Tenderness Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Tooling around the internet this morning, a number of movie posters from the Cannes Film Festival have somehow found a way invade my computer screen; one of which just happened to be the production poster for Charlie Kaufman's (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a theater director who, while attempting to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse for a new play, struggles to maintain the several different relationships he has with those of the opposite sex. ( I imagine the poster should make a lot more sense to people now.) Of course, since it's also written by Kaufman, look for lots of weird things to happen along the way. Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Hope Davis and Tilda Swinton also star.

Apart from Synecdoche, New York, we also have posters from flicks like Paranoid Park (the new Gus Van Sant flick), Leo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour (in which he attempts to be as cool as Al Gore), Tenderness (featuring Russell Crowe sporting a wicked mustache) and a new Jessica Simpson film called Major Movie Star (which in and of itself is a major contradiction). She wears an army-style bikini, and I imagine the film will have her joining the military as a dumb blonde -- gee, keep them original ideas coming boys. I don't get it, is it Simpson's goal to only star in films that are either inspired by or based on old 80s flicks and 70s TV shows?

Not content with its growing reputation as a genre distributor with films like Saw, The Descent and Hostel, Lionsgate has decided to stretch a little and include some other kinds of movies in its roster besides horror -- perhaps with less blood, gore and a smaller body count too. With the upcoming 3:10 to Yuma, they were off to a good start -- not necessarily in the blood, gore or body count department, but at least its not a horror film. And now, according to an article over at IGN, they've added another film to help them expand their slate and re-define their image -- the Russell Crowe thriller Tenderness.

The film (which our own Martha Fischer reported on way back in April), based on the novel by Robert Comier and adapted by Emil Stern, tells the story of a cop (Crowe) who attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding a teenage serial killer who murdered his family and the young female runaway he's taken under his wing. Teenage serial killer? Ok, so its not a completely different genre, but still -- I bet nobody gets locked in a room, explosives strapped to their head and tormented by a sadistic killer who has a penchant for dolls.

Lionsgate took North American, U.K., Australian and South African rights to the film, which was directed by John Paulson and also features Jon Foster, Sophie Traub and Laura Dern. About the film, Lionsgate Execs. Tom Ortenberg and Peter Block gushed: "Tenderness delivers an unbeatable combination of story, filmmakers and actors. Polson, Crowe, Foster, Traub and Dern have given it their all -- which means that audiences can count on an incredibly gripping experience." Sure, its hardly unusual for execs to say those kinds of things about films they just paid good money for, so I'll take their enthusiasm with a grain of salt. Still, I can't think of a Russell Crowe movie I didn't like ... so that definitely helps. Who knows, maybe its as good as they say it is? I guess we'll see when the film gets released next year.

The latest in casting news from Cannes:

• Laura Dern has joined the cast of Tenderness, the Russell Crowe-starring indie flick we told you about last month. The movie takes on the unsettling subject of a teenage serial killer and his romantic entanglement with a damaged runaway girl. Crowe plays a cop who tries to figure the kid out; it's not clear what role Dern will play. The movie begins shooting this week in New York.

• Sean Mathias is directing Colossus, based on Ann Harries' Manly Pursuits, a novel about the Boer War. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film's scored a pretty impressive cast, considering that its budget is a relatively small $15 million: Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz, Ian McKellen and Susan Sarandon are all on-board. Though it's not yet been announced which roles the stars will play, the movie "tells of ailing arch-colonist Cecil Rhodes' [probably McKellen] belief that he can only recover his health if he can hear the sound of English song birds outside his window in Cape Town." Get this: Someone is sent from England with 500 freaking songbirds. When he gets there, he falls in love and decides he needs to stop the Boer War from happening. Ah, if only all men in love would immediately resolve to end wars -- what a lovely world this would be.
  

• Oscar Wilde is coming back to the big screen, this time in the hands of Janusz Kaminski, who is directing an adaptation of A Woman of No Importance. Set to begin filming this fall, the movie is about "an ambitious young man, Gerald Arbuthnot, who introduces his prospective employer, Lord Illingworth, to his mother." Because this is Wilde, it turns out the man has a bit of a history with the mother, and in fact is Gerald's dad. Oops. Set to star in the film are Annette Bening, the ubiquitous Lindsay Lohan and the under-appreciated Sean Bean. Thank the lord someone is letting Bean do something funny -- he's been sporting a macho glower for, like, two decades.
  

More than a decade ago, before he became Mr. Grumpy Hollywood Superstar, Russell Crowe starred in a small Australian movie called The Sum of Us. In that film, he played a gay man who lived with his (very accepting) father; his love interest was played by John Polson, who also happens to do a little directing from time to time. The two clearly got along, because Polson has somehow persuaded Crowe to put his ego aside and star in Tenderness, a little indie flick Polson is directing for GreeneStreet Films.

The film, which is based on a novel by Robert Cormier, is about an 18-year-old serial killer (!) who becomes entangled with a young runaway (In the book, she's 15; according to Variety, it's 16 -- is the latter legal in some states, or something?) who has some issues of her own. Crowe will play "a cop who sets out to unravel [the boy's] complex past."

Production begins next month and must wrap up by July, when shooting is scheduled to begin on Crowe's next big-budget extravaganza, the much-discussed American Gangster.