JulianneMoore Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The name of the cinematic game is believing what happens on the big screen, and suspending belief when necessary. It's a particular and difficult game -- one that is, of course, pulled off with varying degrees of success. One person's perfectly natural action is another person's highly irregular one, and there's no set line for what will be stomached, accepted, and believed. In the case of Atom Egoyan's erotic thriller Chloe, Amanda Seyfried, Julianne Moore, Max Thieriot, and Liam Neeson toe the line of believability as they sail through the sticky waters of romantic discontent and mistrust.

Seyfried is Chloe, a young prostitute well-versed in the finer points of subterfuge -- embodying everything her clients dream. And Moore is Catherine, a successful gynaecologist -- the established professional, mother, and aging woman desperately wishing for the lust-filled attentions that her husband David (Neeson) used to heap on her. After he avoids her on his birthday, "missing" a plane (and subsequently a surprise party), she becomes wary. And when he continues to flirt with every young woman he meets, Catherine becomes convinced that he is cheating.

If you're into classic toys and cartoons, then for you G.I. Joe probably never left. But for most of us, the arrival of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in theaters has brought the Real American Heroes back into the spotlight, which means one thing -- it's time for a little parody. Fans of Adult Swim's Robot Chicken are used to seeing their Saturday morning heroes get a little postmodern treatment, and over at Funny or Die they've gotten in on the action with The Ballad of G.I. Joe ... and just because it's a joke that's been done before doesn't mean that it isn't still pretty darn funny.

The song was written by Daniel Strange and Kevin Umbricht, and gives you a glimpse of what the Joe team is up to after a hard day of battling for the American way -- and I'll just say that ordering episodes of The Wonder Years was not what I was expecting. The video boasts an all-star cast and plenty of your favorite Joes making an appearance. I won't spoil all of the cameos for you, but some of the bigger names to pop up in the video are Billy Crudup, Zach Galifianakis, Ben Stiller, and Julianne Moore. Now if only Stephen Sommers could have gotten some of those people to appear in the actual movie, we might have been on to something.

After the jump; The Ballad of G.I. Joe...

It's been a while, but if you have a good memory, you might remember that I quite like The Tooch... Stanley Tucci. He whipped up magic as Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream, but more importantly, he's the man behind Big Night -- one of the best foodie films Hollywood has seen. (Of course, he's also heading back to food with the upcoming Julie & Julia, but that's not the same.)

Now Variety reports that Tucci is gearing up to film a comedic drama called The Hunter, and he's grabbed Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson, and Julianne Moore to star. Written by The Tooch himself, the film is a coming-of-age story set in the aristocracy of New York's Upper Westchester County. Brosnan will play a middle-aged man clinging to the memories of his "once-charmed life and world." The Whit Stillman fan in me wants Chris Eigeman in a role like that, but I can dig Brosnan, and only hope that this finds the magic of Big Night ... even if food isn't involved.

This news also brings word that Blind Date -- Tucci's adaptation of Theo Van Gogh's film, the brother to Steve Buscemi's Interview -- will finally make its way to the big screen this year, sometime in September. The sky -- it's raining Tooch!

What do you get when you mix Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo in a comedy? A same-sex couple and one eager sperm donor. (Bet you weren't expecting that!) Variety reports that the trio, plus Josh Hutcherson (Bridge to Terabithia) and Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland), will star in a new film called The Kids Are All Right.

Bening and Moore are playing a couple who long ago used donated sperm to start a family. Years later, when their son and daughter (Hutcherson and Wasikowska) have grown up, they want to find the man behind the sperm. So, they hunt down Ruffalo's character, and he "totally upsets their family dynamic once he enters their lives."

This project is coming from Lisa Cholodenko, which bodes particularly well for the already-unique story. You might remember that she's the writer and director of Laurel Canyon, one of the few films to show the lovely Frances McDormand as a beautiful and carefree woman, rather than a quirky gal steeped in kitsch.

So, a filmmaker who can challenge the norm, a same-sex couple played by two multi-Oscar-nominated actresses, and an original storyline to boot? Pinch me, I must be dreaming. The film just started production, so I can only hope we get to see how this all pans out soon.

Recreating well-known political figures has been pretty popular lately. We've had the surprising casting twist of Josh Brolin as Dubya, plus a whole slew of other political figures in W. We've seen Paul Giamatti become a Founding Father. Frank Langella got to take on good ol' Nixon. And now, we're getting Bill and Hillary, and the famous Clinton duo is not being played by Darrell Hammond and Amy Poehler. It's a pair you'd probably never guess.

Variety reports that Dennis Quaid is set to star as President Clinton, with Julianne Moore taking on Hillary in an upcoming HBO film called The Special Relationship. While, at first glance, this might seem like a tale that will discuss certain forays in the Oval Office and risque behavior with cigars, the piece will look at an entirely different relationship -- the "sometimes turbulent political relationship" between Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- who will be played by Michael Sheen.

You might remember that Sheen already played Blair in both The Deal and The Queen, so this will be old hat. (Helen McCrory, who played Cherie Blair in The Queen, is also set to reprise her role.) He was also the Frost to Langella's Nixon, and Frost/Nixon playwright Peter Morgan wrote the screenplay to this project and is hoping to make his directorial debut with the feature, should it get greenlit.
Can you imagine Dennis and Julianne as Bill and Hillary?

Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan is certainly tackling all sides of the relationship spectrum. In June of last year, word hit that he would film a love triangle called Seven Wonders -- one that would follow a woman on the rebound who gets involved with a commercial director and her boyfriend. While there hasn't been any word on the film since, Variety now reports that he's getting busy with another film -- Chloe.

Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, and Amanda Seyfried are set to star in the feature, which sounds a whole heck of a lot different than Seven Wonders. Instead of sexuality-defying sex amidst the Seven Wonders of the World, Moore will play a successful doctor who thinks that her husband (Neeson) is cheating.To find out if she's right, the doc cuts out the skeezy detective middle man (that spurned wives usually use in cinematic cheating scenarios) and hires an escort (Seyfried) herself, to tempt him. "The move creates complications that put her family in danger."

While it sounds like the usual sex thriller, it certainly helps that the story was written by Erin Cressida Wilson -- the pen behind both Secretary and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. Between her and Egoyan, it's safe to say that this won't be your run-of-the-mill sexy thriller.

The cast will freeze their butts off come February 9, when production begins in Toronto.

I'm hoping that Ray Stevenson will dominate the screen completely as Frank Castle, setting wrongs to right and creating utter mayhem, in Lexi Alexander's Punisher: War Zone, which opens wide tomorrow. I loved Stevenson as Titus Pullo in HBO's Rome, an atypical brute with a little boy's heart and a joyous young man's full-bodied embrace of life. At the very least, he should erase memories of Thomas Jane, who glowered and scowled without ever embodying the role in 2004's The Punisher.

With so many sequels being made, it's inevitable that some actors will not reprise their original role. (Just think of all the fuss kicked up by Don Cheadle taking over the part of War Machine from Terence Howard, in the Iron Man sequel.) Whether it's death, Broadway, pregnancy, caring for a family member, money, or the realization that the sequel will suck, sequel replacement actors face the daunting task of replacing a familiar face in the role of a beloved character.

History has not been kind, and while it would be easier to list the worst, we thought we'd be positive and list the best sequel replacement actors. (James Bond and superheroes need a separate list.) We're also noting the role and the actor that was replaced.

1. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter (Brian Cox)

Brian Cox played the flesh-hungry Dr. Lecter in Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) effectively, but Hopkins added a whole new layer when he took over the role five years later in The Silence of the Lambs. Hopkins pushed Lecter right to the edge of camp ("fava beans and a nice kee-anti") yet kept him firmly rooted at the edge of humanity with his probing eyes and ultra-controlled body language.

Being the replaced man in Imagine Me & You, Matthew Goode (soon-to-be Watchmen) managed to balance the anger and loneliness of being second place while his wife found true love with their wedding florist. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that he gets to be the dead remembrance of A Single Man along with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore.

This is Tom Ford's adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel about a gay Englishman and professor named George (Firth). Over the course of one day, the story follows George as he tries to continue his normal life and routine after the death of his partner Jim (Goode). Moore will play one of his fellow professors.

It'll be nice to see Firth take on an entirely different romantic role, in the wake of his many typical romances. As for the story, being "one of the first and best novels of the modern gay liberation movement," it should come as no surprise that the book was dedicated to friend and fellow writer Gore Vidal. So perhaps Vidal can play an educated cameo once again? We'll know soon enough -- the project is about to head into production.

After years of turning down any and all parties who inquired after the film rights for his novel Blindness, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Jose Saramago finally relented to the director-writer team of Fernando Meirelles and Don McKellar after years of cajoling and convincing. McKellar also has a part in the final film, a sprawling story of ruin and redemption that spanned the globe in its production that's been significantly re-cut -- and significiantly improved -- from the version first unveilled in Cannes in May. McKellar spoke with Cinematical in Toronto about the re-cut version of the film, the secret thread between his brilliant directorial debut Last Night and Blindness (" ... my paranoia about the apocalypse hadn't been resolved yet ..."), how Hurricane Katrina influenced the look of Blindness, the need for humor at the end of the world and much more. ...

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Last night, James and I had tickets to the TIFF premiere of Blindness, adapted from the Nobel Prize-winning book by José Saramago. James reviewed Blindness when we saw the film at Cannes, but I'd heard through the Telluride grapevine that the film had undergone a substantial edit since then. The cut we saw back in May was overlayed with a heavy, expositional voiceover throughout that completely killed the film, which I otherwise had liked quite a bit. So when I heard there was a re-edit playing here at TIFF, I knew we had to see it.

I'm happy to report that the newly edited version of Blindness is a vast improvement over what we saw at Cannes. Not only did director Fernando Meirelles (who also made one of the best films ever, City of God) remove the irritating and distracting voiceover, but as a result of doing so had to significantly re-cut, and in the process ended up with a much, much better film. He's tightened it up a lot, particularly a very troublesome bit concerning a major character arc shift for Julianne Moore's character, The Doctor's Wife, which was one of the parts I most had trouble with at Cannes. And while the film's running time is about the same, it now paces much quicker and thus feels like a tauter, shorter film that's much more engaging.