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Piper Perabo
Starz Licenses The Illusionist and Four Other Films From Yari Film ...ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Jan. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Starz Entertainment has acquired the exclusive rights to five films from Indie Producer Bob Yari, including the critically acclaimed mystery thriller and potential Oscar(R) contender The Illusionist starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Jessica Biel. The films will be shown on the Starz linear channels as well as Starz On Demand and Vongo, Starz Entertainment's video download application and service. The films will air in 2007/2008. Other films in the exclusive deal include Haven, starring Orlando Bloom and Bill Paxton; Shortcut to Happiness, starring Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin and Jennifer Love Hewitt; Winter Passing, starring Ed Harris, Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel; and Find Me Guilty starring Vin Diesel, Peter Dinklage and Annabella Sciorra. The deal was brokered by Nancy Silverstone, vice president of program acquisitions for Starz Entertainment. "Bob Yari did an extraordinary job assembling these films with strong casts," said Silverstone. "We hope this is the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with Bob, and we hope to acquire more interesting and acclaimed films to show on our diverse platforms." In The Illusionist, Edward Norton plays a controversial turn-of-the- century Viennese magician who's involved in a love triangle with an upper class young woman (Jessica Biel) and Crown Prince (Rufus Sewell). Paul Giamatti plays the chief inspector who tries to uncover the magician's secrets. Set in the Cayman Islands, Haven intertwines stories of corrupt businessmen (Bill Paxton and Stephen Dillane) fleeing the feds into tax havens and forbidden romance (Zoe Saldana and Orlando Bloom, who executive produced the film). Alec Baldwin co-stars with Anthony Hopkins and Jennifer Love Hewitt in the fantasy Shortcut to Happiness, in which a down-on-his-luck New York writer (Baldwin) sells his soul to the devil (Love Hewitt) in exchange for fame and fortune. Hopkins plays the head of the "Big Apple's" most powerful publishing firm. In Winter Passing, a sullen New York actress (Zooey Deschanel) returns home to visit her washed up novelist father (Ed Harris) in Michigan. She's been offered a large sum of money by a book editor (Amy Madigan) to get the love letters shared between the actresses' late novelist mother and her dad. Will Ferrell plays against type as a shy man who handles Harris' domestic matters. Find Me Guilty takes on the true story of Jack DiNorscio (Vin Diesel), a mobster who, rather than rat on his family and associates, defends himself in court. The trial turned out to be the longest Mafia trial in United States history. Founded in 2002, The Yari Film Group has established itself as one of the most successful independent film companies in Hollywood, with over 20 films produced over the last three years. Casting top-tier talent in compelling projects with consumer appeal, the company is dedicated to ensuring creative freedom for all of its filmmakers. The company's credits include Oscar 2006 Best Picture Winner Crash, Dave Chappelle's Block Party, The Matador, Thumbsucker, Hostage, Love Song for Bobby Long and Prime starring Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman. In it's new releasing venture, Yari Film Group has released Winter Passing, starring Ed Harris, Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel in February of 2006; Find Me Guilty, a dramatic comedy starring Vin Diesel in March of 2006; The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Jessica Biel and Haven, starring Orlando Bloom leading an all star ensemble cast including Zoe Saldana, Bill Paxton, and Joy Bryant. Upcoming releases include First Snow, starring Guy Pearce and Piper Perabo; Even Money, with an ensemble cast including Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger, Kelsey Grammer, Ray Liotta, Forest Whitaker and Tim Roth; Gray Matters, starring Heather Graham, Tom Cavanagh and Bridget Moynahan. The company also finished production on The Hoax, a drama starring Richard Gere, Alfred Molina and Marcia Gay Harden and The Painted Veil, starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. The company recently wrapped production on Kickin It Old Skool, starring Jamie Kennedy; Resurrecting the Champ, starring Samuel Jackson, Josh Hartnett and Alan Alda and Addicted, starring Sarah Michelle Geller. Yari Film Group is currently in production on The Accidental Husband, a romantic comedy starring Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Colin Firth in New York. A change of scenes: Late winter and spring films fill a voidNormally, movies scheduled for the first months of the year are like stand-ins at a Broadway musical, waiting for the stars to lose their voices so they can have the stage—that is, they’re ready to fill the multiplexes soon as interest wanes in the big holiday pictures. Nonetheless, there are still a number of high-profile movies coming up in the mix. Later this month, Jude Law and Juliette Binoche arrive in director Anthony Minghella’s “Breaking and Entering,” a drama about the racial tension in a London neighborhood. And Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan star in “Seraphim Falls,” an old-fashioned post-Civil War Western. Anthony Hopkins isn’t around, but the Hannibal Lecter series continues with “Hannibal Rising,” a prequel about the future cannibal’s childhood. Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore are in one romantic comedy, Chris Rock and Kerry Washington star in another, and there are dramas starring the normally light Sandra Bullock and Adam Sandler. And after this week’s “Arthur and the Invisibles,” kids can look forward to “Meet the Robinsons,” about a smarty-pants kid who sends himself to the future, as well as a computer-generated restart to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. But no single film can match the interest in the two films in “Grindhouse,” a pair of 1970s-style exploitation flicks written and directed—separately, but in the same movie-geek spirit—by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Here’s more information about these and other films scheduled to open between now and early April. ModernBride beauty & fitnessLike many of my fellow NYC gals, I’ve made two resolutions for 2007: get fit and get hitched. So yesterday morning at precisely 6:42 a.m., I shoo’d the sailor from my boudoir and headed out to test-drive my brand-new gym membership. After scrubbing the bioluminescent club stamp off my hand and shrouding myself in makeup and jangly jewelry, I perched myself atop an elliptical doohickey. Sweating is icky! It didn’t take: After dabbing my glistening brow with one of the coarse gym towels (double icky!), I retreated back to my beauty cave, whereupon I surrendered to the sweet familiarity of lather, rinse, repeat. I’m too lazy to exercise. I can’t curb my carb cravings. My eyes are perpetually puffy and my skin sags like a deelasticized sock. What’s a bride-in-training to do? Not read ModernBride beauty & fitness, that’s for darn sure. I have no particular contempt for any woman who wants to glam up in advance of her big day; I’m not sure that the well-manicured patooties behind beauty & fitness feel the same way. In its every simplistic item, the mag practically screams, “We’re going to help you because you’re too clueless to help yourself.” In the Winter 2006/2007 issue’s editor’s letter, beauty & fitness notes that “the idea that you want to transform yourself into the best you can be is laudatory.” Okay, no problem there. But while the mag offers all sorts of beauty and fitness resources for brides-to-be — checklists, diets, regimens, etc. — few display the slightest smidgen of respect for the reader’s intelligence. The beauty and fitness Q&As, the questions of which sure don’t sound like they came from readers, suggest that the bride’s goal “should be to eat and train the smart way.” What? Heresy! Sillier and even less instructive is “10 Sneaky Ways to Lose 10 Pounds.” If drinking water, eating smaller meals and hoofing it around town truly qualify as “sneaky,” color me a calorie cat burglar. The product picks include an iPod, surely an unfamiliar contraption to anyone who finds herself paging through a mass-market publication; the “Modern Makeovers” succeed in making pretty girls look pretty. That’s what bugs me most about beauty & fitness: its laziness. The Winter issue careens between beauty and diet and fitness content haphazardly, with seemingly little thought given to organization. It repurposes generic diet/fitness dreck in any number of ways, slapping on bride-baiting titles (”wedding dress workout,” “the wedding day diet”) for good measure. And there are celebrities — 33 of them, in fact, force-fed under the editorial hook of “hairdos to choose from… walk down the aisle with red-carpet flair.” Apropos of nuthin’, I wonder whether Piper Perabo’s publicist agrees with the description of his/ her client’s look as “beachy.” From a design perspective, beauty & fitness falls back on the easiest trends (those adorable lower-case headlines) and most tired illustrations (for a story on a week’s worth of primping- and preening-related activities, it presents a planner, complete with scribbled annotations and business cards tossed about ever-so-casually). And once again, I understand that nobody likes looking at non-fetching people: not me, not you, not the falafel vendor on the corner. But heck to Betsy, a mag targeting all brides probably should expand its image base beyond emaciated white folks; the first non-celebrity black person, in either ad or edit, doesn’t appear until the issue’s 49th page. For lack of a more creative segue, here’s the part of the review where I say something nice about beauty & fitness. The “i was a beauty diva” romp through hair and gym appointments alike flashes needed personality, at least until its flat and tonally inconsistent final sentence (”I never thought of myself as high maintenance, but now I know that being a beauty diva — especially a few weeks before the wedding — suits me just fine”). The diet success stories bring a bit of quirk and seeming authenticity to the table, though the otherwise didactic taste-test (okay, bad choice of words there) of six weight-loss programs falls short when the mag fails to provide any kind of definitive verdict or recommendation. The Weekend Warrior's "Terrible 25" of '06We got the best (in this author's humble opinion) and now, the fun part: the worst. I think some people must read my reviews or my weekly previews column and assume I like or love every single movie, but no, that's far from the case, and as hard as it was narrowing my favorite movies down to 25, it was even harder to do the same with the bad movies, because there were so many different levels of bad, ranging from incompetence to misguided intentions, and there were a number of surprises and disappointments in here, even for me, and enough to spill-over into a few dishonorable mentions. In this year's cast ...Movie Sneaks: In last Sunday's movie Sneaks listings, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie "TMNT" was included under Action. The CGI film should have been under Animation. Also, the names of writer-director Bruce A. Evans and writer Raynold Gideon for the film "Mr. Brooks" were omitted from the list. Also, the comedy "Good Luck Chuck" was omitted. In it, Dane Cook stars as a dentist who discovers that a curse placed on his love life by a rejected Goth girl a quarter century earlier is having an unforeseen effect on his romantic prospects. Jessica Alba and Dan Fogler also star. The movie, written by Josh Stolberg and directed by Mark Helfrich, is scheduled to be released by Lionsgate on Aug. |
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