Hugh Dancy in Coach!

Nick Scanlon is an unemployed Manhattan barfly on the verge of realizing that his childish bed-head charm might not get him much farther than the door of some hip New York nightclub and that this, perhaps, is no longer enough.

Dumped by his girlfriend and abandoned by his suddenly mature and working friends, Nick becomes motivated to do something more with his life. He quickly finds himself a job coaching a middle school soccer team down the block from his trust-fund financed apartment. His good intentions are rewarded when Nick meets Gabrielle, the beautiful doctor from a hospital close to his team’s home field.

Through an unlikely friendship with the team’s thirteen-year-old star player, and a budding relationship with Gabrielle who questions his party-boy lifestyle, Nick begins to understand that growing up is more complicated than he ever could have imagined – whether it be at thirteen, or at twenty-eight. Nick embraces his new challenge, his new girlfriend, and his soccer team of misfits, and with a few missteps along the way, ends up finding himself in a place he never thought possible.

Yeah, yeah, we've seen this movie a million times. Boy-man grows up to impress a woman, and is nice to kids along the way. I don't care! It's Hugh Dancy in a Rom Com and it promises to have him onscreen for nearly the entire movie! I am just glowing as this trailer totally made my day. I had no idea he had even made this movie.

Mazel Tov to Hugh Dancy and Claire Danes

These two know how to keep a secret! Clair Danes and Hugh Dancy announced their engagement last February, and married secretly in a small private ceremony in France earlier this month. Yeah, I don't want to scratch her eyes out too much!

They met on the set of the film Evening, which isn't the greatest movie ever, but they were both lovely in it. This is my favorite scene:


They didn't have a happy ending in the movie Evening, but they do in real life. Mazel Tov!

Hugh Dancy does Press for Adam

Great article about Hugh Dancy and Adam in the New York Times this weekend:

Mr. Dancy said he had to put aside his normal acting instincts to learn to play a character who lacks empathy. “The nature of the condition is that it’s anti-empathetic,” Mr. Dancy said. “So there isn’t something you can empathize your way into. You have to study it and study it and talk to people until it sinks in.”

And that is what he did: he read books about people with Asperger’s, met and spent time with people with Asperger’s, and talked the character through exhaustively with Mr. Mayer, who had done his own research.

At the same time he had to play a real character, not a type, not simply Person With Asperger’s. “Somebody asked me, outside of this condition, who is this person?” he explained. “There was something delicate and strange and mysterious about the character. He was not just some screenwriter’s vague idea of what a man with Asperger’s might be like, but someone with a very specific set of characteristics.”

And you have to watch this cute video clip from USA Today!
I tried to embed it, but it was autoplay.

Adorable!! Here's the USA Today interview with both actors.

Adam opens this week in New York and LA, and expands to more theaters over the coming weeks.

Hugh Dancy is a Rebel

Adam is almost here, and that means press, interviews and photoshoots of Hugh Dancy! He was interviewed by Black Book Magazine, and was photographed as 4 different "rebels" -- James Dean, Jackson Pollack, Sid Vicious and Oliver Wilde.

Frankly, I find the Sid Vicious picture a little ludicrous, if still adorable. Oscar Wilde seems more his style, don't you think?

On Adam:

The difficulty inherent in playing anyone with a disability, he understands, is that expectations of naturalism are set impossibly high. The consequences have not gone unnoticed by Dancy, who admits, “This project was rife with opportunities for me to fuck it up enormously and, by doing so, prove my own limitations. To botch the whole thing would have been calamitous.”

Adam Trailer!!

Finally! The trailer to my favorite film from Sundance, Adam, starring Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne. Hugh Dancy stars as a young man with Asperger's syndrome in a very touching romance. Read my review from the Sundance premiere here. Adam will be out July 29.

Confessions of a Shopaholic - Mini-review

Confessions of a Shopaholic is a movie plagued by bad timing. Jerry Bruckheimer, uber-action movie producer, shepherded this frothy romantic film, and Valentine's weekend probably seemed like the perfect time to release this film. What he couldn't have known is that our economy would go into collapse and excessive shopping would seem, well, excessive. Nearly every reviewer of this film has taken that tack, using a movie review as an excuse to write an essay on the evils of our economy and over consumption, even bringing up films of the Depression as examples.

Well, yes, there were The Grapes of Wrath and so on in the 30's, but there were also films full of tuxedos, silk dresses and beautiful women dripping with diamonds. Fred Astaire or Philadelphia Story, anyone? People in the 30's wanted to escape at the movies, and this weekend, so did I.

I love the chick lit books of Sophie Kinsella. Rebecca Bloomwood is her heroine for a series of Shopaholic books, and this movie is a combination of the first two. Isla Fisher is an amazing comidienne and there is lots of crazy physical slapstick in the movie. People have compared Isla to Lucille Ball, and not just because of the red hair. She is amazing, and you can't help but adore her, as does Luke Brandon played by Hugh Dancy. Dancy doesn't have a ton to do in this movie as her straight man, but yowza, there is one particular dance scene that had me on the floor laughing.


And that's what this movie is all about. I laughed, and laughed out loud hard, not just chuckling silently. It is damned funny, and Rebecca ends up redeeming herself. She gets herself out of her mess, and is not rescued by her parents (John Goodman and Joan Cusack) or Luke.

I saw this movie in one of the largest theaters at my cineplex that had lots of empty seats, and you could tell that Bruckheimer thought this would be a blockbuster. It ended up the 5th movie for the weekend in box office, but if it had come out a year ago, probably would have been much bigger.

As Owen Gleiberman put it in his raving EW Review:

From its talking storewindow mannequins to its sneaky debauched heroine, the movie is romantic-comedy fizz, but it's fizz that bubbles like champagne.

I give Confessions of a Shopaholic 3 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and think Isla Fisher and Hugh Dancy were terrific. Can't wait to see what Isla Fisher does next. She is a comedic gem! All I can tell you is that her baby with Sacha Baron Cohen has quite the comedic genes!

Adam - Premiere at Sundance

I'm still playing catchup from my Sundance Trip, and I'm finally to Monday, our last full day at the festival. We saw four movies that day, and I want to highlight Adam in its own post because it was probably the movie I enjoyed the most at Sundance. I was certainly looking forward to it the most, and pestered my husband about how we had to get there early to get a good place in the ticket line. We even had a strategy and split up when they opened the doors so that we might have a better chance to get seats in front of the podium. At the Eccles theater, the front left section is reserved for the cast and crew of the movie, but the first three rows are free. If you see all the reserved signs, you might just turn back, but I ran up front and scored seats in the third row right in front, perfect for the Q&A. Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne were seated four rows directly behind me during the screening! I was close enough to see the tears in director Max Mayer's eyes when the audience rose in a spontaneous standing ovation after the film. No other film we saw at Sundance had that kind of audience reaction.

Adam is a very sweet romance with a twist - the main character has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. Adam can mostly take care of himself, but he has problems in social situations and can't read the social cues that the rest of us can. He wants to connect, but it is very difficult for him. Max Mayer, the first time feature director, introduced the film by talking about how making a romantic movie is hard in modern times. What can keep the couple apart?

Rose Byrne plays Beth, a young woman who moves into a new apartment in New York. She's attracted to the cute guy in the apartment downstairs, but he's a little odd. He doesn't seem to notice when she's laden down with groceries, and he seems to avoid eye contact. After a very awkward exchange when he asks if she was sexually excited when they were at the park, he admits to her that he has Asperger's. She doesn't give up on him, and a touching romance develops. There's a side plot where Beth's father, played by Peter Gallagher of The O.C. is on trial for embezzlement. Amy Irving plays Beth's mother, and it was great to see her acting again. Frankie Faison plays Adam's friend.



Hugh Dancy is just excellent in this film. Dancy's Adam is sweet but not too sappy. "Aspies", as Adam calls them, can be very high functioning, but you can just see how lonely Adam is. He wants so badly to reach out to Beth, and he just doesn't know how. Beth and Adam's story seems very honest and real to me. One audience member got very emotional during the Q&A. Her grandson has Asperger's and she felt the movie was very true to what it's like, and she started crying she was so grateful for the way this was made.

Hugh Dancy has always been an emotional actor, and I think his portrayal of Adam is some of his best work ever. There was even buzz in some of the online reviews I read of this film speculating that he might get nominated for an Oscar next year. Fox Searchlight picked up the film right away, and hopefully it should get a fall release. This movie should work very well with mainstream audiences. Three and a half stars. Loved it.

We took tons of pictures at the Q&A, and you can view them here on Flickr.

There's no trailer yet, but I found three clips:

Adam, I'm having lunch:


Were you excited?:


Adam meets the parents:

Hugh Dancy and Claire Danes Engaged

They've been dating for about a year since they met on the production of Evening, but they just made it official. Another dreamboat off the market. Sigh.
Here's where it all started:

New Shopaholic Trailer

Hugh Dancy Vogue Cover

Can someone pick me up off the floor? Oh, my dear Lord. Yes, he's got milk.

Shopaholic Trailer!

Due out February 2009. Can. Not. Wait! Hugh Dancy is dreamy, and Isla hilarious! "You speak Prada?!" LOL

Fall into the Gap

Hugh Dancy in the new Fall Gap ad campaign. Yum!

Confessions of a Shopaholic

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Sophie Kinsella is one of my favorite authors. She writes chick lit books in the tradition of Bridget Jones Diary. The movie of her smash best seller Confessions of a Shopaholic, is currently filming in New York and is due out in February of 2009. Yes, the first book in the series was set in London, not Manhattan (that's the second book!), but who's quibbling when you've got Isla Fisher in the lead, and dreamy Hugh Dancy as her love interest. The film is being directed by P. J. Hogan of My Best Friend's Wedding, and Jerry Bruckheimer, of all people, is a producer. I think Disney will have a huge hit (and not just the box office from me seeing it multiple times!) Sophie Kinsella has a dedicated readership, and this will be a great date film for Valentine's Day next year.

Read an interesting article in the NY Times on how they're trying to NOT have films like this labeled "Chick Flicks" as if that's some kiss of death. Women watch movies, too!

“We all have spending habits, a lot of us do,” said Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the film’s producers, speaking by telephone last week. “If we do our job right, this could be another ‘Wedding Crashers,’ ” added Mr. Bruckheimer, best known for testosterone-fueled entertainments including “Bad Boys” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy.

Also, read an embarrassing story about Isla Fisher on JustJared recently. Seems Matthew Broderick had no idea he was supposed to know who she is (fiance of Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat fame, FYI!)