GaryRoss Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Mice have enjoyed a great ride in the movies. The animated variety first rose to prominence thanks to Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in the late 20s, enjoyed a rebirth as heroes in the late 70s and 80s with The Rescuers, The Secret of NIMH, The Great Mouse Detective, and An American Tail, and overflowed into live-action territory a few years later with Stuart Little. More recently, Flushed Away was a superior entertainment about a spoiled upper-class mouse who must learn to survive in the wild and wooly sewers, while the superb Ratatouille gave a rat a rare favorable turn in the spotlight as a culinary artist.

Adapted by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Dave) from the award-winning book by Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux features both a rat and a mouse in leading roles, but the self-described fairy tale is much more than a slapdash character study of two rodents. The setup makes it sound like a cousin to both Flushed Away and Ratatouille: a disgraced rat must learn to survive in a dark dungeon, a mouse develops a friendship with a human, and gourmet soup features prominently. Yet as the tale unfolds, it deepens and broadens its themes to a welcome degree. Though it never climbs too far above average and too often embraces the familiar, Despereaux remains a gentle and nurturing children's story, imparting lessons without being too condescending to its audience.

While Despereaux is aimed squarely at the little ones, adults may enjoy the top-notch animation and appreciate the above average performances by a celebrity voice cast (Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Watson, Tracey Ullman, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin Kline, William H. Macy, Stanley Tucci) that is well matched to the characters they play, which is a rare pleasure indeed.

At first blush, this has all the marks of the sort of tepid, respectful, boring prestige picture that's normally a huge turn-off. Director Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit) will reteam with Tobey Maguire for The Crusaders, a film about the lawyers who litigated the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka, but who keeps track?). That, of course, was when the Court unanimously held that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

Maguire will play idealistic young lawyer Jack Greenberg, who teamed with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall (Terrence Howard was rumored for that role, but that seems to have gone away) to fight the segregationists. This project has been kicking around for a while, and Topher Grace was previously attached to star in what is now Maguire's role.

Ross and Maguire's Seabiscuit, which I thought was precisely the sort of unimaginative, tediously reverent historical Oscar-bait that the Academy loves but anyone with any taste can't stand, bored the pants off me. This sounds like a similar sort of project -- though on the other hand, having spent significant time venerating Brown v. Board in law school, I'm curious to see what Hollywood will do with this story. Sort of in the same way a geologist might be fascinated with The Core, y'know?

Immensely talented writer/director Gary Ross, who brought us the magical Pleasantville and the Oscar-nominated Seabiscuit is finally beginning to line up his next few projects. According to Variety, Ross, who took a three-year absence from the director's chair while he penned the scrips for the animated The Tale of Despereaux and the remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon, is getting back to directing with the new films Vegas 55 and an adaptation of Neal Shusterman's supernatural novel Everlost.

This time around, Ross will not be writing his projects as he did with Pleasantville and Seabuscuit. Instead, Shusterman will be adapting his own novel, which tells the story of teenagers Nick and Allie who, after being in a car accident, are transported to a shadow world called Neverlost populated by people (good and bad) from different historical periods. Vegas 55, based on a magazine article by Charles Fleming about the first integrated casino in Las Vegas, will be written by Kevin Brodbin -- who recently scripted the comic-book adaptation Constantine starring Keanu Reeves and the super-cute Rachel Weisz.

Universal acquired the rights to Shusterman's novel for Ross and partners Allison Thomas and Naketha Mattocks to produce under their Larger than Life Productions banner. No word yet on a start date for either of these films or any potential casting. However, as Tobey Maguire is probably a little too old now to play a teenager (he is 31 you know) in Neverlost, it's more likely that if he and Ross are going to get together for a third time, after Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, it will have to be in Vegas 55. I can see it now: Tobey Maguire and his Pleasantville co-star Reese Witherspoon reunited (this time in color!) to tell the story of the first integrated Vegas casino. That film could prove interesting indeed.

What do you guys think? Time for a Ross-Maguire-Witherspoon rematch?