Diane Kruger Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If I told you the next Dark Castle horror-thriller flick would star January Jones and Diane Kruger, you'd probably be interested. If I told you that the most recent Dark Castle horror flicks were Whiteout, Orphan, and Return to House on Haunted Hill ... you'd probably be a little less interested. But with the presence of two stunning blondes (and a half-decent concept), Dark Castle's Unknown White Male is starting to sound a little intriguing.

According to Variety, Ms. Jones and Ms. Kruger will join the very busy (and very lucky) Liam Neeson in Unknown White Male, which "centers on a man who awakens from a coma to find that someone else has assumed his identity, and no one, including his wife, believes him." The director is Jaume Collet-Serra, whom the horror freaks may remember from (Dark Castle) flicks like Orphan and House of Wax. The stunning Diane Kruger is best-known for her work in Troy, Inglourious Basterds, and both National Treasure movies, while January Jones (even the name is sexy!) has been seen in We Are Marshall, American Wedding, and the upcoming Pirate Radio. She's also a big hit on that Mad Men series.

Variety doesn't make mention one way or another, but I do believe this film is a feature (loosely) based on this documentary of the same name. And that's a damn good documentary.

I was on Twitter the other day -- my favorite time waster -- and noticed an interesting question from Matt Dentler of Cinetic Media: "Will women pay to see Inglourious Basterds this weekend? No, seriously, I'm asking: are you, or do you know, a woman who will?" I replied that I'd paid to watch the movie at Cinemapocalypse, and would probably pay again to see it with my husband. Matt then told me the Alamo event didn't count -- he didn't quite explain why, but I think the point is that women who go to all-night movie marathons probably do not fit the traditional female moviegoer stereotype.

Anyway, my reply to Matt generated some retweets and a short, interesting discussion: "I wish the ads conveyed that it [Basterds] has strong female characters." "You nailed it," he replied, and I understood what he meant. He found the trailers misleading -- rightfully so.

The second image of Brad Pitt (here's the first one) from Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds has arrived online via filmz.ru, and once again we get a nice look at that mustache. And what's up with the mustache in 2008? George Clooney's sporting one for his new flick, Pitt's got one -- Urlesque seems to think 2008 is The Year of the 'Stache; go figure. I think they itch too much. ANYway, in Basterds, Pitt plays the leader of a group of Jewish-American soldiers whose job it is to spread fear throughout the Third Reich. Check out another image below of Diane Kruger in a bar with what looks like a group of drunken soldiers.



After the jump -- the first images of Rachel McAdams in Sherlock Holmes!

Bastards, bastards, bastards! The best part about Quentin Tarantino appropriating the title for his upcoming movie from Enzo Castellari's high-energy original is that I get to satisfy my inner 11-year-old and tell you all about the latest Inglorious Bastards withour fear of recrimination from parental figures. Diane Kruger is the highest-profile new bastard, according to Variety, joined by Christoph Waltz and writer / actor / comedian Paul Rust.

Kruger, the hellenic beauty who first made a splash on these shores opposite Orlando Bloom in Troy -- which also starred soon to be chief bastard Brad Pitt as a bit of a heel -- will play Bridget Von Hammersmark (not "Hammer Snark," smart guy), a German actress. Kruger is fine casting since, of course, she is a German actress, and already has experience playing WWII theatrics with the flick Joyeaux Noël (Merry Christmas), but I'm sorry that Nastassja Kinski will not be playing the role. She's the kind of 40-something actor that could use a juicy role to remind people of who she is.

Waltz is an unknown quantity to US eyes, though he's done plenty of TV work in Germany. He snared the role of Col Hans Landa, the main Nazi antagonist, the part that Leonard DiCaprio was "in talks" to discuss. If nothing else, Waltz shouldn't have a problem with the accent. Paul Rust has written for Adult Swim's Moral Orel and MTV's Human Giant and appeared in Semi-Pro. Let me go out on a limb and guess that he's been cast -- as the comic relief? I'm sure somebody out there in Commenter Land has read the script and can guess for the rest of us.

The film industry is really loving organs lately. We've got organ repossession, and if you remember Scott's post from March, organ stealing with Run for Her Life.

Dermot Mulroney had signed on to play a district attorney dad whose daughter needs some new lungs. When he sees that she is ridiculously low on the official waiting list, he decides to head South of the Border (not the fireworks shop) to get on the Mexican list. But this is a thriller, so his values are threatened when he finds out that a bunch of kids are being killed for their organs. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that Diane Kruger (National Treasure) will play his wife.

The idea of organ stealing can, and probably will, make for an interesting movie, but I imagine a number of people won't be happy with the portrayal of Mexico's organ donation program as a front for child killing -- unless the couple have somehow found some creepy doctors working outside of the system.

The film will shoot in New Mexico, but a production date hasn't been listed.

One of the best films of the year, Days of Darkness takes what could be a difficult and tedious subject -- getting old -- and makes if poignant and gripping by filtering it all through the prism of one man's declining years as a sexual being. French-Canadian actor Marc Labreche plays Jean-Marc, a Walter Mitty sort with thick, coke-bottle glasses and a mousy speaking voice, who has a mundane office-cubicle existence, helping injured people file claims against the state in what seems to be a near-futuristic, independent state of Quebec.

It's hard to say whether the film intends to make a strong statement on that possibility, but if it does, then it must be decidedly negative. This futuristic Quebec is terribly mismanaged, with taxpayer money being spent on organizations like Humor-Quebec, which employs a man to go around to offices like Jean-Marc's and instruct people on how to laugh. Jean-Marc is only slightly conscious during these kinds of office seminars, however -- he's focused on his fantasy life, which intrudes on reality whenever he has a few minutes to nod off.

His fantasy file is thick with subjects -- there's his blond supervisor at the office, who calls him to the carpet for every infraction and on whom he seeks revenge by crafting for her a fantasy scene that is, to his mind, exceedingly cruel. Specifically, he imagines her as being made the sex slave of several large, black men who pull her around by a choker. Then there's an anonymous fantasy brunette who acts as a sexual component to Jean-Marc's various 'success fantasies.'

I just about lost my breakfast trying not to laugh when Harvey Keitel brought out the President's Book of Secrets -- a book that holds all the answers to this country's most puzzling questions, like who really killed J.F.K. and what's really going on at Area 51. Dun. Dun. Dun. And guess who's job it is to steal it? That's right, Nicolas Cage is back hunting treasures, but this time there's a lot more at stake -- like clearing his family's name. When a piece of John Wilkes Booth's super secret diary is found, not only does it tell us who his top five crushes were, but it also implicates Cage's (or his character Ben Gates, that is) great great grandfather in the conspiracy to murder Abraham Lincoln. And since our man Gates doesn't want to be known as the great great grandson of the guy who conspired to kill one of our greatest Presidents, he sets out on an adventure to clear his family's name. Little did he know the secrets he'd uncover in the process.

This new full-length trailer looks similar to the first film in that Gates needs to keep following clues -- breaking into protected buildings, utilizing a number of one-liners, and even kidnapping the President -- until he gets what he needs. Of course, like with any sequel, the stakes are higher, the missions are harder and the wisecracks are that much funnier. Cage, Keitel, Jon Voight and Diane Kruger all return for part two, with pretty nifty additions like Ed Harris and Helen Mirren. While I'll joke about the film, I kind of dug the first flick. It's no Indiana Jones, but it's light, fluffy and fun to watch Cage figure out a way to pull off a stunt that seems utterly impossible. Kind of like Mission Impossible ... but, ya know, for kids. National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets hits theaters on December 21.

Days of Darkness, Denys Arcand's follow-up to the Oscar-nominated The Barbarian Invasions, isn't as smooth as that film -- but it's as bizarre and inventive a movie as you could ask for. Playing out of competition at Cannes, Days of Darkness is a perverse and busy mix of American Beauty, Brazil, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and many other influence that manages to include blunt drama, razor-sharp social commentary, broad comedy, sexual frankness and sweeping musical numbers. It's like that slightly lumpy knit sweater at the craft fair: it may not be machine-manufactured perfect, but you can tell just by looking at it that it was made by a human being.

Played by popular Quebecois comedian Marc Labrèche, Jean-Marc LeBlanc (I don't think the surname's a coincidence) is a 44-year-old bureaucrat, living a soulless life in a post-modern version of Quebec, struggling with a dead marriage, distracted kids, a mind-numbing job and all the discontents of life. The radio blares news of war and pestilence; when the kids are dropped off at school, they take off their Ipods, get out of the car and put on facemasks. Jean-Marc then goes off to work at a gigantic, inhuman, crumbling structure (it's actually Montreal's infamous Olympic stadium, a nice in-joke for Canadians) to aid -- or, rather, not aid -- Quebecois citizens in negotiating a labyrinthine bureaucracy that hinders more than it helps. Jean-Marc's wife (Sylvie Léonard) is obsessed with her work ("I'm the third-best suburban realtor in Canada!"); his mother dying slowly, falling into Alzheimer's.

After starting her career only a handful of years ago, German actress Diane Kruger has made a recognizable career out of her face. She's starred as Helen of Troy in the pretty crappy Troy, the mysterious other woman in Wicker Park and the sexy estrogen in National Treasure. In promotion of her new film, Copying Beethoven, Kruger spoke with The Sydney Morning Herald and had some interesting things to say. The most notable: she should have been cast in Cate Blanchett's role in The Good German. It seems that the actress just can't get over the fact that she wasn't given a chance.

According to the actress, she tried for over a year to convince the producers of the film that she "was the only woman who could play the part." She continues: "I mean, it's the good German, right? Cate Blanchett is definitely my favourite actress, but it's frustrating to not even get the opportunity." According to the article, this statement was followed by "an exasperated 'Aaaggghhh'." Sure, there is a point buried in there -- I can understand the argument for using the right ethnic background for a role. It saves us from the dreaded accent slips (Kruger has been slighted herself for that), makes things more authentic and allows some great talent to get wider recognition.

But really, she's putting her foot in her mouth. Her career is based on her French and English roles, not German ones. Essentially, she's put herself above every notable German actress, and has chastised the process that has made her career. Topping all that off, her career really isn't something that she can hold up to Blanchett's. She should take her own advice: "I keep bringing that up in interviews, which I probably shouldn't." She's got the choice to make. Does she want to hone her craft and follow in the footsteps of Blanchett, or take the route J-Lo did with that infamous Movieline article?