New York-based photographer Taghi Naderzad recently shot a portrait of [...]

For the first time since he was in his 2006 picture “Scoop,” Woody Allen has given himself a part in his next film, which has the working title of “The Bop Decameron” and is due to start filming in Rome in July. The Decameron is the name of Boccacio’s erotic 14th-century stories, often made into film, most famously by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1971 and also by Fellini/de Sica et al for the 1962 "Boccacio 70." Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page and Roberto Benigni star. Thus, year in, year out, the director pays his tithe to the gods of cinema, this time around surely especially buoyed by the resounding and well-deserved success of his multi-actored, multi-period “Midnight in Paris.”

As Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," which opened in major cities at the end of last month, is getting ready for its nationwide rollout, a how-to featurette has been released by distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures in the hopes that it will help shepherd the meditative film across the dusty trails that await. Because in order for a movie to make money, as Mike Fleming of Deadline New York reports, it needs to connect with a young audience and as anyone who's seen "The Tree of Life" knows, this might be a head-scratching challenge for the distributor.

Sony Pictures has picked up worldwide rights to Detention Films’ [...]

[post_author_posts_link] [post_date] [post_comments] [post_edit] Rappers and movies. Now there’s a [...]

Pro: she’s worked with some of the best video directors of all time and probably has been ‘influenced’ by them. I can hear you snicker and shrug, and maybe being a great movie director doesn’t make one a good movie director but there are some notable exceptions: David Fincher or, when he’s actually working, Spike Jonze. So anyway, by osmosis, or otherwise, Madge has known great music video directors and that has to have affected her stylistically. You can’t spend seven days inside a room with Jonas Åkerlund without getting some benefit out of it. And I’m a huge fan of Madonna’s collaborations with New York photographer Steven Klein (one of my very favorites out there).

Baldwin’s forays into politics have been mostly via his chronicles in the Huffington Post. He’s no Hendrik Hertzberg but the world could always use more politically-committed actors (as long as they’re not taking an Academy Awards telecast with their pleas—Susan Sarandon and Tim Robins).

Last April Baldwin wrote an article bemoaning clean-nuclear politics’ “dishonest” agenda in HuffPo (he’s a contributor). Most recently, also in the media outlet, Baldwin wrote a commentary of the recent Anthony Weiner debacle, saying, “He exists under a constant pressure cooker of self-analysis and public appraisal. Like other politicians, he needs something to take the edge off.”