Oscar Spotlight: Jean Dujardin Finds His Voice

February 25, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Awards, Features Leave a comment

In our new Oscar Spotlight series we take a look at four rising stars who have this year become Oscar nominees for the first time. In a year filled with incredible performances, only one of our chosen actors was a shoo-in. The other three were all (welcome) surprise nominees. Taken from each of the four acting categories, we present …

Jean Dujardin Finds His VoiceThe biggest surprise on Oscar nomination day would have come if Jean Dujardin had not been nominated for Best Actor, considering the French actor had been winning nearly every award for Best Actor since “The Artist” premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

But “The Artist” very nearly wasn’t made, and Dujardin’s journey to potential Oscar glory was not an easy one.

Nicknamed “France’s George Clooney”, Dujardin was, and let’s face it still is, very much an unknown in Hollywood. He began his career on French TV as a a comic actor before transitioning into film with the 2005 spoof surfer movie, “Brice de Nice” in which he played a dead-beat surfer obsessed with Patrick Swayze’s character Bodhi in “Point Break.” Director and frequent Dujardin collaborator Michel Hazanavicius had wanted to create a silent film for years but, according to Hazanavicius, no one would take the film seriously and help finance it. When the director and star began to gain commercial success in France with a series of Bond spoofs “OSS 117″, producers started to pay attention – and soon Hazanavicius, Dujardin and Berenice Bejo were filming in Los Angeles.

Oscar Spotlight: Jonah Hill Gets Serious

February 24, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Awards, Features Leave a comment

In this new series “Oscar Spotlight” we take a look at four rising stars who have this year become Oscar nominees for the first time. In a year filled with incredible performances, only one of our chosen actors was a shoo-in. The other three were all (welcome) surprise nominees. Taken from each of the four acting categories, we present …

Jonah Hill Gets Serious

As Melissa McCarthy captures her first Academy Award nomination for a comedic performance, for funny man Jonah Hill it took playing against type to garner his first nomination.

Hill got his big break working with producer/director Judd Apatow in 2005, in a small supporting role in “The 40 Year Old Virgin“. They worked together again in “Knocked Up”, so it was perhaps unsurprising when Apatow upgraded Hill to play the lead opposite Michael Cera in a little movie you may have heard of called “Superbad”. Hill’s ability to mix crass high school humor with a serious coming-of-age friendship won over audiences and critics alike, and Hill began to get his pick of comedic roles, going on to work with Russell Brand in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and the sequel “Get Him to the Greek” and then with Apatow again in 2009′s “Funny People”.

In 2010, Hill worked with John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei in “Cyrus”, a film about a mother and son’s unconventional relationship. Though it garnered mixed critical reception, it was perhaps a bit of foreshadowing that something more serious was in Hill’s repertoire. Even so, Hill flew in the face of all of our expectations by successfully taking on the role of Peter Brand, a genius number cruncher who helps Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) recruit baseball players on a budget for the Oakland A’s in Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball”, a film that had been in development hell for years, going through three rewrites and three different directors. It was worth the wait for the filmmakers though: “Moneyball” garnered a total of six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Oscar Spotlight: Melissa McCarthy And How The Academy Gained A Sense Of Humor

February 23, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Awards, Features 2 Comments

Melissa McCarthy And How The Academy Gained A Sense Of Humor

It’s rare for the Academy to nominate, let alone vote for, a comedy (it’s a known fact that if you put any of the following together – mental illness, the Holocaust, overcoming adversity or a biopic on Someone Important - you’re looking at a film jostling for an award). So when the crude laugh-out-loud film “Bridesmaids” began to gain serious traction on the awards circuit, and then garnered two Academy Award nominations including one for Best Supporting Actress, it was one of the biggest eyebrow-raising surprises of the morning.

For Melissa McCarthy, awards recognition has come suddenly, after a long and celebrated career on the small screen. Between 2000 and 2007, McCarthy played Sookie St James, the scatter-brained best friend of Lorelai Gilmore in The WB’s “Gilmore Girls”, but it wasn’t until 2011 that she won her first Emmy, as one half of CBS sitcom “Mike and Molly.”

And just a few months later, Oscar came calling too.

Oscar Spotlight: The Rise And Rise Of Rooney Mara

February 22, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Awards, Features 1 Comment

The rise and rise of Rooney Mara

On January 24th 2012, actress Jennifer Lawrence and Academy President Tom Sherak announced the 2012 Academy Award nominations. Sherak began to call out the Best Actress nominees, “Glenn Close .. Viola Davis … Rooney Mara … ” and for those who had followed Mara from the beginning, it was finally deserved and well-earned recognition.

Born in April 1985, Mara began her career on television in 2005, and by 2009 had landed her first film role, opposite Emma Roberts in “The Winning Season”. The young actress went on to film Michael Cera’s “Youth In Revolt” and the remake of horror film “The Nightmare on Elm Street” before winning the most important role of her career – as Erica Albright, Mark Zuckerburg’s girlfriend in David Fincher’s “The Social Network”.

Let’s Stay Together: Five recent onscreen couples we would like to see reunited ASAP

February 17, 2012 | Posted by Linda Ge and Rebecca Lewis in Features 2 Comments

We’ve said it before, but there is certainly a trend happening right now amongst the rising stars in Hollywood, and we, for one, love it. Great chemistry is like capturing lightening in a bottle, so it stands to reason that when you pair up two actors who have that elusive indefinable quality, you should hold onto it. There used to be a good ol’ Hollywood tradition of popular, iconic screen couples reuniting again and again to the delight of audiences and we would welcome it back with open arms.

Lawrence and Cooper, Gosling and Stone, Hedlund and Stewart, Edgerton and Chastain, they’re all bucking with recent industry playbooks and reuniting on screen almost immediately after doing one movie together. Who says you have to wait 10+ years like DiCaprio and Winslet?

In that spirit, we present five other recent onscreen couplings that we loved and that we are already eagerly anticipating reunions for.

Douglas Smith joins Logan Lerman and Jake Abel in “Percy Jackson” sequel

February 16, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Casting 2 Comments

Despite lackluster box office returns for the first film, Fox 2000 are continuing with their Percy Jackson franchise.

The first flick “Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief“, based on the book by Rick Riordan, was released in 2010 and starred Logan Lerman as Jackson, a teenager who discovers he’s the descendant of a Greek god and sets out on an adventure to settle an on-going battle between the gods.

Also starring Alexandra Daddario, Brandon T. Jackson and Jake Abel, the second film, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters” sees Jackson and his friends head into the Sea of Monsters to find the mythical Golden Fleece.

Variety reports that Douglas Smith, star of TV’s “Big Love”, has joined the cast although no word yet on who, or what, he might be playing.

Smith is a relative unknown to Hollywood audiences. The young actor played a young Brendon Fraser in 1999′s “Blast From The Past” and then various bit roles on TV shows. In the next year, the 26 year old has the sci-fi thriller “Antiviral” with Sarah Gadon and Caleb Landry Jones, and the amusingly-titled “The Boy Who Smells Like Fish“, alongside Zoe Kravitz.

Max Mingella will be “Not Safe For Work” in Universal’s low budget thriller alongside Eloise Mumford

February 14, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Casting Leave a comment

Here’s a new and interesting take on the “killer plus innocent bystander” storyline.

Variety reports that Max Minghella is in talks to star in Universal’s low-budget thriller “Not Safe For Work”, playing “a young paralegal trapped in an office with a killer on a secret mission to destroy files and anyone that stands in his path”. Eloise Mumford will play his girlfriend.

To be directed by Joe Johnston, from a script by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason, the film will be Minghella’s first lead role, after starring with George Clooney in “Syriana” and “The Ides of March”, playing Armie Hammer’s business partner in “The Social Network” and then opposite Emile Hirsch in the poorly-received “The Darkest Hour“.

Mumford, most recognisable for TV roles, is set to star alongside Miley Cyrus in “So Undercover”, out March this year, and is currently filming “Drones”, about the pilots of an unnamed air force done working above the skies in Afghanistan.

Gina Carano set for a second action role “In The Blood”

February 14, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Casting 2 Comments

“Haywire” star Gina Carano is set to once again showcase her martial arts, and hopefully improve on the acting skills, in a second action thriller “In The Blood“.

Carano was an international mixed martial arts star before being chosen by director Steven Soderbergh to headline “Haywire” after seeing her in action. In “In The Blood”, Carano will play a wife who pursues two men whom she believes to have caused the disappearance of her husband.

The film has been scripted by Bennett Yellin and James Robert Johnston, and will be helmed by John Stockwell.

Director Stockwell told The Hollywood Reporter, “This role will showcase not only Gina’s fighting skills, but also her acting abilities as her character struggles to reign in her violent past.”

Watch: Kiera Knightley and Steve Carell go “Seeking A Friend At The End of The World”

February 10, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Videos Leave a comment

In a role unlike perhaps anything else we’ve seen her in, British actress and Oscar nominee Kiera Knightley joined Steve Carell in the apocalyptic comedy “Seeking A Friend At The End of The World”, and Yahoo have today revealed the first trailer.

After it is announced that an asteroid is set to hit Earth in three weeks, the duo embark on a journey to find Carell’s lost love. Also starring Patton Oswalt, Melanie Lynskey and Rob Cordry, this first trailer strikes the right balance between comedy, hope, despair, and asks the ultimate question – just what would you do if you knew the end of the world was in three weeks’ time?

“Seeking A Friend At The End of The World” is set for release on June 22nd 2012.

Selena Gomez gets animated as Dracula’s daughter in Adam Sandler’s “Hotel Transylvania”

February 10, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Casting Leave a comment

Disney star Selena Gomez is beginning to make quite the name for herself in Hollywood. The tween actress, who broke out in the TV show “Wizards of Waverly Place”, has in the last few months been cast in Hot Mess (which was a Black List script), joined an indie flick, Spring Breakers, and in the ultimate sign of taking control of her own career, optioned the rights for a teen novel called “The Sky Is Everywhere” in which she will star.

Now she’s going down the animated route, voicing the daughter of Dracula in Adam Sandler’s Hotel Transylvania. The role was originally intended for another Disney actress, Miley Cyrus, but reports say that Cyrus dropped out in order to take more time to figure out where her career is heading.

Hotel Transylvania follows Dracula (Sandler), “who operates a high-end resort away from the human world and goes into panic mode when a boy discovers the place and falls for the Count’s teen-aged daughter.”

Gomez is about to start shooting Spring Breakers, which also stars Vanessa Hudgens, James Franco and Ashley Benson, and follows four college-aged girls who, after being arrested for robbing a fast-food restaurant, cross paths with a drug dealer who enlists their help in killing his rival.

Hotel Transylvania is set for release in September.

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