Say Whaaaa?
Movieline HQ is always a fun place to be on Friday afternoons, if only because of the promise of our weekly visit from the Say Whaaaa? Singers. As such, we’ve compiled yet another list of the week’s most outlandish, bizarre and/or unbelievable cultural happenings under on roof for them to wreak their golden-throated havoc. Who’s ready?
Crime and Punishment
You always knew last year’s rare Universal hit Couple’s Retreat had to experience some economic misfortune somewhere along the line. Today it arrives from an unexpected place: Meet Irina Krupnik, a former model who was more than a little troubled to learn that her photograph had been used as a “masturbatory prop” by Jon Favreau’s character. This calls for a lawsuit!
Reviews
Any review of the maudlin, meandering Robert Pattinson drama Remember Me will always get around to mentioning the Big Twist Ending, so let’s just get it out of the way now: There’s a Big Twist Ending that anyone paying attention to the film’s internal clock and visual cues can see coming a mile away. I won’t spoil it, because one of the film’s few involving qualities lies in spotting these hints as director Allen Coulter and first-time screenwriter Will Fetters deliver them. Other than that, get ready for a marathon of angst, grief, romance and loving close-ups of gorgeous young people in the middle of it all.
Hollywood Ink
· Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess are in talks to co-star in One Day, the Lone Scherfig-directed adaptation of David Nicholls’s novel about a man and a woman who meet for one day every year — for 20 years — before they realize that, yes, maybe they’re in love. Unbelievable. Everybody knows that a fake Vatican business card and any decently tailored suit can close that deal in a matter of minutes. [THR]
Captain America circles a villain, Avatar plots a comeback, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
Movieline Attractions
Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and/or squeal-inducing at the movies. This week it’s (mostly) all about the leading men, with A-list heavyweights holding down a packed mulitplex while the art house gives it up for a few ladies. Read on and let’s sort out where the parties should land.
Welcome back to Moment of Truth, Movieline’s new weekly spotlight on the best in nonfiction cinema. This week, we hear from the director of Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, which was released this week on DVD.
The cross-dressing comic and actor Eddie Izzard wasn’t always the “cross-dressing comic and actor Eddie Izzard.” Sarah Townsend knew him back when he was just another struggling performer desperate for a break, working round the clock and riding a unicycle for whatever spare change passers-by on the street might have in their pockets. And since 2003, Townsend has been piecing those days — and the rest in between — together for her debut feature documentary Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story. I know, I know: “Why does Eddie Izzard need his own documentary?” You’d be surprised. It’s quite the inspiration, really — motivational substance for people who hate that kind of stuff. It’s also a fascinating glimpse at just how comedy is conceived and delivered. Townsend talked to Movieline about this and much more for this week’s Moment of Truth.
The Movieline Interview
As if the buzz around the final season of Lost didn’t give Emilie de Ravin enough to contend with, the Australian actress enters a whole other realm of hype this weekend starring opposite Robert Pattinson in the film Remember Me. De Ravin plays Ally, a saucy New York University student with a tragic past and a protective NYPD-veteran father (Chris Cooper); she’s the type of girl who eats dessert before her entree to get the most out of life, which she knows from experience could end unexpectedly at any minute. She takes up with Tyler (Pattinson), another saucy NYU student with a tragic past and an estranged, big-shot lawyer father (Pierce Brosnan). They’re all headed for a collision (literally and figuratively) in which Ally may be the toughest party — or at least that’s how de Ravin plays her, the keeper of a certain wry grace that slices through the thick machismo and urbane cynicism around her.
De Ravin talked to Movieline recently about doubling up on her Cultural Moment, how to build a back story, and her small problem with dreadlocks.
The inevitable box-office futures racket will finally launch next week, with Cantor Fitzgerald making good on the long-awaited promise to let you bet real money on the prospects of Hollywood films. Regulators have approved, and Cantor is counting on a healthy share of players at the Hollywood Stock Exchange (which Cantor owns) to bite at the opportunity to gamble their cash on Avatar, Valentine’s Day and the like. But the real value is for studios: Finally, flop insurance has arrived!
Peter Bart, Solitary Man : 
Buried in Anne Thompson’s survey of the wreckage at Variety, find this startling revelation about the paper’s former editor-in-chief and all-around Hollywood insider Peter Bart: “Bart […] has lost his phone-answering, email-printing assistant and corporate BlackBerry. He used to type his correspondence, columns and blog entries (which he abandoned after Michael Fleming defected to Deadline.com) on a typewriter and have someone else put them on the computer. Now he files from home.” Typewritten blog entries! What will he think of next? Anyway, Peter, welcome to the club. Let me know if you need help finding your way around that mouse. [TOH]
The Two-Minute Verdict
Kim Masters wrote something yesterday about how Taylor Lautner may soon usurp the role of Twilight franchise mascot from Robert Pattinson — if he hasn’t done so already. It seemed a little unlikely to me, if only because Pattinson’s the one among them who can actually act when provided any halfway-decent material. But between all the broody portent and LOLZ-y line readings, there’s something kind of touching about Lautner in the first trailer for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.
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