Happy Monday! With filming underway on Lovelace, one of two competing biopics about '70s porn actress turned anti-porn advocate Linda Lovelace, the New York Times has a look at a faux-vintage poster featuring Amanda Seyfried as the XXX starlet in her star-making 1972 skin flick, Deep Throat.
more »
This should be interesting: Variety's Gregg Goldstein reports from Berlinale that Billy Bob Thornton is working on a script for an "'ethereal' road movie" entitled And Then We Drove. Based partly on experiences from his time with ex Angelina Jolie, Thornton says "[it's about] a guy who's on a road trip and picks up this girl along the way, and what happens to them. It's about the question of life: 'What is this? Where do I fit in?'" Or, maybe: Honey, Have You Seen My Vial of Blood? Thornton, who premiered his latest directorial effort Jayne Mansfield's Car in Berlin, will also direct. [Variety]
Despite having acted in only a handful of movies before her death on Saturday at the age of 48, Whitney Houston left a lasting legacy with the few film projects she did release during her reign as arguably the best-known female pop singer of her generation. 1995's Waiting to Exhale earned her a NAACP Image Award nomination, and 1996's The Preacher's Wife won her the award (and made her the highest-earning African American actress in Hollywood at the time); this year's Sparkle was set to be Houston's comeback after a well-documented and public period of substance abuse and personal decline. But no film is as indelibly linked to Houston's legacy as her debut in 1992's The Bodyguard, and the record-breaking soundtrack it spawned.
more »
From Meryl Streep to Martin Scorsese and awards season juggernaut The Artist, Hollywood's finest came out in full force Sunday in London for the 2012 BAFTA Awards. (Get the full list of BAFTA winners here.) Hit the jump to see who dazzled on the red carpet and celebrated backstage at the last big hurrah before the Oscars.
more »
File under "Duh": Summit and new overlords Lionsgate say they'd totally be interested in making a sixth Twilight movie, y'know, if author Stephenie Meyer is into it. I get it! It's hard to pass up another shot at making hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention fortunes in merchandising. And it's not like we didn't see this coming; with a first trailer for Breaking Dawn Part 2 set to be attached to Lionsgate's Hunger Games in theaters next month, the studio's pushing hard to make the most of its newfound YA synergy. How can it not try and keep the Twilight cash train rolling?
more »
"There was one particular time I knew I wasn’t going to win, and when they’d train the camera on me as one of the losers, I wanted to be able to rip open my tuxedo shirt and just have stenciled on my chest, 'Oh, shit.' But my wife wouldn’t let me do it." While he's at it, here's more vivid imagery from Hoffman recalling his days rooming with fellow Oscar winner Robert Duvall: "One time he came home when a girl and I were taking a shower, and the next thing you know he had taken off all his clothes, got in with us, put his hand out, and said, 'Hey, I’m Dusty’s roommate, Bob Duvall. Can I have the soap?'" [Maxim via Moviefone]
It was only a matter of time, really; we've got FDR fighting werewolves and Abe Lincoln staking vampires, why not resurrect Osama bin Laden from the dead so Western heroes can kill him off again? This time around it's a bunch of soldiers -- excuse me, hunky, apparently manscaped soldiers -- hunting the zombified bin Laden as he leads an army of flesh-eating terrorists towards a zombie apocalypse in Osombie. Yep, someone went there. Too soon?
more »
No one should be surprised anymore at these announcements, but: DreamWorks and Working Title Films are remaking Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar-winning noir Rebecca, because nothing is sacred. At least they've got people at the wheel with respectable creds; veteran producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are onboard while Eastern Promises screenwriter Steven Knight is scripting based on Daphne du Maurier's original 1938 novel, which saw a few deviations when Hitch made his version (which, incidentally, went on to be the only Best Picture Oscar-winner of his career).
more »
Look, I don't know about you but I've often wondered what Phil Lord and Chris Miller's excellent animated tale Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs would look like as live-action film. I mean come on, an ice cream snow day? How can we make this happen, world?! Well, one enterprising filmmaker went ahead and actually managed to recreate Cloudy using live actors and some fantastic CG work, nailing details like spray on shoes and the Jell-O mansion with impressive panache. (One glaring exception: Where is Steve??) Watch the short, created by Megasteakman for Virgin Radio's 2012 Fake Film Contest, and throw 'em a vote for making the streets rain with ginormous, terrifying, and deliciously realistic-looking donuts.
more »
Sometime after getting her start on NBC’s short-lived but well-loved cult series Freaks and Geeks, starring in two live-action studio Scooby-Doo movies, appearing for six seasons on ER, and turning in various screen performances (including a role as Ennis del Mar’s waitress fling in Brokeback Mountain), Linda Cardellini took a break to reassess her career. “I wanted to step back and reevaluate myself as an actress and find out what I was capable of,” she told Movieline, describing her turn as a shell-shocked female soldier readjusting to life at home in this week’s Return, “and this was sort of the perfect role for that.”
more »
Film festivals have emerged as one of the best, most fertile grounds for discovering new voices in genre filmmaking, so much so that just about every fest these days has a midnight sidebar for edgier, darker fare. Among the just-announced midnight selections at this year's SXSW Film Festival (held March 9-17 in Austin, TX): Tales of killer lady bartenders, faceless spooks, space-traveling Nazis, a deadly virus, VHS tapes, and the most evil kind of nightmare-inspiring villain imaginable, feral children. (Shudder.) Let's rundown the freakiest-sounding offerings of the SXSW Midnight slate!
more »
After spending the last year with her Oscar and her new baby, Natalie Portman is set to return to acting with a busy year with not one, but two Terrence Malick films. The Black Swan star will join Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett to film Knight of Cups this summer, with all three reuniting in the fall to film Malick's Lawless with Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, and Haley Bennett. Plot details for both films have been kept under wraps, so tee off with your thoughts on the Portman addition and the unusual double film casting move below. [Deadline]
Between the rise of digital media and the shortcuts many theaters have taken to alleviate waning profits – forgoing film rigs for digital projectors, replacing projectionists with button-pushers, lowering projection-bulb levels to cut replacement costs – many filmmakers are concerned about the state of their industry. Visual effects veteran and filmmaker Douglas Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters, The Tree of Life), for one, is doing something about it: He hopes to bring back the spectacle of the theater-going experience – and revitalize the industry in the process -- with a project he’s shooting at 120 frames per second, in 3-D, to be projected at seven times the luminosity often seen in theaters today.
more »
The five-time Oscar-winning (and 47-time Oscar-nominated) composer and conductor John Williams was born 80 years ago today in Flushing, Queens. Somewhere a concertmaster is no doubt preparing a 100-piece orchestra for a rousing, booming rendition of "Happy Birthday," but for now, we can send our own regards with a discussion of his finest composition for the screen. You only have, oh, 130-something projects to choose from.
more »
In director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's horror tale The Intruders, Clive Owen investigates spooky happenings at home and discovers that something supernatural may be haunting his young daughter. How scary is this mystery perpetrator who makes things go bump late at night? Well, just hit the jump to get a good look at what it did to poor Owen's handsome face.
more »
FILM NEWS 