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'The Wolverine' − Hugh Jackman Sees More Of Jean Grey & The Silver Samurai In New Trailer

'The Wolverine' − Hugh Jackman Sees More Of Jean Grey & The Silver Samurai In New Trailer

After the initial trailers for The Wolverine depicted our favorite stogie-smoking X-Man in a vulnerable state, his adamantium blades are singing once more. This CinemaCon clip features Hugh Jackman's character battling a barrage of baddies, including the fierce-looking Silver Samurai, and taking on some heavy arrow damage. Not everyone wants him dead though. In between relieving his rivals of their extremities, the trailer also indicates Wolvie finds time for romance.

There's even more footage of him and Jean Grey looking loved up around the 27-second mark, although the gauzy quality of scene suggests a flashback or dream sequence.

The Claws Are Out

More on The Wolverine: 

X Ex: Jean Grey Makes Cameo In Six-Second 'Tweaser' For 'The Wolverine'

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WATCH: 'The Wolverine' Trailers Contemplate Mortality (And It Friggin' Hurts)

WATCH: 'The Wolverine' Trailers Contemplate Mortality (And It Friggin' Hurts)

After a six-second 'Tweaser' anda  20-second preview of The WolverineMarvel unleashed almost four-and-a-half minutes of adamantium goodness in the form of two trailers on Wednesday, and it sets up at least part of the storyline for Hugh Jackman's latest outing as the cigar-smoking mutant.  more »

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X Ex: Jean Grey Makes Cameo In Six-Second 'Tweaser' For 'The Wolverine'

X Ex: Jean Grey Makes Cameo In Six-Second 'Tweaser' For 'The Wolverine'

The trailer for The Wolverine doesn't hit until Wednesday, but director James Mangold has released a six-second tweaser trailer via his Twitter account that crams a lot into its extremely brief run time, including plenty toothy grimacing from Hugh Jackman and a glimpse of the adamantium-clawed antihero's unrequited love Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who died in X2, was reborn as the Phoenix and was willingly killed by Wolverine at the end of X-Men: The Last Stand. more »

Adventures in Marketing || ||

New Posters For 'The Wolverine' Show A Jacked Jackman − But Little Artistic Spark

New Posters For 'The Wolverine' Show A Jacked Jackman − But Little Artistic Spark

Some new posters and images from The Wolverine have hit the web. If only they were as stunning as the original black-and-white Japanese brush style teaser that BLT Communications designed. (I've included it as the last poster below.)  The new one-sheets are designed to appeal to ab lovers more than art lovers and feature images of a shirtless Hugh Jackman and his adamantium claws.  Hoo-ah! As Al Pacino might say.  more »

Close Reads || ||

You Know, That Guy In 'Lincoln'....Hugh Jackman 'Forgets' Day-Lewis' Name

Photo by Paola Kudacki for TIME

Here's a novel way to keep from getting worked up about your main Oscar rival: forget his name entirely. For Time magazine's Great Performances video feature on this year's Oscar nominees, Les Miserables co-stars and Oscar nominees Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman spend some time lauding their competition. Hathaway even praises the computer-generated tiger in Life of Pi. But watch what happens around the 2:09 when Jackman slyly raises the topic of Lincoln. more »

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Do You Hear The Academy Singing? The Daunting Oscar Odds Of 'Les Miserables'

Do You Hear The Academy Singing?  The Daunting Oscar Odds Of 'Les Miserables'

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 »

The Movieline Interview || ||

Tom Hooper Defends His 'Les Misérables ' Close-Ups & Reveals Who's The Bigger Musical Geek: Jackman or Hathaway

Tom Hooper Defends His 'Les Misérables ' Close-Ups & Reveals Who's The Bigger Musical Geek: Jackman or Hathaway

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 »

On the Scene || ||

Batman Cameo Rumors Bring Cheshire Smile To Christopher Nolan's Face At Hugh Jackman Salute

<> the Museum Of Moving Images Salute To Hugh Jackman at Cipriani Wall Street on December 11, 2012 in New York City.

Hugh Jackman is way more emo than I thought.

But I'll get to that in a moment.  Among the filmmakers who turned up to praise the Les Misérables star at the Museum of the Moving Image's salute to Jackman in lower Manhattan on Tuesday night was The Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan who grew an enormous Cheshire-Cat grin when I asked him if the Superman reboot he is producing, Man of Steel, would see a cameo by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, or any actor, as Batman, and if he had any objections to a cameo as a continuity move to tie the Supes movie to the 2015 Justice League movie. 

"I can't talk about that.  You know that," Nolan said cheerily. I didn't know that, actually, but now that I do, I feel compelled to point out that, despite the frustratingly inconclusive nature of his answer, it's not a 'No.'  Yes, JG-L's camp shot down the speculation as "entirely false" back in November, but if the idea had been ruled out, wouldn't Nolan be saying something along those lines, too, so that the fan boys could move on? You know how angry they can get when their casting hopes and dreams are suddenly deflated after being allowed to build for months.

The impish smile on Nolan's face as he issued that no comment also heightened my optimism, especially in the wake of the powerful Man of Steel trailer that's now burning up the Internet. Zack Snyder's take on Superman clearly aspires to have the kind of psychological heft and dark undertones that made The Dark Knight trilogy so satisfying. If the movie attains or even approaches those standards, a JG-L Batman cameo  would not dishonor Nolan's work and it would set the bar high for Justice League . No pressure, Warner Bros.

Nolan, Hathaway, Weisz Honor Jackman At Museum of The Moving Image Fete

Getting back to Jackman, who's on the fast-track to a Best Actor Oscar nomination, Nolan had much more to say about  the actor, who he directed along with Christian Bale in The Prestige.  The filmmaker told guests at the Museum of the Moving Image fete that though "ruthless" is not a word usually associated with Jackman, The Wolverine star is indeed "ruthless creatively" and a performer "driven by intense ambition."  The director also said that he looked forward to working with Jackman again, "probably not on a musical though," despite Jackman's urging him to direct one.

Also praising Jackman were his wife, actress Deborra-Lee Furness, his X-Men Origins: Wolverine co-star Liev Schreiber, director Mike Nichols, former Saturday Night Live cast member Rachel Dratch, who got big laughs mocking Jackman's Australian dialect and  two of his Les Misérables co-stars Anne Hathaway and Eddie Redmayne.

In an effusive, rambling speech, Hathaway called Jackman "deep as the sea."

Rachel Weisz offered up an even more intriguing description of the actor, calling him an "incredible cocktail of light and dark."  She also told the most revealing story of the night:  During the filming of The Fountain, which was directed by her ex-husband Darren Aronofsky, Weisz said that Jackman gave himself so completely to a scene in which his character realizes he's going to die that "he sobbed for about half an hour after the cameras stopped" while Weisz comforted him.  "He'd gone to the deepest, darkest place a person can go," she said. "And he wasn't faking it."

Jackman kept his speech much lighter saying that his Christmas gift wish list was a simple one.   All he wanted, he said, was "a movie with me starring in it to open on Christmas Day."

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Review || ||

'Les Misérables' Hits High Notes, But Also Skitters

'Les Misérables' Hits High Notes, But Also Skitters

I feel I have to confess to a certain partisanship. I grew up listening to Les Misérables. I've seen it performed twice and as a girl had the original Broadway cast recording down cold. It's been years since I've heard it, but watching Tom Hooper's adaptation of Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Herbert Kretzmer's musical I realized with amusement and discomfiture that I could still sing along to just about every damn word, at least until whomever was sitting near me took it upon themselves to murder me for the greater good. These songs — and the bridges in between, for Les Misérables is a sung-through affair with almost no spoken dialogue — are permanently etched in my psyche, and I am as far from being able to look at this material with critical distance as a highly trained stage star is from an actual consumptive 1800s French urchin.

That said, can we admit that Les Misérables is an absolute beast of a musical? It faces the impossible task of compressing Victor Hugo's 1500-page novel into three hours (the screen version running a leaner 157 minutes), starting in a prison in the south of France in 1815 before leaping ahead to the town of Montreuil in 1823 and then Paris in 1832, where the main action takes place against the backdrop of the June Rebellion. It's the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), but it has a notable array of other significant characters to be dealt with, ones who love and suffer and (quite frequently) die, and all with musical accompaniment. The signature staging of the play involved a giant turntable that allowed for more fluid scene changes. On screen, that can be accompanied efficiently with an edit, but then you have to deal with the fact that smooshing a whole storyline about Valjean giving up a chance to let a stranger go down for his crimes and choosing to go on the run again ("Who Am I? / The Trial") looks incredibly rushed when taken out of the abstract.

In staging Les Misérables for screen, Hooper has taken a relatively naturalistic and grounded approach to the musical, a choice that's better suited to the subject matter of the story than to the fact that it takes place entirely in song. The vocals were recorded live on set, the backdrops are grimy in a poetic period Gallic style and the big numbers are frequently recorded in close-up, the camera holding on intimate shots of the performers as they stand or sit and sing. The film (which was shot by Danny Cohen, who also served as cinematographer on The King's Speech) treats its songs as it would dialogue, except that dialogue rarely involves spouting about one's feelings at length out loud to no one, a tic that makes much more sense set to music. It's an infuriatingly static way to shoot musical numbers, and it diminishes the bombastic grandeur many of these songs have. 

Éponine (singer and stage actress Samantha Barks) belts out her anguish about her unrequited love while huddled against a pillar; on the big sequence "One Day More" we cut abruptly between different faces as if everyone's in their own individual music video. It's only Russell Crowe in the role of Javert, the police inspector who's devoted his life to chasing down Valjean, who gets the kind of grandiose staging the material demands in his two big songs, as he wanders along prominent Parisian landmarks and the camera swings out to take in the city.

Crowe is, perhaps not coincidentally, the weakest singer, and despite his musical side career looks uncomfortable in the role of Javert, his concentration all seeming to go toward his serviceable warbling rather than acting. But much of the rest of the cast is terrific, particularly not-so-secret theater geeks Jackman and Anne Hathaway, who settle into their roles like they've spent their lives waiting for this opportunity. Hathaway's in fact so good as Fantine, the factory worker forced into prostitution to support her daughter Cosette near the start of the story, that the film staggers a bit after her character departs, her killer rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" one of its emotional highlights. 

Eddie Redmayne's a pleasant surprise as Marius, the idealistic student torn between his love for the grown Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and his desire to join his friends at the barricades for the uprising — the lovers tend to be the two blandest characters in the ensemble, but he finds a genuine gallantry and sweetness to the would-be revolutionary. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, on the other hand, play designated comic relief couple the Thénardiers even broader than that description would suggest — though "Master of the House" is one of the most dynamically staged of the songs, the tonal difference between their appearances and the rest of the film is jolting.

Even at a generous running time that matches this season's other giant award candidates, Les Misérables seems like it's in a hurry, skittering from one number to the next without interlude. After Hathaway's early high point, it starts to feel numbing, an unending barrage of musical emoting carrying us through Valjean's adopting of Cosette, the latter's first encounter with Marius, the battle at the barricade and a last hour that can feel like it's a non-stop series of death arias. But even if this isn't a great screen adaptation of the musical, there's no resisting the ending, which pairs the film's two brightest stars and then has everyone join in on a reprise of "Do You Hear The People Sing?" Say, do you hear the distant drums? Maybe not, but at that moment the voices coming from the screen and the tune they're crooning are rousing enough to draw a few tears.

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On the Scene || ||

Hugh Jackman Went A Little Wolverine On Tom Hooper To Land 'Les Miserables' Role

Hugh Jackman Went A Little Wolverine On Tom Hooper To Land 'Les Miserables' Role

Hugh Jackman is known for his love of a good musical as much as he's known for his portrayal of the adamantium-reinforced wise-ass Wolverine. So, it's no surprise that he used a bit of the latter character's blunt persuasiveness to land the part of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. more »

Variety Reviews... || ||

REVIEW: Hathaway's A Dream But 'Les Misérables' Doesn't Sing

REVIEW: Hathaway's A Dream But 'Les Misérables' Doesn't Sing

As a faithful rendering of a justly beloved musical, Les Misérables will more than satisfy the show's legions of fans. Even so, director Tom Hooper and the producers have taken a number of artistic liberties with this lavish bigscreen interpretation. more »

On the Scene || ||

Jackman, Hathaway & Co-Stars Are Masters Of The House At 'Les Misérables' Premiere

Jackman, Hathaway & Co-Stars Are Masters Of The House At 'Les Misérables' Premiere

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 »

Close Reads || ||

Handicapping The Performances Of 'Les Misérables' — Who Will Dazzle In the Movie Musical?

Handicapping The Performances Of 'Les Misérables' —  Who Will Dazzle In the Movie Musical?

The highly anticipated Les Misérables is on track to become this year’s Chicago — a crowd-pleasing, award-winning, budget-busting musical extravaganza that will sharply divide audiences on the respective talents of its singing, emoting, showboating stars. The stakes are raised by the actors having sung their parts live on set — accompanied by a piano, with the orchestra added in post-production — instead of recording the songs in the safety of a studio and lip-synching during their scenes. The debates over who proved a genuine triple-threat and who embarrassed themselves will last for weeks as we barrel into Oscar season, but let’s get the ball rolling now by ranking who we’re expecting to dazzle us — and who’ll disappoint.
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Biz Break || ||

Hugh Jackman Eyes 'X-Men' Wolverine Reprisal; George Clooney & Paul Greengrass Plot Crime Thriller: Biz Break

Hugh Jackman Eyes 'X-Men' Wolverine Reprisal; George Clooney & Paul Greengrass Plot Crime Thriller: Biz Break

Hugh Jackman is in talks for the role in the film that is looking like an X-Men: First Class sequel. Also in the news, Angela Bassett is joining Gregg Araki's latest; Plans are in the works for a Humphrey Bogart Film Festival; China's box office set to surge to number one; And the Hamptons International Film Festival gets new leadership.
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Newswire || ||

Anne Hathaway Buzzes About Her Short Hair In Oscar-Buzzed 'Les Misérables'

Anne Hathaway Buzzes About Her Short Hair In Oscar-Buzzed 'Les Misérables'

The film version of Les Misérables is building momentum ahead of its Christmas roll-out in the States, and much has been made about Anne Hathaway's very slimmed down look. She even made fun of her much shorter hair style, likening her new 'look' to resembling her brother.
more »