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Damon and Brolin May Get Gritty For the Coen Brothers

BuzzSugar — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:30:12 -0700

The freight train that is Matt Damon's career is still chugging away at full steam: while he's off filming The Adjustment Bureau, the actor is in talks for yet another upcoming project. Ethan and Joel Coen want Damon, along with Josh Brolin, to star in their upcoming remake of True Grit.

Jeff Bridges is already on board to play US marshal Rooster Cogburn, and Damon would play a lawyer who joins Cogburn and a 14-year-old girl to track down the killer of the girl's father. Josh Brolin would play the murderer, which doesn't seem like much of a stretch of imagination after his recent role in Milk.

Bridges and Brolin are obviously already pets of the Coen Brothers, and I could see Matt Damon fitting perfectly into their repertoire. I was a bit disappointed with A Serious Man, but I'm already looking forward to seeing the talented filmmaking siblings take on another drama with a star-studded cast.

Movie Preview: Women in Trouble

BuzzSugar — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:30:29 -0700

Every few years, a woman-heavy ensemble hits the theaters, and I always hope it's going to be as good as the standard, Steel Magnolias. This year's flick, Women in Trouble, stars Carla Gugino, Connie Britton, Marley Shelton, Emanuelle Chriqui, and Sarah Clarke as the various women from different walks of life. One's a porn star, one's a masseuse, one's a flight attendant, and many of them are in their bras in this trailer. As you can tell from the title, they're each in some kind of personal trouble and the film looks like a Crash-like melange of the ladies' intersecting lives.

There's also a wee bit of testosterone with a few actors who are easy on the eyes: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, and Simon Baker. The cast seems pretty promising, but I worry it'll veer into the same stale territory as last year's The Women.

To see the trailer, just read more.

Link Time!

BuzzSugar — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:30:44 -0700

Josh Brolin is replacing Sean Penn in Cartel - Cinematical
Jude Law recites Poker Face on Jimmy Fallon - Best Week Ever
Production has been suspended on Jon & Kate Plus 8 - Movieline
Quentin Tarantino has plans to make Kill Bill 3 in the next couple years - Moviefone
Do the Lost references on FlashForward belong on the show? - TV.com
Transformers 3 will include Megan Fox and come out July 1, 2011 - MTV Movies Blog
In honor of Whip It, a collection of favorite movie roller skating scenes - Rotten Tomatoes
J.J. Abrams's new spy series causes a bidding war - Coming Soon
Who's your favorite TV mom? - LilSugar

Buzz News Roundup, 2/13

BuzzSugar — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:30:16 -0800

Jennifer Hudson and The Secret Life of Bees were big winners at the NAACP Image Awards. - Reuters
Columbia Pictures is bringing a time-traveling Jane Austen drama to the big screen, based on the British miniseries Lost in Austen. - ComingSoon
Director Christopher Nolan's next project has nothing to do with Batman: He'll direct an original screenplay he wrote called Inception, a sci-fi action film, for Warner Bros. - The Hollywood Reporter
John Malkovich will square off against Josh Brolin in Jonah Hex, the Warner Bros. adaptation of the DC Comics property. - Variety
Armie Hammer has been cast as Serena's new boyfriend on Gossip Girl. - E! Online
After playing Ozymandias in the upcoming Watchmen, Matthew Goode will join Amy Adams for the romantic comedy Leap Year. - Zap2It
Anne Hathaway will topline Twelfth Night in Central Park this Summer in the role of Viola. - AP
U2 will play five nights straight on Late Show With David Letterman in March. - The Hollywood Reporter
Peter Gabriel has withdrawn from performing at the Academy Awards, refusing to perform a shortened version of his nominated song from Wall-E, "Down to Earth." - Variety

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Buzz News Roundup, 2/11

BuzzSugar — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:30:34 -0800

The upcoming movie The Soloist is inspiring at least 174 orchestras in 46 states to participate in food drives. - AP
Showtime has renewed United States of Tara for a second season. - Variety
In other renewal news, Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and Brothers and Sisters are rumored to be getting early pickups from ABC. - TV.com
Mark Valley will star in a Fox pilot called Human Target, while Kathryn Hahn and Kristen Johnston are officially cast in the Absolutely Fabulous remake. - TV Guide
Woody Allen has set Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins to star in the film he wrote and will shoot in London this Summer. - ComingSoon
Tom Cruise is in talks to star with Denzel Washington in the David Cronenberg-directed thriller The Matarese Circle. - Variety
Brad Paisley leads the Academy of Country Music Awards nominations with six nods. - AP
Sam Rockwell has joined Hilary Swank in the legal drama Betty Anne Waters. - The Hollywood Reporter

Photo courtesy of Paramount

Milk: Deeply Moving, Difficult, and Worthwhile

BuzzSugar — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:30:58 -0800

"I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living." - Harvey Milk

The story of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk had a huge impact on me a few years ago when I first watched the Oscar-winning documentary about him, The Times of Harvey Milk. His is truly a stranger-than-fiction tale and is so full of inspiration, absurdity, and absolute heartache that it's somewhat surprising it has taken this long to create a feature-length dramatization of his life and death. I respect director Gus Van Sant's decision to memorialize and honor Harvey Milk with his movie Milk, and to my great relief, Van Sant and his exceptional ensemble cast have done Milk's story justice.

Milk picks up Harvey Milk's life when Milk (Sean Penn) meets one of the great loves of his life, Scott Smith (portrayed by James Franco) and decides to move from New York City to San Francisco. There, the two open a camera store in the heart of the Castro, a neighborhood with a rapidly growing gay population, and there Milk begins his life as a leader of the gay rights movement in the 1970s. After trying and failing twice, he is finally elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977, largely due to the support of the gay community. For the first time, it becomes apparent that the gay community could be a powerful one, and Milk often emphasizes this during his time in city hall. As the country's first openly gay man to be elected to public office, Milk brings the gay rights movement to the city's attention as much as possible, earning him admiration and support along with many enemies - including his ultimate enemy, fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin). For more about this and my thoughts on it all, read more.

Dan White is a good ol' Christian boy who feels threatened by and resentful of Harvey Milk's success. Josh Brolin, who is fast becoming one of the most fascinating actors in Hollywood, simply morphs into this insecure and fearful man who gradually becomes unhinged. His fate and that of Harvey Milk are tragically linked in history forever, and frankly, it's disturbing to see Dan White brought to life on screen, especially after seeing all the actual footage of him in the documentary.

The rest of the cast is equally remarkable: Franco makes for a loving, sympathetic Smith, and Emile Hirsch is captivating as Milk's young activist protégé Cleve Jones. Allison Pill is always an undeniably strong presence on screen and her depiction of Milk's sole female team member, Anne Kronenberg, is no different. Diego Luna plays one of Milk's lovers, Jack Lira, with equal parts bright beauty and troubling instability. Most of all, Penn's portrayal of this charismatic, resilient, and good-humored pioneer will surely earn him some well-deserved accolades and awards.

This project is remarkably ambitious. There are so many intersecting aspects of Milk's career, activism, and personal life, it's enough to make one's head spin. Add to this Van Sant's decision to incorporate actual footage from the '70s into his dramatized story, and you've got yourself a crazy, giant puzzle to put together. But the actual footage is crucial in this case, consistently reminding us that though this seems like fiction at times - especially now, to modern audiences - this is a true story.

Interestingly, one "character" (so to speak), the outspoken fundamentalist Christian singer Anita Bryant, is not played by any actress (though at first glance I thought for sure it was Marcia Gay Harden). Instead, her entire part in Milk's story is shown through real footage - which only makes her behavior that much more staggering. This directorial choice seamlessly blends the reality of Harvey Milk's actual life with the staging of his life by the director and cast. Overall, I can’t express enough how much I applaud and admire Van Sant’s accomplishment here. It's a complicated and deeply emotional story, and the entire production - Van Sant, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, the whole cast - carried a tremendous responsibility to get this thing right and the result is a dignified homage.

I highly recommend watching the documentary first, as there was an effervescence and a beautiful light to the real Harvey Milk that no actor, not even the great Sean Penn, can capture. Both the documentary and this new film may leave you speechless and/or weepy. But his is a worthwhile story to tell and if this grand-scale production with heavy-hitting actors and a talented director gets his story out there, all the better.

Photos courtesy of Focus Features

W: Too Little, Too Soon

BuzzSugar — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:30:33 -0700

No matter your political persuasion, most can agree that the presidency of George W. Bush is concluding on a low and solemn note, the full consequences of his years in office still unknown. There is no doubt he is one of the most controversial figures of a generation, and his life will provide vast and fertile ground for dramatists someday. Which brings me to my basic conclusion that someday is not here yet, and Oliver Stone's new biopic of the president, W, is a half-baked attempt at telling Bush's story and it suffers from the fact that the real-life tale is far from being over.

There is so much to think about when it comes to the life of Dubya. His transformation from a spoiled ne'er-do-well to the leader of the free world is good stuff. Because of the timing and the subject, it's the kind of biography that requires a director to have a point of view and a nuanced storytelling ability. Stone brings neither to his movie and the effect is a shallow psychoanalysis of Bush that too often borders on absurd and darkly funny in ways that I'm not sure was intentional. There is one thing that nearly salvages the whole ordeal, though, and that's Josh Brolin. To see why, just read more.

The truth is we don't know how this story ends yet, but most of us do know how it all began: Jr. started out as a silver-spooner born into a politically influential family. He aimlessly boozed his way through life without much consequence until he got married and religious and decided to make something of himself. All of this is more or less depicted in the movie.

The overarching Freudian theme is how Bush Jr. is forever wilting under the weighty expectations of his father (played nicely by James Cromwell), who has invested the family's political legacy in brother Jeb anyway. Basically the movie's premise is that Dubya needed a hug from his dad, and had he gotten that kind of love and support he may have ended up elsewhere (maybe he would have been baseball commissioner, which is suggested to have been his first love). But it was his drive to prove everyone wrong - along with a sign from God - that drove him to be president, despite being emotionally undermined by his dad along the way.

It's the kind of flimsy pop psychology that reminds me of an Oprah episode - and that's not even the biggest problem with it. The real laughs (intended or not) come from the cast assembled to portray Bush's cabinet, including: Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld and Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell. Whether coming up with the sound bite "Axis of Evil" in the oval office or planning world domination in a dark, cave-like war room a la Dr. Strangelove, the film lurches between eerily familiar and downright parody. Newton's portrayal as Rice is particularly jarring and quite bizarre. Sometimes the movie feels like an ambitious idea that just misses the mark and other times it seems like the rush job it is.

Interestingly enough, Brolin is able to pull a tremendous performance out of this exercise in wacky (and glib) history-telling. His interpretation of the character is a straightforward portrayal that never turns into a joke, despite the well-known (and often mocked) mannerisms of the president. It would be a performance to gush over under any circumstances, but the fact that he shines while playing a guy that comedians have had a field day impersonating for eight years is quite the accomplishment. I have a renewed respect for Brolin's talent, that's for sure.

Actors like Brolin, Elizabeth Banks (as Laura Bush) and Dreyfuss give this movie some life and I found it bizarrely riveting to watch the strange way these events are captured in the film. However, none of this makes up for the fact that it all feels slap-dashed and unfinished. Because Stone has everything and nothing to say about George W. Bush, the effect is just a surreal slog through a sad piece of our nation's history, the timing of which makes it not just a so-so movie, but a kick in the gut while the nation's already down.

Photos courtesy of Lionsgate

Buzz News Roundup, 10/10

BuzzSugar — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:30:12 -0700

USA has renewed Burn Notice and Psych. - Entertainment Weekly
Seth Rogen will co-write a comedy with Will Reiser titled I'm With Cancer that will tell Reiser's autobiographical tale of a 25-year-old who finds out he has the disease. - The Hollywood Reporter
This is Your Life is the latest classic TV show to be revived. - Broadcasting and Cable
A Barcelona-based production company is set to produce Fake Orgasm, a documentary about why people feign pleasure. - Variety
Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy has been given a Nov. 23 release date - which, if it happens, would mean we all get free Dr Pepper. - Billboard
It looks like Josh Brolin will go from playing George W. Bush to playing Jonah Hex in a film adaptation of the DC Comics property. - Variety
The redheaded Rebecca Mader (who plays Charlotte on Lost) will be joining George Clooney and Ewan McGregor in the movie Men Who Stare at Goats. - ComingSoon
YouTube will start streaming full episodes of some shows, starting with a handful of CBS classics and the original Beverly Hills, 90210. - The Hollywood Reporter

Photos courtesy of USA

Movie Preview: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch in Milk

BuzzSugar — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:30:09 -0700

One of the movies I'm most looking forward to this Fall is Milk, which filmed in my fair city of San Francisco last Winter. Directed by Gus Van Sant, the movie follows the true story of Harvey Milk, the nation's first gay official of any major American city, who was assassinated shortly after his election to office. The story has already been covered by a moving documentary, and in Milk, Sean Penn steps into the title role.

Now, I've said before that I can be a bit of a crybaby, and this trailer got me all teary. Penn seems like a great fit as Milk, letting the right amounts of warmth and passion through. The overall look of the film also seems spot-on, capturing the '70s style without seeming costumey. And the cast - oh, the cast! Some of the most wonderful actors in Hollywood appear alongside Penn in this one, including Josh Brolin, James Franco, Diego Luna, and a totally transformed Emile Hirsch.

Milk premieres at the end of October in San Francisco and will be in wide release starting Dec. 5. To watch the trailer, get your tissues ready and read more.

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Teaser Trailer For Oliver Stone's W

BuzzSugar — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:30:43 -0700

From the minute-and-a-half-long teaser trailer for Oliver Stone's movie about George W. Bush, W, it looks like the degree to which you will like or be intrigued by this movie depends on how curious you are about Dubya (played here by Josh Brolin) and his past. Not that it's a totally accurate portrayal, but it does appear to be a relatively straight, dramatic telling of his life, focusing in particular on his relationship with his father, George H. W. Bush.

I will say it's interesting to see the portrayals of well-known political figures like Rove, Rumsfeld, Laura Bush, Condoleeza, Barbara Bush, etc. The teaser includes a few shots of scenes from things we pretty much already know about Dubya's past like his partying and drunk driving, along with prickly interactions with his dad. Then it's mostly a montage of images of those other figures, played by actors like James Cromwell, Elizabeth Banks, Richard Dreyfuss and others.

W opens October 17. To check out the teaser, read more.

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