Director: Michael Mann Stars: Christian Bale, Johnny Depp Studio: Universal Pictures
The Plot: FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Bale) sets his sights on American gangster John Dillinger (Depp) and others in an attempt to curb a rampant Chicago crime spree during the 193
ICE AGE: DAWN OD THE DINOSAURS
Director: Carlos Saldanha Mike Thurmeier Stars: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Animation
The Plot: When Sid gets into some trouble, it’s up to Manny, Ellie, Diego, and Scrat to save their friend. Their mission leads them to an underground world where encounter dinosaurs, flora, and fauna — as well as a one-eyed, dino-hunting weasel named Buck.
I HATE VALENTINE’S DAY
Director: Nia Vardalos Stars: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Judah Friedlander Studio: IFC Films
The Plot: A florist (Vardalos) tries to convince a restaurant owner (Corbett) to date her without the fear of it becoming a full-fledged relationship.
The tube is alive these days with acclaimed actresses such as Holly Hunter (TNT’s Saving Grace), Glenn Close (FX’s Damages), Kyra Sedgwick (TNT’s The Closer), Mariska Hargitay (NBC’s Law & Order: SVU) and Edie Falco (Showtime’s Nurse Jackie), all playing powerful characters who represent a sea change from the saintly matriarchs and ditzy housewives we grew up with. “We’re making real women relatable, as opposed to the perfect mom,” says Bonnie Hammer, president of NBC Universal’s cable entertainment. These heroines may have messy personal lives, but they’re smart and complicated, and they look fabulous.
Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives led the charge. When television executives saw the cash brought in by these risk-taking, female-centric shows, they loosened the rules that once boxed women in. “Desperate Housewives was the biggest display that women over 40 can be a viable industry,” says Vanessa Williams, who plays the scheming editrix on ABC’s Ugly Betty (a show executive-produced by Salma Hayek). “TV is the Wonderbra for actresses over 40.”
From Broadway to the dance stage, opera hall and movie screen, Elliot Goldenthal has proven himself one of the most versatile composers of his generation. In 1995, he adapted Shakespeare’s Othello as a ballet. In 2003, he won an Academy Award for his score to Frida. In 2006, he was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his original three-act opera Grendel, which premiered at the Los Angeles Opera. And July 1, he makes his return to the big screen with a score for Michael Mann’s Public Enemies. Goldenthal spoke to TIME about the compositional challenges he faced in scoring the life of famed gangster John Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp) and the complexities of composing for various media simultaneously.
Owing more to 1960s European art cinema than to any television dramas being made at the time, Miami Vice superimposed ripped-from-the-headlines details about drug smuggling, arms dealing, and covert war onto a pastel-noir dreamscape and gave American TV its first existential drama. The show was born when Brandon Tartikoff, NBC’s entertainment president in the early ’80s, scribbled “MTV cops” on a cocktail napkin and asked Hill Street Blues producer Anthony Yerkovich to turn it into a show. The phrase reads like a glib marketing label, and at the time it probably was.
Karl Malden, 97, an Academy Award-winning actor who excelled in plainspoken, working-class roles and was memorable as the shy suitor in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and as a brave priest in “On the Waterfront,” died July 1 at his home in Los Angeles. No cause of death was reported.
Every Hollywood movie comes with a stack of production notes, released to journalists and prospective film critics. Normally these are a patent bore, full of canned interviews in which stars talk in vague glowing terms about the people they worked with and the movie itself. Bruno though, is as always a little different.
Today Universal Pictures sent us production notes forBruno. Instead of the usual bunch of fluff, contained within them is an in depth, behind the scenes look of just what it takes to make Bruno happens. Contained within Bruno’s production notes are just a sampling of the war stories of the movie’s guerilla filmmaking crew. This is the stuff journalists never get in interviews with Sacha Baron Cohen because, of course, he’s always in character and as far as Bruno’s concerned there was no movie, it’s just his life.
U.S. film studio Paramount Pictures is talking with Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox about merging parts of their home video businesses, sources say.
Citing “people briefed on the negotiations,” the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday the merger discussions are being prompted by the ongoing recession, tanking sales of DVDs and the need for studios to cut the costs of DVD production, handling and distribution.
The sources said any merger of the studios’ DVD operations would be done as a cost-cutting, rather than revenue-sharing, move, adding Paramount would keep control of its own marketing and promotion of its home entertainment products.
The Denzel Washington/Tony Scott runaway-train movie, at one time on the fast track at 20th Century Fox, is slowing down as a result of disagreements over the appropriate budget.
The project — about a train containing toxic chemicals that speeds out of control — was aiming for a fall shoot, and Washington and director Scott said as recently as several weeks ago that they were moving forward on that assumption.
But the studio has concerns about the cost of physical production on the action-heavy film, which could put the project on hold.
Outsourcing to India, long dominated by software engineering and back-office work, is expanding in new terrain: special effects for movies.
India’s rise comes at a difficult time for U.S. special effects outfits, some of which have buckled as the 2008 L.A. writers strike cut productions and the financial crisis curtailed financing. Executives in India say cost pressures are pushing studios to send more work to India, where special effects projects are up to 40 percent cheaper than in the U.S.
To be sure, Indian shops are, for now, minor players. Hollywood’s special effects industry is still dominated by U.S. companies like Industrial Light & Magic. Production standards are generally lower in India, and many moviemakers still won’t send creative work thousands of miles (kilometers) away.
But the distance between Hollywood and Bollywood is narrowing, and many say it’s only a matter of time before the gap in skills, trust, and quality is closed. The domestic market is also maturing as Indian audiences develop a taste for high-tech Hindi flicks.
