WEIRDLAND

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Ashely Greene in "Skateland"

Ashley Greene as Michelle Burkham in "Skateland" (2010).

"Anthony Burns makes his feature film directorial debut with Skateland, which premieres at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival as one of the 16 films which were selected from 1,058 submissions for the U.S. Dramatic competition. Skateland is a coming-of-age story which takes place in the early 1980s in small-town East Texas. Dramatic events force a 19-year-old skating rink manager named Ritchie (played by Deadgirl’s Shiloh Fernandez) to look at his life in a very new way.

Co-writer Brandon Freeman says that Skateland is “a story that resonates – about making choices, finding your way in life, friends, family and change” a story “fueled by an MTV pop appeal, broken and regained relationships, car chases, the always thriving binge drinking backdrop of Anytown, USA, and a cinematic wonder branded by the beauty of the landscape.”

The movie also stars Ashley Greene (Twilight), Heath Freeman, Taylor Handley, AJ Buckley, and Haley Ramm". Source: www.slashfilm.com

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Kristen Stewart: Sundance Indie Queen

"There are some very hot stars heading for the Sundance Film Festival, held in snowy Park City, Utah, which runs from Thursday, Jan. 21 through the end of the month.

"Gossip Girl" hunk Chace Crawford, Katie Holmes, Dakota Fanning, "Mad Men" star John Hamm, Kate Mara, Malin Akerman, Kate Hudson,

Jessica Alba and Julia Robert's niece, Emma Roberts will be making the trek up the slopes to support their indie films.

But "Twilight Saga" star Kristen Stewart has two films at the festival

-- she plays 80's rocker Joan Jett in "The Runaways"

and a troubled stripper in "Welcome to the Riley's" --

Past Indie Queens include Maggie Gyllenhaal, Catherine Keener and Parker Posey, who became mainstream movie stars after doing critically hailed indies.

But in Kristen's case, she's doing it backwards. She's already a big box office star and a major international celebrity, thanks to her "Twilight" role.

Kristen Stewart as Jess in "The Messengers" (2007).

Not terribly surprising are the negative shudders from some snooty Sundance regulars to international celebrity Stewart's inclusion in the fest. Guess they didn't hear about her BAFTA Rising Star nomination.

But Sundance director John Cooper defends his choice to put two of her films in the festival. "She's putting her money where her mouth is ... I think it's great. These are tough parts." Source: www.hitfix.com

Kristen Stewart & Robert Pattinson - Shattered video

Robert Pattinson & Kristen Stewart. Adventureland - Little Ashes - Twilight - New Moon. shattered. Kissing - love. Oppenheimerish.

Marc Webb will be director of Spiderman reboot

"Marc Webb has finalized a deal to helm the new “Spider-Man” movie for Columbia.The studio last week scrapped the fourth installment of the web-slinging hero under director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire and decided to reboot and scale down the franchise.

Marc Webb with Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt during the filming of "500 days of Summer".

Webb became a sought-after director with “(500) Days of Summer,” his comedic romancer for Fox Searchlight starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, earning him praise for the realistic way he portrayed a modern relationship.

Webb, who has options on two sequels, will now tackle a Jamie Vanderbilt script that sees a “Spider-Man” movie that will look and feel very different from the big movies that went before it.

The plan for the movie is to be in the $80 million range and feature a cast of relative unknowns (so you can quash those Rob Pattinson or Gordon-Levitt rumors at this point). And the story will be pared down to center on a high school kid who is dealing with the knowledge that his uncle died even though the teen had the power to stop it.

The touchstone for the new movie will not be the 1960s comics, which were the inspiration behind the movies by Raimi, who grew on up on them, but rather this past decade’s “Ultimate Spider-Man” comics by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley where the villain-fighting took a back seat to the high school angst". Source: riskybusiness.blogs.thr.com

4 Clips from "Howl" (2009)

Premieres at Sundance and stars James Franco, Jon Hamm, David Strathairn, Treat Williams, Mary Louise Parker, Aaron Tveit and Jeff Daniels.

Twilight: the Graphic Novel

"Yen Press will publish Twilight: The Graphic Novel, Vol. 1 on March 16, with a first printing of 350,000 copies. Here’s a first glimpse at the book’s cover, as well as an exclusive peek at one of its panels (for a full ten-page excerpt, and the entire Q&A with Stephenie Meyer, see the issue of EW that goes on sale this Friday).

Stephenie Meyer between Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.

What strikes me, looking at the book, is how faithfully, and how beautifully, artist Young Kim has translated Meyer’s original vision. Kim, who has a fine arts background—in fact, this is her first foray into graphic novels—didn’t just read the book; she absorbed it. Her Bella is the Bella I had in my mind’s eye the first time I read Twilight; her Edward is the Edward I always imagined. It took me back to reading Twilight pre-movie: Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson faded into the background.

Meyer talked to us about all this, and more. Here are a few snippets from our conversation:

-For me, it takes me back to the days when I was writing Twilight. It’s been a while since I was really able to read Twilight; there is so much baggage attached to that book for me now. It seems like all I can see are the mistakes in the writing. Reading Young’s version brought me back to the feeling I had when I was writing and it was just me and the characters again. I love that. I thank her for it.-When this project is done, are you done with Twilight?

-I can’t say that I am done with Twilight forever. I’m not working on anything new Twilight-related now, and probably not for a while. But there’s still a possibility that I’ll go back and close some of the open doors. Source: shelf-life.ew.com

Jake Gyllenhaal with Jerry Bruckheimer attend hockey game

Jake Gyllenhaal and Jerry Bruckheimer attending San Jose Sharks Vs. LA Kings Hockey Game, on 19th January 2010.

-Game-licensed movies are notoriously bad. How are you trying to avoid that outcome?
-Bruckheimer: Well, we took our time developing it. It was over a number of years that we developed it and worked with a number of different writers until we got to a place where we thought we really had a good screenplay, and that is the key. It is telling a good story. I haven't seen a lot of the other video game films, but I think that is the key to our success in our company, is telling you good stories, creating interesting characters, creating the romance, creating the action, having you care about the characters, and putting them in very dramatic situations.It reminds you of a throwback to like Lawrence of Arabia; like an old movie with the supernatural added to it, because it is a really wonderful tale and it takes you full circle. You know, how interesting the story is in itself. It's very satisfying at the end.

-Bruckheimer: And the editor who cut Raiders of the Lost Ark also worked on this film". Source: www.craveonline.com

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: New Deal in HitRECord

"G-tech, by Hitachi, is a company that makes external hard drives, especially catering to creative people, like us. And thanks to them, our final Sundance Screening on January 29th has become hitRECord's first ever money-making production. As you know, when our production company makes money, we share what we make with the contributing artists. So there is now $10,000 up for grabs. If you contribute to one of our collaborations, and we Resource your RECord at the final Sundance Screening on January 29th, you get a share.

In a nutshell: we create and develop art and media collaboratively here on our site; we use my position in the traditional entertainment industry to turn that creativity into money-making productions; and then we share any profits with the contributing artists". Source: hitrecord.org

Sundance 2010 Favorite films

Meet the Artists: Spencer Susser talks about "Hesher"
- Sundance Film Festival 2010.

"Sundance isn’t the market it was 10 years ago (or even five years ago); few buyers have any real money to lavish on acquisitions, and a “bidding war” today might mean a producer strings out a few interested parties overnight for a million-dollar (or less) deal. It could mean a couple cable channels scrapping over a documentary. Or, in more traditional style, it could mean buyersfighting to release the one where Kristen Stewart plays a hooker.

· Blue Valentine
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A couple (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) on the downslope of a marriage attempts to rekindle some of the spark that began their relationship — a period framed in flashbacks.
UPSIDE: That cast! That drama! Gosling’s reunion with his Half Nelson producers and cinematographer implies he’ll turn in something awards-worthy, and Williams’s performance — matched with her own tormented relationship history — will likely be a publicity magnet.
DOWNSIDE: An intense young cast means little if first-time filmmaker Derek Cianfrance can’t harness them into something beyond abject Sundance melodrama.
POTENTIAL BUYERS: Sony Classics, Focus Features, Apparition
HOW MUCH? $3 million.

· Buried
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A civilian contractor (Ryan Reynolds) in Iraq is kidnapped and buried alive, with only a cell phone, a lighter and about 90 minutes to save himself before suffocating.
UPSIDE: Reynolds is coming off a terrific year in high-visibility hits (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Proposal), and come on: Who wouldn’t want a crack at distributing the Ryan Reynolds-trapped-in-a-coffin movie?
DOWNSIDE: In the end, it is just the Ryan Reynolds-trapped-in-a-coffin movie. Despite a cast that also lists Samantha Mathis and Stephen Tobolowski, I’m told that Reynolds is indeed the only one onscreen in the film. Too much Ryan?
POTENTIAL BIDDING WARRIORS: Lionsgate, Magnet, Screen Gems
HOW MUCH? A little north of $1 million, maybe more if Screen Gems — Sony’s genre label, and not generally a huge fest buyer — gets involved.

· The Company Men
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A corporate hot shot (Ben Affleck) and his peers attempt to come to grips with his downsizing.
UPSIDE: In addition to Affleck, first-time feature director John Wells (best known for writing and co-producing a zillion episodes of ER) has Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and Kevin Costner set to deliver the dramatic chops in a story as topical as any at Sundance.
DOWNSIDE: Could be too politically on-the-nose for most buyers, especially if Wells’s small-screen gifts don’t translate to the cinema.
POTENTIAL BUYERS: Summit, Overture, The Weinstein Company
HOW MUCH? $5 million, maybe up to $6 million if the critics buy into it.

· Hesher
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A 13-year-old boy whose mother recently died befriends a batshit anarchist (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Chaos ensues.
UPSIDE: Natalie Portman co-stars. Enough said.
DOWNSIDE: Are audiences ready to buy into Gordon-Levitt as a stringy-haired, sociopathic source of madness?
POTENTIAL BUYERS: Fox Searchlight, Magnolia, Lionsgate
HOW MUCH? Not a penny more than $2.5 million.

· Welcome to the Rileys
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A couple (James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo) mourning the death of their teenage daughter in dramatically different ways attempt to rebuild their lives.
UPSIDE: Jake Scott’s feature directorial debut is all class, with the executive-producer imprimatur of father Ridley Scott and uncle Tony (not to mention Ridley’s collaborator Steven Zaillian) and a cast featuring James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo and Kristen Stewart as a teenaged prostitute in New Orleans. OK, mostly all class.
DOWNSIDE: Could turn out to be this year’s The Greatest, which fizzled at Sundance ‘09 with a similar story line and Big Actor Moments cranked to 11.
POTENTIAL BUYERS: Overture, Fox Searchlight, Lionsgate
HOW MUCH? The bidding starts at $4.5 million.
Source: www.movieline.com

More picks for Sundance Festival 2010:

HOWL

"James Franco stars as beat-poet Allen Ginsberg. Need I say more? A whole lot of buzz on this one folks…

HOLY ROLLERS

Jesse Eisenberg stars as a Hasidic Jew, who goes to work as an ecstasy dealer for a friend with ties to an Israeli drug cartel. Eisenberg starred in two of my favorite films last year, ADVENTURELAND, and ZOMBIELAND, so it’ll be interesting to see how he follows them up. He tends to pick good projects, so this could be a real winner.

SYMPATHY FOR DELICIOUS

Actor Mark Ruffalo makes his directorial debut with this film about a newly paralyzed DJ, who enters into the world of faith healing. Orlando Bloom co-stars.

THE RUNAWAYS

K-Stew’s other big Sundance film, in this one; she plays a circa-1975 Joan Jett, during her formative years with The Runaways. Dakota Fanning plays the band’s lead vocalist, Cherie Currie. While I think Fanning’s too young to play Currie, who was sixteen when she joined the band (Fanning was 14 when this was filmed), I’m nonetheless really looking forward to this one, as I’m a sucker for music biopics.

SPLICE

Vincenzo Natali, director of CUBE, returns with this, the tale of two scientists (Adrien Brody, and Sarah Polley), who mischievously splice the DNA strands of several animals to create a new creature- which I’m sure will run amuck at some point.

THE KILLER INSIDE ME

My most anticipated film of the festival; this stars Casey Affleck as a psychotic sheriff’s deputy, opposite Jessica Alba (as a prostitute), and Kate Hudson. It’s based on a classic piece of pulp fiction by Jim Thompson, and with Michael Winterbottom directing, who previously helmed 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, A MIGHTY HEART, and the awesome TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY, this could be one of the major films of the year". Source: www.joblo.com

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Adventureland & Zombieland video

A musical video featuring some scenes from "Adventureland" (starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart) and "Zombieland", with Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Amber Heard.

Songs "36-24-36" ("I know this summer's gonna be the best if I don't die from lack of rest, Experience what my daddy said, That's what I got just like he said") by The Violent Femmes and "The hardest walk" ("It's so hard not to feel ashamed of the loving living games we play") by The Jesus & Mary Chain.