Though fans are divided regarding whether the remake of pop culture classic "Dirty Dancing" is an abomination or an admirable effort, the show must go on, as they say. Love it or hate it, helming the project is director Kenny Ortega, the original film's choreographer, also known for directing the "High School Musical" trilogy and Michael Jackson's "This Is It" concert film, as well as clever and culturally high-impact television fare such as "Ally McBeal" and "Gilmore Girls". [Fun fact: He also directed a few episodes of the Dirty Dancing TV show in the eighties! Which Paul Feig was third-billed on. Love is strange.]With Lionsgate's formal announcement of its intent and a director attached, casting speculation has also began. A guy who can pull off the the trashy-and-tortured-with-a-heart-of-gold role, with a gorgeous physique and has dance moves to back it, is obviously important. Hopeful speculation has leaned along the lines of Justin Timberlake, Zac Efron, Ryan Gosling, etc. But the heart and soul of the story is the timid and trapped brat-turned-bombshell Baby Houseman, breaking away from her overbearing family and finding her true passion in an unlikely love affair. (Look at that, I could write romance novel book jackets.) She's got to be like the wind! Which young star can fill Jennifer Grey's dancing shoes and breathe life into the classic character for a modern era?
Stephen King fans familiar with his epic 1978 novel The Stand are probably also familiar with the 1994 ABC TV miniseries version of the story. The miniseries wasn't terrible (not that everyone agrees with me there.) Gary Sinise did a great job playing Stu Redman, although Molly Ringwald wasn't my first pick for Frannie Goldsmith's character. The show had a run time of 366 minutes but even that wasn't enough to capture all of the book's original 823 pages, which told the story of a pandemic that wiped out most of the population on earth. The book follows a survivors as they meet up and disband and eventually form communities on the sides of good and evil. Since January sources have reported that Warner Brothers is developing The Stand as a movie. I don't know how they're going to fit that whole story in 120 minutes but I'm willing to watch their attempt. Recently,Deadline and Entertainment Weekly reported that Warner Brothers hopes to hire Ben Affleck to direct the movie. Affleck, besides acting in movies including Chasing Amy and Daredevil, has directed, written and produced films too, including The Town, Gone Baby Gone and Good Will Hunting. Do you think Ben Affleck will do a good job with The Stand?
Nobody puts Baby in a remake!While some furious fans have taken to the web to mourn the modern update of the charmingly chintzy classic "Dirty Dancing," others are thrilled to dust off their ol' favorite and are already speculating on potential casting choices. Amidst all of the excitement, director Kenny Ortega, also the original film's choreographer, promises he's gotten the green light from those closest to the 1987 version. And one of those well-wishers may change fans' minds."Jennifer [Grey] and I have been talking and she’s been so supportive, as has Lisa Swayze and [producer] Eleanor Bergstein, and I couldn’t be more thankful for the outreach that has happened from the cast and crew members from the original movie," Ortega told Us Weekly at the 'So You Think You Can Dance' finale."They've all said 'Go, Ken!'" he assures. The film's fierce fans are sure to want the approval of the original 'Baby' character Jennifer Grey and perhaps Patrick Swayze's widow in his stead, but it's Eleanor Bergstein's surprising support that could influence doubtful devotees. Bergstein, writer and co-producer of "Dirty Dancing", was, after all, the real life Baby Houseman. The wordsmith's imdb.com profile boasts, "According to a December 2008 interview with Dirty Dancing screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein [presumably this one], the characters of Baby and Johnny were both influenced by Bergstein's own biography. Like Baby Houseman, Bergstein came from a liberal Jewish family who visited Catskills resorts during the 1960s; her father was a doctor; and she was nicknamed "Baby" until she was 22 years old. Like Johnny Castle, Bergstein was an skilled "dirty dancer" who learned at house parties and later became an Arthur Murray instructor." Screenwriter Eleanor Bergstien, a.k.a. "Baby"If she's willing to allow the tale inspired by her own sultry summers see another incarnation, shouldn't fans give it a shot? Remember that it has also been adapted into a successful stage production as well-- which was a tough decision for Bergstein. She said "I resisted turning it into a stage show for years. I didn’t want to disappoint the fans with an unnecessary show. Then I discovered people were watching the film over and over. They wanted to be there, while that story is unfolding. So I accepted that the most natural form for it was live theatre." Doesn't she know best how her story should play out? Or will the original be the only way we should be willing to watch?
Directors, and brothers, Tony and Ridley Scott have both been speculated this week to have plans in the works to continue putting their stamp on pop culture classics. "Yes, it appears nothing is truly sacred anymore as Tony [Scott] is currently in talks to reboot Sam Peckinpah’s classic 1969 Western The Wild Bunch," Fandango reported. "The original Wild Bunch starred William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and Warren Oates, among others, as a group of aging outlaws looking for one last big score as the “traditional” American West is disappearing around them. Tony doesn’t seem to be content with just one reboot. He’s reportedly “highly motivated” to “re-invent” his Oscar-winning (for Best Music) 1986 action flick Top Gun." There are no proposed release date or names attached for either potential project. Also, brother Ridley Scott is returning to his dark and dismal world of Blade Runner, MSNBC announced, "for a new feature for Warners-based Alcon Entertainment. While the new movie is being described as a "follow-up" to the first film, the filmmakers have not yet disclosed whether it will function as a prequel or a sequel to the original."Will Ridley's follow-up to Blade Runner blow your mind the way the original did? Can Top Gun top itself? Or will The Wild Bunch reboot rewrite history?
Choose between the French-speaking Bradley Cooper and the "Crazy Stupid Love" actor Ryan Gosling! We want to know whether you agree with People Magazine's choice of the newest sexiest man in the world!
Glenn Close has said her role in ‘Albert Nobbs’ is the most invested she has ever been in a movie. In the past, Glenn has been nominated for best actress five times and the fact that this movie is generating a huge best actress buzz is something that really pleases her. She first took the stage role as the 19th century Irish waiter,Albert Nobbs, in 1982. It is the story of a woman who disguises herself as a man in order to protect herself and to better survive in sexiest times. She works and saves to build up the capital to open her own shop and along the way develops a relationship with a young co-worker. This leads to complications and drama that is difficult to handle. If nominated for best actress, Glenn Close is likely to compete for the award with Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe, Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher and Viola Davis from The Help, among other actresses. Will you go to “Albert Nobbs”?
Glenn Close has said her role in ‘Albert Nobbs’ is the most invested she has ever been in a movie. In the past, Glenn has been nominated for best actress five times and the fact that this movie is generating a huge best actress buzz is something that really pleases her. She first took the stage role as the 19th century Irish waiter,Albert Nobbs, in 1982. It is the story of a woman who disguises herself as a man in order to protect herself and to better survive in sexiest times. She works and saves to build up the capital to open her own shop and along the way develops a relationship with a young co-worker. This leads to complications and drama that is difficult to handle.
If nominated for best actress, Glenn Close is likely to compete for the award with Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe, Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher and Viola Davis from The Help, among other actresses. Will you go to “Albert Nobbs”?
Fight Club is always the example I draw on when explaining that I like a movie adaption that actually adapts the original story -- that is, changes it and makes it better suited for film, manipulates it in a constructive way to fit the new medium. I actually like the movie Fight Club better than the book. And I had the poster hanging in my high school bedroom. Now Shortlist.com has done us the favor of linking to some awesome fanart posters. Which one's your favorite?
Indie ingenue Michelle Williams, who's already collecting praise for her portrayal and stunning likeness of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn, told Vogue magazine that, ironically, she grew up with pictures of the iconic blonde bombshell plastered to her bedroom wall. “I had one of her in a field of trees in Roxbury, Connecticut. She’s wearing a white dress and she’s barefoot and she’s got her arms spread and she’s laughing. There was just something about that image of her—so lovely and joyful and free. I’ve always thought of her as that woman-child, not an icon, which is probably why I let myself approach the role.” Is Michelle Williams the best fit so far in finding an actress to honor the starlet's memory?“Not only is she beautiful and brilliant,” the film’s director, Simon Curtis says of Williams, “but she brings such intellect to her work along with an intuitive grasp of character, extraordinary depth of feeling, and a kind of innate glamour—I guess we call it star quality, don’t we? For a director, it’s the dream package.”"Williams spent six months immersing herself in all things Monroe," Vogue tells of her process. "She read biographies, diaries, letters, poems, and notes, pored over photographs, listened to recordings, watched movies, and tracked down obscure clips on YouTube."“I’d go to bed every night with a stack of books next to me,” she recalls. “And I’d fall asleep to movies of her. It was like when you were a kid and you’d put a book under your pillow hoping you’d get it by osmosis.”To work around her own naturally gamine face and frame, Williams had to gain weight and study with a choreographer in imitating the voluptuous pin-up physique. “Unfortunately, it went right to my face,” she said, puffing up her cheeks. “So at some point it became a question of, Do I want my face to look like Marilyn Monroe’s or my hips?” Foam padding was eventually decided upon to provided the fuller hips so that Williams could maintain a more sleek face. In the end, she says, “it felt like being reborn. It felt like breaking my body and remaking it in her image, learning how she walked and talked and held her head. None of that existed in my physical memory, and I knew I needed as much time as possible to make it part of me.”My Week with Marilyn opens at the New York Film Festival this month. Will winsome Michelle Williams impress as the doomed dream girl?Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 has been hugely successful in theaters, with a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and earning more than 1 billion dollars worldwide. The movies has been popular and profitable, but is it any match for the book that sparked it?I haven't seen HP7.2 in theaters, but in general, the Harry Potter books provide a richness that the movies lack. There are no time or budget constraints on the novels, and characters who get neglected on screen can develop in subtle ways in print. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (the novel) compelled me as much, if not more, than the other books in the series did. I found it riveting, exciting, perfectly paced, heartbreaking, and best of all, it answered all of my questions. Rowling tied up that plot in a way Lost fans can only dream about. When I watch the Harry Potter movies, I can't help but notice every time the film diverges from the book, every time something happens differently on screen than it did on the page. I bite my tongue against complaining aloud, "That's not how it happened!" I agonize over deleted scene and lines that stuck in my mind from reading. The movies are certainly fun -- it's great to see Rowling's action sequences and her inventions and magical creatures given life. But I can't help but feel like they're poor, mutilated imitations from a much superior mold.Few people, it seems, agree with me on this. In searching for articles to cite in this poll, I've mostly come across stories that prize the HP7.2 over the novel that it's based on. Much of the praise for movie comes along with criticism of Rowling's writing in the seventh book. An article titled "How the 'Harry Potter' Movies Succeeded Where the Books Failed" reads, "Rowling’s storytelling couldn't stack up to her setting ... while “darker” things happened, the tone could never quite catch up to the circumstances." The Huffington Post agrees with this assessment of Book 7 -- "to be blunt, this was not J.K. Rowling's best work." E! Online gives "Five Reasons the Harry Potter Movies Are (Gasp!) Better Than the Books," including the action scenes, more riveting on screen than on the page, and "brevity" ("Especially by the end, [Rowling] needed better editors to keep her from being long winded"). A reviewer for The Atlantic writes about the eight film, "It’s a pleasant irony that, just as the first installments of Rowling’s oeuvre were better suited to page than screen, the final installments hae reversed the relationship." Harry Potter better told on screen than in print? Well, you already know how I feel about that. What do you think?
Rebecca Romijn played the X-Men villain Mystique in the X-Men film trilogy, X-Men, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. Critics complemented the performance, for which the actress had to endure hours of make-up application. In the most recent X-Men film, X-Men: First Class, Jennifer Lawrence portrayed young Mystique. She, too, garnered praise and wore the paint and prosthetics that created movie Mystique's particular look. (In the comics, Mystique has blue skin but no scales.) Which performance did you like better, Rebecca Romijn's in the trilogy or Jennifer Lawrence's in X-Men: First Class?
Larry King
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