PatriciaClarkson Tagged Articles at Cinematical

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!

When word about Easy A, otherwise known as The Scarlet Letter hits high school, it didn't sound like the most desirable or charming comedy -- a young woman pretends she's promiscuous to get ahead. (yay) But now ... Well, now there's a killer cast merged with a plot summary that could easily make this a must-see film.

Variety reports that the comedy will, more specifically, follow a high school girl (Emma Stone) who, "after being ostracized by a false rumor she's loose, uses the rumor mill to her advantage, pitting puritanical students and teachers against their liberal counterparts." And who will some of these people be? Oh, just Lisa Kudrow, Alyson Michalka, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci, Penn Badgley, Cam Gigandet, Malcolm McDowell, and Daniel Bird. How's that for a supporting cast? The fact that this is a teen comedy and not some star-ridden ensemble drama makes the roster all the more impressive.

Production kicks off on June 9, and hopefully that means we'll get to see how it all turns out sooner rather than later. But for now -- who are the puritans, and who are the lascivious liberals? Any guesses?

If you had to pick someone to play a (slightly) younger version of Woody Allen, it'd pretty much have to be Larry David, right? Both men are overtly Jewish, neurotic, self-obsessed, and often pretty hilarious -- so it doesn't surprise me one bit to see Larry David take the starring role in Allen's latest, a quick-looking New York comedy called Whatever Works. Going only by the trailer, it looks to be an enjoyably typical (if appreciably old-school) Woody Allen comedy, but (as usual) the prolific filmmaker has managed to bring together one hell of a fun ensemble.

Joining Larry David are Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley Jr., Evan Rachel Wood, and Conleth Hill in this story of an upper-class New Yorker who has some sort of mid-life crisis and decides to live like a starving artist. (If I have the synopsis right, then this flick sounds a little like Mel Brooks' Life Stinks, and no movie wants to sound like that.) But the trailer (available right here at Apple) made me chuckle more than once, and I'm certainly interested in seeing a cast like this deliver some of Woody Allen's neuroses. Too early to tell, of course, but Whatever Works looks like it could be a return to comedic form for Woody. (Because I think his last several comedies have been pretty weak.)

And you? Still a Woody Allen fan? Interested in the new one? It comes out on June 19.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive clip from the film Phoebe in Wonderland, starring Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson and Elle Fanning. Directed by first-timer Daniel Barnz, Wonderland is a quiet-but-peculiar little character piece about a little girl whose clever imagination and dislike for rules and conformity slowly begin to remove her from reality. As I said back when we premiered the poster, Kim absolutely loved this film when it premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival, calling Fanning's performance "pretty brilliant" while noting that with his first feature, Barnz "knocks it out of the park" with an "imaginative and original script."

Phoebe in Wonderland arrives in theaters on March 6. Check out the exclusive clip below.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Phoebe in Wonderland, starring Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson and Elle Fanning. Here, first time writer-director Daniel Barnz crafts a story about a young girl (Fanning) whose fantastical imagination and dislike for rules and conformity leads to her slowly removing herself from reality. Kim absolutely loved this film when it premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival, calling Fanning's performance "pretty brilliant" while noting that with his first feature, Barnz "knocks it out of the park" with an "imaginative and original script." This looks like the perfect film for anyone who remembers hiding behind their imagination a little too much as a kid, and I'm personally interested in seeing what sort of acting chops the younger Fanning sister brings to the table.

Phoebe in Wonderland arrives in theaters on March 6. Click on the image below to view the full, colorful poster.

I'm not partial to overtly subjective reviews, yet I can't seem to find any better way of relating my response to Isabel Coixet's latest film, Elegy, an adaptation of Philip Roth's novel "The Dying Animal," which follows the romance between a college professor and his much younger former student. First, though, a note of appropriateness: early in the film, this professor, the Roth regular David Kepesh, who previously appeared in the novels "The Breast" and "The Professor of Desire," is lecturing about how literature, specifically Tolstoy's "War and Peace," will be appreciated differently by a reader at different points in his or her life. In ten years, for example, it may seem like a new book entirely.

Perhaps in ten years, then, or more likely in thirty, I will be able to watch Elegy again and have a new perspective. Maybe I will be able to relate to Kepesh, here portrayed by Ben Kingsley, when I am in my sixties and have similarly lived and experienced as much. Yet the fact that Coixet's film is so depressing makes me almost hope that I never actually live so long to find out. I should have known, what with the filmmaker's past films, such as My Life Without Me, with their gray atmospheres and dreary dealings with illness and death. While appearing on the outside to be a sexy drama about how one lecherous old man discovers love, Elegy is on the inside really just a slow, uninteresting depiction of a selfish fool who possibly too-late realizes that he's grown old before he's actually grown up.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Elegy (click image to enlarge), starring Penélope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Peter Sarsgaard, Patricia Clarkson and Dennis Hopper. Sweet cast, huh? Based on the novel The Dying Animal by Philip Roth, and directed by Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me), Elegy follows a cultural critic (Kingsley) who views his life as being in a state of "emancipated manhood" until, one day, a well-mannered student (Cruz) waltzes in and awakens a sense of sexual possessiveness in her teacher, the critic. In other words, her touch is toxic ... to him, at least. Seems rather exotic, and with two dynamos like Kingsley and Cruz in the lead, here's hoping Elegy awakens the sexual possessiveness in all of us. Wait ... that would be a bad thing, right? Okay, keep the sex and remove the possessiveness. There ya go -- I'm seeing it. Check out the trailer over on Moviefone.

Elegy hits theaters in limited release on August 8.

One of my favorite films from Sundance, Phoebe in Wonderland, is set to open the 10th RiverRun International Film Festival, according to indieWIRE. The film, which stars Elle Fanning, Felecity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson and Bill Pullman, is about Phoebe (Fanning), a little girl struggling with behavioral problems and relating to others.

Phoebe finds hope through her eccentric drama teacher (Clarkson), who casts her as the lead in the school's production of Alice in Wonderland. Meanwhile her parents (Huffman and Pullman) struggle with balancing their work with their family life, and with accepting that raising their daughters to be creative and non-conformist also means accepting Phoebe as she is, and helping her navigate her way through the world.

If you're a big fan of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, then I have some potentially good news: the actors' latest film consists of little more than the two of them ... sitting in a bar ... talking ... for about 80 minutes. And since these are a pair of exceedingly fine actors, the experience of Blind Date is not what you'd call unpleasant -- but it sure isn't all that exciting.

Based on the 1996 Theo Van Gogh film of the same name, Blind Date is about an estranged married couple who, despite clearly loving one another, have all sorts of painful problems to work through. To that end, the couple stage a series of "blind dates" at the husband's seedy lounge -- most of which don't go off all that well. Toss in a clueless bartender who pops up every once in a while, and that's the long and short of Blind Date -- two great actors trying to breathe some life into a premise that begins as simplistically "symbolic," and gets progressively less subtle as the film moves forward.

When I saw Ira Sachs' Married Life at the New York Film Festival last fall, I had a lot of problems with it. But one thing I didn't have any complaints about is how gorgeous Rachel McAdams looks in the film. And now, thanks to Rope of Silicon, you can see for yourself how amazing the actress looks as a '40s-era blonde beauty. My favorite photo is the third, in which McAdams almost looks like a dead-ringer for Kim Novak in Vertigo. But I'd be fine with looking at any of them. In fact, I'm not just a fan of the way McAdams looks in the film; I also love the three-piece style of Chris Cooper, the open-collared playboy thing that Pierce Brosnan has going on and the partially see-through top that Patricia Clarkson wears in the second-to-last pic. (Clarkson is so stunning in the film, she actually gives McAdams a run for her money, and makes it hard to believe Cooper would cheat on her with anyone.) But aside from simply looking terrific, all four of the stars of Married Life give wonderful performances, as usual.

The film, which opens in limited release March 7, is based on John Bingham's 1953 pulp novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven. Cooper and Clarkson play a married couple, and Cooper's character has a mistress (McAdams). He makes the mistake, though, of introducing the girl to his best friend, played by Brosnan. Not knowing that his mistress is having another affair with his best friend, Cooper's character decides to murder his wife, because it's a more humane thing to do than break her heart. It's a very Hitchcockian plot, which makes sense since Bingham's books were adapted into episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. And it's a good enough movie to recommend, especially because of those great-looking actors. I just wish that Sony Classics would do away with Brosnan's awful and unnecessary voice-over before releasing the movie into theaters.