Also in early Thursday's round-up of news briefs: Rachel Weisz is a possible go for a David Cronenberg project; Tarzan gets new life; And the Dubai International Film Festival rounds out its 2012 program.
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Also in Wednesday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, Amy Adams re-teams with David O. Russell on a pic; the Academy ups exec in newly-created post; Sundance Institute adds 10 titles to new initiative; And Bollywood's first superstar dies.
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To say there’s nothing on the contemporary movie landscape like Alex Kurtzman’s People Like Us is to suggest that the picture is a groundbreaking work with special effects unlike any we’ve ever seen, that it’s fresh and original in its use of characters or situations from old movies (or even older comic books), that its 3-D wow factor rivals that of Avatar. But People Like Us is something odder: This is a straightforward family comedy-drama, a movie made for adults, and one that actually gives its actors – among them Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks, Michelle Pfeiffer and Philip Baker Hall – something to do. That’s more of a rarity on today’s landscape than it should be.
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There are enough terrific, elegant old-style Tim Burton touches in Dark Shadows that, now and then, you might be fooled into thinking the once-mad genius had finally come back to his senses: A young girl gazes dreamily through the window of a train slipping through the New England countryside, the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” serving as an aural curtain for her reverie; a wispy ghost woman floats toward the waiting arms of a giant chandelier, her hair and tattered skirt winding around its crystals like jellyfish tendrils; a secret button reveals a passageway whose opening is framed by mechanical ocean waves and a cadre of cast-iron wolves raising their snouts to the moon in a hearty salute. Parts of Dark Shadows look lovely. So what happened to the story?
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The new trailer for People Like Us (nee Welcome to People) is here, featuring Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks as siblings who meet only after their father dies. The inheritance/estrangement/salvation plot (and a vaguely incestuous vibe that the trailer mostly counteracts with a few key shots of Olivia Wilde as Pine's wife) thickens around the family, with Michelle Pfeiffer dropping in as Pine's mother, which is just as bizarre as I expected it would be. Overall, though? Screenwriter Alex Kurtzman's directorial debut looks all right!
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The new trailer for People Like Us (nee Welcome to People) is here, featuring Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks as siblings who meet only after their father dies. The inheritance/estrangement/salvation plot (and a vaguely incestuous vibe that the trailer mostly counteracts with a few key shots of Olivia Wilde as Pine's wife) thickens around the family, with Michelle Pfeiffer dropping in as Pine's mother, which is just as bizarre as I expected it would be. Overall, though? Screenwriter Alex Kurtzman's directorial debut looks all right!
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With the year 2011 drawing to a close, the stars of Garry Marshall's New Year's Eve were a sentimental -- and cheeky -- bunch talking up the portmanteau rom-com recently in Los Angeles. "When I stopped wanting my New Year's Eve to be perfect, to ring in the New Year right, is when it started working out right," admitted Hilary Swank, seated at a podium about as long as the credit roll for the star-studded holiday pic. At the other end of the panel, Zac Efron faux-wooed co-star Michelle Pfeiffer. "You're coming out with me this year," he winked at her. "I'll show you how we do it."
We've seen the goggles, the cycle-straddling, and the cat ears, but do any of us have an expertly informed inkling as to how well Anne Hathaway will don Catwoman's iconic suit in The Dark Knight Rises? Sister site Hollywood Life went to the source to learn if Hathaway's got what it takes: Michelle Pfeiffer, who purred her way through 1992's Batman Returns as the dominatrix-like Selina Kyle.
In the brand new trailer for New Year's Eve, Garry Marshall's holiday-themed movie event that promises to give the phrase "ensemble romantic comedy" a bad name, Robert De Niro wonders what could possibly beat "New York on New Year's Eve." I'll tell you what: Not throwing all of your actorly credibility out the window confetti-style to appear alongside Zac Efron, Jon Bon Jovi and Ludacris in a movie that features Ashton Kutcher trapped in an elevator with the annoying girl from Glee. You know what other moviegoers might also consider better than seeing Garry Marshall's vision of NYC on New Year's Eve? Tom Six's Human Centipede 2, which inspires similar nausea but for different reasons.
All this fuss over the first look at Anne Hathaway's maybe-official Catwoman garb in The Dark Knight Rises brings to mind Selina Kyle's sartorial choices over the years, since her 1940 debut in Bob Kane and Bill Finger's Batman #1 comic. Much has changed through the decades, from Catwoman's sultry swingin' '60s shimmer to, well, Halle Berry's unfortunate bra 'n' leather pants getup. Will Hathaway's be-goggled Selina Kyle fare any better than her predecessors?
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