Mina of Gold.

Apparently Pedro, who on Broken Embraces declared he'd never make sequels, biopics or remakes. Well he didn't declare it but his alter ego...anyway, it's just been announced that Pedro is working on a film about the life of Italian singer Mina.

Indiewire reports that the Spanish auteur has even cast his leading lady and to my dismay it's not Pe (read the full story here)

Also, just how amazing is this picture of his new movie La Piel Que Habito?

Live From the Kodak, It's Anne Hathaway!

Everyone and their moms have already commented on the great news that the lovely Ms. Hathaway will host the Oscars next year (oh yeah co-host with this dude called James Franco) so as you can imagine from the love I profess for her all the time (just click on her name in the tags down there) I obviously wasn't going to let the moment pass without a celebration.
I was at the office when I found out the awesome news and when I went for lunch what was my surprise if not to see that the November issue of Vogue had just arrived to my local magazine store.
Who's on the cover? Of course it's her...
Now if you'll excuse me, I've had a long day, I proceed to retire to bed with Ms. Anne.

How did you all like this news? (The Oscars, not me in bed with Annie...)

For the press release go here.

Walk With 'Em.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Penélope Cruz will have to get out of the car and walk a little next year in order to receive their latest honors.
My two favorite living actresses are getting their very own amazingly shiny stars in the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame!
How this news escaped me the other day is beyond me but this means I'm gonna have another reason to go visit Los Angeles once again.

For the complete story go here.

Gwyn Breaks Up With Nic.

In what has proved to be the most awful week in terms of casting news for me (see previous tragedy here) yet another of my dream projects blows up in smoke.
Gwyneth Paltrow has pulled out of The Danish Girl...
The film which would have her co-star with Nicole Kidman in telling the story of the first person to undergo a sex change operation is now casting a new actress to fill in the role Paltrow left-which Charlize Theron had also left before (I'd written about this before as well)
The actress claims she wanted to spend more time with her family.
One can't really blame her for that, at least she didn't quit this to star in Transformers 3.
But really, Gwyn being my favorite actress and all I had my hopes up for this one.
She has been in such few movies lately that whenever I get the chance to see her I am beyond thrilled (you should hear my squeal of delight every time I see her kiss and dump that helmet on the Iron Man 2 trailer).
I miss her...

Read the complete story here.

Who's Afraid of von Trier? Pe's Not!

Doesn't Penélope Cruz know I'm already in love with her? She really should stop trying so hard to win me.
According to some sources she went ahead and got the lead role in the next Lars von Trier movie.
If the rumors are true, and an official press release is revealed, she will star in "Melancholia" a psychological disaster movie in which Lars will get to destroy the planet while Pe battles some inner demons.
If it's anything like I'm imagining it to be (which of course will never do justice to the actual things von Trier comes up with) I'm guessing it will be more in the tone of Michael Haneke's "The Time of the Wolf" than "2012".
The plot is supposed to be centered on the destruction of Earth by the incoming collision with a planet called Melancholia.
Sigh, doesn't this just whisper Tarkovsky in your ears?
When asked about what to expect in the movie last year von Trier simply stated "no more happy endings!".
It's as if this movie's being made for me.
(Read the full story here)

Oh man!

I'm like the only person left in the world that still likes Gwyneth Paltrow.
So you can imagine my joy upon finding out that she's been cast to star alongside Nicole Kidman in "The Danish Girl" (she's replacing Charlize Theron).
She will play wife to Kidman's pre-op transsexual in what already was one of my most awaited upcoming movies.
Can you imagine both Gwyn and Nic back in the Oscar game?
The movie sounds baity as fuck, with the director, the plot and with these two on board it's just set to be something remarkable.
I'm already salivating while I think of what they will wear to the 2012 Oscars when they both are nominated for this movie...
Ok a man can dream right?
Read the whole casting story here.

Emasculate Me.

Remember all those movies about either men or women disappearing and causing havoc in terms of population and reproductive matters?
Well, according to recent studies everything we saw in dystopian sci-fi might not be a far fetched conjecture created by geeky writers.
With the imminent end of the Y chromosome, will there come a time when the planet will only be populated by women?
As we know, men are becoming more dispensable in terms of reproduction-with stem cells, in vitro, stored sperm and whatnot- but how will a world without men turn out to be?
This "imminent" event might be million of years away from occurring-if it even happens-but it certainly gets the mind rolling.
Can you imagine when at the 1,000,000th Academy Awards there are only categories for Actresses?

Ten.

The year where I'm assuming "Nine" will win Best Picture at the Oscars brings us a hell of a shocker by AMPAS.
Their Best Picture lineup, which has contained five nominees and remained that way since 1943, will expand starting next year to ten!
AMPAS Presidnet Sid Ganis stated:
"After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year,” said Ganis. “The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.”"
He apparently just saw "Happy-Go-Lucky" and is filled with unreasonable optimism or he has, like most people alive today, lost notion of historic sense and rationality.
Has he forgotten that a wider ballot won't mean voters acquire better taste? Because as much as we can end with a Best Picure lineup like the one from 1939 (I wouldn't know which one to kick out) or something out of the blue like a documentary being nominated in the top race (after all it was back in 1938, in a decennial lineup, when we had our first Foreign Language film nominated for Best Picture), we also could find ourselves with ten "Crash"es, "Frost/Nixon"s and "Ray"s.
We'll see how it all turns out, for now I can't believe that "Up" will be a Best Picture nominee! That makes this whole thing almost seem good!

Forget Your Troubles, Come on Get Oscar!

If Anne Hathaway wants an Oscar she's being quite proactive about it. According to Screen Daily (read article here) she's attached to play none other than Judy Garland in an upcoming biopic for the Academy friendly Weinstein Company.
Harvey referred to Anne as "a class act" and who can argue about this? (Who would you have cast?) She proved she has singing chops at the Oscars this year, she showed she can play very dramatic in "Rachel Getting Married", bubbly fun in the "Princess" films and after Amber Tamblyn (and Tammy Blanchard who won an Emmy for playing young Judy) she's perhaps the closest lookalike to the tragic legendary performer.
So everybody go ahead and place your bets, Anne Hathaway for Best Actress whenever it is this film is released...

The Baz Strikes Back.

On one of his first interviews after the U.S release of "Australia", director Baz Luhrmann is taking on critics who not only dislike his film, but wonder why it was even made.
Not one to remain still, Luhrmann, who is arguably one of the most divisive filmmakers in history (all of his films are either love them or hate them experiences) has revealed his new project is an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby".
Insisting that it won't be another seven years before we see his name on the screen again, he invites people to eat from the grand banquet of cinema...and one can only love him for that.
Read the story here.

Sexiest Oscar Host Alive.

It's official, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has announced Hugh Jackman will host the 81st Annual Academy Awards.
With Bill Condon as executive producer and Jackman's request that the show be built around his abilities, these Oscars are promising to be one of the most interesting ceremonies ever.
Read the story here.

I ♥ LAFCA.

Proving that L.A is not all about tans and crazy executives, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association has announced its winners for this year's awards and boy have they made great choices!

Picture: "Wall-E"
Runner-up: "The Dark Knight"

Director: Danny Boyle, "Slumdog Millionaire"
Runner-up: Christopher Nolan, "The Dark Knight"

Actor: Sean Penn, "Milk"
Runner-up: Mickey Rourke, "The Wrestler"

Actress: Sally Hawkins, "Happy-Go-Lucky"
Runner-up: Melissa Leo, "Frozen River"

Supporting actor: Heath Ledger, "The Dark Knight"
Runner-up: Eddie Marsan, "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Supporting actress: Penelope Cruz, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" and "Elegy"
Runner-up: Viola Davis, "Doubt"

Screenplay: Mike Leigh, "Happy-Go-Lucky"
Runner-up: Charlie Kaufman, "Synecdoche, New York"

Foreign-language film: "Still Life"
Runner-up: "The Class"

Documentary: "Man on Wire"
Runner-up: "Waltz With Bashir"

Animation: "Waltz With Bashir"

Cinematography: Yu Lik Wai, "Still Life"
Runner-up: Anthony Dod Mantle, "Slumdog Millionaire"

Production design: Mark Friedberg, "Synecdoche, New York"
Runner-up: Nathan Crowley, "The Dark Knight"

Music/score: A.R. Rahman, "Slumdog Millionaire"
Runner-up: Alexandre Desplat, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

New Generation: Steve McQueen, "Hunger"

Douglas E. Edwards independent/experimental film/video: James Benning, "RR" and "Casting a Glance"

Apparently they loved their genre films this year with both comic books and animation featuring prominently in the list. Overall it's refreshing to see them choose things others only nominate (Eddie Marsan as runner-up to Ledger is brilliant and sorta hopeful).
I'm thrilled to see Sally Hawkins win something at last and Cruz continuing her walk towards the Kodak Theater, but mostly I'm ecstatic about "WALL-E" which is still the best film I've seen all year long. Can maybe this mean that just perhaps we might be staring at only the second animated film nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars?

Uh oh...

The Screen Actors Guild strike is looking like a go.
How will this affect the worsening economy?
With 2009 movies already looking like a fiasco with the WGA strike last year, will this affect 2010 as well?
Will the Oscars be jeopardized again?
Click here for the complete story.

Now, seriously?

According to the wise voters at IMDB, Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" is the greatest film EVER made.

Yes, above "Gone With the Wind", "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Rules of the Game", anything by Scorsese, Truffaut and Hitchcock, "The Wizard of Oz"...and you get my point.

I first noticed this over at Mark's blog, but assumed it would go away after a few hours. Seeing it's still there I can't help but wonder how long will it be before an inevitable backlash?

Shall we say we owe this to fanboys voting en masse? Overhype? Or are they actually right?

How will this excessive good will (after that massive box office thing) affect the film's chances at awards? Am I the only one sick and tired of listening that Heath Ledger deserves an Oscar?

The answers to all this and more later, at the very bat-time, in the same bat-blog.

Sketches of Sydney Pollack.

The incomparable Sydney Pollack has passed away at the age of 73.

With an impressive filmography that includes "Tootsie", "The Firm" and "the Interpreter", Pollack has the distinctive achievement of having directed two of the most romantic films of all time; "The Way We Were" and the Oscar winning "Out of Africa", which also happen to be two examples of a particular style he excelled at with his features.

Teaming up great lead actors with compelling stories he kept alive the adult drama in a world that constantly underestimated this audience.

While everyone else was teaming up Jessica Alba and Chris Evans in films about saving the world, Pollack paired people like Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman to deliver films that could still be thrilling by genre conventions and deliver the emotional goods.

Extracting career best performances from people like Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman, Pollack was also a very accomplished actor, he delivered scene stealing work in "Eyes Wide Shut" and last year's multiawarded "Michael Clayton" which he also produced.

His producing work with the late Anthony Minghella also provided Pollack with a deserved place in film history, considering he made films like "The Talented Mr. Ripley".

Nominated for several best director Oscars he took it home for "Out of Africa" which in a way sums up the remarkable career of who also seemed to be a very charming man.

By exploring the basic core of human relationships he touched people everywhere and proved that we're affected by the same things, whether we're European royalty in Africa or drag performers in national television.

Carrie On!

Finally a poll where I can agree with Americans.

Click on the picture to read more.

Kill me now!

It's official...
Read the news.

Four More Years of Magic.

Click on the picture to read Disney's upcoming pictures.

I'm thrilled about Lasseter's embrace of hand drawn animation.

Somehow makes you feel all fuzzy inside huh?

Now that Charlton Heston has passed away is it me or does it look like more legends are leaving us this year?

How sad it will be when all the people who lived the Golden Age of cinema have gone.

Why so smug Javier?

Click here to find out.

Oh...

Nevermind.

Lucky bastard!