Movie News & Gossip

WASHINGTON - Nearly 40 years ago, a Kenyan father was visiting his son in Hawaii and took him to his first jazz concert. The boy was Barack Obama and the performer was jazz great Dave Brubeck.

"I've been a jazz fan ever since," the president said Sunday, crediting the pianist and composer with bringing jazz into the mainstream and transforming it with new rhythms. "The world that he opened up for a 10-year-old boy was spectacular."

WASHINGTON - "I'm the president, but he's The Boss."

With those words, President Barack Obama greeted Bruce Springsteen Sunday night at a White House reception before the iconic rocker was lauded with Kennedy Center Honors along with Robert De Niro, comic genius Mel Brooks, jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck and opera singer Grace Bumbry.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "Capote" filmmaker Bennett Miller is in negotiations to direct "Moneyball," a baseball drama starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's who rewrote the unwritten rulebook of baseball.

Columbia's on-again, off-again project got back on track in recent weeks as Pitt and the producers -- Michael De Luca, Scott Rudin and Rachael Horovitz -- met with potential directors. A Steven Soderbergh-directed iteration of the project was scrapped in June. The movie began its rehabilitation with when Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing," "Sports Night") was brought on to write a draft, drawing upon Steve Zaillian's earlier take.

Bennett Miller is in negotiations to direct Columbia's "Moneyball," the on-again, off-again baseball drama starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's who rewrote the unwritten rulebook of baseball.

The move comes after Columbia, the actor and the producers -- Michael De Luca, Scott Rudin and Rachael Horovitz -- met with directors in recent weeks to get the movie back on track after pulling the plug on a Steven Soderbergh-directed iteration in June. The movie began its rehabilitation with when Aaron Sorkin was brought on to write a draft, drawing on Steve Zaillian's earlier take.

The Sundance Film Festival's competition lineup for 2010, announced Wednesday, might demand that audiences wear their serious caps. But the out-of-competition selections allow programmers and viewers to cut loose a little.

The 53 films that populate this year's Premieres, Next, Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontier sections run the gamut from the cosmically experimental to the star-studded and silly. There is indeed something for everyone at this year's event, which runs Jan. 21-31 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

- Capsule reviews of films opening this week:

"Fantastic Mr. Fox" — With George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Bill Murray leading the top-notch voice cast, director Wes Anderson has found an ideal story and medium — stop-motion animation — to bring his cockeyed vision to the cartoon world. In the hands of "Rushmore" director Anderson, Roald Dahl's children's book about a poultry-thieving fox gets loving treatment and a distinct handcrafted style that sets it apart from the sleek computer-generated imagery dominating animation today. Clooney provides the voice of a fox whose capers against three evil farmers bring the mechanized wrath of the human world down on him, his family and a menagerie of neighbors. It's lightweight fun, yet the film succeeds on all levels, presenting cute and clever varmints to charm children while offering adults merry screwball humor that slyly stretches the film's family-friendly rating. PG for action, smoking and slang humor. Running time: 88 minutes. Three stars out of four.

- No movie can be all bad when juiced up with a soundtrack of more than 50 classic rock tunes.

The best thing to say about Richard Curtis' "Pirate Radio" is that it's all about the music, man. The Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix — these are the stars of "Pirate Radio," and the well-chosen songs are the main thing keeping the film afloat.