ewan mcgregor Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Roman Polanski Likely to Be Released on Bail
Filed under: RumorMonger », Celebrities and Controversy »
A Swiss court has granted Roman Polanski bail in the amount of $4.5 million, according to the Associated Press (by way of Variety). The filmmaker, arrested in September for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, is to be "kept under house arrest and electronic monitoring at his Swiss chalet."However, the appeal must still make it through Switzerland's supreme court before he is released. That decision should not affect the ongoing discussion by the Swiss government on whether or not Polanski should be extradited to the U.S., where he had been originally indicted on six counts and was facing a life sentence before he fled the country and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
His latest project, a Pierce Brosnan-Ewan McGregor thriller called The Ghost, remains in post-production, though the BBC suggests that Polanski is instructing his colleagues from jail to finish the film as intended in time for next February's Berlin Film Festival.
Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats
Filed under: New Releases », Theatrical Reviews », George Clooney »
We're told at the beginning of The Men Who Stare at Goats that "more of this is true than you would believe." But the story of the U.S. Army's attempts to harness psychic powers to create super-soldiers is so bizarre it almost HAS to be true, in accordance with the "how could anyone make this up?" principle. In fact, I believe more of this admittedly fictionalized story than I do of The Fourth Kind, which claims to be 100 percent true. Surely there's a lesson in there.
Based on Jon Ronson's nonfiction book, The Men Who Stare at Goats stars Ewan McGregor as Bob Wilton, a journalist covering the Iraq War in 2003. Bob meets a man named Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a private contractor with an unusual past: He claims to have worked for the government as a psychic spy. Bob once met a man, back home in Michigan (played by Stephen Root), who made the same claims, and who named Lyn Cassady as one of his colleagues.
You can see why the military would be interested in psychic spying. Surveillance is a lot less dangerous when you can do it entirely with your mind, rather than having to actually sneak up and eavesdrop on people. And if we could harness things like telekinesis, well, forget about it! We'd beat the Russkies for sure!
Discuss: Which Trailers Are You Sick Of?
Filed under: Action », Comedy », Drama », Mystery & Suspense », Paramount », Focus Features », George Clooney », Trailers and Clips »
I'm grateful for this Friday, because that's the day that The Men Who Stare at Goats comes out and I can stop seeing its trailer relentlessly attached to anything and everything I see (and given that I try to see most anything and everything out there, it's really only a 'me' problem, I suppose). One night, I had myself a triple feature and saw the preview not one, not two, but three times; as a pal put it, he had "more than a feeling" that I was getting sick of it.Before that, it was a summer of Taking Woodstock time and time again, and it would already seem that Shutter Island's move to February will insure that I'll be sitting there, trying to piece the thing together for the next three months when not perfecting my New England Leo impersonation.
So, whether currently or in your own formative years, what trailers have you been just absolutely burnt out on? Did you and your friends quote along with them as they played? Were you actually ever turned off from seeing a film because you had it advertised to you too much? Come on, let it all out...
Exclusive 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' Character Posters
Filed under: Comedy », Fandom », Movie Marketing », Posters »
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Click below to view the full versions of all posters
Cinematical has just received these four exclusive character posters for The Men Who Stare at Goats, which hits theaters this Friday, November 6th. And yes, we freely admit that it sorta freaks us out to see four dudes eerily staring down goats in the above (and below) posters, partly because we never ever thought we'd be premiering posters that feature George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey all staring at goats, but also because, well, Spacey looks like he wants to make out with the animal.
Based on the book by Jon Ronson and directed by Grant Heslov, The Men Who Stare At Goats follows a reporter (Ewan McGregor) who stumbles across a fantastical story about a secret unit in the US military that employs paranormal powers in their missions. Reviewing the film from Fantastic Fest, Cinematical's William Goss called it "unpredictable" and "amusing", and after you scope out the four character posters below, feel free to check out the trailer after the jump.
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Review: Amelia
Filed under: Drama », New Releases », Theatrical Reviews », Fox Searchlight »
The new biopic about Amelia Earhart, Amelia, succeeds in portraying the famous aviatrix in a whole new light ... as a mundane soap-opera character with relationship issues. The movie looks beautiful and is obviously being released now with Oscar hopes, but it is a dull, uninspired recounting of the less interesting parts of Earhart's life.
The plot is structured around Earhart's final attempt at flying around the world, then flashes back to tell her story starting from her first meeting with George P. Putnam (Richard Gere) in 1927 about a transatlantic flight, and looping back to that final flight and the mystery surrounding it, in 1937. It's a standard structure for biographical films, but is confusing at times. For one thing, I couldn't tell you whether the round-the-world attempt that the film flashes forward to periodically is her first one, or her last one. Near the end, they start to blend confusingly. The film also includes a lot of voice-over from Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank), which I presume is probably taken from her real-life letters and diaries.
Fantastic Fest Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Fantastic Fest », George Clooney », War »
War, as they say, is hell. So what's to be said of peace, of employing any and all means necessary to avert violence instead of propagating it? If The Men Who Stare at Goats is to believed, the forces of peace are crazy and covert and even at war with themselves, and if fellow Fantastic Fest attendees are to believed, it's at best a loose adaptation of journalist Jon Ronson's truly remarkable true-life tale.
After all, Ronson from Wales is now Bob Wilton from Ann Arbor (as played by Scotland's own Ewan McGregor), a journalist newly keen on covering the Iraq invasion after a cheating missus robs him of a purpose and a place to call his own. While waiting in Kuwait for a story, any story, he bumps into Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who is not the contractor he says to be, but rather a man on a mission, and sensing a story, any story, Wilton decides to tag along...
The Trailer for 'Amelia' Takes Flight
Filed under: Drama », Romance », 20th Century Fox », Newsstand », Movie Marketing », Trailers and Clips »
A biopic of Amelia Earhart is like every girl's dream come true. Did any woman not grow up idolizing her, spend hours covering her gorgeous flight jackets, and wondering just where her plane vanished to? She has a story just made for the big screen, and if there was an actress who could pull it off, I do think it's Hilary Swank. She has the physical resemblance, and I know she has the talent, if only because I still love her as Maggie Fitzgerald.
Unfortunately, I'm not seeing much promise in Amelia. The first trailer for Mira Nair's biopic has gone online at Yahoo! Movies. (I've embedded a version below the jump to make it easier, but be sure to go visit Yahoo! for the HD version.) While it's beautifully costumed and lushly filmed, it looks a little too teary and overwrought. Admittedly, my image of Earhart is one filtered through the Golden Age of celebrity, and I picture her as a flying Rosalind Russell / Girl Friday type. I've never forgotten a National Geographic blurb I read about her, which described her calmly powdering her nose after one of her plane crashes. That's the kind of biopic I want ... one that has humor and the adventure of the times, not one that's gloom and "You're going to die!" doom from the get go. I'll continue to hold out hope for it, as it has a great cast, and I want it to bring back 1920s and 30s fashion.
Scenes We Love: The Island
Filed under: Action », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Thrillers », Trailers and Clips », Scenes We Love »
Us critics, we don't hate Michael Bay. Well, not all of us, and not all the time. I wasn't a fan of his Transformers, nor Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and I haven't watched The Rock or Armageddon in their entirety in years, but I distinctly enjoyed 2005's The Island during its ill-fated theatrical run (gross: $35 million, cost: between three and four times that), and I still do as a decent sci-fi/action matinee outing.But how?, I've been asked. It does after all bear every other trademark of a Michael Bay outing: explosions, rampant product placement, blatant racial stereotypes, explosions, perpetual dusk lighting, explosions, and a female lead constantly flattered by her wardrobe (yeah, a real woe-is-us scenario).
See What A Live-Action 'Simpsons' Movie Would Look Like
Filed under: Animation », Comedy », Fandom », Images », Fan Made »
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Though it would never ever happen in a million years (we wish and hope and pray), it's still fun to play around with image software to see what a live-action movie based on the animated TV show The Simpsons would look like if it starred a bunch of today's hottest actors and actresses. Australian graphic artist (and Cinematical reader) Brad Anderson created this project as a way to promote his new graphic design business, and I have to say he did a pretty good job finding celebrity images and then tweaking them to fit the Simpsons mold. Can you guess who is who just from looking at the image above? Go ahead and try, I'll give you a moment ...
Give up?
Here's the cast: Homer (George Clooney), Marge (Cate Blanchett), Bart (Ewan McGregor), Lisa (Reese Witherspoon), Maggie (Jennifer Aniston), Otto (Johnny Depp), Krusty (Vince Vaughn), Ned Flanders (William H. Macy), Moe (Steve Buscemi), Mr. Burns (Willem Dafoe), Millhouse (Dustin Hoffman), Mr. Smithers (Stephen Colbert) and Chief Wiggum (Ricky Gervais). We posted the Simpsons family in the gallery below, along with a larger version of the image up top. Head over to Brad's site to view the rest, and throw this guy some business if you're looking for a graphic designer. For the love of god, he's a Simpsons fanboy! Pay the man!
Overture Digs Men Staring at 'Goats'
Filed under: Distribution », George Clooney »
Overture has acquired the movie The Men Who Stare At Goats, which is based on the awesomely insane non-fiction book by intrepid reporter Jon Ronson. The book is a series of Ronson's investigations into the more bizarre aspects of the Bush administration's military, er, strategies. Like trying to kill goats just by staring at them or control the weather with your mind and, well, basically everything that dude in college who took too much acid was trying to tell you was true.George Clooney plays the nutty (yet dreamy!) psychic spy Lyn Cassady who claims that he's been "reactivated" after 9/11, and Ewan McGregor is the reporter who investigates Cassady's strange tales. The fictionalized version of Ronson's book sounds a little more madcap than the reporter's tales of torturing suspected terrorists with the Barney theme song for hours, but I can't wait to see Clooney go eye-to-eye with a "de-bleated" goat for hours.
Goats is slated for a December 2009 release.
Jeremy Renner Wants To Be An Avenger
Directors We Love: Jim Jarmusch
Indie Roundup: 'Sweetgrass,' 'Clarkworld,' 'Broken Embraces'
Shelf Life: Fight Club_thumbnail.jpg)
Watch: Famous 'Matrix' Scene Re-Created with LEGOs
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