Fan Fare

“The Informant!” Matt Damon feels fine looking fat

Much has been made of superstar Matt Damon adding 30 lbs of heft to take on his new role in Steven Soderbergh directed movie “The Informant!”. The movie hits U.S. theaters on Sept. 17, but it premiered at the Venice film festival earlier this week. You can read about it here.

“The Informant!,” whose backers hope to win an award for Damon playing a corporate whistle-blower in a U.S. agri-business, also debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. On Friday in Toronto, Damon was talking to the media about his role.

Notably, the most asked question was about the extra junk he put in his trunk. How’d he do it? Mostly by eating pizza and drinking beer, he said. And Damon, perhaps uncharacteristically of a movie star once named People’s magazine’s sexiest man alive, said he liked carrying the extra pounds! He also said fans watching him shoot the movie in the midwestern U.S. would tell him he looked good with his wig, mustache and full face.

Or, were they lying? You be the judge, click below to watch.

Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly share a love of — applying makeup

What’s that old saying? The couple that plays together, stays together?

Well, when it comes to actors Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, who are married in real life and play Mr. and Mrs. Charles Darwin in the new movie “Creation,” it could very well be the couple that plays together, stays together AND does their makeup together!

On the red carpet at the opening night gala for the Toronto International Film Festival, Connelly was asked about working with her husband on the set of “Creation” and, of course, she lavished praised on Bettany and his performance as the evolutionist whose seminal work, “The Origin of Species,” espoused theories of evolution and natural selection.

Then, Connelly added, “On a silly, superficial level. How many girls can say ‘I put on my makeup on with my husband?’ We did our makeup together.”

And she’s likely very right.

But it does make us wonder: when going out for a gala opening like the one at Toronto, who gets more time in front of the mirror? Judging by the picture, maybe they just share.

Four months of summer end in a Hollywood haze

The summer movie season is officially over with the end of this weekend and — much like a hazy day in Hollywood –  results were mixed. Box office was up based on higher average ticket prices, but attendance was down, which generally speaking has been the case for years as movies competed with other forms of entertainment.

The expected big hits, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” paid handsomely at box offices. Some movies flopped: “Land of the Lost,” “Year One.” Others were big surprises: “The Hangover.” And the indie market did well with “500 Days of Summer” and “The Hurt Locker.”

We were out on the streets in Las Vegas this past weekend, asking people what they they liked and didn’t this summer. Even Elvis gets a crack at our Flip camera. Click below for a quick view.

(video by Marc Price)

“Final Destination” is the place to be at movie theaters

Horror movies scared up big ticket sales at theaters across the United States with the fourth installment of the “Final Destination” series taking the No. 1 spot ($28.3 million) from director Quentin Tarantino’s violent “Inglourious Basterds.” You can read the box office coverage here.

But the “Basterds” landed in the No. 2 spot (R20 million), and it must’ve been heartening for its distributor, the Weinstein Co., which also claimed the No. 3 film with its latest “Halloween” horror flick. We were in front of a megaplex again on Sunday asking people what they liked — and didn’t. Click below for a look.

(Video by Marc Price)

“Inglourious Basterds” aims for more box office glory

As we’ve said before on the Fan Fare blog, opening weekend box office is not the only predictor of a film’s success and, sometimes, can be downright misleading.

Director Quentin Tarantino’s widely-hyped “Inglourious Basterds” enters its second weekend at U.S. and Canadian box offices on Friday after claiming the No. 1 spot last weekend with a debut of  around $38 million. Tarantino has many loyal fans who can be counted on to show up on the opening weekend, but the second weekend is a bigger question. If fans liked the movie and if their “word-of-mouth” recommendations to friends are strong, then “Inglourious” may be able to retain audiences and beat newcomers “The Final Destination” and “Halloween 2.”

So far, “Inglourious” has scored fairly well with critics and fans. At review site rottentomatoes.com, it receive an 88 percent positive score among critics. At Metactric (http://www.metacritic.com), it received a score of 69 out of 100 among critics and a user rating of 7.8, based on 206 votes. We talked to a few fans who’d seen the movie and got their opinion. You can watch by clicking below.

(video by Marc Price)

James Cameron: “Avatar” was “my chance to rage”

Director James Cameron has made a lot of big-time films with big-time special effects: “Aliens,” “The Terminator” and that little movie called “Titanic,” but he told Reuters Television in an interview for “Avatar” day that nothing compares to the upcoming space adventure that will land in theaters December 18. 

In promotional material, the 20th Century Fox film studio that is backing the movie describes it by saying: “Avatar takes us to a spectacular new world beyond our imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption, discovery and unexpected love as he leads a heroic battle to save a civilization.”

Cameron says: “This was my chance to rage, to do big-time design, to design creatures, to design plants, floating mountains, all these incredible landscapes. So this is something that I’ve wanted to do for ages and ages.”

As we told you a few days ago on the Fan Fare blog, (click here) Fox is pulling out all the stops to promote the expensive new film. Today — “Avatar” day – Fox is debuting the movie’s promotional trailer’s in theaters around the world, and in some Imax and other venues equipped for 3D Fox will show select scenes from the film in three dimensions.  The trailer can be seen online, too. 

Cameron told Reuters the 3D effects are a big part of the movie, and something he’d been wanting to explore since making “Titanic.” “I spent a number of years after ‘Titanic’ doing deep ocean expeditions around the world and I was really waiting for the technology to catch up so I could do a film like ‘Avatar’. We were working with 3D camera systems and I wanted to shoot a movie in 3D.

“With ‘Avatar,” Cameron continued, ”we’ve gone beyond not only what I had known previously, but I think what Hollywood in general has been able to do up until now … This is fundamentally different and I think you sense it at a very deep level that it’s fundamentally different.”

Tyra Banks strips down to promote new season

If you happened to be lucky enough to be in New York’s Union Square on Monday, you might have glimpsed supermodel turned TV celebrity Tyra Banks naked — well, sort of. (See  the picture at right)

She was promoting the upcoming season of “The Tyra Banks Show,” her chat program that moves to the CW network this fall. It is the same network that airs Tyra’s “America’s Next Top Model” reality TV contest.

So Tyra stripped down to her knickers, make that a body suit, to say to the world that her new season is going to be about “celebrating inner and outer beauty and owning and rocking what you’ve got.”

Tyra has always been outspoken about women’s body images and the media’s perception of them. Readers may remember a few years back when several celebrity publications ran some rather unflattering pictures of Tyra in a bathing suit. Afterward, she went on her own media campaign to respond, saying things to the effect of, “so what. I am who I am, and this is the body I have.” Our words, not hers. But we say, “You go girl!”

And to support her new season’s campaign of “rocking what you’ve got,” Tyra is going one step further. On the show’s Sept. 8 premiere, she is taking the weave out of her hair and appearing au naturel — her hair, that is. ”No fake hair,” Tyra says in a release promoting the show, “I’m rocking my REAL hair.”

(photo credit: Warner Bros/Michael Loccisano)

“Avatar” for a day — a really big day, a really big flick

It is fitting for director James Cameron that 20th Century Fox is pulling out all the stops to promote his new 3-D, effects-filled spectacle of a movie, “Avatar,” which will land in theaters on December 18. After all, Fox released Cameron’s “Titanic,” and 12 years after its release it continues to be the highest-grossing movie of all time with $1.8 billion in global ticket sales. Nothing else even comes close.

But Cameron hasn’t made a big-budget Hollywood flick since “Titanic,” so “Avatar” comes with some risk. To mitigate the possibilty of a big ol’ box office dud, Fox is promoting the heck out of “Avatar.” It was featured at the recent Comic-Con event in San Diego and on Monday, Fox said it is holding a worldwide “first look” day for “Avatar” anticipators on Friday, Aug. 21. That’s this coming Friday.

Fox will debut the movie’s promotional trailer’s in theaters around the world, and in some Imax and other venues equipped for 3D, Fox will show select scenes from the film in three dimensions.  The trailer will be in all formats and can be seen online. An upcoming video game and toy action figures will be unveiled, too. It’s an “Avatar” extravaganza – Fox style.

The studio describes the film by saying: “Avatar takes us to a spectacular new world beyond our imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption, discovery and unexpected love as he leads a heroic battle to save a civilization.”

Fans can reserve tickets to the big day at http:www.avatarmovie.com. And if you’re lucky enough to get one, tell us what you think of the film clips. We’re dying to know what Cameron has cooked up, too.

“District 9″ attacks U.S. box offices. Cast? Who needs cast?

The way the movie biz works these days is that a good idea is not enough to raise the hands that raise the money to make a film, you’ve got to have a big-name cast. So, when you have a good idea, you go around and try to cast it because — the theory goes — a big movie star lures audiences into theaters. Then, when you’ve added one or two big names, the money gets behind production and off you go. But what “old Hollywood” has long known – and too often gets ignored – is that the movie should be the star, and when it is, box office follows.

If you’ve got a good movie, it almost doesn’t matter who is in it (see “Slumdog Millionaire” or “Twilight” when it opened). This weekend’s No. 1 movie, “Disctrict 9″, proves that old axiom once again. Made by South African director Neill Blomkamp and starring Sharlto Copley (he’s no Brad Pitt), the alien adventure raked in $37 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices over the weekend, and it was made on a relatively low-budget of $30 million. Read our box office report here.

Okay, we admit “District 9″ was produced by ”Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson and he brings a lot of fanboys to theaters. He was also at Comic-Con doing interviews to promote the film. You can read ours here. Regardless, the movie earned good reviews and strong buzz before based on the story and the way the story was told, not any stars. We were out on the streets again this week, getting people’s reviews of “Disctrict 9″ as well as No. 3 flick, ”The Time Traveler’s Wife.” Check them out by clicking below.

(Video by Marc Price)

“Bandslam,” a John Hughes film for a new generation?

Last week drew to a close on a sad note in Hollywood when it was learned that writer and director John Hughes (“The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) had died suddenly of a heart attack. But one of the great things about movies — the good ones, anyway — is that they live on and impact future generations.

Can anyone say “The Wizard of Oz”?!

For teenagers coming of age in the 1980s, the Hughes movies were must-see events, and they continue to resonate with that group of kids who are now in their 40s — and maybe even younger generations, too. Has anyone under 20 seen “The Breakfast Club?” (Several of it’s stars are pictured above right at the 2005 MTV awards — 20 years after that movie debuted in theaters)

So, along comes “Bandslam” opening this week and telling of a group of young teenagers growing up in the late 2000s who have a rock band but need some lessons in how to be cool. But as any fan of Hughes’ movies knows, being truly cool means facing life-changing dilemmas and making hard and even unpopular decisions to complicated problems.

We talked to former Disney star Aly Michalka about “Bandslam” (read about that here) and one thing that didn’t make it into the story is that our reporter, Cristy Lytal, asked Aly whether “Bandslam” could be compared to movies like “Breakfast Club.”

Michalka answered that being considered in the same vein “would be amazing.”

“You know, it (“Bandslam”) definitely has that ’80s-esque feel to it where you fall in love with the characters. That’s what was so great about those movies, the characters drove the movie. It wasn’t necessarily the storyline. It didn’t need to be extravagant or super intricate or anything. It was just a basic storyline about these kids who are kind of outcasts and misfits getting to know each other. And that’s really kind of what this film (“Bandslam”) revolves around as well. And it would be amazing to have that kind of following,” Michalka said.