Martin Freeman Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Here are some casting bites for you, courtesy of Variety:

• According to the Tarantino Archives, funnyman Mike Myers (Austin Powers) has signed up for a "small" role in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards. He'll join what's shaping up to be the oddest cast of the decade: Brad Pitt, Simon Pegg, Eli Roth, BJ Novak, David Krumholtz and Nastassja Kinski. Bizarre ... but lets see where he goes with it.
  
• Martin Freeman, who you should recognize from the ever-awesome Hot Fuzz, has picked up a starring role opposite Ashley Jensen in Nativity. The Debbie Isitt film focuses on "two rival English schools vying to outdo each other in the annual Christmas play." It sounds like it could be fun, although I'm sure it could be helped or hurt by the likes of Hamlet 2. Unfortunately we have a while to wait and see. IMDb has it tentatively set for a 2010 release.
• Calamity Jane, otherwise known as Robin Weigert when she's not on Deadwood, has signed on to Renee Zellweger's indie film My One and Only. This is that George Hamilton picture based on his memories of the 1950s, when his mom set out to find him a new dad. In the meantime, she has a slew of other movies on the way, including Synecdoche, New York and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.
• Finally, we have an answer to the rumors. In January, Jessica alerted us to rumors that Maggie Grace was taking over Sarah Michelle Gellar's role in the big-screen version of American McGee's Alice. Well, they were half right... Instead of replacing Buffy, Grace is replacing Mischa Barton in Malice in Wonderland. Yes, she will play Alice in Simon Fellows' film, which is finally getting off the ground.
  

The death of cinema has been blamed on many things, a lot of them related to home viewing. First it was the television, then it was the VCR, now it's the internet. Somewhere in between the latter two, though, is the real killer: the remote control. This is what filmmaker Peter Greenaway (The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover) believes, anyway, and he's talking specifically about linear storytelling in cinema (or, "old fashioned ideas of a narrative, sit-in-the-dark, Hollywood-centered, narrative book-shop cinema"). In an interview with Dutch TV he gives the exact date as September 31, 1983, when the couch potato aid was introduced into homes.

Wait a minute, there is no 31st day in September. What is Greenaway trying to pull here? To tell you the truth, I have no clue what the filmmaker is talking about. Something about his current interest in non-linear, interactive multimedia, such as "the VJ/DJ phenomenon" (you can see him VJing here). If you want to attempt to understand the interview, check out the YouTube clip after the jump ...

There aren't too many movies that necessitate sequels. Unless a movie is part of a pre-proposed series or is an adaptation of a series of books, it should probably be able to stand alone. But a lot of sequels come from movies that are perfect by themselves -- sometimes the sequels compliment nicely; sometimes they are easily ignored; occasionally they actually take away from the previously regarded original.

It isn't often that a movie screams out for a sequel, but I think I've come up with seven that at least whisper a request for one. Two actually have source sequels that they would be adapted from. One has a lot of history to mine material from. Three of them have been discussed at length at different points in time by makers of the original(s). The problem is that none of these sequels is likely to ever grace your DVD player let alone your local theater. For whatever reason, they simply have too much against them in the minds of studio execs. For now, though, we can dream.

1. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Even with the incredible cast and the surprisingly faithful-enough script, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was not the epic that I was hoping for. It also wasn't the blockbuster that Disney was hoping for. The filmmakers, Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith (aka Hammer and Tongs) and the necessary actors had signed on for the sequel, to be adapted from Adam's follow-up, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, but it appears to be dead in the water. Despite my few reservations with the first film, I would love to see the sequel, as well as the rest of the series (they could end before The Salmon of Doubt, I guess). I remember being bored with some of the prehistoric Earth sequences in Restaurant, but I think they'd make for great cinema. In any event, I think Martin Freeman and Mos Def were a great duo in the original, and they alone should have been propelled to stardom following its release. Maybe they can appear in something else together.

It can't be easy bringing your first film to Sundance as the son and brother of famous film people, but Jake Paltrow -- the son of the late Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner, and brother of Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow -- seems to be handling the pressure well. Jake Paltrow's feature writing and directing debut, The Good Night, starring Martin Freeman, Danny DeVito, Penelope Cruz, and Gwyneth Paltrow made its premiere here at Sundance 2007. Jake very kindly took time out of his busy Sundance schedule to sit down with Cinematical to chat about his film.

Cinematical: What inspired you to make and write this film?

Jake Paltrow: I woke up one day and had the majority of the story in my head, and not so much because I had a dream about the story but because I felt that kind of emotion that everyone's experienced where it's like, if I could just have had five more minutes in that dream ...

Cinematical: Sure, I have that happen all the time where I wake up and just want to go back in and find out how the dream ends.

JP: Right, that's the thing, a lot of people do, and I felt we hadn't seen that. And so I worked on the outline and after a few days I felt I had a story and it that it worked.

More after the jump ...

First-time feature director Jake Paltrow explores the line between dreams and reality in The Good Night, which had its premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Gary Sheller (Martin Freeman), a British ex-pop star living in New York City, is stuck in a stagnant relationship with his long-term girlfriend, Dora (Gwyneth Paltrow). Gary's relationship with Dora is adrift in a sea of ambivalence, and he feels Dora doesn't support him emotionally . Gary and Dora live in the same apartment, share the same bed, but there might as well be an ocean between them; the bridge of communication seems to have long since shut down. Meanwhile, Gary's best friend and former bandmate Paul (Simon Pegg) works for an ad agency and has become Gary's boss, while Gary is relegated to writing jingles that "sound like 'Cheers'."

Then one night, Gary dreams of Anna (Penélope Cruz), a strikingly beautiful woman who exists for the sole purpose of telling Gary how wonderful he is, encouraging him in his music, and fulfilling his sexual fantasies. The trouble is, Gary finds himself more and more not wanting to leave the dream state where he can be with Anna. She makes him feel better about himself, and he finds that he wants to be with her all the time. He seeks out lucid dreaming "expert" Mel (Danny DeVito), who teaches Gary how to enter his dream world any time he wants. But how can Gary ever hope to save his relationship with Dora if he lives more and more in his dreams?

No matter how much planning and money goes into them, wedding ceremonies are generally all the same. Sure, there are slight variations depending on religious denomination and little personal touches, but they basically lack any sort of originality due to their overall adherence to traditions, which keep them from breaking new ground. For those not involved in the actual wedding party, and even for some who are involved, the ceremony is just a boring obstacle that must be endured before getting to the fun part, the reception. Yet, weddings continue to be, for the most part, under the guise of entertainment, as they typically have an audience.

Therein lays the basis for Confetti, a comic mockumentary that tries to spice up the idea of weddings as enjoyment for all in attendance. It follows three engaged couples as they compete in a contest for most original wedding, sponsored by a wedding magazine that's tired of showcasing, "just another woman in a white dress," on its cover. The contest seems like a great concept at first, but as the magazine's publisher (Jimmy Carr) and editor-in-chief (Felicity Montagu) discover, there is a reason why ceremonies don't often open up to new ideas.

Odds and ends from Thursday:

• Apparently, David Hasselhoff is looking to bring on an A-list star to play his son in a planned Knight Rider film. After crossing paths with Orlando Bloom in Hollywood recently, Hasselhoff extended an offer to the actor for him to appear in the flick as Knight Rider, Jr. Bloom gave him the old, "You'd need to speak to my manager about it" routine, which, in actor-speak, means "Um, no."
• For those of you interested in exploring the life of Rembrandt, you'll be happy to know a biopic is currently in the works. In fact, four more actors have just signed on to the project, which already has Martin Freeman (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) starring as Rembrandt himself. Hopping onboard the flick are Eva Birthistle, Nathalie Press, Emily Holmes and Jodhi May. Birthistle will play Rembrandt's wife May, while Holmes and May will play his mistresses. Pic, entitled Nightwatching, is said to "shed new light on the painter's life through a fresh reading of his 1642 painting Night Watch."
• Screenwriter Terry Rossio stopped by the Word Player forums to officially confirm to fans that the title of the third and (final?) Pirates flick will be Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End. Supposedly, the studio had been tossing around At Worlds End and Worlds End, finally deciding to go with the former. Pic is scheduled to hit theaters on May 25, 2007.