A Halftime to Remember

Awards season can start now (and some of the technical awards can be earmarked, too).

Why?

Because here, at last, is the first teaser for Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

Starring newcomer Joe Alwyn, the film – which the two-time Academy Award-winning director shot in unprecedented 120 frames per second in 4K and native 3-D – will unfold during a Thanksgiving Day football game and spin the yarn of how a few minutes of firefight in Iraq transformed the lives of eight men and how that event led to Alwyn’s titular walk at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium.

Country Strong’s Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Steve Martin, Chris Tucker, and Vin Diesel co-star. Check out the preview now:

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is due out on Nov. 11.

Back to the Grid

The Grid musta proved irresistible.

Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde are going to revisit their TRON: Legacy heritage, kids.

Tron 3 will be under the direction of returning helmer Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion) and is expected to go into production this fall.

I wonder how they will incorporate Jeff Bridges into this one....

Photo: ScreenRant.com.

A Most Perseverant Man

To say that a film, especially one released during the holiday season, is a celebration of the triumph of the human spirit adversity has become such a cliché, but the expression must be trotted out when discussing Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken.

The film, about Olympic track runner-turned-World War II POW Louis Zamperini, is precisely that, if predictable so, too.

It is one of those “epic” stories Hollywood has a knack for putting out this time o’ year. Inspiring...a reminder that we are a species capable of many things extraordinary.

And Jolie, for the most part, delivers, on only second foray behind the camera (her first was the 2011 title In the Land of Blood and Honey, a romance backdropped by the 1990s Bosnian War). Unbroken is, beat by beat, a strong film – featuring a mesmerizing leading-man turn by up-and-comer Jack O’Connell – about the resilience of a quite-remarkable individual in the face of a very particular difficulty.

Louis Zamperini – Louie – was just another son of immigrants living in America. Nothing special about the Depression-era kid until one day, under the guidance of his older brother, he began on his winning course from ne’er-do-well to uplifting legend about whom books would be written and films would be made (this offering’s based on the definitive biography by Laura Hillebrand). Louie went from running around misbehaving all over his Italian family’s adoptive California hometown to running in the 1936 Olympics. He went to college, where he set a mile record. And he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in ’41 and was deployed to the South Pacific with a group of young men (including Jai Courtney) that, for whatever reason, Jolie showcases as if she were Bruce Weber on an Abercrombie & Fitch assignment. No doubt, the film is gorgeously shot, and a beautiful thing to behold, visually speaking – but that was an interesting choice.

Anyway....

In 1943, Louie and a crew of 10 more were tasked with flying a search-and-rescue (unfortunately, on a plane that wasn’t up to snuff). It, of course, went down hundreds of miles from land, into shark-infested waters. Louie survived, for more than a month, along only two other men (portrayed by Frank’s Domhnall Gleeson and Finn Wittrock, from FX’s American Horror Story: Freak Show).

On Day 47, he and Gleeson’s character (Wittrock’s died at sea two weeks earlier) were captured by the Japanese. As Louie put it, it was a good news/bad news sitch: they were being rescued, but the ordeal was from over.

Weeks of interrogations and beatings followed, and, eventually, the two were taken to separate POW camps where no one knew they were (no one even knew he was alive for like, two years). At his new home, Louie was singled out for a special kind of blandished punishment by his captor, the bamboo stick-wielding Mutsuhiro Watanabe. The Japanese pop star Miyavi plays the man o.k.a. the Bird, and he imbues his part with a level of ruthless entitlement rather necessary to match O’Connell’s sense of defiant nobility – which makes me think this was another good find by La Jolie....

Louie stayed at that camp until the end of the war, even when he could’ve, well...not. No, not by taking the easy way out but by selling out America and playing into the Japanese propaganda machine, something which we are told he was offered after being allowed a radio broadcast (on account of his Olympic celebrity). He chose to stay and he was put through the ringer by the Bird day in and day out and helped his fellow prisoners (including Garrett Hedlund, whose character was the de facto leader of all the POWs).

Unbroken is that film, alright – but Jolie, while beyond-effective on this particular job, I thought, was much too didactic. Her action sequences are stellar, but she sprinkles all these tug-at-your-heartstrings flashbacks and peeks inside Louie’s psyche that, I should say, more often than not come off as clumsy.

So thank goodness for her two stars. They certainly do elevate her grand-in-scope-yet-Lifetime-y approach and make this one a saga worth watching.

My Rating ***

Photo: TheYoungFolks.com.

How Pan Was

So the Hugh Jackman-as-Blackbeard look is quite a look.

Check out the first teaser for the upcoming Pan if you don’t believe me.

Jackman plays the pirate-overlord of a magical realm – Neverland! – in Joe Wright’s upcoming Peter Pan origin story that also stars newcomer Levi Miller as a young P2, Garrett Hedlund as Hook, Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, and Amanda Seyfried as Mary Darling.

Pan is due out on July 17.

Photo: Variety.com.

The Race to Inspiration Begins Here

I took a moment from following on what was going on at the BAFTAs in London last night – 12 Years a Slave was named  Best Film, FYI – to watch Girls Looking The Walking Dead the trailer for Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken.

The film, if your memory serves, will tell the story of Olympian-turned-World War II POW Louis Zamperini, played by Jack O’Connell.

Garrett Hedlund and Jai Courtney co-star.

Click here to read a little more about the production, which will arrive in theaters at Christmastime.

Photo: WN.com.

Pand

The search for a suitable Pan is over.

In quite a way, too.

See, Garrett Hedlund has landed the part of Peter Pan in the Joe Wright-directed origin story of the character (in which, Hook, btw, is – at least at first – an ally to the guy).

Javier Bardem Hugh Jackman is still circling the role of Blackbeard in the project, which is due to arrive in theaters on July 17, 2015 (the date vacated by Batman vs. Superman, if memory serves).

Photo: VanityFair.com.

Update 1: Whoopsies.

More like Hookd: Garrett Hedlund has landed the part of Hook in the movie.

Peter Pan has yet to be cast.

Update 2: Hugh Jackman will be playing Blackbeard in the movie. It is now officially confirmed.

POW Strong

The cast of Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken is coming together quite handsomely.

Newcomer Jack O’Connell is playing the lead part in La Jolie’s second directorial effort, the story of Olympian-turned-World War II POW Louis Zamperini, and now the filmmaker has secured the participation of one Garrett Hedlund.

The Country Strong star is set to play a fellow prisoner and de facto POW leader of the Japanese camp where Zamperini ends up after a weeks-long lost-in-the-Pacific ordeal.

Unbroken is scheduled for a Christmas 2014 release.

Photo: GossipCenter.com.

No Christian Grey for This Guy

Aww, too bad: Garrett Hedlund is not into mommy porn, so no Fifty Shades of Grey for him, thankyouverymuch.

The Country Strong scene-stealer reportedly has passed on starring on the first adaptation of E L James’ racy best-selling Fifty Shades Trilogy.

Word on the street is Hedlund did not want to take on a three-picture commitment to play the S&M-happy billionaire Christian Grey in the movies, the first of which will be directed by Nowhere Boy’s Sam Taylor-Johnson.

Hedlund’s is the latest name associated to the part in any meaningful way.

Earlier this year, Chris Hemsworth was said to be the No. 1 choice for the part, while Stephen Amell (TVs Arrow) even took a meeting about it in the spring, but that didn’t pan out, for he is back at work on his hit TV show and the movie is scheduled to come out next August.

The one actor who’s like, dying for the role – Ian Somerhalder – is, unfortunately for him, not even being really considered.

So the search continues.

Photo: SocialiteLife.com.

Seeking an Answer at the End of the Desert

Word from Cannes is Garrett Hedlund is heading to Mojave.

The Country Strong scene-stealer has signed on to star opposite Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) in Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monahan’s forthcoming indie psychological thriller.

Hedlund will play a suicidal artist who journeys into the desert to sort himself out and runs into his equally messed up (and dangerous) doppelgänger (Isaac) instead.

Last time I checked, btw, The Great Gatsby’s Jason Clarke was also on board and set to play a bad guy in the film.

Photo: Zimbio.com.

Time to Burn

I never thought I would be this excited about any movie co-starring Kristen Stewart, but hey, stranger things have happened, I s’ppose.

Here I am, though, telling ya I cannot wait to see On the Road, the Walter Salles-directed adaptation of the John Kerouac novel starring Garrett Hedlund (Country Strong), Sam Riley, and Stewart.

Click here to see the trailer, and Hedlund as Dean Moriarty, Riley as Sid Paradise, and the Twilight Saga star as Dean’s teenage wife, Marilou.

Amy Adams, Terrence Howard, Kirsten Dunst, and Viggo Mortensen are also in the film, which is due out this summer.

Photo: AltFG.com.

Well on Their Way

Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund are officially On the Road.

The first images of the adaptation of the novel by Jack Kerouac have hit, showing Stewart in character as Marylou, and Hedlund as Dean Moriarity

“[She is] incredible, and in this everyone is going to get to see how hard a worker she is, the devotion that she puts into her work,” the Country Strong scene-stealer said of the Twilight Saga star. “Her performance is going to be exposed highly in this.”

The film, co-starring Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Elisabeth Moss (AMC’s Mad Men), Steve Buscemi, and Terrence Howard, is due out on Dec. 10.

Photo: Yahoo! Movies.

Catch a Falling Star

It’s a story as old as this business we call show: that of the great entertainer haunted by demons so strong he or she can’t help but fall down the rabbit hole and take us – ever their captive audience – down with them.

In Shana Feste’s tremendously anticipated (by me) Country Strong, that most captivating, intriguing, maddening creature we can’t help but love (and dislike a tad) is country superstar Kelly Canter. Kelly, known to all as the Grammy-winning Belle of Bristol, is best remembered as the sunniest, shiniest thing, but that was before she crashed and burned on stage during a big concert. Now, she’s dimming – a shadow of her former self struggling to cast herself in a light all her own – and as played by my girl Gwyneth Paltrow, she’s vulnerable, flawed, angel-voiced, “stronger than all of this,” yet so...not.

G.P., it must be said, has her job cut out for her, for Feste doesn’t make it easy for her or her cast mates (which include a never-more-actor-y Tim McGraw, Garrett Hedlund, and Leighton Meester) to inhabit a fully realized world.

Paltrow, though, rises to the challenge, and so do her supporting players, especially Hedlund, who is a complete revelation and the heart of Country Strong. His rootsy, hipster-y look and well-suited-for-the-genre vocals come together tremendously, and give his honky-tonk singer/rehab-facility orderly an air of authenticity that lends the movie a much-needed boost in key scenes.

Speaking of rehab, that is where Hedlund’s Beau Hutton meets Ms. Kelly Canter.

She’s there getting herself sorted out following that meltdown I alluded to earlier. It happened about a year ealier. Kelly was in Dallas performing...she was pregant, five months along, and also drunk. Some time during the show, she tripped and fell, losing the baby.

Her star was tarnished, perhaps forever and irreparably, but on the day we meet Kelly, her husband/manager James (McGraw) marches into her room at the recovery center, walking in on his wife and Beau (who’d been writing a song together, engaged in a flirtation) and announces she’s leaving rehab to embark on a three-date encore tour.

It’s her big comeback, y’ see, but is she ready?

Paltrow and Beau say no, but Kelly says OK, she’ll go along with it because she’s scared if she doesn’t she’ll lose no, not her career, but her husband.

Opening for her will be Chiles Stanton (Meester, channeling enough of her Blair Waldorf persona from TV’s Gossip Girl and mixing that bravado with enough up-and-comer insecurity to emerge on the winning side of an underwritten role). Chiles is a former beauty queen determined to make it big in Nashville. She’s got James on her side but not Beau, who dismisses her as easily as he pays her consequence), and, with her Eve Carrington-esque quality, she makes Kelly even more jittery than she already is, the poor thing.

The whole idea of this comeback that’s being mounted for Kelly is so misguided you’ll question real hard why James is pushing for it so.

In fact, you’ll wonder why Kelly’s so messed up (at her worst, she’s a drunken mess, dancing on dive-y bar tables and being all slutacious; at her best, she’s transcending a cynical photo op, making music on the spot for a Make-A-Wish kid), why Beau wants to protect her so much, and, more importantly, why if this is supposed to be a movie about this woman’s journey it is Hedlund who does most of the heavy lifting...and when, just when is Paltrow taking to the stage, already.

After all, that is what we want to see – the GOOPster singing her little heart out. Which she does beautifully, hanging on to her accomplished twang like a natural and oozing a stage presence that’s been talked about quite a bit this awards season.

My love of what this movie meant, for Paltrow and my undying fandom of her, has been well chronicled.

Alas, Country Strong ultimately disappoints in that it gives the Oscar winner much too little meat to bite into and chew (holy melodrama, she sure is asked to cry a lot) that by the time her big moment finally arrives – which she beyond-owns – you’ll be as emotionally drained as Kelly Canter. As Beau sings in the end, timing is everything, and this movie suffers from a lack of it and focus.

The performances elevate this one, as does the music (with which I’m obsessed), so keep that in mind when you go see this one, and you should give in to it and go see it, alright, so this weekend you better get, y’ read.

My Rating **1/2

Photo: Screen Gems.

The Return of a Country Queen

I want Gwyneth Paltrow to win another Oscar.

And y’ know what: Country Strong, her next movie, just might get her an invite to the big party next winter.

The facts are these (oh, how I miss Pushing Daisies – but I digress): In the movie G.P. plays a fading country star staging a comeback after a stint in rehab (behind the glamour is a drinking problem).

And as well all know, America, heck, the world likes a comeback story, so we should all love to root for Paltrow’s Kelly Canter, as the singer struggles to find her place back in a spotlight that now craves Chiles Stanton, a pretty young thing played by Leighton Meester (that Paltrow herself has been away from the spotlight and hasn’t headlined a project in a while is an added bonus):



Country Strong co-stars Tim McGraw as Paltrow’s husband/manager, and Garrett Hedlund (TRON: Legacy), as the opening act who’s rooting for her on a more personal level than just a professional.

The movie, which features Paltrow singing again (super-smart to release the movie’s titular single during the Grammy qualifying months, btw), is due out, in limited release, on Dec. 22, and goes wide on Jan. 7.