Movie News: Monday, November 13

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    ( Released: 11/14/2006   Rated: PG-13 - for some sex-related material   Avg. Score: 4.5/5     | Trailers | Photos | Reviews  ) — Documentarian Lian Lunson captures a Leonard Cohen tribute concert held in the Sydney Opera House in January 2005. The event was organized by famed producer Hal Willner.

Joyeux Noël
    ( Released: 11/14/2006   Rated: R   Avg. Score: 5/5     | Trailers | Photos | Reviews  ) — When war breaks out in the summer of 1914, an Anglican priest, a French lieutenant, a German tenor and his soprano singing partner find their lives thrown out of balance. The war drags on, but then on Christmas Eve, a miracle happens — soldiers on both sides of the trenches put down their weapons to shake hands with the enemy.

Who Killed the Electric Car?
    ( Released: 11/14/2006   Rated: PG - for brief mild language   Avg. Score: 5/5     | Trailers | Photos | Reviews  ) — In 1997, General Motors' EV-1 was the fastest, most efficient car ever built. It ran on electricity and produced no emissions. This documentary explores why the seemingly perfect car never made it into production and instead ended up crushed in a junkyard in the Arizona desert.

Strangers With Candy
    ( Released: 11/14/2006   Rated: R   Avg. Score: 3.5/5     | Trailers | Photos | Reviews  ) — Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) is a frumpy and unattractive 40-something woman who, after living on the streets as a hooker and a junkie and spending time in prison, decides to finish high school. She joins Flatpoint High School's science team, the Fig Neutrons, and aims to win the big science competition.

Accepted
    ( Released: 11/14/2006   Rated: PG-13 - for language, sexual material and drug content   Avg. Score: 3.25/5     | Trailers | Photos | Reviews  ) — High-school senior Bartleby "B" Gaines (Justin Long) gets rejected by eight out of eight colleges, which doesn't go over well with his parents. So how does a guy facing a bleak career please his mom and dad and get noticed by dream girl Monica (Blake Lively)? He opens his own university: the South Harmon Institute of Technology.

John Tucker Must Die
    ( Released: 11/14/2006   Rated: PG-13 - for sexual content and language   Avg. Score: 2.25/5     | Trailers | Photos | Reviews  ) — A chronic cheater (Jesse Metcalfe) gets a taste of his own medicine when three of his angry ex-girlfriends team up to take revenge and break his heart.

"Multiple Mary" wins Hollywood script deal (Reuters)
   Reuters - New Line Cinema has come out on top of an intense bidding war for "Multiple Mary," a comedy that scribe Scot Armstrong will write and which will serve as his directorial debut.

A magic-realist outlaw tale of subtle rewards (Reuters)
   Reuters - Writer-director Jay Craven calls "Disappearances" a Vermont Western, an apt description for this Depression-era saga of whiskey running across the Canadian border.

Pitt-Jolie wax wedding on ice in Vegas (AP)
   

AP - Organizers of a fantasy wedding on the Las Vegas Strip between Hollywood's hottest unmarried couple got cold feet.

The Da Vinci Code
    ( Released: 11/14/2006   Rated: PG-13   Avg. Score: 3/5     | Trailers | Photos | Reviews  ) — In Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is summoned to the Louvre, where a museum employee has been murdered. Near his body is a strange cipher. To solve the riddle, Langdon joins with the victim's daughter, French cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), and learns of a centuries-old conspiracy surrounding the Priory of Sion, a secret society dating back to the days of Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli and Leonardo Da Vinci. The brainy duo must race through Paris, London and elsewhere to solve the puzzle and uncover the ancient conspiracy before the answer is lost forever.

Penguin comedy a "Happy" affair (Reuters)
   Reuters - "Happy Feet" is an odd bird. It's a computer-animated film with a "Dumbo"-esque story about an emperor penguin that unlike other penguins can't sing worth a lick but, boy, can he tap dance. Right from the start, though, you are aware that the Australian director George Miller and his talented artists are aiming for something more than a charming children's cartoon.

Denise Richards Suits Up (E! Online)
   

E! Online - How's this for irony: engage in uncivil behavior, get named in a civil suit.

Borat Bountiful; A Good Year Not (E! Online)
   

E! Online - Borat continues its glorious reign.

Although Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan may be taboo in Russia and ire-inspiring to its accidental stars, the outrageous comedy continued to be very warmly embraced by America at large.

Bollywood plots hi-tech remake of famed Hindu epic (Reuters)
   Reuters - A Bollywood movie will aim to recreate the magic of a 1980s blockbuster Indian television serial based on an ancient epic Hindu text that portrays a clash of dynasties and the victory of good over evil.

Spidey's a Daddy (E! Online)
   

E! Online - The Spider-Baby has hatched.

Tobey Maguire and his fiancée, jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer, welcomed their first child in Los Angeles Friday, the actor's rep confirmed to E! Online, saying that the camera-ready couple are the "proud and happy parents of a beautiful baby girl.

New DVD releases include `Da Vinci Code' (AP)
   AP - Selected home-video releases:

Angelina Jolie gets on full Mumbai train (AP)
   

AP - Actress Angelina Jolie hopped onto a crowded Mumbai commuter train Monday to film a movie about slain journalist Daniel Pearl who lived and worked in India's financial and entertainment capital.

Cruise arrives in Rome ahead of wedding (AP)
   

AP - Tom Cruise flew into a Rome airport on a private jet Monday, airport officials said, setting off a frenzy among media and fans anticipating the star's high-profile wedding to Katie Holmes.

The Nativity Story - Trailer
   From humble beginnings, great things can come. THE NATIVITY STORY tells the extraordinary tale of two common people, Mary and Joseph, a miraculous pregnancy, an arduous journey, and the history-defining birth of Jesus. Brought to life with an unprecedented attention to detail and commitment to historical accuracy.

`Happy Feet' year's best animated film (AP)
   AP - Like the classic animated Disney movies from decades ago — "Bambi," for example, or "Dumbo" — "Happy Feet" isn't afraid to get a little serious, a little dark. It isn't afraid to mix in some substance with its style.

The Painted Veil - Trailer
   Based on the classic novel by W. Somerset Maugham, “The Painted Veil” is a love story set in the 1920s that tells the story of a young English couple, Walter, a middle class doctor and Kitty, an upper-class woman, who get married for the wrong reasons and relocate to Shanghai, where she falls in love with someone else.

Review: `Consideration' mocks Oscar daze (AP)
   AP - You didn't have to be a community-theater diva to appreciate Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy's stage spoof "Waiting for Guffman." Or a dog lover to adore their canine comedy "Best in Show." Or a graying folkie to tap your toes to their music tale "A Mighty Wind."

Review: Craig shines in 'Casino Royale' (AP)
   

AP - It would have been enough just inserting a fresh face, Daniel Craig, as 007 in "Casino Royale" to give a whole new look and feel to the James Bond franchise. Yet taking the world's greatest spy back to his roots as a raw, impressionable brute whose cockiness at times fails him and who can lose his heart to a woman was a keen stroke of intelligence.

'Borat' victims upset at being duped (AP)
   

AP - While teaching American humor to a gregarious and absurdly out-of-touch foreign journalist, Pat Haggerty realized something was off — who WAS this guy?