" There's No Need to Fear, Underdog is Here!"

You can watch the new trailer for Underdog. I think it would have been cooler if the movie was animated. Disney's Underdog hits theaters August 3rd.

Buyer feeding frenzy at Cannes

IFC snaps up 'Four Weeks;' who will ring 'Bell'?

By ELIZABETH GUIDER, DADE HAYES

As the hoopla at Cannes finally shows signs of peaking, a number of U.S players came up for air, either to announce pictures they've bought or to trumpet pictures they've sold.

With so much money pouring into the international film business, and with the competition for top titles so intense year-round, most outfits that can afford to are stepping up to acquire product before it's even made.

A half-dozen of the top U.S. players -- Summit, Par Vantage, Picturehouse, the Weinstein Co. and Sony Classics among them -- have been circling a handful of fest titles, with various degrees of "must-have" enthusiasm.

Cocktail scuttlebutt here has almost always included the Competition title Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," whose distrib Pathe put on another screening for buyers at 4 p.m. Tuesday. No deal was expected before that.

Other fest titles that attracted more than nibbles include the Romanian title called "4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days."

Directed by Christian Mungiu, pic had its gala unveiling Thursday and has since set cinephile tongues wagging. IFC bought the picture for an undisclosed sum Tuesday.

Read the rest of the article

Mike Myers to star in 'Mitty' remake

Actor in on Fox, Goldwyn's 'Secret'

By MICHAEL FLEMING

Myers

Mike Myers is attached to star in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," a remake of the Danny Kaye comedy classic that producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. has moved from Paramount to 20th Century Fox.

Jay Kogen, a writer and producer on "The Simpsons," "Frasier" and, most recently, CBS' "The Class," is penning the script. Samuel Goldwyn Jr. and John Goldwyn will produce.

Jim Carrey had once been attached to play the daydreamer first brought to life in 1947 by Kaye in a pic based on a short story by James Thurber. Directors attached to the project on and off during the past few years include Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard. When those efforts didn't pan out, Goldwyn moved the film to Par, where "Mean Girls" director Mark Waters tried to do it with Owen Wilson.

Fox and Goldwyn are starting from scratch with a version that will be specifically tailored for Myers.

The long-gestating "Mitty" is one of several projects in the works for Myers, whose green alter ego is cleaning up at the box office in "Shrek the Third." His next live-action vehicle, Paramount comedy "The Love Guru," is on track to begin production in September in Toronto, with Marco Schnabel directing. Myers will play Pitka, a self-help guru character he created and honed in comedy clubs while writing the script with Graham Gordy.

"Mitty" will compete for Myers' next live-action slot with "See Me, Feel Me: Keith Moon Naked for Your Pleasure," the Spitfire Pictures/Gerber Pictures drama in which Myers will play the hard-living drummer for the British rock group the Who. Playwright Donald Margulies ("Brooklyn Boy") has completed a first draft and will do a rewrite. The Who lead singer Roger Daltrey is aboard as a producer.

The CAA-repped Myers has several projects looming in the future. He is attached to star in "How to Survive a Robot Uprising," an adaptation of a humorous survival guide written by Daniel H. Wilson that is "Reno 911!" duo Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant are scripting for Par. Myers also has begun early discussions with New Line and director Jay Roach for a fourth installment of the "Austin Powers" series. While no writer has yet been assigned, Myers is eyeing a sequel that tells the story from the viewpoint of Dr. Evil.

Year of the Dog Review

Best in show

Quirky and off-center, Year of the Dog is the little indie that could

by Bob Green / 05-16-2007

Be warned: If you’re after a reassuring, largely formulaic romantic comedy peopled with the beautiful, Year of the Dog isn’t it. The first movie directed by eccentric screenwriter Mike White (The Good Girl, Chuck and Buck), this little movie is far more ambitious than, say, the newest Drew Barrymore assembly-line confection. It approaches reality a little closer than is comfortable for some romantic moviegoers, and its characters are less than gorgeous, asymmetrical in every possible way and prone to fits of contradiction.

These people are, in general, their own worst enemies in ways you might recognize.

With a strong cast featuring the always reliable Peter Sarsgaard, Laura Dern and John C. Reilly, the story—what happens to a mousy secretary after her beloved beagle dies—stars former SNL comedienne Molly Shannon, who burrows right in and makes the character-driven movie work. That is, she’s not after the Miss Congeniality award, nor feel-goodism of ordinary romantic comedies. Her character, Peggy Spade, is a composite of tics, internal personal conflicts and ambivalence as lifestyle. Spade’s only friend, and a good one, was Pencil the dog. When she discovers his collapsed body one day, her world goes into a tailspin.

Now more alienated than ever, Peggy finds herself alone in a world in which her relatives talk either of snagging a marriage partner…or how their kids are doing, and they’re beginning to regard Peggy as a liability. (She’s a failure, they suggest, because she’s not married.)

Enter two men: a doltish next-door neighbor (Reilly, really good at being obnoxious) and an animal rescue volunteer (Sarsgaard, as meaningfully off-center as usual). Wisely, Peggy gravitates toward Newt, the Sarsgaard character but, even there, problems arise.

Here the movie imitates life: The path Peggy “chooses” is part savvy, part accidental, part beyond anyone’s control.

In The Good Girl, writer White’s main character was sabotaged by the casting of Jennifer Aniston, too attractive for the part. Now that he directs this one, he’s made sure that Shannon isn’t just another Hollywood Jewish-American princess with an adorable nose job. In some scenes, Shannon is ungainly and plain Jane-ish; in others, she is attractive and winning—as is the movie.

In a summer of super-charged, hyper-speed movies, Year of the Dog might seem a bit leisurely paced, a series of vignettes seemingly going nowhere. But Shannon’s Peggy Spade is not a superhero(ine) and White’s movie is not aimed at overaged adolescents who are a lot more like Peggy emotionally than they care to recognize.

Forget the hype: Year of the Dog is a good movie. Nothing more and certainly nothing less.

The Waitress Review

Waitress: Food For Thought

Here's a generous tip: See this movie

By Matt Brunson

Published 05.23.2007

It's a heartwarming fairy tale scenario. Pregnant with her first child (a girl), a little-known actress pens a screenplay that manages to corral all her fears, anxieties and optimistic impulses regarding this life-altering event. She later turns that story into a film, not only serving as scripter but also as director and costar. The movie gathers positive reviews at Sundance, and then is positioned as a sleeper alternative to the usual big-budget summer behemoths. And everyone lives happily ever after.

Only something went tragically wrong along the way. The 40-year-old Adrienne Shelly, an indie staple back in the 1990s, had the baby and made the film, but rather than having the rest of a long life to enjoy both, she was murdered last November by a 19-year-old construction worker in her New York office. (The Ecuadorian illegal immigrant allegedly knocked her out during an argument over noise and, fearful of deportation, unsuccessfully staged it to look like she had committed suicide by hanging herself.)

One's initial impulse with Waitress, therefore, is to cut it several hundred yards of slack, to view it through a sentimental prism which would render any criticism of the picture about as cruel as burning a puppy with a cigarette. Yet here's the good news about the film: It doesn't require even a centimeter of slack, as it's a lovely motion picture that succeeds within its own self-contained bubble.

This sweet saga's protagonist is played by Keri Russell, the former Mouseketeer and Felicity star whose brief spots in movies (Mission: Impossible III, The Upside of Anger) only hinted that she might be worthy of larger film roles. In that respect, Waitress is to Russell what The Good Girl was to Jennifer Aniston: a choice opportunity for a television beauty to flex her thespian muscles. And like Aniston, Russell doesn't disappoint, delivering a nicely modulated performance that keeps viewers in her character's corner every step of the way.

Russell stars as Jenna, one of the waitresses employed at Joe's Pie Diner. The eatery, one of those quaint establishments tucked away in a small burg in fly-over country, is most notable for its 27 varieties of pies that are made fresh daily. In addition, Jenna creates a new pie every day, each given a quirky name depending on her mood and her present life situation (e.g. "I-Hate-My-Husband Pie," "Naughty Pumpkin Pie"). For friendship, she turns to her fellow staffers, the chatty Becky (Cheryl Hines, partially channeling Flo from the old Alice TV series) and the mousy Dawn (Shelly herself). But for love and affection, she's out of luck, since she's married to a domineering redneck named Earl (Jeremy Sisto), the sort of Neanderthal who orders her to hand over all her earnings at the end of each day and who's so controlling that he won't even allow her to enter a pie-making contest that offers a substantial amount of prize money.

Life with Earl is unendurable enough, but matters become even more complicated once she discovers she's pregnant (as she bitterly recalls, it happened on that one night when Earl got her drunk). She visits her regular doctor, only to discover that she's been replaced by Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), who just moved to the area with his wife. Medical ethics and marital vows be damned, the pair quickly fall into a tentative affair, one that's marked with as many moments of hesitancy and doubt as it is with steamy trysts. As for the baby, Jenna won't consider getting an abortion, but she also makes it clear that she has no use -- and no love -- for this unwanted infant. All she dreams about is leaving Earl and starting a new life, perhaps even one with Dr. Pomatter.

As writer, Shelly makes some missteps when it comes to her attempts to throw some surprises into the basic framework; for instance, Becky keeps babbling about a "secret" that's obvious from the get-go, while there's no question where the windfall will come from that might allow Jenna to escape her drab lot in life. But where Shelly excels is in her ability to dig beneath sitcom scenarios and focus on some hard truths that all too often define one's choices in life. Two of the three waitresses engage in affairs while the third ends up with a dweeb who almost makes Norman Bates look like a catch by comparison. But Shelly never judges these people or their actions, understanding that folks with limited options will often grasp at whatever straws are placed in front of them, as they realize that they have to work with what they've got (as one character states when asked if he's happy, "I'm happy enough"). Shelly's generosity even extends to the largely one-dimensional character of Earl; when he tells Jenna that he loves her, you don't exactly feel sorry for him but you do realize that in his limited world view, he probably does feel affection for his wife but is too much the lumbering misogynist to properly express it (kudos to Sisto for punching across these brief flashes of skewed humanity).

As stated, Russell is resplendent in the leading role, but let's also be sure to heap copious praise on wily vet Andy Griffith. He appears in a few scenes (not enough, by my count) as Old Joe, the diner's cantankerous owner. Naturally, he's disliked by everyone except Jenna, who recognizes the heart of gold beating beneath that cranky exterior. It's a stock role, of course, but Shelly provides the character with some salty wisecracks, a few engaging set-pieces (a couple involving the reading of his horoscope) and a nice monologue in which he attempts to instill Jenna with the sense of self-esteem that he realizes is integral to her growth as her own person. The beloved actor handles the part beautifully, and we're lucky that he's still with us at the age of 80. It's a shame we won't be able to say the same about the lovely and talented Adrienne Shelly.

Waitress

***1/2

DIRECTED BY Adrienne Shelly

STARS Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion

Romantic Comedies

Sacbee.com tells us who they would put in a romantic comedy . I have to say the Romantic Comedy genre is lacking severely. I guess that is not new news as Salon.com wrote an article about the decline back in the 20th century.( June 1999) The movies sacbee mention like Knocked Up and The Waitress, I do not even consider to be close to a romantic comedy. Some of their pairings are a little far fetched too. Maybe women should revolt and demand more romantic comedies. Or maybe not, as that would mean more movies like Music and Lyrics; however Kate and Leopold I loved.

With a goal of trying to resuscitate these glossy romances, here's my list of dream pairings:

Penélope Cruz

and Christian Bale

An intense actor who always seems to be keeping a secret, Bale might be the co-star to finally help translate Cruz's great appeal in Spanish films to American movies. Cruz could be kooky and play off Bale, who would be a stoic, Colin Firth-type romantic lead. Or a Richard Gere-style straight man à la "Pretty Woman," but with even better suits and less prostitution.

Halle Berry and Will Smith

A pairing with Berry might pull in the five or so moviegoers who thus far have resisted Smith's films. Smith could hone the charm he showed in "Hitch," one of the few romantic comedies of the past few years that worked. And Berry, who was adorable in "Boomerang," could make a movie in which her character isn't in peril.

Amanda Bynes and Shia LaBeouf

These graduates of children's television have displayed impressive talent on the big screen. LaBeouf, who shows real depth along with fine comic timing, could both play into and help calibrate Bynes' wacky approach. Think about it: Bynes and LaBeouf. Not quite Tracy and Hepburn or Lunt and Fontanne, but it still sounds great once you learn to pronounce "LaBeouf."

Virginia Madsen and George Clooney

People compare Clooney to Cary Grant, but he's not known for his romantic comedies. Madsen, retro-glamorous before she grew more earthy on screen, could perfectly complement Clooney's old-school charm.

Keira Knightley

and Johnny Depp

We'll know later this week what the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" installment offers. But in the second film, Depp and Knightley sizzled so inappropriately that you wanted to shield the kiddies' eyes. Perhaps they could transfer that heat to a romantic comedy set in an insurance office or a hospital.

Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman

Freeman would play a widowed businessman who suddenly must raise young grandchildren. Mirren would be the opinionated Cockney nanny with whom he argues about the content and consistency of "pudding." Tempers flare. Sparks fly. And Mirren and Freeman will become the first actors in history to pull off one of those silly romantic-comedy scenes in which people spontaneously break into lip-sync and dance.

Renée Zellweger and Brad Pitt

A blight on the face of modern romantic comedies, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" showed that Pitt would do better with a more down-to-earth partner than Angelina Jolie onscreen, if not in life. And since Jennifer Aniston is probably out of the question, Zellweger will do.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger

Because romantic comedies, unlike "Brokeback Mountain," have happy endings.

Cannes Day 6

For consistent coverage of the Festival de Cannes 2007, you can go over to Indiewire.

On Sunday Morning, 12 a.m. to be exact, instead of people excited to go see the midnight screening of U2 3D just to experience the greatest that is U2, they actually got to REALLY experience, in real lifeD. U2 actually performed on the steps of the Palais de Festival. How cool is that?!




The big movie at Cannes today is A Mighty Heart starring Angelina Jolie premieres at Cannes today ( 10:45 france). Below you can check out the trailer. It is produced by Brad Pitt's company Plan B/Paromount. Speaking of Mr. Pitt, Ocean's 13 makes it Cannes debut on Thursday. That will be one crazy red carpet.