Talented performers make a low-budget musical sing (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Hollywood has lost interest in big-budget movie musicals in the wake of "Nine," "Burlesque" and other misfires.

A radically different approach just might save the genre. The no-frills, no-star, no-budget African-American musical, "Leave It On the Floor," which had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival over the weekend, demonstrates the possibilities. It actually takes some chances.

Most recent movie musicals that succeeded, including "Chicago" and "Dreamgirls," incorporated most of their songs as production numbers performed on stage, so they didn't challenge audiences' preference for realism. But in "Floor," the characters burst into song on the subway or in convenience stores, and the performers are so dynamic that we buy into an ancient musical convention that has fallen out of fashion.

The film doesn't have huge box office potential, but it could develop cult status and find a niche audience.

The script by Glenn Gaylord is an uneven, sometimes threadbare affair, but it does take off from a core of truth: the homophobia within the African-American community. At the start of the film, Brad (Ephraim Sykes) is kicked out by his mother when she discovers that he's gay. He ends up being adopted by a group of drag queens who compete in monthly balls held at downtown L.A. dance clubs. A similar milieu inspired the documentary "Paris Is Burning" a couple of decades ago, and director Sheldon Larry has been tantalized by the idea of making a fiction film on the subject ever since seeing that earlier film.

It's too bad that Larry and Gaylord hew to formulaic storytelling, but the script has never been the most important element in a musical. The key is song and dance, and here "Floor" delivers. The songs by Kimberly Burse (music director for Beyonce and other performers) run the gamut from rap to ballads, and a few of them -- including a sly homage to Justin Timberlake called "Justin's Gonna Call" -- are genuinely rousing. The choreography by Frank Gatson Jr. is equally ebullient.

Characterizations are thin, but the gifted actors help to put the roles across. Sykes has a thrilling voice and an unmistakable charisma. Miss Barbie-Q, playing the den mother of the ragtag group, also sings excitingly and emerges as a force of nature. Andre Myers and Phillip Evelyn as the rivals for Brad's affections both strike sparks with the hero.

Some of the plotting is primitive. A sudden car crash seems convenient rather than convincing, but the funeral scene that follows -- a musical duel between the dead boy's family members and his adopted drag community -- is one of the strongest in the film because it finds the humanity in both contingents.

Larry's direction is sometimes clumsy but always energetic, and the production team makes good use of the gritty locations. The filmmakers' enthusiasm for the musical genre proves to be contagious. This movie may not win awards, but it's a good-hearted joyride.

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A faulty documentary on transsexual tennis star (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – "Renee," Eric Drath's documentary about transsexual tennis star Renee Richards and her battle to play as a woman in the 1977 U.S. Open, is as fascinating as it is frustrating.

Made for ESPN Films and shown in the current Los Angeles Film Fest prior to broadcast later this year, the film brings you up-to-date on a personality who once dominated headlines but has now largely faded from public view.

Drath tries to get to the bottom of two people, Richard Raskin, who was born in 1934 into a comfortable upper middle-class existence, and Renee -- "French for 're-born,'" she reminds -- following Raskin's gender reassignment surgery in 1975.

Richards has written two autobiographies and seen two movies made about her life, the TV movie "Second Serve" starring Vanessa Redgrave and now this one. Yet she remains elusive. This enigmatic quality isn't just about the schizophrenia of Dick and Renee but about the contractions and self-doubts each possessed.

Drath, who comes from a tennis-loving family, remembers as a boy Dr. Raskin, an eminent eye doctor who treated his sister, yet later appeared in a skirt at the U.S. Open, and wants to find out what happened. Good luck.

Observing Richards in an interview today and then in old footage and old interviews, one clearly observes a war going on within this person, not so much between male and female, as between what one friends calls the "private person," who is extremely wary of all this attention, and a headstrong and arrogant individual who craves the limelight.

How else to explain a person who, having undergone gender reassignment, a name change and a switch of coasts from New York to California in order to live anonymously, suddenly wants to resume a tennis career. (Dick reached the final of the men's national 35-and-over tennis championships in 1972.) No one familiar with tennis, a friend tries to tell her, will fail to recognize Dick Raskind's serve no matter how she dresses. RenOe won't listen. Then a local southern California reporter does a little digging and her cover is blown.

One detects more than a little regret over the impact the sex transition had on others in Renee's life although apparently none over the surgery itself. She can be a little evasive on-camera but is willing to express doubts now about the 1977 New York Supreme Court decision that allowed her to play in the U.S. Open without having to submit to sex test.

The film's main focus is on the son Richards had during a brief marriage to a fashion model. A curt Nicholas Raskin does appear on camera briefly to answer questions. He still calls Renee his father and labels her decision to abandon her family for the sex reassignment "selfish." Yet they seem to be close.

On the other hand, Renee talks about her son's drug and alcohol problems although none is evident during his interviews. He is clearly a restless and disturbed man, who still resents the teasing he took as a schoolboy over his father's sudden notoriety.

Nick's mother evidently refused to cooperate as she is scarcely mentioned and never appears. There are other gaps. No mention is made of Richards' Jewishness, which apparently made him feel like an outsider in the WASPY Ivy League schools he attended. He excelled as an athlete as well as a medical student, yet broke off his one serious romantic relationship.

He traveled to Europe as a woman and even arrived in Casablanca, where the only surgeon in the world to specialize in gender reassignment operated a clinic. Then Dick chickened out. He returned to New York, married, fathered a son and only when he feared his own suicide did he have the operation.

One final gap has to do with Dick and Renee's sex life. This comes up only once and with it comes the surprising admission to "sex escapades" with men and women but that Renee never found the love with men that Dick found with women. Say what? No follow-up questions to that?

In person today, the rangy and angular six-foot-two woman still struggles to suppress the alpha male that Dick once was. The practice of medicine -- Richards by all accounts is an even better doctor than tennis player -- sustains her life and, she says, keep her sane. But when speaking of her son or the problems she caused for those close to her, a melancholy settles over her and the film.

One cannot know if more time devoted to interviewing Richards or the casting a wider net to bring in more voices belonging to friends, colleagues or experts in transsexualism might have brought more clarity or understanding to the story of Renee Richards. For in the end, this movie adds to the mystery rather than solves it.

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Southern documentary an exalted endeavor (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – First-time writer-director Robert Persons establishes himself as a maverick personality with his lyrical collage documentary, "General Orders No. 9," which opens Friday in limited release.

An elegiac contemplation of the price of progress in the Deep South and its heavy toll on nature, history and community, the film plays more like a moody art installation than a conventional exploration of the clash between environment and urban development.

Screened at a number of second-tier festivals over the past several months, including Slamdance, this is unquestionably an exalted endeavor. It no doubt will find passionate admirers who respond to its haunting poetry, its hushed solemnity and mournful view of the irreversible damage wrought by the contemporary world. Others are likely to reject the film as a ponderous sermon with a too-cramped field of vision. Either way, however, the meticulous, artisanal craftsmanship and conviction Persons brings to his thesis are difficult to dismiss.

Persons' fascination with maps, patterns, shapes and symmetry informs the work in both structure and content. The principal refrain of the narration, read with somber gravity by William Davidson, is "Deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes county road." Also central is the star-and-satellite relationship of courthouse to town to county, with the weather vane at the top of the courthouse clock tower piercing the center of an intersection within many intersections.

Any harmony in that configuration was shattered when the interstates were built, transforming a neat grid into a chaotic web of interconnected veins. "The interstate does not serve, it possesses," intones Davidson.

Chris Marker appears to be a significant influence, but the spiritual bent in evidence also gives the film a vague tonal kinship to Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life." There's a deep personal investment in the material, which Persons reportedly spent 11 years developing. But where Malick considers the soul of man, Persons' concern is the soul of the land. The film's specific geographic focus is the triangle of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, bordered on the east by the Mississippi River and on the west by the Savannah River.

As Davidson's voice ruminates on the metamorphosis of these tribal lands into sprawling, concrete hubs, Persons' exquisite camerawork caresses remnants of the past -- coins, bones, artifacts, fossils, faded family portraits -- or trains its still, serene gaze on gorgeous images of rural tranquility.

Over Chris Hoke's ambient music, the narration suggests that echoes of the war fought 100 years before this generation was born can still be heard, and Persons' shots of weathered graveyards reinforce that claim. The title -- a reference to Robert E. Lee's post-surrender address to his troops, issued at Appomattox courthouse -- appears to allude to land ceding to industry. But there's more emotionality than reasoning behind the film's formula of nature = good/urban development = bad.

The desecration of "a world covered over" and the rumblings of the past as "something pushing up against the surface of things" are emphasized in brooding Atlanta cityscapes, often digitally animated to heighten the sense of invasion by alien elements. Derelict structures and sterile, empty corridors portend a future with no place for humanity. These sequences are fluidly integrated by editor (and producer) Phil Walker to mirror the stately feel of symphonic movements.

Persons expresses his bereavement for communion and belonging -- concepts that have grown more abstract as progress marches on. His melancholy film urges us to look at the land rendered invisible by relentless construction; to treasure the remaining patches of wilderness and the totems of those who came before; to reassess the deceptions of modern life and appreciate again the constancy and truth of nature.

Those are all noble sentiments, eloquently expressed. But despite the film's beauty, such an earnestly romantic view of a world gone wrong needs to take a moment to weigh the gains against the losses. Without that balance, its wounded sanctification seems simplistic.

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Civil war documentary told with power and grace (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – At once impressionistic and precise, "The Tiniest Place" (El Lugar mas pequeno) is a beautifully rendered memory piece that insists on the necessity of memory. The focus is a remote village in the mountains of El Salvador, decimated in the country's civil war of the 1980s and rebuilt by its surviving residents. When they first returned, one woman notes, the frogs sang. She also recalls the bones and body parts they had to gather and cart away -- the remains of guerrillas and national guard soldiers, enemies intermingled.

Such is the balance between hope and despair, a potent poetics, in Tatiana Huezo Sanchez's first feature-length documentary. Screening this week at the Los Angeles Film Festival, "Place" has the historical insight and visual eloquence to ensure not only further fest berths but also an ardent critical response that could bolster an art-house release in the hands of the right distributor.

The Salvador-born and Mexico-raised director spent two months in Cinquera, her grandmother's native village, and the intimacy and trust she established with the townspeople is evident in every frame. Her decision to record only the audio of their testimony was an essential ingredient of that trust, and it shapes the piece in a brilliant way. Working with two editors, Huezo Sanchez layers the villagers' thoughtful, sometimes harrowing voiceover recollections with cinematographer Ernesto Pardo's fluent footage of them as they go about their daily lives -- lives most Westerners would call simple, devoid as they are of electronic gadgets. The lucent imagery and rich sound design make the verdant setting immediate.

The villagers find meaning and joy in their connection to the land, which they've worked for generations without owning. Gradually, their stories pinpoint the moments of awakening that separated "the aware" from "the sleepers" as war spread across the country. Residents recall the terrors and atrocities they endured, the choices they made: toddlers who saw their mothers beaten and raped, teens who joined the guerrillas, families who hid for two years in a startlingly narrow cave, revisited with the filmmakers.

"Closure" is not a part of these Salvadorans' vocabulary; rather than expecting to recover from their losses, they carry them with a sense of clarity: insomnia for one man, nightmares for another, but also the hard-won knowledge that "a people with memory is more difficult to oppress." In Nuevo Cinquera, a piece of a military helicopter is prominently displayed, as is a mural that pays tribute to the village's dead.

Just as the residents of this town honor the most difficult moments of their lives, Huezo Sanchez and her astute film honor their will to live, and the way unquenchable grief informs their joy. Framing her observations subtly yet with full impact, she's there when that insomniac, who once served as lookout for government soldiers, tends his pregnant cow, and when a woman who had to bury the mutilated body of her daughter lovingly coaxes a hen to incubate eggs not her own.

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"Self Made" a self-indulgent acting exercise (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The first feature by British conceptual artist Gillian Wearing, "Self Made" is an experiment in creativity that has far more resonance for its participants than it will for most audiences.

The documentary chronicles a three-week project that immersed seven non-actors in a specially devised Method workshop. They would each star in a short film designed to embody the inner truths they'd worked to lay bare.

With a premise that's likely to intrigue students of theater and psychology (although they won't need the onscreen definition of "improvise"), this selection of the Los Angeles Film Festival would be a good fit for arts-oriented TV schedules. But the prospect of watching sense memory exercises is a doubtful lure for most moviegoers.

The subjects' willingness to expose themselves doesn't entirely allay the sense of intrusiveness that hangs over the proceedings. They were chosen from hundreds who answered a simple ad -- "Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character" -- and their receptiveness to new ideas is key. In an apparently unheated space in Newcastle (most keep their coats on), Method teacher Sam Rumbelow guides them through a series of exercises, scenes and rehearsals. He's an exceedingly clear-eyed, even-keeled facilitator as he nudges them toward the mother lode of emotional truth and listens to dark confessions (one man has chosen the date of his suicide).

Still, as the camera prowls the rehearsal space, it's easy to see why some acting teachers broke from the Method, choosing not to focus on the personal psychology of the performer. The liberation and expression of emotion doesn't have to rest on the unraveling of the actor -- but in Wearing's fast-track scenario, it does.

The five shorts that are included in the doc were written by Wearing and playwright Leo Butler (a fact made clear in the press notes but not in the film) and range from period B&W drama to stylized updates of Shakespeare and contemporary slices of life centered on acts of terrible violence. The power of some of the participants' performances is unquestionable, and there's a certain purity to their work because they're unfettered by career-driven posturing.

"I don't think the camera likes me," fortyish Leslie, a sweet-faced blonde, says at the outset of the film. One of the most memorable group members, she has disproved that statement by film's end. Those blind spots in self-awareness are among Wearing's concerns. Having explored self-expression in much of her previous work, with "Self Made" she examines the notion of identity as a kind of performance and performance as a way of breaking through self-consciousness.

They're rich fields of inquiry. But by the time the carcass of a pig -- poor innocent creature -- is enlisted for an acting exercise, the concept of self-indulgence overshadows the quest.

(To read more about our entertainment news, visit our blog "Fan Fare" online at http://blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/)

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"Hangover" tattoo lawsuit settled (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Fans of "The Hangover: Part II" can rest easy: the tattoo on Ed Helms' face is staying in the film.

Warner Bros. has settled the lawsuit brought by Missouri tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill over the mark on Helms' face, which Whitmill claimed infringed a copyrighted tattoo he created for boxer Mike Tyson.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. "Warner Bros. and Mr. Whitmill have amicably resolved their dispute. No other information will be provided," Whitmill's attorney Geoff Gerber said.

Sources say the deal was hammered out during an all-day mediation in St. Louis on Friday.

Whitmill, who created the original tattoo and registered the copyright, sued in April asking that a federal judge halt the release of the blockbuster comedy sequel because it prominently features the tattoo without permission.

But on May 24, just days before the film was scheduled to be released, a judge denied Whitmill's request for a preliminary injunction. The judge did suggest that she saw merit in the case, even referring to the studio's defenses as "silly."

In subsequent court filings, Warners said that it planned to digitally alter the tattoo for the home video version of the film if the case didn't settle quickly.

And now it has. A notice of dismissal is expected to be filed shortly, putting an end to one of the odder copyright cases in recent memory. The film, meanwhile, has gone on to earn almost $500 million worldwide.

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Film review: "Rest on Your Shoulder" (Reuters)

SHANGHAI (Hollywood Reporter) – A candy-colored, marshmallow-sweet fairytale about true love, horticulture and immunology, "Rest on Your Shoulder" tells of a botanical scientist who faithfully pines for his missing fiancO, unaware that she is by his side in a different form. Its loudly spelled out ecological lesson is tailor-made for family viewing and is Hong Kong writer-director Jacob Cheung's ("The Ticket," "A Battle of Wits') most guileless and mainstream film.

Although some adults may find the story and its fantasy elements hopelessly naive, young kids will be swept away by the cascade of CG animation merged with splendid natural scenery. In addition to a routine run at cinema circuits in Chinese-speaking territories, this could be considered for festival sidebars aimed at family viewing.

In an unspecified time when epidemics run rampant, botanist Yan Guo (Aloys Chen) and his fiancOe-assistant Baobao (Zhang Yiyan) move to Moon Island, a nature reserve, to research the curing properties of rare plants. As is customary, they pray to the magical Eros Tree to cement their love, unaware that they have to undergo a severe trial, in which Baobao must remain unseen to Yan for three years in exchange for his life.

Baobao transforms into a butterfly, and like the Little Mermaid, she watches two other women - horticulturalist Bailan (Kueh Lun-Mei) and journalist Yang Lin (Gigi Leung) -- court her lonely boyfriend, but cannot speak out her feelings. Cheung does not exploit the plot potential to create a melodramatic love quadrangle. Instead, he opts for a more down-to-earth, feel-good emotional arc by describing how Yan's platonic friendship with the two women motivates a breakthrough in his research.

The subplot about Baobao's adventures in the insect and plant world provides animated slapstick to keep a young audience's attention, as well as showcase the lush natural landscapes shot on location in Hokkaido and Guangxi, and the idyllic replica Canadian houses shot in Yokohama. The generous use of CGI effects don't always blend in completely with the live action or outdoor locations. While smaller scale animation, such as flora and fauna, look fairly life-like, larger scale elements such as waterfalls, tainted skies and fantasy effects look quite artificial.

The music by Joe Hisaishi, who composed most of Hayao Miyazaki's animated features, tends toward the sappy, but it helps to brighten the rhythm during some dull lapses when the film is droning on drily about conservation. It also helps bridge the gap in tone between the adult love story and the childish insect shenanigans. The four main cast members make do with stock expressions and responses for their undemanding roles.

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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Film review: "Don't Tell Me I Can't!" (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Another entry in the seemingly inexhaustible succession of kids' competition documentaries, "Don't Tell Me I Can't!" manages to keep things fresh by profiling a unique problem-solving contest now in its 26th year. Well-suited to educational settings and perhaps a narrowly targeted DVD release, the doc could also see limited public broadcasting exposure.

Founded in 1999, Destination ImagiNation(DI) is a global educational tournament for kids and young adults aged 5-25 now established throughout the U.S. and more than 20 foreign countries. DI organizers design each year's competitive problems and regional playoffs lead contestants to the DI finals, which bring teams of kids from all over the world to Knoxville, Tennessee every May.

In 2010, 16,000 participants came together for four days of competition, recreation and celebration at 80 venues all over Knoxville. Hundreds of area residents and supporters from across the country volunteered to assist with event organization, logistics and evaluating the competitors' execution of assigned challenges.

The film follows five state championship teams from Southern California to the finals, including fourth-graders the Funky Junky Monkeys, middle-schoolers the Neon Ninjas and three high-school groups. While the younger students take on theater arts projects incorporating script writing, improv skits and homemade props and costumes, the older teens select initiatives focusing on engineering/technical challenges or social issues. Although parents and teachers play supportive roles, DI guidelines prohibit adults from participating directly in the projects, which rely entirely on youthful imagination and ingenuity.

While some of these students might be considered outright geeky in a typical school setting, DI becomes a transformational experience for many participants. "Don't tell me I can't" becomes the kids' rallying cry as they respond to their challenges.

First-time filmmaker and former DI mom Vandana Tilak profiles team members, follows events and interviews DI organizers and volunteers for a well-rounded perspective on the global event. Many of the interviewees are impressively articulate, but the doc's narrow scope makes it difficult to get a sense of the significance of the DI experience for the young competitors beyond the tournament phase. Camerawork and production values are adequate, supported by Marc Cahill's fluid editing, although the film's voiceover narration has a tendency to over-enthuse and become rather cloying.

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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2D ticket sales outpace 3D on ticket selling website (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – 2D movie ticket sales on Fandango for Warner Bros. weekend release "Green Lantern" and the final installment of "Harry Potter" are outpacing 3D ticket sales in a possible latest sign of 3D fatigue, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said Friday.

He cited the live "top sellers" data on the Pulse section of Fandango's iPad app, saying that the sales trends for the superhero movie come despite what he called a "massive 3D promotional push" for "Green Lantern" on Fandango, YouTube and elsewhere.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 2" ticket sales went on sale earlier this week, and 2D tickets are in the top 5 on the "top sellers" list, while 3D tickets are not, the analyst highlighted.

"We continue to believe U.S. consumers are frustrated with the amount of 3D movies Hollywood is producing, especially when combined with excessive ticket prices," Greenfield said.

"In addition, we suspect the darkness of 3D is starting to impact movie satisfaction (this was a key problem with "Pirates 3D," with both "Green Lantern" and "Potter" starting off with darker imagery and then layering on 3D glasses that darken the images further)," Greenfield added, pointing out the disappointing performance of a range of recent 3D releases.

While the higher ticket prices of 3D could allow the 3D box office take to exceed 2D box office, "ticket sales are clearly skewing 2D," he concluded.

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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Painter directs short film starring Lindsay Lohan (Reuters)

VENICE (Hollywood Reporter) – For Commercial Break, one of the most anticipated exhibitions running concurrent to the 54th Venice Biennial, artist Richard Phillips - primarily a painter - tried his hand at filmmaking, creating two short ethereal movies, one starring Lindsay Lohan and former porn star-turned-actress Sasha Grey.

Grey's film is a subdued night scene that follows her walking as if in a daydream through John Lautner's famous Chemosphere house, owned by art book publisher Benedikt Taschen; while Lohan's film shows the starlet plunging out of the crystal blue waters of an infinity pool.

Phillips, who makes bold pop paintings of celebrities usually rendered from imagery culled from magazines and the Internet, tried his first foray into collaboration with these two stars. The result has been two of the most talked about works among the show's 150 artists, all of whom were asked to make 90 second films.

Realizing that with so many people in the exhibition he wouldn't get much airplay, Phillips released the films virally first, to maximize exposure. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the artist in Venice at the lavish Bauer Hotel to discuss his latest body of work.

The Hollywood Reporter: Had you been thinking about film for a while?

Phillips: I had not a single thought to make a film. I had decided that I wanted to take photographs of two actors, and I had been in communication with both for different projects. When this came up, I said well, if we can go to the trouble of setting up a shoot, why not bring video and try to get some motion footage of that.

Realizing I had no experience, I contacted my friend Taylor Steele, who is a legendary surf filmmaker. We set up our offices in Los Angeles to begin an incredible week of filming. We had the Chemosphere House so we were shooting in a work of art. We had one day each with the talent and we had a day before to practice out of Santa Monica.

THR: Were you actually making those directorial calls when it came time to shoot?

Phillips: Yeah. I made these storyboards that were based on my experiences watching Bergman's "Persona" and Goddard's "Contempt." Those films really matched in a lot of ways the ideas of these young actors in a transformative moment, making a decision to live their lives in art and the consequences that ultimately befall that. With Lindsay, it's very easy to work with her because she is an extraordinarily beautiful woman. She would always get it on the first take. With Sasha, she had a huge career in adult performance and a new career in cinema and television. The melancholy that happens in her film is something that you never see in her former career. In the work she did on "Entourage" and with Steven Soderbergh ("The Girlfriend Experience"), you're still seeing her being positioned in relationship to her past and I wanted to let her be above that.

THR: Do you think both of these women gravitated toward an art related project because they are both trying to shift the idea that people have about their past?

Phillips: I think that could be assumed but the fact really is that the way I initially got in contact with them is about painting. So if you think about it in a film way you could say yes, it was on our mind to present them independently in this state of mind as they are today, as people and not as these media characters.

THR: Was it a challenge to edit down the footage to 90 seconds?

Phillips: I worked with Haines Hall of Spot Welders who had worked with Sofia Coppola on "The Virgin Suicides" and Doug Aitken's big project at MoMa. He was extremely experienced in crushing huge amounts of footage into highly communicative short bursts. We started with Lindsay and the amounts of gorgeous footage we had gave me chills.

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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Kate Bosworth to star in third film for director (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Kate Bosworth is set to star in writer/director Kat Coiro's "Untitled Italy Project," playing a married woman who embarks on an affair with a 19-year-old on the island of Ischia, Italy.

Iddo Goldberg has been cast as the main character's tightly-wound husband.

It will be Bosworth's third project with Coiro, whose "Life Happens," about three women living in Los Angeles, will have its world premiere Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The two also previously collaborated on a FunnyorDie.com short film "Idiots."

The new feature, which will shoot in Ischia and Naples, Italy as well as Los Angeles, will be produced by Lauren Bratman, Bosworth and Coiro. 1821 Pictures is providing the financing.

"This is my third film now with Kate Bosworth. I'm beyond thrilled to be able to go off to Italy with her and have her play a complicated married woman who falls for a younger man," Coiro said.

Bosworth was most recently seen in "Another Happy Day" as well as the indie "Little Birds." She will next appear on screen in the thriller "Straw Dogs."

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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"Green Lantern" on track to earn $20 million on Friday (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Warner Bros. Pictures' 3D superhero film "Green Lantern" -- starring Ryan Reynolds -- is on track to cross $20 million at the Friday box office, giving it a shot at a $57 million to $60 million debut over Father's Day weekend, according to early estimates.

Friday's total includes $3.4 million in midnight grosses.

Even rival studios are impressed by the strong business "Green Lantern" is doing, and credit an aggressive marketing campaign.

The other new entry over Father's Day weekend is 20th Century Fox's family film "Mr. Popper's Penguins," starring Jim Carrey.

In recent days, Fox lowered its expectations for the movie because of soft tracking. Based on Friday business, "Popper's Penguins" is looking at a weekend gross of $17 million to $19 million.

That's better than Fox's estimate of $10 million to $15 million, but still less than what the studio originally hoped for.

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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"Beaver" acclaim spurs Mel Gibson comeback plans (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – In May, Mel Gibson stood basking in the applause of the black-tie audience as "The Beaver" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. But now Cannes has come and gone, and so has "Beaver," which grossed less than $1 million at the North American box office.

So where does Gibson, whose image was tarnished by his outbursts during his bitter custody battle with his former girlfriend, go from here?

Turns out, Hollywood is still eager to get into the Mel Gibson business. "Beaver" earned him some good reviews, and the general consensus is that any star would have had a hard time opening the quirky drama. "It was just a heavy, depressing, tough art movie," says one distributor.

Gibson hasn't had an agent since William Morris dropped him last summer, but several agencies are courting the actor, according to knowledgeable sources.

"There's a lot of interest on the agency side, but I don't think anything is imminent," says the actor's spokesman, Alan Nierob.

There are other questions on the table: Gibson has completed a film that he produced, "How I Spent My Summer Vacation," but it has yet to find a U.S. distributor even though it sold in most other global territories.

Directed by Adrian Grunberg -- who served as first assistant director on Gibson's "Apocalypto" -- the sure-to-be-R-rated movie is set in a tough Mexican prison where Gibson's character, an American on the run, is thrown after being seized by Mexican authorities. There, he strikes up a friendship with a 9-year-old boy.

Summit, Lionsgate and FilmDistrict have screened the picture, but so far no takers. "It's an interesting, cool movie," says one buyer who passed. "In fact, it has what I'd call a Tarantino-esque feeling."

There also is the question of what movie Gibson might take on next. Lately, he's been talking up a proposed film version of Randall Wallace's novel "Love and Honor," a swashbuckler set in the court of Catherine the Great. Wallace, who wrote Gibson's "Braveheart," is looking to direct.

More immediately, Gibson also has been offered a role in "Sleight of Hand," a heist movie with Gerard Depardieu and Til Schweiger; it is set to begin filming in Paris in August.

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Jack Black shines in oddball Texas murder mystery (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – More than the film that surrounds him, Jack Black is worth the price of admission in "Bernie," an oddball May-December true life crime story that would have profited from being a whole lot darker and full-bodied than it is.

It took Richard Linklater the better part of a decade to put together this seriocomic look at Bernie Tiede, a fastidious, devout mortician who befriended the crabbiest rich old lady in Carthage, Texas, and was later tried for her murder.

The result, however, comes across as less impassioned than mild-mannered, a conflicted portrait of small town attitudes but, most importantly, an opportunity for Black to sink his teeth into a role unlike any he's ever played before. It's hard to imagine what the audience may be for this odd duck of a film, which opened the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival on Thursday and has no distributor as yet, but it's safe to say that the box office tally won't come anywhere near that of the previous Linklater-Black collaboration, "The School of Rock," eight years ago.

In the summer of 1997, 40-year-old Bernie Tiede was arrested for the murder the previous year of 81-year-old Marjorie Nugent, a multimillionaire heiress with whom he had been living. No one in the tight-knit, religious town could believe it, as Bernie was considered the nicest, most considerate man in the world, especially as he had been able to charm and disarm the widely detested Marjorie, who hadn't talked to her own offspring in years.

Working with co-writer Skip Hollandsworth, whose Texas Monthly article served as the basis for the script, Linklater presents Bernie through the eyes of the citizens of Carthage, literally so, as a vast array of genuine locals, mostly older folk, offer up interview-style comments throughout to illuminate aspects of the main characters. While some of these remarks are amusing for the opinionated, down-home tenor, Linklater relies upon them far too much, to the point where they seem like a convenient crutch to avoid dramatizing issues and make Bernie feel more like a docudrama than it should.

Introduced at the outset as "an artist in the embalming room" after he arrives in town to take the job of assistant funeral director at the local mortuary, Bernie is an immaculately groomed gentleman with impeccable diction and a mincing walk who often places his clasped hands on his large belly when he talks. Endlessly solicitous of everyone he encounters and ever-ready with the right words for the bereaved, he has a particular appeal for the little old ladies of the small town where everyone knows everyone else, even if his sexual orientation remains the subject of considerable local debate.

"All the widows in town had a crush on Bernie," one witness confides, so it is regarded with some astonishment when he becomes close to Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), the universally reviled old crab apple who deigns to speak to no one. Slowly melted by Bernie's extravagant attention, Marjorie soon has him move into her mansion, the walls of which are festooned with the full bodies of large hunted animals, takes him on extravagant trips and writes her grown children out of her will, leaving everything to Bernie.

With Marjorie's murder at the 50-minute point, the tone unavoidably shifts, but more from the turn of events than from any stylistic control the director engineers. For nine months, the always reclusive Marjorie is barely missed but, when her remains are finally discovered, Bernie is arrested and tried by wily D.A. Danny Buck Davidson (Matthew McConaughey).

The material offers possibilities for all manner of artistic approaches: Deep black comedy, mordant character study, a look at social mores and hypocrisy, a consideration of legal and religious attitudes. Black's marvelously judged performance, which is drippingly ripe but pitched just enough toward seriousness to be entirely credible, brings to mind such previous high-wire acts as, on the benign side, Charles Laughton's priceless turn as the obsequious butler in "Ruggles of Red Gap" and, in the malevolent direction, Alec Guinness' memorable predator in "The Ladykillers."

In all events, Black's characterization is strong enough to have accommodated any approach, but Linklater establishes no incisive point of view or sense of a bigger picture; in the end, the film is too mild for the insidious incident that anchors it.

Carthage, in East Texas, is clearly positioned as being "where the South begins" rather than as culturally unified with the rest of the state, and the film's sense of regional specificity has keen appeal. Although indisputably expressing Marjorie's hatefulness, MacLaine gives a one-note performance with no variable human traits running underneath, while McConaughey provides a creepy undercurrent to his good ol' boy lawman.

(To read more about our entertainment news, visit our blog "Fan Fare" online at http://blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/)

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Nia Vardalos to star in new "American Girl" movie (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" actress Nia Vardalos, who co-wrote Universal's upcoming romantic comedy "Larry Crowne" with Tom Hanks, has signed on to star in a new "American Girl" movie.

Newcomer Jade Pettyjohn, who's appeared in TV shows such as "United States of Tara," will play the lead character in the movie. Production is scheduled to begin July 11 in Winnipeg, which also happens to be Vardalos' hometown.

"American Girl" is a line of dolls and accessories extremely popular with the tween girl set that in the mid-2000s were tapped for screen adaptations. Most movies were made for the direct-to-home market, although 2008's "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl" was made for a theatrical release. It grossed $18 million in North America. The conceit is a focus on stories of young heroines in various time periods.

"Not only is this is free trip home but most importantly, it'll make me cool to my daughter," Vardalos told The Hollywood Reporter.

The storyline for the new movie isn't being revealed, although it is known that Vardalos will play Pettyjohn's mother. The picture is still casting.

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Spanish thriller "Kidnapped" - family torture porn (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – In his 1997 Austrian feature, "Funny Games," and less effectively in his own almost shot-for-shot 2007 Hollywood remake, director Michael Haneke used a chilling home-invasion scenario to explore the implications of screen violence and our responses to it as entertainment.

Debuting Spanish director Miguel Angel Vivas sets up a similar wide-awake nightmare situation in "Kidnapped," but his focus is less on content than form. The result is a stylishly executed but punishing ultra-realistic thriller that might be classified as family torture porn. The IFC Films release is available on demand now, and opens in theaters on Friday.

Haneke is deliberately cold and intellectual in his approach, imbuing his companion pieces with a provocative meta-playfulness that made them shocking and also uncomfortably ambiguous. The brutality of Vivas' debut feature is blunt and unrelenting, though his ability to sustain and manipulate suspense as the story unfolds in real time is highly assured.

Vivas' central conceit is a technical one that borrows from Hitchcock's "Rope," telling his story in a dozen continuous shots, keeping cuts to a minimum. That means there's no looking away as things get ugly for the well-heeled family in peril. But while the film impresses with its narrative economy, and its compelling use of snaking camera movement, the story (written by the director with an assist from Javier Garcia) is too psychologically threadbare to dispel the notion that this is a bravura genre-geek stunt.

The movie opens with an unsettling sequence in which a battered and bloody man staggers onto a road, his hands bound and head tied in a plastic bag. A passing motorist assists him, but a panicked call to the victim's house to alert his family reveals that the intruders are already inside.

That episode turns out to be unconnected to the plot, but lets us know what's in store for the main characters, a family moving into their dream house in an upper middle class Madrid gated community. While Jaime (Fernando Cayo) and Marta (Ana Wagener) are still arguing about whether to let their rebellious 18-year-old daughter, Isa (Manuela Velles), go to a party rather than celebrate their first night in the new house over dinner, three men wearing ski masks burst in and beat them into submission.

While the chief thug (Dritan Biba) heads out with Jaime to ATMs all over town to collect cash, his cohorts, a volatile Albanian (Martijn Kuiper) and a more rational but jumpy young accomplice (Guillermo Barrientos), stay behind to terrorize mother and daughter. Every kink in their plan -- the unexpected arrival of Isa's boyfriend (Xoel Yanez); an escape attempt; a patrol visit from a security guard (Pepo Suevos) -- ratchets up the intensity and violence.

In Hollywood versions of these stories, such as "Panic Room," catharsis, rescue and redemption usually figure. But while Vivas teases the audience by having his victims turn the tables on their aggressors with varying success, he has no interest in a consoling conclusion. Nor is he particularly diligent about building characters, so Jaime, Marta and Isa remain standard-issue figures, reduced to blubbering, terrified messes before we get to know them.

This short-changes the very capable actors, though sustained tension and fear are clearly the director's priorities here, not emotional involvement. While the family members are all sympathetic ordinary folks, we are no more encouraged to care about their fate than we are the torture victims of horror franchises like "Saw" and "Hostel."

There are mild touches of subversive humor, such as one of the intruders snorting coke and eating snacks while watching TV, wedged between the two bound and gagged women on the sofa. But these moments provide scant reward.

Even so, while the film's accelerating barrage of torture, rape and killing becomes a repugnant orgy, Vivas' control of the medium remains commanding. Cinematographer Pedro J. Marquez's sinuous camerawork keeps the action remarkably mobile for a movie with only two principal locations (house and car) and with no edits within each scene. And Vivas' use of split screen to show simultaneous action -- at one point with two scenes converging -- is masterful.

All he needs to become a formidable genre director is a script with some complexity.

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From bomb silo to big screen, an anti-nuclear quest (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – While the Cold War black comedy "Dr. Strangelove" made fans squirm with its portrayal of catastrophic nuclear brinkmanship, Bruce Blair had reason to feel the cult movie missed the real risks.

As a junior U.S. officer responsible for Minuteman ballistic missiles aimed at the Soviet Union and China, Blair was worried about sloppy safeguards and the reflex obedience of those empowered to slaughter millions from the isolation of a silo.

"I remember watching 'Dr. Strangelove' and thinking, 'They have it all wrong. You don't need to be a general.' We were only lieutenants but we could have started World War Three just as easily," he says.

Decades on, Blair is an international security expert and guiding spirit in "Global Zero," the public campaign for comprehensive nuclear disarmament that found a PR tailwind in President Barack Obama's strident anti-proliferation policies.

He has ventured back into cinema as executive producer of "Countdown to Zero," which opens in Britain next week after a generally well-reviewed U.S. run last year.

"The main purpose of it, at this point, is to provide a tool in the kit-bag of our Global Zero campaign," he told Reuters ahead of the London premiere. "We need to broaden the tent."

In a breathless 89 minutes, the documentary-cum-manifesto recounts miscalculations that nearly led to nuclear launches and accidents. Animated maps stress the city-killing potency of even rudimentary atomic devices. Former statesmen and intelligence analysts appear, warning of an al Qaeda bomb that might one day be built from unregulated fissile materials on black markets.

It's no summer crowd-pleaser, despite an upbeat coda calling on viewers to send text messages to politicians with their demand for disarmament.

Though Blair says Countdown to Zero is far from recouping its cost, the recent success of serious documentaries against Hollywood fiction at the box office suggests the film, which has had extensive Web-based advertising, can bank on an audience.

NUKE JITTERS NOT NEW

The producer, Lawrence Bender, also made Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," which energized the climate change debate.

Still, calls to ban the bomb date back far further -- to a 1961 speech at the United Nations by U.S. President John F. Kennedy, through to the American-Soviet detente in the 1980s -- and progress was stymied by the spread of nuclear powers since.

With India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel ungoverned by the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, and signatories Iran and Syria accused of violating the pact, conservatives ridicule Global Zero's argument that a universal dread of nuclear devastation can be translated into mutual trust and monitoring.

"I don't think it's either worthy or feasible. Why are humans going to stop lying and cheating?" said John Bolton, who served as U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and ambassador to the United Nations under the Bush administration.

Bolton echoed Global Zero's fear of apocalyptic terrorism but said this merely bolstered the classic nuclear postures.

"Having nuclear weapons ourselves remains an important deterrent -- perhaps not against terrorists, but against state sponsors of terrorism," he said.

Blair's response, which informs Countdown to Zero, comes down to a binary logic: Nuclear ruin, whether deliberate or not, is statistically near-inevitable given the multiplicity of those having or seeking the bomb and the erosion of safeguards; that leaves no alternative but to work to eradicate all such weapons.

He outlined Global Zero's plan to encourage worldwide negotiation frameworks, with big powers taking the lead in disarming for a "domino effect" among smaller nuclear powers.

But in the absence of consensus about a process that could take a generation or more to complete, Blair looked to projects like Countdown to Zero to fuel "the growing realization that the liabilities (of nuclear weapons) outweigh the benefits."

"If we cannot muster the political commitment, then Global Zero will not succeed. But we can get a long distance down the road without solving all of these problems," he said.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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"Green Lantern" emerges from obscurity; critics pounce (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The universe has probably never been safer if the proliferation of comic book superheroes on the big screen is any indication.

Marvel adventures "Thor" and "X-Men: First Class" have sold nearly $800 million worth of tickets combined at the worldwide box office in recent weeks, and "Captain America" is getting ready for a July 22 release across North America.

Stepping into the breach Friday is "Green Lantern," starring Ryan Reynolds as the ring-wielding intergalactic space cop immortalized in D.C. comic books.

The $150 million Warner Bros. picture tells the story of Earth's first member of the Green Lantern Corps and his maiden task -- to beat back and defeat mega-villain Parallax, a planet-killing entity that thrives on fear.

Blake Lively co-stars as his love interest, while Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong are on board as villains.

The film's director, Martin Campbell, who rebooted the James Bond franchise with the gritty "Casino Royale," acknowledges that the "Green Lantern" is a lesser-known member of the D.C. comics pantheon, but so what?

"We had a little bit more work to do," Campbell told reporters recently. "It wasn't in as many people's consciousness as Superman or Batman may have been."

But "Iron Man was a second-tier (Marvel comics) character that turned out very well," he points out. "Whether a superhero is second-tier or first-tier is irrelevant ... The movie has to stand alone."

"CLUTTERED CHAOS"

Early "Green Lantern" reviews were overwhelmingly negative. The New York Observer said the film was "a dumb, pointless, ugly, moronic and incomprehensible jumble of botched effects, technical blunders and cluttered chaos."

In slightly more measured tones, Variety said the "visually lavish sci-fi adventure" was "a highly unstable alloy of the serious, the goofy and the downright derivative."

Still, bullish sources at Warner Bros. expect the film to gross at least $50 million during its first three days of release in the United States and Canada. That would put it in the same range as "X-Men: First Class," which opened to $55 million earlier this month and has grossed $104 million to date.

The critics were generally kind to Reynolds, who was last seen by a handful of people trying to escape a coffin in "Buried." He seemed a natural choice to play a character less riven by internal demons than recent movie superheroes have tended to be.

As hot-shot fighter pilot Hal Jordan, the 34-year-old Canadian actor -- who has a fear of flying -- lent a casual wisecracking charm to a guy given the modest challenge of saving the universe.

"A lot of the current iterations of superheroes are a little bit darker and serious in tone," Reynolds told reporters in a recent interview. "This is a bit of a throwback. There's a lot of fun in the character."

So much fun that there is inevitable talk of a sequel. Indeed, viewers who sit through the credits at the end will learn which character becomes a villain in the next episode.

Lively joked she'd like to play the villain next. Strong, who co-stars as Green Lantern Corps leader Sinestro, said he played up certain personality traits that might eventually push his character to the dark side -- as happened in the comics.

Those little teasers hint at the degree of thought that may have gone toward a second installment, even before the opening credits roll on the first.

But if a sequel does not get the green light, Reynolds will get a fresh crack at fanboy glory in yet another obscure comic-book adaptation headed to the big screen. He is attached to reprise the villainous role of Deadpool in a spin-off of the "X-Men: Wolverine" spin-off.

(Editing by Dean Goodman and Steve Gorman)

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A movie that all fans of Celtic dance can enjoy (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – An account of the 40th Irish Dancing World Championships in Glasgow in 2010, "Jig" is just one step up from reality TV show contests in terms of what it offers the viewer dramatically.

Very nicely shot and scored, Sue Bourne's documentary confines itself to the predictable format of introducing a large array of contestants, generating a measure of rooting interest in them, then seeing how it all plays out in the tense competition, where the fruits of years of dedicated effort are decided in a brief moment in the spotlight.

Fans of Celtic dance constitute a modest target audience after the film opens Friday, but the film's inability to illuminate the finer points of the rigid form, to define what separates the great from the good, proves frustrating for the outsider.

Out of the roughly three thousand aspirants who congregated in Scotland a year ago with hopes of winning a trophy -- no cash awards are offered -- Bourne picks a deliberately diverse cross-section of young dancers with an eye to indicating how Irish dance has now won converts of many different stripes. In addition to the cute little Irish and British kids one would expect to see, there's a Dutch boy of African ethnicity, Polish and Russian women who caught the bug in Moscow and, most intriguingly, a California lad, Joe Bitter, whose parents, struck by their son's passion and evident talent, packed up their lives and moved to the U.K. so he could get training that would maximize his gifts.

With the exception of Joe's, the narrative strands are simply dedicated to developing human interest stories designed to pay off suspensefully at the climax, an easy strategy that is on virtually nightly display on world television screens. There are the intense little girls who at age 10 drive themselves maniacally to excel, admissions of how everyone watches their competitors on YouTube to see what they're up against, talk of the financial sacrifices required of the mostly working class families to give their kids a shot and, shades of Billy Elliot, the English boy who is bothered by bullies and accused of being gay ("But Michael Flatley isn't gay," one of the mothers helpfully offers, in the only mention of the Irish dance popularizer).

Interest surges, however, whenever Joe dances into the frame. A black-haired teen who's not terribly demonstrative and applies select British affectations to his otherwise flat American speech, Joe trains with eight-time world champion John Carey, an engaged and engaging teacher able to push his star pupil to the obvious edge of greatness. But even if Joe's talent and the extra speed of his foot movements are evident, no explanations are offered to provide insight into what the judges will be looking for at the competition. On the face of it, Irish dancing, which mixes the maintenance of a stiff upper body and arms kept absolutely straight alongside the torso with fast tapping and high kicks, seems to demand strict adherence to a set of highly formalized requirements. Personal expression and emotion are kept tightly wrapped, so some discussion of where the passion lies, and how it's ideally fused into technique, would have been welcome from the experts.

What's worse, the judging process at the competition is so arcane -- indeed, even Carey can't seem to follow it properly as scores are slowly announced -- that the climactic revelations of who won and by how much prove more frustrating than riveting. Of course, the results eventually become clear from the elation on the winners' faces, but the suspense is dissipated by the droning recitals of scores that can't be assessed.

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