Katherine Heigl’s upcoming film Adaline is inching closer to the big screen. Director Andy Tennant has been tapped to helm the epic romance. The film, centering on a beautiful woman who has been mysteriously rendered ageless for the past 100 years, is supposed to begin filming in early 2011. Tennant also directed Hitch and Sweet Home Alabama, among other films. The movie is being produced by Anonymous Content, Sidney Kimmel, and Lakeshore Entertainment.
Archive: July 2010 (21-30 of 61)
Jul 20
2010
03:05 PM ET
Jul 20
2010
01:28 PM ET
'Inception': Am I the only one who didn't get it?
Image Credit: Stephen VaughanThis particular blog post isn’t an analysis, or a description, so much as it is a confession: I found myself more or less entirely baffled by Inception. I tried, I really tried, to figure it out, but I just couldn’t get the hang of it — not really. For approximately two out of every three minutes the movie was unfolding on screen, my honest experience is that it was vague, obscure, scattershot, puzzling, confounding – and, finally, maddening. There were moments, of course, when I was dazzled. How could you not be? Yet even then, I had the feeling that those moments would have provoked virtually the same reaction of “Oh, wow!” awe if I had seen them completely out of context. Take the scene in which the streets of downtown Paris literally fold, making the movie look like Godzilla recast as a physics experiment. Sure, my eyeballs just about popped out in delight. But what did the spatial-bending quality of this sequence have to do with the rest of the movie? Did its relevance, in terms of explaining the universe of dreams, ever truly pay off?
That’s the kind of question that nagged at me throughout Inception. Too often, I couldn’t connect the movie to itself; for most of the running time, the act of trying to put together what was happening made my head hurt. I’ve discovered that going back to read reviews of it, in the hopes that my fellow critics could shed light on what I missed, has only made my head hurt more. It’s not that they haven’t done a good job. It’s that simply hearing that damned plot described, over and over again, produces the same “What the f—?” I-get-it-but-I-don’t-really-get-it sensation that the movie did. READ FULL STORY »
Jul 19
2010
06:57 PM ET
Janis Joplin biopic: Will the Amy Adams version really make it to the big screen?
Amy Adams’ reps have confirmed that the 35-year-old actress will portray Janis Joplin in the biopic to be directed by Fernando Meirelles (City of God) and produced by Temple Hill Entertainment. Whether or not this movie actually makes it to the big screen is another matter entirely. Meirelles may be co-writing the most recent draft of the script, but he is set to direct 360 — a BBC Films project written by Peter Morgan — prior to beginning work on Joplin. Also, the film does not yet have a studio partner, though a source says Temple Hill is talking to Fox Searchlight about the film. Until a deal is reached though, financing on the project remains shaky. Temple Hill didn’t return calls seeking comment. But the producers, who are also behind The Twilight Saga, are not the first to try to bring Joplin to the big screen. READ FULL STORY »
Jul 18
2010
11:57 AM ET
Box office: 'Inception' breaks through with $60 million; 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' has no magic
Image Credit: Stephen VaughanThe weekend’s two wide releases Inception and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice both scored a B+ with audiences but still ended the weekend with markedly different results. The mind-bendy heist film from director Christopher Nolan generated an estimated $60.4 million for its opening frame, a great success considering the complicated plot line and the vague marketing campaign. In contrast, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which earned the same score from exit pollster CinemaScore, couldn’t catch a break from audiences, grossing only $17.3 million and a third spot for the three-day period. The Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel starrer has now earned a lackluster $24 million after five days of release. This will be one of those movies where Disney will be counting on the international audiences to save the movie from being a total disappointment. READ FULL STORY »
Jul 17
2010
11:01 AM ET
'Inception' nabs over $20 million on Friday; 'Sorcerer's Apprentice's' spell fails
Image Credit: Warner Bros.Christopher Nolan is having a fantastic Saturday. Jerry Bruckheimer is not. For the Dark Knight director scored over $21 million on Friday for his original, mind-bending film Inception. (That includes the $3 million brought in from the opening midnight shows.) The Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer, from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, could now earn $60 million for its three-day opening frame. That’s quite a contrast to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Disney’s failed attempt to recreate the magic of The National Treasure franchise. The film from Treasure producer Bruckheimer, director Jon Turteltaub and star Nicolas Cage grossed an estimated $5 million on Friday for a weekend take that may just hit $15 million. The film opened on Wednesday but even those two days of grosses won’t help the film get much past $20 million for the five-day period.
Third place is likely to be held by Despicable Me, Universal Pictures’ animated hit that earned another $10 million on Friday for a weekend that could translate to $30 million and over $118 million for the ten-day old film. Spot four and five are likely to be held by strong-performing holdovers Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Toy Story 3. The two films grossed $4.5 and $3.5 on Friday, respectively. Eclipse’s cume by the end of the weekend should stand at near $265 million while Toy Story 3′s numbers will have topped $360 million by tomorrow. Come back tomorrow for a full report.
Jul 16
2010
12:25 PM ET
'Inception,' 'Eclipse,' and more: Lisa and Owen talk summer movie moments
Sometimes one moment in a movie encapsulates the whole experience. Remember the moment in Toy Story 3 where a Spanish-speaking Buzz Lightyear did the paso doble? Or the one in Twilight : Eclipse where Jacob had his shirt off? (Uh, which moment when he had shirt off?) Recently, Owen and I got to talking about a few of those memorable moments in four big summer movies. Check out our video after the jump. READ FULL STORY »
Jul 16
2010
10:58 AM ET
Owen's reviews revisited: Does the magic of 'Ghost' have an afterlife?
Image Credit: Everett CollectionPeople are always asking me if I ever get tired of going to the movies. The honest answer is: No, I never get tired of going. But I do get tired of second-tier mediocre Hollywood product, and when you’ve consumed enough of it to wear you out, there’s only one thing that can trump that malaise: stumbling onto a movie that’s fresh, smashing, and original, the kind of picture that reminds you of why you fell in love with movies in the first place. Twenty years ago this week, in the middle of July 1990, was I ever starving for that kind of movie! Entertainment Weekly was just five months old, and though I’d found some films I liked well enough, like the amusing dregs-of-the-Cold War submarine thriller The Hunt for Red October and the fake-brainy futuristic action bash Total Recall, I longed, in the infancy of my connection to my readers, to share something special and exciting. I wanted to announce to them, and to myself, why a magazine like EW existed.
And then the gods of the movie world smiled, and along came Ghost.
It was a yuppie love story, an afterlife thriller with the special-effects ping of good sci-fi, a tale of corporate chicanery, a rude and rowdy trash-meets-class comedy, an old-fashioned swoonfest powered by a haunting unchained melody — and all of this, somehow, from Jerry Zucker, one of the co-directors of Airplane! (He was working from a lively script by Bruce Joel Rubin, but Zucker directed it with extraordinary flair; he was like a happy screwball action painter.) Ghost soon became branded a romantic fantasy for “chicks,” a weeper with a guilty-pleasure label attached. But I knew that it was better than that. READ FULL STORY »
Jul 15
2010
05:36 PM ET
Box office preview: 'Inception' looks dreamy; 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' not so much
Image Credit: Stephen VaughanThis weekend is all about mind games. Chistopher Nolan (The Dark Knight) is playing a big one on audiences with Inception while Nicolas Cage is seeing if he can educate his student Jay Baruchel in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The results are likely to be markedly different. Inception is set to score big, though the long run time and narrow swath of the movie-going public that’s itching to take the trip are going against the challenging film. Apprentice, despite audience enjoyment, is suffering from a muddled marketing campaign and an unmotivated audience. The film opened to a weak $3.9 million on Wednesday, a number that will likely not help build the word-of-mouth that Disney was counting on. Read on for the numbers.
1. Inception: $60 million
Tracking shows that Chris Nolan’s mind-bending ride will open between $50 and $60 million. But that has to be low. Between the reviews, the word-of-mouth and the must-see factor of seeing it in its first weekend, the opening will likely be closer to $60 million. What the film, from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, has going against it is a two-hour-plus run time and a small demographic of moviegoers dying to see it. (Those who are are primarily men between 17-34.) The film is long, but it’s bowing in 3,792 theaters, including a record 197 IMAX locations.
2. Despicable Me: $33 million READ FULL STORY »
Jul 15
2010
04:03 PM ET
'Avatar' special edition: I hate special editions. Director's cuts, too.
This item has nothing to do with Mel Gibson. It has something to do with Avatar, but only tangentially, since I’ve had a confession to make ever since I read, a few days ago, that James Cameron and Fox are preparing a theatrical re-release of the Blue People Chronicles next month in a “special edition” that will contain eight minutes of extra footage. The philosophical observations that the original 162-minute version evidently felt a tad skimpy to Cameron have been duly appreciated.
Here’s what I want to declare: I hate special editions. Even when they’re good. I also hate extended editions, collector’s versions…whatever it is they call it when a movie that was once released as finished (and for which a movie-lover has paid good money to buy a ticket) is subsequently considered not-quite-as-finished as the new version now on $ale. I especially hate “director’s cuts,” with the implication that until their triumphant appearance, artistic liberty has been trampled upon by terrible forces of commerce. Never mind that this is often true; it’s still got the ring of pretension. I read a lot of books, and aside from Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I have rarely found one called the “author’s edition.” I go to the theater a lot, and I haven’t seen any production billed as the “playwright’s edition.”
Limited liability statement: The above opinion does not apply to the superiority of Apocalypse Now Redux; the 1998 re-release of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil brilliantly edited by Walter Murch; the final, final, final, final cut of Blade Runner; and whatever you count as your favorite director’s cut.
Hey, what is your favorite director’s cut, and how is it different from what you saw the first time? Really? Alternatively, if you were allowed to add eight minutes to Avatar, where would you stick them? I think I’d like more scenes of Sigourney Weaver smoking, just to show, you know, how crummy Earth is compared with Pandora.
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'Inception,' that ending, and where critics go wrong
I wish I were dreaming this. Instead, the bickering is a waking nightmare at a time when professional movie criticism is being viewed more and more as a rude, elitist intrusion on the popular preferences of a public with greater opportunities than ever before to be your Own Best Critic and let the world in on your thoughts.
Discuss! Right now, below, discuss! In the meantime, I want to discuss three words that signal when a movie critic (professional or amateur, dead-tree publication or cyber-format) has lost his or her authority.
1. Overrated. READ FULL STORY »