Before Ron Howard became an Academy Award-winning director and producer, he was best known as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show and Richie Cunningham on Happy Days.
He had huge success as a director of such hits as Splash, Cocoon, Parenthood, Backdraft, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code.
His latest is Rush which is being called a spectacular big-screen re-creation of the merciless 1970s rivalry between Formula 1 drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda.
Chris Hemsworth (Thor) stars as the charismatic Englishman Hunt and Daniel Brühl (Inglorious Basterds) is the disciplined Austrian Lauda. Rush follows the two drivers both on and off the track as they push themselves to the breaking point of physical and psychological endurance.
After a few middling efforts, Howard looks like he is back on top with Rush as it is getting critical acclaim, especially for the exhilarating race sequences and the performances of Hemsworth and Brühl. It looks like a movie that everyone will enjoy, even if you are not a fan of Formula 1 racing.
Maybe Joseph Gordon-Levitt will become the next Ron Howard. The actor who got his start in television as Tommy in 3rd Rock from the Sun is on his way to a similar career path.
Gordon-Levitt makes his debut as writer and director with the comedy Don Jon, in which he also plays the title character.
A name that his buddies call him due to his ability to seduce a different woman every weekend, Don Jon’s real passion is his addiction to pornography. However, he must confront his demons when he meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), an old-fashioned girl who wants the romantic comedy life of finding her Prince Charming and riding off into the sunset. Both must wrestle with both of their expectations of the opposite sex and try to find true intimacy with each other.
Also starring Julianne Moore, Don Jon premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and then a few weeks ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, getting raves at both. However, this is not a sweet and syrupy romantic comedy and you may be shocked with the amount of sexuality and language in it, especially since one of the stars is former TV dad Tony Danza.
Picking up where the original left off, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 sees inventor Flint Lockwood’s genius finally being recognized when he is invited to join the Live Corp Company where the best and the brightest inventors in the world create technologies for the betterment of mankind. But Flint’s dream to be recognized as a great inventor is jeopardized when he discovers that his most infamous machine (which turns water into food) is still operating and is now creating food-animal hybrids called “foodimals.”
With the fate of humanity in his hands, Flint and his friends are sent on a dangerously delicious mission, battling hungry tacodiles, shrimpanzees, apple pie-thons, double bacon cheespiders and other food creatures to save the world again.
