Critics will argue over Disney-Pixar's 11th century Scottish princess adventure Brave, but there's one thing we can all agree on: That redheaded Merida chick has one fantastic head of hair. And as the Wall Street Journal reports, it wasn't easy to do the 'do. "Merida's hair is made up of 1,500 individually sculpted curves, distinct points in a three-dimensional space, that are programmed to bounce and interact in relation to one another via a new software system, says [Pixar simulation supervisor Claudia Chung]. Another software program was created to make the hair react more realistically to the character's movements and surroundings." Not bad for a girl born nine centuries before the invention of Herbal Essences. [WSJ via Movie City News]
Paramount's big-budget live-action, Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot has run into some budgetary obstacles, reports Nikki Finke, with production delayed in order to shave down the film's budget to the reported target of $125 million. This means the heroes on a half shell won't hit screens until five months beyond their initial Christmas 2013 date, moving to May 2014 — if a satisfactory budget is reached, that is. Are the Turtles in trouble?
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Big moves for Brit filmmaker Joe Cornish: The writer-director of Attack the Block (who also co-wrote Steven Spielberg's Tintin and Marvel's Ant-Man script with Edgar Wright) has landed the gig of writing and directing an adaptation of Neal Stephenson's 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash for Paramount, Deadline reports. The alternate-reality sci-fi tale follows one Hiro Protagonist, a hacker/swordsman who discovers a new drug/computer virus called Snow Crash is spreading through the postmodern future... and you know what that means: Time for a round of Cast That Movie! Which actors out there could fill Hiro's shoes? [Deadline]
The AP reports on the ongoing courtroom drama between actor/reality TV personality/bankrupt Republican Stephen Baldwin and actor/musician/celebrity investor Kevin Costner, which took a turn for the salacious this week when a witness testified that Baldwin had transpired to "blackmail" Costner over a sum of $21 million involving the pair's interests in ocean clean-up technology, of all things, following the 2010 BP oil spill. "I said, 'Stephen, that's blackmail,'" [business associate Scott Smith] recalled. He quoted Baldwin as saying, "I have to be careful how I do it." And to think, it all started when the Bio-Dome and Waterworld stars joined forces in the name of the environment... [AP via Fox News]
Was Disney's John Carter the victim of our increasing cultural overstimulation? IndieWire's Matt Singer considers the tentpole's reception — and suggests parallels with Kenneth Lonergan's troubled production-cum-critical darling, Margaret: "[As] perpetual sneak preview culture becomes normalized, audiences are being conditioned to weigh in on a movie before it even comes out. They're trained not only to trust their expectations, but to express them constantly. 'I knew this movie was going to be bad from the first trailer,' is a commonly expressed opinion online. At a certain point, it begins to feel like people want a movie to fail, if only to prove their expectations right." [IndieWire]
With his Sundance conversation-starter Red Hook Summer set for an August theatrical/VOD release, Spike Lee sat down with GQ and gave a rundown of which projects are happening for him, and which are not. Among the Spike Lee joints lost by the wayside due to funding struggles, etc.: His Jackie Robinson biopic, LA riots film, and Wesley Snipes-as-James Brown flick. Surprisingly, Lee admits he's still awaiting the green light on Oldboy — but in the meantime Lee's plotting to direct Mike Tyson on Broadway and has already interviewed the likes of Justin Bieber for a Michael Jackson doc celebrating the 25th anniversary of Bad, so there's that... [GQ]
So says Marvel superproducer Avi Arad, describing the spark between the on- (and rumored off-)screen Amazing Spider-Man couple: "On camera the chemistry is real. Those scenes are where Marc Webb really gets into his element. It’s the hardest thing to do and they do it. These two are like Hepburn-Tracy of modern time. It’s a war of brains that turns into attraction." Does that make Spider-Man their Woman of the Year? Discuss. [ScreenCrush]
Twilight/Snow White and the Huntsman star Kristen Stewart comes off as admirably self-possessed ("I don’t care about the voracious, starving shit eaters who want to turn truth into shit") in Vanity Fair, even when bemoaning the photograph that changed her life: “You can Google my name and one of the first things that comes up is images of me sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe with my ex-boyfriend and my dog. It was [taken] the day the movie came out. I was no one. I was a kid. I had just turned 18. In [the tabloids] the next day it was like I was a delinquent slimy idiot, whereas I’m kind of a weirdo, creative Valley Girl who smokes pot. Big deal. But that changed my daily life instantly. I didn’t go out in my underwear anymore.” [Vanity Fair]
Sometimes TMI is just TMI, says writer and critic Dave White, reviewing Scotty Bowers' Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars: "Stalker-y internet gossip site TMZ is its own TV show now and they've got a bus that runs all day long so tourists from Indiana can see where Chris Brown beat up Rihanna....It's a time in Hollywood history when Mel Gibson takes up with his mistress, puts a baby in her, screams weird racist things on the phone, they laugh about it on The View and then Jodie Foster turns around and puts him in her next movie...And even if [Katharine] Hepburn was a lesbian with a bad complexion and [Spencer] Tracy a conflicted bisexual alcoholic, what purpose does it serve if I also know that Scotty Bowers provided her with as many as 150 paid female 'companions' over her lifetime?" [Los Angeles Review of Books]
In 1996, it arrived. Within a few days, it struck box office gold. And on July 3, 2013, it comes back...in 3-D! 20th Century Fox has announced plans to re-release Roland Emmerich's original destructo-blockbuster Independence Day next year in an extra dimension, because America apparently can't get enough of seeing Will Smith battle aliens. (Bad Boys in 3-D? Now that I'd pay to see.) Plan your 2013 '90s sci-fi flashback movie nights accordingly. [Collider]
The latest in a string of big budget studio movie lawsuits has been lobbed at the makers of Men in Black 3, with extra Danika Gerner claiming that she was outfitted with a costume that led to her suffering "serious bodily injuries" during filming last May. The curious part: Reports give no clues as to just how Gerner's costume injured her, or which background character she played. More on the litigious wardrobe malfunction after the jump.
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"That's right, Tom Cruise is the same age that Wilford Brimley was when Brimley starred as a grandfather in Cocoon" — as are George Clooney, Eddie Murphy and eight others featured in this new, head-exploding context. "[... I]t's not really a statement on the age of Cruise or the other people on this list — it's the fact that Wilford Brimley was only 49 years old when he starred as an elderly man who leaves Earth with a group of aliens in an effort to escape the specter of death. (His friends were played by the more age-appropriate 76-year-old Don Ameche, 75-year-old Jessica Tandy, 73-year-old Hume Cronyn, 76-year-old Jack Gilford; today, Brimley is still only 77 years old.)" [Huffington Post]
"Even though the media exhibit enormous sophistication and historical perspective in a thousand different ways — not that I can think of a specific example right now — they are far too often bedazzled by the sheer novelty of a story. If you watch cable news, for example, you know all too well that if there are two child kidnappings in the same month, the first one gets far more attention than the second. This same law applies to box-office bombs. With Battleship, the fascination with Hollywood flop sweat had already worn off. When I asked a veteran showbiz reporter why his publication had spent so little time covering the demise of Battleship, he joked: 'I guess we all had the same reaction — didn’t we just write that story already?'" [LAT]
"'I don’t even know if we can top [Piranha],' lamented sequel director John Gulager, whose horror film Feast was the subject of the Bravo moviemaking documentary series Project Greenlight in 2005. 'I don’t think that was totally our goal. We just wanted to be different. They had Academy Award-winning actors and stuff. We just wanted to have our own separate story.'" [AP via WP]
When one reporter caught up with Michelle Rodriguez at Cannes, the Fast & Furious star waxed ecstatic about Lee Daniels' Southern potboiler The Paperboy — but she's not holding out hopes for a Nicole Kidman Oscar nod. And she's definitely not worried about making controversial statements explaining why. "I fucking loved it," she told Vulture. "One of my friends said, 'She’s going to get nominated for an Oscar for that.' I was like, 'Nah, man. She’s not black!' I laugh, but it’s also very sad. It makes me want to cry. But I really believe. You have to be trashy and black to get nominated. You can’t just be trashy." [Vulture]
