Couldn't make last night's Los Angeles premiere of the latest sprawling, holiday-themed Garry Marshall rom-com New Year's Eve? (I'm talking to you, Robert De Niro and Sarah Jessica Parker.) No need to worry -- Movieline has photos from the red carpet event so that you can catch up on all of the unexpected canoodling and Ludacris photo ops that you missed on Monday.
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Patty Jenkins, the acclaimed Monster filmmaker who less than two months ago was announced as Marvel's surprise choice to direct Thor 2, is reported to have left the project. The cause of the split is said to be the age-old classic "creative differences," but they can figure that out later. In the meantime, a certain Asgardian strongman needs a helmer -- and fast. Who should it be?
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Grab your grain of salt! A new report states that an unidentified PR firm was so worried that fans would not turn out for Tom Cruise's arrival in India this past Saturday for the Mumbai Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol premiere, that they paid approximately 200 people $3 each to show up and scream for the actor when he walked out of the local airport gate. The paid extras were also given a buffet lunch. "Tom kaun? I don't know who he is or what he does," one hired fan told First Post's Bollywood division. "We were told to come here by 1pm today and wait for a foreign VIP to come out of the airport gate and scream and shout when he came." [Movies.com via FirstPost.com]
Film bloggers and pundits and awards season watchers have pecked this David Denby-Scott Rudin exchange to death with no clear consensus or solution, but one player in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo kerfuffle has a solution. "If it were up to me, I wouldn't show movies to anybody before they were released," director David Fincher told the Miami Herald. "...If I had my way, the New York Film Critics Circle would not have seen this movie and then we would not be in this situation." More wishful thinking from Fincher after the jump!
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First, George Lucas loaned Yoda to a Japanese instant noodle company in need of a marketing face (and wisdom applicable to ramen). And now, in an even bigger burn to U.S. Star Wars fans, the franchise creator has shipped Chewbacca to the set of Glee for a one-episode arc. What is this world coming to?
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This is far too intriguing not to think about for hours: The BBC2 just announced a project called The Girl, starring Sienna Miller as model-turned-actress Tippi Hedren and Toby Jones as Alfred Hitchcock, who obsessed over Hedren as they filmed the The Birds in northern California's Bodega Bay. The extreme relationship between Hitch and Hedren, which included some violent bird-throwing sessions during one climactic scene, is well-documented and ready for re-inspection (as is any film starring the dashing Rod Taylor). But is this the most fascinating Hitchcock story to examine? We offer one other possible Hitchcock era that might be intriguing to revisit.
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Milla Jovovich is not just an arresting Fifth Element star and an above-average Project Runway judge -- she's also a roving reporter on the set of her own movie, Resident Evil: Retribution. Jovovich tweeted a holiday-themed video from "Camp Evil," and her version of Santa Claus will haunt you until Christmas day. It's beginning to look a lot like the antichrist!
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While there's hope that one idiotic theater in Washington encouraging audiences to text during movies dies a speedy death, take heart in the actions of new Movieline hero Kevin Spacey. The actor took a stand at a recent Sydney performance of Richard III when a rude theatergoer answered their cell phone during the play. "Spacey, the would-be Duke of Gloucester, singled out the phone owner and bellowed 'Tell them we're busy!'," reports the UK Telegraph. "The audience erupted in support." Sigh. If only actors could leap off the screen to do the same in cineplexes. [Telegraph via Movie City News]
Madonna's much-maligned W.E. opens in limited release in New York and L.A. this week, and I thought we'd wipe the taste of Venetian backlash and hydrangea topnotes out of our mouths and remember five occasions when Lourdes's mother kicked ass in films. Because she did, people. Let's strap on our bangles, writhe in our fishnets, and point our cone bras back at Madonna's sunnier moments at the cineplex.
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Are you a discreet movie theater texter who dreams of a day when the cineplex will not only allow you to text mid-film but actually encourage you to do so by providing state-of-the-art technology to improve your movie messaging experience? If so, then I bring you some good news via CinemaBlend: A Washington-based exhibitor plans on providing one safe social networking theater space for you. If it's successful, movie theater texting could be a not-too-distant reality.
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Happy Tuesday! Also in today's edition of The Broadsheet: Benicio del Toro scratched from Star Trek 2... Danny Elfman scratched from Hunger Games... John Waters mentions Almodóvar and Justin Bieber in the same breath... Great moments in trade reporting, vol. MMCLXXII... and more.
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Happy 110th birthday to Walt Disney, the man who single-handedly transformed moviemaking forever with whimsy and sheer imagination. Almost 75 years after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs first hit theaters, his magical movie empire remains astonishing and prolific, and we stand cryogenically frozen in awe. Hard to believe a man who won 26 Oscars (only three less than Hilary Swank) could have underrated moments in film, but let's explore that strange idea now: What is Walt Disney's most under-heralded great moment on film?
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Steven Spielberg is likely a man of few regrets, but even the Oscar-winning director is appearing dubious about one of his major works. In a new interview, Spielberg admits he "softened" the sensuality of one of his film's source material to preserve a PG-13 rating. And maybe the film suffered for it. Care to guess which opus he's talking about?
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This won't come nearly close to matching the poetry witnessed throughout last week's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy premiere giveaway contest (or the tense, masterful symphony of the film itself, chock-full of your favorite British thesps and "Pillow lipped chameleons"), but: "Thanks to all who played/With odes to Tinker, Tailor.../Winners after the jump!"
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It was an underwhelming weekend at the box office, but that didn't stop Twitter from reacting to the fancy-free stylings of Footloose, the terror of The Thing and even the already-forgotten The Big Year. We've racked up the best five tweets about movies this weekend -- and the most dubious telegrams comes from one of the film's own stars.
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