Pages tagged “doubt”

Release Date: Dec. 12 (limited)
Director/Writer: John Patrick Shanley (based on his play)
Cinematographer: Roger Deakins
Starring:  Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis
Studio/Run Time: Miramax, 104 mins.

Rocky adaptation thrives on play's ideas

The early scenes of Doubt glide past so smoothly that it’s easy to miss the seditious currents underneath. Set at an old Bronx Catholic school in the fall of 1964, the film at first feels like a window into a lost world of tradition, but specters of the Kennedy assassination and the school’s first black student warn of the social revolution ahead. A nun's (Meryl Streep) suspicious glance at the school's priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as he tends to students carries its own warning, with a much more ominous air.

After the awkward press conference that became of last year’s Golden Globes, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association rolled out the expected nominees this morning for a show that is now guaranteed to draw all the names who shunned it last year.

Perhaps that project Anand Tucker announced recently—The Danish Girl with Nicole Kidman playing a transsexual—was a bit too heavy for his liking. While he's still attached to the project, Tucker's announced he's in talks to direct another picture that's, shall we say, a bit more commercial.

There's a surprisingly gargantuan Internet faction dedicated to predicting who will be up for film's most coveted prize, the Academy Award. Publications like Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times and New York Times all have Oscar blogs that obsessively trail the fluctuations in buzz amongst the year's top films. That's not to mention stand-alone sites like Awards Daily and In Contention, or well-known bloggers like Jeff Wells, Dave Poland and Anne Thompson. Even Roger Ebert has devoted a wealth of recent ink on the subject. But, the truth is, no matter how much someone knows, it's still just a wild guessing game.

Despite recent controversies, preparations for the Sundance Film Festival are in full swing, prompting the announcement of the annual event's Jan. 15 opening night film: the Aussie animated import Mary and Max, featuring the voices of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette and Eric Bana. The selection is a major coup for the film, considering the attention lavished on recent opening night films, like this year's rather slept-on tragicomedy In Bruges.

In the season three finale of The Office, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) competes with a couple of his co-workers for a prestigious new job at Dunder Mifflin corporate. "I am by far the most qualified person they're interviewing," he says. "Jim and Karen are here, which is cute. They're like kid actors, tagging along with daddy at the big audition, hoping to be discovered. Except daddy is the best actor around. Daddy is Meryl Streep."