marc anthony Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Almost one year ago, I fell head over heels for Annie Leibovitz's photographic recreations of famous, animated Disney scenes. She shot Scarlett Johansson as the running Cinderella, Beyonce Knowles as Alice in Wonderland, spinning around in teacups that came from Disney World, and David Beckham as the Prince who fights off Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. Now the next set of images have hit the net. They are housed over at The Disney Blog, and I'm still swooning.

I think that what I like most about these images is that they're awesome even if I don't particularly care for the people in them. Leibovitz knows how to capture the essence of each scene, and it makes me wonder just how stunning a carefully-plotted, full-length feature would look. (D*mn good, but long to do, and expensive to boot!) This time around, we've got the above, which features Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan with Gisele Bundchen as Wendy Darling and a teeny Tina Fey as Tinker Bell. But there's also images with Jessica Biel as Pocahontas, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony taking a magic carpet ride in Aladdin, and one more from that film, which looks split from the first, that has Whoopi Goldberg as the Genie.

As an added bonus, TDB also has a bunch of behind-the-scenes pics, which help you see how these great images came to be.

Let's start with the strongest point about El Cantante, the joint effort of real-life married couple Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony to bring to life the story of salsa legend Héctor Lavoe: JLo turns in a decent performance as Lavoe's wife. There, I said it -- and I know without even looking at any other reviews that a lot of critics will either outright disagree or gloss over her contribution to the film, but this is the closest I've seen her come to fulfilling the promise she showed way back in Out of Sight in 1998, and it's nice to see her in good form. Unfortunately, El Cantante -- at least as the title implies -- is about Lavoe, not his wife, but the movie focuses at least as much on the wife of the King of Salsa as it does on the man after whom it's titled, and that's one of the film's weaknesses.

El Cantante takes the life of a fascinating and complex man and waters it down into a decidedly uninspiring and vanilla biopic that does nothing to push the boundaries of the genre or make us want to see further efforts to bring the tales of famous, troubled singers to life. Part of the problem is that, while Lavoe's story is historically significant to fans of salsa music, and he undoubtedly influenced the genre and contributed to it greatly, there's just not much in his personal life -- at least as it's presented in this film -- that's unique among famous musicians. Troubled relationships with family and friends, drama in his relationship with his wife, Puchi, the inevitable drug addiction (seriously, are there any famous musicians out there who haven't struggled with drug addiction?), and the inevitable trajectory of rise and fall of fame and fortune, just aren't that compelling in and of themselves anymore.

The slide of Jennifer Lopez into complete irrelevance seems to be continuing unabated, based on the trailer for her next film, El Cantante. Even after watching it, I can barely make out any semblance of a story, except that it seems to center on Marc Anthony as a singer who is trying to conquer the Latin music scene and Lopez is his woman. According to CinemaBlend, where we first saw the poster for the film, it's a "dramatic biography of Puerto Rican salsa pioneer Hector Lavoe. The film follows Lavoe's (Anthony) passionate relationship with Puchi (Lopez) and his skyrocket to international fame. In the mix are a lot of drugs and angst."

I know Out of Sight was a long time ago, but has Hollywood so completely forgotten Lopez's good performance in that movie that they are offering her nothing but dreck like this? A quick glance at her IMDB page reveals one project on the sked for 2008 called The Governess, but she is the only name beside it so far and I've never heard of it, so it looks like the kind of project that stars say they know nothing about at press junkets. And this Marc Anthony character? I know one thing about him: he gave such a bad performance in Tony Scott's Man on Fire that it's stuck in my mind ever since. Seriously, Tony's red ballcap must have gone spinning every time this guy uttered a line. Marc Anthony, you need to stick to your day job, whatever that may be. For those who still plan to see El Cantante after seeing the trailer, it's scheduled to arrive in theaters on August 1.

If there is such a thing as a "Hollywood martyr" then Marilyn Monroe is probably the patron saint. She was the ultimate in cautionary tales about the destructive side of fame, but it doesn't always have to end so tragically. Ben Affleck's engagement to Jennifer Lopez and the gossip whirlwind that was "Bennifer" was an example of what happens when the gossip machine looks for fresh meat, and the results weren't pretty -- although, they might have been asking for it after that video. Now, that was brutal.

Affleck has begun to pull himself from the wreckage and is building credibility as an actor again for his work in Hollywoodland and Smokin' Aces. He'll also be making his directing debut with Gone, Baby, Gone. Affleck is steering clear of the high profile celebrity life and seems happier because of it. A profile from The New York Times Syndicate has Affleck musing on his brush with A-list fame: "Nothing is inside doing those things. It doesn't matter. I had to learn that by having my family that's what really matters. I'm lucky I was able to see the hollowness of fame, but I got pretty dinged up over the years." It looks like Affleck might have learned his lesson about keeping his private life out of his professional life, but Lopez certainly hasn't; since she stars opposite husband Marc Anthony in the upcoming biopic of singer Hector Lavoe (El Cantante) -- some people never learn.

Calling it the "most sought-after film of the Toronto International Film Festival," the Hollywood Reporter tells us Picturehouse has snatched up all North American rights to El Cantante (aka that JLo-Marc Anthony flick). Completing the deal at 5:30am this morning (which means everyone was either drunk or just woke up way too early) and paying just under $6 million, Picturehouse beat out a slew of other distributors including Miramax, Focus Features and The Weinstein Co.

Pic, which stars the real-life husband and wife duo (who also play husband and wife in the film), tells the true story of Hector Lovoe, a man who began the salsa movement back in 1975 and subsequently brought the sexy dance to the United States. Currently, Picturehouse plans to release the film next summer on roughly 500-700 screens, before going wide with it. Word on the street says Lopez is outstanding in the pic and may even deserve an Oscar or a Golden Globe for her performance. I'm not sure I would go that far, but it does up my interest in the film.

Marc Anthony has finally reached "mega-icky" status in my books. To commemorate J-Lo's recent Women in Film award, the creepy crooner took out a page in Variety to advertise his love for Jennifer Lopez (doesn't he remember Afflek's boot-licking ad of 2002?  Not to mention Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford's ill-fated spread in the New York Times?).  Anthony phrased his praise like a script (complete with stage direction) and ended his profession of love with, "here's to never waking up, baby. You deserve it, I love you."  This sounded a little bit too much like A Nightmare on Elm Street's tag-line, "If Nancy Doesn't Wake Up Screaming, She Won't Wake Up At All ...".

According to Page Six,  we can now add Lindsay Lohan to Anna Wintour's "naughty list." The Herbie Fully Loaded star was sitting at Wintour's table for the CFDA Awards and allegedly visited the bathroom no less than six times in the span of two hours.  Wintour was furious with Lindsay's behavior and was overheard telling a Vogue Staffer, "tell her, if she gets up one more time, she will never be invited to one of my events again." It seems Lindsay has left her super cute Disney days in the dust and is headed towards an entirely different vehicle I like to call, The Bathroom: Fully Reloaded.

Dolphins are the latest mammals to hop on the "Jessica Alba is hot" bandwagon. The Sin City star recently confessed to the fact that the male dolphins on the set of Flipper got a little too close for comfort and would often give her "pokes" (her words, I swear).  Due to the all the friskiness on the set, Alba was forced to work solely with female dolphins.  Needless to say, Alba made sure give a shout-out to her underwater friends when she thanked "all the perverts who voted for me," for her MTV Movie Award for "Sexiest Performance".

The guys who videonapped Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony's wedding video and then tried to ransom it back to the couple, weren't exactly the brightest of bad guys. The video was on a laptop that was stolen, along with Anthony's car, back in October. The car was recovered but the laptop was not; somehow (ahem) the laptop ended up in the hands of criminal masterminds Tito  Moses, 31 and Steven Wortman, 49.

Moses and Wortman first tried hawking their ill-gotten find to media outlets, including People, US Weekly and Hollywood Access, who all (shockingly enough) said thanks, but no thanks. Undeterred, the ruthless pair then contacted Marc Anthony Productions and offered to sell the video back to the salsa king for a cool one million (geez, even Dr. Evil would have known to ask for at least $10 million if he'd executed such an eeeeevil plan). Anthony apparently involved the NYPD, who ran a sting operation and busted the videonappers, who have now been charged with conspiracy, attempted grand larceny, and possession of stolen property. Apparently the DA decided not to file charges of criminal stupidity.