The Academy Award nominations brought good news and bad news to one of my favorite movies of the year. Les Misérables eight nominations including Best Picture, Actor, for Hugh Jackman, and Supporting Actress, for Anne Hathaway. That ain't chopped liver, but the highly publicized snubbing of its director Tom Hooper along with its absence in all-important bellwether categories like screenplay and editing means what was once considered a front runner is now a real long shot to actually win Oscar’s top prize. more »
Now that Les Misérables is expected to surpass its opening-day box-office expectations by $5 million-10 million, director Tom Hooper could pretend that adapting the beloved musical for the big screen was a walk in the park — but he'd be lying. On Thursday, Hooper spoke to Movieline from his Sydney, Australia hotel room and, as he watched a massive tanker navigate Sydney Harbor, likened the challenge of directing the film to piloting an unwieldy boat through a very tricky channel. more »
Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and even rock hobbyist Russell Crowe are known double threats when it comes to acting and singing, but Tom Hooper’s big screen Les Miserables offers its biggest surprise by introducing the musical talents of Brit actor Eddie Redmayne. Trained as a chorister at Eton College (where he went to school with, yes, Prince William — more on that in a moment), the longtime Les Mis fan knew the musical so well he filmed his audition via iPhone while shooting another film. When he got to preparing for the film, however, his Les Mis fanaticism didn’t quite help.
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Fans stormed London's Leicester Square to join the revolution on Wednesday night: the world premiere of Les Misérables. The barricades were up, not to hold back National Guardsmen but to restrain fans who who turned up to salute the movie's lead Hugh Jackman, Londoner (and the movie's Marius), Eddie Redmayne and the rest of the main cast. more »
At age 15, Chloë Grace Moretz is now right in the center of the child/adult Venn diagram. Pretty soon we’ll have to accept that she really is a young woman, but for now, it’s slightly discomfiting to see her in the jailbait short shorts and tiny halter tops she wears in Derick Martini’s Hick. Even in the old days, girlhood went by in a flash, and most contemporary parents will tell you that today those years of innocence — or at least perceived innocence — are even more compressed. Plus, some girls just move faster than others: Moretz’s character in Hick is an unhappy 13-year-old named Luli who doesn’t yet know how to use her sexual allure, though she’s vaguely aware that she’s got some. She can’t wait to grow up and get the hell away from her tiny, repressive Nebraska town and her heedless parents (played by Juliette Lewis and Anson Mount), and her urgency gives the movie whatever momentum it has.
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