George D. Allen | Academy Spotlight, Movie Buzz, Movie Buzz Podcast
...with the help of MovieFanFare's own "Movie Irv" Slifkin, who, as the announcement of the 2010 Academy Award nominees grows near (Tuesday, February 2), has prepared his own set of predictions about both the nominees and the eventual winners. See if you agree:
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gleek (noun): a person obsessed with the TV show Glee
Golden Globe, People's Choice and Screen Actor's Guild winner Glee was first introduced last May on Fox after the American Idol finale and quickly created major buzz. Part soap opera (dual pregnancies and dual love triangles figured big in the first part of the season), part Broadway karaoke, and all parts exuberant fun, Glee along with ABC’s wry Modern Family became the “must watch” of the 2009/2010 TV season. Set at Lima, Ohio’s William McKinley High School, the show tells the story of teen misfits trying to find their place in their school and the world while participating in a show choir named New Directions.
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Irv Slifkin | In the Director's Chair, Movie Buzz
Scott Cooper has reason to celebrate. On the weekend of the Critic’s Choice and the Golden Globe Awards, the 39-year-old writer-director of Crazy Heart boasts an air of self-confidence. And who could blame him?
His $7 million film has just opened across the country, and is up for several year-end awards. Not just for lead actor Jeff Bridges, who has been gaining lots of steam for his marvelous performance as “Bad” Blake, washed-up country-western singer. Cooper himself has been singled out, too, nominated for Indie Spirit Awards and a Writer’s Guild of America Award for turning Thomas Cobb’s 1987 novel about the resurrection of an alcoholic troubadour into a moving, music-filled drama that has critics singing its praises and the industry buzzing: “Will The Dude finally get an Oscar?”
All this from a guy who has never written a screenplay before, or directed so much as a high school play. To say nothing of a movie that was abandoned by its now-defunct studio (Paramount Vantage), and then acquired by Fox Searchlight. That’s the same studio that had a little luck last year releasing a film called Slumdog Millionaire, after Warner Brothers left it orphaned.
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Jon Morgereth and Edward Frebowitz | Movie Polls
Irv Slifkin | In the Star's Trailer, Movie Buzz
Regina King has been one busy actress over the years. And her plate seems completely full now, too.
Over the last few years, she’s provided two voices for Adult Swim’s The Boondocks animated TV shows. Movie roles have included This Christmas, Year of the Dog and the upcoming Living Proof on Lifetime. And then there’s the role in the intense L.A. cop drama Southland, returning to TV on TNT after a quick stint on NBC.
It’s the latter that’s brought her to Philadelphia to host a screening party and talk to the press. She considers it a crusade to keep Southland going and gaining an audience, after getting the “too edgy” tag on the network. She thinks TNT, with series such as the Ray Romano middle age dramedy Men of a Certain Age and Timothy Hutton’s thriller Leverage, could be the perfect fit for the impressive ensemble show Southland.
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Jerry Frebowitz | New Releases This Week
New DVD Releases for this week include Drew Barrymore's very funny roller derby movie Whip It, and Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames appear together again in Surrogates, the recent sci-fi thriller. Along with this week's full slate of new-to-video releases is last summer's mega-hit, Michael Jackson's This Is It which includes the last performances from the "King of Pop." And a classic trio of Foreign wartime movies makes it way to DVD: Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy from the 1940s.
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Jay Steinberg | This Week in Film History
January 27, 1918: Edgar Rice Burroughs' jungle lord debuts on screen in Tarzan of the Apes, starring former Arkansas peace officer Elmo Lincoln.
January 26, 1936: Filmmakers in Hollywood organize the Screen Directors Guild and name King Vidor as their president.
January 28, 1952: The Screen Actors Guild negotiates the first contract granting performers residuals for films sold to television.
January 24, 1957: RKO, the studio that produced King Kong and Citizen Kane, announces plans to close and distribute its remaining films through Universal.
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Many people may know who she is, but Selma Blair rarely seems to get mentioned in the media as the truly talented and versatile actress that she is. Whether it’s because many of her films are off the radar, or that Blair somehow just bewilderingly gets lost in the throng of actresses stampeding through Hollywood is tough to decipher, but it’s about time she at least gets some much deserved attention here.
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In the spirit of the new year, let's take a moment to think about actors and their first film roles. While it is certainly an accomplishment to win over an audience right out of the gate--the way that, say, Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not, Burt Lancaster in The Killers, Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, or Cameron Diaz in The Mask did--it's an even more impressive feat to have a notable Hollywood career when your "big break" came with a, shall we say, not well-received turn. This is not to suggest that any of the ten performances that follow were necessarily bad (but, let's face it, some of them were), just that any filmgoer might have had a hard time imagining the mighty oaks that eventually grew from these cinematic acorns.
(NOTE: It's also true that a lot of today's popular stars got their starts in '80s and '90s horror/sci-fi films. So many--Jennifer Aniston, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Holly Hunter and Julianne Moore, among others--in fact that I'm skipping over them for this list to concentrate mostly on other genres.)
Jerry Frebowitz | New Releases This Week
New DVD Releases for this week include the recent thriller Gamer, starring TV's Dexter, Michael C. Hall, the suspenseful Whiteout with Kate Beckinsale and the Dennis Quaid sci-fi shocker Pandorum. Also new this week: Jennifer Garner fans will rally round The Invention Of Lying and one of Brittany Murphy's last movies is the 2009 noirish movie, Across The Hall plus an interesting Foreign release, My Fuhrer from Germany, will have people talking and laughing. Benicio Del Toro stars as "Che" Guevara in Steven Soderbergh's Che from 2008 and a pre-Priceline William Shatner is back in the re-release of Kingdom Of The Spiders. Yikes!
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Jay Steinberg | This Week in Film History
January 19, 1907: An Exciting Honeymoon and The Life of a Cowboy are the first films to be reviewed in the entertainment trade magazine Variety.
January 18, 1923: Drug addiction claims leading man Wallace Reid, whose morphine dependency followed an injury suffered in a train crash.
January 22, 1928: The John Ford melodrama Mother Machree features, as an unbilled extra, former prop man John Wayne in his first film appearance.
January 20, 1929: The release of In Old Arizona, directed by Irving Cummings and Raoul Walsh, marks the first time a sound film was shot on location.