Writer-director Jeff Nichols returns with the Arkansas-set drama Mud, which vied for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and sweeps through the Sundance Film Festival this week with stars Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon in tow. Watch the film's first trailer — which does indeed feature a shirtless McConaughey, along with simmering Southern-fried intrigue and a palpable sense of menace — and stay tuned for more updates from Park City.
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The Sundance Film Festival continued its roll out of films playing its 2013 event in January, unveiling its out-of-competition Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontier sections as well as installations and performances headed to the festival's New Frontier venue.
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Also in Tuesday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, a new actor joins the next Hunger Games. A surreal comedy by electronic musician Quentin Dupieux is headed to screens. Reese Witherspoon boards a new romantic comedy. And a man is arrested in Ohio for bringing in weapons into a screening of TDKR.
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Can you believe that someone is accusing the writers of This Means War of being... lazy? "The fact remains, though, that most people don’t launch into film-studies lectures on a first date, not unless they’re in the movie business. When they do so in a romantic comedy it’s a giveaway that the screenwriter was too lazy and unimaginative to give their characters any hobbies that they don’t have themselves. It shifts the story even further away from reality." Seriously! It's getting bad. Someone start a human rights petition. [The Economist via The Awl]
It started with the pudding. Oh, not just any pudding: A perfect pool of melt-in-your-mouth chocolate-hazelnut goodness -- a confection so rich, so irresistible, that even Tom Hardy found himself drawn like a moth to a flame to the dessert table before the press conference for This Means War the other week in Beverly Hills. He grabbed a saucer and ambled over to a pack of bewildered journalists, offering an ebullient bon mot about The Woman in Black. “I’d have eaten through Daniel Radcliffe to get that part!” he raved, or so the story goes, before setting down his dish and disappearing once more into the back hallways of the Four Seasons.
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If men are from Mars and women from Venus, This Means War drifts in cold, empty space somewhere between the two orbits, where, as the famous tagline goes, no one can hear you scream.
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Anticipating total Valentine's Day box office domination by competitor The Vow -- the Rachel McAdams-has-amnesia-and-can't-remember-she's-married-to-Channing Tatum weepie -- Fox has shifted their McG-helmed spy love triangle action rom-com This Means War again back to Friday, Feb. 17 to avoid being slaughtered. The Reese Witherspoon/Chris Pine/Tom Hardy romp is still sneaking into theaters on Feb. 14 for a limited pre-opening run, but who are we kidding: Channing Tatum + tears + pining is the way to go, especially if there's no shot at Hardy and Pine running off together in each others' arms. [Deadline]
It’s the biggest, most important question of the season, people: Whom will Reese Witherspoon choose, between pillow-lipped Brit Tom Hardy and confident playboy Chris Pine, in the spy vs. spy love triangle rom-com This Means War? While you won’t get any spoilers here for the Valentine’s Day release, let Hardy and director McG tease you with the envelope-pushing alternate ending ideas that didn’t quite make it to the final cut. (And no -- McG didn't learn from Terminator: Salvation, which he admitted he “pussed out on.” Hindsight, my friends.)
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What if Hollywood reformatted the plot of Mr. & Mrs. Smith from he-spy vs. she-spy to be he-spy vs. he-spy over the same she? Then you would have This Means War, the upcoming action comedy from McG which stars Tom Hardy (with his real accent!) and Chris Pine as two secret agents who go head-to-head after learning they are dating the same woman, played by Reese Witherspoon. Oh, and did I mention that This Means War also marks Chelsea Handler's live action blockbuster debut?
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Jason Biggs, who was already our favorite Twitter celebrity (er, celebrity on Twitter?), put the news of Reese Witherspoon getting hit by a car and sustaining minor injuries in perspective last night. Since the Oscar-winner is out of the hospital and hopefully in tiptop Tracy Flick form, we like to think Mr. Biggs's quip registers as playful sarcasm. Ahem: "I just heard the news about Reese Witherspoon doing a voice in 'Cars 3'. Wow!" [@BiggsJason]
Fairytales are meant to teach lessons -- and the older you get, the more twisted those lessons become. Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood -- featuring a virginal Amanda Seyfried in that iconic red cloak, enveloped in the crimson of sensuality and blood lust, a young woman inexplicably drawn to the big, bad wolf -- isn't the first film to take the fairytale's latent messaging to darker, and we mean really dark, places.
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