JeremySisto Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Did you know that the beautiful city of San Diego has mean streets? City Lights Pictures announced in Cannes today that it has picked up North American rights to Damian Harris' Gardens of the Night, a drama about two young people struggling to exist hand to mouth on the streets of San Diego. City Lights plans a fall theatrical release, according to a statement released by the company.

Gillian Jacobs (pictured) stars as Leslie, a 17-year-old girl who is still dealing with the trauma she experienced when she and her childhood friend Donnie (Evan Ross) were abducted and held captive by two men nine years earlier. The abductors are played by Tom Arnold (!) and Kevin Zegers.

But can Sisto deliver them from evil?

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Kristin Chenoweth is going to star with Jeremy Sisto in an upcoming indie drama called Into Temptation. And finally, a link in my brain is showing up on the big screen. News of Chenoweth (Running with Scissors), always makes me think of Sisto, the Chenowiths, and Six Feet Under, so it's about time the two were combined.

And just like the dead-filled show, this is far from an upper. "Chenoweth will play a suicidal prostitute who confesses to a priest her plans to end her life on her birthday. The priest (Sisto) then searches for her to intervene."

Firstly, I really like the idea of a priest getting emotionally involved with a story he hears during confession. It breeds a million possibilities, but really -- do we need a struggling stripper on the big screen YET AGAIN? I feel like a broken record saying this, but it keeps continuing, so how can I not? There's enough flipping strippers on the big screen, people. Use those creative juices of yours to come up with new material!

The film is written and will be directed by Patrick Coyle, and production begins next week.

I always chuckle when I pop in the Heathers commentary and hear that Heather Graham almost had a role in the film as Heather McNamara (the yellow-colored cheerleader). But she was only 17, and her parents thought the movie was too dark. I wonder what they think of the films she's acted in since? Only a few years later, she became Cooper's love interest on Twin Peaks, and then had a part in the movie -- Fire Walk with Me. At 37, she's definitely not a kid anymore, and The Hollywood Reporter is posting that she's added another dark role to her roster -- a new drug addiction indie flick called Broken.

Graham plays Hope, a wanna-be musician who takes the cliche road and heads to Hollywood to become a star. Instead, unsurprisingly, she works the night shift at a crappy diner. Continuing her path of good decisions, she finds herself a junkie man, played by Jeremy Sisto, and develops an addictive relationship with him as they share heroin. Jake Busey, Tess Harper and Linda Hamilton co-star as "seedy Los Angeles denizens" who cross her addict path. Broken is Aussie director Alan White's first US film, from a script by Jeff Lester and Drew Pillsbury. The film premiered at the AFI fest last year, and now Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban's Truly Indie has picked it up for distribution. Their plan is to release it on October 5 in New York City, with other locales like LA to follow. If you end up checking it out, watch out for Bianca Lawson, who plays Mia -- you might remember her from Saved by the Bell: The New Class, or as the strangely-accented second slayer, Kendra, on Buffy.

.

*A guest review today, from Nick Schager, of Slant Magazine


Regrettably but inevitably, Waitress's tenacious optimism is partially offset by the recent, tragic murder of its writer/director/co-star Adrienne Shelly, an actress who made her name in Hal Hartley's early indies and, with this funny, charming slice of Southern country life, appears to have found her voice as a filmmaker. However, the bittersweetness that accompanies the film's arrival is, coincidentally, in tune with its story's miserable protagonist, a young, pretty waitress at Joe's Pie Diner named Jenna (Keri Russell). Stuck in a loveless marriage to her controlling, abusive husband Earl (Jeremy Sisto), and prevented from running away by a lack of cash, Jenna is a forlorn woman who sees dreams of a bright future dissipating before her eyes. To cope, she pours all of her grief, longing and sadness for happier times-gone-by into her unique homemade pies, which – described, at one point, as "biblically good" – are concocted with an array of inventively combined ingredients, and named after the moods that inspired them (such as her "I Hate My Husband Pie" and "Falling in Love Pie").

Tending to her louse of a spouse, wasting time gabbing in the diner bathroom with co-workers Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Shelly), and waiting on outspoken, lewd diner proprietor Old Joe (a consistently hilarious Andy Griffith) while decked out in her '50s-style blue-and-white uniform – Jenna's life is, at the outset, in a rut. Waitress is too, as its early attempts at establishing a mood are a tad shaky, vacillating unevenly between cutesiness and seriousness. That balancing act becomes much smoother, however, once Jenna – after learning that she's pregnant with Earl's baby thanks to an ill-advised drunken roll in the hay – goes to see her OBGYN and finds, to her surprise, that her lifelong doctor has suddenly semi-retired and been replaced by attractive Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion). Though she's been stashing money around the house for an eventual escape, Jenna makes clear to the married Pomatter that, while she isn't thrilled about the baby (who'll further tie her down), she nonetheless intends to keep it. Her plan to disappear into the night, however, is complicated by the almost immediate and overwhelming mutual attraction that blossoms between doc and patient.

According to an interview with MTV.com, musical yeller Fred Durst is very serious about starting a film career - and he wants to direct, dammit. Despite the fact that people are apparently lining up to have him in act in their projects (he was in NBC's Revelations miniseries, and also appeared with Jeremy Sisto in Population 436, and indie film that just finished shooting in Canada), Durst is determined to be behind the camera. Sure, so far his only non-video directorial work was on Unquestionable Truth, a 30 minute short that appears on a Limp Bizkit release. But he does have a couple of full-length features in the works. Though he won't name the films, Durst has long been associated with Runt, a drama "about a high-school outcast," and a thriller called Joe.

And make no mistake: the man is setting his sights high. "I want to make timeless movies. I want to be beside Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson and Francis Ford Coppola. I'm a real director." Dang. Well, you certainly can't accuse Durst of lacking ambition.