12B - THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
ENTERTAINMENT
THURSDAY, MAY 9,2002
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Bad girl turns to good girl in role in 'The New Guy'
Eliza Dushku stars in The New Guy as Danielle, a good girl, who falls in love with Dizzy Harrison, played by DJ Qualls. Dushku was surprised she got the role, because she usually played bad girls.
Knight Ridder Newspapers
CONTRIBUTED ART
DETROIT — Nancy Reagan would be so darned proud of Eliza Dushku.
"You just have to learn to say no," says the dusky Dushku, who orders nothing stronger than tea in the oaky dark of the Townsend Hotel bar. Dushku is not talking about the drugs and other temptations that are everywhere in young Hollywood. She's referring to the directors who would give her a role in their new movie if she would only do a nude scene, or the art directors who would put her on the magazine's cover if she would just take her top off.
Dushku was spending a day in Detroit last week to promote The New Guy, a teen comedy in which the former Buffy the Vampire Slayer sociopath gets a major makeover: She plays the good girl, of all things.
Dushku said she thought director Ed Dector must have confused her with some other actress when he asked her to play Danielle, the popular girlfriend of a high school jock who finds herself falling for the new kid in school, a skinny geek who is transformed into a cool dude with some help from a career criminal.
She got her first movie role, in 1992's little-seen That Night, playing a 10-year-old who idolizes the free-spirited teenager
(Juliette Lewis) living across the street. (The film features Dushku's only semi-nude scene — one in which she and two preteen friends apply a bust-enhancing cream to their chests.)
The next year, she was cast in This Boy's Life as the daughter of Robert De Niro and the stepsister of young Leonardo DiCaprio.
After enrolling at Suffolk University in Boston, she was offered the role of Faith, the tough new girl in Sunnydale who forms an
amance with Buff on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Dushku stayed with the show for two seasons, then reprised the character in three episodes of the spinoff Angel.
Dushku moved from Buffy to the hip teen movie Bring It On, playing the Goth gymnast recruited by Kirsten Dunst for the cheerleading squad. From there, it was on to The New Guy, another teen flick, for which she makes no apologies.
Is Star Wars hype overblown?
By David Germain AP Movie Writer
LOS ANGELES — Its last installment proved a critical disappointment. Once the trendsetter on visual effects, it lost out in that category to an edgy upstart at the Academy Awards the last time around. Surrounded by fresh-faced film serials, it no longer holds clear claim as the year's most anticipated movie.
Star Wars may have rusted a bit in the 25 years since Luke, Han, Leia and Obi-Wan blasted into theaters. Yet as Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones arrives next week, George Lucas' creation remains the Cadillac of film franchises, the surest sure thing that a blockbuster-minded movie industrv can deliver.
Its previous chapters account for four of the top 13 grossing movies of all-time domestically. Fans camp out at theaters a month or more before a Star Wars film opens to be first in line to see it.
And consider Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace. After waiting 16 years for the first prequel to the original trilogy, audiences almost universally found something to deride in Phantom Menace, a critical dud that sacrificed story to special effects and introduced the loathed buffoon Jar Jar Binks.
What other film franchise could produce a mediocre movie that disappoints the most loyal fans yet still rakes in more than
$900 million worldwide and
$431 million in the United States
and Canada alone?
"Sure, the last movie was not what people hoped it would be," said Barrie Osborne, a producer on "The Lord of the Rings" franchise and executive producer on "The Matrix," which beat "Phantom Menace" on visual effects and two other categories at the Oscars for 1999.
"But I think everyone will want to see the new Star Wars. It's something we all grew up with, and the whole body of work is more powerful than any one of the films. This powerful, mythic story George originated way back still captures the imagination, and people want to see what happens next."
What happens next sounds more promising than Phantom Menace, with early buzz from people who have seen "Attack of the Clones" hinting that it's a better film. Even the cast is more enthusiastic this time.
"I really love it. I personally like this film a lot better," said Natalie Portman, who returns as Padme Amidala, reunited with her Jedi pals Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and the now grown Anakin Skwalker (Hayden Christensen).
"I get really bored in action movies, but I was at the edge of my seat with my mouth open," said Portman, who saw the finished film last weekend. "It's so gorgeous. It's got a great story, a real arc. You really care about the characters."
In the past, Star Wars sequels
or prquelts clearly were the film events of the year. Given the record opening of "Spider-Man" and anticipation for this fall's Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings sequels, Star Wars now has heavy competition for the title of most hotly awaited movie.
Unlike the 3,000-theater-plus launches of today's Hollywood, with its fixation on huge opening weekends, the original Star Wars premiered on just 32 screens on Wednesday, May 25, 1977. The procedure then often was to start slowly, letting positive buzz on a film spread as the release widened to more theaters.
It worked perfectly on Star Wars, which distributor 20th Century Fox expanded to 43 screens by that Friday, with the film grossing $1.55 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.
As it expanded, its total take during that initial run hit $221.3 million, the equivalent of about $560 million when the 1977 average ticket price of $2.23 is adjusted for inflation. Star Wars was such a phenomenon that it took in $101 million more in four reissues within just five years after its debut.
"That was the first movie I ever saw," said Ben Affleck, whose new film, The Sum of All Fears, opens two weeks after Attack of the Clones. Affleck, who turned 5 the summer Star Wars opened, said he cajoled his way into seeing it 17 times.
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