Even though we have no interest at all in "Men In Black 3," Sony is gonna do their damndest to put some enticing carrots for us to keep chasing.
Pajiba reports that Sharlto Copley, Gemma Arterton and Alec Baldwin are in negotiations to join the third installment of the franchise we're suddenly supposed to care about again after ten years (it will be a decade since "Men In Black 2" when the film hits on May 25, 2012). According to the site, the trio are eyeing roles that will see them feature in the 1969 set portion of the film that will see Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones travel back in time. Arterton would play a secretary in the 1969 version of MIB; Baldwin would play the 1969 MIB boss; and Copley would play a fast-talking Yoda type alien. And if that isn't enough Nichole Sherzinger (Pussy Cat Dolls) is being offered a cameo as Jemaine Clement's girlfriend! Talk about cultural relevance!
Emma Thompson, Josh Brolin and Rip Torn round out the cast of this film that makes us want to time travel back to the halycon days before this thing was greenlit.Filming begins later this month.
Well, if the teaser was minor and haunting, the full length trailer for the Coen Brothers' "True Grit" turns the volume way up and increases the number of gunshots. But no worries, the film still looks great and the new trailer is obviously a much more broadly appealing piece of marketing material.
In the new spot, we get far more time with all the principal players, and Matt Damon is still not quite convincing in his role as Texas Ranger La Beouf. That said, in the script we read, his character provided a lot of comic relief and ended up being one of our favorites so we're still curious and hopeful. Hailee Steinfeld and Jeff Bridges look like a formidable duo as they hunt down Tom Chaney (a menacing Josh Brolin), the man who killed the young girl's father. So yes, we're still very excited for what should be a late Oscar season player.
The song in the trailer is Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down" and the film hits on Christmas Day.
Yet more from Production Weekly's Twitter and also their latest print edition, with two new projects that Kristen Stewart is eyeing as potential gigs once "Breaking Dawn" wraps up.
First up is a thriller called, "Someone In The Dark" in which Stewart is "mentioned" for a role. No word yet on plot details but it's already eyeing a March 2011 date to get in front of cameras.
Also crossing Stewart's desk is a project called "Little America." The Imagine Entertainment project being produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer is still listed as being in development by Production Weekly and has a script by Peter Craig ("The Town"). Described as a cross between "Speed" and the 1998 Patrick Swayze film "Black Dog," here's the logline:
About a 16-year-old prostitute who inadvertently kills a gang member, and then must go on the run. She hitches a ride with a truck driver who is hauling a lethal toxin. The truck driver and the prostitute bond during the chase.
Stewart is said to be "interested" in the role of the prostitute, with Brolin "interested" as the truck driver. Sounds like a lean, mean action pic and definitely something a little different for Stewart than what we've seen from the actress so far.
But as always, here are the caveats. Being "mentioned" means her name is sitting on a list somewhere at a studio and details may not have even reached her agents yet, and it takes a lot of steps for "interest" in a project to turn into a starring role. At any rate, after watching the awesome/terrible "Black Dog" trailer below, we're adding it our Netflix queue.
Just when it looked like "The Social Network" was going to hog the Oscar buzz until the end of year, along comes the Coen Brothers with the teaser for their upcoming "True Grit" and if the film even remotely resembles what this early footage promises, it looks like the directing duo will be another powerhouse to contend with.
To refresh your memory, the film stars Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper and newcomerHailee Steinfeld and follows a young girl (Steinfeld) who acquires the assistance of aging, drunken U.S. Marshal Rooster J. Cogburn (Bridges) and young Texas Ranger, La Boeuf (Damon) to track down her father's killer, Tom Chaney (Brolin), who has taken to a gang led by "Lucky" Ned Pepper (Pepper).
And everything in this teaser is ace. Right off the bat, we're immediately impressed with Hailee Steinfeld whose narration and presence pretty much prove why she was hired in the first place. The cinematography by Roger Deakins is top notch as usual, and the music is downright haunting (the song in the trailer is "Where No One Stands Alone" by The Peasall Sisters). Tonally, it looks to fall in their direct matter-of-fact atmosphere in which the truly desperate and strange situations leave room for sardonic humor.
"True Grit" will hit theaters on Christmas Day. Watch the trailer after the jump or in HD over at Apple.
As soon as that dopey 75th Anniversary version of the 20th Century Fox logo dissipates, the first sounds we hear in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" are of a prison gate opening, and someone shuffling through it. It's followed up by a good gag: Michael Douglas, as Gordon Gekko, the role that nabbed him a Best Actor Academy Award oh-so-many moons ago, collecting his personal belongings, having intoned to him gravely by a prison guard, things like "A money clip with no money in it" and a briefcase-sized cellular telephone.
It's when he walks out of the prison, though, that the current state of his character is really revealed: there's no one there to pick him up. The year is 2001 and Gordon Gekko is hopelessly alone; bridges burned, prestige squandered, his slicked-back hair has gone slack and gray, and he looks more like a teacher of comparative literature at Hampshire College than a wolf of Wall Street. And just as soon as we're introduced to shaggy Gordon Gekko, we leave him. We flash forward 7 years and are introduced to the real central character of 'Money Never Sleeps,' Shia LaBeouf, continuing his fine career path of being "younger versions of already established characters," as an enterprising trader named Jake Moore. Jake, unlike Gordon, has some moral bearing, at the very least: he's been tutored, affectionately, by the head of his firm, Lewis Zabel (Frank Langella), and has at least one earth-conscious venture he's trying to funnel money towards (it involves lasers; don't ask us). When it becomes apparent that the corporation is going under, Zabel makes a desperately plea to the Feds to be bailed out. Here he's met with resistance, chiefly from the film's villain, a smarmy hedge fund shark named Bretton James (Josh Brolin) who wears really well tailored-suits (you can tell by the sharp angle of his shirt collars). Devastated, Zabel takes his own life. If there is any emotional hook to hang the big, ungainly hat of "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" on, it's revenge. Jake wants revenge on Bretton James for killing his company and causing his mentor to commit suicide, and in order to exact said revenge, he makes a devil's bargain with Gordon Gekko. Gekko, it's revealed, wasn't imprisoned for the charges Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox lobbied against him as a result of the first movie, no, he was put away by somebody else altogether (who could it be? Oh right it's Josh Brolin, that was fairly obvious).
And what does Gordon want in return? He wants to reconnect with his daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan), who just so happens to be engaged to driven, determined Jake. But is Gordon actually ready to make amends for being a dickish, reptilian asshole? Or will he go back to his old ways again, with the slicked-back hair, and go-go Reagan-era ethos? This should be fairly obvious, too.
The first "Wall Street" was made before Oliver Stone made bold, splashy, big budget movies that often incorporated extremely experimental elements (at least editorially), and for all of its big talk about consumerism and greed it was rigidly formulaic, as square as anything else in Reagan's America. This film is happening after Stone has gotten his ya-yas out and gone back to making oddly mundane movies, like the toothless "W.," and it's good to see him having fun again. Stone adds some pretty embellishments (iris ins, split screens, overlapping images, camera movements that scale entire buildings) and the movie moves along at a clip, even if it is at least 20 minutes too long. Kudos should be also handed to composer Craig Armstrong, with a nicely atmospheric score (the less said about Stone's insistence on using some Brian Eno/David Byrne songs, the better). But "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" is a mess; this much is certain. There's so much going on, both visually and plot-wise, that, coming out of the movie, you're not sure exactly what the thing was about. It's peppered with genuinely touching moments, but they often gets lost in a swarm of subplots and byzantine finance world mumbo jumbo that is rarely, if ever, explained. Was the movie a barbed critique of the current economic crisis? Was it a character piece about a reptilian alpha male who learns to become human again? Was it a revenge parable? A love story, maybe? Or a whirligig look at the way that the financial system works (visualized, gloriously, as glittery towers of information)? Maybe it's all of these things; or none. The raw power of "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" is that it leaves you with the sensation that none of that really matters; that no matter how scatter-shot the film may seem it is unifying in one key way — it's really, really entertaining. And as good as greed is, for a big budget Hollywood confection, solid entertainment is even better. [B]
Even though we have no interest at all in "Men In Black 3," Sony is gonna do their damndest to put some enticing carrots for us to keep chasing.
