A new Zooey Deschanel movie came out last weekend. But is it the one where she plays a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” opposite Paul Dano or the one where she plays a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt? It’s the former, and it’s called Gigantic, which is also not to be confused with this coming week’s new DVD release, Yes Man, in which she plays a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” opposite Jim Carrey.
Sure, Deschanel has range and talent (see this fan-made montage of some of her more varied performances), but she also has a certain repetitive nature to her characters. And this “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” nature became all the more confusing recently when trailers for Gigantic and (500) Days of Summer (the Gordon-Levitt one, which is actually her second romantic pairing with the actor) appeared online around the same time. Maybe instead of worrying about people confusing her for Katy Perry, the actress should worry more about people confusing her characters and films for each other.
Or, maybe not. Plenty of us can’t get enough of Deschanel’s quirky, free-spirited performances. In his Yes Man review, Roger Ebert noted that two critics proposed marriage to the character at the end of the film. We wouldn’t go that far, but we have crushed on the actress since All the Real Girls and haven’t yet gotten sick of her or her similar, typecast roles. In fact, to us, the problem is not that indie films too often employ the MPDG character; it’s that they don’t cast Deschanel for every such part. So, instead of wishing she’d broaden her career to include other types of characters (it didn’t work well for her with The Happening, after all), we’ve selected ten MPDG characters that she should have additionally played.
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It happened last year for Cate Blanchett. The actress starred in a biopic that critics ripped to shreds, a film that basically bombed at the (American) box office, and yet she managed to score a Best Actress nomination for her reprised performance as the titular monarch of Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Additionally, Blanchett earned another nomination for Best Supporting Actress the same year, for her portrayal of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. Now Josh Brolin could achieve a similar feat this year, not just by earning separate nominations for playing the titular president of W. and portraying politician-turned-assassin Dan White in Milk, but also by overcoming the difficulty of earning recognition in a lead category for a film that otherwise is not very well regarded. Are Brolin’s hurdles higher than Blanchett’s, though? With all the praise he’s received for W., he’s still far from being considered a sure thing candidate, regardless of his worthiness or the Academy’s history of oftentimes ignoring the critics and the grosses when nominating dependable, standout actors.
And boy, does Brolin stand out. …Read more
It started off seeming like a joke. But Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic was legit — even if it then appeared to indeed be “a joke”. And now, because the internet can’t lay off writing about the thing (Bush=traffic), we are able to see just how much of a joke the thing is. Thanks to The Hollywood Reporter’’s Risky Biz Blog, we can read the first three pages of the script (originally titled Bush, now known as W), which looks like it was written by a student in a high school creative writing class (it was in fact written by Wall Street scribe Stanley Weiser). Well, obviously Bush experts would declare it inaccurate. Are we to really believe that Bush called Karl Rove a “turdblossom”? If the script wanted to get the facts straight, he would have used “butthead” instead.
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There may not be any literal baton passing going on in the marathon-set screwball comedy Run, Fatboy, Run, but the movie, which was directed by Friends star David Schwimmer, is noteworthy for its hand-offs. The first has to do with the writing of the film, which began as an original screenplay by American actor/comedian/writer Michael Ian Black (Wet Hot American Summer) and was later reworked by British actor/comedian/writer Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead). Despite the screenplay credit confusingly indicating the two writers collaborated, it is more a matter of one taking over from the other and going the distance with it.
The second pass relates to the actors. Although Run, Fatboy, Run is sold as a Simon Pegg comedy, the true stand-out is lesser-known Dylan Moran, who supports as Pegg’s character’s best friend. Familiar to most Brits as the star of the Channel 4 series Black Books (which I keep meaning to finally rent), Moran has also appeared in minor roles in the movies Shaun of the Dead, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and Notting Hill, none of which really showcased his talent the way Run, Fatboy, Run does. Because it was probably not intentional for Moran to upstage Pegg, though, it has to be said that rather than a hand-off of the spotlight, this is more a stealing of the show. And boy does Moran make a great getaway towards the finish line.
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