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Movie Preview: Leo and Michelle in Scorsese's Shutter Island

BuzzSugar — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:30:06 -0700

Within about 20 seconds of watching this trailer for Shutter Island, I had chills. By the time it was drawing to a scary, climactic close (and this is just the trailer, mind you) I was fully spooked. More than most frightening things, the idea of being trapped in an asylum (or a prison) as a presumably sane (or innocent) person disturbs me right to the bone.

Shutter Island takes place in 1954 when "U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels [Leonardo Dicaprio] is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals 'escape' in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity."

The movie opens Oct. 2. To check out the eerie-looking trailer, read more.

What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:30:08 -0700

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue.

Elegy
Here's a movie with two well-respected actors in the lead roles that got very little attention when it came out (I wrote about it awhile back as part of my Ben Kingsley slideshow but barely heard anything about it after that). And interestingly, the movie was generally well-received by critics. Based on the cast and description, I'm totally intrigued.

Elegy is adapted from Philip Roth's novella The Dying Animal and follows David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley), a successful New York author in his 60s who's settled into the fact that he has a strained relationship with his son (Peter Sarsgaard) and a purely sexual relationship with a middle-aged businesswoman (Patricia Clarkson). His life is then unhinged by the arrival of Consuela Castillo (Cruz), a woman who enrolls in one of his classes.

Special features include commentary with screenwriter Nicholas Meyer and a featurette titled "The Poetry of Elegy."

One more pick this week, so read more.

Degrassi: The Next Generation: Season Seven
Before Shenae Grimes was smiling up a storm on the new 90210, she was on the new Degrassi, and now season seven is here for fans to own. I know a lot of fans of this teen drama reboot who will be stoked to pick up these DVDs.

According to Netlfix, the seventh season tackles heavy subject matter like smoking pot, suicide, sexual assault, - even cancer. Jeez! Also, "A fire at rival Lakehurst High means some new students are switching to Degrassi, forcing the gang to confront the aftermath of J.T.'s murder." So, murder too.

DVD extras include special commentary, bloopers, and deleted scenes.

Link Time! 7/31

BuzzSugar — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:39:22 -0700

Remember when I was awed by Ben Kingsley's many accents? Well, Best Week Ever has mapped them all.
The John Hughes-inspired Vampire Weekend video for "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" over on Stereogum is so much fun.
The TV Addict has an interview with Shirley Manson about her upcoming acting debut in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Meanwhile, our own BellaSugar chats with Project Runway's lead stylist, Jeanie Syfu.
Want to know the latest Batman 3 rumors? Cinematical says names like "Johnny Depp" and "Philip Seymour Hoffman" are being tossed around in conjunction with characters like "Riddler" and "Penguin."
Vulture has an exhaustive history of the typically awful August movie releases.
Popwatch reports on the odd intersection of Joss Whedon fans and knitter/crocheters.
MTV Movies Blog captures the moment when Zachary Quinto first comes face-to-face with his face as Spock on the Star Trek movie poster.

Transsiberian: Spooky But Irritating

BuzzSugar — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:30:29 -0700

In select cities, a little indie thriller titled Transsiberian quietly opened over the weekend and did fairly well in the indie market (despite the long shadow cast by The Dark Knight's opening), which frankly surprises me. With some folks calling the movie "Hitchcockian" in its suspense, and featuring a cast that includes the enigmatic Emily Mortimer and a shape-shifting Ben Kingsley, I was interested in seeing it myself. But now I kinda wish I hadn't.

Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson play Americans Roy and Jesse, who are taking a train through Russia after completing a missionary assignment teaching English in China. Roy is your typical all-American tourist, boisterous, over-eager and naive, while Jesse has worked hard to get over her bad girl past, in which she struggled with alcohol and drug addiction. They meet another young couple, Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara), who turn out to have some shady secrets of their own, and Carlos manages to rope Jesse into a dangerous world of drug trafficking. Enter the two-faced Russian cop Grinko (Ben Kingsley) who has interests in Carlos's activities extending beyond official police work. When Carlos goes missing and Jesse was the last to see him, Grinko focuses all his energies on the American couple, and the movie kinda derails from there. To see what I mean, read more.

In terms of setting up a chilling, unfamiliar atmosphere in which terrible things could happen, director Brad Anderson succeeds on all counts. The snow white light of middle-of-nowhere Russia casts everything in a filmy gray, and the bulk of the story takes place on a speeding train, evoking a panicky feeling of being trapped in an foreign country in close quarters with untrustworthy people. Certainly, there are moments of genuine suspense, and the setting is such that this could have been a real nail-biter. But then someone talks, or does something incredibly dumb, and it's all over.

The most debilitating aspect of Transsiberian is the set of characters. At every turn Jesse does something (or doesn't do something - how hard is it to discreetly drop a bag in a trash bin in a public space where nobody is paying attention to you? Come on!) that is so inane, so illogical, there's no response but to throw your hands up in the air and curse under your breath. Indeed, this is the kind of film that was fun to watch with a few friends - but only because we could yell at the screen together out of bafflement and frustration. Though she admirably puts her all into it, even Mortimer can't elevate the quality of this character.

And then there's Woody Harrelson, who brings the stock character of dumb American buffoon to preposterous levels. He could have easily taken the blithe ignorance down a notch and we would have still gotten the picture. As it was, his character was so incredibly stupid at times, I wondered if there were something wrong with him, mentally. In the end, you can have a spooky setting, but characters really matter, too, and if we don't root for, care about or even remotely like any of them, it's hard to find the film worthwhile.

Buzz In: What Are the Worst On-Screen Kisses?

BuzzSugar — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:00:33 -0700

After viewing The Wackness I had lots of nice overall feelings about the movie but one tiny little part of it still makes me go, "Eeesh!" And that would be the part where Mary-Kate Olsen makes out with Ben Kingsley. Yeah, that makeout session (because it's definitely more than a little peck!) gave me the opposite of warm-fuzzies inside.

The romantic pairing up of old and young, sometimes given the lovely term "May-December romance," can be kinda icky to witness. Steve Martin locking lips with Claire Danes in Shopgirl is another one that sends an uncomfortable shiver up my spine.

It's not always the age thing, though. Sometimes there's poor chemistry, or one of the actors looks like he's falling asleep during a supposedly passionate embrace. There are awkward ones, like the tongue kiss between Sarah Michelle Gellar's conniving Kathryn and Selma Blair's painfully naive Cecile in Cruel Intentions. And there's the small screen, too: How awful was that kiss between Joey and Rachel on Friends? I distinctly remember yelling at my TV, "Stop! No! This isn't right!"

Those are just a few of kisses that have made me squirm in my seat, and as Defamer recently pointed out, there's often some squirming on the set as well during these kissing scenes. What are some of the worst screen kisses you can think of?

Source and Source

Ben Kingsley Is the Man of the Hour

BuzzSugar — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:30:36 -0700

Ben Kingsley has always been a man of many faces (and accents), but lately it seems like he's popping up in every movie (and every time with a different accent). I knew he was in War, Inc. with John Cusack, and in one of my Tribeca favorites, The Wackness. And then when I checked out the trailer for Elegy (which is mesmerizing only because Penelope Cruz is so smoking hot no matter what she does), there he was again!
In addition to these recent theatrical releases, Kingsley has four films in various stages of production and four more titles in pre-production.
To check out my guide to recent and upcoming films featuring man-of-the-hour Ben Kingsley, hit "Start."

View Slideshow ›

Tribeca Review: The Wackness

BuzzSugar — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:30:52 -0700

Previously, I'd mostly known The Wackness as that weird-looking Sundance movie in which an Olsen twin makes out with Ben Kingsley and which features a ton of pot smoking. While those things are true, I also gotta say I really liked this weirdo pot-smoking movie. I can easily see why The Wackness won the audience award at Sundance this year: it's funny, it's got that tender boy-grows-up storyline, and there's plenty of sex, drugs and a ridiculously awesome, rap-heavy soundtrack.

Also, it's got Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby and Ben Kingsley at the heart of it, which is what ended up endearing this movie to me most of all. Peck plays Luke Shapiro, a kid on the Upper East Side who deals pot and feels alone amongst his classmates. He lives with parents who fight about money nonstop and he sees a therapist, Dr. Squires (Kingsley) in exchange for weed. Luke soon graduates high school and starts another summer of peddling his goods from out of an ices cart. He befriends his therapist's stepdaughter Stephanie (Thirlby) and then quickly falls in love with her. That's not all, though, so read more.

Discovering that his family might be getting evicted, Luke solicits Dr. Squires' help with his business, gaining a higher-end clientele so he can more quickly earn cash. Luke and Dr. Squires become close friends just as Squires feels more and more estranged from his wife. Meanwhile, Stephanie's commitment issues start to worry Luke, as she's the first girl he's ever truly loved. Mary-Kate Olsen's part is minimal at best. She plays a trippy flower child who buys from Luke and, well, makes out with Dr. Squires.

Screening this movie at Tribeca was the perfect move, and not just because the script includes countless quips about Mayor Giuliani. It's shot with a great affection for New York, framing many of the scenes in parks or on rooftops, relying on the soft sunlight to imbue a kind of hominess and comfort to this city that never sleeps. It isn't the glamorous, impossibly clean New York of mindless romcoms, it's the hometown to these kids who have grown up on the Upper East Side but still try to talk like gangsters. They've got money to burn and they burn it on pot, rather than fashion. Sometimes the pot theme lends a sleepy quality to it all, though there are also little dreamlike fantasy interludes in which we catch a glimpse inside Luke's imagination and rather than being ridiculous, it's actually adorably endearing. I guess that's the bottom line here: I thought this movie would be ridiculous and instead it wormed its way into my heart.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Movie Preview: The Love Guru With Meyers, Alba, Timberlake and More

BuzzSugar — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:30:00 -0800

Okay, I'm willing to give The Love Guru a huge chance based on the cast alone: Mike Meyers (natch), Romany Malco (Conrad from Weeds!), Justin Timberlake (dressed all funny and bewigged), John Oliver (hilarious British guy from The Daily Show) and Ben Kingsley (funny because of, you know, his Oscar-winning performance as Ghandi). Oh, and Jessica Alba's in it too.

The new trailer for The Love Guru looks silly in the Austin Powers kind of way, though less charming and less humorous. Still, I have sorely missed Mike Meyers in recent years and it's oddly comforting to see him back in action. According to IMDB, Meyers plays a guru who travels to the U.S. in the hopes of breaking into the self-help business. "His first challenge: To settle the romantic troubles and subsequent professional skid of a star hockey player (Malco) whose wife left him for a rival athlete (Timberlake)." The Love Guru opens June 20. To check out the trailer and tell me what you think, read more.

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Sundance Spotlight: The Wackness

BuzzSugar — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:30:00 -0800

I am so thrilled to go to Sundance this year, and I can't wait to see as many movies as possible while I'm out there! For the next few days I'll be highlighting some of the films I'm most curious to see. Today's spotlight: The Wackness

I first heard about The Wackness in conjunction with these photos which certainly do seem to embody the term "wackness". . . if there were such a term. I'm totally intrigued by the idea of Mary-Kate Olsen and Ben Kingsley onscreen together; I'd go to see a movie just for that.

The story is set in 1994 for reasons I don't yet understand and "centers on a troubled teenage drug dealer and a drug-addled psychiatrist - after the former trades pot for therapy sessions, then falls for the doctor's daughter." We'll see how this goes. Even if it ends up being a totally crazy train wreck, I'm excited to be around as a witness.

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Buzz News Roundup, 9/24

BuzzSugar — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:32:38 -0700

The New York Times has the obituary for the famous French mime Marcel Marceau who died Saturday at age 84.
Jason Bateman will join Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in the movie State of Play, ComingSoon reports.
Tomorrow Chaka Khan will release her first album in ten years, Billboard reports.
The Hollywood Reporter writes about a study that shows the number of gay characters on primetime TV has dropped for the third year in a row.
Justin Timberlake led the MTV Europe Music Awards nominations, People reports.
Hollywood Reporter has news that Ben Kingsley will play William Shakespeare in Will, a movie about the playwright's deathbed meeting with his lawyer to discuss his last will and testament.
Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern and Denis Leary headline the all-star cast for "Recount," HBO's movie about the 2000 presidential election, Variety reports.
Variety reports that "Sex and the City" writer Cindy Chupack will co-write a romantic comedy series for NBC.
Zap2It has news that Alice Ghostly (Esmeralda on "Bewitched"!) has died at age 81.

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