With the deadline for Academy Award nominations just two days away, perhaps it's not the best time for Jennifer Lawrence to be talking about how acting is "stupid." But that's what she does in the new issue of Vanity Fair. more »
There's nothing like a good bit of alternate "What if?" casting to make you appreciate a movie whose stars' chemistry works, so picture what might have been if David O. Russell had made his Oscar contender Silver Linings Playbook a few years back... with Vince Vaughn and Zooey Deschanel.
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It speaks to just how good David O. Russell is at portraying raw, high-strung sincerity that Silver Linings Playbook is able to walk a line between likable and tolerable despite a premise the reeks of quirky bullshit. In addition to its frequently cutesy treatment of mental illness, the movie features a love interest who instantly latches onto and pursues the film's mess of a hero like she read the script in advance and was assured things will eventually work out. more »
Francis Lawrence, who is directing the second installment of The Hunger Games franchise, Catching Fire will come on board for the final two in the series, Mockingjay - Part 1 and Mockingjay - Part 2.
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David O. Russell (The Fighter) is gunning for awards season again with his Silver Linings Playbook, and Movieline's got a signed poster from the Oscar hopeful to give away! So sharpen your pencils and your wits and submit your best 10-word review of any film by director Russell for a chance to win.
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Also in Tuesday morning's round-up of news briefs, actress Jennifer Lawrence is in negotiations for a hefty paycheck for the second installment of The Hunger Games. Kevin Costner is headed to join a new project. Wayne Wang will direct a basketball tale and big changes at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.
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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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Osar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has been cast to play Plutarch Heavensbee, Head Gamemaker for The Hunger Games, studio Lionsgate said. Hoffman recently wrapped his gig playing Willy Loman on Broadway in the revival of Death of a Salesman, which earned him a Tony Award nomination. He will next been seen in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and indie film A Late Quartet, also starring Catherine Keener and Christopher Walken. The second installment of The Hunger Games franchise is based on Suzanne Collins' smash hit series of novels that have sold 36 million copies in the U.S.
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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will be released via IMAX on November 23rd. Director Francis Lawrence will make use of IMAX cameras in filming portions of the second installment of the franchise, Lionsgate is touting. Oscar-nominee Jennifer Lawrence will reprise her role as Katniss Everdeen along with fellow cast members Liam Hemsworth, and Josh Hutcherson.
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Mattel has unveiled the first look at their Hunger Games-themed Katniss Everdeen Barbie doll ($29.95), available for pre-order today and on shelves in August, and the result is... kinda close to what I envisioned when I read Suzanne Collins' novels. Not that District 12's underfed hunter gal ever hewed that close to Barbie's usual unattainably bosomy dimensions in most readers' minds, but something in Katniss-Barbie's face is appropriately feline, with just the merest hint of the full-lipped pout that Jennifer Lawrence brought to the screen.
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Despite last week's report to the contrary, it's not especially surprising to hear that Gary Ross is not quite out as the director of the Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire: Various sources have followed up initial word of Ross's franchise departure with news of predictable-enough salary disputes over ridiculously large sums of money that would push any spin machine into overdrive. UPDATE 4/10: Ross is officially out of the running to direct the Hunger Games sequel.
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Because Jennifer Lawrence's StarMeter is sky-high during this glorious Hunger Games weekend, why not take a look at her next venture, the indie horror pic House at the End of the Street? Katniss Everdeen this ain't; JLawr (JenLaw? JLa? Did we ever figure this one out?) stars as a teenager who befriends a new neighbor (Max Thieriot) whose family was murdered years ago. In the first image from the pic, a tank topped Lawrence discovers something mysterious and, from the look on her face, probably horrifying. Where's that bow and arrow when you really need it...?
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Suzanne Collins can start her victory lap now. The film version of her first Hunger Games novel is on the brink of blowing up box-office records – and critics and fans like it, too. Other young-adult fantasy authors haven’t been quite so successful in dealing with Hollywood. Some of Collins’s success was luck and good timing: her first Hunger Games book was released a month after Stephenie Meyer’s final Twilight novel appeared, sending publishers and studios alike scrambling for the next young-adult franchise. But Collins also skillfully played the game with and for the filmmakers, making deliberate choices about how she wrote the novels and how she helped market them to the books’ fierce fans. Forget teenage love triangles or wizards vs. werewolves; here's a far more practical list of dos and don'ts for when your popular young-adult fantasy book is being adapted by Hollywood. (Spoilers for lesser movies ahead.)
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Movie events have become deadly little things, highly mechanized gadgets thrown by studio marketing departments into an audience’s midst in advance; then we just stand around and wait for them to explode. The Hunger Games, adapted from the first of Suzanne Collins’ hugely successful trio of young adult novels, was decreed an event long before it became anything close to a movie: More than a year ago its studio, Lionsgate, launched a not-so-stealthy advertising campaign that made extensive use of social media to coax potential fans into convincing one another that they had to see this movie. The marketing was so nervily persuasive that you had to wonder: How could any movie – especially one that, as it turns out, is largely and surprisingly naturalistic, as opposed to the usual toppling tower of special effects – possibly hope to measure up?
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Preparing for a battle to the death in which the odds are most definitely not in her favor, Jennifer Lawrence’s Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen feels utterly alone, trapped within the deceptively cushy confines of the Capitol. Thankfully, she has at least one key ally on her side: Her stylist Cinna, played gracefully by rock star-turned-actor Lenny Kravitz, who discovered only after being cast that he’d be sharing the screen with one of his daughter’s close friends. “I asked, ‘Who’s playing Katniss?’” Kravitz recalled to Movieline. “‘It’s Jennifer Lawrence.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, she was just in my house cooking breakfast!’”
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