Look of the Day: Jessica Chastain

Chastain brought Hollywood glam to the Cannes Film Festival

Cannes’ Best Red Carpet Moments

All-out glamour! See all the stars as the walk the carpet at the international film festival.

Moonrise Kingdom

With a sideways-tracking shot so cheekily dry you might want to add an olive, Wes Anderson here returns to reclaim droll home turf.

We’ve seen many films under Wes Anderson’s influence: deadpan comedies of family dysfunction and/or precocious youth, from Submarine to The Art Of Getting By and Black Pond.

But his first live-action feature since 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited proves no-one ‘does’ Anderson so well as he does. Scrupulously composed but brimful of vim, this is a comeback from a director in joyous command.

We know we’re in Wes-world because the New Penzance setting is an island unto itself, like his films. The year, 1965, evokes an America of hippie naivety and political awakening, perfect for Anderson’s retro-hipster groove and interest in that innocence/experience cusp.

Twelve-year-old lovebirds – Jared Gilman’s Sam Shakusky (survival-skilled scout, bed-wetter) and Kara Hayward’s Suzy Bishop (blank-eyed fantasy-fiction aficionado) – cause a manhunt when they flee their coops to run free in the woods.

Inevitably, Bill Murray appears, but also present are flavours fresh to Anderson. The kids make fine cast newcomers, sweet and poker-faced. So do Bruce Willis as a cop, Ed Norton in shocking shorts, megaphone-packer Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton as invading bureaucracy’s embodiment.

As scouts arm themselves to catch the runaways, Moonrise summons an unlikely thought: ‘Wes Anderson’s First Blood’. When a storm hits, it becomes his first natural disaster film.

But the director’s post-Darjeeling hiatus (Fantastic Mr Fox aside) is as good as any change; his quirks fizz with revitalised energy. The watery colours and artful compositions delight in details; ditto dialogue. Anderson’s pan has never been deader than on zingers about “beige lunatics” and bimbos.

Having forged his own world, he knows how to move in it. The storybook establishing shots are frame-worthy but the plot is never static, galvanised by brisk Britten music and split-screen exchanges.

Emotions drift between mirth and melancholy and the two are seamlessly blurred as a bare-bellied, wine-wielding Murray drifts across the screen in gob-smacking trousers. How’s that for a tragicomic image to distil adult disappointment?

Anderson doubters might moan that we saw similar in Rushmore, but an alternate view is to see Moonrise as the return of a distinct voice in wry, refined and high style. And that kind of homecoming is always worth celebrating.

Moonrise Kingdom News and Features

Men In Black III

Rumours of script problems, cast changes and shooting delays have circled MIB3 since the cameras started turning. So it’s hardly a surprise to find Barry Sonnenfeld’s belated threequel an average affair that, while improving on MIB2, makes you wonder why he bothered.

Things kick off promisingly with a jailbreak sequence that has hairy villain Boris (Jemaine Clement) sprung from a maximum-security moon prison by a slinky Nicole Scherzinger.

Back on earth the torpor sets in, something hardly alleviated by writer Etan Cohen’s baffling decision to reintroduce Will Smith’s J and Tommy Lee Jones’s K as grieving mourners heading to a memorial for Rip Torn’s Zed.

K’s inadequate eulogy is meant to initiate a story arc predicated on J’s desire to know his taciturn partner better. But all it does is steep the first third in a funereal mood exacerbated by Boris leaping back in time to erase Jones from existence.

A shoot-out in a Chinatown eaterie typifies the tonal uncertainty, the pleasure of watching Rick Baker’s wacky aliens zapped into slime undercut by the off-puttingly sadistic sight of K slapping the manager’s face with an extra-terrestrial crustacean.

Determined to prevent Jones’s obliteration, Will jumps back to 1969 and contacts the younger K (Josh Brolin, amusingly replicating Jones’s minimalist mannerisms).

Weirdly, however, what follows fails to take advantage of the new pairing or the retro setting as J and K Junior chase Clement from Coney Island to Andy Warhol’s Factory to the Cape Canaveral launchpad of the Apollo 11 moon module, there to make a fateful discovery that has the whiff of a last-minute, Smith-instigated rewrite.

With a mouth full of teeth and a quip for all occasions, the Flight Of The Conchords star is the most successful addition. MIB3 could have used more of Clement and less of Michael Stuhlbarg’s Griffin, an alien clairvoyant who can see every parallel ’verse simultaneously – including, presumably, the preferable one in which it wasn’t greenlit.

Men In Black 3 News and Features

Ahead of the Curve

Miranda Lambert recently said she likes her “big butt,” and she’s not the only star in support of sexy curves.

Poll: Who Wins Best Dressed of the Week?

From Eva Longoria to Miranda Kerr, cast your vote for the hottest outfit of the week inside!

Jennifer Lopez’s Blush Pantsuit on ‘American Idol’

Leave it to J.Lo to take the pink pantsuit from septuagenarian to sexy.

Who Wore Salvatore Ferragamo Better: Rosario Dawson or Jennifer Lopez?

The vibrant gown Jennifer Lopez wore on a recent *American Idol* episode was first worn by actress Rosario Dawson back in February. Fashion face-off!

Poll: Who Wins Best Dressed of the Week?

From Eva Longoria to Miranda Kerr, cast your vote for the hottest outfit of the week inside!

Look of the Day: Freida Pinto Is Brilliant in Chartreuse

We love when stars take red carpet risks like this one.

Disney’s Brave Premiere, Cannes’ Beasts and Colin Firth’s Mad Dogs: Biz Break Cannes

Also in Saturday’s (mostly) Cannes related news round up, actress Isabella Rossellini gets a new festival jury gig, Lincoln Center teams with Dubai to spotlight Arab cinema, and two groups join for a $150 million equity fund for indie filmmakers. Also check out this weekend’s specialty film releases.

Disney/Pixar’s Brave to Open Dolby Theatre
The world premiere of Brave will mark the opening of the newly re-dubbed Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, the home of the Academy Awards. The Los Angeles Film Festival will co-host the event as a red carpet special presentation. The animated feature is an epic tale set in the mystical Scottish Highlands where the film’s headstrong protagonist, Merida, is “forced to discover the meaning of true bravery.” Disney opens the film wide in theaters June 22nd.

Dubai and Film Society of Lincoln Center Team for Arab Cinema
Arab cinema will take center stage in a new program partnered by the Dubai International Film Festival and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the groups said in Cannes Saturday. Dubbed DIFF Focus taking place August 24 – 30 in New York, the program will feature Venice Film Festival love story Habibi Rasak Kharban and Gulf Film Festival opener City of Life.

$150M Independent Film Equity Fund Launched
Financier and production outfit AngelWorld Entertainment and independent merchant bank First Wall Street have set up a $150 million fund dedicated to independent productions, the groups said in Cannes. AWE funds 100%, providing a single source of funding allowing the equity investor to sit in the first position, minimizing its risk by securing against all of the film’s assets including foreign sales, tax credits, minimum guarantees and  intellectual property rights until the investor has fully recouped its money.

Walk Away Renee to Bow in North American Online Premiere
The Cannes 2011 documentary by Jonathan Caouette will have its North American debut via Sundance Selects’ digital sister SundanceNOW. Walk Away Renee is a follow up to Caouette’s lauded 2004 doc Tarnation. Renee will be debut along with its North American premiere June 27th at BAMcinemaFest.

Around the ‘net…

Preview This Weekend’s Specialty Releases
The Cannes Film Festival is in full swing and at least two distributors are bowing their Cannes cache this weekend. Zeitgeist Films is debuting Elena in the U.S. The film won awards in Cannes and elsewhere before its long (and somewhat bizarre) road to the screen. Sundance Selects, meanwhile will roll out French César and Cannes winner Polisse in theaters and day-and-date VOD using some of its past offerings as a distribution template. Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s directorial debut Virginia opens in limited release and documentary Never Stand Still starts its rollout in New York before heading to other cities, Deadline reports.

Fox Searchlight Fetes Beasts of the Southern Wild in Cannes
The 2012 Sundance winner hit the Croisette Friday, basking in two standing ovations. The mystical story set in the deep Louisiana Delta’s swamp country deals with a young girl’s search for her mother after her father’s deteriorating health and environmental disaster put her life in peril. Searchlight will release the feature in the U.S. June 27th, Deadline reports.

Colin Firth Boards Mad Dogs
Oscar winner Colin Firth has joined Noel Coward’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen, the story of flamboyant English playwright, director and actor singer’s engagement at Las Vegas’ Desert Inn in 1955. THR reports from Cannes.

Isabella Rossellini to Lead Abu Dhabi Film Festival Jury
Rossellini has been named president of the narrative jury for the festival’s 2012 edition taking place October 11 – 20. The actress last chaired a jury at the Berlinale in February, which gave the best film, best actor and best actress prizes to Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, which went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film earlier this year, Cannes Market News reports.

Lawless Director John Hillcoat at Cannes: Story-Driven Filmmaking In U.S. ‘Tough’

L to R: Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, John Hillcoat and Mia Wasikowska in Cannes Saturday.

Born in Australia and raised in Canada, John Hillcoat spent a lot of time in America growing up taking family vacations through the American south, which provides the backdrop for his Cannes competition feature Lawless, which will have its world premiere here Saturday night. Starring Shia Labeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska, the film is inspired by the true-life stories of Matt Bondurant’s own family in his novel, The Wettest County in the World and adapted for the screen by rocker Nick Cave. Lawless centers on the Bondurant brothers, gangsters who sought success bootlegging in Prohibition-era Virginia.

In Cannes to push the feature, which will be released by The Weinstein Company in the U.S. late summer, Hillcoat sounded off on the arduous undertaking of film that is story-driven and not reliant solely on gimmickry. Without mentioning any specific examples, he lamented that the business of motion pictures has crowded out filmmakers who use plot as a vehicle for entertainment.

“I’m interested in stories in America and Australia or anywhere really, but the state of this is pretty tough now,” he said. “My world [of filmmaking] is medium budgets with characters and story. Those are not words you can use right now in the U.S., unfortunately.”

The director of The Road (2009) and The Proposition (2005) and a host of music videos by artists including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bush, Depeche Mode and Nick Cave (who adapted the screenplay for Lawless after previously collaborating with Hillcoat on The Proposition), said there is one medium that dominates storytelling, at least in America. “Television has picked up characters and drama,” he said. “Hopefully this will filter back into films once again.”

Though his story is set against Depression-era Appalachia, Hillcoat sees Lawless as a parallel to a litany of social crises that have arisen in subsequent decades after the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution effectively ended the federal prohibition against alcohol. “There are a lot of parallels to today with the economic crisis, today’s Mexican cartels, heroin in New York, crack and cocaine in the ’80s and the war on drugs. All this feeds back to Prohibition in the ’30s.”

Read more of Movieline’s Cannes 2012 coverage here.

Watch The King’s Speech Edited Down to Just the Stuttering

And now, from the brilliant (and perhaps insomniac) mind that brought you that supercut of Kickboxer featuring nothing but the kicking, wind down your week with The King’s Speech — featuring nothing but the stuttering. Or as they call it in Oscar-history circles, “156 seconds of infirmity that earned Colin Firth an Academy Award for Best Actor.” You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll squirm, etc. Happy Friday!

[via thecussingchannel]

A Surprising Cannes Title? Madagascar 3 Animates the Croisette

Undoubtedly there will be tons of photographers and screaming fans outside as Ben Stiller, Jessica Chastain, Chris Rock, Martin Short, Jada Pinkett-Smith and David Schwimmer ascend the steps at the Palais des Festivals for the world premiere of their latest film. And it will be the best look at them that the crowd will have all night, particularly since they won’t be onscreen — the movie is Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.

The latest DreamWorks Animation effort may seem like a surprising fit for Cannes, usually perceived as the stomping grounds of the world’s great auteurs, but the festival has long embraced mass Hollywood releases on the cusp of their blockbuster rollouts. In 2005 Cannes hosted Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and even piped over a massive sound system Darth Vader breathing along the Croisette in the hours leading up to the movie’s zany red carpet premiere. And from Shrek to Kung Fu Panda 2, DWA has wrangled frequent Cannes premieres complete with screaming fans and all the festival trimmings.

“This is my first time here in Cannes. To have my voice in Cannes is a good first step to actually being in a movie here,” Ben Stiller, who voices the lion character Alex, said to laughs Friday. Co-director Tom McGrath voiced a bit of trepidation about the likes of Madagascar (which is screening out of competition) with the likes of others in the Official Selection including the latest from David Cronenberg (Cosmopolis), Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone), Abbas Kiarostami (Like Someone in Love) and Walter Salles (On the Road).

“We went to opening night and saw our cartoon [in a montage of Cannes films] and we thought, ‘Do we deserve to be here?’” McGrath said. “But the great thing about Cannes is that it’s a festival for all kinds of films – and this is a film about traveling through Europe, so what better place?”

The third installment of the Madagascar franchise finds the lion Alex (Stiller), Marty the zebra (Rock) and the rest of the gang trying to find a way to return to their beloved New York City (you may have had to see the first two installments to get that one, but just go with it). Their quest takes them through Europe, landing in Monaco of all places in the famed casino. They find a perfect cover: A traveling circus, which naturally introduces new characters to the mix.

“I auditioned for this part, and I was so happy when I got the part,” said Jessica Chastain who plays a seductive jaguar in the feature. “I’m an actor who wants to do all kinds of things.”

“It’s a very difficult thing to do,” McGrath said about voicing movie animation. “You have to project that you’re running in your voice when you’re sitting in a studio and you have to change emotion. That’s hard to do when you’re only behind a microphone.” Added Chastain, “I hadn’t done anything before in which I didn’t work with another actor.”

Still, the group said the medium allows for the actors to take time and not feel the pressure of time when working with a large crew, allowing them to workshop their characters to a degree, which was one creative appeal for taking part in Madagascar.

But there was also another.

“Cash!” said Rock. “And it was a lot of fun.”

Read more of Movieline’s coverage of Cannes 2012 here.

Billboard Platinum Status

Miley’s legs, Carrie’s frills, Brandy’s curls: Check out all the top pop stars’ latest style statements.

Billboard Platinum Status

Miley’s legs, Carrie’s frills, Brandy’s curls: Check out all the top pop stars’ latest style statements.

Brandon Routh CROOKED ARROWS Sells To Strategic Film Partners at Cannes

I’ve received this press release stating that Strategic Film Partners bought the int’l rights to Brandon Routh‘s (Superman Returns) lacrosse movie, CROOKED ARROWS. Check out details below.. (more…)

MOON And SOURCE CODE Director, Duncan Jones, Will Helm Biopic On James Bond Creator, Ian FLEMING

Finally! The genius behind one of cinema’s most well-known characters, James Bond, the author Ian Flemming will soon get the biopic he deserves and Variety said that job now belongs to director Duncan Jones who brought us Moon and Source Code, two of my favorite movies in the past 5 years.
The late Fleming himself was a Naval intelligence officer for the Royal Navy in WWII and helped mastermind secret operations around the world, and his experiences inspired him to create 007.
This project is based on Andrew Lycett‘s book, IAN FLEMING, THE MAN BEHIND JAMES BOND.
Below is the book‘s official synopsis.. (more…)

HIGH FIDELITY Scribe To Write Disney’s Movie Version Of THE NIGHT STALKER Starring Johnny Depp

This past February, it was reported that Disney hired everybody’s favorite hip director Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim) to direct THE NIGHT STALKER starring Depp as Carl Kolchak.
Johny Depp’s production company Infinitum Nihil  and Disney are developing a movie based on the ’70s TV movie, THE NIGHT STALKER about newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) who investigates strange supernatural occurrences in Chicago.
Heat Vision said Disney has also hired D.V. DeVincentis (Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, LAY THE FAVORITE) to write this big screen adaptation.

Who’s THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN? Robin Williams Is

Screendaily reported that Robin Williams, Melissa Leo, James Earl Jones, Mila Kunis and the awesome little man from Game Of Thrones, Peter Dinklage will star Cargo Entertainment’s comedy, THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN, produced by Landscape Entertainment and Force Majeure.
The story is about.. (more…)