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Saturday, April 28, 2007

Block Party

Spider-Man 3 takes center stage for Entertainment Weekly's Summer Movie Preview issue (on news stands now...)

Steve Daly begins the Spidey article with this question:

The planet's favorite crime-stopping webslinger returns in the series' biggest installment yet. But who'll be back for part 4?


(From left) Church, Franco, Grace, Dunst, Howard, and Maguire

Photo By James Dimmock

Scores of amateur star-stalkers point cell-phone cameras. Pros aim long telephoto lenses, shutters clicking like cicadas. Why the frenzy? Because right here, in a New York City square near the cluster of court buildings by the Brooklyn Bridge, it's them — Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, who've helped sell $1.6 billion worth of tickets worldwide in two Spider-Man movies.

On this sunny, breezy Saturday in June 2006, they're at work on a Spider-Man 3 scene where Peter Parker, dorky news photographer for the Daily Bugle, runs into Mary Jane Watson, his aspiring-actress girlfriend, at a key-to-the-city ceremony celebrating Parker's crimefighting alter ego. Between affectionate consultations with director Sam Raimi, Dunst looks around warily — she's on open display to hundreds of rubberneckers encircling the company.

Periodically, shout-outs rain down from the outlying crowd: ''Kirsten!'' ''Hey, Tobey, over here!'' ''Kirsten, we love you!'' When Maguire disappears for a while and Dunst begins some reaction shots, she becomes the main focus of onlookers' attention. She squirms.

''The paparazzi are everywhere,'' she says, curling in a semi-fetal scrunch in a low-slung folding chair. A few takes later, an open-roofed double-decker tour bus rumbles by. The mic-wielding barker up top spots Dunst and announces her name, which echoes between tall buildings. ''I wish I had cardboard to hold up to my face,'' Dunst moans. All that fan love, it seems, can be overwhelming.

Reflecting on the day later, Maguire shrugs off the fishbowl mania. ''As an actor, you're used to it,'' he says. ''People watch you all the time, and come pick at you and touch you. You start to not notice.'' Besides, he says, the hometown crowds are a good sign. ''There's a proprietary feeling New York has for the Spider-Man character,'' Maguire says. (That's why Sony planned ''Spider-Man Week in NYC'' starting April 30). ''They feel like it's their film, too. Spider-Man belongs to them.'' New Yorkers, Americans, people of Earth — they all feel they have a stake in the fate of a do-gooder kid from Queens.

Read More Here...

The double issue has info on all of the season's 115 new flicks--including a chat with producers of The Simpsons Movie (July 27th); Does Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End finish with a cliffhanger? (May 25th); Is Ocean's Thirteen better than the last one? (June 8th)-Gosh, I hope so; Live Free or Die Hard has our hero John McClane (Bruce Willis) taking on cyber-terrorists (June 27th): The Harry Potter saga continues in "The Order Of The Phoenix" (July 13th); 5 people wrote the script for The Bourne Ultimatum--according to the mag...(August 3rd); And then there's that pesky Halloween remake/prequel...(August 31st).

It's a worthwhile read--and will help you to plan out your summer cinema menu quite nicely...

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