Month: February 2009

Dakota Fanning Pushes the Limits

Posted February 24, 2009

The adorable Dakota Fanning is growing up. The go-to child star has made her move into bona fide teenage roles — and she’s more than ready to go beyond her usual sweet and innocent side in the sci-fi thriller Push. She swears, has a brief drunk scene and carries a gun. This kid you play in Push is pretty out front and in your face, isn’t she?My character is a true 14-year-old — kind of rebellious. She has a very sassy attitude and that was very fun to get to explore in this film. She says and does things that […]

Casablanca

Casablanca

Posted February 14, 2009

Surprisingly, no, I’d never seen Casablanca before last week. I generally don’t like old movies so I pretty much don’t ever make the time to watch them. The production values are lower, the stories or characters can seem cheesy to a sophisticated audience (yes, that would be me). Plus, I don’t ascribe to the belief that just because a movie is a classic it’s therefore good. Someone once said that the golden age in Hollywood wasn’t really golden, it’s just when we learned to industrialize movie making. I agree, so, I don’t expect that all classic movies will stand the […]

The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees

Posted February 14, 2009

Sweet and heartwarming, this coming of age story is well told with wisdom and strength.

I loved the language of the film, the words and sentences. I don’t know how much of that came

Push

Push

Posted February 7, 2009

Push actually envisions how psychic powers would play out in the real world rather than the heightened reality we’re accustomed to with these sorts of stories. Gritty and realistic, it

A Hollywood Elusive

A Hollywood Elusive

Posted February 1, 2009

With all Cate Blanchett has on her plate—three young boys, a three-stage theater, and a global acting career—she might be forgiven the occasional emotional outburst or diva-like moment. Instead, the author encounters a Hollywood anomaly: a star who doesn’t do drama offscreen, whose only hint of domestic conflict is her husband’s threat to divorce her if she gets cosmetic surgery, and whose latest role, as Brad Pitt’s soulmate in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, has her focused on aging and death. When David Fincher first saw Cate Blanchett play the Virgin Queen, a decade ago, he was stunned. “I […]

Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt

Posted February 1, 2009

To be Brad Pitt is to know the bowels of hotels: the hidden mazes of back entrances, subterranean passages and service elevators daily trudged by housekeepers and room service waiters—and sometimes traveled by a VIP guest who needs secret conveyance to his suite. Thirty minutes before Pitt is scheduled to arrive at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, his private security detail is scouting a route through the basement and issuing brisk instructions to hotel staff. Intensifying the situation is the fact that, a few days earlier, Pitt said on television that he “hates” the paparazzi—an arguably gratuitous comment, since, who […]