Brunette Babes in ‘Black Swan’

Winona Ryder is in negotiations to join Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in the supernatural thriller Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky. Portman stars as a veteran New York ballet dancer who is entangled in a manipulative relationship with her ballet rival (Kunis). However, the rivalry may be real or a figment of Portman’s imagination. Ryder also would play a dancer.

Casting News

** Jake Gyllenhaal is in negotiations to star in the sci-fi thriller Source Code about a soldier who wakes up in the body of a commuter and must solve the mystery of a train explosion. Um…okay?

** Gwyneth Paltrow is moving in on Nicole Kidman. The two Oscar winners will co-star in The Danish Girl about the relationship between the first post-op transsexual Einar Wegener and his wife Greta. Paltrow replaces Charlize Theron, who originally was signed on to play Greta, a portrait painter who asked her husband to stand in for an absent female model. Kidman plays the male-to-female husband, Einar, who begins the metamorphosis into Lili after he slips on women’s clothes. Greta stood by her partner through the sex-change operation only to move on when she realized the person she married is gone. Sounds like a comedy.

Weekend Box Office

Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire may not have made it in the top 5 at the box office this weekend, but it still broke records. After its opening in only 5 cities in 18 theaters this weekend, it made $1.8 million. That averages to $100,000 per screen, a record for a film opening in under 50 theaters.

1. A Christmas Carol, $31 million
2. This Is It, $14 million
3. The Men Who Stare at Goats, $13.3 million
4. The Fourth Kind, $12.5 million
5. Paranormal Activity, $8.6 million

In Theaters Today

The Box • A Christmas Carol • Endgame • The Fourth Kind • The Men Who Stare At Goats • Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire

The Box:
Based on a short story originally printed in Playboy in 1970, Cameron Diaz and James Marsden play a married couple and parents of one in 1976 suburban Virginia who live beyond their means. They accept an offer to earn $1 million until they learn how they have to earn it: by murdering someone before pressing the red button on The Box, says the man (Frank Langella) with the hole in his cheek through which you can see his cheek. And then the twisty, turny, spooky thrill ride begins.

“…is sincere and sinister and inevitably ambitious, a serious work that insists on its own seriousness even when it edges toward the preposterous.” – N.Y. Times

“Have you ever actually tried watching paint dry? A sloth walk? Grass grow? You can have all the ‘thrills’ with none of the chills courtesy of The Box, the painfully sluggish new sci-fi morality play.” – L.A. Times

Check out the trailer:


A Christmas Carol:
Jim Carrey stars as Scrooge in this latest take of the Charles Dickens classic that Disney has turned it into a motion-capture film.

“Taking a few cues from Dickens and with the latest in digital technology at the creators' disposal, this movie version revels in effects…One is reminded that what Ebenezer Scrooge experiences…is horror in the true sense. So this is a very dark tale, a tour of a miserly, misanthropic man's soul, and (writer-director-producer Robert) Zemeckis' film does reclaim this aspect of a story that has become more of a cheery cartoon in modern retellings.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“…a marvelous and touching yuletide toy of a movie, and the miracle is that it goes right back to the gilded Victorian spirit of those black-and-white films of yore… The faces are now fully expressive, the streets and buildings so real you could touch them. Ebenezer, with his drooping flesh and coldly fearful eyes, is no caricature — Carrey plays him with scolding sharpness and a plummy deep melancholy — and his journey unfolds with a classicism that is only enhanced by Zemeckis' spangly visual flamboyance.” – Entertainment Weekly

Check out the trailer:


Endgame:
An account of the secret political talks that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa. It stars William Hurt, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Johnny Lee Miller.

“The film is not so much a history lesson…but a thrilling primer on how to end conflicts of blood hatred. The film claims the IRA consulted with the ANC before negotiating with the British. This film really needs to screen in the Middle East.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Check out the trailer:


The Fourth Kind:
Milla Jovovich stars as a psychologist in Nome, Alaska, who notices quite a few of her patients are describing experiencing the same, strange nocturnal experiences – alien abductions. The movie goes back and forth between footage that is supposed to be the real events and Hollywood’s dramatic retelling of said “real” events. Got it?

“This stiff paranormal thriller could stand a lot more activity.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“The film zigzags between these ‘actual’ events, which are shivery to see, and an overtly staged Hollywood version in which Milla Jovovich plays the psychologist and the ‘real’ scenes are reenacted. This is meant to make the ‘documentary’ stuff look more real, but it just hits you over the head with the fact that the movie itself is a cornball contrivance — and a draggy, rote, and listless one at that.” – Entertainment Weekly

Check out the trailer:


The Men Who Stare at Goats:
George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey co-star in this spoof of the U.S. Army’s research into psychic phenomena to use the same in its wars from Vietnam to Iraq.

“There’s a curious evanescence to the movie, which while apparently based in truth…doesn’t add up to anything. It’s wacky, amusing. But that’s about it. If there are truths to be drawn from the military’s use of men to locate hostages psychically, they’re not evident here.” – N.Y. Times

“With material like this, one would have liked a more incisive comedy to materialize around the decline and fall of the New Age movement…Like numerous other gags in the film – is quick, funny and gets a good laugh without going beyond.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Check out the trailer:


Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire:
By now, you’ve all heard of this movie directed by Lee Daniels (producer of Monster’s Ball and executive produced by Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey. It stars newcomer Gabourey Sidibe as Precious, an overly abused and tortured 16-year-old in 1980s Harlem who’s still in middle school and pregnant with her second child, again by her father. The movie also stars Mariah Carey, Mo’nique, Paula Patton and Lenny Kravitz.

“Damien Paul's edgy and effervescent screenplay propels us into the inner recesses of primitive survival. It's a magnificent distillation, both succinct and eruptive. Director Lee Daniels sagely navigates the story from Precious' cavernous inner world through her synaptic flashes of fantasy that momentarily allow her to transcend her personal hell. As Precious, Sidibe is superb, allowing us to see the inner warmth and beauty of a young woman who, to her world's cruel eyes, might seem monstrous. As Precious' hideous mother, Mo'Nique is cruelty incarnate. It's an astonishingly powerful performance.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Precious is a film that makes you think, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ It's a potent and moving experience, because by the end you feel you've witnessed nothing less than the birth of a soul.” – Entertainment Weekly

Check out the trailer:

Casting News

** Despite bombing with Confessions of a Shopaholic, someone else is taking a chance on Isla Fisher’s starring power. She’s in negotiations to star in Desperados, about a woman who sends an e-mail to her new boyfriend whose gone silent after they have sex. When she discovers he’s in a coma in a Mexican hospital, she and friends go to Mexico to intercept the e-mail before he wakes up. The movie is being touted as the female Hangover.

** Speaking of The Hangover, Bradley Cooper is in negotiations to sstar in Dark Fields, about a designer drug that can make you rich and powerful. Cooper would play a down-and-out New York writer until he takes the pill that enhances his intelligence. But success comes at a heavy price.

South Africa Takes Over Hollywood

If any country is winning a popularity contest in Hollywood right now, it would be South Africa. Three movies about apartheid are in theaters or about to be.

The once racially embattled nation was thrust into the spotlight – the good kind – when the world erupted in festivities to celebrate this summer the 91st birthday of Nelson Mandela, the country’s hero, ambassador and former leader. The bright lights will continue to shine on South Africa through next summer as the world descends upon the country’s soccer stadiums for the World Cup.

These momentous events are happening 15 years after the end of apartheid. They mark the evolution the country – and the world – has made to end racial segregation. But lest we forget South Africa’s recent past – and the political, social and economic ramifications – Hollywood is offering an education. Three movies dramatically recreate three different stories about the fall of apartheid: Skin, Endgame and Invictus.

Skin tells the true story of Sandra Laing, played by Sophie Okonedo, a girl born in 1955 (less than a decade after the start of apartheid) to officially white parents. Because, as the mother explains in the movie, an ancestor was black, Sandra’s skin is darker than that of her white parents. Sandra was judged white until she started school and then her skin color was judged too dark. She was classified and then reclassified by the government, was pushed away by her racist parents, was torn away from her family and friends and suffered under the glare of the media spotlight.

Endgame is shot as a thriller and tells the account of the secret political talks that led to the end of apartheid. It stars William Hurt, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Johnny Lee Miller.

Invictus takes place after the end of apartheid and soon after Mandela is elected president. Morgan Freeman stars as Mandela, who saw a chance to unite what was a very racially and economically divided country. Believing he can bring people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela joins forces with the captain (Matt Damon) of South Africa’s rugby team to rally the team – and the country – as the team makes its historic run to the 1995 Rugby World Cup Championship match.

Check out the trailers:

Skin:


Endgame:


Invictus:

From Slumdog to Utah

Coming off his success with Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle is next directing 127 Hours, about the mountaineer Aron Ralston. Slumdog screenwriter Simon Beaufoy is in talks to pair up again with Boyle. Ralston’s right forearm was pinned for nearly five days under a boulder while climbing a mountain in Utah in 2003. He used a dull knife to amputate the limb, then scaled the 65-foot sheer wall and hiked out before running into a family that gave him water and food. He was finally rescued by helicopter. His story was splashed across the news for weeks afterward.