Thompson on Hollywood

Comic-Con Preview: The New (Amazing) Spider-Man, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Masters of the Web UPDATE

As we gird our loins for this week's San Diego schlep to Comic-Con--which is not my idea of a good time, just getting into everything is an enormous chore--the revelations are coming fast and furious. Yes, we will see Cowboys and Aliens and Captain America there, and Steven Spielberg is making his first appearance with The Adventures of Tintin--as is another veteran filmmaker, Francis Ford Coppola, with his indie horror film TWIXT. DreamWorks/Disney is promoting Fright Night, with Colin Farrell on hand. Universal is presenting a panel on Snow White and the Huntsman, which hasn't even started shooting yet, but why miss an opportunity to highlight star Kristen Stewart, who's there anyway for Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn?

By Anne Thompson
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July 14, 2011 5:13 AM
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: It All Ends at the Box Office

As Warner Bros. brings the blockbuster franchise Harry Potter to an end, our in-house numbers cruncher, Anthony d'Alessandro, looks at what could be some astronomical numbers for the ultimate Harry Potter movie, Deathly Hallows Part 2. This comes as no surprise, but according to studio box office bean counters and early U.S. tracking, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is expected to ring up the best domestic three-day opening of the franchise, out-whizzing the $125-million bow set last November by Part 1.

By Anthony D'Alessandro
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July 11, 2011 4:20 AM
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Emmy Watch: Shameless Cast Talks Candid Approach to Drunkenness and Sex

Executive producer John Wells and cast members of Showtime’s Shameless convened recently for an Emmy season event in which the show’s frankness with regard to nudity and alcoholism were much-discussed. But there’s more than that to this adventurous new series, as Amy Dawes has discovered.“These are people who would be easy to look down on, except that they don’t look down on themselves,” said Wells at a panel following an L.A. Times-sponsored screening of Shameless last week. “They go out into the world and are shameless about who they are. In a similar way, we know no bounds about what we’ll do to get you to laugh or cry when you watch this show.”

By Amy Dawes
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June 10, 2011 9:22 AM
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Weekly Wrap: Cannes Interviews, Winners & Losers, Tree of Life, Bridesmaids, Hangover & Box Office

BOX OFFICE

By Anne Thompson and Sophia Savage
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May 27, 2011 8:00 AM
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SIFF Day Four: Must-See Submarine, Four More Years, Jess + Moss, Beginners' McGregor and Plummer

Meredith Brody continues her movie trawling from the great Northwest's Seattle International Film Festival:Part of the pleasure in attending a film festival in an unfamiliar city is in exploring the city by varying your venues. So I decide this morning to trek to the Neptune, in the northern part of the city, to see the highly-recommended Submarine, a quirky-looking English coming-of-age story that Weinstein Co. is releasing in a couple of weeks. Google Maps offers me both walking (an hour-and-a-half) and bus option (20 minutes), but I lazily grab a cab.

By Meredith Brody
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May 26, 2011 6:49 AM
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Emmy Watch: Greed Gets the Blame in HBO's Too Big To Fail, Bill Pullman Talks

HBO Films put another big dog into Emmy Awards contention this week with the premiere of Too Big To Fail, based on the book by Andrew Ross Sorkin, about the very recent banking crisis and its ongoing implications. Amy Dawes reacts to the movie and talks to actor Bill Pullman, who portrays banker Jamie Dimon:

By Amy Dawes
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May 25, 2011 7:15 AM
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SIFF Weekend One, Day Three: A Quiet Life, Another Earth, Love, Pipe & Beautiful Seattle Weather

Meredith Brody reports on the weather, LOVE, A Quiet Life, The Pipe and Another Earth at the Seattle International Film Festival:Nobody could stop talking about the beautiful spring weather Seattle was enjoying for the first two days of the festival (“after five months of rain,” Director of Programming Beth Barrett sighed at dinner last night). But this morning as I start to exit the hotel to trek to the Egyptian Theatre on Capitol Hill, I turn right around to go back upstairs and fetch one of the two umbrellas I packed – the heavy-duty one. There’s evidence of recent rainfall, and the day is gloomy and overcast.

By Meredith Brody
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May 25, 2011 1:00 AM
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What Comparing Bridesmaids and The Hangover Reveals About Hollywood's Gender Problem

Features

How many people are calling Bridesmaids "The Hangover for women"?

By Sophia Savage
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May 23, 2011 8:48 AM
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SFIFF 54: Wrapping Up the Fest, Days 13-15: The Arbor, Bromberg, Let The Wind Carry Me, Winners, Etc

Meredith Brody wraps up SFIFF 54 and the many films of days thirteen, fourteen and fifteen:After the San Francisco International Film Festival’s second weekend, I feel like the toboggan is slowing down before it crosses the finish line. Day Thirteen, for example: joining Creative Director Miguel Pendas’ SF Film Noir locations tour, which he puts on (along with a tour devoted exclusively to locations for Vertigo) for guests and press, is irresistible to me, but effectively knocks out most of the day. Miguel totes ten companions around SF’s hills and valleys in a van (with an indefatigable driver who manages to pull over where there’s no place to pull over). We see sites for The Maltese Falcon, Sudden Fear, The Sniper, The Lady from Shanghai,Dark Passage, The House on Telegraph Hill, The Midnight Story (the only one I’ve never seen), The Line-Up, and more.

By Meredith Brody
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May 7, 2011 1:18 AM
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SFIFF 54: Day Twelve: Tilva Rosh, Hands Up, Ulysses and the Tindersticks do Claire Denis

On day 12 of the San Francisco International Film Festival, Meredith Brody reports back on her French triple bill (Hands Up is the stand out), Tilva Rosh, Ulysses, and finishes the day off right with English rock/jazz band Tindersticks playing excerpts from their film scores for Claire Denis movies.Amazingly, after getting stuck into CNN-land for two hours of repetitive Osama Bin Laden-chat last night, I still manage to watch the two DVDS of Festival movies that I brought home: I’m Glad My Mother is Alive, by the father-son duo of prolific Claude Miller and his son, neophyte Nathan Miller (giving nepotism a good name). Again something of a message picture (since I’d started the day with Roman Goupil’s Hands Up), about mayhem that ensues when an angry young adoptee finds his biological mother and insinuates himself into her new family (the title means one thing for the first two-thirds of the movie and then tips off its ending, alas).