Rosamund PIke Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Some science fiction films take us to different worlds or alternate realities, or offer visions of the future. In each of these new worlds, certain new rules apply. Sometimes the rules are pretty simple and can be easily and clearly established, as in Star Trek or District 9. Other times the rules are exceedingly complex and raise a million questions, as in the new Surrogates, which is based on a comic book by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. In this future world, humans can strap themselves into a chair, plug themselves into a bunch of sensors and have complete control of an artificial being, including movement, speech and senses. This artificial being can then go out into the world to perform daily tasks, while the real person is safe at home, never risking getting hit by a car or falling down a manhole.

From there, things get sticky. A narrator explains to us that 98% of the population uses the surrogates, and later a character says something about a "billion" users. Last time I checked, a billion was only about 20% (or less) of the population. Plus, how much do these surrogates cost? Can all the poor people of the world afford them? We do get to see a few things like a surrogate bringing home food for its owner to eat, and other points in which surrogates freeze up while their owners use the bathroom, but just how do people go about their daily lives? Some of the users look like they're in pretty bad shape, sitting in their chairs. Is using a surrogate physically or emotionally addicting? Do their muscles atrophy? Do they take showers? Do they ever get together to have sex? Has the population gone down because of too much surrogate sex and not enough human sex?

Danish director Lone Scherfig's new movie An Education is one of the finest movies I've seen so far this year and definitely one I'll be gunning for come Oscar time (and I am in good company). Based on the memoir by Lynn Barber and delicately adapted by Nick Hornby, An Education stars Carey Mulligan as Jenny, an Oxford-bound schoolgirl who finds the excitement she's been yearning for with David, a smooth operator played by Peter Sarsgaard. (As if dating a much older man who takes her out to parties, art auctions, and horse races isn't edgy enough in 1961, he's also Jewish. Oy!) James Rocchi wrote an excellent review of An Education from Sundance.

David manages to win her strict parents over (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) and as their relationship progresses, she transforms into an ultrachic '60s girl who brings her giggling friends perfume back from Paris. Olivia Williams (Dollhouse) is also outstanding as her concerned teacher. Rosamund Pike is great as the glamorous girlfriend of David's friend Danny, who is played by a rather debonair Dominic Cooper. Will she stay in school and head to Oxford or get a more real-world education from David and his friends?

The first trailer from Sony Picture Classics is up over at Yahoo, and it's a great tease of the joys to come in the feature-length film. The official website is here.

Barber is a respected journalist in the UK for The Observer and has given several very interesting interviews about An Education that spoil the plot just an eensy bit. If you're that curious, Google's got your back.

Earlier this week, there was buzz that Radha Mitchell was joining the science fiction thriller, The Surrogates. Now The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed it, and reports two other actors added to the mix -- Ving Rhames and Rosamund Pike.

Based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti, the film will focus on a cop (Bruce Willis) who lives in a future world. However, instead of getting a naked Milla and trying to save the world from one uglified Gary Oldman, he's in a world where people live out their lives through "perfect-looking" robotic versions of themselves. But then these robots or "surrogates" start getting axed, and the cop has to venture into the world, as himself, to find the killer. Mitchell is playing his cop partner, Rhames is playing "a charismatic cult figure who disdains the use of surrogates and tries to lead an uprising against the 'new world order,'" and Pike is playing Willis' wife.

A retro film set in 1960s London is interesting. Hearing that Nick Hornby wrote the script makes it intriguing. An awesome cast -- that just makes the upcoming film An Education sound downright tasty. Variety reports that Lone Scherfig, the Danish filmmaker behind Happy-Go-Lucky, is gearing up to helm the feature, and these are the names she'll get to mold with her directorial hands: Peter Sarsgaard, Orlando Bloom, Alfred Molina, Sally Hawkins, Rosamund Pike, Emma Thompson, Olivia Williams, and newcomer Carey Mulligan. (Some of the cast signed on earlier this month.)

While I vowed that I learned my lesson about great actors not necessarily making great movies after Derailed, I so, so, so want to see this. The film will focus on a 17-year-old girl played by Mulligan who lived in the quiet burbs of London. However, it's during the swinging '60s, and she gets pulled into craziness by a 30-something Brit played by Sarsgaard. (Cradle robber.) As THR described it: "He courts her with chic dinners, clubs, and foreign trips, charming her father (Molina) but putting her future at Oxford University in jeopardy." Thompson, meanwhile, plays her school's headmistress.

Dumb joke of the day #2: She should've bought a SarsGuaard.

Production begins in London this March.

In the five years since we've had to Die Another Day, Bond girl Rosamund Pike has been slipping a varied collection of roles under her belt. On the heels of 007, she had the Israeli drama, Promised Land, before going through a lot of more mainstream fare. There's Johnny Depp's period drama Libertine, Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice and before she could be pigeon-holed into period pieces, she co-starred as Samantha Grimm in Doom. After a lesser-known stint co-starring with Lena Olin in Devil You Know, she's currently slipping on-screen with Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins in Fracture. After that, she's got a few other films on the way, including the one I'm increasingly anxious to see -- Jackboots on Whitehall.

As part of her press tour for Fracture, she talked to Gaurdian Unlimited for their weekly film podcast. A lot of the chat featured talk of Hopkins, who Pike describes as "this kind of Renaissance man" who always seems to be "having so much fun." And if you can get past her soft, drawling, female British voice, you can hear her imitate the actor talking about his current interests. It's cute. Now, as for Gaslight, she doesn't have too much to say about the film version. In January of 2006, Martha Fischer alerted us to the possible remake, and Pike heard as much as we did -- that Joe Wright was looking to make it after Pride & Prejudice. However, she's heard nothing specific about it, and is actually gearing up for a stage version of the classic, taking on Ingrid Bergman's role. Let me go out on a limb and say that if there is any chance for the remake to happen, it will be soon. Pike is making a name for herself, and if Fracture does well, and she impresses people with her on-stage work as Paula Alquist Anton, she will be starring in a movie version in no time.

A refreshingly simple, Grisham-style legal thriller, Fracture lays out its agenda early on and never feels the need to delve into absurdities or tack on sixteen endings in order to complete its business. Anthony Hopkins stars as Ted Crawford, a man who, despite living in a hilltop mansion, is still apparently going to work every day, which can't be the definition of success for someone his age. We're informed early on that his younger wife (Embeth Davidtz) is having a reckless love affair and seems eager to have the big discussion with her husband rather than quietly put a stop to her activities, as he would prefer. He's a typical Hopkins character endowed with a silent British suffering that's laughably out of place amidst the Grand Guignol of Los Angeles. He's also endowed with that typically Hopkins-style compulsion -- that endless mental finger-drumming that goes on in the head of most of his characters. Early and often, we see him staring at an elaborate mousetrap-style contraption in his home that he apparently built himself.

The whole plot revolves around whether Crawford is actually as smart as he thinks he is, so I won't make a comment on that, lest I give away the store. Upon learning that his wife's paramour is actually a lowly cop, he comes up with an elaborate plan to murder her in the home they share and then have the cop (played by Billy Burke) arrive first on scene. Once arrested, he will dramatically reveal buckets of evidence that the cop and the rich wife were having a torrid affair, which he thinks should be sufficient grounds to have the entire arrest declared inadmissible in court. If it were me, I'd probably think I owed it to myself to put in a couple years in night school researching that before I put my plan into action, but he seems pretty confident about it. Opposing him will be Ryan Gosling, a young hotshot from the D.A.'s office who doesn't need a high-profile, complicated case like this one on the eve of being offered an associateship at a swanky private firm.