For the first time since Road to Perdition, I’m actually excited for a new Sam Mendes movie. Though it’s still Untitled, and we don’t really know a whole helluva lot about it (thanks for the clarification, Krasinski!), good things tend to happen when a bunch of smart people get together. Like The Manhattan Project. And… The Manhattan Project. (Not so much The Philadelphia Experiment.)
You might take issue with the labeling of Mendes, Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida, as “smart people”, but you’ve been in a bad mood all week. I know you don’t mean it. We’ve known for a while that John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph – also fairly quick on the uptake – will star as a couple combing the United States for an ideal community to raise their soon-to-be-born first child; recently, Mendes added the talented likes of Paul Schneider, Jeff Daniels, Allison Janney and Toni Collette. That was great and all until Collette game down with a bad case of the “scheduling issues”; now, her character, “a bohemian character who is an old friend” of Krasinski’s, will be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Excellent. Gyllenhaal can’t work enough as far as I’m concerned. This is because I think she’s really fucking smart. And talented. She’ll join the currently shooting film (which the IMDb has listed as “Farlanders“) next week.