Pages tagged “george clooney”

A couple months back we mentioned that Jason Reitman was working on getting George Clooney on board (rimshot!) for his forthcoming dramedy, Up in the Air. Now, per Variety, comes news that The Departed's Vera Farmiga will star opposite Clooney in the film.

Release Date: Sept. 23
Director: George Clooney
Writers: Duncan Brantley, Rick Reilly
Producers: Grant Heslov, Casey Silver
Starring: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski

Studio/Run Time: Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 114 mins.

Silly comedy about football's beginnings kinda swell, thanks to Clooney

Say, George Clooney's got a lotta moxie, giving us this slapsticky movie about an aging football player's hail-mary attempt to save his rag-tag 1925 team and bring fame and fans to the fledgling professional sport. He's the cat's pajamas as Jimmy "Dodge" Connolly, all rumpled and dapper in his newsboy cap, three-piece suit and soft smirks. It's hard to understand how Renée Zellweger—as Lexie Littleton, the hard-boiled dame reporter who's "got great legs"—can resist his whiskey-soaked charms for so much of this lighthearted film, instead taking a shine to too-good-to-be-true war hero and football star Carter Rutherford (The Office's John Krasinski). The movie's got a nifty look and feel—Randy Newman's ragtime piano and speakeasy scenes could just as easily be sepia-toned—but it could've done without the Keystone Cops routine. Some of the characters seem half-baked, their conflicts rushed and too easily resolved, and what is presented as a possible script twist never pans out. Thanks to ol' Georgie boy, though, we can forgive the film's faulty construct—because it's fun to watch and he, of course, is the bee's knees.

Watch the trailer for Leatherheads

Release Date: September 12

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Writers: Joel and Ethan Coen

Cinematographer: Emmanuel Lubezki

Starring: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich

Studio/Run time: Focus Features, 96 mins.

The title of the new film from the Coen brothers instructs us to “burn after reading,” but that won't be necessary. The whole thing vanishes in a puff of sauna steam the second the credits begin to roll.

With Juno, Jason Reitman struck the kind of lightning-rod success that can’t be bought. He took on the film after finding modest success with Thank You for Smoking, his debut, and by the time its run was over, he had become the man behind the word-of-mouth smash of 2007 and a surprise Oscar nominee.

On the evening of August 27, the paparazzi of the world will turn their camera lenses toward the red carpet opening of the Venice International Film Festival, where the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading will hold the festival's honored opening spot.

It's been 30 years since Jarvis Cocker formed Britpop should-have-been-a-sensation Pulp, seven since the band broke up, three since he appeared in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as the lead singer of wizard band, The Weird Sisters, two since he entered his solo career phase with Jarvis. The man is unquenchable.

After optioning Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist last fall, Warner Brothers recently announced that Anthony Peckham will adapt the book into a screenplay as a star vehicle for George Clooney. Clooney's own Smokehouse production company will produce, with he, Grant Heslov and Nina Wolarsky to helm the project. The plot is about a man who (cue summer-movie announcer guy), accused of a murder he didn't commit, risks it all to unravel a conspiracy.

First things first, congrats to my University of Georgia Bulldogs for earning a trip to the College World Series Super Regionals by beating rivals Georgia Tech 18-6—their fourth win in a row after losing the first game of the double-elimination tournament last weekend. If they beat NC State, they go to Omaha.

Brad Pitt getting jiggy with his iPod. John Malkovich punching Brad Pitt in the face. A bearded George Clooney hitting on his Michael Clayton co-star Tilda Swinton. If these scenes intrigue you to any extent whatsoever, then there's a certain movie trailer you need to see:

Director/Writer: Tony Gilroy
Cinematographer: Robert Elswit
Starring: George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack
Studio/Running Time: Warner Bros., 119 mins.

They appeared one by one in a parade across cable news. Old white guys in expensive suits, stepping out of courtrooms with stony faces, holding up their hands to shield their faces from press photographers. Bernie Ebbers, Dennis Kozlowski, John Rigas, Ken Lay... they all blurred together to the point where they were practically indistinguishable, just faceless tyrants marching off to the guillotine.

Screenwriter extraordinaire Tony Gilroy began work on the script for Michael Clayton well before this wave of indictments rocked big business. But those high-profile scandals have – perhaps serendipitously – added a fresh layer of relevance to Gilroy’s directorial debut. They also make the central thesis of his story all the more discomforting to accept: that even those callous corporate masterminds and their big-shot lawyers have conflicts of conscience, too.

Gilroy introduces his three leads in short order, each one a pawn in a $3 billion class-action lawsuit against fictional agrochemical giant U/North. From the film’s onset, there’s little doubt that U/North was in the wrong, but it’s nonetheless up to this trio to cover the corporation’s mistakes. Attorney Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) is the architect of the U/North defense, but his growing horror and disgust with his life’s work quickly reduces him to a manic-depressive wreck. Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), U/North’s lead counsel, is charged with minimizing the civil suit’s damage to her employer. In contrast to Edens, her reaction to her position is one of overwhelming internalized anxiety, masked by her carefully constructed appearance and well-rehearsed press responses.

Then there’s Michael Clayton himself, played with world-weary resolve by George Clooney. He’s a paralegal “fixer,” the kind of fellow who makes his client’s problems disappear quickly and cleanly. When his friend Edens suffers a total meltdown in a deposition hearing, Clayton is brought in to work his magic. But with many of his own personal problems lingering unresolved, Clayton must face a series of moral dilemmas in which his corporate instinct for self-preservation collides with his sense of humanity.

Gilroy maintains a fine balance as he portrays the lives of these three lonely souls while keeping his intricately crafted plot in constant motion. Blending elements of crime drama, paralegal thriller, and a dash of the espionage action he perfected while working on the Bourne trilogy, Gilroy delivers a script that reflects his rare ability to pose complex moral questions while simultaneously drawing his audience deeper and deeper into the action. Shot against the cold, hive-like palaces of Manhattan’s Corporate Row, Michael Clayton deftly portrays the bewilderment of the people who find themselves trapped within the corporate culture. The public may only see the monolithic front of big business, but as Gilroy’s film illustrates, it’s the small, seemingly well-reasoned actions of these subordinates that ultimately drive their companies to good or evil. It’s scary to think that the mega-conglomerates that dominate America’s economy are heartless machines, but even scarier to imagine that they just might be human after all.