Venice Film Festival: Lido To Launch Pics From Ford, Gibson, Malick & More As Awards Season Starts To Buzz – Full List
The roster for the 73rd Venice Film Festival is being unveiled this morning in Rome. At a press conference just getting underway, Artistic Director Alberto Barbera will announce the titles that make up this year’s edition of the world’s oldest fest which takes place on the Lido beginning August 31. Venice kicks off the early fall triumvirate which also includes Toronto and Telluride, and which roundly offers up awards season contenders.
An In Conversation event will be held with a screening of footage from Sing which is world premiering in Toronto the next week.
Sing director explains why Matthew McConaughey was the perfect choice to play a koala
Illumination Entertainment has had a string of successes with two Despicable Me films, their spin-off Minions, and The Secret Life of Pets, which is currently dominating the box office. Now, the production company is hoping to continue its hot streak with its next film, Sing.
The animated movie, which hits theaters in December, sees Matthew McConaughey voice a koala struggling to save his theater. He decides his best option is to stage a singing competition. Rounding out the all-star cast is Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, John C. Reilly, Taron Edgerton, Seth MacFarlane, and Tori Kelly.
EW talked to the film’s writer and director, Garth Jennings (A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) about making his first animated film, creating a made-up world from scratch, and why McConaughey was the perfect choice to voice a koala.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How much work do you have left on the film?
GARTH JENNINGS: We’re finally emerging from the end of the movie-making process. I just walked back from having approved the last shot of animation, which is a big deal for me — it’s a milestone. You literally have called within 30 seconds of being done, so this is fun.
During your career you’ve done a number of music videos and a few live-action films, so why did you now want to do an animated film?
It wasn’t so much the case of wanting to do an animated film, it was just when I sat down and met with Chris Meledandri (Illumination’s CEO) and we talked about a story [that] I just wanted to do, and of course it happened to be animated. I use to do a lot of animated films when I was at art school. That was an easy way of making a short film, because you could make it on a table top with plastering, and you didn’t need to rent a car or any of the stuff, so it was a pretty convenient way of telling stories. I was writing it for Illumination, and then Chris asked me if I’d like to come and direct it, by which time I had fallen in love with the whole world, the characters, the story, everything, so it was very, very easy decision to make.
Reese’s upcoming animated musical comedy Sing will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September:
Toronto To Open With ‘The Magnificent Seven’; ‘La La Land’, ‘Deepwater Horizon’ Among Galas & Presentations
The 41st edition of the Toronto Film Festival will open with Sony and MGM’s The Magnificent Seven, as Deadline predicted last night. The Antoine Fuqua-directed remake of the classic 1960s Western stars Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Haley Bennett and Peter Sarsgaard. It marks latest collaboration between Fuqua and Toronto. Fuqua brought Training Day and leading man Washington to TIFF 15 years ago.
The announcement was made this morning at a news conference presided over by TIFF director and chief executive Piers Handling and artistic director Cameron Bailey. The 41st edition of the festival runs September 8-18.
The closing-night film will be Kelly Fremon’s The Edge Of Seventeen, starring Hallee Steinfeld and Woody Harrelson. Other films selected for this year’s festival include Oliver Stone’s Snowden, David Oyelowo-Lupita Nyong’o starrer Queen Of Katwe, Amma Asante’s A United Kingdom, Jeff Nichol’s Loving, Gemma Arterton starrer Their Finest and much-anticipated musical LaLaLand, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.
A traditional launchpad for awards season, Toronto will see indies and studios go up against each other as they send their eagerly anticipated fare into the marketplace for the first time. Last year’s big winner was Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, starring Brie Larson. In addition to winning the coveted Audience Award, the film also went on to earn Larson an Academy Award for best actress and noms for best film.
Here’s the full list of galas and special presentations:
Moviefone reminded us that Legally Blonde celebrates its 15th anniversary this week, having been released in US cinemas on July 13th 2001! Legally Blonde launched Reese firmly into the Hollywood A-list, and gave us the timeless character of Elle Woods. We’ll be posting more Legally Blonde related updates for you this week, but to start with, here is Moviefone’s article with some little-known facts about the comedy …
‘Legally Blonde’: 10 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Reese Witherspoon Hit
It’s been 15 years since Reese Witherspoon taught us all how to do the bend-and-snap.
“Legally Blonde” was released this week, on July 13, 2001, and it turned Witherspoon into a bankable leading lady after a decade in movies. It also spawned two sequels and a Broadway musical, as well as launching a jillion GIFs and memes. But as many times as you’ve watched Elle Woods triumph over sexism and stereotyping, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes dish on the film that you may not know. Here’s how it all came together — the hot pink wardrobe, the hair, and Harvard Law School.
1. “Legally Blonde” started as a series of letters home from Stanford Law School, written by first-year student Amanda Brown, that made fun of the classmates who were ostracizing her. (She found herself on the outs after laughing at the campus feminists’ attempt to change “semester” to “ovester,” a joke that made it all the way into the movie.) The letters became the manuscript for a novel, which the publisher plucked from the slush pile because it was the only one written on pink paper. MGM soon bought the film rights and hired “10 Things I Hate About You” screenwriters Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah to adapt it.
2. 25-year-old Australian filmmaker Robert Luketic was hired to direct, though he’d never made a feature film before. He landed the job on the basis of his short film “Titsiana Booberini,” a 12-minute CinemaScope musical comedy about a supermarket checkout girl whose co-workers bully her because of her hairy upper lip. The short screened at Colorado’s Telluride Film Festival, and Luketic claims that it played so well that he had an agent, a manager, and a studio deal within 40 minutes of the screening.
3. The studio had other stars in mind for Elle, including Christina Applegate, Katherine Heigl, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alicia Silverstone, and Charlize Theron, as well as non-blondes Jennifer Love Hewitt and Milla Jovovich. Even Tori Spelling (whose mansion was across the street from Elle’s childhood home, according to the script) was on the list. But Luketic insisted on Reese Witherspoon after watching her in “Election.” “I wanted someone with gravitas and brains,” he explained.
Australian TV show ‘Sunday Night’ aired a feature on Reese’s producing partnership with Aussie Bruna Papandrea last night – I can’t find the full episode online for us yet, but here is a clip:
A fantastic and lengthy trailer for Reese’s upcoming animated musical comedy Sing has been released today! Reese voices Rosita the Pig. The movie hits US cinemas on December 21st.
Reese graces one of the covers (there are 4 different ones) of the July issue of UK Glamour magazine, which is their annual Women Of The Year issue. Reese is their ‘Entrepreneur’ of the year – congrats Reese! It’s a reprint of her 2015 US cover, but it’s always nice to see her on a cover again. Pick up a copy today, and see the scans in our Gallery:
The Morning Show (2019) Seasons 1 & 2 available now on AppleTV+
Season 3 coming in 2023 Role: Bradley Jackson Genre: Apple TV+ Series - Drama News / Info / Photos / Official Site
Your Place Or Mine (2023) On Netflix now Role: Debbie Genre: Romantic comedy News / Info / Photos / Official Site
Legally Blonde 3 (202?) In production Role: Elle Woods Genre: Comedy News / Info / Photos / Official Site
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