Moviefone Editorial

Tag: robert-redford

  • ‘Pete’s Dragon’: 10 Things We Learned at the Sneak Peek for Disney’s Reboot

    For many, “Pete’s Dragon” was a huge part of their childhoods, so it’s no surprise Disney chose to make it their next live-action reboot. But don’t expect this “Pete’s Dragon” to be a simple recycling of the original; it has its own unique, grounded take on the fan-favorite story.

    Recently, Moviefone was privy to an exclusive preview of footage from the movie, with writer-director David Lowery in attendance. The scenes we screened emphasized the film’s grounded tone and, of course, everyone’s favorite Disney dragon: Elliot. Following the screening, Lowery and select members of the cast participated in a Q&A, revealing how they brought Disney’s beloved tale to life.

    1. The first decision when it came to designing a CG Elliot: He had to be furry. Lowery revealed that he is obsessed with his cats (same) and he used them as inspiration for the lovable dragon. He really wanted Elliot to remind audiences of a cute and cuddly pet, which the footage definitely delivered.

    2. Karl Urban plays the villain, Gavin. He wants the dragon and will do anything he can to get it.

    3. Bryce Dallas Howard loves the original “Pete’s Dragon” and immediately said yes when she was offered a role in the reboot. She loved that this movie wasn’t just a copycat; it took the core of what the live-action/animated film did and made it its own.

    4. Don’t look for any callbacks to the original. While Lowery gets why reboots and remakes give a wink and nod to their source material, the filmmaker didn’t want to take the audience out of the movie. The reboot also does not feature any songs from the original.
    5. To ensure that they could use a green screen only when necessary, they drove two hours into the woods to film every day. Lowery wanted the movie to feel as grounded as possible, and having a big, furry dragon is enough to “unground” it.

    6. Robert Redford once hitchhiked to the set after being dropped off at the wrong spot. Classic Redford.

    7. On the way to set one day, Redford spotted an injured horse and came to its rescue. What a guy.

    8. Howard said Oona Laurence, who plays Pete’s fierce BFF, Natalie, was “a little Meryl Streep.” She would be playing in between scenes, come to the set, do her scene, nail it, and leave.

    9. To find the perfect Pete, the casting director auditioned thousands and thousands of people worldwide. She eventually winnowed it down to about 150 kids, and, from there, Lowery chose one.

    10. To land the role of Pete, Oakes Fegley was asked in his audition to build something out of the chairs in the room and to sneak up on someone. Lowery wanted to make sure that the actor cast in the role had the genuine qualities he saw in Pete.

    “Pete’s Dragon” hits theaters Friday, August 12.

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  • Top Rated Movies That Should’ve Won Oscars

    Robert De Niro in RAGING BULLThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — that group of secret film wizards most known for handing out naked golden statues to very pretty people once a year — is made up of plain old human beings. Just like you have opinions, and just like your Aunt Bertha who tries to communicate with her cats using telepathic crystals has opinions, these movie-making humans have opinions too. And when you’ve been around as an organization for 90-ish years like the Academy has, you’re bound to throw out some, uh, questionable opinions now and again. And again. And again. Time to grit those teeth and embrace the snubs.

    Facts to Tick Off Your Film Professor

    Let’s start with the big one: “Citizen Kane” did not win Best Picture in 1942. Ever heard of “How Green Was My Valley“? Well, now you have, because that’s what won. It’s not that John Ford‘s “Valley” is a bad movie by any stretch — it’s just a question of horrendously bad foresight. Ask yourself which film left a bigger mark on film classes, cinema, and pop culture over the next 70 years, and you’ll understand why this is the “should’ve won” to beat all “should’ve wons.”

    And while you’re giving your film professor a stroke, feel free to rattle off this list of filmmakers who, like Orson Welles for “Kane,” never took home Best Director awards: Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman, and Charlie Chaplin. And that’s the tip of the Oscar-fail iceberg.

    And the Oscar Goes to … the Safest Choice Possible

    The Academy might not be a hive-mind, but it has most definitely displayed some strong preferences over the last nine decades. It likes drama. It loves history. It has a thing for biographies. Tears are unequivocally good. And, as “Tropic Thunder” taught us, a mentally challenged protagonist translates to trophies. When the ’95 ceremony rolled around, a little flick called “Forrest Gump” conveniently ticked just about all of those boxes. Another critical contender, “Pulp Fiction,” ticked just about none. Take a guess at what won.

    Now, “Gump” is a beloved film. But few will argue that “Pulp” not only inspired a slew of post-Tarantino imitators, it left a mark on cinema bigger than any box-of-chocolate-inspired anecdotes possibly could. But at least Oscar’s predilection for safe choices wasn’t without precedent — back in ’81, the Wonder Bread family drama of “Ordinary People” managed to rob the Best Picture prize from more brutal movies like “Raging Bull” and “The Elephant Man.” That year, Robert Redford‘s directorial prowess — which can best be described as “sort of like a made-for-TV movie” — defeated the combined forces of Martin Scorsese and David Lynch.

    Fun fact: Both the Three 6 Mafia and Roberto Benigni ended up with statues before Scorsese. Poor Marty.

    Snub Like It’s 1999

    Snubs are subjective, and to some extent or other, they happen every year. But 1999 will go down in Oscar history as the Ultimate Snubstorm. In any other year, “Shakespeare in Love” would’ve been remembered as a sharply written romantic comedy with neat Shakespearean trappings and smoking hot leads. But something in the Academy’s drinks said otherwise; not only did “Shakespeare” steal the spotlight from “that other” Elizabethan movie — “Elizabeth,” which gave the world the too-talented-to-exist Cate Blanchett in the title role — Academy voters somehow forgot that “Saving Private Ryan” was also a Best Picture nominee. To this day, World War II buffs, Steven Spielberg loyalists, and Tom Hanks enthusiasts can’t even glance at a Joseph Fiennes movie without breaking into irrational tears. It’s like a movie-nerd “Fight Club” — you just don’t talk about the “Saving Private Ryan” snub.

    Sources

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  • ‘All the President’s Men’: 10 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Watergate Classic

    all the presidents men facts, robert redfordWhen “Spotlight” won Best Picture in February, many observers recalled the Academy Awards race of four decades ago, when Watergate saga “All the President’s Men” was a top contender.

    Both movies made heroes out of the dogged reporters who had uncovered earth-shaking scandals, and both films made the often tedious process of journalism into gripping drama without distorting it much. Indeed, until “Spotlight” came along, “All the President’s Men” had been considered the best movie ever made about journalism throughout the 40 years since its release, on April 9, 1976.

    Today, “All the President’s Men” is remembered as one of the last landmark movies of Hollywood’s 1970s renaissance, and a highlight in the careers of stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. To celebrate the film’s 40th anniversary, here are ten things you probably didn’t know about “ATPM.”
    1. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were still busy investigating Watergate when Robert Redford first called them to ask about buying the movie rights to their story. The suspicious scribes dismissed the actor’s call because they assumed they were being pranked by a staffer on Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP).

    2. Eventually, Redford did buy the rights, hired Alan J. Pakula to direct, and hired William Goldman to write the screenplay. No one much liked Goldman’s first draft, so Bernstein wrote his own screenplay with his then-girlfriend, fellow journalist Nora Ephron. That version was deemed even worse, and ultimately, it was a new Goldman rewrite that Pakula shot. Still, we have “All the President’s Men” to thank for launching Ephron’s career as a screenwriter and, ultimately, the director of such films as “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail.” (Of course, she also chronicled her disastrous marriage to Bernstein in the novel and movie “Heartburn.”)
    3. Indeed, the producers went to extreme lengths to make the movie feel authentic. The Post wouldn’t allow the production to film in its newsroom, which would have been disruptive, so the filmmakers spent $450,000 recreating the newsroom in a Hollywood soundstage. Art directors visited the real newsroom and took photos, measurements, and even a brick from the lobby. They replicated out-of-date DC phone books and bought desks from the same supplier the Post used. They even got Post reporters to send them boxes of their own trash, to make the fake newsroom look realistically messy.

    4. Frank Wills, the security guard who discovered the Watergate break-in, plays himself in “All the President’s Men.”
    5. The identity of Deep Throat, the key informant named after the then-popular porn movie, remained a secret known only to Woodward, Bernstein, and Post editor Ben Bradlee. (They kept the secret for 33 years, until former FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt outed himself in 2005.) Woodward did help the filmmakers cast Hal Holbrook (above), who bore some resemblance to Felt. Holbrook’s performance became legendary, even though he appears in only three scenes. He also uttered the movie’s most famous line, “Follow the money” — a sentence that appears nowhere in Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting and was apparently coined by screenwriter Goldman.

    6. That famous overhead shot of Redford and Hoffman as two tiny figures poring over vast stacks of records at the Library of Congress lasts for 30 seconds and cost $90,000 to shoot.
    7. The movie is so spare and documentary-like that David Shire’s musical score doesn’t kick in until about 28 minutes into the film.

    8. “ATPM” cost $8.5 million to make. It earned back $70.6 million in North America, making it the third highest-grossing film of 1976.
    9. The movie was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture (which it lost to “Rocky“), Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Supporting Actress. It won for Best Sound, Best Art Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay (for Goldman), and Best Supporting Actor (for Jason Robards‘ performance as Bradlee, pictured).

    10. “What I took away from watching the movie six years ago,” Bernstein said in 2011, “was that most of the good work was done at night. I think, and there are certain exceptions, that you get the truth at night and lies during the day.”

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  • ‘Pete’s Dragon’ Looks Very Different in Disney’s First Teaser Trailer

    If “Jungle Book,” “Tarzan,” “The BFG,” “The Good Dinosaur,” and “How to Train Your Dragon” got together to film a movie, it might look a bit like Disney’s first trailer for “Pete’s Dragon.”

    The new teaser debuted last night during ABC’s “The Wonderful World of Disney: Disneyland 60.” It’s a “re-imagining” of Disney’s 1977 live-action/animated musical family film about an orphaned boy named Pete and the dragon named Elliott who protects him … although usually no one else can see Elliott.

    This trailer has a rather dark tone, with ‘s character Grace asking her father (played by ) if he “heard about the boy” who is apparently new in town but lived out in the forest for six years. Redford says there’s no way he could’ve survived out there alone, and Bryce’s character notes that the boy says he was NOT alone.

    That’s pretty much all we get, for now, aside from shots of young as Pete in the forest, and one little glimpse of Ellliott.

    Here’s the first trailer:

    Disney’s Pete’s Dragon – Official Teaser Trailer

    Thar be Disney’s Pete’s Dragon!

    Posted by Moviefone on Sunday, February 21, 2016

    Here’s the new movie’s synopsis:

    For years, old wood carver Mr. Meacham (Robert Redford) has delighted local children with his tales of the fierce dragon that resides deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. To his daughter, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), who works as a forest ranger, these stories are little more than tall tales…until she meets Pete (Oakes Fegley). Pete is a mysterious 10-year-old with no family and no home who claims to live in the woods with a giant, green dragon named Elliott. And from Pete’s descriptions, Elliott seems remarkably similar to the dragon from Mr. Meacham’s stories. With the help of Natalie (Oona Laurence), an 11-year-old girl whose father Jack (Wes Bentley) owns the local lumber mill, Grace sets out to determine where Pete came from, where he belongs, and the truth about this dragon.

    “Pete’s Dragon” will be released August 12th, 2016.

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  • CBS Refuses to Air ‘Truth’ Ads, Calls Dan Rather Scandal Pic ‘Disservice’ to Journalism

    truth, dan rather, robert redford, cate blanchettCBS has declined to air advertising for the new movie “Truth,” the new Sony flick that details the network’s infamous Dan Rather-George W. Bush scandal, calling the film “a disservice” to both journalists and the public.

    In a scathing statement about the film, which stars Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett, CBS spokesman Gil Schwartz said, “It’s astounding how little truth there is in ‘Truth.’”

    “There are, in fact, too many distortions, evasions and baseless conspiracy theories to enumerate them all,” Schwartz’s statement continued. “The film tries to turn gross errors of journalism and judgment into acts of heroism and martyrdom. That’s a disservice not just to the public but to journalists across the world who go out every day and do everything within their power, sometimes at great risk to themselves, to get the story right.”

    “Truth” goes behind the scenes of a “60 Minutes II” story reported by Rather (Redford) and produced by Mary Mapes (Blanchett), which questioned then-president Bush’s Vietnam War-era service in the Texas Air National Guard. There was public outcry about the segment’s accuracy, however, when the veracity of certain documents used to support the story was challenged. In the fallout, Mapes was fired, and Rather parted ways with the network on poor terms in 2006; Rather has maintained that there was underlying truth to the segment.

    Both Rather and Mapes are portrayed somewhat sympathetically in the movie, which could be the source of CBS’s ire. The resulting scandal — and subsequent firings — at the network was embarrassing for all involved, and the Eye is no doubt unhappy that the story is surfacing yet again.

    “To get an official statement from them that is negative was not surprising to anyone involved in the film,” said Brad Fischer, a “Truth” producer, about the network’s response. “I think the one thing that surprised everyone was the tone and the emotional nature.”

    And the move may backfire for the network: According to Forbes, publicly denouncing the flick could actually help promote “Truth” — and make sure more people see it, the opposite of what CBS intended.

    “A film that will mostly be forgotten in a few months time is now much bigger news than it was 48 hours ago,” the site reports.

    [via: Associated Press, Forbes]

    Photo credit: Sony

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  • How ‘War Room’ Defeated ‘Compton’ at the Box Office

    It’s pretty rare for a movie to rise from second place to first at the box office in its second week of release. It’s pretty rare for such a movie to defeat a summer smash that’s topped the chart for three weeks running. And it’s pretty rare for a low-budget, Christian-themed movie with a star-free cast to become the top-grossing film in North America.

    And yet, “War Room” did all three of those things this week. After last weekend’s impressive $11.4 million debut in the No. 2 slot, the film rose to the top spot this weekend with an estimated $9.4 million from Friday to Sunday (and a projected $12.3 million over the four-day holiday weekend). It dethroned previous three-time champ “Straight Outta Compton” (No. 2, with an estimated $8.9 million from Friday to Sunday and $11.2 million over the Labor Day holiday). It also defeated two new wide releases, one starring the iconic Robert Redford in the nature-travelogue milieu he’s best known for, and one installment of a venerable action franchise.

    How did “War Room” achieve this surprise victory? The answers have a lot to do with smart timing and marketing, but even more to do with underserved audiences that mainstream Hollywood either ignores or doesn’t know how to reach.

    It would be easy to dismiss “War Room”‘s success as just a matter of good timing. The Labor Day holiday is typically one of the slowest weekends of the year at the multiplex. Plus, “War Room” seemed fortunate in getting to compete against fairly weak rivals.

    “A Walk in the Woods,” a light comedy-drama starring Redford and Nick Nolte, has a septuagenarian cast and only middling reviews, which can do real damage to the sales for a film whose older target audience still cares what critics think. And “The Transporter Refueled,” the fourth “Transporter” thriller, is the first one in seven years and the first without Jason Statham. (Star Ed Skrein is, well, the opposite of a household name.)
    Even so, the competition may not have been as weak as it appeared. “Compton” was still strong — in fact, it was widely expected to four-peat, and it fell behind “War Room” by just $500,000. “Woods” did better than expected, finishing third with an estimated $8.4 million, well above the $5 to $6 million pundits predicted. “Transporter” finished fifth with an estimated $7.13 million, but that figure is just $20,000 below fourth-place finisher “Rogue Nation,” so it could rise to fourth by the time the final holiday figures are released on Tuesday.

    If “War Room” was fortunate (or shrewd) in its timing, it also benefited from strong marketing and distribution. The $3 million film was produced by the faith-based Affirm label and distributed by TriStar, both arms of major Hollywood studio Sony. The distributor had the savvy — and the muscle — to expand from 1,135 theaters last week to 1,526 this week, so it held the inevitable second-week drop in sales to just 18 percent. (“Compton” dropped 33 percent this weekend.)

    Meanwhile, “Woods” and “Transporter” were both being handled by indie distributors (Broad Green Pictures and EuropaCorp, respectively) that had never done a wide-release campaign before.

    Of course, the main reason “War Room” triumphed wasn’t just that it was smartly rolled out onto more than 1,500 screens, but that it was smartly targeted at the right viewers. By now, we should probably stop being surprised when Christian-themed movies become mainstream hits, but the feat is still striking. It helped that Affirm and TriStar knew how to reach a Christian audience through grass-roots marketing and outreach to individual churches.

    It also helped that the movie was made by director Alex Kendrick, who turned faith-based films “Facing the Giants,’” “Fireproof,” and “Courageous” into modest mainstream hits. So the team behind the film already had the trust of its target audience and experience reaching them through techniques that the mass-market studios are usually too big and lumbering to do well.
    But it also helped that “War Room” has a predominantly African-American cast. Tyler Perry has shown how receptive African-American audiences are to Christian-themed movies made within the black community, but Kendrick is a white filmmaker, working in a Christian-filmmaking mini-industry that’s no more racially diverse than Hollywood in general.

    It’s worth noting that this weekend also saw the successful American launch of “Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos” (“A Rooster with Many Eggs”), a CGI-animated feature from Mexico that debuted in the top 10 (at No. 8) with an estimated $3.4 million. That’s a very good number for a Spanish-language kids’ movie (it earned about the same amount when it opened in Mexico three weeks ago), but it’s also not unprecedented. Its distributor is Pantelion, the Spanish-language division of Lionsgate, which has had similar crossover successes at this late-summer/early-fall season in previous years, including last year’s biopic “Cantinflas” and 2013’s comedy smash “Instructions Not Included,” which earned $44.5 million to become the top-grossing Spanish-language film ever released in the United States and Canada.

    Like “War Room,” “Gallo” offers further proof that there are underserved audiences hungering for movies that respect their cultures, movies that are also universal enough to cross over beyond their target audiences. If the Hollywood studios don’t want to leave money on the table, they just have to figure out how to make such movies and how to sell them in campaigns that don’t require blanketing the continent with superhero toys and fast-food tie-ins.

  • Robert Redford and Nick Nolte Have ‘Synchronization’

    Nick Nolte wasn’t Robert Redford’s first choice to play his onscreen buddy in “A Walk in the Woods.”

    No, the 79-year-old intended on reuniting with Paul Newman for their third film together, but years ago, when the project was first in the works, Newman’s health was in decline. His costar in “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” died aged 83 in 2008.

    So when the chance to adapt the memoir of travel writer Bill Bryson’s five-month-long 2,200-mile hike along the Appalachian Trail with an overweight, coarse, sluggish friend Steven Katz, he thought of Nolte.

    “I just felt that Nick and I would do well together—I liked his work,” Redford tells Made in Hollywood. “It just fell into place very naturally, which I suspected was going to happen and it did.”

    In 2012’s “The Company You Keep,” Redford starred and directed the picture. He cast Nolte in a supporting role and they appeared in a few scenes together.

    Redford says they were “in synchronization with each other.”

    “It was just something natural that developed between he and I,” he explains.

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  • Does ‘A Walk In the Woods’ Get Lost? Here’s What Critics Say

    Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson! Talk about a star-studded cast!

    But to the dismay of critics, even these A-listers can’t save “A Walk In the Woods,” the Ken Kwapis-directed action film about a renown travel writer (Redford)’s decision to take a 2,200 hike with a troubled former friend (Nolte) who leads them both on a wild adventure.

    The acting in the film – which is given only a 47 percent Rotten Tomatoes score – is predictably praised by critics. But the movie is panned for being somewhat flat, with occasional memorable moments.

    “As [Redford] hooks up with his alcoholic, overweight frenemy Stephen Katz, the point of the movie, and their journey, becomes less clear. This isn’t a bad thing. The real point of the movie is watching Redford and Nolte together, and too much plot would have cut into the curmudgeon time.” — Peter Hartlaub, SFGate.com

    “Redford, meanwhile, is nearly 80 … He is, as people often reminded, way too old for the journey. It creates an odd dissonance between the character and the scenario, which almost elevates the films to a level of high fantasy. The nature of this fantasy is boringly feel-good and aspirational. ‘A Walk in the Woods’ feels like a self-help movie by proxy. Watching it, we’re supposed be inspired by the pluck and resolve of Redford’s Bryson, while awed by the rapturous Appalachian scenery.” — John Semley, TheGlobeandMail.com

    But there are those who argue the acting is enough to make it all worth seeing.

    “‘A Walk in the Woods’ is just about as soothing as it sounds — a funny, contemplative consideration of what can and should be done in life brought into focus by two wily veteran actors who, like the characters they play, are obviously not ready to give up the ghost … In ‘A Walk in the Woods’ they show what true cinematic chemistry is all about without appearing to be acting at all.” — Tom Long, The Detroit News

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  • Robert Redford’s Five Favorite Movies

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    Robert Redford became a household name (and one of Hollywood’s best actors) when he starred in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in 1969. Cut to 46 years later and Redford is still making movies, but this time he’s teaming up with Nick Nolte for “A Walk in the Woods.”

    To celebrate his new film, Redford told us what his five favorite movies ever are.
    42nd Chaplin Award Gala - Alternative Views

  • Robert Redford and Nick Nolte Are a ‘Fun Team’

    Not many duos are often compared to Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, but “A Walk in the Woods” director Ken Kwapis found an unlikely dynamic pairing in his stars Robert Redford and Nick Nolte.

    “The day we did our wardrobe tests where we put backpacks on them and had them put on different clothes, I could tell, just watching them together, that they were going to be a fun team,” Kwapis tells Made in Hollywood.

    In the biopic, 79-year-old Redford brings to life the story of travel writer Bill Bryson’s journey, based on the 1998 book that shares the movie title, that stretched from Georgia to Maine with a long-lost friend, played by Nolte.

    “A Walk in the Woods” costars Emma Thompson and Mary Steenburgen, opening Friday.

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