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Entries in Brie Larson (87)

Saturday
Aug012015

Yes No Maybe So: "Room" and "Spotlight"

We have heard your complaints about not featuring the Room trailer just yet. It was not from lack of love for Brie Larson (who improves every single movie she's in) as you'll remember we were among her greatest cheerleaders for a Best Actress bid for Short Term 12. It was merely lack of time. But do you think she'll get closer to the Best Actress lineup this year?

The Room trailer follows this poster along with our Yes No Maybe So commentary. That plus the new Tom McCarthy film Spotlight, and its all-star cast, which is also tipped as 'Oscar bound' or at least testing very very well...

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Apr082015

Young Hollywood Casting News Roundup

Manuel here trying to not to make a big deal out of that “Grace of Monaco will be premiering on Lifetime” news. The Emmy campaign begins now, yes, but gosh, there really is no wrath like a Weinstein scorned, is there? And so, rather than try and come up with a witty headline (maybe something like “DisGrace”?), I figured we’d look onward by checking out some casting news about some of our favorite up and coming (read: young) actresses. In other words, imagine we here at TFE brought all of these talented gals together, shot our very own Vanity Fair-style cover, and this is just a helpful guide as to where to see them next:

Mia Wasikowska
She’s been tormented by Nicole Kidman in Stoker, she’s tormented Julianne Moore in Maps to the Stars, and while I wish I could announce she’ll finish collecting all The Hours ladies with an upcoming Meryl Streep film (we know Meryl loved her in Jane Eyre) she’ll actually be tormented and persecuted by her Lawless co-star, Guy Pearce, in the upcoming Western thriller Brimstone.

Mia is building quite the filmography, no?

Brie Larson
After her head-turning lead role in Short Term 12, Larson has been oddly not busy (let’s not speak of The Gambler). Thankfully, 2015 looks busy enough: we’ll be seeing her next in Trainwreck, while two other films (the claustrophobic sounding Room and the India-set Basmati Blues) feel like fall films. She’s just signed on to Ben Wheatley’s Reservoir Dogs-style flick Free Fire, where she’ll co-star against a trio of hunks: Luke Evans, Armie Hammer and Cillian Murphy.

I really hope Larson has some Trainwreck scenes with Tilda (here pictured with Schumer)

Anna Kendrick
The now ubiquitous triple threat (she can sing! she can act! she can social media!) is poised to have a great summer with Pitch Perfect 2 and while her follow-up projects see her taking more serious looking roles (a hit-man film with Sam Rockwell and a forensic accountant film with Ben Affleck), those of us who enjoy her in full comedy mode should greet her newest casting - in a rom-com titled Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates alongside Zac Efron! - with open arms.

Keke Palmer
Akeelah and the Bee was clearly just a beginning. Since, Palmer has been making a name for herself, both on Broadway (where she was the first African-American Cinderella) and on TV (with recurring roles in 90210, Masters of Sex and starring roles in Lifetime’s A Trip to Bountiful and VH1’s CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story). Now she’s joined the merry band of Ryan Murphy players in Scream Queens:

Kristen Stewart
Hot off being the first American actress to win a Cesar Award (for Clouds of Sils Maria which opens this weekend; go see it!) and chastising the “big, big, big green monster of cash” that fuels the current celebrity news industry, Stewart has been lined up to star with Brendan Gleeson in a Scottish historical film titled The Great Getaway.

Stewart really is amazing in this two-hander with Binoche.

Gabourey Sidibe
I can’t be the only one happy to see Gabourey’s post-Precious career continue to flourish. After parts in The Big C, American Horror Story and Empire, it seems she’s found a footing in television and that’s where we’ll see her next in Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner’s Hulu comedy Difficult People.

Sidibe has a recurring role as the manager of the coffee shop where Eicher's character works

Don't you find it refreshing that none of these actress casting notices mention tentpoles, blockbusters or otherwise multiple-film franchise contracts? Which one of these projects are you most excited about? 

 

Monday
Feb162015

YES NO MAYBE SO: Trainwreck

Manuel here to discuss one of last week’s hottest trailers by one of my favorite funny ladies. After the success of Bridesmaids ($288 million worldwide gross and 2 Oscar nominations), it’s not surprising seeing Judd Apatow partnering up with another small-screen comedy talent for her big screen debut.

Written by Amy Schumer and directed by Apatow himself comes Trainwreck ("We all know one" the poster coyingly tells us), which opens this July as a nice bit of counter-programming (it goes up against Apatow-alum Paul Rudd's Ant-Man so you know where my momey that weekend will be going to). The film will first show itself over at SXSW as a "work-in-progress" so we'll have word of what to expect sooner rather than later, though it shows great confidence in the material. It also tells us precisely what kind of demographic they're hoping to muster enthusiasm among. Both Funny People and This is 40 failed to capitalize on the success of Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin so I'm sure hopes are higher for this female-fronted comedy.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, in true TFE fashion, let’s dive right into the trailer giving it the YES, NO MAYBE SO treatment:

YES

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Nov162014

AFI Fest's Gala Premieres: 'The Gambler' and 'The Homesman'

Margaret here, reporting from the LA festival beat with short takes on some would-be Oscar contenders.


The Gambler
Screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed), director Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), and star Mark Wahlberg joined forces on this remake of the 1974 James Caan movie of the same name, and the result is certainly stylish. It's well-shot, coolly assured, and smartly paced. Wahlberg leads the movie capably as Jim Bennett, a man from a rich family with a solid career who has nonetheless dug himself to rock bottom with extravagant compulsive gambling. 

The film is at its best when it engages with the question of why someone whose life is granted so much privilege so systematically pisses it all away. John Goodman, typically scene-stealing as a dangerous loan shark, makes many salient points about Jim's decisions, which are either self-destructive or indefensibly stupid.  To its detriment, the film ultimately succumbs to the impulse to romanticize its protagonist, asking the audience to cheer and respect him when he  finally makes his first sound decision.

The supporting cast is largely excellent; it will surprise no one that Jessica Lange wrings every ounce of personality, pathos, and curdled maternal affection from her few minutes of screentime. Even so, she makes little impact on the movie because, like the protagonist, it brushes her away. The Gambler can claim the dubious achievement of completing the Stock Female Character hat trick: (1) a maternal figure who exists to thanklessly prop up the male lead, (2) a pretty young thing (Brie Larson) who we're told is a stone-cold genius, but is given no development arc and has inexplicable romantic interest in the lead, and (3) a passel of nameless and faceless strippers. Slow clap. 

These are not deal-breakers for every moviegoer, but they're emblematic of the film's general reliance on familiar beats instead of showing us something new.

 

The Homesman
BREAKING NEWS: Tommy Lee Jones smiled upwards of twice when introducing his newest film at AFI Fest. He had glowing things to say about the whole cast, particularly  "the miraculous Hilary Swank", who more than earned her praise. The Homesman is a stubbornly unromantic and prickly western, but Swank anchors it with a very fine, emotionally vivid performance.

The Homesman's portrait of life in the Nebraska Territory is bleak; life is hard, and heroism a luxury. When a town meeting is called to order the transport of three mentally ill women (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, and Sonja Richter) back to family in Iowa, their husbands shrink from the task. The staunchly moralistic Mary Bee Cuddy (Swank) takes on the assignment, knowing it will be a miserable and dangerous enterprise, because no one else will do it and she knows it must be done. Upon acquiring a traveling companion in a self-interested claim jumper who may be named George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), she sets off with her dead-eyed charges.

There are many well-conceived notes in the movie. A knife fight over a disinterested captive, Mary Bee silently playing an embroidered set of piano keys for lack of a real instrument, a flashback to a passenger's slow break from sanity-- each hints at a poignancy that never feels realized in the film as a whole. The tone occasionally veers into incongruous places-- Tommy Lee Jones' introduction is oddly slapstick, and there's a vengeful sequence in the third act that would have been more at home in Django Unchained-- and while the story doesn't conform to any expected trajectory, neither does it end as strongly as it began. 

The movie didn't leave me sure exactly what story its makers wanted to tell, or at least, it never convinced me of why they were telling it. Even so, it's at times both moving and starkly beautiful, and will not be easy to forget. 

Wednesday
Jul162014

These Actresses Are Just One of the Guys

abstew here. This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of the my favorite movies growing up, Troop Beverly Hills. (I mistakenly thought the woman with curly red hair on the VHS cover was my beloved Bette Midler, but when I realized it wasn't, I loved the movie too much to care and made my parents rent it at least once a month.) But all those times I watched those Wilderness Girls singing about the virtues of Cookie Time, I never thought that the actress playing Shelley Long's daughter, Hannah Nefler, would grow up to be my absolute favorite singer/songwriter Jenny Lewis. She writes the songs that make me remember that I have feelings. If you opened my chest it would be in the shape of Jenny Lewis.

KStew, singer Jenny Lewis, Brie Larson, and Annie Hathaway

After a brief stint as a child star (even appearing on an episode of The Golden Girls and, more importantly, in the film that introduced the world to Super Mario Brothers 3), she later became the lead singer of the indie band Rilo Kiley. Even though the band broke up in 2011, she hasn't stopped making music and her new album "The Voyager" comes out on July 29th. For the first single, Just One of the Guys, she even enlisted some famous actresses to appear alongside her in the video, which she also directed.

Kristen Stewart, Anne Hathaway, and Brie Larson appear as themselves as her all-in-white back-up band, but then also hilariously take on the personas of some track suit-sporting bros. Annie plays a sensitive, rat-tailed break dancer. Brie actually kinda looks like a cute boy that every girl in middle school would have a crush on because of his non-threatening, vaguely feminine demeanor. And the MVP of the video has to be KStew who seems to be enjoying herself more here than I think I've ever seen her before. I hope some studio executive is watching this video and already casting her as a young rapper in Michigan living on 8 Mile. Or the Justin Beiber story. Cause I've never seen her so free and loose. It's fun to see.

Question #1 These three ladies in drag: Do, Dump, or Marry?

 

 

Lewis probably enlisted Hathaway to appear in the video as she, along with her boyfriend Johnathan Rice (who appeared as Roy Orbison in Walk the Line), composed the music for the indie musical film starring the Oscar-winner, Song Onethat debuted at Sundance earlier in the year. Lewis can also be heard at the movies this summer as she wrote the music for the coming-of-age indie Very Good Girls starring Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen, available now on VOD and in limited release later this month.

Question #2: Which 3 actresses would you cast in your own music video (cross-dressing optional)?