Spoiler alert? "I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the preoccupation the director shows with Maggie’s shoes. There are so many shoe-shots in the film, it’s downright laughable. When she leaves number 10 for the last time, the shot lingers long enough on Streep’s walking feet it made me wonder if there was a shoe fetishist behind the camera. She wasn’t Imelda Marcos, after all. And the final scene of the movie: Maggie washes out her teacup in the sink. How tragic! Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah! The filmmakers could not resist that final, petty, hate-filled blow." [Big Hollywood]
Now here's a trend I can get behind: "[U]p to December, there hadn't been a single Russian film in the top 20. The film expected to create a bombastic box-office crater -– war epic Burnt By the Sun 2, at $40m the country's most expensive production ever –- fizzled out embarrassingly when part two was released in May. A few years ago, Russians learned to stop worrying and love the blockbuster as they began producing SFX-laden spectaculars like Night Watch; now they're learning about the flipside -– the car-crash pleasures of rubbernecking a box-office flop." [The Guardian]
"Well I was quoted correctly but only a fraction of what I had to say. I’m a big fan of Albert Brooks so I had things to talk to him about his work, about his movies, we talked about an album of his that I loved called A Star is Bought. [...] And I had to tell him so. And that was really the gist of our conversation, but the little Hoberman moles standing around, they didn’t care about that. [...] Albert asked me the question, is Jay Hoberman here, and I said, that jackass? Cause I couldn’t figure out why somebody as smart as Albert Brooks would even want to know." [The Interrobang]
“I’m sorry ya’all, I love you but I have to kick these shoes off. This is the ultimate party and I’m living the dream of so many young actors and actresses out there and I’m having my Diet Pepsi alongside Hollywood’s best and brightest.” Or maybe Octavia Spencer was just being modest? Or introducing the evening's best euphemism for unlimited buckets of HFPA-brand bubbly? As in, "Someone take away Emily Blunt's Diet Pepsi," etc. etc. [LAT]
What's that? Adam Sandler's Grown Ups was a comedy and not technically a horror concoction/exercise in torture dreamed up to keep children and adults up at night? Well, that doesn't make this report any less frightening: According to ComingSoon, a sequel to the Dennis Dugan-directed 2010 buddy pic, about four immature grown men acting like children while on retreat with their families, already has a release date of July 12, 2013. Duh duh duhhhhhn. Well, Grown Ups did make $271M worldwide. Eh, at least it's not Jack and Jill 2. Mark your calendars accordingly. [ComingSoon]
This just in: "(Beverly Hills, Calif.) January 10, 2012 – Relativity Media announced today that it will promote the Bandito Brothers’ upcoming intense action-thriller Act of Valor, which stars an elite group of active-duty Navy SEALs in a fictionalized composite of actual events, during NBC’s nationally televised coverage of Super Bowl XLVI on February 5, 2012. Four 30-second unique Act of Valor commercials, featuring exclusive content, will run throughout the program including two spots that will air during the pre-game, one spot in game during the fourth quarter and one spot in the post-game show." MUST CREDIT MOVIELINE. [Press release]
Look out world, Katherine Heigl is blogging! At least she's realistic about the years of counseling her daughter will probably require after growing up with famous parents: "Now when I take a job, I look my daughter in the eye, screw up my courage and try to explain to her that Mommy has to go to work. And when she looks back at me and says, “But why?,” I tell her the truth: that work makes me a better person, a better woman, a better mother. Then I pray to God that she will understand one day and that my example will encourage her to find and follow her bliss as well … after I’ve paid for all the therapy, of course." [iVillage]
That DGA snub smarts all the more this morning: "IN CONCLUSION: This is a standard horse movie about projecting human ideals, emotions, and symbolism onto animals, with a decent war movie sandwiched in the middle. There are about four 'pretty horsey runs really fast' scenes, so I give it 4 out of 5 horseshoes!" [The Hairpin]
Congrats of some fashion are in order to William Brent Bell, whose universally reviled yet spectacularly successful The Devil Inside has today yielded news of his not-very-anticipated follow-up. Written by David Cohen, The Vatican is said to be a "conspiracy-driven thriller [...] that uses some found-footage techniques like The Devil Inside did"; Warner Bros. is reportedly fast-tracking the project. Good to know! I'll ready the riot police. [Deadline]
For many fans a Bridesmaids sequel moving forward without star Kristen Wiig is nearly unthinkable, and that goes for would-be sequel star Melissa McCarthy. E! Online's Marc Malkin asked McCarthy if she'd be in without Wiig at last weekend's Palm Springs International Film Festival. "God, I wouldn't want to," she said. "I would never want to. I think it's a terrible idea...I don't [know] anything about it," she said. "But I know that nobody wants to do it unless it's great. If it is, I will show up wherever those ladies are." Those ladies -- as in, all the Bridesmaids ladies? That's solidarity, sister. [E! Online]
Oh, Harvey: “We have a star in Tom Hardy who’s completely anonymous right now. If you go to a line at the ArcLight nobody would know who he is. [...] He’s going to be a huge movie star by August.” [LAT]
After two failed tries, Movieline alum Brian Clark finally visited the David Lynch-designed Paris nightclub Silencio. And? "It's nice -- assuming you get in. So, how do you do that? Search me. The P.R. person I talked to said that they do indeed let people in based on physical and fashion considerations, which she rightfully points out is pretty much the norm at high class nightclubs in Paris. According to her, the Physionomiste says he favors people who he can tell are at least trying. That is, in the clothes-related sense of the phrase. The other, probably simpler option is to make friends with a member (or become one)." [Twitch]
According to the Phuket Gazette, Bourne Legacy star Jeremy Renner was maybe-sorta (okay not really) involved in an insane-sounding bar brawl this week in Thailand in which an associate was attacked and stabbed by a host of bar employees. Oh, I'm sorry: Bar employees wielding knives and a freaking homemade battle axe. But fear not! It seems Renner, most recently seen in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and currently in Thailand shooting his Bourne flick, hightailed it out and escaped unscathed. Wish we could say the same about his reported acquaintance, one Vorasit Issara, who took injuries to his stomach and neck in the melee. [Phuket Gazette, ETonline]
This was, oh, five years in coming, but the long-time Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman has been let go from the paper. Fun fact: Hoberman's 34-year relationship with the Voice commenced with a high-low glimpse at David Lynch's experimental blast Eraserhead ("Eraserhead's not a movie I'd drop acid for, although I would consider it a revolutionary act if someone dropped a reel of it into the middle of Star Wars") and concluded this week with a high-low glimpse at Ken Jacobs's experimental blast Seeking the Monkey King ("This homemade slingshot has the capacity to resist and pulverize the idiotic visual aggression of a commercial behemoth like Transformers. It's a '60s vision happening today—beautiful, terrifying, and determined to storm the doors of perception"). Anyway, don't sweat it, he'll be back. [Capital New York]
If nothing else, this really puts paycheck roles in perspective: “You have all these disparate egos, superheroes in this and that, and they refuse to give up some of their positions in order to make a more perfect union and to join the team. That’s really what the whole movie is about: subjugating your own best interest momentarily to further that of the whole. [...] I didn’t know it a year ago that it was going to speak to so many of the issues we’re having here in the United States and throughout the world, the same kind of theme.” [Speakeasy/WSJ via The Awl]
