Having seen the film earlier this week, I have good news and bad news.
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No Oscar glory for ‘The Reader’?
Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins was being funny. “It’s a good time for you to sit, because you’re all old
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Live: Smashing Pumpkins at Gibson Amphitheatre
Even though it was submitted as a comedy, “W.” will compete as a drama.
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Golden Globes picks: Stranger than ever
Even though it was submitted as a comedy, “W.” will compete as a drama.
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Golden Globes picks: Stranger than ever
As you may remember, Harvey had to donate a cool $1 million to charity after losing a bet with Nikki Finke.
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Harvey Weinstein: Hollywood’s worst gambler?
Britney’s once consistent ability to turn it on when the curtain rises? It appears to be absent.
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Britney Spears’ comeback: A snap judgment
The joint was full of old Watergate hands, including Watergate committee counsel Richard Ben-Veniste and the ageless ex-CBS News reporter Daniel Schorr.
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Fireworks at “Frost/Nixon” Washington screening
When it comes to making the academy cut, rhyme or reason seems to go out the window.
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The academy: Another black eye?
For all its directorial ambition, “Australia” just squeaked into positive Rotten Tomatoes territory.
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‘Australia:’ Land Down Under as in Underperformer
After years of perfecting his smooth nighttime vibe, the DJ steps up to the role of music director and morning host for the station.
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KCRW’s Jason Bentley wakes to a new day
When Hollywood came to town for the Australia premiere at Greater Union George Street recently, CINE BUZZ TV was there with Darren McMullen grabbing Hugh Jackman for a chat and talking all things outback, romance plus the buzz the film has created for our country.
With the closure of one of Sydney’s main streets, thousands of fans flocked to the premiere in the hope of catching a glimpse of Australia’s biggest celebrities. They weren’t disappointed!
Watch the Interview here
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Sydney becomes Tinseltown for a night
All the key cast of Twilight have signed on for the sequel New Moon, which is due to start shooting in the northern spring, ready for release in 2010.
That’s according to USA Today and MTV, although Entertainment Weekly casts doubts on whether Taylor Lautner (pictured) will return as werewolf Jacob, considering the 16-year-old is shorter and more boyish-looking than the way Stephenie Meyer described the character.
”We are definitely talking and thinking about it right now,” Erik Feig, Summit’s president of production, told EW. ”Taylor’s fantastic as Jacob in Twilight. I think when we get closer to shooting, the director is going to look at everyone as if they are brand-new to the role.”
That’s news to Catherine Hardwicke, who hasn’t signed for the sequel yet but is talking as if there’s no doubt she’ll take the reins again.
According to USA Today, Catherine says Taylor told her he’d gained 14 pounds (6 kg) since she’d last seen him. “I think he’s chanting to make himself grow,” she laughed.
Edi Gathegi is keen to go back to Portland to resume playing Laurent in New Moon, and to wear dreadlocks again.
“It
At the risk of hastily jumping to conclusions, I think it’s fair to say a sizable number of Aussies are enjoying Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, while Yank audiences are less enamoured.
The historical drama/romance rang up nearly $1.4 million here on Wednesday and about $1.2 million yesterday: a strong but not stellar start for the much-hyped movie.
Especially considering the $200 million epic seems to appeal chiefly to women aged 30 plus and middle-aged folk, who are not inclined to rush to cinemas in the first few days, unlike fans of say, The Dark Knight, Bond and Harry Potter.
Those figures suggest the film will end up making about $25 million in Oz, a very good result for any Australian movie, but not the blockbuster Baz and Fox were hoping for.
In the US, the Hugh Jackman/Nicole Kidman adventure fetched $2.5 million on around 2,600 screens on Wednesday- a distant No. 7 behind Twilight, the new Reese Witherspoon/Vince Vaughn comedy Four Holidays, Bolt, Quantum of Solace, Jason Statham’s Transporter 3 and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.
That indicates Australia is on course to make about $18 million over the 5-day Thanksgiving holiday, at the low end of most pundits’ predictions, versus roughly $45 million for Twilight and $35 million for Four Holidays.
Fox will be hoping word-of-mouth keeps Australia on screen and earning money in the coming weeks as a bundle of new releases enter both markets.
Otherwise, as one US writer put it, the movie could go down as a low-grossing “Far and Away with Vegemite.”
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Lots of Aussies love Baz’s Australia; Yanks not so much
Slumdog Millionaire offers no stars or glitz, just an inspiring, rags-to-riches story of an illiterate orphan teenager from the slums of Mumbai.
Danny Boyle’s movie is being touted as a dark-horse favourite for the best picture Oscar, alongside much higher-profile contenders such as The Dark Knight, the Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett starrer The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the Meryl Streep drama Doubt and Kate Winslet/Leonardo DiCaprio’s Revolutionary Road.
Launched on November 12 on just 10 screens in the US, the film is drawing sizable audiences, an encouraging sign before it rolls out nationally; it opens here on Boxing Day.
The script by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) follows 18-year-old Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) who dreams of escaping poverty when he competes in Who Wants to be a Millionaire?…until he’s arrested by the cops on suspicion of cheating.
“This is a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time, about a Mumbai orphan who rises from rags to riches on the strength of his lively intelligence,” raved Roger Ebert.
“Slumdog Millionaire has the goods to bust out as a scrappy contender in the Oscar race,” says Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers. “It’s modern India standing in for a world in full economic spin. It’s an explosion of color and light with the darkness ever ready to invade. It’s a family film of shocking brutality, a romance haunted by sexual abuse, a fantasy of wealth fueled by crushing poverty.”
The subject may seem a left-field choice for director Boyle, who’s known for gritty, confronting films like Trainspotting, The Beach and Shallow Grave, and zombie pic 28 Days Later.
“I always try to make films intense — intensely pleasurable or intensely frightening or intensely joyful,” Boyle says. “Intensity is something I go for. That’s how I judge things.”
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Slumdog Millionaire: a nugget among life’s rubble
This is my final week as a contributor to the blog. It’s been a real pleasure and a privilege to have brought you news, gossip, critiques and interviews on the world of cinema this year. Thanks very much for your support and comments. I’m leaving to pursue other interests, while remaining in the industry I love.
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And it’s goodbye from Don
When the producers of Marley and Me sent Jennifer Aniston a copy of the book on which it’s based, she didn’t want to read it.
She knew it was about a couple and their neurotic pooch, and, like many actors, didn’t fancy playing second fiddle to an animal.
Then she read John Grogan’s book, which reduced her to tears and she quickly realized it isn’t a silly story about the world’s worst dog.
Starring Aniston and Owen Wilson, the comedy/drama follows the couple over the course of their pet’s life as they build careers, have three children, make compromises, survive a tragedy and start to approach middle age.
The director, David Frankel, has a fair pedigree in the field of smart comedies: he helmed The Devil Wears Prada and episodes of Entourage and Sex and the City.
Frankel says he was initially reluctant to cast Jen, who’s 39, as her character ages from 22 to 40, until their first meeting. “When she came down the stairs, all of my anxiety went out the window,” he says. “Within five minutes I said, ‘It’s yours if you want to do it.’”
For Wilson, the movie marks a return to form after a year of personal hell. “Everything he went through in the last year really allowed for a beautiful performance,” says Aniston. “He arrives in this film.”
Marley and Me opens on January 1.
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Jen and Owen: laughs and tears in Marley and Me
The AMPTP says the actors guild is out of touch with economic concerns.
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SAG and the studios amp up the rhetoric
“Planes, Trains and Automobiles”: The perfect distillation of the odd-couple comedy matrix.
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A Thanksgiving treat from John Hughes
“Planes, Trains and Automobiles”: The perfect distillation of the odd-couple comedy matrix.
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A Thanksgiving treat from John Hughes
CINE BUZZ TV’s Darren McMullen sat down with Bond, James Bond recently to talk all things action, travel and women. Mr Daniel Craig talks about the latest adventure in the Bond franchise, Quantum Of Solace, which is setting box office records worldwide.
What’s it like to be JAMES BOND? Where on earth do they film all of the exotic scenes from the films? Has life changed after becoming 007? It’s all here.
Watch the Interview here
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We go one on one with Daniel Craig
When Bryan Brown starred in Aussie movie Winter of our Dreams back in 1981 with a young, starstruck actor no one had ever heard of in a supporting role, neither could have imagined they’d be working together, on a much, much bigger scale, all these years later.
The young bloke was Baz Luhrmann, who didn’t have much of a future in front of the camera
(he did appear in six episodes of A Country Practice), but he certainly made his mark behind the camera.
A fan of Brown’s ever since their first collaboration 27 years ago, the director cast the veteran actor as the scheming cattle baron King Carney in his romantic epic Australia.
Carney sets out to ruin Nicole Kidman’s Lady Sarah Ashley so he can seize her ranch Faraway Downs, the only property he doesn’t own in that part of the Northern Territory.
“It was good fun to play a character as colourful as Carney,” says Brown. “He
While most of the stars of Twilight are likely to be inundated with offers, Jackson Rathbone had already figured out what he’ll be doing for the next few months: pursuing his musical career.
Jackson, who plays Jasper, and his jazz/rock band 100 Monkeys are set to release their first EP and album, and will have a regular gig at the L.A. bar called the 24K Lounge.
Not that he’ll be neglecting acting. The 23-year-old plays a hippie in the Rob Schneider comedy Big Stan, now screening here; he’s completed the Donnie Darko sequel, S. Darko, as a nerd who falls in love with Darko’s younger sister; and he’s been in London shooting the Clive Barker horror film Dread.
Born in Singapore and raised in Texas, Rathbone (pictured with co-star Ashley Greene) loved playing Jasper, a vampire from the Civil War era who has the peculiar ability to control the emotions of people around him.
“I tried to keep it very stoic, calm and centred, to keep up the values that I believed Jasper was instilled with, when he was a kid,” he says. “I think those were fairly similar to the ones I grew up with.”
As for juggling two careers, he says, “I
Could an Oscar, which has eluded Kate Winslet ever since her breakthrough role in Titanic, finally be within her grasp?
Some pundits believe she has a strong chance of taking the best actress honours this year, with performances in two movies likely to appeal to Academy voters.
In Revolutionary Road, she re-teams with Leonardo DiCaprio in the tale of an unhappy couple in the 1950s who move to France to try to save their marriage.
Her character April is “steely, strong and brittle, capable of great highs and lows as well as massive uncertainty,” according to Variety. Directed by her Oscar-winning husband Sam Mendes, it opens here in January.
As Hannah Schmitz in The Reader, she really gets to show her mettle, aging from a sexy thirtysomething who seduces a teenager (pictured) to an elderly woman on trial for war crimes because of her work as a prison guard at Auschwitz.
Director Stephen Daldry (The Hours) originally wanted to cast Nicole Kidman but offered the role to Kate after Nic became pregnant during the filming of Australia. The Reader, which co-stars Ralph Fiennes, debuts here in February.
Kate has been nominated for an Oscar five times: best actress for Titanic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Little Children; and supporting actress for Iris and Sense and Sensibility.
The 2008 best actress derby is rated by many pundits as the most competitive in years. Apart from Kate, the contenders could include Cate Blanchett (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Kristin Scott Thomas (I’ve Loved You So Long), Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Angelina Jolie (Changeling) and Meryl Streep (Doubt).
We do know one thing: Academy rules prevent any actor from being nominated twice in the same category in the same year. So Kate won’t know until the noms are announced whether voters have decided she’s better in The Reader or Revolutionary Road…or neither.
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Kate Winslet presses her claims for Oscar gold
Guns N’ Roses lawyer Alan S. Gutman has lashed out at the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, claiming in a letter to the company that the soda makers failed to make good on a promise
Guns N’ Roses’ lawyer lashes out at Dr Pepper
