Also in Thursday afternoon's round-up of news briefs: Taken 2 is looking to lead another strong box office this weekend. Devin Ratray is joining Alexander Payne's latest. And banned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has made another film, defying authorities.
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Also in Monday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, Toronto '12 doc heads for U.S. distribution, while an Occupy Wall Street doc is also set for theaters. Julia Louis-Dreyfun, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener and more begin work on a new comedy, while Bruce Dern and Will Forte are set for Alexander Payne project. And Joe Manganiello has boarded an action-thriller.
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Also in this week-capping edition of Biz Break: Frank Langella to be honored at Nantucket, Harvey Weinstein scores laurels from UCLA, Ken Loach's latest lands Stateside, another Tribeca premiere finds a distributor, and more...
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One of the funniest moments during a "meet the jury session" Wednesday afternoon in Cannes came toward the end of a press conference. The annual first-day Q&A has long been a peculiar dance, with jurors giving vague answers about being happy to be on the jury and how they'll pursue the next 11 days viewing all of the competition entries with an open mind. And this year was pretty much no exception: Joined by fellow jurors Ewan McGregor, Diane Kruger, Jean Paul Gaultier, Raoul Peck, Andrea Arnold, Hiam Abbass and Emmanuelle Devos, jury president Nanni Moretti — whose own film Habemus Papam (We Have a Pope) screened in competition here last year — recalled a wall of silence surrounding the jury when he last served many years back.
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The Cannes jury is now complete. The Descendants director Alexander Payne and actor Ewan McGregor have joined the festival's competition jury, which will judge the 65th annual event's 22 films in competition. They join previously announced jury president Italian director Nanni Moretti (We Have a Pope) who will announce the Cannes winners on stage at the closing ceremonies on May 27th.
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What’s the Film: Citizen Ruth (1996), available on DVD and Hulu
Why it's an Inessential Essential: The premise — one woman’s attempt to have an abortion turns into a national debate and bidding war — was a bold choice out of the gate for writer-director Alexander Payne. Citizen Ruth is his first feature film, and like his subsequent work, it has a biting wit, absurdities from every corner, and deeply flawed characters.
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Kevin Tent had been nominated for three ACE Eddies before winning this month for The Descendants, which the American Cinema Editors deemed Best Edited Feature (Drama). Tent’s work in the cutting room played an important role in placing The Descendants firmly in the drama category. The longtime collaborator with Alexander Payne — Tent's other Eddie nods were for Sideways, About Schmidt and Election — says that much more comedy from the King family was shot than what we see onscreen and that removing it just felt right. In a few days, Tent will vie for the Best Film Editing Oscar for the first time. Movieline spoke with him about how the movie’s dramatic story came together, the attention from the Academy and his plans for Oscar night and beyond.
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As you may have heard or read, the 2012 Academy Award nominations have stirred strong reactions in certain pockets of the Oscar snubculture. And you just know that Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close filmmaker Stephen Daldry -- a first-time non-nominee for Best Director -- is seething somewhere out there: "But at least two of those guys won't even show up!" Fair enough! Or is it?
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That unsubtle backhand slap you just heard was the sound of Steven Spielberg being whacked off his awards-season pedestal by the Directors Guild of America, which just announced Woody Allen, David Fincher, Michel Hazanavicius, Alexander Payne and Martin Scorsese as its 2012 Best Director nominees. This one has to hurt.
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The roster of actors in the world who could reduce megastar George Clooney to rubble with a single withering look is short, but add newcomer Shailene Woodley to the top of the list. As Alex, the acerbic 17-year-old daughter of Clooney's Hawaiian landowner and family man in Alexander Payne's The Descendants, Woodley (of ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager) makes an auspicious film debut that could land her in the Oscar race -- not that Woodley, perhaps the most well-adjusted young star on the rise in Hollywood, would take awards razzle-dazzle too seriously.
The Twilight Saga sparkled to another #1 opening, as if you had any doubt; it was just a matter of how many millions Breaking Dawn would rake in, after Friday's $72 million opening day. But while all the excitement over weddings, butter-colored honeymoons, and monster vampire babies couldn't quite help BD eclipse New Moon (groan), it still nudged out Pirates of the Caribbean: The One with the Kraken for the #5 biggest opening of all time. That's forever, baby. Let's get our imprinting on in today's Weekend Receipts.
The Descendants may look like a 21st century family drama, but as this exclusive featurette proves, writer/director Alexander Payne and George Clooney can trace its world back to cinema of the '50s and '60s. Watch as George Clooney talks about Gregory Peck and his uncle, the late Oscar winner José Ferrer, and Payne recalls wise words from a kooky Czech stage actor.
There has always been something innately memorable about actress Judy Greer. The curiously beautiful actress with razor-sharp timing, a scene-stealer in everything from What Women Want to Arrested Development, carries an underlying melancholy behind her eyes that lends the sweetest characters deeper layers and the over the top ones an even greater sense of unpredictability, whether in comedies or, increasingly, in dramatic fare. So maybe she was born to be in an Alexander Payne movie like The Descendants, which flits back and forth along the painful edge between tragedy and humor in ways that feel completely, and achingly, human.
George Clooney may have been voted Sexiest Man Alive twice by People magazine but you still might want to think long and hard before hiring the Oscar winner to maintain your inground pool. The Ides of March writer/director/star certainly looks pretty while wielding a leaf skimmer but in a new clip for Alexander Payne's The Descendants, he misses an entire forest's worth of foliage in his pool while barking frustrated parenting cues at his daughters. Pool Boy Union of America, you may want to avert your eyes.
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