Disney's first trailer for the big budget Wild West spectacle The Lone Ranger has everything but, y'know, the Lone Ranger himself — Armie Hammer, who's glimpsed here and there amid director Gore Verbinski's bright, sweeping vistas, but certainly isn't the center of attention. Based on this you'd think The Lone Ranger is about horses, runaway trains, slo-mo shoot-outs, and Johnny Depp as a painted face, bird-on-head, perpetually grimacing Tonto. Which, let's be honest, is why this movie exists in the first place.
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If you can't get enough photos of Johnny Depp with a dead bird on his head, well, saunter over here and take a gander. On Tuesday, Disney released a new batch of stills and the teaser poster to Pirates of the Caribbean pardners, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski's take on The Lone Ranger. Depp plays the masked lawman's oddly attired Native American sidekick Tonto, and, according to Disney, "recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid"(Armie Hammer) into the Lone Ranger." more »
Here at Movieline readers have to work for their hard-earned prizes, but today we have a haiku contest that should also engage your inner child and tap into the most whimsical, fantastical depths of your imagination: Write an original haiku inspired by this weekend's colorful and witty Snow White retelling Mirror Mirror -- a movie featuring heroines in swan dresses and people wearing boats as hats! -- and you could win dinner and a movie for four! UPDATED: See the winning entry below!
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There’s plenty of spectacle in movies these days; it’s delight that’s in short supply, and Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror offers plenty of it, shimmering like a school of minnows in a reflective pond. The picture is gorgeous to look at: There are fairytale castles topped with minarets of fluted gold, interior marble archways that look as if they might have been carved by Alfonse Mucha, ball gowns that take their inspiration from the rock-star effrontery of peacock feathers. But the story is a delight, too, a modernized -- but not too modernized -- retelling of the Brothers’ Grimm Snow White peopled with actors who polish the material to a bright glow rather than a high gloss. Mirror Mirror has a great deal of energy and wit and color, so much that it sometimes threatens to go right over the top. Somehow, though, it always stops short of being just too much -- it’s never too taken by its own reflection.
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He's painted cinematic landscapes of psychosexual kink (The Cell), childhood fantasy (The Fall), and ancient Greek 3-D abs (Immortals), but in this week's Mirror Mirror director Tarsem takes a turn into uncharted territory: The family-friendly fairytale. Turning his attentions to the story of Snow White, Tarsem creates another visually rich fantasyland of imagination -- and gives the fabled princess a post-modern streak to boot -- with the help of the late Oscar-winning costume designer and longtime collaborator Eiko Ishioka (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark), who passed away in January at the age of 73. In an exclusive chat, Tarsem takes Movieline through his work with Ishioka and the whimsical, inventive, and utterly imaginative designs of Mirror Mirror that comprise their final collaboration on film.
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While Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer and director Gore Verbinski are working to turn Disney's rudderless blockbuster ship around with The Lone Ranger, Hollywood megaproducer and Twitter mainstay Jerry Bruckheimer has been busy dropping clues about and glimpses at the the making of the film from behind the scenes. If you are even the least bit interested in how this one's coming together, you could do worse than keep an eye on Bruckheimer's tweets.
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And just like that, a million Halloween couple-costumes are decided. Thoughts?
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*: As determined by Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics after crunching 23 weeks of data from the awards cognoscenti and beyond. Thank you for reading; our work here is done.
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You know that when two of the most respected pundits in all of Oscardom argue (within days of each other!) for curtailing both the epic Academy Awards season race and the ceremony in which it culminates, patience for all this crap is wearing thin. With that in mind — and also considering that the "race" for most of these categories ended weeks or months ago — who's up for an Oscar Index lightning round? (The entire staff at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics raises its hands.) OK, then — to the Index!
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"Let's have a moment of silence for the suffering Oscar bloggers as they enter the most trying and mortifying weeks of their labors." Such was Glenn Kenny's tweeted lament earlier this week -- one eerily anticipating today's latest, sanity-thrashing edition of Oscar Index. And that's just its effect on readers! You really don't want to see the catatonic pall saturating Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. On the other hand, we're gonna make a fortune recycling this mounting pile of wine bottles. To the Index!
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It's a little difficult for the specialists at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics to come into work these days, what with the pall of predictability settling in over the awards landscape and the painstaking studies into backlash physics yielding less and less of practical substance. What's a frustrated kudologist to do? Besides drink for the next four weeks straight, I mean. Let's look for ideas and encouragement for all in this week's Oscar Index.
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There's good news and bad news to begin this post-nomination, next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-last installment of Oscar Index. The good news? It's kind of almost over! The bad news? Oy. Please don't make me repeat it.
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Smack in the middle of a two-week frame yielding two awards shows and a pair of nomination announcements that will culminate in this year's Oscar nods, the researchers at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics have gained minimal insight into where the Academy may take the 2011-12 awards race in next Tuesday's final nominations. Or maybe they're all just sleeping. It's been that kind of year. Let's check their work in this week's Oscar Index.
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What a week at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics, where the pundits' hustle harmonized with the guilds' bustle to create a heavy-duty wake-up call for some otherwise dormant awards-season underdogs. They also telegraphed danger for a few juggernauts once thought unassailable. What does it all mean as we head into the Critics Choice and Golden Globe Awards weekend? To the Index!
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We can all agree that Lindsay Lohan is in dire need of a comeback, and this might just do it -- well, it'll certainly help: Deadline reports that the 25-year-old starlet is in talks to play screen icon Elizabeth Taylor in Lifetime's biographical romance Elizabeth & Richard: A Love Story. The pic will chronicle the legendary relationship between Taylor and Richard Burton; no word yet on who'll play Dick to Lohan's Liz, which means it's a perfect time to play a round of Fantasy Casting!
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