When you look at the list of Golden Globe Motion Picture nominations this morning, the really big surprise is how few surprises there are on it. This is an organization that is known to be heavily star-driven, wanting to get as many glamorous superstars crammed into the Beverly Hilton ballroom as they can, and this…
Five years after the vast expansion of California's film and television tax incentive program was inked into law by then-Governor Jerry Brown, big budgets, Oscar winners, remakes and rock bios dominated the 13 films that today were announced as the latest round of allocations.
Led by the $17.5 million awarded to the…
BREAKING: Paramount has acquired world rights for Babylon, a script that Damien Chazelle has written to direct as his next film. His La La Land star Emma Stone is circling to star with Brad Pitt. The actor deals aren’t yet done, but the plan is for them to team in an original R-rated drama that is set in a shifting…
A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit.
If you want your movie to be eligible for the Oscars or WGA awards, you have only one week to comply. All forms are due in November 15 for both organizations, and they are serious. In fact AMPAS minces no words according to their official release on…
UPDATE 09:35 AM PST: Still nothing concrete on why the China release of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has been postponed. One well-placed source in the country claims there was an appeal from Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee to Chinese authorities over the portrayal of her father, a local hero.
In the movie, a…
Can Clint Eastwood save the Oscars? With luck and a little help, yes, absolutely. It could happen. The stars already are aligning.
Since the debut last week of a trailer for Eastwood's Richard Jewell, about the pursuit of a security guard who was wrongly suspected of Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park bombing in 1996…
I have to admit I am still haunted by director James Gray’s 2016 film The Lost City of Z, which centered on an explorer on a mission to find evidence of an advanced civilization that lived in a remote and uncharted corner of the earth. I thought of it a lot as I watched Gray’s latest film, Ad Astra, which takes the…
On the day that Harvey Weinstein's trial for rape was supposed to have started in New York City before being postponed, the much accused producer's team Monday tried to damn Gwyneth Paltrow in the court of public opinion for her role in his downfall.
“Gwyneth Paltrow comes from Hollywood royalty,” a spokesperson for…
In James Gray’s Ad Astra, Brad Pitt plays an astronaut traveling to the farthest reaches of our solar system to find his lost father and grapple with existential questions. And at the heart of the film, Pitt said at its Venice press conference earlier today, was the exploration of what constructs of masculinity mean…
When James Gray set out on the path that would lead him to Ad Astra, he couldn’t have foreseen the importance his film would take on, with Fox’s first releases under new ownership at Disney facing added scrutiny as observers wonder about the fate of the storied studio.
First, Ad Astra proved a complicated film to get…
UPDATE: Moviegoer interest in seeing Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood apparently wasn’t just among the public, who crowded theaters to bring in an impressive $40 million-plus weekend estimated box office haul and sold out shows in major markets, especially L.A. Oscar voters jumped on board, too.
There…
In mixing real and fictional movie stars in Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood,Quentin Tarantino helped his cause by casting performers who were careful not to do impressions, but bite sized performances as iconic stars who in moments are eerily reminiscent of those subjects. Margot Robbie captured the essence of Sharon…
