Movies

Hot on the heels of a new poster for this summer's explosive action thriller White House Down, which features Channing Tatum in white tanktop like a certain action hero played by Bruce Willis, a cool new featurette goes behind the scenes with director Roland Emmerich. This time around, the filmmaker says it's the first time he doesn't just completely destroy Washington D.C. in one fell swoop, but rather tears it down bit by bit. So I guess that's a little bit better. There's some interview bits with the cast, including one of our favorites, Jason Clarke, and tons of the crew members. Plus, there's some new footage too. Watch! ››› Continue reading Watch: Capitol Crumbles Bit by Bit in 'White House Down' Featurette

Affleck stars as Bob Muldoon, a man who takes responsibility for the shooting of an officer by his wife Ruth Guthrie, in the promo video for the 2013 Sundance entry from director David Lowery.

Nothing made me happier today than to hear enthusiastic responses to Jim Jarmusch‘s rock and roll vampire film, Only Lovers Left Alive. The film stars Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as vampires who have spent centuries together. We’ve got some clips, images and more info here, but frankly I want to know as little about further details as possible, at least until there’s a chance to see the film in the US. That chance might not be far off, as the reception at Cannes was capped off by Sony Pictures Classics’ purchase of the US distribution rights. The company didn’t offer precise release info, but knowing it has a home is a good start. After the break, you can check out the SPC press release, and some reviewer reactions to the movie. Jarmusch movies are often quite funny, if not in the style of a typical comedy. That humor seems to be key to the success of Lovers, as The Playlist notes “it’s the deadpan jokes and references that really lift proceedings, especially as delivered, often drily, by Tilda Swinton, who’s probably as good at being funny as she is at everything else, but is so rarely given the chance.” Other reactions, even among the enthusiastic, peg the movie as something for the midnight crowd. Variety calls it “sweet but slight,” “essentially a light comedy of social mores set among a bunch of bohemians whose drug of choice just happens to be human blood, rather than cocaine or heroin.” The most telling bit from the trade may be that “it still feels like an in-joke intended only for select acolytes, who will probably love it with an undying passion.” Film.com was far more enthusiastic, proclaiming it “an exhibit A example of how to use style to enhance substance, not overwhelm it,” and “the next great midnight classic…hazy and dreamy.” Twitter offered more quick reactions: Jim Jarmusch’s vampire comedy (!) Only Lovers Left Alive is lean & literate deadpan fun. Hiddleston/Swinton are a dream team. #Cannes2013 — Robbie Collin (@robbiereviews) May 24, 2013 ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE is Jarmusch at his most deadpan & shaggy. Midnight classic. Loved it to pieces. #cannes2013 — Jordan Hoffman (@JHoffman6) May 24, 2013 Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch): 77. For close to an hour this was shaping up to be one of my favorite films ever. A bit heartbreaking. — Mike D’Angelo (@gemko) May 24, 2013 After Mia W. shows up it just becomes a fun series of riffs. But long 1st movement is Woody’s list of reasons to live as a vampire movie. — Mike D’Angelo (@gemko) May 24, 2013 Surprised to find Jarmusch’s ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE is a charming deadpan comedy that resurrects the spirit of his ’80s movies. #cannes2013 — erickohn (@erickohn) May 24, 2013 Only Lovers Left Alive – Dysfunctional vampires with long hair & iPhones go from Detroit to Tangier. Awkward laughs, history lessons abound. — Alex Billington (@firstshowing) May 24, 2013 Here’s the press release: NEW YORK (May 24, 2013) – Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they have acquired all North American rights to Jim Jarmusch’s ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, which will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival tomorrow in the In Competition section. The film was produced by Jeremy Thomas of Recorded Picture Company and Reinhard Brundig of Pandora Film.  Christos Konstantakopoulos of Fairilo House served as executive producer. Starring Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt, Anton Yelchin and Jeffrey Wright, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE takes place against the romantic desolation of Detroit and Tangier and follows an underground musician, deeply depressed by the direction of human activities, who reunites with his resilient and enigmatic lover. Their love story has already endured several centuries at least, but their debauched idyll is soon disrupted by her wild

The 'Oblivion' leading man will instead shift his attention to ' Mission: Impossible V', in which he takes a double duty as its star and producer.

Donald Trump has a new enemy, this time an Emmy-winning writer/producer on “Modern Family.” Danny Zuker, who also serves an exec producer on the ABC series, is one of TV’s most active creatives on Twitter and regularly takes shots at NBC’s “The Apprentice” and its over-zealous host (“He’s kind of a dick,” Zuker recently tweeted).... Read more »

A more down-to-earth Douglas Adams is still a pretty way-out Douglas Adams, as we find when the wildly imaginative author applies his skewed sensibilities to the private detective genre in DIRK GENTLY.Based on Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" books, this one-season British TV series follows the adventures of the incorrigibly eccentric Gently (Stephen Mangan) as he applies his theories on the cosmic interconnectedness of all things in the universe to such relatively mundane pursuits as investigating possible marital infidelity or locating a little old lady's lost cat. With Dirk Gently on the case, however, things have a tendency to get weird, like when an attractive woman enlists him to track down her stalker--who, it turns out, is Dirk--or when a paranoid conspiracy nut who tells Dirk he's being watched by the Pentagon is, in fact, being watched by the Pentagon. Dead bodies crop up at every turn, with Dirk possessing an amazing talent for stumbling upon crime scenes and looking as guilty as possible in the eyes of his nemesis, Detective Inspector Gilks (Jason Watkins). After using hypnosis to persuade erstwhile college chum Richard MacDuff (Darren Boyd, who was an excellent John Cleese in the Monty Python biopic HOLY FLYING CIRCUS) to invest $20,000 in the "Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency" and act as his assistant, the two operate out of the most derelict-looking office in detective fiction while their hostile, unpaid secretary Janice ( Lisa Jackson) continues to show up for work only to harangue her employers.Gently's methods don't make a lot of sense at first until you start getting used to the seemingly nonsensical way he pieces ostensibly unrelated bits of information together to come up with solutions that can ultimately be rather astonishing--or at least seem so if you don't think them through too carefully. Stories straddle the line between everyday realism and comical farce so adeptly that there's never a jarring transition from one to the other--just when a scene appears to be getting uncomfortably sentimental or emotional, something rather delightfully irreverent punctures the mood.I like the constant hostility that exists between the two leads--Gently and MacDuff are like the anti-Holmes and Watson--and the fact that Gently resolutely refuses to display any positive traits designed to make us "like" him more. He's a likable character despite all the evidence we're given to the contrary, or perhaps because he's so craven, self-centered, vain, greedy, and overwhelmingly irresponsible, in addition to being refreshingly unconventional. Lack of sentimentality is a strong point with this series.Season one--and with the show's apparent cancellation, the only one--begins with a pilot episode that introduces us to the characters and shows how Dirk and MacDuff manage to become partners. This is the one where Dirk is hired to find the old lady's cat, but with Douglas Adams at the helm, the story comes to include such fanciful elements as time travel. How the two are interconnected gives the story a delightful twist. Next, Episode 1 is a frenetic mish-mash of (interconnected) loose ends such as the aforementioned Pentagon surveillance, mysterious computer programs, and whether or not astrology really controls our lives. (Dirk is skeptical.)In Episode 2, Dirk returns to St Cedd's Institute of Science and Technology, Cambridge, where he first learned his holistic methods but was later expelled for cheating. As a security consultant, he's in charge of guarding a lifelike robot named Elaine, who naturally disappears along with an artificial intelligence program that has just achieved sentience. My favorite of the series, Episode 2 veers into deliciously dark "X-Files" territory with some of Adams' trademark scintillating sci-fi elements and a surprisingly resonant emotional core as Dirk meets and falls in love with the mysterious Jane (Lydia Wilson, "Midsomer Murders: Master Class"), who is involved in it all

Baby Boy, the partially-sighted poodle who appears in “Behind the Candelabra,” has been named the top dog of the Cannes Film Festival as winner of the Palm Dog award. Judged by film critics, the prize is not an official part of the festival, but is independently-awarded like other prizes such as the Queer Palm. In... Read more »

Mike Darnell leaving Fox? After all the hell he put multiple entertainment chiefs — including Sandy Grushow, Peter Roth and Gail Berman — over the years? Say it ain’t so. Years ago, somewhere between “When Animals Attack” and “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?,” I suggested that some struggling network, like UPN back when it... Read more »

Stereoscopic cinema desperately needs some wild, artistic directors to experiment with the format, though this clumsy omnibus amounts to little more than a vanity commission by the town of Guimaraes, Portugal.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired all North American rights to Jim Jarmusch’s vampire drama “Only Lovers Left Alive” on the eve of its world premiere at Cannes in competition. Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt, Anton Yelchin and Jeffrey Wright star. Story is set in Detroit and Tangiers and follows an underground musician... Read more »