Whoopi Goldberg Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Adrian Grenier Nabs a Bunch of Celebs for New Paparazzi Doc
Filed under: Documentary », Casting »
He's already made a documentary about the quest to meet his father, and now Adrian Grenier is heading for doc land again for what sounds like a pretty funky endeavor.The Hollywood Reporter posts that Grenier has nabbed a number of big names that include Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, Eva Longoria, Paris Hilton, Rosie O'Donnell, Martin Landau, Noam Chomsky, and Lewis Black for his new documentary titled Teenage Paparazzi. While this sounds like it could be centered on the phenomenon of Lindsays and Britneys, the film will focus on Grenier's "relationship with a 14-year-old paparazzo who took his photo," while also discussing the culture of fame.
But here is where things take an interesting turn -- the film "will interweave the relationship portrait with philosophical interviews in the style of Ricard LInklater's Waking Life." If that means just a bunch of discussions, cool. If that means that those discussions will be rotoscoped, that would be awesome. RIght now, the film is getting shopped to distributors, but hopefully we'll find out more soon.
'The Color Purple': The Hollywood Musical
Filed under: Drama », Music & Musicals », Casting », RumorMonger », Steven Spielberg », Remakes and Sequels »
Here I was thinking that this whole movie into musical and then back into a movie trend had finally come to an end. How wrong I was. The MTV movie blog recently spoke with former American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino and according to her, Oprah Winfrey is planning to produce a big-budget movie musical of The Color Purple. The musical will use the Broadway adaptation of Spielberg's 1985 film as a blueprint and Barrino told MTV, "That's going to happen and I'm going to do it."The original feature film was based on the novel by Alice Walker about the struggles of a young black woman in early 20th century America. The film was a big Oscar contender, but ending up losing most of the awards to the more 'colonial style' of Out of Africa. Just on a side note, it still kills me to this day that Whoopi Goldberg didn't win for her performance as Celie. Instead, she won for the vastly inferior romance, Ghost -- but I'm getting a little off topic.
The Broadway show premiered back in 2005, and Barrino took over the main role of Celie last April. Barrino is planning on taking some time off to work on her own music now that the run of the show has ended, but she won't stay gone long. Barrino tells MTV, "They're going to work with me. They don't have to [but] that's a favor, working with someone like Miss Oprah who's so talented and amazing - It's a blessing." It might be blessing for her, but I'm just not convinced that it's a great idea to begin with. How about you?
Disney Gets New Leibovitz Recreations
Filed under: Animation », Classics », Disney », Fandom », Images »
Almost one year ago, I fell head over heels for Annie Leibovitz's photographic recreations of famous, animated Disney scenes. She shot Scarlett Johansson as the running Cinderella, Beyonce Knowles as Alice in Wonderland, spinning around in teacups that came from Disney World, and David Beckham as the Prince who fights off Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. Now the next set of images have hit the net. They are housed over at The Disney Blog, and I'm still swooning.
I think that what I like most about these images is that they're awesome even if I don't particularly care for the people in them. Leibovitz knows how to capture the essence of each scene, and it makes me wonder just how stunning a carefully-plotted, full-length feature would look. (D*mn good, but long to do, and expensive to boot!) This time around, we've got the above, which features Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan with Gisele Bundchen as Wendy Darling and a teeny Tina Fey as Tinker Bell. But there's also images with Jessica Biel as Pocahontas, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony taking a magic carpet ride in Aladdin, and one more from that film, which looks split from the first, that has Whoopi Goldberg as the Genie.
As an added bonus, TDB also has a bunch of behind-the-scenes pics, which help you see how these great images came to be.
Sundance Review: If I Had Known I Was a Genius
Filed under: Drama », Independent », Sundance », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports », Movie Marketing », Cinematical Indie »
If I Had Known I Was a Genius, the screenwriting debut of actor Markus Redmond (who also plays the lead in the film), starts out with promise. Michael (Redmond), breaking the invisible "fourth wall" -- a technique used throughout the script -- informs us that he's going to tell us the story of his life, starting from when he was about six years old and his older sister pushed him down a flight of stairs. The interesting technique here is that Redmond, the adult actor, plays himself at various ages, from six (cramming his adult body into a first grade school desk) all the way to present day (in his uniform for the Costco-type warehouse store he works in, present day), and for a while, at least, that novelty entertains.
Penguins Spoof Goes Straight to DVD
Filed under: Comedy », Distribution », DIY/Filmmaking », Newsstand »
If you were one of those people anxiously awaiting the theatrical release of Bob Sagat's March of the Penguins spoof, Farce of the Penguins, well you're crap out of the luck -- the flick will instead debut on DVD at the end of January. ThinkFilm was supposed to shovel the raunchy pic into theaters last Spring in order to take hold of the lingering buzz left by the popular documentary, but since production fell behind (to this day, it's still not done), they decided to just toss the thing onto DVD.
If you dig Sagat's warped and disgusting humor, then you should definitely enjoy Farce; a live-action comedy featuring shots of penguins mixed with narration from Samuel L. Jackson (I take it they were looking for the complete opposite of Morgan Freeman here) and a host of voiceovers from folks like Jason Alexander, Dane Cook, Whoopi Goldberg and Christina Applegate. Also, John Stamos and Dave Coulier will show up somewhere, however this Full House reunion should be kept far away from the little ones.
With the amount of talent involved here (I only listed a few names, but there are lots more), I'm surprised it's not getting a theatrical release. I wonder if ThinkFilm is pissed Sagat hasn't finished the film on time, and subsequently pulled this move in order to get back at the guy? Something feels fishy. Was anyone looking forward to seeing this in theaters, or are you just happy the film is being released at all?
Jeremy Renner Wants To Be An Avenger
Directors We Love: Jim Jarmusch
Indie Roundup: 'Sweetgrass,' 'Clarkworld,' 'Broken Embraces'
Shelf Life: Fight Club_thumbnail.jpg)
Watch: Famous 'Matrix' Scene Re-Created with LEGOs
_thumbnail.jpg)
