A Tale of Two Toms, Beautiful Creatures...

Feb 13, 2013 08:11

~If anyone is thinking of using Photobucket’s new service just spare yourself the headache and go ahead and give yourself papercuts on your tongue and hands and then pour salt and lemon in the wounds. It’s less painful than dealing with new Photobucket that piece of sh*t.

In 20 days or so I think everyone will be forced to adapt to the new changes so stupid me went ahead and accepted the changes not knowing how terrible it is and not knowing that once you go Photobucket Beta you can’t go back. They’re still working on functionality so they don’t have a slideshow function. That means that whereas the previous version your pics would be laid out 20 to a page and you could just copy and paste from there. Now you have to click through individually to get the embed code. Even if you do “view all” you still have to open each picture to get the embed. Which takes forever. I hope they restore the old lay out. In the interim I’m using Imageshack and crying about all the pictures I’ve recently uploaded to Photobucket but haven’t copied yet. I don’t have the patience to find them all.

~ The saying goes “when it rains, it pours” and that’s certainly been the case in Southern and Northern California with the stupid rain that we had in recent days; but it’s also the case for the flurry of Tom Welling pictures. Yes, that Tom Welling who took time out from golfing to book a role. Tom is working on “Parkland”, a film written and directed by NY Times journo Peter Landesman and produced by Tom Hanks. “Parkland” centers on the events at Dallas’ Parkland hospital the day of President Kennedy’s assassination.


He’s back, ya’ll!!


Besides Tom (as Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman) the film stars other WB/CW alums such as Zac Efron (“Summerland”), Colin Hanks (“Roswell”), Gary Grubbs (“Angel”), Matt Barr (“Hellcats”), Gil Bellows (“Smallville”s useless Maxwell Lord) and Austin Nichols (“One Tree Hill”)..

Aka Jake Gyllenhaal’s walking/riding (and yes, that’s a euphemism)buddy











Other cast members are Marcia Gay Harden, Paul Banks (“Boardwalk Empire”s Mickey Doyle), James Badge Dale (“Flight”, “Iron Man 3”), Mark Duplass (“Zero Dark Thirty”), Ron Livington (“Office Space”), Oscar nominees Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, Jackie Earle Haley and Jacki Weaver,

The film will be released in time for the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death.

So Tom is working and as he’s working he’s taking pictures and lots of ‘em.








So while Tom is venturing back in front of the screen his rotund friend Jensen Ackles is guaranteed employment for another year. The CW has renewed “Arrow”, “The Vampire Diaries” and “Supernatural”.

Whatever, dudes. Whatever.


I don’t begrudge this show’s existence. Even though Jensen talked about “Smallville” going on for too long when it was in S7, that it wasn’t the same and that the cast and showrunners were gone. Meanwhile, Kripke left SPN in S5, Gamble’s gone, Beaver’s gone and now they’re reintroducing a new mythos on SPN (now Papa Winchester is from a line of Watchers-types?).

I guess you need the income to keep coming in for boat rides and babies


Boy, bye


I really don’t begrudge the show being on. I would get bothered by people saying SV should be cancelled because I still loved it-even with S10 where everyone hijacked Clark’s past experiences I still loved the show. So I won’t say SPN should be cancelled.

Just that it shouldn’t reach S10.




I hope “Hart of Dixie” gets a renewal.

My Blue Belle babies


~Another Tom who is working and working. And working some more is Tom Hardy. In an interview he said he was going to continue striking while the iron was hot so that he can have some money put aside to raise his son.


People say this is his son Louis but I don’t know. The lips are too thin.


Baby!Louis had fuller lips




Well Louis is going to be well provided for because it’s like every other week Hardy’s name is attached to a project.

Besides the wrapped “Mad Max: Fury Road”



With costars Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult


with her Mad Max buzz cut


The ladies of Fury Road: Rose Huntington-Whitely, Zoe Kravitz Riley Keough (Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter) and Adelaide Clemens


Hoult, Kravitz with Abbey Lee


This movie means nothing without Aunty Entity


The real star of Mad Max: The vehicles.


Hardy has already been announced for lead roles in “Locke” the real-time thriller (it takes place over 90 minutes) in which Hardy will play “Ivan Locke who has the perfect family and a dream job, but a phone call forces him to make a decision that will put it all on the line.". There’s “Cicero”, in which he’ll play Al Capone; the movie adaptation of the video game “Splinter Cell” in which Tom will play covert agent Sam Fisher; he booked two films with pal Noomi Rapace.











The pair will star in “Child 44” where Tom will play a Russian agent who is investigating a series of child murders and becomes a suspect. Rapace will play his wife. The two will also costar in “Animal Rescue” based on a short film. Hardy will play a bartender “with a criminal past who's working hard to change his ways. However, after taking in a stray pit bull, he unexpectedly gets pulled into the troubles of the dog's deranged owner, and is lead into a heist gone wrong and a murder.”

What’s funny about Toms Welling and Hardy is the reaction they get online. On Twitter it’s largely women who rave about Welling’s looks and guys who are keeping their geek out barely restrained for him, and Tom Hardy women and men rave about how bad ass he is. The men wax poetic about his ‘traps and other muscles. It’s almost like they want to either lick his muscles or skin him alive and use his body as a suit like a real life Slim Goodbody.

*And you know the wiseguys of the interwebs already came up with their TDKR/Super Bowl blackout gif






~
Beautiful Creatures


At one point during “Beautiful Creatures”--- actually three times during “Beautiful Creatures” ---I found myself staring at the ceiling longingly wishing for the powers that the characters had in the film so that I could send the beams crashing down on me so that I could be knocked out or killed to spare me from the film. Overall the movie isn’t as terrible as “Twilight” or even an Adam Sandler film but it’s not very good either.

Directed by and adapted from the book by the same name (first in the “The Caster Chronicles” series) by Richard LaGravenese, “Beautiful Creatures” tackles magic, free will, destiny and young love in the backdrop of the South.

High school junior Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) dreams of leaving his small town of Gatlin where everyone knows everyone else’s secrets and where no one really leaves. He’s drawn to the new girl in school Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), the niece of Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons) a descendent of the town’s founders whom the community believes to be Satanists. As the pair become closer Lena shares her family’s secret: they’re Casters; essentially witches and warlocks.



Ethan easily accepts Lena’s secret but their happiness is marred by the disapproval of Macon and Ethan’s psuedo-guardian/mother’s best friend Amma (Viola Davis) who know of the futility of a Caster/mortal relationship. Adding to the turmoil is the arrival of Lena’s mother Sarafine (Emma Thompson) and cousin Ridley (Emmy Rossum) who are conspiring to push Lena to the darkness so that she can usher in a new age of Casters who would lord over humans.

The best thing about the film is its humor tinged, slightly camp elements from the flamboyant and eccentric Ravenwoods (including Kyle Gallner as Lena’s cousin Larkin and Margo Martindale as their aunt) to the arch Southern stereotype as gossiping, small-minded judgmental townsfolk who are critical and suspicious of anyone different and lump liberals in with Satanists. But the thing that brought me true joy in the film was Alden Ehrenreich’s Ethan. I don’t know how much of it was the a genuine love of the character or Ehrenreich’s performance but I just adored every minute he was onscreen. Ethan Wate is the boy that YA novels and TV shows are made of. He’s sweet, charming, goofy, loving, a dreamer. I just wanted to do a rescue mission to airlift that character out of the film and into one that was worthy of him. I would watch a show about Ethan Wate. It would be called “Worth the Wate” and be about Ethan’s aww shucking his way into adulthood. It’s his earnestness that sold me on the ending of this film. I cared because he cared. The ending really made me not hate the film as much as I wanted to.

The flaws in the movie, however can’t be ignored. There’s a few plot points that were propped up to only not amount to anything. Other plotpoints that would’ve been interesting to explore were introduced and not fleshed out. Then there’s the production value. This movie looks like it was made with a Groupon and change from someone’s ashtray.

It’s not as offensively bad to me as “Twilight” and the supporting cast is enjoyable enough to not make this film a complete wash. So I’m going to pretend to take umbrage to Michael Rosenbaum’s snarky tweet.



It was the premiere.


The only cast members I knew were Irons, Rossum and Gallner.



I didn’t even IMDB the film so I didn’t know Davis, Thompson and Martindale was in it. So I was really hoping to see Davis and Martindale (neither attended the premiere).

Viola didn’t do the L.A premiere but did NYC’s


I was making my way to my seat behind a couple and I was trying to figure out who the guy was because he looked like an actor. He was a cross between “Red Riding Hood”s Shiloh Fernandez and Milo Ventimiglia. As I’m walking behind them to the aisle we got stopped by gridlock, so I moved to the left to bypass them when I stopped in front of Kyle Gallner. A young guy was talking to him and Kyle was dividing his time making eye contact with the guy and turning his head to see who was coming down the aisle. He must’ve noticed he wasn’t giving the guy his full attention so he asked, “How’s it been with you? How’s the press?” But he still had his head turned looking up the aisle. Finally he waved to someone and it was the female half of the couple I was behind. The woman is Zoey Deutch who plays Ethan’s ex-girlfriend in the film (I only found out who she is and pretty much everyone else from that cast by checking Wireimage the next day).


She came over as Kyle asked ‘How’s the press?” And she said, “Yeah, how’s the press?” and gave Kyle a hug.

I continue to my seat and the usher asked if I needed help finding the right row. He takes me there and the usher asked a guy in the first seat if he could lift his arm to make sure we had the right row. The guy was very apologetic when he realized we were walking up and down trying to find the letter. He stood to let me in, holding my jacket that I was carrying up so that it wouldn’t drag and told me “Be careful, it’s sticky” because even though the film hadn’t started yet, soda and popcorn was spilled all around our section. As we’re waiting for the film to begin I think, “he must be a suit” because the usher was explaining to him why there was a slight delay to the film starting and don’t worry it’ll begin soon. Looking through Wireimage the next day? Turned out the guy was the writer/director Richard LaGravenese.

With Emmy at the afterparty


A woman in the row behind us was talking to the people in the row in front of us and introduced someone to the guy to my immediate right. She said, “This is our film’s costume designer Jeffrey Courtland”. With that in mind I kept scrutinizing the wardrobe of the characters. And it was really basic at first until they focused on the Ravenwoods and then it got better, but I was still thinking, “Interesting, but he’s no Eiko Ishioka.” When the film ended and the credits ran his name came after Richard LaGravenese which was unusual to me because I don’t recall seeing a costume designer’s name come that early in the credit. But when I saw the name I thought, “Kurland, not Courtland. That sounds familiar” Went home to check. I read about him in Clothes in Film. He was the costume designer for “Inception”!

Kurland with his “Beautiful Creatures” designs


I liked this dress


Film over, I make my way up the aisle hoping to see Viola Davis or Margo Martindale. I hear Emmy Rossum before I see her. And she was with her “Shameless” costar Shanola Hampton who was being led carefully up the stairs (she was trying to keep from tripping on her dress) by their former costar Jacob Tyler Moore; which answered the question I had when I saw him on “Emily Owens, M.D” last week, “Is he still dating Emmy Rossum?” He is and he’s obviously in love.

These lies!



*Though, now that I think of it it is like “Witches of Eastwick”.

Jacob, Emmy and Shanola at another event


I thought I had missed all the cast because the lead, Alice Englert had dark hair in the film I didn’t have any idea that I had been seeing her the entire night.

You can’t miss this dress.


When she was taking pictures with fans a girl near me said to her friend, “She’s not really ugly.” Because in the film when you first see her she does kinda look homely.

I know I missed Alden because you can’t miss that suit.
*Designed by Albert Hammond Jr. Yeah, I didn’t know Albert from The Strokes was a designer either.


He’s related to Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the “Nickel and Dimed”, one of the best books about workers in the US that I’ve read.


Alden, looking like a young Misha Collins here, was in SPN’s “Wendingo”





>

The lobby was all but clear so I finally went outside. I was checking my voicemail when I saw a commotion. It was L’il Kyle.

Terrible red-eyed Kyle pics that I tried to repair failingly








By that time there weren’t that many people because he was the very last of the cast and pretty much last of the celebrities. The person who was out just before him was a girl from ABC Family’s “Switched at Birth”. So desperate was one girl for a cast sighting that after she went up to Kyle---as he was gamely trying to take pictures as security was trying to lead him of the courtyard to the street--and asked, “Do you know where the rest of the cast?” He just said, “Nah, I don’t know where those guys are.” And she said, “Thank you” and darted off. Didn’t take his picture, didn’t ask for an autograph. She had bigger fish to fry.

tom hardy, tom welling, movie review

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