The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
- 'Letters to Jackie' opens US documentary film festival
- Robert Downey Jr. back for 'The Avengers' 2 & 3
- 'Star Trek's Scotty heads for the final frontier
| 'Letters to Jackie' opens US documentary film festival Posted: 21 Jun 2013 12:32 AM PDT WASHINGTON (AFP) - One of America's premier documentary film festivals got underway late Wednesday with a fresh look back on the life and times of John F. Kennedy based on moving condolence messages to his widow. Letters To Jackie: Remembering President Kennedy marries archival footage with poignant words of sympathy from the 800,000 letters sent to Jacqueline Kennedy in the two months after JFK's assassination 50 years ago this November. It set the tone of the American Film Institute's AFI Docs festival, which over five days will unspool 53 documentaries, many of them with a distinct political flavor, in theaters in Washington and surburban Silver Spring, Maryland. Highlights include Herblock: The Black And The White, a biopic of the iconic Washington Post political cartoonist, and Documented, in which journalist Jose Antonio Vargas describes his life after outing himself as an illegal migrant. Directed by Oscar winner Bill Couturie, Letters To Jackie grew out of an eponymous anthology of condolence letters and telegrams to the former first lady compiled by Ellen Fitzpatrick, published two years ago. Reading off-camera the selected two dozen or so letters from grief-stricken Americans from all walks of life is a constellation of Hollywood stars from Betty White, 91, to Hailee Steinfeld, 16. "When this tragedy struck, I felt like Peter Pan when Tinker Bell was dying," wrote one letter-writer gripped by a sense of helplessness. Another declared by way of a postscript: "I wish I could get my hands on that assassinator." Others in the film's largely female cast of voices include Berenice Bejo, Jessica Chastain, Zooey Deschanel, Kirsten Dunst, Anne Hathaway, Melissa Leo and -- conveying the words of a US army lieutenant in Berlin -- Channing Tatum. "What I find so amazing is that common people sit down and they spill their heart out," said Couturie prior to a gala evening screening at the Newseum, a museum in downtown Washington dedicated to journalism. "There is so much compassion, so much wisdom, it makes you so proud to be a human being, and in some cases to be an American," added the filmmaker, an Oscar winner in 1990 for his AIDS film Common Threads: Stories From The Quilt. "These letters had a way of trying to show there is so much more that brings us together than pulls us apart." With lots of mood music plus home movies from the Kennedy clan's Cape Cod summer holidays, the film at times feels hagiographic, before Martin Luther King appears to remind viewers how Kennedy sometimes wavered on civil rights. Couturie also prudently makes a point of underscoring JFK's role in escalating the United States' fateful involvement in the Vietnam war, as well as poignant references to the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Supporting the project was Steven Spielberg's production house Amblin Entertainment and the TLC cable channel, which plans to air it this autumn when the United States alongside commemorations of Kennedy's death. |
| Robert Downey Jr. back for 'The Avengers' 2 & 3 Posted: 20 Jun 2013 08:38 PM PDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Robert Downey Jr., who has gained huge box-office success with his portrayal of Iron Man, has signed on to star as the superhero in the next two installments of the The Avengers, Marvel Studios said on Thursday. Downey, 48, was one of the main stars of the 2012 all-star superhero film The Avengers, which united Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor and the Black Widow. The Avengers, made by Walt Disney Co's Marvel Studios, became the third highest-grossing film of all time, with US$1.5 billion at the worldwide box office. Downey is expected to be joined by Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johansson in reprising their superhero roles for The Avengers 2. The Avengers 2, set for release on May 1, 2015, will be directed by Joss Whedon. Marvel said the film would reunite the superheroes from the first film, as well as introducing Marvel characters never seen in film before. The three Iron Man films starring Downey from 2008 to 2013, have grossed more than US$2.4 billion at the worldwide box office. Iron Man 3 released last month has become the highest-grossing film of the year, with US$1.2 billion in global ticket sales, and the fifth highest-grossing film of all time, Marvel said in a statement. |
| 'Star Trek's Scotty heads for the final frontier Posted: 20 Jun 2013 08:25 PM PDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The remains of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of sci-fi fantasy television series Star Trek, will head for the final frontier next year. Scotty will be going along with him. Rodenberry's cremated remains, along with those of his wife, Majel, and actor James Doohan, who played starship engineer Scotty in the original 1960s Star Trek series, will be launched into deep space in November 2014 by the memorial spaceflight company Celestis. They will be part of a cargo that will include other cremated remains, written messages and samples of DNA in capsules sent by the general public, Celestis said on Thursday. "What's very cool about this is that it's science fiction meeting reality," Celestis spokeswoman Pazia Schonfeld said. The messages and remains will be placed on a spacecraft called a solar sail, which is powered by sunlight and made to withstand high temperatures, and headed for orbit around the sun, Celestis said. The solar sail's journey will be captured by cameras on board the craft and streamed live online. The flight will not be the first time the remains of Roddenberry, who died in October 1991 at age 70, and Doohan, who was 85 when he died in 2005, have been in space. Roddenberry was part of Celestis' inaugural flight in 1997, when his remains were taken on a trip into space before returning to Earth. An urn containing some of Doohan's remains were sent into space in 2012. Members of the public are invited to join Roddenberry and Doohan on Celestis' Sunjammer Voyager Mission, submitting names for free and samples of writing or messages at a price. Sending cremated remains into deep space starts at US$12,500. |
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