If human cloning has begun, I'd like to wager some money that Tom Hanks is an early adopter. The actor has been everywhere over the last week, making the media rounds to promote his latest picture, the ambitious Cloud Atlas, and his friend Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln as well. more »
As is often the peril with movies of giant ambition, Cloud Atlas walks a crooked line between the glorious and the ridiculous, its reach unencumbered by sensible decisions or restraint. Adapted with reasonable faithfulness from a novel of equally epic sweep by British author David Mitchell, the film spans eras and genres, intertwining tales of men at sea in the 1850s with a 1970s conspiracy-based mystery with a dystopian future Seoul. Through these settings and the characters that populate them, the movie highlights themes of reincarnation and of the warring nature of mankind as empathetic and self-sacrificing versus competitive and brutal.
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Now that's what you call good publicity! Tom Hanks of all people dropped an F-bomb on Good Morning America this morning (video below!), shocking GMA host Elizabeth Vargas and putting the epic, arty Cloud Atlas on the map with those four little letters. Well done!
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Also in Thursday afternoon's round-up of news briefs: Val Kilmer will receive kudos from the Dallas Film Society; Jodie Foster takes on Money for her next directorial project. Also, Tribeca Film Festival names a new Deputy Executive Director and the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) launches a major new initiative;
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Tom Hanks will make his Broadway debut in a play written by his friend, the late Sleepless in Seattle director Nora Ephron. Hanks will play the late tabloid columnist Mike McAlary in Lucky Guy, Ephron's play about the charismatic and controversial newspaperman, who worked for both the New York Post and its rival the New York Daily News during the gritty 1980s. more »
It's a good fall for ambitious movies. In the wake of the September release of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, Warner Bros will open Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings' Cloud Atlas to theaters on Oct. 26, and a trio of TV spots has begun building awareness of the film adaptation of David Mitchell's 2004 novel. Check out the clips after the jump and stay tuned for Jen Yamato's upcoming report on the film's debut at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX on Wednesday night. more »
Also in Wednesday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, recent Toronto International Film Festival Gala Inescapable is headed to U.S. theaters. Tech and media moguls are among Forbes' list of America's richest individuals. And, an actress of the video at the center of rage among some Muslims worldwide, Innocence of Muslims is suing the film's producer and YouTube.
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America loves a good ol’ fashioned bachelor party. It's a time honored tradition that’s been committed to film again and again, including in this week’s gender-reversal romp, Bachelorette, where the ladies get to behave badly. In honor of that film Movieline takes a look at the holy grail of bachelor party movies, and a bad movie we love: Bachelor Party, starring future Oscar-winner Tom Hanks.
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A week ago brought the first teaser for The Road We've Traveled, a Davis Guggenheim-directed, Tom Hanks-narrated, campaign-driven lighting round through the Obama presidency to date. Last night brought the full 17-minute video, and while it squeezes a lot — from the economy to healthcare to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — into 17 minutes, it's probably most interesting around the 10:35 mark as Joe Biden takes us behind the scenes on the night Osama bin Laden was killed.
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Late night host Jimmy Kimmel's tradition of filming a post-Oscar movie-related spoof continued Sunday night with a "trailer" for Movie: The Movie, the ultimate star-studded epic to end all epics. In addition to featuring a host of stars, from Taylor Lautner to Helen Mirren to Tyler Perry (er, "Daniel Day-Lewis as Tyler Perry as George Washington"), the Kimmel-produced gag covered just about every genre and trope known to the movies. I give it a few years before some suit turns this into a reality.
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*: As determined by Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics after crunching 23 weeks of data from the awards cognoscenti and beyond. Thank you for reading; our work here is done.
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You know that when two of the most respected pundits in all of Oscardom argue (within days of each other!) for curtailing both the epic Academy Awards season race and the ceremony in which it culminates, patience for all this crap is wearing thin. With that in mind — and also considering that the "race" for most of these categories ended weeks or months ago — who's up for an Oscar Index lightning round? (The entire staff at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics raises its hands.) OK, then — to the Index!
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"Let's have a moment of silence for the suffering Oscar bloggers as they enter the most trying and mortifying weeks of their labors." Such was Glenn Kenny's tweeted lament earlier this week -- one eerily anticipating today's latest, sanity-thrashing edition of Oscar Index. And that's just its effect on readers! You really don't want to see the catatonic pall saturating Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. On the other hand, we're gonna make a fortune recycling this mounting pile of wine bottles. To the Index!
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It's a little difficult for the specialists at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics to come into work these days, what with the pall of predictability settling in over the awards landscape and the painstaking studies into backlash physics yielding less and less of practical substance. What's a frustrated kudologist to do? Besides drink for the next four weeks straight, I mean. Let's look for ideas and encouragement for all in this week's Oscar Index.
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There's good news and bad news to begin this post-nomination, next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-last installment of Oscar Index. The good news? It's kind of almost over! The bad news? Oy. Please don't make me repeat it.
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