gary oldman Tagged Articles at Cinematical

One day I was strolling alongside bins of super-cheap used DVDs when I spotted Gary Oldman's face. The DVD in question: Tiptoes, directed by the writer/director of Freeway, Matthew Bright. Naturally, I picked it up, wondering how I'd never heard of this movie before. I flipped it over, and started reading:

No couple could be more in love than Steven (Matthew McConaughey) and Carol (Kate Beckinsale). But Steven has a little secret he's been keeping to himself. He has a twin brother (Gary Oldman), who just happens to be a dwarf. In fact, with the exception of Steven, his entire family is made up of little people.

Oldman as a dwarf? There was no way I could refuse such a thing, and rushed home to watch it. As the below trailer shows, this is far from a stellar movie, even if they say the film is filled with "command performances" and that Oldman is in the "role of a lifetime." Oh, the humor of false superlatives. Sure, Oldman does a decent job tackling the part, but better than Immortal Beloved? Romeo is Bleeding? The Professional? Pshaw. I love the man, but a grown man on his knees does not a little person make.

Our Eric D. Snider summed it up perfectly. It's "a movie that's stilted and awkward -- not altogether boring, I must say, because there's a certain trainwreck curiosity about it, but not recommendable, either. It's a barely watchable experiment gone awry." Still, a trainwreck is good every once in a while. Any of you in Cinematicaland ever see it?

Iron Man 2 has been filming all of three days, and no move by the cast or crew has gone undocumented by paparazzi or Jon Favreau. But that doesn't stop the rumor machine from flying. The latest is that Commissioner Gordon has jumped the DC- Warner Bros ship to make a visit to the Marvel Universe. (That's one hell of a crossover.)

IESB.net is reporting that Gary Oldman was seen on set today, though no one knows if he's actually playing a role or if he was just visiting. Oldman is currently filming Book of Eli in New Mexico so if it is a role, it can't be anything much more than a cameo.

Rumors abound that he's playing Howard Stark, Tony's father, which Tim Robbins denied all connection to a few weeks ago. But IESB has also heard that John Slattery of Mad Men fame is playing the Stark patriarch, which would honestly make a lot more sense.

So, stay tuned -- between Favreau and Just Jared, nothing is staying secret on the Iron Man 2 set for very long. Then again, not even the cast is privy to some of the mysteries. According to Favreau, Garry Shandling declared: "I can't wait to see the movie to see who I actually play." If he doesn't know, then we can't pretend to!

UPDATE: Oldman's long-time manager, Douglas Urbanski (or someone claiming to be Urbanski) has left a comment below stating the following: "I am Gary Oldman's manager. He did not visit the set for Iron Man and there are currently no plans for him to appear in the film."

OK, I gotta keep this short because I'm crazy busy with SXSW madness, but you won't believe this. A few days ago we published a review of an indie noir film called The Perfect Sleep, and it seems that none other than GARY OLDMAN has taken exception with this review. Seriously, check this video ...

For starters, I just want to make it perfectly clear that I have nothing against Winona Ryder. Veronica Sawyer will remain as one of my favorite characters of all time, and her Bjork on Rock N' Roll Jeopardy has yet to be matched. But, let's be honest, period pieces were never her thing (maybe with one exception ... but that's a big maybe). In 1992 Francis Ford Coppola released Bram Stoker's Dracula, and I've never been able to look at her the same way again.

Dracula is hardly a perfect movie, and by no means am I dumping all the blame on Winona's doorstep. But all the beautiful costumes and references to La Belle et la Bête couldn't save what was once described as a "fruitcake of a movie"; and the cherry on that fruitcake is this scene between Gary Oldman (as the bloodsucking Prince of Wallachia) and Ryder as Mina Harker. What should have been romantic and emotional (not to mention hot) is for me the cinematic equivalent of watching an amateur lightweight get into the ring with Muhammad Ali (and can you guess who the lightweight is?). Ryder's delivery is stilted and awkward, Oldman is hamming it up for all it's worth, and I will forever be cringing in my seat.

Dracula Fun Facts (Courtesy of IMDB):

• In an attempt to elicit more emotion, director Francis Ford Coppola shouted "whore" and "slut" at Winona Ryder while filming the scene when Van Helsing catches Mina with Dracula.
  
  
• Prince Vlad's scream after he drives his sword into the cross is not the voice of Gary Oldman. Lux Interior, lead singer of punk band The Cramps, recorded the scream and it was dubbed in.
  
  
• Earnings from the film was enough to save Zoetrope (Francis Ford Coppola's studio) from bankruptcy after suffering from financial difficulties and liabilities of $27 million over the past 3 years.

Take me away from all this Twitter!

Any movie that begins with a dog wearing a human mask is in serious trouble. If it wants to use that kind of dream snippet as a launch pad for exploring a demented and increasingly bizarre world, if it wants to embrace a loony aesthetic and milk it for all it's worth, wonderful. Deliver a solid, jolting, dazzling, surprising thriller, and all will be forgiven.

On the other hand, if it desperately wants to be taken seriously, if it proceeds in a very measured and sober manner, if it becomes increasingly sedate as it calmly plods through tedious exposition, then you have a mess on your hands.

The Unborn looks like a ghost story, feels like a ghost story, and kinda sounds like a ghost story, but it's dead on arrival. Because writer/director David S. Goyer has been associated with a host of projects with which I have a natural affinity, I was cautiously optimistic that his fourth directorial outing (after ZigZag, Blade: Trinity, and The Invisible) might reflect more of the pulpy, noirish mood and momentum that are evident in some of the best scripts for which he's been credited in part or in whole (Dark City, Blade II, Batman Begins).

Instead, all the juice has been drained from The Unborn. Not even the sight of the lovely, lean and fit Odette Yustman, whose last name became Yowza! when the trailer and pics first hit the net, can salvage the film from mediocrity.

This week will bring us The Unborn -- the latest horror movie offering starring Cloverfield's Odette Yustman, with a pretty sweet supporting cast that includes Gary Oldman, Cam Gigandet, Meagan Good, Carla Gugino, James Remar, Jane Alexander, and Idris Elba. But before it hits theaters on Friday, you can check out the clip above, courtesy of Empire. (You might recognize it as a longer scene from the trailer.)

Sometimes twins just aren't cool. They either ingest you in the womb, or die and then haunt you later. Yustman plays a girl who is bitter about the fact that her mom left her as a child -- only to later begin to discover why. She turns to a spiritual advisor (Oldman), and tries to end a family curse dating back to Nazi Germany ... at least, according to the Moviefone synopsis. The trailer is more -- "Hey, I have a twin brother who is dead and ticked off about it."

Is it her twin? Or just a demon disguised? No idea. But with Oldman along for the ride, it's got to be a sweet and scary journey.

A pal of mine passed along this new international poster for David S. Goyer's supernatural thriller, The Unborn, which Empire Magazine recently premiered. The Unborn stars Odette Yustman (Cloverfield), who finds herself haunted by one freaky little spirit if the freaky little trailer is to be believed.

In the most petty terms, I give this one the benefit of the doubt over next month's other PG-13 horror flick, The Uninvited. This one was rated PG-13 for "intense sequences of violence and terror, disturbing images, thematic material and language including some sexual references"; that one can only boast "violent and disturbing images, thematic material, sexual content, language and teen drinking". Try and tell me you wouldn't rather see the former based on that assessment alone.

Other than that, I really just wanted to share this nifty poster with you and yours this holiday season. Co-starring Gary Oldman, Cam Gigandet, and Odette Yustman's Sweet Booty (also of Cloverfield), The Unborn opens on January 9th.

The Book of Eli had me halfway when they cast Gary Oldman -- but they got a guaranteed ticket sale from me when they cast Ray Stevenson. I'm disappointed that he's playing another badass assassin type, but hey, at least I'll believe he could kick Denzel Washington's ass.

The plot description has been incredibly dry thus far -- a man named Eli protects a book that may be humanity's salvation, Oldman is the despotic mayor of a struggling town, Mila Kunis is an assassin sent to kill Eli, but who ends up joining him. But we have a little more, courtesy of its newest cast member. Stevenson sat down with Reelz Channel, and shed a little more light on the bleak future this film will inhabit. "The world in which it is set is completely uncompromising. The most precious commodity is actually water, because virtually all of the water is poison, toxic -- whether it's due to eruptions from the earth or the poisons in the sky. These very basic things are what drives human nature down to almost animalistic qualities. But what still separates us from the animals?"

Hmmm. Shades of Waterworld, a threat that looms over every post-apocalyptic film not titled The Road. There's never an in between when it comes to this genre ... you either end up with something cool and Max Maxish, or you end up with The Postman. Let's keep hoping for the best, though. The film begins shooting in February, and has a release date of January 15, 2010.

After blowing up baddies in this week's surprisingly entertaining Punisher: War Zone, it looks like Ray Stevenson is now taking aim at Denzel Washington's protagonist in The Book of Eli. In the near future, Washington's on a mission to deliver a book that may hold the key to nothing less than Our Salvation (not to mention so very many late fees), with Mila Kunis at his side and Gary Oldman on his tail, and now -- according to Variety -- Stevenson (HBO's "Rome") has this makeshift messiah in his sights.

The post-apocalyptic thriller marks the return of the Hughes Brothers behind the camera for the first time since 2001's From Hell, and between them and a cast of this talent (yes, that includes Kunis, stop snickering), they might manage to make this somewhat less derivative than it already sounds, to echo Monika's sentiments.

Production starts in early 2009 for a release date in early 2010.

The futuristic, post-apocalyptic drama Book of Eli is one of those features that sounds like a lot of other films -- man setting out in a wasteland to save the Earth. To me, it's one robot away from Cyborg -- well, a few pecs away as well, since star Denzel Washington isn't as beefy as Jean Claude Van Damme. But where the old post-apocalyptic world was great in that terrible, crappy movie sort of way, Eli is getting packed with talent.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that the wonderful chameleon Gary Oldman is in negotiations to co-star. Better yet -- it's taking him back to the dark side and away from his recent good guy forays. As Washington's Eli tries to make his way across America's wasteland and "protect a sacred book that might hold the key to saving the future of humanity," Oldman's Carnegie will try and stop him. The despot of a makeshift town without laws, Carnegie wants to take possession of the book Eli is guarding, presumably for his own benefit. (Or maybe for his little community a la Blindness?)

So yeah, it's Cyborg with a book instead of a robot, with less muscles, and a much better baddie. My hopes, they're soaring high. Production will kick into gear next year, and unfortunately, we'll have to wait until 2010 to see what Denzel and Gary make of this.