It's March 14, dear readers, which is better known in the math-loving community as Pi Day. In honor of this numeric holiday, please help yourself to approximately three slices of pie from our expansive pie-ffet (any kind of pie you can imagine, displayed underneath a Movieline-emblazoned sneeze guard!), and review these films that make you -- or your estranged autistic brother Raymond -- really, really love numbers.
more »
SXSW is a fest that caters to alterna-sensibilities, so it's no surprise genre fare has done well thus far. Insidious scored high marks with the horror crowd, but The Kill List notched all-out raves from even mainstream press -- though the Conan O'Brien documentary Conan O'Brien Can't Stop contains enough rage and demon-exorcising to give both a run for their money. Meanwhile, Bellflower -- a Sundance entry in the Emerging Visions sidebar -- screens on Monday night, as does the Dance Dance Revolution thriller The FP. Yes, you read that right: a gang warfare film about Dance Dance Revolution. Don't you wish you were in Austin?
more »
The Maysles Brothers and the Rolling Stones. Martin Scorsese and the Band. Jonathan Demme and Talking Heads. Davis Guggenheim and Justin Bieber. Some of cinema's most important collaborations have served as pop music milestones as well, a collision of sound, light, vision and performance better known as the concert film. And finally -- finally -- we can add David Lynch and Duran Duran to their ranks. Wait, what?
more »
· Come to think of it, Ferris Bueller's Day Off is like a coming of age indie movie -- what with the Star Wars references, museum trips and the before-their-time hipsters struck with a sense of ennui. British filmmaker Joseph Brett took advantage of this fact by recutting a trailer for the teen comedy classic with a weepy indie rock song ("A Slight Return Home" by Wood Pigeon), and the results speak for themselves. Click ahead to watch, then stick around for more Buzz Break.
more »
"The first time he went on the show, promoting Step Brothers, he had a panic attack and started to shake visibly. 'People are, like, "Oh, my God, are you all right? Do you have Parkinson's?" You think no one will notice and then you read the comments online, and people are genuinely worried, or, worse, they're making fun of you.'" Best wishes to Adam McKay in swiftly curing his Charlie Rose jitters; Hollywood's best celebrity therapist seems to help. [The New Yorker]
"A film distributor says it has decided to stop showing Clint Eastwood's tsunami movie Hereafter in Japan following a catastrophic quake. Warner Entertainment Japan Inc. official Satoru Otani says theaters will no longer show the film. He said Monday the terrifying tsunami scenes in the movie were 'not appropriate' at this time." Yeeaahhh, probably not. [AP via Deadline]
Happy Monday! Now that we've all sprung forward, it's time to address one of the weekend's other primary cultural matters: Battle: Los Angeles. The number-one movie in America was also one of the most critically reviled of the year -- from Movieline's own Michelle Orange to Roger Ebert, opinions on this ranged from generally disapproving to bitterly angry. But that was before you saw it.
more »
Talk about burying the lead. Over the weekend, Alec Baldwin penned an open letter to Charlie Sheen about why he should head back to Two and a Half Men, which doesn't matter until you realize Baldwin included five paragraphs about how he wound up not appearing in Patriot Games. "People often ask me why I never continued in the role of Jack Ryan in the movies based on Tom Clancy's great novels," Baldwin wrote. "Usually, I have given a half truth as an answer, something about scheduling conflicts and so forth. But the truth is the studio cut my throat. Or, more specifically, an executive at the studio named David Kirkpatrick..." Burn.
more »
Also in this Monday edition of The Broadsheet: Steven Soderbergh discusses the Leni Reifenstahl biopic that never happened... Bret Easton Ellis sheds light on Charlie Sheen's antics... Sheen is too busy selling out his variety show and trying to save Japan to care... and more ahead.
more »
72 new production images from Tree of Life have surfaced online, and while they contain no major reveals about the film, they do emphasize one major revelation that some may have missed in the trailer: The redhead beauty Jessica Chastain is about to be a major star. We've already called this, but for my money, these photos pretty much put the case to rest. While Sean Penn and Brad Pitt's expressions mostly range from pensive to really pensive, Chastain's ethereal presence infuses the stills with a dynamic range of emotion and um... life. Click through and get ready to start reading her name on almost every shortlist.
more »
Universal's geek bonding road trip flick Paul screens shortly tonight at SXSW, but another sci-fi alien pic with ties to the Nick Frost-Edgar Wright-Simon Pegg universe may have already stolen its thunder: Attack the Block, director Joe Cornish's horror comedy about inner-city London kids who channel their delinquent ways into survival skills when vicious space invaders descend.
more »
On Friday, the folks from Disney got together to clean up and help construct a new playground in Queen Park in Inglewood, California. Clearing debris, pouring concrete and assembling new playground equipment, all of the volunteers put in a backbreaking full day of work for a charitable good cause. Except for Wilmer Valderama. He cruised in about 5 hours after the volunteers had begun working, picked up a shovel and a hoe "to help out," and then posed for a photo op before jetting off. I think Wilmer might have spent more time on his iPhone than anything else, since he only was there about an hour before the project was finished. Oh well, at least he was playing Angry Birds for a good cause. Take a look at these pics that a Movieline spy snapped and judge for yourself.
more »
This weekend, aliens attempted to storm your local cineplex and America decided it likes its space invaders to shoot lasers at LA rather than just nab some moms. Battle: Los Angeles took the box office crown this weekend, while the Robert Zemeckis-produced Mars Needs Moms crash-landed at number five. And occupying that squishy middle ground was Red Riding Hood, which had a so-so debut at so-so number three. Your weekend receipts are here.
more »
Fresh from its fantastic new trailer that announced its Oscar candidacy, Super 8 has unveiled its new poster and it's just as thoughtful, whimsical and tantalizing as its preview. With the money shot names of JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg prominently featured, it also has a sideways perspective that recalls the knocked-over super-8 camera that may or may not have recorded whatever was in that train. Unless you're Christopher Rosen, check out the poster below!
more »
