Best Actress 2013: Emma Watson, The Bling Ring

Sofia Coppola, who has crafted quite an oeuvre for herself, is back. This time, she's bringing Emma Watson along with her, who, thus far, has enjoyed the rather perfect career.  With the Harry Potter franchise behind her and the world having watched her grow up before the cameras, Watson is seamlessly transferring into the world of adult roles.  With her first part being in My Week with Marilyn, her followup was the small box-office hit The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  I'm not sure about her involvement with the self-referential apocalyptic comedy This Is the End with Seth Rogen and James Franco, but I imagine she'll emerge unscathed with projects like Darren Aronofsky's ambitious Noah (which I have a difficult time imagining as being watchable, but it's Aronofsky, so I'll cross my fingers) and Coppola's promising The Bling Ring.  The title is a reference to a real-life gang of fame-obsessed teenage burglars based out of Calabasas, California, who successfully targeted an assortment of celebrities--like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Orlando Bloom--on a multiple occasions.  Coppola wrote the screenplay of which there appears to be name changes from the real-life counterparts, I'm sure, for legal reasons and/or artistic license.  Leslie Mann and Gavin Rossdale are also in the cast.

Made on a budget of $20M, the movie filmed all over the Southern California area as well as Las Vegas.  New distributor A24 (Ginger & Rosa, Spring Breakers, Charles Swan) will release the film probably sometime in 2013.  Production designer Anne Ross is a Noah Baumbach alum.  This will be editor Sarah Flack's fourth feature film collaboration with Coppola.  Stacey Battat was the costume designer.  And this marks the final film of Harris Savides (Zodiac, The Game, Milk, Birth, Margot at the Wedding) who died this past Fall.

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