Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried Are "In Time"

Reviewing "TRON: Legacy," "Yogi Bear," and "True Grit" on Today in LA

Hollywood Bites Reviews: "Yogi Bear," and Picnic Pockets

It's getting to be the time when people start compiling lists to mark the year that's past. Awards are handed out, successes are heralded, the best and brightest are toasted, but it also means we have a chance to reflect on the low points of the last twelve months.

With Oscar races just beginning to be handicapped, 'tis the season to ordain which films were the worst of 2010.

While we'll never fully recover from the horror of "Sex and the City 2," littered with puns like "Lawrence of my labia," we think the battle royale for the top spot is ultimately between Julie Taymor's ghastly adaption of "The Tempest" and Warner Brothers update of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon "Yogi Bear," opening on Friday.

Since both have so much wrong with them, it's hard to narrow the argument, we've decided the real question at hand is this: What's worse, attempting to make something noble, high-brow and artistic and turning it into a meandering, nonsensical bore that transported us back to the nap time also known as 10th grade English class, or taking a beloved childhood treasure and making it a screeching, blathering disaster that insults the intelligence of children and adults alike and defiles the memory of a cartoon adored since 1958?

Word to the wise; don't screw around with childhood memories! "Yogi Bear" is our official choice for Worst Film of 2010.

A 3D mix of live action and CGI animation, the film follows Yogi (voiced by Dan Aykroyd), Boo-Boo (Justin Timberlake), Ranger Jones with a serious Just For Men dye job (Tom Cavanaugh, who some may remember from the TV show "Ed") and his obligatory love interest, Rachel (Anna Faris, who one of our fellow journalists thought decided to play the role as if she had special needs) as they fight to save Jellystone Park from an evil mayor who’d like to see it sold to loggers.

You know you're in trouble about 20 minutes into the 82 minute movie (including credits, which makes us wonder if it even fully qualifies as a feature film) when you realize you'd rather be watching "Meet the Deedles," a 1998 romp about surfer park rangers defending Yellowstone from a demented former ranger (played by Dennis Hopper), because at least then you'd get to ogle a shirtless Paul Walker and/or bikini-clad A.J. Langer.

Even worse than Alvin and his "Squeakquel," can someone please explain why Justin Timberlake signed on to this mess? From terrible direction, laughably flat CGI, horrific writing and appalling acting, this is a career Boo-Boo for all concerned.

written for NBC's Popcorn Biz

It's been pouring rain in LA this week, which I love but is definitely not pic-a-nic weather. The other day I was craving a taste of summer and came up with these super fast and delicious little bundles of joy which require no more work than pulling a Yogi and going the lazy route by making a quick trip to Trader Joe's.

Picnic Pockets
serves four
1 package Trader Joe's potato salad
1 package Trader Joe's pulled BBQ chicken
1/4 cup cilantro
1 package Sonoma carb-cutting torillas
2 limes, quartered
butter flavored cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a bowl, combine potato salad, BBQ chicken, and cilantro. Mound small handfuls (about 1/4-1/2 cup) of filling into center of tortilla. Fold ends and sides over filling to create a sealed, rectangular package.

Place pockets on a lightly greased sheet pan and spray with cooking spray.

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until puffed, golden and slightly crisp. Serve with lime wedges.

Candids from The Social Network Junket

Last weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to fly to New York to cover The Social Network.

Ummm, seriously? New York, baby daddy JT, Jesse Eisenberg, and the chance to see what was already being hailed as one of the best films of the year?

Done and done.

While the entire trip was insanely idyllic (I'll post more photos very soon), here are a few behind-the-scenes shots from the trip to accompany my feature and Fox News appearance.

My room at The Regency on 61st and Park could have rented for $3000 a month by New York standards. And what was I going to do with two massive beds? At first I debated setting and alarm for 4am, thinking I'd shout "Rotate!" and swap in my sleep, but instead I decided to make more practical use and jump back and forth until I was panting, spent and uncontrollably giggling.

The next morning, bright and shiny, we journalists converged on The Harvard Club, the same spot we'd gotten liquored up the night before at the film's after party, to grill the movie's stars and writer, Aaron Sorkin. Note the elephant head mounted on the wall. That ain't fake, ya'll.

Anxiously awaiting the arrival of JT, Eisenberg, Sorkin, Spiderman 2.0 Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer, one of the most tropical men I've had the pleasure of admiring in far too long.

Ned, who came through looking extra spiffy, was my un-official escort for the weekend. A girl couldn't ask for better.
Armie Hammer, Justin Timberlake, Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Aaron Sorkin.

Now there's a Social Network I'd like to be part of.

I can't stress enough what an outstanding movie The Social Network is. Eisenberg moves into the ranks of my favorite leading men with this role, superbly sculpted by Fincher and Sorkin. Go. NOW! It's brilliant.

"The Social Network" of Timberlake, Sorkin and Eisenberg

Amongst greatness, the best and brightest flourish.

Could that be a slogan for an Ivy League enclave? Absolutely, but it’s also what makes The Social Network, set in the hallowed halls of Harvard, one of the best films of this year, if not the decade (though it pains me to side with Peter Travers in such gushing praise).

Consider the films’ pedigree; written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing), directed by David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club), starring Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and newly minted megastar Andrew Garfield (aka: Spiderman 2.0), The Social Network, an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book about the founding of Facebook, The Accidental Billionaires, is a parade of some of Hollywood’s most captivating talent turning in work of the highest caliber.

On a balmy September afternoon in Manhattan, Sorkin, Timberlake and Eisenberg settle into embossed leather chairs at the Harvard Club under oil paintings of white haired men sporting General Custer mustaches and taxidermy, including an elephant head, trunk flaring, to discuss the film which is already considered a sure Oscar contender.

Sorkin has long asserted that his writing is simply people sitting in rooms talking, so how was he able to make mindnumbingly mundane moments, things like blogging and depositions, frenetic, wrought and pulsating in the film?

“Well, they’re not sitting in rooms talking, they’re standing in rooms talking and that’s how I infuse it with a Michael Bay-type energy,” Sorkin deadpans. “My parents took me to plays starting when I was too little to understand what the plays were about, like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf when I was eight years old. Because I didn’t understand the story on onstage, I fell in love with the sound of dialogue, it sounded like music to me, and I wanted to imitate that when I wrote.”

Fans of the writer’s previous work will instantly recognize his hand in The Social Network’s opening scene, a patently Sorkin rapid-fire exchange which finds Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) in the midst of a breakup conversation with Erica Albright (Rooney Mara).

“I wanted to start out at 100 miles an hour, in the middle of a conversation, so that the audience would have to run a little just to keep up with us,” Sorkin explains. “And then sequences like the one that follows where Mark is blogging, drinking and hacking; David shot it and cut it and [Nine Inch Nails frontman] Trent Reznor scored it like it was bank robbery, like an action sequence.”

“We performed that scene 99 times,” Eisenberg points out quickly and without venom. “[Fincher] refused to do it the extra time to make it an even hundred. For an actor, that’s what you want. That’s what’s thrilling.”

“That was David’s process,” Timberlake interjects. “Working digitally with this film,” which was shot on a Red One camera, “it was almost like he would use the first twenty to twenty-five [takes] as a rehearsal and if something good came out of it, it was more of a fluke in his mind that what he was trying to get. You’d get to the 25th or 26th take and he’d say, ‘Great. Print that. Erase everything else.’ And you’d be like, ‘Whoooa! Wait. Really? Oookay, so we’re starting over?’ But while feeling like you were running wind sprints which turned into a marathon, it was freeing to be a part of that process.”

“We’re asked about the great number of takes as if the actors are in opposition to it,” Eisenberg says. “Every actor I know would stay there all day if there was film in the camera. This film was a blessing and we were thrilled for the time we got actually acting and not sitting around waiting to act.”

Sorkin reveals Fincher also vetoed any flouncy, typical Hollywood perks you’d expect to see on a set, like directors’ chairs, big trailers or an overflowing craft service table.

“David didn’t believe in frills or bells and whistles,” Sorkin says. “On this movie you sat on the floor when you weren’t working. David doesn’t like to spend money if it doesn’t go onscreen.”
“The money for this film went to the time to make it,” Timberlake adds. “It’s so amazing for a director to say, I want time for my actors to act and for me to watch them act and direct them. He’s one of the bravest directors you could ever be lucky enough to work with.”

The Social Network opens October 1.

Lucy Punch Meets a Tall Dark Stranger

Lucy Punch is having a TKO year. The 32-year-old British actress has spent the last year working with the likes of Steve Carell, Kate Hudson and Justin Timberlake, is about to start production in Nick Cassavetes’ new film, and stars alongside Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin in Woody Allen’s new film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, stepping into a role at one point occupied by Nicole Kidman. Not bad considering just before she won her part in Allen’s film, she’d been out of work for over a year and was considering a new line of work.

Settling into a suite at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, tall and lean, in a sheer fuchsia blouse and dark trousers, gold bracelets climbing up her arms, Punch explains that getting to be in Allen’s film took a lot of hard work and a little luck, all beginning with an audition on tape because, “Woody didn’t know who I was,” the actress offers good-naturedly. Liking what he saw on the tape, Allen invited Punch to New York for a meeting.

“Usually when you’re close to getting a part, the studio will pay for a [plane] ticket,” Punch says. “But because it’s Woody and [his movies are] always low budget and every actor wants to meet him, you pay for your own ticket. I was completely broke at the time but I was like, ‘Of course!’ The night before I was supposed to go, I found out he’d given the part away and I was devastated.” She jokes that when she found out it was Nicole Kidman who’d been cast in the role, “I was more understanding,” though still heartbroken. “But she dropped out!” Punch grins. Still, the part wasn’t hers that easily. “I really had to prove myself to him,” Punch continues. After another round of auditions, where she was asked to do “a number of scenes from the script,” she had what every actor dreams of; a part in a Woody Allen film, something Punch sums up as, “Insane and very intimidating.”

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger follows what happens to a pair of troubled married couples; Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and Helena (Gemma Jones), and their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin), as their relationships fracture. After Alfie and Helena separate thanks to his growing late-middle life crisis, he takes up with Punch’s character, Charmaine, a call girl from the wrong side of the tracks who’s thrilled to find a sugar daddy. It was a part the required a very particular, and skin-baring, look that Punch describes as, “that kind of really unsubtle sexy that’s vulgar and almost a little repulsive.”

“Woody wanted her to be very sexy, so I went to my last audition really dressed as the character,” Punch recalls, chuckling. “I was getting some serious wolf whistles from construction sites and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ve got this down. I’m attracting the right kind of disgusting attention.’”

Even after landing the role, Punch didn’t meet the notoriously retiring director until she walked onto his set the first day. “I’d spoken to some actors who’d worked with him before, so I knew I’d get very little [in direction],” she says. But that didn’t stop her from using her time with Allen to the fullest advantage. “I had a hundred gagillion ideas which I was constantly pestering him with,” Punch admits, “and he was like, ‘Don’t tell me, just do it. I don’t need to hear about it.’ It actually gave me a huge amount of confidence that he put his trust in me.”

Allen doesn’t need to be verbose to get the most out of his actors. For Punch it was three little words that made all the difference in her performance. “One day I was doing a scene and I got a laugh from the crew and I thought, ‘I’m doing a good job.’” That was until she caught the eye of her director. “I looked up and [Woody mouthed], ‘Stop being funny.’ And he was right! This is the sort of part where it would be very easy to go bananas, but the style and tone of his films, the comedy is really grounded. As outrageous as the character is and looks, I was always aware, having Woody’s eyes on me, to be truthful.”

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger opens September 23.