Big 6: Brad Pitt on MONEYBALL, THE HOBBIT’s Bilbo, more

Tweet

RSSS

Tweet

Brad’s Pitch: Why an A-list actor was willing to go to bat for Moneyball…

For Pitt, Moneyball also evoked “films about process,” particularly the seventies movies he loved. “I thought of The Conversation: How do you tap a phone? Or Thief, with Jimmy Caan: How do you crack a safe?” Pitt says. “And I saw in it a guy who had an obsessive quality like Popeye Doyle,” from The French Connection. Read the full NY Mag article

‘The Hobbit’: Peter Jackson and the one true Bilbo Baggins

Jackson added: “I can’t imagine anyone else doing Bilbo, which is one of the reasons, really, we signed [Martin Freeman] up even with having the ‘Sherlock’ break — normally on a movie you wouldn’t want to do that with the schedule,” Jackson said. “But we literally couldn’t figure out any other actor and we auditioned, you know. There is no other actor.” Read the full LA Times post

Summer Cinema Worth Debating

This summer, by my count, three movies have been especially divisive, provoking strong and interesting schisms among critics and also among people who actually buy tickets — or so I surmise, having spent the past few months trawling Internet comment threads, sipping cocktails in civilian company and eavesdropping on the subway while pretending to play Angry Birds on my phone. Those three films, in chronological order of release, are “The Tree of Life,” “The Future” and “The Help.” Read the full NY Times article

How Much Is Too Much To Say After The Credits?

Through various mechanisms, Caesar helps make apes really smart, and that smartness is genetic, and thus do the beginnings of a race of supersmart apes appear. Or “rise,” if you will. Because it turns out smart apes don’t like it when you poke them with electric prods. And then at the end of the movie you get, in effect: “P.S. Also humanity is wiped out by a superbug.”  Read the full NPR article

Culture flash: fallen dictators

When President Assad or Colonel Gaddafi watches Star Wars – which surely sometimes happens – whatever do they make of it? Do they tut and nod about the sad necessity of Darth Vader’s strong leadership, and the difficulty of finding a good henchman nowadays? I ask because, among the many stories told about dictators (usually by men), very few are on the tyrant’s side. Read the full Guardian article

Five Films Left on the Cutting-Room Floor

…for every board-game-based adventure or kill-your-boss comedy that makes it to the big screen, there are dozens of flicks that don’t. Some get shot, then shelved (see Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote); most don’t even get written (Sly Stallone’s Cliffhanger sequel, The Dam). Here are five films we would have paid to see—and the reasons we may never get the chance. Read the full Wired article

THE BIG 6 is a daily collection of film stories and features from around the web. If you have a something to add, leave a comment below.