Daily Hot Celebrity Photos 2009

Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

2012-01-28T04:24:00.001-08:00

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Dear Google user, We're getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that's a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google. We believe this stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service at http://www.google.com/policies. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.
One policy, one Google experience

Easy to work across Google Our new policy reflects a single product experience that does what you need, when you want it to. Whether you're reading an email that reminds you to schedule a family get-together or finding a favorite video that you want to share, we want to ensure you can move across Gmail, Calendar, Search, YouTube, or whatever your life calls for with ease.	Tailored for you If you're signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries – or tailor your search results – based on the interests you've expressed in Google+, Gmail, and YouTube. We'll better understand which version of Pink or Jaguar you're searching for and get you those results faster.	Easy to share and collaborate When you post or create a document online, you often want others to see and contribute. By remembering the contact information of the people you want to share with, we make it easy for you to share in any Google product or service with minimal clicks and errors.

Protecting your privacy hasn't changed Our goal is to provide you with as much transparency and choice as possible, through products like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager, alongside other tools. Our privacy principles remain unchanged. And we'll never sell your personal information or share it without your permission (other than rare circumstances like valid legal requests).	Got questions? We've got answers. Visit our FAQ at http://www.google.com/policies/faq to read more about the changes. (We figured our users might have a question or twenty-two.)

Notice of Change March 1, 2012 is when the new Privacy Policy and Terms will come into effect. If you choose to keep using Google once the change occurs, you will be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Please do not reply to this email. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. Also, never enter your Google Account password after following a link in an email or chat to an untrusted site. Instead, go directly to the site, such as mail.google.com or www.google.com/accounts. Google will never email you to ask for your password or other sensitive information.

{allmovies} Photo: Quentin Tarantino

2009-06-22T18:00:00.000-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Mel Gibson

2009-06-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

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{allmovies} Twilight's Peter Facinelli Wins Twitter Bet

2009-06-22T17:11:00.000-07:00

Peter Facinelli is the latest celeb to win a Twitter bet.

The Twilight star recruited 500,000 followers by his Friday deadline. If he didn't, he would have handed over the backing of his movie set director's chair to best friend Rob "Rob D." DeFranco.

But since he succeeded, Mr. DeFranco is now forced to dance down Hollywood Boulevard in a bikini while singing Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" (Joe Jonas, watch out) and holding a sign that says, "Twitter Me."

Since the bet began, Facinelli's follower count had been fluctuating...

It had hit more than 500,000 by Friday, but after an hour it dipped below.

"What I had heard was that Twitter was treating the followers like spam because so many were coming in, so they were getting tossed off," Facinelli wrote in an email to yours truly. "So at the end of the day, I'll never know if my follower count is right, but I do know that we had over 500,000, which was the magic number for Rob doing the bikini dance."

DeFranco is set to hit the streets on June 30. He tweeted over the weekend about trying on bikinis, going on a crash diet and getting manscaped with a wax.

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{allmovies} Photo: Matthew Broderick

2009-06-22T16:44:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Alec Baldwin to pen parenting guidebook?

2009-06-21T23:20:00.001-07:00

Alec Baldwin is considering writing a parental guide book.

The actor, who was vilified in the media after an answer machine message of an attack on his teenage daughter Ireland was leaked online, insists he's the perfect person to pen a modern look at parenting.

Baldwin admits he was shocked by the letters and emails he received from fans who revealed they'd never been able to shake harsh things their parents had told them - and, as a result, opted to treat their own kids with kindness at all times.

As a result, he fears parents have stopped parenting.

He tells Playboy magazine, "It will be ironic for some people, but I'm going to write a parenting book.

"We're at... an awful place right now in terms of parenting. People are raising their children with the belief that we need to be friends with our children.

"Kids have too much power and call too many of the shots, telling their parents what they will and won't do."

Baldwin blames the economy and other social issues for the way parents have gone soft: "People are working hard to make money and manage their feelings about what the country's going through. We live in stressful times.

"People come home, walk up the driveway, put the key in the door, and they can't do another hard job. Parenting your children effectively is a tough job."

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{allmovies} Photo: Arnold Schwarzenegger

2009-06-21T17:18:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Verne Troyer

2009-06-21T17:16:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Tony Danza

2009-06-21T17:15:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Seacrest, Lohan Collaborate on "Meaningful" New Reality Show

2009-06-21T16:57:00.000-07:00

Ryan Seacrest has met with Lindsay Lohan to discuss a new reality series that will help people whose lives have taken a wrong turn.

"Met with Lindsay last night about a show idea I have for her," Seacrest said via Twitter on Friday. "It helps people and gives others a second shot! Still putting it all together."

In addition to hosting American Idol (see related Q&A), Seacrest executive-produces such series as Denise Richards: It's Complicated and Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Lohan herself tweeted about the "really great project," describing it as "something meaningful like [ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition]."

"I am excited!" Lohan wrote. (Follow TV Guide on Twitter.)

Neither party elaborated on the exact concept of the show — and a rep for Seacrest did not immediately respond to TVGuide.com's request for further comment — but a source told TMZ.com that it would involve giving people whose lives are on the wrong track a cool million dollars to right themselves.

Lohan, in turn, would serve on a panel of judges determining which hapless individual would best be suited by the life-changing endowment.

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{allmovies} Photo: Russell Crowe

2009-06-21T14:24:00.003-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Rachael Leigh Cook

2009-06-21T14:24:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Paul Rudd

2009-06-21T14:23:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Yeoh says she'll star in John Woo kung fu movie

2009-06-21T11:25:00.003-07:00

SHANGHAI - Former Bond girl Michelle Yeoh said Sunday that she will star in an upcoming kung fu movie directed by John Woo, adding that she's not avoiding action movies despite a recent break from the genre.

The "Tomorrow Never Dies" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" actress told a press conference at the 12th Shanghai International Film Festival that the Chinese-language film will start shooting in China in September.

She said Woo will share directing duties on the film - tentatively called "The Sword and the Martial Arts World" - with Taiwanese filmmaker Su Chao-pin, who directed the horror film "Silk."

She declined to give further details.

Yeoh is a former beauty queen who first made her name as an action star in Hong Kong. Her recent roles in "Memoirs of a Geisha" (2005) and "Far North" (2007) have veered toward drama, but the 46-year-old actress said she still feels fit enough to handle action.

"I have felt physically stronger the past few years. I don't let age limit me," Yeoh said, adding she chose her recent projects because she enjoyed the stories - not because they were less physically taxing.

The film with Yeoh is Woo's first new project since his US$80 million two-part historical epic "Red Cliff." The Hong Kong native was supposed to next direct "1949" - an epic romance set against the Chinese civil war in that year - but the project fell through because of a dispute with its Taiwanese investors.

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{allmovies} McGregor: 'Angels' no challenge to Catholicism

2009-06-21T11:25:00.001-07:00

SHANGHAI - Actor Ewan McGregor says the Vatican's criticism of the religious thriller "Angels & Demons" was muted compared to the previous Robert Langdon adventure "The Da Vinci Code" because the newer film doesn't challenge the Catholic faith.

Promoting the movie Sunday in China, where it is showing as the closing film at the 12th Shanghai International Film Festival, McGregor said the Vatican-set "Angels & Demons" is less controversial. In the film, the Scottish actor plays a priest who serves as a top aide to the late pope.

"There's nothing that challenges Catholic or Christian belief in the film. Really, it's just a good, old-fashioned thriller with a bomb ticking away in the background and detectives solving the clues," McGregor said at a press conference.

"There was nothing for anybody to be annoyed about, I believe," he said.

Top church officials strongly objected to the 2006 film "The Da Vinci Code" because it was based on the idea that Jesus married and fathered children and depicted the conservative Catholic movement, Opus Dei, as a murderous cult.

"Angels & Demons," which also features the Harvard symbologist Langdon from the Dan Brown novels, is about Langdon's attempt to help the Holy See thwart a plot by the ancient secret brotherhood Illuminati to kill four cardinals and bomb the Vatican as a new pope is being chosen.

The Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano said in a review and editorial that "Angels & Demons" was historically inaccurate and filled with stereotypes, but concluded it is "harmless" entertainment and not a danger to the church.

The newspaper also praised director Ron Howard's "dynamic direction" and the "magnificent" reconstruction of locations like St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. Much of the film was shot on sets that painstakingly recreated church landmarks.

McGregor appeared in Shanghai with co-star Ayelet Zurer.

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{allmovies} Fox a savvy blockbuster babe

2009-06-21T11:24:00.001-07:00

It was a thankless, skin-deep role, designed to take a backseat to the spectacle of giant robotic hot rods. After all, who goes to a Transformers movie for the humans?

But there was improbably piston-hot grease monkey Megan Fox striding on-screen, tinkering with Shia LaBeouf's canary-yellow Camaro in Michael Bay's mega-budget toy-based blockbuster.

Heads turned. Motors revved. And before you could say, "Autobots, roll out!" Fox was promptly in Hollywood's fast lane, propelled by lust-inspiring looks, a lippy, flippant candour in interviews, and comparisons to that other actress who used to personify ink-dappled sinfulness in her younger, pre-maternal days (and yes, Fox bristles at being hailed the "next Angelina Jolie").

In the two years since the original Transformers, Fox has — with only one other minor film to her credit — become a fixture of the cult du celebrity, landing on the covers of magazines and being a constant focus of the blogosphere. Google her and there are shrines to her hotness.

"The picture of physical perfection," gushes one report from the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen premiere overseas. Never mind the online mockumentary that suggests Fox is literally too good to be true: Just another digitally-rendered effect courtesy Bay's vivid imagination. For some, this all might be overwhelming, even unwanted.

But in a Canadian exclusive interview with Sun Media, the savvy, candid 23-year-old Tennessee native sounds anything but an industry neophyte, suspicious of the hype, skeptical of the buzz and realistic about her place in Tinseltown's demolition derby.

"When the first movie made $700 million, I knew my career would change to a certain degree. But that it made that much was because of who's directing it and the fact it's a franchise that's been around since the 1980s. It's ILM's movie," she says on the phone from Los Angeles, referring to George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, which is responsible for all the metal-morphing visuals.

Besides, if anyone noticed the actors, it wasn't because of her, she insists. "It was mostly due to Shia (LaBeouf)'s performance in the first movie that people paid attention to the characters and we didn't get lost (among the effects)."

One assumes Fox and LaBeouf face a similar challenge in the sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which opens Wednesday with the pledge of many more droids and thunderous explosions, again enthusiastically orchestrated by Bay (Armageddon, The Rock). Many expect the $200-million sequel to top the summer's box office, with some predictions suggesting that its five-day opening could surpass the $152 million webbed up by Spider-Man 2 in 2004. In the sequel, LaBeouf's Sam Witwicky and Fox's Mikaela Banes — still improbable sweethearts — once again find themselves caught in the middle of the ongoing feud between the peaceful Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, and the power-hungry Decepticons, commanded by the villainous Megatron.

But as the story opens, the two are actually faced with a decidedly more earthbound challenge: Namely that Sam is headed off to college and "there's the strain of a long-distance relationship," Fox explains.

Not that they're separated for long — this isn't Jane Austen, remember.

"When things go bad, and he's really in physical danger, clearly I am the one to go to," she says, laughing.

Fair enough. Who wouldn't rather have Fox — rather than puny, motor-mouth LaBeouf — on their side in a brawl with alien invaders? Fox, like Jolie, appears poised to occupy a certain niche: The confidently-sexual siren who can wade into big-budget, boys-and-their-toys extravaganzas.

For Hollywood executives, it's an undeniable draw: A drop-dead gorgeous female who men don't mind seeing kick ass and women don't resent for having won the genetic Super-Lotto.

Fox isn't fond of the Jolie references — she denies persistent rumours she's going to be the new Lara Croft — but admits she is a fan of rugged, rough-and-tumble action. For example, she's currently shooting the comic-book-inspired horror western Jonah Hex with Josh Brolin and John Malkovich.

"We were just doing a fight scene and I was begging to be really choked. It's a help. It feels more realistic."

Of course, just as rampant as online buzz about what potential franchise Fox might sign on to (there were those Wonder Woman rumblings shortly after the first Transformers, remember) is the speculation about her personal life.

Depending on who you believe and what you read when, Fox, who has split from long-time boyfriend Brian Austin Green (he of Beverly Hills 90210 and more recently the Terminator TV series), is dating no one. Or maybe LaBeouf ("There is a bond, but he also can be a brat and we have fist fights and brawls. He's like a brother. But we also like each other," she says). Or even Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson (a rumour since strenuously denied). As you might expect, she's not terribly impressed.

"People need things to write about so people go to their blogs," she says. "There's a complete lack of respect. People don't respect movie stars. I don't know if they ever did, but at least they were movie stars. Now we're just the clowns, the court jesters. There really aren't movie stars anymore."

Not that you should necessarily discount everything you learn online. Take, for example, Bay's reputation for being — to put it politely — abrasive.

"He's a total nightmare when he's on set," Fox confirms. "Off-set, he's another person and I enjoy his company. But when he's on set he's a nightmare. But I also think he kind of enjoys that image of him."

Similarly, Fox herself confesses while she has gravitated to smaller projects between Transformers (the Diablo Cody-scripted Jennifer's Body arrives later this year) she also finds the widescreen mayhem "addicting … I kind of miss the madness of it, being in this constantly abusive relationship where you never know where the explosions are going off, and there's screaming and running."

You can't blame Paramount for trying.

In March, the studio announced that Transformers 3 would be charging into multiplexes July 2011. The only niggling detail they failed to iron out? No one told the filmmakers.

"The studio wanted to reserve that release date, but they hadn't spoken to any of us," says Megan Fox. "So (director) Mike Bay stepped up and said, 'No, I need to have a life and this isn't possible.' "

Thus this curious blog entry, which quickly followed the news, courtesy of Bay: "Paramount made a mistake in dating Transformers 3. They asked me on the phone — I said yes to July 4 — but for 2012 — whoops! Not 2011! That would mean I would have to start prep in September. No way. My brain needs a break from fighting robots." Just not too long a break, mind you. Another sequel is inevitable with many of those involved in the franchise throwing around the T-word: "Trilogy."

And why not? There are plenty of characters from the cartoon/toyline mythos to draw from, as co-screenwriter Roberto Orci recently told mtv.com.

"I'd like to see some version of Galvatron. I would like to see Unicron, too."

And what of the Dinobots? "I think eventually the Dinobots are going to have to happen," he continued. "As a fan, I would like to see some Dinobots."

As, we're sure, so would Paramount. Even if it means waiting until 2012.

The low-down on Fox

In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, she plays the planet's most improbably hot mechanic, surrounded by alien droids who morph on a whim into trucks, planes and cars. But what's under Megan Fox's hood? Here's a rundown:

» Born: May 19, 1986, in Rockwood, Tenn.

» Most-unwanted comparison: To Angelina Jolie, another ink-etched, raven-haired bombshell with an affinity for on-screen demolition.

» Previous credits: She appeared in 2008's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People with Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst. Pre-Transformers, her credits include Holiday in the Sun with Ashley Olson and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen opposite Lindsay Lohan. On TV, she's popped up in Two and a Half Men, What I Like About You and Hope and Faith.

» Named: Sexiest Woman in the World by readers of FHM magazine.

» Tattoos: Eight, including one of Marilyn Monroe.

» Future roles: As a demon-possessed cheerleader in Jennifer's Body, written by Juno's Diablo Cody, and in the graphic novel-inspired duster Jonah Hex with Josh Brolin. She's also developing a big-screen version of the comic book Fathom about an underwater (i.e.: barely-clothed) heroine.

» Sexual preference: She likes guys — we know this because she was in a long-term relationship with Brian Austin Green — but what about girls? Fox hasn't been shy about fueling speculation about her bisexuality, revealing in an interview with GQ magazine that she once fell for a female stripper.

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{allmovies} How To Be a Dad Like Brad

2009-06-21T11:21:00.001-07:00

With six kids under the age of 7, Brad Pitt has picked up a thing or two about parenting. From keeping clean to staying healthy and happy, check out how this hands-on pop handles the day-to-day.

Need a Remedy for Diaper Rash?
After Pitt admitted to Esquire back in 2006 that his then newborn daughter Shiloh (now 3), suffered from a terrible case of diaper rash, PEOPLE's readers came to the rescue, with an overwhelming recommendation for Boudreaux's Butt Paste. No stranger to celebrity support, the remedy has also been used by athletes like Lance Armstrong and Shaquille O'Neal to keep chafing at bay.

Getting Fresh
With this many kids, you're going to have a fair share of spills and spit ups. You also may be just too busy to bathe! After encountering a smelly situation with his Inglorious Basterds costar Eli Roth, Pitt shared his stay fresh secret: baby wipes. "All you've got to do is just take them, [and do] a couple quick wipes under the pits," he explained to Roth.

How To Tame the Mane – Or Not
When it comes to styling his daughter Zahara's dark curls, Pitt also told the October 2006 issue of Esquire magazine that he had trouble. But after discovering Carol's Daughter Hair Products, Pitt raved about the results, which gives the 4-year-old a "fantastic luster." Meanwhile, sons Maddox and Pax are allowed creative freedom when it comes to their hair – rocking mohawks and wild colors at times.

Back To School
Doing more than just carpooling his kids back and forth to school, Pitt embraces his role as Mr. Mom. He's been known to stay for Shiloh's nursery school classes, even reading to the children. And while the sheer possibility of his presence on school grounds managed to get moms out of their sweats and into designer threads, Pitt takes a less high-profile approach and "sits in the back of the classroom a lot."

Avoid the Sugar Rush
During a recent trip to a Carvel ice cream shop near their Long Island, N.Y., home, Pitt and his daughters Shiloh and Zahara were warmly greeted by friendly neighbors who offered them an assortment of cookies. But the dutiful dad politely declined, limiting the kids to one sweet treat, and keeping their sugar levels in check!

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{allmovies} Photo: Matthew Broderick & Sarah Jessica Parker

2009-06-21T11:05:00.003-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Matthew Broderick

2009-06-21T11:05:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Marcia Gay Harden

2009-06-21T11:04:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Robert Pattinson, Take a Bath

2009-06-20T12:23:00.001-07:00

Any old celebrity can inspire a petition.

Then there's Robert Pattinson. He can—and does—inspire petitions. Very plural.

Pattinson fans, it seems, aren't content to merely wave at their object of affection—as the screaming hordes who supposedly prompted the Twilight star to hurl his white-hot self in front of an oncoming New York City cab suggest.

No, they want to help, advise and even bathe their man.

Here's a sampling of the Pattinson petitions, in case, you know, you're looking for a worthy cause to support:

• "Robert Pattinson come to Tampa, FL for a meet & greet"

Sadly, there's no evidence this one succeeded. (Yet.) But there's no harm in trying. Or asking. As those lobbying for Pattinson appearances in Australia and Kansas City should agree. (Note to Mr. Pattinson regarding the Kansas City petition: No idea if you're being asked to pop into Kansas City, Kan., or Kansas City, Mo. Guess you'll have to do both to shore up support in the Midwest.)

• "Please Wash Your Hair, Robert Pattinson"

It's unclear when this respectful plea—"We, the undersigned, hereby beg you to wash your hair. We also petition that you then, once you have washed your hair, wash it routinely thereafter, at least once every few days, with shampoo."—was launched. Was it after Pattinson showed off his dirty hair in Dossier? Or after Pattinson talked about his dirty hair to Extra? In any case, the anti-dirty hair movement is apparently not as hot as Pattinson's dirty hair. At last check, there were just 57 signees for the above petition. Make that, 57 ardent signees. Writes No. 51: "Damn straight, it needs washing."

• "Petition to get Robert Pattinson to take a bath!!! Who's with me?"

To answer the above question, the person who wrote "Take a bath, stinky!" is with you. (Maybe time to join forces with the shampoo pushers?)

• "Twilight on SNL, Robert Pattinson as Host"

With more than 5,000 signees, and a blog to boot, this is one of the largest Pattinson petitions out there. Sadly, for its supporters, it's been as successful as the bath one. As Saturday Night Live viewers can attest, Pattinson did not host the show last season. Signatures, however, are still being added. And another SNL season is looming. An NBC rep says no guest hosts, dirty haired or not, are locked in yet.

• "Let Robert Pattinson Use Accent In New Moon"

Question: If Pattinson took a bath, washed his hair and sounded like a proper Brit in the Twilight sequel, would we even recognize him?

• "Against Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen"

Um, this petition, which attracted 725 signees, is now closed.

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{allmovies} New 'Conan' may be Schwarzenegger stand-in

2009-06-19T12:16:00.001-07:00

When you've got a ringer, why not run with it?

That's the thinking at Lionsgate and Nu Image/Millennium, apparently. The companies, having chosen Marcus Nispel to direct their "Conan the Barbarian" remake, are looking at Roland Kickinger for the title role, according to The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz Blog.

Austrian bodybuilder (sound familiar?) Kickinger looks like the previous Conan: He actually played Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of "Conan the Barbarian," in the 2005 telepic "See Arnold Run." He also played the T-800 in "Terminator Salvation," referring to Arnold's own cybernetic designation earlier in the series.

We desperately want to find a connection pertaining to Kickinger's long run on "Son of the Beach," but nothing comes to mind.

Filming on the new "Conan" is scheduled for later this year, with a projected 2010 release.

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{allmovies} 'Victoria Day' an honest tale of teens

2009-06-19T09:32:00.002-07:00

Victoria Day is a tiny perfect gem about the no-man's-land of adolescence.

Don't worry -- this isn't your usual dishonest snore fest about disaffected youth and teen angst. This film maintains an emotional honesty that makes some scenes uncomfortable to watch. That's a good thing.

Prompted by real events big and small, Victoria Day is set in Toronto in 1988 and centres on the experiences of a fairly serious kid named Ben (Mark Rendall). Ben is the son of Russian immigrants, and his parents have set high standards for him.

Over the May long weekend, Ben has several things to think about -- a Bob Dylan concert at Ontario Place, the upcoming Stanley Cup finals, a girl at school named Cayla (Holly Deveaux).

Ben and his friends are currently obsessing about everything from the 1960s.

Ben's interest in Cayla is a bit tricky, because she's the younger sister of Jordan, a guy on Ben's hockey team. Jordan's a bit of a jerk. He and Ben don't get along.

At the Dylan concert, Jordan nags Ben into lending him some money to buy drugs.

The next day at school, Ben is hanging out with his friends when Cayla comes by to ask if anyone saw her brother at the Dylan concert -- because he didn't go home afterward. It's not the first time Jordan has gone AWOL after a concert, but Ben feels uncomfortable about the whole thing.

Where's Jordan?

Meanwhile, life unfolds as usual. Ben plays hockey, goofs off with his friends (John Mavro and Scott Beaudin), buys some firecrackers and goes on a date with a girl named Melanie.

It's all teen life as usual, except that Jordan's disappearance has cast a pall over everything.

Grown-up life has arrived long before anyone expected it to.

Victoria Day is an intelligent, understated film about the process of moving from childhood to adulthood.

As he slowly undertakes that transition, Ben makes all the usual unsettling discoveries about responsibility and disappointment, those staples of adult life.

Because Victoria Day lacks anything in the way of unlikely event or stereotype, the film plays just like real life and all the characters are heart-breakingly three dimensional.

The writer/director, David Bezmozgis, has said that his ambition was to recreate what it feels like to be a teenager, and while that's not an experience most people would willingly revisit, he has indeed captured the wobbly essence of that vulnerable time of life. (To his credit, Bezmozgis' film does not overlook the giddy fun or delicious anticipation that sometimes lighten the adolescent load.)

Victoria Day is not only set in Toronto and named for a colonial holiday, it even uses the chaos at Boston Garden during the 1988 Stanley Cup playoffs -- fog on the ice, flickering lights and a power outage -- as a sort of metaphor for the awakened consciousness. That's so Canadian.

And that too is a good thing.

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{allmovies} You'll choke on food documentary

2009-06-19T09:32:00.001-07:00

Big. Fast. Cheap.

Those are the three Holy Commandments of U.S. food production.

If you've wondered why people are becoming so fat, why there's an epidemic of diabetes or why there are so many food-related E. coli disasters, please see Food, Inc., an extraordinary documentary about the American food industry.

If you have the stomach for it.

Food, Inc. is 90 minutes of frankly riveting information about what we eat now.

Food production has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 10,000, and all your granny's misgivings about tomatoes and melon in the winter and processed food in general were correct.

These days, what passes for bounty and choice at the supermarket is all an illusion, a dangerous magic show that originated with the fast food giants.

The company that buys the most beef and potatoes in America for their burgers and fries has slowly changed the way food is created, and not for the better.

Four beef packing companies control the whole industry. About the same number control the poultry business. Power is in the hands of a very few companies, and their influence has robbed the FDA and the USDA of any ability to police the industry.

Past attempts to shut down meat packing plants that repeatedly failed microbial testing for salmonella and E. coli 0157h7 -- potential killers both -- failed after meat and poultry producers took the USDA to court.

Food, Inc. will show you lots of gross food facts, such as chickens that grow so fat so fast that they cannot walk, or cows on feed lots ankle deep in their own manure, or meat parts dunked in a chemical bath for consumer protection. Yuck.

But the movie has much bigger fish to fry, namely, what else the food industry yields in the way of corruption and conspiracy.

The chicken farmer who tells the truth loses her contract, for example.

The woman whose toddler died from E. coli contaminated food can't say on-camera what she personally eats now, because she'll be sued.

You're not allowed to know if the food you're eating contains genetically modified ingredients.

And various people would rather you didn't know how the food industry uses and abuses illegal immigrants to keep their production lines moving along.

The corporations with a vested interest in public ignorance have the ties to government and the finances required to squash their opponents via the legal system.

It's all pretty terrifying.

But Food, Inc. also provides some answers, and makes it clear that consumers get to vote three times a day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

People have far more power to change this mess than they realize.

The movie illustrates the point with Walmart executives explaining why their stores now stock organic yogurt: Because their shoppers demanded it.

Food, Inc. has input from such foodies as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) and interviews with brave and articulate farmers and food workers.

The filmmakers tried to get reps from such food giants as Monsanto, Tyson, Perdue and Smithfield on camera, but they all declined to be interviewed.

See you at the farmer's market.

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{allmovies} 'Baby Formula' mockumentary sentimental

2009-06-19T09:31:00.003-07:00

The Baby Formula is a mockumentary about two lesbians who discover a way to have each other's child, no sperm required.

So badly do they want their own child that the women use 'female sperm,' created from one of the women's stem cells. Athena (Angela Vint) can then become pregnant with Lilith's (Megan Fahlenbock) baby.

Pregnant Athena is cheerfully enjoying morning sickness, hormone swings and general bloat, and it looks like so much fun that Lilith is a bit jealous. Using the same secret technology to transform Athena's stem cells into female sperm, Lilith likewise becomes pregnant. Athena is a bit ticked off by this turn of events, but now each woman is carrying the other's child.

Now they only have to deal with their family's reactions.

Athena has a religious mom (Rosemary Dunsmore, offering the movie's finest performance) who thinks her daughter just hasn't met the right guy.

Athena also has an ailing dad, a feisty grandma and a goofy brother who is creating problems by claiming to have fathered Lilith's child.

Lilith has alcoholic parents, and is disappointed to find that she may not be able to count on them to be good grandparents.

The two pregnant women fight and make up, grouse about being pregnant, interact with their wacky families and go to the big Pride parade in Toronto. The action moves slowly but surely toward a predictable happy ending.

The Baby Formula is proof that lesbian romantic comedies are every bit as dopey as the straight variety. This one, mixing sitcom writing with all that stem cell reproductive stuff, plays like I Love Lucy meets Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Not that it's a total write-off. Despite some suspiciously manipulative tragic bits, The Baby Formula is generally sunny and bright, and both lead actresses are easy to watch. (As it happens, both women -- Angela Vint and Megan Fahlenbock -- really were pregnant as this movie was filmed, an unexpected bonus on the verisimilitude front.)

For all its good intentions and its message of accepting people -- even family! -- for who they really are, The Baby Formula is every bit as twee as the punny title would suggest.

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{allmovies} Tree-hugging 'Green Chain' wooden

2009-06-19T09:31:00.001-07:00

Full disclosure: I owe my career to dead trees -- and not just because nearly every word I've written in 30 years has been printed on them.

Lucrative mill jobs in my Northern Ontario teens financed a journalism degree, loan-free.

Some high school friends went on to become forest fire fighters.

Others landed jobs along every link of what director Mark Leiren-Young cannily calls "the Green Chain" -- cutting, debarking, waferizing, pulping, etc.

So I can say that The Green Chain, Leiren-Young's windy polemic about the push-and-pull between sanctimonious eco-activists and the world-weary denizens of a fictitious Western mountain logging town, is well-informed.

He does, indeed, see the forest for the trees.

What he doesn't have a handle on is how to make a movie.

A series of soliloquies from talking heads (all of whom begin with the words "I love trees"), with trees and logging equipment as backdrops, The Green Chain feels like an overwritten fringe festival play, performed outdoors, with a single camera recording it for posterity.

More egregiously, The Green Chain employs the hackneyed documentary-within-the-movie approach, a conceit so overused there should be a moratorium.

We're never told who's conducting these interviews -- if you can call them that, no questions are ever asked.

The camera simply starts recording, say, a logger (Scott McNeil, handsome, well-spoken, seemingly right out of an Irish Spring commercial) and he proceeds to spill his guts, his boyhood dreams, his friends' traumas, as if we'd caught him after successful gestalt therapy.

C'mon, these are Canadians. You'd have to push and probe before they'd even tell you their name, let alone share their feelings with a stranger.

Before we're done, we've experienced reams of similar catharses, delivered in nothing that could ever be confused with how people actually talk (the one exception being August Schellenberg as a native working for a logging company -- a real pro, his speech is measured and evocative, allowing the script to breathe for the only few moments in the film).

There's an actress (Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer), a celebrity in town to endorse the anti-logging protests, caught in her motel room complaining about the primitive conditions, her own misgivings about being ignorant of the issues and about having to even be there at all.

In real life, no Hollywood actress would ever let her guard down in front of a camera like that.

Which again leads us to ask, who are these people recording these gut-spilling sessions that they have everybody's complete confidence?

And on it goes.

A fire-fighter (Tahmoh Penikett) tells his story. An older woman protester (Babs Chula) is interviewed behind bars, playing the role of cute, incarcerated eco-granny.

An obnoxious tree-sitter (Brendan Fletcher) gives his dude-manifesto 100 feet up a tree.

Bringing it on home is a waitress (Jillian Fargey) whose testimony manages to touch, Rashomon-like, on the previous six speeches, hitting the viewer over the head with moral relativism -- although Leiran-Young shows his hand from the beginning by making the townies more sympathetic than the self-righteous interlopers.

Somewhere, buried in the morass of words that is The Green Chain, there is a three-act structure and some interesting character arcs -- useful stuff if they ever decide to make a real movie out of this movie.

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{allmovies} 'Summer Hours' a beautiful family tale

2009-06-19T09:30:00.003-07:00

Summer Hours is a quiet family drama about adult children dealing with the end of an important chapter in their lives.

At their summer house in the French countryside, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) and Frederic (Charles Berling) gather to celebrate their mother's 75th birthday.

Mother (Edith Scob) is sharp, healthy and somewhat controlling, and she's intent upon reminding Frederic about the important antiques and paintings in the house. Mother has spent much of her time preserving the memory and the work of her famous uncle, a painter who also collected important pieces of furniture and other items.

She knows her own children might not be interested in keeping everything, so she wants Frederic -- her only child still living in France -- to know which items are important.

And what about the house itself? It's so beautiful, and it contains both cherished family memories and important cultural artifacts -- but it's isolated and rarely used.

Adrienne lives permanently in America. Jeremie is probably going to live in China with his young family. Who will even use the summer house once mother is gone?

It's impossible to see Summer Hours without assuming that the house represents France itself.

In the house are peace, beauty, signs of intellectual pursuit and items of huge cultural importance, but there are few left who appreciate any of it, and outside, the world is changing rapidly.

(Near the end of the movie, when the teenaged grandchildren of the family hold a big party at the house, all that quiet gives way to a raucous crowd of kids, of all ethnicities, who smoke dope and play loud music. It's almost as if the house is under siege; should we worry that this is some veiled comment on racial and social change in France?)

Summer Hours manages to present an intricate family structure and complex relationships within this story about what we treasure, and why. The three grown-up children pick their way through various emotional land mines in the process of deciding whether or not to keep the house, and their different opinions never threaten a certain family unity. In the end, however, they will physically go their separate ways.

Though there are many precious items under discussion in Summer Hours, two glass vases of some value are overlooked by the children. They are identified as worthwhile by experts; one vase goes to a museum and the other to a faithful housekeeper, who has no knowledge of the vase's monetary value. For her, the vase has only sentimental value.

The fate of these two objects is the heart of the movie: One is in what the filmmaker calls a zoo for things, and the other remains part of a household where it is useful and cherished.

Summer Hours is a slow, beautifully photographed film about what we value -- in the emotional and material realms. The movie is in French, with English subtitles.

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{allmovies} 'Wind Man' blows a fresh breeze

2009-06-19T09:30:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you've got to go a long way to find an enjoyable theatrical feature utterly free of Hollywood contrivance or influence. This week it's Kazahkstan, locale of the odd, wry allegorical fantasy Wind Man.

A recent entry at the Sundance and Telluride Film Festivals (and a winner at Montreal's), Wind Man is a quirky, quasi-Biblical allegory, taken from a story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It takes place in a desolate village in a polyglot part of the former Soviet Union where the majority of the population looks Asian, practises Islam and speaks Russian, and where the town "transit" is a wingless plane that taxis around -- hardly an Eden, but the scene of "a Fall" nonetheless.

As the story begins, a cloaked figure is seen circling the perimeter of the town. Those who peel back the cloak to see its face are soon dead. We recognize the figure as Death itself, a "Madar" to the locals.

At the same time, a villager named Almat (Kuandyk Krystykbaev) and his son discover in their barn an old man (Igor Yasulovich) with broken wings. The appearance of this crash-landed "angel" -- who speaks no known language -- inspires fear in the populace (even more than that provoked by the Madar), and heated argument among the local religious leaders, with the local mullah pronouncing him a demon because he doesn't speak "Allah's language," Arabic.

Unable to come to an agreement, they call on the local political "boss" to come in from town. The fat criminal (Farkhad Abdraimov) demands the angel be forced to fly, but pokes from a hot branding iron only provoke it to open its wings and unleash hurricane-like winds. Unconvinced, the "boss" leaves, stealing from the locals as he goes.

Through it all, only Almat and his son approach the Wind Man with compassion (there is a memorable scene where Almat tries to help the angel regain the power of flight). Unfortunately misfortune is Almat's only reward, with the eventual loss of seemingly everything dear to him. It's a Story of Job with a semi-bad ending and a coat of jaundiced humour.

As painted by director Khuat Akhmetov, the village (or "aul") is an irredeemable place, paralyzed by fear, tainted by greed and governed by the worst sorts of all. And even the heroes are not immune to their baser instincts (a desperate Almat at one point tries to sell the angel). The ugliness crosses over into satire, which makes a nice mix with the seedy mysticism that powers the movie and the comically decrepit locale.

Originated in the '50s by Marquez, and scripted by Akhmetov in the '90s, Wind Man contains elements of old school class struggle and the fear of the new that pervaded the entire Eastern Bloc with the fall of communism. At issue is the relevant good or evil that men will do with no one to give them instructions. The mullahs and government -- who should be reliable sources of same -- both fail Almat. And so he must, scarily, take heavenly matters into his own hands.

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{allmovies} Cop in Parker case denies accusations

2009-06-18T16:45:00.000-07:00

An Ohio police chief at the centre of an alleged plot to break into the home of Sarah Jessica Parker's surrogate mother has confessed to meeting up with a tabloid journalist to discuss a deal - but insists he only intended to "mess" with the reporter.

Martins Ferry Police Chief Barry Carpenter is being investigated along with Bridgeport Police Department Chief Chad DoJack amid claims they planned to burgle the pregnant woman's house and gather information on her lifestyle for a magazine expose.

Carpenter protested his innocence in the accusations immediately after the story broke on Wednesday, saying: "I'm 100 per cent innocent in this and my department is as well."

But now he has gone into more detail about the allegations in a radio interview in West Virginia, admitting he did once step foot in the pregnant woman's house, but only after spotting the front door ajar. He claims he entered the property to ensure everything was in order before leaving empty-handed.

Carpenter reportedly went on to explain his link to a journalist said to be digging for dirt on behalf of the National Enquirer, alleging he only met up with the reporter to "mess with him and jerk him around" - and had no real intention to go through with the plot.

The investigation continues.

Parker and her actor husband Matthew Broderick are expecting twins via the surrogate mother this summer, after failing to naturally conceive a brother or sister for six-year-old son James Wilkie.

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{allmovies} Cdn. 'Twilight' star stays true to roots

2009-06-18T12:32:00.001-07:00

TORONTO - Montreal native Rachelle Lefevre has a devised plan to ensure she never loses touch with her Canuck roots as her star soars on the smash success of the "Twilight" vampire film and its upcoming sequel, "New Moon."

"When I moved to L.A. like, five years ago, I said to myself: 'My goal is to do a project on Canadian soil every year," the Montreal native said Thursday in an interview. "And so far I've managed it."

Boy has she ever.

The affable stunner, who plays the vengeful vampire Victoria in the films that are based on Stephenie Meyer's bestselling books, has been working on various projects in her homeland in recent months.

A year ago, she shot the CBC miniseries "The Summit" in several parts of Ontario (it airs next month); last month, she wrapped up shooting "New Moon" in Vancouver; on Friday she finishes filming "Casino Jack," starring Kevin Spacey, in Toronto; and in August she'll head back to Vancouver to shoot "Eclipse," the third film in the "Twilight" saga.

"It has to be a short turnaround because none of us are supposed to age," Lefevre said with a laugh about the tiny window between shooting "New Moon," set to open in November, and "Eclipse."

"So unless they want all these 20 year olds running around getting Botox, they're going to have to hurry up!"

Speaking of tiny windows, Lefevre's schedule was so packed on Thursday that she had to start her first interview while stylists applied makeup to compliment her ice-blue eyes and curled her trademark long, strawberry-blond locks.

"The more I work, the less sleep I get, the more hair and makeup I need," joked Lefevre, whose other film credits include the 2002 "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," directed by George Clooney.

Multi-tasking is something Lefevre, a bilingual graduate of education and literature at McGill University, has mastered.

In high school, she says, she was known as the girl who was "always doing a million things at once."

Up next on her overflowing agenda is an appearance at Sunday's MuchMusic Video Awards.

Lefevre, 30, says she's excited about the show because she looked up to the female MuchMusic VJs as a child.

"They were like the hip, older sister," who is dating actor Jamie Thomas King ("The Tudors").

Her new pseudo brothers and sisters, of course, are her "Twilight" castmates, who include Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan) and Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen).

"We're completely like siblings," said Lefevre. "Like we, you know, keep each other in line, we bicker, we make up, we're good friends, we love each other so much."

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{allmovies} Larry David takes acting turn for Woody Allen

2009-06-18T10:59:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) – While many A-list stars list Woody Allen as the director they most want to work with, comedian Larry David was not fawning for a chance to collaborate with the creator of such hits as "Annie Hall," "Manhattan" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

"It wasn't really a burning ambition. Acting is not the top of my list of things to do," said David, who made his name as co-creator and writer of the hit 1990s sitcom "Seinfeld" and now improvises a self-caricature in the HBO comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Indeed, the 61-year-old said he thought Allen was making a mistake by casting him in Allen's new film, "Whatever Works."

"I was a little intimidated at first, I didn't want to be the guy to screw up Woody Allen's movie," David said, insisting he is not really an actor at all. "I called him up and I said, 'I think you are making a mistake.'"

While David calls the movie a Woody Allen "gem" and insists he is "very pleased and satisfied" with it, few critics agree.

"On the plus side, Allen avoids the creepy ventriloquist effect of a younger actor mouthing his words and intonations by choosing as raucously individualistic a performer as David," Variety wrote of the film, which opens on Friday.

"But by forcing David, a total improviser who rarely delivers scripted lines, to incant impossibly long monologues ... Allen the director loses sight of what works."

David has completed filming and is now editing the seventh season of his television show "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which starts up on HBO in September. He said he does not know if this season will be its last.

During its upcoming season, he says he fights with Rosie O'Donnell and has episodes with top stars of "Seinfeld."

David says the rude, abrasive character he plays on his show is him, but without the social boundaries of real life, and that people often mistake him for his TV incarnation.

That, he says, gives his liberty to behave like his TV character. "I can be a little more honest. If they treat me like the character, they will get the character," he says.

People often tell him funny things that happened to them, thinking it would be great material for his show.

"They are never any good," he said. "Now I just tell people, 'Don't tell me, I don't want to know,' and they think I'm rude."

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{allmovies} Lohan denies Timberlake 'tweet'

2009-06-18T09:27:00.001-07:00

Bosses at New York club Avenue have threatened to ban Lindsay Lohan if a catty "tweet" about Justin Timberlake proves to be hers.

Lohan claims her Twitter.com account was hacked into by a fellow reveller at the club on Monday night - and that she had nothing to do with a bitchy remark about fellow clubber Timberlake's behaviour.

The tweet read, "So dark - where's jb cheater?" suggesting Timberlake was cheating on girlfriend Jessica Biel. It came with a photo of the pop star appearing to be close to another woman.

But Lohan insists she never sent the message to her Twitter.com followers.

She writes on the micro-blogging site, "I would not discuss my personal life, let alone someone else's, on the Internet!"

And she's taking aim at the brains behind the Twitter.com phenomenon: "Clearly! Twitter needs to fix their s**t. I didn't write 'jb cheater!' What does that even mean? It's annoying.

"Stop trying to get onto my Twitter page whoever you are! It's become extremely creepy!!! Just trying to clear the air! And I'm tired of changing my password every other day!"

The controversy has prompted bosses at the celebrity-friendly club to issue a stern warning to all star Twitter.com users: "Celebrities that twitter about other celebrities will no longer be welcome at Avenue."

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{allmovies} Early Star Trek Review: Best Movie Since Wrath Of Khan!

2009-06-09T00:03:00.000-07:00

What do you think about this new Star Trek movie?

http://digg.com/d1o87J

Let me know your thinking .

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{allmovies} 37 Cool Movie Poster and Text Effects Photoshop Tutorials

2009-06-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

Hi there groupies,

I found this cool link about some funny movie poster, you might wanna
check this out

http://digg.com/d1seVE

Let me know what you think.

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{allmovies} Hello everyone!

2009-06-08T23:43:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

I'm new here and I want to take a moment to introduce myself.

Hope to have a good time here, beside you.

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{allmovies} Kevin Bacon's band to perform on top of Pikes Peak

2009-06-05T12:39:00.000-07:00

COLORADO SPRINGS (AP) — Move over John Denver. This will be a real Rocky Mountain high.

Actor Kevin Bacon's band is set to play a concert on top of 14,110-foot Pikes Peak as part of a cancer charity fundraiser.

The Bacon Brothers, Cy Curnin of The Fixx and The White Buffalo will perform June 27 for about 100 people hiking to the summit to raise money the Love Hope Strength Foundation.

The foundation says Curnin plans to play at the base in the morning and join hikers on the climb. The Bacon Brothers expect to perform at the top around 1 p.m. for those who reach the summit.

The foundation previously has held concerts at Machu Picchu in Peru and Mount Everest to raise funds for cancer treatment and to raise awareness about bone marrow donation.

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{allmovies} Re: Photo: Amanda Bynes

2009-06-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

THANKS

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 5:55 AM, almosthuman73 <almosthuman73@shaw.ca> wrote:

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{allmovies} Re: Photo: Amy Smart

2009-06-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks and good to knwo of your group
Bye waiting a reply

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 7:23 AM, almosthuman73 <almosthuman73@shaw.ca> wrote:

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{allmovies} Vardalos' 'Life in Ruins' comes crumbling down

2009-06-04T19:15:00.001-07:00

In My Life in Ruins, Nia Vardalos, playing a professorial tour guide, is repeatedly informed, "You're not funny!"

Those watching the movie will echo the sentiment as they slog their way through the clichés, predictable scenarios and failed attempts at humor. My Life in Ruins plays out more like a thuddingly bad, been-there, seen-that sitcom. Even the sight of breathtaking ancient monuments don't keep it from crumbling.

Vardalos plays Georgia, a Greek American living in Athens. Having lost her job as a teacher, she is forced to make a living leading tours. Her boss (Bernice Stegers) complains that tourists find her boring and gives her oily colleague Nico (Alistair McGowan) the more appealing customers. In other words, he gets the courteous Canadians, while she gets a motley crew of obnoxious Americans, stuck-up Brits, oversexed Latinas and hard-drinking Aussies. The ethnic stereotypes are as plentiful as they are insulting.

Everyone keeps telling Georgia she needs to get her groove back. The Greek word for mojo is apparently kefi— and Georgia needs to locate and tap into it.

But while she could use some loosening up, the folks on her tour do nothing but hang loose: All they want to do is buy cheesy souvenirs, snap photos and gobble ice cream. Georgia's vast knowledge of Greek culture apparently is wasted on these numbskulls. Or, could it be that in their fun-loving ways they actually have something to teach her?

Richard Dreyfuss plays a widower who dispenses such sage advice as "sex sells" and urges Georgia to portray the Oracle of Delphi in a salacious style, with disastrous consequences. Then there's the enigmatic tour bus driver, Procopi (Alexis Georgoulis), who insists on being called by his nickname, Poupi. As the tourists inquire about his last name, it's impossible not to guess what's coming. A character named Poupi Kakas might be funny if the screenplay were written by someone still in middle school.

While a sweet British biddy engages in larceny, a loud American couple negotiate to buy ancient relics as receptacles for snacks. An IHOP sales rep relates all he sees to pancakes and boasts of his vintage syrup collection.

What a perfect metaphor for this cloying and dated movie.

My Life in Ruins
* 1/2 (out of four)

Stars: Nia Vardalos, Richard Dreyfuss, Alexis Georgoulis, Brian Palermo
Director: Donald Petrie
Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Rating: PG-13 for sexual content
Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes
Opens today nationwide

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{allmovies} New album, new film for Landon Pigg

2009-06-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

Landon Pigg is calling his second full-length album, due Aug. 25, The Boy Who Never. But don't let the title fool you: The singer/songwriter, who is best known for the wistful single Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop, has been plenty busy, and not just in the recording studio.

This fall, Pigg, 25, makes his feature-film debut in Whip It, also Drew Barrymore's first outing as a director, opening wide Oct. 9. He plays "a musician in the big city" who becomes romantically involved with the heroine, portrayed by Juno's Ellen Page. "He represents one of many new challenges for her." Others in the cast include Marcia Gay Harden, Juliette Lewis and Jimmy Fallon.

Pigg also plans to promote Boy with a tour. He describes the album, which includes a new mix of Coffee Shop, as more rhythmically charged than his previous material. "I'd say it's where George Gershwin meets Motown. Even on the slow songs, you'll hear more of a soul influence."

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{allmovies} Jerry Seinfeld Cracks on Marriage and Voice Mail

2009-06-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

Jerry Seinfeld is opening up about his marriage.

OK, not exactly.

But he was crackin' some funny ones last night when he performed a 20-minute set at the Palm Pre phone launch event at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood.

Read on for some of the highlights...

"Being married is like being on a game show and you're always in the lightning round," he said. "I have a podium in my living room, and in the morning I hit the clicker button: 'I'll take Movies That I Think We Saw Together for 200.' "

"The woman," he continued, "is always the returning champion from last week: 'I'll take Details of a 10-Minute Conversation We Had at 3 in the Morning Eight Years Ago...' "

Since the party celebrated the launch of a new phone, Seinfeld shared plenty of observations. "It's sad," he said about voice mail. "There are people on phones [and] phone machines still telling you to leave your name and number.

"Are those necessary instructions?" he asked. "Is anyone getting messages like, 'This is a woman. Good-bye'?"

And then there's the beep: "I know people who are still telling you to wait for the beep," Seinfeld griped. "It's the 21st goddamn century—I think we're all up to speed on the beep!"

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{allmovies} D.C. lands movie project starring Reese Witherspoon

2009-06-04T12:47:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — Columbia Pictures plans to shoot a film in Washington starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd.

Mayor Adrian Fenty announced the movie plans Thursday and said the film crew will provide training to some D.C. students.

The romantic comedy with the working title How Do You Know? is slated to spend 14 weeks in D.C. this summer. Producers will hire more than 100 local crewmembers and several hundred extras.

Fenty spokeswoman Erica Stanley says the city didn't spend any incentive money to lure the film project. Officials expect the project will generate $8.5 million in local spending.

The film is written and directed by James L. Brooks and is expected to feature landmarks including Nationals Park and the city's neighborhoods.

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{allmovies} Caruso's ex sued by nanny

2009-06-04T08:59:00.000-07:00

CSI: Miami star David Caruso is facing more legal woes - his former nanny is suing the mother of his children.

Maria Vianey Guadron filed suit against the actor's ex-girlfriend Liza Marquez earlier this week claiming wrongful termination and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Guadron cared for the couple's two children before the pair split in 2007 and then allegedly went to work solely for Marquez.

The nanny says she was fired after she refused to sign a confidentially agreement which she claims would have barred her from speaking about matters discussed in private with Marquez.

Guadron is a potential witness in an ongoing custody/palimony battle between the former couple and she insists signing the document would have prohibited her from testifying in the case, according to website TMZ.com.

Guadron has asked for the Los Angeles County Superior Court to grant her unspecified damages.

But Marquez's lawyer has spoken out against the lawsuit and denied the allegations.

Debra Opri tells RadarOnline.com, "Guadron has been employed by the same employer, David Caruso, and still is. He has paid Guadron all along, and still does as she still works for him. David Caruso is harassing my client through the nanny, and he better be ready to be named as a defendant."

A representative for Caruso could not be reached for comment as WENN went to press.

Caruso and his ex are locked in a bitter legal dispute after Marquez filed a suit against the actor, claiming he had failed to pay her $1 million as part of a split deal.

The former couple shares children Marquez, three, and Paloma, 20 months.

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{allmovies} 'Kill Bill' star Carradine found dead

2009-06-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK (AP) -- Actor David Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies, has been found dead in the Thai capital, Bangkok. A news report said he was found hanged in his hotel room and was believed to have committed suicide.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, Michael Turner, confirmed the death of the 72-year-old actor. He said the embassy was informed by Thai authorities that Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he could not provide further details out of consideration for his family.

The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation cited unidentified police sources as saying Carradine was found Thursday hanged in his luxury hotel room.

It said Carradine was in Bangkok to shoot a movie and had been staying at the hotel since Tuesday.

The newspaper said Carradine could not be contacted after he failed to appear for a meal with the rest of the film crew on Wednesday, and that his body was found by a hotel maid at 10 a.m. Thursday morning. The name of the movie was not immediately available.

It said a preliminary police investigation found that he had hanged himself with a cord used with the room's curtains. It cited police as saying he had been dead at least 12 hours and there was no sign that he had been assaulted.

A police officer at Bangkok's Lumpini precinct station would not confirm the identity of the dead man, but said the luxury Swissotel Nai Lert Park hotel had reported that a male guest killed himself there.

Carradine was a leading member of a venerable Hollywood acting family that included his father, character actor John Carradine, and brother Keith.

In all, he appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby. One of his prominent early film roles was as singer Woody Guthrie in Ashby's 1976 biopic "Bound for Glory."

But he was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series "Kung Fu," which aired in 1972-75.

He reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine's grandson in the 1990s syndicated series "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues."

He returned to the top in recent years as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's two-part saga "Kill Bill."

The character, the worldly father figure of a pack of crack assassins, was a shadowy presence in 2003's "Kill Bill -- Vol. 1." In that film, one of Bill's former assassins (Uma Thurman) begins a vengeful rampage against her old associates.

In "Kill Bill -- Vol. 2," released in 2004, Thurman's character comes face to face again with Bill himself. The role brought Carradine a Golden Globe nomination as best supporting actor.

Bill was a complete contrast to his TV character Kwai Chang Caine, the soft-spoken refugee from a Shaolin monastery, serenely spreading wisdom and battling bad guys in the Old West. He left after three seasons, saying the show had started to repeat itself.

After "Kung Fu," Carradine starred in the 1975 cult flick "Death Race 2000." He starred with Liv Ullmann in Bergman's "The Serpent's Egg" in 1977 and with his brothers in the 1980 Western "The Long Riders."

But after the early 1980s, he spent two decades doing mostly low-budget films. Tarantino's films changed that.

"All I've ever needed since I more or less retired from studio films a couple of decades ago ... is just to be in one," Carradine told The Associated Press in 2004.

"There isn't anything that Anthony Hopkins or Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery or any of those old guys are doing that I couldn't do," he said. "All that was ever required was somebody with Quentin's courage to take and put me in the spotlight."

One thing remained a constant after "Kung Fu": Carradine's interest in Oriental herbs, exercise and philosophy. He wrote a personal memoir called "Spirit of Shaolin" and continued to make instructional videos on tai chi and other martial arts.

In the 2004 interview, Carradine talked candidly about his past boozing and narcotics use, but said he had put all that behind him and stuck to coffee and cigarettes.

"I didn't like the way I looked, for one thing. You're kind of out of control emotionally when you drink that much. I was quicker to anger."

"You're probably witnessing the last time I will ever answer those questions," Carradine said. "Because this is a regeneration. It is a renaissance. It is the start of a new career for me.

"It's time to do nothing but look forward."

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{allmovies} Re: Photo: Eliza Dushku

2009-06-04T04:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 8:43 AM, almost99 <almost99@shaw.ca> wrote:

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{allmovies} Re: Photo: Jenna Elfman

2009-06-04T00:29:00.000-07:00

SO HOW U DOING

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 8:48 AM, almost99 <almost99@shaw.ca> wrote:

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{allmovies} Re: Photo: Jessica Alba

2009-06-03T23:06:00.000-07:00

I realy interested to know litle bit of u
bye

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Janaka kumara <jkumara55@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 8:50 AM, almost99 <almost99@shaw.ca> wrote:

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{allmovies} Re: Photo: Katie Holmes

2009-06-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

Thanks

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 8:51 AM, almost99 <almost99@shaw.ca> wrote:

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{allmovies} Re: Photo: Carmen Electra

2009-06-03T22:49:00.000-07:00

Hi Thanks

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 7:42 AM, almost99 <almost99@shaw.ca> wrote:

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{allmovies} Re: Photo: Jessica Alba

2009-06-03T22:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks

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{allmovies} Eliza Dushku meets with ex-Uganda child soldiers

2009-06-03T18:56:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK - TV actors are known for travelling in the break between seasons, but "Dollhouse" star Eliza Dushku did more than just go on vacation.

Dushku, 28, visited Uganda recently to meet with former child soldiers who are trying to reintegrate themselves back into society. The actress' mother, Judith, is a political science professor who specializes in African politics. She arranged the trip for her students with Global Exchange, an organization based in San Francisco.

"You learn so much that you would never be able to read in a book ... meeting people and hearing stories firsthand," Dushku said.

Her Uganda experience taught her that children who serve as soldiers return traumatized and stigmatized, and made her look at the world differently.

"I can't bear to hear people say that they're bored in this day and age," Dushku said, suggesting that people invest time in learning about those in need.

Thanks to the actress' mother chaperoning student trips and to Global Exchange, Dushku said she's travelled to more than 30 countries and 48 of the 50 U.S. states. The only two she hasn't been to yet are Alaska and Louisiana.

She next plans to visit Cuba, Vietnam and more of Central and South America.

"Dollhouse" will return for its second season on Fox in the fall.

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{allmovies} Christina Ricci, Fiancé Call Off Engagement

2009-06-03T17:01:00.001-07:00

Christina Ricci and her comedian boyfriend Owen Benjamin have ended their engagement, sources tell PEOPLE.

"Owen had a birthday party this past Sunday, and everything seemed fine. Sometime after, they got into a fight and decided to reevaluate things. [Then] the engagement was off," says a source close to the couple.

Another source close to the actress says the pair called off the engagement before last week. "They really are still close," adds the source. "They talk almost every day. It was a very mature decision and they both felt good about it. They're definitely still friends."

Ricci, 29, met Benjamin in 2008 on the set of their film All's Faire in Love and went public with their relationship in October. Their engagement was announced in March.

A rep for Ricci had no comment.

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{allmovies} Gilles Marini Checks Into Hospital for Surgery

2009-06-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

Gilles is off the operating-room table and on to his recovery. "I am out now," he just said in an email. "Shoot, it hurts. LOL. It's the post-Cheryl Burke treatment. LOL."

_________

Good luck, Gilles!

Marini checked into a hospital this morning to undergo surgery to treat a shoulder injury related to work on Dancing With the Stars.

"On my way to the hospital," the Sex and the City stud tweeted at about 9 a.m. PST. "I am relax and hope that all will be fine. It's my number 15 when it comes to surgery. Love G."

Shortly after DWTS began, Gilles suffered a separated shoulder. He declined to go under the knife right away, because he did not want to drop out of the competition.

"Because I am not dancing anymore, it feels fine," he told me after the final performance show in mid-May. "But I need to schedule [the surgery], because the recovery time is about three weeks, and I don't want to spend too much time doing nothing."

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{allmovies} Miley Cyrus, Wal-Mart Collab on Clothing Line, Concert Tour

2009-06-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

Who says clothes don't make the girl?

Miley Cyrus has just landed a deal with Wal-Mart to produce a clothing line with designer Max Azria of Hervé Léger, BCBG and Max Azria fame. And, thanks to the the megastore, tweens can sport their Mileyware at her fall tour.

Hot on the heels of Taylor Swift's Wal-Mart line of l.e.i. sundresses and the Jonas Brothers' sweatervests, the "Miley Cyrus & Max Azria" label will include tops, pants, graphic tees, shoes and accessories all priced allowance-friendly and under $20. The goods will hit shelves, as well as Walmart.com, just in time for back-to-school shopping in early August—and her tour kickoff a few weeks later.

Wal-Mart is sponsoring the Miley Cyrus Live in Concert tour, launching Sept. 14 in Portland, Ore., and winding up 45 stops later in Miami.

As for those duds...

"We're really excited," BCBGMAXAZRIAGROUP rep Patrick McGregor tells E! News.

"I love creating looks that are all about personal expression and individuality," the recently reupped Hannah Montana said in a statement. "Collaborating with Max Azria has been an amazing experience, and I'm really excited about launching this line with Wal-Mart. There's even more to come!"

In case the idea of Cyrus coming together with the designer sounds familiar, the pair shared a segment during the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards this year that had the starlet and Duane "The Rock" Johnson donning the same red frock. Miley also wore Hervé Léger to the Grammys in February and the London premiere of her movie last month.

"Miley Cyrus is talented and approachable, so working with her sparked a line that is authentic and vibrant," the demure fashionisto said in a statement.

Meanwhile, tickets to Cyrus' tour go on sale June 13 via Ticketmaster.com.

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{allmovies} Nia Vardalos says life is far from "in Ruins"

2009-06-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The title of her new movie is "My Life in Ruins" but Nia Vardalos who shot to fame in the 2002 autobiographical hit "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" couldn't be happier.

The actress returns to the Greek theme in her first big screen outing in five years, playing a tour guide who goes to Athens to regain her mojo -- or kefi as the Greeks call it.

The romantic comedy also stars Richard Dreyfuss as a witty widower in the tour group from hell discovering Greece's ancient treasures. It opens in U.S. theaters on June 5.

In reality, Vardalos, 46, rediscovered her own joy in life more than a year ago when she got fit, dropped 40 pounds, and adopted a three-year-old girl with her husband, actor Ian Gomez, after a long struggle to conceive.

"In 2004 I came to the end of a 10-year infertility battle that knocked me over. So I decided to just quietly withdraw and write, and I enjoyed it.

"Now having come through it, I highly recommend it. I think when you let go and try and stop making things happen, you come out of it quite invigorated," Vardalos told Reuters.

Vardalos says she fell hard for the character of Georgia in "My Life in Ruins" although it was a rare instance of playing a role she hadn't written herself.

"She (Georgia) was so controlling and she had to learn to let go. I've always been told, work hard and anything you want can be achieved. That actually turns out not to be that true.

"I was daunted by the challenge of playing a character that I hadn't created. Then I felt liberated by that because I am an actor first. I think I forgot how much fun it was to be an actor in the years that I was away," she said.

HAPPILY EVER AFTER?

Vardalos has struggled so far to capitalize on the success of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", a low-budget charmer based on her own life that made $368 million worldwide at box offices and brought her a screenplay Oscar nomination.

A U.S. TV show based on the movie proved short-lived and Vardalos's 2004 film followup, "Connie and Carla", which she also wrote, made a disappointing $11.3 million globally.

Vardalos however found the unexpected success of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" liberating rather than something to live up to. "This is something that you hope happens in your career so when it did, it's like, there's no pressure anymore.

"There is this idea I don't have to work because of the success of 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding'. Even if they had written me a check for $400 million, I still would be making movies. We work because we love to. It's so much fun," she said.

Vardalos also has another, smaller movie coming out this summer called "I Hate Valentine's Day" in which she teams up again with her "Greek Wedding" co-star John Corbett and which she wrote, directed and stars in. It's not a sequel to the 2002 hit -- but Vardalos says she hasn't ruled one out.

"I do want to write a sequel to 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' but we need to be a little bit older for the idea that I have," she said.

Meanwhile, family is a priority for Vardalos, whose husband and parents all appear in "My Life In Ruins". Her daughter, however, will be seeing less of the limelight. Vardalos and Gomez are not releasing her name in order to protect the family's privacy but say their life has changed completely.

"All I do is think about her. Even when she wakes up at 2 o'clock in the morning, Ian and I look at each other and we are smiling. We wanted this so badly," she said.

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{allmovies} Romance Between Kate Hudson and A-Rod Heats Up

2009-06-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

Kate Hudson and Alex Rodriguez were spotted getting cozy last month at a restaurant in New York City, and now a source confirms they are dating.

"It's somewhat serious," the source tells PEOPLE in its upcoming issue. "He introduced her to a bunch of his friends."

For her part, Hudson followed Rodriguez on the road late last month to Dallas, when the Yankees played the Texas Rangers in a three-game series. The actress and son Ryder, 5 (dad is Chris Robinson), stayed at the same hotel as Rodriguez, and the couple "worked out together in the fitness center," says an eyewitness.

For one of the games, she sent Ryder and his nanny to the ballpark while she "stayed behind and watched the game from the hotel," adds the eyewitness. "She remarked several times about what a big baseball fan she is!"

Will their relationship last past the season? Another source says it's too early to tell: "You never know with Kate."

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{allmovies} Photo: Johnny Depp

2009-06-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

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{allmovies} Hathaway stuffs pants for role

2009-06-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

Actress Anne Hathaway has been stuffing her pants with socks to better understand how to portray a man for an upcoming New York theatre production of Twelfth Night.

The Hollywood star is due to take to the stage as part of the Big Apple's Shakespeare in the Park series, which kicks off later this month.

And she admits she's been preparing for her role as Viola, a girl who disguises herself as a man called Cesario, by strutting around her Manhattan apartment with an extra prop in her trousers.

She says, "I'm having a fun little time with Cesario right now. My character is a girl who's shipwrecked and she arrives on a strange shore where she doesn't know anyone, and it occurs to her that the best way to take care of herself is to pretend that she's a boy.

"I'd be lying if I said that I haven't walked around my apartment with a sock shoved down the front! All of a sudden, you just understand. You stand differently and it's just like, yeah!"

But playing a man convincingly isn't the only aspect of the role Hathaway is nervous about - the Oscar nominee fears her Shakespearean speech won't go down well with theatre-goers after realizing that mastering the 16th century dialogue isn't as easy as it seems.

She adds, "It's really tough actually. I used to go to musical theatre camps and at one of them we had a wonderful Shakespearean coach, and when I was 16, I thought I knew everything. So when this opportunity (to do Shakespeare in the Park) came up, I was like, 'I was great', it came so naturally.

"And it turns out that I was just lying to myself! It's not easy! At first I was like, wouldn't it be so cool if I was some like, Shakespearean prodigy and now my expectations are like, wouldn't it be great if no one threw fruit at me! And now I'm just like, if they do, let the fruit be fresh!"

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{allmovies} Photo: Taylor Kitsch

2009-05-28T12:50:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} DreamWorks to release five films every two years

2009-05-28T12:45:00.005-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc will release five feature films every two years, adding an additional film every other year to its existing two picture-a-year release schedule going forward, Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg told investors on Thursday.

The company's slate through 2012 now includes eight feature films, including five original films and three sequels based on its "Shrek", "Madagascar" and "Kung Fu Panda" franchises. All DreamWorks Animation films are available in 3D.

Katzenberg told the Cowen and Co Technology Media and Telecom Conference the animation company has "the resources and bandwidth to support the new films" and would see "significant cost savings on a per film basis."

Lazard Capital Markets analyst Barton Crockett saw the expanded slate as "a positive". Shares of DreamWorks were up 4 cents at $27.20 in early afternoon trading on Nasdaq on Thursday.

"By making more movies, we believe that (DreamWorks) has more chances to produce a new franchise, improving long-term earnings prospects, and increasing (its) strategic value to larger studios, such as its distribution partner, where (it) expects to negotiate better terms after the deal expires in 2012," Crockett, who has a "buy" rating on DreamWorks and a $30 price target, wrote in a note to clients.

Because of a scheduling anomaly, DreamWorks Animation already had three films slated for 2010, and Katzenberg said it expected to see a 5 percent to 10 percent improvement in its typical production costs of $130 million per film plus the $15 million price tag for 3D conversion.

Katzenberg said the company now believes it can produce each of its 2011 films for $130 million including 3D, lowering its costs by more than 10 percent, in part through outsourcing some labor to India.

The company believes the number of major animated film releases from competitors will drop over the next few years, leaving room for more "high end" animation, Katzenberg said.

"Demand is greater than what's in the market now," he said.

The company's DVD sales prospects remain "a home run value proposition", despite a stagnation in overall DVD sales, because parents think of those purchases "not at all as a movie purchase (but)... as a toy purchase" justified by kids' repetitive viewing, Katzenberg said.

DreamWorks Animation also could see some "favorable" changes in its film distribution costs in 2012, when its distribution contract with Viacom's Paramount Pictures expires, Katzenberg said.

Under that deal, inked in 2005 when Paramount bought private parent DreamWorks SKG Inc, DreamWorks Animation pays about $50 million per film in fees, Katzenberg said.

"Today that is probably not a competitive deal. I would expect that we will want to approach some kind of new arrangement with Paramount," Katzenberg said.

DreamWorks Animations' revised release slate is:

- "How to Train Your Dragon" on March 26, 2010

- "Shrek Forever After" on May 21, 2010

- Oobermind (formerly titled Master Mind) on November 5, 2010

- "Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom" on June 3, 2011

- "The Guardians" (working title), on November 4, 2011

- "Puss In Boots" (working title) on March 30, 2012

- a Madagascar sequel on May 25, 2012

- and a November 2, 2012 release of one of three original projects currently in preproduction.

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{allmovies} Bollywood veteran Kher thrilled at Woody Allen role

2009-05-28T12:45:00.003-07:00

MUMBAI (Reuters) – He has effortlessly straddled arthouse and mainstream cinema in India for 25 years, and now actor Anupam Kher is going to Hollywood to work with American director Woody Allen, a filmmaker he has always admired.

Kher, 54, made a memorable Bollywood debut with "Saaransh" in 1984, earning critical acclaim for playing a 65-year-old while still a young man.

Twenty-five years later, he's a familiar sight in Indian movies and has also acted in British productions like the 2002 film "Bend it like Beckham."

By bagging a role in Allen's next project, Kher has joined other Indian actors -- Aishwarya Rai, Irrfan Khan, Om Puri and Freida Pinto -- who have made a mark in Hollywood.

Kher plays Pinto's father in Allen's untitled project, which is to be filmed in London later this year.

The Indian actor spoke to Reuters about clinching the role on the same day "Saaransh" was specially screened at a Mumbai cinema to mark the film's 25th anniversary.

Q: How did you get the role in the Woody Allen movie?

A: "I got a call from my agent in London, saying Woody Allen wanted me to come for an audition for his new film. I asked her to show him the show reel, with some of my work. She showed it to Allen's casting director, who in turn showed it to him in New York and I am told he liked what he saw."

"I, on my part, had forgotten about it, until on the morning of the premiere of 'Saaransh', I got an email, saying 'Woody wants you'."

Q: Do you know anything about your role?

A: "I know that I will be playing Freida Pinto's father and that we start shooting in August in London. Beyond that, I don't know and I don't care. After all, it is Woody Allen. And the film has such a great ensemble cast. It has Sir Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman. I am happy to be a part of the film."

Q: Do Hollywood roles figure high on your priority list?

A: "If you asking me whether I chase Hollywood roles, well, I don't. But there are some filmmakers you really admire and want to work with. Like Ang Lee, who I worked with in 'Lust, Caution'. Or Woody Allen. I admire his work, I have seen most of his films and I am really happy that I will get to go on the set and shake hands with him."

Q: Your first film "Saaransh" completed 25 years this month. What do you remember of the film?

A: "I was just talking to director Mahesh Bhatt this morning and we were discussing that even 25 years later, it is more relevant today. There are so many new elements which are now even clearer. It has given me so much, that film."

Q: Do you remember the premiere of the film? A: "Actually, the film didn't have a premiere. There were riots taking place at the same time, so in fact we had to postpone the release of the film. It wasn't possible to have a premiere anyway. In fact, I remember being this starry-eyed actor, thinking that my first film would have a glittering premiere."

"When I went to see the film at Metro (a Mumbai cinema), I stood outside once the show was over, hoping that the crowd would come out, recognize me and offer some form of congratulations. But nobody even recognized me. They expected to see a 65-year-old man, not a young actor."

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{allmovies} Just a Minute With: Japan's Oscar-winning Yojiro Takita

2009-05-28T12:45:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – "Departures," the Japanese winner of the 2008 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, deals with job loss and death -- albeit in a sly and humorous fashion.

Directed by Yogi Tanta, it tells the story of Dago (Masai Molokai), a young cellist who suddenly loses his job when his symphony orchestra in Tokyo is disbanded.

So, Molokai moves back to his small home town with wife MIA (Rook Hirsute) and applies for a local job in tourism, only to find the company specializes in embodiments, the ancient Japanese art of preparing a corpse for cremation.

Tanta talked to Reuters about making the film, which opens in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago on Friday,

followed by a national roll-out.

Q: What sort of film did you set out to make?

A: "When you deal with death as a theme it can be a very delicate matter, and it's true I was very intrigued by the story of an Escoffier, especially as at my age the specter of death begins to creep up on you. So the biggest challenge was deciding how to tell this tricky story. What really helped was visiting a professional Escoffier and watching them do their tasks. Seeing that, you begin to see something in yourself, and that was the turning point in how I'd shape this film."

Q: Death is increasingly sanitized in the West. Is it the same in Japan?

A: "Even more so. For a long time in Japan, death was looked at as something filthy, and people with occupations associated with death have had to fight prejudice. Even when you have rituals and ceremonies celebrating someone's death, more often than not the body isn't seen as usually people prefer to turn away from the reality of it."

Q: How difficult was it finding the right actors?

A: "Casting is obviously crucial in any film, and you start off with a wish list and then come up against the reality of availability and so on. But I was lucky in that the idea for the film came from Masai Molokai who plays Dago, and Rook Hirsute who plays his wife was in another of my films. And even though there's a certain age gap between them, I was convinced she'd be great in the role as they embark on a new journey. I was lucky to actually get everyone who was on my wish list."

Q: Is it difficult casting corpses?

A: "Very. When you use live people you can't help but see their eyes quiver and other parts of their bodies move to some extent. We auditioned hundreds of people and eventually found some who could lie as still as possible. It's amazingly difficult to do that. And some of the characters we see alive first, and then they're corpses later, and for them we just couldn't find body doubles. So we had to use digital effects and transplant a very still section from one body to another, to make them realistic corpses. In most films, corpses aren't a big deal, but they were uncommonly important in this."

Q: There's a lot of sly humor. How important was that in setting the film's tone?

A: "Usually with films that deal with death, there is a lot of crying and sadness. That's the typical approach and it's not easy to watch. So I knew that, as we had a lot of funeral scenes, I didn't want to depict it as any sadder than it had to be. My perspective on people is that we all have two sides -- the serious and humorous -- and I like to depict the surface but also show something of the inside. When you simply observe people doing something very serious, like incontinent, the comedy and humor just comes out naturally."

Q: Did it make you more aware of your own mortality?

A: "Absolutely. Death used to be a very distant thing for me, but making this film and the fact that now I'm 54 made me realize that death's ahead for all of us and the message of "Departures" is really to live life to the fullest."

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{allmovies} Photo: Mandy Moore

2009-05-28T12:41:00.003-07:00

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{allmovies} Photos: Bryce Dallas Howard and Moon Bloodgood

2009-05-28T12:41:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Ryan Reynolds tabbed grand marshal at Pocono

2009-05-28T12:39:00.001-07:00

LONG POND, Pa. -- Ryan Reynolds, star of the upcoming comedy The Proposal, has been named the grand marshal for the Pocono 500 on June 7 (2 p.m. ET on TNT).

Reynolds will participate in a number of pre-race activities, including attending the drivers meeting, participating in driver introductions and giving the most famous command in motorsports, "Gentleman, start your engines."

The Proposal, in theaters on June 19, is a comedy about what happens when a high-powered book editor Margaret (Sandra Bullock) faces deportation to her native Canada. The quick-thinking exec declares that she's actually engaged to her unsuspecting put-upon assistant Andrew (Reynolds), who she's tormented for years.

He agrees to participate in the charade, but with a few conditions of his own. The unlikely couple heads to Alaska to meet his quirky family (Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Betty White) and the always-in-control city girl finds herself in one comedic fish-out-of-water situation after another. With an impromptu wedding in the works and an immigration official on their tails, Margaret and Andrew reluctantly vow to stick to the plan despite the precarious consequences.

Director Anne Fletcher came to The Proposal following her highly successful 27 Dresses. Her directorial debut was with the 2006 surprise smash Step Up.

Prior to his starring role in The Proposal, Canadian-born Reynolds recently starred in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Adventureland, Definitely-Maybe, Smokin Aces, The Amityville Horror and Van Wilder.

Reynolds is married to actress/model Scarlett Johansson.

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{allmovies} Actress Jane Randolph dies at 93

2009-05-28T12:28:00.001-07:00

Silver screen actress Jane Randolph has died after undergoing surgery on a broken hip. She was 93.

The veteran star passed away on May 4 in Gstaad, Switzerland.

Randolph, born Jane Roemer in Ohio, landed roles in 20 Hollywood films between 1941 and 1948, and found her big break in the 1942 film noir horror Cat People.

After filming a lead part in the 1948 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Randolph married businessman Jaime del Amo and retired from acting.

She is survived by her daughter, Cristina del Amo.

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{allmovies} Photo: Matthew Broderick & Sarah Jessica Parker

2009-05-28T12:02:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Sienna Miller

2009-05-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Salma Hayek

2009-05-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

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{allmovies} PR: Mutant Chronicles

2009-05-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

SILVA SCREEN MUSIC AMERICA PRESENTS

MUTANT CHRONICLES OST

RICHARD WELLS' SCORE TO SIMON HUNTER'S SECOND FEATURE

STARRING RON PERLMAN AND JOHN MALKOVICH

From the composer of Jake West's cult debut Razor Blade Smile, the
martial arts smash hit Ong-bak and the hit BBC3 TV series Being Human,
comes an intense contemporary orchestral action score.

The Mutant Chronicles tells the story of the last mission of the only
surviving humans on earth, a hopeless task which ends in bloody
failure against an army of Mutants. The visual backdrop of muddy
trenches and huge WW1 style weaponry is aided by the Richard Wells'
music. Reflecting the ever increasing futility of the mission, the
score starts with a haunting melody in the trenches before the mission
begins and then becomes ever more discordant as the survivors die one
by one until the final violent act, accompanied by a dreadful
dissonant cacophony.

Richard began his professional music career as a programmer, keyboard
player and engineer, and his credits include work on tracks by Dominic
King (My Simple Heart), Jon Moss (Culture Club), Talk Talk and Clan of
Xymox.

Richard's break into films came in 1998 and in 2002 he started writing
music for film trailers, including The Grudge, Seven Swords and
Infernal Affairs.

After scoring the teaser for Simon Hunter, Richard was asked to write
a full orchestral score for the major feature film Mutant Chronicles.
More recently, Richard scored the hit TV series Being Human and the
Jake West comedy/horror film Doghouse.

TRACK LISTING
1. Take Off (4.05)
2. The Night Before (1.36)
3. Mutant Attack (4.28)
4. The Corporate Council (1.38)
5. Give Me Twenty Men (2.25)
6. Mitch and Adelaide (2.29)
7. The Sewer (3.09)
8. The City Burns (0.57)
9. The Killing Fields (2.57)
10. McGuire (0.58)
11. The Lost City (1.42)
12. How Much Do You Weigh? (1.37)
13. Bonecrusher (4.33)
14. Steiner Rescued (1.57)
15. Monastery (2.22)
16. Lift Shaft (3.35)
17. Tunnel Of Bones (3.50)
18. Leap Of Faith (2.36)
19. Mutant Chronicles End Credits (7.37)

The Mutant Chronicles soundtrack is available at iTunes.

For more information contact cinemediapromo@yahoo.com
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{allmovies} Stamp: Bob Hope

2009-05-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

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{allmovies} Raimi says 'Knight' has upped ante

2009-05-28T09:11:00.001-07:00

CANNES, France - Like other superhero fans, Sam Raimi agrees that "The Dark Knight" raised the bar for every comic-book movie to come.

Raimi figures it can only benefit the next chapter in his "Spider-Man" franchise, the first installment of which had been the top-grossing superhero flick until "The Dark Knight" blew it out of the record books last year.

"'The Dark Knight' was brilliant, and the audience seemed to love it, and I think it rightfully raises expectations for the other superhero pictures," Raimi said in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival, where his horror tale "Drag Me to Hell" played. "Which is a great thing for everybody. For the filmmakers, for the audience."

Raimi said he expects to have the script for "Spider-Man 4" in hand within a few weeks. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire is writing the screenplay for the film, due in theatres in May 2011.

The director said he has discussed the story with Tobey Maguire, who stars as Peter Parker and his alter ego Spidey.

"I'm interested in making the best of the 'Spider-Man' movies ever, and Tobey's really excited," Raimi said. "I'm really looking forward to that collaboration."

A part has been written for Kirsten Dunst, and Raimi said he hopes she will return as the love of Peter's life, Mary Jane Watson.

After glowing reaction for the first two movies, critical response for "Spider-Man 3" was so-so. Right after the third movie came out, Raimi was undecided about returning for more, but he said he did not like "thinking about a world where somebody else was making the Peter Parker story. I love that character."

Raimi said the break he took to make the smaller "Drag Me to Hell" has refreshed him for the return to Spidey, adding that he wanted to "take some of the more modest approach I've learned from this film into the 'Spider-Man' film. I think it's exactly what it needs."

He also said he was game for the challenge of satisfying fans clamoring for bigger and better after "The Dark Knight."

"Yes, they have higher expectations," Raimi said. "The best thing I can do is be true to my character and work harder to bring him to the screen with as much truth and drama and a real conflict that means something to me. And have him grow in a realistic way to either overcome that conflict or be swallowed by it.

"I'm glad those expectations are up. I'm excited about that."

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{allmovies} Photo: Reese Witherspoon

2009-05-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Rachel McAdams

2009-05-28T08:37:00.002-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Rachel McAdams & Josh Lucas

2009-05-28T08:37:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Orlando Bloom

2009-05-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Mel Gibson & Oksana Grigorieva

2009-05-28T08:35:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Mischa Barton

2009-05-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

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{allmovies} Celebrity birthdays for the week of May 31-June 6

2009-05-27T23:19:00.001-07:00

Celebrity birthdays for the week of May 31-June 6:

May 31: Actor-director Clint Eastwood is 79. Singer Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary is 71. Keyboardist Augie Meyers of the Texas Tornadoes and the Sir Douglas Quintet is 69. Actress Sharon Gless ("Cagney and Lacey") is 66. Actor Gregory Harrison is 59. Actor Tom Berenger is 59. Comedian Chris Elliott is 49. Actor Kyle Secor ("Homicide: Life on the Street") is 49. Actress Lea Thompson ("Caroline in the City," "Back to the Future") is 48. Singer Corey Hart is 47. Rapper DMC of Run-DMC is 45. Actress Brooke Shields is 44. Country bassist Ed Adkins of The Derailers is 42. Actor Colin Farrell is 33. Trumpet player Scott Klopfenstein of Reel Big Fish is 32. Drummer Andy Hurley of Fall Out Boy is 29.

June 1: Actor Andy Griffith is 83. Actor Edward Woodward ("The Equalizer") is 79. Singer Pat Boone is 75. Actor Morgan Freeman is 72. Actor Rene Auberjonois ("Benson," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine") is 69. Guitarist Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones is 62. Actor Jonathan Pryce ("Evita") is 62. Actor Powers Boothe is 61. Country singer Ronnie Dunn of Brooks and Dunn is 56. Actress Lisa Hartman Black is 53. Bassist Simon Gallup of The Cure is 49. Actress Teri Polo ("Meet The Parents") is 40. Model Heidi Klum is 36. Singer Alanis Morissette is 35. TV host Damien Fahey (MTV's "Total Request Live") is 29. Singer Brandi Carlile is 28.

June 2: Actor Milo O'Shea is 84. Actress Sally Kellerman is 72. Actor Ron Ely ("Tarzan") is 71. Actor Stacy Keach is 68. Singer William Guest with Gladys Knight and the Pips is 68. Drummer Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones is 68. Actor-director Charles Haid ("Hill Street Blues") is 66. Composer Marvin Hamlisch is 65. Actor Jerry Mathers ("Leave It To Beaver") is 61. Actress Joanna Gleason is 59. Actor Dennis Haysbert ("24") is 55. Comedian Dana Carvey is 54. Singer Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet is 49. Singer Merril Bainbridge is 41. Rapper B-Real of Cypress Hill is 39. Comedian Wayne Brady is 37. Keyboardist Tim Rice-Oxley of Keane is 33. Actor Zachary Quinto ("Heroes") is 32. Actress Nikki Cox ("Unhappily Ever After") is 31. Actor Justin Long ("Accepted," "Dodgeball") is 31. Actor Deon Richmond ("Van Wilder," "Scream 3") is 31. Singer Irish Grinstead of 702 is 29. Drummer Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes is 29. Country singer Dan Cahoon of Marshall Dyllon is 26.

June 3: Actor Tony Curtis is 84. Game show host Chuck Barris ("The Gong Show") is 80. Singer Ian Hunter is 70. Singer Eddie Holman is 63. Bassist Too Slim of Riders in the Sky is 61. Singer Suzi Quatro is 59. Singer Deniece Williams is 58. Singer Dan Hill is 55. Actor Scott Valentine ("Family Ties") is 51. Guitarist Kerry King of Slayer is 45. Singer Mike Gordon of Phish is 44. Newsman Anderson Cooper is 42. Country singer Jamie O'Neal is 41. Singers Ariel and Gabriel Hernandez of No Mercy are 38. Actress Lalaine Dupree ("Lizzie McGuire") is 22.

June 4: Actor Bruce Dern is 73. Singer-actress Michelle Phillips (The Mamas and The Papas) is 65. Singer Gordon Waller of Peter and Gordon is 64. Actor Parker Stevenson is 57. Singer El DeBarge is 48. Actor Scott Wolf ("Party of Five") is 41. Comedian Horatio Sanz ("Saturday Night Live") is 40. Actor Noah Wyle ("ER") is 38. Bassist Stefan Lessard of The Dave Matthews Band is 35. Actor Russell Brand ("Forgetting Sarah Marshall") is 34. Actress Angelina Jolie is 34. Bassist JoJo Garza of Los Lonely Boys is 29. Drummer Zac Farro of Paramore is 19.

June 5: Country singer Don Reid of the Statler Brothers is 64. Guitarist Fred Stone of Sly and the Family Stone is 63. Singer Laurie Anderson is 62. Country singer Gail Davies is 61. Drummer Nicko McBrain of Iron Maiden is 57. Saxophonist Kenny G is 53. Singer Richard Butler of Psychedelic Furs is 53. Actor Ron Livingston ("The Practice," "Band of Brothers") is 42. Singer Brian McKnight is 40. Musician Claus Norreen (Aqua) is 39. Actor-singer Mark Wahlberg is 38. Actor Chad Allen ("Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman") is 35. Bassist P-Nut of 311 is 35. Actress Navi Rawat ("Numb3rs") is 32. Actress Liza Weil ("Gilmore Girls") is 32. Bassist Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy is 30. Guitarist Seb Lefebvre of Simple Plan is 28.

June 6: Singer-songwriter Gary "US" Bonds is 70. Country singer Joe Stampley is 66. Actor Robert Englund (Freddie Krueger) is 60. Singer Dwight Twilley is 58. Playwright-actor Harvey Fierstein is 55. Actress-comedian Sandra Bernhard is 54. Actress Amanda Pays is 50. Record producer Jimmy Jam is 50. Comedian Colin Quinn is 50. Guitarist Steve Vai is 49. Singer-bassist Tom Araya of Slayer is 48. Actor Jason Isaacs ("Harry Potter" films) is 46. Actor Max Casella ("Analyze This," "Doogie Howser, M.D.") is 42. Actor Paul Giamatti ("Sideways") is 42. Singer Damion Hall of Guy is 41. Bassist Bardi Martin (Candlebox) is 40. Guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer of Korn is 39. Country singer Lisa Brokop is 36. Singer Uncle Kracker is 35. Actress Staci Keanan ("Step By Step," "My Two Dads") is 34.

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{allmovies} "Year Without Sex" proves to be time well spent

2009-05-27T23:16:00.000-07:00

SYDNEY (Hollywood Reporter) – Australian writer-director Sarah Watt is not averse to throwing the odd narrative curveball, and the nimble tonal shifts of "My Year Without Sex" are sure to keep audiences on their toes. Starting with the attention-grabbing title -- not a frat boy's lament but the unlucky consequence of a middle-class mom's medical condition -- the buoyant dramatic comedy takes many an unpredictable swerve, and proves Watt's breakout 2005 hit, "Look Both Ways," was no fluke.

As in "Look Both Ways," the writer-director confronts life's thornier concerns -- love, sex, death and religion -- all the while keeping a tight rein on sentimentality and dusting proceedings with sprinkles of wry humor. This follow-up, which opens Thursday (May 28) in Australia, is sure to mirror the domestic success of her debut and put a smile on the face of the international art-house crowd.

The talented Sacha Horler is terrific as Natalie, an earthy Melbourne mother struck down by a brain aneurysm during a routine doctor's visit. She returns to her loving family and the domestic clutter of their life under strict instructions to avoid any activity that may trigger a recurrence -- including sex with husband Ross (Matt Day).

The new vulnerability throws an element of crisis into the already messy world of a regular, suburban two-kids-and-a-dog family as it makes its way through a 12-month cycle of birthday parties, loose teeth, football training and family vacations.

In a nod to her animation background, Watts splices the film into segments with quirky, sex-themed titles which add even more bounce to a screenplay that cleverly avoids getting bogged down in minutiae. Watt's keen observational gift for the little things that make families tick is abetted by her characters' disarming tendency to say exactly what they think.

Mortgage pressure, fears of redundancy and an obligatory workplace flirtation join less conventional diversions such as Natalie's dalliance with religion via friendship with a female '80s rocker-turned-priest (Maude Davey).

Australian filmmakers have a maddening tendency to mock the denizens of suburbia, but Watt shows great affection for her characters. And it's catching.

Jonathan Segat and Portia Bradley are delightful as the couple's football-mad son and bubbly 7-year-old daughter, and Day lends an understated charm to his role as the besieged everyman doing his best under trying circumstances.

The honest, loving relationships at the core of "Sex" give it a thumping pulse, and top-notch performances across the board help make every action and reaction compellingly real.

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{allmovies} Photo: Kiefer Sutherland

2009-05-27T23:14:00.008-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Zach Efron

2009-05-27T23:14:00.007-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Denzel Washington & Adam Levine

2009-05-27T23:14:00.005-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Marisa Tomei

2009-05-27T23:14:00.003-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Jack Nicholson

2009-05-27T23:14:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} 'Terminator' showcases femme fighters

2009-05-27T23:07:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES -- With apologies to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator films have always been about women flexing their muscle.

Linda Hamilton (T1 and T2), Claire Danes (T3), even Lena Headey and Summer Glau on TV's now-defunct The Sarah Connor Chronicles -- all iron-willed, machine-gun-toting and at least as resilient as the metallic alloy of a cyborg's exo-skeleton.

So when it came time to cast Terminator Salvation, the newest sequel about what happens when your BlackBerry decides to kill you, director McG knew that -- even if he couldn't recruit California's governor to join him -- he had a tough-chick quotient to fill.

"I'm a big fan of strong female characters as is (Terminator creator and Aliens director) Jim Cameron," he says. "The strongest female characters in history have got to be Ripley, in the Alien pictures, and Sarah Connor."

Trouble was, by the time of the sequel's post-apocalyptic future, Hamilton's Sarah Connor is long dead (although the actress lends her voice via taped messages to her son, John, played by Christian Bale).

So Salvation introduces two fresh female faces to the terminator-ravaged fray: Bryce Dallas Howard and Moon Bloodgood. The former takes over the role of Kate Connor from Danes, while the latter's character, a resistance fighter pilot named Blair Williams, is an addition to the mythos.

"Moon to me is the third leg of that triangle of Ripley and Sarah Connor," McG explains.

"Moon can damn well do one-handed pull-ups on a psychiatric bed, turned upside down, and that's following in the footsteps of Sarah Connor. She is a survivor and she doesn't have a rich uncle in Hollywood. She's got to pick herself up by her own boot straps and make it happen, and I responded to that. I said, 'I believe you would be the last woman standing, so come be a part of this.' "

Which suited tom-boy and science-fiction fan Bloodgood just fine.

"I love sci-fi. I like Star Trek. I've never been somebody that liked romantic comedies," she says. "I always wanted to see movies that were about the future, like Blade Runner. I liked Arnold, but my favourite (part of Terminator) was always the story of John and Sarah Connor, who was a female with those bad-ass biceps. She was so tough."

Conversely, Howard's Kate Connor is the movie's maternal figure and care-giver -- a nurse and confidante to her T-800-busting prophet husband.

The Michelle Obama of the resistance? Sounds that way.

"Bryce brings a First Lady elegance that I believe, all the way. If you look at Carla Bruni in France or you look at Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama -- these are very elegant people that I would, personally, believe in," McG says.

"I took one look at Bryce, and I know a thing or two about her upbringing and who she is as a young lady, and I thought that she was effectively a wonderful First Lady choice for this world."

Howard, for the uninitiated, is Hollywood royalty to begin with: the daughter of director and actor Ron Howard. In recent years, she's been winnowing out a place for herself in the industry with roles in The Village, Lady in the Water and Spider-Man 3.

She also says she was a fan of past Terminators, even if she was decidedly girly-girly about it.

"I had no action figures or models, but I always watched this franchise. This is such an incredible moment to appreciate the franchise and be a fan of it, and then to know that you're going to be a part of the next film is amazing.

"It was an awesome, exhilarating moment."

THE TOUGHEST MOVIE CHICKS

Forget Sarah Connor. The Terminator should just cross to the other side of the street when he sees these tough chicks coming:

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)

Introduced in: Alien (1979)

Pet peeves: Chest-bursting, parasitic extraterrestrial xenomorphs; Paul Reiser. (Yes, those are two different things.)

Weapons of choice: Flame-throwers; assault rifles; airlocks; harsh language.

Last seen: Looking across at Winona Ryder and wondering how it all went so horribly wrong.

Selene (Kate Beckinsale)

Introduced in: Underworld (2003)

Pet peeves: Werewolves (sorry -- Lycans); Bill Nighy; chafing.

Weapons of choice: Pistols; bad dialogue; a straight face; slow-motion.

Last seen: Wondering who let the guy from Felicity onto the set.

Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie)

Introduced in: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

Pet peeves: Secret societies; long pants; authentic British accents.

Weapons of choice: Enormous guns.

Last seen: In 2003's Cradle of Life. If you watched the movie, you know why nobody's seen her since.

O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Lui)

Introduced in: Kill Bill , Volumes 1 and 2 (2004)

Pet peeves: Yakuza lords who question her ethnic heritage; waking up to find herself in an anime.

Weapons of choice: A samurai sword; perpetual cuteness.

Last seen: Performing decapitations in the board room. (At last: a heroine for the global recession!)

Alice (Milla Jovovich)

Introduced in: Resident Evil (2002)

Pet peeves: Zombies; the Umbrella corporation; the end of the world.

Weapons of choice: Anything that makes a sound that ends with an exclamation mark: Boom! Pow! Bam! Crash! Zap! (Okay, maybe not Zap!)

Last seen: Killing something while scantily clad. What -- you were expecting Jane Austen?

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{allmovies} Photo: Matthew McConaughey

2009-05-27T23:01:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Liv Tyler

2009-05-27T23:00:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Lisa Rinna

2009-05-27T20:42:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Director Jake Kasdan enrolls for "Bad Teacher"

2009-05-27T20:23:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Jake Kasdan, who most recently co-wrote and directed "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," has signed on to shoot the comedy "Bad Teacher."

The Columbia Pictures project concerns a foul-mouthed seventh grade teacher who is dumped by her sugar daddy and starts to pursue a colleague, which provokes conflict with the school's model teacher. Kasdan's credits also include "The TV Set" and "Zero Effect."

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{allmovies} Israeli actress "Game" for Plame CIA tale

2009-05-27T20:22:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Israeli actress Liraz Charhi has been cast in "Fair Game," director Doug Liman's drama about outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.

Naomi Watts already has been cast as Plame. Sean Penn plays her husband, ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Charhi will play the fictional Sawsan, an Iraqi doctor in Cleveland whom Plame sends undercover to Baghdad to gather intelligence on Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in exchange for bringing her brother to the U.S.

The movie centers on how Plame's status was compromised because of a leak from the Bush administration, allegedly in retaliation for a 2003 op-ed piece her husband wrote claiming the administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who was skeptical of the administration's war plans, admitted in 2006 that he was the original source of the leak.

The film, based on Plame's memoir, is filming in New York and the Middle East.

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{allmovies} Tom Hanks enlists for WWII documentary

2009-05-27T20:21:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – Tom Hanks has tapped into his knowledge of World War II to executive produce a new documentary, "Beyond All Boundaries," which will screen daily in the National WWII Museum in New Orleans beginning November 9.

The museum is currently undergoing a renovation and will see the opening this year of three major new destination attractions, representatives announced here Wednesday. One of them is the Victory Theater, which will be presenting "Beyond All Boundaries," described by museum reps as a "groundbreaking 4-D cinematic experience."

"This film uses a whole world of technologies, including an incredible sound system, multilayered projection, high definition, moving sets, 3-D features and more spectacular theatrical effects," said Phil Hettema, creative director of "Beyond All Boundaries."

Hanks -- the star of "Saving Private Ryan" and an executive producer of the war-themed miniseries "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific" -- was involved throughout the process, said Hettema.

"He has a very deep knowledge of World War II. He knows more than some of those who work at the museum," the creative director said. "He's been excitedly and graciously involved, and has an important honorary role in the making of this film."

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{allmovies} Photos: Mary J. Blige, Queen Latifah, Paris Hilton

2009-05-27T20:16:00.005-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Antonio Banderas & Melanie Griffith

2009-05-27T20:16:00.003-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Ernest Borgnine, Dustin Hoffman

2009-05-27T20:16:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Photos: Tyrese Gibson

2009-05-27T20:13:00.001-07:00

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{allmovies} Hilary Swank Takes Flight as Amelia Earhart

2009-05-27T16:55:00.001-07:00

She's taken on transgendered teens and female boxers, so it only seems fitting that 34-year-old actress Hilary Swank bust the gender barrier again on the silver screen – this time as legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart, in the upcoming movie Amelia.

The movie, directed by The Namesake director Mira Nair, is expected to be released in October, and also stars Richard Gere as Earhart's husband, George Putnam, and Ewan McGregor as her lover Gene Vidal.

The real-life Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and garnered even more fame when she and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared in the South Pacific while attempting to fly around the world.

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{allmovies} Photos: Diego Luna

2009-05-27T16:54:00.005-07:00

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{allmovies} Photo: Kristin Chenoweth

2009-05-27T16:54:00.003-07:00

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