Producer Mike Kaplan’s Collection Of Vintage Movie Posters Goes On Exhibit.

Posted on December 2, 2011 by jlmicek

And there’s some corkers, including this terrific French poster for Audrey Hepburn in “Funny Face.”

You can view the full slideshow here.

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Full John Carter Trailer Hits The Web.

Posted on December 1, 2011 by jlmicek

Here’s the full trailer for Disney’s upcoming adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom” stories — “John Carter.”

Comic nerds will remember the 1970s Marvel series “John Carter, Warlord of Mars,” which relied on the same source material.

Posted in Film News, Sci-Fi, Spoiler-itis, Superhero Cinema, Trailer Trash | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Another Reason You’ll Miss Daniel Craig As James Bond.

Posted on December 1, 2011 by jlmicek

Thank you, Daniel Craig.

The steely eyed actor has branded the Kardashian family “f***king idiots” and has ripped a colorful (if entirely accurate) new one in the reality TV biz.

“‘It’s not about being afraid to be public with your emotions or about who you are and what you stand for. But if you sell it off it’s gone,” Craig says in an interview that will appear in the January edition of men’s mag GQ. “You can’t buy it back – you can’t buy your privacy back. Ooh I want to be alone. F*** you. We’ve been in your living room. We were at your birth. You filmed it for us and showed us the placenta and now you want some privacy?”

Craig stars in the 23rd installment of the James Bond franchise “Skyfall,” directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty). It’s said to be his last turn as 007. Too bad.

Read the full story here.

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Actress Alice Eve Cast In “Star Trek 2.”

Posted on December 1, 2011 by jlmicek

Beam her up.  Alice Eve is headed for the starship Enterprise.

The “She’s Out of My League” star has apparently beat out Hayley Atwell (Captain America) for a part in J.J. Abrams’ sequel to the long-running space opera.

Airlock Alpha has the story:

“It’s not clear exactly what role Eve will play in the film, which goes before cameras in January, but she brings a pretty solid acting resume with her to the table.

The British model and actress is probably best known for her role as Sophia in the HBO series “Entourage” in a four-episode span earlier this year. However, she also appeared in the 2010 romantic comedy “She’s Out of My League,” which starred Jay Baruchel, T.J. Miller and Mike Vogel as well as “Sex and the City 2.”

However, she is picking up more high-profile projects that have not come out yet. She wrapped the role of Emily in the John Cusack-starring film “The Raven,” based on the life of Edgar Allen Poe. Eve also played a younger version of Agent Oh in “Men In Black III,” both of which are scheduled to be released next year.”

Read the full story here.

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Carey Mulligan: “On the surface she is a sweet girl, but let me tell you, she is a freakin’ tiger with claws.”

Posted on November 30, 2011 by jlmicek

Actress Carey Mulligan opens up to The Daily Beast’s Lorenza Munoz about her turn in director Steve McQueen’s “Shame” opposite Michael Fassbender and how playing “Nina” in Chekhov’s “The Seagull” helped her prepare for the role:

“For a couple of years after playing Nina in Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull, Mulligan did not feel moved by the scripts she was sent. She was searching to reconnect with Nina, the aspiring and vulnerable actress in the classic play about art, love, and death. Mulligan says she found a contemporary version of Nina in Sissy. Like Nina, Sissy is desperate to make a human connection and find feeling in her life. And perhaps like Nina, she will endure.

“There was nothing like the feeling of playing Nina on the stage,” she said. “I felt like Sissy and Nina were related.”

And so she tracked down McQueen and practically forced him to hire her when they met in a hotel lobby in central London.

“I wanted to leave, and she wanted me to stay,” he said, admitting that Mulligan seemed “an odd choice” for the part. “She wanted the role quite desperately, and it reminded me of Sissy, so I offered her the role on the spot.”

Read the full story here.

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Hedy Lamarr Invented The Cell Phone. You’re Welcome.

Posted on November 30, 2011 by jlmicek

Actress Hedy Lamarr (Salon Photo)

In Addition To Being …

… one of Hollywood’s classic sirens, actress Hedy Lamarr was also crazy smart.

How smart? Smart enough to develop the tech allowing you to send mobile photos of dancing cats, cute babies and dumb skater guys faceplanting on concrete to your friends. She also came up with the tech supporting the device that allows you to to send incredibly inappropriate text messages and to check sports scores when you really should be talking to your wife at dinner.

You can thank her now.

Writing in Salon, Laura Miller takes up the tale of how Lamarr and avant-garde composer George Antheil invented the process by which remote-controlled torpedoes could evade signal-jamming attempts by the enemy. The process, which was critical to the WWII war effort by the Allies, was patented and is now essential to the wireless and cellular communications now used by everyone and their dog.

Here’s the nut graf:

“The Navy buried the patent for various complex reasons, but Lamarr and Antheil’s invention was eventually dusted off and employed in a variety of military and civilian communications systems during the 1950s and onward. (If you use Bluetooth devices, you use frequency hopping.) For a while, the actress and the composer had more or less forgotten the patent, which expired in 1959. Later, Lamarr would occasionally complain to the press, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that she found a champion in Dave Hughes, a longtime member of the online community the Well (now owned by Salon). He brought her achievement to wider awareness and, in 1997, she received a Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.”

 

Posted in Books On Film, Film News, Golden Age of Cinema, Screen Sirens, Thinking About Movies | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

How To Tell If You’re Having Your Moment, Zooey Deschanel.

Posted on November 30, 2011 by jlmicek

In a story posted to its website, two scribes at men’s mag GQ argue the case for and against Zooey Deschanel, who’s having something of a moment right now with her Fox sitcom “The New Girl,” not to mention her “She & Him” LPs with M.Ward. It’s odd to see an actress who’s basically a distillation of Mary Tyler Moore’s more endearing quirks get dissected this thoroughly. But we need something to get us through the slow news cycles.

Here’s the nut graf, pro:

“Talent and ambition are terribly attractive in a girl, and damn it if Zooey doesn’t try hard to be dynamic. Also, I don’t buy this idea that, because she wears sundresses and bangs, Zooey’s somehow a male-fantasy fetish object. You might swear by Derrida and Bikini Kill, but that doesn’t mean all third-wave feminists must do the same.”

And here’s the argument against:

“Hey girl. It’s me, Sean. Exhale. I’m not here to hurt you or objectify you. Or feed you a hamburger on a sesame seed bun. I wanted you to know, you seem cool. Not like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype you’ve been saddled with. You know how I know? I saw you pre-500 Days of Summer. You remember? Back when you were being all mercurial and unknowable in All the Real Girls. I saw you doing your damndest to appear slightly goth and strung out in The Good Girl, too.”

Read the full story here.

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Film Freaks Launch Effort To Save “Living Dead” Cemetery Chapel.

Posted on November 29, 2011 by jlmicek

Horror buff Gary Streiner (Photo by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Here’s a cool story from my own state of Pennsylvania about an effort to save a cemetery chapel that featured in George Romero’s legendary 1968 zombie flick “Night of the Living Dead.”

It’s spearheaded by a guy named Gary Streiner, who was just 17 when he lent a hand on the cult classic. He’s got a year to raise the $50,000 it’ll take to save the decaying chapel in the Evans City Cemetery in Butler County, which is all the way out near the Ohio state line in southwestern Pennsylvania.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, here’s the key part of the story:

“The effort has drawn nearly 2,000 people to a Facebook page, where they share and execute fundraising projects including T-shirt and poster sales, customized zombie portraits and sales of pieces of the decaying chapel roof. About two months into the campaign, they’ve raised nearly $7,000.

“People just want to be a part of this,” said Mr. Streiner. “It’s cinematic history.”

Ron Volz, president of the cemetery association, said board members wish Mr. Streiner luck but said that if the effort falls short they will have no choice but to tear down the chapel. He acknowledged its iconic cinematic status, noting the chapel is the last remaining building featured in the zombie classic.

“We have people in town who want to keep it, but we need the money to restore it. He’s come up with great ideas to raise money but 50 grand is going to be tough to raise, I think,” Mr. Volz said. “But if he gets zombies from all over the United States to contribute … he can raise it. It will be a great improvement over what’s standing there now.”

Read the full story here.

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Moore. Roger Moore.

Posted on November 29, 2011 by jlmicek

Roger Moore as James Bond.

The Guardian Has A Great Interview …
… with former “James Bond” actor Roger Moore. The newspaper finds the 84-year-old thespian in fine fettle. And he remains as dryly funny as he was when he had a license to kill in the 1970s and 1980s. Moore’s last turn as 007 was in 1985’s “A View to a Kill,” which is chiefly memorable for its Duran Duran-penned theme song and precious little else.

Here’s my favorite exchange:


“Q: What got you started?
A: A toga. I’d lost regular employment as a cartoon animator, so some friends who were doing crowd work on films told me to come and join them on a film called Caesar and Cleopatra. I was dressed up in a toga, given a spear and gold sandals, and stood with 2,000 others. Later, the director approached me, and asked whether I would consider training to be an actor.”

Read the full interview here.

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New Tom Cruise Movie Filming In Pittsburgh And A Look At Pennsylvania’s Film Tax Credit.

Posted on November 29, 2011 by jlmicek

Denzel Washington In A Scene From "Unstoppable."

From On Location Vacations:

“Filming in Pennsylvania: “One Shot,” starring Tom Cruise, is filming in Pittsburgh.”

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, and you’ve clicked on the “So You’re Probably Wondering” link on the top of this page, then you know I cover state government and politics for a major Pennsylvania newspaper.

Few topics in state government in recent years have been as polarizing as a $75 million tax credit program for the film industry passed under the administration of former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell. The program was funded at $60 million in the fiscal 2011-2012 budget under new Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.

Small government conservatives have piled on the program, arguing that it’s a waste of taxpayer money and doesn’t drive economic development. Rendell also took flak because of a lobbying effort by Lions Gate to get the credit.

One thing that seems inarguable, however, is that the state has become a destination for filmmakers. This summer, director Christopher Nolan shot portions of “The Dark Knight Rises” in The Steel City. The Denzel Washington-starring “Unstoppable” was also partially filmed in the state.

Over the weekend, the Patriot-News newspaper of Harrisburg took a look at Pennsylvania’s emerging film industry. Here’s the nut graf:

“‘Unstoppable’ needed rails and rural train locations, and Pennsylvania is perfect for that,” said Steven Kratz, press secretary for the state Department of Community and Economic Development, which includes the Pennsylvania Film Office.
The return on that investment for Pennsylvania has been $800 million in direct investments by production companies and about $1.2 billion in total economic impact, according to Kratz.
When film productions come to the Keystone State, they bring actors, technicians and specialists who need hotel rooms, rental vehicles, restaurant meals and groceries.
The production companies hire local people as extras, rent equipment and pay to use sites where they plan to film.
“It definitely has a positive economic impact,” Kratz said.
”

Read the full story here.

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