I've been sold on Steven Soderbergh's Liberace movie Behind The Candelabra since the trailer for the HBO movie hit the web earlier this month. But if you need further convincing, the filmmaker drops some interesting details about the movie in a free-ranging discussion with his younger, gay brother Charley Soderbergh in Out magazine. more »
What begins as a barbed satire of our pill-popping, self-medicating society morphs into something intriguingly different in Side Effects. Steven Soderbergh's elegantly coiled puzzler spins a tale of clinical depression and psychiatric malpractice into an absorbing, cunningly unpredictable entertainment that, like much of his recent work, closely observes how a particular subset of American society operates in a needy, greedy, paranoid and duplicitous age. Discriminating arthouse audiences not turned off by the antidepressant-heavy subject matter should be held shrink-rapt by what Soderbergh, after years of flirting with retirement, has said will be his last picture "for a long time." more »
Calling all Steven Soderbergh fans and movie-loving hypochondriacs. Time to cue up Pink's "Just Like A Pill" on Spotify and get your haiku mojo working. Movieline will give away a Side Effects poster signed by cast members Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Jude Law, Vinessa Shaw and Dr. Sasha Bardey to the armchair bard who, in our opinion, writes the most addictive haiku inspired by his or her favorite pharmaceutical or the movie itself. more »
As Steven Soderbergh said at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's preview screening of Side Effects on Wednesday, "There’s Movie A and there’s Movie B and there’s Movie C." The director was making the apt point that Side Effects could have been a heavy-handed movie about a) Big Pharma or b) insider trading, two of the film's main motifs. But Soderbergh chose c), a much subtler and entertaining third path and, judging from the Manhattan audience's enthusiastic reaction to the picture, his instincts did not fail him. more »
Even as retirement looms, Steven Soderbergh still has a feature in the pipeline destined for the big screen. But as his theatrical career apparently heads toward its sunset, the Oscar-winning filmmaker is taking a swing at the movie-making machine that has left him - at least now - not wanting to make more pictures.
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Steven Soderbergh has pushed against the limits of Hollywood’s sexual mores his entire career. His debut, sex, lies, and videotape, was a study in voyeurism and sexual dysfunction. He blurred the line dividing the feature film and porn video worlds with The Girlfriend Experience, which starred adult actress Sasha Grey. His last film, Magic Mike, subverted the male gaze by turning all eyes, male and female, on the rock-hard and very hairless abs of dude-strippers. Yet even Soderbergh has had trouble financing his next and rumored-to-be-last project, Behind the Candelabra, a biopic of Liberace starring Michael Douglas as the flamboyant pianist and Matt Damon as his significantly younger live-in lover.
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The Sexiest Man Alive is looking to take an acting break. 21 Jump Street and Magic Mike star Channing Tatum is planning to put the acting gigs on hold next year in favor of working on his directing chops with production partner, Reid Carolin.
"[Reid and I] have about three to four ideas that we love that are all in the hopper. By the end of next year, we’re going to shut things down and write the first thing that we’re going to direct," Tatum told EW. “We’re going to be like, alright, no more acting parts for a minute, let’s take a few and really get caring about that section of our career."
Tatum and Carolin are in the midst of developing a Magic Mike sequel - and with a nearly $166 million worldwide gross from the first installment and a production budget only a fraction of that - then why not? They're also developing a pic on 1970s daredevil, Evel Knievel.
Still, Tatum won't be absent from the big screen in 2013. He's set for Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects in addition to action pic White House Down along with Jamie Foxx and Maggie Gyllenhaal as well as drama Foxcatcher from Bennett Miller.
“I love the steps that I’ve taken acting-wise. That has been a wild sort of exploration," Tatum said. "But I don't want to just keep putting [directing] off for these fun and incredible opportunities."
Tatum gave a shout-out to Soderbergh for showing him and Carolin the filmmaking craft.
"I don’t think Reid and I would have the balls to try to make a movie without learning what we did from Soderbergh and [assistant director] Greg Jacobs," Tatum said about the Magic Mike director. "It was like a crazy crash course Cliff Notes on directing and how to make movies, literally get them done. We had a Matrix-style download, like a plug in the back of the head and bloop! I know Kung Fu now."
People magazine named Tatum its 2012 Sexiest Man Alive last month.
[Source: EW Inside Movies]
As ads for pharmaceuticals go, this clip for the anti-depression drug Ablixa is textbook perfect. Wooden actors progress from sad to happy with the help of digital dark clouds, sun rays, and, presumably, the being advertised. And there's the de rigueur reading of possible side effects. more »
Folks like Steven Soderbergh know it can be a long, long road to retirement. But there are still (at least) two titles to come, including Side Effects. With this year's box office lauded strip down Magic Mike as well as his other 2013 shoot Behind the Candelabra on the make, his segue out from the director's chair may linger a year or two. There are promo obligations post-post production after all…
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Also in Monday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, the proposed Magic Mike musical appears to move forward with Soderbergh's involvement; Emma Watson for Fifty Shades of Greay?; Oscar-winner Alex Gibney hires two key people at his production outfit and Jason Alexander goes anti-gun in Tweet.
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Magic Mike has already scored just under $78 million at the box office since its release in late June and the production budget was only $7 million. Minus the marketing budget, the stripper feature has likely already packaged a hefty sum. But never mind the money, there's plenty of skin to be had, so why not let the strip show go on? Actors flexing their hot bods is a winning formula, and Tatum teased recently that another round of Magic Mike is in the early stages.
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He may look like an impossibly chiseled slab of flesh – and, well, he is – but this past weekend Channing Tatum proved to America (and that foreign country called Hollywood) that he is capable of much more. With Magic Mike wildly overperforming at the box office to the tune of $39 million, it’s time to acknowledge that this one-time piece of eye-meat has opened the door to a new chapter in his career. It’s widely known that it was Tatum who approached auteur Steven Soderbergh with the idea for Magic Mike, as the film was inspired by Tatum’s own experiences as a male stripper when he was 18. For as long as he’s been entertaining audiences, Tatum has been seen primarily as nothing more than an object, but his aspirations are clearly to have a career that involves some brains, too. Below, we take a look at where one of the most buzzworthy actors in the world is headed, by way of his upcoming films.
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The Magic Mike director gave insight into his future endeavors once his hard stop to movie making begins in six months. He told Reuters that a book and even television work may occupy his interests, following in the footsteps of a number of filmmakers who are crossing over to the small screen in the past several years.
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Director Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike debuted over the weekend, closing out the Los Angeles Film Festival. And while the Warner Bros film opens in theaters this Friday, fans may have the opportunity to see it live in the flesh as it were in the future.
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The promise of seeing Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, and their manscaped compatriots bare (almost) it all in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike has quickened the collective pulse of the film’s target audience in the weeks leading up to Friday’s release. But while ladies and many gents will get a titillating thrill from the scantily-clad dance numbers and cheesy-fantasy bumps ‘n’ grinds (and there are so, so many), what elevates the film beyond its “Showgirls-with-men” concept is the depth and naturalness in the story of 30-year-old star performer Mike (Tatum) and his pursuit of the American dream as one of the “Cock-rocking Kings of Tampa.”
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