Get Paid To Promote, Get Paid To Popup, Get Paid Display Banner

Frankly My Dear...

    Frankly My Dear...

    Hollywood Reporter speculates on ‘Best Ensemble’ Screen Actor’s Awards nominees

    Posted: 15 Nov 2011 04:40 AM PST

    When January rolls around and the Screen Actor’s Guild is honoring pictures that benefit from a bundle of good performances, “The Help” and “Midnight in Paris” figure into the mix.

    And “The Ides of March.”

    The Hollywood Reporter adds to that “best ensemble” nomination game by suggesting that “The Descendants,” “Bridesmaids,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and “The Artist” could be contenders.

    Will they choose to honor Harry Potter? That would be a great consolation prize to the always-star studded, almost always well-acted Potter pictures.

    Might “The Tree of Life” have a shot in that category? “Moneyball”? Yes, I think.

    Brad Pitt retiring in three years?

    Posted: 15 Nov 2011 04:18 AM PST

    Brad Pitt told Australia’s “60 Minutes” that he gives “acting three more years.”

    He has other things he’d like to do with his life, he’s over the whole leading man thing. He liked the producing, getting “Moneyball” as a project together and in front of the cameras.

    Really?

    Now, he told this to Australian TV. He’s got a movie out he’s hyping, and he’d love to win an Oscar for “Moneyball.” Is this his way of saying “This could be my last chance, what about it, Hollywood?”

    Taking him at his word, I’m hard pressed to think of another leading man of his stature who just walked away. He’s not directing, so he’s not going the Clint Eastwood route. His ability to get things made is based on his box office appeal as an actor. If he’s never going to star in another movie, why would you take his calls? Even if he has a passion project that he’s producing, even if he has pretty good taste in films, the leverage he has is as a box office draw leading man. Take that away and the “I’ll make your movie if you make this one for me” deal goes out the window.

    And he loved producing “Moneyball” that much? He wasn’t able to protect his pal, Steven Soderbergh, from getting fired. Did he even have a hand in it? That can’t be pleasant. Then again, Steven Soderbergh is the one who started all this “I’m quitting the business in x-years” thing.

    Pitt’s made noise over the years that he’d have loved to become an architect, and producing may appeal to the “building things” guy inside of him.

    But I’ll beleive it when I see it. This seems like a bum’s rush way of adding urgency to his “Moneyball” Oscar campaign.

    A ‘Descendants’ ukulele, ‘Arthur Christmas’ wrapping paper — the season’s movie tchotchkes?

    Posted: 14 Nov 2011 12:33 PM PST

    I always get a chuckle out of the time and invention that goes into film studio marketing department efforts to get a littkle extra attention for their upcoming film from the entertainment press.

    Toys and t-shirts, a “Wall-E” ice chest (just like the one he had in the movie) a Chinese dinner kit in a huge Chinese food take-out box for “Kung Fu Panda 2.”

    This stuff is a hoot.

    Today was a banner here here at Frankly My Dear. “The Descendants,” whose director, Alexander Payne, I am talking to in a few minutes, shipped out a ukulele. It’s set in Hawaii. Get it?

    And “Arthur Christmas,” the big holiday ‘toon in theaters next week, prompted PR people to send out X-mas wrapping paper kits.

    Cool.

    Both movies are out Nov. 23.

    Do I have time to learn “Blue Hawaii” on the uke before Payne calls? I wonder…

    Movie Preview: The Hunger Games

    Posted: 14 Nov 2011 07:24 AM PST

    Here’s the trailer, and it looks good. Good cast, Jennifer “Winter’s Bone” Lawrence seems very well cast.

    Maybe “The Hunger Games” WILL be Lionsgate’s “Twilight” saga. Young, romantic, action packed and sexy. I can totally see it taking off.
    However, the trailer’s visual tone seems brighter than the material suggests. Then again, “dark” doesn’t have to mean “literally dark,” I don’t care what Christopher Nolan says.

    EXCLUSIVE: R. Pattz sees the end of Edward, and likes the view

    Posted: 14 Nov 2011 07:06 AM PST

    Three years and three films into "The Twilight Saga," Robert Pattinson can see the finish line for the role that made him famous.

    With the release of "Breaking Dawn — Part 1," he knows that the whirlwind surrounding him and his cast mates is about to peak. then subside. He says he's relishing the end, and he's taking it all in: the attention, the career boost and the way his peers have coped with the sudden fame of a film series whose fans are nothing if not fanatical.

    "I am constantly amazed that no one has gone totally crazy," he says, chuckling. "Everybody has their own way of coping. We're all trying to be artists at the same time this whole thing is going on around us."

    The 25-year-old British actor has worked with Oscar winners Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz ("Water for Elephants")and a  former James Bond (Pierce Brosnan ("Remember Me"). But he says his contemporaries – his "Twilight" cast mates — "have taught me the most. They've grown up in the eye of the storm. I learn from how they've dealt with fame. For me, that's obviously the most overwhelming … thing I've had to deal with. You learn a lot about the world and a lot about people when you and they go through something like this."

    That "something like this" has been in evidence since before the first film opened. Pattinson was an all-but-unknown 21-year-old, best known for a glorified cameo as Cedric Diggory in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" when he landed the role that would change his life the instant he was cast.

    Tim Guinee, one of his co-stars in "Water for Elephants," recalls the paparazzi in helicopters above  that film's set, the scores of fans hanging around, "hoping to catch a glimpse of him. What an extraordinary amount of pressure this was for such a young guy to deal with and I was always amazed at the dignity and fortitude with which he dealt with all of it."

    Pattinson knows that he's in select company, having come from almost nowhere to star in three spectacularly successful movies — "Twilight" (2008),  "New Moon" (2009) and "Eclipse" (2010)  — with one more sure-to-be-a-hit installment opening this weekend and another opening next year at this time.

    "It inevitably skews your idea of what this business should be," he says. "But you have to fight against that. The whole fun, the whole point of being an actor is to keep re-inventing yourself."

    Pattinson has managed that, squeezing in a couple of non-vampire roles amid the run of the saga. He earned "acquits himself quite nicely" (Leonard Maltin) notices for last spring's period piece "Water for Elephants." He hopes his work will get a fair viewing once "Twilight" ends, that critics and fans won't make as much of his "brooding beauty" (Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News) as they do now.

    "It gets scary. You worry that this is all they'll let you do. But I could take chances [with other roles] because I always had another 'Twilight' movie coming out.

    "At the same time, it's kind of nice that they're coming to an end, to know I don't have that safety net and that I have to really strive to do new things and wholly commit to them because there's nothing to fall back on."

    Pattinson began the films by feeling he was just playing author StephenieÖ Meyer's creation — the simmering, silent vampire dreamboat, Edward CullenÖ, who wins the fair Bella (Kristen StewartÖ) with just a furtive glance. But as the films have progressed, he's taken ownership. "Things intermingle, and he becomes more like me, more 'my character.'"

    Pattinson's take? "Edward spends this whole series trying to catch up to being 17 in today's society. Even though he's 108, his values are more old-fashioned. He doesn't know how to have a relationship with a young modern woman his age. He has to learn. He's been hidden away from the world for so long that through the saga he's had to learn how to love all over again.

    "Love makes you both feel you have reason to live, especially if you really needed one. Edward has the understanding. He knows what it's like to live forever without loving. And Bella hasn't quite gotten to that understanding, yet. I guess that's what she learns during the saga."

    He can joke about the new film's overheated sex scene, which necessitated a re-edit, and not missing "this pale, pale makeup, which is covering more and more wrinkles. You start to look like a faded clown with fangs, eventually." But he's pondered "Twilight's" imponderables — why this mortal-in-love-with-a-vampire-but-loved-by-a-werewolf romance has become a global sensation.

    "I think people are into endlessly impossible relationships. Maybe everything's so easy to get these days — love, sex, whatever. People want it to be hard, at least in the movies."

    Pattinson doesn't know what he'll do after "Twilight." But he isn't worried, no more than usual, he says with a laugh. "It helps to have tremendous self-doubt. That keeps you humble. It's a very English mentality, that glass is always half empty."

    ‘Atlas Shrugged’ video recall — ’self-sacrifice’ breaks with Rand orthodoxy

    Posted: 14 Nov 2011 05:26 AM PST

    The moxie orthodoxy of the folks behind “Atlas Shrugged” knows no end.

    They had a shot at landing a decent director and real stars (Brangelina showed interest), blew that, got it into a limited number of theaters, spent days proclaiming “victory” when reviews were scathing and there aren’t enough Fox News watchers (mostly where it was promoted) to make it a big enough hit to justify doing the second half of the film.

    Now there’s this. They’re recalling the cover sheets/art because the phrase “self-sacrifice” is used on it. And Ayn Rand, the imperial authoress of this “Let them eat cake” Tea Party-friendly epic, would never have approved. Hilarious.

    I see on the BluRay I got that “self-sacrifice” is indeed on the cover. Along with Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post critic’s endorsement of the film.

    I see “Part 2″ still listed on IMDB. But since the first film didn’t earn back its budget, I don’t know where that sits in terms of a “go project.”

    Russell Brand complains ‘The President Stole My Girlfriend’

    Posted: 14 Nov 2011 04:37 AM PST

    Herw’s a Warner Brothers project that Russell Brand (“Arthur” was set up there, too) is slated to produce and star in.

    He tells The Hollywood Reporter that “”It was inspired by the night I naively invited [Warners president] Jeff Robinov for dinner.” Brand contracted Mark Portenoy to write it, and there you go — a hit?

    He’d play another “sexy hippy” who loses his girlfriend to a president. Like Johnny Depp, Brand loses his mojo if a role requires him to get a haircut.