JamieBell Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Steven Spielberg's The Adventues of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn started filming with so little fanfare that I've nearly forgotten all about it ... but I doubt you diehard Herge fans have. Now you'll have a date to circle on the calender as Variety reports that Tintin will be hitting theaters on December 23, 2011, pitting it against Warner Bros Happy Feet 2 and Disney / PIXAR's The Bear and the Bow. (It may be two years away, but you can offer your box office predictions now if you like!)

At least, that's when it'll be hitting theaters on this side of the pond. Paramount and Sony plan to release the film in Europe first, as befitting its heritage and fanbase. There's no specific dates set, but they're eying a fall dates of late October and early November depending on what part of Europe you're in. If you're very wealthy, you could hop on a plane and catch it a few weeks early.

Variety also reports that the film will be released in 3-D. I guess that's a sign I've lost track of this project as I wasn't aware that was ever in doubt, but apparently the two studios have been debating that the past few months. Now after viewing dailies, they've decided that 3-D "would offer the best rendition" for the film ... and frankly the recent ginormous 3-D successes like Monsters Vs. Aliens probably helped convince them of that.

So, there you are, Tintin fans: December 23, 2011 in 3-D. Excited?

At last year's Cannes Film Festival, it was reported that Kevin MacDonald was interested in directing the Roman epic The Eagle of the Ninth once he wrapped up State of Play. Nearly a year later, Variety is reporting that he's officially on board along with scriptwriter Jeremy Brock, and beginning to assemble his cast.

The cast is a little surprising -- Jamie Bell is signed to play a Celtic slave, and Channing Tatum is in talks to join him as his Roman owner. I would have expected MacDonald to favor a British cast, and not an all-American type like Tatum, but hey -- he's certainly got the build and bone structure for a Roman officer.

Ninth is based on Rosemary Sutcliff's popular 1954 novel, and centers on a young Roman officer named Marcus Aquila. Forced into an early retirement after being wounded, he travels north with his Celtic slave (who will be played by Bell) to discover what became of his father's Ninth Legion, who vanished in the Scottish Highlands. Marcus also seeks to retake the legion's gold Eagle and reclaim the legion's honor. (The facts Sutcliff based her book on have since been debunked -- the Ninth Legion existed after 117 A.D., and is now believed to have been slaughtered in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Not as poetic, though.)

As I believe there can never be too many sword-and-sandal epics, I'm anxious to see this one come together, especially since they'll be bowing to authenticity and in the Scottish Highlands. It may be fudgy on the facts, but that doesn't mean it won't be an enjoyable costume drama.

The cast has finally been completed for Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, and once again, I'm really, really wishing this was live-action, rather than 3-D motion-capture.

Variety reports that straight off some Russian Defiance, Jamie Bell has signed on to play the titular role, while co-star Daniel Craig has grabbed the role of Red Rackham. If you remember from earlier reports, this installment will not only focus on 1943's The Secret of the Unicorn, but also 1944's Red Rackham's Treasure. This should fit together quite nicely since one flowed into the other with Tintin's adventures with Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) ultimately leading to the search for Rackham's treasure.

Now Bell might be a smidge old to play a young, thrill-seeking kid, but I bet he'll do wonderfully (even better if this darned picture was live-action!); the actor has done everything from a dancing tyke full of wonder to a pacifist gun-toter to a doomed US Marine. The kid's got range. And Craig -- I'm sure he'll have no problem embracing his inner pirate.

What say you?

A lot of the time, watching a movie, we recoil or start at something in it: That's fake, we say, and dismiss the whole film. On many occasions, that impulse is correct because the film is fake, but on rare occasions, we feel that sensation of dislocated wrongness not because the film is fake but because our world is; we can't wrap our heads around the facts and ugly truths of what we see, can't comprehend how such things are possible, and recoil from them out of refusal to believe, not because they aren't believable. This is one of the challenges Defiance, the newest drama from Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond) faces as it tells the true story of the Bielski brothers, three Belorussian Jews and outlaw petty criminals who, during World War II's pogroms and purges, protected hundreds of Jews from the Nazis, some surviving and others actively fighting back.

We witness Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig) make the decision to kill his horse so it can be eaten, and we cannot imagine such hunger. We watch Zus Bielski (Liev Schrieber) fight alongside Russians who hate him to stop Germans who hate him, and we cannot imagine such a grim choice. We watch Asael Bielski (Jamie Bell) fall in love, or a quick quip between two supporting characters, and we cannot imagine love, or laughter, in such a place. But there must have been such hunger; there must have been such anger; there must have been laughter, and love, in the years of exile. It's hard to imagine, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

Jamie Bell makes the best of a bad situation as Hallam, the titular teenage protagonist of Mister Foe, whose anger, resentment and paranoia drive him from his father's remote Scottish Highlands estate to the streets of Edinburgh in search of solace. Hallam's mother recently drowned in the loch behind the house, the apparent victim of a freak boating accident, and his dad (Ciarán Hinds) has moved on and married his former secretary Verity (Claire Forlani), whom he was seeing before his wife's untimely passing and whom Hallam believes is a gold-digging hooker responsible for mom's death. Bell conveys the kid's withdrawn distrust through restless body language and wary glares, while at the same time flashing steely, cocky defiance during Hallam's confrontations with dad and Verity, as well as nonchalant, gregarious charm in the company of others. His performance has a multifaceted vitality to it, equal parts wounded puppy dog and plucky fighter, and might have carried director David Mackenzie's follow-up to Asylum (adapted from a novel by Peter Jinks) were it not for the fact that the film doesn't treat its subject as a real person, but rather as a term paper-ready vessel for narrative themes of voyeurism and Freudian longing.

Maybe it's just me, but is it really a good idea to start promoting a Holocaust drama smack dab in the middle of the summer movie season? I guess you can't blame the makers of Defiance for wanting to start their promotions a little early, though. The new poster for Daniel Craig's WWII flick has been released (click image to enlarge), and it is about as dark and sombre as you might expect.

Defiance was written and directed by Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond), and tells the true life story of the Bielski partisans. The Bielskis were three brothers who escaped into the Belarus forests while on the run from the Nazis and banded together to form a resistance group to save other Jews during WWII. Jamie Bell, Liev Schreiber, and Craig (who is the only face that made it to the poster) portray the three brothers, and The Mist's Alexa Davalos also stars as a fellow escapee and love interest for Craig.

Defiance wrapped production back in 2007 (as we all know, Craig has been a tad busy working on a certain spy film ever since) and there hasn't been much hoopla surrounding the film -- with the exception of a small trailer release back in January. So even though the next three months are all about blockbusting fun, we can't forget that Oscar season is merely months away; I'm sure Zwick hasn't.

Defiance will arrive in theaters on December 19th, 2008.

Granted, Daniel Craig has already made sure that he won't be playing James Bond for the rest of his career; but that hasn't stopped him from signing up for a variety of parts that are as far as you can get from the suave super spy. Paramount Vantage has just released the trailer for the WWII drama, Defiance. The film is the latest from 'bleeding-heart' action director Ed Zwick, whose last feature, Blood Diamond, managed to snag the director an Oscar nomination. Judging by the orchestral swell in this trailer and tag lines like "from desperation comes defiance," it would seem like he might be angling for another nomination this year.

Defiance is based on the true story of three Jewish brothers who escaped Nazi-occupied Poland to join up with the Russian resistance in the forests of Belarus. Zwick's screenplay is based on Nechama Tec's book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. Tuvia, Zusia, and Asael Bielski established a large partisan camp in the forests of Belarus during World War II and ultimately helped to save the lives of over 1,200 Jews. Craig will play Tuvia Bielski and he is joined by Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell as Zusia and Asael.

Despite my lack of love for some of Zwick's previous work, I'll admit that so far this one looks pretty good. Although to be fair, it might have a lot to do with the talents of Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber rather than Zwick's skill behind the camera. Defiance has yet to find a release date, but is expected to arrive sometime in '08.

[via ComingSoon.net]

One of my favorite young actors, Jamie Bell, will be playing little brother to Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber in Ed Zwick's next project, Defiance. The war film, based on a true story, tells of Jewish brothers who escape Nazi-occupied Poland in order to fight alongside the Russians in the forests of Belarussia. We'd previously heard about Craig's involvement -- something that must have excited fans of both James Bond and Munich -- but despite Variety's story today focusing on Bell, I think this is also the first time we're officially hearing about Schreiber's involvement (over at The Hollywood Reporter the casting news spotlights both actors).

Although these three guys don't really look like they'd be related -- though they could pass better than the fraternal trio of The Darjeeling Limited -- each is a terrific actor, and together they should prove an enjoyable team to watch. And while the subject matter and the filmmaker are sure to warrant their own usual Oscar buzz, I'm really hopeful about the prospects of these three guys getting recognition, themselves. Zwick has directed a few actors to nominations (DiCaprio; Hounsou; Watanabe; Denzel Washington even won for Glory) and his resume as producer also features plenty of Oscar notices.

In addition to Bell and Schreiber, two others have joined the cast in supporting roles. Alexa Devalos (The Chronicles of Riddick) will play Craig's (much younger) love interest, a fellow Polish refugee, and Tomas Arana (Gladiator) will play a leader of Russian resistance fighters. However, I'm mostly excited for Bell, who I've been a fan of since his precious debut in Billy Elliot.

He has had a few starring roles beyond that film, but nothing that has gotten him the same acclaim. He almost makes Chumscrubber and Dear Wendy tolerable, and he is fine -- though underused -- in Peter Jackson's terrible King Kong. But if you want to see him give another great performance in another great film, you have to go back to David Gordon Green's Undertow, which also admittedly may be too much an acquired taste for mainstream audiences. He also co-starred in last year's Flags of our Fathers, but I still haven't seen it and so can't judge his contribution. Hopefully, Defiance will allow him to break out more in terms of getting more prestigious gigs. Even if the film itself is as badly paced and as forcefully harrowing as Zwick's last, Blood Diamond, it will at least be, like that film, entertaining for its performances alone.

Now that The Bourne Ultimatum has broken box office records, I have to say again that I like Doug Liman's Bourne Identity -- the first of the trilogy -- best. Still, I don't mind that he left the franchise in the hands of Paul Greengrass, because it allowed him to make the brilliant Mr. & Mrs. Smith and the upcoming Jumper, which I'm really looking forward to. I've loved everything directed by Liman since Go (yeah, Swingers was fine but nothing great), and I hope Jumper continues the streak. Based on a series of young adult novels by Steven Gould, is a sci-fi adventure thriller about a teenage jumper -- or someone with the power to teleport -- in search of his mother's killer while also being tracked by the NSA. It has a script from David S. Goyer (Batman Begins), Simon Kinberg (Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and Jim Uhls (Fight Club), and a great cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane, Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) , Rachel Bilson (The O.C.), Tom Hulce (Amadeus), Michael Rooker (Slither) and Hayden 'Anakin Skywalker' Christensen. The movie now also has a website.

The thing I love best about the Jumper site is that it's easy to navigate. It's one of these websites that pans through a location (here someone's room/office) where certain objects can be clicked on to reveal things like a synopsis, a cast, etc. But for those of us who are impatient or have slow computers, or just simply aren't good at finding every last hidden link, there's a menu at the top of the screen that gives us pretty much the same stuff the link-objects do. Well, it doesn't include the site's clock links, which go to a site that gives us the exact time in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, St. Petersburg (Florida), Tokyo and ... Tokyo (because the New York one also accidentally links there, too). I'm surprised that Rome isn't one of those provided, since the city features prominently in the movie. The in-site links include a back story about jumpers and Paladins, who hunt and kill jumpers. There's also a photo gallery, a wallpaper download and a character guide. One of the link-objects, a group of video cassettes, don't really give us anything special, so I'm guess that's where the trailer will appear once it is available. I guess the site isn't too amazing, but it's given me some more background, and I'm now even more interested in seeing the movie. Jumper hits theaters on February 18, 2008.