Maria Bello Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Rewinding the past seven days of the wonderful world of independent films:

Deals. Twilight fans will have the opportunity to see Kristen Stewart in a different type of role later this year. In Udayan Prasad's The Yellow Handkerchief, based on a story by Pete Hamill, Stewart jumps into a stranger's car. She and the driver (Eddie Redmayne) are soon joined by a newly-released convict (William Hurt) as they travel through rural Louisiana toward a hoped-for reunion with the ex-con's beloved (Maria Bello). Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired U.S. rights and is planning a theatrical release, according to indieWIRE.

Hans-Christian Schmid's legal thriller Storm will also hit theaters later this year, indieWIRE says, courtesy of Film Movement. Kerry Fox stars as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague; she must convince a witness (Anamaria Marinca from 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) to testify in order to convict a former officer of war crimes.

Box Office. Arriving with this year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in hand, Yojiro Takita's Departures took the #1 spot among indies. Set in and around a Japanese business tasked with preparing bodies for burial, the drama earned $8,327 per screen at the nine theaters where it opened in New York and Los Angeles, Box Office Mojo reports.

Also performing well in its debut weekend, Pressure Cooker grossed $8,151 at one theater in New York. The documentary, directed by Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker, follows a high school culinary arts class in Northeast Philadelphia, where teacher Wilma Stephenson tries to help her students earn college scholarships. We've embedded the fiery trailer below.

After the jump: Outfest lineup, plus Transformers 2 in Los Angeles.

You may have heard that Francis Ford Coppola had said no to screening Tetro out of competition and had decided to keep his latest film out of Cannes. Well, all that's changed now. Variety reports that Olivier Pere countered Coppola's refusal with a new offer, one that proved too irresistible. Now the Vincent Gallo film will open the 41st edition of Directors' Fortnight, which also boasts I Love You Phillip Morris amongst a number of international selections. For the unlucky Cannes-free people: Coppola will be distributing the film through his American Zoetrope, but no release date has been announced.

Meanwhile, the cast of The Company Men, the drama that has Ben Affleck getting sacked, keeps growing. First Kevin Costner and Tommy Lee Jones signed on, and now Variety reports that Craig T. Nelson and Maria Bello are joining the film, which is currently kicking off in Boston. Company focuses on a man who suffers from a lay-off due to corporate downsizing, and has to work at his brother-in-law's (Costner) construction site to make ends meet. Bello will play the Vice President of human resources who cans Affleck, while Coach plays the global conglomerate's CEO. Get ready to see a lot more of Mr. T. Nelson. You might have noticed that he's also in The Proposal, and, he's rumored to be part of that Parenthood TV project.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Downloading Nancy, billed as "The Most Controversial Film You Will See This Year." Our own Erik Davis called it "a sick and twisted rollercoaster ride that climbs fast and drops slowly." What do you mean, Erik? "Basically, Downloading Nancy is about this unhappily married woman (Maria Bello) who meets a guy (Jason Patric) over the internet, falls in love, then asks him to kill her ... slowly ... so she can finally feel something in her life."

Erik admitted that he may have been the only one who actually liked Johan Renck's film when it premiered at Sundance last year, but that's my boss: always ready to champion the "sick, twisted and sadistic stuff," in this case because he felt it "had purpose, revealed character and told a pretty f**ked up story."

I think it bears repeating that Maria Bello is the lead -- an amazing actress who has consistently demonstrated a willingness to take risks, even in more conventional roles. Jason Patric is fully capable of giving a subtle, moody performance, as are co-stars Rufus Sewell and Amy Brenneman. Behind the camera, the exquisitely talented Christopher Doyle served as director of photography. Clearly, this movie isn't for everyone, but more adventurous souls will want to see it for themselves.

Courtesy of the courageous Strand Releasing, Downloading Nancy will open - in theaters only -- on June 5. You have been warned. Check out the full poster by clicking the image below.

I believe I made history during Sundance 2008 by being the only one who actually liked Downloading Nancy. For those who don't remember the buzz (or non-buzz) surrounding this flick, it probably went down as the most hated of the festival last year. I mean, folks really disliked this movie -- to the point where one critic (I forget who) said it felt like his face was being raped while watching it. Me? I'm kinda into the sick, twisted and sadistic stuff -- and while the majority felt the film was over the top for the sake of it, I actually thought it had purpose, revealed character and told a pretty f**ked up story.

Basically, Downloading Nancy is about this unhappily married woman (Maria Bello) who meets a guy (Jason Patric) over the internet, falls in love, then asks him to kill her ... slowly ... so she can finally feel something in her life. I can't even imagine the different places Bello had to take herself in order to pull off this role -- the gal is completely out of her mind, trust me. I can't even believe someone finally picked this up -- but they did, and it's apparently arriving in theaters this May. Check out the trailer after the jump (for NSFW purposes).

I'm hoping that Ray Stevenson will dominate the screen completely as Frank Castle, setting wrongs to right and creating utter mayhem, in Lexi Alexander's Punisher: War Zone, which opens wide tomorrow. I loved Stevenson as Titus Pullo in HBO's Rome, an atypical brute with a little boy's heart and a joyous young man's full-bodied embrace of life. At the very least, he should erase memories of Thomas Jane, who glowered and scowled without ever embodying the role in 2004's The Punisher.

With so many sequels being made, it's inevitable that some actors will not reprise their original role. (Just think of all the fuss kicked up by Don Cheadle taking over the part of War Machine from Terence Howard, in the Iron Man sequel.) Whether it's death, Broadway, pregnancy, caring for a family member, money, or the realization that the sequel will suck, sequel replacement actors face the daunting task of replacing a familiar face in the role of a beloved character.

History has not been kind, and while it would be easier to list the worst, we thought we'd be positive and list the best sequel replacement actors. (James Bond and superheroes need a separate list.) We're also noting the role and the actor that was replaced.

1. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter (Brian Cox)

Brian Cox played the flesh-hungry Dr. Lecter in Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) effectively, but Hopkins added a whole new layer when he took over the role five years later in The Silence of the Lambs. Hopkins pushed Lecter right to the edge of camp ("fava beans and a nice kee-anti") yet kept him firmly rooted at the edge of humanity with his probing eyes and ultra-controlled body language.

My general rule is: I don't walk out of movies. The last time I did so was in 2006 during the fairly wretched bar mitzvah comedy Keeping Up with the Steins -- but only because I was with a friend who wasn't into it; we were bored and I was embarrassed because I had suggested the film. I'm occasionally tempted to leave in the middle of a movie that's giving me no earthly reason to hope it will get any better, but something always keeps me in my chair. Often I'm at a press screening, where it's poor form to walk out. Even if I'm seeing a movie on my own dime, I'm usually driven by a sense of duty and completism. I like talking about movies, as you've probably guessed, and it doesn't seem legitimate to do so not having given the whole thing a chance. "Oh man, I despised Movie X." "Really? What did you think of the ending?" "I left halfway through." "Oh."

I've been doing some traveling, and am spending this weekend in San Francisco. Friday was a gorgeous day, but for various reasons I'm a bit behind in my movie-watching duties, so after exploring the city for a while in the morning, I decided to head to the theater for a double feature. The first thing I went to see was Swing Vote, which I found irritating and politically gutless but certainly watchable. My next choice: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

I haven't seen the previous two movies in the Mummy series, although people have recommended them to me as rollicking old-fashioned action-adventure movies, from the same Saturday-afternoon-matinee roots as the Indiana Jones series -- not exactly brain teasers, but good silly fun. The good news is that if you too haven't seen the preceding movies, you can watch The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor without fear of getting confused or lost or not understanding the recurring characters. The bad news is that regardless of whether you've watched the other films, the third Mummy entry is a headache-inducing mess that piles on unimpressive special effects to stretch a slight and often incomprehensible storyline.

The movie begins with an extended backstory: the history of the Dragon Emperor from thousands of years ago, in which a ruthless tyrant (Jet Li) bargained with an infamous witch (Michelle Yeoh) in his ambitious drive to seek immortality. The backstory, narrated in a manner befitting the History Channel, goes on for far longer than necessary. (Hellboy II did this so much better and faster, and with cool puppetry too.) It's a full 10 minutes before the story begins and we encounter the leads from the previous Mummy films, Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello this go-round), who have retired from the action business and are trying to lead humdrum lives in the English countryside.

This summer may be confusing to some less blog-literate moviegoers thanks to two recast roles. In both The Dark Knight and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a prominent character is played by a new actress. In the former sequel, "Rachel Dawes" will be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes, who had the role in Batman Begins. In the latter, "Eveyln Carnahan O'Connell" will be played by Maria Bello, subbing for Rachel Weisz, who appeared in both The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.

This certainly isn't the first time characters have been recast with different actors, and over at The Onion, the A.V. Club has listed 20 such memorably jarring switcheroos, which they're calling The Darrin Effect (after the famous character replacement on TV's Bewitched), in television and film. Surely everyone recalls when Sarah Chalke took over the part of "Becky" on Roseanne; the writers even occasionally even slipped in some reflexive jokes about it. And let's not forget the glaring problem of recasting Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning role of "Clarice Starling" -- Julianne Moore played the part in Hannibal. Or the tragic yet surprisingly respectable replacement of Michael Gambon for a deceased Richard Harris in the Harry Potter movies.

When it comes to Hollywood movies, Chinese censors have always been a little strict. Case in point: The State Administration for Radio, Film and Television tells Variety that the upcoming release of The Mummy 3 Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is still pending until Universal makes unspecified changes to the flick. The censors didn't give any details about what would have to be cut from the film, but speculation has it that the source of the problem is "usually themes involving ghosts are taboo in China".

Emperor sets the new and improved O'Connell family (Brendan Fraser, Luke Ford, and Maria Bello) smack dab in the middle of another adventure battling a tyrannical emperor (Jet Li) and his legion of undead armies. Universal already made some concessions to the Chinese government in exchange for permission to shoot on location. According to Variety Universal was urged to make the film, "less political and more focused on fantasy than real history" -- Less political? Now that's a word I would have never associated with the Mummy franchise.

A flack for Universal has already released a statement saying, "Universal does not anticipate any obstacles to clearing the film for China and looks forward to releasing "The Mummy: Tomb of The Dragon Emperor" in the country where it was set and shot." Translation: We just spent $145 million bucks on this movie, and we want some of those Chinese box-office dollars. Emperor is just the latest Hollywood production to get a rough deal from Chinese censors, but at least they are in good company. On the upside, I guess the Chinese will never know what they're missing.

The Mummy 3 Tomb of the Dragon Emperor opens on August 1st, 2008.

Perhaps sensing that the dough was going to rise (ha!) on this puppy, Papa John's Pizza is sponsoring the new trailer for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor over on director Rob Cohen's blog, in preparation for the three-quel's forthcoming premiere on big screens and large pizza boxes everywhere come August 1.

Anyway, what's the difference between this new trailer and the one we got just a month back? Not all that much, really, which means that the film still looks to be an improvement over its noxiously overblown predecessor. Yes, after seven years, Brendan Fraser's character remains vocal about his wearying habit of fighting mummies. No, you're not crazy, Rachel Weisz isn't just bearing a passing resemblance to Maria Bello. Sure, their son seems to have aged ahead just enough to be both handsome and cocky in equal measure.

But all qualms aside, it isn't often when one gets to say that a movie looks to have a cooler Yeti than it does a three-headed dragon, so check out Cohen's blog for that trailer and other behind-the-scenes material, and here's to hoping that the film itself manages to be the most entertaining action-adventure blockbuster surrogate for the Indiana Jones franchise since... well, last month.