Most actors might think twice about playing dark and depressed versions of themselves on the big screen, parodying their most cringe-worthy moments of cheeseburger-craving internet fame for all to see in movies — like this week’s Piranha 3DD — more concerned with seeing big-bosomed babes being eaten by fish than with exploring the existential pains of celebrity. But then most actors don’t refer to themselves in the third-person with nicknames like “The Hoff” ™, a la David Hasselhoff, who spoke with Movieline last week about his Piranha 3DD cameo, that one time Leonardo DiCaprio went out for Baywatch, and how he’s learned to just “get on the Hoff train and ride.”
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The Weinstein Co. has unveiled a batch of new images from Quentin Tarantino Christmas Western Django Unchained, including shots of Jamie Foxx as the former slave-turned-bounty hunter Django, Christoph Waltz as his German comrade in arms Dr. King Schultz, and Leonardo DiCaprio as the evil plantation owner Calvin Candie. But it's the image of Foxx sidled up to a bar next to Franco Nero — the original Django — that gets bonus points for film nerdage.
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The first trailer for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby has arrived, and yup — this looks exactly like what Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby should look like: A richly stylized 1920s New York, Jazz Age nightclubs swirling with beaded flappers a la Moulin Rouge, star-crossed lovers exchanging torrid looks across impossibly polished sets, the anachronistic sounds of Kanye & Jay-Z & Frank Ocean... Not to mention Leonardo DiCaprio looking mighty fine in his first broodingly romantic role in over a decade. Soak up the moody art deco stylings and weigh in on Lurhmann's Christmas 3-D offering after the jump!
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It's difficult to single out the best part of Mark Ebner's fascinating new Hollywood poker-culture exposé, but Kevin Pollak's true confessions are up there: "Nick [Cassavetes] actually pulled me aside — I got up to go to the restroom, and when I came out, he was waiting for me. He took me into a side room and said, 'Dude, you've got to lighten up. You could kill this game if you stopped being so upset about everyone playing like dicks. This is how we play, and you could be killing these guys, because half of them don't know what the fuck they're doing. They just know how to play like a dick. You actually know how the game works, so stop being so pissed off at everyone for over-betting 3-2 off, and take their money.'" Oh, wait, no... this: "Hank Azaria, Simpsons’ co-creator Sam Simon, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Macaulay Culkin have all hosted prominent house games in the past 20 years." [Hollywood Interrupted]
I love the first teaser posters for Django Unchained — just vague enough to stir the imagination and just explicit enough to sing the film's epic, violent intentions in a way everyone can hear them. Very retro, very minimal, very... Quentin.
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Crazy Heart writer-director Scott Cooper isn't holding back with the follow-up to his double-Oscar-winning filmmaking debut, dialing in Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard and Zoe Saldana (not to mention producers including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ridley Scott and Relativity Media mogul Ryan Kavanaugh) for the family crime-and-redemption drama Out of the Furnace. Read on for full details just over the transom from Relativity; adjust your Oscar 2013 pools accordingly.
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Browsing through the photo record of Tuesday's Titanic 3D premiere in London, one notices immediately the absence of Leonardo DiCaprio. What gives? I mean, if Billy Zane can make time, then lord knows Leo should be able to drop in for at least a few snapshots with James Cameron and co-star Kate Winslet. At the very least, he'd better have a good excuse — which, according to Cameron, he did.
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Heads up, romantic drama die-hards: Movie theaters will be awash with tears in the next couple of weeks. Three epic — well, two epics and one epic-lite — love stories are being re-released for various questionable reasons, and in these challenging economic times it might not make sense to rush out and see all three. Here, then, are some points to consider before buying a ticket and travel-size tissues for Casablanca, The Bodyguard or Titanic.
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You know this movie, and chances are that you loved this movie -- except for that one role that almost ruined it all. Miscast Roles is where Movieline and its readers swap out those roles to make it right.
One of last year’s surprise critical and commercial darlings, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, wowed audiences, stoked many an awards-season debate and revitalized an important science fiction franchise — all while still managing to appeal to moviegoers unfamiliar with the original 1968 film (or that film's 1963 source novel). As chief chimp Caesar, Andy Serkis’s performative collaboration with the motion capture geniuses from WETA was a great spectacle, presenting viewers with a gorgeously rendered CGI-animated character.
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I wanted to believe James Cameron — I really did! — but it turns out that the 3-D conversion of his megahit Titanic is not only the craven cash grab we all feared, but it's also a visually drab re-rendering of an otherwise extraordinary technical achievement. Womp wooomp.
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So Baz Luhrmann beats on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into 3-D. In the first photos from his splashy new The Great Gatsby adaptation, stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, and Joel Edgerton vamp it up like humorlessly obsessed guests at a murder mystery dinner party. Anybody else find the casting here a bit too pat and obvious? Leonardo DiCaprio is a... a moneyed and aloofly self-interested man! Tobey Maguire is... a nervous, kowtowing outsider! Carey Mulligan is... the new Mia Farrow again! Well. Check out the images for yourself and see if I'm too cynical.
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It wasn't so long ago that I enjoyed my own reunion with Titanic, but this time, James Cameron invites everyone to Titanic 3-D, the Avatar'd-up revamp of his 1997 blockbuster. What parts are you looking forward to seeing in 3-D? Leonardo DiCaprio's shabby togs? Kate Winslet's unadorned areolas? Kathy Bates's contempt? You'll get them all in April, 2012, which marks the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. Trailer after the jump.
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Looks like Jonah Hill won't be joining Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kurt Russell, Kerry Washington, Anthony LaPaglia, RZA and Don Johnson in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, even though he was offered a part. Hill revealed why he had to turn down the role with thundering poetic regret: "I got offered the new Quentin Tarantino movie, and I can't do it because of my schedule... Doing Quentin's movie would have obviously been amazing, but my schedule didn't work out, which sucks." Djonah Unavailable, more like! [MTV via /Film]
Leonardo DiCaprio tried his best to buck Clint Eastwood's reputation as a one-take director but it turns out that his J. Edgar co-star Armie Hammer had a totally difference experience than the leisurely ten-take routine described at last week's press conference. "There would be takes that we did where I was under the impression we were shooting a rehearsal," Hammer told Moviefone. "Or that the cameras weren't even on ... and that's what we used. [...] At one point he was like, "OK, cut, print." And I was like, "Whoa, whoa, Clint, I had my sides in my hands, I thought we were just rehearsing that." [Moviefone]
At the press conference for J. Edgar, which premiered last night at AFI Fest to mixed, often hilarious reviews, stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts joined director Clint Eastwood, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and producer Brian Grazer fielded questions about the very issues that make the biopic seem difficult to make: the ambiguity surrounding both Hoover and his confidants' personal lives. Movieline culled the best five quotes from the panel, one of which involves 81-year-old Eastwood's on-set brawling.
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