josephgordon-levitt Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Cinematical Late Night: Smurfs, Conan, Indy 5, New John Hughes Film(?)
Filed under: Action », Comedy », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Casting », Fandom », Family Films », Lists »
Do you suffer from insomnia? Work the late shift? Live off the blood of mortals in the pale moonlight? Good, then we've got a new Cinematical feature we'd like to run by you. As you can tell from the title above, it's a special Cinematical Late Night edition where we'll be covering the smaller goodies that tend to get lost in the shuffle over the course of a busy day. Think of this first post as a pilot; if there's enough interest, we'll keep it going on a regular basis. If not, just pretend this was all a dream...
- Neil Patrick Harris has been cast in the leading role of Raja Gosnell's Smurfs movie. He won't have a self-descriptive Smurf name, however, as he'll actually be playing a human.
- Stephen Lang, who absolutely nailed Colonel Quaritch in Avatar, has been offered the role of Khalar Singh, the villainous warlord in Marcus Nispel's reboot of Conan.
- Eclipse, the third film in the Twilight Saga, has undergone a change in the editing department. Director David Slade's pick, Art Jones (who edited both of Slade's previous films, Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night) has been replaced by Nancy Richardson, whom diehard fans will recognize as the editor of the first Twilight film.
- A new Indiana Jones movie may be inching closer to life with the familiar rumblings from Harrison Ford that Spielberg and Lucas have agreed on what idea they'll use for the story.
Sundance Review: Hesher
Filed under: Sundance »
Hesher is not a nice guy. He is rough with children, views women only in terms of whatever sexual pleasures they can provide and is a moocher with no jobs who has no qualms about destroying private property. On the other hand he might just be the homeless rocker equivalent of Mr. Miyagi, noisily allowing situations to unfold that will teach the new people in his life something about letting go. It is a risky balance for Spencer Susser to undertake in his feature debut and, against all odds, it manages to succeed with a pastiche of great casting and an unapologetic slant towards being anti-touchy-feely. Until it needs to be.
Young T.J. (Devin Brochu) is living in a house of sadness. And it's no wonder since when we first see him he's chasing down a tow truck to a junkyard where the remains of the family car will eventually be put to rest. His mom once sat in that vehicle. His dad, Paul (Rainn Wilson), sits in a funk all day, unshaven since the accident and only leaving the house to pick his boy up from school while his mom (Piper Laurie) quietly fixes their meals. Shortly after getting his cast off, T.J. has another accident and, in his frustration, awakens the sleeping shirtless giant of the unfinished housing complex. Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), with his cover blown, begins following around T.J. and soon settles into his house, washing his clothes and eating their food to almost no resistance from the nearly catatonic inhabitants.
Sundance in 60 Seconds: January 24, 2010
Filed under: Deals », Sundance », Lionsgate Films », Festival Reports », Distribution », Cinematical Indie »
This has been a pretty big day for Sundance, including Twitter fights, the first big distribution deal and so much buzz it's as if Devin Ratray finally received the spin-off movie he deserves (Home Alone fans out there, say yeah!). Let's get right into it:
Celebrity sightings: Obviously Kristen Stewart is still the big paparazzi draw of Sundance 2010. Entertainment Weekly has some photos of the actress with the rocker she portrays, Joan Jett. Other hot babes being sighted include My Blue Valentine star Jessica Alba in a fur jacket (via Celebrity-Gossip), Katie Holmes, who is in town to promote two films, Jared Leto (whose head Kevin Kelly got a picture of) and Bill Gates, who attended a screening for and applauded the HBO doc A Small Act. Less popular are regular Sundance-goer Paris Hilton and questionable attendee Jon Gosselin. Real indie film fans have also been crazy for sightings of Ronald Bronstein and the Safdie brothers.
Our coverage: Our team in Park City posted a number of reviews late last night and today. Here are some quotes from these posts:
Erik Davis calls the Facebook romance documentary Catfish, "one of the most fascinating stories you'll watch all year ... Revealing, profound and surprisingly therapeutic, Catfish is a must-see for the Friend-Me-Now generation, as well as a striking portrait of a modern-day online relationship from beginning to ..."
Scott Weinberg writes of Armless: "It takes a little while to warm up, but that's not a problem because Armless is packed with great performances ... hats off to director Habib Azar and screenwriter Kyle Jarrow for setting up an outlandish premise (sad man wants his arms taken off) and delivering a fascinating little handful of thoughts, themes, and ideas that might actually make one feel better about THEIR own 'creepy little secrets.'"
More reviews and additional buzz after the jump:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt Tells Us To hitRECord
Filed under: Sundance », Shorts », DIY/Filmmaking »
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is at Sundance for the fourth time, having previously appeared with the notable films Brick (2005) and last year's (500) Days of Summer. This year he's appearing at the festival in Hesher, and he's pimping his own open-source film project called hitRECord.org. It's an interesting collaboration between artists, where anyone can be the filmmaker, the composer, the effects artist, or ... pretty much anything you want to be. And by artists, we mean you.
Anyone in the world can sign up at the website, and upload their own clips, tweak existing clips, add soundtracks, record new voiceovers, etc. Films can be recorded on anything from a professional grade camera or a cell phone (or anything in-between), and Gordon-Levitt, or RegularJOE as he's known on the website, hopes to produce a full project that will be released in some sort of money-making format (DVD, VOD, small theatrical run, online, etc) where half of the money will go to the artists who were selected to work on the project, and the other half will go back into funding for hitRECord.
It's an ambitious project, and you can see one of the completed shorts embedded just beyond the break. If you're a budding filmmaker with an extremely limited budget but lots of imagination, this might be the short-film generating outlet you're looking for.
The Top 10+ Sundance Movies to Watch
Filed under: Sundance »
Sundance is so close you can almost smell the slush-stained Uggs. Even if you can't make it to Park City - although you can watch some of the Sundance features on VOD! - we've cobbled together a handy guide to the movies that look the most interesting, have the most buzz, and are the most drool-worthy for us film nerds. For all your Sundance needs, you can hit up any of Cinematical's conveniently tagged articles here.
HOWL
Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Stars: James Franco, Mary-Louise Parker, Jon Hamm, Jeff Daniels, David Strathairn
This might be one of the hottest tickets at Sundance. Jam-packed with big names, including that body-pillow loving rapscallion Franco, HOWL zeroes in on one of America's most famous poets, Allen Ginsberg. With episodes from the poet's early life and his blossoming as a poety, from the trial itself, to the dramas he faced afterward, the story of HOWL sounds engrossing and illuminating. Plus, director/producer Gus Van Sant (Milk, Paranoid Park) is one of the exec producers.
The Best of the Decade: Breakthroughs
Filed under: Fandom », Lists », Best/Worst »
After a month of Cinematical expertly digging through one genre after another and nailing down the best entries in each one during the last decade, it seemed like there was an important cache of contributions that might not get the recognition they deserved: breakthrough performances or films. Such a designation crosses the boundaries of genre, sometimes happens in a film less deserving of praise, or otherwise finds itself overlooked. But after poring over the list of so many thousands of movies made in the last ten years, I've put together a svelte collection of superlative contributions which I believe qualify as the breakthroughs of the decade.
(It should be noted that we aren't pretending that these actors and filmmakers never made movies before the ones we're celebrating here. Rather, these are the moments in their career that they crossed over and introduced themselves in a way that audiences could no longer ignore.)
Can Joseph Gordon-Levitt Bring Showmanship Back to Hollywood?
Filed under: Trailers and Clips »
If you didn't catch it over the weekend, Joseph Gordon-Levitt hosted Saturday Night Live, and kicked things off with a huge recreation of Donald O'Connor's slapstick performance of "Make 'Em Laugh" in Singin' in the Rain. He didn't just sing the song, thank everyone, and let it go to commercial. He performed many of the moves from the film himself, and if you're at all familiar with the scene, you know it's not just simple jive. For a live performance that has no benefit of retakes, it's darned impressive. Of course, it's yet another example of the actor's impressive talents; that man's got mad skills. It's not too often these days that we get an actor who can be funny, serious, and an impressive live showman all in one package. Heck, the most we can usually get is a funny singer who dances, a mediocre hottie who dances, a funny man who can deliver some drama, or something similar. All of the above? Not these days.
Yet here Gordon-Levitt is, with one of my favorite SNL introductions ever. Movieline described Joseph as having "showman skills so hyperkinetic and gooey that Marc Summers might've Febrezed his screen." But what I want to know is: Could he help revive the idea of multi-talented show-people in Hollywood? Even if you don't like song and dance numbers (which, I admit, I usually don't), it can't hurt for Hollywood to start pressing the importance of a wide skill set. These days most actors are a one-note wonder, and here is JGL tackling every genre with ease while making this girl mourn a cinematic style she's never missed.
Does JGL make you miss the days of that flamboyant business we call show? Check out the original performance and the SNL stint after the jump and weigh in below.
Interview: Joseph Gordon-Levitt on 'Uncertainty', 'Inception' and His Favorite Movies
Filed under: Action », Drama », Independent », New Releases », New in Theaters », Interviews »
Whether as a fast-talking high schooler in a film noir (Brick) or a disfigured soldier in a big budget blockbuster (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra), Joseph Gordon-Levitt has proven himself to be one of the most talented young actors. His new movie, Uncertainty, takes the viewer on a journey into two different worlds, where a flip of a coin takes a young couple (Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins) into an innocuous visit to her family and decisions about their future and another takes them into a strange criminal underworld where everyone is after a cell phone they found in a cab. Directed by David Siegel and Scott McGehee, Uncertainty was filmed on the fly with hand-held cameras in S16m and HD as the couple race towards their different futures. In this interview, we discuss the freedom of improvising within a structured world, his favorite movies, and what he can't say about G.I. Joe sequels or Christopher Nolan's Inception.
Cinematical: Can you discuss the beginning of the movie a bit? I was confused if it was symbolic or literal or what.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: What do you think was happening?
Cinematical: Well, I went back and I watched it again and wasn't sure.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: I don't want to be evasive or anything... You know, it's the kind of movie that's meant to stimulate a conversation or provoke your own creative thoughts about it, so I hesitate to say, "Well, what it means is blah blah blah." First of all, because it means something different to everybody. And second of all, I would never want anybody to say, "Well, I read an interview where the actor said that it means blah blah blah, so it means that and it doesn't mean anything else. 'Cause to me that's the beauty of movies, is that it can mean really whatever you want. The act of watching a movie, I think, is a creative act; it's not just input. All of us, as audience members, we're telling the story the way that we see it.
What's the Statute of Limitations For Mentioning Old Work?
Filed under: Fandom », Newsstand »
Scanning through my RSS feeds at the end of the weekend, my eye immediately fell on this gem from the BBC: "Talking Shop - Third Rock's Joseph Gordon-Levitt on his new film." 3rd Rock from the Sun. It's been eight years since Gordon-Levitt co-starred in that show, which wrapped just as he got out of his teens. Now he's pushing 30, and has had a multitude of work since then. Mysterious Skin, Brick, Stop-Loss, Miracle at St. Anna, 500 Days of Summer, and even G.I. Joe. I get the reference -- to a degree. With the exception of G.I. Joe, Gordon-Levitt's work hasn't exactly been mainstream. But is aged mainstream work really more relevant than notable indie work, no matter how well-received said work is? Furthermore, it's hard to say these references are just for the sake of mainstream understanding when one of the questions is: "You're best known for Third Rock from the Sun. Is making the jump back into films tricky?" Apparently this was part of a "BBC Breakfast" interview, so I'm going to assume the question came from someone who didn't even know of the actor's more recent work, or his general roster for that matter. A quick scan of IMDb shows that Gordon-Levitt's been continually working on big-screen fare alongside his past television stints.
Fan Rant: Where Did the Bad Buzz on 'G.I. Joe' Actually Come From?
Filed under: New Releases », RumorMonger », Newsstand », Movie Marketing »
One of the most mystifying things about the summer of 2009 has been how, months ago and without any actual information to go on, it became gospel that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was going to be a ridiculous train wreck. This is especially bewildering in light of the moderate-to-positive buzz that preceded the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, also for no apparent reason. Who decided that G.I. Joe would be terrible? When? Why?
I have, as they say, no robotically enhanced dog in this hunt. I certainly do not expect G.I. Joe to be any sort of season's highlight. I don't have any specific expectations for it, to be honest. But here's the information I have: this is a summer action movie directed by Stephen Sommers, whose last three blockbusters have ranged from tolerable mediocrity to delirious fun. Its cast includes character actors like Christopher Eccleston and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as the arch-villain, no less). Its trailer is no more or less ridiculous than you would expect from a movie based on action figures, and actually struck me as lighter on its feet than other recent tentpoles. Why it's fated to be the summer's biggest disaster escapes me entirely.
I mean, look at this USA Today piece about the film's "bad buzz". What facts does it actually contain? Anonymous, generalized "complaints" about elements of the trailer. (Was it really that bad? I just don't see it.) The notion that "the script was hurried into production" to beat the writer's strike -- legitimate, but shamefully vague. And a positive review from Harry Knowles, which I guess some people would consider a bad sign, but I'm not sure that's the point the article was making. The piece doesn't even mention the absurd rumors -- not helpful, though proven false -- that Stephen Sommers was kicked off the project in post-production.
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