The trailer for the new Ben Affleck movie, "The Town," isn't on the Web yet. The movie's scheduled to open Sept. 10. The trailer was shown before the advance screening of "Inception" last night. Jeremy Renner looks scary. Rebeca Hall, being Rebecca Hall, looks wonderful, and the whole thing goes on way too long. What makes the trailer worth noting is how at one point a character in voiceover says something to the effect, "There are 300 bank robberies attempted in the Boston area each year. Most of them are committed by people who live within a single square mile, in a place called Charlestown." Well, the AMC Loews Boston Common, where the screening was being held, is about a mile and a half from Monument Square. The theater was packed. You can imagine the response when "Charlestown" was spoken As Tip O'Neill might say, "All laughter is local." Presumably, an audience on Pandora watching a trailer for "Avatar" would have reacted much the same way.

Filed under: Action, Casting, Paramount, RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

In case you missed the news, Marvel and Ed Norton lobbed a gossip grenade into geekdom on Friday night. Marvel announced, once and for all, that Norton would not be reprising his role of Bruce Banner / The Hulk in The Avengers. Norton's agent fired back to HitFix, calling Marvel's statement "purposefully misleading" but also noted that he and his client "accepted their decision with no hard feelings."

Whether those feelings are good or bad are inconsequential to the Marvel moviemaking machine. With ComicCon only a week and a half away, Marvel is racing to recast. They are hoping to have all those Avengers onstage come Saturday, July 24. The rumor mill is about to go into overdrive and we have our first name, courtesy of CHUD. Their Marvel sources report that an offer has gone out to none other than Joaquin Phoenix.

It's rumor, and it's only an offer. Phoenix could still turn them down. Nevertheless, it's a surprising choice, though I could see the actor-turned-rapper doing it. Phoenix needs a comeback big time, and he's never been entirely above big popcorn movies. He is certainly as talented as his predecessor, and looks enough like Norton and Eric Bana that many who don't follow this stuff as exhaustively as we do (and there are many!) would barely notice. But it's hard to understand why Marvel keeps flinging themselves against notoriously troubled and difficult actors. Could Phoenix really be cheaper and more malleable than Norton?

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Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand

Does Bruce Willis smell like gunpowder, sweat, and dried blood? In my mind he always did, but my world was crushed today with the discovery of his new cologne, titled simply "Bruce Willis."

Sparing no hyperbole, LR Health and Beauty CEO Tilo Ploger had this to say, "I personally feel that the new Bruce Willis fragrance is the manliest scent in the world." So, the cologne smells like pine trees, bourbon, and exhaust fumes? I wish! Instead, the new fragrance, also available as a body wash and deodorant, smells of pepper, grapefruit, and something called "vetiver", which I can only assume is the bottled smell of his sheets after a night with Alisha Klass (note: I have come to find out that vetiver is a type of grass grown in India).

Racked reports that the marketing slogan for the fragrance is "Smart Guys Live Forever." If Bruce Willis dies, we can all sue for false advertising! Unless, of course, Bruce Willis isn't a smart guy. However, if he is indeed an immortal, you can follow us right here on Cinematical for all the latest news on Die Hard CLXII (that's 162 -- I'm a smart guy).

I posted the question on Twitter and Facebook -- What does Bruce Willis smell like? You can read people's responses after the jump (and make sure to chime in with your own).

Continue reading What, Exactly, Does Bruce Willis Smell Like?

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Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand

As we continue to sift through the wreckage left in the aftermath of Mel Gibson's latest offensively racist tirade, one thing seems clear: Gibson's career in mainstream Hollywood is deader than William Wallace at the end of Braveheart. The emergence of the recording of Gibson telling Oksana Grigorieva that she's to blame if she gets "raped by a pack of n*****s" would seem to make that obvious.

However, as the 24 Frames blog over at the L.A. Times points out, this was a certainty even before the tape appeared. William Morris Endeavor -- the agency repping Gibson -- dumped the actor last week. The news didn't surface until yesterday, but clearly someone at the firm has had enough of Gibson's antics. The speculation is that his latest tirade, coupled with last week's passing of agent Ed Limato, finally cleared the way for the WME to part ways with the beleaguered performer.

Continue reading Mel Gibson Fallout: Audio Released, Agents Gone, Career ... Over?

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No, that gentleman on the left isn't auditioning for the Taye Diggs part in a remake of "How Stella Got Her Groove Back." It's Isaiah Mustafa as the impossibly confident beefcake guy in the Old Spice ads. You probably recognize him (even if you didn't know his name), just as you also probably recognize Jonathan Goldsmith, below, as the Porfirio Rubirosa-like playboy in those Dos Equis ads where he's billed as "the most interesting man in the world." He could give Tony Stark lessons.

Both these campaigns are a lot more entertaining than almost any of this year's movies. They're so smart and funny you'd think a live-action, PG-13 Pixar had made them. So the arrival of two new Old Spice ads a week ago is cause for minor rejoicing (that power-saw bit!). It also raises an inevitable, if vexing, question, one on the order of magnitude of Beatles vs. Stones? Butch vs. Sundance? Death vs. dishonor? That question is: Who'd win a duel between these these two guys? It's a tough one, all right. In "Twilight" terms, would Old Spice be a vampire and Dos Equis a werewolf?

As you ponder your choice, stay watching, my friends.

 

Filed under: Action, Casting, Paramount, RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

For two years, Edward Norton and Marvel have been dancing around whether or not he'll reprise his role as the Hulk in The Avengers. Norton has insisted he's simply waiting by the phone for Marvel to call him up, and that he was eager to return to the character, but nothing has ever happened.

Now, Drew McWeeny of HitFix is reporting that Marvel plans to hire an unknown to play the Hulk in The Avengers. Reportedly, Norton even met with Joss Whedon (who, it must be said, is still unconfirmed but is actively working on the film) and the two hit it off very well. Norton supposedly even cleared his schedule with goodwill. But no offer has been extended to him. In fact, Marvel has made it clear that they're moving on and giving the role to someone else -- someone cheaper. McWeeny writes, "In early conversations, it sounds like a deal could be made here, and simply wasn't. Norton's desire to return to the role was so palpable at SXSW, and that was before he met with Whedon, that I can't imagine he would refuse to negotiate or find some way to satisfy Marvel. So the question is really why won't Marvel try to make Norton happy at all when he obviously brings so much weight to the team?"

It's whispered that Marvel plans to introduce the Avengers in Hall H at SDCC this year in person. One of these will apparently be the new Hulk. While that's an exciting picture, knowing that Norton wants to be on that stage but won't be takes the shine off it a little bit. The Hulk doesn't need an actor's actor like Norton, but it's awfully cool that one wants to play him. Why not fatten that lineup out just a little more, bring on Norton, and make The Avengers truly epic?

Does Norton's non-involvement in The Avengers hurt the film, or is it a non issue in your opinion?

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Although no one would ever confuse Hanover for Hollywood, at least seven Dartmouth movie connections come to mind. One of F. Scott Fitzgerald's two most famous film credits, "Winter Carnival," is set there; its producer, Walter Wanger, was an alum. David Thomson taught there, as did Maury Rapf, who founded the school's film studies program. Two eminent screenwriters are graduates, Budd Schulberg and Buck Henry. Also, a certain pillar of Movie Nation did a bit of Big Green matriculating himself -- studying with Thomson, in fact.

Okay, eight: There's Dartmouth being the model for Faber College, in "Animal House."

Now there's another connection, albeit short-lived. "Made in Hollywood: Photographs from the John Kobal Foundation" is at Dartmouth's Hood Museum of Art through Sept. 12. Kobal was the preeminent collector of Hollywood studio portraits. His collection is to the Studio Era what the Michael Ochs Archives is to rock 'n' roll. Here we see the Golden Age at its most gleaming and glamorous. The idea was to make these phenomenally attractive men and women -- Gable, Bergman, Taylor, Hayworth, Welles, to name a few -- look their very best, and they sure did. The exhibition includes 93 photographs in all, the work of 50 photographers, among them Clarence Sinclair Bull, MGM's chief studio photographer for 40 years, and George Hurrell, the Apollo of studio portraitists. Beauty has rarely looked so beautiful.

(Above: John Miehle, "Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers," for "Swing Time," 1936.)

Pick hit: "Bigger Than Life" at the Harvard Film Archive, tonight (Friday) at 7 p.m., introduced by Susan Ray, daughter of director Nicholas Ray. The film kicks off the Archive's Ray series -- a tribute to a filmmaker of unparalleled visual and textual emotion -- and is a rarely seen blat of brilliant 50s neurosis in which James Mason (in photo above) plays a stressed-out small town schoolteacher who veers into mania as a result of cortisone treatments. If you've seen "Rebel Without a Cause" in a movie theater, you know that Ray used color and widescreen cinematography with more agonized flair than almost any other director (except maybe his devoted acolyte Jean-Luc Godard). Another of his odes to outsiders, "Bigger Than Life" is an almost hallucinatory dismantling of the certainties of Eisenhower America. Highly recommended, as is Saturday's screening of 1949's "They Live By Night," a primal influence on Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" and remade by Altman as 1974's "Thieves Like Us." The unheralded Cathy O'Donnell gives one of the most touching performances in all of American cinema as a backwoods nobody made incandescent by her love for a naive young criminal (Farley Granger). (Here's the scene where the two meet.)

As far as multiplex fare goes, I've been predicting for years now that director Nimrod Antal might turn out to be the great genre-movie hope of his generation, much as John Carpenter was in the 1970s and James Cameron was in the 1980s. Films like "Kontroll, " "Vacancy," and "Armored" may be cheap but they're lean, smart, and effective -- unapologetic B-movies turned out with skillful panache. I'm such a fan, in fact, that an acquaintance just sent me an e-mail asking how the heck I let Wesley review "Predators," the movie that in theory may finally vault Antal into the A-list. Luck of the draw, I guess, but Wes has seen the light and so should you. Yes, it's a sequel. So was "Aliens."

From the expertly ridiculous to the Gallic sublime: The annual Boston French Film Festival hits the Museum of Fine Arts for a two-week trawl through the country's latest cinematic highlights (it's to be hoped). Here's an idea: Go catch the restored print of "Breathless" at the Coolidge or Kendall this weekend, then touch down at the MFA next Friday for "Two in the Wave," a documentary about the friendship of Nouvelle Vague titans Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut.

What? You've never seen "Breathless"?! Here's your chance, then. Just understand that if much about the film seems familiar, it's because movies (and TV and commercials) have been absorbing its lessons for 50 years. The original still captures that beautiful mayfly moment when the cinema seemed new again.

"Despicable Me" is fine for the kiddies and just sly enough to keep mom and dad from nodding into their popcorn. At heart it's as mediocre as the Times' A.O. Scott says, but the details fizz nicely. A good start for newcomer Illumination Entertainment. Meanwhile, the local arthouses are abuzz with the arrival of "The Girl Who Played with Fire," the second installment in the Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson's best-selling crime series. The movie boils water but it's not all that special; of course, I haven't read the books, so I can't port my literary memories over to the screen. Noomi Rapace is terrific as the title heroine -- man, I'd like to see her take on Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt; he'd be a smudge on the pavement -- but the filmmaking is essentially a stodgy, made-for-TV item with spurts of gore and ooh-la-la lesbianism. I don't normally say this, but the upcoming Hollywood version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig (no takers for the role of Lisbeth yet) is likely to be an improvement.

Want further guidance? Check out Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, and David Gross's Movie Review Intelligence.

Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina enjoyed one of the supreme director-actor collaborations in movie history. (Godard being Godard, maybe ?enjoyed? isn?t quite the right verb.) She starred in seven of his films, one fewer than the number of years they were married. Yet crucial as their pairing was, there?s no question that the most important professional relationship of Godard?s life was with someone else. Raoul Coutard, his cinematographer, shot 17 films for Godard.

The first was ?Breathless.? Coutard participated in the film?s 50th-anniversary restoration, which opens at the Coolidge and Kendall. Here's Ty's review ("nicotine blood"!). This week?s Phoenix has a Q&A with Coutard, conducted by the paper?s film editor, Peter Keough.