Talking about Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s savvy and surprising genre deconstruction Cabin in the Woods, the opening night film of SXSW 2012, is a tricky thing partly because nobody involved wants any part of the film spoiled for their opening weekend audience and also, more importantly, because those surprises really are best left discovered by virgin eyes. So rest assured: All spoilery plot details, character developments, casting choices, kills, and surprises that follow in this piece have been redacted for the preservation of discovery, leaving only all the vital bits of information up for discussion. Like, after filming in 2009 and being delayed for so long that star Chris Hemsworth is now kind of famous, is Cabin in the Woods actually any good?
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It only took about 20 years from conception to writing to development to shooting to the most notoriously protracted post-production saga in recent memory, but Kenneth Lonergan's embattled epic Margaret finally had the festival premiere it deserved Saturday night in Manhattan.
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It started with the pudding. Oh, not just any pudding: A perfect pool of melt-in-your-mouth chocolate-hazelnut goodness -- a confection so rich, so irresistible, that even Tom Hardy found himself drawn like a moth to a flame to the dessert table before the press conference for This Means War the other week in Beverly Hills. He grabbed a saucer and ambled over to a pack of bewildered journalists, offering an ebullient bon mot about The Woman in Black. “I’d have eaten through Daniel Radcliffe to get that part!” he raved, or so the story goes, before setting down his dish and disappearing once more into the back hallways of the Four Seasons.
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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.
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Forget blowing a million or more on a Super Bowl ad; the day after upcoming tentpoles John Carter, Battleship, and G.I. Joe targeted football-watchers with pricey TV spots, Sony went after niche fans with an international simulcast screening of new footage and a 3-D preview of the new Amazing Spider-Man trailer set to hit tonight at midnight PT. Though it included some unfinished visual effects, the sizzle reel featuring 30-40 percent new footage (according to a rep for the studio) hinted at the scope and darkly humorous tone of the Marc Webb-directed reboot.
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Park City was eerily peaceful early this morning with nobody around and last night’s dusting of snow on the ground. Soon enough – by this afternoon, or this evening, or certainly tonight – that will all change as filmmakers, press and industry folks roll in and the dreaded promoters (“leveragers,” Sundance founder Robert Redford called them in his inaugural address today) pimp out this snowy mountain town like a toddler in a tiara. Appropriately, Redford pointed to the current hardships for filmmakers, and the world at large. “Times are hard and grim,” he acknowledged, later offering optimism. “Independent film is healthy. That doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
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The formidable creative team behind the new adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo reconvened today in New York, where director David Fincher, screenwriter Steven Zaillian, and stars Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgård talked things over with a few dozen members of the press. Movieline was there to capture a range of revealing back stories, true confessions and amusing -- if slightly harrowing -- anecdotes from the shoot. Read on for the full report.
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"Inconceivable!" With a single word, unveiled at the close of last month's live-read of The Apartment, Jason Reitman launched AOUS (that's Anticipation of Unusual Size) for the December 15 installment in his brilliant LACMA/Film Independent series. Few films are so magical, so beloved, so instantly and indelibly quotable as The Princess Bride, Rob Reiner's 1987 fantasy-comedy, written by William Goldman, about a princess and her pirate and those involved in and affected by their adventure. And few live-read casting choices could be as inspired as Reitman's: Paul Rudd in the Westley role originated by Cary Elwes, Cary Elwes in the Humperdinck role originated by Chris Sarandon, and, performing the part of the Grandson first portrayed by Fred Savage over two decades ago... Fred Savage.
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Part of the wave of initiatives in Elvis Mitchell's rebooted Film Independent at LACMA programming is a series of live script reads directed by Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno), who kicked things off last month with a star-studded rendition of The Breakfast Club. Last night's second script read of the 1960 multiple Oscar-winner The Apartment, with Natalie Portman and Steve Carell in the Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon roles, respectively, demonstrated how the marriage of cherished movie memories, live theater, and fresh talent is such an inspired idea to begin with.
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Although Albert Nobbs has made the festival rounds and has long been generating awards-season buzz -- particularly for star and co-writer Glenn Close -- the film only had its Hollywood coming-out party of sorts over the weekend.
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The 2011 AFI Fest drew to a close Thursday night with the North American public premiere of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, directed, appropriately enough, by AFI-associated Steven Spielberg. Though he was unable to attend in person (much of the crew of Tintin, including Spielberg, was on location filming Lincoln), he sent star Jamie Bell in his stead to introduce the film and play a pre-recorded message for the audience at the Grauman's Chinese, which became so packed festival goers spilled over into a second overflow theater for the premiere.
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AFI Fest's "secret" screening of Steven Soderbergh's Haywire wasn't so much a showcase for the AFI darling as it was a coming out party for MMA bruiser-cum-action heroine Gina Carano, whom Soderbergh glimpsed fighting one night on TV and subsequently built a star-studded spy thriller pic around. But it's hard to say if first-time actor Carano will branch out in a film career beyond the often lo-fi action experiment. Is she a hybrid of Angelina Jolie and Steven Seagal, as Soderbergh suggested Sunday night? Or is there more of a Cynthia Rothrock quality to Carano's steely gaze and powerhouse physicality?
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For the first time since Bridesmaids premiered this past spring, the comedy's filmmakers and cast gathered last night in Hollywood for a special Screen Actors Guild Awards screening of their surprise box office smash. Afterward, Judd Apatow (who executive produced the film) moderated a Q&A panel comprised of director Paul Feig, stars Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy and Wendi McLendon-Covey as well as Annie Mumolo, who co-wrote the screenplay with Wiig. What transpired was an entertaining discussion about the movie "that changed female comedy." The most exciting revelations follow.
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Julia Roberts shot newbie director Dennis Lee's ensemble family drama Fireflies in the Garden four years ago, but after an infamously disastrous Berlin Film Festival showing and distributor drama at Senator Films, the indie film languished for years on the shelf. Last night at their premiere in Los Angeles Lee told Movieline how Roberts saved the film from direct-to-video hell and Roberts explained why her upcoming project, Snow White, will be worth the price of admission.
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Laurence R. Harvey (not to be confused with Laurence Harvey, the late Oscar-nominated Lithuanian-British actor) made an unusual debut on the world's stage when a close-up of his face, sweaty and bug-eyed, was released as the first image from Tom Six's depraved sequel The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence). Meeting the British stage veteran -- and, yes, one-time children's television performer -- on the red carpet at Fantastic Fest, Movieline was pleasantly relieved to find that Harvey is far from his disturbing alter ego, the put-upon Human Centipede-worshipping drudge Martin, who commits unspeakable acts upon fresh victims in the new film. But does his mother know what he's been up to?
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