Jack Reacher, protagonist of Lee Child's brilliant series of airport pulp, has sold nearly 40 million books. He's also blonde, ugly, 6'5” and 250 lbs, which means the difference between the Reacher that fans love and Tom Cruise, who plays him in his long-awaited film debut, is literally sizable: Ten inches and 90 lbs, to be exact, and a whole lot of handsome. Child's Jack Reacher is homeless, and for the well-coiffed Cruise, playing a guy who shops as Goodwill is as much of a stretch as hoping no one will notice his larger-than-life ex-military cop is barely taller than his co-star Rosamund Pike. (Which in real life, he's not — Pike towers over him by two inches.)
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Also in a Monday afternoon round-up of news briefs, doc filmmaker Werner Herzog eyes a fiction project for his next directorial; Robert Zemeckis set for a Chicago Film Festival award; The Austin Film Festival names its winners and the Toronto International Film Festival sets its 2013 dates.
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Also in Thursday morning's round-up of news briefs, a U.S. Appeals Court upholds MGM's rights to a classic Martin Scorsese film after a relative's challenge. The London Film Festival chooses its closing night film. And Michael Keaton heads for a re-imagine of an '80s classic.
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Every performer must pay their dues, but with this week’s old school-flavored ghost pic The Innkeepers character actor Pat Healy cashes in over a decade of memorable supporting turns and guest spots for the spotlight at an auspicious moment in his career. Having popped up in a number of great films over the years (Magnolia! Ghost World! Rescue Dawn!) Healy stars with Sara Paxton in the Ti West film as a sardonic desk clerk at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, where spooky happenings are afoot; meanwhile, Healy also earned writing credits on the award-winning In Treatment and recently took Sundance by storm with Craig Zobel’s controversial Compliance. And to think: It all began with the one-two punch of My Best Friend’s Wedding and Home Alone 3…
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The New York Times reported Sunday that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' documentary branch is tweaking its qualification rules once again, allowing only theatrical nonfiction feature films that have been reviewed by the NY or LA Times to be considered for Oscar nominations. Furthermore, voting on nominees will be expanded to the entire 166-member Documentary Branch (as opposed to individual committees), and the Academy as a whole can vote for Best Documentary, regardless of how or where members saw the nominated films. The revisions have prompted more than a little hand-wringing around the doc community -- for no especially good reason, alas. Here's why:
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And so my most-favorite, least-favorite task of the year rolls around again. I never call it a "10 best" list -- meaning the unequivocal 10 best films of the year -- because I'm fully aware of how subjective it is. Yet as frustrating as it usually is to pull together just the right 10, I found the job surprisingly pleasurable this year. So many movies to love! How could this have happened? Let's not even address the fact that two 3-D movies made it onto my list -- that surprises me as much as anyone. The remarkable thing is that year after year, no matter how much samey-sameness Hollywood (or even so-called indie cinema, for that matter) seems to give us, there are always pictures that resonate, movies that stand apart as if to do so were their God-given right.
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Today's mind-blowing, near-unexplainable but still awesome casting news: Werner Herzog, German filmmaker, roadside angel, and the man François Truffaut once called "the most important film director alive," has been cast opposite Tom Cruise in One Shot, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie's adaptation of Lee Childs' Jack Reacher novel. Details after the jump.
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