This year’s Oscar show may have been a critical and ratings flop, but the careers (of at least some) of those involved clearly haven’t suffered as a result. Co-producer Don Mischer has been called back to co-produce the Oscar 2012 ceremony with action filmmaker Brett Ratner; James Franco stars in the well-received The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which is expected to top the North American box office this weekend; and in the above photo Anne Hathaway can be seen riding a, huh, catmobile in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, next year’s blockbuster-of-blockbusters-to-be.
In addition to Hathaway, who three years ago received a Best Actress Oscar nod for Rachel Getting Married, The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Juno Temple, and Matthew Modine. The third installment in the Batman franchise – following Batman Begins and The Dark Knight – The Dark Knight Rises is scheduled to open July 2012. Christopher Nolan co-wrote the screenplay with brother Jonathan Nolan; the screen story is credited to both writer-director Nolan and David S. Goyer.
Photo: Warner Bros.
WPXI captured these fight scenes from The Dark Knight Rises, featuring Christian Bale as Batman and Tom Hardy as Bane. Watching them we can see not only how Christopher Nolan’s fight sequences are done, but also why they can come alive only in the editing room. I’m not at all into violence, but in terms of raw ferocity, the fight sequence between Marlene Dietrich and Una Merkel in George Marshall’s 1939 Western Destry Rides Again would put Batman and Bane to shame.
As per The Huffington Post, the clip above shows a brawl between Gotham City Police and Arkham Asylum inmates. The snowflakes aren’t real, of course. We’re in the height of one of the worst summers on record.
In addition to Bale and Hardy, The Dark Knight Rises stars Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Juno Temple, and Matthew Modine. The third installment in the Batman franchise – following Batman Begins and the megablockbuster The Dark Knight – The Dark Knight Rises is scheduled to open in July 2012.
The Dark Knight Rises poster, or rather, teaser poster, is out. In it, Gotham City comes crumbling down as a result of a) meteor b) terrorist attack c) earthquake d) another stock market crash e) global warming f) who the hell knows?
Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy appropriately began with Batman Begins in 2005 and went on to break box office records of various sorts with The Dark Knight in 2008. Unfortunately, Heath Ledger can’t return for The Dark Knight Rises, but Christian Bale, now an Oscar winner, will be back. Whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent depends on how much you enjoy Bale’s performance as Bruce Wayne/the Caped Crusader.
Others in the Dark Knight Rises cast are Inception troopers Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, and Michael Caine; in addition to Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Juno Temple, Matthew Modine, Tom Conti, and Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. Christopher Nolan co-wrote the screenplay with brother Jonathan Nolan.
The Dark Knight Rises is scheduled to open July 20.
W.E. photo showing Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson and James D’Arcy as King Edward VIII temporarily removed at the request of The Weinstein Company. We’ll post another W.E. image once it becomes available. Our apologies to visitors. On the right are the real Wallis Simpson with the former King Edward VIII.
Abbie Cornish, Oscar Isaac, James D’Arcy, and Andrea Riseborough star in Madonna’s W.E., a drama about two different love stories, set in two different eras and in two different places. The Weinstein Company has picked up W.E. for distribution in North America; the film will open on December 9. We’ll see whether Madonna lands a Best Director nomination or if she goes the Barbra Streisand route.
W.E., which will premiere out of competition at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, is described as a romantic drama “focusing on the affair between King Edward VIII [James D’Arcy] and American divorcée Wallis Simpson [Andrea Riseborough] and a contemporary romance between a married woman [Abbie Cornish] and a Russian security guard [Oscar Isaac].”
Photo: The Weinstein Company. Synopsis: IMDb.
Andrew Garfield is Spider-Man
Andrew Garfield is a radical departure from Tobey Maguire, the star of the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man movies of the first decade of the 21st century. Garfield, perhaps best known for his performance as The Jilted One (that’s Eduardo Saverin) in David Fincher’s Academy Award-nominated The Social Network, is the star of Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man.
Directed by Marc Webb, fresh off the unexpected success of (500) Days of Summer, a romantic comedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, The Amazing Spider-Man also features Emma Stone, Campbell Scott, Sally Field, Martin Sheen, Rhys Ifans, C. Thomas Howell, Julianne Nicholson, and Irrfan Khan. The Amazing Spider-Man is scheduled to open on July 3, 2012.
Andrew Garfield The Amazing Spider-Man photo: Columbia Pictures.
Emma Stone, Andrew Garfield, The Amazing Spider-Man
Emma Stone replaces Kirsten Dunst, Andrew Garfield replaces Tobey Maguire, and Marc Webb replaces Sam Raimi in The Amazing Spider-Man. The latest Spider-Man reboot will open July 3, 2012.
The Amazing Spider-Man also features Campbell Scott, Sally Field, Martin Sheen, Rhys Ifans, C. Thomas Howell, Julianne Nicholson, and Irrfan Khan. As per the IMDb, screenplay credit goes to Academy Award winner Alvin Sargent (Julia, Ordinary People), Steve Kloves (of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and every other Harry Potter movie ever made), and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac and the upcoming Total Recall remake). Peter Parker/Spider-Man is a Stan Lee-Steve Ditko creation.
Photo: Columbia Pictures.
Anne Hathaway Catwoman featurette: The Dark Knight Rises DVD
Nov. 23 update: Anne Hathaway as Catwoman is discussed in The Dark Knight Rises DVD featurette about the making of the final installment in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Those DVD featurettes are almost invariably nothing more than promos for those involved in the filmmaking process. This one, if the Catwoman clip made available by Warner Bros. is any indication, is no exception. (Please scroll down to check out the Anne Hathaway / Catwoman featurette clip.)
For instance, The Dark Knight Rises co-producer Emma Thomas, plugging Anne Hathaway’s work on the film, marvels – while conjuring up the ghost of Ginger Rogers: “I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for [Anne Hathaway]. She was having to do the most amazing stuff, and having to do it backwards and in high heels.”
Anne Hathaway Oscar nod for The Dark Knight Rises?
A Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Anne Hathaway? Well, Hathaway will likely get a nod in that category for Tom Hooper’s upcoming Les Misérables – and, when it comes to actors, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences allows only one nomination per category.
The Best Actress field would be a possibility if Warner Bros. were to push Hathaway in that direction, but even that particular category is quite competitive, with the likes of Hathaway’s The Dark Knight Rises fellow player Marion Cotillard (for the French drama Rust and Bone), Jennifer Lawrence, Emmanuelle Riva, Naomi Watts, Keira Knightley, and about ten other potential nominees (but no clear frontrunner[s] so far).
Anne Hathaway: The Dark Knight Rises’ Ginger Rogers
Now, what does Ginger Rogers have to do with Catwoman? That’s Emma Thomas’ “doing it backwards and in high heels” bit. Katharine Hepburn supposedly once said that Rogers was as good a dancer as Fred Astaire, as she follow his every step while “doing it backwards and in high heels.”
As the end of the Catwoman featurette clip below reminds you, The Dark Knight Rises will be available on DVD / Blu-ray on December 4. Directed by Christopher Nolan, TDKR was co-written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan, who were at least partly inspired by Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Besides Anne Hathaway and Marion Cotillard, the TDKR cast includes Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Morgan Freeman, Matthew Modine, and Tom Conti.
Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises image: Warner Bros.
The Dark Knight Rises: Three new posters surface online
The Dark Knight Rises had several other posters that never made it to billboards and computer screensavers around the globe. Now, Trailer Park, the marketing company that created the posters for TDKR distributor Warner Bros., has posted on their website three of those. The most striking – and the most different from the posters used during the Dark Knight Rises marketing blitz – is the one picture above. Another poster features Bane in his trademark “Come and Get It” pose, while another yet has the word FEAR printed on it. (Above, The Dark Knight Rises previously unseen poster.)
A major worldwide box office hit, The Dark Knight Rises turned out to be a domestic letdown of sorts. Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman movie failed to live up to expectations in the United States, where critical reception was mostly positive but not nearly as overwhelmingly enthusiastic as it had been for The Dark Knight four years earlier.
In any case, The Dark Knight Rises didn’t do too badly for a “letdown.” The third Batman flick grossed $1.08 billion worldwide ($447.91 million in North America), is a potential (though not necessarily “likely”) Best Picture Academy Award contender, and on December 4 it comes out on DVD/Blu-ray – surely to become a home video blockbuster as well. (For the record: the first Christopher Nolan-Christian Bale Batman collaboration was Batman Begins, released in 2005.)
The Dark Knight Rises cast
In addition to Christian Bale as Batman a.k.a. Bruce Wayne, The Dark Knight Rises features Tom Hardy as the evil Bane, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate.
Other TDKR cast members include Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Matthew Modine, and Tom Conti.
Written by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan, The Dark Knight Rises’ basic theme was inspired by Charles Dickens’ novel of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities.
2 comments
Dark Knight Rises, the best movie I have ever seen :)
A letdown? Since when is almost $450 million in North America alone and over $1 billion worldwide a letdown, especially when it had to overcome the fact that there was this little shooting in a movie theater you may have heard of, no 3D, and no A-List villain to draw in fans (since people always say the Joker is a big reason why TDK did so well). If anything the very high profile shooting had to keep a lot of people away and it still made a lot of money despite it, I’d call that anything but a letdown.