After perusing former New York Post reporter Mandy Stadtmiller's must-read post for XOJane.com about how she inspired a character on Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, I had to find out if the show's creator responded to her after her story hit the 'net.
He did, although his response was not what I expected. more »
HBO's upcoming original movie The Girl, previewed last week for the Television Critics Association, tells the story of Alfred Hitchcock (Toby Jones) and Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) making the films The Birds and Marnie. If you thought this would be a fun story about stepping in bird doodie and making it big in Hollywood, you’re in for a big shock, as Hedren spoke at length about the alleged sexual harassment and abuse she suffered at the hands of the "unusual, genius, and evil" director.
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Ridley and Tony Scott know a thing or two about indelible movie scenes. So it's not surprising that the filmmakers behind, respectively, the chest burster scene in Alien and the "Bela Lugosi Is Dead"-accompanied blood-drinking scene at the opening of The Hunger would rely on an iconic single image to connect their A&E Network reboot of Coma to Michael Crichton's original 1978 movie adaptation of Robin Cook's novel about organ harvesting.
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Joined by series star Rupert Grint at the British Embassy’s Creative Content Summit, Harry Potter series producer David Heyman looked back on 2001's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first film in the lucrative J.K. Rowling boy wizard franchise, and revealed which parts now make him "want to cringe."
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To paraphrase Clemenza from The Godfather: Move the picture. Keep the scene.
Deadline Hollywood reported that Warner Bros. has decided to push the release date of Gangster Squad to January 11, 2013. more »
Gangster Squad does not look like it will be coming to a theater near you any time soon.
In the wake of the mass shooting at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo., an industry insider tells Movieline that Warner executives are expected to decide today whether to reschedule the release of the Ruben Fleischer-directed film about the L.A. police departments war against the organized crime in the 1940s and 50s.
And the insider says odds the picture — which stars Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn and Josh Brolin — will keep its Sept.7 release date are pretty long. more »
The adaptation process is always a tricky one, but Oliver Stone had to make some especially tough choices in editing his big-screen version of Don Winslow’s Savages – and as a result, scenes with Uma Thurman, one of his cast’s biggest names, were left on the cutting room floor.
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Film critic and author Marsha McCreadie remembers an afternoon spent with the late Nora Ephron discussing life, filmmaking, and the industry for her book The Women Who Write the Movies.
So how did I actually get to interview Nora Ephron, who died at the age of 71 two days ago in Manhattan? I had put in requests in the usual fashion, for a book I was writing on women screenwriters. But what sealed the deal was cornering Ephron in the woman’s room of the Loew’s 84th Street movie theater on her beloved upper west side of Manhattan, setting for You’ve Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally..., the topic of the latter — can a woman and man be friends without or with having sex? — having spawned innumerable rom-coms.
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Of the many, many unexplained puzzles left untangled in Ridley Scott's Prometheus, one deliberately vague scene has had Prometheus-watchers scratching their heads and speculating for weeks — let's call it the "Lost in Translation" question. So what did Michael Fassbender's David say, in non-translated ancient alien-speak, to a certain you-know-who in Prometheus? Actual answers within!
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Critics will argue over Disney-Pixar's 11th century Scottish princess adventure Brave, but there's one thing we can all agree on: That redheaded Merida chick has one fantastic head of hair. And as the Wall Street Journal reports, it wasn't easy to do the 'do. "Merida's hair is made up of 1,500 individually sculpted curves, distinct points in a three-dimensional space, that are programmed to bounce and interact in relation to one another via a new software system, says [Pixar simulation supervisor Claudia Chung]. Another software program was created to make the hair react more realistically to the character's movements and surroundings." Not bad for a girl born nine centuries before the invention of Herbal Essences. [WSJ via Movie City News]
With his Sundance conversation-starter Red Hook Summer set for an August theatrical/VOD release, Spike Lee sat down with GQ and gave a rundown of which projects are happening for him, and which are not. Among the Spike Lee joints lost by the wayside due to funding struggles, etc.: His Jackie Robinson biopic, LA riots film, and Wesley Snipes-as-James Brown flick. Surprisingly, Lee admits he's still awaiting the green light on Oldboy — but in the meantime Lee's plotting to direct Mike Tyson on Broadway and has already interviewed the likes of Justin Bieber for a Michael Jackson doc celebrating the 25th anniversary of Bad, so there's that... [GQ]
Ditto what New Yorker writer Hannah Goldfield says of Disney's 1992 flop-turned-Broadway hit Newsies, though I loathed the tepid romance between Christian Bale's Jack and that useless Sarah girl. Ahem: "A movie is fixed, eternal. Your perception of it may change slightly each time you watch it, but nothing else, not the tiniest of details, will. It’s a precise memory you can return to, over and over—I know I’ve found a movie I’ll love forever if I have the feeling of wanting to watch it again immediately after it ends..." [New Yorker]
Oscar-nominated director Guillermo del Toro has been in the craft of filmmaking since he was 16, filling roles as diverse as P.A., assistant director and makeup effects. He made his first film Cronos at 28 and received his Academy Award-nomination in 2007 for Pan's Labyrinth, making him one of the most prominent filmmakers to emerge from his native Mexico. In a candid interview, he explains how he learned filmmaking in author Mike Goodridge's new book, FilmCraft: Directing.
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Sometimes TMI is just TMI, says writer and critic Dave White, reviewing Scotty Bowers' Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars: "Stalker-y internet gossip site TMZ is its own TV show now and they've got a bus that runs all day long so tourists from Indiana can see where Chris Brown beat up Rihanna....It's a time in Hollywood history when Mel Gibson takes up with his mistress, puts a baby in her, screams weird racist things on the phone, they laugh about it on The View and then Jodie Foster turns around and puts him in her next movie...And even if [Katharine] Hepburn was a lesbian with a bad complexion and [Spencer] Tracy a conflicted bisexual alcoholic, what purpose does it serve if I also know that Scotty Bowers provided her with as many as 150 paid female 'companions' over her lifetime?" [Los Angeles Review of Books]
Joss Whedon has always kept his devout cult following close, even as his projects have made it big (or not -- right, Dollhouse fans?). So with the mega-huge success of Avengers, maybe some of the Whedon faithful were right to worry that fame might alter their idol's true path -- the one that takes a step back from a big time Hollywood future to focus on Dr. Horrible 2 and homemade Shakespeare adaptations, for instance. And so Whedon took to his blog to thank the fans who'd been Whedonettes/Whedonheads/Whedonwhatevers all along, and also to link to a poop-related internet video he appeared in last week. Oh, that Joss.
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