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Thursday, January 30, 2014
A few of our favorite things...
Monday, December 23, 2013
❄ Festive Recipes for your Holidays ❄
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Tuesday, November 26, 2013
This November at IFTTT we’re thankful for…
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Sunday, November 10, 2013
AFI Fest: David O. Russell Sneaks 'American Hustle' First Scene: 'Everybody ...
At the Nov. 8 AFI Fest tribute to David O. Russell, the director screened the first six minutes of the hotly anticipated American Hustle, which stars Christian Bale and Amy Adams as con artists working for federal agent Bradley Cooper.
The audience chuckled at the first words in the clip: 'Some of this actually happened,' and again when Bale, somewhat resembling Tom Cruise's fat Les Grossman character in Tropic Thunder, laboriously and hilariously prepares a bald man's elaborate comb-over, as America's tune 'Horse With No Name' plays on the soundtrack.
VIDEO: David O. Russell's 'American Hustle' Debuts First Full Trailer
Then he joins brassy British-sounding con woman Adams, her braless breasts barely contained by an open shirt, and Cooper's irritably high-strung Brooklyn Federal agent to sweet-talk a mayor ( Jeremy Renner) into accepting an attache case stuffed with cash, to the tune of Steely Dan's 'Dirty Work.' Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Bale's wife, did not appear in the clip, but at the pre-screening party at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, she said, evidently referring to the film, 'I come in with a big pow!'
Despite hours of horrifying sound problems that provoked Russell to walk out of the event briefly, muttering, 'No way!' the clip played well the second time it was screened, when the sound worked. Russell graciously returned to acknowledge the applause. Though it's hard to tell how the whole film will go over, the first scene clearly resonated with the AFI crowd.
Russell noted that American Hustle, a potential Oscar magnet that opens Dec. 13 (and Dec. 18 in wide release), is in the style he discovered with 2010's The Fighter and developed in 2012's Silver Linings Playbook -- a character-based piece rooted in a real story. ' The Fighter was a great revelation to me, about these people, the way they talk, their behavior, their emotion, their romance, their heartbreak,' Russell said. 'In Silver Linings, I took the true story and put my own life into it. In American Hustle, I took some of the true story and made it personal and fictional, so it became a movie.'
Asked what that means, Russell replied, 'It means that I want to focus on the characters more than an event. In American Hustle, there was an event in the '70s where a Bronx-born con artist and his partner in crime -- that's Christian Bale and Amy Adams, a woman from England, or supposed to be from England -- were forced to work for the Federal government, and they taught the government how to con, and how to create a theater to draw other people in, based on what their hopes were. And this was during a recession. So I wanted to make it about those people and their love affair, these two characters, and Christian's wife, really -- that's Jennifer -- a very, as she describes her, 'a Picasso of a passive-aggressive[ness]. Jennifer was very excited about playing someone wildly different from who she's ever played, a real housewife of Long Island.'
'Everybody [is] playing against type,' said Russell. 'Jeremy Renner, who's very guarded typically, play[s] a big, open-hearted Italian mayor of a New Jersey community, who wants to do anything for his community. There's a real romance between him and Christian Bale as well. And Louis CK -- I'm probably answering too many questions.' In fact, Russell didn't answer very many questions about American Hustle, but he well explicated his previous career under Jenelle Riley's gentle interrogation.
When Riley asked what more we can expect from the film, Russell grinned and said, 'Well, there will be sound!'
from newsandtalking.blogspot.com News And Talking
George Clooney Honored by "Great Friend" Julia Roberts at BAFTA Britannia ...
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for AFI
George Clooney may have been the big honoree at tonight's BAFTA Los Angeles Jaguar Britannia Awards in Beverly Hills, but that didn't stop his A-list celeb friend Julia Roberts from cracking some jokes about the Oscar winner.
'I'm normally in my second REM cycle by now so let's get this done,' Roberts joked on stage while presenting Clooney with the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film. 'George Clooney, or as my daughter calls his, 'George Looney.' So, so honored to be here tonight. And there are two obvious reasons why I was chosen to do this.'
'One, was out of town,' she went on. 'Two, , he's in town but he was unavailable. I consider George a friend. We have worked together in many capacities. We have acted together a few times. He's been my producer and my director, all of which he is immeasurably gifted at. He's handsome, he's talented, he is an exemplary humanitarian and a gifted prankster.'
PHOTOS: Clooney & more hot stars in uniform
Clooney was quick to return the compliments. 'It has been such a pleasure to watch the woman you have become,' he gushed. 'Its' very hard for me to be just straight nice because she'll get me later. But just an amazing mother, an amazing wife and a great, great friend. It's really an honor to have her here.'
Before the show, Clooney (sans rumored gals Monika Jakisic or Amal Alamuddin) and Roberts chatted it up during dinner. The former Ocean's Twelve costars were smiling and laughing while catching up.
Other stars who were honored during the bash included Kathryn Bigelow (John Schlesinger Britannia Award for Excellence in Directing), Sacha Baron Cohen (Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for Excellence in Comedy), Benedict Cumberbatch (Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year), (Britannia Humanitarian Award) and Sir Ben Kingsley (Albert R. Broccoli Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Entertainment).
The BAFTA Britannia Awards will be broadcast on BBC America on Nov. 10 at 9 p.m.
PHOTOS: Hollywood party pics
from newsandtalking.blogspot.com News And Talking
Saturday, November 9, 2013
AFI Fest 2013: David O. Russell shows first six minutes of 'Hustle'
David O. Russell unveiled the first six minutes of his latest movie, 'American Hustle,' during a career tribute at Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre on Friday night. And though technical issues with the sound forced the footage to be stopped and restarted, it was clear from watching the opening scenes that the filmmaker is working with the same energetic brio and stylistic command that propelled his last two movies, 'The Fighter' and 'Silver Linings Playbook,' to best picture Oscar nominations.
'Hustle' opens with a long shot of Christian Bale's pot-bellied con artist character preparing for a sting operation by fussing and combing and spraying an elaborate hairpiece in a way that recalls Richard Dreyfus sculpting that mound of mashed potatoes into the Devil Towers Monument in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'
'When you see him with his hair, that's one of the themes of the picture,' Russell tells me in a conversation after the tribute. 'What that is for yourself and your life, when you're constructing something. It's real and it's not real. It's both things. It's the best version of yourself. How long does it serve you and how long does it not serve you?'
From the comb-over, we're then taken into a hotel room where Bale, his partner ( Amy Adams, wearing an insanely plunging neckline) and Bradley Cooper's unhinged FBI agent try to coerce a New Jersey politician ( Jeremy Renner) into taking a cash-filled briefcase while surveillance cameras record them.
Noting Adams' dress and a similarly revealing leather jacket seen in a publicity still, Russell smiled and said, 'I wanted her to wear classic fashion of the '70s, and [costume designer] Michael [Wilkinson] took it where he took it. She was game and she's never been so glamorous or beautiful. She's not like that of course the whole time, but she wears a lot of glamorous clothes. She has 50 wardrobe changes. Five. O.'
Russell also revealed that Robert De Niro's role in the 130-minute 'Hustle' will be vital, featuring the 'Silver Linings' alum in a handful of 'important' scenes. ( Jennifer Lawrence, another member of the 'Silver Linings' ensemble, is in the movie too, playing a volatile housewife.)
'There's a whole bunch of surprises in the movie actually,' Russell told me, coyly. Adding that since Thanksgiving falls late this year, it appears that 'Hustle' will start screening for the media before the November holiday. (The movie opens in theaters on Dec. 13.)
Russell was still writing the film last year while promoting 'Silver Linings Playbook' through the awards-season gauntlet. It's the first time in his career he has made movies in back-to-back years.
'I wouldn't want to do it every year,' Russell says. 'But to have done it this once. ... You know, there are guys like the Coen brothers, I've always been impressed by how prolific they are. Or even Woody Allen. Woody loves being in the river too, the river of storytelling and the narrative. That's what I love. I love being with these characters and their narratives as they're trying to change them or remake them. Narrative is everything. Without narrative, I don't know what anything would be, frankly.
'So you strike while the iron's hot,' Russell continues. ' I don't want to take a break when things are going too well. I'm happiest when I'm telling a story. it's very exciting to me. It keeps me young.'
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from newsandtalking.blogspot.com News And Talking
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