick is that it’s a period piece, with the novel kicking off in the mid-’20s, and traveling eventually from Boston to Florida and Cuba.
Read a long synopsis of the book below. Read More »
When Ben Affleck was in his “choosing between projects” phase right after the completion of Argo, he flirted with acting in a Warner Bros. film called Focus. The movie, scripted and set to be directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love) is about a young female con artist who teams up with an older, more experienced male counterpart.
The original idea was to re-team Crazy, Stupid, Love actors Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. That didn’t work, and Kristen Stewart was soon set to play the young criminal, with Affleck to play her partner. Affleck dropped out (edit: both actors dropped out, Affleck and Stewart) but now Will Smith is in talks to play the role. Read More »
In the twenty years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick was elevated from director who salvaged Days of Heaven only after years of editing, to cinematic messiah. His aesthetic approach was canonized, and actors flocked to work with him, no matter how small the part. Now, with two movies in less than two years (and at least two more on the way) Malick is being brought down to Earth once more. This is a good thing. Once again, he’s just a guy who makes movies. Fortunately, he makes movies in a way that is unlike most others, and thanks to his improvisational process he still carries the trust of talented actors.
I’d very much like to love his latest film, To the Wonder. I do appreciate it quite a lot, which is something different. As if designed to be a miniature of his career, this movie describes a tension between the glorious and prosaic. It is not a conventional narrative, but rather a look over Malick’s shoulder as he feels his way towards an idea.
That idea is a portrait of our relationship to the divine, as expressed through four interconnected lives that sketch a difficult romantic relationship. Whether that “divine” is God or nature, or some ineffable truth, doesn’t really matter. Malick seeks to balance the first brush with wonder and the difficult process of sustaining it though the grind of everyday life. Read More »
You know how it goes: a picture becomes a financial success, wins a few awards, takes home the top Oscar, and pisses off Iran. All because of that, someone is guaranteed to want to get the team back together for another round.
Ben Affleck, star and director of Argo, and Argo screenwriter Chris Terrio (also an Oscar-winner for Argo) are looking like the duo to adapt the book Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution, which tells the story of the battle that helped kickstart the American Revolution against the British. It probably won’t be Affleck’s next movie — that’s looking like it will be an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel Live By Night — but it could be up after that. Read More »
Posted on Friday, March 8th, 2013 by Angie Han
“Prolific” isn’t a word you would’ve associated with Terrence Malick for the first forty years of his career, which yielded just five films. But it’s coming to define the next stage of it. Since 2011′s Tree of Life he’s been on a roll, with some four films due out in the next few years.
The first of those will be To the Wonder, which hits next month. The dreamy romantic drama stars Ben Affleck as Neil, a man caught between two loves: the French Marina (Olga Kurylenko), who moves with him to Oklahoma, and the all-American Jane (Rachel McAdams), who was his childhood sweetheart. Javier Bardem also stars, a priest suffering a crisis of faith. Hit the jump to check out the latest trailer.
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Here are the winners of the 85th Oscars. It was a rather strange year, with only the sixth tie in the history of the awards (for Sound Editing) an excess of references to Chicago, and a surprise win in the Best Director category for Ang Lee. (And those who expected Jessica Chastain to take the Best Actress award were surprised by Jennifer Lawrence winning the award, for Silver Linings Playbook.) Lee’s Life of Pi actually ended up being the night’s big winner, with four Oscars.
As expected, Ben Affleck‘s Argo took Best Picture, with producer Grant Heslov taking the opportunity to really highlight Affleck (also a producer) and give the director time to have the mic. And though the event was hosted by a comedian, Best Actor winner Daniel Day Lewis made the best jokes of the night — surprise, surprise, the guy was better than everyone else in the room.
For more commentary check out the night’s live blog. Read More »
Terrence Malick has traditionally been one of the most reclusive American filmmakers. He does few interviews, and makes his films shrouded in as much secrecy as possible. But it’s very difficult to make a movie in a vacuum of late, and so we see occasional behind the scenes glimpses.
For To the Wonder, his most recent film, we’ve now got behind the scenes footage released through official channels ahead of the film’s opening. Here the actors, (Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, and Javier Bardem) discuss how there was really no script, and that their characters were shaped by Malick describing them, and that there was essentially a syllabus that included novels and philosophy.
There’s a lot here about shooting on location and the way the director likes to use light. One thing is noticeably absent in this footage, however: Terrence Malick. If you’re hoping for interviews with the still-reclusive director, forget about it. Still, this long featurette is worth a look. Read More »
