The Host (1 of 3 'next Twilight's) gets 3 theme posters.

Yahoo Movies just debuted three new theme-specific posters for one of three major young-adult literature adaptations dropping this year.  The clear advantage that it has over Beautiful Creatures and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is that it's based of course on book written by Stephanie Meyer, she of Twilight fame.  Saoirse Ronan is the real deal, William Hurt always has my attention, and Andrew Niccol seems an uncommonly good match for the material.  This could be Open Road's shot at the big time, the same way Twilight elevated Summit Entertainment just a couple years into its existence.  Anyway, The Host debuts on March 29, 2013.  As always, we'll see. For those who care, a synopsis is after the jump.

Scott Mendelson

Better roles for child actresses than adult actresses? Jennifer Lawrence graduates to 'adult' roles by playing the token girlfriend/manic pixie dream girl.

Yes, this started as deleted material from my Silver Linings Playbook essay from Saturday. I don't want to get into another 'roles for women' rant, but it's interesting that Jennifer Lawrence may win an Oscar for arguably the first role of her career where she exists purely to support the male lead's arc (even her token girlfriend role in The Beaver had a character arc for *her*). She has not a single scene in this film where she exists as a character outside of her role as Bradley Cooper's girlfriend/spiritual healer. She is basically a glorified manic pixie fuck toy who exists purely to support the male lead's emotional journey, not fit for even a single scene disconnected from Cooper's story. This parallels the career trajectory of the likes of Shailene Woodley and Blake Lively, solid actresses who did film and/or television work as leads who only earned real acclaim after they took supporting roles in more automatically prestigious 'manly dramas'. Blake Lively was a lead in films like Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and the television show Gossip Girl.  But she was written off as a kid-friendly television star before she played a strung-out junkie with romantic feelings for Ben Affleck's oh-so-conflicted bank robber in The Town. Shailene Woodley was a lead actress in ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, but critics only started taking her seriously once she played supporting fiddle to George Clooney in The Descendants. It's a great film and Woodley is terrific in it, but would critics have even noticed the picture had it been told from her point of view? I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of this as the newer crop of child actresses 'come of age'.

The newest 'next Twilight', The Host, gets a trailer.

 

Jake Abel - Saoirse Ronan - William Hurt - Diane Kruger - Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Always be weary of any trailer where all of the action beats seem to come from the same scene.  As such we can presume that most of the budget went towards the daylight car chase that is highlighted several times throughout.  Otherwise, this trailer both reveals much of the narrative (at least the first half of the film) while revealing a relatively thin story.  Still, Saorise Ronan is worth seeing in pretty much anything, while old-pros like William Hurt and Francis Fisher will hopefully bring gravitas.  What's interesting is that while the likes of The Hunger Games, the Twilight Saga, and even the Harry Potter franchise were films born of many cooks (the original novelist, the screenwriter(s), and the director), The Host is both an adaptation of a Stephenie Meyer novel but a film written and directed by Andrew Niccol.  The source material is of course right in his grind house, so my biggest qualm with the trailer is that it all looks rather dull. Anyway, The Host opens on March 29th, 2013.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson