There's a lot going on in Hollywood this summer, as the economy and DVD declines continue to take their toll on several struggling distributors, from MGM and Lionsgate to the Weinstein Co., Overture and Apparition. MGM is in flux, as it struggles to pull itself back from the brink of bankruptcy and ...
Read More »- Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges - yes, please! Production Weekly says the pair, a pinnacle of Oscar clout, are finalizing deals to star as a couple undergoing marriage counseling in dramedy Great Hope Springs. ThePlaylist also notes that Philip Seymour Hoffman was suggested to play the couple's doct...
Read More »-Rumors are swarming that Billy Elliot's Jamie Bell is Sony's choice for Marc Webb's Spider-Man reboot. The young Brit is already the face of Tintin in Sony's Spielberg directed/Jackson produced CGI The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, which comes out December 2011. Could Bell reall...
Read More »Soon after revealing that he was waiting for the dust to clear at MGM so he could get on with The Hobbit, Guillermo del Toro, one of Hollywood's hottest directors after Pan's Labyrinth and Hell Boy 2, is quitting The Hobbit because he can't keep his career on hold any longer; he's already been on th...
Read More »No one in Hollywood will listen now that Avatar and Alice in Wonderland have scored the mother-lode of grosses as 3-D movies. Could Alice have done as well in 2-D as a perfect match between name director, beloved children's book, and family-friendly studio? No, confirms Disney, because 70% of its gr...
Read More »At their best, the photos in Annie Leibovitz's 2010 Hollywood photo gallery capture feelings between the movie directors and their stars. This one of Quentin Tarantino and straight man Christoph Waltz--who will get an Oscar, even if his boss does not---is my favorite.
Read More »Seven movies have made the short list of the Academy Visual Effects branch. They will vote for the final three nominated films on January 21 at the annual bake-off, where 15-minute reels of each film are screened for the VFX voters. I'm always at Sundance for this; I'd love to go one day.
Read More »Where are we, after the record-breaking holiday? There were many winners.
Read More »People in Hollywood tend to put film directors up on pedestals, and as far as Avatar is concerned, Jim Cameron deserves to be up there. I'm calling nine Oscar nominations for Avatar. But its one sure-shot win will be Peter Jackson and Joe Letteri's Weta Digital team for Avatar's visual effects. Wha...
Read More »The Lovely Bones presented a fascinating challenge for a movie adaptation of a book. But finally, the realities of commercial filmmaking may have been unmanageable in this case---much as they were with John Hillcoat's film version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. What works on the page and in our imag...
Read More »