It'll be a busy shopping season at next month's Sundance Film Festival, whose star-studded premieres are up for grabs by potential theatrical distributors.
Some premieres usually enter the independent-film showcase with U.S. distribution already lined up. But festival director John Cooper said all the premieres that Sundance announced Monday will be looking for distributors.
"I don't think that's ever happened before," said Cooper. "It makes for a much more exciting buyer's market, I think. At least, lively."
Among Sundance's big-name premieres: Kirsten Dunst's wedding romp Bachelorette, directed by Leslye Headland; Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones' Las Vegas bookie caper Lay the Favorite, from filmmaker Stephen Frears; Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon's Wall Street saga Arbitrage, directed by Nicholas Jarecki; Sigourney Weaver and Robert De Niro in Rodrigo Cortes' paranormal thriller Red Lights; and actor-director Julie Delpy's 2 Days in New York, co-starring Chris Rock in a follow-up to her 2007 romance 2 Days in Paris.
After impressing with his first dramatic role in Moneyball, opposite Brad Pitt no less, Jonah Hill could have started to plot his Serious Actor follow-up and go for awards bait or another underdog tale. Instead, and thankfully, Hill is not turning his back on comedy and stars in David Gordon Green's (Pineapple Express, "Eastbound & Down") R-rated romp The Sitter where he plays a college kid whose suspension means a gig babysitting is harder to turn down.
After being coaxed by his mom to look after the brats next door, Noah's expected quiet night of ignoring the kids and watching TV turns into an all-out adventure with shout-outs, high-speed chases and Method Man (!).
Check out four clips from The Sitter right now.
Twitter is a space that operates not in minutes but seconds and heartbeats and a timely event - be it political or say the swift, public decline of a once-popular movie and TV star - becomes a globe-spanning talking point thanks in part to the symbol that used to be no more than a bedfellow to the number 3 on keyboards and telephones.
The folks at Twitter revealed their annual Hot Topics list and proved that popular movies in the twittersphere did serious box office business in the real world (Thor, Fast Five) and the actors and actresses that everyone was talking about were either outspoken tabloid fodder (Charlie Sheen, whose #tigerblood was the second most popular overall hashtag) or a former child star with a massive following, in the case of Raven Symone, who somehow came in above Oscar winner Natalie Portman in the popular Actresses Top 10 ranking.
Considering her only film credit to date is Monster, the gritty drama that turned Charlize Theron into an Oscar-winning A-lister, news that Patty Jenkins has left the director's chair on Thor 2, a movie that would have seen her profile skyrocket, is a tad worrisome.
First reported by Deadline Hollywood who revealed "her exit had something to do with creative differences," she is the second director to be attached, and then not, with Brian Kirk ("Game of Thrones") in talks early on that ended up ultimately breaking down.
So what's going on in Asgard? Deadline holds that this likely won't be the last we hear of Jenkins since "the feeling is that she’ll probably end up working on one of these superhero films, but perhaps not on a sequel," which is encouraging, sure, but the fact that we won't get to see a female take on the male-centric world of the Norse gods is disappointing.
Tom Cruise may seem larger than life on-screen. But when it came to stunts on the side of the world's tallest tower, his thoughts were definitely down to earth.
Asked Wednesday about his biggest fear during scenes outside the half-mile (828-meter) high Burj Khalifa, Cruise was quick with an answer: "Falling."
The actor is in Dubai for the world premier of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol at the city's annual film festival.
Cruise said filmmakers had to monitor temperatures on the spire's sun-baked facade so he wouldn't get burned. That wasn't the only challenge. The actor says he didn't anticipate the cross winds.
"I had to figure out, actually, how to fly," he told reporters on the 124th floor observation area of the Burj Khalifa, which rises dozens of stories higher. "I had to figure out how to use my feet as a rudder ... The first couple of times I was slamming into the building."
Don't let the thought that 2011 is drawing to a close depress you as there's still lots of in-theatre entertainment to enjoy before we ring in the new year. December is set to be a busy month at the box office with fan favourites Sherlock Holmes, Alvin, Ethan Hunt, Lisbeth Salander (albeit in a new version) and Maverick all returning to the big screen. Before you get too worried that there's only familiars to whet your appetite, get set to meet a whole new cast of characters in films like The Sitter, Young Adult, New Year's Eve and many more!
Check out the new preview of the month below and let us know what you're excited to see!
It's a good thing nobody told Steven Spielberg when Emily Watson auditioned for his new movie War Horse that she's afraid of horses.
The actress said she actually didn't tell the director about her fear until just days after she began shooting the movie in Devon, England, last fall. Watson says she had to overcome her fears because she was so excited about being in the Spielberg film due out December 25.
"I'm not very good at animals generally," Watson said in a recent interview. "I like domestic animals but big, large ones that might hurt me - I'm a bit of a wimp."
Watson plays Rose Narracott, mother of Albert (Jeremy Irvine), a young man who bonds with the horse who is sold to the British cavalry and sent to the trenches of World War I. Watson said War Horse is not just a story about a boy and a horse but also a "profoundly moving document" of how warfare changed. She said when British cavalry charged and the Germans responded with machine guns "that was a turning point in history and our horse is in the thick of that."
What if Patrick Bateman had Facebook? The yuppie serial killer at the heart of Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 novel, and the subsequent 2000 movie by Mary Harron, may be coming back to a screen near you but this time, as a man living in modern-day New York.
According to Deadline Hollywood, Noble Jones, a David Fincher protege and commercial and music video director, has pitched an updated, very low-budget version to Lionsgate and the studio is interested in what's quickly becoming a buzzed-about project.
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