Alexander Payne’s NEBRASKA Gets a Trailer
Alexander Payne’s existential aging male characters are something we’re quite used to by now. It’s kind of his thing. But even the Cannes crowd was wowed by Nebraska, giving Bruce Dern the Best Actor award for his work in the film. Now as we get closer to the film’s official release date, we finally have a trailer that lets us know what we’re in for. Check it...
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Leo DiCaprio, Still Hunting For Oscar, Will Play Woodrow Wilson In New Biopic
Leonardo DiCaprio, like any movie star/actor working in the pictures, probably wants an Oscar. And in truth, he’s given plenty of deserving performances (and should have won for The Aviator.) This year’s The Wolf of Wall Street will likely be another that gets him attention but not enough to get him across the finish line first. Still, DiCaprio knows how to pick his roles and he knows which directors to work with. Someday it’ll happen, right? Well in his latest Oscar grab, DiCaprio will play President Woodrow Wilson in the biopic Wilson, based on the recently release biography by A. Scott Berg. Wilson isn’t the flashiest President one could play, but the man instituted a progressive agenda that he gets little credit for today. Most people think of FDR or LBJ when it comes to progressive domestic policy, but it was Wilson who...
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TERMINATOR Moves To July Fourth In 2015; ID4 Sequel Definitely Delayed?
While 2015 may become the best year for blockbuster movies ever, the crowded field means that there’s going to be a lot of movement in and out of the calendar. The latest film to move is Terminator 5, the first film in a sequel/reboot trilogy, which is now scheduled for July 1, staking its claim on the Fourth of July holiday. While this might be good news for Terminator fans, knowing that the film is getting a big push from Paramount, it’s likely to be bad news for those of us who want an Independence Day sequel. ID4 2 was scheduled for release in 2015, presumably for the July Fourth holiday. But director Roland Emmerich recently suggested that the film could move to 2016. Paramount’s positioning of Terminator 5 likely means that they know Fox has already made the decision to move the film but hasn’t...
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NUOVOMONDO: An Exercise in Historical Art House
Hollywood is, as I’m sure we all subconsciously know, not as much of a noun at times as it is an adjective implying a kind of attitude, style, and set of expectations we carry with us. What then can we do with these expectations when a film might subvert them so seamlessly? Well, as I watched an Italian film called Nuovomondo from 2006 (with the English title The Golden Door, as if to intentionally deny the viewer any chance at thinking they know that they’re getting into as they would have done had they translated it literally to the seemingly trite “new world”), these expectations proved refreshingly useless. It satisfies on a level that Hollywood historical epics so seldom do, perhaps because we are not shown the typical set of images and conventions we are used to, which can...
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David Hasselhoff Thought His Nick Fury Was Better Than Sam Jackson’s, Quickly Realizes It Wasn’t
How do you very quickly get the geekosphere to rise up against you? Suggest you’re better than Samuel L. Jackson. That’s kind of what David Hasselhoff insinuated in an interview with Yahoo. The man who played Nick Fury in the 1998 telefilm Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.E.I.L.D. tried to tip-toe around it, but when asked, he obviously thought his Nick Fury was better than Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in the Marvel movies. “You know, it wasn’t Nick Fury,” he said. “They take these shows and they make it the way they want to make it and unfortunately, they should have had Stan Lee on the set and let him kick him into gear – whoever directed [Avengers] decided they wanted to go that way. But it’s their prerogative. He’s still a great actor.” Two quick lessons here: Don’t ever suggest that...
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The Contenders: 12 YEARS A SLAVE Becomes The Oscar Front Runner With Toronto Win
The Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award doesn’t always precisely line up with Oscar. But in the last five years, four winners have gone on to Best Picture nominations and two (Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech) have gone on to win Oscar’s big prize. So if nothing else, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, which won the People’s Choice Award at the 2013 fest, just earned itself a guaranteed spot on the Best Picture nominations list. As of today, it’s also you’re likely winner. The reception for 12 Years a Slave was outstanding at Telluride, where people who saw the movie instantly touted it as the Oscar front runner. Given the hyperbole that tends to come along with these Oscar season fests, I didn’t buy it. But with the People’s Choice Award win, 12 Years a Slave proves that beyond critics and hardcore...
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