Rachel Abramowitz
March 31, 2009
Steven Bach dies at 70; United Artists executive, author
As a studio executive at United Artists, Steven Bach presided over one of the most notorious debacles in movie history -- the making of 1980's "Heaven's Gate" -- an experience he would later write about in what would become a classic in the Hollywood tell-all genre, the 1985 book "Final Cut."
February 19, 2009
HOLLYWOOD BRIEF
Tomei and Winslet: nudity = Oscar glory?
Take 26. ¶ That's the shot that director Darren Aronofsky used of Marisa Tomei in one of "The Wrestler's" pivotal dance sequences, one in which the 44-year-old Academy Award nominee gyrates and prances, flaunts and slinks -- largely in the nude -- across a real New Jersey club called Cheeques. ¶ That combination of Aronofsky's persistence paired with the time constraints of an indie film budget didn't allow for Tomei to have much reluctance about baring all. "It was just fast and furious," she says, "and there was no room for being shy or for niceties. [The character's] comfortability has to become my comfortability. The diving in needed to happen." ¶ Tomei isn't the only Oscar nominee this year who shed her clothes for the part. Kate Winslet's haunting performance as the enigmatic Hanna Schmitz in "The Reader" involved extensive nudity, sparking one critic to fume that her nakedness trivialized the Holocaust.
January 23, 2009
Robert Downey Jr a bit red-faced on Oscar nod
What does it say about racial politics in America that two days after the first African American president is inaugurated, Robert Downey Jr. is nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for essentially playing a part in blackface?
January 23, 2009
OSCARS
Academy nominations don't give Kate Winslet a double chance
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has forced the cruelest result upon Kate Winslet, nominating her for best actress for her indelible performance as a onetime concentration camp guard in "The Reader" but skipping over her other acclaimed performance as a suffering suburban housewife in "Revolutionary Road," a film that happened to be directed by her husband, Sam Mendes.
December 23, 2008
'10,000 Hours' book a hit with Hollywood
Why is everyone in Hollywood talking about 10,000 hours?
December 12, 2008
GOLDEN GLOBES
Comedy actor, supporting actor noms are good for laughs
There was tittering in the Beverly Hilton ballroom early Thursday morning as Brooke Shields announced the Golden Globes nominees for actor in a comedy or musical. James Franco, she intoned, and there came those giggles. Co-announcer Elizabeth Banks then revealed Tom Cruise as a supporting actor nominee and out burst the laughter again.
November 12, 2008
AWARDS
'Elegy,' 'Frozen River' beating the rush
It pays to be early, or so that was the thinking behind Sony Picture Classics' decision to send out the academy screener of the Sundance hit " Frozen River" back on Sept. 24.
August 12, 2008
HOLLYWOOD BRIEF
'Star Wars' just kid stuff?
I read in the paper last week that tween boys, or young males ages 9 to14, account for $50 billion in spending a year.
August 6, 2008
HOLLYWOOD BRIEF / RACHEL ABRAMOWITZ
Shauna Robertson is just one of the guys
IN HER mind, Shauna Robertson is a 23-year-old guy, always ready with a fart joke, an ever-ready plea for more nudity, and a belly laugh for any raunchy gag.
July 16, 2008
HOLLYWOOD BRIEF
'Mamma Mia!' dances into theaters
MY 9-YEAR-OLD son asked me the other morning why I was dancing around the breakfast table singing "Take a Chance on Me." I don't usually sing in the morning. I definitely don't dance. And I didn't know I knew any ABBA songs (I've never actually bought an album), but there they were -- "S.O.S," "Dancing Queen" and "Mamma Mia" -- bouncing around in my subconscious, like unmoored neurons, suddenly revitalized by an infusion of "Mamma Mia!," the big-screen adaptation of the musical, which I'd seen the night before.
June 25, 2008
HOLLYWOOD BRIEF
Hancock, Obama and the summer of heroes
Sp far this summer, I've had my brain pummeled by Robert Downey Jr. flying around in a techno-suit, Adam Sandler as an invincible (and priapic) former Mossad agent, Steve Carell as a nerdy indestructible super spy, Harrison Ford as a Teflon 60-year-old archaeologist, Edward Norton as the incredibly angry green dude -- which I admit I missed but saw the ads. However, I did catch an early screening of Will Smith as a hung-over but still unbeatable superhero. And I still have "The Dark Knight" and "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" to go.
June 4, 2008
THE HOLLYWOOD BRIEF
Rob Lowe's privacy, nanny woes
Why is Tinseltown such a big, happy family? Every mogul is a fine upstanding citizen, and every diva is really Mother Teresa?
May 24, 2008
THE HOLLYWOOD BRIEF
Mel Gibson reaches out to Britney Spears
There. So Mel Gibson and Britney Spears flew off to Costa Rica together.
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