Wilmington on Movies: Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer

  Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer (One and a Half Stars) U.S.: John Schultz, 2011 Hard to believe. But there really is a move called “Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer.”  And yes, it really is based on a popular kiddie book of the same title, about energetic third grader Judy and…

Friday Estimates: June 10, 2011

Super 8 opened to a modest 13. But this was a a mega-launch compared to Relativity’s Judy Moody, whose numbers rhyme with the title.

Wilmington on Movies: Super 8

  Super 8 (Four Stars) U.S.: J. J. Abrams, 2011 Remember what it was like when you were 12? 14? Twelve, wishing you were fourteen? Remember how magical the world was then? And how magical the movies were: the ones that you really loved and remembered and were really affected by? For me, that was 1958 and…

DP/30 Emmywatch: Covert Affairs, actor Piper Perabo

Piper Perabo has stretched in ways that few saw coming after she broke out in Coyote Ugly, years ago. She’s six episodes into her second season of Covert Affairs on USA Network, and we sat down to chat for the second time this year.

Digital Nation: ‘Viva Riva!’ … think ‘Harder They Come’ in Africa

Remember the jolt of excitement you experienced watching “The Harder They Come,” “City of God” and “Amores Perros” for the first time? How raw depictions of violence, sex, corruption and poverty flowed organically from the directors’ choices of actors, locations and music, whose singularity couldn’t have been faked or synthesized? These stories may have been…

DP/30 Emmywatch: Glee actor/Shameless writer, Mike O’Malley

Mike O’Malley has had a long career as an actor. But he’s become more than “I know that guy from somewhere” (like “Yes, Dear” or “My Name is Earl”) with his role as Kurt Hummel’s kind, generous, very heterosexual father on “Glee.” Meanwhile, he has also embraced a second career as a television writer, on staff for the American remake of “Shameless.”

The DVD Wrapup: True Grit, Another Year, Just Go With It, Carancho, Night Flight, The Housemaid, The Big C, White Collar … …

True Grit: Blu-ray There is a considerable difference between the re-making a classic movie for contemporary tastes and the re-adaptation of a novel, based primarily on a re-interpretation of the source material. While staying true to the original version of “True Grit” – for which, in 1969, John Wayne was awarded an Academy Award as…

DP/30: Beginners, writer/director Mike Mills

Mike Mills wrote and directed this personal tale of a father (Christopher Plummer) who comes out of the closet after mother passes… and the son (Ewan MacGregor) who struggles to learn the lessons of his life.

DP/30 Emmywatch: Parks & Recreation, actor Nick Offerman

You probably recognize him, even with a full beard in place of his trademark Parks & Recreation mustache and high hair. We spoke to Offerman in his studio, where he has a second life, as a nationally-renowned master wood worker.

Review: Super 8 (spoilers noted)

There is something disheartening about not liking something that is trying so very hard to get you to like it. And Super 8 jumps up on your lap and purrs and licks your face. It does everything it can to get you to feel like you were touching a member of the opposite sex for the first time and not being able to catch your breath. But it stops short of any real intimacy, a series of rose-colored moments that never get the viewer dirty, in the best or the worst sense of that word.

Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. True Grit

PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW. True Grit (Four Stars) U.S.: Ethan and Joel Coen, 2010 (Paramount)        The Western is one of the great America movie myths, and the Coen Brothers’ new version of Charles Portis’ novel, “True Grit” seems to me one of the great movie Westerns.  America movies and American literature should join hands…

SIFF Dispatch: Meeting Elmo

Suddenly I find myself next to Clash and Elmo. I don’t usually get starstruck, but suddenly I’m five years old, a shy schoolgirl. Sesame Street memories, part and parcel of my own very earliest awareness of a world wider than the place in which I lived, flood through me, and I feel a soul-deep stirring of memory and emotion as everything the words “Sesame Street” evoke rushes through me.

DP/30 Emmy Watch: Mildred Pierce, actress Evan Rachel Wood

As famous for her personal life as for her acting, at 23, Evan Rachel Wood seems to have clarity and confidence in both arenas. After 18 years in The Business, she just keeps getting better. In Todd Haynes’ take on Mildred Pierce, she doesn’t arrive in the film for almost 4 hours… and then, steals scene after scene after scene opposite some of the best “older” actors in the world.

The Weekend Report: June 5, 2011

The opening of X-Men: First Class provided the franchise with a strong re-boot and the new chapter easily led weekend ticket sales with an estimated $56.1 million.

All those folk that fell in love with the movies in the 1970s and 1980s have found the likes of Midnight in Paris and The Tree of Life and have provided Beginners with a good start. These shifts in movie going trends are receiving close scrutiny in the industry and one can expect release patterns to see at least nominal change from rather entrenched patterns dating back to 1989 including a few high profile debuts in March and October.

Friday Estimates: June 3, 2011

X-Men: First Class is the only wide-release opener this weekend, but competition doesn’t seem to be as much as issue as the reboot. The launch is pretty much in line with the opening say of the first film in the franchise, 11 years ago.,

DP/30 Emmy Watch: Mad Men, actress Kiernan Shipka

Showbiz can be hard on an 11-year-old in this town, but Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka seems to get through it with a smile. After a season in which her character, Sally Draper, seemed clearer on reality than her dad, Don, we decided to talk to the young actress.

Wilmington on Movies: X-Men: First Class

(Two and a Half Stars) U.S.: Matthew Vaughn, 2011 Maybe I’m getting tired of super-heroes and super-heroines. Or maybe X-Men: First Class just has too many of them. In any case, the latest Marvel movie, by my reckoning, puts a first-rate cast into a third-rate story, nearly saves it with first or second rate production…

DP/30 Emmy Watch: Luther, actor idris Elba

Idris Elba is currently featured in the hit movie, Thor, but his turn in the BBC series “Luther,” and his supporting turn on Showtime’s “The BIg C” have got people talking Emmy. Spend a half-hour with the rising star in this DP/30 interview.

Wilmington on DVDs: Pick of the Week, Box Set. Marlon Brando

PICK OF THE WEEK: BOX SET Greatest Classic Legends: Marlon Brando (Four Stars) U.S.: Various Directors, 1951-1967 (TCM/Warner) Marlon Brando, America‘s finest movie actor by general consensus, began his career at the top, in his early 20s, with a revolutionary stage and film performance — as Stanley Kowalski in playwright/screenwriter Tennessee Williams’ and director Elia…

The DVD Wrapup: Drive Angry, Once Upon a Time in the West, Adua & Her Friends, A Clockwork Orange, Undertow, The Joke, Passion Play, Kaboom, Harvest …

Drive Angry: Blu-ray Apparently, the only person unaware that Nicolas Cage’s career is stuck in replay mode is Cage, himself. If the Oscar-winner is disturbed by how predictable he’s become since “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Honeymoon in Vegas” and “Moonstruck” put him on the A-list – and roles in “Face/Off,” “Adaptation” and “World Trade Center” further…