These poor, poor movies. Based on last weekend’s box office receipts, they’ll all be rolled over by the Spider-Man juggernaut.
The Ex: It’s really too bad that Spider-Man will just flatten this movie. We here at TrailerSpy are looking forward to this comedy starring Zach Braff, Amanda Peet, and Jason Bateman. Three of our favorite actors in one movie? Rock on! I felt a tad guilty laughing at the guy-in-the-wheelchair jokes, but they are funny. We can’t wait to SEE IT.
28 Weeks Later: This is the follow-up to the smash hit 28 Days Later, which made a star of Cillian Murphy. This time around, London faces a second deadly outbreak of the rage virus. Horror and sci-fi fans, run and SEE IT.
Georgia Rule: More people will see the photos of Lindsay Lohan snorting cocaine than will see this movie. Early reviews are scathing. To quote the AP, “With Georgia Rule, Lindsay Lohan has made her Gigli.” Ouch. Lilo is overpriced and overrated, and maybe now studio heads will stop hiring her. (But if studio heads stop hiring her, then we won’t get to read any more warning letters blasting her penchant for calling in sick due to “exhaustion”.) I love Felicity Huffman and I’d love to see her do well, but she’s playing third banana to La Lohan and Jane Fonda. I originally said I wanted to rent it, but now I plan to SKIP IT.
For Mother’s Day, go take Mom to see Waitress instead.
I must take a slight detour from our movie-related programming and tell you about one of New York City’s best-kept secrets. I love living in New York, but it can be quite expensive, unless you know how to beat the system.
You’re reading the title of this post and thinking, “No way.” But yes, there is really a completely legal, legitimate way to get tickets to Broadway shows for only $4. It’s called Theater Extras, and it’s awesome. For a $99 annual membership fee, you can purchase up to two tickets to available shows for $4 each. Usually the offerings are way-off-Broadway theater, concerts, or comedy clubs, but if you check the site daily and subscribe to their email updates, you can get tickets to Broadway shows.
Yesterday I saw Liev Schreiber in Talk Radio. (Schreiber’s performance as a radio shock jock was incredible and I highly recommend the play.) In the past two and a half years, I’ve seen at least ten Broadway shows through Theater Extras, including Sweeney Todd, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and A Streetcar Named Desire. Even at the half-price ticket booth, two tickets would cost more than my annual membership in Theater Extras. In addition, I’ve seen several excellent Off-Broadway shows and one jazz performance, all for the bargain price of $4 per ticket.
Here’s the catch: these are last minute tickets and you don’t know where your seats are until you pick up the tickets. (The TE office is open Monday through Friday, so I found about Sunday’s Talk Radio tickets on Friday.) If you don’t pick up your tickets, your credit card will be charged a $15 penalty per ticket. But that’s it. Generally the seats are not bad, and you sure can’t beat the price.
If you join, tell ‘em julie@trailerspy.com sent ya. (Official site)
Which actors will win an Oscar in the next ten years? That was the question posed by Oscarwatch, and Don Cheadle was on the top of nearly everyone’s list. Sooner or later, the man will win an Oscar, it’s just a question of when. This year alone, Cheadle is starring in Reign Over Me, Ocean’s Thirteen, and Talk to Me. In Talk to Me, Cheadle plays an ex-convict who becomes a controversial DJ in 1960′s Washington D.C.
Could Talk to Me be the movie that lands Cheadle his overdue Oscar? Possibly. Cheadle is portraying a real person, which the Academy always loves. He’s been nominated before (for Hotel Rwanda) and the Academy will often award Oscars to actors who were overlooked in the past. On the other hand, Cheadle’s character, Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene, is an ex-convict who peppers his dialogue with enough colorful language to get Don Imus fired several times.
Only time will tell what awards season has in store, but either way Talk to Me is a definite SEE IT. It’s a biopic (good) that will make you think (even better), and it has a great soundtrack (sign me up), and some really funny lines in the trailer (just take my $11 now). The trailer does a good job of highlighting the supporting cast–and telling you where you’ve seen them before.
It is impossible to talk about Waitress without discussing its sad backstory. Waitress was written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, an independent film actress who began making her own films in 1994. Last November, Shelly was found dead in her Manhattan apartment in what was presumed to be a suicide. A few days later, a housepainter that Shelly had hired confessed to the murder. When she died, Shelly had already finished Waitress and was waiting to hear whether the movie had been accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. The Sundance committee had already selected Waitress before Shelly died, and in January the film played to capacity crowds at Sundance and shortly sold to Fox Searchlight for $5 million.
After watching the trailer, I’m not surprised that Waitress was one of Sundance’s bigger sales. Although it is undoubtedly aimed at women, Waitress is not your typical chick flick and looks far superior to most films of that genre. (We’re talking about you, Georgia Rule.) Keri Russell plays a Jenna, Southern waitress who is pregnant, unhappily married, and feeling trapped by her own life. By day, Jenna works at a diner with waitresses played by Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s Cheryl Hines and by Shelly herself, behind big black glasses. By night, she pours her heart into unique pies and writes letters to her unborn baby. Jeremy Sisto plays Jenna’s husband and the one and only Andy Griffith plays one of Jenna’s regular customers.
In short, Waitress looks to be a poignant comedy about what happens when life doesn’t turn out just as you’d hoped it would. I definitely want to SEE IT when Waitress opens in limited release on May 2. (Official Site)
The new film Georgia Rule has already gotten tons of free publicity, all at the expense of its star Lindsay Lohan. Last summer La Linds partied hardy, and called in sick with “dehydration” one too many times. The CEO of Morgan Creek, which produced Georgia Rule, sent Lilo a scathing letter saying she “acted like a spoiled child” and called her “discourteous, irresponsible, and unprofessional.” Snap! The letter was also sent to Lindsay’s eight handlers, so of course it was all over the internet within 36 hours. (Read the letter–it’s classic.)
The trailer for Georgia Rule just landed on the internet, and I must say I am underwhelmed. All that fuss for this? Really? In this run-of-the-mill chick flick, Lohan plays an out of control, hard-drinking teenager (gee, that must have been a stretch) alongside Felicity Huffman and Jane Fonda. Huffman and Fonda play Lohan’s mother and grandmother, respectively, and they all end up in the same house when Huffman’s character has run out of answers. Fonda runs her household with a million “Georgia Rules,” and by the end of the trailer I was really tired of her saying “Georgia Rule!”
Still I’m going to RENT IT because I love Felicity Huffman and I want to see what all Lilo’s controversy was about. Georgia Rule is rated R (which eliminates much of Lilo’s fan base) and opens on May 11. (Official Site)
Whether you want to win your Oscar pool or just sound informed at a party on the big night, we’ve got you covered. Here are my Oscar picks, with lots of help from the experts at Oscar Watch.
Supporting Actress
Ok, I’m going to begin with a doozy that may start some arguments. If you want the safe bet, pick Jennifer Hudson, but I’m going to bet that she won’t win. There is no freakin’ way that Academy members, who are elitist overachievers, are going to give an Oscar to an actor in her first acting job. That doesn’t happen unless the actor is 12. The Academy is tired of Dreamgirls (remember, it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture) and frankly, Hudson’s been completely over-hyped. Anybody who saw Dreamgirls after mid-January walked away from her performance thinking, that’s it? I mean, the girl can sing, there’s no denying that. But the award is Best Supporting Actress. And let me tell you, every other nominee acted circles around Jennifer Hudson, even 10-year-old Abigail Breslin. However, Breslin won’t win. Both Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi were amazing in Babel, but they will split votes from Babel fans. All of which leaves Cate Blanchett to swoop in for her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar in three years. Her performance in the climactic scene of Notes on a Scandal was a work of art (as was Judi Dench’s, but it’s not her year). Furthermore, Blanchett has worked with a good percentage of the Academy, and the Academy votes for its own.
Safe Bet: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
My Pick: Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Supporting Actor
Eddie Murphy, unlike Jennifer Hudson, is actually an actor, or at least a comedian. I did walk away from Dreamgirls pleasantly surprised by how good he was in the role. Then again, this is also the man behind Norbit, and those Norbit ads were unmissable during the entire voting period. Of the other nominees, Alan Arkin has the most momentum. Jackie Earle Haley is the other upset candidate, but he is playing a pedophile in Little Children, which few people saw.
Safe Bet: Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
My Pick: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Lead Actress
The Academy has already started engraving this award with Helen Mirren’s name on it. She simply was Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, and it is impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.
Safe Bet: Helen Mirren, The Queen
My Pick: Helen Mirren, The Queen
Lead Actor
Reese Witherspoon has presented so many awards to Forest Whitaker this season that by now they are old friends. Oscar night will be no different. Ryan Gosling will get another shot, and sentiment isn’t enough to carry Peter O’Toole to the podium.
Safe Bet: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
My Pick: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
Director
This is Martin Scorsese’s sixth Oscar nomination for Best Director, and eighth nomination overall, but every year he has gone home empty-handed. (He was nominated for Adapted Screenplay for Goodfellas and The Age of Innocence.) He was supposed to have won in 2005 for The Aviator, but Clint Eastwood stole his thunder with Million Dollar Baby. The Aviator was a good, but long, movie, and The Departed is brilliant. This is Marty’s year, plain and simple.
Safe Bet: Martin Scorsese, The Departed
My Pick: Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Best Picture
This year’s Best Picture race is so close that Fox Searchlight has hired people to give cupcakes away in Los Angeles on behalf of Little Miss Sunshine. It has devolved into a high school popularity contest, but with much larger stakes.
If I were an Oscar voter, I would look at the Best Picture category as a question of legacy. Which film is going to leave the greater legacy? Which film has a greater legacy: Dances With Wolves, or Goodfellas? Goodfellas, of course, but Dances won.
Prognosticators and bookies have The Departed, Babel, and Little Miss Sunshine in a dead heat. Letters From Iwo Jima is a masterpiece, but hardly anybody saw it. Plus, Clint won for Best Picture twice already. The Queen is a really good television movie. Many people are predicting gold for Little Miss Sunshine, and as much as I would love for that to happen, comedies simply don’t win, especially not zany comedies about a family of losers.
The real contenders are Babel and The Departed. Not many people saw Babel, but those who did either loved Babel or they really hated it. There was a fair amount of frontal female nudity, which will turn off notoriously conservative Oscar voters. Numerous websites are saying that Babel is this year’s Crash, since they share similar themes. All those people who were heartbroken that Crash took the big prize over Brokeback Mountain last year are not going to be voting for Babel.
So I am going to go with The Departed. At two and a half hours long, I was expecting to be bored and antsy, but I barely blinked. The box office winner has a definite advantage in the Best Picture race, and the sentiment for Martin Scorsese will be a huge factor.
Safe Bet: Babel or The Departed
My Pick: The Departed
Agree? Disagree? Let’s hear it…
For analysis and picks on the rest of the categories, click here.
Here at TrailerSpy, we mostly review the movie trailers. Sometimes, though, one of us will talk our way into an advance screening, and we’ll get to write a movie review before most reviews are released.
Last week, I was lucky enough to find myself at the premiere of Amazing Grace. As I had already reviewed the trailer, I was anxious to see the finished product. I am happy to tell you that the film is much, much better than the trailer would have you believe.
Amazing Grace is the true story of William Wilberforce, who fought to end slavery in England in the 1790s. In a time when England’s economy was wholly reliant on slave labor, Wilberforce took on the slave trade, which had most of Parliament in its pocket.
Charismatic Ioan Gruffudd plays the lead role, and he is supported by effective turns from Michael Gambon, Rufus Sewell, Benedict Cumberbatch, Youssou N’Dour, Albert Finney, Romola Garai, and Jeremy Swift. At the helm is Michael Apted, who also directed The World Is Not Enough and Nell.
Amazing Grace rides on the charm of its lead actor, Welshman Ioan Gruffudd (pronounced YO-an GRIFF-ith, or as I call him, Yummy Ioan). Gruffudd is in nearly every scene and he carries the film completely on his impassioned performance. He spends much of the movie in powdered wigs and make-up that makes him look sick and tired, but you can never take your eyes off of him. (Or maybe that was just me.)
After the film, I found myself asking why Gruffudd is not a bigger star. You may have seen him in The Fantastic Four or King Arthur, and across the pond he is quite well known for his stint as the title character in the Horatio Hornblower mini-series. Between Amazing Grace and The Fantastic Four sequel, perhaps 2007 will be the year everyone knows how to pronounce Ioan Gruffudd’s name.
The film is a moving biopic that will have you rooting for Wilberforce and his compatriots. At almost two hours, Amazing Grace never feels slow. It would be difficult to watch this movie and not to root for Wilberforce—it’s another retelling of David vs. Goliath.
Amazing Grace trips only when the film tries to connect itself to the song. In one early scene, Wilberforce tries to prove a point about slavery to a bunch of poker players by standing up on the card table and singing Amazing Grace. Even in 1784, I highly doubt this would have happened.
So put Amazing Grace on the rental queue—you’ll be happy you did. (And trust me, guys, this isn’t a chick flick.) Amazing Grace is rated PG and opens nationwide on Friday, February 23. (Official site)
Nicolas Cage, I like you. I really do. Moonstruck is one of my all-time favorite movies. And who (besides Sean Penn) didn’t love Face/Off? I’ve never sat down to watch Leaving Las Vegas, but you won an Oscar for it, so you must have been good. So why, oh why, are you signing up for drivel like Ghost Rider?
I bet your agent called and said, “Nic, have I got a script for you. You’ll be playing a man who has sold his soul to the devil, and at night, you turn into a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle!”
Obviously I’m going to say SKIP IT to Ghost Rider. Wake me when Nicolas Cage gets back to making good movies.
January means good news and bad news for moviegoers. The bad news is that studios typically release nothing but drivel in January. The good news is that the studios released their best films in December in time for Oscar consideration, and now those films are opening in more theatres.
The Hitcher: Don’t pick up strangers, people. SKIP IT. (Official site)
The Last King of Scotland: Want to win your Oscar pool? Pick Forest Whitaker to win Best Actor. SEE IT. Full review is below.
The Italian: A six-year-old Russian orphan has the chance to be adopted by an Italian couple, but instead he goes off on his own to find his mother. Foreign films that make it to US shores are usually the cream of the crop, and The Italian looks like no exception. This will probably only play in a handful of theatres, so I will definitely RENT IT. (Official site)
The Good German: George Clooney and Cate Blanchett are two of my favorite actors, but I could not get into this trailer. Reviews have not been good. SKIP IT. (Official site)
Today I did something I never thought I would do:I intentionally ran screaming into 45 degree water.And I was sober.Why would I do such a thing, you ask?Well, my good friend Brenda told me she was writing an article about the Polar Bear Club for the New York Daily News and asked me if I would like to take the plunge with her.When she told me her swim was scheduled for my birthday, the whole event seemed like kismet, and I knew I had to do it.
I am generally a warm water girl.I grew up in West Palm Beach, where the ocean was always above 75 degrees, even in February.I would never swim in my parents’ pool unless the water was more than 85 degrees.On several occasions, I have been canoeing or at the beach in New York, and I have been completely satisfied with only dipping a toe in the frigid water.My fiancé doubted that I would complete the Polar Bear swim today.
The gods were smiling down on me today, my 28th birthday.For mid-December in New York, the temperature was a balmy 47 degrees with not a cloud in the sky.Jared and I met Brenda at Coney Island, and all the Polar Bears greeted us like new friends.They offered tips on how to maintain body heat and they emphasized that it was not a competition—if we weren’t feeling well, we should leave the water immediately.
There were approximately 50 swimmers at Coney Island today.Many were grizzled vets with thick Brooklyn accents, and some were newbies like us.Before the swim, we gathered in a huge circle in the sand and did jumping jacks to get the blood flowing.And then we charged the water.
I ran screaming in the wintry water, holding hands with Jared and Brenda.Immediately my lungs began to contract, and I had trouble breathing.I was taking deep breaths, but I couldn’t get enough air, and there was a searing pain my chest.The water was freezing, so cold that it felt like a thousand needles against my skin.Fortunately there were 50 crazy people in the water yelling and screaming, so I had a distraction from the pain.I got in up to my neck, which makes my swim official by Polar Bear standards.
In order to become an official Polar Bear, you have to do 12 swims in one season, which is not going to happen for me.I am a proud Polar Bear Cub, and I will have bragging rights for the rest of my life.Now I know that I can do anything I set my mind to—even swim in freezing cold water.
