Since his award-winning debut feature “In the Company of Men” in 1997, Neil LaBute has developed a diverse career that spans writing and directing for both the stage and screen. Depicting unsettling and often cruel relationships between men and women, his work can be difficult to stomach, but there ...
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When filmmakers find themselves in a rough place, they tend to dial back their productions, usually by necessity, but also as a refresher course in refueling the creative spirit. Playwright Neil LaBute has had a rough go of it in his last few big-screen adventures: "Lakeview Terrace" was a half-bake...
Read More »When a franchise makes a third film and it winds up making a ton of money, talk of a fourth film is inevitable even if key cast and crew members are not on board. Think about "Pirates of the Caribbean," when everyone but Johnny Depp dropped out for the fourth movie; or "Spider-Man," when complicatio...
Read More »Two Tribeca Film Festival first-looks for you this afternoon. First up is one of two Neil LaBute films landing within the span of two months: "Some Velvet Morning," which is debuting at Tribeca in mid-April. It stars Alice Eve ("Star Trek Into Darkness") and Stanley Tucci, and it's a relationship d...
Read More »Some fairy tales and fables are dark, while others invite a range of interpretations. This rendering of “Jack and the Beanstalk” is pretty full-blooded, especially for a family-oriented film, but this gives it some backbone to match its elaborate visual effects.
Read More »Critics are divided on Bryan Singer's "Jack the Giant Slayer," starring Nicholas Hoult, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci and Eleanor Tomlinson. Some bluntly call it "pretty dumb" and label it as yet another Hollywood cash-in on the fairytale trend, while others find Singer's ...
Read More »"Rectify," the Sundance Channel's first original scripted series all its own, will premiere next year, marking a shift the network's been making into the kind of high-end scripted show territory for which its sister channel AMC is best known. Sundance's dramas have until this p...
Read More »Stanley Tucci is currently in talks to star alongside "Harry Potter" star Emma Watson in the psychological drama, "Your Voice in My Head." At the moment, an almost unrecognizable Tucci can be seen in "The Hunger Games" as the flamboyant master of ceremonies.
Read More »If your part calls for an actor in their 40s or 50s, and you're part of a big studio movie, the reality is that the same handful of names are always going to be at the top of your casting wishlist -- the Cruises, the Clooneys, the Pitts, the Hankses, the Depps. These are the guys who get every o...
Read More »The massive audience for The Hunger Games is easily split into two camps. There are fans of the books, who are likely to approve of the terrific Jennifer Lawrence while picking out all the details missing from Suzanne Collins’ novels. And there are people like me, blank slates about Colli...
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