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Paul Rudd Joins The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving – He’ll befriend a boy with an serious illness

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Paul Rudd may be going superhero this summer with Ant-Man, but he’s planning a rather different follow-up, as he’s signed on for the drama The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, according to Variety.

The movie will be based on Jonathan Evison’s 2012 bestselling novel, which ‘follows the touching friendship between Ben Benjamin (Rudd) and a young adult stricken with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The two form a unique bond and gently push each other toward re-engaging in life in an affecting, funny and inspirational tale of broken people coming to terms with difficult lives.’

Rob Burnett, who best known for producing The Late Show With David Letterman will direct from his own script. It’s not 100% clear with Revised Fundamentals will shoot.

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Wes Bentley Is On For Pete’s Dragon – He signs up for Disney’s planned remake

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Disney’s planned remake of Pete’s Dragon is now fast coming together. The likes of Oakes Fegley, Robert Redford, Bryce Dallas Howard and Oona Laurence are already onboard, and now TheWrap reports that Wes Bentley (American Beauty, Hunger Games) has signed on too.

The original 1977 movie was a mix of live-action and animation, about a boy who escapes his horrible adoptive parents and befriends a dragon called Elliott. This time around the dragon with be CGI, and the story will also be rather different (it also won’t be a musical). Here Pete was raised in a forest by the dragon after his parents died in a car accident. He has to take on a group of loggers who are cutting down all of the trees.

Robert Redford is set play a local who tells tall tales involving dragons that no one believes, the equivalent of Mickey Rooney’s Lampie from the original.

It’s not known exactly who Bentley will be, although it is known that the filmmakers have been on the lookout for a mill owner and his greedy brother, so Wes may have scored one of those roles.

David Lowery is directing from a script he co-wrote with Toby Halbrooks. It’s believed the movie will start shooting in the next couple of months.

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Michael Keaton May Head For Kong: Skull Island – He’s in talks for the ape prequel

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Following his potentially Oscar-winning role in Birdman, Hollywood seems to have suddenly remembered the talent that is Michael Keaton. He’s suddenly become far more in demand than he has been for many years, and that includes the makers of Kong: Skull Island, who are finalising a deal for Keaton to star, according to THR.

Assuming that deal comes together, he will star alongside Tom Hiddleston and J.K. Simmons in the film, which is a prequel to King Kong. Not too much is known about the plot specifics, but the movie will be entirely set on Skull Island, the mysterious place full of dinosaurs and monsters, along with giant apes. The speculation is that it will be about how Kong became the last of the giant gorillas, while also giving an explanation for how outsiders knew about the island and so set sail to later find and capture Kong.

It isn’t known who Keaton will play, although it’s believed the three actors currently cast will be the core of a group who set out to explore the island..

Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings of Summer), will direct from a script by John Gatins and Max Borenstein. A March 10th, 2017 release date is already pencilled in.

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Reese Witherspoon Will Be Downsizing – Alongside Matt Damon in Alexander Payne

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Reese Witherspoon has been slightly in the filmic wilderness for the past few years, but coming off her well received performance in Wild she’s circling for a new film from a director beloved by the Academy, as she’s in talking Alexander Payne’s Downsizing, according to Deadline.

It’s her second time round on the project, as she was previously attached way back in 2009, before Payne but the project on the backburner.

The slightly odd sounding film is about a man (Matt Damon) who decides that his life would be much better if he shrunk himself. It’s previously been described as being a social satire.

It’s not 100% clear who Witherspoon will play, although she was previously set to play a woman who met the shrinking man (who at that point was set to be played by Paul Giamatti).

The main sticking point with Witherspoon’s involvement is scheduling, as it’s believed Damon will shoot the new Jason Bourne movie before Downsizing, and so it’s difficult to pin down exactly when it will go in front of the camera at the moment.

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Into The Woods – The stars turns out for the Sondheim adaptation

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Ah, Stephen Sondheim, writer of amazing tongue-twisting lyrics, flat tunes and dark themes. That’s been his formula for many a year – the flat tunes aren’t deliberate presumably – and they are all present and correct in this film version of his adult take on fairy tales. Adult is certainly the word here, the underlying theme being human beings’ reluctance to grow up and face the real world, and the terrifying prospect of sex, while superficially there are blindings, stabbings, a prince whose eye wanders, an absent father, and plenty of death.

Throw in a top-notch cast – and James Corden – and you get a polished, great-looking and sounding, entertaining fable. The story itself peaks a little early and there are longeurs in the story of the giant, but overall it’s a successful adaptation of Sondheim’s stage musical.

It cleverly throws together several of our favourite stories of childhood – Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel – with Meryl Streep’s witch at the centre. She has put a curse on the baker and his wife (Corden and Blunt), who will remain childless unless they bring her four items – a white cow, a golden slipper, corn-coloured hair and a red cape. They have three nights to find these items.

Sondheim uses the dark possibilities of each story with sometimes dazzling effect, and sometimes gets a little close to the bone. Little Red Riding Hood’s encounter with the Wolf (Depp) is very creepy indeed, and borders on paedophilia, with him almost insisting she stop being a little girl and take a risk or two – nearly Jimmy Savile-esque. Cinderella is riddled with self-doubts over the Prince – how can she be what he wants when she doesn’t even know herself? Rapunzel is kept in a tower by her mother the Witch, who refuses to let her out when she reveals a sexual awakening for the prince. The baker is haunted by his father who abandoned him as a baby, and the prospect of becoming a dad himself terrifies him. And poor Jack learns about life the hard way when his favourite cow drops dead en-route to market.

Lyrically Sondheim’s songs are at times truly dazzling – the Witch’s song about why she laid the curse on the baker contains some extraordinary rhymes, and the underlying darkness is never far away. Where it is a let-down is his score – Sondheim’s tunes are never easy, and here they border on the tuneless far too often. The cast give it their best – Streep’s singing in particular is gung-ho and Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood is just terrific, and never cutesy – but too many songs go by leaving barely a trace of melody.

Visually it has the look for a fairy-tale, with dark lush woods, twisty brambles, lovely moonlit meadows and rural Berkshire doing a good job of looking like a medieval fantasy land. Special effects are kept to a mimimum, but when they do appear they make their mark – the beanstalk is impressive, and Frances de la Tour’s barely-seen giant is a wonder, especially the sound of her footsteps which are literally earth-shaking.

Overall verdict: Successful adaptation of Sondheim’s stage musical which keeps its gothic themes intact. Marvel at the wordplay and top notch acting and don’t worry too much about the lack of harmonies in the music.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

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The Lazarus Effect Trailer – Olivia Wilde is coming back from the dead

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The plot for The Lazarus Effect sounds a bit like a rehash of Flatliners, but the first trailer thankfully shows that while there are echoes of Joel Schumacher’s 1990 movie, it does want to be something in its own right too.

The very short synopsis simply says ‘The film follows a group of medical students who discover a way to bring dead patients back to life.’

The movie centres around Mark Duplass and Olivia Wilde, who discover how to resurrect people. After she dies, he decides to use the technique on her, but as you’d expect in a horror movie what returns isn’t quite the same as what left.

Evan Peters and Donald Glover also star in the movie, which is out in the US at the end of February, although it’s not clear when it’ll arrive in the UK.

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