Pages tagged “john travolta”

Release Date: Nov. 21
Directors: Byron Howard and Chris Williams
Writers: Williams and Dan Fogelman
Art Director: Paul A. Felix
Starring (voices): John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton, Malcolm McDowell, Greg Germann
Studio/Run Time: Walt Disney, 96 mins.

Animated charmer falls into awkward place

The era of family animation spiked with irony and winking asides for adults in the audience arrived with the CG format, and together the new traditions have come to dominate what was once a conservative standby in Hollywood. DreamWorks briefly co-opted Disney’s habitual dominance of the format with the Shrek franchise, but Disney decisively reclaimed it with its fateful (and bluntly expensive) acquisition of Pixar in 2006.

James Gandolfini, Denzel Washington and John Travolta have signed on to star in the upcoming Columbia Pictures film The Taking of Pelham 123, Variety reports.

Action movie aficionado Tony Scott (Top Gun, Man on Fire) will direct the film, which is a remake of the 1978 thriller starring Walter Matthau. Washington will play a transit cop forced to go head-to-head with a group of hijackers who hold a packed subway car ransom. Travolta will play the gang’s leader, and Gandolfini's casting as the mayor of New York City was announced only yesterday.

Fresh off of his Golden Globe win for his work on the final season of HBO’s The Sopranos, Gandolfini has signed on to a number of new projects. He recently finished shooting his role in Spike Jonze’s upcoming adaptation of children’s favorite Where the Wild Things Are, and inked a deal with HBO to play grassroots basketball camp founder Sonny Vaccaro in the film ABCD Camp.

Gandolfini’s Attaboy Films also has several projects in development, including an untitled drama in which the actor will portray famed author Ernest Hemingway. Gandolfini and his Attaboy partner Alexandra Ryan will also be producing ABCD Camp.

Related links:
IMDb: James Gandolfini
IMDb: Denzel Washington
IMDb: John Travolta

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Director: Adam Shankman
Writers: Leslie Dixon, John Waters, Mark O’Donnell
Cinematographer: Bojan Bazelli
Starring: Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, Zac Efron, Michelle Pfeiffer, Queen Latifah, James Marsden
Studio/Running Time: New Line Cinema, 117 min.

"Look at that little girl
Look like a Georgia Peach
She doing that thing
From her head to her feet
Oh, they got that thing
On American Bandstand."
-Buddy Guy “American Bandstand”

Hollywood never ceases to surprise. This time, they’ve taken the director of some embarrassingly mediocre films (Adam Shankman: Cheaper by the Dozen 2, The Pacifier, Bringing Down the House), combined his efforts with the inventive talents of a truly twisted independent filmmaker (John Waters: Pink Flamingos, Polyester) and made the most refreshing and enjoyable musical of this century—Hairspray.

Adapted from the 2002 Broadway musical, which was adapted from Waters’ 1988 film, Hairspray follows teenager Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) as she pursues her dream of being a dancer on The Corny Collins Show, Baltimore’s version of American Bandstand. In spite of being ridiculed for her obesity, Tracy falls in love, becomes a wanted fugitive and integrates her community—all at once. Her mother Edna (John Travolta) attempts to hold her back before having an awakening of her own by leaving the house for the first time in years. Mother and daughter are soon dancing their way through the adversity of 1960s racism.

Travolta is wonderful as the insecure and demure Edna, giving a thoroughly impressive performance. But Blonsky is the true star of the film. Not since Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz has a young girl charmed and endeared herself so effectively in a musical. But don’t assume Hairspray to be your standard, white-bread comic opera. In keeping with the spirit of Water's original script, which included plenty of sexual innuendo despite its PG rating, double entendres run rampant in this modern day version. Michelle Pfeiffer is supremely villainous as the station manager who wants Tracy off the show, and Amanda Bynes is adorable as Tracy’s best friend who falls in love with a black man named Seaweed (Elijah Kelley), much to the dismay of her puritanical mother (Allison Janney). The film’s songs jump with enthusiasm from the opening number to the closing credits and are tempered by moments like Queen Latifah’s “I Know Where I’ve Been,” which is movingly sung during a civil rights protest march.

Summer film-going is often known for its effects-laden, terror-yielding blockbusters. Despite the current saturation of just this sort of release, the simple-but-glorious Hairspray tops them all.