Katie Holmes (Batman Begins) and Chace Crawford (Twelve) have signed on to star in comedy-romance Responsible Adults.
John Poll (Charlie Bartlett) is attached to direct from a screenplay written by Alex Schemmer.
Responsible Adults centers on a 30-year-old medicine student (Holmes) who meets and falls for a younger man (Crawford) only to realise she was once his babysitter.
Night & Day Pictures will finance the film, while Myriad Pictures will sell the international rights at the 64th annual Cannes Film Festival this week.
It may be in French but let’s face it, we don’t watch Transformers for the dialogue do we? We watch it for the Bayhem and this new French teaser trailer features plenty of that!
This third instalment has the title Transformers: Dark of the Moon and is directed by Michael Bay and stars Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, John Malkovich, Patrick Dempsey, Ken Jeong, John Turturro, Frances McDormand, Peter Cullen and Tyrese Gibson.
Synopsis: Shia LaBeouf returns as Sam Witwicky in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. When a mysterious event from Earth’s past erupts into the present day it threatens to bring a war to Earth so big that the Transformers alone will not be able to save us.
As the poster suggests, the movie will hit both US and UK cinemas on 1st July.
Focus Features has acquired the North American distribution rights to romance-drama Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.
Writer/director Lorene Scafaria (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) is attached to direct, with a cast that includes Steve Carell (Date Night), Keira Knightley (Never Let Me Go), Adam Brody (Scream 4) and Rob Corddry (Hot Tub Time Machine).
As an asteroid nears Earth, a man (Carell) finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart (Knightley). Accompanying him is a neighbour who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.
Production on Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is scheduled to start later this month in Los Angeles, with a release date penciled in for 2012.
Almost every aspect of Citizen Kane has been lauded, analysed and replicated to the point that it’s almost become a cliché of a film. At the same time the infamous War of The Worlds radio broadcast, and the (no doubt overstated) ensuing widespread panic at impending alien invasion, have become a leading urban legend.
While Orson Welles has rightly taken the glory for these projects, there seems to be little trickle down effect to the man who stood beside him during both – Bernard Herrmann; a motion picture composer who is only really rivalled by John Williams. Despite this though, he hasn’t made the leap from being known in film circles into being known more widely.
Probably the most famous homage paid to him in recent times was when Quentin Tarnatino used his piece “Twisted Nerve” in Kill Bill.
So what’s his story? He showed himself to have prodigious talent early on, winning composition prizes from the age of 13 onwards and after forming his own orchestra he took a fairly corporate role, working up to become the head of the CBS orchestra. He did good work here, but it was his meeting with Welles, and his shadowing him into the movies that would lead him to become legendary.
He only worked with Welles once on a film after Citizen Kane -but by then he had already struck out on his own, winning an Oscar for the score to “The Devil and Daniel Webster”.
This happened to be the only Academy Award he would get; the piece is good, but his later work is fantastic. Unlike many actors who give a good performance, miss the Oscar, then get it years later for a less deserving role out of an “it’s now or never” Academy mentality, Bernard won before he had peaked.
His peak in fact came by teaming up with another great director – Alfred Hitchcock – with whom he worked on almost every notable film in the 50s and 60s, the most iconic of course being Psycho:
For the legendary shower scene we owe just as much to Hermmann as Hitchcock, the latter of whom had wanted to have no music. Hermann was robust to the point of being pig headed though and forced through the decision to have it accompanied. It’s hard to imagine its impact being so well preserved without the classic stabbing violins that mirror the unseen action.
However, this incident hints at the real reason Herrmann is so important to remember. There is a real danger of less importance being put on to the soundtracks of films. While there’s no empirical way to prove this, and egregious examples like There Will Be Blood stand out against the theory, my general feeling is this is happening. Even the endearing mid-90s phenomenon of rap music at the end of kids’ films which seemed to set a playful tone have been replaced all too often with a bland disposable pop offering.
In the parallel universe of television, long opening credits have become eschewed in favour a quick flash of the logo (“Lost” being probably the most obvious example). There has never been as much need for this in film. Movie audiences are fish in a barrel, so you don’t have to worry about them changing channel during the opening. You can build up suspense without them changing to another film. The problem is though that scores cost money – and if TV audiences seem happy without them, it’s only time before execs look at that as a licence to slash costs.
Herrmann is the strongest example against this. He worked on Taxi Driver, Cape Fear, Jason and the Argonauts and a whole host more (his IMDB page will have you going “ooo really, that was him?”). It was no coincidence these films all became iconic. With a composer like Herrmann setting the tone just right, so much becomes implied that you can get away with subtleties in acting you never thought possible.
Herrmann was to pass away in 1975, at the age of just 64 – an age too young, but not young enough for it to be considered a tragedy and bestow on him the sort of “musical genius” status that often goes hand in hand with a premature death. For Hermann instead his legacy seems to be binary. Those who know him love him, everyone else seems not really to have heard of him. Next month will mark 100 years since his birth – perhaps on reflection of his work the BBC might stretch to more than a quick profile on Radio Three. What is more likely though is that Bernard Herrmann will remain a lesser known legend.
Another name has been added to the cast list for the remake of famed Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi actioner, Total Recall, and the actor in question represents perhaps a slightly unusual (but very welcome) presence to the film.
Former Generation X heartthrob and Richard Linklater regular Ethan Hawke is down for a small, cameo part which is being kept under wraps for the time being. He’ll join villain Bryan Cranston and either Kate Beckinsale or Jessica Biel for this futuristic yarn about (like you need a reminder!) a factory worker who undergoes a memory implant which reveals he may (or may not) be some kind of secret agent.
Colin Farrell takes over from Arnie in the lead and Len Wiseman is in the director’s chair for this Philip K. Dick adaptation. The actors who have been assembled so far here (Cranston in particular is a delicious casting choice) suggest this retread may have more tricks up its sleeve than what was initially believed.
Concentrating on a storyline which focuses on the heroes’ journey to the intriguingly-sounding integrated nation states Euromerica and New Shanghai, instead of getting his “ass to Mars”, also offers an interesting departure to the original. Fingers are firmly crossed here.
Out on DVD and Blu-ray this week is Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, an exacting, achingly distressing look at the complexity of a marriage and its steady dissolve.
The narrative unfolds in a non-linear fashion over two timelines as it tracks the burgeoning romance between Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Williams), and its eventual breakdown.
The action flicks back and forth, transposing the bright optimism of their young romance – each yearning for one another’s veracity – against the buried anguish and turmoil the dissolve has led to.
Gosling’s Dean, through flashbacks, is seen as a charming, caring guy, while Williams’ Cindy is an intelligent, wholesome girl attracted to Dean’s fun-loving nature – beautifully captured in a scene where Dean’s playing a ukulele as Cindy dances along.
Their personalities age with the turbulent marriage, Gosling undercuts his characters’ charm with a frightening anger and eruptiveness. Williams’ contained performance as the older Cindy exudes despair and hopelessness, surmising her feelings towards her changed husband.
Cianfrance beautifully transposes the two different time periods with pitch-perfect direction. He uses penetrating camera angles and subdued lighting to represent the turmoil the relationship has become, while intercutting this with bright, snappy flashbacks to convey the puppy-love beginnings.
The film is a deeply visceral experience, pulling you from one emotion to another as it skips so dramatically from the giddy hopes of young love to the painful sorrow of this union’s death throes.
Grizzly Bear’s stripped back tracks are used to great avail as the films core soundtrack, further adding to the emotional integrity this film boasts.
Equally, in the scene where Dean sing’s “You Always Hurt the Ones You Love” and Cindy dances along, the emotional devastation set to behold the troubled pair is hinted as subtly, yet devastatingly so.
Blue Valentine is an emotionally affecting, raw and impeccably acted portrait of a doomed marriage, making brilliant use of the complex, non-linear narrative structure, gaining complete control over the audiences emotions from start to finish.
In short, it’s a breathtakingly real piece of filmmaking from a talented up-and-coming director.
A few days ago we ran a short piece on the Polish poster for the beautiful end of the world epic from Lars Von Trier, Melancholia. Today we have more from the film, again from Poland as one of the effects houses working on the film have placed a show reel online.
When Von Trier announced he was following his controversial 2009 film Antichrist was a serious sci-fi pre-apocalypse drama our interest was piqued, then came the casting – Kirsten Dunst, Keifer Sutherland, John Hurt, Charlotte Rampling – and then the trailer. A slow, deliberate and terrifying succession of images hinted at the story Von Trier is telling to the end of the world with one shot of the night sky with the Moon and the new planet Melancholia looming overhead standing out in particular.
In this Making Of video Platige Image hint at the work they’ve done for the film, and it’s a fascinating look at the creation of the unique look of the film.
If you’re in Cannes then you’re in for a treat, the rest of us will have to wait until September.
Following the news that Wes Bentley has been added to the cast of The Hunger Games, the forthcoming film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ popular novel of the same name, another brilliant actor has signed on to star in the form of Stanley Tucci, Deadline reports. He will star alongside Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), Elizabeth Banks (The Next Three Days), and Josh Hutcherson (The Kids Are All Right).
Tucci is something of a class act. He’s one of the few actors that can play both sides of the nice/nasty aisle so convincingly, so his casting comes as great news for what is certainly shaping up to be a film worthy of the anticipation preceding it.
Directed by Gary Ross (Pleasantville), The Hunger Games is set in the future, revolving around a young girl, Katniss (Lawrence), who must take part in a live televised fight to the death against eleven other girls and twelve other boys, until only one remains. Tucci will be playing Caesar Flickerman, the host of the games, who interviews the contestants.
Like Bentley, I think Tucci is another great actor who has always been just short of the true appreciation he deserves. In everything he’s starred in, he’s maintained such a high level of excellence throughout his career in a diverse array of roles. He was impressive on TV back in Murder One fifteen years ago as a millionaire businessman suspected of murder. His performance as a cop in Lucky Number Slevin back in 2006 (a film which deserves to be seen, if you haven’t already) was so well done. Similarly, his recurring role on E.R. in its fourteenth season was incredibly impressive, and he played a surprisingly funny laid-back father to Emma Stone in last year’s Easy A. He can do it all. He’ll be with us shortly in Captain America, due out on 29th July this year, and is currently filming Jack the Giant Killer which is due out next summer, and I have no doubt that he will excel in both.
Before that, with a release date set for 23rd March 2012, we can look forward to seeing Tucci as the host of The Hunger Games. His character is said to be a flamboyant one, so I personally can’t wait to see both Tucci’s approach to the role and what his wardrobe will look like.
Michael Cera is going to be mixing things up a little with his career, Empire is reporting, and is set to star in upcoming indie drama/thriller Magic, Magic.
The film will be the English language debut of Chilean writer/director Sebastián Silva, who wrote and directed 2009’s Golden Globe Award-winning film, The Maid (La Nana).
Magic, Magic has at its centre a young woman on holiday with her friends in remote part of Chile, and she slowly starts to lose her mind. Though she tries to get her friends to realise what’s happening, they ignore her until it is too late.
At the moment, the search is still ongoing for the actress to play the young woman. Perhaps with Cera now on board, an actress of both similar fame and calibre will be more enticed to join. Silva also won the World Cinema Jury Prize for Drama with The Maid at Sundance, so his talent as both writer and director seems confirmed already. Personally, I think Emma Stone would be perfect for the role. She and Cera starred in Superbad, so we know that they work well together, and Stone has truly been going from strength to strength over the past few years. The only thing that could be an issue is that she is already very much in demand, currently filming The Amazing Spider-Man, and depending on what roles she’s looking to take on next, she could be hard to schedule.
Cera, on the other hand, has been relatively quiet of late. He of course had the lead role in last year’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which has gained somewhat notoriety for not doing as well as expected at the box office, falling short by about $15m of its budget, a figure that I hope it will make up with its DVD and Blu-Ray sales.
Scott Pilgrim was incredibly well received by critics, and its unsuccessful performance came as a real surprise, because I don’t think it had anything to do with the quality of the film; some films just don’t do well at the box office. Having worked pretty solidly since about the age of 10, Cera (now 22) was certainly due a bit of a break.
Coming back to work with Magic, Magic sounds like it will be quite a bit of a change from what he’s done in the past though, so it will be interesting to see what he’s like in a more serious role. I’m hoping that before we see him in Magic, Magic, we’ll be seeing him return to his role as George-Michael Bluth in the upcoming (and very much long awaited and highly anticipated) Arrested Development movie. Nothing is set in stone yet, but creator Mitchell Hurwitz talked to Digital Spy back in February and said that he’s sincere in his hopes for shooting it this year, so I remain optimistic that things are progressing well.
The forth Pirates of the Caribbean saga must have proved to be a rewarding creative experience for star Johnny Depp and newcomer to the series, Nine director Rob Marshall. Both are attached to the remake of 1934 comedy-mystery, The Thin Man.
The Wrap is reporting that the actor will play the part of Nick Charles, a former detective who embarks a murder mystery case for fun, alongside his wife. The female lead is yet to be cast (wonder how far down the list Angelia Jolie sits?), but this remake will be co-produced by Depp, with script-writing duties going to Jerry Stahl – the famous hedonist 80’s TV scribe who has since cleaned up his act and has gone on to work on CSI and contributed to the script for Bad Boys 2.
According to the site, the film has already been pencilled in for a 2013 release. Will they have time to fit another ‘Pirates’ film in before then?
Katie Holmes (Batman Begins) and Chace Crawford (Twelve) have signed on to star in comedy-romance Responsible Adults.
It may be in French but let’s face it, we don’t watch Transformers for the dialogue do we? We watch it for the Bayhem and this new French teaser trailer features plenty of that!
Focus Features has acquired the North American distribution rights to romance-drama Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.
Almost every aspect of Citizen Kane has been lauded, analysed and replicated to the point that it’s almost become a cliché of a film. At the same time the infamous War of The Worlds radio broadcast, and the (no doubt overstated) ensuing widespread panic at impending alien invasion, have become a leading urban legend.
Out on DVD and Blu-ray this week is Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, an exacting, achingly distressing look at the complexity of a marriage and its steady dissolve.
A few days ago we ran a short piece on 
Following the news that 
Michael Cera is going to be mixing things up a little with his career, 
