Thompson on Hollywood

X-Men: First Class: Winners and Losers, Fassbender Up, Lawrence Down

X-Men: First Class's $56 million opening (no 3-D premium ticket sales) marks a big win for most of the folks involved. But there are a few losers, too.

By Anne Thompson
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June 5, 2011 6:55 AM
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Trailer Watch: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The trailer for Rupert Wyatt's prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, starring James Franco as a scientist run amuck and Andy Serkis (Gollum, King Kong) as a smart primate, looks pretty creepy. Here's more on WETA's VFX. Fox releases the pic on August 5. Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton and David Oyelow also star.

By Anne Thompson
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June 3, 2011 12:33 PM
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Academy Unspools Summer of Silents, Starring Keaton, Chaplin, Oliver & Hardy

On the heels of one the most acclaimed films in the Cannes Film Festival this year --the silent film The Artist, made in Hollywood by the French, which earned Jean Dujardin the best actor Palme d'Or--the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is presenting a wondrous program, Summer of Silents.

By Anne Thompson
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May 27, 2011 12:19 PM
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Teaser Trailer: Super 8 Preview

Well, I finally saw, here at the Star Cinema in Cannes, the 20 minutes of J.J. Abrams' Super 8 (June 10) Paramount had screened to media in New York and exhibitors at CinemaCon. The footage looks very Spielbergian, and serves to set up the film's characters, a group of teen guys and one girl (Elle Fanning) as they film a super 8 movie at a train station, when a truck veers onto the tracks and causes a stupendous train crash that lets out something wicked and alien into the area.

By Anne Thompson
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May 18, 2011 8:29 AM
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Summer Preview: Must-Sees on Big Screen, Skippable, Must-to-Avoid

The summer is upon us, with a plethora of viewing choices, many of them utterly avoidable. I lay out the summer movie landscape.

By Anne Thompson
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April 28, 2011 9:46 AM
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7 Comments

Sundance Romance Homework Changes Title To The Art of Getting By

While Fox Searchlight's $3-million Sundance pick-up formerly titled Homework now boasts the new title The Art of Getting By, rookie Gavin Wiesen's beauty and the nerd romance starring Emma Roberts (Scream 4) as a gorgeous girl who sees merit in lonely depressive Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), has held onto its opening date of June 17th--for a platform release--which will expand nationally in July.

By Anne Thompson
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April 19, 2011 8:52 AM
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Oscar Watch: Rowling and Kloves' 12-Year Harry Potter Collaboration; Deathly Hallows Photo Gallery

In the April/May issue of the Writers Guild's Written By Magazine, J.K. Rowling and screenwriter Steve Kloves talk about their 12-year email collaboration as he adapted six of the seven Harry Potter books that yielded Hollywood's biggest blockbuster literary franchise. Rowling fell for Kloves during their first meeting on the Warners lot (even if she figured out that the studio executive dominating the conversation had never read the book), when the writer told her that Hermione was his favorite character. He had fallen for the first book before it became a global phenomenon. Now there's a Wizarding World in Orlando, Florida--for which Kloves wrote 16 pages of text for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.

By Anne Thompson
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April 18, 2011 12:50 PM
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Summer Preview: X-Men: First Class Boasts Stellar Cast; Photo Gallery [UPDATED]

Twentieth Century Fox's Marvel prequel X-Men: First Class, with five credited writers so far, has been embroiled in a long, problematic, over-schedule shoot on locations in England, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and Russia, with a curtailed post-production hurtling toward a June 3 finish line. Nonetheless its strong cast makes me want to see it.

By Anne Thompson
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April 18, 2011 1:35 AM
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Thor Early Reviews: Good Not Great, Hemsworth and Gods Better Than Earthlings [UPDATED]

Paramount screened the first summer movie, Kenneth Branagh's Thor (May 6), for junket press and critics. Here's a sampling of early reviews, which largely agree that this is a good, not great comic-to-screen adaptation, Chris Hemsworth breaks out in the title role, and the film's earth-bound sections are its weakest: