Archivio di news mensili riguardanti la vita privata di Kim, i film in uscita, le classifiche, le apparizioni tv.

	1 settembre: 'Door' closes on San Sebastian - Tod Williams' "The Door in the Floor," toplining Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger, will close the 52nd San Sebastian Film Festival. JEFF BRIDGES AND TOD WILLIAMS AT THE CLOSING GALA OF THE 52 DONOSTIA-SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL The film chosen to close the 52nd San Sebastian International Film Festival is directed by Tod Williams, a young American director who has chosen for his second movie starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger a complicated and highly attractive story based on the adaptation of one of John Irving’s most interesting novels. THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR by Tod Williams. USA. Cast: Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Jon Foster and Mimi Rogers. Based on the first part of John Irving's novel “A Widow for One Year”, this film demonstrates the enormous ability of Kim Basinger and Jeff Bridges to move through a heartbreaking story about how their two teenage sons' death in an accident slowly destroys their marriage without anybody being able to do anything to save it. Once-happy couple formed by Ted and Marion flounders under the weight of tragedy. Although the Coles pour love onto their remaining daughter, the smart 4-year-old Ruth, Marion’s confusion between love and loss, together with Ted’s infidelities, force them to consider a change. Perhaps the change in question will come in the shape of Eddie, the young boy that Ted, a writer of children’s books, hires as a summer assistant. Although Eddie adores Ted, the latter’s disorganized way of working soon leaves the boy out on a leg. The youngster turns his desires to Marion, who finds herself experiencing unexpected emotions as a woman and a mother. To his surprise and delight, Marion fervently accepts his advances. As the summer draws to an end, Marion and Ted have to take difficult decisions regarding the family future.
	2 settembre: BALDWIN MISSES OUT ON FAMILY WESTERN MINI-SERIES - ALEC BALDWIN has missed out on the chance to star in a western with his brothers and ex-wife KIM BASINGER because he's too old to play the lead. The movie star reveals he developed a mini-series idea with a writer pal for American TV network CBS years ago, but the project never made it past the boardroom stage. He says, "I had a western project with CBS for years as a miniseries that my friend wrote and it was actually really quite wonderful. "We were gonna cast my ex-wife, Kim Basinger, as an animal activist who was lamenting the fall of the buffalo herds. It was set in the old west and all very personal but we never got it off the ground and now I'm too old to play that part. "My brothers were all going to have parts in it too."  Now, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger squabble over furniture! Separated Hollywood couple Kim Basinger and ex-hubby Alec Baldwin are always looking for fresh reasons to fight. According to the Star magazine, Alec, who is currently living in a New York City apartment, wants to do away with Kim's furniture, but she has prevented him from doing so till he hands over a blown-up photo of undisclosed content to her.  Alec's attorney, Vicki Greene, does not want to disclose the contents of the photo. "It is a very personal item," he was quoted as saying.
	3 settembre: Kim Basinger Hates Cell Phones -  Kim Basinger has an important speech to give. She's concerned about the outfit her daughter, Ireland, has chosen for her to wear to it. This speech isn't given along the red carpet, at a swank movie premiere, or at a big charity event. This is a speech the stunning actress is giving at her 9-year-old daughter's school.  "I found myself standing up at her school last year making a speech. Only because she wanted me to do it, and she has prepared me for some of the roles I have taken on lately. It's amazing," says the Oscar-winning actress. Was she nervous? "Yes, and especially in a pair of these kind of jeans that I've been so against wearing. Of course I wouldn't show my navel, I wouldn't go that far."  The 5-foot-7 beauty turned 50 last year. However, that hasn't stopped her kicking some serious ass in her new action film, "Cellular," directed by David Ellis who did "Final Destination 2." Basinger tells Zap2it.com she still needs to overcome her shyness even though she plays strong women characters. And, her shyness crops up a lot, whether she's talking to the press about her latest film, or talking to her daughter about Mom's old pictures in Playboy.  "I don't consider myself good in any of those situations - on the red carpet - or ever," admits the mother of one.  Basinger stars in a fast-paced action film with up-and-comer Chris Evans ("Not Another Teen Movie") as a California slacker kid who receives a random call on his cell phone from - her, claiming she's been kidnapped. At first, Evans' character thinks the call is bogus, but something tells him to act. Basinger's character doesn't know where she is, her husband and son are in danger, the cell phone battery is almost dead and the kidnappers are not getting any nicer.  In the film the cell phone is Basinger's character's only hope, however in her everyday-life Basinger is not such a fan of mechanical devices, admitting, "It's a pain in the neck to have to carry it around. I'm not a phone person at all. I'm really not. Again when you have a daughter you have to have a cell phone, bottom line."  The role is demanding both physically and emotionally. Basinger's inspiration for her character's demeanor comes from her daughter. "I'm a Mom, that's where I got it. That's exactly where I got it from, " says the actress in her soft Southern tone. "When you kick someone's ass, when it comes to your kid, you will go to the mat for your kid."  Basinger says her daughter has matured quickly. The girl suffered through the high-profile divorce of her movie star mom with actor Alec Baldwin. . However, the star discloses that she tries to keep her daughter's life as child-like she can. Nevertheless, the moment finally came when she had to talk with Ireland about her pictures in Playboy.  "We were going through ALLof my pictures one day and I saw it, and she said 'Mom, you didn't,' and I said 'Yes I did, I did this' I said, 'Today I wouldn't do that again, but I made that choice at that time,' so it was not really a big deal."  In just as smooth a fashion, Basinger slides into the action role with ease. "I've done that damsel thing, and that's fine too because it was fun to play and it was nice, but today I love the idea of strong people, strong women in particular," Basinger says.  The director, David Ellis, says he thinks that women want to see somebody that would fight back and not just sit and cry, adding, "I think that it is good to see powerful women, and especially the instincts in a mother with her child and her husband."  Ellis recalls that Basinger did not want to rehearse with her onscreen kidnapper Jason Statham, ("The Italian Job.")  "She did not want to know what he was going to do. And Jason didn't care what she was going to do," Ellis explains. "But she really hit him and he really kind of manhandled her and really threw her to the ground and she loved it. She's very physical, she's in great shape and for her character. She didn't want to rehearse."  In one scene, the actress drives her SUV through a garage to save her son, Basinger reacts with giggles about the experience, "I loved it! I have a great stunt girl and she has taught me a lot through the years, on how to drive and everything."  It's hard to believe a woman, who won an Academy Award for best supporting actress in 1997's "LA Confidential" is more nervous about getting up and speaking at a school than speaking on TVin front of millions. However, Basinger credits her daughter with helping her, especially with "that" speech. "She really pushes me out of that shyness, and I wore the jeans and I got up there and I made the speech and I was quite proud of myself when I walked out," says the actress.  "Cellular" opens nationwide on Friday, Sept.10 and also stars William H. Macy.
	4 settembre: ‘Door in the Floor’ Is Next SunFlix Film  The next Sunrise film, “The Door in the Floor,” is not about a trapdoor to a hiding place or cellar. Instead it is a compelling drama about a husband and wife’s inability to handle the tragic loss of two sons in an accident — but those details are not revealed until late in the film.  Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger star as Ted and Marion Cole, who exist in Long Island as an unsavory, unhappy couple. Ted is the writer/illustrator of children’s books — “The Door in the Floor” is one of them — and he has affairs with models who pose nude for some of his paintings.  Meanwhile, Marion finds her own interest in 16-year-old Eddie (Jon Foster), an aspiring, innocent young writer hired as a summer assistant by her husband. As each indulges in infidelities, the couple’s 4-year old daughter Ruth (Elle Fanning) lives in the shattered household and studies photos of the two dead brothers she never knew. As the summer ends, however, Marion and Ted have to make decisions about the future of their relationship.  The story of the film is adapted from John Irving’s best-selling novel, “A Widow for One Year,” and is reviewed as a “beautifully acted drama,” with “powerful performances” from Bridges and Basinger. The film is rated R and runs for 111 minutes.  Showing from Sept. 3-6, “The Door in the Floor” times are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Monday at 4 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $7 for adults/evenings; $6 for matinees and $5 anytime for under 12. The Sunrise Theater is in downtown Southern Pines, 250 NW Broad Street. Concessions are always available.  Contact the theater via 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com. Films are sponsored by Autowerks in Pinehurst.
	5 settembre: Un po' di news! WEEKEND BOX OFFICE - August 27-29, 2004 - Studio Estimates - 37 The Door in the Floor Focus $124,000 -30.9% 83 -29 $1,493 $3,382,000 $7.5 / - 7 WEEKEND BOX OFFICE - August 27-29, 2004 - Actuals - 38 37 The Door in the Floor Focus $123,831 -31% 83 -29 $1,491 $3,381,368 $7.5 / - 7 Top 50 United States Video Rentals for the week ending 22 August 2004 - People I Know (2002) 33 $1.3M $10M Top 50 United States Video Rentals for the week ending 29 August 2004 - 21. 20 People I Know (2002) 40 $1.21M $11.2M THEATER COUNTS - Week #36 - September 1 – 3: 20 40 The Door in the Floor Focus 76 -7 8. THEATER COUNTS - Week #37 - September 10:  1 - Cellular New Line 2,800 2 - Resident Evil: Apocalypse Sony 2,700+
	6 settembre: Un po' di news! A persistent ringing - 'Cellular' is just the latest film to use the telephone as a crucial plot device  Most Americans have a love-hate relationship with the telephone - as do the movies. The latest evidence is "Cellular," opening Friday, in which a kidnapping victim (Kim Basinger) random-dials a stranger (Chris Evans) to beg for help.  The two technologies grew up together in the late 19th century - the telephone having been patented in 1876. Silent one-reelers used Alexander Graham Bell's "electrical speech machine" as a source of comedy and drama.  By the time Hollywood mythologized the man in 1939's "The Story of Alexander Graham Bell," his invention had been used to depict the new media's hectic pace (1931's "The Front Page," remade as 1940's equally frantic "His Girl Friday"), the threat to happy homes (1937's "Dangerous Number") and the height of elegance (in movies like "The Thin Man" and "Dinner at Eight").  "Ostentatious phones in movies were a mark of sophistication," says James Monaco, author of "How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media and Multimedia." "Rich characters in penthouses had huge, ornate phones that looked like sculptures. They were a far cry from the clunky black phones most people had, candlestick models like those used in 'The Front Page,' or wall-mounted crank phones.  "And even if moviegoers didn't have a telephone in their house, they could relate."  Phones in movies would take on a darker tone with 1948's "Sorry, Wrong Number," in which a bedridden housewife (Barbara Stanwyck) listens in to what she thinks is a plot to murder her. The movie upends the telephone's intrinsic sense of community, presenting the voices on the other end of the line as ominous.  Alfred Hitchcock tapped into the same fear in 1954's "Dial M for Murder," in which a wife (Grace Kelly) fights off a strangler when she picks up the receiver. In 1952's "Phone Call From a Stranger," a creepy lawyer (Gary Merrill) rings up the families of passengers on a doomed airplane.  That sense of danger ("Who is this? How'd you get this number?") would continue through thrillers like "Play Misty for Me" (1971), "When a Stranger Calls" (1979) - which contained the line, "The calls are coming from inside the house!" - "Murder by Phone" and "Don't Answer the Phone!" (both 1980) and "Scream" (1996). In the Japanese and American versions of "The Ring" (1998 and 2002, respectively), viewers of a mysterious video get calls warning them of their imminent deaths.  It isn't much safer on the streets, as a sleazy publicist (Colin Farrell) discovers in 2002's "Phone Booth," after he answers a ringing phone in Times Square and is told he'll be shot if he hangs up. That film's over-the-wires relationship between hunter and prey evoked 1975's "Dog Day Afternoon," which presented the power duel between criminal and cop as a dial-in dynamic.  Just as telephones are deployed for dramatic effect - think of Jamie Foxx's cell troubles in this summer's "Collateral" - the disconnect between speaker and listener is grist for the comic mill.  "There was a whole genre of plays, which Hollywood later imitated, where characters used 'half-duplex dialogue' - talking on a phone to give plot information," says Monaco. "In the 1950s, the cinematic equivalent was the split-screen effect."  The split screen was most famously used in 1959's "Pillow Talk," which centered on neighbors Doris Day and Rock Hudson's use of a party line; 2003's "Down With Love" paid homage to it with some saucy split-screen gags.  Movies like "Clueless," "Girl 6," "Punch-Drunk Love" and the recent "Mean Girls" have gotten laughs from phone scenes. In 1989's "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," the heroes time-travel by stepping into a telephone booth (a nod to British TV's "Doctor Who").  And filmmakers understand that even in a visual medium, the sound of a lover's voice on the phone can be enticing. Just listen to the seductive tones and soulful pauses in movies like "Choose Me" (1984), "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993) and "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" (1996).  In the 2000 romantic comedy "Keeping the Faith," Ben Stiller distracts paramour Jenna Elfman during a work meeting by calling her cell - which is set on vibrate and strapped to her thigh. The seductive use of the telephone was practiced by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in "The Big Sleep" (1946) and more explicitly by Michael Caine and Britt Ekland in "Get Carter" (1971). James Stewart and Donna Reed realize they're in love when they listen to the same receiver in "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946).  And just as AT&T has always understood that its commercials need to appeal to family unity, so Steven Spielberg knew how to have his alien express the ultimate long-distance longing in "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982). "E.T., phone home," he plaintively gurgles. Good thing he doesn't get a busy signal.  September 2004 Forecast. The big summer season is over, but the studios aren’t totally giving up on big releases. Josh Hartnett, Kim Basinger, and Reese Witherspoon all return to the silver screen in wide releases. There are a wide variety of genres included in this month’s forecasted top ten. Plus, we have a movie with airships!!! 1. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow You want airships? We’ve got ’em! If that wasn’t enough, we’ve got Angelina Jolie with an eye patch. Paramount has put a lot of marketing muscle behind this one. Well before we saw trailers for it, there were giant cardboard displays in theaters all over the place. You couldn’t miss them if you went to see any movie during the summer. Now the studio has moved the attack to television and we are being shown what an exciting movie this is going to be. I think that this film will do very well during its opening weekend in mid-September, but will drop off quickly. The fanboys will be out in full force, but they’ll have to be getting back home to finish their homework since school has started. 2. Cellular Kim Basinger is back in her first major wide release since 2002’s 8 Mile with Eminem. As you’ve gathered from the numerous commercials that have been bombarding the airwaves, she plays a kidnapped woman who dials a random phone number to try and get help. It seems intense from the commercials and trailer, but that’s what the marketing is supposed to do. Entertainment Tonight has also done stories about the film, grabbing the attention of those viewers. It should be interesting to see how well Cellular holds up in this season that has seen very few films with legs. 3. Resident Evil: Apocalypse Horror fans rejoice! You’ll be getting your fill this month with this sequel to the 2002 original film. As is typical with horror and some science fiction films, the core group of fans will come out in droves opening weekend. The original made $17.7 million its opening weekend, only being beaten out by the huge hit Ice Age for the biggest film of March that year. However, it only had a 2.23 total multiplier. This indicates that after the initial rush, there were a lot of empty seats. I expect this one to follow the same pattern. 4. The Forgotten This one could be either really good or really bad. From the extremely intense previews, I think curiosity will get movie-going audiences to show up opening weekend. However, the word-of-mouth advertising will be crucial for future success. If the film can’t live up to its pre-release hype, it’s doomed. 5. Wicker Park Josh Hartnett returns to the big screen and takes on a different type of role for him. He plays a man obsessed with finding the woman he believes to be his “true love”. Hartnett’s good looks were what originally drew audiences to his films, but I think the outstanding acting ability he has shown keeps drawing them in and has also created an ever-growing following. This looks to be a solid, if not spectacular, opening weekend. 6. Mr. 3000 Bernie Mac finally gets a lead role in a film. Yes, this is not a misprint. Bernie’s been very visible in his many movie roles and his popular TV show, but this is the first time he’s going to be “Numero Uno” in a movie. And I really think he’s going to be able to hold his own in this role. I also believe that this will be a launching pad for a future of more lead work. 7. Vanity Fair Focus Features is trying to get a jump on the competition by releasing this movie about society in the 1800s on a Wednesday. Even starring Reese Witherspoon, I don’t think it’s going to help much. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s that much of an audience out there for this work and I don’t think even Witherspoon’s fans will be drawn in. It also doesn’t help that it’s not a giant release in terms of number of theaters. 8. The Cookout Queen Latifah’s production company had its hand in getting this film made and released. There’s also been a decent cast brought together that should also expand the audience appeal. However, I think the marketing push just hasn’t been there for this one. Yes, there was an Entertainment Tonight story, but not much beyond that. It should end up as a quiet disappointment. 9. First Daughter Hmmmm. Yes, Forest Whitaker is the director. Yes, the cute Katie Holmes is in a starring role. But Michael Keaton as the President? Put a fork in this one. 10. Shaun of the Dead I don’t think this one’s going to get enough of a screen count to make it into the top ten, but I thought I’d give it an Honorable Mention here. This British film has been all the talk around the Box Office Prophets water cooler. Zombie films have been prevalent lately, which should help this one a bit. If you get a chance to see Shaun of the Dead, take it.  TIMESONLINE - Kim Basinger She’s had her disasters, in life and on screen, but Kim Basinger’s new movie proves she won’t give up the fight, says Garth Pearce Kim Basinger’s leonine blonde mane ripples over the shoulders of her well-cut black power suit. Her body is athletically lean, her facial features are chiselled and her blue eyes are piercing. She wears a thin gold necklace and the tiniest of diamond earrings, and her fingers are stripped of rings. But this is not just another Hollywood actress fighting middle age. Basinger is winning a different battle, far from the screen. In recent months, she has been using the considerable might of her looks and power as never before, in a public fight with her former husband, the actor Alec Baldwin, over access to their eight-year-old daughter, Ireland. It is a war of words whose viciousness and intensity has taken even jaded star-watchers by surprise. One American supermarket tabloid called it “Hollywood’s bloodiest divorce”.  Baldwin will lose his visiting rights altogether if he ignores a court deal that includes a strict timetable for when he can see his daughter. It puts a limit on how many minutes he can spend on the telephone with her, and he also has to provide “personal female assistance” when she visits. Basinger, perhaps unwisely, has gone on record to say that she fantasised about Baldwin’s death during their long fight over who had custody. She also sold her 3.7-carat diamond engagement ring for £33,000 at auction, handing the proceeds to the Performing Animal Welfare Society as a silent public declaration that their marriage had gone to the dogs. Her ex-husband’s actor brother Billy branded her “a black widow spider” and “a nutcase”.  So, what sort of woman am I meeting here? A fully fledged nutter? A misunderstood diva? Or, as I suspect, a shrewd and beautiful operator? The appointed meeting place is a hotel suite overlooking California’s Santa Monica Pier, where the well-organised process of publicising Basinger’s resurgent career in a new thriller, Cellular, is in full swing. And she is playing it like the expert that she has become. She is on time to the appointed minute, every question is invited and met head-on — sex, ageing, love, motherhood, personal problems — and she delivers with charm.  So, it’s already one-nil to the Basinger (“Bay-singer”, as in carol singer, by the way, just in case you have forgotten) before she even opens those famously sensual lips. “I am just going to be totally honest with you,” she says in that caress of a voice that evokes hot afternoons in the shade of magnolia trees in her native Georgia. It is instantly two-nil. “There is no point in covering up things that are already out there. So far as I am concerned, it is just Ireland and me from now on. I am a working mom, trying to make the best of things. I am aware that I get paid a deal more than other working moms, but the problem of trying to balance a stable home life for my child with my job is exactly the same.”  Some job, of course. From the moment she makes her entrance in Cellular, as the science-teacher wife of a well-heeled estate agent, taking her young son to the school bus, there is a striking thought among every red-blooded male in the audience. Basinger is 50 going on 30. She looks — well, she looks terrific, just as sexy clothed as in her other film doing the rounds, The Door in the Floor, in which her character has wild sex with a college boy (played by Jon Foster) young enough to be her son.  Cellular is a watchable thriller — a kind of Phone Booth in reverse — with Basinger, its undoubted star, delivering trauma with panache. For much of the action, she is locked in a bare room, with only a broken wall telephone and a vicious kidnapper — played by the British actor Jason Statham — for company. “I saw it like a theatre play, which I am far too nervous to ever do,” she says.  “My main scenes are on my own, talking on the phone or being attacked by Jason Statham. I also did not know exactly what he was going to do to me,” she adds. “We would never talk. We would meet to go through our marks silently with the director every morning, then he would come in and beat me. I told him, ‘Surprise me.’ He most certainly did. When I heard those footsteps outside the door, I was just like the audience — I did not have the faintest idea what would happen next.”  On being complimented on her notable looks, she responds with a Southern-girl version of “Aw, shucks” before announcing: “I would like to say that I did not have to work at it, but I do, every day of my life. I could sit here and give you my diet and exercise routine. Okay, then: lots of cardio. Mine is running. I also use an elliptical machine, which is advertised as if people can watch TV while doing it. I don’t watch anything, but move really fast and sweat. I do not perspire, I sweat — an hour a day or longer. Then I lift weights. Plus, I use a stability ball.”  Feeling tired already? Basinger is not finished. “I stay in shape because I like it for me — it is my life,” she says. “I am an athlete, so I do not stay still for long. That is why I could be thrown around on this film. I am not saying I did not get injured — I did, with plenty of cuts and bruises — but my recovery was fast. It also gives me more confidence. I have never been the most confident of people about my looks — and I am not kidding you here — but I am far more confident now than I was 25 years ago.”  This brings us, neatly, to sex appeal. “I do have a belief about being sexy at any age,” she says. “I think that working with so many British and Europeans taught me more about being sexy in middle age and later life than anything else. They have a great appreciation of sex and sex symbols. I learnt not to be ashamed of it. That was not always the case. Part of me originally felt uneasy about this ‘sex symbol’ thing. I knew it would be difficult to prove myself as an actress after that, especially in America. It makes for other problems within. I started getting complexes. Then I thought, ‘Why not accept it for what it is?’” She could not have had a much more spectacular start, of course, first as a Bond girl opposite Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again (1983), then, much more notoriously, with the erotic 9 Weeks (1986), which illustrated the delights of having fresh fruit in the fridge. Before you could peel an orange, she seemed to be back on screen, performing ably in the comedy Blind Date (1987), with Bruce Willis, and as the sultry Vicki Vale in Batman (1989). The 1980s were certainly good years.  Then came the bad choices. She rejected Basic Instinct (1992), which propelled Sharon Stone to international recognition. She also turned down Sleepless in Seattle (1993), which confirmed Meg Ryan as America’s sweetheart. Instead, she chose The Marrying Man (1991), on which she met her future husband, with whom she co-starred in the equally awful The Getaway (1994). She came back spectacularly in the 1998 film LA Confidential, for which she won a best-supporting-actress Oscar. She disappeared again, with a couple of clunkers (I Dreamed of Africa and Bless the Child, both 2000), but she was back on form as Eminem’s mother in 2002’s 8 Mile.  A pattern has clearly emerged of a seesaw screen life. Yet she seems remarkably clear-headed for someone whose career has been thrown around like a crash-test dummy. She is under legal restrictions when discussing her recent court wrangles with Baldwin, but it does not stop her from delivering a frank assessment of the situation. “We are in the public eye — it comes with the territory,” she says. “I have not gone running to hide away from what happened, and I never will. I have been through it, I am stronger for it and I am moving on. As for love again, I am not even thinking about it right now. I am more concerned with renovating another house that I have bought next to my property.”  Just in case her ex is left in any doubt about her feelings for their daughter, she catalogues them in full. “She is the most important person in my life,” she says. “We have talked honestly about what has happened, and there is some resentment from her about me having her at such a mature age. She has asked, ‘What are you going to do with me?’ There were some delicate issues to deal with. But we have come through them, and she has no fears on that score. I have a great belief in her, and she believes in herself. We know we will never really be apart.”  Her daughter wants to work as a vet when she grows up. To that end, there are 21 animals on the properties — dogs, cats, rabbits, plus a variety of fish and birds. “I am glad she is thinking like that,” insists Basinger, who was a pageant queen and successful model before she was an actress. “It is so tough for young actresses. My daughter is as thin as a rail, but I have seen a friend of hers, equally thin, who is eight, looking in a mirror, holding in her stomach.  It is crazy what Hollywood does to kids. As for coming into this business, unless you have the talent of someone like Hilary Duff (the 16-year-old star of A Cinderella Story and The Lizzie McGuire Movie), you are dust.”  Basinger, who knows all about the heat and dust of a Hollywood career and a private life that is never still, remains a force to be reckoned with. “It has taken me years to learn how to act,” she says. “I know, at last, how to press the right buttons.” She could have acted out the entire interview, for all I know. If so, she is good at her job.  “Experience,” she says, “is my payoff for survival.”  Cellular is released on September 24; The Door in the Floor has no British distributor as yet. Terror Cell Basinger digs deep to play phone thriller kidnap victim A familiar ring to it?  The simplest assessment of Kim Basinger is that she's a glutton for punishment. The actress -- fresh off one of the nastiest custody battles in Hollywood history with ex Alec Baldwin -- had two movies released this year, in both of which she played women going through hell.  There was the harrowing summer release The Door in the Floor with Jeff Bridges, in which the onetime Oscar winner played a woman suffering through a marriage torn apart by tragedy.  And there's this week's thriller Cellular, in which she plays Jessica Martin, an upper-middle-class L.A. high school teacher who's kidnapped suddenly and mysteriously by brutal thugs, locked in an attic and intermittently terrorized for information she doesn't have. Between violent visits, the science teacher finds the wherewithal to partially assemble a smashed phone and, in a shot in the dark, reaches the cell phone of a college student named Ryan (Not Another Teen Movie's Chris Evans).  What follows is essentially two separate movies connected by a tenuous cell signal -- Ryan bypassing the unhelpful police to take matters into his own hands (and leaving a trail of destruction along the way), and Jessica trying desperately to stay alive in her claustrophobic attic as her captors become more desperate and angry.  Directed by David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2), the movie's parts were filmed separately, with Evans and Basinger only meeting once. In an ironic twist, the story was created by Larry Cohen, who also wrote the similarly plotted Phone Booth.  As for inspiration, Basinger says she's had plenty in real life to draw from when it comes to being terrorized. "If you've lived enough life and you've been through some pretty horrible experiences with people, and if you've ever been threatened in any way ... well, let's just say I have a really great memory bank and I can go back and grab some of that any time I want," she says cryptically.  The temptation is to think she's referencing her marriage to Alec Baldwin and their custody battle over their nine-year-old daughter, Ireland. In February, a judge allowed the Manhattan-based Baldwin increased access. By June, the couple were in front of a judge again, on the receiving end of a list of strict rules on e-mail and fax content and general behaviour. They were also ordered to undergo something called "parent-centredness counselling."  Dressed tastefully and casually in a black skirt and top -- and still looking spectacular at age 50 -- Basinger has been open about suffering in the past from panic disorder. On this day of interviews in a Santa Monica hotel room, she's friendly and ebullient, but her hands shake noticeably.  Asked whether the custody battles are behind her, she declines to give an answer and offers a pained expression. "Ohhh," she says in a not-unfriendly manner, "it's just such a boring story now."  Basinger adds, in reference to Cellular, that she doesn't want to be seen to be playing the martyr. "God forbid, I've never walked in those shoes. I've never been kidnapped, and the word 'kidnapped,' especially to a mom, is just horrifying.  "I found this a unique opportunity as an actress, because it sort of read to me like a play, that I would be so alone and I had the opportunity to take the audience with me into the attic, where I don't know why I'm there and I don't know what these guys are going to do to me.  "And I talked to David about clearing the set completely so it would be more like I was alone with the audience with all the shock and hysteria, and we could let it unravel. I also had him tell Jason (Statham, who plays the chief thug) -- who is a doll -- to surprise me with whatever it was he was going to do to me."  Still, you'd think a woman with panic disorder would want to steer clear of movies like this. "See, it's just the opposite," she says. "Acting has been so therapeutic, because it's made me face my fears. Sometimes I go, 'God, why did you make me an actress?' And the crew says, 'God, why did you make her an actress?' "she adds with a laugh. "My makeup girl Jaime says it all the time: 'God, why did you make this klutzy girl an actress?'  "But along with therapy and God and a sense of humour, I've always felt that, by the end of my life, I want to have faced as many of my fears as I can. There's a tremendous list left."  Case in point: Her daughter recently convinced Basinger to speak at a school benefit. "She came into my closet and I'm usually a 'big jeans' person -- especially since I had a baby. And big T-shirts. And Ireland came in and pulled out these little teeny jeans that show off your navel and said, 'I want you to wear this, Mom.' And I put them on and spoke at her school. I don't want to stand up in front of anybody and do anything, and I was very nervous doing it. But I knew I would disappoint her if I didn't. She's a people person, and I want to nurture that."  After her daughter, she says the camera is the love of her life. "It really is like a relationship with any two people, a love relationship. It's not like it doesn't want to love you, but it can be cruel, it can challenge you. And when you come through with the camera, it begins to have respect for you. It's trustworthy and loving and connective."  Whew, it's a wonder the lens stays unfogged. She continues, "I've always considered my longevity in this business to be a gift from God. But it's a gift where one day you wake up and you go, 'I get it! I have the buttons, I have the tools.' I know where to go to get this emotion, because I really have lived that much life." . Film Review: Cellular - LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Two years ago, "Phone Booth" -- written by Larry Cohen and directed by Joel Schumacher -- trapped a character on a public telephone for the entire movie.  Now "Cellular" -- written by Chris Morgan from a story by, why, it's the same Larry Cohen -- employs the same strategy, only this time the guy is on a cell phone so he can roam all over the Los Angeles basin as he races to save a family from execution. With veteran stunt coordinator and second unit director David R. Ellis at the helm, the film squeezes just about every action stunt imaginable from this scenario.  What the film doesn't achieve is any real tension since a viewer is more caught up in how the movie is going to sustain the cell phone gimmick than in what happens to the hapless family. Then there is a genuine question of how many laws a film's hero is allowed to break. "Cellular" should deliver average business in the short run for New Line as the company tries to rediscover its roots in modestly budgeted genre fare.  After a misleadingly peaceful opening where high school science teacher Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) walks her son to a school bus stop, things quickly explode: Armed men break into her home, kill the maid, kidnap Jessica and drive her to an unknown location.  Locked in an attic, Jessica manages to patch together a smashed telephone and miraculously places a call to the cell phone of a guy named Ryan (Chris Evans), who's hanging out at the Santa Monica Pier. Since the beach boy has only girls on his mind, it takes awhile for Jessica to convince Ryan that she cannot place another call and that he needs to take his cell phone to a police station where she can talk to a cop.  That cop turns out to be desk Sgt. Bob Mooney (William H. Macy), who would love to chat but a riot has just broken out in the station lobby. All Bob can do is send Ryan up to homicide on the fourth floor. Only by this time, Jessica -- with Ryan listening on the line -- is roughed up by one very intense bad guy (Guy Ritchie vet Jason Statham). He tells her that they intend to nab her young son when he gets out of school.  Here comes Major Plot Hole No. 1: Instead of Ryan redoubling his efforts to find a cop -- he is, after all, in a police station -- he takes off to intercept the son before the bad guys do. He fails. Thus begins his day of trying to be a jump ahead of the villains but invariably finding himself a jump behind.  Ryan races from the beach to the airport to downtown to Century City and back to the pier, a journey that sees him cause one of the largest traffic accidents in L.A. history, hijack several cars and wave a gun around whenever he doesn't get his way. Meanwhile, the audience waits impatiently for the penny to drop with Sgt. Mooney so he will realize that this one-man "crime spree" is connected with that frantic man on his cell phone.  Writer Morgan struggles to paper over these other plot holes and keep the hero's crimes to a minimum. When he uses a gun to get a battery charger, he actually pays for the item. When he needs a quick loaner car, he carjacks an obnoxious attorney so no one is going to mind. Sending the chase to LAX is a dubious strategy, though, since in these security-conscious days anyone speaking loudly can shut an airport down.  Basinger and Evans manage to keep a tight rein on the hysterics, so they become people behaving bravely under enormous pressure. Macy once again brightens an otherwise mundane character by suggesting an entire inner life for this cop who has never fired a shot in his career.  Tech credits are routine.  Cast: Jessica Martin: Kim Basinger; Ryan: Chris Evans; Ethan: Jason Statham; Chad: Eric Christian Olsen; Jack: Noah Emmerich; Sgt. Bob Mooney: William H. Macy.  Director: David R. Ellis; Screenwriter: Chris Morgan; Story by: Larry Cohen; Producers: Dean Devlin, Lauren Lloyd; Executive producers: Douglas Curtis, Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener, Keith Goldberg; Director of photography: Gary Capo; Production designer: Jaymes Hinkle; Music: John Ottman; Co-producer: Marc Roskin; Costume designer: Christopher Lawrence; Editor: Eric Sears.  Reuters/Hollywood Reporter  VARIETY - Cellular. Plot involving a Los Angeles kidnapping is merely a tepid recycling of old film noir chestnuts. And because plot is the sum total here, the alarming holes, inconsistencies and impossibilities in Chris Morgan's script corrode this drama of distress. Auds will sense the B-pic nonsense early on, sending pic to an early B.O. disconnect....  Drive Away In A Porsche Cayenne With New Movie 'Cellular' Local 4, ClickOnDetroit.com and New Line Cinema are teaming up with Porsche Cars North America to give you a chance to drive a new Porsche Cayenne SUV in conjunction with the new film "Cellular".  The preview is set for Tuesday, Sept. 7 at 7 p.m. at Uptown Birmingham, 211 S. Woodward Ave., Birmingham.  The movie is rated PG-13 for action violence and language.  SYNOPSIS:  A random wrong number on his cell phone sends a young man into a high-stakes race against time to save a woman's life. With no knowledge of Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) other than her hushed, panicked voice on the other end of the tenuous cell phone connection, Ryan (Chris Evans) is quickly thrown into a world of deception and murder on his frantic search to find and save her. Jessica's life is in his hands, but what is waiting for him on the other side of the line, and what will cost him to find out? Cellular is a fast-paced suspense thriller featuring Chris Evans in his starring debut opposite Oscar winner Kim Basinger (LA Confidential, 8 Mile), along with Jason Statham (The Italian Job) and William H. Macy (Fargo). The film is directed by David Ellis (Final Destination II) from a screenplay by J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress (The Butterfly Effect), and Larry Cohen (Phone Booth).  Movie Contest rules:  Seating is limited and on a first-come, first served basis.  Each pass admits two! The pass is not redeemable for cash or for any other movie ticket. The pass must be used at the specified theater.  IMPORTANT!! Arrive Early! Having a pass does not guarantee entry. NOTE: ClickOnDetroit.com, Local 4 and theaters are not required to compensate pass winners who do not gain entry.  ClickOnDetroit.com, Local 4 and the movie theater are not responsible for overbooking of shows and are not required to compensate pass winners.  The theater and movie company reserves the right to admit or refuse access to the theater at the discretion of authorized personnel.  Moviegoers may be subject to a physical search upon entry to the theater. The contest sponsors and the movie company are not liable for any damage as a result of the search.  No recording. The screening will be monitored for unauthorized recording. By attending, you agree not to bring any recording device into the theater. If a recording device is used during the film, you will be subject to criminal and civil liability.  Winners accept tickets at their own risk. ClickOnDetroit.com or its parent companies are not responsible for winners attending the show.  Car Contest Rules  You must be over 21 to enter this contest.  The winner of the car will need to sign a release of liability with Porsche Cars North America and hold harmless agreement in order to drive the car.  Winner must have a driver's license and be insured with his or her own vehicle.  The car is the Porsche Cayenne SUV featured in CELLULAR.  Winner will receive car for a specific weekend.  Winner is liable for damages to car.  A peek behind the Door - Kim Basinger, Jeff Bridges talk about sex, cinema. Seeing is believing, even in the illusion-making world of cinema. In a new film called The Door In The Floor, you see almost all of Kim Basinger -- emotionally and physically. "God, she's what?" her co-star Jeff Bridges asks himself in a Toronto Sun interview. "Fifty years old? And she looks just like she did in Nadine!" Bridges and the blond bombshell Basinger, who will turn 51 four days after Bridges turns 55 in early December, last worked together in the 1987 movie Nadine. They play a battling married couple in both movies. In the John Irving-inspired drama The Door In The Floor, Basinger is emotionally stripped naked by a tragedy in her marriage and she is physically stripped naked in an incendiary sex scene with a college-boy lover (played by newcomer Jon Foster, who is three decades younger than his co-star). She does not use a body double and seems unabashed. "Maybe it's that painting she carries around or that she keeps in her attic," Bridges riffs on the stunning physique Basinger shows off so graphically (he is also referring to the anti-ageing legend embedded in Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray). "I do know that she wears a hell of a lot of sunscreen or doesn't go out in the sun at all. That might have something to do with it. "She has a more European sensibility to it, which is great. You can see that in 9 1/2 Weeks, where she had that same kind of willingness, that gameness. That's a real asset for an actor, if he has gameness, a willingness to be the fool or try the weird thing. And she has that!" Bridges' comments come in a telephone interview this week from New York. Earlier, in a group session, the Sun sat down with Bridges and Basinger together in Hollywood. In that interview, Basinger waxes happy about the sex scene with Foster, pausing to dismiss any analysis about how most American movies are uptight about sexuality and nudity, especially in comparison to European movies. "I don't know," Basinger says of the differences, "and I don't care. I enjoyed every minute of it, okay? I think love and sex comes in all different ways and sizes in life and I've just, more or less, had a European attitude about things, I think. "(In) my life, I've been so attracted to the Harold And Maude aspect of living, you know, as opposed to your norm. Normal is sooooo boring. I like to spice it up a little myself." She doesn't explain, other than to invoke images from Harold And Maude, a 1971 cult movie in which a geriatric cougar played so mischievously by Ruth Gordon takes a boyish but suicidal lover played by Bud Cort. The 80-year-old zest for life reinvigorates the 20-year-old lad's outlook. In Basinger's own life, all the public knows of her private life now is that, since her 2002 divorce from her second husband, actor Alex Baldwin, she lives as a single mom with her eight-year-old daughter Ireland Eliesse. Basinger recently declared she would like to stay single for a while and attend to raising Ireland. On screen, the nudity and sexuality is no joke, although both Basinger and Bridges exchange a little mutual admiration banter. "I enjoyed Kim's naked scene," Bridges says with a grin when the subject first comes up. "I was very comfortable with yours," Basinger says of Bridges' nudity in the movie. "There is a lot of nudity in the film," Bridges adds, referring to scenes showing knockout Mimi Rogers in a full-frontal scene after a live modelling class that also involves a complicated love-sex relationship with Bridges' character. "Mimi is really out there on display! Speaking of game, Mimi was really game, just showing the whole package there." Critically, because this is a John Irving novel (A Widow For One Year) that was adapted to the screen by writer-director Tod (Kip) Williams, there is a serious subtext to everything we see. That presented a challenge to the filmmakers and the actors when it came to things sexual. "Sexuality, it's such a major part of all our lives," Bridges tells the Sun, "and it's so difficult to portray in a movie without snapping the audience out of it, out of the story. At least, I find it that way. If I see a film and it's got a sex scene in it, it usually just yanks me out of the story. I'm thinking about how they shot the scene, how the actors must be feeling, how it looks like a commercial -- now the camera creeps up the leg -- and all kinds of different things. God, I just don't like it at all.  "But, every once in a while, a film will really handle it well. I remember Breaking The Waves -- I thought the sexuality in that was terrific. And I thought that Kip did it very well, too, in The Door In The Floor." Basinger was attracted to the film, following her recovery from painful back surgery early in 2003. The lure was Williams, his script and her complicated, moody character Marion, who, as the movie begins, has retreated into a dark hole of depression because of a tragedy involving the couple's two teenage sons. "I loved Marion's -- this is the word that I'm using -- aloneness," Basinger says. "And I loved Kip. I could and would not have done this piece without Kip. And it was just perfect timing for me to meet Marion. She was rather quiet and got to be somewhat the voyeur, and it was kind of interesting for me. It was kind of internal. Everything was very internal." For Bridges, The Door In The Floor taps into something he finds  attractive in John Irving's fiction. "He's so great," Bridges says of the way in which Irving explores the notion "that marriage is comedy and tragedy. It's really terrific. "And Kip did such a great adaptation of it. That was a big plus for me, when I heard that John was in support of it. I think that Tod bought the rights for a buck or something from John." As for his own character, Bridges plays a children's book author named Ted Cole. Meanwhile, he indulges himself by doing drawings of married women, usually with their children at first, later alone and finally naked. An affair then ensues and things get messy. His wife, Basinger's fractured character, seems to know all about his lifestyle. "There were kind of slippery spots," Bridges says, "but the place where I could first grab onto the guy was his drawing. I love to draw so, when I saw that in the script, I thought, 'Oh, maybe I can do some drawing here.' That led into it. And, of course, I have kids. I have daughters of my own so that was a big handle for me. And then there's some ambiguity in there about his motives, which were kind of fun to play around with." Don't ask for a detailed explanation. "I'm a big movie fan," Bridges says with a smile, "and I find, the less I know about a movie going in, the more I enjoy it. So, especially (with) the ambiguity of the picture and the role, I find I want to dance around it and not spell out too much. But it was fun to talk about that stuff with Kip. And he was so helpful, such a wonderful director." All this turns The Door In The Floor, which juxtaposes depression and vibrant hope and longing, into alternative programming for the summer season. It sits in stark contrast to a comic book blockbuster such as Spider-Man 2 or the forthcoming Catwoman. "I don't keep my finger on the pulse too attentively," Bridges says, "but it seems like the people who finance films bet on those $200 million movies (the top end for the reported budget on Spider-Man 2) and they figure that's a safer bet than the smaller movies. But, thank God, there are still small, independent films like The Door In The Floor. "I kind of miss the middle ground. Maybe that's coming back, I don't know. But you can do some great stuff low budget, like The Door In The Floor. I'm really pleased with the way that that turned out." http://www.canoe.ca/JamMoviesArtistsB/basinger.html  Kim Basinger is just too shy! Even after essaying the role of a femme fatale in several movies and posing nude for Playboy, Oscar winner Kim Basinger reveals that she has never been able to get over her shyness and making a public appearance still makes her nervous. According to Zap2it, the actress, 50, confessed that she shivered when she recently had to speak at her daughter's school. "I don't consider myself good in any of those situations, on the red carpet or ever," the 'L A Confidential' actress was quoted as saying. She also said that her daughter helps her get over her shyness, "She really pushes me out of that shyness, and I got up there and I made the speech and I was quite proud of myself when I walked out," she added.
	7 settembre: Un  po' di news! This phony premise works - Cellular ***  Rated: PG-13 for violence, terror situations, language and some sexual references  Cast: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham, Jessica Biel  Director: David R. Ellis  Family call: This one's fine for the kids.  Running time: 88 minutes  Opens Friday at: Century Park, El Con, Foothills,Park Place, Desert Sky and Uptown  Having just been dissed by his ex, Ryan - early 20s - cruises down the street when his cell phone rings. It's an hysterical woman who says she's been kidnapped.  Ryan asks a few skeptical questions and once satisfied that she's on the level, he kicks into action star mode and proceeds to race around his unnamed beachside city. Like any other lad raised on a diet of "Rambo" and "Commando," the man has been waiting for such a call all his life. Survey says 8 out of every 10 men who purchased a cell phone secretly did so in hopes that one day a random call would plunge them into a rip-roarin' extravaganza.  Ryan is living the dream, and he'll save this woman, even - heck, especially - if doing so involves plowing through construction sites and driving the wrong way down one-way streets. He'll also expect to hammer out on-the-road detective work, and maybe commandeer a slick ride from a nerdy lawyer, after his first car blows up, to go even faster the wrong way down one-way streets.  The trailers tried to sell "Cellular" as a serious thriller, but it doesn't take long to figure out that director David R. Ellis's new flick is bounding down the same road of outsized action and sly comedy has his last film, the underrated "Final Destination 2." All events herein take place specifically in Movie World, where all things are possible except boredom.  The script is juiced with exaggerated freneticism, the set pieces throb with radioactive shock, and the actors just strap on the lap bars, hoist their arms into the air and go along for the ride.  Cut to a locked-down basement, and shivering on the floor is Jessica (Kim Basinger). Jessica's sole purpose in life is to be kidnapped and stuck in a basement with a smashed-up phone, into which she can MacGuyver a semi-working contraption that rings up action stars-in-waiting on the road. Jessica is terrified, but she should've known it was coming, because she spent earlier scenes sharing tender bonding moments with her cute li'l son. In action movies, tender bonding moments portend imminent kidnapping.  Jessica somehow gets her jacked-up phone to dial by clicking exposed copper wires. Luckily she phones Ryan instead of the electric company's convenient automated system, whose menu options have changed.  The movie consists of Jessica barking out advice to Ryan, who rambles around, unraveling the conspiracy plot.  The movie is called "Cellular" because "Land Line" just wouldn't have the same - heh heh - ring to it.  Ryan makes use of the full range of his cell phone's accessories. Call waiting, camera and caller I.D. will all come in handy. And there's instant suspense when the phone blinks "low battery" in close-up. Ryan freaks when he sees it, then focuses on the road. He checks the phone again, which continues to - dun, dun, DUNNNN! - flash "low battery."  If cell phones existed back in the day of Alfred Hitchcock, Hitch totally would have included multiple blinking low-battery close-ups.  "Cellular" doesn't disappoint in the low-battery close-up category, nor does it fail to herky-jerk its willing audience down its zany action-com road. This baby tunes into action-lovers with full five-bar service. "Cellular," we can here you now. CELLULAR - A film review by Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** A fun film, CELLULAR is a comedic thriller with good energy and good laughs. Its trailers are exemplary in that they do what the studio wants -- to sell the movie -- and what you want -- to give you a good sense of what the movie will be like without giving away all the jokes and too many of the plot twists. In short, if you liked the trailers, as I did, you'll undoubtedly like the movie too. And, if you found the trailers stupid or preposterous, then this isn't the picture for you. Wasting little time before the action begins, the movie quickly cuts to a kidnapping incident, with Jessica Martin, a mild-mannered high school biology teacher, being kidnapped by a ruffian named Greer and his cohorts. In her second terrific performance this year, Kim Basinger (THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR) plays Jessica, a vulnerable but resourceful victim. Jason Statham, always excellent as a dangerous, explosive bad guy, plays Greer. Greer needs something that Craig (Richard Burgi), Jessica's husband, has. Jessica finds this very hard to believe, arguing that they must have the wrong family since Craig is "just" a real estate agent. Her ransom will be this unknown item Greer thinks Craig possesses.  As Jessica is locked in an attic, she calls random numbers with loose wires on the phone that Greer thought his sledgehammer had completely demolished. She accidentally reaches Ryan (Chris Evans), whom she must convince to come to her rescue. The plot has shades of SPEED since Ryan has to race around town without ever losing her due to a low battery, a lost signal or a dropped phone. Building interiors, tunnels and skimpy batteries all conspire to put the maintenance of their connection, and hence her life, in jeopardy. The tension is good, but the laughs are even better. William H. Macy plays an average-Joe policeman named Mooney who steals scenes left and right as he eventually comes to the rescue. Ryan ends up smashing a series of cars and getting the comeuppance of an especially snotty lawyer whose cell phone tries to play party line with Ryan's phone. One of the funniest jokes has Ryan finding a way to get proper attention from extra perky but super rigid sales associates at a cell phone store. He needs help immediately in securing a cell phone charger, but they are hell bent on sending him to the end of the line with all of the false sweetness they can muster. Ryan finds that a fired pistol can cut right through the saccharine and the red tape so that he will immediately be sent to the front of the queue and get all the service he requires. The ending needs some crisping up, and the plot isn't one that holds up to much scrutiny. But this is a fun romp that mainly sizzles. When CELLULAR comes calling at your theater, you'll want to answer. CELLULAR runs 1:34. It is rated PG-13 for "violence, terror situations, language and some sexual references" and would be acceptable for kids around 11 and up. The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, September 10, 2004. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.  Movie review: 'Cellular' By Michael Wilmington  Tribune Movie Critic  2 stars (out of 4) Sorry, "Cellular" is a wrong number. Speeding away from its distant origins as a very promising story idea about cell phones and kidnappings to its screaming realization as another outlandishly cliched L.A.-set movie thriller--high on action, low on sense--"Cellular" is a model of how big movies go wrong. "Cellular" is a movie thriller for our own cell phone era, but it's the wrong movie. Slickly produced, well cast and very excitingly made, it's based on plot hooks so silly, most of them blow up in your face. The actors and technicians may be giving their all, trying to pump believability into "Cellular's" tank, but it's as futile as trying to make calls on a battery-dead phone. The premise isn't bad and neither are the actors. Terrified housewife Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is kidnapped by sadistic crook Ethan (Jason Statham) and his drug thugs and locked in an attic. Frantic about the gang's threats to her husband, Craig (Richard Burgi), and young son Ricky (Adam Taylor), Jessica hot-wires a smashed phone and establishes a fragile link with the cell phone of happy-go-lucky college guy Ryan (Chris Evans), cruising the streets from the Santa Monica pier on an errand from his angry girlfriend. Gradually, Jessica breaks through Ryan's skepticism and enlists him in a struggle to tell the cops, warn Craig and Ricky and foil the bad guys. For the rest of "Cellular," we're treated to the spectacle of the now hero-ized Ryan, crashing and smashing through innumerable hair-raisers--including improvised armed robberies, wrong-way freeway drives and a final shootout back at the pier--while eluding or battling an increasingly large and intimidating array of villains. His only real ally: aging, sad-eyed LAPD desk cop Mooney (William H. Macy), who smells a rat and soon has a few waving guns at him. Within five minutes, the original premise may have you hooked. But within 20 or so, shortly after Ryan locks horns with an arrogant lawyer (Rick Hoffman), whose cell phone crosses wires with his, the movie flies off the rails into high-octane absurdity. "Cellular's" David R. Ellis, an action director who recently graduated to full features ("Final Destination 2"), keeps the move ripping along--and I suppose we should thank him for keeping up the pace. If he lingered very long on these plot twists, they might be unbearable. The only way "Cellular" works is as an action comedy; unfortunately, when the movie tries for real humor, as it does with that obnoxious attorney (his vanity license plate reads "I WL SU YU 2"), it mostly goes coy and crude. The movie's script is credited to newcomer Chris Morgan and the story to savvy old pro Larry Cohen ("Phone Booth"), whom we can probably thank for the nifty premise. I doubt Cohen would want to share the blame for the movie's chain of howlers--which we'll keep secret on the theory that even bad movie surprises deserve some chance to work on their audiences. This script, like many others these days, has only one real narrative principle: Cut to the chase. But if you keep cutting from one chase to the next, it's tough to care who's running or why. In the movie, Evans' Ryan goes too fast from joker to hero, from disengaged party guy to madcap risker of life and limb. Shouldn't he have some bigger motivation for his sudden switch--like, say, a photo of Basinger? Basinger, who hasn't parlayed her "L.A. Confidential" Oscar into enough good follow-up roles, has another weak one here. But somehow she invests Jessica with enough passion to carry us through the action. Basinger, Macy, Staham (the glowering tough guy of Guy Ritchie's films)--and even, at times, Evans--give this movie better acting than it deserves. Thrillers don't have to be 100 percent plausible, as Alfred Hitchcock often patiently explained. But they do have to parse on some level. The only way to really enjoy it, after the first 20 minutes or so, is to keep your logic disconnected. "Cellular" Directed by David R. Ellis; written by Chris Morgan, from a story by Larry Cohen; photographed by Gary Capo; edited by Eric Sears; production designed by Jaymes Hinkle; music by John Ottman; produced by Dean Devlin, Lauren Lloyd. A New Line Cinema release of an Electric Entertainment production; opens Friday. Running time: 1:32. MPAA rating: PG-13 (for violence, terror situations, language and sexual references). Jessica Martin - Kim Basinger Ryan - Chris Evans Ethan - Jason Statham Mooney - William H. Macy Chad - Eric Christian Olsen Deason - Matt McColm. "Cellular” New Line Cinema Directed by David R. Ellis Starring Kim Bassinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham and William H. Macy Rated PG-13 3 Stars  Two years ago, a guy named Larry Cohen wrote a story about a guy trapped in a phone booth by a killer with a sniper rifle. “A guy stuck in a box” sounded like a horrible idea for a movie. Needless to say that I was amazed to find that “Phone Booth” actually turned out to be an engaging thriller despite the problem of having the hero stuck in a glass box for the duration of the movie.  Cohen’s second story is the basis for the new film “Cellular,” which is the tale of a kidnapped woman who manages to piece together a smashed up phone and get a call out to a complete stranger on his cell phone. Once again, it sounds like a bad movie. Once again Larry Cohen proves me wrong. “Cellular” turns out to be an exciting thriller despite the fact that it’s just a desperate woman talking on the phone to a random stranger.  What’s more surprising is that the acting is rather run of the mill and the story is filled with several obvious plot holes. Nevertheless I was swept up by the frenetic pace of the movie and thoroughly engrossed by this slight but effective thriller. Kim Bassinger gets top billing as the kidnapped woman, but it’s up-and-comer Chris Evans who’s the real star of the show playing the slacker surfer dude whose conscience forces him to become a hero. William H. Macy turns on his quirky charm as the police officer who slowly realizes what’s going on. And don’t forget bad guy Jason Statham, with a hissable performance as the bad guy that keeps the film going even when logic runs out. For my money, it’s Statham’s bad guy, out of all the characters, who really makes “Cellular” so successful. The plot problems did bother me during the film. The idea that the surfer dude can’t get a police officer to help him at the station, or the fact that he thinks that he can take on a quartet of armed and obviously professional killers is silly to say the least. Then again, if any of the plot holes suddenly closed the movie would have ended before it ever began.  So I excuse the logic problems and the rather routine action sequences and return to Larry Cohen. I’m not sure how he pulled it off, “Cellular” should have been a bad movie, yet somehow it ends up being a fun and surprisingly engrossing little action flick.  INT: Kim Basinger - Source: JoBlo.com by: Thomas Leupp  Academy Award winner Kim Basinger returns to the big screen this Friday with New Line’s latest high-octane thriller, CELLULAR. Basinger stars as a high school teacher/soccer mom whose comfortable suburban life is shattered when she is kidnapped by a gang of unknown assailants and tossed into an attic. Frightened and alone, she frantically pieces together a broken rotary phone and dials a random phone number in a desperate attempt to save herself and her family. She manages to reach Ryan, a self-absorbed slacker with problems of his own, and the adventure begins.  I got a chance to talk with Kim last week at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. Wearing a stylish black pantsuit, the demure blonde looked as beautiful as ever. Here is what she had to say about her latest project, CELLULAR.  What got you interested in playing this character?  I loved the isolation she had, I loved that. It was more like a play for me and that’s a challenge I’ve never done. It’s one of my biggest fears, to do a play, and maybe one day I will because I love to face my fears, but I thought that was great. And when I heard who the cast was; I love William Macy, and Jason I adore, I didn’t know Chris but Chris is wonderful. I just felt the cast was extremely interesting as well and I’d never been isolated, to have to do that. I love these challenges, to be on the phone and do most of your performance on the phone. The director David Ellis mentioned that you were always his first choice. How many times did you meet with him before you signed on?  I was interested in it, and after I spoke to him, I met him once, that was it. We went to lunch and that was it. Really basically, I needed to say hello to him, I needed to see what his personality was like. I instantly just adored him, what a wonderfully nice man.  You’re pretty emotional throughout this film. Is it easy for you, or is there a process you have to develop over the years to get you into that mode? It takes years to learn how to act, I think. It takes years, if you’re not fooling yourself, and I think it’s like what Anthony Hopkins once said, when someone asked him about an emotional scene he had to do, and he said, “It’s my job.” Well I can now look at someone and know the tools that I’ve developed over the years, and the things and the buttons, and where to go to press that button and I thank God it’s such a gift, and one day you wake up and you go, I can access that, I can get that, I know where to go to get that. It is your pay-off for longevity, for being tenacious. How challenging was it to act opposite Chris Evans without ever actually seeing his face?  It was just one of those things that led me to want to do the film because I wouldn’t see him. Chris I never knew at all and my very first day of filming, the very first day, they said, “We really hate to have to do this to you the day before, but you’re going to come to your very first day of filming, you’re going to come to the pier and you’re going to get out of the van and you will have been through the whole experience, you would have been kidnapped.” So the first day I got out of the van and came around and saw Chris Evans, that was my very first scene of that movie. Ellis mentioned that you got very physical in this movie. Blake Edwards taught me something. He loves slapstick. I got to be crazy in his films, just crazy. I got to fall down, get up, and he loves all that, and I knew that I could do that very early on. He was sort of my teacher. You use the same kind of thing in this kind of film. Yeah, in the fight scenes, this is what I did with David (Ellis): I told David to please, please tell Jason (Statham) I do not want to know, we had never met, and Jason is such a great guy, he’s lovely, lovely man, and such an intense actor at times but we never met each other. We would come in the room in the morning, just to see where the chalk, you know, you throw her over here and you end up over here Kim. Now go away and come back and we’ll do the scene. Jason and I would come in in the morning and he would have his hands in his pocket and he’d just kind of look down and we’d kind of look at each other and say “Hmm hmm,” because we didn’t know what was about to happen. And I told (Ellis) to please tell Jason I want to be surprised. I want to be surprised, only because it would make it more real. This is just a movie, thank God, but kidnapping is a very real thing and I just try to make it as real as possible, and when acting as real as I think someone would, I’m just an actress in a movie, but you know, in doing that I wanted to get as close to the truth as I could, and asking David to ask Jason if he would just surprise me because, one of the most wonderful opportunities for me, and I’ve never had this before, was I knew I could bring you guys upstairs with me. I was thrown in the attic; I wanted you guys to be thrown in the attic as an audience, and also because I don’t know why I’m in there and you don’t know why I’m in there. You don’t know what they’re going to do to me, and I don’t either. So I wanted everybody to get the feel, the audience to get the same identical feeling that I’m feeling, and that’s why I didn’t want to know. How do you manage to look so youthful, so beautiful all the time?  Thank you. I need that today.  How do you do it? I mean, you look incredible.  Gosh, thank you. I don’t know. I could sit here and give you my diet, exercise routine, but… Could you? I really need to get in shape.  Well, do you want to lose a few pounds or do you want muscle? If you want to lose weight, women and men, you have to fight it with weight, you really do. And you have to do cardio or whatever your favourite is. Mine’s running, the elliptical, I actually love that machine. Everybody, you know what the elliptical is? Ok, but you know what the key to the elliptical is, everybody loves the elliptical because they think they can get on it for an hour and watch tv and read, whatever. That’s not the key to the elliptical. It’s how fast you go because, you’re not really running.  As you get older, are you less concerned about being a sex symbol?  No, I don’t have a thing about sexiness at any age, whatever. I think the Europeans taught me more about that than anything in the world. They have a great appreciation of sex, and sex symbols, you know their women and men down through the movies. They taught me not to be ashamed of it, and when I first came to this town, and they threw me in that kind of…it’s a very difficult place to be put. It’s twice as hard to prove yourself as an actress. It takes a long time to be taken really seriously, especially in America. I mean beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What’s beautiful to him may not be beautiful to her or whatever, but whenever you are put into a category like that, of course it’s different, and it makes for other problems within you. If you start getting complexes that you won’t look the role, you can’t play the chancellor of a University or a head of this, you can’t do this, and when that’s put in your head long enough you, thank God I never really believed that but it was a hurdle for you. Has your criteria for choosing a script changed dramatically? Have you been offered more diverse roles? You know what I think? I think you get more opportunities in different ways. I think as I’ve got older, I’ve got more interesting opportunities, just so much more.  Was there any point where you thought, “Ok, this is it for me. I don’t want to be an actress anymore”?  I think we’ve all gone through that. I’ve gone through that every month since I started, every month that’s gone by.  Would you encourage your daughter to follow in your footsteps, to become an actor?  My daughter has wanted to be one thing only since she was probably two years old, maybe two and a half. She wants to be a veterinarian. That’s all she wants.  You must be thrilled.  I am thrilled to death. She’s got her school picked out. I think she’s had enough of this business, really. I love it because she’ll be nine in October and if you’re not into, you know, Chad Michael Murray or Hillary Duff, you’re left in the dark. My daughter, she’s going pretty soon, going for her brown belt, then they’ll go for their red and their black.  How old is she?  She’ll be nine.  How do you discipline your kid, knowing she’s a brown belt?  You know, the funny thing about my daughter. She’s such a sweet girl that she has, she is, they go through this thing where they’re sparring. She has a tough time with that. She doesn’t want to hit anybody. She doesn’t want to be hit, but they don’t want to hit either. So that’s a tough part of karate to get through, really. Have you ever gotten any strange calls on your cell phone?  I was called on my car phone one day and a guy just talked and talked and went on and on and on and I tried to stop him but he went on and on. It was not, I had not seen this movie yet, and I’ve seen the trailer, remember when Chris goes, “Chloe? Chloe is that you?” That part. I kept saying, “Hello, hello, hello,” and I learned this whole story about this guy, his company and what he was going to do in the morning. I think it was probably the strangest cell phone call I’ve ever received. So he just went on talking about this and I knew his whole story. I said “Hi, I’m not who you think I am.” And he said, “Oh. Oh God,” and I said, “Well, you have a nice day,” and he said, “Oh yeah and you have a nice day.”  And when he got off the phone, he never knew he’d been talking to Kim Basinger.  Nope. 'Cellular' power William H. Macy finally gets some action in new film. By Anthony C. Ferrante | Special to The Examiner William H. Macy loves a great joke just as much as telling one, which is why interviewing him can always be good for a laugh. Shortly before the interview begins, he tells a decidedly off-color "bear" joke and he delivers it effortlessly proving this comedic part of his acting personality has still gone largely untapped. "There are joke tellers and non-joke tellers and whenever real joke tellers get together, you can always go one-on-one until someone cries," says Macy. "My dad was quite the jokester and when he heard a good joke, he would write it down, put it in his wallet and save them. One of the great things about going to a new movie set, nobody's heard your jokes. You're in virgin territory and you can start from the beginning." It's October 2003 in downtown Los Angeles as Macy relaxes comfortably on the set of the thriller "Cellular" (opening Friday in theaters) and it's obvious he's been able to start from the beginning with his joke repertoire. He has an easy-going demeanor with the crew and his fellow actors both on screen and off as he plays Mooney, a retiring cop. When a young man named Ryan (Chris Evans) receives a random call on his cell phone from a mysterious woman (Kim Basinger) who claims she's been kidnapped, Mooney aids Ryan in finding her before the phone goes dead. Naturally, the life of her and her family could depend on it. "This scene we're shooting right now has Mooney checking in with another cop [to see] if this situation with Ryan was taken care of," says Macy. "It wasn't, so it's gnawing at Mooney." From script to screen, Mooney has certainly changed dramatically according to Macy. "My character was originally written for a portly gentleman who was older than me and who had just had a heart attack, so all the jokes in the film were about 'calm down Mooney,'" says Macy, who was asked to come up with a way to make the character his own. "I suggested that what if I was retiring after 27 years and my wife and I were going to start a day spa, so that was great fodder for ribbing from the other cops." While Macy is primarily known for his more indie-minded character roles, "Cellular" provided him with the opportunity to play "action hero," which comes with its own set of problems. "Oh god, in heaven, I'm going to be black and blue," he says. "I have three knock-down, drag-out fights. Even though they have these magnificent stunt guys doing the heavy lifting, you still get beat up. If someone throws a fake punch and I throw myself against the wall and sink to the floor -- I can do that. No sweat. The 10th time I do it, I start to notice I'm getting sore. Then you go home, look in the mirror and there's a huge black and blue spot on your elbow and you think, 'When the hell did I do that?'" Regardless of the bruises, Macy has found working with "Cellular" director David R. Ellis refreshing -- especially with the helmer's extensive second unit action experience on such films as "Matrix Reloaded" and "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" not to mention on his last film "Final Destination 2."  "In indie films, I work with a lot of first-time directors and there is a price to be paid," says Macy. "They're learning on our time and it's difficult, so it's quite pleasant and refreshing to work with someone as facile as David is. He really knows his way around. He's cut the film in his head and knows what he's looking for. And one of the benefits of him being so experienced and working so efficiently is if a scene doesn't work, he has the time to hunker down and figure out what's going wrong."  Hollywood's Calling By Terry Morgan  Chris Evans may not be well-known to cinema audiences yet--even though the 23-year-old actor has been in films such as Not Another Teen Movie and The Perfect Score--but he's about to become much more recognizable. Although he's second-billed behind Kim Basinger in the thriller Cellular--which opens this week--Evans is the lead actor amid a cast of strong talents who include William H. Macy and Jason Statham. Evans plays a heretofore irresponsible young man who has to grow up quickly when he receives a cellphone call from a woman who's been taken hostage. Evans' combination of good looks, charisma, and talent has industry insiders buzzing that he soon may be a star. Currently he's filming the long-awaited feature adaptation of the comic The Fantastic Four, in which he's cast as the iconic Human Torch. Evans says his present run of success with his role in Cellular, following several years of failed TV pilots, began simply enough. "I just auditioned," he says. "I had read the script probably a year prior to [New Line] actually making [the film], and I loved the script. It was a great one. I know Dean Devlin, one of the producers. We got along, but, like a lot of projects, it got put on the shelf for a while, for a year. I was in New York working on something else, and I got a call from my manager saying, 'Cellular is back around, and they're going to test 10 guys, and you're one of them.' So I came back and auditioned, and I just got lucky." Evans' early training was relatively typical for a young actor, but his path to agency representation was focused and intelligent. "I did plays from sixth to eighth grade, and I did theatre camp," says Evans, who grew up in Boston, Mass. "I loved it. As I got older I thought maybe this is what I want to do, but around 16 I started getting the itch for film. I wanted to branch out from theatre. Theatre's great, but you still have to project, and you're playing to the back of the theatre, and you don't want to turn your back on the audience--all of these rules where you're still acting but it takes you out of the moment.  "I had some friends in New York who were acting," he continues. "I asked them for advice on what they thought I should do, and they said, 'Well, the most difficult thing is getting an agent. If you don't have an agent, forget about it.' You can't just walk into an agent's office and say, 'Sign me,' so I thought a good thing would be to meet agents, maybe work for one, somehow get in with them on the friendship side. I got an internship at a casting office and moved to New York for the summer, living in a little piece-of-crap place in Brooklyn, and my job was to set up actors for auditions. So I'm on the phone with agents all day, setting up actors. By the end of the summer I was pretty friendly with two or three agents, just from talking to them on the phone all day, and I said, 'I don't mean to impose; I know I'm just a voice on the phone, but I'm an actor. Do you mind if I come read for you?' Two of them let me do it, and one of them signed me. I booked a pilot, and it got picked up. I moved to L.A. to work on the show [FOX's short-lived The Opposite Sex]. I thought it was going to be huge. We were cancelled in two episodes. It was a nice kick to the stomach, a little bit of humility, and a taste of reality." Says Evans from experience, "My advice to anyone who comes to L.A. or New York without representation: Do not send out your 8x10s to agents. Do not send little postcards to agents. They're not going to look at them. If you don't have a friend of a friend who can get you a meeting, or if you don't have any connections and are starting from scratch, your best bet is to make connections yourself. Don't send a resume and expect they'll call you back. Get an internship at an agency, or a casting office, where you can meet these people, spend time with them, and eventually ask for a favor. And then do your best to impress. Other than that, they're not going to give you the time of day." One of Evans' biggest challenges in filming Cellular was that he spent almost the entire shoot emoting into a cellphone, as opposed to interacting face-to-face with another actor. "Kim [Basinger] was off working on The Door in the Floor, so they shot my half of the conversation first," he recalls. "For two months it was just me, and they hired an actress. They gave me a little ear microphone, and I put the cellphone over it, and she would read lines from the monitor. A lot of the times it was a real phone conversation, not pretend. "It's interesting, because there are so many things your body does subconsciously while on the phone--your gestures, your posture," he continues. "There are flavors of authenticity in life that when you try to re-enact, they sometimes look fake, even if you're doing your damnedest. The fact is, you are not driving a car. This wheel--it's not even a real wheel; it's loose, just spinning around like a toy. So there are times when you're doing a scene, and you're trying to act panicked, and [the director David R. Ellis] would call, 'Cut. Chris. Don't forget you're driving.' Oh, yeah. I didn't move my hands through the whole take." Evans isn't just spinning his wheels, however, and his career may soon be revving into high gear. Kim's connected to reality. While Kim Basinger dislikes cellphones, the technology has also given her a great part, writes Jamie Portman All Kim Basinger wanted to do was spend a pleasant evening with her daughter Ireland at a Broadway play. But that hope was dashed when she discovered someone in the audience was taking their photograph with a camera cellphone. Basinger was already lukewarm about the cellphone revolution because of a couple of bad experiences when a driver almost ran her down while chattering away into one. And this wasn't the first time she had been photographed by a cellphone user. But the theatre incident was the last straw. "I hate that thing with the camera because we have been so disturbed by them," she sighs. "When you're sitting there with your daughter ..." She stops and shakes her head. "I mean, anybody who has a kid ..." She finds herself at a loss for words again. She's an elegant presence in black as she chats this morning. She's also -- given her famous shyness -- surprisingly feisty when it comes to things that matter to her. She's here to talk about her taut new thriller, Cellular, opening this Friday, and she admits the irony of starring in a movie whose outcome depends on a device she dislikes so much. She plays a mother who's kidnapped by a gang of vicious criminals and whose only hope lies in the fragile telephone contact she's been able to establish with a feckless young cellphone user (Chris Evans), a guy who's more interested in ogling the babes on the beach than taking a distress call from a stranger whose desperation he refuses to take seriously. Basinger liked the challenge of carving a characterization out of a situation where she spends most of her time trapped on one end of a broken telephone that she's managed to wire together in order to seek help from the outside world. "It was quite a roller-coaster ride every day," she recalls, laughingly conceding that cellphones in all their irritating unpredictability are the driving force behind Chris Morgan's screenplay. But she remains convinced that cellphone users need restrictions imposed on them. Furthermore, she doesn't really understand the technology. "I am not a real good technical person. I don't have a lot of gadgets." She carries a phone in her car because she's a mother and she knows it can be useful in an emergency. At the same time, she believes society needs a strong dose of cellphone etiquette. "Haven't people gone crazy? It's so disturbing." She opposes the use of cellphones by motorists. "I know there are people who will hate me for saying this: I think it is wonderful to have a cellphone in your car in case you get into trouble -- but I honestly think it should be hands free in the whole country. You see too many accidents happening. I live in my car because I live in California, and you see people all the time making wrong turns and whatever -- and they have got THIS in their hand ..." It's not that easy for her to speak out this way. The shyness is for real -- in fact, there are times in the past when she has coped with agoraphobia. But life has toughened her over the years. Public scrutiny still upsets her, but she has learned to deal with it. Earlier this year, for example, the Oscar-winning actress was back in the spotlight because of her bitter child custody battle with ex-husband Alec Baldwin -- but she's learning to be philosophical about such things. "You know, we live in the public eye," she says gently. "It comes with the territory. I always say: God and a sense of humour have gotten us through this whole thing. It's all I can do -- just grow up and make the best decisions I know how. And we have come through pretty well." She's more cautious with her acting choices now that she's turned 50, and she feels she has been lucky with the recent The Door in the Floor, Cellular and the coming Elvis has Left the Building. "These were three opportunities that happened to pop up in the same year. That doesn't happen to me very often." Basinger's role in Cellular essentially static. She's stuck to a telephone for most of the movie, except for those gruelling moments when she's threatened by her captors -- and she had to operate on a note of high emotion for most of the shooting. But she likes being tested in this way. "You come to a place in your life where you really learn what it is and how it is and what makes you tick as an actress. It takes you a long time to learn how to be an actress. It really does. And then you have those buttons that have become so accessible to you, and you just push them." As a mother herself, she had no trouble getting into her character's mindset. "God forbid, I have never had to be in a situation like this, but I tried to get as close as I could to imagining what it would be like. And the word 'kidnapping' -- especially being a mom -- becomes a huge fear in your life." Don’t hang up on ‘Cellular’ Actors’ performances elevate familiar material in this thriller Richard Foreman / New Line via AP Cohen’s latest story idea, “Cellular,” also dramatizes the limits of communicating by phone, but in a less claustrophobic manner. No longer strapped to one tied-down phone, the plot is free to wander wherever cell phones are found in contemporary Los Angeles, which means, of course, everywhere. The result is a popcorn picture with few surprises, plenty of contrivances, almost no narrative credibility, but with some humor and entertainment value. It also manages to turn Kim Basinger and William H. Macy into action heroes who demonstrate both grit and smarts.  She’s a high-school science teacher who uses her knowledge about the more vulnerable parts of human anatomy to thwart a gang of homicidal kidnappers. He’s a veteran policeman, determined to quit after 27 years, who finds himself back on the job when she and her young son are abducted. The somewhat unlikely star of the picture, however, is Chris Evans, a teen heartthrob who made a minor splash in “The Perfect Score” and “Not Another Teen Movie” and suggests the coltish charm of the young Kevin Costner. He’s a perfect fit for this material. It helps that his character, Ryan, is an irresponsible kid who is given the chance to grow and redefine himself as his story connects with Basinger’s. Ryan is introduced as a shirtless hunk of beefcake who has just been dumped by his understandably fed-up girlfriend when Basinger randomly contacts him on his cell phone. At first he doesn’t take this stranger’s dilemma seriously, but when she tells him she’s been kidnapped and her housekeeper has been murdered, he decides to take the cell phone to the police. Macy’s retiring cop is initially too distracted to pay proper attention to Ryan, who is forced to resort to a number of illegal maneuvers to save her. He pulls out a gun in order to get a recharger for his cell phone, carjacks a mouthy lawyer’s swankmobile (the film’s comic high point), ignores stoplights and charges straight into L.A. freeway traffic — the wrong way, of course. If this description sounds too familiar, wait until you get a whiff of the conspiracy that’s really driving the story. Perhaps this was also Larry Cohen’s idea, but Chris Morgan’s script makes it feel like the kind of warmed-over pap that studios thrive on adding. Fortunately the actors, especially Macy, are allowed to tweak it a bit and make it seem like an intentional joke. The director, David R. Ellis (“Final Destination 2”), handles the action scenes efficiently, and he helps Basinger, who is saddled with the most banal lines, to make her character count. He treats Macy as a gift (as he should), and he pretends that Evans is Cary Grant. He’s not (not yet anyway), but the fact that someone should treat him with that kind of confidence helps him to carry the movie.  BASINGER GETS COURAGEOUS WITH DAUGHTER  Hollywood actress KIM BASINGER credits her eight-year-old daughter IRELAND with helping her become more courageous. The agoraphobic screen star, who shares custody of her offspring with ex-husband ALEC BALDWIN, recently spoke at a school benefit at her daughter's urging - something she would never have considered a few years ago. She says, "We've been through a lot together, but she has given me so many gifts." The 8 MILE star even admits her child has ignited her new passion for pop culture, gadgets and fashion. She adds, "(Ireland) made me try on these teeny jeans the other day, the kind that show off your navel."  Cellular: un film, ma anche un telefonino (Nokia)  - Una rischiosa operazione di "product placement". L'ha tentata Nokia, protagonista assoluto, insieme a Kim Basinger e Chris Evans, di un film che uscirà nelle sale americane il 10 settembre: Cellular. Come dire, un titolo che è tutto un programma, o forse meglio ancora un prodotto, visto che il telefonino chiamato in causa è proprio il modello 6600 del produttore finlandese. Un'operazione di "piazzamento" del prodotto che si diceva, però, rischiosa, vista la trama "dark" del film. Una Kim Basinger rapita riesce infatti a contattare fortunosamente il cellulare di uno sconosciuto, Evans, che da allora cercherà di scoprire il suo nascondiglio andando incontro a molte disavventure, tra cui varie frustrazioni wireless, dalla mancanza di segnale allo scaricamento della batteria a inadeguati servizi per il cliente. Insomma, il film mostra tutti i problemi e le magagne della comunicazione senza fili. Dettagli che non sembrano preoccupare il management di Nokia. "Il telefonino è assolutamente centrale nella trama - commenta Kari Tuutti, portavoce della multinazionale - ed è mostrato in una luce positiva visto che servirà a salvare la vita di Kim Basinger". 'Door' opens the way to the forbidden - The depth and complexity of love is examined in "The Door in the Floor," a compelling, sometimes shockingly funny and thoroughly adult film by writer-director Tod Williams. It explores the idea of loving someone so much that you will give them whatever they need, even if that is not in your own best interests. Jeff Bridges, looking scruffy and a bit seedy, plays a gregarious children's book author whose marriage to the fragile and withdrawn Kim Basinger is slowly falling apart because of a tragedy involving their two teen sons. He believes that life should go on, particularly since they also have a 4-year-old daughter (the remarkably accomplished and adorable Elle Fanning). But the wife is still so paralyzed by grief and guilt that she cannot put the past behind her. She cannot live; she can merely exist. She retreats into wistful memories, and he retaliates with alcohol and debauchery with bored, lonely neighbors (epitomized by Mimi Rogers). Despite his flagrant infidelities, she refuses to leave because he is the only one who understands her. When the author hires a student intern (Jon Foster) as his assistant for the summer, the young man becomes intimately, inextricably entangled in the couple's messy lives -- for both good and bad. The assistant's father smugly advises him to learn by watching what it takes to be a writer. But, hilariously, good old Dad has no idea of the sorts of things his son will see and experience. And the young man himself wonders whether he'll be up to the task of chronicling anything as exhilarating, as anguishing, as revealing as real life. Based on novelist John Irving's "A Widow for a Year," this film is both brash and tender. It's exquisitely poignant but laced with jabs of humor that will provoke unexpected laughs. It's smart, literate and thoughtful with compelling words and ideas rather than mere preambles to action. But the pacing may be slow for some audiences. Bridges, whose uninhibited character has no problems running around nude in front of strangers, gives a fearless, multilayered performance. He can be selfish and insensitive but, in a shocking twist, proves he has the deeper love. The title comes from a child's fable within the movie about a little boy who grows up being warned that there is danger behind a door in the floor and to never, ever open it. It is the door to the unknown, which can be scary. But it is also the door to the forbidden, which is tantalizing. And filmmaker Williams makes the most of that idea. Nokia Goes Hollywood To coin a phrase: It was the best of product placements. It was the worst of product placements. On Sept. 10, Finnish cell-phone handset maker Nokia (news - web sites) (NYSE: NOK - News) will become a major Hollywood action movie star opposite Kim Basinger. Its new Nokia 6600 videophone will get the title role in the film "Cellular," distributed by Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX - News) New Line Cinema, as the heroic phone used by a police officer to track down a kidnapped Ms. Basinger.  With Nokia's new phone featuring so prominently in the storyline, and presumably garnering lots of close-ups with the company's trademark prominently displayed, what could possibly go wrong with this product placement? Lots. You see, in addition to being a vehicle to revive Ms. Basinger's fallen star-hood, this movie aims to "connect with people" -- much as Nokia does itself -- by getting them to identify with the frustrations of the police officer as he attempts to track down and rescue Ms. Basinger.  He will endure short battery life, "one-bar" signal situations, and the misnamed customer "service" of his cell-phone provider. Reportedly, at one point the poor constable gets so frustrated that he discharges his sidearm in a cell-phone store. Lucky for him that, in order to stay connected to Ms. Basinger so the film can come to the usual happy ending, the officer can be reasonably certain he will not have to deal with dead zones or dropped calls.  The negative portrayal of cell-phone service in the U.S. was sufficiently traumatic to scare away literally every cell-phone provider approached with a product placement offer. That includes SBC Communications (NYSE: SBC - News) and BellSouth (NYSE: BLS - News) joint venture Cingular, Sprint (NYSE: FON - News), and Nextel (Nasdaq: NXTL - News), according to The Wall Street Journal. Verizon (NYSE: VZ - News) Wireless may or may have not been approached by the film's makers, but AT&T Wireless claims no one even contacted them. That's kind of funny, in a movie about lousy cell-phone service -- although the repeated attempts to sign Cingular on for the movie make sense for the same reason.  The providers' reluctance to attach their names to this film is understandable. And even Nokia is taking a risk in what is probably the most prominent product placement ever conceived. As for whether it pays off in the end for the company -- well, I don't want to spoil the ending.
	8 settembre: News! 'Cellular' one of year's best thrillers - BY ROGER EBERT "Cellular" stands "Phone Booth" on its head. The 2003 thriller was about a psychopath who threatens Colin Farrell with death if he leaves a Manhattan phone booth. The new one has Chris Evans racing desperately all over Los Angeles as he tries to stay on his cell phone with a woman who says she's been kidnapped. The same writer, Larry Cohen, collaborated on both projects and is no doubt currently involved in a thriller about chat rooms. The plot of "Cellular" sounds like a gimmick, and no wonder: It IS a gimmick. What's surprising is how convincing it is, under the circumstances, and how willingly we accept the premise and get involved in it. The movie is skillfully plotted, halfway plausible and well-acted; the craftsmanship is in the details, including the astonishing number of different ways in which a cell phone can be made to function -- both as a telephone and as a plot device. Kim Basinger stars as Jessica, a high school science teacher who is kidnapped by violent home invaders and held prisoner in an attic. The men who have taken her want something from her husband -- something she knows nothing about. They know where her young son, Ricky (Adam Taylor Gordon), attends school and plan to kidnap him, too. The kidnappers are hard men, especially their cold, intense leader, Greer, played by Jason Statham. Because they've allowed Jessica to see them, she assumes they will eventually kill her. The attic has a wall phone, which a kidnapper smashes to bits. But Jessica the science teacher is able to fit some of the parts back together and click on the wires to make a call -- at random. She reaches Ryan (Chris Evans), a 20-something kid who at first doesn't believe her when she says she has been kidnapped. At one point, he even puts her on hold; that's part of the movie's strategy of building our frustration by creating one believable obstacle after another. Jessica pleads with him not to hang up: to trust her enough to hand his cell phone to a cop. Something in her voice convinces him. He walks into a police station and hands the phone to a desk cop named Mooney (William H. Macy), who gets sidetracked and advises him to go to homicide, up on the fourth floor. Uh, huh. But Mooney, too, hears something in her voice, and later in the day it still resonates. He's not your typical hot-dog movie cop, but a quiet, thoughtful professional with unexpected resources. The movie's surprises, when they come, mostly seem to make sense. When we find out  who the kidnappers are and what it is they want from Jessica's husband, it doesn't seem like too much of a reach. But the real fun of the movie comes from the hoops Ryan has to jump through in order to somehow stay on the line with Jessica, convince people he's not crazy, and get personally involved in the deadly climax. Yes, the action scenes are over the top, and yes, the chase scenes involve unthinkable carnage on the freeways, but, yes, we go along because the motivations and strategies of the characters are strong and clear. What's ingenious about the movie is the way it uses telephones -- and the people who use them. At one point Ryan gets a "low battery" warning and desperately needs a charger, so of course he finds himself in a cell phone store where he is instructed with maddening condescension to take a number and wait his place in line. And then there are the ways phones can be used for things other than making calls. Ways they can preserve evidence, maintain callback records, function as an emergency alarm system, convey unintended information, or even betray themselves. Kim Basinger, who for such a healthy-looking woman has always been so good at seeming vulnerable, is ideally cast here, and young Chris Evans (from "Not Another Teen Movie") has a star-making role. But the real juice comes from the old pros William H. Macy, as a dogged cop who might surprise you in a tight spot, and Jason Statham as the leader of the kidnappers. By occupying their roles believably, by acting as we think their characters probably would, they save the movie from feeling like basic Hollywood action (even when it probably is). This is one of the year's best thrillers. Better than "Phone Booth," for my money, and I liked that, too. Basinger's No Mere Damsel In Distress Kim Basinger is quite the radiant vision. At 51, the Oscar winner has aged beautifully, her tanned skin having shown no sign of aging. All smiles, with her Georgian accent in toe, the stunning Ms Basinger is happy to dish out exercise and dietary advice prior to talking about her intense role in the thriller, Cellular. "Well, if you want to lose a few pounds but you want muscle, you have to fight it with weight, you really do, and you have to do cardio or whatever your favourite is. Mine's running with the elliptical. Everybody loves the elliptical, because they think they can get on it for an hour and watch TV and read, but that's not the key to the elliptical: It's how fast you go because, you're not really running." Basinger, who is obsessed with exercise, says that she goes "really, really fast and I sweat. Usually an hour on, an hour or a little longer on the elliptical. I also lift weights as well as the stability ball."  Looking fit, the actress says that no matter how much exercise and fitness regime she undertakes, when working n a film such as Cellular, nothing can prepare her for the eventualities of injury. "Knowing you're going to do this type of film, there is no way in the world that you're not going to get injured if you're not in shape. I had cuts, I had bruises, and I had everything all over me. You can't be slammed against a mirror, slammed down on a table, or thrown in a room, unless you're somewhat capable of handling that entire balancing act." In the fast-paced thriller Cellular, Basinger plays Jessica Martin, mysteriously and viciously kidnapped. A random call to a stranger's cell phone results in a furious race against time to save her and her family from imminent execution. While Basinger spends much of the movie alone, she does eventually get physical with her kidnappers, and Basinger certainly wanted those scenes to be as realistic as possible. "Blake Edwards, who loves slapstick, taught me something. I got to be crazy in his films, as I got to fall down, get up, and I knew that I could do that by early on. He was sort of my teacher and you use the same kind of thing in this kind of film. So, in the fight scenes, I told our director, to tell Jason [Statham] I did not want to know what he had planned. Jason and I would come in, kind of look at each other and say hmm, because we didn't know what was about to happen. And I told him to please tell Jason I want to be surprised, because it would make it more real." For Basinger, the key element in this film, she says, is to make her character and situation identifiable to an audience. "God forbid I've never been in one of these situations before and I think that you know we're at a time in our existence on this planet where we have heard the word, especially as a Mom, kidnapping and that has become such a big word. This is just a movie, thank God, but kidnapping is a very real thing and I just try to make it as real as possible. I was thrown in the attic, and I wanted you to be thrown in there as an audience." Basinger, who can still afford to be selective, says that she was drawn to Cellular because she "loved the isolation that character had. It was more like a play for me and that's a challenge I've never done. It's one of my biggest fears, to do a play, and maybe one day I will because I love to face my fears, but I thought that was great." While Basinger gets down and dirty here, there is no sign of the sexy, glamorous film star on screen that we are used to. Basinger says that she has her own philosophy on being a sex symbol and sexiness in general. "I don't have a thing about sexiness at any age. I think the Europeans taught me more about that than anything in the world. They have a great appreciation of sex, and sex symbols, and they taught me not to be ashamed of it. When I first came to this town, and they threw me in that kind of image, it's a very difficult place to be put and it's twice as hard to prove yourself as an actress. It takes a long time to be taken really seriously, especially in America. I mean beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what's beautiful to him may not be beautiful to her, or whatever. But whenever you are put into a category like that, of course it's different, and it makes for other problems within you. If you start getting complexes that you won't look the role, you can't play the chancellor of a University or a head of this, you can't do this, and when that's put in your head long enough you, it becomes a hurdle for you." Basinger has learned to overcome such hurdles, now that she is a member of that elite Oscar club, but says that as she becomes older, how she chooses a role clearly changes. "I think you get more opportunities in different ways. I think as I've got older, I've got more interesting opportunities. I wish so much that America would have more of a European take to aging." The actress even admits that there are times when she is ready to put acting and Hollywood behind her. "I think I've gone through that every month, since I started, and every month that's gone by." Basinger is more content being a single mother, doting as she does on her nine-year old, a brown belt at karate. "You know, the funny thing about my daughter, is she's such a sweet girl that she has to go through this thing where she's sparring and she has a tough time with that. She doesn't want to hit anybody. She doesn't want to BE hit, but they don't want to hit either, which is a tough part of karate to get through." But Basinger's daughter has more on her mind than getting physical or following her mother's footsteps on the screen. "My daughter has wanted to be one thing only since she was probably two years old, and that's a veterinarian." Given her mother's passion for animal rights, the actress is delighted. "I am thrilled to death and she's got her school picked out. I think she's had enough of this business, really. I love it because she'll be nine in October and if you're not into Chad Michael Murray or Hillary Duff, you're left in the dark." Basinger is still very much into her animal activism. "It's consuming and is never over unfortunately, with the pain and the things that happen." While Basinger appears confident as we speak, she finally reveals that is in fact relatively shy and insecure. While she may have gracefully accepted her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for LA Confidential, when it comes to speaking at her daughter's school, fear sets in, but at least she has her child to help her face those fears. "She really pushes me out of that shyness, and once when I had to speak at her school, I wore the jeans, got up there and made the speech. I was quite proud of myself when I walked out."  Cellular opens on Friday. WaffleMovies.com - Cellular - I had a good laugh when Kim Basinger was recounting a recent story on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. She was outside a movie theater on her cell phone when many people around her started to laugh and point. Since Kim is a hottie and huge Hollywood star, she's not used to people openly mocking her (so that's how the other half lives). It turns out Ms. Basinger was standing directly in front of a poster for her new movie, Cellular, which features a photo of her on the phone. In a way, it was a perfect story since it's the type of funny sight gag that would find its way into Cellular.  Basinger stars as Jessica Martin - a well-to-do high school science teacher with a great house, successful husband (Richard Burgi), and a good kid in Brentwood. One morning, her house is raided, she's kidnapped, dragged off to a secret location she has never seen before, and kept prisoner in the attic. Jessica's only hope is a smashed phone, which she uses to randomly dial Ryan (Chris Evans) - an unreliable, slacker kind of guy who answers her desperate phone call from out of the blue.  Can Ryan figure out how to help her? Why was Jessica kidnapped? Who are the kidnappers?  This movie shows you why I have caller ID on my cell phone. I don't need some crazed drug dealer accidentally calling me in the middle of the night, or some horrifying scenario like this one. Cellular is a fun, exciting thriller with a sense of humor and storytelling. Aside from one, major, glaring mistake in logic (see if you can find it like I did), director David Ellis does a wonderful job keeping the action moving in a tense and believable way. Unlike other movies we have seen this year, the action flows in a sensible manner with only a few instances of amazing coincidence helping the story (people having relationships in just the right way at the right time, others showing up at just the right time). He's able to keep us on the edge of our seats, gripped by every twist, turn, and shocking change in the action.  Chris Morgan's screenplay is average, but he does have moments of absolute brilliant comic relief like the son named Ricky Martin, or Ryan's reaction to cell phone use by others. It's the kind of comedy that helps gloss over incidents and script elements we might find absurd, even turning the absurdness on itself so we can all enjoy it. Also, he has fun with cell phones and their roles in our lives in several scenes that will have you laughing because you know it's true.  On the acting front, Basinger and Evans make a decent team even though they spend the movie apart. The roles are not complicated, but each one excels. Basinger is great as the lady in peril, breathlessly begging into the phone for help as Jessica faces her possible death, and danger to her family. Evans shows he might have a future as an action hero as he races from situation to situation, always showing us Ryan's growing concern for Jessica as he has to leap hurdle after hurdle to keep the cell phone signal active, and try to find her.  Cellular is the movie to see this week. 3 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4)  By NICK ROGERS - ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR - THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER SPRINGFIELD, IL Drivers on their cell phones. Too-loud car stereos. Unhelpful, self-centered people. “Cellular” might be the first thriller that couldn’t exist without today’s annoyance factor, but does it ever move. Beating with the pounding pulse of the best B-movie rides, it’s every bit the telephone-based heartstopper that the miserable “Phone Booth” promised to be. Maybe that’s because someone wisely blocked any incoming screenplay calls from Larry Cohen, who wrote “Phone Booth” but gets only a story credit here. Chris Morgan’s screenplay is smart without being too clever for its own good, finds a wicked sense of humor in its narrative opportunities and never tries to turn its everyday characters into superheroes despite the extraordinary situation they find themselves in. The film begins serenely as we meet Jessica Martin, a science teacher walking her young son to the bus stop. Jessica is played by Kim Basinger, but for all the movie ultimately requires of her, the filmmakers could have selected someone off the street. Soon afterward, she’s kidnapped and thrown in the attic of a remotely located house, where the head kidnapper (Jason Statham) smashes the phone and her hopes of connecting with the outside world. Ah, but he forgets she’s a science teacher, able to cross the wires of the junked phone and somehow connect with surfer guy Ryan (Chris Evans). He takes her plea for help as a joke until he hears the threats. So begins a wild ride through Los Angeles as Ryan must stay connected with Jessica, find out why she’s been nabbed and save her and her family from death. In the way Ryan must keep a signal with Jessica at all costs (avoiding stairwells and tunnels), “Cellular” is somewhat like “Speed," which had to keep the bus above 50 miles per hour. And David R. Ellis’ direction establishes a similarly brisk, go-with-the-moment rush. It also leaves room for wonderful bits of irony swiftly woven into the ticking-clock plot.  More known for comedic roles in forgettable teen flicks, Evans impresses as a man given the ultimate test of his capacity for responsibility. When he hears Statham’s menace over the phone, he reacts convincingly. And though the movie has him pull off impressive feats of quick intelligence, he remains a relatively smart surfer. The movie even earns a laugh in his futile attempts to talk tough with Statham near the film’s conclusion. The same rule holds true for William H. Macy, flawless character actor that he is, turning up as a cop ready to call it quits and run a day spa after 27 years on the force. Though he doesn’t seem like a study in quick wit when introduced, he hasn’t logged all those years for nothing, as shown in the film’s third act. Even given these impressive performances, the movie remains gleefully aware of its silliness. Why else would composer John Ottman drop a few well-placed phone tones into his score? And with lines like “This has really been fun, but now you’re wasting my minutes” and Macy’s doozy of a send-off, it’s hard to call any of this classic thriller material. But “Cellular” is as high-energy as it is high-tech, and that’s part of its guilty-pleasure charm. Give 'Cellular' a ring A surprisingly spiffy postsummer treat, "Cellular" comes fully charged if just a little bit silly, a wham-bam action flick with no pretense and plenty of fun.  It also should mark the arrival of actor Chris Evans (he'll be playing the Human Torch in the upcoming "Fantastic Four" movie), whose natural presence and regular-guy energy keep "Cellular" grounded even when it's spinning in circles.  Wait a minute, don't Kim Basinger and William H. Macy and Jason Statham star in this thing? Yes, they do, but it's Evans' movie all the way.  And that way does wind around some. Evans plays Ryan, your standard Venice Beach slacker dude trying to prove he's responsible when, deedle-deedle-deedle, his cell phone rings.  It's a sobbing, near-hysterical woman named Jessica Martin (Basinger) on the phone, saying she's been kidnapped and is afraid her son and husband will soon be nabbed as well. After he figures out it isn't a prank, Ryan drives to a police station with the woman -- who's using a shattered phone that won't redial -- still on the line. He tells a desk cop named Mooney (Macy) what's going on, but the cop gets distracted and Ryan starts to lose the signal.  And thus begins Ryan's long and crazy day of driving around trying to save the son and husband from abduction, figure out where Jessica is, keep his cell phone charged and stay out of tunnels. If he loses the connection, she's lost.  Director and former stuntman David R. Ellis showed moments of flash in the otherwise absurd "Final Destination I" and moments of heart in "Homeward Bound II," but he puts it all together in a tight commercial package here. Though Basinger's plight is dire, there's plenty of humor thrown in as well and the pace never lags. What could have been a series of conversations in terror becomes a complete buzz of a film.  Basinger is appropriately panicked here, and Statham does his patented snarling menace thing as the lead bad guy. And kudos also to Rick Hoffman, who's making a career out of playing weaselly lawyer-types. But Macy shines over all others as always, traveling from buffoon to action hero without missing a beat, in a way offering an older version of Evans' character.  Sure it's all silly and yes, there are car crashes galore, girls in bikinis and lots of shootouts. But when car chases, bikinis and shootouts are outlawed this just won't be America anymore. "Cellular" is grand cheesy fun. Give it a ring.  Cellular - By Calvin Wilson - Of the Post-Dispatch "Cellular" is so shamelessly cliched and hysterically pitched that it's actually a lot of fun. In fact, it may be the most idiotically entertaining film of the year.  Kim Basinger plays Jessica, a high school science teacher who's kidnapped and terrorized by the sinister Greer (Jason Statham) and his accomplices. Also at stake are the lives of her husband (Richard Burgi) and son (Adam Taylor Gordon).  Jessica's prospects for survival increase when she tinkers with a broken phone and gets through to easygoing cellphone owner Ryan (Chris Evans). Although he's initially skeptical of her story, Ryan quickly takes on the task of rescuing her. But that won't be easy: Jessica has no idea where she is or what her captors want.  Also figuring in the action is Mooney (William H. Macy), a veteran cop who's had enough of life on the beat, and Chloe (Jessica Biel), Ryan's estranged girlfriend.  It's an intriguing premise. And director David Ellis, working from a story by Larry Cohen and screenplay by Chris Morgan, brings a certain giddy energy to the proceedings. At times, the film delivers the anarchic rush of a live-action cartoon.  But "Cellular" is marred by abrupt shifts in tone, misguided attempts at humor and a reckless disregard for narrative logic. Instead of a light but intelligent romp in the Hitchcock tradition, we get a misbegotten combination of lowbrow farce and generic mayhem. This is the sort of film in which tangential characters and situations seem to have been introduced merely to extend the running time.  Basinger, who was so good in "The Door in the Floor," turns in an oddly unconvincing performance. It's as if she hasn't a clue about who Jessica is. Granted, the character as written is woefully thin, but it's an actor's job to flesh out even the most stereotypical creation. As it is, Jessica makes SpongeBob SquarePants look downright Shakespearean.  As the ready-for-anything Ryan, Evans demonstrates a flair for comic exasperation while coming off as a credible hunk. It matters little that Ryan's actions are poorly motivated, or that it's unclear what he learns from the experience. Except, perhaps, that phones are sometimes better left unanswered.  Statham, who was so great in "Snatch," never rises above the level of standard-issue bad guy. But Macy captures Mooney's offbeat charm and surprising fearlessness, giving us a character of complexity and depth.  It's a performance that belongs in a better, more ambitious movie than "Cellular."  ** 1/2 (out of four)  "Cellular" (PG-13, 1 hour, 29 minutes) - A typical example of the R-ward drift of PG-13 films, particularly in terms of bloody violence, "Cellular" remains, it cannot be denied, an adrenaline pumper, despite its flaws. OK fare for high-schoolers attuned to action movies, it will keep them hanging on and guessing where every plot twist leads. Not a great choice for middle-schoolers, "Cellular" features not just loud gunplay, but shooting deaths that are very nearly point blank. The movie also shows a strangulation witnessed by a child, head-banging fights, a character bleeding to death from a slashed vein, and high-velocity car chases. The plot hinges on the abduction of a woman, the kidnapping of a child and threats against their lives. The script includes barnyard profanity and a few crass sexual jokes. A menacing between-the-lines sexual innuendo infuses scenes with the villain and the female captive.  Kim Basinger stars as science teacher Jessica Martin, who drops her 11-year-old Ricky (Adam Taylor Gordon) at school, comes home and is grabbed by goons who break into her kitchen.  DIAL 'K' FOR KIDNAPPED  Taut thriller makes a star of the ubiquitous cell phone Starring Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham, William H. Macy. Directed by David R. Ellis. A random wrong number on his cell phone sends young man on a race against time to save a kidnapped family. Opens Friday in area theaters.  "Cellular," a brilliant and tense thriller, starts with a bang. Inside of five minutes, an upscale home in suburban Los Angeles is broken into, the maid is murdered and a woman is kidnapped by huge, masked men.  The woman is thrown into an attic, but before one of her captors leaves, he smashes a phone with a sledgehammer.  Hearing a dial tone, the terrified woman kneels over the phone, taps wires together and actually dials a phone number. It's the cell phone belonging to a kid named Ryan who's in his jeep heading to Home Depot to pick up supplies for a save-the-whales demonstration in an attempt to show his ex-girlfriend he's responsible.  Fashioning a functioning phone out of shards may sound implausible when reading it described, but David R. Ellis' exhilarating movie is a high-stakes race against time, a muscular 95 minutes without a wasted moment. (Besides, this woman is fighting for her life and has nothing but time. Who in that situation wouldn't fiddle with a broken phone?)  The ingenious screenplay was written by Christopher Morgan based on a story by Larry Cohen. It's frightening, lean, surprising and even sparingly hilarious.  Ellis, who also directed "Phone Booth," another economical thrill ride, is clearly fascinated with reaching out and touching (more like scaring the hell out of) viewers with the ubiquitous communication tool we can't live with, can't live without.  Ryan (Chris Evans) doesn't believe the story he's being told by this wrong number. He's about to hang up when the desperate woman (Kim Basinger) repeats her story - that her name is Jessica Martin and she's been kidnapped and doesn't know where she is. She begs Ryan to take 10 minutes out of his day to deliver her phone to a police officer.  Ryan agrees to help, but when he gets to the police station, a near riot in the waiting area distracts all the officers. But one detective, Bob (played by William H. Macy), does get Jessica's name and says he'll follow up.  The mysterious kidnapping isn't high on his list of things to do, however. Just moments before, he was on the phone haggling with a beauty supply distributor over a shampoo shipment. ("I know the difference between jojoba and awapui. I'm a police officer," he snaps into the phone.) After 27 years on the force, Bob is getting ready to retire and open a day spa with his wife.  While Ryan is trying to find a police officer who can help, he hears the kidnappers threaten to snatch Jessica's son from his school. She begs Ryan to get to the school first. She tells him her what her son looks like and that his name is Ricky.  "You named your child Ricky Martin?" he yells incredulously.  Despite Ryan's efforts, he gets to the school in time to watch the kid be pulled into a black SUV by the bad guys. Jessica hears the whole thing.  The kidnappers want something they believe Jessica's husband has, and they will do anything to get it, including killing all three of them, they tell her.  Ryan steals a school security vehicle and chases the SUV carrying Ricky while narrating the events over the phone to Jessica.  He finds a gun in the car. His cell phone battery is running down. He needs a charger but can't wait line at the cellular store. Suffice to say, Ryan steps up.  The lives of a well-to-do family are in the hands of a kid wearing a T-shirt and a string bracelet. Ryan doesn't shy away from any chase (which are frequent and fiery in "Cellular"). He's a hell of a driver and isn't averse to jacking another vehicle, a Porsche belonging to an obnoxious lawyer.  This kid is amazing. It's just what we thought about the Gen Y'ers - give these slackers some responsibility and they rise to the occasion.  Every feature and foible associated with mobile phones - video screens, mute buttons, interference, bad reception, DWD (driving while dialing) - play a part here. As in life, cell phones are a blessing and a curse in "Cellular."  Incorporating a technology into a movie is a sure way to humanize it. When "You've Got Mail" and "Something's Gotta Give" have its characters instant messaging, a sterile process played out in ones and zeros becomes a warm and intimate connection. The fact that Jessica Martin's life could be saved by something in most of our purses and pockets makes the cell the movie's hero.  The performances in "Cellular" are all as tight as the script. Basinger is properly terrified and maintains that terror unflaggingly. Evans is a young actor to watch. Jason Statham, the lead kidnapper, is the consummate bad guy - bald and built like a brick outhouse. And Macy is nothing less than fabulous as the cop who sniffs out clues while wearing an algae mud mask and a spa robe.  The on-the-phone suspense thriller (dating back to "Dial M for Murder") is a genre that doesn't seem to get old.  The frantic pace and surprise about the kidnappers' motives and limits (homicide, basically) will keep your heart beating and even had viewers cheering and gasping. Any movie that delivers that kind of excitement is worth turning off your cell phone and passing the popcorn.  STATHAM'S SURPRISE ATTACKS ON BASINGER - Hollywood veteran KIM BASINGER found filming violent scenes with JASON STATHAM in new movie CELLULAR a genuinely horrifying experience, because she insisted on "surprise" on-screen attacks. The LA CONFIDENTIAL star - who plays an abductee who is locked in a room by Statham's kidnapper character - decided the best way to achieve realistic fear would be for the SNATCH star to remain silent about the brutality of the scenes. However, she quickly learnt her method had a downside - pure fear. She says, "My main scenes are on my own, talking on the phone or being attacked by Jason Statham. I also did not know exactly what he was going to do to me. "We would never talk. We would meet to go through our marks silently with the director every morning, then he would come in and beat me. I told him, 'Surprise me.' He most certainly did. When I heard those footsteps outside the door, I was like the audience - I did not have the faintest idea what would happen next. "That is why I could be thrown around on this film. I am not saying I did not get injured - I did, with plenty of cuts and bruises - but my recovery was fast."  'Cellular' has convincing ring, despite over-the-top action - "Cellular" stands "Phone Booth" on its head. The latter film, a 2003 thriller, was about a psychopath who threatens Colin Farrell with death if he leaves a Manhattan phone booth. The new one has Chris Evans racing desperately all over Los Angeles as he tries to stay on his cell phone with a woman who says she's been kidnapped. The same writer, Larry Cohen, collaborated on both projects and is no doubt currently involved in a thriller about chat rooms.  The plot of "Cellular" sounds like a gimmick, and no wonder: It IS a gimmick. What's surprising is how convincing it is, under the circumstances, and how willingly we accept the premise and get involved in it. The movie is skillfully plotted, halfway plausible and well-acted; the craftsmanship is in the details, including the astonishing number of different ways in which a cell phone can be made to function -- both as a telephone and as a plot device.  Kim Basinger stars as Jessica, a high school science teacher who is kidnapped by violent home invaders and held prisoner in an attic. The men who have taken her want something from her husband -- something she knows nothing about. They know where her young son, Ricky (Adam Taylor Gordon), attends school and plan to kidnap him, too. The kidnappers are hard men, especially their cold, intense leader, Greer, played by Jason Statham. Because they've allowed Jessica to see them, she assumes they will eventually kill her.  The attic has a wall phone, which a kidnapper smashes to bits. But Jessica the science teacher is able to fit some of the parts back together and click on the wires to make a call -- at random. She reaches Ryan (Chris Evans), a 20-something kid who at first doesn't believe her when she says she has been kidnapped. At one point, he even puts her on hold; that's part of the movie's strategy of building our frustration by creating one believable obstacle after another. Jessica pleads with him not to hang up: to trust her enough to hand his cell phone to a cop. Something in her voice convinces him.  The movie's surprises, when they come, mostly seem to make sense. When we find out who the kidnappers are and what it is they want from Jessica's husband, it doesn't seem like too much of a reach. But the real fun of the movie comes from the hoops Ryan has to jump through in order to somehow stay on the line with Jessica, convince people he's not crazy, and get personally involved in the deadly climax. Yes, the action scenes are over the top, and yes, the chase scenes involve unthinkable carnage on the freeways, but, yes, we go along because the motivations and strategies of the characters are strong and clear.  The director, David R. Ellis, doesn't depend on the usual chases and shoot-outs to make his movie work. He's attentive to how and why the characters behave, he makes it clear what they're thinking, and he has a good feel for situations in which everything depends on human nature.  Kim Basinger, who for such a healthy-looking woman has always been so good at seeming vulnerable, is ideally cast here, and young Chris Evans (from "Not Another Teen Movie") has a star-making role. But the real juice comes from the old pros William H. Macy, as a dogged cop who might surprise you in a tight spot, and Jason Statham as the leader of the kidnappers. By occupying their roles believably, by acting as we think their characters probably would, they save the movie from feeling like basic Hollywood action (even when it probably is). This is one of the year's best thrillers. Better than "Phone Booth," for my money, and I liked that, too.  Porsche Models Land Starring Role in 'Cellular' Porsche 911 Cabriolet and Cayenne Turbo Featured Prominently in Action Thriller  ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 9, 2004--Porsche® Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA) today announced two of its models, the Porsche 911® Cabriolet and Porsche Cayenne® Turbo sport utility vehicle, are prominently featured in the upcoming release of "Cellular," a New Line Cinema action thriller starring Kim Basinger. Premiering September 10, "Cellular" portrays Basinger as Jessica Martin, a kidnapping victim who desperately dials a random number, sending a young man into a high-stakes race against time to save her life. With no knowledge of Jessica other than her hushed, panicked voice on the other end of the tenuous cell phone connection, Ryan (Chris Evans) is quickly thrown into a world of deception and murder in his frantic search to find and save her.  Porsche's Cayenne Turbo and 911 Cabriolet get top billing throughout the film and play integral roles in the film's plot. Hand-picked by director David Ellis, the two Porsches flawlessly perform various stunts including high-speed chases in the 911 Cabriolet and a dramatic entry into a brick building in the Cayenne Turbo.  "After spending a week in the Cayenne Turbo, I knew these were the cars for the film," said Ellis. "The incredible engineering, handling and performance that make these cars 'Porsches' even inspired me to make several changes to the script in order to better highlight some of the most compelling capabilities."  The 911 is Porsche's flagship sports car. With a flat six-cylinder engine located in the rear, the vehicle is designed to be the best sports car available and performs accordingly, conveying Porsche's racing heritage.  The Cayenne Turbo, Porsche's first sport utility vehicle, was designed to be the sports car of SUVs. With the perfect blend of style, exhilaration and control, the Cayenne Turbo upholds Porsche's performance legacy while also displaying superior off-pavement ability.  In conjunction with the release of the film, Porsche is implementing dealer promotions in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Atlanta and Detroit, as well as e-mail blasts and film-based content in various Porsche publications. In addition, Porsche is launching a direct mail campaign offering two free tickets to see the film in exchange for a test drive in the Cayenne. The campaign is targeting more than 40,000 prospective Porsche customers.  "At Porsche, we are very protective of our brand image and prefer to work with like-minded directors and production companies. David Ellis and New Line Cinema have done a wonderful job with this film," said Tim Mahoney, Vice President of Marketing for Porsche Cars North America. "We enjoy working in partnership with films that integrate our products into the action, enhancing the characters and story line. 'Cellular' captures the essence of these two vehicles beautifully."  "Cellular" opens in theaters across the country on September 10. For more information about the film, please visit http://www.newline.com/.   Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA), based in Atlanta, Ga., and its subsidiary, Porsche Cars Canada, Ltd., are the exclusive importers of Porsche sports cars and Cayenne sport utility vehicles for the United States and Canada. A wholly owned, indirect subsidiary of Dr. Ing. h.c.F. Porsche AG, PCNA employs approximately 250 people who provide Porsche vehicles, parts, service, marketing and training for its 203 U.S. and Canadian dealers. They, in turn, provide Porsche owners with best-in-class service.  Evans, Basinger & Ellis Talk Cellular  ComingSoon.net got to sit down with the stars of New Line's Cellular, starring Chris Evans, Kim Basinger, Jason Statham, and William H. Macy. In the thriller, directed by David Ellis, a random wrong number on his cell phone sends a young man into a high-stakes race against time to save a woman's life. With no knowledge of Jessica Martin (Basinger) other than her hushed, panicked voice on the other end of the tenuous cell phone connection, Ryan ( Evans) is quickly thrown into a world of deception and murder on his frantic search to find and save her. Jessica's life is in his hands, but what is waiting for him on the other side of the line, and what will cost him to find out? David Ellis on the message of the film: We just made a film that seemed real. The whole point of this film is to make people think of what they'd do in this situation. Would you help someone that was in need, especially if you didn't know them? If you had a busy day, and you got a call on your cell phone; what would you do? The message that people get out of this is that it's ok to help people. I think 20 years ago people were more readily to help people they didn't know…We just tried to make a film that was fun, exciting, (and) moved quickly. David Ellis on William H. Macy: Bill Macy's character was initially an overweight cop with a heart problem, which doesn't really fit Bill. When he came onboard, he had the idea of making this cop, a guy who's been a career cop. A guy whose worked 25 years; he's finally going to retire, his wife has raised their kids and stood by him this whole way. So finally he's going to do something for her which was her dream to open a beauty salon, or a day spa. That's what the people at the precinct are kidding him about. Before it was about his weight and so he kind of re-developed that character. David Ellis on Kim Basinger: Kim was my first choice, but I never thought we'd get her. So we went out to some other people and we had interest from a lot of other people. I said, let's try it and approach Kim. So we approached her and she responded to the script, but said she wanted to meet. So I met her for lunch, which was cool, and we sat and ate for 2 hours; she called her agent and said let's do it.  David Ellis on shooting Kim Basinger's scenes: I made sure that she did not meet Chris; that they never got to meet. So on stage, we had her set which was kind of a box, which is kind of hard cause she's trapped in this box. I put Chris' Bronco on the stage, way over in different part of the stage in a black tent so he could pretend like he's driving. We had already shot all of his prior scenes…Kim on her earpiece on the phone had Chris talking. So she would hear him and was able to respond to him, but never got to meet him face to face.  Kim Basinger on the feel of Cellular: I wanted to bring you guys up into the attic with me. I was thrown in there and I want you guys to be thrown into the attic as an audience. Also, I don't why I'm in there and you don't know why I'm in there. I wanted the audience to get the same identical feel that I was feeling. Kim Basinger on getting older: You get more opportunity in different ways. I think as I've gotten older, I've gotten more interesting opportunities. Just so much more and I wish so much that America would have a European take when it comes to aging and all those things. Kim Basinger on her strangest cell phone call: I was called on my car phone one day, and a guy just talked and went on and on and on. I tried to stop him, but he went on and on. I kept saying, "Hello? Hello?" and I just learned this whole story about this guy and money and what he was going to do in the morning. I think that was probably the strangest cell phone call I've ever gotten. I said "Hi, I'm not who you think I am." He said, "Oh, oh oh my God."  Kim Basinger on playing Jessica Martin: I loved the isolation that she had. It was more like a play for me and that's a challenge I've never done. And it's a fear, to do a play and maybe one day I will, cause I love to face my fears. Also, when I heard who the cast was; I love William Macy and Jason, I adore. And I didn't know Chris, but he's wonderful. I just thought the cast was extremely interesting as well and I've never been isolated like that…to do most of your performance on the phone. Chris Evans on becoming famous: I can't see it. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've been recognized in my life. I never ever get recognized anywhere; it's tough to think about all of a sudden, just being a movie star. I haven't even seen the tip of the iceberg…If I could have any movie career I chose, I'd probably love to have one like Chris Cooper or Billy Crudup. These guys who do great work and work all the time and they have the respect of the people in the industry. And they can walk down the street and no one knows who the hell they are. What more perfect career could you ask for? Chris Evans on getting his start: I grew up in Boston, right outside of Boston. My mother was a dance teacher, so I guess if I got the creative side from anyone I suppose it's her. My dad's a dentist so it's not very creative. My older sister acted; she did plays. I think the first time I saw her getting the applause and the flowers, I was like "I want that." I started in 4 th grade cause she was doing (the plays). Then you start getting the bug and realizing that this is actually really fun. Chris Evans on the Cellular script: I love fast-paced movies. It's like Speed; it's one of those scripts that- there's some scripts that you'll read for a while and it will have lulls and you'll find yourself putting it down. But this script, I just burned through it. It's that type of immediate action; you don't need this big, long character journey where it happens over a long period of time and there's and evolution of mentality. It's just something happens, your reacting to it, go. And I love that type of shit. I thought, if you want to make it a little funny, fine; if not, it can still fly.  Chris Evans on Fantastic Four: It's tough to say no to superhero. I think it's every little kid's dream is to be a superhero. What guy here didn't wrap a towel around their shirt and run around the living room…I had Dr. Doom growing up; I had the action figure of Dr. Doom. And he kicked a lot of ass as I remember. I didn't know much about this one in particular. As soon as I read the script, I went out and bought some of the comic books just before the audition to brush up a little bit. And it was cool cause I had some buddies who were like "Dude, Fantastic Four!" I think within the Marvel family, it's up there…I was reading some article on the internet that said that Fantastic Four is first royal family of comic books. Up until Fantastic Four, it was just sole, Batman, Spider-Man, just these individual superheroes. It was the first grouping of superheroes; it's a family unit essentially. We really have a good dynamic. You obviously mix in the special effects; we're going to have great effects with the fire and the stretching arms. And Michael Chiklis plays the Thing who is a pretty well known. I didn't know the comic book, but I knew that guy….Everyone is great. Everyone is so excited and dedicated. It's a little different than the other stuff. I see the trailer in my head. If I wasn't doing it, I know I'd want to see it. Cellular hits theaters on Friday, September 10. Cellular - Fast-moving Cellularphones in character development  Cellular is a one-gimmick movie, and if the gimmick intrigues you, you may have a good time.  The Chris Morgan screenplay from a story by Larry Cohen (directed by David R. Ellis) recalls a score of other films, from 1965's The Slender Thread to Cohen's 2002 Phone Booth script. Only this time it's Kim Basinger instead of Anne Bancroft or Colin Farell, and the communications devices are a tad more high-tech.  It doesn't take long for the action to kick in. Jessica Martin is a high school teacher dropping off her son (Adam Taylor Gordon) at a bus stop. We know right away something terrible is going to happen, because the son, after seating himself on the bus, calls out to his mother to wave a second goodbye. Whenever adorable children are seen giving a parent an extra hug at the beginning of a movie, you can be certain one of them is, at the very least, about to get the shit beat out of them.  Sure enough, moments after Jessica is comfortable inside her nice Brentwood home, men break in, kill the housekeeper and kidnap our heroine. (It's a mistake to have the action begin so quickly. While the guns are popping, audience members with freshly bought popcorn are likely to be still climbing over each other in search of the best seats.)  Jessica has a bit of luck, however. Even though the bad guy has taken an ax to the wall phone hanging in the attic where our victim is being held, Jessica is able to rub some wires together and get the thing working. (Moral: If you're going to ax up a phone, make sure you've really broken it.) She can't dial or anything (after all, it was a sharp ax), but is able to make random contact with someone's cell phone. Winds up it belongs to a young man named Ryan (Chris Evans) who's just been bawled out by his ex-girlfriend (Jessica Biel) on the Santa Monica Pier for being lazy and unreliable.  It takes a while for Ryan to take the call seriously, but he soon slips into gear in an effort to save the lady; especially when he finds out the bad guys are going to wipe out the woman, her husband (Richard Burgi) and the adorable kid. Trouble is, he has no idea where Jessica is being held, and neither does she. He enlists the aid of about-to-retire desk sergeant Bob Mooney (William H. Macy), who at first seems more concerned about the beauty shop he and his wife are about to open. But Mooney proves a decent sort (as Macy characters often do) and he joins in the chase.  The big question, of course, is how long can Jessica stay on the phone without getting caught? How long will the battery on Ryan's phone remain powered? Now that the killers are aware of who Ryan is, can this "lazy" and "unreliable" slacker hold his own?  The writers throw in a fair number of plot twists and humor so that things bump along fairly harmlessly. Jason Statham is an enjoyably sadistic head villain. Macy's an earnest-looking good guy. And Evans proves himself a capable leading man.  The film misses out simply because the characters are not written strongly enough for us to care about them. Ryan is supposed to be our Walter Mitty character, yet the writers don't even think to show us the big payoff scene where his ex-girlfriend realizes what a hero her man really is. That kind of sloppiness permeates the screenplay. The editing and cinematography are uninspired.  The movie has a primitive appeal, but you have to do a lot of forgiving and forgetting to let it work on you. 'Cellular': Dial 'M' for 'Monotonous'  By Bill Muller The Arizona Republic Stars: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, William H. Macy. Director: David R. Ellis.  The skinny: **1/2 (of 5 stars). The buzz: At times, Cellular plays more like a commercial — look, it takes amazing video! — than a film. There is zero character development. Car chases and gun battles aside, Cellular is still a movie about watching someone talk on a cell phone.  MPAA rating: PG-13 (violence, terror, language, sex). Car chases and gun battles aside, Cellular is a movie about watching someone talk on a cell phone. In certain corners of Hollywood, this might seem like an exciting concept. At times, Cellular plays more like a commercial than a film. There is zero character development, except for making a tired cop played by William H. Macy wear a gooey facial mask so he can seem caring, vulnerable, yet still dedicated to his job.  The movie doesn't make a great deal of sense, and stuntman-turned-director David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2) devotes little time to introducing his main players. Science teacher Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) barely has time to kiss her cute son goodbye before she's accosted by menacing gunmen, who break into her house and shoot her maid. Led by Ethan (Jason Statham), the men drag Jessica to a remote house, stick her in the attic and smash the phone on the wall. Apparently a distant relative of MacGyver, Jessica pieces together enough of the phone to make random calls.  When someone finally answers, it's Ryan (Chris Evans), who then goes rushing all over L.A., crashing cars and dodging bullets. Cellular was co-written by Larry Cohen, whose other credits include Phone Booth, a movie starring Colin Farrell as a guy stuck in a phone booth, instead of a movie starring Kim Basinger as a woman stuck in an attic. Basinger can be appealing in some roles, but Cellular doesn't play to her strengths. She spends most of the movie talking into a broken telephone receiver and acting really upset. Given the script, I can understand why.  Evans, who will play the Human Torch in the upcoming Fantastic Four film, doesn't really distinguish himself, either. His performance is flat and monotonous even when cars are exploding or people are shooting at him. Macy (The Cooler) tries his best to make his silly character, police Sgt. Mooney, come to life, but the script forces him into some corners.  If someone calls asking you to go to Cellular, there's only one response: Sorry, wrong number.  CELLULAR - Starring Kim Basinger, Chris Evans. Written by Larry Cohen, Chris Morgan. Directed by David R Ellis. (14A) 89 min. Opens Sep 10.  It's tempting to write off a film that uses a cellphone (and a clearly branded one at that) as a cheap, hollow gimmick designed more for product placement than entertainment. But though it's hard to admit it, those shrill little ear goblins are now a fully integrated staple of our culture, so it only makes sense that they get their very own Hollywood thriller.  Cellular lucked out, too; not only did it somehow land William H. Macy, but it's got a script that doesn't mess around trying for substance. Within minutes of the opening credits, the central action has already begun: schoolteacher Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is kidnapped from her affluent California suburb and thrown into a dark attic without explanation. A few frames later, she's already pulled a MacGyver, reassembling a smashed phone and randomly dialing the mobile belonging to Ryan (Chris Evans), a mookish beach dude whom she begs for help. Ryan suspects a joke at first, but soon gets caught up in a crazed drive to save Jessica and her family.  Macy, a boon to any film he so much as jogs through, plays a cop who gradually catches on to what's happening. His performace is the film's only good one, a funny but believable turn that balances out Basinger's purple blubbering and Evans' wiseass mugging.  Acting, though, is clearly not director David Ellis' primary concern; he's more interested in keeping things moving (not surprising, considering his background as a stunt co-ordinator).  The big mystery question -- why has Jessica been kidnapped? -- is answered at just the right moment, and the subsequent car chases, gunfights and beatings in shadowy rooms all maintain the high level of suspense established in the film's early scenes. Even the inevitable denouement is admirably clipped, lasting only long enough for a tidy wrap-up and a zinger from Macy. As compact and practical as its namesake and not half as infuriating, Cellular might be the best feature-length commercial yet.  'Cellular,' starring Basinger, is thoughtful thriller - "CELLULAR"  Ryan (Chris Evans) races against time after he gets a call on his cell phone from a woman who says she's being held captive in "Cellular."  (((½  Directed by David R. Ellis. Produced by Dean Devlin and Lauren Lloyd. Written by Larry Cohen and Chris Morgan. Photographed by Gary Capo. Edited by Eric A. Sears. Music by John Ottman. Running time: 94 minutes. Classified: PG-13 (for violence, terror situations, language and some sexual references). By Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times "Cellular" stands "Phone Booth" on its head.  The 2003 thriller was about a psychopath who threatens Colin Farrell with death if he leaves a Manhattan phone booth. The new one has Chris Evans racing desperately all over Los Angeles as he tries to stay on his cell phone with a woman who says she's been kidnapped.  The same writer, Larry Cohen, collaborated on both projects and is no doubt currently involved in a thriller about chat rooms.  The plot of "Cellular" sounds like a gimmick, and no wonder: It IS a gimmick. What's surprising is how convincing it is, under the circumstances, and how willingly we accept the premise and get involved in it. The movie is skillfully plotted, halfway plausible and well-acted; the craftsmanship is in the details, including the astonishing number of different ways in which a cell phone can be made to function -- both as a telephone and as a plot device.  Kim Basinger stars as Jessica, a high school science teacher who is kidnapped by violent home invaders and held prisoner in an attic. The men who have taken her want something from her husband -- something she knows nothing about. They know where her young son, Ricky (Adam Taylor Gordon), attends school and plan to kidnap him, too. The kidnappers are hard men, especially their cold, intense leader, Greer, played by Jason Statham. Because they've allowed Jessica to see them, she assumes they will eventually kill her.  The attic has a wall phone, which a kidnapper smashes to bits. But Jessica the science teacher is able to fit some of the parts back together and click on the wires to make a call -- at random. She reaches Ryan (Chris Evans), a 20-something kid who at first doesn't believe her when she says she has been kidnapped. At one point, he even puts her on hold; that's part of the movie's strategy of building our frustration by creating one believable obstacle after another.  Jessica pleads with him not to hang up: to trust her enough to hand his cell phone to a cop. Something in her voice convinces him. He walks into a police station and hands the phone to a desk cop named Mooney (William H. Macy), who gets sidetracked and advises him to go to homicide, up on the fourth floor. Uh, huh. But Mooney, too, hears something in her voice, and later in the day it still resonates. He's not your typical hot-dog movie cop, but a quiet, thoughtful professional with unexpected resources.  The movie's surprises, when they come, mostly seem to make sense. When we find out who the kidnappers are and what it is they want from Jessica's husband, it doesn't seem like too much of a reach. But the real fun of the movie comes from the hoops Ryan has to jump through in order to somehow stay on the line with Jessica, convince people he's not crazy, and get personally involved in the deadly climax.  Yes, the action scenes are over the top, and yes, the chase scenes involve unthinkable carnage on the freeways, but, yes, we go along because the motivations and strategies of the characters are strong and clear.  About the crime and the criminals I will say no more. What's ingenious about the movie is the way it uses telephones -- and the people who use them. At one point Ryan gets a "low battery" warning and desperately needs a charger, so of course he finds himself in a cell phone store where he is instructed with maddening condescension to take a number and wait his place in line. At another point he comes into the life of a spectacularly obnoxious lawyer (Rick Hoffman), and steals his Porsche not once but twice.  And then there are the ways phones can be used for things other than making calls. Ways they can preserve evidence, maintain callback records, function as an emergency alarm system, convey unintended information, or even betray themselves. Larry Cohen and his co-writer, Chris Morgan, must have spent days with their yellow pads, jotting down every use they could think of for a cell phone.  The director, David R. Ellis, does have the usual chases and shoot-outs, but he doesn't depend on them to make his movie work. He's attentive to how and why the characters behave, he makes it clear what they're thinking, and he has a good feel for situations in which everything depends on human nature.  Kim Basinger, who for such a healthy-looking woman has always been so good at seeming vulnerable, is ideally cast here, and young Chris Evans (from "Not Another Teen Movie") has a star-making role. But the real juice comes from the old pros William H. Macy, as a dogged cop who might surprise you in a tight spot, and Jason Statham as the leader of the kidnappers. By occupying their roles believably, by acting as we think their characters probably would, they save the movie from feeling like basic Hollywood action (even when it probably is). This is one of the year's best thrillers. Better than "Phone Booth," for my money, and I liked that, too.  Cellular (2004) Directed by David R. Ellis Cast: Chris Evans, Kim Basinger, William H. Macy, Jason Statham, Noah Emmerich, Jessica Biel, Eric Christian Olsen, Eric Etebari, Valerie Cruz, Eddie Driscoll, Adam Taylor Gordon, Richard Burgi, Brendan Kelly, Matt McColm, Sherri Shepherd, Lin Shaye 2004 – 89 minutes Rated: (for violence, language, terror situations, and sexual references). Reviewed by Dustin Putman, September 7, 2004. It was only a matter of time before a motion picture took the cell phone technology and all of its capabilities and pitfalls and created an entire story revolving around it. The surprise is that it took so long. Directed with savvy gusto by David R. Ellis (2003's "Final Destination 2"), "Cellular" is a taut, crowd-pleasing thriller in which the improbable, if canny, premise is overlooked in exchange for what is an exceedingly fun ride. Think of the film as a cross between 1994's "Speed"—with a cell phone standing in for a bus—and 2003's "Phone Booth," coincidentally written by Larry Cohen, who gets the "story" credit here, and you will have a pretty solid idea of what to expect.  Ryan (Chris Evans) is the kind of handsome slacker who spends most of his days at the beach, unreliable to those around him but coasting by on charm. When he receives a call on his cell phone from a woman named Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger), who earnestly tells him she has been kidnapped and is holed up in an unknown location, his natural first impression is that she is a prank caller. After pleading her case to him—she has managed, by chance, to make a random call on a shattered telephone and he is her only hope for savior—Ryan changes his mind. Having no luck at the police station, Ryan is suddenly thrust into a long, dangerous day of trying to find out where Jessica is, thwart her captors, headed by Greer (Jason Statham), and keep alive their phone connection with each other. If the battery runs out, or the call is lost, Jessica and her family are as good as dead.  The story of a care-free young man who is forced to grow up and take on the responsibility of saving the life of a total stranger, "Cellular" doesn't offer much more depth in Ryan than that, but there is hardly time for character depth in a film, and hero, that has nary a second to sit down and take a breather. The movie, slim as it may be and as contrived as the setup is, enthralls the viewer from the very beginning and doesn't stop piling on one innovative predicament after the next for Ryan to face until its 90-minute running time is over.  The screenplay by Chris Morgan appreciably plays by the rules, not straining the boundaries of one's disbelief on how a cell phone works and what it can and cannot do. Ryan can't drive into any tunnels, the call threatens to break up in stairwells, and it is only so long before his cell gets low on battery. There is further tongue-in-cheek humor throughout that strikes some common truths about the world we live in without getting too silly for its own good. While rushing through slow L.A. traffic, Ryan—on the phone with Jessica—yells at another driver to get off their cell and concentrate on the road. Later, he becomes frustrated when, wouldn't you know it, he gets stuck behind a big truck, blocking his view of the kidnappers' car that he is following. In another scene, while Ryan is stopped at a red light, the beats of rap music move closer until a middle-aged white woman pulls up next to him, her loud radio threatening to give Jessica's secretive call away to Greer on the other end of the line.  As Ryan, this could be Chris Evan's (2004's "The Perfect Score") star-making performance. He is likable, commands the screen with no other prop or character to work off of other than his phone, and is just awkward enough in some of his intense run-in's with the public to make believable that this is a guy who has never broken the law before or raised his voice to get what he wants. As the distraught Jessica, Kim Basinger (2004's "The Door in the Floor") does excellent with an emotionally demanding role, keying vividly into the pure terror and desperation of a woman facing life-threatening circumstances. And, along the way, Evans and Basinger form a tight-knit bond without ever meeting face-to-face until the climax. William H. Macy (2003's "The Cooler") is strong in a quirky supporting role as police officer Mooney, who begins to investigate Jessica's whereabouts on a hunch following his cut-short conversation with Ryan.  As "Cellular" speeds toward its conclusions, a few plot threads are left to unsatisfying closure, including the particulars surrounding a key event that led to the kidnappers' motives and Ryan's rocky relationship with ex-girlfriend Chloe (Jessica Biel). More time could have also been afforded to Jessica's also-in-danger husband (Richard Burgi) and son (Adam Taylor Gordon). These problematic areas, however, don't leave more than a cursory impression on the viewer because, fundamentally, the film is but a plot-driven, action-laden thriller out to entertain as wide of an audience as possible. "Cellular" achieves this goal, bringing suspense and ingenuity into the equation when so few movies in the genre barely seem to try at all.  Pierce Brosnan signs to star in annual Christmas commerical for Freixenet on Spanish TV  Pierce Brosnan has been signed to star in this year's Freixenet's Christmas Spot for Spanish television. It will be the first time a James Bond actor has appeared in the long running series of advertisements.  The shoot for the commericial is slated for September 28th 2004 in Barcelona by Studio Pomés, and the international release will be in Miami on November 17th 2004. The script is still not available, but it is known that the spot will be a comedy.  Brosnan will be joined by Nieves Álvarez for the short.  Since Liza Minelli starred in the Freixenet commercial in 1977, Freixenet's Christmas spots have always starred the most known artists of the moment in Spain.  These are the stars that have enlightened the Freixenet spots over the years. 2003 - Paz Vega 2002 - Pilar López de Ayala 2001 - Penélope Cruz 2000 - Lorin Maazel 1999 - Montserrat Caballé, Joaquín de Luz, Támara Rojo, Carlos Nuñez, Cristina Pato, Ketama, Estrella Moriente, Ingrid Rubio, Lorena Bernal 1998 - Alejandro Sanz, Maribel Verdú, Laura Ponte, Ainhoa Arteta 1997 - Meg Ryan 1996 - Anthony Quinn, Lorenzo Quinn, Mar Flores, Sofía Mazagatos, Juncal Rivero 1995 - Andie MacDowell, Nacho Duato 1994 - Belle Epoque: Miriam Díaz Aroca, Maribel Verdú, Penélope Cruz, Ariadna Gil, Jorge Sanz, Gabino Diego 1993 - Kim Basinger 1992 - Sharon Stone, Antonio Banderas 1991 - Don Johnson 1990 - Christopher Reeves, Inés Sastre 1989 - Paul Newman 1988 - Josep Carreras 1987 - Victoria Principal 1986 - Jacqueline Bisset, Alexander Gudonov 1985 - Raquel Welch 1984 - Plácido Domingo, Ana Obregón 1983 - Shirley McLaine, Miguel Bosé 1982 - Ann Margret, Cheryl Ladd, Norma Duval 1981 - Gene Kelly 1980 - Sidney Rome, Bárbara Rey, Lorenzo Santamaria, Margaux Hemingway 1979 - Freixenet "Bubbles" 1978 - Freixenet "Bubbles" 1977 - Liza Minelli.
	9 settembre: News! Title / Theater Count (Change) / Week #  Resident Evil: Apocalypse / 3,284  Cellular / 2,749  BOX OFFICE GURU - Weekend Box Office (September 10 - 12, 2004) THIS WEEKEND Following the worst box office weekend of the year, Sony's action-horror sequel Resident Evil: Apocalypse looks to liven things up with a well-needed boost of firepower in its debut. New Line counters with the action thriller Cellular which has its speed dial set for second place while most top ten holdovers coming off of the Labor Day session are set to stumble into a tight $3-5M range. After taking the summer off, zombies return to the multiplexes this weekend to scare up some big business in the form of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. The R-rated sequel to the 2002 hit film adapted from a popular video game once again stars Milla Jovovich as a military agent trying to stop a virus outbreak which unleashes an army of the undead. Packed with guns, shoot outs, stunts, and special effects, this new installment in the franchise will appeal to the same crowd that powered the first Resident Evil to a solid $17.7M bow and $7,004 opening average over two years ago. Last September, that same young male audience drove the vampire thriller Underworld to a $21.7M debut and last spring's Dawn of the Dead to a $26.7M launch. It made sense to greenlight a sequel when the first Resident Evil went on to gross $39.5M domestically and become a big success on DVD. Landing Jovovich again was a salary increase worth paying as it prevents Apocalypse from becoming a starless vehicle like Anacondas. Sony has put together an exciting marketing campaign and with business being mostly stale over the last two weeks, moviegoers will be looking for a new film to rally behind. Direct competition will not be too fierce as most summer action films have run their course making Sony's decision to release the film now a shrewd one. Resident Evil: Apocalypse will invade over 2,800 theaters and could shoot up about $20M for the number one spot. A young man races against time to save the life of a woman trapped on the other end of his mobile phone in the New Line thriller Cellular. Directed by David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2), the PG-13 film brings to the big screen the same type of tense reach-out-and-touch-someone suspense that screenwriter Larry Cohen brought to Phone Booth last year which took advantage of Colin Farrell's starpower to open at number one. Cellular centers around Chris Evans (The Perfect Score, Not Another Teen Movie) who does not sell the same amount of tickets, but the actor is surrounded by Kim Basinger, Jason Statham, Jessica Biel, and William H. Macy who provide some respectable star wattage. The concept is marketable, but without a big star in the lead, many will just wait for the DVD. Cellular opens also in over 2,800 theaters on Friday and could find itself with about $10M this weekend. The two-week reign of Jet Li as emperor of the North American box office will come to an end this weekend as Evil is set to rule. Hero's drop last weekend was sizable so a 45% fall in the third frame could be in order which would give the Miramax hit $5M for the weekend and $42M after 17 days. Paramount's comedy Without A Paddle has been holding up well, but with the target audience now back in school, a larger fall is likely to result. Dropping 40%, Paddle may gross $4M over the weekend and boost its cume to $45M. Anacondas should plunge 55% to $3M and put its sum at $28M. Take this week's Reader Survey on the opening of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. For a review of Vanity Fair visit The Chief Report. LAST YEAR Leading a trio of new films to the top spots on the charts, the Antonio Banderas-Johnny Depp duel Once Upon A Time in Mexico opened with strength at number one with $23.4M. The Sony sequel went on to shoot up $56.4M. Debuting in second was the Warner Bros. comedy Matchstick Men with $13.1M followed by Lions Gate's Cabin Fever which bowed to $8.6M in third. Final tallies reached $36.9M and $21.2M, respectively. Dropping by a small amount to fourth was former number one Dickie Roberts with $5M and rounding out the top five with another great hold was Pirates of the Caribbean with $4.5M, off only 15%. Meanwhile, opening in only 23 theaters, but still enough for the Top 20, was the Focus hit Lost in Translation with just under $1M and a potent $40,221 average. The Bill Murray film went on to win an Oscar and secure four total nominations including one for Best Picture. WEEKEND BOX OFFICE September 3-5, 2004 3-day Labor Day Weekend Studio Estimates - 38 The Door in the Floor Focus $83,000 -33% 76 -7 $1,092 $3,505,000 $7.5 / - 8  WEEKEND BOX OFFICE September 3-6, 2004 4-day Labor Day Weekend - 45 38 The Door in the Floor Focus $120,205 -2.9% 76 -7 $1,581 $3,542,785 $7.5 / - 8  WEEKEND BOX OFFICE September 3-5, 2004 3-day Labor Day Weekend - 44 38 The Door in the Floor Focus $92,816 -25% 76 -7 $1,221 $3,515,396 $7.5 / - 8
	10 settembre: E' disponibile la colonna sonora di CELLULAR! LA-LA LAND RECORDS Presenting the original motion picture score to New Line Cinema’s big-screen action/thriller CELLULAR, starring Kim Basinger (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, 8 MILE), Chris Evans (THE PERFECT SCORE), William H. Macy (SEABISCUIT, FARGO, THE COOLER) and Jason Statham (THE ITALIAN JOB, THE TRANSPORTER), opening in theaters nationwide September 10th. Acclaimed composer John Ottman (X2: X-MEN UNITED, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, GOTHIKA) redefines suspense with a thrilling orchestral score, accented with pulsing electronics, that captures the white-knuckle suspense of this riveting motion picture event. CD Booklet features official artwork and exclusive liner notes from the composer and the director.  Visit the film's offical site at http://www.cellularthemovie.com/

TRACK LISTING
1. Opening/Abduction (3:10)
2. Going Shopping (3:32)
3. Making A Connection (2:20)
4. Freeing Ricky (4:05)
5. Moony's Curious (1:21)
6. School's Out (4:22)
7. The Bait (3:06)
8. Epiphany/Bank (4:02)
9. LAX (4:21)
10. We're Going To Die (2:11)
11. The Pier (4:09)
12. Lost Connection/Dirty Cops (4:42)
13. Porsche/Simple Bio (3:36)
14. Police Station (4:01)
15. Fake Out (2:12)
16. Shoot Out (5:42)
TOTAL TIME (56:52)

	11 settembre: Nuovo carico di news e recensioni! Cell Phone Is a Lifeline in 'Cellular'  LOS ANGELES — In the real world, cell phones have become almost indispensable. And in the movie world of the new thriller "Cellular" (search), Kim Basinger's (search) life depends on one.  Directed by David R. Ellis, the film follows the story of a kidnapping victim who must convince a total stranger on the other end of the line to help save her life. Jessica Martin (Basinger) makes a random call and ends up connected to a young man named Ryan, played by Chris Evans (search). Jessica tells the cell phone owner she’s been abducted and thinks she’s going to be killed soon. She begs him to help save her husband and young son, whom the kidnappers have gone after next. But Ryan doesn’t have an easy task ahead of him if he decides to save the day. His battery is low and could die at any minute – and the frightened victim has no idea where she or the rest of her family are. “The thing I actually loved about it was [that] it was a ride I could take with the audience,” Basinger said of the movie. Evans said “Cellular” is an adrenaline rush and manages to sustain that anticipation throughout. “It’s one of those movies that’s just fast-paced,” he said. “It remains up there for the whole film. There are moments of comedy and drama, but it's all a byproduct of the suspense.” It’s also a flick that takes the importance of the cell phone to a whole new level, making it a literal lifeline for Basinger’s character. “They’re a very important tool,” director Ellis said. “At the same time, I think they’re abused. I hate them in restaurants, I hate them in movie theaters, I hate it when people are not paying attention as they’re driving down the road.” “Cellular,” rated PG-13, opens this weekend. Beating the Odds Historically speaking, the weekend after the Labor Day long weekend tends to be the slowest weekend of the year. But this year looks to buck the odds, as we should see a slight bounce from last weekend. And this increase should be thanks entirely to one movie, while this week's other new release will have to settle for a distant second place. The rest of the top five, and indeed the top ten, will finish way back but within a couple million of each other.  Resident Evil: Apocalypse is the sequel to the marginally successful video game movie from 2002. When determining whether a film deserves a sequel you have to take more than just the box office into account. If the film suffered from a steep drop and poor reviews, like Resident Evil did, then chances are the sequel won't be well received. You might get one big weekend out of it, but expect steep drops after that. Reviews for this film are about half as strong as the original's, but slightly better than I expected. And its theatre count is much, much higher at 3,284. So look for $25 million at the box office this weekend, but the film could earn more during the first three days than it will during the rest of its run.  Coming in a distant second should be the second new release of the weekend, Cellular. I was expecting the film's reviews to be abysmal, hovering around 20% positive, so to see them just shy of the overall positive threshold was a bit of a shock. So I've raised my expectations, not a lot, but I think $10 million opening should be the goal and it should have more reasonable legs.  The rest of the top ten, and possibly beyond, should finish within $2 million of third place.  Hero should see its box office cut in half, again. But adding another $4.5 million will push its total box office above $40 million so far.  Without a Paddle should continue to show the kind of legs that most movies would kill for. Look for just north of $4 million.  Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement's chances at $100 million pretty much ended on Labor Day, but the film should still have a solid shot at one more top five finish with $3.5 million.  Paparazzi, which was the biggest pleasant surprise last weekend, could show some serious legs this weekend, but I won't bet on it. Look for it to drop out of the top five and land at just over $3 million.  Collateral's chances at $100 million are still very strong since the film should at least come close enough for the studio to give the film an extra boast, especially after earning another $3 million this weekend.  Despite earning the best per theatre average in the top ten last weekend, there was no real expansion for Vanity Fair this weekend. Therefore, it will slump at the box office to just $3million.  Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid should see its box office slashed in half, again, leaving a little less than $3 million.  Rounding out the top ten will be Wicker Park with just $2.5 million, maybe. Limited releases, Napoleon Dynamite and Garden State both have a shot at the last spot, the latter more than the former.  'Cellular' works despite logic hangups Ryan, the improbable hero of the improbably entertaining trash thriller Cellular, is, according to his ex-girl, "irresponsible, self-centered and completely childish."  So, of course, when poor Jessica Martin gets in dire straits and manages to makes a random call by touching together the wires of a shattered telephone, who should answer but Ryan?  Jessica (Kim Basinger) has been kidnapped. She's certain her abductors plan to kill her. She needs help, quickly. But Ryan doesn't have time.  "You're wasting my minutes," he says breezily. "I gotta go."  Cellular is the latest of a long line of suspense films -- dating at least as far back as Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) -- in which life hangs by a slender telephone cord, except now the phone is wireless.  Ryan (Chris Evans) races to save a kidnapped woman who called his cell phone, in Cellular.  The movie's young beachgoers swim in cocoons of electromagnetic waves instead of enjoying the sun, and drivers pay more attention to their phones than to the road, but the film is nothing if not pro-cellular. The infernal contraption saves lives. And Ryan's phone has a video camera,which figures prominently in the plot.  Chris Evans (Not Another Teen Movie, the upcoming Fantastic Four) plays Ryan, and he's perfect as the reluctant hero. He's a laid-back beach boy who cares only about getting his girlfriend back.  He doesn't take Jessica seriously until he hears one of her kidnappers (Jason Statham) terrorize her. Then Ryan is desperate to help. But how?  He drives to police headquarters and gets a distracted cop's attention, but then a melee breaks out and Ryan is on his own.  Like Collateral, another thriller in which a cell phone provides a lifeline, Cellular sends its hero from one far-flung Los Angeles location to another.  First he races to a school to try to reach Jessica's son before the kidnappers get him. Later, after failing to follow the men back to their lair, he speeds to the airport to try to rescue Jessica's husband.  The movie expertly rachets up the speed and tension.  Collateral is infinitely more artful and intelligent -- it's so well-crafted its lapses in logic are distracting. Logic has nothing to do with Cellular, but it's so quick-moving and fun we don't care.  Humor is the movie's saving grace. A standout scene involves an obnoxious attorney driving a new Porsche who's forced to relinquish it to Ryan -- twice.  Basinger is the biggest drag on the movie. She's one of those actresses (Halle Berry is another) who often are better the less they say. That's why Basinger's so good in The Door in the Floor -- she's almost catatonic through most of the movie.  During her crucial telephone conversations with Ryan, she simply isn't believable as a desperate mother and kidnap victim. Luckily, she takes a back seat to the action and to Evans. And she's surrounded by terrific actors.  Statham, who had a small role in Collateral but is best known for The Italian Job, The Transporter and Snatch, has terrific presence. And William H. Macy figures prominently as a conscientious cop on the brink of retirement who stumbles blindly onto the kidnap plot.  At The Movies: "Cellular" First came "Phone Booth,'' in which Colin Farrell was trapped under a sniper's predatory gaze while making a call in Times Square. Now we have "Cellular,'' with a kidnapped Kim Basinger randomly calling a surfer dude's mobile phone for help.  One can only imagine what's next - "BlackBerry,'' perhaps, about threatening text messages, or "iPod: The Musical.''  While these all sound like totally ludicrous premises, the makers of "Cellular'' insist that their film is rooted in reality - that it's "a movie about social and moral responsibility,'' as producer Dean Devlin says. They've got the wrong number there.  "Cellular'' functions best when it has a little fun with itself and embraces its innate B-movie tendencies. Basinger, for example, plays Jessica Martin, arguably the hottest high-school science teacher ever.  Even after she's abducted from her home in posh Brentwood, Calif., by a motley, multicultural assortment of baddies, and even after their leader (Jason Statham) hauls her into a musty attic and smashes a phone on the wall with a sledgehammer, Jessica still manages to reconstruct the contraption by simply clicking a couple of wires together. She's like MacGyver in fishnet stockings.  Faster than you can say "Can you hear me now?'' she's on the line with shirtless slacker Ryan (Chris Evans from "The Perfect Score'' and "Not Another Teen Movie''). He's at the beach and is naturally skeptical when he hears Jessica's breathless voice gasping, "They're going to kill me _ you're my only hope.''  Ryan correctly wonders why she didn't just call the cops if she were truly in trouble, but eventually agrees to take his cell phone, with her still on it, to the police department himself. There he runs into Sgt. Mooney (William H. Macy, and what is he doing here?).  Mooney's on the verge of retiring after 27 years and plans to open a day spa with his wife, which inspires an amusing sight gag involving an algae facial mask.  And there are some other surprisingly funny little detours and supporting characters as Ryan runs around Los Angeles trying to save Jessica.  He finds a handgun and whips it out in a busy mobile phone store when his battery is running low and he needs a charger.  He also carjacks a convertible, ice-blue Porsche from a guy who has got to be the world's most obnoxious movie lawyer.  But then the movie dissolves into your usual action-flick fistfights and shootouts, despite the presence of Macy, the bungling "Fargo'' villain here serving in the heroic Marge Gunderson role.  Among the nagging plot holes: Why does Ryan have a cell phone signal in one stairway and not another? And why do Jessica's husband and 11-year-old son (named Ricky Martin, which is pretty funny) trust him, a complete stranger, when he tries to help them, too?  Larry Cohen, who wrote "Phone Booth,'' also conceived "Cellular'' and maintains a "story by'' credit, though first-timer Chris Morgan is credited with having written the screenplay. That sort of makes it a sequel, which would be fitting in the filmography of director David R. Ellis ("Final Destination 2,'' "Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco'').  "Cellular,'' a New Line Cinema release, is rated PG-13 for violence, terror situations, language and sexual references.  Running time: 89 minutes.  Two stars out of four. Tense 'Cellular' a mobile effort  Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham, William H. Macy. Director: David R. Ellis (1:32). PG-13: Violence, terror situations, language, sexual references.  The way technology rules our lives can seem soulless and intrusive, but the perks sure come in handy if you've been kidnapped.  So says "Cellular," a flimsy but pleasant popcorn movie that features an abducted science teacher, a surfer dude who responds to her distress signal and a sweet little cell phone that ties them together for one exhausting day.  Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is hustled from her suburban home to an attic somewhere with only a smashed wall phone and a view of a garage where the bad guys later stash Jessica's son.  These guys, led by the charismatic Jason Statham, want something from Jessica's husband, but she doesn't have a clue what it is.  "You've got the wrong family!" she keeps protesting.  Good thing she's got that science background. She patches together the broken wall phone and sparks a connection to Ryan (Chris Evans of "The Perfect Score"), a twentysomething slacker who can't be bothered distributing his girlfriend's charity leaflets let alone help a stranger whose biological clock is really ticking.  Basinger, a tremulous actress to begin with, is perfect for the task of basically huddling on an attic floor, clutching those dinosaurs of technology: wires, mouth- and earpieces. Her Jessica is just barely holding it together in both senses.  When the movie cuts to Ryan, we're in another film entirely - a teen comedy marked by adventure, silliness, buff bodies and car chases.  Ryan's challenge is to keep his signal from fading and his battery from dying while he tries to solve the kidnapping on his own, and this requires fancy driving, waving a gun around, stealing, fighting and assorted degrees of thuggery.  As Ryan, Evans attempts to graduate from "Not Another Teen Movie"-type fare to more adult stuff. He holds his own, but he has no edge.  There is nothing more to the movie than the usual thrills. But if you have a burning need to make deeper connections, the movie also says that older technology and the generation it guided still have something useful to teach the young'uns.  The seasoned Jessica, with her fragments of an old-fashioned land line, offers steady guidance in Ryan's ear as he tries out adult responsibility for the first time. And veteran character actor William H. Macy brings a welcome touch of maturity as a cop whose instincts won't let him forget the kid with the cell phone who tried to get his attention earlier in the day.  But, hold the phone! Didn't we see something like this last year? Larry Cohen wrote the story that is the basis of "Cellular" and also wrote the one that became "Phone Booth," wherein Colin Farrell was stuck on a call all movie long under the watchful eye of a sniper.  Neither movie became all it could be. But they both demonstrate an absorbing use of telecommunications - already a staple of our lives, even as we ignore it artistically - as a means of propelling story and character.  Movie Review: Cellular  Fast cars and cell phones, the staples of this generation. Cellular has got ‘um both but it’s not The Fast and the Furious. The film is a fast-moving thriller about kidnapping and an unlikely hero who could be any of us. We meet pretty, kind mom Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger), a high school biology teacher who is grabbed by a thug named Greer (Jason Stratham) and his pals after seeing her son off to school. Boom! This happens so fast and senselessly that your head will spin.  Greer demands that Jessica turn over to him something that her real estate agent hubby Craig (Richard Burgi) has. She doesn’t have a clue but Greer and the gang will hold her until hubby turns over the mystery item. These dudes must have the wrong family! Greer locks Jessica in an attic where there is an old-fashioned phone. Being a science whiz, she messes with loose wires (after Greer and goons smash the phone) and accidentally reaches Ryan (Chris Evans) on his cell phone. He’s a devil-may-care, irresponsible hottie whose girlfriend (Jessica Biel) has broken up with him for his flaky behavior.  The rest of the film is a race against time as Ryan has to rush around town trying to warn hubby, retrieve the mystery item, keep Jessica’s son safe and hopefully bring in the police all while his phone is running out of juice. Helping him, finally, is a close to retirement, bored office cop (William H. Macy) who is about to put his life savings into a day spa with his bossy wife.  Cellular is a fun film. It is non-stop exciting and Chris Evans is very Tom Cruise-style hot as his character tries to do the right thing…for a change. Kim Basinger is really believable as the confused, kidnapped woman and Bill Macy is funny and brave as the reluctant everyman cop who gets involved and turns hero despite himself. There is mystery to unravel and a cool “Speed-esque” format to the film since Ryan must not lose his signal to Jessica or risk her death.. This results in some very funny moments and humor is well-balanced with action in the film.  Cellular is one movie that you, your buds and parents will all enjoy. Sure, there are some logic holes but you are too busy rooting for Ryan to turn hero and rescue Kim and her family that you don’t care.  For a really fun, exciting and, at times funny ride.. 4 out of 5 stars Everyday phone scenarios help give thriller 'Cellular' that convincing ring Ryan (Chris Evans) is a young man who gets a phone call from a stranger claiming she has been kidnapped in "Cellular."  • Cast: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Eric Christian Olsen, William H. Macy, Jason Statham. • Locations: AMC Greenwood Park, Clearwater; Loews Cherry Tree, College Park; Regal Shiloh, Village Park, UA Galaxy, UA Eagle Highlands, UA Circle Centre; Kerasotes Showplace 12, Showplace 16; Legacy; Canary Creek; Pavilion; Tibbs. • Running time: 94 minutes. • Rating: PG-13; violence, terror situations, language, some sexual references.  By Tom Long The Detroit News A surprisingly spiffy postsummer treat, "Cellular" comes fully charged if just a little bit silly, a wham-bam action flick with no pretense and plenty of fun. It also should mark the arrival of actor Chris Evans (he'll be playing the Human Torch in the upcoming "Fantastic Four" movie), whose natural presence and regular-guy energy keep "Cellular" grounded even when it's spinning in circles. Wait a minute, don't Kim Basinger and William H. Macy and Jason Statham star in this thing? Yes, they do, but it's Evans' movie all the way. And that way does wind around some. Evans plays Ryan, your standard Venice Beach slacker dude trying to prove he's responsible when, deedle-deedle-deedle, his cell phone rings. It's a sobbing, near-hysterical woman named Jessica Martin (Basinger) on the phone, saying she's been kidnapped and is afraid her son and husband will soon be nabbed as well. After he figures out it isn't a prank, Ryan drives to a police station with the woman -- who's using a shattered phone that won't redial -- still on the line. He tells a desk cop named Mooney (Macy) what's going on, but the cop gets distracted and Ryan starts to lose the signal. And thus begins Ryan's long and crazy day of driving around trying to save the son and husband from abduction, figure out where Jessica is, keep his cell phone charged and stay out of tunnels. If he loses the connection, she's lost. Director and former stuntman David R. Ellis showed moments of flash in the otherwise absurd "Final Destination I" and moments of heart in "Homeward Bound II," but he puts it all together in a tight commercial package here. Though Basinger's plight is dire, there's plenty of humor thrown in as well and the pace never lags. What could have been a series of conversations in terror becomes a complete buzz of a film. Basinger is appropriately panicked here, and Statham does his patented snarling menace thing as the lead bad guy. And kudos also to Rick Hoffman, who's making a career out of playing weaselly lawyer-types. But Macy shines over all others as always, traveling from buffoon to action hero without missing a beat, in a way offering an older version of Evans' character. Sure it's all silly and yes, there are car crashes galore, girls in bikinis and lots of shootouts. But when car chases, bikinis and shootouts are outlawed this just won't be America anymore. "Cellular" is grand cheesy fun. Give it a ring. Ring! It's for you BY CHRIS HEWITT St. Paul Pioneer Press REVIEW: Cellular  MPAA rating: PG-13 (for violence, terror situations, language and some sexual references) Running time: 1:35 Cast: Dat Phan, Jason Statham, William H. Macy, Chris Evans, Kim Basinger Directed by: David R. Ellis  'Cellular' just the latest film to use the phone as a crucial plot device  "Cellular" is the sort of swift, entertaining nonsense that's perfect for the drive-in. It's a simple premise: A woman (Kim Basinger), kidnapped and squirreled away in a remote location, is able to reassemble a broken phone and contact a randomly dialed stranger (Chris Evans, who has the film's biggest role). Then, she has to keep him on the line as he tries to help because she's not sure she can get another call out. The aptly titled "Cellular" is all about the phones - her busted wall phone and his high-tech model - and the beauty of the movie is that it works every angle of cell-phone technology. Calls that bleed into other calls? The danger of losing a call when you enter a tunnel? Low batteries? Video features? Ringers that go off at the worst times? They're all here - even the witty end credits involve cell phones - and the movie gets mileage out of the idea that, with cell phones spreading like viruses, they are helpful and irritating in about equal measure. As "Cellular" makes fun of the tyranny of the mobile, it's almost as if it's making fun of the craziness of its own premise. Toward the middle, as Evans races all over L.A., the movie loses track of its claustrophobic premise (although the credits list a wardrobe stylist for Basinger, she has just one dress and she's in one room for most of the film), giving us too much time to ponder the variables: Wouldn't the bad guys tie up Basinger when they leave their hideout? Wouldn't she try to escape? And does everyone in the film have to be so relentlessly good-looking? But writer Larry Cohen and director David R. Ellis dole out information so expertly, telling us what we need to know exactly when we need to know it, that every time the goofiness of the premise yanks us out of the movie, its simplicity lures us back in. Who hasn't felt like Evans, suspicious of a call from a stranger? Who doesn't wonder if, given the chance, you'd be a good samaritan? Who hasn't gotten a wrong number and wondered what the caller's story was? It's easy to put yourself in Evans' shoes. The fun of the movie is watching him and wondering if you'd be equally resourceful if you were ever pulled into a crazy situation simply because, as he says, "I just answered my phone." 'Cellular' gets better reception than it should Stars: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, William H. Macy  MPAA rating: PG-13 for violence, terror situations, language and some sexual references  By Ed Blank TRIBUNE-REVIEW FILM CRITIC "Cellular" has little right to work as well as it does.  The plotting is sloppy. The characters are maddeningly careless. It's pretty bad when you start toting up the criminals' mistakes and thinking, "You don't deserve to get away with this."  And the unraveling of motivations includes an almost inexcusably shameful plot point designed to trigger audience reaction cheaply and counterproductively.  That said, "Cellular" generates more suspense than any purely formulaic thriller in years.  The story is credited to its original screenwriter, veteran writer-director Larry Cohen, who also wrote "Phone Booth," a flip side of "Cellular."  His new film, though, was rewritten by Chris Morgan and directed by David R. Ellis, a 52-year-old whose main credential until now was doing stunts in 65 movies. He pulls off "Cellular" with such intensity that you might resent its efficiency in overriding chronic foolishness.  You can't mistake the idyllic, sticky-cute, lovey-dovey opening scene between biology teacher Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) and her elementary school-age son Ricky Martin (Adam Taylor Gordon) as anything but a cliche-driven clue that it's the last happy moment they'll share for a while.  She's promptly kidnapped from their tony Brentwood, Calif., home by five thugs including Ethan (Jason Statham).  They stash Jessica in the spacious loft-attic of another large house.  Ethan smashes the attic wall phone but leaves its innards strewn about. That's it, stupid, leave the pieces.  Jessica toys with loose wires until she manages a random connection to the cell phone of 20-ish Santa Monica Pier habitue Ryan (Chris Evans).  Once he's persuaded her call is no gag, he navigates half of Southern California in a series of purloined vehicles, never coherently expressing the emergency at hand.  Why doesn't he just go to the police? He does at first. But a desk cop named Mooney (William H. Macy) is preoccupied planning a career segue into "day spa" management, and everyone else is slugging it out with gang members in the corridor.  Stay an extra moment and clarify his report? Go to another police station and begin again? Call 911?  Instead, he copes with so many callous twits, including a despicable lawyer -- the film's main comic relief -- that Los Angeles begins to look as though it's portraying stereotypical New York City.  Amidst all this irrational behavior, "Cellular" becomes an effective palm-sweater in the sphere of "Nick of Time" and "Deceived," although never remotely approaching classic stature. It's all surface. No substance. The film is ruled by the mechanics of moving Ryan around.  But, yeah, it moves. Time flies when a thriller is this well paced and trim at 92 minutes.  'Cellular' just the latest film to use the phone as a crucial plot device New York Daily News Most Americans have a love-hate relationship with the telephone - as do the movies. The latest evidence is "Cellular," opening Friday, in which a kidnapping victim (Kim Basinger) random-dials a stranger (Chris Evans) to beg for help. The two technologies grew up together in the late 19th century - the telephone having been patented in 1876. Silent one-reelers used Alexander Graham Bell's "electrical speech machine" as a source of comedy and drama. By the time Hollywood mythologized the man in 1939's "The Story of Alexander Graham Bell," his invention had been used to depict the new media's hectic pace (1931's "The Front Page," remade as 1940's equally frantic "His Girl Friday"), the threat to happy homes (1937's "Dangerous Number") and the height of elegance (in movies like "The Thin Man" and "Dinner at Eight"). "Ostentatious phones in movies were a mark of sophistication," says James Monaco, author of "How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media and Multimedia." "Rich characters in penthouses had huge, ornate phones that looked like sculptures. They were a far cry from the clunky black phones most people had, candlestick models like those used in `The Front Page,' or wall-mounted crank phones. "And even if moviegoers didn't have a telephone in their house, they could relate." Phones in movies would take on a darker tone with 1948's "Sorry, Wrong Number," in which a bedridden housewife (Barbara Stanwyck) listens in to what she thinks is a plot to murder her. The movie upends the telephone's intrinsic sense of community, presenting the voices on the other end of the line as ominous. Alfred Hitchcock tapped into the same fear in 1954's "Dial M for Murder," in which a wife (Grace Kelly) fights off a strangler when she picks up the receiver. In 1952's "Phone Call From a Stranger," a creepy lawyer (Gary Merrill) rings up the families of passengers on a doomed airplane. That sense of danger ("Who is this? How'd you get this number?") would continue through thrillers like "Play Misty for Me" (1971), "When a Stranger Calls" (1979) - which contained the line, "The calls are coming from inside the house!" - "Murder by Phone" and "Don't Answer the Phone!" (both 1980) and "Scream" (1996). In the Japanese and American versions of "The Ring" (1998 and 2002, respectively), viewers of a mysterious video get calls warning them of their imminent deaths. It isn't much safer on the streets, as a sleazy publicist (Colin Farrell) discovers in 2002's "Phone Booth," after he answers a ringing phone in Times Square and is told he'll be shot if he hangs up. That film's over-the-wires relationship between hunter and prey evoked 1975's "Dog Day Afternoon," which presented the power duel between criminal and cop as a dial-in dynamic. Just as telephones are deployed for dramatic effect - think of Jamie Foxx's cell troubles in this summer's "Collateral" - the disconnect between speaker and listener is grist for the comic mill. "There was a whole genre of plays, which Hollywood later imitated, where characters used `half-duplex dialogue' - talking on a phone to give plot information," says Monaco. "In the 1950s, the cinematic equivalent was the split-screen effect." The split screen was most famously used in 1959's "Pillow Talk," which centered on neighbors Doris Day and Rock Hudson's use of a party line; 2003's "Down With Love" paid homage to it with some saucy split-screen gags. Movies like "Clueless," "Girl 6," "Punch-Drunk Love" and the recent "Mean Girls" have gotten laughs from phone scenes. In 1989's "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," the heroes time-travel by stepping into a telephone booth (a nod to British TV's "Doctor Who"). And filmmakers understand that even in a visual medium, the sound of a lover's voice on the phone can be enticing. Just listen to the seductive tones and soulful pauses in movies like "Choose Me" (1984), "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993) and "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" (1996). In the 2000 romantic comedy "Keeping the Faith," Ben Stiller distracts paramour Jenna Elfman during a work meeting by calling her cell - which is set on vibrate and strapped to her thigh. The seductive use of the telephone was practiced by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in "The Big Sleep" (1946) and more explicitly by Michael Caine and Britt Ekland in "Get Carter" (1971). James Stewart and Donna Reed realize they're in love when they listen to the same receiver in "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946). And just as AT&T has always understood that its commercials need to appeal to family unity, so Steven Spielberg knew how to have his alien express the ultimate long-distance longing in "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982). "E.T., phone home," he plaintively gurgles. Good thing he doesn't get a busy signal. Basinger gets disconnected in 'Cellular' By David Elliott MOVIE CRITIC  Kim Basinger often gives the impression of a beautiful woman who has known, and expects, great torment. She could have soulfully played either Mary in "The Passion of the Christ," but her career is crucifixion enough.  It must be rather mortifying to Basinger to sink from Oscar-winning work in "L.A. Confidential" to such disposables as "Bless the Child" and now "Cellular," while in "8 Mile" she was part of the Eminem display package. The public, now so fickle about female stars, ignored her good work in "I Dream of Africa" and this summer's "Door in the Floor."  In "Cellular," from the writer of "Phone Booth," Basinger is the tormented mother Jessica, a science teacher. That provides a generic sort of explanation of how she can re-wire a smashed phone in the dark attic where she's been stuck by abductors of her son.  The motive, which only comes clear in slurred doses, is that Jessica's husband inadvertently videotaped crooked cops killing people. Rather than just go for him (and why has he left the tape in the camera?), the creeps lay terror on Jessica and the child, the thuggery led by hard, shave-headed specialist in coldness Jason Statham.  Jessica's impromptu phone repair lets her reach the cell phone of Ryan, a Santa Monica stud played by likable Chris Evans, who seems to be an advanced model of Mark Harmon. Nice guy Ryan is sucked into the plot, which is all vortex and little sense.  He proves he is not the "irresponsible" slacker dumped by his girlfriend. His inner Stallone is roused by wild street chases, a robbery, smash-ups, carjacking the same sports car twice (so we can savor the comic benefit of the owner's snotty attitude twice), jumping down chutes and off a pier.  The police are either twisted or unavailable, except for old desk pro Mooney (William H. Macy). "Twenty-eight years without this (bleep)," he grumps after shooting a rotten apple. Though nobody can make such a line more humanly enjoyable than Macy, not even he can make us think that Mooney, after so many years of padding around on softer duty, can dispose of grim brutes much younger, larger and not suffering from his neck wound.  Director David R. Ellis, up from stunt work (but not very far), hangs onto the whopper moments for dear life, even if cheap laughs outweigh a mother's pain. He gives a major moment of pathos to a busted cell phone.  The sadism is ruthless and repetitious. To affirm that she is still only a woman in peril, Jessica gets slapped around and abused with the ugly "b" word six or seven times. For easily adrenalized viewers, this works up a response.  Nothing here hasn't been done before, and better, but it passes the time. Some scenes are paced by screams, another is tuned to "Sinner Man," though it doesn't rival the Nina Simone salute in "Before Sunset."  Opening: "Cellular" (PG-13, 94 minutes). Kim Basinger is kidnapped and held in an attic; her child and husband are threatened. The phone in the attic is shattered, but as a science teacher she knows enough to piece it together. She dials at random, and gets a 20-something kid (Chris Evans) who at first thinks it's a gag. He eventually races all over Los Angeles to try to save her and her family. Strong performances by Jason Statham as a villain and William H. Macy as a quietly professional cop. From the same writer as "Phone Booth." Rating: Three and a half stars. MOVIE REVIEW: Dial M for mayhem  By STEPHEN HUMPHRIES, The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) - "Cellular" wastes little time in setting up its high-concept premise. Two minutes after the opening credits, Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is kidnapped from her home, driven to a remote location, and imprisoned in an attic. Oddly, the kidnappers don't bother to tie her up. (Isn't that rule No. 1 in "Kidnapping for Dummies"?)  The lead villain does, however, take the precaution of smashing the loft's dial phone with a sledge hammer. By the time he's finished making a Humpty Dumpty out of the receiver, one is convinced that not even MacGyver and an AT&T toolbox could get a dial tone out of it. Yet Jessica, now alone in the room, merely taps two copper wires together like a pair of jumper cables and manages to call a random number. (By now the movie had become so absurd that I half expected Carrot Top to pop onscreen to admonish Jessica for not calling collect.)  The stranger who answers her call is Ryan (Chris Evans), a cellphone-toting slacker who hangs out on the beach. At first, any long-distance relationship between Jessica and Ryan seems doomed. He initially thinks she's a prank caller. Worse, Ryan's ex-girlfriend has already accused him of being irresponsible, self-centered, and childish. But when it becomes apparent that the voice on the other end of the line isn't kidding, he resolves to save her without doing anything to jeopardize the fragile connection signal. That means no driving through tunnels. Plus, he needs a cellphone charger - and fast.  If the plot has a familiar ring, it's because the story is by Larry Cohen who also penned "Phone Booth," the 2002 movie in which a man answers a ringing public phone only to be told that he will be shot by a nearby sniper if he hangs up.  But where "Phone Booth" created a self-contained world that made viewers buy into its taut premise, "Cellular" dilutes any suspense by cramming its plot with contrivances. An overly earnest, shrill Kim Basinger doesn't garner any audience sympathy, either. Unlike veteran actor William H. Macy - who plays a meek cop - she doesn't seem to get how hokey the movie is. Fortunately Macy and newcomer Evans are a hoot - even if they are phoning in their performances. A woman who is kidnapped (Kim Basinger) manages to rebuild a shattered telephone and dials a random cell phone number. She pleads with the man who answers (Chris Evans) to help her, and finally she manages to convince him that it is not a prank call. Unable to enlist the help of the police the man tries frantically to find her and free her. Also with Jason Statham, Jessica Biel and Noah Emmerich. Directed by David R. Ellis. [1:35] SEX/NUDITY 3 - A man and a woman hug. A woman kisses a man on the cheek. A man looks at a woman wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt that reveals the outline of her nipples and says, "friend with nipples" and she is later referred to simply as "nipples." A man makes a remark that his car, "takes the girls' panties down..." A man talks about the size of a whale's sex organ. There are several beach and boardwalk scenes with men and women wearing skimpy swimwear. A woman's blouse hangs open revealing cleavage.  the review continues below... VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - A man grabs a woman and throws her on the ground, he threatens to kill her, she grabs a shard of glass and cuts his arm, which bleeds profusely; he stumbles and falls to the floor (we see blood gushing from the wound and hear that she cut an artery) and we later see him dead. A woman wraps her handcuff chain around a man's throat and squeezes until he falls limp (her young son watches and pleads with her not to kill him). Two men shoot back and forth at each other, one man is shot in the chest, falls back onto the ground and dies. Three men crash through a glass door, hold guns on two women, and one woman is shot in the back as she runs for the alarm. A man hits a man's head onto a steering wheel, pulls him out of the van, slams his head into the side of the van, and slams the door on his head twice (we see his bloody face and head). Two men fight over a gun, punching and shoving each other, and one hits the other on the head with the gun (children on a carousel watch the fight and we see blood on both men's faces). Several men kick and punch two men on the ground, and then shoot them (we see bodies lying on the ground). A man goes into a house with a gun drawn, a woman inside shoots at him (we see blood on his neck), he then shoots her three times in the chest (we see blood stains on her blouse) and she dies. A man with a sledgehammer walks briskly toward a woman, he swings the hammer toward her, she screams and ducks and the hammer shatters a telephone on a beam behind her. A man shoots at what he thinks is another man, and the man he was shooting at comes from behind him and hits him over the head with a surfboard knocking him to the ground. A man wraps a belt around a woman's neck and around a beam, he pulls it tight, and she screams and gags (we hear part of this over a telephone and then see what's happening). A man slams a metal pole into a man's chest, he falls to the floor, another man shoots at the man who hit him, he runs away and the man with the gun chases him. A man hits a man on the head with a gun. A man slams a man's head into a car door, and then shoves him into the car (we see bloody gash on the man's forehead). A man head-butts another man in the face (he falls to the ground). A man grabs a woman by the throat and threatens to shoot her in the head, and another man punches a man (he's her husband) in the face repeatedly (we see his bloody face). Several men begin fighting with police officers in the lobby of a police station (shoving and punching). A man swings an oar at another man, who grabs the oar, punches the man and holds a gun on him. We hear news reports of two men being shot execution style in the back of the head (we see two bodies lying on the street). A man slides down a construction site chute and another man shoots at him. A man held at gunpoint is taken into a bank. A man holds a gun to a man's car, threatens to shoot it and then steals the car. A man drives recklessly through traffic going the wrong way, he swerves, and a truck swerves dropping lawn equipment onto the road causing a multi-car pile up. A woman crashes her car into a garage, and the structure collapses when she backs out. A man backs his car up out of a tunnel causing other cars to swerve. A woman sees her son being held by a man and another man threatens to kill the boy, the woman screams and punches the man repeatedly, and he throws her to the floor. A boy is grabbed and pulled into a car. A woman is manhandled, shoved and pushed to the floor of a dark attic. A man hears a woman being beaten and threatened over a telephone (we hear her screaming and hear thuds and see the man panicking as he hears this). A man is held forcibly by security at an airport when a gun is found in his possessions. A man tells another man to cut a boy's throat. A man threatens to kidnap a woman's son and to kill him, in a couple of scenes. A man shoots a sign in a store crowded with people, and people scream and drop to the floor. A man drives through a construction site, through ditches, splashing muddy water, and he crashes through a fence and drives across traffic lanes -- without being struck. A man drives erratically and yells at other drivers in several scenes. A man yells at a woman in several scenes. A woman quakes uncontrollably in fear for her life and the lives of her son and husband. A truck crashes into a car and the car explodes (there are no passengers). PROFANITY 5 - 2 F-words, 1 obscene hand gesture, 42 scatological terms, 10 anatomical terms, 15 mild obscenities, 5 religious profanities, 12 religious exclamations. [profanity glossary] DISCUSSION TOPICS - Kidnapping, responsibility, relationships, family, corruption, police brutality, dreams, goals, misdemeanors. MESSAGE - The means can justify the ends if it is to save someone's life -- as long as the means used are misdemeanors and not crimes. "Cellular" has the best advertising tag line I've read this year: "If the signal dies, so does she."  It's simple, it's clever and it tells you how the plot will work. If kidnap victim Kim Basinger loses her phone connection, that's it for her. The tag line promises what "Cellular" will hold, and the filmmakers deliver on its promise.  "Cellular" is a quick, efficient thriller that gets right to the point. A brief preamble establishes that Basinger's character, Jessica Martin, is a biology teacher who just dropped her son (Adam Taylor Gordon) off at grade school.  Then — BAM! — bad guy Jason Statham ("The Italian Job") kicks in the kitchen door, shoots the housekeeper, grabs Jessica, drives her to his hideout and throws her in the attic. Then, just to show her who's boss, he grabs a sledgehammer and smashes the phone behind her.  The dummy should have just cut the wire.  Jessica fiddles with the pieces of the phone, taps the wires together and succeeds in placing a call to...  Ryan (Chris Evans), a lackadaisical surf bum whose cell phone rings as he runs an errand for his ex-girlfriend (Jessica Biel). Ryan doesn't believe Jessica's story but agrees to take the phone to the police.  This introduces officer Bob Mooney (William H. Macy), a beleaguered desk sergeant about to retire and open a day spa with his wife. Mooney listens to Jessica's voice only briefly before circumstances force Ryan out of the police station, but something about Ryan's story niggles at Mooney's untapped store of deductive reasoning.  Now convinced Jessica is in danger, Ryan realizes his cell phone is her lifeline as he races around Los Angeles determined to save her and not lose the signal. Chris Morgan's script throws every telecommunications and traffic obstacle at Ryan that you would predict (a dying phone battery and road construction) and a few that you wouldn't (a middle-aged white woman blasting rap music and a runaway cement mixer).  As another L.A.-traversing thriller based on a simple gimmick, "Cellular" is similar to "Speed," but with a sense of humor. Director David R. Ellis pulls off an impressive balancing act, filling the plot with surprisingly hilarious moments without downplaying the character's peril. Many of the laughs come out of such situations as Ryan apologetically carjacking an obnoxious lawyer's Porsche.  Other laughs come from Macy's deadpan style. His character never seems foolish, even when he performs a scene wearing an avocado mud mask ("For combination skin," he explains). Macy keeps the plot honest, while newcomer Evans keeps it moving.  Basinger isn't the ideal actress to spend a film crying and pleading into a phone, but she keeps the hysterics to an acceptable level. Toward the climax, she cuts loose and proves that a biology teacher is the last person you want to face in a knife fight.  "Cellular" is the flip side of "Collateral," taking place in L.A.'s cheerful daytime instead of its existential nighttime. Still, Ryan faces many of the same dilemmas as Jamie Foxx's cab driver.  "Cellular" doesn't have the depth of "Collateral," but it doesn't want to. It's fast, fun and exciting, and that's all it needs to be.  Films in Focus: 'Cellular' connects with good, dumb fun By Journal Times staff  After watching and thoroughly enjoying "Cellular," I realized the real problem with most formulaic thrillers isn't that they are so dumb, it's that the people making them don't seem aware of that fact. This isn't a problem with "Cellular," a film that gleefully embraces its stupidity with such good humor that I'm almost tempted to call it smart. Mind you, this isn't a spoof or a subversive comedy masquerading as a dumb thriller; it's the genuine article. But without succumbing to parody, the makers of "Cellular" consistently acknowledge the silliness of their material and the movie is all the better for it. Think of this gimmick-driven film as a less bloated relative of "Speed," kept to a sensibly trim 90 minutes and with a leading man a bit less dramatically challenged than Keanu Reeves. "Cellular" hits the road running immediately after the opening credits, as we see upper middle class housewife Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) abducted by a fearsome band of kidnappers minutes after dropping her son off at school. At first, this seems a little too sudden, as if several minutes of character development had been forgotten by another lazy group of Hollywood screenwriters. But it soon becomes evident that this movie is all about the ride and the filmmakers wisely step on the gas right away. Held captive in an attic, Jessica pulls a MacGyver and manages to get a phone smashed by the kidnappers working again, though she has no way to dial. Randomly touching wires, she somehow gets through to the cell phone of Ryan (Chris Evans), a beach bum in his 20s. After Jessica convinces Ryan of her plight, he goes to the police, but unexpected obstacles arise that make help from the law impossible, though a straight-shooting cop named Mooney (William H. Macy) does get in on the action.  From there, it's off to the races as Ryan tries to find the best way to save Jessica and her family while maintaining contact on his cell phone - his only link to the imperiled mother. Though he's just a nervous kid in over his head, Ryan is soon stealing cars and dodging other vehicles at top speed and with the precision of the world's greatest stunt driver. No surprise to find that director David Ellis ("Final Destination 2") is a veteran stunt coordinator and he certainly shows that experience in this film dominated by expertly staged action sequences. But what keeps the film from becoming a monotonous string of chases is a fun script by newcomer Chris Morgan drawn from a story by Larry Cohen, a legend of low-budget filmmaking thanks to such cult classics as "It's Alive," "Hell Up in Harlem," and "Q: The Winged Serpent." Having enjoyed recent mainstream success with his screenplay for 2002's "Phone Booth," Cohen must have decided that phone films were a good gimmick. He was right. Like "Phone Booth," "Cellular" milks a fair amount of tension out of the simple idea of a guy who has to stay on the phone. The difference is "Phone Booth" depended on claustrophobic confines while "Cellular" is an open road joyride. I've never found Basinger to be the compelling actress others do, but she hits the right notes as a basic damsel in distress. Evans ("The Perfect Score") makes an amiable accidental hero and Macy excels in another tailor-made role as the frustrated, slightly nerdy cop. Jason Statham ("Snatch") is suitably menacing as the leader of the kidnappers and Noah Emmerich ("The Truman Show") is very good as one of Macy's fellow cops. But "Cellular" isn't a character-driven piece and the actors really don't need to bring too much conviction to their roles to make it work. Its surface-level amusement is effective because it is technically polished and especially because the filmmakers made sure the audience would laugh with its implausible twists and clichés instead of laughing at them. Rating: HHH (Three stars) Starring Kim Basinger, Chris Evans and William H. Macy. Directed by David Ellis. Screenplay by Chris Morgan, based on a story by Larry Cohen. Rated PG-13 for violence and language.  Parents' Film Guide PG-13 CELLULAR: Flawed, illogical R-ish thriller still thrills with surprising action; Kim Basinger as woman abducted violently from her home, threatened with death for her and her son (Adam Taylor Gordon); she hot-wires a smashed wall phone and randomly reaches a callow guy (Chris Evans) on his cell at Santa Monica Pier; he races to save her; both William H. Macy as desk sergeant, Jason Statham as bad guy shine. Kidnapping of child; bloody gunplay; strangulation seen by child; head-banging fights; character bleeds to death; car chases; barnyard profanity; crass sexual jokes; subtler, menacing sexual innuendo. Not for middle-schoolers. 'CELLUAR' HAS A BAD CONNECTION  Car chases, comic relief kill the tension in thriller about a man entwined in a kidnapping by a random phone call  "Cellular" has all the earmarks of a genuinely smart thriller rewritten by a studio-lapdog script doctor who was told it didn't have enough car chases and comic relief. As originally conceived by Larry Cohen ("Phone Booth"), the film makes cunning use of the titular technology in its plot that follows an aimless beach dude (utterly bland buff-boy Chris Evans) whose cell phone is on the receiving end of a desperate call for help from a kidnapped woman (Kim Basinger). By tap-tap-tapping together the wires of a smashed old rotary phone, she's managed to dial his number at random from the attic where she's being held. Disbelieving at first, Evans ("Not Another Teen Movie") is soon robbing a cell phone store for a charger (his battery is low) and stealing cars to drive like Andretti through downtown Los Angeles, trying to beat the bad guys to Basinger's son and husband (it's him they're really after) so he can save the day. The movie's otherwise terrific tension is undermined by such overblown action, and by a distracting deluge of cheap laughs (an leathery middle-aged white woman playing loud hip-hop on her car stereo, etc.), and by the many occasions on which either Evans or the kidnappers (led by charismatic tough-guy Jason Statham) have to do something stupid to keep the story moving. Basinger is mostly regulated to screaming and crying, while Evans' character uses the bells and whistles on his mobile phone (call logs, video captures, etc.) in truly resourceful ways to outwit the kidnappers -- who prove to be dangerous in startling ways that plausibly exclude our hero going to the police. (After attempts to do so meet ill-fated results, however, one cop, played by William H. Macy, follows his instincts to his own perilous discoveries.) Unfortunately, director David R. Ellis ("Final Destination 2") and first-time screenwriter Chris Morgan (credited with the drafts after Cohen's) miss the boat on so many other plot blunders (e.g., an implied blackmail subplot that is never resolved) that the picture threatens to collapse if given any measure of scrutiny. It's a pity because somewhere inside "Cellular" there's a snappy Hitchcockian B-movie struggling to get out. Basinger's Beautiful Hardship  Big screen beauty KIM BASINGER has spent 30 years struggling to win dream film roles, because directors could never see beyond her sex symbol image.  The 8 MILE actress insists her stunning looks played havoc with her career, and she's delighted the plight of age has proved fruitful in her quest for good film parts.  Basinger, 50, says of her movie beauty stigma, 'It makes it twice as hard to prove yourself as an actress.'  In 1998, Basinger won a Best Supporting Actress OSCAR for her role in LA CONFIDENTIAL.  Movie Review: 'Cellular' keeps you on the line WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER  Chris Evans is angling to be the next Tom Cruise. And "Cellular" is the movie that will get the handsome hunk noticed, from his first shirtless moment on the Santa Monica Pier.  Kim Basinger plays Jessica, a kidnapped woman locked in an attic with a smashed telephone, in "Cellular."  Add the still-hot Kim Basinger as a quaking hostage in a little black dress, then intercut action sequences featuring Evans, and cut the tension with hip humor.  Hold the phone, I think we've got a late-summer winner here.  Evans plays Ryan, dumped by his girl (Jessica Biel in a bit role) for being self-centered and unreliable. He vows to prove her wrong.  Cellular  Quality: * * *  Stars: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, William H. Macy  Director: David R. Ellis  Rating: PG-13 for violence, language, sexual references  Theaters: 20 Grand, Cinema Center, Q-Cinema 9, Omni 4, Twin Creek Cinema, Village Pointe Cinema, Oak View 24, Star Cinema Basinger is Jessica, who sees her son, 11, off to school and then is kidnapped at gunpoint and whisked to an unknown location. A captor smashes the attic phone with a sledgehammer, then locks her in.  But Jessica is a science teacher, and she pieces the phone's innards together. Guess whom she gets on his cell phone.  Ryan goes from "don't waste my monthly minutes" to a man with a mission when he hears Jessica being roughed up. The trick is to keep contact with her, because she can't dial and he doesn't know where she is.  Sooner or later, you'll see every feature on that cell phone become crucial to the plot.  And every cell irritant, too: weak signal, low battery, background noise, distracted yacking drivers, cell phone salesmen, cell phone users everywhere.  At the climax of a preview screening - I swear I am not making this up - a cell phone went off in the audience.  Savvy screenwriter Larry Cohen recognized the cell phone as a ripe target. Cohen also wrote "Phone Booth," in which Colin Farrell is trapped in one spot by a sniper on the other end of the line. Cohen wanted "Cellular" to be that movie's opposite in that the protagonist could go anywhere, yet the same in that he could not hang up.  William H. Macy plays a tired cop to whom Ryan tries to hand the phone, and later the cop can't rest when loose ends are uncovered. The wife's dream of having him retire from the force and help her open a spa becomes a recurring joke.  At one point Ryan steals a racy convertible (can you say car chase?) from an obnoxious lawyer (vanity plates: WL SU YU 2) - and the lawyer also becomes a joke with legs.  In this kind of romp, which doesn't take itself too seriously, you know your hero and the nice-guy everyman cop have to prevail over the nasty kidnappers, whose motives are gradually revealed as they pressure poor Jessica for information by menacing her husband and kid.  So the point isn't biting your nails. It's solving the riddle, waiting to see how they get past the next ridiculously contrived barrier, watching them just miss a solution by inches or seconds, enjoying the wild ride.  And for 90 minutes or so, "Cellular" does a pretty good job of keeping you on the line.  Nokia Goes Hollywood  By Rich Smith  The Motley Fool  To coin a phrase: It was the best of product placements. It was the worst of product placements. On Sept. 10, Finnish cell-phone handset maker Nokia will become a major Hollywood action movie star opposite Kim Basinger. Its new Nokia 6600 videophone will get the title role in the film "Cellular," distributed by Time Warner's New Line Cinema, as the heroic phone used by a police officer to track down a kidnapped Ms. Basinger.  With Nokia's new phone featuring so prominently in the storyline, and presumably garnering lots of close-ups with the company's trademark prominently displayed, what could possibly go wrong with this product placement? Lots. You see, in addition to being a vehicle to revive Ms. Basinger's fallen star-hood, this movie aims to "connect with people" -- much as Nokia does itself -- by getting them to identify with the frustrations of the police officer as he attempts to track down and rescue Ms. Basinger.  He will endure short battery life, "one-bar" signal situations, and the misnamed customer "service" of his cell-phone provider. Reportedly, at one point the poor constable gets so frustrated that he discharges his sidearm in a cell-phone store. Lucky for him that, in order to stay connected to Ms. Basinger so the film can come to the usual happy ending, the officer can be reasonably certain he will not have to deal with dead zones or dropped calls.  The negative portrayal of cell-phone service in the U.S. was sufficiently traumatic to scare away literally every cell-phone provider approached with a product placement offer. That includes SBC Communications and BellSouth joint venture Cingular, Sprint, and Nextel, according to The Wall Street Journal. Verizon Wireless may or may have not been approached by the film's makers, but AT&T Wireless claims no one even contacted them. That's kind of funny, in a movie about lousy cell-phone service -- although the repeated attempts to sign Cingular on for the movie make sense for the same reason.  The providers' reluctance to attach their names to this film is understandable. And even Nokia is taking a risk in what is probably the most prominent product placement ever conceived. As for whether it pays off in the end for the company -- well, I don't want to spoil the ending. 'Evil' Returns with a Vengeance at Box Office By Nicole Sperling  LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Since the box office hit rock bottom last weekend, there's no place to go but up. And two films targeting very different audiences are looking to take advantage of the usual seasonal slump this weekend.  Sony Pictures' Screen Gems division will roll out "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" for horror fans, while New Line Cinema will unveil "Cellular," a kidnapping thriller centering on the conceit of cellular phone as hero, in an attempt to connect with older filmgoers. Both pictures should perform decently, while most of the holdovers are likely to slump into the low-single-digit millions.  Screen Gems scored in 2002 with "Resident Evil," the horror film based on the popular Sony PlayStation game. Reaping a $17.7 million opening and grossing $39.6 million domestically, "Resident Evil" has generated a sequel with Milla Jovovich (news) returning in her role as one of two survivors of a contained biochemical disaster. The sequel takes off where the first one concluded, sending Jovovich, whose character has been genetically altered with superhuman strength, into a series of battles with a group of aggressive zombies.  Screenwriter Paul W.S. Anderson, who directed the first "Resident Evil" as well as the recent "Alien vs. Predator," has turned over the directing reins to Alexander Witt, making his feature directorial debut after a successful career as a second unit director. Bowing in 3,284 theaters, the R-rated scarefest is likely to outperform its predecessor's opening weekend and could bring in close to $20 million, a figure similar to Screen Gems' most recent horror win, "Underworld," which reaped $21 million in its opening frame in September 2003.  "Resident Evil" is likely to perform strongest Friday night, while "Cellular" is hoping to attract the date crowd for a Saturday night score. "Cellular" follows a similar story line to writer Larry Cohen's most recent success, "Phone Booth," which earned $46.6 million in summer 2003. This time around, the phone is mobile, though, so it can travel with the hero Chris Evans ("The Perfect Score") as he tries to rescue Kim Basinger (news) and her son from the clutches of an evil kidnapper. Co-starring William H. Macy as the cop who helps Evans, "Cellular" is tracking well with younger and older female audiences. Basinger, who is starring in the specialized film "The Door in the Floor," is not known as a box office draw. She has found greater success in her supporting roles, included her Academy Award-winning performance in "L.A. Confidential," Basinger's previous star turn in 2000's "I Dreamed of Africa" opened to $6.5 million. The PG-13 "Cellular," opening in 2,749 theaters, might be her biggest bow yet, with insiders predicting that it will generate close to $10 million.  The indie market seems a bit crowded this weekend. Warner Independent Pictures will bow "Criminal," the English-language remake of the Argentine thriller "Nine Queens." Starring indie faves John C. Reilly, Diego Luna and Maggie Gyllenhaal, WIP's crime drama will open in 77 locations. The R-rated film marks the directorial debut of Gregory Jacobs, the longtime first assistant director to Steven Soderbergh. "Criminal" focuses on two con men, played by Reilly and Luna, who have 24 hours to swindle a rare piece of currency. Soderbergh's production company Section Eight also is a producer on the film.  IFC Films opens the R-rated "When Will I Be Loved" on eight screens in Los Angeles and New York. Starring Neve Campbell (news) as a femme fatale who schemes against two men who have taken her for granted, "Loved" comes from director James Toback ("Harvard Man," "Two Girls and a Guy") and offers a twist on the "Indecent Proposal" plot.  Palm Pictures will bow the unrated "Reconstruction," directed by Christoffer Boe, on one screen in New York. The psychological romantic drama from Denmark won the Camera d'Or for best first film at the 2003 Festival de Cannes and also marked Denmark's official foreign-language Academy Awards (news - web sites) entry last year. The film centers on a man who falls in love with a married woman only to find her gone the next morning and his identity missing as well.  Reuters/Hollywood Reporter  MOVIE REVIEW: Cellular Evans, Basinger make a connection in movie BY DANIEL NEMAN TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Sep 10, 2004  MOVIE REVIEW  CELLULAR  CAST: Chris Evans, Kim Basinger AT: Carmike, Chester, Commonwealth, Crossings, Short Pump, Southpark, Virginia Center, West Tower FYI: Running time: 1:32. Rated PG-13 (violence, terror situations, language and some sexual references) Sometimes, when you're on the edge of your seat, you don't notice what got you there. "Cellular" is an action thriller so effective in creating tension that it is possible to ignore all of the major, gaping problems in the plot and the inconsistencies. You just hold tight and enjoy the ride. Afterward, while your muscles are slowly and painfully unclenching, you can replay all the flaws in your mind. But it's best not to. "Cellular" is everything "Phone Booth" wanted to be but wasn't. Two strangers are linked in a life-and-death situation by a phone call that must not be disconnected or an innocent person will die. The difference is that "Phone Booth" felt like an experiment, an exercise. "Cellular" feels like a movie. Kim Basinger gets top billing as Jessica, a mother, wife and teacher who lives in a $3 million house in Brentwood but doesn't think she is rich. You've got to love Hollywood. Anyway, Jessica is kidnapped by a group of murderers who take her to a very nice arts-and-crafts style house. Left unattended, she manages to make a call at random to our hero du jour, Ryan, played by Chris Evans. The remaining 98 percent of the film shows Ryan hanging on the phone, trying to find Jessica, save her life, keep her family from harm, solve a few crimes and basically make the world safe for democracy. Evans, who was last seen in that awful SAT film "The Perfect Score," turns out to be up to the challenge. He is by turns disbelieving, concerned, frustrated, protective, tough and always resourceful. But he is not above enjoying a wild ride in a fast car if one happens to come to him. Basinger proves herself a worthy actress after all, and although we catch her acting sometimes, she almost completely obliterates the negative impression left by "The Door in the Floor." And in the William H. Macy role, William H. Macy is as solid as ever. Here he plays a wimpy cop with a heart. Writer Chris Morgan has come up with an entire movie full of complications, obstacles and variations on the theme of maintaining cellular phone contact. (Don't go in that tunnel! You'll lose the connection!) Director David R. Ellis is not unfamiliar with the work of Alfred Hitchcock, which he uses to his advantage. His work here is so slick and assured that we get caught up in the story despite ourselves. We realize as it happens that the plot takes us a coincidence too far - a Noah Emmerich coincidence, yes, in the Noah Emmerich role. We notice the small problems (a fire alarm in a stairwell), the technical problems (the whole film appears to be shot at the same time of day) and the huge problems (Dude, you're in a police station. Find a cop and tell him what is happening). It's massively flawed but also massively entertaining. "Cellular" has got your number. Movie openings CELLULAR. Opens today in area theaters. Starring Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham, William H. Macy. Directed by David R. Ellis. A random wrong number on his cell phone sends a young man on a race against time to save a kidnapped family. " "Cellular' is a brilliant, muscular thrill ride. The performances are all as taut as the script by Christopher Morgan. Who would ever guess the cell phone - that annoying yuppie nuisance - could create such excitement?" 95 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for violence, terror situations, language and some sexual references.) (Elizabeth Barr)  Kim Basinger: Classic Beauty Goes “Cellular”  Gorgeous blonde Kim Basinger is noted for not only her beauty but strong acting chops.  Hey, she played Eminem’s mom in 8 Mile, and was Batman’s first girlfriend Vicki Vale okay! She also won an Oscar for her portrayal of a high class call girl in the noir thriller L.A. Confidential. Now she stars as a desperate kidnapped woman in the action thriller Cellular. Kim is one of our fave people because she speaks out on animal rights causes even if it doesn’t make her popular. She’s rescued dogs from test labs and done her part to save elephants from cruelty in circuses.  Kim, who is an “older” mom of a young daughter, looks at least fifteen years younger than she is. Rest easy Kim. I’m not tellin’. When we chatted with the affable actress in a Santa Monica beach hotel, she was all Hollywood glam in long flowing blonde hair, classic black suit and small diamond earrings. She’s been busy with quirky indie films lately but Cellular is poised to be a wider-audience hit. The hot blonde talked about her tough, emotional scenes in the film, her daughter, her work with animals and her own cell phone experiences. Push “talk” and tune in to our conversation.  TeenHollywood: You are pretty busy lately.  Kim: These three opportunities sort of popped up all at once: I did The Door in the Floor and then once I finished that little human drama, I went and did a little film in Albuquerque called Elvis Has Left The Building. Then this one. These were just three opportunities that happened to pop up in the same year. That doesn’t happen to me that often. TeenHollywood: How hard is it to do a film like this where it is so emotional every single day of the shoot? Kim: You know, I really loved this opportunity because it was more like a play to me.  And I love new challenges. I said to David (the director), "I don’t want the crew around me. I want as few people there to make it as real as I could." I wanted you guys up there with me because I don’t know what is going to happen to me and I don’t know why I was thrown in there. And, you guys don’t either. So I love that. I don’t think I can remember a film I have been in where I have had the opportunity to do that.  TeenHollywood: Wasn’t it really difficult?  Kim: Yes, it was quite a roller coaster ride emotionally every day.  My crew, I think they suffered more than me. They would watch me and say, "Oh, my God, she has to go back in the attic." It was every day that I had to pick up right where I left off. It takes you a long time to learn how to be an actress and then you find these buttons that become so accessible to you. And you just push them. God forbid, I have never had to be in a situation like this, but I tried to get as close as I could to imagining what it would be like. And the word "kidnapping", especially being a mom, becomes a huge fear in your life. So it was a challenge and a bit for me emotionally.  TeenHollywood: You have a great emotional arc in the film. From calm and confident to hysterical. Can you talk about the development of your character?  Kim: You have to kind of write the song yourself as you go along, so that it has those different layers.  Because human nature is like that. But I think shock and hysteria and fear, of course, is all in there. But once I had Chris’s character understanding this was a real situation, I think it became a fight for your life. And then you found out it was about your son and you sort of lower the whole mechanism so that you clearly understand all that is going on. And always keeping that fear that we could be disconnected at any moment. So it was a balance to do, a challenge. But I enjoyed it. As I have grown up in the acting world, I have learned a lot about really listening and keeping quiet, even in my own life. Less talk, more listening. It has taught me a lot about life and acting. TeenHollywood: How did you do the scenes where you are on the phone? Was Chris Evans (her co-star) there? Kim: No. For one little piece Chris was there one day. But they had finished filming him and then they did me as the last part of the film. So they did him as the first half and I got to hear his voice. And we had to change lines, sometimes things didn’t work. So it was read to me off stage sometimes.  TeenHollywood: Chris said it was a good idea that you didn’t have face to face encounters during these scenes because you aren’t supposed to know each other.  Kim: It was great. It worked out the way it should have worked out. My first day of filming was the last scene when I get out of the van and see him. That was the first time I had ever seen Chris. They said "We really hate to do this to you, but you are going to have to get out of the van all beaten up and you are going to have to have already been through it all”. That was my first scene.  TeenHollywood: What about your cell phone use? Do you have one with a camera in it? Kim: I hate that thing with the camera because we have been so disturbed by them sometimes. Like I’m seeing a Broadway play, people will start taking your picture when you are sitting there with your daughter. Anybody who has a kid (knows what I mean). I am a mom, so I have a cell phone. It’s that simple. But then some people just like to take pictures of their dog.I am not a real good technical person. I don’t have a lot of the gadgets. Sometimes they are forced down your throat and if you do have a young kid and they are into all the stuff for school, then you have to learn, you know. But I carry my cell phone and usually it is in the cradle in the car. TeenHollywood: Any thoughts on cell phone etiquette? Kim: Haven’t people gone crazy? It is so disturbing. I think it is wonderful to have a cell phone in your car in case you get in trouble. Really, it is important. But I honestly think it should be hands free in this whole country. Honestly. You see too many accidents happening. I live in my car because I live in California. And you see people all the time making wrong turns and whatever and they have got this in their hand! TeenHollywood: Let’s talk purses (okay, guys, tune out). What do you always carry with you? Kim: A camera. I love to paint, so I love to take photographs of things (to paint). Cash. My credit card. I am not a real girly girl, so no make up. Oh, my sun stick for my lips. Probably some breath freshener. Things for Ireland (her daughter whose dad is actor Alec Baldwin). I always take lollipops in my bag because she always gets car sick. She turns nine in October. And if you had asked me this three years ago, it would be full of anything to keep her occupied. So I think it is about time to clean up my purse, okay? TeenHollywood: Are you still involved in animal rights causes? Kim: You know, I am always working on several different things with several different organizations. Always. It is a never-ending, horrific, horrible thing in every country. So right now, we are working on a number of different issues. I am a spokesperson for PAWS. Performing Animal Welfare Society. I work with the Farm Sanctuary in California. They also have another sanctuary in New York. I do work also with individual issues that PETA brings to my attention.  TeenHollywood: What animals will you have at your home? Kim: Between my two houses on the same property, we have a menagerie: kitties and doggies and rats and..you name it.  TeenHollywood: What is on tap for the next chapter of your life? Kim: I hope a lot of creative things up the road that I want to work on. But I think just watching my daughter come into her own. Into her creativity and then watching what the rest of my journey is going to be about. I am very open about it. I look so forward to it. TeenHollywood: I haven’t seen you doing plays. Any plans for that? Kim: Now, I am reading some things for film.  You know what? I have got to tackle that (theater) because it is a fear of mine. I would love to do it and I have been asked many times if I wanted to come to Broadway and do something. So I think it might be one of those steps in the near future if I could find something I really wanted to do. I think it would be mortifying, but I have a tendency to go toward anything I fear. TeenHollywood: Back to Cellular, it looks like you really got roughed up. If you didn’t know what the actor playing the kidnapper was going to do to you, did you end up with any injuries? Kim: Oh, I got bruised and banged up and cut a lot. But you know what? I try to keep pretty physically in shape and not just for the look of it but really keep in shape with weights and running and all that stuff. I was ready to take on this part, but I knew, you can’t get thrown on tables and against glass and not expect to get cut a little.  TeenHollywood: How are you and your daughter Ireland doing? Does she worry about you being an “older” mom?  Kim: You have this child that depends on you.  And I think when you have a child later in life like I did, you find they come to you in the most innocent way. I know my daughter was mad at me for having her as late as I did in my life and it has been a delicate subject. But at the same time I have great beliefs in what I believe in. And she has a great foundation in her faith and her belief as well. We believe and we will never really be apart ever. She has never really asked me and we haven’t gone through it again. TeenHollywood: Some of her friends parents may be a few years younger than you, but you sure appear to be their age! Kim: Thank you. You know what? The real truth is I don’t go there and I don’t really care. But I do really wish we had more of the European feeling of age in this country because it has put so much pressure not just on the women, but on the men and the children, too. It’s sad to see a little 8 year-old like my own look at the other girls and start holding in her stomach. My daughter is as thin as a rail. I mean, I have trouble keeping weight on her. And already they are evaluating their own bodies and that is sad. So I hope to adopt that same attitude as I get older and bring it in to my home. Can you hear us now? It's good By Bob Strauss Film Critic There is trash. And there is Larry Cohen-generated trash. Happily, "Cellular" is very much the latter. With all due respect to director David R. Ellis ("Final Destination 2") and screenwriter Chris Morgan, who reportedly put a lot of the humor and L.A. atmosphere into this ticking clock thriller, original writer Cohen's wayward imagination informs every scene. The director of such semi-sublime junk as "It's Alive!" and "Q - The Winged Serpent" and writer of things like "Maniac Cop," Cohen has a gift for well-plotted exploitation that pops with clever pop-culture references. And "Cellular" is worked to within an inch of its life. Like Cohen's previous script for "Phone Booth," it's all about staying connected. But instead of being pinned down in a fixed position, the reluctant hero of "Cellular" must keep up his end of the conversation while on a wild, geographically nonsensical ride up and down L.A.'s Westside.  When Jessica, a Brentwood science teacher (played by Kim Basinger in fishnet stockings, which is something of a two-for-one joke right there), is kidnapped and locked in an attic, she manages to get a signal out from a smashed phone. It happens to ring the cell of surf dude slacker Ryan (Chris Evans). Of course, he thinks her frantic story is a prank, but he does her bidding long enough to realize that he's her family's only hope of survival. Which no one else, of course, is willing to take him seriously about. Several car-jackings, miles of dangerous driving and every mobile phone annoyance imaginable later, hordes of bad guys, good cops (like William H. Macy's, though he'd rather retire and open a day spa), bad cops, bikinied Heal-the-Bay babes and more congregate for a crazily complicated climax on and around the Santa Monica Pier. It's actually quite suspenseful in places, often hilarious even when working the tiredest of gags (loved that recurring, obnoxious lawyer), and a well-detailed, fevered fantasy of how one sunny day in L.A. can go terribly, entertainingly wrong. Every implausible thriller should have so much worth dialing into.  CELLULAR  Our rating:  (PG-13: violence, language) Starring: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, William H. Macy, Jason Statham. Director: David R. Ellis. Running time: 1 hr. 29 min. Playing: Wide release. In a nutshell: Cheesy but lively thriller about a kidnapped woman whose only hope is a cell phone connection to an L.A. surfer dude. Twisty, funny, exciting and very silly. Review: 'Cellular' a good connection A fine popcorn film that moves right along  By Paul Clinton For CNN.com LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- With the passing of Labor Day weekend, the really big movies -- featuring household names, gigantic budgets and baring the burden of Oscar hopes and pretensions -- are just around the corner. But now it's the perfect time for a popcorn chomping action/thriller to squeeze into the last lazy, hazy days of summer. And "Cellular," directed by former stuntman David R. Ellis, is such a movie. Starring Kim Basinger, Chris Evans and William H. Macy, "Cellular" takes place in the laid-back, fairly privileged world of West L.A., where for many people a bad surf day or your favorite manicurist being on vacation qualifies as major crises. But Jessica Martin (Basinger) has bigger problems. Shortly after dropping her young son off at his school bus stop, five men smash through her kitchen door, gun down her housekeeper and kidnap her, all in the matter of seconds. She's transported to an empty, dusty attic in an unknown location. Before she can even catch her breath, one of the men bangs into the room with a baseball bat and smashes one of the few objects in the room, a wall phone. Satisfied that she is now totally cut off from the outside world, he leaves. Jessica is not only scared out of her mind, she cannot think of a single reason why anyone would want to kidnap her. Her only clue is a reference to some kind of information involving her husband -- who works in real estate -- and she is being used as bait to make him cooperate. Good connection Now alone and terrified, Jessica hears a faint dial tone coming from the bits and pieces of the shattered phone, starts randomly attaching wires together, and -- of course -- is connected to a cell phone owned by Ryan (Evans), a poster boy for California beach living. He mocks her pleas for help at first, but he reluctantly agrees to go to the closest police station and hand over the phone to anyone wearing a uniform. William H. Macy is a police officer and Chris Evans is the man who received Basinger's call in "Cellular."  On the way -- while their conversation continues -- it dawns on Ryan that Jessica is really in danger and telling the truth. Now drawn into the drama, he arrives at a police station and confronts an officer named Mooney (Macy). Mooney is counting down the days to his retirement and absent-mindedly passes Ryan off to another department. Only later does he realize that Ryan is involved in a life or death situation, and throws himself into the case. That's the basic set-up for this well-crafted story, created by screenwriter Larry Cohen, who also brought us another film involving telephones, "Phone Booth." Cohen left the actual screenwriting to newcomer Chris Morgan. The drama, "Speed"-like, occurs during a tight time frame -- just a few hours. But one of the film's nice devices is having the two central characters never knowing or even seeing each other. (In fact, actors Basinger and Evans made it a point to never meet face-to-face until the very end of filming.) That idea pays since there really is a feeling of anonymity between the characters that grows into a deep connection by the film's climax. Sharp acting They two characters build a unique bond of trust -- and create their own private world -- by being connected only through their fragile link. But the true beauty of this film is how the dramatic tension builds to almost unbearable levels, only to be snapped by a bit of humor, and then over and over takes up once again. Ryan grows from an apathetic slacker into a quick thinking man of action, and Jessica transforms from a high school science teacher, and wife and mother, into a courageous person who refuses to be a victim. Basinger once again proves why she won an Oscar ("L.A. Confidential") and Evans is not only suitably handsome, he also displays real acting chops. As always, Macy is takes what could be an average everyday role and turns it into a tour-de-force. "Cellular" will unlikely win any major awards or rock your world, but it's a fun ride and well worth the trip to your local cineplex. "Cellular" opens nationwide on Friday and is rated PG-13. Basinger gets disconnected in 'Cellular' Kim Basinger often gives the impression of a beautiful woman who has known, and expects, great torment. She could have soulfully played either Mary in "The Passion of the Christ," but her career is crucifixion enough.  It must be rather mortifying to Basinger to sink from Oscar-winning work in "L.A. Confidential" to such disposables as "Bless the Child" and now "Cellular," while in "8 Mile" she was part of the Eminem display package. The public, now so fickle about female stars, ignored her good work in "I Dream of Africa" and this summer's "Door in the Floor."  In "Cellular," from the writer of "Phone Booth," Basinger is the tormented mother Jessica, a science teacher. That provides a generic sort of explanation of how she can re-wire a smashed phone in the dark attic where she's been stuck by abductors of her son.  The motive, which only comes clear in slurred doses, is that Jessica's husband inadvertently videotaped crooked cops killing people. Rather than just go for him (and why has he left the tape in the camera?), the creeps lay terror on Jessica and the child, the thuggery led by hard, shave-headed specialist in coldness Jason Statham.  Jessica's impromptu phone repair lets her reach the cell phone of Ryan, a Santa Monica stud played by likable Chris Evans, who seems to be an advanced model of Mark Harmon. Nice guy Ryan is sucked into the plot, which is all vortex and little sense.  He proves he is not the "irresponsible" slacker dumped by his girlfriend. His inner Stallone is roused by wild street chases, a robbery, smash-ups, carjacking the same sports car twice (so we can savor the comic benefit of the owner's snotty attitude twice), jumping down chutes and off a pier.  The police are either twisted or unavailable, except for old desk pro Mooney (William H. Macy). "Twenty-eight years without this (bleep)," he grumps after shooting a rotten apple. Though nobody can make such a line more humanly enjoyable than Macy, not even he can make us think that Mooney, after so many years of padding around on softer duty, can dispose of grim brutes much younger, larger and not suffering from his neck wound.  Director David R. Ellis, up from stunt work (but not very far), hangs onto the whopper moments for dear life, even if cheap laughs outweigh a mother's pain. He gives a major moment of pathos to a busted cell phone.  The sadism is ruthless and repetitious. To affirm that she is still only a woman in peril, Jessica gets slapped around and abused with the ugly "b" word six or seven times. For easily adrenalized viewers, this works up a response.  Nothing here hasn't been done before, and better, but it passes the time. Some scenes are paced by screams, another is tuned to "Sinner Man," though it doesn't rival the Nina Simone salute in "Before Sunset."  Despite some dead spots, 'Cellular' connects in the end By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff  Any Kim Basinger movie whose first words are, "Mommy, will you still be a science teacher when I get to high school?" knows it's stupid. And so starts the mother-son chat in the first scene of "Cellular," a ludicrous little abduction thriller that boasts an entertaining cocktail of gunpowder, suspense, adrenaline, and cheese. I just couldn't hate this movie, and I really, really tried. It's tightly made and well written in deceptive ways that don't reveal themselves until past the halfway point. The minute after Basinger's Jessica Martin, a biology teacher, puts her son on the school bus, three tough-looking thugs burst into her Brentwood, Calif., fortress, kill her maid, promptly throw Jessica in a car, and then lock her up in a great big attic, where the lead thug (Jason Statham) smashes the phone mounted on the wall. Basinger's face looks ready to melt. Nobody's told her why she's suddenly Olivia de Havilland in "Lady in a Cage." But Jessica's husband is in danger, her son, too. So she does what any frantic abductee with a working knowledge of biology would do: rub together the wires on a broken landline until she gets not just a dial tone but the cellphone of an actual person. Her hopes for survival rest with a slacking pretty boy named Ryan (Chris Evans) and a strong signal. Before she called, he was at the beach, trying to fix things with his fed-up girlfriend (Jessica Biel). Why, he wonders, if Mrs. Martin is in such peril has she called him and not the cops? Well, if he's going to ask that, then he ought to ask why she's wearing fishnets to frog dissections, but never mind. Her desperate, pleading voice and his overhearing her chief captor yelling at her have Ryan convinced that something is up. So the movie turns into a race against time as well as a dead battery. Ryan has to stop the thugs from doing heaven knows what to Jessica's family. He holds up a store for a phone charger, steals a Ferrari when a truck hits his other stolen car, and runs out to the Los Angeles airport to warn Jessica's husband. The movie, which David R. Ellis directs, works up a lot of laughs and a lot of suspense, usually at the same time. One of several cleverly plotted sequences happens at airport security, where Ryan has to figure out what to do with the gun in his pocket. (Please, don't ask how he got it. This movie raises more tough questions than the SAT.) Evans is part of the movie's fun. He's like the Luke Wilson that would show up to install your cable or put your sofa in the moving van. As Ryan continues to be surprised by his own ingenuity, his likability grows. "Cellular" was written by Chris Morgan and is based on a screen story by the B-movie artist Larry Cohen, whose last script was "Phone Booth." What's so absorbing about "Cellular" is the way it taunts you to laugh at it, when, really, it's in on all the jokes. Jessica's son's name? Ricky. Ricky Martin, which Ryan can't believe. The movie also busts up the tension with a sideplot that drags the reliably good William H. Macy, as a very nice cop, into the action. Naturally, it's his last day on the force. (Danny Glover must have been unavailable.) But the movie puts its cliches in a headlock: The Martin family's mysterious nightmare happens to affect Macy's character personally, and the annoying first half cleanly dovetails into the juicy second. "Cellular" is a dumb "Collateral" or a talky "Speed": a movie that has hilariously resonant ideas about the wild social and urban matrix that is Los Angeles. The city in these films becomes a weird metaphor for the world and a place whose personal history exists in a sort of infinite entertainment repeat, which is perfect for a movie that plays like an aerobic "Night Gallery" rerun. David Ellis's Poolside Chat The making of Cellular For the second time, I met David Ellis by the pool to do an interview. The first time was for Final Destination 2, by the pool at the Four Seasons. For Cellular, it was the pool at the Loews’ Santa Monica hotel, matching the beach atmosphere that opens and closes the film.  This Ellis interview was colored by the interruption by Cellular star Kim Basinger, yelling down at me not to believe her director. Kim Basinger could ask me for a ham sandwich and get my attention, so I appreciated her playful attitude.  Ellis still has his blonde surfer hairdo, though he admits it’s not natural. “It costs a lot of money, but it’s blonde.” After some small talk about other recent movies I’d seen early, we got to talking about Cellular.  Balancing the three stories of Chris Evans, Kim Basinger and William H. Macy, did you do reshoots to even those threads out? I think we balanced them really in the script. The reshoots were, what happened was I knew there was probably an 80 percent chance on any film that you’re going to do some kind of reshoot. When you test a film and if there’s something that’s not working. We came in under budget and under schedule and I still had some aerial shots and different things that I had planned. I told the studio, “I’ll do those later. Let’s put the film together, let’s see what we have. Let’s test it. Because then we can respond to anything that the audience likes or dislikes and do it all at once. We’ll do the aerial shots, etc.” So when we tested the film, what we found out was that Jessica’s character was written to be this lady in jeopardy through the whole film and there was more of her constantly begging and pleading for Ryan to help her. She didn’t come off whiny, but she didn’t come off as a really strong and proactive woman who’s trying to save her family. She’s pleading for them, she’s not giving us any information on how it might happen. So the one thing that she never did before we did the reshoots was try to find a way out of the attic. So we shot this extra little scene where she’s just trying the door, looking out the window, trying to just figure out where she is, what’s happening, is there any way out, so that she was from the beginning, a little bit more proactive.  Were William H. Macy’s John Woo moments directly inspired by Woo? We just wanted to give him kind of an action hero moment. John Woo does that a lot. There’s a lot of guys who do it. I try to keep that really out of the style of the film. I just wanted to give him a special moment. People haven’t seen Bill Macy like this so I wanted to give him a moment where it’s a heroic moment, where he turns and finally takes down the bad guy that’s been stalking him and creating havoc for the entire picture. I could have had him just leap and shoot, but I just wanted to suspend that moment for a beat.  Was there a comment about the service industry in the scene where he goes to the cell phone shop? No. I think that’s just inherent in a lot of places where you go and you have to wait in line. Even though you might need attention immediately, they have their protocol which is take a number and we’ll get to you when we get to you. Everybody’s treated, it doesn’t matter who that would have been, somebody in jeopardy. Maybe if it was John Travolta, they would have gotten to him sooner, but he just appears to be this normal kid and saying I need help, and it’s just like, “Wait your turn, buddy.”  Was it important that Chris never kill even the bad guys? Absolutely. Initially in the script, he did indirectly, and I felt that it was important that he didn’t do that because he’s got to be our hero. It’s okay if Bill Macy being a cop shoots somebody, but Chris has a gun at one point in the cell phone story, and it was really important that he did whatever he could not to harm anybody. To just get people’s attention so that he could remain a really good hero.  And the bad guys? But also the people just on the road during the chase sequences, we wanted to make sure that he, although he puts some people in jeopardy, that it’s never anything that’s life threatening. So we made sure that the chase sequences were more a series of near misses than crashes and cars exploding.  Did you work it out for other characters to dispose of bad guys? Absolutely we did. I mean, Kim, it’s totally justified when he ends up killing the guy that’s going to beat the shit out of her. Bill Macy definitely, he’s a cop, these are bad cops, this guy’s shooting at him. Definitely justified for him to take that guy out. And those are the only two people that get killed in the film. Everybody else, I mean, Chris beats the guy up but he doesn’t kill him.  You got a PG-13 and only dropped one F word. Were there any more or any ratings issues? There definitely was a ratings issue with the violence. We knew we wanted a PG-13 movie. This movie could have gone either way. We could have gone way into the R rating and had more sexual stuff with Kim where the kidnappers start to abuse her sexually, but that wasn’t the movie we were trying to make. Again, we could have gone more into the violence with showing squib hits and blood and all that stuff. So we stayed away from that and tried to keep it a PG-13, but even when we thought we had a really good PG-13, because we only used one F word, we had to go back to the ratings board three times. Mainly, it was take out a punch here or lower the sound effect here or let the music stay in here so it doesn’t hit the violence so hard.  How did you send out the casting call for the girl in the nipple shirt? Well, that was really funny.  What happened was she came in and read for the part of Chloe which was Jessica Biel’s part and she was really cute, had a lot of charisma. She did a really good job in the reading, but unfortunately she was up against Amy Smart and Jessica Biel and actresses that actually meant something to us as far as audiences and domestic box office. So we were trying to find a place to put her and when she did come in for her reading as Chloe, she came in in a very revealing shirt. And I said, “This is perfect, she’s the girl.”  The nipple joke was written in the script? No, it actually was put into the script because of her coming in dressed the way she was.  And the studio was cold? Actually not. Richard Brenner, the guy at the studio who’s my creative exec thought it was cute.  And then Biel is not on poster or marketing? That was part of her contract because she had a small part. She just had a movie being released while we were making this at the end, Texas Chainsaw Massacre where she was doing leads. There’s lots of movies where cameos are being done by big actors but you can’t use their name, their likeness in the posters or to promote the movie, but they come in and do little parts. That was the case with her.  Does that defeat the purpose of casting a big name? No, because I think it still gets out that she’s in the movie and especially she’s dating Chris Evans. At the premiere they’ll be together and people will know that she’s in the movie. Word of mouth after the first weekend, they’ll know, so we’ll still get some PR because of that.  They are still dating? They were dating when we made the film and then they took a little break and now they’re [back]. She’s here. She was just here for lunch with Chris. Now they’re back together. They just took a little hiatus.  At the time, was it just a coincidence that she was cast? No. What happened was I knew Chris was going out with her, and I said, “Why don’t you show this to Jess and see what she thinks. If she’d like to come do it, you guys could do something together, it’d be cute.”  Are you happy with Cellular’s release date? You know, it’s a tough time to release on any date coming up. We had the 17th. First, we had August. Then we went to September 17th and then Sky Captain and the World of tomorrow moved in. Then there’s like four new films coming out that weekend. And some people moved off of the 10th so we moved onto the 10th. It’s just hard. We have a small film. We don’t have the marketing money and everything that a lot of the other bigger films do. We have a tough weekend because we’re facing a really successful sequel. We don’t hope to win the weekend at all. We just hope to do a good, strong showing and hopefully people will enjoy the film and then word of mouth will hopefully have legs. But the following weekend, there’s four big films coming out, so it’s tough. We could hold it and try to find another date, but now until Christmas there’s big films coming out every week. It’s not like before where you could have two or three weeks. Now you pretty much get a weekend.  Final Destination 3 and future projects Shakers and more How hard was it to balance the humor, so it’s not at inappropriate moments of danger? We just tried to put enough in there every now and then to give the audience a break so that they could just take a breath. This is intense what’s going on with her, what Ryan’s dealing with, but we just tried to find enough spots where we could have some fun.  Do you believe cell phones cause cancer? I don't know enough about it.  Did New Line insist on a Lord of the Rings backpack? No, actually I put that in. I thought it’d be cute. I’m not trying to do blatant product placement, but at the same time, Lord of the Rings was really hot. The kids love it, kids his age love it. I have a nephew that’s the age of [the character] Ricky Martin.  He loves Lord of the Rings, so I thought it’d just be cool if we could do a tie in with New Line. We weren’t going to promote some Disney film, but if we could do a tie-in that’s really a recognizable product which is Lord of the Rings so the backpack is really recognizable, so that when he sees it, it triggers Ryan to yell out the kid’s name.  I noticed Final Destination 2 on the TV set. Were you trying to work it in? I didn’t try to work it in, but when we had the TV in the scene and these guys were watching the TV, and they’re going, “What do you want to put on the TV?” I thought, “Let’s put a piece of Final Destination in there.” A lot of people won’t recognize it. You do because you know the movie and we’ve talked before. It was something mainly for the people on DVD that really get it.  Have you heard the rumblings about Final Destination 3? Yeah, they’re going to make it with Morgan and Wong are going to make it again. They’re coming back. Supposedly it’s going to be in 3D and I think they’re working on the script right now.  Will you participate?[/n] No, they wanted to come back and do that with the studio. We had talked about doing it together before, but they’re a really good creative writing/directing team and I’m looking to maybe move on to a movie that’s not a sequel.  What will your next film be? I’m in talks on a film called Shakers which is kind of like a Point Break film set in a dragster world about these dragster racers that finance their sport by robbing banks. It’s kind of cool with a great love story and a great twist in it. I’m in talks with New Line on a couple projects. Universal, there’s a lot of projects that I’m being considered for.  Is Shakers at New Line? No.  You said before you didn’t want to just be the horror guy, but are you worried about the action typecast? No, actually, the film at New Line is a horror film that I’m up for. It’s really cool, it’s in the vein of Arachnophobia. It’s about spiders but it’s really cool, really scary, really dark. Could be good. I’m not worried about being pigeonholed. I just want the opportunity to explore a lot of different kind of genres. I would love to do a comedy. I’d love to do a big action movie. I just love working.  I want to see you do a comedy. I think it’d be so much fun because we had so much fun on our set and it’s out of control. People can’t believe, the people that work with us can’t believe that they can have so much fun. We have a few moments of comedy in this movie and they were the most fun to do. When I did the stuff with the lawyer, when you go to work and enjoy your work as much as I do but also be cracking up all day because what you’re shooting is so funny, I think that would be just so cool. You'll have to suspend disbelief to enjoy 'Cellular' A couple of years ago, journeyman filmmaker Larry Cohen concocted a plot about a man who had to save his life without leaving a public pay phone on a New York street. While waiting for that movie to be made, ultimately as "Phone Booth" with Colin Farrell, he came up with another plot. This one featured a man who had to save a life to which he was connected by a cell phone. That's "Cellular," with young Chris Evans ("Perfect Score") as Ryan, the surfer dude whose cell phone is reached randomly by a kidnap victim (Kim Basinger). She's a science teacher lucky enough to be hidden away in an attic with a broken phone that she can coax into making signals. She's been kidnapped because her husband owns something coveted by a gang of well-armed heavies in black leather. She -- and later, her pre-teen son -- are the hostages the bad guys use to coerce hubby to fetch the item. The whole thing's ridiculous, of course, since one back-up file and a call to a TV station would render everything moot. But stuntman- turned-director David R. Ellis ("Final Destination 2") is smart enough to know that. Thus, he whips up the action so furiously that viewers have too little time to calculate the effects of simple common sense. If Ryan's not stealing a Porsche to follow the kidnapped kid, he's sticking up a cell-phone store or hustling guns through LAX (you were warned it gets silly). With all that nonsense, it's good to have William Macy around. After a solid career playing losers, he does a creditable job here as the unflappable cop who becomes Ryan's ally. Amid the flimsy flippery, he's an anchor of calm. This sort of preposterous plotting fits easily into the notion of "high-profile" filmmaking, or what packs video shelves and late-night cable schedules. Cohen has made a career of such fluff ever since his start with the '70s exploitation flicks "Bone," "Black Caesar" and "Hell Up in Harlem." Lately, Cohen's been mellowing to the extent that he's scripted the sensitive "We Don't Live Here Anymore." "Cellular" shows he's still got the old stuff. Director David Ellis, who got his start with the young Kurt Russell at Disney, shows he's got some stuff, too. His background as a stunt coordinator ("Patriot Games") serves him well as he pushes Ryan through some pretty impressive traffic pile-ups and a nifty chase or two. It doesn't amount to anything more than B-grade filmmaking
	12 settembre: NEWS! Top 50 United States Video Rentals for the week ending 5 September 2004 - 23. 21 People I Know (2002) 47 $1.03M $12.2M. THEATER COUNTS > 2004 > Week #37 - September 10: 3 - Cellular New Line 2,749 - 1  37 43 The Door in the Floor Focus 72 -4 9
	13 settembre: News ...e ottimo debutto per CELLULAR! Weekend Box Office (September 10 - 12, 2004) - THIS WEEKEND Video gamers and zombie fans stalked the multiplexes powering the new action thriller Resident Evil: Apocalypse to the number one spot at the North American box office during an otherwise sluggish post Labor Day frame. The kidnapping drama Cellular bowed in second place while most holdovers saw heavy declines coming off of the holiday session. With students going back to class and a new football season commencing, ticket sales for the top ten films failed to break the $60M mark for the second consecutive weekend. Apocalypse took advantage of the lethargic marketplace and generated a strong $23.7M opening weekend, according to estimates, improving upon the $17.7M bow of the first Resident Evil from March 2002. Playing much wider this time, the sequel averaged a healthy $7,217 from 3,284 theaters which just edged out the $7,004 opening average of its predecessor from 2,528 locations. Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which finds Milla Jovovich as a human heroine who battles infected zombies, was the fifth top spot debut of the year for market share leader Sony and was the tenth sequel to open at number one in 2004. Produced for $44M, the R-rated actioner appealed mostly to young men and despite being likely to see large declines in the weeks ahead, should outgun the $39.5M gross of the first Resident Evil keeping the franchise alive. While Jovovich was out saving humanity from the walking undead, Kim Basinger played a damsel in distress in the New Line kidnapping thriller Cellular which opened in second place with an estimated $10.6M. Playing in 2,749 theaters, the PG-13 film averaged a decent $3,856 per location. Chris Evans and William H Macy co-starred in the $25M production. Cellular did manage to attract better reviews from critics than Resident Evil did and appealed to a more adult crowd. Sinking only 35% was the Paramount hit comedy Without A Paddle which dropped a spot to third with an estimated $4.6M in its fourth weekend. The Seth Green title has collected a hearty $45.6M to date. Two-term chart-topper Hero fell 50% to an estimated $4.4M in its third outing. Ranking fourth, the subtitled Miramax film has grossed $41.7M in 17 days and already ranks as the fourth highest-grossing foreign language film of all-time after The Passion of the Christ, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Life is Beautiful. Moviegoers sprinkled their dollars around spending between $2-3M each on a whopping ten different films this weekend proving that audiences only have real excitement for a couple of choices in the marketplace at this time. Disney's The Princess Diaries 2 grossed an estimated $2.9M, off 47%, and pushed its cume to $89.3M. Also pulling in the same sum, but tumbling 55% in the process, was Sony's Anacondas which has collected $27.7M to date. The period piece Vanity Fair dropped 43% to an estimated $2.75M in its second weekend putting its 12-day total at $11.2M. Focus Features' Reese Witherspoon costume drama was followed closely by the Tom Cruise assassin thriller Collateral which shot up an estimated $2.7M in its sixth weekend. The DreamWorks entry has taken in $92.6M to date. With an estimated $2.65M in its 14th weekend of release, the Fox Searchlight sleeper hit Napoleon Dynamite finally reached the top ten. Averaging $2,877 from 921 theaters, the low budget high school comedy has lifted its cume to an amazing $30.4M and should be able to surpass the $40M mark as well. Rounding out the top ten was Fox's Paparazzi with an estimated $2.6M, down 58%, for a ten-day total of $11.8M. Three releases fell from the top ten over the weekend but stayed within the popular $2-3M range. MGM's romantic drama Wicker Park crumbled 53% in its second weekend to an estimated $2.55M giving the Josh Hartnett film just $10.5M in ten days. Lions Gate took in an estimated $2.35M for the comedy The Cookout, off 53%, for a cume of only $9.2M in ten days. Universal's The Bourne Supremacy, the number five film of the summer box office, slipped 39% to an estimated $2.5M in its eighth weekend of release. Produced for $75M, Matt Damon's action sequel has grossed $168M domestically and an additional $45M overseas with many more markets still to open. In the coming days, Supremacy will surpass the $214M worldwide gross of The Bourne Identity from two years ago and is hoping to reach the $300M global barrier. In limited release, Warner Independent Film met with disappointing results from the opening of its caper pic Criminal which debuted to an estimated $275,000 from 77 theaters. The George Clooney-produced dud averaged just $3,571 per theater. The Korean War saga Tae Guk Ki took in an estimated $177,000 in its second weekend, off 32%, for a ten-day tally of $613,000. Distributed by Destination Films & Samuel Goldwyn Films, the subtitled picture averaged a solid $5,699 from 31 bunkers. 'Evil' Sequel Infects North American Box Office - LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In another quiet weekend at the North American box office, the Milla Jovovich sci-fi sequel "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" opened at No. 1, ending the two-week reign of the Chinese martial arts saga "Hero."  "Resident Evil" sold about $23.7 million worth of tickets in its first three days, according to studio estimates issued on Sunday. The Kim Basinger thriller "Cellular," the only other new release, opened at a distant No. 2 with $10.6 million.  The rest of the pack barely registered. The male-bonding comedy "Without a Paddle" slipped one place to No. 3 with $4.6 million in its fourth weekend.  "Hero" was at No. 4 with $4.4 million in its third round, while "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement" held steady at No. 5 with $2.9 million in its fifth, about $31,000 ahead of "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid." Final numbers will be released on Monday. Overall sales were about flat with those from last week, but down from the same weekend a year ago, according to tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. The top 12 films grossed $64.7 million in the latest three-day period, down 11 percent from the year-ago frame.  The early fall is traditionally the quietest time of the year, but things should pick up next weekend with the arrival of three films: "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow; the baseball comedy "Mr. 3000," starring Bernie Mac; and the romantic comedy "Wimbledon," starring Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany.  "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" is the sequel to 2002's video game-inspired "Resident Evil," which opened with $17.7 million and finished with $40 million. Jovovich plays the leader of a group of rebels in a world of zombies and evil businessmen. Budgeted in the mid-$20 million range, the sequel was released by Screen Gems, the genre arm of Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Entertainment. The studio said the film attracted primarily young males. "Cellular" stars Basinger as a kidnapped housewife whose only link to the outside world is a complete stranger she manages to contact on his cell phone. It cost about $25 million to make and opened within expectations, said a spokeswoman for its distributor, New Line Cinema, a unit of Time Warner Inc. Box office: 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' munches on moviegoers - LOS ANGELES Zombies rule the weekend box office as "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" debuted as the number one movie with 23-point-seven (m) million dollars. It was a slow week for new movies as most kids headed back to school, and the blockbusters of summer gave way to a B-movie-style monster movie and a thriller.  The Kim Basinger suspense drama "Cellular" opened at number two with 10-point-six (m) million dollars.  The goofball outdoors comedy "Without a Paddle" hung on to the top five, coming in third with just over four-and-a-half (m) million.  In fourth, the Chinese historical action epic "Hero" -- and rounding out the top five was the Julie Andrews royal comedy "Princess Diaries Two: Royal Engagement." US BOX OFFICE: ESTIMATES! Friday 10th - $3,300,000 -- / $1,200 $3,300,000 / 1   Saturday 11th - $2,710,000 -17.9% / $986 $6,010,000 / 2 Sunday 12th - $4,590,000 +69.4% / $1,670 $10,600,000 / 3 Week End: 1 N Resident Evil: Apocalypse SGem $23,700,000 - 3,284 - $7,216 $23,700,000 - / - 1  2 N Cellular NL $10,600,000 - 2,749 - $3,855 $10,600,000 - / - 1  3 2 Without a Paddle Par. $4,575,000 -35.4% 2,754 -2 $1,661 $45,581,000 $19 / $25 4  4 1 Hero Mira. $4,420,000 -49.8% 2,175 +83 $2,032 $41,652,000 $31 / - 3  5 5 The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement BV $2,931,000 -47.2% 2,452 -687 $1,195 $89,258,000 - / - 5  6 3 Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid SGem $2,900,000 -54.8% 2,544 -361 $1,139 $27,671,000 - / - 3  7 9 Vanity Fair Focus $2,750,000 -43.1% 1,054 +3 $2,609 $11,232,000 $23 / - 2  8 7 Collateral DW $2,700,000 -46.1% 2,024 -324 $1,333 $92,674,000 $65 / $40 6  9 13 Napoleon Dynamite FoxS $2,650,000 -5.7% 921 +35 $2,877 $30,427,000 $0.4 / $10 14  10 4 Paparazzi Fox $2,600,000 -57.7% 2,153 +38 $1,207 $11,835,000 - / - 2  New movie? Director BILL BENNETT (Spider and Rose, The Nugget) wants KIM BASINGER and Daniel McPherson in his new upcoming 6.85 million $ thriller "THE FARE". Box office Mojo Review - CELLULAR / B - "When a Stranger Calls". Director David R. Ellis proves that even a plain plot and a bunch of stock characters are more thrilling than an army of flashy X-Men, tormented Spider-Men and noisy Terminators in New Line Cinema's gripping Cellular starring Kim Basinger. The mobile telephone is merely the means to the movie's relatively low-tech purpose. Packed with a woman in peril, a typical twentysomething, a good cop and a gang of thugs, Cellular's straightforward action proceeds from a simple moral dilemma: whether to risk one's life for the sake of a stranger. After some standard bad guys kidnap Basinger's biology teacher, she manages to establish a tenuous telephone connection to a young man with the intellectual depth of a Frisbee (Chris Evans). Basinger's Brentwood Barbie -- with her life, her husband and her son at stake -- is at the mercy of one of those dispassionate, distant youths for whom technology has replaced real, human action. She's in trouble, she knows it and it seems her one pitch at survival has landed in the hands of a loser. But she can't hang up and dial 911. For several convoluted reasons, she must stay on the line, keep the signal active, and try to avoid the fate of her housekeeper, who was pumped with bullets during the snatch. The action is swift, not frantic, with a lot of Los Angeles car chasing, as Evans's character chooses to put his cocky attitude to the test to help a stranger. A few lines about altruism as a moral obligation do not spoil Cellular's sense of decency; it's about good people uniting against bad people for the sake of their values, not for the sake of others. With a subplot involving William H. Macy's veteran policeman, the screenplay by Chris Morgan combines situational humor with several episodes that lead to the final conflict and the result, while far from perfect, is fully engaging. Basinger is sufficiently desperate, Evans is affable and Macy plays an ordinary cop like a fiddle. The heavies are fine, too, though one of them looks like he walked off the set of a Backstreet Boys video, and the plot twists enhance the intensity. Cellular is an unpretentious mystery thriller with interesting characters and clear contrasts. Occasionally, the movie goes to voice mail. Plot discrepancies abound -- a she-devil with the bad guys is used, discarded and never explained -- and, in its slower moments, one tends to contemplate alternatives to driving around L.A. like a lunatic. The prolonged conclusion is anti-climactic and Morgan's tight script has its rough spots: Basinger's biology teacher borders on hysterical, a running gag with a lawyer is distracting, and the Evans character competes with Macy's policeman for center stage. Nevertheless, Cellular is a tense, plot-based thriller; a harmless indulgence free of ear-splitting explosions, choppy shots and grating anti-heroes. What's more, when the tension subsides, the conventional Cellular finishes with an increasingly rare sensibility: that the good guys -- connected by shared values and the will to act on those values -- are much more interesting than the bad guys. Grade: B  Friday Box Office Analysis - After a totally blah Labor Day Weekend, the box office looks to be recovering a little bit, with the butt-kicking action of Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil: Apocalypse leading the way. Resident Evil: Apocalypse This sequel to a movie that wasn't necessarily all that well-received in the first place chalked up $9.3 million on Friday, an impressive number no matter how you slice it. With dismal reviews and even fans of the first film admitting that the sequel is a definite step down, Resident Evil: Apocalypse nonetheless drew in both devotees of the classic videogame franchise and probably added some folks who discovered the original movie on DVD. It's headed for a free-fall from here, though. The Friday-to-Sunday multiplier of the first Resident Evil was a not-so-good 2.6, and the sequel is going to be even more front-loaded. With a best-case-scenario multiplier of 2.4, Resident Evil: Apocalypse should be able to manage $22.3 million for its first weekend, which isn't a bad increase over the original's debut frame of $17.7 million. Look for the zombie flick to fall fast and hard next week. Cellular A film that actually never looked all that bad, Cellular simply didn't get the strong advertising push it needed to score bigger. Its middling first-day total of $3.3 million isn't going to be enough to help the Kim Basinger starrer make any sort of significant splash over the weekend. Since it is targeted to a more adult audience than Resident Evil 2, Cellular should have a fairly decent hold from Friday-to-Sunday, though. A three-day multiplier of 2.9 should be right in line, which would give the film $9.5 million in its opening frame.
	14 settembre: Altri aggiornamenti! Divorce gets Kim punchy KIM BASINGER used a punching bag to get through her nasty divorce with Alec Baldwin. ``There's nothing like it. I put on a vest, shorts and a pair of gloves and just go crazy,'' the ``Door in the Floor'' star tells ananova.com. ``There's no better way, girls, to get that man out of your life. You won't need anything else. Forget lifting weights, forget running, forget workouts. Just box and you feel great.'' Amen, sista!  Kim Basinger Talks Cellular Victim of cell phone thriller Kim Basinger headlines Cellular as the biggest star and the film’s only award winning actress. But she is more of the instigator of the plot than the main actor. As kidnap victim Jessica Martin, she places the phone call to our hero, who must maintain a cell phone connection while running around Los Angeles trying to rescue her.  Basinger is a favorite from action films like Batman, The Getaway and Never Say Never Again, as well as femme fatale roles in L.A. Confidential, Nine ½ Weeks and Wayne’s World 2. She maintains as much charisma as ever, holding her own against threatening bad guys and making the most of her limited situation.  Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer?  “Gosh, I hope not. We’d have a pretty dead society soon.”  “It’s a pain in the neck to have to carry it around. I am not a phone person at all. I’m really not, but again when you have a daughter you have to have a cell phone. My daughter is very, very funny. She just doesn’t want a cell phone. She doesn’t want one. She doesn’t want to be bothered with calls. She’s very funny. She’s not a real talk on the phone girl either. She’s just not. And they go through that age when they don’t want to talk and then probably in a couple of years – or what I don’t know when she’s going to come to me and all her friends will have cell phones and it’s going to be over.”  “They had already filmed most of the movie. I was just there for the last four weeks or so. My part was last. They had already done all the major running through the streets and all the crazy stuff. So they pre recorded him. He’d done his side and I had to come in and do my side. It was crazy but it was the way they had to board it. They said, ‘Kim I hope you don’t mind but you have to look beat up and you have to come around and you’ve been through the whole thing and you have to look like you’ve been through the whole thing, but we’re going to throw you in the dungeon two weeks from now.’ That’s the way it happened.”  “It was exhausting and I think even my crew, my hair and makeup, would just look at me. They were very shut down when they were watching me go back into the attic. ‘She has to go back into the attic, be quiet.’ So it kind of became a joke, but it was exhausting. It was pretty exhausting, but the thing I really love, and I will have to say this, it intrigued me that I could be with you guys. I wanted to bring you guys into the attic with me and go through it with me because I am where you are. You’re sitting watching the movie. I have no idea why I am in the attic and neither do you. I’ve never had that opportunity so it was kind of fun to do.”  “I’ve done the damsel thing and that’s fine, too, because it was fun to play and it’s nice, but I think today I love the idea of strong people and strong women in particular. I’d like to think that – God, you never know how you’ll be in a situation like this. I’ve not walked in these shoes at all, but I tried to get as close to it [as I could]. You know, after the hysteria of it all comes the shock. You’ll be in shock and so full of fear that you wouldn’t know what to do, what your captors were going to do to you, whatever. But, again, the strength even when she calms down and she knows that Chris is going to believe her, she then had her son’s life, not just her own. I think it was really important. I think the studio wanted that and David [Ellis] definitely wanted her to kick someone’s butt after this or whatever. And I hate to - - God knows this is only a movie, but we’ve been inundated with the captors in Iraq and all that stuff and I couldn’t help but say, ‘My god, none of us can help but sit in front of the TV and watch that horror go down and say my god how lucky we are to be where we are.’ Just the word kidnapping takes you for a little bit of a spin emotionally.”  Movie Reviews: 'Cellular' - Although a cell phone may be the real star of Cellular, about a kidnapped woman who randomly calls a man on his cell phone, the film's performers, including Kim Basinger as the woman, Chris Evans as the man, Jason Statham as the leader of the kidnappers, and William H. Macy as a desk cop, are receiving plaudits from several critics for performances that lend credibility to a film that most of them portray as contrived. "The movie is skillfully plotted, halfway plausible and well acted; the craftsmanship is in the details, including the astonishing number of different ways in which a cell phone can be made to function -- both as a telephone, and as a plot device," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. A. O. Scott in the New York Times, while calling the plot "implausible," nevertheless describes the movie as "an honest, unpretentious, well-made B picture with a clever, silly premise, a handful of sly, unassuming performances and enough car chases, decent jokes and swervy plot complications to make the price of the ticket seem like a decent bargain." Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post writes similarly: "There ought to be a small place in heaven for movies like Cellular. Now they almost never make them, but from the '30s through the '60s they were a Hollywood staple: efficient programmers, taut, tight killer B's, churned out in the hundreds, unstudied and unloved, but perfect on the undercard of a double feature, then gone forever in a week." John Anderson suggests in Newsday that Cellular shouldn't last that long, that the movie "is too inept to work as what it seems to be, and not clever enough to work as a spoof -- which, if you're feeling charitable, is what you assume they intended." And several critics, including Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune, Megan Lehmann in the New York Post, and Susan Walker in the Toronto Globe and Mail use the same term to disparage the movie: "Wrong number."  Kim Basinger, still hot at 50! Kim Basinger is 50. Not that you'd know it by looking at her. The stunning actress now has a starring role in Cellular, a thriller that opened in the US last week. The news comes as a pleasant surprise, especially considering how we often hear about actresses in Hollywood feeling left out once they get to a certain age. So, how does Basinger feel about her younger days? 'I wouldn't be in my 20s [again],' she says, adding that, if she regrets anything, it would be that she was very naive. 'I could have just avoided a lot of things had [I not had] that naivete with people. But do I regret anything? Not a thing. I've been one of the luckiest people, one of the luckiest girls in the world as far as I'm concerned.' Cellular starts off with a wrong number on a cell phone, calling a young man to duty when he hooks up with a woman in danger. The woman is trapped. She doesn't know where, but she could be killed soon. Whether or not the hero finds her depends on how long the battery lasts. US BOX OFFICE: FINALS! Friday 10th - $3,198,000 -- / $1,163 $3,198,000 / 1 Saturday 11th - $4,416,000 38.1% / $1,606 $7,614,000 / 2 Sunday 12th - $2,487,000 -43.7% / $905 $10,100,571 / 3 Week End: 1 N Resident Evil: Apocalypse SGem $23,036,273 - 3,284 - $7,014 $23,036,273 - / - 1  2 N Cellular NL $10,100,571 - 2,749 - $3,674 $10,100,571 - / - 1  3 2 Without a Paddle Par. $4,512,552 -36.3% 2,754 -2 $1,638 $45,518,563 $19 / $25 4  4 1 Hero Mira. $4,420,702 -49.8% 2,175 +83 $2,032 $41,652,507 $31 / - 3  5 5 The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement BV $2,932,938 -47.2% 2,452 -687 $1,196 $89,259,246 - / - 5  6 3 Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid SGem $2,807,475 -56.3% 2,544 -361 $1,103 $27,578,480 - / - 3  7 4 Paparazzi Fox $2,771,056 -54.9% 2,153 +38 $1,287 $12,005,971 - / - 2  8 7 Collateral DW $2,718,073 -45.8% 2,024 -324 $1,342 $92,691,776 $65 / $40 6  9 9 Vanity Fair Focus $2,613,777 -45.9% 1,054 +3 $2,479 $11,096,102 $23 / - 2  10 13 Napoleon Dynamite FoxS $2,516,879 -10.5% 921 +35 $2,732 $30,294,397 $0.4 / $10 14 43 45 The Door in the Floor Focus $71,117 -23.4% 72 -4 $987 $3,634,359 $7.5 / - 9
	15 settembre: Aggiornamenti! JOBLO - CELLULAR - RATING: 6/10.  PLOT: A woman kidnapped by strangers, manages to "McGyver" her way through a broken phone in the attic and get a hold of a kid on a cell phone, who thinks he's being punk'd by one of his buddies. But it doesn't take long for the dude to figure things out and come to realize that he may be the hysterical woman's only chance of survival. Help her, Obi-Wan Kenobi...you're her only hope. CRITIQUE: A fun, old school thriller that moves a mile a minute, offers plenty of nail-biting moments, appealing actors seemingly enjoying themselves, but not without going a little too over-the-top in certain sequences, particularly the ending, which asks one to stretch their suspension of disbelief a little more than one usually might in a film of its sort. That said, the film did grasp me within its fervor from its opening bang all the way through to its hordes of beach babe bikini shots, Jason Statham acting like the badass that only a badass like the badass that he is would act, and Kim Basinger's unexpectedly compelling performance as a frantic woman caught in the middle of some seriously effed up shit. I know you're not really supposed to consider acting performances in movies like this, but all I kept thinking through most of her jarring, and surprisingly violent, scenes was how much of a trooper she was, and how she really managed to maintain that true sense of hysteria throughout. Great show! Chris Evans also came through as the goofy beach bum, whose lazy demeanor suddenly gets turned upside down when he receives a call that changes his day (and probably, life) completely. The film also included a handful of lighter moments, many of which featured the great William H. Macy and his bushy mustache, as well as a cute "Ricky Martin" joke, which appealed to me. As for the preposterousness of the storyline, well...just read the opening paragraph to my PAPARAZZI review for my take on that, but overall, I thought the film held together pretty well, considering what type of movie it is, but did eventually start to lose me when the hero's resourcefulness went way past the basics and into the "how the hell could a schmuck like that, do that?" zone.The film's bad guys were also pretty one dimensional and once displayed in all of their glory, a little too boneheaded from their given backgrounds. In fact, once everything is said and done, you'll wonder why they didn't partake in a zillion other ways to get to what they were trying to get to, instead of the whole "kidnapping" thing, but then I guess we wouldn't have much of a movie then, would we? And who knew that being a high school biology teacher would ever come in handy, eh? Some of the New Line regulars also show up, including exec Toby Emmerich's brother Noah, who I'll always fondly remember as Mo from the superb BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, and speaking of beautiful girls...the very lovely Jessica Biel in a small part playing a hot girl who's...well, looking hot, as only a hot girl like she could (even producer Dean Devlin has a cameo as a taxi driver). Given director David R. Ellis' background in stunts, it's also to note that the film includes plenty of crashes, punches and car chase scenarios, but nothing that blew my testicles off, a la the "highway scene" from FINAL DESTINATION 2. Oh, another small but cool bit in the film features the ultimate L.A. yuppie-asshole lawyer, who is cast as perfectly as they come...nice! (also a neat way to get a Porsche into the movie) So to recap...the film isn't the tightest one in the world when it comes to its plot mechanics, but I really enjoyed myself as I watched, got into the whole "what the hell would I do in that situation?" of the protagonist (a la PHONE BOOTH...the same guy who wrote that movie came up with the "story" for this one) and was more than a little taken by all of its actors, including the wholesome Evans, the powerful Basinger, the goofy Macy and the badass Statham. Don't take it all too seriously and have a good time... Nokia 6600's the hero in Cellular  TV commercials, Print Ads, Radio, Cinema... if you think these are the only ways to advertise you are living in 18th century. Believe it or not products can well bethe hero of a Hollywood flick. Yes, 'Cellular' was released on the 10th of September this year and guess who was playing the lead role - A Nokia phone. And co-starring, Kim Basinger and Chris Evans. The whole movie revolves around Nokia's new and swank cell phone - Nokia 6600. Statham has your number - "Cellular," like the film "Phone Booth," is a terrific thriller which revolves around an object of communication that we all take for granted. And it also seems that the creative team behind this film must have spent weeks at a time coming up with different ways a cell phone can function -- both as a telephone and plot device. The film starts out with five men kidnapping an attractive middle-aged school teacher named Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger). She is transported to an attic of an unknown location, where a phone in the attic is smashed to bits by the lead kidnapper (played by an ice cold Jason Statham) leaving Jessica completely helpless. Or so he thinks. It turns out that Jessica is pretty resourceful though, because she ends up attaching the wires of the shattered phone together which then connects to the cell phone of Ryan (Chris Evans) a young 20-something slacker type. What happens next is where the film really takes off, throwing in about every blood curdling situation you could possibly think of but never expect. The most interesting aspect of the film is between the strong bond that develops over the cell phone between Jessica and Ryan, who are two defenseless strangers thrown into a crisis situation which brings out the heroics in both of them. The film direction is taut all the way through, building to great levels of dramatic tension that are also balanced with bizarre snips of humor -- Evans stealing a lawyer's Porsche the second time around is fantastic. But the acting is what keeps the pacing and events glued together. Basinger proves once again that she can be a terrific actress when provided with solid material, think "L.A. Confidential," and here she makes the metamorphosis from victimized to courageous look seamless. Chris Evans ("Not Another Teen Movie") also impresses as the apathetic slacker turned fast thinking hero. But it's the veteran players -- both Statham as the lead kidnapper and especially William H. Macy as a dogged cop who gets involved, who take the action almost too close to home with a commanding sense of reality. Kim's despair after split Los Angeles - Actress Kim Basinger says the love of her daughter saved her from despair after her bitter divorce. The 50-year-old star's bitter battle with ex-hubby Alec Baldwin for custody of daughter Ireland has been particularly vicious, even by Hollywood standards. The split was so bitter that Basinger and Baldwin are banned from speaking to each other, and can communicate only by fax or e-mail. They agreed on a deal that says Baldwin will lose visiting rights altogether if he ignores a strict timetable for seeing eight-year-old Ireland. It also puts a limit on how many minutes he can spend on the phone with her and says he has to provide a "personal female assistant" for her when she visits his home in New York. The actress told The Sun: "Ireland is the most important person in my life. We have talked honestly about what has happened and there is some resentment from her about me having her at such a mature age. "There were some delicate issues to deal with. But we have come through them and she has no fears on that score. I have a great belief in her and she believes in herself. We know we will never really be apart." Ireland's movements are strictly governed by a court order which sets out when she can go on holiday and with which parent. The actress married Baldwin in 1992 and the couple divorced 10 years later. She despises her ex so much that she once admitted she fantasised about his death. Baldwin's brother Billy retaliated, branding her "a black widow spider" and "a nutcase". BASINGER CONTEMPLATES QUITTING  KIM BASINGER is so sick of the "hard life" she's led as an actress, she constantly wants to quit the movie industry. The LA CONFIDENTIAL veteran, 50, is delighted her eight-year-old daughter IRELAND with former husband ALEC BALDWIN has career goals outside Hollywood, because working on films would only grind her down physically and emotionally. Basinger says, "It's a huge relief to me. I'm glad that she's not looking towards acting because it's such a hard life. "Not a month goes by when I don't think about giving it up. But then I get a new role or read a new script and feel that I can do something with it." In her latest movie CELLULAR, Basinger plays a biology teacher who is kidnapped by bounty hunters and locked in a room with only a broken telephone for company. "Cellular" - Not Four Stars, But Four Bars "Cellular" is a movie with a gimmick but that gimmick works just fine to draw audiences into theaters and keep them entertained. The whole crux of the movie is the dependence of a kidnapped woman to keep a young man on his cell phone so he can help her. This would seem to be an unlikely premise to sustain an entire film, but believe me it works. Kim Basinger plays Jessica Martin, a high school science teacher with a husband and young son. One day a trio of men burst into her home and kidnap her. They take her to a secluded house where she is imprisoned. It is basically a bare room but there is a wall phone there. Jason Statham plays Greer, the leader of the kidnappers. He busts the phone into pieces when he puts her in the attic. Still our girl Jessica is one smart cookie and she manages to put the pieces back together enough to make a random connection with a young man named Ryan (Chris Evans) on his cell phone. At first Ryan thinks everything Jessica says is a joke but then he begins to take her seriously. He even contacts a policeman named Mooney (William H Macy) but nothing comes of that encounter. It is basically up to Ryan to save Jessica and her family. The movie keeps up the pace of tension and excitement while still having moments of hilarity. One of these involves the cell phone batteries getting weak and Ryan not being able to find a charger. He finally has to take desperate measures that are appropriate but still comical. Basinger plays the damsel in distress perfectly, with just the right blend of gumption. Jessica isn't a woman who will stand back and let others rescue her; she springs into action herself. Basinger makes her a combination of beauty, brains and even brawn. Evans is also good as the young man who is happy go lucky until fate steps in and makes him a hero. This is a career making role for Evans and he makes the best of it. He will surely get bigger and better roles after this one. Macy and Statham are also good, and that comes as no surprise. Macy is perfect for the bumbling but good intentioned Mooney; while Statham is picture perfect as Greer. He is the type of actor who can make menacing a terrifying thing to see. He exudes force and a sense of evil. The movie is rated PG-13 for violence and profanity. "Cellular" is one of those surprise movies which is even better than it looks in the trailer. You will have fun with it from beginning to end and will walk out of the theater thinking you have finally seen a movie worth the price of admission. It may be a "gimmick" movie but this time the "gimmick" works from beginning to end. I scored "Cellular" a don't hang up 7 out of 10. Us Box Office - Monday 13th - Cellular # 2 $670,000 -73.1% / $244 $10,771,000 / 4. IMDB - Cellular was written by a neophyte script polisher, and directed by a second-unit pro whose main fame claim is having helmed Final Destination 2, but the whole buoyant, pleasantly pulpy, invigorating doodle has Larry Cohen's pawprints all over it. (He receives only a "story by" credit.) The scenario is Cohen-ultra, akin to Phone Booth and an inverse-double-flip of Sorry, Wrong Number: Classy Santa Monica mom Kim Basinger is kidnapped God knows why, and manages to get a broken phone to work—calling, haphazardly, the cell phone of an irresponsible beach stud (Chris Evans), who must then drive like a bat out of hell through L.A. to save her family and intervene in the bad guys' every maneuver. Dead spots, dying batteries, crossed lines—every cell phone tech burp is a set piece. As light on its feet as any B-movie this featherweight, Cellular belongs to Evans, who looks like a Tiger Beat demigod but jumps the hoops with infectious aplomb. Basinger takes her shuddery Stanwyckness very seriously, but everyone else has a ball.
	16 settembre: Altro carico di news! ‘Cellular’ story, cast, direction good calls A common complaint with movies — especially action movies — is that they play more like video games than films. But “Cellular,” a quirky, fast-moving picture starring Kim Basinger, shows that playing like a video game isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The tone of “Cellular” is set early, when the seemingly quiet life of Jessica Martin (Basinger) is interrupted when four angry men kick through a window, enter her home and shoot her housekeeper. The entire sequence lasts about 20 seconds. The men take Jessica to a hideout where she crosses the wires of a broken phone and somehow reaches unsuspecting surfer Ryan (Chris Evans) on his cell phone. Ryan is suspicious at first — who wouldn’t be? — but when he overhears one of Jessica’s abductors roughing her up, he decides to help. Jessica tells Ryan her husband and child will be the next targets. But Ryan doesn’t know where Jessica is, making his job even more difficult. Through information Jessica gets from her captors, Ryan tracks down the bad guys and interferes. But things like walking up a staircase or driving through a tunnel (places where he’d lose his cell signal), not to mention a low phone battery, complicate matters. “Cellular” isn’t the kind of film that will tell us anything about the human condition or change the world. That said, this is an incredibly well-made, well-paced and well-acted movie that’s clever in its dilemma and eventual solution. It’s also short, coming in at about 90 minutes. Basically, think “Speed” but with the built-in problems of a cell phone, not a bus. Oh, and there’s the added benefit of no Keanu Reeves. Basinger has to play only one emotion — freaked out — but she does it well. Evans, whose previous screen highlight basically was “Not Another Teen Movie,” shows he can act. The supporting cast is great, especially William H. Macy as good-natured cop Mooney and Jason Statham as one of the lead bad guys. Statham doesn’t have a lot of range, but his style works well either for the really mean bad guy or the really troubled good guy. Terror cell The simplest assessment of Kim Basinger is she’s a glutton for punishment. The actress — fresh off one of the nastiest custody battles in Hollywood history with ex Alec Baldwin — had two movies released this year, in both of which she played women going through hell.  CALLER ID ... Kim Basinger plays a kidnap victim whose only hope of freedom is a cell phone in the thriller Cellular.  There was the harrowing summer release The Door in the Floor with Jeff Bridges, in which the onetime Oscar winner played a woman suffering through a marriage torn apart by tragedy. And there’s the thriller Cellular, in which she plays Jessica Martin, an upper-middle-class L.A. high school teacher who's kidnapped suddenly and mysteriously by brutal thugs, locked in an attic and intermittently terrorized for information she doesn’t have.  Between violent visits, the science teacher finds the wherewithal to partially assemble a smashed phone and, in a shot in the dark, reaches the cell phone of a college student named Ryan (Not Another Teen Movie’s Chris Evans). What follows is essentially two separate movies connected by a tenuous cell signal — Ryan bypassing the unhelpful police to take matters into his own hands (and leaving a trail of destruction along the way), and Jessica trying desperately to stay alive in her claustrophobic attic as her captors become more desperate and angry. Directed by David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2), the movie’s parts were filmed separately, with Evans and Basinger only meeting once. In an ironic twist, the story was created by Larry Cohen, who also wrote the similarly plotted Phone Booth. As for inspiration, Basinger says she's had plenty in real life to draw from when it comes to being terrorized.  “If you’ve lived enough life and you’ve been through some pretty horrible experiences with people, and if you’ve ever been threatened in any way …well, let’s just say I have a really great memory bank and I can go back and grab some of that any time I want,” she says cryptically. The temptation is to think she’s referencing her marriage to Baldwin and their custody battle over their nine-year-old daughter, Ireland. In February, a judge allowed the Manhattan-based Baldwin increased access. By June, the couple were in front of a judge again, on the receiving end of a list of strict rules on e-mail and fax content and general behaviour. They were also ordered to undergo something called “parent-centredness counselling.” Dressed tastefully and casually in a black skirt and top — and still looking spectacular at age 50 — Basinger has been open about suffering in the past from panic disorder.  On this day of interviews in a Santa Monica hotel room, she's friendly and ebullient, but her hands shake noticeably. Asked whether the custody battles are behind her, she declines to give an answer and offers a pained expression.  “Ohhh,” she says in a not-unfriendly manner, “it’s just such a boring story now.” Basinger adds, in reference to Cellular, that she doesn’t want to be seen to be playing the martyr. “God forbid, I’ve never walked in those shoes. I’ve never been kidnapped, and the word ‘kidnapped,’ especially to a mom, is just horrifying. I found this a unique opportunity as an actress, because it sort of read to me like a play, that I would be so alone and I had the opportunity to take the audience with me into the attic, where I don’t know why I'm there and I don’t know what these guys are going to do to me. “And I talked to David about clearing the set completely so it would be more like I was alone with the audience with all the shock and hysteria, and we could let it unravel. I also had him tell Jason (Statham, who plays the chief thug) — who is a doll — to surprise me with whatever it was he was going to do to me.” Still, you’d think a woman with panic disorder would want to steer clear of movies like this. “See, it’s just the opposite,” she says. “Acting has been so therapeutic, because it’s made me face my fears. Sometimes I go, ‘God, why did you make me an actress?’ And the crew says, ‘God, why did you make her an actress?’ ” she adds with a laugh. “My makeup girl Jaime says it all the time: ‘God, why did you make this klutzy girl an actress?’ “But along with therapy and God and a sense of humour, I’ve always felt that, by the end of my life, I want to have faced as many of my fears as I can. There’s a tremendous list left.” Case in point: Her daughter recently convinced Basinger to speak at a school benefit. “She came into my closet and I’m usually a ‘big jeans’ person — especially since I had a baby.  And big T-shirts. And Ireland came in and pulled out these little teeny jeans that show off your navel and said, ‘I want you to wear this, Mom.’ “And I put them on and spoke at her school. I don’t want to stand up in front of anybody and do anything, and I was very nervous doing it. But I knew I would disappoint her if I didn’t.  She’s a people person, and I want to nurture that.” After her daughter, she says the camera is the love of her life. “It really is like a relationship with any two people.”  Interview: Kim Basinger Quite possibly more beautiful at 50, the radiant actress and star of Cellular graces IGN with her presence.  In 1989, during the course of the four times I saw Batman in the theater, I developed one of my first schoolboy crushes on the southern belle blonde bombshell. Something about the way she said her character's name, 'Vicki Vale,' she made even that sound sultry. Basinger was more than beautiful, though; she was a competent, smart actress who generally chose her roles pretty carefully (sure, there were a few snafus in there, but not many) and generally wound up doing very good work as a result. Basinger's latest role is the damsel in distress in director David R. Ellis' new action chase thriller, Cellular. She plays schoolteacher, mom and wife Jessica Martin. On a normal day after walking her son to school, Martin is suddenly kidnapped by a gang of all-business baddies led by a brooding no-nonsense Jason Statham. They take her to a house and lock her in the dingy attic. There is a phone on the wall, but Statham smashes that to bits and throws Martin to the floor. She is craftier than the baddies expect, connecting the wires of the shattered phone, she taps them together and makes a call. The only problem is, she has absolutely no idea who she just called. On the other end of the line is a young surfer type named Ryan (Chris Evans). He just got a new cell phone and nearly hangs up on the distressed Martin, believing her to be little more than a prank call. Ryan soon realizes that the call is for real, leading to a cross-L.A. chase to rescue Martin and her family.  As I sat awaiting Basinger's arrival at Santa Monica's beachside Loews hotel, I knew that she'd still be attractive. At 50 years old, Basinger is known as one of Hollywood's ever-lasting beauties. I never would have expected what I soon saw. Now 15 years past her role in Batman and seven past her Oscar win for L.A. Confidential, Basinger looks just as gorgeous as ever. Looking more 35 than 50 with a body that would make most 22 year olds green with envy, Basinger has aged like a fine red wine. I emphasize the word fine. Relaxed and clearly at ease in a room full of recorders and microphones, Basinger's cool southern charm and radiant smile quickly enrapture the room. Her southern twang is loose and easy, without the usual accent restraints many of her roles require. While many dread press days, Basinger actually looks happy to be here.  Her terrific physical condition is the first topic of conversation. "Knowing you're going to do this type of film," Basinger states, "there is no way in the world that you're not going to get injured if you're not in shape, in one way, shape or form. I had cuts, I had bruises, I had everything all over me. You can't be slammed against a mirror, you can't be slammed down on a table, you can't be thrown in a room, whatever, unless you're somewhat capable of handling all that balancing act. "Blake Edwards taught me something. He loves slapstick; I got to be crazy in his films… I got to fall down, get up, and he loves all that, and I knew that I could do that by early on. He was sort of my teacher. He let me do that... You use the same kind of thing in this kind of film. Yeah, in the fight scenes, this is what I did with David [R. Ellis], I told David… 'Please tell Jason I want to be surprised … when I hear those footsteps, only because it would make it more real.' I mean, God forbid I've never been in one of these situations before, and I think that you know we're at a time in our existence on this planet where we have heard these words, especially as a mom, we hear the word kidnapping… This is just a movie, thank God, but kidnapping is a very real thing and I just try to make it as real as possible, and when acting as real as I think someone would, I'm just an actress in a movie, but you know, in doing that, I wanted to get as close to the truth as I could, and asking David to ask Jason [Statham] if he would just surprise me because, one of the most wonderful opportunities for me, and I've never had this before, was I knew I could bring you guys upstairs with me. See I was thrown in the attic, I wanted you guys to be thrown in the attic as an audience, and also because I don't know why I'm in there and you don't know why I'm in there. You don't know what they're going to do to me, and I don't either. So I wanted everybody to get the feel, the audience to get the same identical feeling that I'm feeling, and that's why I didn't want to know." On the subject of bizarre cell phone calls, Basinger has a pretty good story of her own: "I was called on my car phone one day and a guy just talked and talked and went on and on and on and I tried to stop him but he went on and on… I have not seen this movie yet, and I've seen the trailer, remember when Chris goes, 'Carrie, Carrie is that you?' That part? I kept saying, 'Hello, hello, hello,' and I learned this whole story about this guy, his company and what he was going to do in the morning. I think it was probably the strangest cell phone call I've ever received. I knew his whole [story], I said 'Hi, I'm not who you think I am…' I said, 'Well, you have a nice day…'" As Basinger has gotten older, she says that she hasn't necessarily had less offers, just different and more challenging ones. "You know what I think? I think you get more opportunities in different ways. I think as I've got older, I've got more interesting opportunities, just so much more. You can feel spring, God I wish so much America would have more of a take, more of a European take to aging and all those sorts of things." Basinger was the first choice for director David R. Ellis. The two hit it off quickly and she was excited by the part he had to offer. "I loved the isolation she had, I loved that. It was more like a play for me and that's a challenge I've never done. It's one of my biggest fears, to do a play, and maybe one day I will because I love to face my fears, but I thought that was great. And when I heard who the cast was, I love William Macy, and Jason I adore. I didn't know Chris, but Chris is wonderful. I just felt the cast was extremely interesting as well and I'd never been isolated, to have to do that. I love these challenges, to be on the phone and do most of your performance on the phone." Acting opposite a leading man who you never see also seems like a pretty tough challenge in itself. "It was just one of those things that led me to want to do the film because I wouldn't see him and I don't know if I said this to you guys, Chris I never knew at all and my very first day of filming, the very first day, they said we really hate to have to do this to you, the day before, but you're going to come to your very first day of filming, you're going to come to the pier and you're going to get out of the van and you will have been through the whole experience, you would have been kidnapped... So the first day I got out of the van and came around and saw Chris Evans, that was my very first scene of that movie. Then two weeks later, I did the whole month of, they threw me in the attic and did the scenes. Good ol' movie making." This role requires some very intense and seemingly very draining emotional moments for Ms. Basinger. I asked her whether getting prepared for those dramatic scenes is easy for her or whether she has a process after all these years that she draws on? "I'll pick the last one. It takes years to learn how to act, I think. It takes years if you're not fooling yourself, and I think it's like what Anthony Hopkins once said when someone asked him about an emotional scene he had to do, and he said, 'It's my job,' you know? And how did you get to it, and he said, 'It's my job.' Well, I can now look at someone and know the tools that I've developed over the years, and the things and the buttons, and where to go to press that button and I thank God it's such a gift, and one day you wake up and you go, I can access that, I can get that, I know where to go to get that. It is your pay-off for longevity, for being tenacious." Cellular opens in theatres nationwide this Friday, September 10th. Cellular: An Interview with Kim Basinger  Kim Basinger may have made her start in Hollywood as a pin-up, sexpot or a 'damsel in distress' in such movies as "Never Say Never Again" and "9 1/2 Weeks", but the actress is hardly as easily relegated to subordinate roles these days. Her Oscar-winning turn in 1997's "L.A. Confidential" earned her widespread acclaim as well as credibility with filmmakers who saw her only as a pretty face, and she's taken full advantage of those opportunities in recent years: she tackled tough roles in "I Dreamed of Africa", "8 Mile" and "The Door in the Floor", and now lays bare her fear and desperation playing a kidnap victim who finds unlikely salvation via a tenuous phone call with a selfish twenty something (played by Chris Evans). Basinger recently sat down with blackfilm.com to discuss her latest role, her career, and her evolving status as one of Hollywood's most sought-after actresses.  You are having quite a year.  Kim Basinger: These three opportunities sort of popped up all at once: "The Door In The Floor", and then once I finished that little human drama, I went and did a little film in Albuquerque called "Elvis Has Left The Building". These were just three opportunities that happened to pop up in the same year, so I was just pleased with being attracted to three things in a row. That doesn't really happen to me that often."  How hard is it to do a film like this where it is so emotional every single day of the shoot?  KB: You know, I really loved this opportunity because it was more like a play to me. And I love new challenges. I said to David (the director), 'I don't want the crew around me. I want as few people there to make it as real as I could.' And it is a real opportunity to sit where the audience sits. I wanted you guys up there with me. That is all I have is to have my audience up there with me. Because I don 't know what is going to happen to me and I don't know why I was thrown in there. And you guys don't either. So I love that. I don't think I can remember a film I have been in where I have had the opportunity to do that. And yes, it was quite a roller coaster ride emotionally every day. My crew, I think they suffered more than me. They would watch me and say, 'Oh, my God, she has to go back on the attack.' Because it was almost a solid month. It was actually longer than a month. It was every day that I had to pick up right where I left off. You come to a place in your life where you really learn what it is and how it is and what make you tick as an actress. It takes you a long time to learn how to be an actress. It really does. And then you find these buttons that become so accessible to you. And you just push them. It's not like fear is over here and death is over here and blah, blah, blah... God forbid, I have never had to be in a situation like this, but I tried to get as close as I could to imagining what it would be like. And the word 'kidnapping,' especially being a mom, becomes a huge fear in your life. And unfortunately all of this has been going on, and this is just a movie, thank God, but the words 'kidnapping' and 'captor' and all this Iraqi stuff, just the fear and the faces... all we can do is stare in shock. And I would think it would be the same with anyone that got kidnapped and didn't know what was going to happen to them with some crazy people downstairs. So it was a challenge and a bit for me emotionally. But it was very different from the human drama and very different from the comedy and we all came with a big old- I think- a big old afternoon of cowboys and Indians. And Jason, look at him. He is one of the nicest people, but I never really got to know Jason. We never even met each other. And I told David 'I do not want to know what he does to me when he comes in the room.' I wanted him to surprise me, and he surprised me.  How did you do the telephone scenes? Was Chris there?  KB: No. For one little piece Chris was there one day. But they had finished filming him and then they did me as the last part of the film. So they did him as the first half an I got to hear his voice. And we had to change lines, sometimes things didn't work. So it was read to me off stage sometimes.  Chris said it was a good idea that you didn't have face to face encounters during these scenes.  KB: It was great. It worked out the way it should have worked out. My first day of filming was the last scene when I get out of the van and see him. That was the first time I had ever seen Chris. They said 'We really hate to do this to you, but you are going to have to get out of the van all beaten up and you are going to have to have already been through it all. Meet Chris and then we are going to go back and throw you in this attic and start doing it all,' That was the first scene I did.  What about your cell phone use: do you have one with a camera in it?  KB: I hate that thing with the camera because we have been so disturbed by them sometimes, like in a Broadway play, people will start taking your picture. [Like] when you are sitting there with your daughter. I mean, anybody who has a kid. I am a mom, so I have a cell phone. It's that simple. I could do without one because they just worry you all day long. I am not a real good technical person. I don 't have a lot of the gadgets. Sometimes they are forced down your throat and if you do have a young kid and they are in to all the stuff for school, then you have to learn, you know. But I carry my cell phone and usually it is in the cradle in the car.  Any thoughts on cell phone etiquette?  KB: Haven't people gone crazy? It is so disturbing. I think the only thing that really should change- and I know there are people who will hate me for saying this- I think it is wonderful to have a cell phone in your car in case you get in trouble. Really, it is important. But I honestly think it should be hands free in this whole country. Honestly. You see too many accidents happening. I live in my car because I live in California. And you see people all the time making wrong turns and whatever and they have got this in their hand.  You are saying it has also been obtrusive where you have been in public with your child .  KB: Yes. And I don 't know enough about them. So it takes someone else sitting beside me to say 'They are taking your picture with that cell phone.' I don't even know where the camera is. 'Is it in the back of the camera? The front of the camera?' And then some people just like to take pictures of their dog.  Besides the cell phone, what do you always carry with you?  KB: A camera. I love to paint, so I love to take photographs of things (to paint). Cash. My credit card. I am not a real girly girl, so no make up. Oh, my sun stick for my lips. Probably some breath freshener. Things for Ireland. I always take lollipops in my bag because she always gets car sick- she and her friends- or they say they are getting car sick. She turns nine in October. And if you had asked me this three years ago, it would be full of anything to keep her occupied. Even now, I have little things that might keep her occupied. So I think it is about time to clean up my purse.  Are you still involved in animal rights causes?  KB: You know, I am always working on things with several different things with several different organizations. Always. It is a never-ending, horrific, horrible thing in every country. So right now, we are working on a number of different issues.  Are you still working with PETA?  KB: Yes, actually. I am a spokesperson for PAWS. Performing Animal Welfare Society. I work with the Farm Sanctuary in Orlin, California. They also have another sanctuary in New York. I do work also with individual issues that PETA brings to my attention. I will do that with PETA.  What animals will you have at your home?  KB: Between my two houses on the same property, we have a menagerie: kitties and doggies and rats.  Are you turning a corner in your life now that some of your personal issues are behind you? How are you doing?  KB: You know, we live in the public. It comes with the territory. I always say 'God and a sense of humor has gotten us through this whole thing.' And it is all I can do: just grow up and make the best decisions I know how. And we have come through pretty well.  What is on tap for the next chapter of your life?  KB: I hope a lot of creative things up the road that I want to work on. But I think just watching my daughter come in to her own. Into her creativity and then watching what the rest of my journey is going to be about. I am very open about it. I look so forward to it.  Any other projects coming up?  KB: I don 't know what I am going to be doing on film at all. Nothing I plan to do.  What about theater?  KB: I am reading some things for film. You know what? I have got to tackle that because it is a fear of mine. I would love to do it and I have been asked many times if I wanted to come to Broadway and do something. So I think it might be one of those steps in the near future if I could find something I really wanted to do. I think it would be mortifying, but I have a tendency to go toward anything I fear.  It looks like you really got roughed up. If you didn't know what the guy was going to do, did you end up with any injuries?  KB: I got bruised and banged up and cut a lot. But you know what? You take on a role like this and . I try to keep pretty physically in shape and not just for the look of it but really keep in shape with weights and running and all that stuff. I was ready to take on this part, but I knew, you can't get thrown on tables and against glass and not expect to get cut a little.  Can you talk about the development of your character's tenor throughout the movie: going from being calm to hysterical.  KB: You have to kind of write the song yourself as you go along, so that it has those different layers. Because human nature is like that. But I think shock and hysteria and fear, of course, is all in there. But once I had Chris understanding this was a real situation, I think it became a fight for your life. And then you found out it was about your son and you sort of lower the whole mechanism so that you clearly understand all that is going on. And always keeping that fear that we could be disconnected at any moment. So it was a balance to do, a challenge. But I enjoyed it. As I have grown up in the acting world, I have learned a lot about really listening and keeping quiet, even in my own life. Less talk, more listening. It has taught me a lot about life and acting.  As a mother now, do you ever think about longevity or take any measures to ensure your longevity?  KB: Of course you think about that. You think about that the older you get because you have this child that depends on you. And I think when you have a child later in life like I did, you find they come to you in the most innocent way; I know my daughter was mad at me for having her as late as I did in my life because she says things like 'what has that got to do with me?' She has those issues. And we have had to go through those issues. It has been a delicate subject. But at the same time I have great beliefs in what I believe in. And she has a great foundation in her faith and her belief as well. We believe and we will never really be apart ever. She has never really asked me and we haven't gone through it again.  Some of her friend's parents may be a few years younger than you, but you sure appear to be their age!  KB: Thank you. You know what? The real truth is I don't know there and I don't really care. But I do really wish we had more of the European feeling of age in this country because it has put so much pressure not just on the women, but on the men and the children, too. It 's sad to see a little 8 year-old like my own look at the other girls and start holding in their stomachs. My daughter is as thin as a rail. I mean, I have trouble keeping weight on her. And already they are evaluating their own bodies and that is sad. So I hope to adopt that same attitude as I get older and bring it in to my home.  Is your daughter old enough to see this movie?  KB: I have not even seen it. So she is coming with me to the premiere. She loves the little boy, Adam. 'Cellular' does not deserve reception Although director does good job with setting the movie, actors could have delivered better performance to audience Mariko Fritz-krockow, Cavalier Daily Arts & Entertainment Editor  Kim Basinger plays the kidnapped science teacher Jessica Martin, and plays it badly. Chris Evans, a fairly unknown actor, does a much better job. Courtesy New Line Cinema The story line is predictable, the direction about average and the actors either have past, or are yet to reach their peak. To make a movie like this good is a challenge, but somehow, the cast and crew of "Cellular" managed to make a semi-decent movie out of it.  Let's start with the plot. A man in his early twenties receives a phone call from a woman who claims to be kidnapped. It takes this man a little while to actually believe her, but when he does, he goes all out to try and save this woman, her husband and her child. Along the way, the young man, Ryan (Chris Evans), finds himself in the middle of a huge conspiracy that has nothing to do with him.  If you think about it, this plot could be the start of a very good movie. If only the plot hadn't been used before. Think back not too long ago to "Phone Booth." Colin Farrell picks up a random phone call to find himself in a lot of trouble. Sure, Colin Farrell was in a booth and was trying to save himself, not someone else, but in any case, the phone thing has been done before.  Now, in order to get away with a used premise of a plot, director David R. Ellis had to come up with new ways to put this plot into action. Let's say that he did an okay job. There is nothing new about "Cellular," but it is interesting just the same. In a way, you have seen it all before, but this is a different movie.  Now that we have the average stuff out of the way, let's move to the one major thing that was sub-average -- the acting. You would expect that a veteran actress like Kim Basinger could deliver a better performance than she did here. Basinger plays the kidnapped mother, wife and science teacher, Jessica Martin. Through her science knowledge, she puts together a smashed telephone and calls Ryan. Her family is being attacked and she is helpless. You would think that this woman would be hysterical. She makes the character sound wimpy, whiny and just not frantic enough. At times, she seems a little too composed for her son to be in grave danger.  In her defense, I can see how it is hard to act out all this in only a voice. She is, after all, on the phone for a little more than half the movie. When she is acting in the flesh, she is okay. Notice how I say "okay" and not "good." But in spite of everything, this is Academy Award Winning (1998 Best Supporting Actress) Kim Basinger -- I expected better.  Chris Evans is still a fairly unknown actor with only 10 films under his belt. Notable credits include genius movies like "Not Another Teen Movie" and "The Perfect Score." These things considered, I think he did pretty well in one of his first serious roles. If his character had failed, this movie would be getting way fewer stars than it is receiving now. Although Basinger may be the best-known actor in this film, Evans is in the spotlight. He is the one who must execute the tasks. He is the hero. Nothing special, but he did well.  One actor who did do a very good job is William H. Macy, who plays Officer Mooney, the cop. Unlike Basinger, Macy's veteran acting status shows as he plays a cop close to retirement. He is tired and slightly disappointed with his job, wanting to spend the rest of his working life helping his wife run a day spa. This makes for some very funny scenes, which are made even better by Mooney's dry, tired personality.  Acting points drop immensely with the performances of the bad guys played by Jason Statham, Eddie Driscoll and Eric Etebari. Since their rolls require little talk, their facial expressions do all the talking for them. But these are hard to read since their expressions remain forever constant and don't ever change. It is a shame because with a little work, these bad guys could have been very interesting people, because, believe it or not, the characters actually have interesting backgrounds. Actually, it may have been harder to portray these characters badly, because they were given background to work with. Either way, the evil parts in "Cellular" are not worth the excitement.  The very worst part of the movie comes with the credits. True, this is a slightly unimportant part of the movie, but it is nevertheless the way audiences leave the theater and they inevitably affect the way we see the movie. When the credits roll you think they are going to show bloopers or something of the sort since they start replaying scenes from the film. Instead, they replay the scene, only to cut to the phone and roll credits. If this sounds bad to you, double it. I believe that if you are going to make a credit sequence that audiences are going to watch, you need to make it good. This one was horrible.  All in all, this movie is okay. There are better things to see out there and so I wouldn't recommend this being your movie of choice. If you want to see a telephone related action movie, go and rent "Phone Booth." Nevertheless, if for any reason, you are stuck seeing this movie, as I was, it won't be a total waste of your time. There are a couple of nice twists and turns and a couple of good looking people to distract you from the bad acting. There are some thrilling moments and some funny scenes that may make your time slightly worthwhile.  Weekend Box Office (September 17 - 19, 2004) THIS WEEKEND Three new films will inject some badly-needed excitement into the marketplace as the box office looks to bounce back following the year's two lowest-grossing weekends. Yankee gals hook up with Brit boys in the Gwyneth Paltrow-Jude Law actioner Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and the Kirsten Dunst-Paul Bettany tennis comedy Wimbledon. Meanwhile, Bernie Mac steps up to the plate with a sports comedy of his own - the baseball pic Mr. 3000. An appealing batch of new content should help increase attendance as the fall season continues to rid theaters of stale summer leftovers. Hollywood's first live-action film made with all computer-generated sets takes off on Friday in the form of the bold adventure tale Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Paltrow and Law star in this Paramount offering while Angelina Jolie snags the coveted "and" credit for her supporting contribution. Refreshingly, the two lead actors get to use their own natural voices and do not have to fake the accents of the other's country as we've seen so many times in prior roles. Taking place in the late 1930s, Sky Captain sees Paltrow playing an investigative journalist and Law as a hero for hire who team up to stop a mysterious scientist from destroying the world. One of the smartest decisions Paramount made this year was to move Tomorrow from its late June launching pad out to mid-September. The PG-rated film would have been clobbered in the summer by Spider-Man and Harry Potter which moviegoers would find to be more worth the price of admission. Though a slower play period, fall allows Sky Captain to fly into a marketplace without much competition where a top spot debut is now possible. Science fiction fans will be lining up to see something new and the mild rating will help to bring in business from young boys. Reviews have been very positive for the landmark film which creates an appealing setting that mixes yesterday with tomorrow. Individually, the three marquee names have anchored flops but together, they give Sky Captain a potent dose of starpower. Blasting off in 3,170 theaters, World of Tomorrow might see an opening of about $23M. Buena Vista swings for the fences with its baseball comedy Mr. 3000 starring Bernie Mac. The PG-13 film finds the new incarnation of Bosley playing a retired celebrity slugger who must return to the big leagues when three of his 3000 hits are found to be no good. Directed by Charles Stone III (Drumline), the pic also has in its line up Angela Bassett, Chris Noth, Paul Sorvino, and Tom Arnold. The studio's marketing efforts explain the plot clearly and moviegoers will find Mac believable in this role. Supporting at-bats in hits like Ocean's Eleven, Bad Santa, and Head of State have made the comedian a familiar face in theaters, but Mr. 3000 represents the actor's first chance to really anchor a movie on his own. The timing of the release coincides with the pennant race in baseball which should help and a current lack of black starpower at the box office will lead to a solid turnout from African American audiences. Packing broad appeal, Mr. 3000 steps to the plate in over 2,600 parks and could drive in around $12M worth of ticket sales. Courting the date crowd, Universal counters with a sports comedy of its own with Wimbledon starring Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany. The blonde actors star as tennis players, one a rising American star and the other an aging English pro, who meet and fall for each other during the grand slam tournament. With Bring It On and the Spider-Man flicks to her credit, Dunst certainly has a powerful serve at the box office and is being asked to carry this film commercially. Films like Get Over It and crazy/beautiful were led by Dunst and died horrible deaths at the turnstiles. But Wimbledon has a much more appealing concept and promotion during the U.S. Open during the past couple of weeks targeted the best possible audience. Females will outnumber males but Wimbledon is not a chick flick. In fact the cross-gender appeal is quite strong and the sports element is central to the film throughout. Universal's television spots fail to show the romantic comedy's good side as the London-set film is more of a crowd pleaser than one would think after watching the commercials. Not-so-favorable reviews and the lowest theater count among the weekend's new movies will prevent Wimbledon from scoring an ace. However, competition for women and the date crowd will not be too heavy so a solid opening is likely. Serving in 2,033 locations, Wimbledon could debut with about $9M and become a profitable little venture for the studio. A small handful of movies debut in limited markets on Friday. National Lampoon's Gold Diggers features a pair of con men who scheme to marry for money and will target young men. The PG-13 film is being released by Voyage Entertainment and has been backed by a quiet marketing campaign. Acclaimed director John Sayles (Lone Star) offers the political satire Silver City which stars Chris Cooper as a troubled gubernatorial candidate on the election trail. The R-rated Newmarket entry also stars Richard Dreyfuss, Daryl Hannah, and Billy Zane. DreamWorks and Go Fish Pictures will open the Japanese animated adventure Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence in about two dozen markets. The PG-13 film was the first anime feature to compete at the Cannes Film Festival and also screened at the Toronto Film Festival last week. With a crop of new releases hitting the multiplexes, look for last week's champ Resident Evil: Apocalypse to get knocked down a few notches on the charts. The first Resident Evil faced the bow of Blade II in its second weekend and plunged 62%. Apocalypse, like any action-horror sequel, will face a steep drop and will be further pounded by the arrival of Sky Captain which will lure away much of the sci-fi vote. Look for Sony to suffer a 60% fall for the Resident Evil pic to around $9M this weekend putting the ten-day sum at $35M. The Kim Basinger thriller Cellular generated a lukewarm $3,674 average last weekend and adult women now have the more upbeat Wimbledon to play with. A 45% drop to $5.5M would give the kidnapping drama a ten-day tally of $18M. Interview: Kim Basinger - "Cellular"  Kim Basinger is quite the radiant vision. At 51, the Oscar winner has aged beautifully, her tanned skin having shown no sign of aging. All smiles, with her Georgian accent in toe, the stunning Ms Basinger is happy to dish out exercise and dietary advice prior to talking about her intense role in the thriller, Cellular. "Well, if you want to lose a few pounds but you want muscle, you have to fight it with weight, you really do, and you have to do cardio or whatever your favourite is. Mine's running with the elliptical. Everybody loves the elliptical, because they think they can get on it for an hour and watch TV and read, but that's not the key to the elliptical: It's how fast you go because, you're not really running." Basinger, who is obsessed with exercise, says that she goes "really, really fast and I sweat. Usually an hour on, an hour or a little longer on the elliptical. I also lift weights as well as the stability ball." Looking fit, the actress says that no matter how much exercise and fitness regime she undertakes, when working n a film such as Cellular, nothing can prepare her for the eventualities of injury. "Knowing you're going to do this type of film, there is no way in the world that you're not going to get injured if you're not in shape. I had cuts, I had bruises, and I had everything all over me. You can't be slammed against a mirror, slammed down on a table, or thrown in a room, unless you're somewhat capable of handling that entire balancing act." In the fast-paced thriller Cellular, Basinger plays Jessica Martin, mysteriously and viciously kidnapped. A random call to a stranger's cell phone results in a furious race against time to save her and her family from imminent execution. While Basinger spends much of the movie alone, she does eventually get physical with her kidnappers, and Basinger certainly wanted those scenes to be as realistic as possible. "Blake Edwards, who loves slapstick, taught me something. I got to be crazy in his films, as I got to fall down, get up, and I knew that I could do that by early on. He was sort of my teacher and you use the same kind of thing in this kind of film. So, in the fight scenes, I told our director, to tell Jason [Statham] I did not want to know what he had planned. Jason and I would come in, kind of look at each other and say hmm, because we didn't know what was about to happen. And I told him to please tell Jason I want to be surprised, because it would make it more real."  For Basinger, the key element in this film, she says, is to make her character and situation identifiable to an audience. "God forbid I've never been in one of these situations before and I think that you know we're at a time in our existence on this planet where we have heard the word, especially as a Mom, kidnapping and that has become such a big word. This is just a movie, thank God, but kidnapping is a very real thing and I just try to make it as real as possible. I was thrown in the attic, and I wanted you to be thrown in there as an audience." Basinger, who can still afford to be selective, says that she was drawn to Cellular because she "loved the isolation that character had. It was more like a play for me and that's a challenge I've never done. It's one of my biggest fears, to do a play, and maybe one day I will because I love to face my fears, but I thought that was great." While Basinger gets down and dirty here, there is no sign of the sexy, glamorous film star on screen that we are used to. Basinger says that she has her own philosophy on being a sex symbol and sexiness in general. "I don't have a thing about sexiness at any age. I think the Europeans taught me more about that than anything in the world. They have a great appreciation of sex, and sex symbols, and they taught me not to be ashamed of it. When I first came to this town, and they threw me in that kind of image, it's a very difficult place to be put and it's twice as hard to prove yourself as an actress. It takes a long time to be taken really seriously, especially in America. I mean beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what's beautiful to him may not be beautiful to her, or whatever. But whenever you are put into a category like that, of course it's different, and it makes for other problems within you. If you start getting complexes that you won't look the role, you can't play the chancellor of a University or a head of this, you can't do this, and when that's put in your head long enough you, it becomes a hurdle for you." Basinger has learned to overcome such hurdles, now that she is a member of that elite Oscar club, but says that as she becomes older, how she chooses a role clearly changes. "I think you get more opportunities in different ways. I think as I've got older, I've got more interesting opportunities. I wish so much that America would have more of a European take to aging." The actress even admits that there are times when she is ready to put acting and Hollywood behind her. "I think I've gone through that every month, since I started, and every month that's gone by." Basinger is more content being a single mother, doting as she does on her nine-year old, a brown belt at karate. "You know, the funny thing about my daughter, is she's such a sweet girl that she has to go through this thing where she's sparring and she has a tough time with that. She doesn't want to hit anybody. She doesn't want to BE hit, but they don't want to hit either, which is a tough part of karate to get through." But Basinger's daughter has more on her mind than getting physical or following her mother's footsteps on the screen. "My daughter has wanted to be one thing only since she was probably two years old, and that's a veterinarian." Given her mother's passion for animal rights, the actress is delighted. "I am thrilled to death and she's got her school picked out. I think she's had enough of this business, really. I love it because she'll be nine in October and if you're not into Chad Michael Murray or Hillary Duff, you're left in the dark." Basinger is still very much into her animal activism. "It's consuming and is never over unfortunately, with the pain and the things that happen." While Basinger appears confident as we speak, she finally reveals that is in fact relatively shy and insecure. While she may have gracefully accepted her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for LA Confidential, when it comes to speaking at her daughter's school, fear sets in, but at least she has her child to help her face those fears. "She really pushes me out of that shyness, and once when I had to speak at her school, I wore the jeans, got up there and made the speech. I was quite proud of myself when I walked out."  Basinger sick of 'hard life' acting  Kim Basinger is so sick of the "hard life" she's led as an actress, she constantly wants to quit the movie industry.  The LA Confidential star, now aged 50, is delighted her eight-year-old daughter Ireland with former husband Alec Baldwin has career goals outside Hollywood, because working on films would only grind her down physically and emotionally. Basinger said: "It's a huge relief to me. I'm glad that she's not looking towards acting because it's such a hard life. Not a month goes by when I don't think about giving it up. But then I get a new role or read a new script and feel that I can do something with it."  BOX OFFICE USA - Tuesday 14th - Cellular #2 - $685,000 2.2% / $249 $11,456,000 / 5. La rivista FILM TV offre questa settimana il DVD di "L.A. Confidential" a Euro 12,90.
	19 settembre: News! 'Captain' Creams Sports Films 'Wimbledon' and 'Mr. 3000' LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) -- The stylistic computer-graphic "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" won the box office, skyrocketing to $16.2 million this weekend, while newcomers "Mr. 3000" and "Wimbledon" cracked the top five. Starring Jude Law in the title role and Oscar winners Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie who battle for his attention, "Sky Captain" earned the top spot, while Bernie Mac's comedy "Mr. 3000" came in a distant second place at $9.2 mil and last week's winner "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" fell to third place with $9 mil.  "Wimbledon," the romantic sports comedy, landed in fourth place at $7.8 mil and "Cellular," which was in second place last week, fell to $6.875 mil.  The overall weekend box office was down by nearly 30 percent, according to Exhibitor Relations, which tracks box office receipts. The top 12 movies grossed $90 mil this time last year while the top 12 this year grossed $66 mil.  Friday Box Office Analysis Though the three new films that made their way into theaters this weekend looked to be of pretty solid quality, consumers weren't buying. Movie theaters are apparently occupied little more than the goo on the floor. Notable Holdovers Resident Evil: Apocalypse took an absolutely dire tumble from last Friday to yesterday, falling an outrageous 71%. There was never any doubt that the fanboy rush to see the film on opening day would be huge, but this is bordering on ridiculous. The film might manage another $7 million for the weekend before it begins to fade out of the picture entirely. Cellular, on the other hand, had a pretty reasonable Friday-to-Friday drop of 36%. It's going to hold up quite nicely over the weekend, and should pull another $6.8 million.  Cellular´ makes clear connection 09-16-2004  “Cellular,” a new telecommunications thriller from the writer of “Phone Booth,” is something of a rare breed. In this time of self-important blockbuster extravaganzas, “Cellular” reminds us why the genre of over-the-top action ever began - because it can be fun.  Advertisement Sticking to a reoccurring theme of not wasting time, the opening scenes of the movie just barely establish any crucial information before the action kicks into full swing. Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) walks her son to his school bus and through their conversation we find out that she is a science teacher and that she loves her son.  That´s all we get. The next thing that we see is Jessica being dragged out of her house by a violent intrusion of home invaders and the plot begins. Jessica is locked into an attic of a home setting just outside of Los Angeles. The wall phone in the attic is smashed with a sledgehammer by the leader of the kidnappers, Greer (Jason Statham).  Jessica, being a science teacher, manages to assemble the phone back together just enough to dial a random phone number. She reaches a young, pompous surfer named Ryan (Chris Evans) and convinces him to take his phone to the police station.  Why she has been kidnapped she does not know. What “it” is that the kidnappers want she does not know. Why the police do not look at the phone number Jessica is calling from so that they can trace it, I do not know, but to think too heavily on the unanswered questions of this movie is to defeat its purpose and destroy the fun.  The police don´t take any serious action on the matter, so that only leaves one option - Ryan must help Jessica. Ryan finds his inner stuntman and weaves through traffic at top speeds, holds up a cellphone store at gunpoint and dives through a long garbage chute - all to try and find a woman that he has never met.  When the kidnappers go after Jessica´s son and husband, Ryan is hot on their trail and slowly pieces together the clues of why the kidnappers are pursuing the Martin family. When the truth finally comes out about what is going on exactly, it all makes sense without stretching the audience´s belief too much.  Kim Basinger seems like she is trying a little too hard to make her performance good, but William H. Macy, who plays a 27-year-old veteran cop flailing on the tail-end of this kidnapping, looks like he doesn´t even have to try to bring his character to life. His performance alone helps curb the ridiculousness that comes along with a thriller such as this, but really it´s a group effort between the writing and directing that keep this movie right on key.  Ultimately, “Cellular” is a well-made B picture that moves so fast you never get to think about all of its missing links. It´s simple enough to keep everyone who watches from disconnecting and implausible enough to make the audience laugh and have fun.  Rating: 7 out of 10.  Thriller 'Cellular' keeps you engaged Suddenly, just when all the big fat stupid movies of summer have finally slouched off to the video store (does anybody remember “Van Helsing” ?), along comes a pleasant little surprise.  “Cellular” is everything those forgettable big-budget summer movies were not. It’s well directed, well written and well acted from top to bottom; it’s funny and scary (sometimes all at once); and it has a human heart. No wonder they held it out of movie theaters till after Labor Day.  Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is a super-mom who has it all: an adorable toe-headed kid, a hunky husband, a job teaching high school biology, a Porsche S.U.V. and a house in L.A.’s swank Brentwood neighborhood. All this on a schoolteacher’s salary? Don’t ask pesky questions. Sit back and enjoy the fun.  One fine day, after putting her son Ricky (yes, Ricky Martin!) on the school bus, Jessica returns home and literally watches her snug world shatter. Through the glass kitchen door come three thugs, led by a lout named Ethan (Jason Statham), who shoots the maid and hauls Jessica away to an abandoned house, where he locks her in the attic. For good measure, Ethan comes in with a sledgehammer and smashes the telephone.  But Jessica is a resourceful biology teacher/ super-mom. Soon she’s hot-wiring the old rotary-dial phone and getting a dial tone and dialing a number at random.  Meet Ryan (Chris Evans), a superficial generic surfer dude last seen in “The Perfect Score” and “Not Another Teen Movie.” He interrupts his surfside flirting long enough to pick up his cell phone and listen to Jessica’s implausible cry for help.  Only when Ryan overhears Ethan terrorizing Jessica does he realize the phone call is no prank. He decides to leave his cozy world of beaches and bimbos behind and help the damsel in distress.  This high-concept set-up could have gone any number of ways. Happily, the director, David R. Ellis, manages to produce a savvy blend of suspense and comedy and action, aided by plausible plot twists and brisk pacing. This movie will surely be a breakthrough for Ellis, who has directed sequels (“Final Destination 2,” “Homeward Bound II”) and, more tellingly, has worked as second unit director on such action blockbusters as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Master and Commander.”  The screenplay was written by first-timer Chris Morgan from a story by the legendary writer/ director Larry Cohen, who wrote the recent Colin Farrell thriller, “Phone Booth.” It’s safe to say Larry Cohen has telephones on the brain.  And that’s a good thing, because cell phones — in all their maddening, liberating, amusing ways — provide much of the fuel for “Cellular.” In a sense, the movie is one extended telephone conversation — and yet it manages to be so much more.  There’s a wonderful performance by the gargantuan character actor William H. Macy, who plays a burnt-out desk sergeant yearning to leave 27 years of police work behind so he can open a “day spa” with his girlfriend. He gets maximum laughs out of an avocado facial, but he’s not the only actor doing fine work here.  Kim Basinger is her usual radiant self. Jason Statham, who exhibited his tough-guy chops in “The Transporter” and Guy Ritchie’s “Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels,” makes a chilling villain. Even a superficial surfer dude like Chris Evans rises to the material and delivers an engaging performance.  “Cellular” may not be great art, but it’s a refreshing autumnal breeze after a summer of bloated, windy movies, a welcome change of pace that has heart, wit and the good sense not to take itself too seriously. THEATER COUNTS > 2004 > Week #38  3 3 Cellular New Line 2,749 0 2  38 43 The Door in the Floor Focus 55 -17 10  BOX OFFICE FORECAST - 5 Cellular 5.9 18.8 / 2. 'Cellular' connects directly to suspense  Sometimes films that seem completely implausible and predictable prove just the opposite.  While there are still plenty of things about Cellular that can be questioned from a thematic standpoint, these are forgiven because director David R. Ellis and his cast have delivered a first-rate suspense thriller. It is interesting that the same writer (Larry Cohen) who crafted last year's decent effort Phone Booth also collaborated with Chris Morgan on Cellular, because he evidently learned some lessons on the former that were incorporated to make the latter a better picture. The first and major difference is movement, keeping the central figure on the go. Where Colin Farrell spent almost all of Phone Booth in a static situation talking with various individuals, this time Ryan (Chris Evans) has to steal cars, hold up a phone accessory store for a charger, fight criminals and try to explain what's happening while never losing contact with the voice of Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger), who somehow managed to contact Ryan's cell phone and inform him she has been kidnapped.  Martin is a 10th-grade science teacher who somehow becomes part of a vicious plot to recover some precious merchandise her husband has been hiding from the kidnappers. Martin and her son are imprisoned, but the kidnappers, despite smashing the phone in the attic, didn't cut the outside cord. Martin jiggles with wires until she gets a signal, and somehow manages to connect with Ryan. Ellis smartly makes the mystery a central element in the film, giving the audience only barebones details and letting them guess who the villains really are and what is truly at stake as things unfold.  William H. Macy pops up in an uncharacteristic action mode, though he certainly doesn't stray too far out of his everyman persona in the process. Jason Statham also makes a very creepy kidnapper, engaging in plenty of leering, threatening behavior though always stopping just short of truly harming Martin or her son.  The fun in watching Cellular comes from knowing that while the conclusion is pretty inevitable, the director has taken great pains to find clever ways of getting to it. Ryan has to do some rather unusual and bizarre things to stay alive, keep the connection and ultimately solve the mystery with Macy's help.  Here's a film where much wasn't expected, and instead the audience gets an above average, quite entertaining effort. BOX OFFICE USA - Estimates! Lunedì 13 Settembre - # 2 $671,000 -73% / $244 $10,772,000 / 4 Martedì 14 Settembre - # 2 $686,000 2.2% / $250 $11,458,000 / 5 Mercoledì 15 Settembre - # 2 $736,000 7.3% / $268 $12,194,000 / 6 Giovedì 16 Settembre - # 2 $721,000 -2% / $262 $12,914,026 / 7 Venerdì 17 Settembre - $2,150,000 198.2% / $782 $15,064,000 / 8 Sabato 18 Settembre - $2,960,000 37.7% / $1,077 $18,024,000 / 9 Domenica 19 Settembre - $1,765,000 -40.4% / $642 $19,789,000 / 10 Week end - September 17/19: 1 N Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Par. $16,200,000 - 3,170 - $5,110 $16,200,000 $70 / $35 1  2 N Mr. 3000 BV $9,200,000 - 2,736 - $3,362 $9,200,000 - / - 1  3 1 Resident Evil: Apocalypse SGem $9,000,000 -60.9% 3,284 - $2,740 $37,375,000 $45 / $25 2  4 N Wimbledon Uni. $7,780,000 - 2,034 - $3,824 $7,780,000 $31 / - 1  5 2 Cellular NL $6,875,000 -31.9% 2,749 - $2,500 $19,789,000 $25 / $20 2  6 3 Without a Paddle Par. $3,715,000 -17.7% 2,610 -144 $1,423 $50,409,000 $19 / $25 5  7 4 Hero Mira. $2,956,000 -33.1% 1,926 -249 $1,534 $46,210,000 $31 / - 4  8 10 Napoleon Dynamite FoxS $2,400,000 -4.6% 1,024 +103 $2,343 $33,457,000 $0.4 / $10 15  9 8 Collateral DW $2,300,000 -15.4% 1,605 -419 $1,433 $96,005,000 $65 / $40 7  10 5 The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement BV $2,000,000 -31.8% 1,902 -550 $1,051 $91,940,000 - / - 6  Basinger and Evans give surprise performance in 'Cellular' Suspense is a state of being that only exists when we don't know what's going to happen. Hollywood thrillers are meant to exploit that tingly sensation of breathless anticipation, yet all too often they come off as flat and predictable - mechanical exercises that go through Hitchcockian motions. "Cellular," a technology thriller about cell phones and "Paparazzi," a film that gets off from the boogeyman of tabloid celebrity obsession, are both suspense films in the familiar, comfort-food mode of most generic Hollywood jolt-a-thons, but they keep us on the edge of our seat in newly pleasurable ways. "Cellular" may be the first movie made that's entirely centered around the technological miracle that is the cell phone. It's based on a story by the cult filmmaker Larry Cohen (the script is actually by Chris Morgan) who last made the last electronic communications thriller, "Phone Booth." That movie pinned Colin Farrell in, yes, a phone booth for 81 minutes, as he parried back and forth with the purring, velvet-voiced sniper on the other end of the line. In "Cellular" the poor schmuck stuck on the line is Ryan (Chris Evans), a callow beach bum in his twenties that answers his shiny new cellular (it even has a video camera attached) only to be confronted by the frantic pleas of Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger), an Los Angeles based science teacher who has been kidnapped by a band of armed thugs.  Most of "Cellular" consists of Ryan rushing around Los Angeles, stealing cars and brandishing guns. The fun of the movie comes from watching Ryan get in touch with his inner action hero. Events force him into helping out Jessica - she's on a dilapidated phone, and she may not get another chance if the line cuts out. We see Ryan squeezed into a situation straight out of Hitchcock: the innocent man caught in a web of suspense. Too much of "Cellular" is made from out-of-the-bucket parts; dirty cops, incriminating videotapes, the creeping walk through dark and enclosed spaces. The movie's director is David R. Ellis, who previously directed the giddy and gore-drenched "Final Destination 2." If anything, he knows how to direct a thriller in a way that it zooms along happily on its own formula wavelength (he can also stage a mean highway demolition derby).  The acting in "Cellular" is surprisingly top-notch, from the bruised strength of Basinger to the boyish likeability of Evans to William H. Macy, who is given a rare heroic part.  "Cellular" never actually comes together as a movie, but it does have enough clever parts to keep you entertained. Top 50 United States Video Rentals for the week ending 12 September 2004 - 30. 23 People I Know (2002) 54 $820K $13M. Movie File: Kim Basinger, John Corbett, Rachel McAdams, Heath Ledger & More '8 Mile' mom starring alongside a bunch of dead Elvises in next flick. Kim Basinger, whose "Cellular" opened at #2 at the box office last weekend, will next be seen alongside John Corbett in "Elvis Has Left the Building," due later this fall. Joel Zwick of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" fame directed the romantic comedy. "I play [a woman] like Mary Kay of Mary Kay Cosmetics, only she's very Southern. If you ever saw 'Nadine,' she's a little bit like Nadine in that she's very spunky," Basinger said. "It's about Elvis impersonators, and they're all on their way to Vegas for this big convention, and everywhere I go there's another dead one. So I begin to think I'm killing these people, so I'm on the run from the cops. It's kind of a little romp through the desert." ...
	20 settembre: NEWS! A random wrong number on his cell phone sends a young man into a high-stakes race against time to save a woman's life. With no knowledge of Jessicca Martin (Kim Basinger) other than her hushed, panicked voice on the other end of the the tenuous cell 'phone connection, Ryan (Chris Evans) is quickly thrown into a world of deception and murder on his frantic search to find and save her. Jessica's life is in his hands, but what is waiting for him on the other side of the line, and what will it cost him to find out? Cellular is a fast-paced suspense thriller featuring Chris Evans in his starring debut opposite Oscar winner Kim Basinger (LA Confidential, 8 Mile), along with Jason Statham (The Italian Job) and William H. Macy (Fargo). The film is directed by David Ellis (Final Destination II). Based on the story by Larry Cohen (Phone Booth), the screenplay was written by Chris Morgan. L'uscita di CELLULAR in UK è prevista per il 24 settembre. In Brasile uscirà il 5 novembre col titolo "Celular - Um grito de socorro" (Celular - Um Grito de Socorro Elenco: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham e Willian H. Macy. Sinopse: Uma mulher é seqüestrada e presa em cativeiro consegue fazer uma única ligação telefônica pedindo socorro, antes dos criminosos destruírem o aparelho. Ela ligou para um número qualquer e a ligação caiu no celular de um rapaz que, a princípio, não acredita na história. Ele pensa que trata-se de um trote, mas quando ouve os gritos dela e as vozes dos violentos seqüestradores ameaçando-a, ele tenta buscar socorro. O problema é que a mulher não sabe onde está e a bateria do celular do rapaz pode acabar a qualquer momento. Se a ligação cair, eles perderão definitivamente o contato e ela perderá sua única chance de ser encontrada e salva). Ok all of us are driven insane by the amount of cellular phones that are in our society today. From that guy who is constantly on the phone while driving to the mother who is screaming into her phone as she walks down the grocery store aisle, people just don’t realize how much they use their phones and how much they disturb people around them. Well what if contacting one of these crazies was your only hope at living? Well, I guess then you would be screwed. That particular circumstance is the only hope for suburban housewife and kidnap victim Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) who has been able to use the remnants of a shattered telephone to reach out and touch someone. That someone is twentysomething Ryan (Chris Evans), who by a freak of nature actually listens to the woman’s cry for help. What would you do? Hang up? Think it’s a joke? Or become an instant “superhero” and save the damsel in distress? “Cellular” is being marketed as a “nail-biter” thriller which is sure to thrill, captivate and excite audiences. The only problem is that the marketing people and the filmmakers each made two totally different films. There is nothing scary, thrilling or “nail-biting” about this movie. Instead what you have is a comedy-action film with a young kid who all of a sudden has to become a “superhero” and save the girl.  I was literally baffled to see how many different ways that stuntman-turned-director David R. Ellis was able to screw up the intense thriller based scenes. Everywhere the audience turns there is another thing to disrupt the tension. The cellphone battery running out, going into a tunnel will lose the signal, crossing connections to another cellphone user are all plot elements that if executed well could have been hair-raising but instead come off as more “obstacle-course” comedy/action sequences than tense moments. Ellis was able to use his style of action and humor in his previous film, “Final Destination 2” which worked some what but here it just seems in bad taste. Do we really want to laugh as a guy tries to save a woman from an insane kidnapper? The film is based on a story by Larry Cohen (“Phone Booth”) and that story was adapted by first time screenwriter Chris Morgan. Somewhere between these two guys we lost a good movie. What happened? As the film struggled for its identity, I found myself some what impressed with Chris Evans in the lead. Evans is able to hold his own in scenes and has great on-screen charisma. I also liked poor Kim Basinger who seemed to be the only character scared in this film. Jason Statham as the kidnapper is a throwaway role for the actor. But if you have to feel sorry for anyone in this film it is poor William H Macy, who plays the cop trying to find Basinger. Macy is a brilliant actor and a wonderful talent but seeing him with green mud on his face and him uttering cliché-like lines like “I am too old for this, crap” is just awful. If this would have been a thriller and more like “Hitchcock-in-style” than Macy probably would have been perfect. So don’t believe the ad campaigns, “Cellular” is just as much of a throwaway film as one of those $40 disposable cellphones.  Cellular is one of those preposterous thrillers that are at times enjoyable due to its briskness. The whole concept of having a young man receiving a random call on his cell phone from a kidnapped woman, then jumping through obstacles to try and save her is genuine all in itself. Cellular plays out as a “B” thriller yearning to be sort of a mix between Speed and Phone Booth. Phone Booth writer Larry Cohen is in fact credited for the story of Cellular. The film opens with a middle-class science teacher named Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) walking her son (Adam Taylor Gordon) to his school bus stop. Shortly after arriving back at home, a group of criminals break in, kill her housekeeper, and kidnap her. She is then thrown into an attic in an abandoned house and asked the ultimate question of where “it” is by the leader of the group named Greer (Jason Statham). Of course not knowing what Greer is talking about, the kidnapper storms out of the attic, but shortly returns with a sledgehammer and shatters a wall phone in the attic to pieces.  The kidnapper for some reason does not take the broken phone pieces out of the attic with him, so as time passes Jessica attempts to make random calls by crossing the wires of the phone together. The first person she reaches is the beach ridden and self-centered twenty something named Ryan (Chris Evans). Not believing Jessica’s plea for a minute and unwanting to waste his cell phone minutes, Ryan nearly hangs up on her, until something he hears reveals her situation. Now, with his phone battery going low among other things, Ryan begins a crazy and erratic mission to help Jessica while also keeping her on the phone. Director David R. Ellis is bound to know that he had a pretty silly script to work with by Chris Morgan, even though Larry Cohen’s concept is keen. Ellis rushes the audience through every frame of this film, to where the energy and quickness almost makes you forget of how ridiculously written and played out this thriller is. Remember “almost.” Granted Ellis does not want the film to come across as smart or to give audiences a twisted ending, he merely wants to entertain and almost does. Ellis’ vast rushing through sequences will overshadow how clumsy some of the obstacles are for Ryan. There is a early moment in the film where he is actually in the police station with Jessica on the phone, but can not find anyone to help, except William H. Macy’s character of Mooney for a brief minute. However, Macy’s character leaves him waiting when a gang fight breaks out in the police station. So, Ryan then leaves the police station and takes it upon himself of being the ordinary guy doing extraordinary things type to try and save Jessica. Of course the end of the film involves the police, merely looking for Ryan, who after an hour into the film has broken numerous laws to stay on the line with Jessica.  It also seemed that Ellis and Morgan wanted this film to be more of a comedy than a thriller, with a few examples being William H. Macy donning facial mud or Basinger’s son being named Ricky Martin. What does work for this film as a “B” thriller is for sure its energy, it in fact nearly saves the film entirely and it is quite understandable if some hail Cellular as a fun guilty pleasure. Kim Basinger makes for a worthy “damsel in distress” as the kidnapped teacher Jessica Martin. Basinger does carry the majority of the film’s emotion and of course by the end of the film she gets to kick a little butt. As the ordinary hero Ryan, Chris Evans proves that he is not just eye candy for teenagers, even though his shirtless opening scene was a terrible stretch. Evans has a likeable quality and may shine in the future if he gets better work. The great William H. Macy of course makes a cliched “soon to be retired to better things” cop character more credible than the writing suggests. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for Jason Statham, who is underused in his wooden performance as the head kidnapper. Cellular is a ridiculous thriller, but may serve as pure escapism fun for many. The energy from director David R. Ellis overshadows a troubled script that has a genuine concept, but is just not mapped out too effectively. Grade: C
	21 settembre: NEWS! The Door in the Floor - Die Tür der Versuchung USA 2004. Buch und Regie: Todd Williams - nach Motiven des Romans “Witwe für ein Jahr” von John Irving Mit Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Jon Foster, Mimi Rogers 111 Minuten Verleih Tobis Kinostart: 21.10.2004 Ein Film, der sofort das Herz anspricht und sich dann in entlegene Winkel der Seele vorarbeitet: Willkommen im Kosmos von John Irving. „The Door in the Floor“, die fünfte Verfilmung eines Irving-Romanes (“Witwe für ein Jahr”), fängt Irvings Geist ein, ohne es bei einer puren Nach-Erzählung zu belassen. Tod Williams, ein junger Regisseur, der erst 1998 seinen Debütfilm („The Adventures of Sebastian Cole“) vorgelegt hat, ist mutig und intelligent vorgegangen. Statt sich an der komplexen, über 700 Seiten starken Vorlage zu verheben, schneidet er lediglich einen Strang aus der Geschichte und erzählt einfach nur ein Drittel von „Witwe für ein Jahr“ - ein Segment, das es in sich hat:  Der 16-jährige Eddie schätzt sich glücklich. In der festen Absicht eine schriftstellerische Fortbildung anzutreten, nimmt er einen Ferienjob als Assistent bei Ted Cole, dem berühmten Kinderbuchautoren, an. Er stellt sich darauf ein, den Sommer bei den Coles auf dem Land zu verbringen, nicht ahnend, dass die Fingerübungen anders geraten werden, als er sich das vorstellt.  Tatsächlich wird er von Ted Cole nur als Chauffeur missbraucht, weil der seinen Führerschein versoffen hat, geht aber stattdessen bei Teds wunderschöner Frau in Lehre. Marion Cole vertieft zwar nicht seine Kenntnisse als Dichter, dafür führt sie ihn in die Liebe ein. Während Ted eifrig seine Fähigkeiten als Aktzeichner vor lebendem Modell perfektioniert (um damit von seiner Einfallslosigkeit als Dichter abzulenken), verwendet seine Frau in diesem Sommer all ihre Energie darauf, Eddie zum Mann werden zu lassen. Was auf den ersten Streich so komisch klingt, verhüllt in Wirklichkeit – und das ist typisch bei Irving – die tiefe Tragik: Die Coles fristen nur deshalb ein so dem Leben entfremdetes Dasein, weil ihr eigentliches Leben längst vorbei ist: Sie haben vor Jahren ihre fast erwachsenen Söhne bei einem Unfall verloren und irren seither trauernd durch die Welt auf der Suche nach einer neuen Form zu existieren.  John Irving zählt seit Jahrzehnten zu den Autoren, die verlässlich Leser und Bestellerlisten erobern. Ein Grund dafür: Seine Romane bersten schier vor Leben, erzählen dabei aber auch immer unerschrocken vom Tod. Sie lesen sich süffig wie eine Komödie und kreisen doch um die großen Themen der Tragödie. In dieser Verfilmung gelingt der Tanz zwischen Lachen und Weinen perfekt. Über weite Strecken nehmen die Bilder geschickt die Gestalt einer skurrilen Sommergeschichte an, bieten (ein klein wenig verwegenes) Amüsement, um erst am Ende umfassende Trauer zu enthüllen.  Heiter gerät die Geschichte vor allem dann, wenn Jeff Brigdes seine Auftritte zelebriert. Seine Performance als gebrochener Mann, der sich hinter dem Gehabe des Bohemiens versteckt und dabei wie ein gutherziger Tanzbär wirkt, steckt voller Pointen. Sein idealer Gegenpart: Kim Basinger als gläserne Schönheit, die durch die Welt hindurchsieht und die Welt durch sie.  Die beiden Eheleute leben wie in Watte gepackt, und erst als diese flöckchenweise abgezupft davonfliegt, können sie sich wieder spüren und ihren Weg zu Ende gehen.  „The Door in the Floor“ erzählt von der Vergänglichkeit des Lebens und der Unvergänglichkeit von Trauer. Wie wunderbar, dass der Film den Mut besitzt, dem nicht mehr Optimismus entgegen zu setzen, als die pure Erkenntnis: Im Universum bieten sich mehr Möglichkeiten für ein glückliches Ende als das Happy End. Ein reifer Film. A “Cellular” Connection On Screen  Kim Basinger, whose role in 1997’s “L.A. Confidential” won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, delivers another powerful performance in “Cellular.”  What would you do if a random person called you on your cell phone one day as you were walking to class saying they had been kidnapped? Would you believe them? Would you try to help them?  This is the dilemma that Ryan (Chris Evans) faces when Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) calls him after being kidnapped and tied up in a dusty attic. With nothing but a shattered cell phone, the only signal Jessica has is to a cell phone that belongs to Ryan, an average college student whose only prior concern was to win back the trust of his ex-girlfriend (Jessica Biel).  Directed by David R. Ellis, “Cellular” immediately takes you along with Basinger and Evans on a whirlwind of events of high action and suspense as Evans goes to extreme lengths to help a woman and her family, whom he has never even met before, from being killed.  Basinger’s performance in this movie demonstrates that her acting skills have not dulled since she won her Oscar for best supporting actress in the 1997 film, “L.A. Confidential.”  Not only is her role an emotionally taxing one because her character has been kidnapped, but it is extremely physical as well. Part of what makes it easy for Basinger to adapt to any role is the fact that she is healthy and physically fit.  “I stay in shape because I like it for me, for my life,” Basinger said. “But knowing that you’re going to do this kind of film, there is no way that you’re not going to get injured if you’re not in shape. You can’t be slammed down on a table or thrown across the room unless you’re somewhat capable of handling that balancing act.”  Basinger’s character engages in several physical struggles with her kidnapper (Jason Statham) that seem all too realistic. Indeed, the fight scenes between Statham and Basinger were real and not choreographed.  “I was trying to make it as real as possible,” Basinger said. “I’m just an actress in a movie, but I wanted to get as close to the truth as I could in asking David to ask Jason if he would just surprise me because I knew I could bring you guys [the audience] upstairs with me. I was thrown in the attic and I wanted you to be thrown in the attic as an audience.”  Not only were the fights real, but it takes a talented actress like Basinger to go to work everyday and play a character who is crying, scared and frantic for just about the entire movie. She admits that it takes hard work to fine-tune one’s acting skills.  “It takes years to learn how to act if you’re not fooling yourself,” Basinger said. “I think it was Anthony Hopkins who, once when someone asked him about an emotional scene he had to do, said ‘It’s my job.’ Well, I can now look at someone and know the tools that I have developed over the years and the buttons and where to go to press that button.”  Another challenge that Basinger had to face was acting and reacting merely to a voice on the phone.  “It’s just one of those things that led me to want to do the film because I wouldn’t see Chris [Evans]. And I’ve never been isolated to have to do that and I love these challenges to have to be on the phone and to have to do most of your performance on the phone,” said Basinger.  In “Cellular,” Chris Evans, a newcomer to the Hollywood scene, delivers a performance that has captured the attention of Hollywood  One of the remarkable aspects of Evans’ performance is that he had never met Basinger until the end of filming—thus, he was required to act and react to her voice coming through the phone, which helped him get into character.  “It served its purpose,” Evans said. “In the film, I’m not supposed to know who she is and I’m not supposed to have any connection to her. So the fact that I had never met her and wasn’t looking at her face kind of helped.”  Evans is now filming “Fantastic Four,” in which he will play Johnny Storm. Yet, being that “Cellular” was his first big movie, Evans admitted he was indeed.  “It’s a little nerve-racking. I try not to think about it. I think if I thought about it too much, I would have just panicked myself and have done an even worse job,” Evans said.  Not only did a chance to work with great people attract Evans to the movie, but the script itself drew him in as well.  “I thought it was great. It’s just one of those movies with immediate action. You don’t need this big long character journey where it happens over a long period of time and there’s an evolution of mentality. It’s just something happens, you’re reacting to it, and you go. I love that type of shit,” remarked Evans.  In uscita il 14 dicembre 2004 il DVD Regione 1 di THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR: Title: The Door in the Floor - Released: 14th December 2004 - SRP: $29.98 - Further Details- Universal Home Video has released some very early details on the upcoming region one release of new drama The Door in the Floor which stars Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Mimi Rogers and Bijou Phillips. This Tod Williams directed film, will be available to own from the 14th December this year, and should set you back somewhere in the region of $29.98. The film itself will be presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen along with both English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround tracks. Extras will include an audio commentary with writer/director Tod Williams, director of photography Terry Stacey, editor Affonso Goncalves, composer Marcelo Zarvos and the costume designer Eric Daman, a new behind the scenes featurette, a Novel to Screen: John Irving feature and an anatomy of a scene.
	22 settembre: NEWS! THEATER COUNTS > 2004 > Week #39 - September 24: 45 50 The Door in the Floor Focus 46 -9 11. THEATER COUNTS > 2004 > Week #39 - September 24: 4 3 Cellular New Line 2,763 +14 3  BOX OFFICE: Venerdì 17 - $2,174,000 201.5% / $791 $15,088,000 / 8 (#5)  2,749 theaters Sabato 18 - $3,014,000 38.6% / $1,096 $18,102,000 / 9 (#5) Domenica 19 - $1,606,000 -46.7% / $584 $19,706,847 / 10 (#5) Lunedì 20 - $415,000 -74.2% / $151 $20,122,000 / 11 (#5) Martedì 21 - $465,000 12% / $169 $20,587,000 / 12 (#4) [The Numbers - $471,000 +16.30% 2,749 $171 $20,582,000 12] Mercoledì 22 - $425,000 -8.6% / $155 $21,012,000 / 13 (#3) [The Numbers - $428,000 -9.13% 2,749 $21,010,000 13] Bernie Mac is not swinging a big bat with Mr. 3000 which opened with a weak average of just $3,172 last weekend. The Buena Vista comedy could fall 45% to $5M this weekend pushing the total to $15M after ten days giving Disney another underachiever. Sony's Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Universal's Wimbledon, and New Line's Cellular should all drop down to about $4M each for the frame. That would lead to total grosses of $44M for the zombie basher, $12.5M for the tennis comedy, and $25M for the phone flick. Kidnap Kim in call for help - What would you do if you received a call on your mobile phone from a complete stranger, with the frantic voice on the other end begging you to help save her life? Would you hang up immediately, thinking it was a prank? What if there was even a remote chance the caller was serious and you were their only remaining hope? A random wrong number on his phone sends a young man into a high-stakes race against time to save a woman's life in the fast-paced action thriller Cellular (15). Kim Basinger stars as Jessica Martin, a high school science teacher and mother whose peaceful life is turned upside down when she is kidnapped from her home by five unknown assailants and taken to a mysterious location.  Fearful for her life and completely in the dark as to her abductors' motives, Jessica manages to patch together a shattered telephone and secretly place a call to an unknown number in a last-ditch attempt to save herself. Ryan (Chris Evans, of The Perfect Score and Not Another Teen Movie), the carefree young man who answers the panicked call, suddenly finds himself Jessica's last hope. With no knowledge of Jessica other than her hushed, fearful voice on the other end of the tenuous cell phone connection, Ryan is quickly thrown into a world of deception and murder in a frantic search to find and save her. The lives of Jessica and her family are in his hands, but what is waiting for him on the other side of the line and what will it cost him to find out? William H Macy co-stars. BOX OFFICE FORECAST - 6. Cellular 4.1 25.5 / 3.
	28 settembre: News! WEEKEND BOX OFFICE September 24-26, 2004 (Finals): 6 5 Cellular NL $3,660,608 -46.1% 2,763 +14 $1,324 $25,071,475 $25 / $20 3. 63 53 The Door in the Floor Focus $30,021 -52.6% 46 -9 $652 $3,779,743 $7.5 / - 11. WEEKEND BOX OFFICE September 24-26, 2004 (Estimates): 6 5 Cellular NL $3,650,000 -46.3% 2,763 +14 $1,321 $25,061,000 $25 / $20 3. Lunedì 20/09 - # 5 $412,000 -74.3% / $150 $20,119,000 / 11. Martedì 21/09 -  # 4 $462,000 12.1% / $168 $20,581,000 / 12. Mercoledì 22/09 - # 3 $422,000 -8.7% / $154 $21,003,000 / 13. Giovedì 23/09 -  # 3 $407,000 -3.6% / $148 $21,410,867 / 14. Venerdì 24/9 - # 7 $1,125,000 176.4% / $407 $22,536,000 / 15. Sabato 25/09 - # 5 $1,700,000 51.1% / $615 $24,236,000 / 16. Domenica 26/09 - # 7 $825,000 -51.5% / $299 $25,061,000 / 17. UK - September 24-26: 1 - Wimbledon UIP $3,131,997 - 444 - $7,054 - $3,131,997 1  2 1 Collateral UIP $2,636,864 -36% 447 -3 $5,899 -36% $8,846,395 2  3 - Ying xiong (Hero) BVI $1,814,455 - 254 - $7,144 - $1,814,455 1  4 4 Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story Fox $1,055,105 -24% 318 -4 $3,318 -24% $15,780,159 5  5 3 The Terminal UIP $885,671 -38% 360 -62 $2,460 -29% $10,255,966 4  6 2 Open Water Redbus $805,911 -49% 328 -94 $2,457 -27% $7,666,951 3  7 - Cellular Entertain. $771,425 - 290 - $2,660 - $771,425 1  8 - The Punisher Columbia $335,650 - 217 - $1,547 - $335,650 1  9 10 Garfield: The Movie Fox $321,435 -7% 364 -4 $883 -5% $16,518,674 9  10 9 A Cinderella Story WB $291,678 -22% 270 -4 $1,080 -20% $6,364,223 6  Top 50 United States Video Rentals for the week ending 19 September 2004: 36. 30 People I Know (2002) 61 $580K $13.6M. Weekend Box Office (September 24 - 26, 2004) - THIS WEEKEND The supernatural thriller The Forgotten led a depressed North American box office opening to an estimated $22M from 3,104 theaters. Averaging a robust $7,088 per location, the Sony title stars Julianne Moore as a mother whose life isn't what she always thought it was. Gary Sinise and Anthony Edwards co-star in the PG-13 film. With The Forgotten, the marketplace for the first time all year boasted only one film grossing more than $7M. Nosediving 57% in its second flight, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow fell to second place with an estimated $6.7M pushing its cume to $25.6M in ten days. The $70M Paramount release should end its domestic journey with about $40M. Buena Vista's baseball comedy Mr. 3000 dropped 42% to an estimated $5.1M in its second turn at the plate. The Bernie Mac pic has grossed $15.4M after ten days and looks to reach $25-30M. In its third weekend, the Sony actioner Resident Evil: Apocalypse fell 54% to an estimated $4M for a 17-day total of $43.4M. Moviegoers failed to make it out to vote for Fox's First Daughter which opened poorly with an estimated $4M. Averaging a pitiful $1,771 from 2,259 locations, the PG-rated Katie Holmes film about the offspring of the U.S. President is the second film of the year to explore this subject matter after January's Chasing Liberty starring Mandy Moore which bowed to only $6.1M. The New Line thriller Cellular dropped 46% to an estimated $3.7M and lifted its sum to $25.1M after 17 days. Kirsten Dunst watched her tennis film Wimbledon get crushed 53% in its second set to an estimated $3.4M for a ten-day cume of $12.2M. Universal's $31M date flick should end its tournament with a disappointing $20M from North America. International results should be more promising as evidenced by its number one debut in the U.K. this weekend with $3.2M and 22% market share. Australia, home to another of the sport's Grand Slams, opens the film this Thursday.