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Berlin Review: Giuseppe Tornatore's 'The Best Offer' Is A Campy, Overcooked Mess

  • By Jessica Kiang
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  • February 14, 2013 11:04 AM
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  • 2 Comments
Reviews
If director Giuseppe Tornatore has had an up-and-down time of it since his breakthrough, 1988's almost universally adored, Oscar-winning "Cinema Paradiso," it has to be said that his most recent film, "The Best Offer," marks a definite low point, even as one of the downs. But that's probably what's going to happen when you take a cast, including Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess and Donald Sutherland, that mostly seems as though they don't belong on the same planet, let alone in the same film, stick them in a pointlessly convoluted plot that's ludicrously unbelievable from start to finish, and drench the whole lot in a hysterically screechy score from Ennio Morricone. The resulting film is such a campy mess that for a while it's possible to see it having some sort of life as a kitsch cultish artifact, like an overplotted TV movie from the eighties. But then it goes on for an interminable 124 minutes, and even that dubious hold on our interest is lost.
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More: Geoffrey Rush, Giuseppe Tornatore, The Best Offer, Jim Sturgess, Berlin International Film Festival, Review

Geoffrey Rush & Emily Watson To Star In WWII Tale ‘The Book Thief’

  • By Tess Hofmann
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  • February 5, 2013 11:20 AM
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  • 2 Comments
News
“The Book Thief,” the WWII Germany-set children’s novel by Marcus Zusak that spent over 280 weeks on the New York Times’ bestseller list, has been gearing up for the big screen for a little while now, and has attracted quite the international cast to help bring the story to life.
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More: The Book Thief, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson

Watch: Italian Teaser Trailer For Giuseppe Tornatore's 'The Best Offer' Starring Geoffrey Rush & Jim Sturgess

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • November 21, 2012 2:24 PM
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  • 2 Comments
News
As the man behind such films as "Cinema Paradiso," "The Star Maker" and "Malena," there was an era when Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore was a familiar name at the arthouse. However, it has been a while since he's had a movie arrive stateside with quite the same attention as those pics, but "The Best Offer" could change that.
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More: The Best Offer, Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess, Film Trailers

Geoffrey Rush & Jim Sturgess Get 'The Best Offer' With Giuseppe Tornatore, Ennio Morricone To Score Film

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • April 4, 2012 1:55 PM
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  • 0 Comments
News
Celebrated Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore doesn't exactly crank them out, and while he made waves on American shores in the late '80s and '90s with "Cinema Paradiso," "The Star Maker," "The Legend Of 1900" and "Malena," it has been over a decade since the latter and the subsequent movies -- "The Unknown Woman" and "Baaria" -- have made the same splash.  But his next effort is gearing up, and drawing upon two well-known names, it could see him once again back in American arthouses in bigger form.
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More: Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess, Giuseppe Tornatore, Ennio Morricone, The Best Offer

Geoffrey Rush Sought To Take Over Lead In Former Marlon Brando & Johnny Depp Project 'Divine Rapture'

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • February 22, 2012 12:21 PM
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  • 3 Comments
News
At the best of times, particularly in the latter stages of his career, Marlon Brando was pretty unpredictable; you never knew what you might get from the mercurial actor once he was on set. But in the case of the never-made "Divine Rapture," the filmmakers never got a chance to see what might happen out of their starry production. Set to star Brando, his friend Johnny Depp (they worked together on "The Brave" and "Don Juan DeMarco") and Debra Winger, the film was all set to shoot in Ballycotton, Ireland (indeed, you can see the cast in costume above) when producers CineFin failed to secure the $4 million they needed to make the movie, leaving the movie and many villagers in the lurch. This was back in 1995, however producer Barry Navidi (Al Pacino pics "The Merchant Of Venice," "Wilde Salome" and the upcoming "King Lear") has stuck with it and it looks like nearly two decades later, the movie will be made.
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More: Geoffrey Rush, Holy Mackerel

Watch: Trailer For Fred Schepisi's TIFF Entry 'Eye Of The Storm' With Geoffrey Rush

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • August 31, 2011 7:28 AM
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  • 0 Comments
It has been a long time since Australian director Fred Schepisi has been behind camera. His last effort was the acclaimed HBO mini-series "Empire Falls" and before that his last feature film was 2003's forgettable "It Runs In The Family." But the director is back, and we'll soon see if he still has his mojo and he heads to TIFF with the acerbic looking drama "Eye Of The Storm" and the first trailer certainly shows some promise.
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More: Actresses, Actors, Geoffrey Rush, Charlotte Rampling, Judy Davis

Production On 'The Wolverine' May Be Bumped To Spring 2012 So Hugh Jackman Can Do 'Les Miserables'

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • August 25, 2011 1:45 AM
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  • 7 Comments
The rocky road to "The Wolverine" continues to bump as yet another delay may push back the film even further.
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More: Films, Actors, Actresses, Super Hero Films, Musicals, Hugh Jackman, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Amy Adams, Hayden Panettiere, Emma Watson, The Wolverine, Les Miserables

Review: 'Pirates of the Caribbean 4' Is a Soggy Sea Chanty That Seems Awfully Familiar

  • By Drew Taylor
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  • May 13, 2011 11:48 AM
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  • 19 Comments
Executive producers of television series talk about needing to do a "bottle episode," usually about a third of the way through the season when they've unnecessarily overspent on the earlier episodes and need to save up so that the finale can go out with a bang. In a lot of ways "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (yes, that's the actual title) feels like a "bottle episode" in the franchise, one in which the scale is cut back tremendously, extraneous mythology shaved away, with the lavish direction of the original trilogy (by Gore Verbinski, who helmed one of this year's very best movies, "Rango") replaced with someone whose vision is, if not entirely lacking, somewhat more made-for-TV.
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More: Films, Actors, Actresses, Review, Rob Marshall, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane, Penelope Cruz

'Green Lantern' WonderCon Footage Impresses; New Posters Released Too

  • By The Playlist
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  • April 2, 2011 5:59 AM
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  • 12 Comments
Last night, Ryan Reynolds may have said he's reached his super hero film quota with "Green Lantern" already completed and "Deadpool," plus the genre-y graphic novel, "R.I.P.D.," but he may be getting ahead of himself, since none of these pictures has been released. We've been pretty skeptical of "Green Lantern" so far, and more importantly, so has the vocal movie geek community who the movie is aimed at. Early trailers looked like lame SyFy channel tele-movies and even Warner Bros. admitted that all the early footage was weak.
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More: Films, Actors, Actresses, Martin Campbell, Super Hero Films, Ryan Reynolds, Geoffrey Rush, Blake Lively, Green Lantern

Geoffrey Rush To Voice Tomar-Re In 'Green Lantern'

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • March 31, 2011 2:27 AM
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  • 2 Comments
Hal Jordan Will Not StutterIf the buzz around "Green Lantern" is non-existent, don't worry, because Warner Bros. is well aware of the problem. They recently admitted that the first trailer wasn't so hot and conceded that the effects are taking much longer to lock down than they expected, hence the lack of whizzbangwow show-off footage as yet. The movie is racing to the finish line -- a new trailer is expected to arrive in front of "Thor" with a big marketing push likely to follow -- and director Martin Campbell is assembling his voice cast fairly late in the game.
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More: Films, Actors, Super Hero Films, Geoffrey Rush, Green Lantern

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