Also in Wednesday evening's round-up of news briefs, supernatural thriller Jinn is heading to theaters. The San Diego Film Festival sets slate. And Lydia Hearst joins a horror reboot.
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And doesn't it make sense? With the final installment of the mega franchise coming out, how could there not be a ton of cash? Notes the publication, "At this point, could anyone else play Bella Swan in Twilight?" Good point! The publication, which dishes out the super rich and famous wealth numbers annually said Stewart made an estimated $12.5 million plus a share of the profits from the mega-franchise in her last two stints on Twilight, but she also made more cash via Snow White and the Huntsman this past year.
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Mirror Mirror is about as postmodern as a postmodern version of a fairytale gets these days – “It’s been focus-grouped!,” the prince protests, as the princess defies tradition and sets out to save him. So why is it so very white? It’s especially jarring when Indian director Tarsem Singh ends the movie with a Bollywood-inspired dance number – it’s a Technicolor celebration of cultural diversity by a cast that doesn’t seem to have any, save a dwarf or two who barely stand out from their pack.
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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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"'It’s my least favorite thing. [...] People ask me about that movie, but I’ve forgotten it. That was a silly romantic comedy. [Arbitrage] is a much more serious movie that has some real cause and effect.' Incredibly, the grumpy star also claims his Pretty Woman character Edward Lewis helped contribute to the global financial crisis, as he glorified greedy and selfish Wall Street types. 'It made those guys seem dashing, which was so wrong,' Richard explains. 'Thankfully, today, we are all more skeptical of those guys.'" Except for hookers! Some things never change. [Woman's Day via Big Hollywood]
Some directors clearly have no filter and suffer for it; others choose to live altogether filter-less, playing the game their own way, on their own terms. Which is why earlier this year Movieline anointed Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) the honey badger of Hollywood; an indie film talent recently gone mainstream -- who wore a homemade shirt proclaiming "I've been media trained" at WonderCon -- Tarsem's infamously cheeky public persona might threaten to overtake his work if only his films, just three features to date counting this week's Immortals, weren't so distinctive and gorgeous.
"Usually when I hear the words 'family drama,' I run," said Willem Dafoe, who nevertheless found something to savor in writer-director Dennis Lee's Fireflies in the Garden. Little did Dafoe or his castmates Julia Roberts, Ryan Reynolds, Emily Watson, Hayden Panettiere and least of all Lee himself know that their particular family drama wouldn't make it to American theaters only today -- nearly four years after its Berlin Film Festival premiere in 2008.
Julia Roberts shot newbie director Dennis Lee's ensemble family drama Fireflies in the Garden four years ago, but after an infamously disastrous Berlin Film Festival showing and distributor drama at Senator Films, the indie film languished for years on the shelf. Last night at their premiere in Los Angeles Lee told Movieline how Roberts saved the film from direct-to-video hell and Roberts explained why her upcoming project, Snow White, will be worth the price of admission.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest Evil Queen of them all? Is it Julia Roberts, who will star opposite Lily Collins's Snow White in Tarsem Singh's untitled fairy tale adaptation? Or is it Charlize Theron, who will play the wicked queen opposite Kristen Stewart's armored Disney princess in Snow White and the Huntsman? Take a look at the side-by-side comparison below before deciding for yourself.
Gwyneth Paltrow has a habit of saying things that inspire me to take notes, fill a bulletin board with theories, and question my own feelings. Today's incendiary soundbite: a seemingly off-the-cuff remark from the Cee Lo foil regarding the roles she takes: "I have little kids, and I'm a full-time mom. I really only do small parts." Considering her role in Contagion is a short one -- she's only in the first 15 minutes -- and her newly announced ensemble role in Stuart Blumberg's upcoming sex addiction comedy Thanks for Sharing, is it possible that we should be mourning her status as a leading lady? Will you attend the memorial?
If Sean Penn didn't love the abstract narrative Terrence Malick employed in Tree of Life, maybe he'll dig the pretty-similar, much more conventional stuff in the long-delayed Fireflies in the Garden -- a Tree of Life Lite starring Ryan Reynolds as a middle-aged man who returns to his Texas childhood home to deal with his strained relationship with his stern father (Willem Dafoe). Period flashbacks, memories of an angelic mother (Julia Roberts), and a pivotal death that inspires exploration into deep emotional scars? The only things missing are the cosmic clouds of particles laden with meaning. Would Penn approve?
This summer's most unlikely super hero may well be Tom Hanks' titular everyman in Larry Crowne, an unsinkable Navy veteran who loses his job and decides to bounce back by going to college. Star Hanks, who co-writes and directs for the first time since 1996's That Thing You Do!, was taken by the idea of a tale about re-invention, loss, and bouncing back, and reminisced with co-star Julia Roberts about the moment in his life when things looked so dire he wasn't sure a Hollywood career was in the cards.
Director-star Tom Hanks is trying to tell us something in the new poster for his summer star vehicle. Just take a look at the visual messaging within the new poster for Larry Crowne, which follows a Navy veteran (Hanks) who goes back to community college and falls for a professor (Julia Roberts). Powder blue Vespas! Slightly off-center title placement! This is the summer cure for the middle aged blahs!
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