Blogroll

Thompson on Hollywood

Casting Watch: Kirsten Dunst Visits Set of Sofia Coppola's "The Bling Ring"

Perennial Sofia Coppola muse Kirsten Dunst and rocker Gavin Rossdale have been spotted on the L.A. set of the writer-director's currently filming "The Bling Ring." That doesn't mean that the star of "Virgin Suicides" and "Marie Antoinette" or the rhythm guitarist are necessarily in the movie, although Coppola loves throwing cameos into her flicks.
  • By Maggie Lange
  • |
  • March 28, 2012 2:53 PM
  • |
  • 0 Comments

Sundance Reviews: Lean Mean 'Bachelorette' Shocks Festival, Too Hard or Too Soft?

Sundance comedy "Bachelorette" boasts an all-star girl comedy-pack: Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, and Isla Fisher. They play a hard-drinking and drugging trio who are horrified that their pudgiest gal pal (Aussie comedienne Rebel Wilson) is the first of their high school gang to get married.
  • By Anne Thompson
  • |
  • January 26, 2012 10:28 PM
  • |
  • 0 Comments

Cannes Actress Winner Dunst Forgives "Melancholia" Director Von Trier, Heads for Red Light Winter with Ruffalo

Lars von Trier and Kirsten Dunst at Cannes
This year at Cannes, the person who squirmed sitting next to Lars von Trier at his notorious "Melancholia" Cannes press conference, during which the Danish writer-director offended just about everybody by calling himself a Nazi, was his star, Kirsten Dunst.  In the days to follow he apologized repeatedly for the "stupid, idiotic" comments that led to his banishment from the festival.

But he also had to repair the damage he had done to his relationship with Dunst.  "It was probably harder on her than anyone else," Von Trier told me the night he was going to meet her for a makeup dinner.

  • By Anne Thompson
  • |
  • November 16, 2011 9:23 PM
  • |
  • 2 Comments

Oscar Watch: Which Indie Outsiders Have a Shot at Best Actress?

Last night I watched Ellen Barkin act her heart out in Sam Levinson's Sundance screenplay-winner "Another Happy Day" (Phase 4, November 18), which is saddled with an unfortunate generic title. At 57, Barkin has been around the block a few times, and while the movie opens with her two younger sons debating whether or not she is hot, the actress shows wear and tear, which never hurts with the Academy. In the movie, Barkin and her sons return to her family home for her older son's wedding, where her parents (Ellen Burstyn and George Kennedy) seem to favor her ex-husband (Thomas Hayden Church) and his new wife (Demi Moore) over their own daughter. Her troubled teen is played by creepy Ezra Miller, who also tortures his mother Tilda Swinton in "We Need to Talk About Kevin." Passed-down generational neurosis and dysfunction is the story here, and Barkin wallows in it.
  • By Anne Thompson
  • |
  • November 16, 2011 4:24 PM
  • |
  • 32 Comments

Videos