Paul Newman was working on and planning to cameo in “Lucky Them,” a romantic dramedy about a female journalist in pursuit of a reclusive musician who happens to be an ex-boyfriend.
Toni Collette has signed on to star in the long-gestating film, with Thomas Haden Church as the missing rocker. Oliver Platt is also on board. Joanne Woodward is keeping the Newman hand in it by taking a producer credit.
Deadline.com says that Megan Griffiths (they left out her first name) is now set to direct it.
Zombies, zombies everywhere – from TV (“The Walking Dead”) to the big screen (“World War Z”), from bookshelves filled with zombie survival guides, to the Internet (zombiesurvivivalwiki.com), trickling down to parades (“zombie walks”) and theme parties from coast to coast.
Are these warning signs that America is headed for its own zombie apocalypse?
“Well, I don’t want to come out and say these things are turning us into a nation of zombies,” says Jonathan Levine, director of the film of Isaac Marion’s teen zombie in love novel, “Warm Bodies.”
“Have you ever played ‘Words with Friends?’” giggles Analeigh Tipton, one of the stars of “Warm Bodies,” which opens Friday.
Let’s see, cell-phone addicts mindlessly staring down into a phone, missing the life that’s passing us by? Maybe that’s a sign.
“It’s no secret that texting and Twitter and Facebook have become obsessions of social interaction among young people,” says Tipton, 24, who plays a human who becomes sympathetic to zombies in “Warm Bodies.” The movie suggests that a little love, or lust, gets the old heart pumping and who knows how much that will humanize the Walking/Living Dead? “Everybody is craving some commentary that calls that sort of behavior zombie-like. This movie doesn’t call people idiots for doing that. But the commentary is there. Staring at the ground like your head is buried in a phone call. That’s kind of zombie-like.”
Levine says that “the central allegory in Isaac’s book, really resonated with me. Are people really living in the moment, being the best version of themselves they can be, or are they bored and drifting around?”
The story’s other big allegory is that being an awkward teen, unable to communicate with the opposite sex, is a bit like being a zombie.
“It’s not technology that’s making us zombies,” says Tipton, the skater turned model/actress (“Crazy Stupid Love”). “But it is a sign of how we’re relating to each other. Like zombies, we can’t talk to somebody or pick up their social signals.”
“Conversation’s always tricky,” Levine adds. Zombies typically just moan. “That takes a bit of pressure off, though, on a date. You don’t have to talk because you CAN’T.”
“And there’s always the body parts and maybe leftover brains around the house,” adds Tipton. “That can be a real relationship=-killer.”
Levine is best known for the dramedies “The Wackness” and “50/50.” For “Warm Bodies, “I had to go to ‘Zombie Camp.’ That meant watching every George A. Romero (The “Living Dead” movies, font of all big screen zombie lore) film.
“Our movie breaks a lot of his ‘zombie rules,’ Levine says. Zombies can move pretty fast when they’re attacking in his film. And they might be redeemable as human beings.
“But watching Romero’s films, I realized that he was constantly pushing the tropes of his own zombie mythology in new directions. There was already a precedent for others changing those rules, in films like ’28 Days Later,’ Zack Snyder’s ‘Dawn of the Dead.’ It’s not dogmatic about the rules.”
Levine, an American Film Institute alumnus, also got to finally – at 36 – get a “rite of passage for student filmmakers” on his resume. They all do a zombie movie, usually as students.
“It’s fun to dress up and act that way. And if you’re smart, there is an underlying social commentary about the genre. When you’re a zombie, you’re playing a heightened BORED version of your real self.”
Silence is golden in this year’s collection of Oscar nominated animated short films, packaged together for limited theatrical release so that we can all see them before Oscar night.
Five different films, none with a word of dialogue, showcase a wide range of animated styles in demonstrating the endless possibilities of the medium.
You may have seen Disney’s “Paperman,” a black and white (with touches of red) romance between an office drone and a girl he almost meets on the train. It was attached to “Wreck-It Ralph,” and it plays like the Oscar favorite – polished, sweet, funny and darned near perfect. Our hero empties his office of documents, flinging paper airplanes out the window in an effort to attract the attention of a woman he’s never spoken to in an adjoining hi-rise office building.
The movie’s signature, unforgettable image? A tornado of paper airplanes swirling, almost in conspiracy, to give him a hand in chasing down the fair lady.
But if “Paperman” plays like a favorite, the wondrous anime-styled “Adam and Dog” will have any fan of dogs and animation pulling for it. Disney veteran Minkyu Lee’s film is a Garden of Eden account of how Dog discovers Man, Man discovers Dog, and Man ditches Dog when Woman shows up. It’s a lovely parable, touching in the ways it builds the Origin Myth of how people and dogs got together.
Timothy Reckart’s almost-as-touching “Head Over Heel” is another parable, this one a stop-motion clay animated story of a long-married couple who live upside down from each other in a house that aimlessly floats — him on the floor, her living on the ceiling, lovers no longer connecting – until the day he finds her old ballet slippers. Events are set in motion to bring them together again. A little slow, but beautifully detailed and heartfelt.
You saw “The Longest Daycare” attached to and utterly outclassing the latest “Ice Age” cartoon. It’s a Maggie Simpson short, a politically-barbed “Simpsons” story of Maggie’s first day at the Ayn Rand School for Tots. She is condemned to the “Nothing Special” wing of the school, but finds inventive purpose in defending a caterpillar ready to turn into a butterfly from her creepy kid nemesis. The opera “I Pagliacci” and the D-Day movie “The Longest Day” are parodied.
And the stop-motion animated “Fresh Guacamole,” by PES, inventively treats grenades as avocados, baseballs as stuffed with dice and lightbulbs as low-hanging fruit that can be mashed up and served with poker chips as the green goodness of guacamole. Cute.
MPAA Rating: unrated, with some adult moments
Directed by Timothy Reckart, PES, David Silverman, Minkyu Lee, John Kahrs
A Magnolia release.
Running time:1:28
The robbers work with a confident, brutal and bracing efficiency. And the same could be said of their director. Ben Affleck’s “The Town” is the work of a filmmaker with an eye for faces, an ear for dialect and a light hand on the editor’s shoulder. It’s the best heist picture since “Heat,” and it confirms that Affleck, who co-wrote the adaptation of a Chuck Hogan novel, is no “Gone Baby Gone” fluke.
Set in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood, “The Town” is about a profession that has consumed generations there — bank robbery. Doug (Affleck) picked it up from his dad, who’s in prison for life. His pal Jem (the terrific Jeremy Renner from ‘The Hurt Locker’) was born into the biz, too. Their crew knocks over the occasional armored car or bank. Not too often, mind you. They don’t need the cash, or the hassle of the FBI getting close to them.
They splash bottles of bleach all over crime scenes, sweep up hair from barber shops to leave in their stolen getaway vans — which they then torch. DNA evidence? It’ll be the wrong DNA. They’re not geniuses. They’re just drawing on generations of experience.
But one robbery puts Claire (Rebecca Hall of “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) in their way. She’s pretty, which Doug notices through his disguise. She’s local, which he picks up on. She works for the bank and tripped the alarm, which he hides from the others. And when they kidnap and blindfold her, he’s the one who whispers, “No one’s going to hurt you.”
The Feds, led by an intense Jon Hamm of “Mad Men,” can’t get much out of her. But Jem, a two-time loser, isn’t in the mood to take chances. Doug isn’t hearing it.
“She’s already scared,” he says.
“Maybe not scared enough,” Jem spits back.
Thus, an unlikely, far-fetched “relationship” begins — the still traumatized Claire, who has no clue that this charming working class Joe she met in a laundromat had once held a gun on her, and the good-hearted bank robber who has this great big lie hanging over his hopes for the woman of his dreams.
As unlikely as all this seems, Affleck makes it work. Though he can’t resist the occasional personal confession delivered with the far-away eyes of a soliloquy, the romance’s bizarre nature never takes center stage. This is a movie about a milieu and the hard people who inhabit it.
Renner brings a Cagney-like short-guy/chip-on–his-shoulder intensity to Jem. Blake Lively plays Jem’s too-hot/too-stoned younger sister. And the great Pete Postlethwaite is the “florist” who sets up these robberies, and has for decades. Guys with thick Boston accents break down the code which these men live by — “Did his time like a man.”
And the robberies, from the opener to the “one last job” that heist pictures have lived off of for decades, are as fast and furious as the real thing. This crew arms itself and gears up, but this isn’t “Takers,” with its over-the-top “How can you turn a profit spending that much on a caper?”
Best of all is the movie’s sure sense of place, as Affleck shoots chases through the narrow streets and tentative, romantic dates in the distinct, off-the-tourist track corners of the city.
He’s directed and starred in a thoroughly involving, perfectly entertaining thriller, and one that celebrates the rough edges of his “Town” without polishing them off.
Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner, Pete Postlethwaite, Blake Lively
Director: Ben Affleck
Running time: 2 hours
Industry rating: R for strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality and drug use.
“This girl is in trouble,” Renee Zellweger’s character declares in “Case 39,” her first horror movie in 16 years. “I can FEEL it.”
As can we all. Zellweger, at 41 is not really someone we’d call “girl” anymore. But she seems to be in trouble herself. Her career is, for all intents and purposes, in full regression with this generic supernatural thriller. A fine actress with an Academy Award, you’d think she would be far removed from playing a social worker trying to figure out if this creepy kid she’s saved from abusive parents was the one who needed saving.
“Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny…”
And at about this point the gnome reciting the prologue to “Romeo and Juliet” is yanked off stage by a big Bugs Bunny hook. For this is no epic tale of woe, this romance of Juliet and her Gnomeo. Even if “the story you are about to see has been told before. A lot.” You’ve never seen it told like this.
“Gnomeo & Juliet” is a daft and generally deft British animated re-telling of the star-crossed romance set in adjacent English backyard gardens and set to the music of Elton John (he and his Rocket Films produced it). And if it’s not an unerringly faithful adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, it still manages enough wit and charm to come off.
They’re young, they’re darned attractive, and their hands glow an eerie neon blue when they’re in trouble. And they’re in trouble a lot, because they’re being hunted.
They have superhuman strength, great hair and lips and wardrobes to die for.
And in “I Am Number Four,” they’re not vampires. Thank heavens.
The “Emperor’s New Clothes” con job of modern art takes one right on the kisser in “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” a little guerrilla style filmmaking about guerrilla graffiti artists and their status as darlings of the art world.
In Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., anxious parents and kids who share their anxiety gather.
They draw numbers, sit in a crowded gym, cross their fingers and hope for the best.
What they’re hoping for is a chance at a future. They’re participating in a lottery, which is how kids are selected for for the nation’s prized charter schools, which out-perform entrenched public schools. No matter how poor you are, how disadvantaged your neighborhood, if you child lands a coveted charter slot, it’s good-bye to the “failure factory” that many American public schools have become.
That lottery scene is the climax to Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman,” a heavily-hyped new expose of America’s failing schools from the director of “An Inconvenient Truth.” It was also the heart of “The Lottery,” which beat “Superman” into film festivals and theaters. The documentaries share ideas and even interview subjects. It’s the “Superman” hype that has teacher’s unions up in arms over “Waiting for Superman’s” “unions are the problem” message.
The actual box office figures from last weekend pushed “Hansel & Gretel” very close to its predicted $20 million take for the weekend, up from earlier notes that suggested it wouldn’t clear $18.
“Mama” held almost 50% of its audience to come in second at over $13.
“Silver Linings Playbook” and the much longer “Zero Dark Thirty” are battling for third and fourth place, and nudging each other upward — “Linings” is at $69 overall, “Zero Dark” $70.
“Parker” did an unimpressive $7 million plus.
“Movie 43” when all the coins were counted fell short of even its $5 million announced take Sunday night — well under $5, as it turns out.
“Django Unchained” will top out just over $160 million, Tarantino’s biggest hit.
“Les Miserables” will finish around $150, unless it gets an Oscar bounce. “Lincoln,” closing in on $175, will be the biggest hit among this year’s Oscar nominees. “Life of Pi” cleared $100 million last weekend.
“The Last Stand” lost most of its audience after a weak opening weekend.
“Skyfall” cleared $300 million, US, and “Jack Reacher” managed a respectable near $80 million, not nearly enough for us to say Tom Cruise has a new franchise on his hands.
