Movies
Gwyneth Paltrow Had No Clue She Starred in Spider-Man: Homecoming. At the end of the 2017 film Spider-man: Homecoming, Gwyneth Paltrow makes a brief appearance as Pepper Potts. And up until recently, that was news to her. "We were in Spider-Man together," Jon Favreau told her on his new Netflix program The Chef Show. "Remember we were in Spider-Man?" "We weren't in Spider-Man," she said. "Yes we were," he said. "You were in Spider-Man." "No," she said. "Yeah," he said. "I was in Avengers," she began. "No, you were in Spider-Man also," Favreau said. "Remember, Spider-Man at the end, and Tom Holland's there and you're gonna walk out and do a press conference?" "Oh yes," she said. "That was Spider-Man? Oh my God!" May want to check those residuals checks, Gwyneth. (Eonline)
Blue blood boiling over Jake Gyllenhaal's 'Ivy League dad killer' film. New York blue bloods are aghast that Hollywood star Jake Gyllenhaal is helping to make a movie about accused "Ivy League dad killer" Thomas Gilbert Jr. Gilbert's on trial for the murder of his Manhattan hedge-funder father, and Gyllenhaal's planned movie on the case is called "Gilded Rage." It's yet unclear if Gyllenhaal will star in the film that's said to be going into production later this year. High-society types who knew Gilbert say they're worried that Gyllenhaal -- whose credits as a producer include the edgy thriller "Nightcrawler" -- will "glamorize" Gilbert Jr. "It's so upsetting," said one socialite source of the project. "They're just going to glamorize Tommy. He doesn't deserve that. Tommy can't be the victim in this film -- people need to remember he was a monster -- a calculating, rage-filled psychopath." Sources recall that before Princeton grad Gilbert Jr. allegedly killed his father over his allowance being cut in 2015 -- he'd already been banned from the Hamptons' uber-exclusive Maidstone Club for allegedly threatening an employee (whom sources told Page Six was a caddy at the club). The accused killer was also a suspect in a Sagaponack, LI, fire that burned down a historic home. In the courtroom, Gilbert Jr.'s lawyers have asked the judge to order a mental competency exam three times since the trial began. Prosecutors have countered that more than one legal expert has determined that Gilbert, 34, was faking his symptoms, The Post reported. The defense alleges that Gilbert was in a psychotic break when he pulled the trigger. But a source who knew him told us that they worry about the Gyllenhaal film depiction. "It's important for people to understand that everything Tommy did was methodical and vicious. He just seems to be painted in another light." They're waiting to hear if his dark past comes up in court. A rep for Gyllenhaal didn't immediately comment. (PageSix)
Quentin Tarantino may not be done editing 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.' There's speculation in showbiz circles that Quentin Tarantino could re-edit his latest film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," after its Cannes debut. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino hasn't indicated that he'll tinker with the 159-minute movie before its July 26 opening. But Tarantino worked on the movie up to the last minute before Cannes and has time to make more changes. Sony's Tom Rothman told THR on any such plans: "You'd have to ask the maestro himself." (PageSix)
Voice Actor on How Ron Howard's Pavarotti Doc is a "Gift" to the Blind Community. With her company, Woman of Her Word, Michelle Spitz audio describes movies like Howard's 2016 Beatles doc to meet a growing need: "There is no greater gift." While talk in Hollywood leans toward greater inclusion, it generally concerns diversity both in front of and behind the camera. But for the blind community, movies and TV are often simply not options and Michele Spitz is out to change that. For about seven years Spitz been audio describing dozens of shorts and documentaries, laying down a track that paints the scene so the blind can picture the image surrounding the dialogue. Her latest work Pavarotti is Ron Howard's bio-doc on one of the 20th century's most celebrated opera tenors, in theaters June 7. "I wanted to get into making movies accessible to the blind. It wasn't planned, it was just a beautiful gift," Spitz tells The Hollywood Reporter about stumbling into her life's passion after a series of jobs as varied as distribution at Universal Pictures, broadcasting and real estate. Her work through her company, Woman of Her Word, dates to 2012 and includes Howard's 2016 doc, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week The Touring Years. Most people have no idea such a service exists, and that includes distributors as well as filmmakers. With three percent of the population legally blind, budget hawks might think it isn't worth their while. But Spitz provides the service for free from her personal savings. The process sounds easier than it seems, with laying down a track that illustrates the scene. However, the information must be economically related to dialogue pauses, which requires tight descriptive passages. With a movie like Pavarotti comes the added challenge of using subtitles under Italian speakers, plus supertitles from opera scenes. Spitz's solution was to hire two actors, a man and a woman, to read the Italian subtitles, with herself assuming the role of the narrator. "It's all about inclusion, it's very simple," says Pavarotti producer Jeanne Elfant Festa of White Horse Pictures, who counts two members of her extended family that are blind. "This is very important to us. It's nice that they could see my life's work. They could see my passion. They experience what my passions are and that makes it I wish I had the wonderful words to tell you how much that means to my heart, my soul and to my very being. It's deeply moving." While much of the industry remains indifferent to audio description for the blind, according to Spitz, mainstream film releases, Netflix and the new Apple launch are addressing the needs of the blind, with Hulu and HBO also beginning to adapt. "The blind community, they're all over Netflix and Amazon Prime, they're all over everything. How many people really want this, and how many people are watching it?" asks Spitz. "In the film, Pavarotti wanted to democratize opera and he donated time and made it for all audiences. And I realize that were he alive today, he would be thrilled to know that someone donated this asset and made it accessible to the blind people. To be able to be the voice for the eyes that can't see, there is no greater gift. It's perfect for me." (Hollywood Reporter)
Qatari Giant BeIN Shopping Major. The new 'X-Men' movie is based on a storyline with a complicated (and controversial) history. The new Dark Phoenix movie draws on the original "Dark Phoenix Saga" comic book storyline, which unfolded slowly in the pages of the Uncanny X-Men series from 1976 through 1980. But, while the movie brings matters to an appropriate conclusion, things didn't go quite that straightforwardly for the comic book version of the story. The original "Dark Phoenix Saga" is one of the, if not the, most iconic and beloved of Marvel's X-Men comic book storylines, in part because it subjects one of the original members of the team to a very simple, very epic, arc: Jean Grey gains almost godlike power, and ends up becoming corrupted by it, to the point where she not only turns on her loved ones, but also commits genocide, murdering the entire population of an alien planet when she causes a sun to go supernova. In the end, it's only Jean's innate humanity that saves the day, resurfacing enough to allow her to die by suicide before she succumbs to a more primal, destructive self that could destroy the universe. The story offered the chance for fans to watch a favorite character illustrate the "absolute power corrupts absolutely" maxim, before paying the ultimate price as a result -- in one of the first deaths of a major character at either Marvel or DC. How could anyone resist? That wasn't originally the plan, however; writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, who at the time of the "Dark Phoenix Saga" were co-plotting the X-Men comic book series, had a far more benign ending in mind, at first; Jean Grey would be de-powered by aliens but left alive, with the thinking being that it left the door open for a future Dark Phoenix reprise if necessary. Then-Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter wasn't a fan of the idea, when he found out -- he has referred to it as being "like taking the German army away from Hitler and letting him go back to governing Germany" -- and demanded a rewrite, which is where the notion of Jean's death as ultimate punishment came from. It was an ending that was intended to stick, although Claremont -- who stayed as X-Men writer for a further decade, teaming with a number of artists following Byrne's departure from the series a handful of months after the end of the Phoenix storyline -- would gleefully tease the return of Phoenix on a couple of occasions, just to raise the blood pressure of fans. (Jean Grey died in Uncanny X-Men No. 137, but her return is the focus of the cover of both Nos. 157 and 175; in both cases, it's someone in disguise.) That it didn't stick was, oddly enough, partly the work of one of the architects of her death. In 1985, Uncanny X-Men was such a hit for Marvel that the prospect of adding a new spin-off title to the schedule was hard to resist, especially when the four surviving original members of the team weren't active X-Men anymore. Plans were hatched for a new comic called X-Factor that would feature the original team (Beast, Cyclops, Iceman, Angel) reunited, with Dazzler -- another mutant superhero, ironically one introduced during the initial episode of the "Dark Phoenix Saga" -- taking the place of the deceased Jean Grey. John Byrne, however, had a better idea: Why not just bring Jean Grey back from the dead and properly reunite the original team? It wasn't, strictly speaking, his idea; the mechanism for bringing Jean back actually originated from writer Kurt Busiek when he was a college student, and was then shared with writer Roger Stern, who shared it with Byrne. Together, Byrne -- then the writer and artist of Fantastic Four -- and Avengers writer Stern pitched it to Jim Shooter, who approved, and X-Factor was put on the schedule with an ambitious launch structure that would see a story run through all three series to properly explain how Jean Grey could be alive and well five years after everyone saw her die. Ahead of publication, Shooter told official fan magazine Marvel Age that the storyline "is going to be a real milestone in Marvel history. I think it will be remembered as a significant event in the same way that the issue of Daredevil that had the death of Elektra was a significant event, in the same way the death of Phoenix was a significant event." That Uncanny X-Men wasn't part of X-Factor's plans was no accident; Jean Grey's return didn't just undo the climax of the "Dark Phoenix Saga," it actually undid the entire Phoenix storyline as it had originally been published. It argued that the Phoenix that everyone had read about was never actually Jean Grey at all, but a clone of Grey created by the Phoenix Force itself; the "real" Jean Grey had been kept in suspended animation all along, until her discovery at the hands of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. All of this was decided without the input -- or, indeed, knowledge -- of Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont. When Claremont found out, his first impulse was to quit in protest. (Only his inability to remember the phone number of Jim Shooter's direct line prevented this, he's since claimed.) Instead, he came up with alternate proposals -- including giving Jean Grey's rarely-seen sister powers, to take the place of a resurrected Jean -- that were all rejected in favor of the powerful lure of nostalgia. Jean Grey would be part of the team, and the fan-favorite "Dark Phoenix Saga" would be retconned as a result. It wasn't just Jean Grey's history that would end up rewritten as a result of the decision to publish X-Factor, however. The series launched in October 1985, one month after Claremont had written Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, out of Uncanny X-Men in that title's 201st issue; he'd left the team to go into superhero retirement along with his wife, Madelyne Prior -- who just so happened to look a lot like Jean Grey -- and his newborn son. In X-Factor No. 1, Summers abandons his wife and child when he discovers that Jean Grey is still alive, and that... was a problem. Maybe no one at Marvel had realized that readers would find it hard to consider a man who'd abandon his family a particularly heroic figure, especially when X-Factor showed little interest in allowing either Madelyne or son Nathan Christopher in the comic, preferring instead panels of a self-pitying Scott Summers saying things like, "Madelyne and the baby are constantly on my mind, but my life's been turned upside down. Jean's back. She's alive and... I don't know what to do... " Perhaps no one at Marvel thought it could be a problem until they saw the reaction from fans. Either way, something had to be done to redeem Scott Summers. The solution was, shall we say, unexpected. Madelyne would eventually show up in the pages of Uncanny X-Men, just as Scott Summers decided to try to return to his family, only to find them missing. (The two teams weren't talking at the time.) This was the start of a shared storyline that would result more than a year later with the revelation that Madelyne Prior was, despite evidence to the (ahem) prior having been presented, actually a clone of Jean Grey created by the evil Mister Sinister. Worse still, she was a clone who had done a deal with a demon and was now looking to sacrifice her son as a result, along with lots of other children, in the pursuit of power. It was a retcon that attempted to save Summers' reputation -- surely, it's fine to walk out on a demonic clone, right? -- and make sense of the increasingly complicated continuity of the X-Men comics and related series of the time. Did it work? Well, the resolution involved Jean Grey absorbing the memories of both her evil clone and the Phoenix Force's Pretend Jean Grey and set in motion a chain of events that would end with Summers' baby being sent into a distant future so that he'd become Cable, so let's just say that the jury is still out on that one. Dark Phoenix is, of course, the final movie in the current cycle of X-Men. Given the possibilities of what could have happened had the series continued, perhaps that might be a blessing in disguise. (Hollywood Reporter)
Blue blood boiling over Jake Gyllenhaal's 'Ivy League dad killer' film. New York blue bloods are aghast that Hollywood star Jake Gyllenhaal is helping to make a movie about accused "Ivy League dad killer" Thomas Gilbert Jr. Gilbert's on trial for the murder of his Manhattan hedge-funder father, and Gyllenhaal's planned movie on the case is called "Gilded Rage." It's yet unclear if Gyllenhaal will star in the film that's said to be going into production later this year. High-society types who knew Gilbert say they're worried that Gyllenhaal -- whose credits as a producer include the edgy thriller "Nightcrawler" -- will "glamorize" Gilbert Jr. "It's so upsetting," said one socialite source of the project. "They're just going to glamorize Tommy. He doesn't deserve that. Tommy can't be the victim in this film -- people need to remember he was a monster -- a calculating, rage-filled psychopath." Sources recall that before Princeton grad Gilbert Jr. allegedly killed his father over his allowance being cut in 2015 -- he'd already been banned from the Hamptons' uber-exclusive Maidstone Club for allegedly threatening an employee (whom sources told Page Six was a caddy at the club). The accused killer was also a suspect in a Sagaponack, LI, fire that burned down a historic home. In the courtroom, Gilbert Jr.'s lawyers have asked the judge to order a mental competency exam three times since the trial began. Prosecutors have countered that more than one legal expert has determined that Gilbert, 34, was faking his symptoms, The Post reported. The defense alleges that Gilbert was in a psychotic break when he pulled the trigger. But a source who knew him told us that they worry about the Gyllenhaal film depiction. "It's important for people to understand that everything Tommy did was methodical and vicious. He just seems to be painted in another light." They're waiting to hear if his dark past comes up in court. A rep for Gyllenhaal didn't immediately comment. (PageSix)
Quentin Tarantino may not be done editing 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.' There's speculation in showbiz circles that Quentin Tarantino could re-edit his latest film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," after its Cannes debut. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino hasn't indicated that he'll tinker with the 159-minute movie before its July 26 opening. But Tarantino worked on the movie up to the last minute before Cannes and has time to make more changes. Sony's Tom Rothman told THR on any such plans: "You'd have to ask the maestro himself." (PageSix)
Voice Actor on How Ron Howard's Pavarotti Doc is a "Gift" to the Blind Community. With her company, Woman of Her Word, Michelle Spitz audio describes movies like Howard's 2016 Beatles doc to meet a growing need: "There is no greater gift." While talk in Hollywood leans toward greater inclusion, it generally concerns diversity both in front of and behind the camera. But for the blind community, movies and TV are often simply not options and Michele Spitz is out to change that. For about seven years Spitz been audio describing dozens of shorts and documentaries, laying down a track that paints the scene so the blind can picture the image surrounding the dialogue. Her latest work Pavarotti is Ron Howard's bio-doc on one of the 20th century's most celebrated opera tenors, in theaters June 7. "I wanted to get into making movies accessible to the blind. It wasn't planned, it was just a beautiful gift," Spitz tells The Hollywood Reporter about stumbling into her life's passion after a series of jobs as varied as distribution at Universal Pictures, broadcasting and real estate. Her work through her company, Woman of Her Word, dates to 2012 and includes Howard's 2016 doc, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week The Touring Years. Most people have no idea such a service exists, and that includes distributors as well as filmmakers. With three percent of the population legally blind, budget hawks might think it isn't worth their while. But Spitz provides the service for free from her personal savings. The process sounds easier than it seems, with laying down a track that illustrates the scene. However, the information must be economically related to dialogue pauses, which requires tight descriptive passages. With a movie like Pavarotti comes the added challenge of using subtitles under Italian speakers, plus supertitles from opera scenes. Spitz's solution was to hire two actors, a man and a woman, to read the Italian subtitles, with herself assuming the role of the narrator. "It's all about inclusion, it's very simple," says Pavarotti producer Jeanne Elfant Festa of White Horse Pictures, who counts two members of her extended family that are blind. "This is very important to us. It's nice that they could see my life's work. They could see my passion. They experience what my passions are and that makes it I wish I had the wonderful words to tell you how much that means to my heart, my soul and to my very being. It's deeply moving." While much of the industry remains indifferent to audio description for the blind, according to Spitz, mainstream film releases, Netflix and the new Apple launch are addressing the needs of the blind, with Hulu and HBO also beginning to adapt. "The blind community, they're all over Netflix and Amazon Prime, they're all over everything. How many people really want this, and how many people are watching it?" asks Spitz. "In the film, Pavarotti wanted to democratize opera and he donated time and made it for all audiences. And I realize that were he alive today, he would be thrilled to know that someone donated this asset and made it accessible to the blind people. To be able to be the voice for the eyes that can't see, there is no greater gift. It's perfect for me." (Hollywood Reporter)
Qatari Giant BeIN Shopping Major. The new 'X-Men' movie is based on a storyline with a complicated (and controversial) history. The new Dark Phoenix movie draws on the original "Dark Phoenix Saga" comic book storyline, which unfolded slowly in the pages of the Uncanny X-Men series from 1976 through 1980. But, while the movie brings matters to an appropriate conclusion, things didn't go quite that straightforwardly for the comic book version of the story. The original "Dark Phoenix Saga" is one of the, if not the, most iconic and beloved of Marvel's X-Men comic book storylines, in part because it subjects one of the original members of the team to a very simple, very epic, arc: Jean Grey gains almost godlike power, and ends up becoming corrupted by it, to the point where she not only turns on her loved ones, but also commits genocide, murdering the entire population of an alien planet when she causes a sun to go supernova. In the end, it's only Jean's innate humanity that saves the day, resurfacing enough to allow her to die by suicide before she succumbs to a more primal, destructive self that could destroy the universe. The story offered the chance for fans to watch a favorite character illustrate the "absolute power corrupts absolutely" maxim, before paying the ultimate price as a result -- in one of the first deaths of a major character at either Marvel or DC. How could anyone resist? That wasn't originally the plan, however; writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, who at the time of the "Dark Phoenix Saga" were co-plotting the X-Men comic book series, had a far more benign ending in mind, at first; Jean Grey would be de-powered by aliens but left alive, with the thinking being that it left the door open for a future Dark Phoenix reprise if necessary. Then-Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter wasn't a fan of the idea, when he found out -- he has referred to it as being "like taking the German army away from Hitler and letting him go back to governing Germany" -- and demanded a rewrite, which is where the notion of Jean's death as ultimate punishment came from. It was an ending that was intended to stick, although Claremont -- who stayed as X-Men writer for a further decade, teaming with a number of artists following Byrne's departure from the series a handful of months after the end of the Phoenix storyline -- would gleefully tease the return of Phoenix on a couple of occasions, just to raise the blood pressure of fans. (Jean Grey died in Uncanny X-Men No. 137, but her return is the focus of the cover of both Nos. 157 and 175; in both cases, it's someone in disguise.) That it didn't stick was, oddly enough, partly the work of one of the architects of her death. In 1985, Uncanny X-Men was such a hit for Marvel that the prospect of adding a new spin-off title to the schedule was hard to resist, especially when the four surviving original members of the team weren't active X-Men anymore. Plans were hatched for a new comic called X-Factor that would feature the original team (Beast, Cyclops, Iceman, Angel) reunited, with Dazzler -- another mutant superhero, ironically one introduced during the initial episode of the "Dark Phoenix Saga" -- taking the place of the deceased Jean Grey. John Byrne, however, had a better idea: Why not just bring Jean Grey back from the dead and properly reunite the original team? It wasn't, strictly speaking, his idea; the mechanism for bringing Jean back actually originated from writer Kurt Busiek when he was a college student, and was then shared with writer Roger Stern, who shared it with Byrne. Together, Byrne -- then the writer and artist of Fantastic Four -- and Avengers writer Stern pitched it to Jim Shooter, who approved, and X-Factor was put on the schedule with an ambitious launch structure that would see a story run through all three series to properly explain how Jean Grey could be alive and well five years after everyone saw her die. Ahead of publication, Shooter told official fan magazine Marvel Age that the storyline "is going to be a real milestone in Marvel history. I think it will be remembered as a significant event in the same way that the issue of Daredevil that had the death of Elektra was a significant event, in the same way the death of Phoenix was a significant event." That Uncanny X-Men wasn't part of X-Factor's plans was no accident; Jean Grey's return didn't just undo the climax of the "Dark Phoenix Saga," it actually undid the entire Phoenix storyline as it had originally been published. It argued that the Phoenix that everyone had read about was never actually Jean Grey at all, but a clone of Grey created by the Phoenix Force itself; the "real" Jean Grey had been kept in suspended animation all along, until her discovery at the hands of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. All of this was decided without the input -- or, indeed, knowledge -- of Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont. When Claremont found out, his first impulse was to quit in protest. (Only his inability to remember the phone number of Jim Shooter's direct line prevented this, he's since claimed.) Instead, he came up with alternate proposals -- including giving Jean Grey's rarely-seen sister powers, to take the place of a resurrected Jean -- that were all rejected in favor of the powerful lure of nostalgia. Jean Grey would be part of the team, and the fan-favorite "Dark Phoenix Saga" would be retconned as a result. It wasn't just Jean Grey's history that would end up rewritten as a result of the decision to publish X-Factor, however. The series launched in October 1985, one month after Claremont had written Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, out of Uncanny X-Men in that title's 201st issue; he'd left the team to go into superhero retirement along with his wife, Madelyne Prior -- who just so happened to look a lot like Jean Grey -- and his newborn son. In X-Factor No. 1, Summers abandons his wife and child when he discovers that Jean Grey is still alive, and that... was a problem. Maybe no one at Marvel had realized that readers would find it hard to consider a man who'd abandon his family a particularly heroic figure, especially when X-Factor showed little interest in allowing either Madelyne or son Nathan Christopher in the comic, preferring instead panels of a self-pitying Scott Summers saying things like, "Madelyne and the baby are constantly on my mind, but my life's been turned upside down. Jean's back. She's alive and... I don't know what to do... " Perhaps no one at Marvel thought it could be a problem until they saw the reaction from fans. Either way, something had to be done to redeem Scott Summers. The solution was, shall we say, unexpected. Madelyne would eventually show up in the pages of Uncanny X-Men, just as Scott Summers decided to try to return to his family, only to find them missing. (The two teams weren't talking at the time.) This was the start of a shared storyline that would result more than a year later with the revelation that Madelyne Prior was, despite evidence to the (ahem) prior having been presented, actually a clone of Jean Grey created by the evil Mister Sinister. Worse still, she was a clone who had done a deal with a demon and was now looking to sacrifice her son as a result, along with lots of other children, in the pursuit of power. It was a retcon that attempted to save Summers' reputation -- surely, it's fine to walk out on a demonic clone, right? -- and make sense of the increasingly complicated continuity of the X-Men comics and related series of the time. Did it work? Well, the resolution involved Jean Grey absorbing the memories of both her evil clone and the Phoenix Force's Pretend Jean Grey and set in motion a chain of events that would end with Summers' baby being sent into a distant future so that he'd become Cable, so let's just say that the jury is still out on that one. Dark Phoenix is, of course, the final movie in the current cycle of X-Men. Given the possibilities of what could have happened had the series continued, perhaps that might be a blessing in disguise. (Hollywood Reporter)
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