In the new film Gullivers Travels, Jack Black plays the big man in town — which proved to be quite a challenge with so many tiny actors on the set. “There were a lot of safety issues, obviously,” he tells Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz. With Jack Black , Emily Blunt . No tiny actors were harmed in the making of the movie, of course. In this iteration, Jack Black’s Gulliver is a stunted mail-room jockey at a newspaper. Save yourself and your children from the abomination that is this new, modern-day retelling of Jonathan Swift’s scathing and enduring 1726 masterpiece. Actually, the “pee” bit was the only occasion in the screening I attended wherein I heard the delightful laughter of children.

Black is Gulliver, a loser and mailroom worker at a major New York City newspaper. Jack Black’s persona has always been larger than life, so in a way, he’s the perfect choice for an adaptation of ” Gulliver’s Travels .” But while Black ably carries the movie on his super-size shoulders, Rob Letterman’s slacker take on the Jonathan Swift classic is easier to like than respect. It wasn’t hard to get into the mindset of a character who’s too timid to ask for a promotion, Black says.

Gulliver’s Travels does speak to Jack Black’s lack of self-consciousness. Letterman seems perfectly happy to stand back and let the lead do his thing, which makes the movie feel like — well, most of Black’s other films. As any cameraman will tell you, the least flattering angle to shoot a husky guy is from below. Aliens ) sands the edges off of Jonathan Swift’s tale and replaces them with robots, wedgie jokes, and a neatly wrapped all-you-need-is-confidence personal message, which also plays out through Jason Segel’s attempts as a lower-caste Lilliputian to woo his kingdom’s princess (Emily Blunt). That’s the way we see Black through most of the movie, on several occasions with his shirt off. He’s got a huge crush on travel editor Darcy Silverman ( Amanda Peet ), so an awkward, stammering conversation somehow gets him sent on assignment to Bermuda . Horatio’s rival, General Edward (Chris O’Dowd), is a preening blowhard. Soon he’s sucked into the famed Triangle, which hides a tiny country called Lilliput. Otherwise, Gulliver’s Travels remains one of those misbegotten projects that can’t decide whether it’s aimed at kids or adults, so it misses both. One painful memory is meeting Thom Yorke, the lead singer of the band Radiohead. She too ends up in Lilliput (presumably thanks to the same sea spout), but not before Gulliver gets banished and becomes a prisoner on another island, this one populated by giants. “Every sentence, it sounded like I was speaking through a bottle of molasses,” he says.

At the same time, it transforms this “Gulliver” into some species of a Jack Black movie, complete with scat-singing, “Guitar Hero”-playing, wedgies, goofy sounds, etc. “But we don’t have a Hanukkah Santa,” he says.

“That would be taking it too far.”

And when it comes to trying to pushing for a big break in Hollywood , patience certainly pays off. “I spent ten years pitching it Disney and they weren’t interested,” Beattie, who went on to write a string of other big-budget, epic films such as “Collateral,” “G.I Joe: Rise of the Cobra,” Australia” and “30 Days of Night,” added. “Then finally, I got a call to come back in.” “You don’t know what she might be like — if she has any sense of humor at all. I was so pleased to find that she is incredibly normal, and has a wonderfully kind of dark, perverse sense of humor.” See our Angelina Jolie photo gallery Depp chats with Patti Smith for a piece in Vanity Fair about the challenges he and his co-star in The Tourist faced with constant media scrutiny on set.

Facebook Twitter E-mail Angelina Jolie ‘s latest big fan? Depp went on to earn an Oscar nomination for his performance. The 47-year-old actor said Disney “couldn’t stand” his take on Captain Jack Sparrow in ” Pirates of the Caribbean ,” but that he only made matters worse after Disney heads asked if his most famous character was gay and claimed he was “ruining the movie” “I actually told this woman who was the Disney-ite…’But didn’t you know that all my characters are gay?’” he said, “which really made her nervous.” Depp explained that his most famous character, which he has played three times and will next show up in ” Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ” in 2011, appealed to the Bugs Bunny inside him.

Google Trends. 1. merck 2. google groupon 3. abb 4. andre johnson 5. school hostage 6. s 510 7. julian assange 8. jeter 9. comcast netflix 10. wikileaks website. There are times when you see how ridiculous is this life, how ludicrous it is, you know, leaving your house every morning and being followed by paparazzi.” Depp tells Smith they sometimes had “to hide” to avoid unwarranted speculation—which included “sometimes not even being able to talk to each other in public because someone will take a photograph and it will be misconstrued. …” Depp compares Angelina to another famous leading lady. “Somebody once asked [ Hunter S.

“You don’t know what she might be like – if she has any sense of humor at all. “Captain Jack was kind of like that for me.” The actor said that he took on the role in ” The Tourist ” because Frank Taylor is an everyman who simply gets caught up in a crazy situation. Angie’s got the same kind of thing, you know, the same approach.” On the set of the upcoming installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, Depp reveals that Disney execs did not like his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow. “I’ve had the honor and the pleasure and gift of having known Elizabeth Taylor for a number of years,” Depp says. “You know, you sit down with her, she slings hash, she sits there and cusses like a sailor, and she’s hilarious. They just couldn’t stand him,” Depp says of his interpretation of the pirate. ” Marlon Brando said, ‘Why don’t you just take a year and go and study Shakespeare, or go and study Hamlet. . . and play that part,’” he tells the mag. “I was a musician and I was a guitarist, and that’s what I wanted to do.” Though Depp appears to have played every character under the sun, there is one last role he would love to inhabit. ” Marlon Brando said, Why don’t you just take a year and go and study Shakespeare , or go and study Hamlet,” he told the magazine. “Upper-echelon Disney-ites, going, ‘What’s wrong with him? I’d really, really like to.” Get more Us!

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, the ever-interesting Jack White intimated that the recent surge and uptick in White Stripes merch could signify a return of the band. “We thought we’d do a lot of things that we’d never done: a full tour of Canada, a documentary, coffee-table book, live album, Find out more by clicking the link

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It’s better than the alternative, which would be Mr. Gun, reflecting his livelihood, and the special-forces tattoo on his bicep. “The American,” real name Jack, or perhaps Edward, knows his way around the instrument, whether modifying one with scrapped engine parts or using one to kill a person. This is Jack’s grim life. The American may be the most deceiving title of the year. Think of “The American” as a cinematic form of bait and switch. “The American” is an exercise in style and withheld sentiment, a bleak and atmospheric art-house thriller that’s more of an aesthetic experience than an emotional one. It’s as if he’s all too aware that she will end up dead in the Swedish snow the next day. But it’s a very different, more removed Clooney than audiences are used to seeing. This is one of those films that has dialogue in the trailer that isn’t in the movie, never a good sign. Clooney plays Jack (but his real name might be Edward), whose work usually entails somebody dying. Regardless, he doesn’t take it.

It’s a much more interior performance than usual, a dark, withdrawn role that completely avoids the actor’s usual high-wattage smile and suave good humor. Pitched in ads and trailers as a James Bond-style action flick, it’s hardly a thriller in the way the genre has evolved. Next thing you know, people are shooting at him in the snowy outdoors, and, as he pulls out a Walther PPK to return fire, the woman hisses, “Why do you have a gun?” In response, he shoots one of his attackers. Considering he sees suspicion in every pair of eyes, it makes sense that he befriends the local priest, Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), himself an astute judge of character. The film starts off with some momentum, with George taking on a bit of murdering, but then slows to a crawl before completely sputtering at the finish line. As he heads to Italy to hide out, his control agent (Johan Leysen) sends him off to the boondocks with a warning: “Don’t make any friends, Jack. As Jack’s “boss,” Pavel (Johan Leysen), puts it, a man in this line of work cannot afford to make friends. Though “The American” echoes classics of the genre like Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samourai,” Corbijn’s proclivity for holding everything at a remove combined with schematic tendencies in the script stops us from caring about this film as much as it cares about itself. Clooney makes good use of many still, contemplative moments to develop a tight-lipped character. He is proficient, but not Jason Bourne superhuman.

The guy’s getting the best of heaven and earth. It’s all molto atmosferico. It’s just one big sleep after that promise of potential. In addition to his past as a gun for hire, Jack is a gun craftsman.

He sizes up waiters and the couple at the next table in restaurants. But we don’t read about, nor do any police arrive to investigate, a growing pile of corpses in Castelvecchio.

The camera often sits on his shoulder and follows him through empty Italian streets. He doesn’t have to say a lot to keep our interest, and he expresses a character’s inner state without actorly heavy lifting. We expect violence noisy jolts.

Still, what the story lacks in emotional involvement, it makes up for in quiet intrigue. He previously made “Control,” a terrific 2007 film about the British band Joy Division. Also, Clooney works out for few scenes, proving once again that he’s a better man than almost everyone watching. We become as jumpy as Jack must be, and we know trouble is eventually going to come looking for him. There is no pressure to inject the requisite jolts and chases of American thrillers. He also begins to work on a weapon that he’s providing to someone else. The way he assembles a rifle with military precision says more about Jack than dialogue could, and Corbijn enhances the moment with a lush piece of music we typically would associate with a lovemaking scene. Jack’s a bit of a gunslinger, too, and his many silences and internalized anguish make him a fascinating mystery, one that yearns for a butterfly’s freedom.

The American may be the most deceiving title of the year. Of course, none of this is a dealbreaker, and the film still could have added up to something substantial with the listed ingredients. If Robert Bresson , the austere French minimalist, had directed a James Bond film, it might have turned out like this. George Clooney is an assassin. Playing Jack, a hit man on high alert who is facing a crisis in his life, Clooney is all but unreachable behind his dark glasses. The Swedes are after him!

Only it’s not, even though they are. From there, storywise, we head off to nowhere. It’s just one big sleep after that promise of potential. He has a conversation with a gent who might be his boss, could be a friend or co-worker, perhaps he’s a brother-in-law, whatever he is the fellow instructs him to head to Castlevecchio, Italy. Given these structural drawbacks, Clooney initially does fairly well. Clooney kind of does that, heading instead to a village just up the road. Even when it is intentionally dimmed, star power is always a plus for an actor looking to connect with an audience, and Clooney starts out convincing as the laconic Jack, someone who dislikes wasting either words or bullets. An American who works in Europe, Jack is introduced unwinding a bit in snowy Sweden. But if you are a big deal killing machine, your life will not stay tranquil for long. Just when you can’t abide another homily, Jack gets an assignment, and it’s a pip.

Okay, both of those are romantic comedies, so perhaps that’s not a fair comparison as these proceedings are definitely dramatic (and drip with “important” piano and string music throughout). Still, there is some good to be had here if you’re willing to be patient. But he’s not given anything to do, not given a sandbox to play in, and all those quiet scenes whisper so softly that they end up saying nothing at all.

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But his Jack, a brooding assassin seeking redemption, is a bigger departure, and he pulls it off well. It is easily his most pared-down performance, a throwback to the taciturn gunslingers of Westerns. In the opening sequence of The American , George Clooney is in the middle of a hookup in snowy Sweden when he bumps off the two men who’ve been hired to kill him and shoots the woman he was sleeping with in the back. (She’s innocent, but he can leave no witnesses.) That’s a promising moment ? it suggests that Clooney is playing the sort of sociopathic hitman one remembers from films like The Day of the Jackal (1973).

Art-house audiences that would consider it slumming if they wallowed in a routine spy thriller may go to “The American” and feel there’s something serious and worthy going on. The film — and Clooney’s role — is akin to Gregory Peck ‘s in 1950′s The Gunfighter . Once again, the melancholic central character is a man who awakens to the possibility of love and connection with another human being. Clooney’s Jack, a weary veteran of the assassin lifestyle, is a sinner out to save himself, and the film portrays him like Jason Bourne on a fake-Antonioni journey of redemption.

This is to be expected from the Dutch director Anton Corbijn, a longtime photographer who made his feature film debut with “Control,” the black-and-white musical biopic about Joy Division’s short-lived frontman, Ian Curtis. His back story and motivations are never discussed. It’s a much more interior performance than usual, a dark, withdrawn role that completely avoids the actor’s usual high-wattage smile and suave good humor. The role requires Clooney to dial down his charm to nearly zero, and frankly, he looks twitchy and uncomfortable without it. As a low-budget indie or experimental foreign film, “American” could enjoy a festival-circuit ride where cineastes could ponder the profundities of its blank stares and static situations. In the aftermath, Jack is ordered to chill in Italy, while expediting a job that doesn’t require his trigger finger. George Clooney does!), or nursing a cup of coffee in some lonely cafe. Focus must be expecting the worst to throw it out on Labor Day weekend, not an ideal time for any movie looking for box-office glory. For much of the film, Clooney is framed like an extra, fading into the background, not a star commanding the screen.

Jack gets occasional calls from a craggy, silver-haired boss, but other than those brief conversations and what we glean from a murderous opening scene, there is no discussion of his work. Not that the color or Italian countryside isn’t gorgeous.

Even when it is intentionally dimmed, star power is always a plus for an actor looking to connect with an audience, and Clooney starts out convincing as the laconic Jack, someone who dislikes wasting either words or bullets. But the mood is nero e bianco. In adapting Martin Booth’s “A Very Private Gentleman,” Rowan Joffe has produced a screenplay notable for its spare dialogue and minimalist plotting, but the windblown narrative shorthand has a downside. An American who works in Europe, Jack is introduced unwinding a bit in snowy Sweden. Dialing down his charisma, Clooney aims for invisibility. Clooney’s Jack is enjoying an idyllic romp with someone named Ingrid in a snowbound cabin retreat. Yet, Corbijn’s first feature since the Joy Division biopic “Control” is one fine-looking and extraordinarily thoughtful movie, its scenes laid out with fastidious care. No dash or swashbuckling here, no. suavity or warmth. The film, with its vague, rambling plot, works best as a study of a loner seeking to escape his past.

Despite its rugged individualism, The American feels distinctly and lyrically European.

George Clooney’s blue period continues with Anton Corbijn’s The American , an immaculately shot study of loneliness and misanthropy in one dour assassin working a job — maybe his last? — in Italy. It does for hit men what Up in the Air did for frequent-flying corporate terminators, minus the comic tang. Once again the melancholic central character is a man who awakens — maybe too late? — to the possibility of love and connection with another human being. But in the brooding and enigmatic The American , he reaches new levels of dour and dire. I felt there was something essential missing. The last couple of really serious efforts to turn George Clooney into an action star came in 1997 with the duds “The Peacemaker” and “Batman & Robin.” Obviously, he’s come a long way as an actor since then.

Clooney’s Jack, a weary veteran of the assassin lifestyle, is a sinner out to save himself, and the film portrays him like Jason Bourne on a fake-Antonioni journey of redemption. In the Italian village of Sulmona, where Jack is told to wait for his next assignment, he hangs out in cafés and wine bars, getting involved with a prostitute (Violante Placido) as sweet as she is voluptuous. The opening sequence is an absolute and almost wordless shocker. Clooney stars as the title character, an experienced assassin who’s known as either Jack or Edward — or even Mr. Butterfly — depending on whom you talk to. Instead, he uses his hands to build a custom weapon for an inscrutable lady assassin (Thekla Reuten), something with the range of a rifle and the oomph of a submachine gun. He’s been trying to lie low in Italy since his previous assignment and subsequent “vacation” resulted in the deaths of two would-be killers, as well as his at-the-time girlfriend.

And on the advice of his employers, he’s trying to keep to himself, though he’s befriended a local priest, Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), and his relationship with a prostitute, Clara (Violante Placido), is threatening to turn into something more. Unknown motives and plans are actually a specialty of The American , and it won’t take long before you start asking yourself a question: Does what we don’t know matter? He’s not keeping idle, either. In every encounter he stifles grief while nursing paranoia. Not much of it, and what’s there is terse. Director Anton Corbijn ( Control , enough music videos to start his own cable network) is a master of quietude ready to rupture, at home with Italy’s rolling green hills, Old World villages and out-of-the-way bistros, the beauty of which plays off Edward’s ugly Americanism. “It’s Jack,” starts a typical phone call. We see much of the action from a vantage point just behind him and over his shoulder. It’s the point of view, we uneasily sense, of a sniper drawing a bead on Jack’s exposed neck. There are a few plot holes and other inconsistencies, unfortunately. We’ve seen movies about an assassin set to do one more job in an exotic locale, quite recently in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges (2008).

A whole lot of espresso-sipping unfolds. “The American” is rated R and features strong violent content and imagery (gunplay and shootings, strangulation, automotive mayhem, and violence against women), simulated sex and other sexual contact, full female and partial male nudity, gory and bloody imagery, and scattered strong sexual language (profanity). Yet Corbijn’s first feature since the Joy Division biopic Control is one fine-looking and extraordinarily thoughtful movie, its scenes laid out with fastidious care. Once you see the film, you’ll get a good laugh at how the trailer presents The American as a drum-rumbling action movie. Using Martin Ruhe’s composed cinematography and his own photographer’s eye, Corbijn exploits lighting, focus and camera angles to illumine or conceal the tragedy at its core. Clooney’s sad mug occupies almost every scene – almost every frame .

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