Bit by bit, we get closer to the soon-to-be-sped-through biopic on George W. Bush, W-- remember, although it hasn't been completely cast, and is just one day into production, it will hit theaters this October. We've got Josh Brolin as Dubya, Elizabeth Banks as Laura, Rob Corddry as Ari Fleischer, James Cromwell as George Sr., Ellen Burstyn as Barbara, Thandie Newton as Condoleeza, Ioan Gruffudd as Tony Blair, and Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell.
And now, Empire reports that Scott Glenn is going to play former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It's a fair likeness, and not half as surprising as Brolin being Bush. It's also a fair casting move considering Glenn's previous work, from his CIA director in The Bourne Ultimatum, to his Jack Crawford in Silence of the Lambs, to his Lieutenant Richard M. Colby in Apocalypse Now.
But really, even with potential script issues and questionable likenesses, I'm completely charmed by this cast and hoping that it won't be one of those huge ensemble stinkers. I'm not even particularly interested in more Dubya, but I can't resist a film that has both Burstyn and Wright.
Now that you know what Josh Brolin's George W. Bush will look like, you should know that you'll get to see him in action real soon -- probably sooner than you thought. The ever-courageous Lionsgate has picked upOliver Stone's W, and plans to release it on October 17th. Of this year. That's 2008. Before the election. Notably, the movie hasn't even started shooting yet -- it goes into production on May 12th in Louisiana.
I never really thought the film would fail to find distribution, though early buzz on the screenplay has been fairly toxic. I did think there was going to be a race between when W would be finished and when Dubya would be finished -- that is, out of office. But apparently Stone is not messing around and plans to deliver the film in a few months, with Lionsgate hoping to capitalize on the furor that will surround the election.
Jeez -- maybe it's because I read too many blogs (or because I live in Pennsylvania, suddenly a battleground state), but it's barely May and I'm already tired of the election. Is W really how people will want to spend their leisure time in late October? I can't imagine, but I respect the folks at Lionsgate enough to think they know what they're doing. Incidentally: Dick Cheney remains uncast. Any suggestions?
The world thought one thing when Oliver Stone cast Josh Brolin as our Commander in Chief: "Really? How is that going to work?" And yet, here comes our first look at W. proving that it actually does. It's creepy. Granted, it is still President Bush as filtered through the Handsome and Rugged Machine (TM), but it's not nearly as outlandish as I expected. The same goes for Elizabeth Banks. The magic of hair and makeup. Let's just hand them the Oscar for this one. Entertainment Weekly has a six-page spread on the new film; we've included another photo of Josh Brolin as George W. Bush after the jump.
No release date yet, but shooting begins in two weeks and I am beyond intrigued now. Stone should make this a new franchise. I vote Clive Owen as Vladimir Putin. What do you think? Does it work? Does this whole thing work?
Oh Ari Fleischer -- the David Cross of Press Secretaries. Wait a minute -- why didn't they get David Cross for this role? He'd be perfect. Anyway, MTV tells us that Rob Corddry (The Daily Show, Semi-Pro ... and a bunch of other random comedies) has signed on to play former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in Oliver Stone's W. Corddry joins a cast that continues to get larger by the minute, and includes Josh Brolin (George W. Bush), Elizabeth Banks (Laura Bush), James Cromwell (George Bush Sr.), Ellen Burstyn (Barbara Bush), Thandie Newton (Condi Rice), Ioan Gruffudd (Tony Blair) and 50 Cent (as Colin Powell).
Yes, I'm kidding about that last one.
Earlier today, we clued you into a script review of W currently circulating the internets. According to some, the film seems to be taking the Bush is a moronic alcoholic fratboy route, which, if you watch, well, The Daily Show, is kinda old news. As Eugene put it, "Most people -- whether or not they accept it -- have already absorbed the meme that Bush is an arrogant, reckless, hard-drinking buffoon, and I'm not sure that this perception merits its own movie." I completely agree -- and I'd much rather have watched Stone return to Vietnam with Pinkville than sit down for a feature-length version of a joke that's way past its prime.
The script for Oliver Stone's W -- a project we've been discussinga lotaroundherelately -- apparently leaked to several news outlets this week, and Slate has posted a delightful, albeit spoiler-heavy, review. Now, the extent to which a George W. Bush biopic can be spoiled is debatable, and a lot could change from the October 15, 2007 draft (titled Bush rather than W) that Slate got its grubby paws on, but the review does give away a good number of specific scenes, lines and moments, so proceed with caution.
Slate's prevailing impression is that the screenplay is heavy on Bushisms ("Is our children learning?") and common perceptions that have become clichés (Bush as alcoholic fratboy). Indeed, some of the lines they quote sound like something that I, having done no research and possessing virtually no insight into the man, might come up with if asked out of the blue to write a movie about Bush's life. (On the decision to invade Iraq, for example: "I think it's time we stopped standing around with our dicks in our hands, and raised the stakes on ol' 'Husseny.'")
I'll say one thing for Oliver Stone's W: it makes for some fun casting updates. Watching this movie come together has had much more novelty value than I would have thought. I guess that's what happens when you set out to make a movie about the most controversial figures in the world right now, instead of decades ago.
And you may now take Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair off your to-cast lists. Those roles have been filled with Thandie Newton and Ioan Gruffudd (respectively, though I think it would have been much more interesting in reverse order). Both actors are British, but this won't be the first time Newton has played an American. My worry about her isn't her accent so much as the fact that she seems too damn nice. I think they should have followed the lead of the ultraconservative 2006 TV miniseries and cast 24's Penny Johnson Jerald (a.k.a. the terrifying Sherry Palmer). That's about as on-the-nose as it gets.
Right on the heels of the announcement that Elizabeth Banks would play the First Lady in Oliver Stone's ever-so-timely biopic of President George W. Bush (which is surely, as Erik Davis put it in the above-linked post, "one of the strangest projects in recent years"), Variety reports that James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn have been cast as George H.W. and Barbara. Josh Brolin is already set to play Dubya himself. The film is called simply W.
Cromwell is an expert at playing United States Presidents. He's portrayed fictional heads of state in The Sum of All Fears and an episode of The West Wing, as well as the extremely non-fictional Lyndon B. Johnson in the 2002 made-for-TV movie RFK. He's also played Senators, high-ranking military officials, and WIlliam Randolph Hearst. If anything, I'm worried that he might be too presidential for the role of the folksy George H.W. As for Burstyn, well -- if she can convincingly paint her face blue and run shrieking through the forest trying to kill Nicolas Cage in a bear suit, Barbara Bush should be a cinch.
Stone hopes to have the film ready before Bush leaves office next January, which is a pretty impressive turnaround as presidential biopics go. And while I usually have some sort of conception of what to expect from an upcoming release, I cannot even begin to imagine what W will be like. Can we expect more hysterical conspiracy-mongering à la JFK? The unexpectedly toned-down empathy of Nixon? The excruciating boredom of Alexander? The mind reels.
I'm sorry, but this has got to be one of the strangest projects in recent years. The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Elizabeth Banks is about to sign on to play First Lady Laura Bush in that George W. Bush biopic Oliver Stone is directing. If she signs on, Banks will join Josh Brolin, who's already landed the part of our current President of the United States. Banks, who, funnily enough, just wrapped a film called Zack and Miri Make a Porno, would probably make a pretty good Laura Bush. She definitely resembles a much younger version of the woman, and, like Mrs. Bush, as an actress Banks often fades into the background.
Then again, some folks might think Brolin and Banks are way too hot to be playing the President and the First Lady. Personally, I feel Josh Brolin needs the most work -- but if he slims down and practices that famous Bush dialogue, I can almost see it. The film, which will be called simply W, will begin shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana in late April. Stone will direct off a script he co-wrote with Stanley Weiser (Wall Street).
What do you think about this film? Are the lives of George W. Bush and Laura Bush really that interesting? Or, will Oliver Stone make them interesting?
When you talk to someone about Shreveport, Louisiana, usually the first thing to come up are the city's casinos. The airport is rather small, and getting a taxi is no small task. There's not much in Shreveport; as I sat in my taxi on my way to the Hilton hotel for an eventual set visit, the driver pointed out landmarks like the Waffle House, the Cancer Center, and "the place where they hold the county fair." He spoke with a thick Cajun accent, and, somehow, immediately knew that I was there for a film -- even though the only info he had was that I came from New York. How would he know this? I don't look like I belong in film. I don't sit and type feverishly on a blackberry, and I don't wear dark glasses. But he knew. Somehow.
Upon arriving at the hotel, things became a tad clearer. Not far from me, mingling among a few other folks, was director Oliver Stone. Wha? Oliver Stone is hanging out in Shreveport? (A bunch of us assumed he was prepping for that George Bush flick, but nothing was confirmed.) A few minutes after spotting Stone, Harold Ramis walked through. Hmmm. What's going on here? Later that night while having dinner at the one good steakhouse in Shreveport, sandwiched between trailer parks and new housing developments, we spotted the cast of The Year One -- Michael Cera, David Cross, Juno Temple, among others. Then, a few minutes after seeing them, Bob Weinstein walked in for a meal. Wha? Now Bob Weinstein is in Shreveport!? I swear my head was spinning -- what in the world was going on in little Shreveport, Louisiana?
Surely, they weren't all here for the Waffle House?
The man has already taken on the stories of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, so this latest bit of news isn't a huge surprise. Variety reports that Oliver Stone, whose schedule was freed up when Pinkville was put on hold, is focusing on President George W. Bush for his next film, Bush. What is a bit of a brow raiser -- he's tapped Josh Brolin to star as Dubya. That is, Brolin will finalize his deal once Stone secures financing.
So, the rush is on to find money and shoot the script that was penned by Stanley Weiser (who co-wrote Wall Street with Stone) this spring -- to be released just in time for the fall election. You would think Stone might have wanted to do this last time around, when Bush was looking at a second term, but I guess not. Whatever the case, should he find the money, much of the Pinkville crew has jumped to Bush, so slipping into production quickly shouldn't be a problem.
Now, considering some of the filmmaker's comments on the current president, you'd think this would just be an anti-Bush rant. However, Stone says it will instead be about how the man came to power: "It's a behind-the-scenes approach, similar to Nixon, to give a sense of what it's like to be in his skin. But if Nixon was a symphony, this is more like a chamber piece, and not as dark in tone. People have turned my political ideas into a cliche, but that is superficial. I'm a dramatist who is interested in people, and I have empathy for Bush as a human being, much the same as I did for Castro, Nixon..."
Whatever he has planned, I really hope that he finds the money, because I have got to see Brolin as Bush. I never would have thought of it, and still find the casting surprising, but I'm well beyond curious. How about you?
In the ongoing battle of Pablo Escobar biopics, I think Smokin' Joe Carnahan finally has managed to one-up Oliver Stone in the war between the two (possibly three) Pablo Escobar films currently in development. Carnahan recently updated his personal blog with news that he had received a letter from Juan Pablo Escobar, the only son of the infamous drug baron. It would appear that Carnahan has managed to impress the family member, since according to Joe, "He offered me unlimited access to his family's history, including photos, films, letters and the like". Carnahan's film is based on the book by Mark Bowden, and focuses on the "cocaine cartel dismantled by US Special Forces and intelligence, the Colombian military, and a vigilante gang controlled by the Cali cartel".
The whole thing started back in October when news of Stone's film first began to hit, and that they were aiming for a pre-strike production date (which as we all know never materialized, but it probably did nothing to help the bad blood between the productions).Considering that Carnahan wasn't exactly happy with having to compete with Oliver Stone and Antoine Fuqua's Escobar, getting the seal of approval from Escobar's only heir could be what Carnahan needs to trump Stone's project; which is based on the book written by Pablo's brother, called Mi Hermano Pablo. Carnahan has been struggling for years to get his Escobar flick into production so you can see where he is coming from when he shouted "no fair" when multiple projects were being rushed into production. Carnahan has already scored Javier Bardem (though Bardem may bow out because of scheduling conflicts) and Christian Bale for his film which automatically gives it another advantage over the yet-to-be-cast Escobar. Killing Pablo is set for release in 2009 ... if Joe ever gets around to filming it.
Oswald's Ghost is the rare film whose power increases with distance. As I sat in the historic Texas Theatre last week, where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested on the day President Kennedy was assassinated, and watched a special screening of the documentary, the suggestive rhythm of the editing and the understated urgency of the musical accompaniment lulled me into a false sense of security. I was deceived into thinking that I knew what kind of film it was and so, based on that assumption, I allowed the shaped narrative to lead me down a certain path, only to discover at the end that I had arrived at a very different destination than I expected.
Filmmaker Robert Stone says that he was initially inspired by the furor that erupted after the release of Oliver Stone's JFK in 1991. Why were people so wrapped up emotionally in what had happened so many years before? How had that pivotal event changed the nation? Ten years later, he saw parallels in how the nation responded to 9/11 and started what he calls his own "journey" to discover why America has remained obsessed with the JFK assassination, to the point that he calls it a "theology."
That being said, Stone does not take the approach I had anticipated. After an opening fusillade of opinions issued by experts, he dives right into the events leading up to November 22, 1963, laying them out one by one in distinct, logical order as though he had an organized sheaf of papers he was slapping down on a table. The drama is inherently captivating; no matter how many times you've seen news footage and photographs from the days in question, it still feels like you're dragged against your will into a nightmare.
"Although much of this film is fiction, much of it is also based on documented historical fact. Did the conspiracy we describe actually exist? We do not know. We merely suggest that it could have existed."
Released ten years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, nine years after the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and six months after the nationally televised Senate hearings on Watergate began, Executive Action theorizes that a conspiracy of industrialists plotted and carried out the murder of the President of the United States. Crisply presented, confidently straightforward and refreshingly free of melodrama, Executive Action delivers a thick slice of paranoia without resorting to hysteria.
Burt Lancaster stars as James Farrington. He leads a discussion (dated June 5, 1963) among a small group of white men intended to convince wealthy conservative oil magnate Harold Ferguson (Will Geer) of the need to kill Kennedy. Ferguson, with his white hair, white suit and Southern drawl, plays Devil's advocate, shooting holes in the worst case scenarios presented ("Kennedy will lead a Black revolution [and] withdraw from Vietnam, leaving Asia to the Communists") and expressing reservations ("I understand these things. They're tolerable only if they're necessary, and permissible only if they work"), but it's not made clear why his involvement is thought so important -- did they need his money? They seem well-funded without him.
Farrington is an old hand at running "black ops" and has two teams of marksmen training in the field, headed by William Watson and Ed Lauter. (Dick Miller plays one of the sharpshooters.) Robert Foster (Robert Ryan, who died a few months before the film's release) appears to be in charge of the operation, taking time to explain the racist spin of the conspiracy to Farrington. The real problem, Foster says, is the swarming numbers of people throughout the earth, especially the browns and blacks. Once the world's over-population is reduced, attention can be turned to America's own over-population ("blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, poverty-prone Whites, and so forth"). As chilling as anything is Foster's matter of fact referral to genocide.
So much for all those casting updates for (and comments asking about how to get cast in) Pinkville, Oliver Stone's latest Vietnam war movie. Thanks to the writer's strike, the movie is now delayed indefinitely, according to Variety. United Artists put the stop on the production because both Stone and Pinkville screenwriter Mikko Alanne are members of the WGA, and more script-tuning is needed. Apparently the film is fully written, but there were expectations that things would be changed while filming is taking place -- something Stone is known for -- and that's not allowed to happen during the strike. The movie now joins Angels & Demons (aka The Da Vinci Code 2), which was the first major feature to be delayed because of the strike. Yet unlike that higher-profile film, Pinkville may not be easily started when the strike is over. There are now possibilities the cast will change or that United Artists will be less interested in doing such a serious picture right off the disappointment of Lions for Lambs.
The cast and crew was set to begin shooting in a few weeks in Thailand, so now obviously there are a lot of people out of work who are likely praying for the strike to end asap. Once given a new greenlight, Pinkville will be Stone's fourth feature film to deal directly with the Vietnam war, following Platoon, Born on the Fourth of Julyand Heaven and Earth (unless he somehow squeezes another in before this one -- who knows how long UA will keep this on hiatus?). This time Stone is focusing on the terrible My Lai Massacre and the trial of the U.S. soldiers involved.
Oddly enough, The Hollywood Reporter has two new casting announcements today, despite Friday's announcement from UA. Jason Behr (The Grudge) is set to play Lt. Stephen Brooks, commanding officer at My Lai, and Cam Gigandet (Who's Your Caddy?) is cast as guilt-ridden soldier Fred Widmar.
Bit by bit, we get closer to the soon-to-be-sped-through biopic on George W. Bush, W -- remember, although it hasn't been completely cast, and is just one day into production, it will hit theaters this October. We've got Josh Brolin as Dubya, Elizabeth Banks as Laura, Rob Corddry as Ari Fleischer, James Cromwell as George Sr., Ellen Burstyn as Barbara, Thandie Newton as Condoleeza, Ioan Gruffudd as Tony Blair, and Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell.
Now that you know what Josh Brolin's George W. Bush will 
Oh Ari Fleischer -- the 
The script for Oliver Stone's 
I'll say one thing for 
So far, there are only a few actors officially attached to Oliver Stone's 
Right on the heels of the 
I'm sorry, but this has got to be one of the strangest projects in recent years. 
When you talk to someone about Shreveport, Louisiana, usually the first thing to come up are the city's casinos. The airport is rather small, and getting a taxi is no small task. There's not much in Shreveport; as I sat in my taxi on my way to the Hilton hotel for an eventual set visit, the driver pointed out landmarks like the Waffle House, the Cancer Center, and "the place where they hold the county fair." He spoke with a thick Cajun accent, and, somehow, immediately knew that I was there for a film -- even though the only info he had was that I came from New York. How would he know this? I don't look like I belong in film. I don't sit and type feverishly on a blackberry, and I don't wear dark glasses. But he knew. Somehow.
The man has already taken on the stories of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, so this latest bit of news isn't a huge surprise. 
In the 
So much for all those casting updates for (and comments asking about how to get cast in) 
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Cinematical Seven: Disney's Awesome Live-Action Kid Adventures
