DianeLane Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Color me surprised.

I feel like I shouldn't be any time something gets in line to be remade, but I thought we would've heard about a remake of the J.A. Bayona-directed, Guillermo del Toro-produced thriller The Orphanage by now. Well, it's indeed in the works, with del Toro remaining on board as producer and Larry Fessenden (The Last Winter) being brought on as director, according to THR.

An actor, producer, director, writer and editor in his own right, Fessenden has no small familiarity with the horror genre -- even presently starring as a grave robber in this Friday's horror-comedy, I Sell the Dead -- and his more considered filmmaking style seems ideal for a story that turns out to have as much sorrow in store as spooks.

The Reporter notes the the project is still in need of a lead actress. The original hinged on Belén Rueda's wonderfully empathetic performance; who do you think could fill the role of leading lady in this case? Not to dwell on that Lovely Bones post, but I really do think Rachel Weisz could bring the right sensibility to this, or maybe Diane Lane... Your thoughts?

Diane Lane's grabbing the reins in Disney's new film Secretariat. Lane will be starring as Penny Chenery, a housewife who takes over her father's thoroughbreeding farm after he falls ill. She learns the ropes fast, and her horse Secretariat goes on to win the 1973 Triple Crown. Secretariat will focus on her relationship with the prize-winning horse, which is a nice change from movies focusing on relationships between, say, Lane and Richard Gere as in 2008's weepy Nights in Rodanthe.

Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplays for Atlas Shrugged, We Were Soldiers, Pearl Harbor, and Braveheart, is directing; he also directed We Were Soldiers and The Man in the Iron Mask. Mike Rich is behind the script; he also penned similarly inspirational flicks The Nativity Story, The Rookie, and Finding Forrester.

Secretariat sounds a little bit Seabiscuit-y and a little bit you-go-girl, with a distinct possibility for sappiness. Is Disney aiming for Diane Lane's demo or horse-loving young girls? It's too early to tell, but I'm just happy to see a movie with a strong female lead who isn't just interested in shoes and dudes. And despite some missteps with films like the aforementioned Nights in Rodanthe,Jumper, and Untraceable, Diane Lane pretty much rocks.

Oh, the irony of ironies when the Dennis Quaid serial killer mystery The Horsemen had a tagline that said "Come and see," only to receive an unceremonious dump on something like 75 screens in early March and its first formal review just this week in Variety (and they had to catch it in Paris, apparently!). Box Office Mojo can't even claim any exact figures for what the thing grossed in its very limited run.

In similar straits was the Diane Lane/Mickey Rourke thriller, Killshot, which was formally dumped in Arizona and Arizona alone at the end of January. $18,000 on five screens -- way to capitalize on that Wrestler buzz, Weinsteins. But soon, scarcity will matter not for either film, as Fangoria says that the former film will get its DVD release on July 14th, while Amazon claims a May 26th bow for the latter.

There's no word on special features for Killshot yet, which makes me wonder if we'll see any sign of Johnny Knoxville's reportedly excised character... but maybe I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

So Erik-with-a-k covered the coming comedies of 2009, Scott was all over the horror picks (though his inclusion of Race to Witch Mountain still boggles my mind), Eric-with-a-c nabbed the family-friendly fare, and Elisabeth went over the geek fodder that awaits. But while I respect their calendar years and made-up math alike, I've opted to divide my list of 2009's action and adventure flicks into four categories: Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About, Action Flicks I Couldn't Care Less About, Action Flicks That I Hope Surprise Me, and Those Which Fell In Between. Enjoy!

Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About: First and foremost -- Watchmen (March 6th). It's one hell of a graphic novel and looks to be one hell of an adaptation (with or without the Giant Blank), but the only problem is it may not hit theaters on time if 20th Century Fox has anything to say about it. Both Fox and Warner Brothers are fighting over who actually owns the rights, and if a judge favors Fox comes January 20th (when the court date is set), we're looking at a delayed release and a whole ton of angry fans. Then there's Public Enemies (July 1st), which has me sold on not the subject matter, but sheer pedigree: Michael Mann directs Johnny Depp and Christian Bale as '30s gangsters. (It doesn't hurt that the earliest word ranges from damn good to great.) On the skimpier side, I can only hope that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 17th) streamlines its source material as the previous one had, and I can only hope that Crank 2: High Voltage (April 17th) lives up/down to the depravity of its predecessor. There's one last action movie that I couldn't care more about because, well, I've already seen a version of it. The international cut of Taken (January 30th, though reportedly opening with some R-dodging trims) is about as brisk and butt-kicking as one might hope out of a man-on-a-mission kidnapping thriller, and if you disagree, I'll send Liam Neeson to change your mind.

Gallery: Watchmen

Coming up on the new year, it's interesting to see which films we had thought would've been released by this point. In the summer of 2007, I recall myself and several colleagues showing up for a press screening of Jonathan Levine's lauded slasher, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, only to discover it was canceled just that morning and the film had been sold from the Weinstein Company to Senator that afternoon. (The film has since landed at Sony, whose indie arm, Sony Classics, already saw Levine's follow-up, The Wackness, to a proper theatrical reception.)

At least the Weinsteins gave something up for a change. The oft-shuffled Killshot and Fanboys are tentative January and February releases at the moment, respectively, and I just want to see for myself if The Poughkeepsie Tapes has been worthy of its modest reputation following a BNAT '07 screening -- the same BNAT that featured the reportedly sweet Trick 'r Treat that WB continues to hoard.

A perhaps more morbid curiosity has me keeping an eye on Paramount's Case 39, just to see if it's really that bad, and who knows what similar straits Assassination of a High School President, The Accidental Husband (originally last March), and Possession (originally last February) are in following Yari Film Group's bankruptcy -- not that I have much invested in the last two, but Assassination is a perfectly release-worthy noir take-off that deserves a home.

So what do you guys and girls think? Which of these are you most dying to see? What was the longest you ever waited to catch something, and were you ultimately disappointed or satisfied by the time it came your way?

The first time I came across a trailer for the Diane Lane/Thomas Jane/Mickey Rourke hitman thriller Killshot (only remaining on an AICN archive page and the errant DVD release), it was back in September of 2006. Since then, the Elmore Leonard adaptation has endured reshoots in January of 2007 and countless changes in release dates after that. Of course, there's also at least three test screening reviews that bring to light the entire removal of a character played by Johnny Knoxville from the film.

Now, not long after the Weinstein Company issued its latest round of supposed scheduling, Killshot's most recent date -- November 7, 2008 -- has been dashed away by this Los Angeles Times piece, and as pointed out, how does one struggle to release anything that John Madden, Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack and Quentin Tarantino all had hands in at some point? How does one struggle to even sell off domestic distribution rights to a film with this cast and that crew? The obvious answer is, of course, that the film is a downright dud, though the general pedigree and harshest reviews seem to suggest that it's not a total turkey.

The best-case scenario at this point is that the film rides the awards buzz of Rourke's performance in December's The Wrestler as suggested and gets a theatrical release in the early winter dumping grounds (through the Weinsteins' Third Rail arm, I'd bet), while the worst-case scenario is the film being directly downgraded to the level of a Blockbuster-exclusive curio. We shall see...

Movies like Nights in Rodanthe are beyond reviewing, because intellectually analyzing them cancels out their intended effect. This is a weepie, pure and simple. If you're the type that likes crying at the movies, you'll love it. If you loved Richard Gere and Diane Lane together in a thriller like Unfaithful (2002) but you don't like to cry, you probably won't like it. Me, I found a few things to like and much to loathe.

Diane Lane stars in Nights in Rodanthe as Adrienne Willis, a frazzled single mother with a young son and a teenage daughter; the latter has just begun talking back and expressing her universal disdain for everything her mother does. Adrienne's no-good husband (Christopher Meloni), who, we learn, has had an affair, arrives to pick up the kids so that Adrienne can go help her happy-go-lucky pal Jean (Viola Davis, playing a typical movie "best friend") look after a sexy, beach-side North Carolina hotel during its off-season. Unfortunately, the husband now wants to get back together.

Confused Adrienne arrives at the hotel, which is decorated head-to-foot in all kinds of colored, tinkly bric-a-brac and prepares for its one and only guest. Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere) is a doctor struggling with a dark secret, and who has arrived for an equally mysterious errand. The attractive duo eventually warm up to one another and talk, but their dark secrets get in the way. Meanwhile, a huge storm threatens to blow away everything that isn't nailed down. I guess it's not too hard to guess what happens next. (Trivia hounds: this is Gere and Lane's third movie together. Besides Unfaithful, they were in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club together way back in 1984.)

An average to slightly above-average thriller with a noticeable lack of twists, predictable or otherwise, Untraceable is acceptable viewing for anyone who is a fan of Diane Lane or dense enough about the Internet to buy the film's premise, that a hacker of limited means and intelligence could create and maintain a high-profile Website; the origin of which is untraceable by the FBI. It's a conceit that sounds fishy even to the computer know-nothings in the theater and at one point the film acknowledges this, throwing in the caveat that while the technology to trace the killer does exist, it's only available to the National Security Agency, and they aren't willing to share their technology with the FBI. Uh-huh. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that that's the case. Once FBI agents themselves start getting murdered and their bodies grotesquely displayed on the site in question, wouldn't some responsible FBI chief threaten the NSA with a press conference to let America know that this culprit could be caught if the NSA spooks would only share their toys?

After they're stalked and selected, the killer's victims meet the sharp end of a taser and end up trapped in a Saw-like contraption in a dank basement, staring into a video camera that's sending feed to a website called KillWithMe.com -- yes, Sony has grabbed that particular domain and you should go there now to see some funny marketing. The killing mechanisms, be it a drip of acid into a water tank or the turning on of heat lamps one after the other, are incrementally activated by the number of hits the Website receives. The more people tune in, the faster the victim dies. Much like in Seven, the killer chooses high-profile, prominent victims to draw attention to his crimes and that only adds to the outlandishness of him being uncatchable. Still, there's enough lack of knowledge about the technology in question to make it sound something less than absurd, and the movie works on a the level of a cheap, quick ride that you can ride just long enough before it gets tiresome and irritating.

Variety is reporting that Ed Harris will make his return to the director's chair with Appaloosa, a western he will star in with Viggo Mortensen and Renee Zellweger. The film starts filming in New Mexico on October 1st. This must be a real passion project for Harris, in addition to acting and directing, he's co-producing the film and co-wrote the script with Robert Knott. The story is an adaptation of Robert B. Parker's novel of the same name, and is "centered on a pair of friends hired to protect a lawless town suffering at the hands of a renegade rancher." But...wait for it..."the arrival of an attractive widow disrupts their plans." Harris will play Virgil Cole, the new marshal of the mining and ranching town of Appaloosa. Mortensen plays his deputy, Everett Hitch. Together they take on the corrupt rancher who ordered the previous marshal and deputy killed. No word on who will play the corrupt rancher, but let me suggest Rip Taylor?

This will be Harris' second time directing a feature. His first was the pretty solid Pollock, in which he directed Marcia Gay Harden to a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and himself to a Best Actor nomination. Harris and Mortensen were great together in the excellent A History of Violence, and I do love westerns, but I would be a lot more excited about this project if it weren't for Zellweger. Diane Lane originally had the role of the "attractive widow," and that's a choice I'd be much happier about. It's just a matter of taste, but Zellweger's acting drives me insane. And I particularly can't stand her in period roles -- how she won an Academy Award for her supremely annoying work in Cold Mountain, I'll never know. I still remember that scene, used in the trailer, with her bellowing that ridiculous line, something like -- "They say this war is cloudy, but then they tell us to go and stand in the rain, and then we go and stand in the rain, and then they tell us it's raining!" Her hamtastic performance still haunts my dreams. But hey, maybe this'll be different.

Rejoice! There's finally more news about the super-saucy adaptation of Nicholas Sparks romance Nights in Rodanthe. In February, Erik Davis posted about the film, which will re-team Diane Lane with India-incensing Richard Gere (you might remember that the pair starred together in Unfaithful). Unlike their last film, this offering is about a doctor (Gere) who is heading to see his estranged son when he has a sexy interlude with a woman in an unhappy marriage. Not simply sex like that old Heart song goes, the experience is "life-changing" for the man. Now, if you're wondering who the other two players in the dysfunction are, you don't have to wait any longer.

Christopher Meloni, that guy from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and the puss-y Freakshow from Harold & Kumar, will play Lane's husband; James Franco, everyone's favorite little Goblin will play Gere's son. There's just something about Franco and Gere as father and son that seems completely right to me, so I've got to give kudos on the casting choice. How the players will come together in this dysfunctional environment remains to be seen. The adaptation comes from Ken Hixon, who last penned City by the Sea, and Ann Peacock, whose last film was The Chronicles of Narnia. Interesting pair, isn't it? Lackawanna Blues director George Wolfe will helm the feature and Denise Di Novi is the romance's producer. Considering the increasing popularity of Nicolas Sparks' work on the big screen, especially the most recent adaptation -- The Notebook -- I imagine that romance fans will go to see this in droves.