July 30th, 2010 | 2:58 pm | Tracie Cooper

Ace sailor and all-around great human being Charlie St. Cloud (Zac Efron) is perfect at life. He’s a shoe-in to win any and all interschool sailing competitions, and he takes the not-so-good-natured ribbing of his envious competitors with grace and charm. He is willing to defer his enrollment at Stanford (Charlie St. Cloud is very smart) and find a part-time job in order to take some of the financial pressure off his beleaguered mother (an underused Kim Basinger). Most of all, Charlie St. Cloud is a great big brother, and he swears to help 11-year-old Sam St. Cloud (Charlie Tahan) hone his baseball skills every day at sunset, “rain or shine, come hell or high water.” Somewhere, somehow, Nicholas Sparks is asking Charlie St. Cloud to tone it down. While “lucky” may not be the proper term, it is, from a film perspective; at least in terms of his career, Efron is fortunate that Sam dies in a car accident, because an emotionally devastated Charlie St. Cloud is a lot more interesting than his flawless former self.
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June 2nd, 2010 | 6:33 pm | Mark Deming

In 1986, Tobe Hooper was in Austin, TX, shooting the long-awaited sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and John Bloom (aka Joe Bob Briggs), the world’s leading authority on drive-in movies and an ardent fan of Hooper’s 1974 original, was cast in a small part that was cut from the final print. Joe Bob used the opportunity to write an article about the making of TCM2 for Rolling Stone, in which (among other things) he recounted a conversation he had over lunch with leading man Dennis Hopper, who played chainsaw-wielding lawman “Lefty” Enright. Hopper, enjoying a repast of roast beef and vanilla ice cream, mentioned he had seven pictures slated for release in the next 18 months. Asked what kind of pictures he was working on, Hopper replied, “Well, there’s this one where I play an alcoholic father. I’m doing that one next month. Then there’s one where I’m a psychotic B-29 pilot. And then there’s another one where I’m a wealthy toy manufacturer. And one where I’m an alcoholic. One where I’m crazy. This one here, where there’s a lot of possibilities for me to be crazy….” Joe Bob asked, “Dennis, do you ever have any roles where you’re not an addict or a psycho?” Hopper replied, “I just told you, I play a wealthy toy manufacturer.”
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