In Tuesday morning's round up of news briefs, Paramount offered kind words for Tom Cruise. Warner Bros is readying an outdoor free Comic-Con experience coinciding with the event; The Amazing Spider-Man is poised to do record box office domestically with its Tuesday release; The Butler adds an additional cast member and Fandango eyes a record quarter.
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After five years and change of marriage, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are calling it quits. And we all thought those crazy kids would make it! (Right?) Relive the glory of TomKat, from their globe-trotting whirlwind romance to daughter Suri, to hobnobbing with fellow A-lister couples and more recent public appearances, in a very special Movieline gallery.
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They courted and were married amidst a media spectacle, but after five years of marriage, one of Hollywood's most celebrated couples,
Tom Cruise and
Katie Holmes, are calling it quits.
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Many of us who were alive in the 1980s claimed not to listen to heavy metal or its almost indistinguishable twin, hard rock. But we did listen, or at least we heard it — it was unavoidable, an omnipresent aural beast slithering out of car radios, grungy bars and retail-establishment stereo systems. Even if you were more attuned to punk or jazz or just about anything else, it was part of the background noise of your life whether you liked it or not. If nothing else, Rock of Ages — adapted from the Broadway show of the same name, in which ’80s metal hits from the likes of Def Leppard, Foreigner and Night Ranger were woven into a rudimentary boy-meets-girl love story — reminds us just how good many of those songs we were pretending not to listen to really were. The picture has a good-natured, if self-conscious, spring to its step, at least until you-know-who shows up in a bejeweled devil’s head codpiece. The movie almost doesn’t survive his slurpy tongue bath.
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Fans of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages may throw tomatoes when they see the big screen version; director Adam Shankman, screenwriter Justin Theroux and even Tom Cruise himself made some major changes to the plot of the stage show. Some make the edgy musical more family friendly, but others sharpen the story. Will fans embrace their toned-down Rock of Ages movie?
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Oscar-nominated director Guillermo del Toro has been in the craft of filmmaking since he was 16, filling roles as diverse as P.A., assistant director and makeup effects. He made his first film Cronos at 28 and received his Academy Award-nomination in 2007 for Pan's Labyrinth, making him one of the most prominent filmmakers to emerge from his native Mexico. In a candid interview, he explains how he learned filmmaking in author Mike Goodridge's new book, FilmCraft: Directing.
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"That's right, Tom Cruise is the same age that Wilford Brimley was when Brimley starred as a grandfather in Cocoon" — as are George Clooney, Eddie Murphy and eight others featured in this new, head-exploding context. "[... I]t's not really a statement on the age of Cruise or the other people on this list — it's the fact that Wilford Brimley was only 49 years old when he starred as an elderly man who leaves Earth with a group of aliens in an effort to escape the specter of death. (His friends were played by the more age-appropriate 76-year-old Don Ameche, 75-year-old Jessica Tandy, 73-year-old Hume Cronyn, 76-year-old Jack Gilford; today, Brimley is still only 77 years old.)" [Huffington Post]
There's no writer or director, but whatever — let's get this rumor party started: "As MGM prepares to start production on RoboCop and Carrie later this year, the studio is going back to the vault again to develop a remake of John Sturges' 1960 Western The Magnificent Seven with Tom Cruise attached to star. [...] Sources caution that while Cruise has long been interested in saddling up for a Magnificent Seven remake, the project is still a long ways off and is not in Cruise's immediate plans." Next thing you know, they'll be stapling Sam Raimi's name to a Poltergeist remake or something. Oh, wait. [Variety]
Long queues formed outside the Palais des Festivals this afternoon in Cannes as attendees mobbed the building waiting to pick up their credentials. Marilyn Monroe presided over the scene; the now familiar image of the legendary actress blowing out a candle is this year's official image/poster of the 65th Festival de Cannes, which kicks off tomorrow evening with the debut of Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, the first of 12 nights of red carpet premieres.
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Universal's going back to the well, this time bringing Star Trek/Transformers/Cowboys & Aliens writers Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci along to re-envision two horror properties of the not-so-distant past: "Kurtzman and Orci’s K/O Paper Products will develop and produce a modern reimagining of Universal library titles including The Mummy, alongside producer Sean Daniel and writer Jon Spaihts. The pair will also develop and produce Universal’s reimagined Van Helsing, with Tom Cruise attached to star in and produce the film." Oh, I'm sure it'll all work out just fine. Right, Ron? [Deadline]
The thing I love about the ramped-up new Rock of Ages trailer is how unapologetically it states what this movie is: A bombastic, cheeky, kitschy, bright-eyed and utterly slick tribute to the decadence of '80s rock culture, based on the even slicker Broadway hit of the same name. Which of course you already know — but now, with Tom Cruise's brief singing showcase and pretty much everyone else warbling adapted pop show tunes of their own, Warner Bros. and New Line's cards are on the table. There can be no ambiguity: You are either in or you are out. In this era of equivocation and overlapping quadrants and being everything to everyone, it's pretty ballsy when you think about it.
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After years of foisting dashed-off 3-D — and its inflated ticket prices — on movie audiences, studios may have found their most reliable ally yet in shoring up box office: IMAX. And not just the punch and potential of the brand's own 3-D, either, but good old conventional 2-D as well.
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Let's see — after Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Leonardo DiCaprio and now reportedly Tom Cruise, who's left to consider to star opposite Beyoncé Knowles in Clint Eastwood's long-planned, probably-never-gonna-happen Star is Born remake? George Clooney? Brad Pitt? Liam Neeson? Viggo Mortensen? Jean Dujardin? Philip Seymour Hoffman? Albert Brooks? Charlie Sheen? Matthew Broderick? Peter Dinklage? Richard Dreyfuss? (Too busy.) Ned Beatty? Danny McBride? Roberto Benigni? Peyton Manning? Who did I forget? [Deadline]
I'm willing to give on-the-brink screenwriter Michael Bacall the benefit of the doubt based on what I've seen and heard of him so far, from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which he co-wrote) to the Todd Phillips-produced teen party comedy Project X and 21 Jump Street (both of which he has scripting and story credits on), the latter of which is earning surprisingly glowing reactions from the blogoscenti. But I might have to draw some sort of line at the Tropic Thunder spin-off starring a fat, hairy Tom Cruise as slimy Hollywood exec Les Grossman, which apparently is not only really, seriously a thing but is, as Bacall describes, "a pretty heartfelt story."
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Hollywood has a long history of sending white dudes to Japan to A) fall in love with a local hottie and B) somehow save Japan itself, and that irksome trend shows no sign of ending, to my dismay. The latest Caucasian hero set to do so is LOST’s Matthew Fox, who’s signed on to play real-life figure General Bonner Fellers in Peter Webber’s Emperor, a “nail-biting political thriller” about post-World War II diplomacy…and Fellers’ love affair with a Japanese woman. Sigh. Of course.
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