renee zellweger Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Did you know that back in 2006, Renee Zellweger took on a horror film? The project was Case 39, a creepy, kid-centric thriller that started off with bad luck in production when a fire scene torched the entire set and most of the crew's equipment, and continued when the film just couldn't get a distribution break. It was supposed to be out last summer, but just like Mandy Lane, it was a no-go. Now it is said to hit theaters sometime this year, and a trailer has finally been released.

Zellweger plays a social worker who thinks she's saving a kid (Tideland's Jodelle Ferland) from her evil parents trying to send her to hell (one of whom happens to be the excellent Callum Keith Rennie). So this woman takes the kid into her home, but then realizes that this little 10-year-old isn't exactly innocent.

One would imagine that a horror film would have to be pretty decent to get Renee Zellweger on board, and that it can't be all that bad with the talents of Ferland and Rennie. However, Shock Till You Drop says that this puppy has "been through the test screening wringer," so there might be a really good reason we haven't seen it yet, and not just Mandy Lane bad luck. It looks like your basic thriller set-up in the trailer, but looks can be deceiving ... and if they are, could someone give Ferland a break and put her in something that gets a little more love?

It's awesome, somehow, that Liam Neeson (along with some nifty marketing, it's true) can open an action movie to the tune of $24.6 million. Maybe it's the fact that Taken's debut at #1 comes after two depressing weeks when Paul Blart: Mall Cop inexplicably dominated the charts (and indeed, Paul Blart continues to rake in big bucks, falling off only 35% to second place). Taken opened in just about every other part of the world in 2008 and has already grossed nearly $70 million worldwide; put this one into the win column for Luc Besson and his production team.

The Uninvited's third-place, $10.5 million bow is a disappointment -- to Dreamworks, but also to me, since I think it's superior to most of the PG-13 horror that's been doing so well lately. (Certainly it kicks The Unborn's ass six ways from Sunday.) I think the advertising was a bit too stately, emphasizing Elizabeth Banks in creepy mode rather than the shock effects that tend to draw the crowds. Not a tragedy for the relatively inexpensive film, but perhaps a missed opportunity.

New in Town was defeated by a beatdown of scathing reviews, a wimpy, girly-man 1900-screen release, and a marketing effort that wasn't up to the task of capitalizing on Renee Zellweger's star power. Zellweger eats $6.75 million for breakfast.

For the first time since January 9th, Slumdog Millionare made less than it did the previous weekend, but it's up to a not-too-shabby $67 million cume. I wouldn't rule out $100 million before it leaves theaters.

The full top 10 after the jump.

If that reliable mecca of information that is Wikipedia is to be believed, the earliest surviving motion picture is dated to the year of 1888. Mathematically speaking, and disregarding any other media of storytelling, it should come as no surprise that someone might construct and release a film in 2009 that features not a single unique aspect to it. New in Town wouldn't be the first film to appear wholly recycled from many that came before it, and I severely doubt it'll be the last, and if it boasted even one iota of charm or humor between its first frames and its last ones, I probably wouldn't mind.

But it didn't, and so I do.

Coming up on the new year, it's interesting to see which films we had thought would've been released by this point. In the summer of 2007, I recall myself and several colleagues showing up for a press screening of Jonathan Levine's lauded slasher, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, only to discover it was canceled just that morning and the film had been sold from the Weinstein Company to Senator that afternoon. (The film has since landed at Sony, whose indie arm, Sony Classics, already saw Levine's follow-up, The Wackness, to a proper theatrical reception.)

At least the Weinsteins gave something up for a change. The oft-shuffled Killshot and Fanboys are tentative January and February releases at the moment, respectively, and I just want to see for myself if The Poughkeepsie Tapes has been worthy of its modest reputation following a BNAT '07 screening -- the same BNAT that featured the reportedly sweet Trick 'r Treat that WB continues to hoard.

A perhaps more morbid curiosity has me keeping an eye on Paramount's Case 39, just to see if it's really that bad, and who knows what similar straits Assassination of a High School President, The Accidental Husband (originally last March), and Possession (originally last February) are in following Yari Film Group's bankruptcy -- not that I have much invested in the last two, but Assassination is a perfectly release-worthy noir take-off that deserves a home.

So what do you guys and girls think? Which of these are you most dying to see? What was the longest you ever waited to catch something, and were you ultimately disappointed or satisfied by the time it came your way?

Josh Charles started out strong, but sure fizzled, didn't he? I mean, he started his career with Hairspray, before heading to the Dead Poets Society, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, and soon after, the sexually dysfunctional Threesome. But now he's cameo guy, and there's a new one on the way.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Charles and Justin Long are joining the Christina Ricci and Liam Neeson-starring After.Life. Long will play the boyfriend of a woman caught between life and death (Ricci), while Charles plays his friend. (Poor guy, relegated to token roles.) This is that long-in-gestation feature that once starred Kate Bosworth, and even had a poster released waaaay back in February of 2007. But it finally seems to be moving forward.

Meanwhile...

Four Leaf Tayback, also known as Nick Nolte, has grabbed a role in My Own Love Song, according to Variety. Pretty much nothing like his last release film, Tropic Thunder, this project follows a former singer in a wheelchair during a road trip to Memphis with her friend. Renee Zellweger and Forest Whitaker star, but there's no word on who Nolte will play. Maybe her dad?

There's no question Appaloosa is a Western. It's set in 1882 in the New Mexico Territory, it has tin-star-wearing city marshals getting into gunfights with ornery cusses, it includes some scenes involving problems with Indians -- the whole nine yards. But underneath all that, it's really just a buddy movie, a rough-and-tumble, no-girls-allowed, steak-and-potatoes romp that happens to be set in the Old West. It's as much Don Quixote and Sancho Panza as it is Butch and Sundance.

The buddies are Virgil Cole (Ed Harris, who also directed) and his sidekick, Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), an inseparable pair of freelance peacekeepers and expert gunmen. At the film's outset, they are hired by the dusty frontier town of the title to protect it from Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), a devious rancher whose band of ne'er-do-wells occasionally murders local citizens, including the previous city marshal. With Cole as the new marshal and Hitch as his deputy, the two set about enforcing law and order.

One of the town's new ordinances, under Cole's direction, is that you can't bring guns inside the city boundaries. He informs a couple of Bragg's men of this when they show up at the saloon one day.

"That's the law," Cole says.

"Your law," replies one of the men, scoffing.

"Same thing," Cole says. OH SNAP!

As the director, co-screenwriter and star of Appaloosa, Ed Harris follows up his Oscar-nominated work as an actor-director in 2000's Pollock with an adaptation of Robert B. Parker's novel, revolving around two old friends and partners (Harris and Viggo Mortensen) in 1882 New Mexico trying to enforce the rule of law in a town threatened by a corrupt power-broker (Jeremy Irons). Harris spoke with Cinematical in Toronto about working on Appaloosa, adapting Parker's novel, co-starring opposite Mortensen and how hard it was to find financing for a traditional Western like Appaloosa: "Pretty hard. I mean, it was very interesting; people really responded to the script, and if the budget for it had been half of what it was, we probably could have got it made pretty easily. ... But we needed the budget to serve the production values; it called for that. I didn't want to make a little intimate art-house film. I wanted to make something that respected the space that it took place in ... it deserves it; it calls for it; so, it was pretty tough; it was a real battle."

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I don't necessarily have a soft spot for westerns -- although 3:10 to Yuma, Seraphim Falls, and The Proposition certainly didn't hurt that cause -- but because we as moviegoers aren't exactly inundated with them, it always feels like they tend to have more effort and care put into them than most other genre fare.

Judging from the MSN exclusive trailer for the upcoming Appaloosa, this looks to follow suit as Ed Harris (who also directed and co-wrote the film) and Viggo Mortensen (for whom Harris played an adversary in A History of Violence) deal with lawlessness in a small town out west, while the widowed Renée Zellweger surely tempts them both.

Toss in a supporting cast that includes Jeremy Irons and Lance Henriksen (that reminds me, The Quick and the Dead merits mention as well), and the benefit of my doubt at least has been earned. Appaloosa is scheduled to play Toronto in September, followed by an October 3rd release.

Because of Hollywood Squares, the perma-tanned George Hamilton is one of those guys that is burned into my brain, even though I usually forget what else I've seen him in. (The same goes for ol' Jim J.) Still, he's a face of the '80s and the thought of a dramedy about a childhood adventure he had sounds all sorts of cool. In February, Jessica posted that Renee Zellweger was joining My One and Only, and now Variety reports that Chris Noth, the infamous Mr. Big, will co-star.

The film is based on a story that Hamilton once told Merv Griffin -- about traveling on the road with his mother and brother. (As a child, George lived in Memphis, Arkansas, LA, Boston, New York, and Palm Beach.) Zellweger will play Anne Deveraux -- a woman roaming from city to city to find a wealthy man to become husband and father. Noth will play "a retired military doctor who might just fit the bill." It could be a pretty funky tale, especially since it will jump back in time, based in the '50s.

However, Charlie Peters wrote the script, which has me a little apprehensive; his resume includes Blame it on Rio, Her Alibi, 3 Men and a Little Lady, and Krippendorf's Tribe -- not exactly the best collection of films. Richard Loncraine (Band of Brothers), meanwhile, will direct the film, which heads into production next month.