Thompson on Hollywood

Weekly Wrap: Venice and Telluride Reviews, Pre-Toronto Buys, Lifetime Achievement Awards

INTERVIEWS:

By Maggie Lange
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September 9, 2011 10:04 AM
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Working Title Assembles Joe Wright's Anna Karenina and Tom Hooper's Les Miz

Joe Wright has firmed up his cast, led by Keira Knightley, Jude Law, and Aaron Johnson, for his epic film of Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina. This will be Joe Wright's third film for Working Title, Focus Features and UPI, following other successful Knightley-starrers, 2005's Pride & Prejudice and 2007's Oscar-nominated Atonement. Knightley has received mixed reviews for her performance in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method. Wright also shot The Soloist for Working Title and Hanna for Focus.

By Maggie Lange
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September 9, 2011 2:30 AM
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Toronto Deal Wrap: Early Buys Begin, New Indie Distribs

Before the high stakes bidding begins at the Toronto Film Festival which runs Thursday September 8 through September 18, acquisitions execs are already opening their checkbooks. Several distribs are said to be chasing Steve McQueen's erotic drama Shame, which would have to go out unrated; a studio subsidiary would have to go with an inevitable NC-17 rating, if no trims were made (so how could rumored interested distribs Sony Pictures Classics take this on? I don't see it).

By Anne Thompson and Maggie Lange
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September 8, 2011 3:53 AM
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TIFF: Pariah Gets Release Date and Poignant Poster

Focus Features initiated an online outreach to choose the poster for the upcoming Sundance drama, Pariah. The winner was "Subway," a poster showing actress Adepero Oduye staring out a window and at herself--an apt image for a film about a 17-year-old woman from Brooklyn coming to terms with her identity as a lesbian.

By Maggie Lange
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September 7, 2011 5:25 AM
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Angelina Jolie Talks Land of Blood and Honey to VF, Says People Will Have to Judge it for Themselves

Vanity Fair confirms: No wedding, no baby, no adoption. Now we can all focus on Angelina Jolie the director.

By Anne Thompson and Sophia Savage
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August 30, 2011 5:07 AM
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Trailer Watch: Waltz, Winslet, Foster and Reilly Lose It in Polanski's Carnage

In Roman Polanski's upcoming Carnage, Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly portray two sets of Manhattan couples who try to debrief a fight between their eleven-year-old sons. As their discussion continues, things take a turn for the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and fly wildly out of control.

By Maggie Lange
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August 19, 2011 7:45 AM
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Three Sneak Peeks at The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Even Daniel Craig has to search for cell phone reception by holding his mobile in the air. These first look photos from David Fincher's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo also reveal Rooney Mara's pierced, shorn, dark look as Lisbeth Salander. The movie also stars Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, Steven Berkoff, and Robin Wright. Columbia Pictures will open the film in theaters on December 21.

By Maggie Lange
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August 19, 2011 4:33 AM
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Trailer Watch: Daniel Radcliffe in Upcoming Thriller The Woman in Black

Creepy children (in the pinafore-dress style of the twins from The Shining), innocent yet terrifying. Creaking Victorian House, dusty mechanical toys with minds of their own, and blood-splattered wall-paper--oh my!

By Maggie Lange
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August 17, 2011 11:36 AM
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Soderbergh's Tyranny of Narrative, Haywire at SDCC, Can Carano Hold a Candle to Action Star Jolie?

Steven Soderbergh presented footage from Haywire at Comic-Con. It was well-received. In ThePlaylist's interview with the director, he admits they weren't sure if Comic-Con was the right fit for the film, but "ultimately we decided, yeah, this is our take on the action film and we should show it off.” It was a good call, because the movie features an ass-kicking (and hot) female MMA champion, Gina Carano, muscle-boy Channing Tatum and newfound heartthrob and serious thesp Michael Fassbender (Carano and Tatum joined Soderbergh on stage for the panel). Why wouldn't it play well at Comic-Con?

By Sophia Savage
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July 26, 2011 5:45 AM
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New Tintin Trailer Reveals Spielbergian Animation

Check out the new trailer for Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (December 23) below, for which star Daniel Craig wore a leotard for the performance capture. The question that Kris Tapley and I asked in our mid-summer Oscar Talk is: will the Academy consider this live action VFX (Avatar) or animation (Monster House)? Clearly the film is utterly stylized and "rendered," as they say in the trade, with no live action components, as "virtual" as Pixar's Cars 2. But performance capture, as live-action director Bob Zemeckis used it in Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, has not been considered animation.