Homayoun Ershadi Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Back in February, I briefly mentioned through a casting bite that Alejandro Amenabar was gearing up for his next film, and had cast Rachel Weisz and Homayoun Ershadi from The Kite Runner. Now Variety has fleshed out the whole project. It's called Agora, the filmmaker wrote it with Mateo Gil, and it will be Amenabar's second English-language feature, after The Others.

Rachel Weisz and Max Minghella (Art School Confidential) star in the film, which takes place in Ancient Egypt. More specifically, Weisz will play the astrologer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, in Roman Egypt during the fourth century. "Trapped in the Library of Alexandria as religious riots flare on the city's streets, Hypatia battles to save the collected wisdom of the ancient world. Meanwhile, her slave Davus (Minghella) is torn between his love for his mistress and the freedom he could attain by joining the rising tide of Christianity." Aside from Ershadi, Oscar Isaac, Ashraf Barhom, Michael Lonsdale, and Rupert Evans have roles.

Amenabar plans to use a "hyper-realist approach" to bring Alexandria to life, and says: "We want the audience to see, feel and smell a remote civilization as if it were as real as the present day." To me, it definitely sounds worth is, and is certainly better than Weisz doing a million Mummy sequels. Are you ready to get dirty in Ancient Egypt?

Bits of casting for the new week, all courtesy of Variety:

• Last year, Angel Oquendo had bit parts in 3 films -- King of California, Ocean's Thirteen, and 1408. Now he's picked up a gig with Michael Keaton in The Post Grad Survival Guide. This is the pic I told you about back in December, which stars Alexis Bledel as a college grad who moves home trying to figure out her life -- and while that doesn't sound like the most original premise, the movie also cast Michael Keaton and Carol Burnett (who will be playing her family), which makes it all a heck of a lot more interesting... Almost as interesting as another film Oquendo is working on -- The Slammin' Salmon. I really, really love that title for some reason.
• Next up is Christy Scott Cashman. It seems she's grabbed a role in Abel Ferrara's new film -- Chelsea on the Rocks. This is a tribute to the Chelsea Hotel in New York City -- a building that has already inspired a whole slew of films. (You can check out a description of the Hotel, plus some stills from production at Twitch.) It's listed as a documentary, but looks to be maybe a mixture of both drama and doc. Christy is playing Vera Mendelssoh according to IMDb, which I assume is a typo for sculptor Mendelssohn, which makes her the neighbor of Sid & Nancy, and who heard witnessed some of the events surrounding Spungen's death.
  
• Finally, we have Homayoun Ershadi. Most recently, he played Baba in The Kite Runner. Now he's going to star along with Rachel Weisz in Agora, the latest film from Alejandro Amenabar. Not too much is being said about the feature thus far, unless you can read Spanish and check out the myriad of links on Google. However, this has got two solid stars and comes from the man behind Abre los ojos, so I'm intrigued. Production begins next month in Malta.