AmeliaEarhart Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In the 2007 awards season, Fox Searchlight had two strong films in the mix with Juno and The Savages, and then in 2008, they dominated with Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler. As many other indie arms were folding (Paramount Vantage, Warner Independent, Picturehouse), Searchlight managed to keep things up on their end.

2009, however, hasn't been so kind to them. January's Notorious didn't do bad actually, though March's Miss March was indeed D.O.A. June's My Life in Ruins similarly underperformed, while July's Adam failed to catch on as that same month's (500) Days of Summer had. Post Grad was dumped in the doldrums of August, while Whip It failed to find a crowd in October.

Cut to now: Amelia has been effectively neutered as a ready-made Oscar contender, while Gentlemen Broncos (from the director of Napoleon Dynamite, which did particularly well for the same studio) is being pulled from wider release after this weekend after posting modest numbers on two screens and earning savage reviews for the most part.

With Miramax also facing tough times, it's a shame to see studios like these have an off-year, though there's time for a turn-around yet so far as Searchlight is concerned. Summer's summer release means the timing could work out to earn a push for Original Screenplay as a happy-go-lucky alternate to many dour contenders. This month's similarly light Fantastic Mr. Fox is an Animated Feature candidate at the very least, and -- according to THR -- the Jeff Bridges drama Crazy Heart is getting a last-minute test run of sorts at the moment to see if it can merit a move to be positioned for this year's race instead of next year's.

The new biopic about Amelia Earhart, Amelia, succeeds in portraying the famous aviatrix in a whole new light ... as a mundane soap-opera character with relationship issues. The movie looks beautiful and is obviously being released now with Oscar hopes, but it is a dull, uninspired recounting of the less interesting parts of Earhart's life.

The plot is structured around Earhart's final attempt at flying around the world, then flashes back to tell her story starting from her first meeting with George P. Putnam (Richard Gere) in 1927 about a transatlantic flight, and looping back to that final flight and the mystery surrounding it, in 1937. It's a standard structure for biographical films, but is confusing at times. For one thing, I couldn't tell you whether the round-the-world attempt that the film flashes forward to periodically is her first one, or her last one. Near the end, they start to blend confusingly. The film also includes a lot of voice-over from Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank), which I presume is probably taken from her real-life letters and diaries.

As you all know, Ben Stiller is taking on the wacky museum world once again for Night at the Museum 2: Escape from the Smithsonian. One of the big casting announcements for this sequel was Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart. Now you can see a glimpse of her as the famous pilot above, then check out one more below (featuring a few old friends) and others at TheBadandtheUgly (note: images possibly contain romantic subplot spoilers, so be warned). How cute is she?

I'm sorry Hilary, but I'm really digging the look of Adams as Earhart much more. I think the big difference between the two is that Adams seems completely natural as Amelia. Adams looks like she walked right out of the same time, whereas Swank's Amelia looks more costumed and much less natural -- at least, based on the images we've seen online.

The showdown of the Amelias will take place next year. Amelia is set to hit theaters some time in 2009, while Night at the Museum will hit screens on May 22, 2009. Which do you prefer?

When I first heard that Hilary Swank was going to take on Amelia Earhart for a new film, Amelia, I looked at pictures of both of them. While I'm not a big fan of Swank's period work, there's no denying that they hold a decent resemblance. Then there were the pics that popped up last month -- not too bad. But holy crap, I really don't like the new image of her as Earhart.

Cinema Blend threw up a picture of Swank that apparently popped up in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. It looks like Swank is wearing either a hideous knit cap made by grandma, or a weaved Halloween placemat on her head. Man, they should have stuck with the leather flier's cap. CB also pointed out that it's a fairly ... awkward ... picture of her as it is. All around, it looks like a total mess. I guess they're waiting awhile, but if they really wanted to make people excited, show her in the whole flying getup. Even if the film is all about the romance, give people the Amelia everyone remembers.

I keep going back and forth on this whole Amelia Earhart project. On the one hand, I'm thrilled that her story is hitting the big screen. Amelia was one of the quintessential kickass tough-women, and one of my favorites along with the likes of Annie Oakley. But then Hilary Swank signed on -- a woman who can be an incredibly powerful actress and looks much like Amelia, but also really disappointed me with her Black Dahlia performance. Disappointing films are bad enough, but if the disappointment shatters your previous excitement, that's worse. However, this latest casting news helps.

Variety reports that Virginia Madsen has signed on to play Dorothy Binney in the film. The biopic, titled Amelia, will focus on Earhart's relationship with publisher and promoter George Putnam (Richard Gere), who she married, and Binney was Putnam's first wife. The reason Binney is in this story -- Putnam left her to pursue his relationship with Earhart. (Although to be fair, she was looking elsewhere as well.)

I can't wait to see Madsen in this role, but I wonder just how much of the flying Earhart we're going to get when everything is focused on the relationship between her and Putnam. Well, at least if they boil it down to only romance, it should still be interesting -- her ideas on marriage weren't exactly traditional.

After tons of speculation and millions of votes counted, the results are in -- Richard Gere is still The Man. Seriously, how many people do you know who look 33 when they're actually 106? None. Gere. That's it. And Variety tells us he's signed on for not one, but two more films. The Pope turned 81and he's riding around in a little bulletproof car. Gere is 106 and he's doing two movies! Who do you think is more awesome? Hint: His name rhymes with Fear??

First up, he'll star opposite Hilary Swank in Amelia -- a biopic on the famed aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, which will be directed by Mira Nair off a screenplay by Ron Bass. Gere will play Earhart's husband, publisher George Putnam, and the film will document their rocky relationship. Additionally (and this is something we already reported), Gere will co-star in the cop flick Brooklyn's Finest, alongside folks like Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke. Antoine Fuqua will direct. (Currently, there's no word on which young actress Gere will be shaggin' in that film, but we'll let you know when more info is released ...)

Amelia Earhart -- we hardly knew ya. But we're about to know the gal a whole lot more as it appears that planned biopic starring Hilary Swank (as Earhart) has brought on a new director to replace Phillip Noyce (who recently left the project). Yup, Moviehole (who've been all over this film) reports that Mira Nair has signed on to helm the flick, which will most likely begin shooting soon. Nair is a solid director; she's the woman behind The Namesake (which I liked very much), and definitely knows how to work with period films (see: Vanity Fair).

The film, currently titled (I believe) The Story of Amelia Earhart, is due out in 2009 and will star Swank as the American aviation pioneer. Earhart is probably most known for disappearing over the Pacific Ocean while attempting a circumnavigational flight across the globe in 1937, but she was also the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, which she was awarded as the first woman "aviatrix" to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, so says Wikipedia. She also wrote best-selling books and helped launch The Ninety-Nines, which is an organization for women pilots. Needless to say, it's about time Earhart got the glossy, big-screen Hollywood treatment -- and with Swank and Nair involved, I'm sure this will be a film we hear a lot more of come Oscar time.

Variety is reporting that Phillip Noyce has signed on to direct Scarlett Johansson in Mary, Queen of Scots, a long talked-about project that will focus on the Roman Catholic Scottish queen who conspired in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Elizabeth I, and was eventually beheaded as a traitor in 1587. It's hard to understand what the excitement could be in telling this tale again -- we've seen it innumerable times in the past few years, right up to last year's bloated disaster Elizabeth: The Golden Age, in which the character was played by the hugely talented Samantha Morton. I also can't be the only one who thinks the casting here is bizarre in the extreme. Johansson is not a bad actress, but can she really play a French-accented monarch from the Elizabethan age? Isn't that something of a stretch? I guess we'll find out. The Variety story also says nothing about how this impacts Noyce's involvement in the Amelia Earhart biopic he's supposed to be helming.

The word from Hilary Swank's own mouth last month was that her Oscar-bait biopic of the doomed flying ace was set to begin filming in February -- so how is Noyce going to start helming Mary, Queen of Scots in April? Obviously something is screwy here. Numerous outlets have been reporting Noyce's commitment to the Earhart biopic over the last couple of months, but details about the project -- including official confirmation about basic cast and crew details -- have not been forthcoming. It certainly can't be true that Noyce is filming a major show like an Amelia Earhart biopic in the same season as Mary, so maybe his involvement was never so firm in the first place or he just dropped out of one and moved to the other. Such has been known to occur.

Hilary Swank has confirmed what was reported a while back -- her next project is a big biopic of flying ace Amelia Earhart. Collider reports that Swank gave some details at the recent junket for my-husband-just-died romcom weepie P.S., I Love You. "It's happening," Swank says of the Earhart film. "I start doing my research in January. It's my next project." She goes on to note that the strike may put a crimp in the plans, as the script is not quite finished. "The film's almost done, but with the hopes that ... we're not filming that till late February, so while I'm doing my preparation and breaking down the script -- sorry, not breaking down the script -- when I'm doing my preparations in breaking down Amelia, who she was and doing all that research, hopefully the writers get what they need and we can start working on that. It's very minor, minor work that needs to be done on the script." Swank also said the film does not attempt to offer a solution to the mystery of Earhart's disappearance.

Want to hear more? As is often the case, the Australian press is out in front on this. A couple weeks ago, The Australian broke the story that Philip Noyce is attached to direct this film, and it already has a title -- The Story of Amelia Earhart. Catchy. The paper also revealed that Noyce will shoot the film in Hawaii and Nova Scotia. That's it for details thus far, but expect more casting news and the like in the next month, assuming this picture doesn't become the latest in an increasingly long line of strike casualties.