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Daisy Edgar-Jones has twisted out of the upcoming Carole King biopic.

After previously being announced as cast in the lead role in 2022, “Twisters” star Edgar-Jones told Variety that she is “no longer” set to portray singer/songwriter King onscreen.

“That’s no longer happening,” Edgar-Jones said. “I love Carole and I love that story, but it was a year ago that they decided [to no longer pursue it].”

“I did learn a lot of piano. I think it’s a gorgeous story, and the script probably needs a little more time in the oven. But I did meet Carole King on Zoom, and I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever,'” she added. “She really enjoyed ‘Normal People,’ so she was a fan of that and I was a fan of hers. I get so starstruck by musicians, much more than actors, and Carole was one where it was quite hard to keep my cool.

It has taken a couple of years, but there is some forward movement on development for an English-language remake of Thomas Vinterberg's dark comedy Another Round. Depending on your feelings towards the original, this may not be considered good news, but Chris Rock is now aboard to direct a new take on the film.

Another Round, which took home Best International Film at the Oscars in 2021, follows Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), who learns there is an obscure philosophical theory that humans should have been born with a small amount of alcohol in our blood; that modest inebriation opens our minds to the world around us, diminishing problems and increasing creativity.

So Martin and three of his friends, all weary high school teachers, embark on a risky experiment to maintain a constant level of intoxication throughout the workday. Initial results are positive, but as the units are knocked back and stakes are raised,...

“Where the Crawdads Sing” and “Normal People” star Daisy Edgar-Jones will play Carole King in a film adaptation of Broadway’s “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.”

“The Kids Are Alright” filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko will direct, with Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman producing. They will be joined by Paul Blake, who also produced the Tony-winning stage show. Executive producers are Sherry Kondor, Christine Russell, Steven Shareshian and Mike Bosner.

Cholodenko and her “Kids Are Alright” co-writer Stuart Blumberg are working on the latest draft of the script, which is still in development. Based on Douglas McGrath’s book of the musical, “Beautiful” will trace the legendary singer-songwriter’s path to fame, as well as her tragedies and triumphs in her personal life.

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‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Director Olivia Newman Explains That Twist Ending

King has already given Edgar-Jones her seal of approval. “Daisy has a spirit and...

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Daisy Edgar-Jones has been cast as Carole King in the movie version of the beloved Broadway show centering on the singer’s life and career, Beautiful. Sony is behind the project, having worked with Edgar-Jones on Where the Crawdads Sing.

The adaptation of the Tony-winning Beautiful: The Carole King Musical will be directed by Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are Alright). Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg penned the most recent draft of the screenplay, which is based on Douglas McGrath’s book of the musical.

Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and Paul Blake, who also produced the stage show, are producing. Sherry Kondor, Christine Russell, Steven Shareshian, and Mike Bosner will executive produce.

“Daisy has a spirit and energy that I recognized as myself when I was younger. She’s a tremendous talent and I know she’s going to give a great performance,...

Daisy Edgar-Jones is set to play Carole King in Sony Pictures’ feature take of Tony Award-winning Broadway hit musical, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Deadline has confirmed.

The Kids Are All Right Oscar nominated filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko will direct and produce with Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and Paul Blake, who also produced the stage show. Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg are writing the latest draft of the screenplay based on Douglas McGrath’s book of the musical. The pic will follow King’s rise to fame and off-stage triumphs and tragedies. Beautiful was nominated for seven Tony awards, winning two.

“Daisy has a spirit and energy that I recognized as myself when I was younger. She’s a tremendous talent and I know she’s going to give a great performance,” said Carole King.

Sherry Kondor, Christine Russell, Steven Shareshian, and Mike Bosner will executive produce.

Edgar-Jones most...

Daisy Edgar-Jones has landed the plum role of Carole King in Sony’s upcoming film adaptation of the stage musical “Beautiful,” a package as high-profile as it is pedigreed.

“Daisy has a spirit and energy that I recognized as myself when I was younger. She’s a tremendous talent and I know she’s going to give a great performance,” King told Variety.

Jones is familiar to Sony, having starred in the studio’s box office winner “Where The Crawdads Sing.” She will be directed in “Beautiful” by Academy Award nominee Lisa Cholodenko (“The Kids Are All Right”).

Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, who co-wrote “Kids Are All Right” together, recently completed their own pass on the “Beautiful” script, which is currently in development. Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman of Playtone will produce the film with Paul Blake, who also produced the stage show. Sherry Kondor, Christine Russell, Steven Shareshian, and...

Edward Norton is one of our generation's greatest actors. He has collaborated with a slew of renowned directors. Often, (and sometimes to the detriment of his reputation), he works behind the scenes of the films he stars in. He took over the editing room while director Tony Kaye fought with the studio over "American History X"; he argued over the "Red Dragon" script with director Brett Ratner, who told the Los Angeles Times, "He likes to challenge the director. It's all about intellectual debate ... Edward's instinct is going to be, 'I have to take over this film.' He's going to try to rescue the film"; he wrote parts of "The Incredible Hulk" script to improve his character arc (via Entertainment Weekly).

To this date, he has only made two films in the span of nearly twenty years: "Keeping the Faith" in 2000 and "Motherless Brooklyn" in 2019. Norton tells Interview magazine...

It’s been 10 years since “The Kids Are All Right,” a queer family dramedy that was the darling of that year’s Sundance Film Festival, charted an unlikely ride to the Oscars and helped shift popular opinion about gay marriage.

Written by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, and directed by Cholodenko, the movie arrived as attitudes about gay rights were shifting dramatically. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore starred as a couple whose long marriage had grown stale, further strained by an emptying nest. As their eldest child prepares to leave for college, she hatches a plan with her teen brother to meet their biological father, an Echo Park-dwelling free spirit played by Mark Ruffalo. Tensions escalate as Moore and Ruffalo embark on a secret affair, the kids launch into full rebellion, and Bening unravels with boozy abandon.

While controversial in the LGBTQ community upon release for depicting a lesbian having...

After winning her inaugural Emmy on her first try in 2015 for directing the HBO miniseries “Olive Kitteridge,” Lisa Cholodenko looks to return to the Best Limited Series/TV Movie Directing lineup for Netflix’s “Unbelievable.” She helmed the first three episodes, of which she chose the opener to enter at the Emmys.

The premiere centers on Kaitlyn Dever’s Marie Adler, an 18-year-old who reports being raped at knifepoint to the local police station in Lynnwood, Washington. The story is told through Marie’s eyes, through which the world becomes cold and bleak as she grapples with trauma, all while being confronted with inklings of doubt from the people around her. With her grounded direction and tight collaboration with cinematographer Quyen Tran (who uses a veristic color palette throughout), Cholodenko crafts an uber-realistic atmosphere, which not only sets the tone for the show, but is a pivotal step toward immersing viewers into Marie’s situation.

The slate of Phyllis Nagy is getting a massive showing of support from some of the biggest names in film and television. More than 300 writers of all levels in the film and TV business, from up-and-comers to superstars, have signed an open letter endorsing Nagy, who is running for president of WGA West, as well as her slate of Craig Mazin, who’s running for vice president, and Nick Jones Jr., up for secretary-treasurer.

Those who have signed the letter include heavyweights Shonda Rhimes, Greg Berlanti, Ryan Murphy, Ava DuVernay, Dan Fogelman, Kenya Barris, Steve Levitan, Damien Chazelle, Courtney Kemp, Aaron Sorkin, David E. Kelley, Akiva Goldsman, Lena Waithe, Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Allan Heinberg, David Benioff, Db Weiss, Alex Kurtzman, Sarah Treem,, Darren Star, Nic Pizzolatto, Scott Frank, Eric Kripke and Alex Gibney.

The list also includes top showrunner John Wells, one of the most respected leaders in the...

Naomi Watts has been cast in the lead role in the upcoming Quibi series “Wolves and Villagers,” Variety has learned exclusively.

The exact plot of the short-form series is being kept under wraps, but Quibi co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg has previously described the show as “Fatal Attraction 2.0.” Jason Blum is executive producing the series, with Stuart Blumberg writing and executive producing.

This marks the latest TV project for Watts. She was recently cast in a major role in the “Game of Thrones” prequel pilot at HBO, and signed on to play Gretchen Carlson in the Roger Ailes limited series currently in the works at Showtime. She previously appeared in Showtime’s revival of “Twin Peaks.”

Watts is also known for her roles in films like “Mulholland Drive,” “I Heart Huckabees,” “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” “St. Vincent,” “The Ring,” “King Kong, and “J. Edgar.” She earned Academy Award nominations...

Toni Collette (United States of Tara), Merritt Wever (Godless) and Kaitlyn Dever (Last Man Standing) have been cast in Unbelievable, an eight-episode Netflix limited series from Erin Brockovich writer Susannah Grant, CBS TV Studios, studio-based producers Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly and Katie Couric. In addition, Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right) is set to direct and executive produce the first three episodes.

Co-written by Grant, who will serve as showrunner, Michael Chabon (John Carter) & Ayelet Waldman (Applebaum), Unbelievable is based on The Marshall Project and ProPublica Pulitzer Prize-winning December 2015 article, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” written by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, and the “This American Life” radio episode about the same case, “Anatomy of Doubt.” It tells the true story of Marie, a teenager who was charged with lying about having been raped, and the two female detectives who followed a twisting...

Former “Girls” collaborators Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner will not make their studio screenwriting debut with Paramount’s English-language take on “Toni Erdmann.” Last June, the duo was negotiating to adapt Maren Ade’s 2016 dramedy of the same name, which vied for the Palme d’Or and Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (Germany). However, co-producer Adam McKay told IndieWire that “it didn’t work out with them.”

Paramount confirmed that the new writers are Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, Oscar nominees for their “The Kids Are All Right” screenplay. Cholodenko, who directed that film, will also direct “Toni Erdmann.” “We just got our first draft of it,” said McKay.

He added that the project is “on track” and lead producer Jessica Elbaum — who conceptualized Gloria Sanchez Productions as the female-centric counterpart to McKay and Will Ferrell’s Gary Sanchez Productions — is “really happy” with the initial script, which now requires McKay’s notes.

Exclusive: Paramount Pictures, which has been gearing up production under new studio chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos after being left with pretty much a barren cupboard from the previous regime of the late Brad Grey and Rob Moore, has several projects in development with female directors. They have only one in production, but the town understands this is an inherited situation that new management is now working to turn around.

We’re told one of the mandates from Gianopulos is to hire more female directors onto projects, evidenced by its development slate both at Paramount and in its Paramount Players division. One of those new projects is the high-profile Nightlife, which Neal Moritz is producing with two strong female roles (see below).

Here is what’s on the studio slate to date:

Paramount

In Production

The Rhythm Section, starring Blake Lively and Jude Law, is currently in production with director...

Willem Dafoe has joined Edward Norton's passion project, Motherless Brooklyn, an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's detective novel that Norton will star in, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

The pic, about a detective with Tourette syndrome, played by Norton, is produced by Warner Bros. and Norton's production shingle, Class 5 Films. The producer credits are shared by Bill Migliore and Stuart Blumberg, while Gigi Pritzker, Rachel Shane and Sue Kroll executive produce.

The Florida Project, Sean Baker's indie about life in a cheap motel near Disney World and his follow-up to Tangerine, netted Dafoe an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor and...

Jeff Bridges and Diane Lane have signed on to star in Meadowland director Reed Morano's untitled project.

Bridges is to play an obsessed virtuoso violinist who gets a life-threatening illness and has to return to his estranged wife, played by Lane. The indie pic from Bankside Films and Emjag Productions is based on a script by Stuart Blumberg, who also co-wrote the screenplay for The Kids Are All Alright, the Julianne Moore and Annette Bening-starrer, with director Lisa Cholodenko.

The Morano project marks the first film from Bankside as it moves into production from its origins as an international distribution...

Exclusive: Jeff Bridges and Diane Lane are set to star in an untitled project from The Handmaid's Tale and Meadowland director Reed Morano, written by The Kids Are All Right scribe Stuart Blumberg. The project (formerly known as First Chair) marks the first film developed by London-based international sales and film finance company Bankside Films, which is beginning to ramp up its activity in the production arena. The story follows a regimented, self-obsessed virtuoso…...

Hollywood is rarely in search of the new, so each year brings a longer list of adapted screenplays and a shorter list of originals.

Sundance launched American indie-in-Paris Whit Stillman’s witty adaptation of an early epistolary Jane Austen novella, “Love & Friendship,” which boasted rave reviews for Kate Beckinsale as a bitchy gold-digging mom, and long legs at the arthouse box office ($14 million).

Veteran indie distributor James Schamus returned to his first love, screenwriting, for his well-reviewed directorial debut “Indignation,” adapting the Philip Roth novel about college love, which performed modestly at domestic arthouses ($3.3 million). Lesser-known “Indignation” fared better with Roth than rookie director-star Ewan McGregor and writer John Romano’s film version of the better-known novel “American Pastoral.”

Writer-director Rebecca Miller’s sixth feature, sophisticated New York comedy of manners “Maggie’s Plan,” earned strong kudos at Toronto and Sundance but scored modestly on the specialty circuit ($3.5 million). Woody Allen aside,...

Annette Bening and Warren Beatty on the Oscars' Red Carpet Best Actress nominee Annette Bening and husband Warren Beatty Smiling radiantly, Best Actress Academy Award nominee Annette Bening and husband Warren Beatty are seen above as they arrive at the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony, held on Feb. 27 at the Kodak Theatre, located in the world-renowned (but locally not all that prestigious) Los Angeles suburb of Hollywood. Annette Bening was in the running for her performance as a lesbian companion/wife to Julianne Moore and mother/adoptive mother of Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson in Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right. Bening lost the Best Actress Oscar to Natalie Portman for her mentally unbalanced ballerina in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. See also: Pregnant Natalie Portman on the Oscars' Red Carpet. Annette Bening: Four Oscar nominations The Kids Are All Right was Annette Bening's fourth Academy Award nomination.

Mark Ruffalo and wife Sunrise Coigney on the Red Carpet Mark Ruffalo and wife Sunrise Coigney Oscars photo Mark Ruffalo and wife Sunrise Coigney arrive at the 83rd Academy Awards on Feb. 27 at the Kodak Theatre at (almost) the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue in downtown Hollywood. Ruffalo was a 2011 Best Supporting Actor nominee for his role as a chauvinistic male slob who disrupts the family life of a lesbian couple in Lisa Cholodenko's Best Picture contender The Kids Are All Right. The dramatic comedy co-stars Best Actress nominee Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Josh Hutcherson, and Mia Wasikowska. This was Ruffalo's first Academy Award nomination. As it turned out, The Kids Are All Right didn't win a single statuette on Sunday night. But at the 2011 Spirit Awards held the day before, Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg's screenplay was chosen as the best of the year among independent films.

Something I didn’t realise was happening is that Netflix UK and Ireland actually has a blog and what they have been doing on the rare update is providing information on which ISP’s are actually providing the fastest service. For the last couple of months the top two have always been Virgin and BT with BT coming out on top. Surprisingly though this month it’s switched around and Virgin is on top, considering the negative feedback I always hear about them this is very interesting.

If you google ‘Netflix News’ then you can usually find this blog and check the updates because otherwise it’s not the easiest thing to find via the site. It’s not only a good way of checking that you will get a reliable service if you are just starting out but a good way of seeing whether or not it is worth...

Stars: Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins, Josh Gad, Alecia ‘Pink’ Moore, Patrick Fugit | Written by Stuart Blumberg, Matt Winston | Directed by Stuart Blumberg

Stuart Blumberg, writer of Keeping the Faith, The Kids are All Right and The Girl Next Door, took to the director’s chair for the first time here, with Thanks for Sharing, a story of sex addiction starring the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins, Josh Gad, Alecia ‘Pink’ Moore and Patrick Fugit. It’s a decent cast and Blumberg is a very good writer, so I was interested to see how he faired as a director, and how this mish-mashed, though very good, cast would do under his guidance.

Ruffalo plays Adam, a guy who we meet as he is celebrating his fifth year in sex addiction sobriety. His sponsor, and friend, Mike (Robbins) is also an addict who is juggling his job,...

News Simon Brew 3 Apr 2014 - 07:06

Once mooted for Shia Labeouf, John Grisham's The Associate is now set to star Zac Efron instead...

It's been some time since the last John Grisham movie adaptation made it to the screen, with 2004's Christmas With The Kranks - based on the book Skipping Christmas - the most recent one.

That said, several of his books seem suddenly destined for the big screen again. A movie take on The Testament is apparently in the hands of director Stuart Blumberg (Thanks For Sharing), although we can't find anything concrete on that at the moment. Furthermore, The Racketeer had been linked with Safe House director Daniel Espinosa, and rumours persist of a film of The Partner.

And now you can add to list The Associate. The film version of that has attracted Zac Efron, who is set to produce and star in the movie.

Exclusive: It may have taken him 15 years to get there, but Edward Norton will star in and direct Motherless Brooklyn, his scripted adaptation inspired by the Jonathan Lethem novel. Brett Ratner and James Packer’s RatPac Entertainment have stepped up to fully finance the film for a late 2014 production start in New York. Ratner will join Norton and his Class 5 Films’ cohort William Migliore as producers, and Packer will be executive producer with Class 5’s Stuart Blumberg. While Lethem’s novel is contemporary, Norton has set the story in New York in 1954, a time of great change in the city. He plays Lionel Essrog, a lonely private detective afflicted with Tourette’s syndrome, who tries to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend. Armed only with few clues and an obsessive mind, Lionel slowly unravels closely guarded secrets that have major ramifications. It leads him through Harlem jazz clubs,...

Mark Ruffalo and Gwyneth Paltrow are thrown into a sticky situation in Stuart Blumberg's romantic dramedy Thanks for Sharing. While Phoebe (Paltrow) might have some of her own foibles, she soon realises that Adam (Ruffalo) is a recovering sex addict, five years sober. The film is available to watch online now without a subscription, thanks to blinkbox.

Here are five reasons to stop whatever you're doing and watch Thanks for Sharing as soon as humanly possible:

1. Pink!

The filmmakers try to trick us by crediting her by her given name, Alecia Moore, but there is no disguising the actress playing sex addict Dede. It is, of course, Digital Spy favourite Pink. Better known for her music (and some dramatic accompanying videos), Moore pulls out a top performance in Thanks for Sharing.

2. An original take on the rom-com premise

Thanks for Sharing gives us an original take on the usual romantic comedy/drama.

The ‘romantic dramedy’ is a concept that continues to elude many Hollywood filmmakers and screenwriters, despite its seemingly self-explanatory nature. A ‘rom-drom,’ as it’s known to some overeager cinephiles, should feature aspects of romance, drama and comedy. That’s the basic explanation, and the one that writer-director Stuart Blumberg applies to Thanks for Sharing, a rom-drom that tackles the tricky subject of sex addiction.

Unfortunately for Blumberg, and for Thanks for Sharing, that basic explanation doesn’t cut it for a movie with a 113-minute runtime. To make an enjoyable, coherent, feature-length film that traverses romance, drama and comedy, what’s utterly essential is a story that blends all three together. It’s not enough to merely toss the genres up onto the screen. That’s what Thanks for Sharing is missing, and that’s why it doesn’t work. For all its lofty goals and fine actors, the film never builds the strong,...

It is that time again when the year is drawing to a close and the cinematic twelvemonth is summed up in a myriad Best Of lists and the trophy cabinets are being prepped from the Academies on both side of the Atlantic to hand out their golden trinkets.

We, too, are continuing our tradition of awarding The Truffles – the annual HeyUGuys movie awards where when we make up the categories in order than the prizes given more accurately reflect our feelings on year in film. The team have given their choices below, if you care to you can click here to see our previous years’ awards, and finally see you all next year!

Stefan Pape

Best Jason Statham One-Liner of the Year: “I’ll kill you with this spoon” – Hummingbird

Fans of Jason Statham (you’re out there somewhere…) will have been thrilled with the amount of ‘Stath’ that illuminated the big screen this year,...

Magic Johnson talks HIV and his gay son, Rick Santorum faces Stephen Colbert, American Horror Story goes back to the past next season

Excuse me while I try not to giggle (anger management is a real disease, if he has it), but Chris Brown has been ordered by the court into 90 days of residential anger management treatment, and that’s not even dealing with the question of whether his last altercation violated his parole.

Over the summer, we almost got two out NFL players. One had the team back out because of fear of publicity, and the other had a supportive team, but the player wanted too much money.

Of course, the closest we ever got was Dorien Bryant, who went undrafted out of Perdue, and signed with the Steelers before getting cut preseason. And he says he would have been far from alone in sleeping with guys in the NFL,...

Exclusive: Stuart Blumberg has sold an original comedy pitch to New Line Cinema with Scott Stuber and Maven Pictures duo Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler producing. The untitled comedy centers around two very different families, one a blue-state liberal, the other a red-state conservative, who discover that they have been raising the other’s son since they were switched by accident 17 years ago. Blumberg scripted The Kids Are All Right, for which he got an Oscar nom, and he made his directing debut on the sex addiction tale Thanks For Sharing with Mark Ruffalo and Gwyneth Paltrow. Stuber will produce through his Bluegrass Films banner and Styler and Rattray through Maven Pictures. Blumberg’s Class 5 Films cohorts Edward Norton and Bill Migliore are exec producing. This is a reunion between Rattray and Blumberg, who collaborated on The Kids Are All Right. New Line’s Richard Brener and Michael Disco are overseeing for New Line.

Box-office takings lifted by 13% to $16.7 million last weekend, powered by an impressive launch for Gravity, a strong hold by Grown Ups 2 and sizable contributions from the children.s/family films during school holidays.

Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón's 3D outer space thriller starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, raked in $3.54 million. Pro-rata, that wasn.t as stellar as the Us opening of $US55.8 million, a record for October. However 70% of the receipts in the Us came from 3D locations, including 323 IMAX screens, compared with 59% in Australia. That discrepancy prompted one Australian distributor to lament that some Australian cinema operators are not embracing 3D with the same enthusiasm as their Us peers. Or perhaps Aussies are less willing to pay the premium for 3D.

The thriller.s grosses in Oz on Sunday were just 12% lower than Saturday, whereas most other titles were down by 20% or more, which suggests the film will...

Mark Ruffalo stars in a misjudged tale of recovering sex addicts from the writer of The Kids Are All Right

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This self-conscious oddity can't decide whether it wants to be an indie-earnest reappraisal of the rigours of chronic dependency, or a slightly racy romcom with a saucy topical edge. Sadly, it ends up falling between two stools, wanting us to take its subject matter seriously while still finding amusement in the taboo territory of sex addiction.

Mark Ruffalo provides the dramatic meat as the recovering lothario struggling to form a meaningful relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow's borderline eating-disordered health freak. While Ruffalo's tormented character plays like a lightweight version of Michael Fassbender's titanic turn in Shame, Josh Gad plays it broadly for laughs as a porn-obsessed cycling frotteur, leaving Tim Robbins to suck his teeth as a fatally flawed father figure tormented...

After the subject of sex addiction was handled so brilliantly, and bleakly, in Shame, it is hard to imagine how Thanks For Sharing can navigate the same path with a lighter touch. Set in the same support group, we follow three separate story threads: five years sober Adam (Mark Ruffalo) is embarking on a relationship with Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow), unsure of how to proceed. The group's father figure Mike (Tim Robbins) has to deal with the return of his addict son (Patrick Fugit), opening old wounds. And seemingly hopeless case Neil (Josh Gad) has to dig deep and take the group seriously after losing his job as a doctor. While it does treat it's subject matter very seriously, but first time director Stuart Blumberg has delivered an terribly unbalanced movie, not knowing whether it's a comedy or drama. For the most part, Thanks For Sharing is entertaining, hanging on by...

Filth | Sunshine On Leith | The Perverts Guide To Ideology | For Those In Peril | How I Live Now | The Crash Reel | Thanks For Sharing | Camp 14 | The To Do List | Emperor

Filth (18)

(Jon S Baird, 2013, UK) James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, Imogen Poots. 97 mins

Drugs, sleaze, sex, Scots, Irvine Welsh – is it 1996 again? This is just as energetic as Trainspotting, but less hip and more theatrically grim, wallowing in the debauchery and mania of a copper bent way out of shape. The only subtlety to be found is on the face of McAvoy, whose committed performance holds it all together.

Sunshine On Leith (PG)

(Dexter Fletcher, 2013, UK) George MacKay, Kevin Guthrie. 100 mins

It worked for Abba, so why not the Proclaimers? Basing an Edinburgh love story around their music turns out to be a fine idea.

The Pervert's Guide To Ideology (15)

(Sophie Fiennes, 2013, UK) 133 mins

Slavoj Žižek gives an absorbing, annotated...

A smug, humourless film about recovering sex addicts that drips with political and emotional correctness

Thanks but no thanks. This smug and humourless comedy-drama about recovering sex addicts is written and directed by Stuart Blumberg (who scripted the 2010 award-winner The Kids Are Alright) and it's dripping with all sorts of correctness – political and emotional – and the changes of tone are jarring. Tim Robbins is almost intolerable as Mike, a seraphically wise greying guy with issues; he's a 12-step programme sponsor to fellow addict Adam: Mark Ruffalo on exceptionally dull form. Adam has been "sober" for five years: no porn, prostitutes or one-night stands. Now he's ready for a real relationship with Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow), but when is the right time to tell her about his past? It's a bland film that makes you appreciate the icy, ruthless candour of Steve McQueen's sex-addiction nightmare Shame.

Rating: 1/5

Gwyneth PaltrowMark RuffaloPinkTim RobbinsComedyComedyDramaPeter Bradshaw

theguardian.

★★★☆☆ The examination of sex addiction in cinema is becoming more and more frequent. Steve McQueen's Shame (2012) was a bold exploration of the topic, whilst Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut Don Jon (2013) will once again put the subject under the microscope. Directed by The Kids Are All Right scribe Stuart Blumberg, Thanks for Sharing (2012) arguably has the most mainstream appeal of the three. Ultimately, it's not a film to abstain from, nor is it a film you should be overly eager to indulge in either. Blumberg's debut follows three sex-addicted men who are in different stages of the twelve-step programme.

Adam (Mark Ruffalo) is an over-achieving environmental consultant who has been 'sober' for five years and he is mentored by Mike (Tim Robbins), group leader and perennial attendee of many meetings. Our third protagonist is compulsive doctor Neil (Josh Gad) who is having a harder time coping with his addiction...

Director: Stuart Blumberg; Screenwriters: Stuart Blumberg, Matt Winston; Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Tim Robbins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Josh Gad, Joely Richardson, Alecia Moore; Running time: 112 mins; Certificate: 15

As one member of a support group that makes up the ensemble here, Mark Ruffalo points out that sex addiction doesn't get you sympathy, it gets you judgement. Sadly, that is a problem that writer-turned-director Stuart Blumberg (who co-penned The Kids Are All Right) never really overcomes, frequently addressing the symptoms without looking at the cause.

If you're an overweight geek like Neil (Josh Gad) the root of this evil is simply that there are too many hot girls riding the New York subway and the temptation to rub up against them is powerful. Initially, Neil himself is pretty tough to bear as well, but Ruffalo does draw out a softer side to him as his sponsor Adam, along with fellow addict Dede (popstar Pink...

October 4, 2013

Filth

Director: Jon S. Baird

Starring: James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, Imogen Poots

Running time: 97 mins

Certificate: 18

How I Live Now

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Tom Holland, Sophie Ellis

Running time: 101m

Certificate: 15

Sunshine on Leith

Director: Dexter Fletcher

Starring: George MacKay, Peter Mullan, Jason Flemyn

Running time: 100m

Certificate: PG

Thanks for Sharing

Director: Stuart Blumberg

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo, Pink, Tim Robbins

Running time: 112m

Certificate: 15

October 11, 2013

The Fifth Estate

Director: Bill Condon

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, Carice van Houten

Running time: 124 mins

Certificate: Tbc

Le Week-end

Director: Roger Michell

Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Jim Broadbent, Olly Alexander

Running time: 93 mins

Certificate: 15

Machete Kills

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Starring: Danny Trejo, Sofia Vergara, Antonio Banderas, Jessica Alba

Running time: 108 mins

Certificate: 15

Not Another Happy Ending

Director: John McKay

Starring: Karen Gillan, Stanley Weber, Iain De Caestecker

Running time: 102 mins

Certificate: 12A

Romeo and Juliet

Director: Carlo Carlei

Starring: Hailee Steinfeld,...

Today’s film is the 2013 short She Said, She Said. The film stars David Wain, Élodie Bouchez, and Marisa Tomei, and is written and directed by Stuart Blumberg. Blumberg made his feature film writing debut alongside Edward Norton’s feature film directing debut, with 2000′s Keeping The Faith, before going on to co-write The Girl Next Door and The Kids Are All Right. His newest venture, titled Thanks For Sharing, in which Blumberg, alongside co-writing it, takes the directorial reins for the first time as well, opens in limited release in American theatres this weekend.

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The post Saturday Shorts: ‘She Said, She Said’, written and directed by Stuart Blumberg appeared first on Sound On Sight.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Stuart Blumberg (The Kids Are All Right) steps behind the camera for the first time with this sympathetic portrayal of sex addiction. Through his lens, one experiences a world of temptation for those trying to stay sober: low-cut blouses and short skirts everywhere, on billboards and on living ladies (usually to the beat of a marching-band drum corp)—without blaming the objects of their lust. Sex addiction isn’t a joke in Thanks for Sharing; it’s a disease. But it’s not handled without humor, either—with witty dialogue and sharp references—resulting in a warm, funny and poignant portrait of a misunderstood...

As we ease into the winter months (and the year-end awards season), the studios are delving into more serious subject matter such as this film’s look at addiction. Now we’re not into substance abuse like the classic The Man With The Golden Arm (drugs) or The Lost Weekend (alcohol), but it does encompass a form of abuse. You wouldn’t know from the deceptive marketing which make it look like a glossy “rom-com”, but Thanks For Sharing deals with sex addiction or Sa (with the word “sharing” in the film’s title you’d think they could “share” a bit more info), a controversial concept (one character even questions whether Sa is a real thing, as do many researchers). There have been a few films dealing with this subject. Blake Edwards, years after his classic alcohol abuse film The Days Of Wine And Roses, touched on Sa with...

A movie about people grappling earnestly with sex addiction is bound to inspire its share of snorts — my subjective response to the hero’s problem of too many willing beautiful women is “Cry me a river” — but Stuart Blumberg’s Thanks for Sharing certainly makes the case that any addiction will turn your life inside out and hurt others in the bargain. Mark Ruffalo plays a man who hasn’t even dated a woman in five years. He commiserates with his sponsor (Tim Robbins) while they walk past posters of half-naked people and women in micro-minidresses. He’s also not allowed to masturbate. Just when you’re thinking five years seems harsh for a good-looking guy in his prime, he meets Gwyneth Paltrow at an insect-eating party (you can’t make this stuff up — no wait, someone did) and there’s magic. The only catch is that she won’t date ex-addicts.

When I first heard the premise of screenwriter Stuart Blumberg’s directorial debut Thanks For Sharing I couldn’t help but be reminded of director Steve McQueen’s haunting 2011 film Shame since both deal with the unconventional yet seriously debilitating disorder of sex addiction. Where McQueen’s expertly-made Shame took an acutely challenging stance in engaging with that malady, Thanks For Sharing seemed like it would take a lighthearted but grounded approach similar to Blumberg’s script for Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right— that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay—which dealt with the similarly insular formalities and repercussions of artificial insemination. The fact is that Thanks For Sharing does try to go about its plot with amusing levity, but also makes the mistake of trying for serious dramatic turmoil that here just doesn’t tonally make sense. I’m not saying that...

Daily Show regular Josh Gad honed his comedy talent by playing the joker in school. Now he's starring alongside Gynweth Paltrow and Mark Ruffalo

Five minutes with Josh Gad and already we're deep into sex addiction, the subject of his new comedy-drama, Thanks for Sharing. Is it even a real thing? People tend not to take it very seriously.

"Including myself," he laughs. "I mean, until I sat in on one of these sex-addiction club meetings. I could not believe how it's destroyed people's lives. We joke around about getting laid, but it goes beyond that – these are people who have gone bankrupt, lost their loved ones, contracted major diseases, destroyed their relationships with their children and families. And I think that, unlike other addictions, as Tim Robbins says in the movie, this is the only kind of addiction where the crack pipe is actually attached to you."

Thanks for Sharing,...

Thanks for Sharing is a touching story that deals with the serious subject matter of sex addiction, in a humorous but extremely moving and well thought out way. I was definitely surprised that it could be both funny and heartfelt at the same time.

Have any of us given much thought to sex addiction being as painful as alcohol or drug addictions? As we learn in Thanks for Sharing it is as painful and often goes hand and hand with other addictions. The film begins with four people meeting in a twelve-step program for sex addicts. This group includes Adam (Mark Ruffalo), Mike (Tim Robbins), Neil (Josh Gad), and Dede (Pink). Adam is the veteran of the group being the sponsor of Mike. Mike has five years of sobriety under his belt and is the sponsor to the failing Neil. Dede is new to the group having multiple addictions and...

Mark Ruffalo stars opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the new romantic comedy Thanks for Sharing which takes a warm-hearted approach to dealing with sex addiction. We’ve got the Canadian exclusive debut of the poster featuring stars Ruffalo and Paltrow alongside Tim Robbins, Joely Richardson, Josh Gad and rocker Pink (aka Alecia Moore).

The movie marks the directorial debut of Stuart Blumberg, co-writer of 2010’s acclaimed film The Kids Are All Right, directed by Lisa Cholodenko. After working together in The Kids Are All Right, Blumberg and Ruffalo once again pair up to bring us the story of Adam, whose years of sobriety and sex addiction management are put at risk when he meets and falls in love with Phoebe (Paltrow). Tim Robbins is on board as Adam’s addiction sponsor in the sex addict meetings attended by Pink and Josh Gad who are all struggling with their own addiction.

Get...

On the surface Adam (Mark Ruffalo), an over achieving environmental consultant, Mike (Tim Robbins), a long married small business owner, and Neil (Josh Gad), a wisecracking emergency room doctor have little in common. But all are in different stages of dealing with sex addiction. Confident and successful in his career, Adam is afraid to allow love back into his life, even if that means losing a chance to start over with smart, beautiful, and accomplished Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Mikes efforts to control his wife Katie (Joely Richardson) and son (Patrick Fugit) as tightly as he does his impulses are tearing the family apart. Neil is still deeply in denial when befriended by Dede (Alecia Moore) who has just begun taking her own small steps back to health. As they navigate the rocky shores of recovery, Adam, Mike, and Neil become a family that encourages, infuriates and applauds each other on...

Are you a sex addict? Do you know a sex addict? Would you like to know more about the subject, but wish someone would make a movie about it, rather than publish another book? According to Stuart Blumberg's new film Thanks for Sharing, sex addicts need understanding and support, just as much as someone who is addicted to alcohol or narcotics. Even more so than the often-pictueresque Manhattan locations, sexual addiction forms the landscape against which a three-pronged story plays out, as three generations of men deal with the life-long consequences of their addiction. Blumberg, making his directorial debut, also shares a screenplay credit with Matt Winston. The world that he's created is, for the most part, a kind and lovely and well-heeled Manhattan, in...

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Stuart Blumberg’s Thanks for Sharing brought its brilliantly funny and serious look at sex addiction to Tiff last year, and deservedly brought down the house with applause at the screening I was at – you can read our five-star review here.

The film is now finally about to land in cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic, and ahead of its debut in the States this weekend, Yahoo Movies has released a new clip in which Gwyneth Paltrow gets suspicious of a call Mark Ruffalo gets in the early hours of the morning.

From Academy Award®-nominated screenwriter and first-time director Stuart Blumberg (The Kids Are All Right), Thanks For Sharing is a sharply comic and deeply moving look at a new kind of modern family, as a group of friends in recovery learns to face life together with heart, humor and humility.

Ruffalo and Josh Gad are absolutely terrific in the leads here,...

“I have a lack of impulse control,” says Adam (Mark Ruffalo), and that’s putting a very fine point on it. As a recovering sex addict, just walking in New York City is a minefield for him, with lingerie billboards and stylishly dressed women on every block testing his sobriety. Adam’s is one of several intertwining stories in “Thanks for Sharing,” a comedy-drama from “The Kids Are All Right” co-writer Stuart Blumberg. And while it focuses on a different kind of 12-step meeting than we’re used to seeing on screen, it slips too easily into an all-too-familiar addiction narrative: Gut-spilling,...

Thanks for Sharing marks the directorial debut of Stuart Blumberg, who received an Oscar nomination for co-writing The Kids Are All Right with Lisa Cholodenko. The film tells the story of three men who have very little in common with each other except for the fact that they are in different stages of recovery from sex addiction.

Adam (Mark Ruffalo) is an environmental consultant who, as the movie opens, has reached his fifth year of sobriety when he meets the breathtakingly beautiful Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow). Mike (Tim Robbins) is a small business owner with a loving wife, Katie (Joely Richardson), and a wayward son named Danny (Patrick Fugit), who has addiction problems of his own. Then there’s emergency room doctor Neil (Josh Gad), who is in deep denial about his own sex addiction, and he soon realizes that he needs to face up to it before it’s too late.