L.A. Times - Entertainment News

Hollywood is churning out fairy tales with a twist
Reese Witherspoon gets a little disordered
Nicolas Cage out on $11,000 bail after New Orleans arrest
Julie Andrews is having a loverly time
'Thor': Foo Fighters take a 'Walk' with Marvel film
'Meek's Cutoff': A starkly different kind of western
'Incendies' director Denis Villeneuve talks about his journey
A Second Look: 'Sweetie'
Bertrand Tavernier goes back in time with 'The Princess of Montpensier'
New on DVD: 'The King's Speech'

Hollywood is churning out fairy tales with a twist

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Hollywood's latest trend is taking childhood classics and reimagining them with a modern, playful sensibility.

All grown up, Hansel and Gretel return to the forest to exact revenge on their childhood tormentors. Snow White escapes the Evil Queen and takes up with a group of Shaolin monks. And after leaving Kansas, carnival barker Oscar Diggs remakes himself as a wizard in the Emerald City.

Reese Witherspoon gets a little disordered

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In 'Water for Elephants,' the ordered actress worked with unpredictable animals, including a horse lying on her thigh as she powered through lines.

As far as tightly wound actresses go, Reese Witherspoon tops the list. She insists upon a strict sense of order in her life. Her production company is called Type A, a moniker her latest costar, Robert Pattinson, says fits her strong sense of self perfectly. And even when she appears to be having a spontaneous moment, lamenting that her well-orchestrated career built around an avoidance of bikinis has been breached by her current role as a leotard-clad circus performer, it turns out the line is a well-rehearsed quip that's been repeated, practically on a loop, to scores of media outlets.

Nicolas Cage out on $11,000 bail after New Orleans arrest

Posted: 16 Apr 2011 02:34 PM PDT

Cage was arrested Friday in New Orleans on a domestic abuse charge after an allegedly drunken argument with his wife.

Julie Andrews is having a loverly time

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The British actress, about to be honored at the Geffen Playhouse during its annual fundraiser, reminisces about her early stage work, her late husband, Blake Edwards, and her wish list of projects.

British film and stage star Julie Andrews, 75, will be honored at "Backstage at the Geffen," the Geffen Playhouse's annual fundraiser, on May 2 for cutting a swath on Broadway with leading roles in "Victor/Victoria," "My Fair Lady" and "Camelot." Her career has also spanned films from "Mary Poppins" to "Shrek Forever After" and numerous children's books written with daughter Emma Walton Hamilton. She was married for 41 years to filmmaker Blake Edwards, who passed away in December.

'Thor': Foo Fighters take a 'Walk' with Marvel film

Posted: 15 Apr 2011 02:07 PM PDT

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige revealed Friday that the music of Dave Grohl's band was a late addition to "Thor."

'Meek's Cutoff': A starkly different kind of western

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Director Kelly Reichardt and frequent collaborator Jon Raymond tell it like it was in this re-creation of an ill-fated wagon train in 1845 Oregon. And in art imitating life, cast and crew faced their own travails during filming.

After a hand-stitched title card announces the year and place as 1845 Oregon, "Meek's Cutoff" shows the slow, laborious process of a small wagon train moving across open country. A river is crossed, water gathered, clothes wrung out, cookware scrubbed. Then, as one shot dissolves slowly into another, one barren landscape fading in from the last, the wagons and their guide seem to roll right across an expanse of open sky, an image at once rustic, fragile and mystical. "Meek's Cutoff" is by all technical definitions a western but also clearly something more.

'Incendies' director Denis Villeneuve talks about his journey

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The film, based on Wajdi Mouawad's play, is about twins who travel to the Middle East to untangle their late mother's past.

Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve had two movies under his belt when he saw Wajdi Mouawad's acclaimed play "Incendies" in May 2004 in Montreal. Though he was writing another movie at the time, Villeneuve tracked down Mouawad to see if he could obtain the film rights. Mouawad said yes — on one condition. Villeneuve had to show he could make the movie his own.

A Second Look: 'Sweetie'

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The 1989 film was the first of a line of Jane Campion films centered on difficult women.

Jane Campion's movies have varied from Gothic romance ("The Piano") to erotic thriller ("In the Cut") to literary drama ("Bright Star"), but most of them center on willful, even difficult women. Her long line of prickly heroines, who tend to challenge or disregard societal pieties and are generally regarded by those around them as threats or annoyances, begins with the sisters Kay and Dawn in "Sweetie," her 1989 debut, which the Criterion Collection is issuing in a Blu-ray high-definition edition this week.

Bertrand Tavernier goes back in time with 'The Princess of Montpensier'

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'I didn't want to shoot a museum piece,' the French director says of his 16th century swashbuckler.

Veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier ("A Sunday in the Country," "Life and Nothing But," "'Round Midnight") has a simple philosophy when it comes to making period pieces — just because the film is set in the past, that doesn't mean the characters should be living in the past.