Thompson on Hollywood

Oscar Talk: Diane Lane, John Malkovich, Annette Bening, Winter's Bone and Leader The Social Network

This week Kris Tapley and I range over Disney's Secretariat and Tangled; the vampire remake Let Me In; Oscar chances for SPC's Mother and Child, starring Annette Bening, and Animal Kingdom, starring Jacki Weaver, the first Oscar screeners to go out; and the long road ahead for early frontrunner The Social Network, which opened Friday.

By Anne Thompson
|
October 1, 2010 8:52 AM
|
0 Comments

More:

Social Network Update: Charlie Rose, Wired

It's fascinating to see the dynamic between The Social Network visualist David Fincher (not a wordsmith) and scribe Aaron Sorkin on Charlie Rose. Fincher seems deferential, and Sorkin dominates the space. Not the usual director/writer interaction.

By Anne Thompson
|
September 29, 2010 7:03 AM
|
0 Comments

More:

Oscar Talk: Frontrunners King's Speech vs. The Social Network, Why The Fighter Isn't A Shoo-In

It's only September, which means that Kris Tapley and I are declaring The King's Speech and The Social Network frontrunners---for now. Which films could possibly supplant them? Toy Story 3 is an animated sequel. I argue that The Fighter is directed by the one and only David O. Russell, while Kris points out that All the President's Men was beaten by Rocky. The Beaver's Mel Gibson makes another problematic award-season figure. Ben Affleck's The Town needs to accumulate success and gravitas. And then there's the Coen brothers' True Grit.

By Anne Thompson
|
September 24, 2010 12:30 PM
|
14 Comments

More:

Sorkin Talks The Social Network at Harvard Q & A

Sony is marketing the hell out of The Social Network which opens the New York Film Festival Friday night (with Harvard Club after party) and opens wide on October 1. (The NYT offers a rave; author Ben Mezrich talks to LAT, Zuckerberg talks to the NYorker.) They're also hitting the college demo hard, staging screenings in Austin, Texas, which boasts a student population of some 50,000, and at Harvard, natch, where TOH guest blogger L.M. Kit Carson saw the film and reported on the Q & A with writer Aaron Sorkin:

By L.M. Kit Carson
|
September 23, 2010 4:30 AM
|
0 Comments

More:

The Social Network Update and Review

Given the way things pile on now, you've already read more than you want to know about a movie you are dying to see, David Fincher's The Social Network. Some of you will go to the New York Film Festival September 24; others will wait until it opens October 1.

By Anne Thompson
|
September 21, 2010 3:10 AM
|
6 Comments

More:

The Social Network Early Reviews: Suspenseful, Absorbing, Compelling, Oscar Frontrunner

Film Comment's Scott Foundas got the ball rolling a month before David Fincher's The Social Network was set to open the NYFF ("big and brash and brilliant") on September 24. And Rolling Stone's Peter Travers swiftly offered up a juicy Tweet quote: “David Fincher’s Social Network is the 1st film I’ve given **** in 2010. It’s the movie of the year that also brilliantly defines the decade.” And this week Sony screened the movie for several online folks--they invited me, but I was in Toronto and figured I'd see it Monday when I got back to L.A. Jeffrey Wells couldn't wait that long: he flew from Toronto to New York to see the film, and reported thusly:David Fincher's The Social Network (Columbia, 10.1) is Zodiac's younger, geekier, greedier brother. That means it's good, as in really good -- a movie for guys like myself and critics like Eric Kohn, Karina Longworth and Robert Koehler to savor and consider and bounce up against, and basically for smart, sophisticated audiences to savor in every cultural corner, and....can I just blurt it out? It's the strongest Best Picture contender I've seen so far this year, and in saying this I'm obviously alluding to Inception.

By Anne Thompson
|
September 15, 2010 5:57 AM
|
1 Comment

More:

Oscar Watch: Gurus 'O Gold Top Contenders, Godard No-Show

Movie City News webmaster David Poland has lined up the usual suspects for this year's round of Gurus 'O Gold of Oscar-watching. The top seven ranking is shared by most of this group of 11 voters: 1. Inception2. The Kids Are All Right3. The King's Speech4. Toy Story 35. The Social Network6. True Grit7. Black Swan

By Anne Thompson
|
September 7, 2010 8:31 AM
|
9 Comments

More:

A Social Network Starts Too-Early Oscar Buzz

David Fincher, Scott Rudin and the Sony marketing team are all smiles over a very early rave review from Film Comment of The Social Network, followed by a tweet from Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers (proffering an ad quote after A Social Network lost its Hot Issue cover to Barack Obama): "David Fincher’s Social Network is the 1st film I've given **** in 2010. It’s the movie of the year that also brilliantly defines the decade." The NYT weighs in with a fact vs. fiction debate.

By Anne Thompson
|
August 20, 2010 12:18 PM
|
3 Comments

More:

Dragon Tattoo's Rapace Goes Hollywood as Remake Goes English, Jolie as Go-To Action Star

- Noomi Rapace took herself out of the running for David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - the Swedish adaptation won her the country's Oscar equivalent for best actress. Rapace wants to expand her career in new directions, and is spending the week in LA meeting with directors, according to THR (including McG and Ridley Scott), producers (Avi Arad and Lorenzo Di Bonaventura) and studio executives at Paramount and Warner Bros. to plan her attack. Repped by UTA and fluent in English, Rapace could burst into Hollywood off the momentum of Dragon Tattoo's success. But it's Rooney Mara who will grab the career hype as she channels Stieg Larsson's counter-cultural anti-heroine for Millennium Trilogy fans, who are already salivating for a better screen version of the story. While Mara's performance will be compared to Rapace's when The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens in December 2011, it will be seen by far more people. Both actresses' lives have changed because of Lisbeth Salander.