Scott Foley in on a guest-starring bender.
Shut it down – I’m in New York for the weekend, and I’m dying thinking my Entertainment Weekly is going to go unread until I get home.
Director Christopher Nolan revealed yesterday that the follow-up to his successful Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight, will be titled…The Dark Knight Rises.
Madonna gets a lot of s--- for her beyond-ripped body and for the way she flaunts it (mostly on stage, mind you).
Rumor had it for a little bit there that Mark Salling, a.k.a. Puck on Glee, wanted out of the show that made him a star because he went MIA for an episode earlier this month and won’t be in this week’s Rocky Horror-themed one.
The thing about cynicism, though, is it’s often misguided. If I was a betting man I’d be a losing man. So rest easy, A.B.Swank plays Betty Anne Waters, a high school dropout from the wrong side of a Massachusetts town whose brother, Kenny (Sam Rockwell), is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in 1983.
Betty Anne and Kenny are like two peas in a pod. The two are thisclose; they’ve always had to rely on each other through thick and thin since their mom was, well...trash who didn’t mind them like, at all. Theirs is a bond that is like no other: unbreakable, unshakable, and unconditional.
When Kenny is sent away, for a crime he says and his sister knows he didn’t commit, Betty Anne puts her own life on the back burner to champion his tarnished name. She embarks on a lifelong quest to prove Kenny was wrongfully pinched for the did by a tough-as-nail cop (Frozen River’s Melissa Leo), and even puts herself through college and law school, sacrificing her marriage and her role as a mother in the process. It’s what she has to do...and by golly if she’ll do it, even if takes her years.
That it does – 18 years, to be exact.
It’s a tall task she’s taken on, and while no one understands it, while everyone tells her she should accept the facts (those everyones are promptly shunned), Betty Anne remains steadfast.
With the help of a supportive friend (Minnie Driver) she allows herself to pick up along the way, she pores over piles of suspicious evidence and retraces the steps that led to Kenny’s arrest in the hope of finally winning her brother’s freedom.
Eventually, her quest gains enough traction that she picks up another ally, a lawyer (Peter Gallagher) who specializes in this type of case, and Betty Anne’s dream to free her brother begins to become a reality.
What Conviction fails to capture, though, is just how daunting this mission must’ve been. I felt like the movie spent a lot of time walking us through the case, which was resolved rather quickly – I say acknowledging that I live in a post-procedural-TV zeitgeist...and that things weren’t quite so easy – and not enough showing us Betty Anne getting her fighter on. I guess not all heroines in this type of movie are Erin Brockovich-esque, but still, I wish Swank had been given something showier to shine with, you know.
Perhaps that Oscar buzz would still be around, but since the actress also produced the movie I will say, sans cynicism, that she really wanted to tell this story, and for that she can reap the biggest benefit, just like her subject matter: satisfaction in self.
My Rating **1/2
Photo: Lionsgate Films.
In: Movie country music.
Ben Affleck is going paranormal.
Brothers & Sisters’ Gilles Marini is feeling the Royal Pains.
Gabourey Sidibe is ready to take her scene-stealing ways to the next level.You go, girl!
Photo: InterviewMagazine.com.
Update 1: Joining the star-studded cast is Téa Leoni, who will play an FBI agent who falls for Stiller’ heist-mastermind character.
Update 2: Matthew Broderick is also on board.
Update 3: Ditto Casey Affleck and Judd Hirsch.
Alright, I give – James Franco is an artiste.
Cheyenne Jackson isn’t the only up-and-comer who’s getting the cover-boy treatment these days.
Who would have thought that a movie about retired spies (i.e., old people, albeit badass old people) would be so much fun, but that’s precisely what RED is.
Well, you can’t say Madonna doesn’t have balls.
I knew it was only a matter of time until Cheyenne Jackson started getting the attention he so richly deserves...the kind that will keep him away from my interviewing reach.
OK, before I tell you about Rihanna’s new video – oops! – I gotta tell you I think her Rated R (her last, darker, post-Chris Brown album) was woefully underrated.
George Clooney is a national, heck, an international treasure, and not just because he looks so good on screen and off.
Neil Patrick Harris wants to be in control.
The war between film and TV rages on.
Rhys Ifans, the British scene-stealer from Notting Hill, is set to antagonize Andrew Garfield in Marc Webb’s Spider-Man reboot.
So NBC and the man behind the gone-too-soon Pushing Daisies, Bryan Fuller, are developing a reboot of The Munsters, right.
Two Marilyn Monroe movies are a-comin’, and production on the first one (the one with Michelle Williams) is already underway.
Gwyneth Paltrow has revealed she was…propositioned, I guess you could say, back when she was just getting going in Hollywood.
I was in first grade, or about to start it.Watiting for “Superman” follows five children, most underprivileged, who are attempting to get an education in the American system. A system that is...perhaps not broken, but definitely on the brink; full of promises (“No Child Left Behind,” anyone?), but short on deliverables. American test scores in key disciplines are way low compared to other developed nations – but American kids rank No. 1 in confidence (yay!?).
For a nation that talks a big talk, the United States is not walking the walk on behalf of the children politicians love to trot out and make promises for come election time and whatnot.
And that’s just disheartening because kids...they are the future, and we’re investing so little in them.
What Watiting for “Superman” does is it calls us all out on this because we all can make a difference, regardless of whether we have children, because we all have a voice. We have a right and a duty to effect change by picking the right people to do the job that isn’t getting done: that is, to educate the leaders of tomorrow. Otherwise the world is going to pass America by...and neither Superman nor any other superhero is coming to rescue us or these treated-as-statistics young’uns any time soon.
My Rating ****
Photo: Paramount Pictures.
Starring Katherine Heigl – getting her mojo back after the poor showing of her summer entry Killers – and Josh Duhamel – emerging as a likeable leading man in training at last – this is a dramedy about two people who don’t fall in love but rather in family with each other and the cutest baby girl this side of Michelle Tannerville.Heigl plays Holly, an up-and-coming, sunny coffee shop caterer in Atlanta, while Duhamel is Messer (he goes by his last name ’cause he’s cool like that), a let-it-rip-type and a rising star in the world of network sports directing.
The two don’t like each other.
What? A movie that will be pigeonholed in the rom-com box with two characters who hate each other? Where could this be headed?
It’s true, though: Holly and Messer attempted to go on a blind date set up by their respective BFF a couple of years ago, but he showed up an hour late – and then took a booty call right in front of her – and she, of course, gave him (and her gal pal who played matchmaker) a piece of her mind about it.
Over the course of the next, what, couple of years, they stayed in each other’s lives. It happens when you’re named your friend’s maid of honor or best man, or the godparent to their child, just FYI. So Holly and Messer learned to tolerate and get some enjoyment out of needling each other.
After their besties die in a car accident, they have to rearrange their lives because they become the legal guardians to Sophie, that adorable baby girl I mentioned earlier (played by triplets who should get baby awards for cooing on cue). Their lives turned upside down, they have to set aside their differences and get it together. A lot of it is played for laughs, natch, but there are moments of real poignancy in this movie, which elevate it out of Generictown.
And yes, Holly and Messer get closer as Life as We Know It progresses. They become friendlier toward each other, and supportive of each other and their separate interests (in her case that includes a doctor fellow she met at her coffee shop, a dashing man played by Josh Lucas; in his, a bunch one night stands). They make themselves a bit of a home, of a family, just like they’re meant to.
The two of them just sort of...happen. Then a romance blossoms. But life throws them another curveball, because that’s what it does, right.
Life as We Know It works because it keeps things grounded in reality.
Yeah, sometimes it idealizes things a little, but that’s what movies like this one are supposed to do, after all, but it should keep you guessing.
I think that that’s what makes it a bit different, and why it works. Heigl is warmer in this one than in her previous offerings (and than she seems in real life), and Duhamel makes for a enjoyable partner for her – and us – to want to have as a support system. But do they end up together? That you’ll have to see for yourself.
My Rating ***1/2
Photo: Warner Bros.
What…a feather in Peru’s cap: Author Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Drea de Matteo is following her lackluster turn on Desperate Housewives last season with a guest-starring one on TV’s Running Wilde, the freshman comedy starring Will Arnett and Keri Russell that’s still struggling to find its creative footing.
Sandra Bullock may be going to infinity and beyond in her next, much-anticipated movie.
Modern Family standout – sorry, that’s Emmy-nominated standout to y’all – Sofia Vergara is diversifying.
TV’s 30 Rock is getting another shot of AMC’s Mad Men.
Are Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep going to star in a movie together and finally blow our minds?
One of my faves, the beautiful Brit Emily Blunt, is gonna get her time traveling on opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a movie called Looper.
The world needs to crush on Ryan Gosling more than it already does.
Emma Stone is on a roll.
It’s the scene this Grey’s Anatomy fan has been waiting for since it was teased, the one with the semi-naked Dr. Jackson Avery, played by Jesse Williams.
Tina Fey tried, she really tried.
