GlennClose Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The 18th annual Florida Film Festival ended a week ago last night, and do you want to know why our coverage of the fest is going up just now? Because I'm selfish and wanted to catch up with as many of the forty or so features as possible, even after the awards had been announced and everyone had gone home (for the record, I managed to miss each and every winning film -- Prince of Broadway, The Garden, Prodigal Sons, Neil Young: Don't Be Denied, and the exceedingly popular Poundcake -- and am kicking myself still).

However, between the appearances by Ken Russell, Glenn Close, and Jon Voight (oh, my!), I did manage to catch my fair share of world, regional, and local premieres at this celebration of Original Cinema, and you can see what we saw after the jump.

Why do so many women get stuck playing characters older than they are? While watching Duplicity, for example, I was thinking, "Wow, Julia Roberts really looks her age." (She's 41.) I don't mean that in a negative way -- she's still a fine-looking woman -- but it's rare to see an actress in her 40s or 50s playing a character who's in her 40s or 50s.

More often than that, we see younger women playing older characters, as Hadley Freeman points out in The Guardian: "It is all too easy for a female actor to find herself cast as the mother of someone who once played her boyfriend as soon as she blows out the candles on her 35th birthday cake." She cites various examples:

• Sally Field as Tom Hanks' mother in Forrest Gump. Age difference: ten years.
• Glenn Close as Mel Gibson's mother in Hamlet. Age difference: nine years.
• Anne Bancroft as Dustin Hoffman's matronly seductress in The Graduate. Age difference: five years.
• Elizabeth Taylor as Dennis Hopper's mother in Giant. Age difference: four years.
• Angelina Jolie as Colin Farrell's mother in Alexander. Age difference: one year.
• Lea Thompson as Michael J. Fox's mother in Back to the Future. Age difference: none.

Freeman concludes: "Quite why film directors are so averse to having middle-aged roles played by middle-aged women comes down to male insecurity and misogyny ... The sense of disgust of older women is so deeply entrenched in Hollywood that even when the role is specifically for an older woman, no one wants to see an actual older woman on screen." All of the directors of the films cited above are men.

Do you want to see more "actual older women" on screen? Or would you prefer that older female characters be played by younger actresses?

It was over two years ago that we got the first installment of Hoodwinked! It did well enough in its first weekend, making $17 million dollars ($3 mil short of its cost), that #2 was put into the works. Now writer and voice Cory Edwards has been blogging about the second installment, and has listed the cast that Weinstein Co. has put together. Some voices remain, like Glenn Close, David Ogden Stiers, and Andy Dick. Oh, and we can't forget Patrick Warburton -- but it's not like anyone, ever, could replace him.

But there are also some new names to the mix. Red, who was voiced by Anne Hathaway, will now get the invincible hero Hayden Panettiere -- which Edwards says is a good fit because Red becomes "more of a 'caped crusader'" in the film. Meanwhile, James Belushi's The Woodsman will now be voiced by the unstoppable Jack Putter -- Martin Short. You can't really complain about a Short replacement, unless well, he was taking over for a rippling, glistening superhero -- then it would be weird.

But there's also some tasty new vocal talent coming along for the ride. Edwards says Joan Cusack will play a "villainous witch," Brad Garrett is The Giant (of the beanstalk variety), Wayne Newton of all people will be Jimmy Ten Strings -- the Giant's singing harp, David Alan Grier will play a troll, and to top it all off, Amy Poehler and Bill Hader will voice Hansel & Gretel. How's that for an all-star cast?

[via Ace Showbiz]

There is just something about a 'best of' list, isn't there? We can't help ourselves I guess; I mean, how many AFI specials are we up to now, anyway? The Independent has compiled the best and worst film lines of all time, so automatically I started to think about my favorites and not so favorites. I have to admit, they've got a pretty good list: The usual candidates are there, but there are also a few surprises. I wholeheartedly agree that "As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster. ... " from Goodfellas, is possibly one of the great movie intros of all time.

Now, the ones on my list? I'm a sucker for a one liner so, some of my favorites would be Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons; "Like most intellectuals he's intensely stupid." And George Sanders in All About Eve :"You're maudlin and full of self pity, you're magnificent." And my worst list would be pretty much any line from Showgirls -- do I have to pick just one? So now it's your turn ...what would you're best and worst list look like?

[via Independent ]

I am generally suspicious of "star-studded" casts; that five, ten, or even twenty actors would all agree to participate in an independent film speaks not so much to the quality of the project but the current vogue of Hollywood actors wanting to create for themselves "indie" cred. And TV cred. And stage cred. So on and so forth like little Mexican jumping beans they go, from one acting platform to the next, building the versatile resume of an A-grade 21st century star. But perhaps the star-studded cast is less for resume building and more for rubbing elbows between the established and the new, the young and the old, the Hollywood icon and the crossover hit. Or maybe everyone's just feeling sentimental.

Some combination of the above theories might explain the strange amalgamation that is Nine Lives, with tearjerker experts Glenn Close, Kathy Baker, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Holly Hunter, Robin Wright Penn, Amy Brennerman, and Dakota Fanning reading dutifully from a script that seems to have been drafted during an Oprah post-show party.

Okay, now I'm convinced that many of the critics whose reviews count over at Rotten Tomatoes are secretly Pod People. That's the only way I can think of to explain how The Chumscrubber has a 32% rating over there, while Broken Flowers has an 87%.  I saw both of these movies, and I'll tell you right now, one of them? Not nearly as great as its been touted to be. And the other? Much, much better than a lot of critics are giving it credit for.

The Chumscrubber is not your typical teen film. It tackles complex social issues without being condescending; it somehow manages to walk the line between drama and dark satiric comedy without being trite, cutesy, or quirky for the sake of quirkiness (an annoying trend which I'm seeing more and more with indie films lately).

This was a fabulously layered movie about the isolating loneliness of a self-medicated society, a world where everyone walks around in a solipsitic bubble, lightly bumping into each other rather than really interacting. On the surface, The Chumscrubber might appear to be just your average indie satire of suburban society, but there is much more to this movie than that.