AmyRyan Tagged Articles at Cinematical

August gave us the voice of Matt Damon in Ponyo, September gave us the inner voice of Matt Damon in The Informant!, and now October has brought us a look at his next two performances.

Clint Eastwood's Invictus is one of the last big likely contenders of the awards season, though it is as of yet unseen (unless those very few who have seen it are very good at being very quiet). Damon plays real-life rugby captain Francois Pienaar, whose team saw the support of Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) as a rallying point around which they might lift the spirits of South Africa in the wake of apartheid. It's political! It's underdog! It's opening in December! It's Oscar bait for certain, and Apple has the exclusive trailer.

Paul Greengrass' Green Zone, on the other hand, was shuffled out of the Oscar race once Universal decided to sort out its slate after a lackluster summer at the box office, and that may have been a wise move. Yahoo's trailer (which is also embedded below) comes across as more of a straight-up actioner than a ready-made contender, with Damon back in Bourne mode as a betrayed soldier on the hunt first for WMDs, and then for answers. Based on the best-seller Imperial Life in the Emerald City, it opens on March 12, 2010.

The Missing Person, playing at Sundance even as its star Michael Shannon earns an Oscar nomination for his work in Revolutionary Road, isn't merely a clever, cool spin on the classic private eye story, but it also works as a private eye story. It showcases a lurching, hunched, quietly lived-in performance by Shannon but offers more than just that performance. It has the knowing, humane touches of Paul Auster's brilliant urban fiction but still manages to rope in familiar crime genre characters like the rich widow, the collaborating cabbie, the wanted man, the ethical crimelord, the unethical businessman, the femme fatale and -- most importantly -- the sad-sack, mercenary-but-moral private eye.

John Rosow (Shannon) lives and works and drinks -- and does a far better job of the last thing in that list than the first two -- in a shabby office in Chicago. The phone rings. Get to the train station by 7, he's told. Board the Zephyr Express from Chicago to L.A.; there's a man to follow. An old friend in New York recommended him, and he's got the job if he wants it: "Five hundred dollars a day, plus expenses ... not including gin." After Miss Charlie (Amy Ryan) gives him the dossier of background and some cash, Rosow shaves, puts on a brown suit, goes to the train and takes the job. Because that's what a private eye does, as near as he can tell. And aside from the ringing phone being a cell, we could be in the 30's or the '40s or the '50s with the train and the gin and the cash and the job. But, of course, we're not.

When actors grab the directorial chair, my response is usually dictated by two things: the person's charisma, and their film choices. Considering how awesome Philip Seymour Hoffman is, and how his recent roles include Synecdoche, New York, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, The Savages, and Capote, the thought of him as a director is downright lovely. And now Variety reports that he's going to helm Jack Goes Boating -- an adaptation of Bob Glaudini's Off Broadway play.

The play is "an unconventional romantic comedy about two misfits in New York City, laced with cooking classes, swimming lessons, and illegal drugs." Hoffman will divide his time between directing and starring as the stoner limo driver, alongside Gone Baby Gone's Amy Ryan. Finishing off the cast is John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega, who are both reprising their roles from the stage.

At the very least, this will be a slice of laughs and romance without the trite and overused stereotypes. But I'm betting it will also be one heck of a fun film -- it's not everyday that Manhattan-based drug films deal with cooking and swimming classes, nor is it everyday that a romcom gets Hoffman and Ryan as the leads.

Does this whet your cinematic appetite?

The 25th annual Sundance Film Festival is finally upon us (opening night is this Thursday), and while we dig ourselves out from under piles upon piles of publicist emails, here's another trailer for a film that just made our extremely-selective 10 most anticipated list. Cinematical has a 10 most anticipated? Where? I didn't see it. That's because we haven't posted it yet -- look for the list to arrive tomorrow night. That said, The Missing Person stars Michael Shannon, Amy Ryan and Frank Wood, and it was written and directed by Noah Buschel.

Here's a snippet from the Sundance film guide description (more over here): "John Rosow is a private detective prone to sardonic wit, gin, and the endless repercussions of what happens when you mix the two. Powerful lawyer Drexler Hewitt wants Rosow to tail a mysterious middle-aged man who is traveling with a Mexican boy from Chicago to Los Angeles. Hewitt's loyal, stern assistant, Miss Charley, waits at the door with cash and instructions. But when Rosow hits Santa Monica, his objective changes: now he has to bring the man back to New York-for a cool half mil. Through his various dealings with an odd cast of characters-a cabdriver who knows his Catholic saints, a Segway-riding L.A. cop, meddling FBI agents, and femme fatales-Rosow begins to unravel the strange tale of the missing middle-aged man and learns something about himself along the way." Very cool modern-day noir caper -- check out the trailer below.

As we've started to get our fair share of trailers for the coming prestige projects -- Frost/Nixon, The Soloist, Zack and Miri Make a Porno -- I was curious as to why we'd yet to get one for Clint Eastwood's period drama, Changeling, if it were set to open by the end of next month. Particularly after Kim's Cannes review, I wanted to get a proper glimpse beyond a brief clip...

Perhaps hearing my prayers or just tiring of my complaints, Yahoo! Movies saw fit to post the trailer (watch it after the jump as well), in which a young mother (Angelina Jolie) in 1928 Los Angeles finds herself standing up against a corrupt police department when her missing son is returned, or rather replaced by a different child altogether.

Even if the same piece of score hadn't been used in both of their trailers, I'd still have felt a need to draw a correlation between this and last October's missing-kids-and-corrupt-cops powerhouse, Gone Baby Gone (of course, it doesn't hurt that Amy Ryan shows up in both of them). From Eastwood's end comes a particular tinge of Mystic River, and so far as I'm concerned, all of those signs point to something substantial waiting for us when Changeling opens in limited release on October 31.

From a magical private school to the heart of the Iraq war is quite a jump. Luckily, Jason Isaacs is just the kind of versatile actor to pull it off. (If you don't believe me, take a look at the man's IMDB page -- talk about well-rounded!) Variety reports that Isaacs (aka Lucius Malfoy of Potter fame) has signed to star in Paul Greengrass' military drama, Green Zone. Isaacs will play an American officer in Iraq in the days following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Matt Damon stars as an investigator searching for weapons of mass destruction, Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) plays as a foreign correspondent from the NYT, and Greg Kinnear makes an appearance as a CIA agent.

Zone is based on the non-fiction book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, titled Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone. For those of us who maybe don't watch the nightly news as much as we should, here is a little reminder: "The Green Zone, (the common name for the International Zone of Iraq), is a 10 km² (4 mile²) area in central Baghdad that was the center of the Coalition Provisional Authority and remains the center of the international presence in the city." Chandrasekaran's book highlighted the "absurdities, incompetence, and bureaucratic failings which prevented a timely transfer of power to the Iraqis and bred the growing insurgency" -- you know, just your usual fun bedtime reading.

Greengrass wrote the original script for the military thriller, but eventually L.A. Confidential scribe Brian Helgeland was brought aboard to help smooth out some of the rough edges. Green Zone started filming in Spain last month, and will then move to Morocco (the two locations have served as stand-ins for Iraq, since the production could obviously not work in the actual area). The film has yet to secure a release date, but is scheduled to arrive in theaters sometime in 2009.

I get very excited about the upturns some actors and actresses' careers take following awards season, especially when those performers end up Oscar winners. I always enjoyed reading the post-Oscar write-ups on "What's Next for ____?", though it's less of a thrill nowadays because I typically already know what is in their pipeline. For example, thanks to Variety, I now know that Amy Ryan will be co-starring in Paul Greengrass' "untitled Iraq war thriller". She joins the movie, along with Greg Kinnear, which already starred Matt Damon (who has worked with Greengrass on two Bourne films) and which reportedly began filming in Spain yesterday. While Kinnear and Damon will both play CIA agents involved in the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Ryan has been cast as a New York Times correspondent investigating the WMD investigation.

A front-runner for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (for Gone Baby Gone), Ryan has already had one heck of a year (she also appeared in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and Dan in Real Life). In fact, I'm sure I'm not the only one to admit I'd never heard of her until 2007. But she may still not be a household name, and that should surely change following her expected win (she's also the best bet for the Golden Globe this Sunday). The supporting actress category is sometimes a bit of a joke, as it was throughout most of the 1990s (starting with Whoopi and ending with Angelina, with a Mira in the middle), but Ryan is hopefully going to be one of the few actresses that shows us how much she deserves the accolades by continuing to take respectable roles. In addition to Greengrass' film, Ryan will be co-starring in Clint Eastwood's The Changeling, which also stars Angelina (whose "What's Next ... " in 1999 included Gone in 60 Seconds and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider). By the way, for those not keeping track, after making The Changeling, Ryan will have worked with four of the ten 1990s supporting actress Oscar winners (Marisa Tomei is in Before the Devil; Juliette Binoche and Dianne Wiest are both in Dan). Perhaps Greengrass can find a part in his new film for Anna Paquin?

I was a little hard on the International Press Academy last year, but they made some ridiculous decisions when handing out their Satellite Awards. Still, at least they came off as being different than every other year-end awards giver by picking winners like Joseph Cross and X-Men: The Last Stand (best comedic actor and best editing, respectively). Those are at least some interesting, unpredictable picks, right? This year, I feel the need to be harder on the organization, because it's gone totally predictable in honoring No Country for Old Men, Juno, Sicko, American Gangster, Ratatouille, Diablo Cody and Christopher Hampton, among others. The actors they honored -- Marion Cotillard, Viggo Mortensen, Ellen Page, Ryan Gosling, Tom Wilkinson/Casey Affleck (tied) and Amy Ryan -- aren't all the most obvious choices, but they aren't shocking, either. Couldn't they have at least gone with nominee Clive Owen or his nominated "comedy or musical" Shoot 'Em Up (!?!?!?), or something?

Not that the winners aren't deserving, but what good is yet another awards ceremony if it's not going to distinguish itself from the Golden Globes, which are the Satellite's unrecognized yet unmistakable "baby daddy". Yeah, the Hollywood Foreign Press will likely go with some other winners, but they won't seem that different. Again, I do salute the IPA for having a documentary category, though it wouldn't have hurt to give The King of Kong its one possible prestigious(?) award -- not that it was actually a better film than fellow nominee No End in Sight. Also, it's always enjoyable to see what the IPA picks for best DVDs (The Prestige for overall; Borat and Masters of Horror Season 1 (tied) for extras; Ratatouille for youth-oriented; Ken Burns' The War for documentary; The Graduate 40th Anniversary Edition for classic). For the rest of the nominees and winners, head over to Variety.

The San Francisco Film Critics Awards have been announced, and they're especially exciting for us here at Cinematical. Why? Because three of our writers are in the SFFC! Our very own James Rocchi, Jeffrey M. Anderson, and Richard Von Busack are all part of the San Francisco critic "scene." San Fran made some interesting picks, several outside of the expected Oscar nominees. So what were their choices? For Best Foreign Film, they selected Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which I am watching when I finish this post). For Best Documentary, they selected No End in Sight (which didn't blow me away, but was certainly well done). Best Adapted Screenplay went to Sarah Polley for Away From Her (great script, one of the most kick-in-the-stomach depressing movies I've seen lately). And Best Original Screenplay went to Tamara Jenkins for The Savages.

Amy Ryan was named Best Supporting Actress for her brilliant portrayal of a highly difficult character in Gone Baby Gone. Ryan's co-star in that film, Casey Affleck, was named Best Supporting Actor for his outstanding work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Best Actress was Julie Christie for Away From Her and Best Actor was George Clooney in Michael Clayton -- two choices I approve of though I disagree with them. Joel and Ethan Coen took Best Director(s) honors for their latest masterpiece, No Country for Old Men. And -- drumroll please -- the Best Picture Award went to Jesse James. A surprising pick perhaps, but it was an absolutely fantastic film, and hopefully the award encourages more people to see it. The SFFC gave a special citation to an indie called Colma: The Musical, "a homegrown song-and-dance extravaganza about the paradoxical drudgery and surreality of life in a city where the dead outnumber the living one thousand to one." That old story again? See the list for yourself here -- it's a San Francisco treat!

Most people consider the National Board of Review irrelevant, and yet they continue to write about the organization's annual film honors. Like the Oscars, though, it doesn't matter if the NBR is irrelevant or not. It's been around for nearly a century now, and it's been a significant part of awards season for many decades. Maybe the organization is made up of paid-entry film buffs rather than critics or "experts" but at the end of the day its members are simply movie lovers like you and me. And sometimes those members even champion and endorse movies that deserve that extra notice.

Sure, the 2007 mentions by the NBR seem so exhaustive that I almost can't even think of a movie that didn't get an award. Also, many of them seem like obvious and predictable decisions (doesn't this just mean the movies were noteworthy enough to receive the awards anyway?). Some of the winners, though, are pretty satisfying. Tim Burton probably won't win an Oscar for best director, so it's good to see him honored here. Also, I wouldn't have expected Lars and the Real Girl to get an original screenplay mention from anywhere. Nor did I expect for The Bucket List to land on any top ten lists. Mostly, I'm delighted to see Casey Affleck recognized for his acting.

Check out all the awards after the jump.