It's fitting that Marisa Tomei and Kevin Bacon have supporting roles in Crazy, Stupid, Love. (out Friday). After all, Tomei could have her own Six Degrees-like board game, having worked with everyone from Lisa Bonet to Joe Pesci to Sissy Spacek to Mickey Rourke throughout a variety of genres. In Crazy, Stupid, Love., she adds a cavalcade of likable performers to her roster of former co-stars (Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Julianne Moore and Steve Carell), and reconfirms to everyone that adult comedy is what she does best. If only Hollywood would actually make them.
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Meeting Rose McGowan over the weekend at Comic-Con, she instinctively offered her left hand first. Having injured her other arm weeks ago in the goriest window-related accident I've ever heard, she'd flown into San Diego to promote this summer's Conan the Barbarian, touted as one of the bloodiest action pics of the year. But to hear her tell it, Conan the Barbarian's got nothing on McGowan's last few years when it comes to struggle and pain -- and yet, she credits the summer swords 'n' sorcery pic with changing her mind about quitting Hollywood.
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Actor, singer, magician, talented master of ceremonies, web star... Neil Patrick Harris can pretty much do it all -- but can he make the leap into mainstream movie stardom? He'll find out this month in Sony's live action-CG adaptation The Smurfs, which sees the famous blue creatures take Manhattan -- and the lives of Patrick (Harris) and Grace Winslow (Jayma Mays) -- by storm in a modern day-set adventure about appreciating family and stepping into fatherhood.
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Earlier this year, Verge designee and writer-producer-actor Brit Marling took the festival circuit by storm with not one, but two knock-out indie films which she starred in and co-wrote: the philosophical sci-fi pic Another Earth, directed by Mike Cahill, and the cult drama Sound of My Voice, directed by Zal Batmanglij. This summer, Fox Searchlight will release the first of the Brit Marling two-fer, Another Earth, starring Marling as a young woman haunted by a chance tragedy in her past who finds hope of a sort when a duplicate Earth appears in the sky. Finally, the world will see what all the fuss was about.
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Screenwriting duo Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely began their partnership in college, moved to Los Angeles together ("We watched Baywatch and thought, 'Somebody wrote Baywatch -- we could do that!'" quips McFeely), wrote a film for Bill Pullman, scripted The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and caught the eye of Andrew Adamson, who then hired them to write all three Chronicles of Narnia films. Now they've penned Captain America: The First Avenger, the latest in Marvel Studios' multi-film Avengers franchise and a rollicking WWII-set adventure that they hope to follow up with a sequel. It's safe to say Markus and McFeely might have some wise words to share on the subject of their craft.
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When Michael Rapaport's documentary lens captured the behind-the-scenes drama between members of iconic rap group A Tribe Called Quest, his subjects took to the media to voice their discontent. But by the time Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, and won the Audience Award at the L.A. Film Fest, Rapaport had earned all but one Tribe member's public support.
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Chances are you first laid eyes on former Verge designee Ari Graynor as a gum-snapping party girl in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, the breakout role that put the 28-year-old actress on Hollywood's radar back in 2008. Since then, she's continued to steal scenes in films like Youth in Revolt, Whip It, and Holy Rollers, but as she prepares for another big comedic year ahead of her (plus a run on Broadway), Graynor's ready to take her next big leap -- right into leading lady territory for the first time -- in the indie black comedy Lucky.
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For a guy who has spent the last three decades mapping the contours of human frailty and folly, director Errol Morris is awfully upbeat about the future. Of course, his is not just any map: It illustrates redoubts of genius (A Brief History of Time, Mr. Death) and islands of quirk (Gates of Heaven, Vernon, Florida) in vast seas of systemic failure (The Thin Blue Line, the Oscar-winning The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure). Its moral compass points mysteriously inward, challenging viewers to orient themselves accordingly. His latest film, Tabloid, exists as its own sort of hemisphere in this schema, marking milestones of crime, gossip, sex, religion, love, science and indiscretion in the jaw-dropping story of Joyce McKinney.
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Bob Stephenson may not be what you'd call a household name, but he might be the closest thing we have to a household face. Stephenson has appeared in countless commercials and played Deputy Jimmy Taylor on the CBS drama Jericho and Walter Bailey in the ABC series The Forgotten. He was the shy slob who dated Jennifer Aniston in Friends With Money and the airport security guard who confronted Edward Norton about his vibrating suitcase in Fight Club. (He's appeared in four David Fincher films, in fact.) And beginning this month, the Oxnard-born actor is about to get a lot more big-screen time with his one-two-three-four box-office punch Larry Crowne, Our Idiot Brother, Hick (with Blake Lively and Alec Baldwin) and Lorene Scafaria's feature debut Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.
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With his nice guy looks and demeanor, Colin Hanks has played a lot of, well, nice guys over the years. But in Gil Cates, Jr.'s Lucky, in limited release this week, the 33-year-old actor and neophyte documentarian throws that image for a loop as Ben, a meek Midwesterner who wins a $36 million lottery jackpot, marries his dream girl (Ari Graynor)... and just so happens to be a serial killer.
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Liv Tyler ends an unusually long break from the movies this year, first with the wild dark comedy Super and today with The Ledge, in which she co-stars as the troubled, born-again Christian wife in the middle of a fundamentalist husband (Patrick Wilson) and hunky atheist neighbor (Charlie Hunnam) sandwich. Faith, sex, love, and mortality collide in writer-director Matthew Chapman's potboiler, which culminates in a suicide showdown also featuring Terrence Howard. It's madness! But it's also, as always, a pleasure to see Tyler back onscreen -- where she has a confirmed interest to return even more frequently in the months and years ahead.
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Actor Michael Rapaport was such a passionate fan of hip-hop legends A Tribe Called Quest, it's almost tragic what happened after he was granted permission to film the group, reunited after disbanding in 1998, for his directorial debut in the documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest. Having captured incredibly intimate footage of members Phife Dawg, Q-Tip, Jarobi White, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad -- along with a veritable oral history of the '90s-era Native Tongues hip-hop movement culled from musical luminaries of past and present -- Rapaport found himself on the outs with A Tribe Called Quest just as his passion project was on the brink of a distribution deal.
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Despite some chatter to the contrary, comedies are alive and well in Hollywood this summer. Especially R-rated comedies: the combined domestic grosses of The Hangover Part II, Bridesmaids and Bad Teacher are closing in on $500 million. Into this landscape arrives Horrible Bosses (out Friday), the Seth Gordon-directed comedy about three dudes who try to kill their titular terrible employers. How come Bosses works so well when some other summer comedies have not?
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If the total grosses of The Hangover Part II, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Transformers: Dark of the Moon have you feeling a bit peaked, there is some hope: the success of Bridesmaids. The beloved Kristen Wiig-led comedy not only scored near-universal praise from critics upon its release in May, but record crowds as well; it's the biggest Judd Apatow production ever, and over the Fourth of July, Bridesmaids became the highest grossing R-rated female comedy of all-time. Said director Paul Feig to Movieline about topping Sex and the City for that crown: "I'm dancing in the streets about that one."
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The last few years have seen Patrick Wilson travel the hero route (Watchmen), the villain route (The A-Team), the romantic-lead route (Morning Glory), the romantic-foil route (The Switch), the beset-father route (Insidious) and the indie title-character route (Barry Munday). The versatile actor takes a road far less traveled in The Ledge, playing a religious zealot from under whose thumb his wife (Liv Tyler) squirms into an affair with the godless heathen next door (Charlie Hunnam). The triangle prompts a stand-off on the titular ledge, where a despondent cop (Terrence Howard) attempts to talk the heathen down. Sound crazy? It is! But in a good way.
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