The Screengrab : dakota fanning

Morning Deal Report: Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Watchmen is still hours away from opening in theaters, but its visionary director (oh, how I’ll never tire of calling him that) has already lined up the cast for his next picture. “Amanda Seyfried in negotiations to topline the project, while Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, Evan Rachel Wood and Emma Stone are in talks to star in the action fantasy” Sucker Punch, per The Hollywood Reporter. “Set in the 1950s, Punch follows a girl who is confined to a mental institution by her stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomized in five days. While there, she imagines an alternative reality to hide her from the pain, and in that world, she begins planning her escape, needing to steal five objects to help get her out before she is deflowered by a vile man. Snyder, who co-wrote the script with Steve Shibuya, has described the fantasy world as Alice in Wonderland with machine guns.” Oooh…visionary!

Dakota Fanning has joined the Runaways. That is, the Coraline star is “negotiating to play lead singer Cheri Currie in The Runaways, the biopic of the '70s all-girl band that already has Twilight star Kristen Stewart playing Joan Jett,” Variety reports. “At 15, Fanning is the same age Currie was when she made her debut with the Runaways as the lead singer who belted out hard-edged tunes like Cherry Bomb. Currie became caught up in drugs and a hard-partying lifestyle.” Screengrab instant poll: how many months before Fanning turns up in rehab?

Steve Carell is set to produce and star in Hi-T, which “revolves around a man dealing with uncontrollable mood swings after an injury forces him to take testosterone injections.” Yes, it is a comedy.

Related:
Screengrab Review: "Watchmen"
Steve Carell is Despicable

DVD Digest for February 3, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week, a whole mess of “classic” movies flood the DVD market, which is good, since the recent releases coming out this week aren't all that impressive.

Heading up the classics crop is the Being There 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray). The good news is that the Blu-Ray disc will contain a number of intriguing special features, including an alternate ending. The bad news is that most of these features aren’t going to be on the standard DVD, so if you don’t have Blu-Ray, you’re sort of stuck. Still, definitely a movie that should be part of any good movie lover’s collection, no matter what form. And speaking of Peter Sellers movies, this week also brings the Peter Sellers 5-Film Collection (Lionsgate), which includes I’m All Right, Jack!, The Smallest Show on Earth, Carlton-Browne of the F.O., Two-Way Stretch, and Heavens Above!. Likewise, there’s a similar box set devoted to the work of Sellers’ mentor Alec Guinness- Alec Guinness 5-Film Collection (Lionsgate)- includes The Lavender Hill Mob, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Man in the White Suit, The Captain’s Paradise, and The Ladykillers (a rather better selection than the Sellers set, I’d say).

More classics being released this week: Yentl Extended Director’s Edition (MGM), now featuring 30% more Streisand close-ups; the musical phenomenon RENT: Filmed Live on Broadway (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Friday the 13th, Parts 1-3, Uncut Deluxe Editions (Paramount, Part 1 also Blu-Ray), to tie in with the upcoming remake; the animated family film Oliver & Company 20th Anniversary Edition (Disney); John Carpenter’s wicked awesome Assault on Precinct 13 Restored Collector’s Edition (Image, also Blu-Ray); Richard Donner’s Inside Moves (Lionsgate); and the enticingly titled Silverado Single-Disc Version (Sony). Finally, Sony is releasing their second wave of their “Martini Movies” series, with this week’s releases being Getting Straight, Our Man in Havana, Five, Vibes, and Gumshoe.

On the recent releases, this week brings Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno (Genius Products, also Blu-Ray); Michael Cera in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah in The Secret Life of Bees (Fox, also Blu-Ray); the wine-centric comedy Bottle Shock (Fox); and Everybody Wants to Be Italian (Lionsgate), the movie that tries to prove that, uh, everybody wants to be Italian. Also, this week brings the long awaited release of Private Valentine: Blonde and Dangerous (Sony), yet another failed attempt at movie stardom by Jessica Simpson. After all, if you want to be a big-screen star, it helps if your movies actually get released in theatres.

This week’s TV on DVD releases include Bewitched Season 7 (Sony), Colombo Mystery Movie Collection: 1990 (Universal), and The Partridge Family Season 4 (Sony).

Finally, Fox is unloading four comedy favorites on Blu-Ray this week: Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite, Office Space, and Sideways.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 7

Peter Smith — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

The hottest ticket at Sundance 2007 — for the increasingly desperate press, if not for the general public — was Hounddog, in which Dakota Fanning played a barefoot farm girl so desperate for tickets to see Elvis Presley that she was willing to strip naked and gyrate around à la The King, only to get brutally raped for her trouble. Many fewer journalists flocked to see this year's less sensationalistic Phoebe in Wonderland, starring Dakota's equally precocious younger sister Elle — which is a shame, since it's a much more interesting film, albeit somewhat muddled. Phoebe's dangerous obsession isn't Elvis but Alice: Her mother (Felicity Huffman) has been working for years on a Lewis Carroll dissertation, and Phoebe desperately wants the lead role in her grade school's production of Alice in Wonderland, to be directed — sort of — by a singularly bizarre new drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson). So badly does Phoebe want the part, in fact, that she devises an elaborate system of games and rituals designed to secure it for her. She paces the school hallway for hours, carefully avoiding any cracks in the floor. She hops up the stairs at her house, then hops down twice, backwards, then up again, then a half-turn, clapping, then repeat. She washes her hands again and again and again, until they bleed.

Writer-director Daniel Barnz plays a rather pointless game of keep-away with Phoebe's condition, which isn't named until the movie's final moments, but I'll respect his wishes. (I'm pretty sure it's two comorbid conditions, actually, though the script doesn't specify; if I tell you that she also shrugs her shoulders a lot and occasionally repeats other people's sentences, that should clinch it for the neuro-heads.) Barnz's goal here — quite an admirable one, in an after-school special kind of way — is to suggest that such conditions are only the extreme end of a continuum upon which we all reside. But he also wants to make a more general plea for tolerance, so we get a subplot about an effeminate little boy in Phoebe's class who wants to play the Red Queen in drag and is immediately labeled queer. And he also wants Clarkson's drama teacher to be one of those Dead Poets Society educational martyrs who encourage kids to chuck all rules and regs before being marched to the guillotine by some humorless authority figure (here, inexplicably, Campbell Scott, who can't do humorless with a gun to his head). And he also wants to beguile us with Gilliamesque fantasy sequences, at which he sucks, quite frankly. The main reason to see Phoebe in Wonderland is for yet another astonishing Fanning performance. How these little girls are able to summon such powerful reserves of fear and anguish and terror, I have no idea. I'm not really sure I want to know, to be honest.

Morning Deal Report: Tell Me Bruce Campbell's In It

Peter Smith — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:30:00 GMT

Sam Raimi returns to his roots, with a movie called Drag Me to Hell, cowritten with his brother Ivan. Now that is awesome. Key quote: "The appeal to Sam. . . was returning to what he had once done and loved doing, which was entertaining a very specific group of fans and providing a roller coaster ride for them." I think I hear a very specific group of fans salivating already.

Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah and Sophie Okonedo have joined Fox Searchlight's adaptation of the bestseller The Secret Life of Bees. Improbably, it's about "an eccentric trio of beekeeping sisters," not a quirky regional spelling competition. Dakota Fanning may also be involved.

Here come the big guns: now the Vatican itself has spoken out against The Golden Compass, instead of just letting William Donahue sputter about it on Fox News. Guys, chill — it's not even that good.

Trailer Roundup: Cloverfield, Definitely Maybe, The Other Boleyn Girl

Peter Smith — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Cloverfield

While the 1.18.08 teaser that played before Transformers this past summer appeared to simply be a brilliant piece of viral marketing, it now appears that the project, now titled Cloverfield, will actually be shot largely by characters wielding personal camcorders and camera phones, instead of in a conventional style. Frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I think it's a good idea in theory to make a kind of Godzilla for the YouTube generation. But a movie like this is tricky to pull off. The Blair Witch Project worked because you always got a sense that there were really three people lost in the forest and beset by forces they couldn't explain, but it'll be much harder to get that same vibe with a project this large-scale and effects-intensive. I'm not sure the director of the 1996 David Schwimmer vehicle The Pallbearer is the man for the job. Regardless, I'm curious to find out.

Definitely, Maybe

About the best thing I can say about this trailer is that Ryan Reynolds doesn't look to be as insufferable as he usually is. Plus his three romantic partners — Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz, and Isla Fisher — are all pretty smokin'. But otherwise, gag me. Much of the blame can be placed on little Abigail Breslin, who has taken over the mantle of Hollywood's go-to moppet from Dakota Fanning. Or maybe it's just that the character feels less like a precocious kid than a screenwriter's conception of same, a little girl who gives voice to all the clever, self-aware ideas on the scribe's oh-so-clever mind. How else to explain lines like "what's the male word for slut?" This is the kind of crappy Valentine's Day release that makes me glad to be single. And who signed off on that title?

The Other Boleyn Girl

Okay, who cast this thing? When your least problematic lead is Aussie Eric Bana (Henry the Eighth he ain't, he ain't), you know there's trouble. I'm not sure who's more ill-fitting in this story, emo pixie Natalie Portman as the defiant Anne Boleyn, or princess of pout Scarlett Johansson as her sister Mary. Based on her ignominious work in previous period films, I'm inclined to lean toward Johansson here, but it's a tough call. Either way, couldn't they find two English actresses who (a) suited their roles, and (b) were more convincing as sisters? With Elizabeth: The Golden Age and now this, Hollywood might want to consider laying off the British history for a while, lest our friends across the pond think we've got it in for them.

— Paul Clark