WEIRDLAND

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Jake Gyllenhaal out from "Now you see me", Jesse Eisenberg still in

Jake Gyllenhaal having lunch with Rashida Jones at Cafe Gratitude in LA on 4th September 20011

Melanie Laurent Confirmed For ‘Now You See Me’; Jake Gyllenhaal Out, Jesse Eisenberg Stays In

"While the currently-filming sequel was given to other hands, Leterrier hasn’t been bowed, and his next film is shaping up to be his most promising to date by far. The French director is gearing up to direct “Now You See Me” a heist thriller about the face-off between an FBI team and a group of world-famous illusionists who pull heists during their act, and an impressive set of names were said to be circling the project, including Jesse Eisenberg, Jake Gyllenhaal, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Olivia Wilde. There’s good news and bad news today, with some of the previous names being locked in, while at least one has moved on to new pastures.

Melanie Laurent at the premiere of the new film "Beginners", held at the MK2 Bibliotheque in Paris.

Variety report that “Inglourious Basterds” star Melanie Laurent, last seen being typically luminous in Mike Mills’ wonderful “Beginners,” is in firm negotations to play the female lead in the film, which, after her terrific turn in Tarantino’s film, can only be a good thing. Laurent will join the increasingly, and deservingly, busy Eisenberg, who’s now locked in to the project, but the trade reports that Gyllenhaal has passed on the project. There’s no word on whether Hoffman and Wilde are still involved—neither have taken other projects recently, so it’s possible they’re still in talks.

Jesse Eisenberg, photoshoot by Martin Schoeller

Still, Eisenberg and Laurent alone would have our interest: both are relatively picky in their roles, which suggests that the script, by Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt, is strong. “Star Trek” writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are producing and Summit will release the film.

Ben Stiller and Jesse Eisenberg attending the "30 Minutes or Less" World Premiere

There’s no exact word on when filming will start, but it’ll presumably come some time after Eisenberg wraps Woody Allen‘s currently-filming “Bop Decameron,” so perhaps we’ll see it in theaters in late 2012 or early 2013". Source: blogs.indiewire.com

Friday, September 02, 2011

Jake Gyllenhaal caught attending to the french thriller Point Black

Jake Gyllenhaal leaving El Cid Restaurant in Los Angeles on 31st August 2011


Jake Gyllenhaal caught an early movie with a group of male and female friends at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood. According to the onlooker, the newly shorn actor was trying to look incognito at the theater. His movie of choice? The French thriller Point Blank. Source: www.people.com

Thursday, September 01, 2011

Kristen Stewart in Marcus Foster clip, stills of Eclipse and Water for Elephants

Stills of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as Bella and Edward in Twilight saga "Eclipse" (2011)

Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon as Jacob and Marlena Rosenbluth in Water for Elephants (2011)

Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett in "The Runaways" (2010)


MSN exclusive Marcus Foster video featuring Kristen Stewart
Check out the video for Marcus Foster's new single, I Was Broken, which features a cameo appearance by Twilight actress Kristen Stewart...

London-born singer-songwriter Marcus Foster is set to release his debut album, Nameless Path, on September 26.

The 24 year-old first came to many people's attention when his song Let Me Sign, sung by his old schoolfriend Robert Pattinson, appeared on the Twilight soundtrack.

Presumably this is how Pattinson's co-star Kristen Stewart, who makes a cameo appearance in the video for latest single I Was Broken, became both a friend and a fan.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Audrey Totter, Joan Bennett, Barbara Stanwyck, etc: a femme fatale controls her destiny


Movie Tension (1949) directed by John Berry, starred by Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter and Cyd Charisse
Richard Basehart and Cyd Charisse during the filming of Tension

"Audrey Totter, playing one of the meanest women the movies have ever seen this side of Claire Trevor's entire canon of work, is a riot, slithering into frame with the same trashy trumpet squawk accompanying her on the soundtrack. After she leaves her pharmacist husband for another man, the country's new contact lens craze gives the pussy-whipped David (Richard Basehart) the idea to create an alter ego in order to kill his wife Claire's (Audrey Totter) lover. The actress gives grotesque face, most hilariously during a David-versus-Goliath standoff at the beach that has Claire yelling out "You know how I want it" to her meathead boyfriend". Source: www.slantmagazine.com

"Adapted from Renoir’s La Chienne (once again, the European influence at work), the film observes a masochistic weakling who falls prey to the machinations of a particularly slovenly specimen of femme fatale, of a strain that would make Double Indemnity’s Phyllis Dietrichson seem downright genteel by comparison. Indeed, Bennett’s Kitty March — nicknamed ‘Lazy Legs’ by the smarmy, abusive pimp she dotes upon — had the dubious distinction of being the most graceless, classless and altogether vulgar piece of cheap fluff ever to make an appearance in high-grade film noir (due in no small part to the influence of Scarlet Street, she wouldn’t be the last.)
Lolling about her filthy walk-up in a tacky negligee, scattering candy wrappers and cigarette butts on the floor while waiting for her worthless boyfriend to materialize for rough sex and even rougher treatment, Lazy Legs is indolent to the point of inactivity; lack of ambition would be her most salient characteristic if not for her total lack of sensitivity or scruple. Stretching her whisky-soaked alto into a slatternly drawl, Bennett embellished the role with subversive flashes of humor; seductive and repellent at the same time, Lazy Legs is all the more alluring for her lack of any appealing trait beyond her beauty". Source: eddieonfilm.blogspot.com

Ivonne de Carlo and Dan Duryea as Anna and Slim Dundee in "Criss Cross" (1949) directed by Robert Siodmak

Duryea created a unique type of screen villainy. Richard Widmark and Lee Marvin became bigger stars playing similar roles, but not even they could replace Duryea in a film. He was a weird blend of weakness and menace, sex and slime, evil and smiles. This is all the more remarkable since in real life he was just Dan Duryea, husband and father. A charming man.

When asked who was one of his favorite actresses to work with, he replied: “Joan Bennett … she was a true professional and so easy to work with in the two films we made with Eddie Robinson: The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street … and I found her very attractive and before you ask, Hedda, no, I did not have an ‘affair’ with her or any other of my co-stars … for one very good reason: I was very happily married and never broke my vows.”
Lang called Duryea “one of the best actors” he ever directed, in his press release of The Woman in the Window. Source: www.classicimages.com


Classic Femme Fatale A tribute to the femme fatale in classic films.

Ann Savage in "Detour" (1945)

Jean Gillie in "Decoy" (1946)

"In the restless middle of the 20th century, the femme fatale, the dark queen of film noir, jolted the silver screen with an electric sexuality and lethal cunning it had never seen before. She smoldered, she coveted, she hated, she schemed and, above all, she manipulated the men in her life — alternately offering and withholding the promise of love and a mind-blowing screw, playing the poor saps like puppets as the moment required.
Jane Greer plays Kathie Moffat in Out of the Past (1947) directed by Jacques Tourneur

Along the way, she provided a group of gifted, intrepid Hollywood actresses a chance to shine in a way few of their rivals ever did or could, which is to say darkly: Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944), Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947) — unforgettable performances all, in every case a career zenith.

Marilyn Maxwell
Bette Davis
Ann Dvorak
Lana Turner
Gene Tierney
Audrey Totter
Peggy Cummins
Martha Vickers
Linda Darnell
Ivonne de Carlo
Jan Sterling
Irene Manning
Veronica Lake
Lizabeth Scott

"It was Stanwyck who scored the series’ first major triumph. (Mary Astor claimed the territory first, as the poisonous Brigid O’Shaughnessy in 1941’s The Maltese Falcon, but lacked the requisite sex appeal and, perhaps in consequence, enough screen time to make a lasting impression.) Stanwyck’s smoky-voiced Phyllis Dietrichson greets Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), an insurance salesman who fancies himself a fast talker, wearing what Neff calls “a honey of an anklet,” her shapely leg strategically outstretched for its display. Before he knows it — and he knows so little, until it’s too late — he’s her slave:
Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray as Phyllis Dietrichson and Walter Neff in "Double Indemnity" (1944) directed by Billy Wilder

"We’re both rotten", Phyllis tells Walter. “Only you’re a little more rotten,” he shoots back, but she has made her point. For all her lying, the femme fatale was a truth-teller, a bad woman whose real crime was to introduce a man to his own innate badness.

And then she was gone. By the early 1950s, the femme fatale all but disappeared from the big screen, displaced by the politely swooning housewives of Douglas Sirk and, later, empowered ass-kickers like Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde. And although the femme fatale occasionally flickered to life in the decades to come — in homages like 1981’s Body Heat (with Kathleen Turner in a scintillating big-screen debut) and 1994’s The Last Seduction (with Linda Fiorentino), sensationalist hybrids like 1992’s Basic Instinct (with Sharon Stone), genre spoofs like 1993’s Fatal Beauty (with Sean Young) and the rare fresh take on the archetype (1995’s To Die For, with Nicole Kidman) — she was essentially dead.
But for every argument against the femme fatale as politically retrograde, there’s a counterargument for her as protofeminist forerunner. The femme fatale isn’t passive, waiting for her life to improve on its own. Instead she takes the initiative, attacking the problem with nerve, drive and intelligence. Yes, she uses cat’s-paws, rather than her own paws, to accomplish her goals. But whose fingerprints do you want on the smoking gun, yours or someone else’s? Yes, she uses her sexual power over a man to get what she wants, but power is power. She is the actor, he the acted upon. It’s she who controls her destiny, for better or worse". Source: www.obit-mag.com