Month: August 2014

“Very soon, this whole structure that we all love so much will be gone,” prophesies Danny Huston’s wide-grinning movie studio head in Ari Folman’s “The Congress.”

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Rapper Wiz Khalifa knocked the “Guardians of the Galaxy” soundtrack from the top spot on the weekly U.S. Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, scoring his first No. 1 album. Khalifa’s “Blacc Hollywood” sold 90,000 copies in its first week, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan. It outpaced last week’s chart-topper, the retro “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” soundtrack from Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” film, which sold 64,000 copies in its fourth week of release.

By Patricia Reaney NEW YORK (Reuters) – Thwarted ambition and shattered dreams push actress Susan Sarandon to become the ultimate stage mother in “The Last of Robin Hood,” a drama about the final fling of middle-aged matinee idol Errol Flynn and his teenage lover. As Florence Aadland, the mother of Flynn’s young paramour Beverly, Sarandon ventures into Aadland’s deluded nature and complicit role in the illicit two-year affair that shocked Hollywood when it was made public after Flynn’s death in 1959. Sarandon, an Oscar winner for “Dead Man Walking,” has played mothers, and even a grandmother, in films ranging from “Pretty Baby” in 1978 to 2014’s comedy “Tammy.” As the frumpish Aadland, a former dancer whose career ended when she lost a leg in a car accident, Sarandon portrays a woman who lived vicariously through the daughter she had groomed for a career in Hollywood. Academy Award winner Kevin Kline (“A Fish Called Wanda”) plays Flynn, the hard-drinking, notorious ladies’ man known for his swashbuckling roles in the 1930s films “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “Captain Blood.” Flynn had already faced two accusations of statutory rape that nearly ruined his waning career when he met Beverly, played by actress Dakota Fanning of the “Twilight” films.

VENICE, Italy (AP) — VENICE, Italy — The Venice Film Festival is bringing 11 days of red-carpet premieres, innovative movies and Hollywood glamour to the Italian city. Here’s what has been catching the eye of The Associated Press:

By Michael Roddy VENICE (Reuters) – Former “Batman” star Michael Keaton gave a soaring start to the 71st Venice Film Festival on Wednesday as a crestfallen superhero in “Birdman”, a film its Mexican director Alexandro Inarritu called an experiment that could have failed miserably. The film brings starpower that Venice, the world’s oldest film festival, needs to keep itself from being sidelined by the celebrity magnet of Cannes in May and industry powerfest the Toronto Film Festival, which opens next week. Noted for his arthouse movies “Babel” and “21 Grams”, Inarritu switches gears in this Fox Searchlight production, also starring Emma Stone as Keaton’s daughter, who is just out of drug rehab, Naomi Watts as an actress desperate to make it on Broadway and Edward Norton as the foil to Keaton’s character, Riggan Thomson.