Contest time again! And while our L.A. squad had all the fun last time around, today I'm pleased to offer readers in and around New York City a chance to check out a nifty new doc tying the Bard, cutthroat competition and the winsome likes of Kevin Spacey and Richard Dreyfuss together in a potent nonfiction blend. If you've got this Friday night free and are feeling creative and/or lucky, read on to win a pair of tickets to Shakespeare High.
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Taylor Kitsch is about to have a very big 2012. In addition to carrying Disney’s ambitious sci-fi adaptation John Carter as the titular Edgar Rice Burroughs hero, a Civil War veteran transported to Mars, he’s also fronting Peter Berg’s alien invasion actioner Battleship and starring in Oliver Stone’s Savages later this year. But as Kitsch revealed to Movieline, the John Carter job wasn’t easy to get — and the toll it took on him during production was a challenge in itself. So who better to offer pro tips on nabbing the spotlight and handling the pressure of becoming an action hero than Kitsch, on the eve of a new chapter in his career?
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Unemployment is bad, but things like What's Your Number are apparently worse: "In the overall (all countries) adjusted model, adolescents with higher exposure to alcohol use in movies were significantly more likely to have engaged in binge drinking, even after controlling for age, gender, family affluence, school performance, television screen time, sensation seeking and rebelliousness, and frequency of drinking of peers, parents, and siblings." The most troubling part of this study might be its definition of binge drinking as five or more drinks in one sitting, which I otherwise tend to refer to as "lunch." [Pediatrics (PDF) via Deadline]
Because the only thing audiences want to see more than Woody Allen acting in someone else's movie is Woody Allen whoring John Turturro out to rich women, we will soon have a film entitled Fading Gigolo (which still sounds better than Nero Fiddled). Turturro will write and direct the buddy comedy, "which finds Turturro and Allen playing cash-strapped best friends who decide to go into the gigolo business together and subsequently attract the suspicion of the Hasidic Jewish community in which they live. Duo take on the pseudonyms Virgil and Bongo, with Allen pimping out Turturro's character until he falls for a Jewish widow, who has not yet been cast." [Variety]
It's the start to a pivotal relationship in The Hunger Games saga: Newly minted tribute Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) meets her Capitol-assigned stylist, Cinna (Lenny Kravitz), who will help her put on a brave, fierce face for the media circus leading up to the televised deathmatch known as the Hunger Games. Watch the two meet in a promising clip from the March 23 release and chime in: Does this scene bode well for the franchise-launching adaptation?
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Official release plans haven't been revealed for Paul Thomas Anderson's mysterious untitled religious drama, known as The Master, which stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix and was reportedly filmed on 65mm. But while distributor The Weinstein Co. hasn't let slip potential release dates yet, producer/financier Megan Ellison dropped a hint on Twitter about a possible fall opening.
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Back in January, actress Kim Novak issued a statement decrying the use of Bernard Hermann's theme from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo in eventual Oscar-winner The Artist, igniting a flurry of debate by calling it an act of rape. (“I want to report a rape," she declared. “My body of work has been violated by The Artist.") And whether or not you agreed then that it was an appropriate way to describe an act of artistic citation -- the Academy Award-winning team behind The Artist would call it homage -- Novak is back with another stunner that may reignite the conversation. "I didn't use that word lightly," she said in a report by The AP's Derrik J. Lang today. "I had been raped as a child."
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Over the course of his career, Robert B. Sherman and his brother Richard wrote some of the most endearing and indelible songs tied to the Disney legacy, including their "It's a Small World (After All)" theme park ditty and the music for Mary Poppins that earned them two Academy Awards. In honor of the elder Sherman, who passed away this week at the age of 86, let's traipse down memory lane and revisit some of the Sherman Brothers' most enduring contributions.
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If it's good enough for Werner Herzog, Tony Scott and the reigning Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, then by God, it's good enough for you: "Executive Director Gregory Kallenberg announced today the inaugural Louisiana Film Prize, with a grand prize of $50,000. The Louisiana Film Prize contest and festival invites filmmakers from all over the world to create and present a short film under one condition – it must be shot in the Shreveport-Bossier area." Good luck! Write if you get work! [LAfilmprize.com]
Two teen-oriented comedies this season share much in common, from a gleeful embracing of the spirit of youthful recklessness to the idea that geeks will indeed inherit the earth. One is among the better comedies we’re likely to see this year; the other is by far, on its face, the sleaziest. Both were penned by the same actor-turned-screenwriter, Michael Bacall, who also captured the slings and arrows of slacker youth heroism in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So why are Project X and 21 Jump Street so diametrically opposed when it comes to depicting the youth of today?
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No! Not together! Could you imagine? Actually, I guess you're perfectly welcome to play these unearthed early '90s pop gems by artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel and actor Ian McShane simultaneously in a fit of masochistic Tuesday morning ardor, but nine out of 10 doctors would strongly disapprove. And the tenth one would be clinically deaf. Let's have a listen!
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Amber Tamblyn (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret) always seemed like a girl with moxie, and I'd guess you don't fall in with a guy like David Cross without one wicked sense of humor, but even so the depths of awesome that she went to in pranking Tyrese Gibson deserve applause. And boy, what a prank: After receiving an e-mail from the Transformers/Fast 5 star proposing a future collaboration after he mistook her for model Amber Rose on a mutual friend's email message, Tamblyn reportedly had some fun with the musician-actor with a series of original "Awareness Raps."
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Following in the footsteps of hit musical adaptations Billy Elliot, Wicked, and Bring It On: The Musical, Universal's stage adaptation of John Landis's Animal House will hit Broadway with a book by playwright Michael Mitnick, to be directed by Book of Mormon's Casey Nicholaw, with music by the guys who sang the indelible lyrics "Chickity China the Chinese chicken/You have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin'." Because nothing says "Broadway" like frat boys and crunchy Canadian alt-rock, right? [THR]
Young adulthood has seemed to suit Dakota Fanning well, as the now 18-year-old has embraced her transition out of childhood with a number of ballsy, mature moves. The latest in her career progression? Tackling the two-fold challenge of playing a dying cancer patient and sporting an English accent, as seen in the trailer for Now is Good. Try to ignore the Mia Wasikowska vibe emanating from Fanning (and the spectre of Mandy Moore, who did this already in the Nicholas Sparks pic A Walk to Remember, if you remember) after the jump.
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At long last, the meeting of influential cinema icon Stanley Kubrick and the amorphous multi-headed entity known collectively as The Kardashians has occurred, and here is the photographic evidence: Kendall and Kylie Jenner, younger sisters of Kim Kardashian and the other two from that show you know you watch when no one else is looking, pose a la the creepy twins from The Shining with matriarch Kris Jenner as... uh, you tell me.
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