In 2002, French filmmaker and actor Patrice Leconte brought us Man on the Train -- the story of a teacher and thief who meet and befriend each other. As their friendship develops, they realize that they wish they had the other's life. The award-winning film is one that inspired Roger Ebert to say: "I have seen The Man on the Train twice, will see it again, cannot find a flaw." Of course, you know what that means! Stomach your groans and prepare yourself -- a remake is coming.
The Hollywood Reporter posts that Miramax is whipping up an English remake of the film. As of now, the only person signed on to the project is screenwriter Daniel Taplitz, the man who just brought us Chaos Theory. Thomas Bezucha (The Family Stone) is in negotiations to direct, and THR says that Billy Bob Thornton "is said to be circling the project."
I really enjoyed Chaos Theory, but I wasn't too much of a fan of The Family Stone. I'm sure, however, that they can make an enjoyable movie. But will it be one worthy of the original? I'm not convinced. Leconte excels at creating really excellent and dynamic friendships on-screen (think Mon Meilleur Ami), and while the films have mainstream comedy aspects, there's a depth to them that makes them more than just a normal comedy. But maybe they'll all surprise me and make it more than just your everyday comedy. Production is scheduled to begin later this year.
It seems like a lifetime or two has passed since Billy Bob Thornton wrote, directed, and starred in Sling Blade. There's been a marriage to Angelina Jolie, teamed with super-romantic blood vials, and a whole slew of acting gigs from A Simple Plan to The Astronaut Farmer. He also had two other directing stints -- All the Pretty Horses in 2000 and Daddy and Them in 2001.
Now Cinema Blend reports that he's getting back to the director's chair with two new projects, and explained why it has taken him so long to do so. It seems that Billy Bob did not enjoy working with ol' Harvey Weinstein on Horses, and that experience has kept him from getting back behind the camera. But now, with deals contingent upon him retaining total control of both projects, he's trying again. He says one is locked, and the other is close to a deal.
The first is some book adaptation that he didn't say much about, but the second idea focuses on Floyd Collins. It's a pretty wild story about a caver in the '20s who was trapped in some underground caves and became the first world-wide media sensation, well before the days of Jessica McClure, or reality TV. Thornton says: "the reason I want to make the movie is I want to make the movie about human nature. It's human nature to want to see other people suffer for entertainment. That's why we have reality television. That's why every time there's somebody trapped in a hole, everybody's interested." I just wonder if it will detail the creepy stuff later -- like displaying the poor dude's body at the cave.
When I first posted about the film back in November, I said that the upcoming Clive Owen and Julia Roberts-starring Duplicity filled me with curiosity and dread. The curiosity (and a little excitement, I must admit) came from the fact that it was re-teaming two stars from Closer -- a film I really enjoy. On the other hand, I hear "Duplicity," and I think of the similar-sounding Derailed. That makes me want to run for my life. (Famous last words said before watching the latter: It's got Owen. It can't be all bad.)
All that said, there's two more great actors joining the cast, which should start to erase those Derailed fears. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Tom Wilkinson and Billy Bob Thornton are looking into joining the cast. (Wilkinson is in negotiations, and THR doesn't say whether BB has officially signed on yet.) This will re-team Wilkinson with Michael Clayton director Tony Gilroy, who also wrote the script, so I imagine he'll sign on the dotted line soon enough -- Tom's role in the film did nab him an Oscar nod for supporting actor, after all.
The thriller focuses on Roberts and Owen's characters, "who are longtime lovers and rival corporate spies who team to pull off an elaborate con." (Sounds like Mr. & Mrs. Smith meets Ocean's 11.) Wilkinson is set to play the CEO of a large company, while Thornton's role is said to be "a more maverick type of CEO." The film will shoot this spring in the Big Apple.
Putting together last week's list of my favorite screenplays of the 2000's was relatively easy. I came up with about ten worthy candidates and narrowed from there. When I started putting together this week's list -- my favorite screenplays of the 1990's -- things got a lot more complicated. I had a much larger list of worthy candidates to choose from. It made me realize that a) the 90's, particularly the late 90's, was a genuinely incredible time for film, and b) I was going to have to split my list into two halves: 1995 -- 1999 and 1990 -- 1994.
So, in support of all the great screenwriters currently on strike, what follows is my favorite screenplays produced between 1995 and 1999. Read that last sentence carefully! If you've got movies you'd add to or subtract from my list, I would love to hear them, but make sure your choice fits the criteria. On my 2000's list, I was getting comments like "How DARE you not include Citizen Kane, you freaking idiot?"
Now then, with all apologies to the scripts it killed me to leave off (Office Space, A Simple Plan, As Good As it Gets, Chasing Amy, Lone Star, Three Kings, Swingers, Jackie Brown, Kingpin, I could go on and on), here is my alphabetical list:
If you've grown kind of tired of Billy Bob Thornton's recent predilection for comedy (and a little astronaut farming thrown in for good measure), all of the actor's upcoming projects should fix that -- The Informers, Tulia, and Peace Like a River. It's like he just sat and realized that he hasn't given audiences anything meaty to chew on lately and is doing everything he can to rectify that. Now a Moviehole source says he's added another -- Eagle Eye.
Originally set up by Steven Spielberg, who left the project to work on a little picture about Indiana Jones, the film is being directed by Disturbia helmer D.J. Caruso and is re-teaming him with his last star, Shia LaBeouf. It's a thriller about a young slacker and a single mother who are framed as terrorists and then get involved in a terrorist cell that's planning a political assassination while trying to clear themselves. Shia is the slacker, of course, and will be joined by Michelle Monaghan as the single mother, and Rosario Dawson as a government agent. Billy Bob could be her fellow agent, or maybe the head of the terrorist organization.
So basically, this is kind of like Disturbia without the house arrest, and it seems without his mom -- all reports are careful to say "a" single mom, not "his" single mom, but I wonder then, where his is. Moviehole says that rehearsals for the film will start tonight, so I'm sure we'll find out more about the feature soon enough.
Shoot 'Em Up may not have been a smash at the box office (at this point it might struggle to match the gross of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot), but it provided us plenty of laughs with last week's Insert Caption contest. Still, while the film may be cartoonishly violent and slightly satirical, there's a strong social message at the heart of it: Guns don't kill people, Clive Owen does. Hundreds, thousands, maybe even cajillions of them. Congrats to our winners below, you've got a hat, t-shirt and shot glass (get it?) on the way.
1. "What happened next was completely logical." -- Jordan M.
2. "Look... I'm hungry and you're hungry, it is an unfortunate situation. But there is no reason we can't share these baby bottles." -- Tom O.
3. "You know, if it weren't for those colored baby bottles over there, this would totally be a cliche." -- Bob M.
This week we have a photo from another film with some stirring social commentary, Mr. Woodcock, which I believe was originally scheduled to release in 1993. Susan Sarandon flaunts her liberalism by playing a woman who marries a gym teacher (Billy Bob Thornton), much to the chagrin of her son Stifler (Seann William Scott). In the spirit of Fashion Week, writers of our three favorite captions will win various items from the limited edition Mr. Woodcock clothing line. Good luck!
My first thought should be to congratulate Halle Berry on her pregnancy, which she finally, officially announced on Access HollywoodTuesday. But instead, I'm thinking primarily about John Singleton, who stands to lose by the news. The Boyz n the Hooddirector is having some bad luck of late -- in case you didn't hear, he accidentally killed a woman recently -- and Berry's bun in the oven has unfortunately affected Singleton's latest project. He was set to direct Tulia, a Southern courtroom drama with Berry and Billy Bob Thornton, but now, thanks to the actress' unavailability for the next six months or so, the film has been postponed -- if not canceled. According to TMZ, Lionsgate has definitely halted production, which was scheduled to begin shooting in October, with no word on when it would resume. The gossip news site did learn, though, that the project hasn't been shelved entirely.
I had been excited for Singleton when he took overTulia from Carl Franklin. Here, I was thinking he could work with the reunited Berry and Thornton, who paired up on Monster's Ball, and direct the actress to another Oscar nomination (she won for Ball). And then his career would pick up again, proving that his status as youngest director to ever be nominated for the directing Oscar was not a fluke. Maybe it wouldn't get him another nomination, but it would hopefully get him enough respect to finally get him his Luke Cage greenlight. Now, even if Singleton does remain attached to Tulia, it won't be bringing him to any Academy Awards until at least 2010. Currently, Singleton is also having trouble as a producer. He worked with filmmaker Franc. Reyes on the new release Illegal Tender, which has only made $2.5 million in its first two weeks -- most of it earned opening weekend before a near-60% drop. Considering Reyes' previous film, Empire, grossed seven times that amount, Singleton could be blamed.
I'm a big fan of author Bret Easton Ellis' work. Since many of his novels rely on the inner workings of characters' minds, they can be difficult to adapt to the big screen. The film version of Less Than Zero made cocaine addiction look like Pretty in Pink. I know I'm in the minority, but I detested Mary Harron's American Psycho. The only adaptation I feel got Ellis exactly right was Roger Avary's excellent take on The Rules of Attraction. Now three more films are going to try and re-create Ellis' world. Darren Star is working on The Frog King with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There is no director yet, but a movie version of Lunar Park has been announced. And director Gregor Jordan (Ned Kelly) has put together a cast for the film translation of Ellis' 1995 novel The Informers.
The Hollywood Reporter writes that Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, and Superman himself Brandon Routh are in "various stages of negotiation" to star in the ensemble film. The Informers is set in Los Angeles in 1983 and it tracks seven stories. The major characters are: a movie executive (played by Thornton), his wife (Basinger), his mistress, a rock star, a kidnapper, and a vampire (Routh, apparently looking to darken up his image). Rounding out the cast are Ashley Olsen as a "sexually promiscuous girl" (doesn't it seem like those twins are getting a ton of work these days?), Jon Foster (Stay Alive), Austin Nichols (John Monad on the baffling John From Cincinnati), and Lou Taylor Pucci (star of the very good Thumbsucker and the not very good Chumscrubber -- yes, they're different movies). Sounds like it could be a great flick! Now, whatever happened to Roger Avary's planned Glamorama movie? I would love to see that come to light. Did Zoolander steal its thunder?
Now that Carl Franklinhas chosenThe Maintenance Man as his next project, he is no longer attached to Tulia, the project reuniting Oscar-winner Halle Berry with her Monster's Ball co-star Billy Bob Thornton. Too bad, since it also would have reunited Franklin with his One False Move screenwriter/actor -- again, Thornton. Filling in for Franklin, according to Blackfilm.com, is John Singleton. While this isn't officially confirmed yet, it does make sense for the Boyz n the Hood director to take over a ready-made production while he waits and waits for that Luke Cage greenlight. If it is true, I wonder if Singleton will do another re-write of the screenplay, which was originally adapted by Karen Croner (Franklin's One True Thing) and then supposedly rewritten by Franklin.
As we told you back in March, Tulia is based on Nate Blakeslee's book Tulia: Race, Cocaine and Corruption in a Small Texas Town, which tells the true story of 46 racially profiled men arrested in a drug-less drug bust in Texas in 1999. Berry will play the lead attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense, a character Blackfilm.com notes is Indian, not African-American (it's true). Thornton also joined the project back in March, but we still don't know his role (Erik imagines he'll be the racist cop who aids in the conviction of the 46 men) and Blackfilm claims that Columbus Short (Stomp the Yard) may be added to the cast. The film was set to begin shooting back in April, but Thornton supposedly had a scheduling conflict. Hopefully Singleton, who is no stranger lately to race-based legal battles, won't need too much time to become acquainted with the project and it can start lensing soon.
The two alternate identities of Bruce Willis -- curmudgeonly father-figure who must occasionally save the planet from annihilation and baby-boomer pop-bluesman Bruno Radolini -- rarely interact with one another. On August 2, however, they will. As part of the Netflix LIVE! music and movies series, Willis is leading his band The Accelerators in a blues concert outside the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The concert will then be followed by an outdoor screening of Armageddon. For those of you who paid vast sums of money to have Armageddon total-recalled out of your memory, that was the movie where Willis teamed up with Ben Affleck and Billy Bob Thorton to stop a giant rock from crasing into the planet. Willis had this to say about the music-movie event: "It is truly thrilling to return to The Kennedy Space Center to enjoy 'Armageddon' with my band on hand. Movies have been my career, but music has always been my love, so I am excited about merging the two worlds in such a unique way and being able to share it with so many people."
About 5,000 fans are expected to pack the Center's Rocket Garden for the show that begins at 7:30pm on August 2nd and Netflix had this to say about the Willis event: "Netflix LIVE! On Location is a great way for us to share the Netflix experience with thousands of people around the country. Bruce's popularity with movie fans is enduring, and we are delighted to be able bring him back to Kennedy Space Center for this one-of-a-kind event." The Netflix LIVE! On Location series is also expected to announce more music-movie pairings in the coming weeks.
Over the past couple of months, we've brought you all the rumblings about a possible Justice League movie in the works, based around the DC Universe superhero squad that includes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and others. We brought you the scuttlebutt about Batman being supposedly too big to waste on the project, and then a counter-rumor developed that Batman would definitely be involved. We also heard rumors that the Justice League film might be used as a sort of substitute for the complicated sequel to Superman Returns. So far, there hasn't been much word on who exactly would be opposing the JLA, but if it's going to be the Injustice League -- a DC Comics supervillain team, of which Catwoman is a charter member, don't expect Halle Berry to be cracking the whip.
At Tuesday's press junket for the upcoming thriller Perfect Stranger, Cinematical asked Berry if she could be persuaded to pick up the character again, for a Justice League film. "No, no," she said, forcefully. "You guys didn't like Catwoman the first time, and I'm not a masochist." When we pointed out that she has said she enjoyed the Catwoman role, Berry responded, "I love it, but my ego is in check, and I'm not just gonna do it for the sake of, you know, doing it for myself. I make movies for people, and if people don't really want to see that, then I wouldn't make the same mistake twice, obviously. I wouldn't choose to do that."
Another tidbit during the press day: Berry threw cold water on Billy Bob Thornton's supposed casting in Tulia. When asked when she would start shooting the movie with Billy Bob, Berry responded "Well, he might not actually be in it. That's been a little bit of misreporting. Carl Franklin is directing, but Billy Bob is ... we don't even know if we're going to start right away. We're still working on getting it together, and Billy Bob might have a scheduling conflict." We'll have the rest of the news from the junket in a later report, so stay tuned to Cinematical.
The debate over the difference between mainstream and independent movies has raged for decades. The line has blurred more and more over the years as so-called independent companies began financing multi-million dollar films like The English Patient or Fargo, which were still labeled as "independents." To make things more complicated, what does one call a movie made by an independent filmmaker for a mainstream audience, say Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight, Richard Linklater's School of Rock or Spike Lee's Inside Man? I'd argue that we could call it an acceptable compromise between personal vision and entertainment, and a case in which everybody wins.
That's also the case with Michael and Mark Polish's The Astronaut Farmer. It's the fourth film by the identical twins, who write all their screenplays together and appeared together in their debut, Twin Falls Idaho (1999). Subsequently, Michael has established himself as a director, while Mark has taken on acting roles. Their three previous films, which include Jackpot (2001) and Northfork (2003), certainly cannot be classified as "mainstream." A familiar collection of odd, beautiful wanderers and losers populate their frames, from Siamese twins, to a traveling, professional Karaoke singer and a pair of mysterious, black-suited agents charged with evacuating the site of a future lake. This time the hero of their film does not fit in with this crowd and we have the makings of an American hero: a man who launches his own rocket into space.
We have an exclusive first look at three photos from the new Billy Bob Thornton flick The Astronaut Farmer. The movie tells the tale of Charles Farmer (Thornton), a one-time aspiring astronaut who, in the face of a family crisis, dropped out of the Air Force -- effectively ending his chances of joining the NASA training program. But rather than give up on his dream, Farmer builds his own rocket in the barn of his Story, Texas, ranch, hoping to one day launch said projectile into space. Will he succeed? Or will his efforts crash and burn? Only time (the film flies into theaters Feb. 23) and a $10 movie ticket will tell. Click on the pics below for larger versions.
He may be prettier than Humphrey Bogart, but Clive Owen sometimes reminds me of the Casablanca star. I guess I just see a lot of Owen's characters as being the kind who would say that they stick their neck out for nobody. And then there's Owen's voice, which has been heard in voice-overs before and which would work perfectly in a film noir. Of course, Owen isn't distinguished enough to be cemented into the consciousness of cinema in the same way that Bogie has been. In one hundred years, Humphrey Bogart will still be the better remembered actor.
For the time being, though, Owen is probably the best person to take on the part of Philip Marlowe (maybe Billy Bob Thornton would be good, too), a character that most of us associate with Bogart, despite the fact that so many others have played the role, some more than once. Producer Marc Abrahamtold Louisville, Kentucky's Courier-Journalthat he will be following up Children of Men with another collaboration with Owen that will be based on one of Raymond Chandler's detective stories. He didn't specify which story would be adapted, but he did say that Owen would be playing Marlowe.
Todd Phillips has made a string of comedies -- Frat House, Road Trip and Old School -- all springing from bad male behavior, capturing the seeming link between heightened testosterone and reduced I.Q. Phillips' biggest success, Old School, shone probably not thanks to any directorial touch he brought to the material, but rather because he had a triumvirate of charismatic, funny leads in Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughan and Will Ferrell. In School for Scoundrels, starring Jon Heder as Roger, a nebbishy New Yorker who takes bad cad Billy Bob Thornton's dating confidence course, Phillips doesn't have three funny, charismatic leads; he only has one.
The fact that Jon Heder has somehow become a leading man is a mystery that will be puzzled over by future generations. Much like Owen Wilson in Bottle Rocket, Napoleon Dynamite exploded Heder onto the scene with a bravura performance in an independent film, a film full of the energy you get from a young actor giving a part everything he has. Unlike Wilson, though, Heder is a zero-charisma screen presence, a wispy, insubstantial figure who cannot hold his own against any other actor -- or even hold our attention. Some might make the case that hey, Heder's character is supposed to be a bit of a gimp in this film -- uncharismatic, not forceful -- but that's a load of hooey: Heder's Johnny one-note skill set is getting tired terribly, terribly fast.
In 2002, French filmmaker and actor Patrice Leconte brought us Man on the Train -- the story of a teacher and thief who meet and befriend each other. As their friendship develops, they realize that they wish they had the other's life. The award-winning film is one that inspired Roger Ebert to say: "I have seen The Man on the Train twice, will see it again, cannot find a flaw." Of course, you know what that means! Stomach your groans and prepare yourself -- a remake is coming.
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SCOOP: Spider-Man 4 and 5 Might be Shot at the Same Time!
Cinematical Seven: Disney's Awesome Live-Action Kid Adventures
