Eve Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Both Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson leapt from the world of Henry VIII into city love with New York, I Love You, but that's not all they're working on:

• When Portman joined the Big Apple film, it was said to be her directorial debut, but it looks like another film is sliding in front of it. The CBC reports that a 17-minute film she directed, titled Eve, will debut at the Venice Film Festival this month. Organizers are describing her film as a "civilized comedy" and expect the budding filmmaker to be at the opening. Nothing else is being said about the plot, but I imagine it could be quite interesting -- the film stars Ben Gazzara and the one and only Lauren Bacall.
• We've seen the many faces of ScarJo's acting. We've heard her tackle Tom Waits songs, we're on our way to seeing her directorial debut in New York, I Love You, she's apparently looking for a threesome and now she wants more. Showbiz Spy reports that she's itching to develop a film she can direct, and after that, she'd "love to do another album," citing how much she loved living with music and working with musicians. Oh Scarlett, do you really want to take that path again?

" ... and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place."

-- Horace Smith, Ozymandias

WALL-E, from Pixar studios, shows us a ruined city, centuries from now, where a single (and singular) robot toils to cube trash and, it seems, will never lack for work. WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth-Class)), a two-treaded solitary worker robot, spends his days cubing trash and his nights shut in safe from the cataclysmic garbage-gales that sweep the planet, inside a repair truck he's filled with things that have fascinated him; garden gnomes, butane lighters, a copy of Hello, Dolly! And in WALL-E's nearly-silent opening minutes, we get a sense of the world he lives in. Everything is ruined; there are no signs of life but for cockroaches; the only voices you hear come when the motion-activated Buy 'n' Large holo-billboards go off. WALL-E strips his broken-down brethren for parts and recharges by the sun's rays and stacks trash-cubes to imitate the skyscrapers decaying all around him, garbage as a pale reflection of glory.

With Wanted opening this week, starring rapper Common opposite Angelina Jolie (and, I'm happy to see, getting some awesome reviews, making it one of the few movies I may pay to see just for the heck of it), we thought it would be a good time to revisit seven other rappers who've attempted the treacherous transition from rap artist to movie star.

What makes film producers look to rap stars when casting for the big screen? Well, aside from the built-in audience that comes from casting a popular rap performer in a movie role, rappers have to have stage presence to perform, and that charisma and personality can come across well on a movie theater screen. Here are seven of them; let me know which of your favorite rappers I missed. (And before any of you Outkast fans get all worked up: they are hip-hop, not rap, and this post was for the rappers; Outkast is one of my absolute favorite bands, though, and Andre Benjamin in particular, I consider enormously talented. I'll do a whole column on Outkast and what they're up to movie-wise in the near future, promise.)

1. Will Smith -- Smith charmed TV audiences as a teenager in his popular TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air before hitting it big on the silver screen with the triple-whammy of Bad Boys (1995), Independence Day (1996), and Men in Black (1997). Since then, more hits have followed, and Smith and his wife, actress Jada Pinkett-Smith, have become Hollywood royalty; Smith's solid marriage and commitment to his family have earned him a reputation as one of Hollywood's genuine "nice guys," to boot. Smith is one rapper who successfully made the transition from singer to big-name actor, largely due to his charm, charisma and natural talent on the screen. His latest film, Hancock, opens July 2.

See, when you're an actor who's in the midst of a hot streak, I would think it might be bad karma to star in a film that has you portraying a fading Hollywood star. However, when you have the 007 card in your back pocket, I guess you don't have to worry about karma anytime soon. Variety reports that Daniel Craig will star in Flashbacks of a Fool, which starts shooting later this month in South Africa and London. Music video helmer Baillie Walsh will make his feature directorial debut on the film off a script from which he also wrote. Craig will exec produce, with Lene Bausager and Damon Bryant producing.

In the film, Craig will play a "hedonistic British actor" whose Hollywood career is tanking now that the guy has entered his 40s. When his childhood best friend dies, the actor returns home for the funeral and begins to flashback to a time in his life when a tragedy forced him to re-consider his future endeavors. Also starring in the film are Helen McCrory, Olivia Williams, Emilia Fox and ... Eve. Yeah, see if you can spot the odd one of the group. I normally loathe films whose stories are told primarily through flashbacks; I've always felt it was one of the laziest forms of storytelling (apart from the ever-so-annoying phone conversation). Here though it appears as if these flashbacks are crucial; I mean, the film is called Flashbacks of a Fool -- it would probably look a bit weird if there were no flashbacks. So I guess we'll see. In the meantime, Craig has been busy lining up a number of gigs to take on in between Bond projects. With both The Invasion and The Golden Compass in post production, he also has I, Lucifer, Defiance and Blindness on the horizon.

As much as you would love this film to be about a couple of rappers who have tremendous egos, and go on MTV Cribs to show off their 13-car garage, 8-bedroom house and gigantic swimming pool, sadly it is not. According to Production Weekly, Mekhi Phifer, Vincent Laresca and rapper-turned-actress Eve have signed on to star in Ego, to be written and directed by Antonio Macia.

Story centers around a cop (Laresca) who finds himself to be an emotional mess after harassing the newly paroled ex-con (Phifer) who killed his father so much that it results in the ex-criminal's tragic death. Fifteen years later, this same cop is put to the test when his suspects his partner might be playing with a crooked deck of cards. Hey, whatever happened to Phifer? For awhile there I thought he was on his way to becoming one of the top African-American actors in Hollywood, but then he sort of disappeared off the radar. Was it a case of bad roles or bad acting?