dustin hoffman Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The hooker with a heart of gold is a Hollywood staple, but usually when we're talking about the 'pay to play' types, we're dealing with the female species. So who better to take a role as 'man candy' than Chris Evans? I mean, just look to your right -- is it any surprise he's the crush of girls and guys everywhere? In an interview with Prestige, Sharon Stone told them she would be working with Evans in the somewhat poorly named drama, Satisfaction, where Evans will play a male prostitute whose career has hit the skids.

According to Stone, the story will center on Evans' character as he's beginning to lose his cache with his agency, but when he hooks up with a new client (played by Stone), his career soon begins to take off again. This is no Pretty Woman tale, though, because what starts off as a partnership between the two turns into a vicious battle of the sexes ... with plenty of, ahem, sex.

Evans is still filming the comic book adaptation The Losers, but then it's off to start work on Satisfaction which will start shooting this January on location in Europe.

After the jump: Evans joins the ranks of these famous Hollywood hustlers...

When Cinematical staff first discussed the "Montages We Love" series, the image that popped into my head was a classic: the from-bed-to-pool montage in the 1967 film The Graduate. This is my favorite part of the Mike Nichols-directed movie -- yes, even better than the "plastics" line and the bit with Buck Henry and that iconic scene at the end.

The montage is a triumph of clever editing, thanks to Nichols and editor Sam O'Steen, whose other credits include Cool Hand Luke, Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown. It begins with Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) lazing in his parents' swimming pool, then as he leaves the pool and pulls on a shirt, he's revealed to be in a hotel room with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" and then "April, Come She Will" play in the background as Ben shifts from his bed to the pool to the hotel, drinking beer and looking passive and bored, or with his expression masked by sunglasses. The scene ends with Ben pushing himself off the pool's raft -- and into Mrs. Robinson's arms on the hotel bed.

Some more cast members have been revealed for Rod Lurie's "re-imagining" of Sam Peckinpah's controversial '70s thriller Straw Dogs, which is good because it just started filming in Shreveport, LA. Like, yesterday. James Woods (one of my favorite creeps) has joined the cast, as have Willa Holland and Dominic Purcell; however, there's no real info on who they will be playing, as the three leads have already been cast.

Kate Bosworth is taking on the complicated character of Amy Sumner, who was played by Susan George in the original; James Marsden is her husband, David, originally played by Dustin Hoffman, and Alexander Skarsgård is her ex-boyfriend Charlie, Susan's ex and the ringleader of the escalating violence against the couple.

In Lurie's version, the Sumners relocate to Amy's hometown in Mississippi instead of Cornwall, and David is a screenwriter from Los Angeles rather than a milquetoast mathematician. I'm very curious to see how Lurie plans to handle the ambiguities of the original, especially the rape scene that had many critics leveling charges of misogyny against Peckinpah.

Did this movie really need a "re-imagining?" Can we please think of a new term of directors and writers who take pre-existing characters and put them in almost the same circumstances but in different locations? How will the cast hold up to the original? And let's not forget the iconic poster from the original -- that will be hard to top.

Thirty years ago, a political crisis and two movie stars inspired thousands of young people to pursue a career in journalism. Now that the profession may be dying, is it foolish to hope that an economic crisis and three movie stars could revive interest?

Opening tomorrow, Kevin Macdonald's State of Play stars Russell Crowe as a world-weary reporter investigating a murder in which his old friend, politician Ben Affleck, may have been involved. Rachel McAdams also stars as an up-and-coming blogger. Obviously, that's a very different kind of movie than Alan Pakula's All the President's Men, which starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who helped uncover the full extent of the Watergate conspiracy in the 1970s. In the wake of that movie, The Atlantic commented: "Today's generation of young Americans is flocking to journalism schools in unprecedented numbers ... the extraordinary popularity of 'communications' has been attributed to 'the Woodstein Phenomenon,' the effect of the Woodward and Bernstein feat of exposing and unseating the Nixon gang in the White House."

Ever since, there has been no shortage of qualified journalists; the problem is that jobs for journalists are drying up faster than a water hole in the Sahara. Without getting into a discussion of why the newspaper and magazine industries are dying, my questions are:

• Will anyone look beyond the murder thriller trappings of State of Play?
• Will it cause anyone to think about why good, solid investigative journalism is still so important -- in part, to hold elected officials, government workers, and corporate executives accountable for their actions?
• Will anyone be prompted to come up with viable solutions to sustain and support a valuable profession before it's gone forever?

You might have noticed that Cinematical is digging into Oscar winners this week, but I've got to break the rules a little bit and go for a film that won no Oscars, even though it was nominated for six: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. I think a nod in every major category, in a year that also gave us The Godfather: Part II, Chinatown, The Conversation, Murder on the Orient Express, and Blazing Saddles, makes the film more than worthy. That film would be Lenny.

As someone who loves wordplay, and can sit for hours listening to interesting conversations, Lenny is a word fiesta wrapped in a black and white bow. The 1974 film stars Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce, and it outlines his career as a comic -- how it evolved from gigs in the Catskills to endless arrests on obscenity charges, before ending with an accidental overdose in 1966.

Pretty much any scene where Hoffman is onstage and channeling Bruce is worthy of attention, but this clip is one of the best. After getting arrested for using the word "c---------g," he gets back on stage and strives to perform a really obscene show, without using any obscene words. This is, of course, the perfect example of what he strived to teach audiences in the '60s -- the word is not the power, not the obscenity.

Trivia from IMDb: Neil Diamond was originally selected to play Bruce. Neil Frakking Diamond!

On Christmas Day, Last Chance Harvey will go into limited release and give us a Christmas treat. The film stars Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, and it's almost like seeing what would've happened if Stranger Than Fiction's Professor Jules Hilbert met and romanced Karen Eiffel. I always wonder what sort of romance could have blossomed between Jules and Karen, and since this is the holiday season, it got me thinking about characters who should reunite and deal with the holidays on the big screen.

The first that came to mind was Jesse and Celine -- our beloved Before Sunrise and Before Sunset characters. After Richard Linklater created a billowing, world-wide sigh with the ending of the second film, audiences have been itching to find out what happens next, so why not a thoughtful piece that takes place over the course of the holidays? It wouldn't work to add a million people into the mix, but I'm sure the pair would find a lot to say about Christmas, and maybe we could finally see how the pair survive in the real (albeit Santa-laced) world.

Beyond the realm of indie romance, can you imagine a certain Miles and Jack taking a New Years Eve trip back to wine country? Pineapple Express getting hidden in a Christmas gift? The Wonder Boys going on a new snow-filled adventure?

Are there any characters you would love to see in the holiday setting? Are any just perfect for dealing with a Winter Wonderland?

Mice have enjoyed a great ride in the movies. The animated variety first rose to prominence thanks to Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in the late 20s, enjoyed a rebirth as heroes in the late 70s and 80s with The Rescuers, The Secret of NIMH, The Great Mouse Detective, and An American Tail, and overflowed into live-action territory a few years later with Stuart Little. More recently, Flushed Away was a superior entertainment about a spoiled upper-class mouse who must learn to survive in the wild and wooly sewers, while the superb Ratatouille gave a rat a rare favorable turn in the spotlight as a culinary artist.

Adapted by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Dave) from the award-winning book by Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux features both a rat and a mouse in leading roles, but the self-described fairy tale is much more than a slapdash character study of two rodents. The setup makes it sound like a cousin to both Flushed Away and Ratatouille: a disgraced rat must learn to survive in a dark dungeon, a mouse develops a friendship with a human, and gourmet soup features prominently. Yet as the tale unfolds, it deepens and broadens its themes to a welcome degree. Though it never climbs too far above average and too often embraces the familiar, Despereaux remains a gentle and nurturing children's story, imparting lessons without being too condescending to its audience.

While Despereaux is aimed squarely at the little ones, adults may enjoy the top-notch animation and appreciate the above average performances by a celebrity voice cast (Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Watson, Tracey Ullman, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin Kline, William H. Macy, Stanley Tucci) that is well matched to the characters they play, which is a rare pleasure indeed.

Well my friends are gone
And my hair is gray
And I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day In the tower of song
-- Tower of Song, Leonard Cohen

Harvey Shines (Dustin Hoffman) is a New York jingle-writer who doesn't quite toil in the tower of song; maybe in a small office in a nearby strip mall. But the rest of it applies; he's older, tired, headed to London for his daughter's wedding and obsessing about getting back fast in time for a job-related meeting. Harvey's dreading the trip before he even takes it, which guarantees it will be dreadful, but then he meets Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), another single, singular person unwilling to confront the terrifying possibility of happiness. ...

Written and directed by Joel Hopkins (who previously gave us the younger-skewed Jump Tomorrow), Last Chance Harvey may be easily -- in fact, too easily -- dismissed as "Before Sunrise for the sunset years," as Harvey and Kate meet accidentally, mesh immediately, dare to hope, get brought together by chance and separated by accident. Younger audiences will ignore Last Chance Harvey like a an overdue bill notice in the post, but if you've been around the block of life a few times -- on the bus or under it -- you'll find that it wins you over, bit by bit, in no small part thanks to the mix of effortless charm and contemplated sincerity Hoffman and Thompson bring to their work; the whole film has an air of lightweight gravity to it, and Hopkins may not be swinging for the fences, but he knows just how to swing and hit for a solid double.

Cinematical has just received these exclusive images from the upcoming film Last Chance Harvey, starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. You can view all three images in the gallery below. Last Chance Harvey follows a down-on-his-luck jingle writer (Hoffman) who, after missing a flight, losing his job and getting dissed by his daughter at her wedding, bumps into an over-worked mama's gal (Thompson) at the airport bar and finds himself energized by her presence.

You wouldn't necessarily think Hoffman and Thompson as an on-screen pair in a light romantic comedy, but I kinda dig it. Perhaps what this genre needs is some better acting to revitalize the same old stories, so I'd give it a chance. Written and directed by Joel Hopkins, Last Chance Harvey opens in limited release (NY and LA) on December 26th, and goes wide on January 23rd. For more, check out the website here, and feel free to hop into our exclusive gallery below.

When looking to cast a hard-drinking womanizer of the 1920s, the first name that springs to mind probably isn't Dustin Hoffman. Nevertheless, the NY Post reports he wants to take a walk on the naughty side and play Maynard Nottage in a proposed biopic.

Nottage was a PR pioneer in the silent film era, helping to create the all-consuming celebrity culture we live in today. The next time you pick up a People Magazine, say a little prayer of thanks to Nottage -- or curse him, depending on how you feel about Brangelina. He lived a pretty wild life himself, touring with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and enjoying the booze and the babes he encountered along the way. His partying ways caused him to fall out of favor in the moralistic Prohibition era, and he died, a Hollywood outcast, in 1965.

But as if that's not movie-worthy enough, there's more! Nottage's life was largely forgotten until he became the focus of Mark Borkowski's biography, The Fame Formula. Borkowski was given access to Nottage's private papers by his surviving heirs. But the London Times did a little digging, and claims Nottage may not have even existed. They cited the U.S. Census of 1920, and the archives of the L.A. Times as having no record of his existence. Borkowski and Nottage's decendants have angrily denied the allegations, offering proof from his personal papers. (The fact that you have descendants means nothing, apparently.) If a movie gets made, expect this part of the plot to thicken.