Jennifer Lawrence's Best Actress Oscar win is more than a career milestone. During awards season, Lawrence got dinged by people like me for speaking her mind and not being more politic during the campaigning process. She didn't really listen, and, guess what, it didn't really matter. more »
Sony Pictures Classics took North American rights to the latest film by Woody Allen, starring Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale and more. Also in Tuesday's news round-up, Australia's Academy picks its nominees just two days before the Oscar noms; the Domestic Box Office hits a record; Mark Romanek is exiting Cinderella; and R.I.P. director David R. Ellis.
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Alec Baldwin says the documentary he's making with filmmaker James Toback, Seduced and Abandoned, continues to take shape. I spoke to Baldwin briefly at the reception that Hamptons International Film Festival Chairman Stuart Suna threw at his East Hampton home on Saturday afternoon. There, the actor — who arrived at the party gallantly carrying his new bride Hilaria Thomas's high-heeled party shoes — explained that interviews he and Toback conducted with venerable filmmakers Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Roman Polanski and Bernardo Bertolucci will comprise the core of the project. "They are the pillars of the film," said Baldwin, who described Seduced and Abandoned as a "meta" documentary about filmmakers who venture to the carnival-like South of France festival to raise funds for their latest projects. more »
The scene outside East Hampton's usually civilized Guild Hall was almost as frenzied as a mosh pit on Saturday night when an overflow crowd turned up to watch Alec Baldwin interview fellow leading man Richard Gere. The spirited conversation, which focused mostly on Gere's pre-Pretty Woman career, was a precursor to the Arbitrage actor receiving the Hamptons International Film Festival's 2012 Golden Starfish Award for Lifetime Achievement in Acting. more »
Any re-hash of Beetlejuice will have to include Michael Keaton, Tim Burton who directed the 1988 original that also starred Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara has said. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter writer Seth Grahame-Smith, who is currently penning a script for the Beetlejuice sequel said in May that he's spoken with both Burton and Keaton about the proposed follow-up.
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New York was central to most of Woody Allen's film career until he headed to Europe in the mid-2000s, with features set in London, Paris, Rome and Barcelona, but if some Allen fans have their way, he'll be shooting in Israel. Now that he has To Rome With Love making its way to screens in the U.S., the Oscar-winning filmmaker is reportedly headed to San Francisco for his next project, which will star Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale and curiously, Andrew Dice Clay. But if a group of L.A.-based Jewish campaigners have any say, his follow-up will be in Israel and they're looking to put their crowd-funding wares to the test in order to lure Allen to film in the Jewish state.
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It's going on seven years since Brokeback Mountain brought cowboys and leading men out of the closet - even if they weren't exactly gay. But still, man on man snogging sessions still make some headlines as was the case recently with 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin and actor Russell Brand who share make-out time in the forthcoming Rock of Ages.
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Also in this week-ending, Friday afternoon edition of Biz Break: MGM gets into the Ray Bradbury business, how Obama lost Hollywood, and more...
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Alec Baldwin will reportedly head off to Cannes as part of James Toback's next project, an unscripted slice of life featuring the actor as himself, doing all the things Alec Baldwin might do at the world's most venerated, glamorous film festival. Neve Campbell, who will not travel with the team, is said to star as Baldwin's wife; she shot material in New York last week. Sounds great! Though if this just turns out to be a long-form Capital One commercial, I'm going to be pretty pissed. [Forbes via VF]
Woody Allen continues his cinematic Eurotrip with To Rome With Love, which aims to repeat the formula of pitting navel-gazing privileged Americans against Old World locales with charming results. While it doesn't go for the transformative magic of Midnight in Paris, will Woody's Rome outing capture something special in Italy? Watch the first trailer below.
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The thing I love about the ramped-up new Rock of Ages trailer is how unapologetically it states what this movie is: A bombastic, cheeky, kitschy, bright-eyed and utterly slick tribute to the decadence of '80s rock culture, based on the even slicker Broadway hit of the same name. Which of course you already know — but now, with Tom Cruise's brief singing showcase and pretty much everyone else warbling adapted pop show tunes of their own, Warner Bros. and New Line's cards are on the table. There can be no ambiguity: You are either in or you are out. In this era of equivocation and overlapping quadrants and being everything to everyone, it's pretty ballsy when you think about it.
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First things first: Rise of the Guardians is an animated adventure, but it's not a sequel to that owl movie. I know, it's very confusing. What's more, it's about Santa Claus — a brawny, tatted-up Santa who pulls a Sam Jackson and assembles a superteam to fight evil and protect the children of the world. The other fantasy heroes called to duty? The Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman. It's pretty much The Avengers for kids, only I'm willing to bet it'll have a better soundtrack. Hey-oh!
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If you enjoyed watching Liam Neeson battle territorial wolves in Joe Carnahan’s The Grey — and plenty of moviegoers have — then you'd be well-advised to look into Lee Tamahori's 1997 thriller The Edge. Starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin and perhaps best characterized by screenwriter David Mamet's trademark clipped dialogue, the film is an unusually strong entry in the survival-story tradition — and one to which The Grey owes at least a spiritual debt (if not more).
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Alec Baldwin, one of our chirpiest and most opinionated tweeters, has apparently given up Twitter altogether. The 30 Rock star and Oscar nominee fled the site following an incident in which American Airlines booted him off a plane for playing Words With Friends and for being violent, abusive, and aggressive. All that remains of his Twitter is the handle name and the word "Deactivated." Sad, sad day. Thrust your American flag at the sky and never forget his above-average GOP putdowns. [@AlecBaldwin]
Now hear this! No, seriously, hear this: Alec Baldwin has a new WNYC podcast called Here's the Thing, which will comprise a series of conversations with the actor's Hollywood peers and other cultural luminaries (including "makers of public policy, critics and comedians") about "what motivates them" and "how [...] they feel about what they do" -- among other things. The first episode, which you can listen to below, feature Michael Douglas and is pretty much just as awesome as you'd imagine.
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