In February, a clip went viral of Steven Spielberg telling Tom Cruise at an Oscars luncheon that he “saved Hollywood’s ass.” Spielberg was referring to the explosive success of Cruise’s return to the pilot seat in “Top Gun: Maverick.” Released in May 2022, the long-awaited sequel was the top earner at the domestic box office last year, raking in over $700 million in the United States. It was the shot in the arm that cinemas needed after the pandemic, and proof positive of Cruise’s enduring appeal as both a marquee movie star and skilled actor — two bona fides not always packaged together so successfully.
Cruise has been leveraging looks and charm, and flexing his blockbuster muscles, for decades. Going all the way back to the early 1980s, his appeal never seems to age, even at 61 years old. He’s skillfully shepherded original movies as a star and producer, never...
Cruise has been leveraging looks and charm, and flexing his blockbuster muscles, for decades. Going all the way back to the early 1980s, his appeal never seems to age, even at 61 years old. He’s skillfully shepherded original movies as a star and producer, never...
- 7/11/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio, Christian Zilko and Wilson Chapman
- Indiewire
Mixing comedy and drama while making a political point is a tough nut to crack. As much as people like Adam McKay and Aaron Sorkin are good at making you angry and making you laugh in equal measure, there’s always folks who will take them to task for that approach. Moreover, there’s tons of storytellers out there who just can’t pull it off. Unfortunately, actor and director Edward James Olmos, along with his writer Robert McEveety, are the latest to join that latter group, with the film The Devil Has a Name. Despite noble ambitions and a solid cast, this is a misfire. The movie is a dramedy, pitting an oil company against a farmer, with wide ranging consequences. When Gigi (Kate Bosworth) is pulled in front of her bosses to find out just what the hell happened, she tells the story of a battle with Fred Stern...
- 10/17/2020
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
Resting on laurels is for suckers.
It’s been four excruciatingly long years since The World’s End, the last film from Edgar Wright, which in Edgar-Wright-fan years is like a century. He was set up to direct Ant-Man, but we all know how that turned out. And while you might think Wright spent some of his time post-Marvel licking that particular wound, you’d be wrong, because Edgar Wright knows that living well is the best revenge, so in the last few years he’s been busy gearing up for not one but two films. Immediately after Ant-Man Wright started developing Baby Driver, which is at long last completed, set for a June 28 release, and so far is garnering the best reviews of the director’s career. At the same time he was starting Baby Driver back in 2014, though, there was another project the director was kicking around, an adaptation of the novel Grasshopper Jungle, and...
It’s been four excruciatingly long years since The World’s End, the last film from Edgar Wright, which in Edgar-Wright-fan years is like a century. He was set up to direct Ant-Man, but we all know how that turned out. And while you might think Wright spent some of his time post-Marvel licking that particular wound, you’d be wrong, because Edgar Wright knows that living well is the best revenge, so in the last few years he’s been busy gearing up for not one but two films. Immediately after Ant-Man Wright started developing Baby Driver, which is at long last completed, set for a June 28 release, and so far is garnering the best reviews of the director’s career. At the same time he was starting Baby Driver back in 2014, though, there was another project the director was kicking around, an adaptation of the novel Grasshopper Jungle, and...
- 4/13/2017
- by H. Perry Horton
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Robert De Niro made his directorial debut with 1993's A Bronx Tale, a film adaptation of Chazz Palminteri's acclaimed one-man show. Now the star is co-helming a musical adaptation of the project with four-time Tony winner Jerry Zaks, Entertainment Weekly reports.
The musical – which features music from Tony and Oscar-winner Alan Menken – will premiere next year as part of the 2015-2016 season for Millburn, New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse, running from February 4th to March 6th. The production will feature a book by Palminteri, lyrics by Glenn Slater and choreography by Sergio Trujillo.
The musical – which features music from Tony and Oscar-winner Alan Menken – will premiere next year as part of the 2015-2016 season for Millburn, New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse, running from February 4th to March 6th. The production will feature a book by Palminteri, lyrics by Glenn Slater and choreography by Sergio Trujillo.
- 7/29/2015
- Rollingstone.com
Genre mash-ups may be commonplace these days, but it took a mad genius to even consider combining film-noir and teen sex comedy back in 1983. Paul Brickman’s wildly successful experiment, Risky Business, not only launched the career of Tom Cruise, it set a new benchmark for substantive sex comedies. Here, we had an observant and erotic satire that always entertained and never sermonized. Through the use of film-noir conventions and evocative symbolism, Brickman’s classic takes the teen movie into shadowy territory while still remaining accessible. It’s a masterful script that warrants closer analysis.
Risky Business towers above its 80’s contemporaries because writer/director, Paul Brickman, was less concerned about the loss of virginal innocence than the loss of moral innocence. Our hero, totally unprepared for the shady inner-workings of the adult world, tumbles deeper into chaos with each new indulgence. Instead of letting Joel Goodsen (Tom Cruise) off...
Risky Business towers above its 80’s contemporaries because writer/director, Paul Brickman, was less concerned about the loss of virginal innocence than the loss of moral innocence. Our hero, totally unprepared for the shady inner-workings of the adult world, tumbles deeper into chaos with each new indulgence. Instead of letting Joel Goodsen (Tom Cruise) off...
- 5/27/2014
- by J.R. Kinnard
- SoundOnSight
Oscar-nominated cinematographer who worked on Lenny, Dirty Harry and The Beguiled
The American cinematographer Bruce Surtees, who has died aged 74, became known as "the prince of darkness" for his muted and often lugubrious style of lighting. However, while Surtees was well-suited to the nocturnal street scenes of Dirty Harry (1971), the Rembrandt-esque arrangements of The Beguiled (1971) and the claustrophobic interiors of Escape from Alcatraz (1979), all directed by Don Siegel, he was also at home with the wide open spaces of the western Joe Kidd (1972) and the surfing movie Big Wednesday (1978).
His deceptively simple black-and-white scheme for Lenny (1974), Bob Fosse's semi-documentary biopic of the comedian Lenny Bruce, earned Surtees an Oscar nomination. The film's compelling stand-up sequences owe almost as much to the expert lighting of the nightclub as they do to Dustin Hoffman's performance. As Hoffman paces the stage, chased by his own shadow, the light captures wisps of...
The American cinematographer Bruce Surtees, who has died aged 74, became known as "the prince of darkness" for his muted and often lugubrious style of lighting. However, while Surtees was well-suited to the nocturnal street scenes of Dirty Harry (1971), the Rembrandt-esque arrangements of The Beguiled (1971) and the claustrophobic interiors of Escape from Alcatraz (1979), all directed by Don Siegel, he was also at home with the wide open spaces of the western Joe Kidd (1972) and the surfing movie Big Wednesday (1978).
His deceptively simple black-and-white scheme for Lenny (1974), Bob Fosse's semi-documentary biopic of the comedian Lenny Bruce, earned Surtees an Oscar nomination. The film's compelling stand-up sequences owe almost as much to the expert lighting of the nightclub as they do to Dustin Hoffman's performance. As Hoffman paces the stage, chased by his own shadow, the light captures wisps of...
- 2/29/2012
- by Chris Wiegand
- The Guardian - Film News
Forget a limo - James Beard award winning chef Art Smith went a different route for his wedding transportation: He kicked off the day with a four-mile run through Washington, D.C., alongside his longtime partner Jesus Salgueiro and 485 guests. "We had the runners, the joggers, the walkers," Smith tells People. "We had sweat on our shirts but nobody cared because it was beautiful." The run, which began at Smith's D.C. restaurant Art and Soul, ended at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, where the grooms shared a marriage blessing last Saturday. "It was this big gay wedding," Smith,...
- 8/24/2010
- by Thailan Pham
- PEOPLE.com
hollywoodnews.com; Belltower Entertainment announced today that Academy Award Winner Forest Whitaker (Last King of Scotland) is formally attached to star in the Feature Film entitled “Little Treasure” to be filmed entirely on location in Shanghai, China.
Michael D. Olmos (Splinter) is attached to direct. Belltower utilized in part, a $1 million credit facility to secure Whitaker and Olmos through William Morris Endeavour Agency (Wme) where they are both repped. Whitaker will Executive Produce the film as well.
Little Treasure is an inspiring story about a bi-racial American couple who return to the wife’s homeland of China to rekindle their love and reignite their marriage, only to encounter prejudices, humor, cultural differences, and ultimately self-discovery…and along the way meeting a Shanghai street kid who changes their lives. The screenplay was penned by writer Josh Goldstein (Disney’s Jungle Cruise, “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “Jamie Foxx Show”).
Michael D. Olmos...
Michael D. Olmos (Splinter) is attached to direct. Belltower utilized in part, a $1 million credit facility to secure Whitaker and Olmos through William Morris Endeavour Agency (Wme) where they are both repped. Whitaker will Executive Produce the film as well.
Little Treasure is an inspiring story about a bi-racial American couple who return to the wife’s homeland of China to rekindle their love and reignite their marriage, only to encounter prejudices, humor, cultural differences, and ultimately self-discovery…and along the way meeting a Shanghai street kid who changes their lives. The screenplay was penned by writer Josh Goldstein (Disney’s Jungle Cruise, “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “Jamie Foxx Show”).
Michael D. Olmos...
- 6/5/2010
- by HollywoodNews.com
- Hollywoodnews.com
It’s been said that Westerns are to America what Shakespeare is to England. The Western genre has been an important and iconic part of our heritage, whether in film, TV or in print. And one of the most popular and prolific Western authors was Louis L’Amour.
L’Amour had a long career writing Western fiction, which he liked to call “Frontier Stories”. L’Amour wrote 89 books from 1930 to the late 1980s. Many of his stories were made into movies and all his books are still in print. He was a favorite author of Western film superstar John Wayne. “The Louis L’Amour Western Collection” brings three film adaptations of L’Amour novels to DVD for the first time.
The first of these L’Amour adaptations is The Sackets, a two-part made-for-tv retelling of two of L’Amour’s novels (The Daybreakers and Sackett) from “The Sacketts” series. The...
L’Amour had a long career writing Western fiction, which he liked to call “Frontier Stories”. L’Amour wrote 89 books from 1930 to the late 1980s. Many of his stories were made into movies and all his books are still in print. He was a favorite author of Western film superstar John Wayne. “The Louis L’Amour Western Collection” brings three film adaptations of L’Amour novels to DVD for the first time.
The first of these L’Amour adaptations is The Sackets, a two-part made-for-tv retelling of two of L’Amour’s novels (The Daybreakers and Sackett) from “The Sacketts” series. The...
- 6/3/2010
- by Rob Young
- JustPressPlay.net
BERLIN -- Gregory Nava's "Bordertown" is several sprockets short of a real film. It wants to be a thriller, a piece of investigative journalism, a political soapbox and a vehicle for Jennifer Lopez. It serves none of these masters well. There also is something disingenuous about a movie that claims that the media on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border are too afraid or corrupt to expose the hundreds of rapes and murders of Latina factory workers in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico, in recent years when the filmmaker no doubt learned about this tragic situation from countless media stories.
Such wacky thinking pervades a movie that exaggerates and overplays the elements that ripen the melodrama while ignoring a far worse reason for police and institutional failures on the border -- indifference. You can't make a thriller about indifference, of course, so everyone from cops to millionaires are black with evil, while Lopez strides through this hellhole of the western world as the only journalist brave enough to write the truth.
Just as "Trade", which debuted last month at the Sundance Film Festival, turned the global sex slave trade into an excuse for a thriller with Kevin Kline coming to the rescue of a single girl, "Bordertown" trivializes a very real issue in a hokey, unconvincing and ludicrous suspenser with Lopez as the rescuer.
Theatrical prospects are limited to a quick payoff that capitalizes on Lopez and Antonio Banderas' names.
When a Chicago newspaper editor (Martin Sheen) assigns his most ambitious reporter, Lauren Lopez), to report on the dead and missing women in Juarez, Lauren complains, "Who gives a shit about Mexico?" At that moment, you just know the story will capture her heart and get her back to her roots. But who knew that getting back to her roots meant dying her blonde hair black?
Supposedly speaking little Spanish, Lauren tries to hook up with ex-lover and colleague Diaz (Banderas), now the editor of a Juarez rag. He tells her to get lost but, wouldn't you know it, Lauren walks out his door and immediately spots the one girl every cop, criminal and reporter is looking for -- Eva Maya Zapata), a factory worker, who survived a rape and murder attempt. Lauren's got a source! But before she and Diaz can interview Eva, the police cart Diaz off, leaving Lauren to hide Eva.
There's virtually nowhere to hide because screenwriter-director Nava has decided these killings go all the way up to the heads of multinational corporations and scions of the richest families in Juarez. So everyone is out to get Eva. Even the head of a women's rights group, Teresa (Sonia Braga), who does shelter Eva, isn't too sympathetic to her plight.
Nava then confuses journalists with movie private eyes. In the course of her "reporting," Lauren makes herself the target for the next attack, seduces a CEO and gets into two fights to the death. At one point, her lover-boy CEO brags that he buys politicians on both sides of the border. Wouldn't you think an experienced reporter would love to use that quote? Not our girl Lauren.
When she finally does file a story, it contains not one quote, fact or piece of evidence; it's simply an editorial. When her editor kills the story -- not for sloppy journalism, as he should, but because of cowardice -- she flies back to Mexico a born-again crusading reporter.
The story is replete with plot holes, but the most egregious is the central issue of whether little Eva can and will testify against her attacker. If she doesn't, he walks free. No one in the movie seems to have noticed the guy attacked Lauren, too. What prevents her from testifying?
Cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos does get the grit of the bordertown scene in his jumpy camera lens. Nighttime shots blare a riot of vibrant colors as the dusty town turns into a giant sex emporium. Good thing a Latino made this movie, though: A white director would stand accused of the worst sort of stereotypes about Mexican males, rich or poor.
BORDERTOWN
Capitol Films
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Gregory Nava
Producers: Gregory Nava, Simon Fields, David Bergstein
Executive producers: Cary Epstein, Tracee Stanley Newell, Barbara Martinez Jitner, Fred Ulrich
Director of photography: Reynaldo Villalobos
Production designer: Miguel Angel Alvarez
Music: Graeme Revell
Costume designer: Elizabeth Beraldo
Editor: Padraic McKinley
Cast:
Lauren Adrian: Jennifer Lopez
Diaz: Antonio Banderas
Eva: Maya Zapata
Teresa: Sonia Braga
George Morgan: Martin Sheen
Aris: Rene Rivera
Juan Diego Boto: Marco Antonio Salamanca
Elena: Kate del Castillo
Running time -- 112 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Such wacky thinking pervades a movie that exaggerates and overplays the elements that ripen the melodrama while ignoring a far worse reason for police and institutional failures on the border -- indifference. You can't make a thriller about indifference, of course, so everyone from cops to millionaires are black with evil, while Lopez strides through this hellhole of the western world as the only journalist brave enough to write the truth.
Just as "Trade", which debuted last month at the Sundance Film Festival, turned the global sex slave trade into an excuse for a thriller with Kevin Kline coming to the rescue of a single girl, "Bordertown" trivializes a very real issue in a hokey, unconvincing and ludicrous suspenser with Lopez as the rescuer.
Theatrical prospects are limited to a quick payoff that capitalizes on Lopez and Antonio Banderas' names.
When a Chicago newspaper editor (Martin Sheen) assigns his most ambitious reporter, Lauren Lopez), to report on the dead and missing women in Juarez, Lauren complains, "Who gives a shit about Mexico?" At that moment, you just know the story will capture her heart and get her back to her roots. But who knew that getting back to her roots meant dying her blonde hair black?
Supposedly speaking little Spanish, Lauren tries to hook up with ex-lover and colleague Diaz (Banderas), now the editor of a Juarez rag. He tells her to get lost but, wouldn't you know it, Lauren walks out his door and immediately spots the one girl every cop, criminal and reporter is looking for -- Eva Maya Zapata), a factory worker, who survived a rape and murder attempt. Lauren's got a source! But before she and Diaz can interview Eva, the police cart Diaz off, leaving Lauren to hide Eva.
There's virtually nowhere to hide because screenwriter-director Nava has decided these killings go all the way up to the heads of multinational corporations and scions of the richest families in Juarez. So everyone is out to get Eva. Even the head of a women's rights group, Teresa (Sonia Braga), who does shelter Eva, isn't too sympathetic to her plight.
Nava then confuses journalists with movie private eyes. In the course of her "reporting," Lauren makes herself the target for the next attack, seduces a CEO and gets into two fights to the death. At one point, her lover-boy CEO brags that he buys politicians on both sides of the border. Wouldn't you think an experienced reporter would love to use that quote? Not our girl Lauren.
When she finally does file a story, it contains not one quote, fact or piece of evidence; it's simply an editorial. When her editor kills the story -- not for sloppy journalism, as he should, but because of cowardice -- she flies back to Mexico a born-again crusading reporter.
The story is replete with plot holes, but the most egregious is the central issue of whether little Eva can and will testify against her attacker. If she doesn't, he walks free. No one in the movie seems to have noticed the guy attacked Lauren, too. What prevents her from testifying?
Cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos does get the grit of the bordertown scene in his jumpy camera lens. Nighttime shots blare a riot of vibrant colors as the dusty town turns into a giant sex emporium. Good thing a Latino made this movie, though: A white director would stand accused of the worst sort of stereotypes about Mexican males, rich or poor.
BORDERTOWN
Capitol Films
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Gregory Nava
Producers: Gregory Nava, Simon Fields, David Bergstein
Executive producers: Cary Epstein, Tracee Stanley Newell, Barbara Martinez Jitner, Fred Ulrich
Director of photography: Reynaldo Villalobos
Production designer: Miguel Angel Alvarez
Music: Graeme Revell
Costume designer: Elizabeth Beraldo
Editor: Padraic McKinley
Cast:
Lauren Adrian: Jennifer Lopez
Diaz: Antonio Banderas
Eva: Maya Zapata
Teresa: Sonia Braga
George Morgan: Martin Sheen
Aris: Rene Rivera
Juan Diego Boto: Marco Antonio Salamanca
Elena: Kate del Castillo
Running time -- 112 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/16/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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