Adam is a simplistic story that succeeds thanks to two excellent lead performances. This isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but it contains enough enjoyable aspects to become a memorable entry in the romance genre. With the recent wave of crappy rom-coms, an actual good love story is more than welcomed.
The story revolves around a lonely man with Asperger’s Syndrome named Adam (Hugh Dancy). After the passing of his father, Adam becomes even more reclusive. But when a new neighbor moves in next store named Beth (Rose Byrne), Adam soon finds his first love. Beth at first is intrigued by Adam’s oddball persona and childlike wonder. Soon she finds out about Adam’s condition and she doesn’t mind. She’s fully enticed by Adam. Why shouldn’t she be? He’s a well hearted man that’s only well intention. Of course Adam feels the same way about Beth, who had the case of “love at first sight.” Beth may have to deal with the annoying opinion on the matter from her family, but her love for Adam renders their opinions useless.
American Violet is based on the true story of Dee Roberts who is a single mom who struggles to make ends meet in a small Texas town. When the cops arrest her in a drug sweep, she insists on her innocence. Refusing a plea bargain that would allow her to avoid jail time, Roberts decides stands up against a corrupt law enforcement and judicial system. The film stars Nicole Beharie (The Express), Tim Blake Nelson (O’ Brother Where Art Thou), Xzibit (Gridiron Gang), Will Patton (Remember the Titans), and Michael O’Keef (Michael Clayton). Anyway, I was lucky enough to have a sit down with the film’s star Nicole Beharie and the writer/producer Bill Haney. Here’s the result:
How did you get attached?
Nicole Beharie: That’s weird (laughs), I auditioned for the part. I got like a stack of scripts from my agency and I read a whole bunch of them, and quite frankly some of them were garbage. This one I was just moved by enough so that I actually had a dream about it. So I called my agency and asked if I could go in for the part, and when I went in I was moved by Bill and Tim, and what they said about there investment and how they had actually been to the town and they’ve been working on it for like six years. So I knew I wanted to have a part in this regardless if I played the main character or whoever. I wanted to have a part in it, because I thought it was important and then from there I got the part (laughs) which is kind of amazing.
Here is our third episode of The Film Stage Podcast in which we review Greg Mottola’s Adventureland. Recorded by Jordan Raup, Dan Mecca and guest John Ranic, you can stream it below or download the mp3:
JustJared has leaked on set photos of Nicolas Cage (Knowing) and Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder) on set forThe Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The film is inspired by Disney’s Fantasia and is directed by John Turtletaub (National Treasure).
Nicolas Cage’s newest film, Knowing came out atop of the box office this past weekend grossing just shy of $25 million in ticket sales domestically according to Box Office Mojo. This marks a strong showing for Cage considering the numerous competition he faced from films like the comedy I Love You, Man, which debuted in second place with $18 million and the thriller Duplicity with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen which came in third place grossing about $14 million. This also makes a win for Knowing‘s distributor Summit which has been on a hot streak after produced last year’s hit Twilight.
Woah, Time Magazine reports James Cameron’s 3-D sci-fi action epic, Avatar is costing quite the bank. It is reported that “more than a thousand people have worked on it, at a cost in excess of $300 million, and it represents digital filmmaking’s bleeding edge.” Interviewer Josh Quittner saw some footage saying; “I couldn’t tell what was real and what was animated-even knowing that the 9-ft.-tall blue, dappled dude couldn’t possibly be real. The scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora [the world in which the film takes place] were real.” He goes on to say; “Spielberg predicts it will be the biggest 3-D live-action film ever.”
Firstshowing explains that according to IMDb, the most expensive film ever made was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End with a reported $300 million budget. Although, we’ve heard that Spider-Man 3 pushed well beyond its reported $258 million budget upwards of $350 million. Of course, budgets like this are never officially reported, but if the first number we’re hearing related to Avatar is already $300 million, we could even hear higher amounts later on in the year. I’m not surprised that Avatar is already up that high, as Cameron has invested so much in both the technology and production and has been working on this for years.
Avatar is set for a December 18th, 2009 release.
Do you think Avatar deliver? Especially with this massive budget?
UPDATE: Time made a correction. The correct budget is $200 million.
The latest sci-fi flick by director Alex Proyas is an impressive and surprisingly ambitious film. Proyas is the genius behind Dark City and The Crow, and yes he also did I, Robot,but it is easy to give him a pass for that mindless action spectacle since he didn’t have creative control. Where does Knowing stand compared to those movies? Its by no means on level of with Dark City andThe Crow, but it does manage to excel beyond I, Robot.
Hello everyone, while we were gone on spring break the film industry somehow kept going with quite a bit of news. Here is a round-up of what we missed (brought to you by /Film):
I’ll admit it. I’ve never heard of Watchmen until Zack Snyder was attached to direct during the summer of 2006. Since I hadn’t read the graphic novel the hype started when I saw the trailer before The Dark Knight. I knew it was something special and after reading the graphic novel during the past couple months my hype increased tenfold. After the lawsuit fiasco got resolved it finally sunk in, I would actually be seeing this very soon. Only watching the trailers and select TV spots, the day finally arrived. From the first frame of Watchmen, as lush yellow completely engulfs the screen while the company logos pop in, eventually fading into that iconic pin, we just hope Snyder doesn’t screw this up. Don’t worry, he doesn’t.
