Penelope Cruz | The New York Observer

!Hola!Will Almodovar Finally Make Movie in English?

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:26:10 -0400

The New York Film Festival began very softly but ended with the sizzle of director Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces on Sunday, Oct. 13.

The film follows the tangled love story of a writer and his muse, played by Penélope Cruz, in what Mr. Almodóvar called “a love declaration to the cinema.” In signature Almodóvar style, the complex plot channels decades of cinematic history, including his own Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

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Five More Oscar Hopefuls You Shouldn’t Count Out!

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:12:32 -0400

There are just too many promising-looking films vying for Academy voters this year—don’t forget to factor in some of these pics:

Broken Embraces (Los Abrazos Rotos): This film pairs the great Pedro Almódovar with his favorite leading lady–muse Penélope Cruz in a thriller about a blind writer (Lluís Homar) who must heal his wounds from the past. (Dec. 11, Sony Pictures Classic)

White Ribbon (Das weiße Band): Michael Haneke rebounds from the...

Where'd All the Tough New Yorkers Go? Josh Brolin: 'New York Critics Have Been Very Sweet to Me'

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:10:35 -0500

At the New York Film Critic's Circle Awards on Monday, Jan. 5, NYFCC Best Actor honoree Sean Penn offered early clues as to how he'll approach this year's awards: He hammed it up for the cameras with Milk co-star Josh Brolin before blowing off a lengthy line of eager journalists. (Interestingly, Mr. Penn is something of a journalist himself these days, penning an eager travelogue for The Nation in December about his self-initiated chats...

The Week in DVR: Cameron Crowe's Maligned Masterpiece, Touch of Evil, Grace Kelly's Last with Hitch

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:05:44 -0400

Monday: Lost
Long before the Dharma Initiative, Widmore Industries and The Oceanic Six, there was the first season of Lost. It was a simpler time, when Michael Emerson was just that guy from a few episodes of Law & Order and not a passive-aggressive criminal mastermind with a couple of Emmy nominations … but that doesn't mean the show wasn't amazing. There is nary a false step in Lost's freshman campaign, and the...

Penelope Cruz to Get Gotham Award Tribute

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:14:30 -0400

There's been lots of chatter lately over Penelope Cruz's steamy kiss with Scarlet Johansson in the new Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which opened in New York last Friday—enough chatter that we almost missed the following tidbit yesterday in The Hollywood Reporter: Ms. Cruz, who's also enjoying critical praise for her role in Elegy, Isabel Coixet's adaptation of an acclaimed Philip Roth novel, will receive a Gotham Award Tribute at the 18th Annual...

Woody’s Busty Muses Make Sweet Spanish Love

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:20:29 -0400

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
Running time 96 minutes
Written and directed by Woody Allen
Starring Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem

Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, from his own screenplay, is close to his 40th feature film in an almost 40-year career that began in earnest in 1969 with Take the Money and Run, and has proceeded through the years with more ups and downs, more...

Morning Memo: Agyness Deyn Engaged; Mariah Carey Celebrates Her Marriage; Gossip Girl Identity Theft

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:42:49 -0400

Model Agyness Deyn and Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. are engaged. [Us]

Woody Allen's new film Vicky Cristina Barcelona premiered Wednesday night at the Hotel Plaza Athenee on East 64th St.; stars Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall didn't show up. [WWD]

At the screening, Vicky Cristina Barcelona star Javier Bardem gloated over his sex scenes with Ms. Johansson, Ms. Hall and real-life girlfriend Penelope Cruz. [P6]

Mariah Carey is paying $125,000 to rent the Stone Meadow Farm...

ScarJo Embarassed by Coverage of Obama E-mails; Ready to Tie the Knot?

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:47:31 -0400

We sometimes long for the days when Scarlett Johansson was best known as one of the angsty, combat-boot wearing teens in Ghost World, or, a few years later, as the soul-searching former philosophy major-cum-sexy cigarette smoker who flirts with Bill Murray—cue Jesus and Mary Chain song—in Lost in Translation. Her career since then has had a few unfortunate blemishes, namely her roles in the box office bombers The Black Dhalia and Woody Allen’s Scoop,...

Sir Ben Kingsley Plays Roth’s Concupiscent Kepesh as Cruz Nudes Up

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:11:11 -0400

ELEGY
Running time 108 minutes
Written by Nicholas Meyer
Directed by Isabel Coixet
Starring Penélope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard

Isabel Coixet’s Elegy, from the screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, based on the short novel The Dying Animal by Philip Roth, enters a metaphysical region between life and death that few films have ever dared to explore. Ms. Coixet and Mr. Meyer have managed to...

Penelope Cruz Frenches Her Sister in New Music Video

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:54:07 -0500

Siblings who share true, unfettered love and affection with one another are rare—let alone kin who kiss with tongue. Not so in Celebrityville, where a little harmless necking among family members is apparently a-okay. Indeed, a new music video features Penélope Cruz and her sister, Monica, making out. And real sexy like, too.

What’s perhaps even stranger than watching the bespectacled Volver star lustily nibble...

Penelope Cruz: Almodovar's Like Family, and Bono Was With His Family

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:01:47 -0500

In Vogue's holiday issue, actress Penelope Cruz unloads on the paparazzi that fueled the story that she and U2's Bono were having an affair:

Like when I went on holiday to Bono’s house with his wife and kids… we were holding hands because we’re very good friends, and do you know what the paparazzi did to us? They took photos and cropped out Bono’s wife and children! So they made up a story about us...

Screen Version of Broadway's Nine Could Get Zeta-Jones, Cruz, Loren

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 09:05:27 -0400

The Weinstein Bros. are in talks with a slate of Hollywood song-and-dance types to star in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, Nine.

According to Variety, The Weinstein Company is negotiating with Penelope Cruz, Catherine Zeta Jones, Sophia Loren, Javier Bardem and newcomer Marion Cotillard (who recently played Edith Piaf in the highly-praised biopic, La Vie En Rose) to appear in the adaptation.

Bardem follows Raul Julia in the role--Julia played director Guido Contini,...

Penélope and Pedro Return! Almodóvar Loves the Ladies, Again

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver, from his screenplay (in Spanish, with English subtitles), turns out to be by far the most disciplined narrative film, structurally and stylistically, of the 16 or so that he’s made over the past quarter of a century. Mr. Almodóvar’s ingrained partiality to his women characters attains almost heroic proportions here, as he follows the adventures and misadventures of a half-dozen closely related women for whom men are, at best, a necessary...

Almodóvar Digs Tao of Cruz

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 19:00:00 -0500

¡Hola! Pedro Almodóvar’s funny, scary and innovative Volver has been reviewed at so many film festivals that I’m not sure anyone wants to hear another word about it. But there is much to be said about Penélope Cruz, who has redeemed her reputation as an awkward, wooden actress in American films by proving just how enchanting she can be under the right conditions.

Volver is the Spanish verb meaning “to return,” and that’s...

Silly Sahara Makes No Sense

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 20:00:00 -0400

Sahara should, by all the rules, be one of those randy, rowdy adventure yarns in the tradition of old Saturday-afternoon matinee serials and every desert epic from Gunga Din to Indiana Jones. Alas, the mumbling, mush-mouthed Matthew McConaughey is no Cary Grant, or even Harrison Ford, and can scarcely say "I'll find the bomb, you get the girl" without the need for subtitles. Never mind that Sahara was the name of a 1943 Humphrey...

Not the Goods, but Good Woody

Sun, 19 Aug 2001 20:00:00 -0400

For pure silliness, Woody

Allen's back in the driver's seat with The Curse of the Jade Scorpion , an affectionate wink at those noirish 1940's comedies in which a doofus like Bob Hope and a good-sport lady sidekick like Dorothy Lamour are pursued by Nazis, Oriental gumshoes and Peter Lorre. In period clothes and timeless confusion, Bob (er, Woody) plays a grungy, myopic little insurance investigator who cracks cases with tips from ex-cons, street urchins and assorted Damon Runyon rejects, and...