It’s weird to see the roles older actors take. Sure, there are not a lot of parts for guys over 60 that aren’t grandfather roles (or going to Nicholson), but you have to ask yourself why guys like Peter O’Toole make shitty family films. Is it because he has saved absolutely no money from his … Continue reading
The cast list for Star Trek XI reads like a joke, especially the inclusion of Winona Ryder as Spock’s mom (who knew that Sarek was a rocker in his early days?), but the newest casting news almost brings a smile to my face. And then I realized that JJ Abrams is only doing strong casting … Continue reading
To paraphrase Stephen Colbert: Is Southland Tales a great disaster or the greatest disaster? While Southland Tales won’t end a studio, as Heaven’s Gate did, it’s also a much, much worse movie than that legendary failure. Southland Tales is like Heaven’s Gate, though, in that it seems to be a product of unrestrained hubris, a … Continue reading
There’s a lot of buzz around a young woman named Diablo Cody, and for good reason: her screenwriting debut, Juno, is completely fucking terrific. Cody manages to walk the line of being indie and precious and giving her characters quirky, perhaps overstylized dialogue while keeping everything emotionally real and honest. I saw the film with … Continue reading
This morning IESB ran a story claiming to have some minor plot details for JJ Abrams’ Star Trek XI; I read it and was interested, but don’t tend to like linking to stories like this without some kind of outside confirmation. They end up being fake too often, and it’s a bummer running a retraction … Continue reading
I knew that Beowulf would be a quality bit of spectacle after seeing the 3D preview at Comic Con this summer. I was blown away by the visuals and especially by the 3D experience, but nothing I saw in that footage indicated to me that Beowulf would be anything other than a novelty thrill ride. … Continue reading
Oliver Stone’s Pinkville continues to add cast members, but there’s one role that’s going to prove tough to fill: that of a ten year old Vietnamese girl who sees rape and murder of her mother and sister and the burning of her home, who testifies to the atrocities committed by American soldiers at the My … Continue reading
The Signal is an excellent film that lives right at the intersection of art movie and horror movie, a film that isn’t afraid of being a little bit avant garde at times but is also happy to kill a character by brutal bug spraying to the throat. I saw it at the LA Screamfest in … Continue reading
Darren Aronofksy has cast Mickey Rourke in the lead for one of the chapters in his Men of Physical Combat Trilogy (the other films are The Fighter, about real life boxer ‘Irish’ Mickey Ward, and The Atomic Wedgier, cast and storyline unknown), The Wrestler. The role had originally been earmarked for Nicolas Cage, who suddenly … Continue reading
In The Dark Knight Batman takes a trip to the Orient*, but he won’t be doing any swimming. The production is moving to Hong Kong to get some inscrutable footage, some of which was to include Batman dropping out of a plane into Hong Kong’s harbor and then climbing out. Yeah, I have no idea … Continue reading