Movie Nation

She gained notice for TV’s “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” and fame from the George Clooney/Alexander Payne dramedy “The Descendents.”

Shailene Woodley’s first film after that was “The Spectacular Now,” which features another dazzlingly natural turn from this star-on-the-rise.

“Divergent” and a few other pictures are in the works for her, and I’ve got a few re: “Spectacular.” Suggested questions? Post them as comments below, and thanks for the help.

Ben Foster of “3:10 to Yuma,” “The Messenger” and “Rampart” is an intense actor with a killer gaze.

Which he’ll need if he plays Lance Armstrong in Stephen “The Queen” Frears’ Lance Armstrong bio-pic. Armstrong turned that looks-could-kill thing on his foes on the Tour de France, and on anybody who questioned the legitimacy of his training and titles.

“Disgraced” and “stripped of his titles” now attach themselves to the Texas cheater’s name.

After a robust Thursday night and a solid Friday, “The Wolverine” looked to be on track to bust into the $60million+ range for its opening weekend, kind of on the lower end of most projections for its performance.

But Saturday was a bit of a sag and the latest comic book franchise may only hit $55 million or so.  Not shabby, but not in the conversation of “biggest of the summer.” Not “Pacific Rim” weak, but not “Iron Man 3” either.

“The Conjuring” did another whopping $24 million, holding much of its opening weekend audience. If James Wan, the “Saw” and “Insidious” vet already attached to “Insidious 2,” ever wants to break out of horror, now is the time. His stock will never be higher.

“Fruitvale Station,” a potential Oscar contender, a serious topical drama that Weinstein Co. opened in the summer hot on the heels of the George Zimmerman verdict, did a terrific $4 million and cracked the top ten. Will it stick around through August and become an Oscar nomination-worthy hit (the longer it is in theaters, the better)? Next weekend will tell.

The funny and hyped up CBS comedy “The To Do List” didn’t figure out a way to crack into a crowded summer top ten. It’s not on enough screens, and the take from Friday suggests it doesn’t have the oomph to do big business anyway. “The Way, Way Back” is having an easier time of it.

The ’80s action comedy phenomenon has been shopped and talked up as a TV series pitch for the past few months. That may or may not happen.

But Paramount took that idea — a network or two has passed on the series — as reason to reboot the film franchise. They’ve got  Eddie M. on board. His fortunes have been on the wane since “Dreamgirls,” and even if he isn’t the sassy hipster he was in the original films, a guy can dream.

A character actor’s career can often be translated into a stock market graph. Some years you’re up, some you’re down, and some years you’re just treading water, waiting for that next role that makes your stock spike in value.
“Longevity is the key,” says James Cromwell. “You’ve got to deliver when you get asked. But if you keep at it, good things happen.” And a little luck never hurts.
“I’ve been incredibly fortunate,” Cromwell says, “in the films that have picked ME.”
The tall, gangly son of film director John Cromwell (“Since You Went Away”) spent decades in the episodic TV trenches, with recurring roles on “All in the Family” and “Barney Miller” and other shows. His scattered film roles were minor.
Then came “Babe” (1995), when his turn as the playfully taciturn Farmer Hoggett earned him an Oscar nomination and put him on Hollywood’s “must have” supporting player list. By 1997, he was regularly appearing in top flight films, such as his venal, corrupt Irish cop in “L.A. Confidential.” He took recurring roles in TV series from “Six Feet Under” and “24”.
More recently, the Oscar-winning silent comedy “The Artist” (2011) reminded movie folks that Cromwell wasn’t getting older, just more distinguished.
And now, at 73, this actor who “radiates an imperial authority” (New York Times) is earning the best notices of his long career. “Still Mine”, an indie drama about old age, love and resisting authority, has won Canada’s Genie Award. Cromwell plays an elderly farmer who wants to build a single-story house on his own land to spend his final days with his beloved, increasingly infirm wife (Genevieve Bujold). And the local permitting authorities won’t have it. A simple film, it is “elevated by Cromwell into something more weighty, and even existentially profound,” raved New York’s Newsday.
“I’ve always had a crush on Genevieve Bujold,” Cromwell cracks, when asked what drew him to the script. But the truth is, he rarely turns down a role that he’s offered.
“Only over politics, or if there’s nothing to give to the role,” he says. He thought he could fake his way through being a farmer physically capable of building a wood frame house. And he really liked the politics of “Still Mine.”
“Lend authority a little power, and authority will overreach for a lot more power,” Cromwell says. “That’s what this movie is about, and we see this sort of thing happen everywhere. This is a character who doesn’t believe in flouting the law. But when a law’s unjust, that is the thing your conscience commands you to do.”
Cromwell sees his character as “honest, and non-confrontational. Very Canadian. If this film had been made in America, I wonder if at some point this confrontation would have ended in violence. That is the way we seem to resolve things.”
Cromwell’s political bonafides are well-established. His father was on Hollywood’s infamous anti-radical blacklist in the 1950s. In the ’60s, James, who then went by Jamie, toured the South with a political theater company, got involved in Civil Rights, the anti-war movement and support for The Black Panthers. When he gets off topic these days, it’s likely to be for a discourse on the NRA and the Trayvon Martin case, or “assaults on our privacy and civil liberties.”
He became a vegetarian long before “Babe,” “after a long motorcycle ride through stockyards, as far as the eye could see, in Texas back in ’75. It was grotesque, the smell, the noise, all those animals penned up and waiting to die.”
He shares the politics of an old friend, TV producer Norman Lear, who gave him some big breaks in the ’70s, and some advice.
“‘Celebrity,’ Norman taught me, ‘is to spend. If you don’t spend it, it eats a hole in your pocket but also in your soul.’ I walk around with an Academy Award nomination, so I use what little celebrity that I have to support causes that I believe in.” Those include animal rights and anti-death penalty activism.
And the work? It’s spiking again. He’s been cast in the ABC TV series “Betrayal.”
“I’m having a pretty good run, here. I have some productions I’ve been kicking around for years that I might get around to now — a production of ‘King Lear’ that I want to do, on stage, a production of Dalton Trumbo’s ‘Johnny Got His Gun’, and a film I want to direct in Cuba.
“I am getting closer to doing those projects, even at my age, because the work that I’ve done adds up to something to some people.”

(Roger Moore’s review of “Still Mine”)

The Clearwater Aquarium will turn into a movie set again when “Dolphin Tale 2” comes to town, a sequel to the story of the injured/rescued dolphin Winter and how researchers and a craftsman built a replacement tale for one lost in a crab trap.

The new story, according to Warners, will be about Hope, a baby dolphin rescued there.

It looks as if “The Wolverine” will hit the lower end of the high expectations for its opening weekend take at the box office.

A $23 million Friday (and late Thursday) should add up to a $61 million weekend, says Deadline.com.

With projections in the $60-75 million range by prognosticators, that qualifies as more relief than “Break out the champagne.”

No numbers yet on “The To Do List” or smaller scale releases, or where “Conjuring” will turn up on its second weekend ($20 is projected).