The Playlist

Megan Ellison Hates Harvey Weinstein & More: 7 Highlights From The Juicy Vanity Fair Profile On The Annapurna Scion

By Edward Davis
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February 1, 2013 10:00 AM
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33 Comments

News

Vanity Fair’s 2013 Hollywood issue is kind of the gift that keeps on giving. It not only has an awesome oral history of “Pulp Fiction” (highlights of which you can read here), but it also has some pretty in-depth and juicy profiles. But, the most tantalizing is about Megan Ellison, the 27-year old daughter of the third richest man in the U.S. She’s rumored to have been given a bankroll as large as $2 billion from her Dad on her 25th birthday (though her reps deny the figure), with the movie buff using the amount to help bankroll her slate of films.

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Review: Brilliant & Angry 'Killing Them Softly' Is The Anti-Thriller For Our Times

By Kevin Jagernauth
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November 28, 2012 12:03 PM
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6 Comments

Reviews

"What is that American promise? It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect," Barack Obama said at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. And that section of the speech opens Andrew Dominik's seething "Killing Them Softly," as he cuts the audio between white noise and the silent black title screen, signifying the blind emptiness of Obama's statement and the thematic current he'll be taking for the film. We are not a changed nation. We are not a nation of equals. The government are a bunch of children who need to be led by the hand into any decision-making process and Americans at both the top and bottom rungs of the ladder all have their share of the blame to take. Uncompromising and uncommercial, divisive and brave, "Killing Them Softly" bitterly boils at the state of the nation.

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5 Key Directors Of New Australian Cinema As Andrew Dominik's 'Killing Them Softly' Hits Theaters

By Oliver Lyttelton
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November 27, 2012 1:01 PM
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11 Comments

Features

Though born in New Zealand, Andrew Dominik, the director of this week's "Killing Them Softly," moved to Australia at the age of 2, and was raised there. And around thirty years later, he provided a firecracker up the arse of the nation's film industry by directing "Chopper," a biopic of colorful criminal Chopper Read that made Eric Bana a global star, and firmly launched Dominik as a filmmaker to watch.

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Andrew Dominik Talks The Anger Of 'Killing Them Softly', Downplays The "Mythical" Long Version of 'Jesse James'

By Drew Taylor
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November 27, 2012 12:30 PM
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10 Comments

Interviews

When Australian director Andrew Dominik and ultra-handsome super-star Brad Pitt last teamed up, it was for "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," a brilliant, elliptical ode to the old west and one of the very best movies of the past decade. Five very long years later, the pair have reteamed for "Killing Them Softly," which opens this weekend and, as it turns out, is just as brilliant as their previous collaboration.

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Andrew Dominik Aims To Shoot Polanski-Esque Marilyn Monroe Biopic 'Blonde' In 2013, Naomi Watts Still Attached

By Drew Taylor
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November 23, 2012 2:15 PM
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8 Comments

News

The other day we got to speak to Andrew Dominik, whose genuinely amazing new crime film “Killing Them Softly” opens next week. One thing we wanted to make sure of was, after the seemingly epic gulf of time between his brilliant but criminally under-seen “The Assassination of Jesse James and the Coward Robert Ford” and “Killing Them Softly,” that there was at least something in the works. It turns out that the movie he was originally going to do before “Killing Them Softly” is still very much a go. "I'm going to do this movie called 'Blonde,' which is about Marilyn Monroe," Dominik said.

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7 New Photos From 'Killing Them Softly' Starring Brad Pitt

By Edward Davis
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September 14, 2012 12:33 PM
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4 Comments

News

Brad Pitt is notoriously hard to net for a film. He'll sign on to a lot of projects and even produce, but getting the man to star in a picture when all is said and done can prove to be difficult. Aussie director Andrew Dominik had a leg-up. He directed Pitt in the underrated "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," a movie that Pitt has said he lost money making, but is one of his personal favorite films. So how did Dominik get Pitt to sign on for his latest film, the American crime drama "Killing Them Softly"? "It was all very simple. I texted Brad, asking if he was interested, and he wrote back 'Yes,' " Dominik told EW recently. "We basically worked the whole thing out via text message over half an hour."

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New 'Killing Them Softly' Poster Blandly Reminds You That Brad Pitt Stars In The Picture

By Edward Davis
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August 23, 2012 4:35 PM
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9 Comments

News

Ok, the creative marketing gurus over at The Weinstein Company were not working overtime when they created this new poster for "Killing Them Softly." Then again, maybe they were going for a much-less-is-more approach and making sure -- in case you were unaware -- that good ol' A-lister Brad Pitt stars.

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Watch: First Trailer For Andrew Dominik's 'Killing Them Softly' Starring Brad Pitt

By Kevin Jagernauth
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August 1, 2012 8:09 PM
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16 Comments

News

After making the beautiful and ethereal anti-western "The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford," Andrew Dominik took a bit of time away, and now five years later he returns with a wholly different film, the angry, caustic, funny and riveting "Killing Them Softly."

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Brad Pitt To Produce Andrew Dominik's Marilyn Monroe Biopic 'Blonde,' Naomi Watts Not Likely To Lead

By Kevin Jagernauth
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June 1, 2012 9:03 AM
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10 Comments

News

Having a friend in Brad Pitt certainly isn't a bad thing. The actor has used his superstar clout to get difficult, hard to finance movies made -- often choosing to produce them himself via his Plan B shingle -- and among his many filmmaker and actor pals, he's forged a strong relationship with Aussie helmer Andrew Dominik. The pair first teamed up on the existential western "The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford" where the actor used his sway with the studio to keep the lengthy title for the film, and stuck by the director's side during the fraught editing sessions. And just a couple of weeks ago, they hit the Cannes Film Festival with the searing and brilliant "Killing Them Softly," another ambitious effort produced by and starring Pitt. And it looks like the bromance will continue.

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Cannes: Andrew Dominik Says He's Aiming To Make "Emotional Nightmare Fairy-Tale" Marilyn Monroe Biopic 'Blonde' Next

By Oliver Lyttelton
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May 25, 2012 12:05 PM
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6 Comments

News

After a few years in the wilderness after the masterpiece "The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford" underperformed at the box office, Andrew Dominik's third film -- initially titled "Cogan's Trade" after the George V. Higgins book on which it's based, and later retitled "Killing Them Softly" -- came together quite quickly. The first hints emerged in September 2010, and within a few months it had a star and producer in Brad Pitt, a distributor courtesy of The Weinstein Company, and rolled in front of cameras in early 2011.

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