Piper Perabo Tagged Articles at Cinematical

What, you might fairly ask, inspired me to think of this well-meaning-but-mediocre 2005 rom-com four years later? This entry stems from my refusal to see The Ugly Truth, which I'm pretty sure is the sort of treacly, cloying, romance that I can't abide, with a contrived, ultra-sentimental happy ending shoved down our throats. Like, oh, I don't know, Must Love Dogs. Or, God forbid, Made of Honor. Two people who are meant for each other, but whom fate has kept apart for an endless 100 minutes, dramatically come together with a big heartfelt speech (or two), maybe an interrupted wedding, and, of course, a big kiss. Needless to say, not my favorite brand of crowdpleaser.

Hollywood loves talking dogs. And I guess a lot of moviegoers love them too, because otherwise Hollywood wouldn't keep making them. Later this summer, we have a super-powered talking dog in Underdog and in two years, we'll be getting a super-sized talking dog movie called South of the Border. I say super-sized because the live-action Disney movie is going to have a lot of talking dogs in it. Drew Barrymore will be voicing the lead dog, a pampered Beverly Hills Chihuahua named Chloe, who ends up lost in Mexico while on vacation with her owner (Piper Perabo). As you'd expect, the little dog meets a bunch of new friends to help her find her way.

Most of the other dogs will be voiced by Latino actors, including Salma Hayek, who plays a spirit guide who helps Chloe learn her Hispanic roots, and George Lopez, who plays another Chihuahua who attempts to woo Chloe. Other unspecified roles have been cast with Cheech Marin (who voiced the cartoon Chihuahua character in Disney's Oliver & Company), Paul Rodriguez, Plácido Domingo, Edward James Olmos and Eddie 'Piolin' Sotelo. Andy Garcia will also be voicing a dog, one which doesn't seem to be of the Latino variety. The Cuban actor is voicing an ex-K-9 German Shepherd. I assume that the character will have a German accent (as long as they're going so racial) and that he will end up the true love interest for Chloe -- though I don't think this is physically appropriate.

Just the other day, I was remarking to a friend: "When are they going to make a movie about a pampered Beverly Hills Chihuahua who gets lost in Mexico and must rely on friends to find her way back Stateside?" And in Variety today, there it was. Thank you, Mr. Hollywood - answerer of prayers, fulfiller of dreams! And with Raja Gosnell, director of Scooby-Doo and Big Momma's House at the helm, I've got a feeling this puppy can't lose! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Piper Perabo is going to the dogs! The article doesn't say who Perabo will play, but if I had to guess I bet she'll be the dog's Paris Hiltonesque owner? Whoever she plays, if this baby's half the movie Kangaroo Jack was, we should be in for some head-exploding, kick-you-in-the-crotch, lick-you-in-the-ear entertainment! Let me catch my breath here -- sarcasm overload. Okay.

Perabo last appeared on the big screen in the Diane Keaton vehicle Because I Said So (as in "Why do I have to watch this?"). She is currently starring in In Vivid Detail, which is playing the Tribeca Film Festival. And before the year is out she will appear in both Carriers and Ashes, which is the directorial debut of Ajay Naidu (Samir from Office Space). According to the announcement, South of the Border will be live-action, but it doesn't mention whether an actual chihuahua will be used or a CGI dog a la Scooby. It also doesn't mention whether the dog will be speaking or not, but I can't imagine the producers passing up a chance to have animals talking in wacky accents. Also not mentioned: how the chihuahua gets from Beverly Hills to Mexico, but I'd love to be the screenwriter who has to figure that out! There is no imdb information on the film regarding the writer of South of the Border, so I'll just assume it's David Mamet.

The centerpiece of Express Stops Only, a short film program playing at Tribeca, is Raving, from first-time writer/director Julia Stiles. Starring Zooey Deschanel and Bill Irwin, the film centers around two possibly dangerous Manhattan misfits who try to figure each other out and end up engaging in an uneasy friendship, of sorts. Zooey is a street scammer, hustling people for drinking money with a song and dance about how she got hooked up with bad people and was left behind all alone, in the big bad city. Irwin's character is a straight-laced man who shows up at an office every morning, swipes a card at a security station and acts outraged when it doesn't work. We never learn whether he worked there or if he's just a complete lunatic who likes to show up at office buildings and cause a scene. Stiles shows a sure hand for offbeat comedy her first time around, keeping us engaged in the interplay between the two weirdos without ever tipping her hand as to where this thing is going. There's a nice musical finale.

Say Can You See is a creepy animation short that imagines 9/11 and its aftermath through the eyes of the those high-powered binocular stations on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. With the eye-holes already in place, it's an easy transition to anthropomorphize them as sad, contemplative watchmen who have a clear line of sight to see what's going on downtown but can do nothing about it. This isn't a talky short or something aimed at children, but a music-laden art piece that transitions from rain and sadness to a milieu of rebirth as birds and sunshine begin to return to the area. I wonder if the timing is off, however -- this seems like exactly the kind of thing that could have played three or four years ago at Tribeca and been very powerful, but the intervening years drain it of some of its power to inspire emotions through such a simple presentation. Still, its an intriguing little piece that puts one in mind of why the Tribeca film festival was created in the first place.

*A guest review today, from Nick Schager, of Slant Magazine

On the evidence of First Snow, it's apparent that Mark Fergus is a devoted student of classic crime cinema. For his directorial debut, the filmmaker (re-teaming with his Children of Men screenwriting partner Hawk Ostby) delivers a streamlined, straightforward slice of "Sunshine Noir," a sub-genre in which noir's pessimistic thematic preoccupations are transplanted from the shadowy night to the blisteringly bright daytime. As in Fergus' film, this shift also often involves a milieu relocation from the seedy, malevolent city to the imposingly empty rural wasteland, with the omnipresent air of gloom and calamity found not beneath towering skyscrapers and in darkened alleys but, rather, just behind scraggly tumbleweed bushes, across the horizon-seeking interstate, and around the corner from the dilapidated gas stations that sit, like ominous oases, in the middle of the vast nowhere.

Such a fill-up station is the starting point for the turbulent journey of Jimmy (Guy Pearce), a cocky, fast-talking flooring salesman who dreams of making it big selling classic Wurlitzer jukeboxes, and who becomes stranded at an out-of-the-way New Mexico rest stop after his car hits a (literal and figurative) bump in the road. While waiting for repairs, Jimmy entertains himself by having his fortune read by a laid-back psychic named Vacaro (J.K. Simmons), though his mockery of the man's supposed supernatural gifts come to a halt when – after offering up some cryptic comments about impending events – the seer is overwhelmed by violent seizures and, consequently, halts the reading and returns Jimmy's money. Simultaneously amused and mildly annoyed, the salesman nonetheless thinks little of the encounter until the prophesies begin coming true, prompting a return visit to Vacaro during which he's told that death shall arrive with the season's first snowfall.

The critics almost universally panned Guy Pearce's latest film, Factory Girl. Our own Ryan Stewart, in his review of the feature, said: "But as turned-on by superficiality as Warhol was, this film, coming in the age of Paris Hilton, stumbles by settling for a pair of superficial portraits." While Pearce had a wonderful stint dolled up in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, lately audiences haven't been happy unless he's dirty and dripping with angst and drama, which he does so well. So, it's probably a really good thing that he's following up Factory Girl with First Snow.

The film's official website has a trailer up for the film, and it looks a million times more fun than his big-screen take on Warhol. Pearce plays Jimmy Starks, a flooring salesman and hustler whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He asks someone if the area has "interesting diversions," and finds himself getting a scary reading from a psychic who says that with the first snow, there will be no tomorrow. So, obviously, Starks gets suspicious and paranoid as bits of the reading start to come true. And, in case you think he could just hightail it for Mexico, they add a little Final Destination in -- that his destiny will find him.

Granted, you'll have to look beyond his long hair/mullet look, which I really don't understand. Or, why the cute Piper Perabo wouldn't have forced him to get a haircut yet. Nevertheless, Pearce pulls off paranoia and inner-angst to a tee, and he's helped by William Fichtner, who already sold us as a salesman in Go, and JK Simmons in the meaty role as the psychic -- a nice change from his J. Jonah Jameson. The film will be released this March, just as the snow will hopefully be thawing.

[via Twitch]

"The secret impresses no one," Michael Caine's character reminds his proteges in The Prestige. In other words, you better have something else up your sleeve besides actual "magic" because magic is lousy entertainment. It's cold and impersonal and usually has no dramatic heft. Most magic tricks are performed at a quick pace because the whole thing depends on a moment's misdirection and because if it didn't go by quickly, no one would ever sit for it. Even when it's successful, a magic trick earns nothing but a polite clap. Christopher Nolan should have thought harder about this, because his film has the same deficiencies. All of its energy goes into structure and the concealment of hollow secrets. The film's backbone is an elaborate timeline that moves backwards, splits into two threads and then wobbles forward again, leaving the actors without a leg to stand on. Nolan's much-enjoyed puzzleboard picture Memento had a reason for its structural acrobatics, but The Prestige just wants to challenge the memory and attention of the audience. This isn't a movie, it's a game of Concentration.

Turn of the century London is the setting for a friendly rivalry between two up-and-coming magicians, played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. Jackman sports a west-of-the-Rockies American patter while Bale puts on an Eastend Cockney brogue that probably earned him high-fives from Michael Caine. Jackman's wife, played by where-are-they-now actress Piper Perabo, is killed early on in a scary water-tank trick that goes wrong. When Jackman blames Bale, the rivalry gets un-friendly. Jackman turns up at Bale's bullet-catching show and replaces a stage charge in his pistol with a real bullet. He becomes even more irate when Bale makes a great leap forward in the magic world by coming up with that rarest of things -- an interesting trick. It's a little something called The Transporting Man. He steps into a box on one side of a stage and then instantly re-emerges from an identical box on the other side of the stage. Hmmm...how does he do that? It's not a spoiler to tell you that there's no satisfying answer.