Quite likely cinema's first Shakespearean conspiracy thriller-meets-royal romance fable, Anonymous features Rhys Ifans as Edward De Vere -- the Duke of Oxford long considered a front-runner for having authored many (if not all) of the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. It's a role that even the charismatic Welsh actor wasn't sure he would lock down before encountering director Roland Emmerich, the erstwhile apocalypse visionary whose boldness made a fine complement to Ifans's own.
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Fifteen-year-old Abigail Breslin, America's erstwhile Little Miss Sunshine, is growing up -- not too fast, like some of her Hollywood peers and predecessors seem to be, but in her own time. Still: In the upcoming New Year's Eve, she'll share her first movie kiss; next year, she takes on the role of a real life teen killer. To kick off this new phase in her career, Breslin plays her first official teenage role in this week's music-themed Janie Jones, starring (and performing her own vocals) as a capable young girl forced on a road trip with the rock star father she never knew.
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One of the biggest discoveries you'll make this year -- and one of this fall's class of neophyte Oscar contenders -- is 22-year-old Elizabeth Olsen. The younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley may have earned her first credits as a child actor in her siblings' tween franchise-building movies, but she launches her very serious film career this October in the Sundance award-winning Martha Marcy May Marlene, Sean Durkin's deeply observed drama-thriller about a shell-shocked young woman (Olsen) who reunites with her family after spending years under the influence of a sexually abusive cult.
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It's been a hell of an autumn so far for Zachary Quinto, who has followed his appearance in last month's Anna Faris comedy What's Your Number? with a forthcoming role in the FX hit American Horror Story and the lead in writer-director J.C. Chandor's superb economic-meltdown drama Margin Call. And he dominated headlines last weekend after officially coming out as gay.
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Ten years after working as a director and consulting producer on Freaks and Geeks, the heartwarming television series about a few misunderstood high school troublemakers (and their more wholesome peers), Jake Kasdan found his biggest box office success this summer with Bad Teacher, another project profiling a misunderstood hallway troublemaker. Starring Cameron Diaz as an English teacher more interested in smoking pot and procuring breast implants than molding the the minds of her middle school students, Bad Teacher earned over $200 million worldwide, establishing Kasdan -- son of The Big Chill and Accidental Tourist filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan -- as a heavyweight comedic director and rounding out a summer known for it's R-rated, female-led comedies.
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"Usually when I hear the words 'family drama,' I run," said Willem Dafoe, who nevertheless found something to savor in writer-director Dennis Lee's Fireflies in the Garden. Little did Dafoe or his castmates Julia Roberts, Ryan Reynolds, Emily Watson, Hayden Panettiere and least of all Lee himself know that their particular family drama wouldn't make it to American theaters only today -- nearly four years after its Berlin Film Festival premiere in 2008.
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There's no stopping Joel Schumacher, the 72-year-old filmmaker who returns to screens this week with the thriller Trespass. Though to invoke his name in some circles is to invite wishes he would stop; Schumacher has never been an especially popular director among the critical elite, and his latest film, a wild home-invasion potboiler co-starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman, won't necessarily change things. But you know what? That's a good thing -- at least for Schumacher.
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Craig Brewer knows that some of you are skeptical about his remake of Footloose, the 1984 Kevin Bacon teen classic about lusty high-schoolers who kick off their Sunday shoes, strain against their small town conservative parents, and "angry dance" their way to prom. But the director, who helped bring rap music to the Academy's attention in his Oscar-winning Hustle & Flow (and next chained Christina Ricci to a radiator in Black Snake Moan, another tale set in the Southern region where Brewer was raised), comes at it with a fan's devotion and with an awareness of how religion, morality and politics still overlap in the lives of teenagers today. And, as he watched Kevin Bacon do when he was a kid watching Footloose on the big screen, Brewer admits to indulging in his fair share of "angry dancing."
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Opening this weekend in limited release, Fireflies in the Garden isn't exactly Hayden Panettiere's "new" film. It's more like her embattled, shelved, revisited and re-revisited film -- shot in 2007, a festival curio in early 2008 and thought lost to the indie-film ages until recently, when plans were finally made for its theatrical distribution. At least she's in pretty phenomenal company, starring alongside Julia Roberts, Ryan Reynolds, Willem Dafoe and playing a young Emily Watson in the tale of a family grappling with generations of guilt, misunderstanding, tragedy and maybe -- just maybe -- a future.
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Australian actor Joel Edgerton has been in the business for a good 15 years, during which time he's transitioned from Aussie TV to supporting turns in international films (Kinky Boots, King Arthur, and Star Wars: Episode II -- Revenge of the Sith) and wrote and co-starred in the solid Australian thriller The Square with brother Nash (who directed). But in 2011 -- on the heels of his work in the underperforming but critically-loved Warrior, on the eve of his lead turn in Universal's prequel The Thing -- he seems poised, finally, for his moment in the spotlight.
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Dutch filmmaker Tom Six cut a striking figure last month at Fantastic Fest, where he appeared -- ever-smiling and clad head to toe in a pristine white suit, his outfit of choice -- to world premiere his squirm-inducing body horror sequel, The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence). The following day Movieline spoke with Six about the film, in which he meets the challenge of one-upping himself in the escalation of extremes in gory, grotesque detail. Upon hearing that an audience member fainted the previous night, Six professed his sympathy. He was sorry to hear it, he said with a grin. Well, maybe not completely sorry.
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You might not think that Real Steel, the sci-fi action flick about a washed-up boxer and the junkyard robot he trains toward a fictional fighting championship, would carry much boxing credibility. But that's where Sugar Ray Leonard comes in. The Hall of Famer was recruited by director Shawn Levy to choreograph the robot fights and most importantly, to advise the filmmakers on how to establish a humanistic relationship between the movie's beleaguered trainer (Hugh Jackman) and Atom, the robo-underdog he takes on, that audiences will want to root for.
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Last week, Movieline spoke with with Fast Five star Tyrese Gibson to get the male perspective on being part of such a lucrative, testosterone-driven franchise. Eager to get another take, we reached out to Jordana Brewster, who has played the sole heroine of the car heist series since day one. The Yale graduate eagerly discussed her growing role in Fast Five (which is released on DVD and Blu-ray this week), a potential sixth installment and her own meager knowledge of automobiles.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated actor Sam Shepard doesn't take a lot of lead film roles, but when he does, he makes them count. Take this week's Blackthorn, the sweeping epic tale of what might have happened if -- as some historians believe -- legendary outlaw Butch Cassidy wasn't gunned down by Bolivian forces in 1908, and instead went on to live a quiet, reclusive existence in that country under the pseudonym James Blackthorn.
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Grindhouse icon Pam Grier blazed a trail through the blaxploitation era, was dubbed "the baddest One-Chick Hit-Squad that ever hit town" (a title that remains uncontested four decades later, one might argue), and commanded the screen with a combination of ferocity, empathy, and a look so striking Roger Ebert once described her as an "actress of beautiful face and astonishing form." Years later, in 1997, Quentin Tarantino paid homage to the work and the woman in Jackie Brown, adapted from Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch, one of the filmmaker's best and most underrated films and the spark that jump-started a career revival for its stars.
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