 Baz Luhrmann sure knows how to bring the bombast to his take on The Great Gatsby, but in the end he’s just the latest filmmaker to fail in his attempt to bring the classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald to life. Luhrmann, along with co-writer Craig Pearce, relishes in trying to both bring the period setting to the screen in glorious 3D and giving it a vibrant modern feel. Visually, they’re certainly successful, and much of what you see and hear is suitably garish and loud, but the screenplay just can’t deliver. The plot of the novel is there, but it doesn’t express nearly the same thing. Luhrmann isn’t at all interested in the decline of this particular American period of excess and often seems to be celebrating it instead. Luckily for him, he’s got a real good performance from Leonardo DiCaprio in his back pocket. I’m not as indifferent to this latest adaptation as some will be, but a Best Picture contender, this is not. It’s far too artificial and without an emotional center to be anything more. Read more on The Great Gatsby (**½)…
Categories: Film Reviews Tags: 2013 releases, Amitabh Bachchan, Baz Luhrmann, Carey Mulligan, Craig Pearce, Elizabeth Debicki, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Leonardo DiCaprio, The Great Gatsby, tobey maguire
 Directed by: Jason Reitman
Written by: Jason Reitman, based on the novel by Joyce Maynard
Cast: Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, Gattlin Griffith, Tobey Maguire, Clark Gregg, Tom Lipinski, James Van Der Beek, Alexie Gilmore, Lucas Hedges, Brighid Fleming, Maika Monroe, Brooke Smith, Micah Fowler, and Dylan Minnette
Read more on Awards Profile: Labor Day…
Categories: Award Profile Tags: 2013 releases, Awards Profile, book adaptation, Clark Gregg, Dylan Minnette, Gattlin Griffith, James Van Der Beek, Jason Reitman, Josh Brolin, Kate Winslet, Labor Day, Oscar hopeful, tobey maguire
 After debuting a set of new posters, Warner Bros. has released a new trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby. Opening in May 2013, Luhrmann’s film stars potential Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio along with Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, and Isla Fisher.
The film was originally scheduled to come out on Christmas and then was pushed back abruptly by Warner Bros. last summer. Could this be a potential Oscar player for next season?
Check out the full trailer after the jump.
Read more on New Trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s ‘The Great Gatsby’…
Forgive the obvious pun, but I’ve got my money on Ralph wrecking his competition at the box office this weekend to cap off a nice week of triumphs for Disney. Robert Zemeckis is also back at it with the help of a non-animated Denzel Washington. And perhaps a little stylized kung fu from a hip-hop chameleon to feed the eclectic palate?
Read more on Weekend Openings: 11/2/2012…
Categories: Weekend Openings Tags: Animation, Barry Levinson, Bradley Rust, Cast Away, China, Christopher Denham, Christopher Walken, Denzel Washington, Director, Don Cheadle, Entertainment/Culture, Francis McDormand, humble blacksmith, Jack McBrayer, Jacob Aaron Estes, jane lynch, Jane McNeill, John C. Reilly, John Goodman, Judd Hirsch, Juno Temple, Katherine Keener, Kristen Connolly, Kylie Minogue, Late Quartet, Laura Linney, Lucy Lui, Movie Release, Paolo Sorrentino, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rich Moore, Riley Keough, Robert Zemeckis, Russell Crowe, Sean Penn, tobey maguire
 I enjoy a black comedy as much as anyone, but I do require that there be a point to things. That’s an area where the well acted but hollow film ‘The Details’ utterly fails in regard to. Its tone is all over the place and never really figures out what it wants to be doing. The cast is mostly effective but writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes doesn’t quite know what to do with his material. It’s frustrating to watch because individual moments work pretty well, but the movie itself is a real mess. Tobey Maguire gives a lead performance far different than you’d normally expect from him, while Laura Linney has a scene stealing supporting role that’s pretty enjoyable, but neither is able to save this confused little film. Estes wants you to laugh at the misery that his main character is suffering through, but he never really gives you anything funny to actually cause the laughter. It’s quirky and uncomfortable, but never really funny, which is what sabotages the flick. I didn’t completely hate the film, but when such a big part doesn’t work for me, I can’t really embrace it at all. ‘The Details’ opens early next month, but I wouldn’t wait for it with baited breath. It’s just not worth that sort of effort.
Read more on The Details (**)…
 More and more we’ve seen actors taking an interest in the behind the scenes/production process of film making. According to The Hollywood Reporter,Tom Hardy, Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio are the latest stars to make that move, teaming up to produce an anti-poaching drama . Hardy developed the idea for the film based on tales from his friends who are former Special Forces operatives and went on to become anti-poaching fighters. Word is they are looking to make this film in a style similar to Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, moving from the ground war on poachers in the African savanna to seeing how animal material ends up in the fashion houses of Paris.
Read more on DiCaprio, Maguire, and Hardy team up for anti-poaching drama!…
 Big news has dropped today folks. Early on in the year ‘The Great Gatsby’ was thought by just about everyone to be gunning for a whole lot of Oscar love, and it still might, but it’ll have to wait a year. Yes, The Hollywood Reporter writes here that Warner Brothers has moved the 3D film to the summer of 2013 and out of a coveted Christmas Day slot. I don’t think any of us saw this coming, and it definitely shakes up the race a great deal, as you can take the film, Baz Luhrmann’s direction (plus the adapted screenplay he co-wrote), and the performances of Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, and Isla Fisher out of the equation, not to mention the below the line possibilities. Perhaps this is a sign that Warner is extra confident in the likes of ‘Argo’, ‘Cloud Atlas’, and ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’? After the jump I’ll share with you WB’s reasoning, but it’s time to update those Oscar predictions and take Gatsby off of them. Read on for more below about this very surprising development…
Read more on Warner Brothers pushes ‘The Great Gatsby’ to 2013!…
 One day, Tobey Maguire will be an Oscar nominee. He made a strong play for a nod a few years ago with ‘Brothers’, and while he doesn’t always pick projects that properly utilize his skill set, he does however often work with interesting filmmakers. The Playlist is reporting here that he’s adding Jason Reitman to that list, taking on a small role for the director’s next film ‘Labor Day’. The story also says that he won’t be in Ang Lee’s ‘Life of Pi’ though, so you win some, you lose some. After the jump you can see who he’s playing in the flick, but I do like the direction his career is going. Read on below for more on Maguire’s role in Reitman’s film…
Read more on Tobey Maguire will be in Jason Reitman’s ‘Labor Day’!…
 Remember the sheer joy on the face of Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker in the first Spider Man (2002) when he was discovering his powers, strength and agility, leaping from building to building and eventually finding the magic to shoot webs and swing from them. Like a modern-day Tarzan he mastered the whole swinging from a web thing, and when the mask was off, he was thrilled with what was happening to him, and because Maguire conveyed that thrill so well to we the audience, we too were thrilled with him. There was a delirious joy in what had happened to Peter Parker allowing him, overnight to become a master athlete and super hero, and the film celebrated, from beginning to end one of Marvel’s most iconic comic book characters.
Which brings us to the new film, The Amazing Spider Man. Read more on The Amazing Spider-Man (*)…
 It’s the first of the month. Not only that, it’s the first day of the second half of the year. Anybody else feel like that was fast? Yet, here we are.
It’s time to start getting serious, Oscar-wise. Not many things have come out, and not many films are looking like Best Picture nominees from the first half. Some will argue The Avengers with a $600 million dollar bank is in talks. Some think the little indie-film Moonrise Kingdom from Wes Anderson could be our “Little Miss Sunshine” of the year. In limited release, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild has opened and received one of the best word-of-mouth reviews of the year. Is that a contender for the big prize? I’d say it is.
I’m ready to start getting down and dirty with these predictions.
Read more on Oscar Circuit: “Let’s dance…”…
Categories: Article, Editor, Oscar Circuit, Oscar Predictions Tags: alexandre desplat, Amour, Anna Karenina, Anne Hathaway, Annette Bening, Argo, batman, Baz Luhrmann, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Ben Affleck, Benh Zeitlin, Bill Murray, Brave, Daniel Day-Lewis, David Strathairn, Disney, Django Unchained, Editor, Hugh Jackman, Hyde Park on Hudson, Imogene, Jane Fonda, Joaquin Phoenix, Joe Wright, John Hawkes, Julianne Moore, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, Les Miserables, Lincoln, love, Lucy Alibar, Marvel, olivia colman, Olivia Williams, Oscar Circuit, oscar predictions, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Roger Michell, the avengers, the dark knight rises, The English Teacher, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Master, The Sessions, tobey maguire, Tom Hardy, Tom Hooper, Woody Harrelson
 Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay to the Jack Clayton directed film The Great Gatsby (1974), a banner year for cinema with some of the greatest films ever made. For those who hail 1939 as the greatest year in film history, I suggest they look hard at 1974 which is infinitely stronger. All in ’74 were The Godfather Part II, Chinatown, Lenny, The Conversation, Young Frankenstein, A Woman Under the Influence, Badlands, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Phantom of the Paradise were just some of the American films released in that single, miraculous, year. One of the most anticipated films of the year, and subsequent failure was the film adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby (1974) with Robert Redford as Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy. Redford was at the zenith of his career, a major box office star after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973) and respected as an actor in films such as Jeremiah Johnson (1973) and Oscar nominated for The Sting (1973). Farrow was less known but had enjoyed both box office and critical acclaim in Rosemary’s Baby (1968). In many circles she was better known as Frank Sinatra’s wife. Many felt she lacked the acting chops to play the role believing Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton or Ali McGraw to be better choices. Read more on Re-visiting Gatsby (1974) Brings High Hopes Luhrmann’s adaptation…
Read more on Re-visiting Gatsby (1974) Brings High Hopes Luhrmann’s adaptation…
 One of the great things about film festival and conventions is that even though everyone can’t attend, film studios always release tons of promo images for upcoming films. Adhering to that transition, the first image for Ang Lee’s 3D adptation of Life of Pi has made its way online via Collider. Starring Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Kahn, and Tobey McGuire, the film is ”the story of an Indian boy named Pi, a zookeeper’s son who finds himself in the company of a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger after a shipwreck sets them adrift in the Pacific Ocean.”
Read more on First Look at Ang Lee’s ‘Life of Pi’…
 Directed By: Ang Lee
Written By: David Magee (Based on Yann Martel’s Life of Pi novel)
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Suraj Sharma, Gérard Depardieu, Irrfan, Tabu, Adil Hussain, Ayush Tandon, and Shravanthi Sainath.
Synopsis (From IMDB): The story of an Indian boy named Pi, a zookeeper’s son who finds himself in the company of a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger after a shipwreck sets them adrift in the Pacific Ocean.
Read more on Awards Profile: Life of Pi…
Directed by: Baz Luhrmann
Written by: Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher, Amitabh Bachchan, Joel Edgerton, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Clarke, Brendan Maclean, Callan McAuliffe
Synopsis: Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby’s circle, becoming a witness to obsession and tragedy. (Provided by IMDB.com)
F. Scott Fitzgerald had his novel “The Great Gatsby” published in 1925. He began writing it two years earlier and in his wildest dreams could not imagine, the effect the book would have not only on the literary world but its many attempts at translating it to the world of cinema.
Read more on Awards Profile: The Great Gatsby…
Categories: Award Profile, Editor Tags: Awards Profile, Baz Luhrmann, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher, Joel Edgerton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oscar hopeful, The Great Gatsby, tobey maguire, warner bros
 Place: Santa Monica, California
Major Awards and Citations: Golden Globe Awards 2010: Nominee for Best Actor in a Leading Role- Drama for ‘Brothers’ Toronto Film Critics Association Awards 2000: Won Best Supporting Performance- ‘Wonder Boys’
Oscar Snubs: The Cider House Rules (1999) Wonder Boys (2000), Seabiscuit (2003), and Brothers (2009)
Read more on Under the Circuit: Tobey Maguire…
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