Image Credit: Deana Newcomb
The nominations for the 28th Independent Spirit Awards were announced this morning in Hollywood. We checked in with Jack Black (Bernie), David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Emayatzy Corinealdi (Middle of Nowhere), and more for their reactions. Check out what the stars had to say below and read our full analysis of what the nominations mean for awards season here.
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Taking on his first significant role in a major feature film since 2007, actor-turned-musician Jared Leto has signed onto Dallas Buyers Club, EW has confirmed.
The drama follows the real-life exploits of Ron Woodruff (Matthew McConaughey), a drug addict who contracted AIDS in the 1980s and ended up smuggling needed medication into the country for himself and his fellow patients — including a cross-dresser named Rayon, played by Leto. Jennifer Garner joined the cast last week as Woodruff’s physician. Gael Garcia Bernal was up for the role, but a deal never closed.
Ironically, Leto’s last role, as John Lennon killer Mark David Chapman in Chapter 27, required him to gain 67 pounds, whereas McConaughey has dropped 30 pounds to play Woodruff.
Jean-Marc Vallée (The Young Victoria) is directing the film, from a screenplay by Melisa Wallack (Meet Bill) and Craig Borten.
Read more:
Worth the Weight? 11 Radical Physical Transformations for a Role
Jared Leto on Thirty Seconds to Mars’ record-breaking tour: ‘It’s been the journey of a lifetime’
I didn’t see Magic Mike when it opened in theaters last June. I meant to, I swear. After all, even if the movie looked a little like equal parts 54 and Showgirls, it’s a Steven Soderbergh film: think Traffic, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s Eleven. Plus, I knew it featured a gonzo Matthew McConaughey playing the bongos, which would normally be enough for me to see any movie even if Steve Buscemi had Channing Tatum’s sexy stripper role. But for some insecurity reason, I never made it to the theater to see it on the big screen. Not that the film suffered for it — it eventually grossed $113.7 million.
But with the movie out on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download today, I no longer had any excuses. Yes, it is the story of two male strippers, one an accomplished veteran (Tatum) looking to graduate to the next chapter in his life, the other an impressionable kid (Alex Pettyfer) just looking for some cash and a good time. McConaughey is the owner of their Tampa Bay strip club, and Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello share the stage through a variety of strip teases and bacchanalian behavior. Within the first two minutes, Tatum bares his behind. Later, we see a silhouette of Manganiello’s kick-stand, and the guys spend a lot of time grinding the panting ladies shoving handfulls of dollar bills at them. But Magic Mike never gets as hardcore as a film like Boogie Nights. It’s more like The Full Monty with Calvin Klein models instead of depressed middle-aged Brits.
Take a look below at an extended behind-the-scenes clip of the film’s dance routines, choreographed by Alison Faulk. Bonus points if you can watch and not think about Chris Farley. READ FULL STORY »
When The Paperboy premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, director Lee Daniels’ follow-up to Precious created quite a stir, thanks in large part to Nicole Kidman’s performance as tarted-up sexpot Charlotte Bless, who’s eager to get her pen pal boyfriend (John Cusack) sprung from jail for a murder she swears he didn’t commit. She enlists the help of a Florida reporter (Matthew McConaughey) and his associate (David Oyelowo), and entrances the reporter’s younger brother (Zac Efron). But in this exclusive clip from the film — in which everyone meets Cusack’s character for the first time — Charlotte’s attention remains squarely on the man she’s hoping to free. Check it out below: READ FULL STORY »
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• Kristen Stewart‘s tabloid woes have certainly not slowed her career. She’s attached to star in Lie Down in Darkness, an adaptation of the William Styron novel about the highly dysfunctional Loftis family and their beautiful-but-neglected daughter Peyton (Stewart). Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) also penned the screenplay. [Vulture/THR]
• Abraham Lincoln is totally blowing up, you guys. Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) has signed up for The Green Blade Rises, playing the 16th U.S. president’s influential stepmother Sarah, who married Lincoln’s father in 1819 after his biological mother Nancy died from an illness. The film, produced by auteur Terrence Malick and penned by first-time director A.J. Edwards (credited as an editor on Malick’s upcoming To the Wonder), spans three years in Lincoln’s childhood in rural southern Indiana. So the black-and-white film, which begins shooting this fall, won’t overlap with Steven Spielberg’s impending biopic Lincoln, which covers the man’s final four months; but it will overlap with a few of the events in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which had a much different suggestion for what killed Ma Lincoln. (Hint: It’s in the title.) (No, not hunters.) [Deadline]
Check out projects for MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY, WILL FERRELL, CHRIS PRATT, KYLE CHANDLER, MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD, BOB ODENKIRK, YASIIN BEY (A.K.A. MOS DEF), and OCTAVIA SPENCER below: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Glen Wilson
Matthew McConaughey, as a Tampa strip-club owner-manager named Dallas, spends a lot of time in Magic Mike giving tips and pep talks to his team of on-stage stripper-studs. Instructing Adam (Alex Pettyfer), the new kid on the block, in some of the basic moves, as the two look into the mirror of a workout gym, he shows him how to tease the women in the audience, with slow grinds that grow more and more seductive (if that’s the right word to use for gestures that make it look like someone’s pantomiming a porn film), until, at last, the time arrives to deliver the money shot, a pure hard thrust of the crotch — bam! — that leaves no room for suggestion. Dallas, narrating his own sinewy movements, lets us know that he’s done all of this a hundred thousand times before, and that it’s pure performance, but also how much he relishes the sheer sexy works-every-goddamn-time effectiveness of it, the incredible control it gives him. Late in the movie, he gets up on stage at the Xquisite Male Dance Revue, and he makes good on his lessons. He puts on a mesmerizing strip show, with just the right move for every moment. He’s like a cowboy who’s his own bucking bronco. Yet as you watch his knowing, serpentine maneuvers, you can see that one reason Dallas is so good at this stuff is that he’s been doing it longer than forever. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Claudette Barius
EW’s movie critics Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum agree that Steven Soderbergh’s new film Magic Mike is a light, fun romp through the world of male strippers and strip clubs for women. While it starts out a little “low rent,” taking place in a Tampa, Florida, strip club, it moves through to become a more developed story about Channing Tatum’s character and how he’s handling approaching the big 3-0. Tatum and McConaughey in particular give brave, spirited performances, giving Tatum his second win of the summer, following 21 Jump Street. Check out the full review from Owen and Lisa below.
READ FULL STORY »
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• Emma Watson is in talks to climb aboard Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. The Harry Potter alum would play Ila, who has a relationship with Shem (Douglas Booth), Noah’s son. [Deadline]
• It seems Jamie Foxx and Maggie Gyllenhaal are both Washington-bound for the Roland Emmerich thriller, White House Down. As reported Wednesday, Foxx will play the president. Gyllenhall is in talks to play the female lead. Channing Tatum was previously announced as playing a Secret Service agent who intercepts a plan to takeover the White House. [Deadline]
• And speaking of the White House: Matthew McConaughey has dropped out of the new Lee Daniel’s film, The Butler. He had been slated to play JFK in the film about longtime White House butler Eugene Allen. Instead, McConaughey will star in Dallas Buyer’s Club, a film that has been long in development and is now moving forward, about a Texas man who contracts HIV in the 1980s and tries various experimental remedies. [L.A. Times]
Image Credit: Film Images
When you hear about a movie that gets booed at the Cannes Film Festival, you tend to picture a monolithic thumbs-down chorus, like an ancient arena crowd turning on a gladiator. Actually, that’s not how it works. There is almost always at least some polite applause after film festival showings, so the boos, when they do happen, tend to be mixed in with clapping. That’s the sound I heard this morning when the closing credits rolled on Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy. And, in fact, that sound expressed my own feelings exactly. I wanted to do a catcall and clap encouragingly at the same time. READ FULL STORY »
Happy Friday! A second Magic Mike trailer has been released and this one cuts right to the chase. Sure, we’re informed that Magic Mike (Channing Tatum) is an “entrepreneur,” but he still shakes his moneymaker many, many times. Among the other new shots: A sage Matthew McConaughey in some hilarious workout wear, a cowboy number (yes, please), Alex Pettyfer giving a lapdance, and a tease of a group number that involves the guys ripping off their Army fatigues to reveal thongs (and kneepads!). We also see how the friendship between Tatum’s and Pettyfer’s characters evolves. (Plot!) Watch it below. READ FULL STORY »
