BuzzSugar

Drew and Justin Reunite For Romantic Comedy

BuzzSugar — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:30:02 -0700

Former real-life couple Drew Barrymore and Justin Long worked together a bit on He's Just Not That Into You but now they'll get even cozier as the lead onscreen couple in the romantic comedy Going the Distance. The feature will be directed by Nanette Burstein, who last directed the documentary American Teen, and is described as an "observational comedy" about long distance relationships. Drew and Justin will play "a young couple navigating their way through the perils of a long distance relationship who quickly discover that 'going the distance' might cost them everything they have, including one another."

It seems like long distance relationships are more feasible than ever in this technological age, though they can still be difficult and problematic. I'm curious to see how the movie deals with this kind of relationship that many of us have had (or currently have!).

What about you? Intrigued? Do you think Drew and Justin are cute together (either onscreen or off)?

Source

Buzz News Roundup, 3/20

BuzzSugar — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:30:48 -0700

The Big Bang Theory has been renewed for two seasons and Two and a Half Men for three. - TV.com
Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke will direct a film adaptation of Gayle Forman's upcoming novel, If I Stay, for Summit Entertainment. - Zap2It
Elle Macpherson is returning to acting with a recurring role on CW's drama pilot Beautiful Life. - The Hollywood Reporter
Universal has picked up a romantic-comedy script titled Merman about a merman who comes to land so he can win back his mermaid fiancee, who has left him for a real man. - Variety
The widower of the late Adrienne Shelly (writer-director of Waitress) will develop and produce The Morgan Story, a screenplay for a family drama that Shelly left behind. - AP
In Treatment will return to HBO on April 5. - Zap2it
Kevin Costner and Tommy Lee Jones will join Ben Affleck in the dramatic movie The Company Men. - ComingSoon
Lily Collins, daughter of Phil, will guest-star on 90210 at the end of the season. - The Hollywood Reporter
Justin Long will star in the romantic-comedy Going the Distance, which will be directed by American Teen director Nanette Burstein. - ComingSoon
Mary J. Blige has signed on to star alongside Taraji P. Henson in I Can Do Bad All by Myself, Tyler Perry's upcoming film. - Variety

Photos courtesy of CBS

Buzz News Roundup, 11/12

BuzzSugar — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:30:29 -0800

The mayor of a city in Turkey called Batman is suing Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. for royalties from The Dark Knight, claiming the producers used the city's name without permission. - Variety
ABC's probable Winter plans could include Scrubs on Wednesdays and Private Practice after Grey's Anatomy. - The Futon Critic
The Twilight soundtrack is the best-selling album of the past week. - Billboard
American Teen director Nanette Burstein is directing the romantic comedy Going the Distance, with Adam Shankman producing. - ComingSoon
The Shield's Walter Goggins will head to AMC for a pilot about wrongful convictions. - Zap2it
A Jerry Garcia biopic is in the works. - Billboard
America Ferrera will star in and executive produce the dramatic movie American Tragic. - ComingSoon
If Pushing Daisies gets canceled, the story will continue in a comic book. - TV Week

Source and Dark Knight photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

An Interview With American Teen Director Nanette Burstein

BuzzSugar — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:30:02 -0700

When I saw the documentary American Teen at Sundance this year, I was totally wowed, and I knew I was watching something special. It's truly one of the most insightful documentaries on American life to come out in years. The film is in select theaters now, and I highly recommend you check it out.

As you can imagine, it was a delight to sit down with the director of American Teen, Nanette Burstein, and pick her brain about the making of the film, what it means in the grander scope of current teen culture, and what it's like to be a lady director in a field that is still staggeringly dominated by men.

Buzz: When you were first filming at the high school in Warsaw (Indiana), how did you know you found the "right" kids with Colin and Hannah and Jake and Megan, etc.?

Nannette Burstein: Well, I didn't know for a while. I'm used to looking for not only the people but also a story that's already in process. And it's really funny because I found the best stories all in this one town - but that was in the summer. And then I got there like a month later and every one of their stories had changed, and I was so upset! I was like, "Oh my God, I've raised all this money and this film is going to be a disaster." (laughs) But they're teenagers! And their lives change like that.

The interview continues if you read more.

Buzz: Did it take a while for them to trust you, especially in regard to filming them doing potentially incriminating things, like vandalism, drinking, etc.? Were they OK with you filming that?

NB: No, not in the beginning. It did take a while . . . because they were worried that I was going to show that they drank a lot. So, I made this promise to them that I wouldn't do that, and I did keep that promise. There's only one scene where you actually see them drinking alcohol. [But] that wasn't what I was interested in, and in fact, they weren't doing really anything. I was worse in high school, I was drinking and doing more drugs than they were. I think it’s something that teenagers do, and if anything it was tamer. But yeah, it definitely took them a few months to trust me and feel comfortable on camera.

Buzz: Speaking of things that you did when you were younger and what they did, do you think there's anything unique about teenage life right now? And are there things that are the same and are always going to be the same?

NB: Yes, I think what's different about teenage life now is communication. Just overwhelming different forms of communication like the Internet and text messaging and i-chatting and YouTube, and it’s really hard for them to navigate. There's already enough rumors and misunderstandings that happen when you’re a teenager and this has just multiplied them, you know, a hundred-fold. I think what hasn't changed are the core issues of wanting to fit in and feeling insecure and fragile hearts and your parents pressuring you . . . All of these emotional issues are timeless. And up until now, you have these fiction films that deal with these kinds of subjects, but they tend to be more one-dimensional and everyone has a happy ending and nothing is very realistic. And then these reality shows are very stagey and tend to be about the wealthier classes in life so they don't feel very real either. So I haven't really seen a film that's depicted - both on an entertaining level and a complexity and substantive level - what teenage life is like. Hopefully in that way this film is new and different and could have wide appeal.

Buzz: You had mentioned at Sundance that you wished there had been more diversity, but it just didn’t work out that way. Did it ever give you pause to call the film American Teen when it's about basically one sort of homogeneous group of people?

NB: Yes! It gave me great pause, in fact. And I was struggling until Sundance - I knew once I got to Sundance I couldn't change the name because there would be all this publicity and we went through a bunch of different names. But I was and still am concerned about that.

Buzz: It's still quite different from what we're getting a lot of on TV, The Hills, all that stuff, and to me this is endlessly fascinating - the heartland of America, etc. - perhaps more so than say, Southern California.

NB: I know, and it's so funny because when I first got to Warsaw, the more popular kids were like, "Why are you filming here? You should be in California! Who's gonna want to watch this?" (laughs) They were so dubious of the movie because it was set in their Midwestern town.

Buzz: But it’s actually fulfilling a need.

NB: Yeah! Oh, it totally is.

Buzz: As a female director, what has been your experience within the film community as it is today?

NB: You know, I haven’t yet experienced discrimination, and I'm going to do a fictional film next so I'm sure it could be very different. Documentaries, there are a lot of female directors, probably because you don’t make much money (laughs). And it's not quite as political. But subject matter-wise, you look at the movies out there and every year has some exceptions. Maybe Juno is about pregnancy, but it was more than that to me, it was a film about a really smart . . . like a Hannah type of girl. And it's great, and you never see movies with young, female icons like that, that don’t care about being popular and are not vapid but are actually quite witty.

Buzz: And that movie just took off.

NB: I know! Exactly. And the success of it is because there's obviously a desire to see girls depicted that way. Yeah, I don't know why there are so few female directors, but there are . . . I do think there are strong female characters in [my movie], which is cool. I think that both Megan and Hannah are even more complicated than the boys, and I think that definitely comes from a woman making the film. And I didn’t even consciously think about it.

Source and source

Movie Preview: American Teen

BuzzSugar — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:45:11 -0700

Man, people love to push the whole "this generation's Breakfast Club" angle with the documentary American Teen (though the poster for it, ah, doesn't help). I suppose this makes sense, but only in that The Breakfast Club featured timeless high school themes and characters. Yet, The Breakfast Club was still fiction, and a documentary is always going to be more complex and more nuanced than the stereotypes in a scripted film.

The movie follows four Indiana teenagers - introduced in the trailer as The Jock, The Princess, The Rebel and The Geek - as they go through their senior year of high school. It's both a familiar chronicling of the ups and downs of high school as well as a revealing look at how teens today are quite different from those of other generations. This was one of my favorite movies at Sundance a few months ago, and I plan on seeing it again when it opens July 25. To check out the trailer, read more.

Photo courtesy of Paramount Vantage

Sundance Review: American Teen

BuzzSugar — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:30:00 -0800

What is it about teenagers that fascinates us so? In the case of many TV shows - from The O.C. to My Super Sweet 16 - there's an obsession with wealthy teens, kids who seem to have way too much way too young. We love seeing the spectacle these kids provide, their outrageous demands, their bratty tantrums that make us tsk-tsk even as we turn up the volume. We love affirming (in certain cases) that money doesn't solve everything, nor does it make anyone a better person.

The documentary American Teen, however, never focuses on this kind of outrageous opulence. The main idea is to get a glimpse at four Indiana kids from different backgrounds and social circles. Yet while everything in the film is completely ordinary, it still fascinates us.

American Teen was one of the best-received documentaries at Sundance, as evidenced in part by the various studios that courted filmmaker Nanette Burstein before Paramount Vantage bought up the rights. I admit I was driven to see the film partly out of curiosity to see these kids go through this delicate, difficult, and intense time of life that I've already experienced in my own way. Is this curiosity the thing that drives the desire to see American Teen? If not, why do we want to see these relatively normal stories so badly?