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Fall film preview: familiarity rules
2007-08-28
Hollywood may not have a Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Shrek or Capt. Jack Sparrow on its upcoming lineup. Yet the fall and holiday schedule does offer filmgoers a chance to catch up with some familiar characters, stories and movie-making teams. Muzi.com News 10049237-0 (muzi.com)It'll be reunion season for actors and filmmakers such as Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott ("American Gangster"); Cate Blanchett and Shekhar Kapur ("Elizabeth: The Golden Age"); Nicolas Cage and Jon Turteltaub ("National Treasure: Book of Secrets"); Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton ("Sweeney Todd"); and Ben Stiller and the Farrelly brothers ("The Heartbreak Kid"). Muzi.com News 10049237-1 (muzi.com) It'll be reacquaintance season for some classic characters in Robert Zemeckis' retelling of the Norse legend "Beowulf"; "Fred Claus," a North Pole comedy about Santa (Paul Giamatti) and his black-sheep brother (Vince Vaughn); and "I Am Legend," with Will Smith in a new take on the sci-fi thriller "The Omega Man." Muzi.com News 10049237-2 (muzi.com) There's even the return of a venerable genre, the Western, which has fallen on hard times in modern Hollywood. Crowe and Christian Bale star in the remake "3:10 to Yuma," about a poor rancher helping to escort a captured gang leader, while a second Old West tale comes close on its heels with "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." Muzi.com News 10049237-3 (muzi.com) Brad Pitt, starring as James, said his own celebrity helped him sympathize with the outlaw, whose notoriety as a heroic Robin Hood figure was heavily fabricated. Muzi.com News 10049237-4 (muzi.com) "I liked the themes of fame, the obsession with fame. The idea of the Jesse James character being trapped behind a facade and not knowing how to get out," said Pitt, who plays James in the last year of his life as he lapses into paranoia over potential betrayal by accomplices and intimates, including young idolizer Ford (Casey Affleck). Muzi.com News 10049237-5 (muzi.com) "We operate under the assumption everyone is pretty much up on the Jesse James myth, so we start dissecting the myth," Pitt said. Muzi.com News 10049237-6 (muzi.com) In other fall films, Crowe plays a New York cop to Denzel Washington's Harlem crime kingpin in director Scott's "American Gangster"; Stiller rejoins the Farrellys, who directed him in "There's Something About Mary," for "The Heartbreak Kid," about a man who meets the perfect woman -- on his honeymoon with another bride; Cage sets out to clear an ancestor implicated in Abraham Lincoln's assassination in the "National Treasure" sequel; frequent collaborators Depp, Bonham Carter and Burton adapt Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd," the musical about the murderous 18th century barber; Vaughn plays the title role in "Fred Claus" to Giamatti's Santa, who bails his sibling out of jail and forces him to work off the debt at the North Pole; Reese Witherspoon is a woman searching for her missing husband, an Egyptian who vanishes on a flight to Washington, in "Rendition"; Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly are a couple in grief after their son is killed by a hit-and-run driver (Mark Ruffalo) in "Reservation Road"; Phoenix stars with Mark Wahlberg and Robert Duvall in "We Own the Night," a crime tale in 1980s New York; and Tim Roth stars in Francis Ford Coppola's "Youth Without Youth," playing a professor on the run in Europe as World War II looms. Muzi.com News 10049237-7 (muzi.com) Also, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone are featured in "Beowulf," with Zemeckis applying the performance-capture technology he used in "The Polar Express" to animate the epic of the hero's battle against the monster Grendel and his mother; Steve Carell plays a widower who falls for his brother's girlfriend (Juliette Binoche) in "Dan in Real Life"; Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon star in a murder mystery surrounding an Iraq war soldier after he returns home in "In the Valley of Elah"; Sarandon plays a wicked queen who banishes a fairy-tale princess (Amy Adams) to modern New York in "Enchanted"; Halle Berry is a widow who forges a relationship with her husband's friend (Benicio Del Toro) in "Things We Lost in the Fire"; a gang of beloved cartoon critters come to life in "Alvin and the Chipmunks," with Jason Lee; Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig appear in "The Golden Compass," set in a fantasy world where a girl rushes to rescue her missing friend; Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts mastermind American strategy to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in "Charlie Wilson's War"; and Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are terminal patients who take a final road trip in "The Bucket List." Muzi.com News 10049237-8 (muzi.com) Here's a closer look at some fall and holiday releases: Muzi.com News 10049237-9 (muzi.com) RECLAIMING HER THRONE: Muzi.com News 10049237-10 (muzi.com) Nine years after "Elizabeth," Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and director Shekhar Kapur reteam for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," resuming the story of Britain's Queen Elizabeth I. Muzi.com News 10049237-11 (muzi.com) The new film has the spinster monarch juggling romantic temptation for Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), opposition from Mary Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton) and the threat of conquest by Spain and its armada. Muzi.com News 10049237-12 (muzi.com) "The first film was about denial, what one has to do to sort of extricate oneself from oneself in order to rule. At the beginning of this film, she's still in a place of denial, but this film is more about acceptance in a way," Blanchett said. "On a domestic, prosaic level, you have a woman who realizes: `Am I not going to have children?' Muzi.com News 10049237-13 (muzi.com) "On a bigger scale, you have a woman asking, `Do people love me for who I am or for what they want from me?' Anyone in a position of power must go through that." Muzi.com News 10049237-14 (muzi.com) CATCHING A BUZZ: Muzi.com News 10049237-15 (muzi.com) Jerry Seinfeld returns with his first major project since "Seinfeld," co-writing and providing the lead voice in the animated comedy "Bee Movie." Muzi.com News 10049237-16 (muzi.com) The premise: worker bee Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld) befriends a human florist (Renee Zellweger), who becomes his aide when he sues humanity for stealing the honey his species toils to produce. Muzi.com News 10049237-17 (muzi.com) "Barry stings them in the one place it really hurts" -- their wallets, said Seinfeld, whose story has its roots in his fascination with nature documentaries. Muzi.com News 10049237-18 (muzi.com) "The ones about bees I've always found amazing," Seinfeld said. "The sophistication of their culture and architecture, and this amazing substance they make. Their communication system, their navigation system, and how they're not supposed to be able to fly. It always struck me as a great setting for a story." Muzi.com News 10049237-19 (muzi.com) GOING POSTAL: Muzi.com News 10049237-20 (muzi.com) Jodie Foster has played the victim in "The Accused" and the enforcer of justice in "The Silence of the Lambs." Muzi.com News 10049237-21 (muzi.com) Now, she's both -- along with judge, jury and executioner -- in "The Brave One," a thriller about a Manhattan woman who becomes a gun-toting vigilante after recovering from an attack that killed her fiance and left her near death. Muzi.com News 10049237-22 (muzi.com) "She is plagued by fear in a way she never really knew. Little by little, she turns that fear into a kind of monstrous rage," Foster said. "She buys a gun like a lot of women do, and having it in her pocket imbues her with this power, where she finds herself by coincidence or by design in situations she shouldn't be in. Muzi.com News 10049237-23 (muzi.com) "It's a descent or progression that starts as self-defense and very quickly becomes something else." Muzi.com News 10049237-24 (muzi.com) FOXX HUNTING: Muzi.com News 10049237-25 (muzi.com) "The Kingdom" stars Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner and Chris Cooper as members of a U.S. counterterrorism unit chasing after the mastermind of a bombing in Saudi Arabia. Muzi.com News 10049237-26 (muzi.com) Their investigation runs smack into culture clash as Saudi leaders view them as arrogant Americans bulling their way into a matter for local authorities. Muzi.com News 10049237-27 (muzi.com) The pursuit hits close to home for Foxx's character, the FBI man leading the American response, who has lost a close friend in the bombing. Muzi.com News 10049237-28 (muzi.com) "He goes a little overboard because of the fact that it is personal, kind of like a 9/11 thing for him," Foxx said. "You see him on fire for this. `Whoever did it, I'm going to the end of the world to find out who, because it's personal.' And his team is telling him it's too personal." Muzi.com News 10049237-29 (muzi.com) INHERITING THE EARTH: Muzi.com News 10049237-30 (muzi.com) "I Am Legend," adapted from the same novel as "The Omega Man," takes place after a plague that wipes out most of humanity and transforms others into bloodthirsty nocturnal creatures. Muzi.com News 10049237-31 (muzi.com) Will Smith stars as a survivor -- and possibly the last human on Earth. Muzi.com News 10049237-32 (muzi.com) Smith said he spends much of the movie in silence, with just a dog for company. To help capture the character's desperate loneliness, Smith met with prisoners of war and inmates who lived in solitary confinement, including one man left alone so long he claimed he had trained cockroaches to gather food for him. Muzi.com News 10049237-33 (muzi.com) "It's fun to have a moment by yourself alone, a little peace and quiet, but peace and quiet turns into your worst nightmare very, very quickly," Smith said. Muzi.com News 10049237-34 (muzi.com) "If you break your ankle, you need your tonsils out, anything that takes another person to do, the first time you get an infection, you're in trouble," Smith said. "The reason that there are cities and civilizations and Screen Actors Guilds and AFL-CIOs, the reason people form groups, is that you can't survive by yourself." Muzi.com News 10049237-35 (muzi.com) DOING DOUBLE-DUTY: Muzi.com News 10049237-36 (muzi.com) As he did two years ago with "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney moonlights as a performer in one movie and actor-director on another. Muzi.com News 10049237-37 (muzi.com) Clooney has the title role in "Michael Clayton," a legal drama about a corporate firm battling a class-action lawsuit. Muzi.com News 10049237-38 (muzi.com) "I play sort of a fixture in a law firm who does all the dirty work most people don't talk about," Clooney said. "He's not a guy who's ambitious to get to the top. He's just a guy who sort of makes a living. The idea is, times are changing and the world is crashing in around him, and he's boxed himself into a corner. He just wants to make this one last deal and get out." Muzi.com News 10049237-39 (muzi.com)
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