KeishaCastle-hughes Tagged Articles at Cinematical

After spending time with large, water-dwelling mammals and ticked off, sexually harassed female miners, writer/director Niki Caro is going to sit back and delight in some fine wine. The latest news from Cannes is that she is set to direct a screen adaptation of Elizabeth Knox's The Vintner's Luck, which Caro co-wrote with Joan Scheckel. Along with an impressive cast of actors that includes Jeremie Renier (In Bruges), Gaspard Ulliel (Hannibal Rising) once again delighting in wine, Vera Farmiga (The Departed) and María Ruiz, the production will reunite the helmer with Keisha Castle-Hughes, who she directed in Whale Rider.

Unlike Sideways, which focuses on the wine tasting with a side of dysfunction, Vintner's is just a smidge more fantastical. The book is set in 1808, and talks about Sobran (Renier), a young man who discovers an angel with "an appetite for earthly pleasures -- wine, books, gardening, conversation, and, eventually, carnal love." For the next 55 years, the angel Xas is his friend and adviser as he experiences everything from love and marriage to war and death. The Hollywood Reporter's description adds a few more grapes: "The film revolves around a peasant winemaker in 19th century France as he grapples with the sensual, sacred and profane while searching for the perfect vintage." It sounds like a pretty interesting story -- angels, sexiness, wine and the turmoil of life -- what else could we want? (And heck, any production with young actors that doesn't include the tabloid-crazy is a plus in my book.) Unfortunately, we'll have to wait a while for this interest to be fulfilled. The film isn't slated to shoot until next year -- February for shots in Auckland New Zealand and March for the Burgandy region of France and then Belgium.

Knowing almost nothing about this filming of The Nativity Story before I went to see it, I imagined that I might enjoy it if, somehow, Joseph and Mary were shrunk down to human dimensions. The trials of two young adults on a 100-mile foot journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, attempting to make King Herod's April 15th tax deadline, could make a decent yarn. Unfortunately, director Catherine Hardwicke had something different in mind. She forgoes a reality-based rendering of the myth in favor of a heap of prophecy-babble and a weirdly off-topic astrology subplot, both of which plant the film on uneasy ground in the realm of signs and wonders. The couple's journey is prompted by a visit from a descending angel who looks, incredibly, like a Commodores-era Lionel Richie. He clues them that they are inside The Greatest Story Ever Told, and from then on, Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes) and Joseph (Oscar Isaac) speak of the fetus Jesus as if he's already turned water into wine. If you've ever been around new parents, you know how annoying that can be.

As the power couple descend on Bethlehem, we are forced to endure a B-story involving the three 'wise men' of scripture, crazily interpreted here as a trio of sideshow occultists who live in a dusty lair filled with cheap-looking pieces of astrology equipment and maps that look like kiddie placemats from Denny's. When used together, they can apparently foretell the birth of celebrities. These wise men made me want to pull my hair out. They engage in endless, pointless bantering about which star-map will get them to the Messiah's birthplace, while tossing off one-liners that were old when Shecky Green was a boy, nevermind Jesus. If the film has a weakest link, it's these scenes. They're so self-parodic that they seem purposefully inserted to kill whatever religious buzz the true believers in the audience might build up. Shouldn't a story about the birth of God be told with a straight face? Is the source material really so thin that this kind of filler, not fit for Saturday morning cartoons, had to be included?

Keisha Castle-Hughes has had quite a life so far -- and she's only sixteen. You probably know her as the smiling face of the Whale Rider, which not only earned her an Oscar nomination, but also made her the youngest person ever nominated as a lead actress. Now, she's playing the young Mother Mary in the upcoming The Nativity Story. You've seen the preview right? There's some feet, some shrouded people, and a whole lot of flying dust?

Well, her current role is not what's making waves in the news world: It's her pregnancy. In an epically coincidental case of life immediately imitating art, the young girl is about to follow Mary's footsteps, without the parthenogenesis.* As if a childhood pregnancy isn't enough to deal with, there are competing stories of Papal displeasure. Although the official word is that the Pope has always had other commitments in and never planned to be at the Vatican premiere, other rumblings say otherwise -- that the Pope is quite disapproving of the young girl's un-wed pregnancy.

Personally, I think a minor getting pregnant is a lot more worrisome than it being out of wedlock, but we're talking about religion, not rationality. If the rumors are true, and the Church is pissed about her actions, I would assume they don't know about Catherine Hardwick's other films -- namely Thirteen, with its almost pre-teen sex, drugs and crime.

*Thanks Lauren, for pointing out the misconception about the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic teachings of my youth are obviously foggier than I thought! My apologies.

According to Variety, Australian actress Toni Collette and New Zealand teenager and Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes will co-star in the comedy Hey, Hey, It's Esther Blueburger, written and directed by Cathy Randall. The movie is a coming-of-age story about a 13-year old girl trying to fit into a posh private school as well as an ordinary public school. Blueburger will be distributed by Walt Disney Co. Buena Vista Intl. in Australia and New Zealand and by Lightning Entertainment in the rest of the world. Hughes was the youngest ever best actress Oscar nominee in 2003 for Whale Rider and is currently filming New Line's Nativity; I'm looking forward to this one -- mainly I'm interested in seeing how Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) will tell the story of the Virgin Mary. Collette, who starred in In Her Shoes (which, as chick flicks go, wasn't too bad with the sparkling Collette and Elizabeth Bishop), is, as we reported earlier, involved in an independent project called Dead Girl and The Night Listener.


 

New Line's Virgin Mary project - entitle Nativity - has come together incredibly quickly: between the purchase of Mike Rich's spec script and the start of production this spring, less than six full months will have passed, and the studio plans to have the movie in theaters by December, not even 12 months after the script was bought. (If writers whose scripts are mired in development hell find out about this, we risk a rash of quiet suicides.) The film, which will be directed by the very unconventional Catherine Hardwicke, will tell Mary's story from a "strong female perspective," detailing her travels with Joseph, and the obstacles they encountered. According to today's Hollywood Reporter, Mary will be played by the world's only 15-year-old with an Oscar nomination under her belt, Whale Rider's Keisha Knight-Pulliam Castle-Hughes.

As I said in an earlier post on this movie, it's shaping up to be a promising project - when they hired Hardwicke, New Line made it clear that they were going to do more than pay lip service to the idea of examining the life of Mary from a new, feminine perspective. That choice was a great sign, as is the choice of Castle-Hughes for the role of Mary, because you know there were at least three execs pushing La Lohan.