Monday, January 31, 2011

Natalie Portman is most desirable spouse

Natalie Portman has topped a poll to find Hollywood's most desirable wife - while Charlie Sheen has been named the least wanted husband.
The Black Swan actress saw off competition from Megan Fox, British singer Cheryl Cole and Prince William's bride-to-be, Kate Middleton, to be crowned the Most Desirable Celebrity Wife in a poll by U.K. planning service My OK! Wedding.
Source
Full lists

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Screen Actors Guild Awards

  • Natalie Portman wins Best Leading Actress for Black Swan
  • Mila Kunis nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Black Swan, loses to Melissa Leo for The Fighter
  • Black Swan cast (Portman, Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder, Barbara Hershey) nominated for Best Ensemble Cast, loses to The King's Speech cast
  • Portman, Kunis, and Ryder in attendance

Director's Guild Awards

On Saturday night the Director's Guild Awards were held in Hollywood, California. The winner in the "Best Film" category was Tom Hooper for The King's Speech, one of Black Swan's biggest award competitors about King George VI of England and his fight against speech deficiency. Natalie Portman and Darren Aronofsky were both in attendance for the event. Portman was seen with Amy Adams, who was there to support The Fighter, another Best Picture Oscar nominee about the trials of Mickey Ward and his family.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Black Swan Co-Writer Writing Sci-Fi Film For Marc Webb

Heat Vision reports that Mark Heyman, an executive producer on Black Swan and the co-writer is currently writing an original science fiction film titled Age Of Rage for Fox Searchlight with Webb directing based on the story he wrote for this film.
Age Of Rage takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where all the adults are dead and a group of teens set about trying to establish a new society.
Source

"Black Swan" on Blu-Ray March 8?

Just a few weeks ago, some were surprises that Sony seemed to be accelerating the DVD/Blu-ray release of The Social Network. (103 days from theatrical premiere to retail release.) Today we hear the announcement that The King’s Speech will hit store shelves on April 19 (131 days after its Dec 1 premiere). Now I’m finding a site offering (unconfirmed) pre-orders for Black Swan, apparently shipping on March 8 (a mere 81 days after it opened in mid-December, and roughly a week after Oscar night.)

The rule of thumb for estimating home video release dates used to be 17 weeks (119 days). Disney shortened that window considerably for Alice in Wonderland with its theatrical release span of March 5 – June 1 (12.5 weeks, 89 days). This time-frame works to terrific advantage with the current awards season calendar. Films released in the Fall are ready for AMPAS voters in editions that serve as deluxe FYC presentations. Movies that wait for traditional holiday premieres are perfectly positioned for home delivery, striking when the iron is hottest and publicity machines are firing on all cylinders.

Expect me to question this Promote Me & Own Me marketing synergy? No way. I’m too eager to get my hands around Nina’s neck to be skeptical of the Incredible Shrinking Theatrical Window. (Just wondering what’s taking so long for Pulp Fiction, Vertigo, and Lawrence of Arabia to go Blu.)

[Check out the cases after the cut.]

Vincent Cassel and Darren Aronofsky team-up for perfume commercial

Vincent Cassel, the smoking hot French choreographer from psycho-thriller "Black Swan", is reprising his role as the face of Yves Saint Laurent's best selling men's fragrance.

The actor is reteaming with his "Black Swan" director, Darren Aronofsky, for the second ad campaign for the perfume, La Nuit de L'Homme.

Though working with Aronofsky is the same on set as it is for commercials, Cassel admitted to WWD, there is a difference between portraying a character in a film and acting as a face of a fragrance.

"It is another role, but at the same time..when [people] see a movie, they think, 'Oh, it's a character.' When they see an ad, they say, 'Oh, it's him,'" he told the periodical. "But it's not."

The film for the ad, shot in Paris, revolves around Cassel playing the ultimate ladies' man attempting to seduce multiple women across the French city, all in one night. 

The sexy ad campaign is set to air in parts of Europe starting at the end of March and a month or two later in the States.
 From the New York Daily: Source

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Inside the Special Effects of "Black Swan"

Oscar Round-Up

  • Natalie Portman nominated for Actress in a Lead Role
  • Matthew Libatique nominated for Cinematography
  • Darren Aronofsky nominated for Directing
  • Andrew Weisblum for Film Editing
  • Producers Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver, and Scott Franklin and for Best Picture
  • Also received five votes for Best Screenplay

The 83rd Academy Awards will air Sunday 27th February at 8PM EST / 5PM PST on ABC
(Red carpet from 6.30PM / 3.30PM)

Darren Aronofsky on his nomination:
"It’s very insane. It’s beyond all our expectations. You don’t go in with expectations, especially when you are making a film that’s scary and psychological and not common. I’m really happy that the Academy is recognizing this kind of movie, it’s very exciting."

Natalie Portman on her nomination:
"I am so honored and grateful to the Academy for this recognition. It is a wonderful culmination of the 10-year journey with Darren to make this film. Making 'Black Swan' is already the most meaningful experience of my career, and the passion shown for the film has completed the process of communication between artists and audience. I am so thankful for the support we have received and I share this honor with the entire cast and crew of the film, especially Darren Aronofsky."

PopWatch on Barbara Hershey being snubbed:
"Speaking of frighteningly miserable characters, better luck next time, Barbara Hershey. Her maniacal mother character in Black Swan might as well have been a super villain named The Nail Clipper, and I loved every second of her creeptastic, wide-eyed performance. Black Swan is obviously Natalie Portman’s movie, but Hershey gave it some emotional context and depth."

Source 1/2/3

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Sample Reviews for "No Strings Attached"

Very little happens in this film that couldn’t realistically happen in the lives of actual beautiful-but-brainy, non-obnoxiously moneyed and ambitious twentysomethings circa now, and at times, No Strings Attached feels almost shockingly attuned to the particular angst of its time and place. Emma’s third-act flight from Adam’s feelings would play as a predictable beat in a rom-com that only wanted to tear its lovers apart so it could bring them together again; it’s to Meriwether and Reitman’s credit that here it feels organic, a testament to the difficulty of accepting love at face value in a culture in which artificiality is the norm, sincere feelings are foreign enough to be frightening, and old-fashioned romance can seem like a suspicious affect [sic].

The uneasy tension between the natural and the contrived is embodied in Reitman's well-chosen real L.A. locations. Feelings that can no longer be contained come spewing out in an outdoor mall, backdropped with a blur of neon signs; a relationship fissure opens within the tight corridors of Chris Burden's “Urban Light” installation in front of LACMA. These vibrant emotional duets set within the city’s highly contrived public spaces subtly sketch Los Angeles as a place where the real is often hiding in plain sight among the profoundly synthetic. - The Village Voice

The prospect was iffy at best: a romantic comedy, from a Hollywood studio, with a premise that smacked of "Last Tango in Paris," the scandalous classic in which Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider have a sexual liaison with no strings—or names—attached. Yet the outcome is delightful. "No Strings Attached" doesn't have the overexposed, washed-out look of a studio comedy—the cinematographer was Rogier Stoffers—and doesn't for a moment feel like one. It's a smart, sexy romcom that turns the neat trick of staying sweetly human. - Wall Street Journal

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Ivan Reitman has his best outing in decades with “No Strings Attached,” an amusing flip of the “friends with benefits” sex-leads-to-love romantic comedy formula.
It’s a movie benefiting from another sparkling, sexy and emotionally available performance by Natalie Portman, some clever turns in situations and witty banter that isn’t shy about crossing over into “Hangover” level raunchy.
Portman, almost certainly an Oscar nominee for “Black Swan,” carries this movie with her warmth and her wicked way with an incredibly crude come-on. Kutcher is better at bringing the funny that in carrying the emotional weight. Reitman didn’t suddenly evolve into a warmer, deeper filmmaker, either. But the director surrounds his leads with funny people saying witty things.
3 out of 4 stars - Orlando Sentinel

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The movie is rated R, but it's the most watery R I've seen. It's more of a PG-13 playing dress-up.
This is a strange film. Its premise is so much more transgressive than its execution. It's as if the 1970s never happened, let alone subsequent decades. Emma and Adam aren't modern characters. They're sitcom characters allowed to go all the way like grown-ups.
Natalie Portman is perhaps about to win an Academy Award for “Black Swan." Why she helped produce this I cannot say. Ambitious actors usually do dreck like this in order to be able to afford to make a movie like “Black Swan." All the same, she does what she can; she has an edge, aggressive timing, and impressive enthusiasm for sex romping.
Of Ashton Kutcher, I have less to say. He seems to be a very nice guy, a little too large for agile romping and still too young for the Brendan Fraser role. When I saw him in “The Butterfly Effect" (2004), I registered that he could act, but in this material, he's essentially just the Male Unit. There is no character there.
2 out of 4 stars - Roger Ebert

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Kutcher and Portman have terrific screen physics, using their 12-inch height difference to considerable slapstick effect. He is a galumphing hulk who comes to heel when the munchkin barks at him. Do they have chemistry? Not exactly. But both are such gorgeous animals that their couplings are frisky fun without being sexually explicit. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

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How does this film get right what so many get wrong? You're not going to be startled by any redefinition of the entire notion of a romantic comedy here. It's ultimately a pretty simple, direct little movie. Kutcher seems more engaged and engaging than he has in most of his films, and part of that seems to be a matter of chemistry, him reacting to Natalie Portman. I get it. This is the first time we've seen that girl from the Lonely Island rap video in a feature film, the first time she's brought that same foul-mouthed, cheerfully dirty sense of humor out to play for a film. It makes her doubly adorable, and it feels like in her last few films, we're starting to really see what the adult Portman is capable of. She lets her Black Swan fly here, and her sense of giddy joy at what she's doing carries over into the tone of the film itself. She's having a good time, Kutcher's having a good time, and even Ivan Reitman, whose work has been genuinely awful for his last several films, seems to be having a good time. As a result, I did, too, and that simple surprise is enough to make me recommend this one. - Hitfix

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In "No Strings Attached," Natalie Portman plays a beautiful doctor interested in sex without commitment.

Yeah, yeah, the line forms over there. But at the front of it is Ashton Kutcher, playing a dopey guy who still believes in love and figures if he works at it enough, he'll get Portman's character to come around, too.

It's an intriguing idea - if you put an actress as wonderfully talented as Portman in what is in many ways another romantic comedy plucked from the assembly line wherever such things are manufactured (well, Hollywood), will it make a difference? The short answer is yes. Portman proves game for just about anything here, the raunchier the funnier. The long answer is still yes, though quite a bit more qualified.

It's not a stretch to say that dippy good guy is a role Kutcher was born to. More intriguing is Portman as a sexually aggressive woman, particularly on the heels of her brilliant performance as a repressed ballet dancer in "Black Swan." The Oscar folks won't come calling for "No Strings Attached," at least not for Portman. But it is a nice little diversion in a career increasingly filled with outstanding performances.

"Strings" is Ivan Reitman's first directing gig since "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" in 2006 (in fact, his son Jason has been in the spotlight more often). He makes good use of comic timing, particularly among those in the supporting cast.
3 out of 5 stars - AZ Central

'No Strings Attached' Reverses Recent Row Of Rom-Com Flop Openers: Possible $20M

Paramount was so worried about its No Strings Attached being a stinker that the studio didn't even bother to give me a pre-release briefing. ("You know I only like to write these notes after the film works. I'd rather you beat me up for no email than a flop!" an exec at the studio emailed me by way of explanation.") I don't necessarily blame them: any movie starring Ashton Kutcher is probably a bomb since his last one -- PG-13 Killers with Katherine Heigl -- opened to only $15.8M for Lionsgate. And rom-coms, especially sexy R-rated ones (Ed Zwick's Love And Other Drugs which opened to only $9.7M for Fox with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal) have been stillborn at the North American box office with this caliber of star. This $25 million-cost movie started out as a Black List script originally titled Fuckbuddies and written by Elizabeth Merriwether. Natalie Portman came on board as a producer and star for Ivan Reitman and Tom Pollock's The Montecito Picture Company, which co-financed in partnership with Coldspring and Paramount's usual partner Spyglass Entertainment.

Natalie is hot after her Oscar-worthy transformative performance in Black Swan and now finds herself with 2 movies in this weekend's Top 6. And perhaps risking overexposure because of her new pics opening in January, February, April, and May. Anyway, the pic took advantage of being the only wide opening this weekend and may hang on for $20M. (Remember, it took Ron Howard's Dilemma starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James 4 days to even make that over the MLK long holiday.) The film had been tracking strong with 20-year-old females whom Paramount pursued aggresively not with traditional newspaper ads but instead with a big Facebook push of a sexy Red Band trailer. Meanwhile, Sony's The Green Hornet 3D and Universal's aforementioned Dilemma look to drop less than -50% this weekend. Here's the Top 10:

1. No Strings Attached (Paramount) NEW [3,018 Theaters]
Friday $7.3M, Estimated Weekend $20M
2. The Green Hornet 3D (Sony) Week 2 [3,584 Theaters]
Friday $5.2M (-53%), Estimated Weekend $17M, Estimated Cume $62.3M
3. Dilemma (Universal) Week 2 [2,943 Theaters]
Friday $3M, (-51%), Estimated Weekend $10M, Estimated Cume $33.5M
4. The King's Speech (Weinstein Co) Week 9 [1,680 Theaters]
Friday $2M, Estimated Weekend $7M, Estimated Cume $56.5M
5. True Grit (Paramount) Week 5 [3,464 Theaters]
Friday $2M, Estimated Weekend $6.7M, Estimated Cume $137.3M
6. Black Swan (Fox Searchlight) Week 8 [2,407 Theaters]
Friday $1.7M, Estimated Weekend $5.7M, Estimated Cume $83M
7. Little Fockers (Universal) Week 5 [2,979 Theaters]
Friday $1.2M, Estimated Weekend $4M, Estimated Cume $140.8M
8. The Fighter (Relativity/Paramount) Week 6 [2,275 Theaters]
Friday $1.2M, Estimated Weekend $4M, Estimated Cume $72.5M
9. Tron: The Legacy 3D (Disney) Week 7 [2,018 Theaters]
Friday $975K, Estimated Weekend $3.5M, Estimated Cume $163M
10. Yogi Bear 3D (Warner Bros) Week 6 [2,510 Theaters]
Friday $750K, Estimated Weekend $3.5M, Estimated Cume $88.3M
From Deadline: Source

Friday, January 21, 2011

"No Strings Attached" Opens

No Strings Attached, Natalie Portman's follow-up film to Black Swan, a romantic comedy co-starring Ashton Kutcher, premiered today. It currently stands at a 48% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with most reviews praising Portman's performance whether they enjoyed the film or not.

Rotten Tomatoes page
IMDb page

How 'Black Swan' Will Reach the $100 Million Mark

A ballet psycho-thriller isn’t the typical boxoffice juggernaut, but as Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan hit the $75 million mark during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, Fox Searchlight received its most detailed breakdown of who is fueling the season’s surprise hit:

Women (big surprise!) About 55 percent of the audience is female (17-34 is the sweet spot), and many are bringing their boyfriends and husbands along. Women are giving the film a B+ on CinemaScore; men are a bit less enthusiastic with a B, but that is considered great for a horror/thriller.

People in small cities After opening in 18 theaters, Swan upped its theater count from about 1,550 to 2,328 and extended into smaller communities, turning in top performances in Butte, Mont., Guleph, Ont., Columbus, Ga., Houma, La., and Bangor, Maine. The $13 million-budgeted film is doing especially well in French Canada and heavily Hispanic San Antonio, even though Searchlight initially didn’t spend much there.

And big-city types, too The top-performing theater in the U.S. is the Regal Union Square in New York, where Swan will soon become its third-highest grosser of all time, behind only Avatar and Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace ($1.7 million each). Other top cities include Boston, Seattle and Chicago.

But not really L.A.'s Arclight Hollywood is the No. 2 theater overall for Swan, but Searchlight says the film hasn’t overperformed in the broader Los Angeles market.

How high can Swan fly? After her best drama actress win at the Golden Globes, Natalie Portman is a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, which should send the film past $100 million and possibly toward the ranks of Juno ($143.5 million) and Slumdog Millionaire ($141.3 million), Searchlight’s highest-grossing films. Says Searchlight’s Sheila DeLoach, “It has become the movie people have to see.”  

Article from the Hollywood Reporter: Source