Representing a slightly skewed take on 2004’s Cellular crossed with a lobotomized Silence of the Lambs, Brad Anderson’s high-concept thriller The Call would be an unremarkable bit of women-in-peril dreck were it not for two distinguishing factors — the sexualized sadism inflicted upon the half-dressed 16-year-old Abigail Breslin, and the equally sadistic Sideshow Bob coiffure affixed to the otherwise lovely Halle Berry. These indignities aside, there’s little to differentiate this high-pitched screamer from a particularly feverish Law and Order rerun, and it might be tough for such a film to dial in sizable auds to theaters. more »
Exciting news for fans of Orson Scott Card's sci-fi series Ender's Game: Harrison Ford has officially joined the cast as Hyrum Graff, the manipulative colonel responsible for training students in a futuristic military academy called Battle School.
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With the year 2011 drawing to a close, the stars of Garry Marshall's New Year's Eve were a sentimental -- and cheeky -- bunch talking up the portmanteau rom-com recently in Los Angeles. "When I stopped wanting my New Year's Eve to be perfect, to ring in the New Year right, is when it started working out right," admitted Hilary Swank, seated at a podium about as long as the credit roll for the star-studded holiday pic. At the other end of the panel, Zac Efron faux-wooed co-star Michelle Pfeiffer. "You're coming out with me this year," he winked at her. "I'll show you how we do it."
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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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Imagine if Sofia Coppola's Somewhere had been about a girl who bonds with her estranged musician father while on tour instead of a girl who bonds with her estranged movie star dad at the Chateau Marmont. That alternative scenario is exactly what writer/director David M. Rosenthal explores in Janie Jones, which stars Abigail Breslin as the titular offspring and Alessandro Nivola as her struggling rocker father.
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Hollywood's little miss sunshines are growing up, and how (looking at you too, Dakota): Variety reports that 15-year-old Abigail Breslin has been cast as one of two leads in The Class Project, an indie drama based on the real-life "Bathtub Girls," two teenage Canadian sisters who murdered their mother in 2003 and got away with the crime for a year before being found out. Stan Brooks will direct from a script by Fabrizio Filippo and Adam Till who adapted The Class Project from Toronto Star reporter Bob Mitchell's 2008 book, The Class Project: How To Kill a Mother: The True Story of Canada's Infamous Bathtub Girls. [Variety]
