Movie & TV News

[Rasputin]

Breaking and Entering (2006)

A young Muslim thief breaks into the office of a yuppie architect in London, afterwards the architect re-evaluates his life. A series of related events intersects the lives of the two men with a variety of other people in the seedy inner-city area of Kings Cross.

Genres: Art/Foreign and Drama

Running Time: 2 hrs.

Release Date: December 8th, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: R for sexuality and language.

Distributors: MGM Distribution Company, The Weinstein Company , Buena Vista International

Cast and Credits

Starring: Jude Law, Vera Farmiga, Juliette Binoche, Martin Freeman, Ray Winstone
Directed by: Anthony Minghella
Produced by: Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Colin Vaines

[Rasputin]

Deja Vu

"Déjà Vu" gives you the feeling that you've seen parts of this movie before. Only, the parts were all from better films.

Denzel Washington reteams with Tony Scott, his "Man on Fire" and "Crimson Tide" director. But this hybrid time-travel mystery/romance feels like a slickly packaged product lacking much heart or coherent plotting.

Washington plays New Orleans-based Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Doug Carlin, charged with tracking down the terrorist responsible for bombing a ferry, killing more than 500 people.

He's assisted by a secret federal surveillance branch with a very cool toy: These technogeeks have somehow folded time and patched their video screens into a wormhole that allows them to see what happened, anywhere in the world, exactly four days and six hours ago. (Don't ask how; you're just supposed to buy the idea.)

Doug has them focus on Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton), whose body was found far away from where most of the ferry casualties were recovered. His hunch? That she was killed for her vehicle, which was packed with explosives by the bomber and driven onto the ferry.

Doug is right, naturally. He's also a little bit creepy as he spies on the then-alive Claire wandering around her home and stripping off to take a shower.

Much of the first half of "Déjà Vu" consists of Washington and his fellow actors sitting around looking at Paula's last hours on monitors. It sometimes has all the excitement of seeing a bunch of guys playing "World of Warcraft."

Finally — and you knew this was coming, even though you could also guess it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense — Doug gives up watching and has himself sent back through time like a very special FedEx delivery.

Can he save pretty Claire and, incidentally, those other 500 folks? Will they fall in love? And will the ATF pay Doug overtime for literally working a double shift? "Déjà Vu" tries to fuse time-travel romances such as "Somewhere in Time" and "Time After Time" with some of the futuristic video technology of "Strange Days." But none of it really sticks.

Before it winds up with an explosive ending and a romantic coda that doesn't bear much scrutiny (at least according to the rules of time-travel fiction), "Déjà Vu" occasionally perks up with the appearance of Jim Caviezel as a bad guy.

But he perks things up in the wrong way. At a word-of-mouth screening of the film, his appearance repeatedly had people nudging each other in their seats, and asking, "Hey, isn't that Jesus?"

Well, yeah, he was, in Mel Gibson's film. But he can't work any miracles in his new one.

[Nutcase]

FACTORY GIRL

SYNOPSIS: The year is 1965, and Edie Sedgwick is living every young girl’s dream. Rich, ambitious and breathtakingly beautiful, Edie’s life changes forever when she meets Andy Warhol, New York’s most famous artist, and the man who will transform this trust fund baby into the Big Apple’s most dazzling Superstar.

At the center of this exciting and decadent new world is The Factory, Warhol’s downtown loft, a place where musicians, artists, actors and all types of misfits gather to create art and movies during the day, and to throw fabulous parties at night. It is here that Edie takes her place at Andy’s side as the Factory’s most alluring and irresistible Superstar.

Edie has the world at her feet. Every woman wants to be her. Every man wants to be with her. But unable to find the love she craves from Andy and The Factory Edie turns to the “voice of a generation” singer-songwriter Danny Quinn, a captivating and talented musician who represents everything that Andy is not - where Andy is all cool surfaces, Danny burns with the fire of his convictions. Danny pushes Edie to free herself from Andy, who has been using her in his movies but never paying her. Edie quickly falls for Danny, but every affair has its price…

Warhol is deeply stung by the revelation of Edie’s affair, and punishes her for her unfaithfulness by banishing her from the Factory. As her world collapses, Danny abandons her too. All alone, Edie struggles to hold herself together as the pressures of fame and the cost of the fast life turn her world from glamour to tragedy.

A fragile shooting star who dazzled the world with her beauty, style, glamour and wealth, Edie Sedgwick was one of the great pop icons of the 1960’s.

This is her story.

GENRE: Drama

CAST: Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen, Jimmy Fallon

[Rasputin]

The Holiday (2006)

Iris is in love with a man who is about to marry another woman. Across the globe, Amanda realizes the man she lives with has been unfaithful. Two women who have never met and live 6000 miles apart, find themselves in the exact same place. They meet online at a home exchange website and impulsively switch homes for the holiday. Iris moves into Amanda's L.A. house in sunny California as Amanda arrives...

Genres: Comedy and Romance

Release Date: December 8th, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and some strong language.

Distributors: Sony Pictures Releasing

Cast and Credits

Starring: Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black, Eli Wallach
Directed by: Nancy Meyers
Produced by: Suzanne Farwell, Nancy Meyers, Bruce Block

[Rasputin]

Unaccompanied Minors (2006)

It's Christmas Eve and a huge blizzard has just shut down the airport, threatening to ruin holiday plans for all stranded travelers. Snowed in en route to their father's house, two "Unaccompanied Minors"--dubbed UMs--Spencer and his little sister, Katherine, are ushered to the airport's Unaccompanied Minors Room, a holding cell for dozens of stranded, parent-free kids from all over the country. Caught...

Genres: Comedy, Kids/Family and Adaptation

Release Date: December 8th, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: PG for mild rude humor and language.

Distributors: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution

Cast and Credits

Starring: Wilmer Valderrama, Dyllan Christopher, Gina Mantegna, Quinn Shephard, Tyler J. Williams
Directed by: Paul Feig
Produced by: Ira Glass, Julie Snyder, Michael Lambert (III)

[Rasputin]

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

Chris Gardner is a bright and talented, but marginally employed salesman. Struggling to make ends meet, Gardner finds himself and his five-year-old son evicted from their San Francisco apartment with nowhere to go. When Gardner lands an internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm, he and his son endure many hardships, including living in shelters, in pursuit of his dream of a better life for the...

Genres: Drama and Biopic

Release Date: December 15th, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some language.

Distributors: Sony Pictures Releasing

Cast and Credits

Starring: Will Smith, Thandie Newton, Jaden Smith, Dan Castellaneta, Zuhair Haddad
Directed by: Gabriele Muccino
Produced by: David Alper (II), Mark Clayman (II), Louis D'Esposito

[Rasputin]

10 Items or Less (2006)

A Hollywood icon finds himself riding around Los Angeles in a beat up Gremlin with a young female check out clerk from Carson. He's a long way from Brentwood but what looks like just another celebrity scandal reveals an unexpected friendship that will leave a lifelong impression.Once the center of Hollywood, an aging actor finds that his fear of failure has made his career dry up, and he's now forced...

Genres: Comedy and Drama

Running Time: 1 hr. 22 min.

Release Date: December 1st, 2006 (limited)

MPAA Rating: R for language.

Distributors: ThinkFilm

Cast and Credits

Starring: Morgan Freeman, Paz Vega, Anne Dudek, Jonah Hill, Alexandra Berardi
Directed by: Brad Silberling
Produced by: Morgan Freeman, Brad Silberling, Lori McCreary

[Rasputin]

Turistas (2006)

Brazil. Beautiful women, pristine beaches, a friendly, open culture. Alex is accompanying his sister Bea and her best friend Amy for their first time abroad--young Americans who have come to exotic Brazil for fun, adventure and the promise of foreign pleasures. On a rickety bus rocketing up a twisting mountain road, they meet the beautiful Pru, who speaks the native language Portuguese, and Finn and...

Genres: Thriller

Running Time: 1 hr. 29 min.

Release Date: December 1st, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: R for strong graphic violence and disturbing content, sexuality, nudity, drug use and language.

Distributors: Fox Atomic

Cast and Credits

Starring: Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, Olivia Wilde, Beau Garrett, Desmond Askew
Directed by: John Stockwell
Produced by: Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban, Elaine Dysinger

[Rasputin]

3 Needles (2006)

A drama that visits rural China, a plantation in South Africa, and Montreal's porn industry, to tell three separate yet universal stories, rooted to struggles with the HIV pandemic. In China, Ping is a pregnant young woman running a black market blood collection scam that creates a mini epidemic in a rural village. In Montreal, Denys is a porn actor hiding his positive HIV status in order to continue...

Genres: Comedy and Drama

Running Time: 2 hrs. 7 min.

Release Date: December 1st, 2006 (limited)

Distributors: Covington International

Cast and Credits

Starring: Lucy Liu, Shawn Ashmore, Stockard Channing, Chloe Sevigny, Olympia Dukakis
Directed by: Thom Fitzgerald
Produced by: Thom Fitzgerald, Bryan Hofbauer

[Rasputin]

Deliver Us From Evil (2006)

Moving from one parish to another in Northern California during the 1970s, Father Oliver O'Grady quickly won each congregation's trust and respect. Unbeknownst to them, O'Grady was a dangerously active pedophile that Church hierarchy, aware of his predilection, had harbored for over 30 years, allowing him to abuse countless children.

Genres: Documentary, Crime/Gangster and Politics/Religion

Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

Release Date: October 13th, 2006 (limited)

MPAA Rating: Not Rated

Distributors: Lionsgate

U.S. Box Office: $196,585

Cast and Credits

Starring: Monsignor Cain, Oliver O'Grady, Cardinal Roger Mahoney, Nancy Sloan, Marie Jyono
Directed by: Amy Berg
Produced by: Ray Baldwin, Michael Brown (XI), Tom Ortenberg

[Rasputin]

'The Devil Wears Prada': Devilishly fun

The dishy new comedy "The Devil Wears Prada" is dressed to kill.

Killer cast, killer clothes, killer laughs. And best of all, you don't have to know the difference between Donna Karan and Donna Summer to delight in the film's wicked workplace politics.

Based on Lauren Weisberger's best-selling roman à clef about her adventures in the perfect-skin trade as a lowly assistant to Vogue magazine's Anna Wintour, David Frankel's ("Entourage," "Sex and the City" ) movie is as crisp as a starched white shirt, as clever as the perfect pair of Jimmy Choos, and as self-confident as a supermodel.

Our newly graduated heroine, Andy Sachs (fetching Anne Hathaway), wants a job in Manhattan's literary world, preferably at the New Yorker. She settles for indentured servitude as the junior assistant to icy Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the legendary and formidable editor in chief at glamorous Runway magazine. She's told almost hourly, "A million girls would kill for this job," but after a few days at Miranda's malicious beck and call, Andy is ready to kill herself.



Or Miranda.

However, if she can hang on for a year, her experience as Miranda's punching bag will guarantee her a job at just about any publication she chooses. Including the New Yorker.

So she makes her deal with the devil, enduring snide suggestions that a size 6 (5-foot-10 Andy's size) is the new 14. Or suffering Miranda's out-loud mea culpa about her new hire, "I told myself, go ahead. Take a chance on the smart fat girl."

The film's devilishness, you might say, is in the details. Miranda's curt "That's all," to signal she's no longer interested in having you anywhere within five feet of her. The office-wide pandemonium when it's reported Miranda is on the premises, as flats are tossed for stiletto heels and panicked cries, "She's coming!" sound like grunts yelling, "Incoming!" in a war zone.

After observing her college-girl togs and asking if there was "a before-and-after piece I don't know about," Nigel (Stanley Tucci), Runway's fashion maven, takes Andy under his expensively clothed wing and gives her a makeover.

Two things work especially well in the movie. First, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna has softened Weisberger's sometimes bilious novel, made it a little less Old Testament in its wrath. And she's cut down on the scenes with Andy's family, boyfriend, etc. — essentially anything that takes us away from the addictively toxic corridors of Runway.

Secondly, the casting couldn't be better. It would've been easy — expected — to hire some TV-sized actor who specializes in swish as Nigel, but instead Frankel chose Tucci, who gets inside this man and makes him more than a grab bag of drag-queen tragedy, arch witticisms and "Queer Eye" bitchiness. As Miranda's senior assistant, Emily Blunt is also good, both believably shallow and certifiably terrified when she hears Miranda's voice. When she walks into the boss's office, that clacking sound you hear isn't her mile-high heels but her knees knocking together.

Hathaway continues to impress. Woefully undervalued for her work in "Brokeback Mountain," she really shines here, as both a gawky fish out of water and a bright young woman trying to convince herself it's OK to sell her writer's soul for a Gucci bag.

And Streep is almost guaranteed to have bagged yet another Oscar nomination. She doesn't make Miranda a caricatured monster, nor does she play for sympathy. Instead, she keeps Miranda cool, quiet and commanding — someone able to paralyze underlings with her Medusa stare — and keeps her voice at a moderate, reasonable tone, as if to mask the fact she is anything but.

She looks amazing, too.

A tale of sex, lies and bulimia, "The Devil Wears Prada" is a classic underdog story, as applicable to a fashion magazine as it is to a law firm or a movie studio. These Byzantine survival tactics aren't merely Victoria's Secrets; they're everyone's.

[Rasputin]

Driving Lessons (2006)

Shy and downtrodden Ben dreads yet another dreary school holiday coming around. Seventeen years of living in an absurdly conservative and traditional household with his highly-strung and overbearing mother and quiet, mild mannered vicar father have taken its toll on young Ben. While the other kids are out having fun, Ben spends these precious few weeks attending bible classes, having driving lessons...

Genres: Art/Foreign, Comedy and Drama

Running Time: 1 hr. 38 min.

Release Date: October 13th, 2006 (limited)

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language, sexual content and some thematic material.

Distributors: Sony Pictures Classics

Cast and Credits

Starring: Rupert Grint, Julie Walters, Laura Linney, Nicholas Farrell, Tamsin Egerton-Dick
Directed by: Jeremy Brock
Produced by: Robert Jones (VIII), Edward R. Pressman, Alessandro Camon

[Rasputin]

Everyone's Hero (2006)

A young boy finds himself at an extraordinary crossroads: He has a chance to be a hero - and make a difference against incredible odds - or he can play it safe. With faith in himself instilled by his family, he teams up with a sassy young girl and some off-the-wall sidekicks and embarks on a sometimes perilous, often funny, cross-country quest. In the process, he restores his family's honor, befriends...

Genres: Action/Adventure, Comedy, Kids/Family, Animation and Sports

Running Time: 1 hr. 26 min.

Release Date: September 15th, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: G

Distributors: 20th Century Fox Distribution

U.S. Box Office: $14,514,455

Cast and Credits

Starring: Whoopi Goldberg, Rob Reiner, Jake T. Austin, William H. Macy, Brian Dennehy
Directed by: Colin Brady, Daniel St. Pierre, Christopher Reeve
Produced by: Morris Berger, Dana Reeve (II), Steve Brown (II)

[Rasputin]

Employee of the Month (2006)

For customers of Super Club, the largest high-volume, bulk-discount retailer in the country, membership has its privileges. For workers at the cavernous store, the most coveted honor is the "Employee of the Month" award, and having one's photo immortalized on the wall of fame in the staff lounge. Enter Zack Bradley and Vince Downey, two ultra competitive Super Club workers whose ten years of employment...

Genres: Comedy

Running Time: 1 hr. 43 min.

Release Date: October 6th, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, and language.

Distributors: Lionsgate

Cast and Credits

Starring: Dane Cook, Jessica Simpson, Dax Shepard, Efren Ramirez, Harland Williams
Directed by: Greg Coolidge
Produced by: Michael Paseornek, John Sacchi, Michael Burns

[Rasputin]

Facing the Giants (2006)

In his six years of coaching, Grant Taylor has never had a winning season. Even the hope of a new season is squelched when the best player on his Shiloh Eagles decides to transfer schools. After losing their first three games of the season, the coach discovers a group of fathers are plotting to have him fired. Combined with pressures at home, Coach Taylor has lost hope in his battle against fear and...

Genres: Drama, Kids/Family, Politics/Religion and Sports

Running Time: 1 hr. 51 min.

Release Date: September 29th, 2006 (limited)

MPAA Rating: PG for some thematic elements.

Distributors: Destination Films, Samuel Goldwyn Films
Cast and Credits

Starring: Alex Kendrick, Shannen Fields, Tracy Goode, Bailey Cave, Steve Williams (V)
Directed by: Alex Kendrick
Produced by: Jim McBride (VI), Alex Kendrick, Stephen Kendrick