dermot mulroney Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Don't you hate it when your daughter needs new lungs and your only recourse is to head down to Mexico for some spare parts? That's what's going to happen to Mr. Dermot Mulroney, who has recently signed on to star in an organ-harvest thriller called Run For Her Life.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Mulroney will play a district attorney whose daughter contracts a rare illness and needs new lungs. After discovering she's low on the official U.S. waiting list, he heads to Mexico to buy his way onto their list. But his ethical nature is put to the test when he has to choose between saving hundreds of children being killed for their organs or saving his daughter's life."

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur will helm the flick, which begins shooting in New Mexico late next month. The screenplay comes from first-timer Christian Escario, with a re-write from John Claflin, whom you might remember from Fool's Gold and Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. Or maybe not.

And good for Mulroney, says me. I've been a fan of the guy's work since Young Guns, and I hope that since his solid work in Zodiac, he's past the Must Love Dogs / Wedding Date portion of his career.

Imagine how happy your life would be if you forgot the last 15 years. That would mean you no longer had any memory of a certain nude scene in About Schmidt. But it would also mean you no longer have any memory of the rest of About Schmidt. Anyway, the reason I mention that movie is because two of its stars, Hope Davis and Dermot Mulroney, will be reunited for a film about memory loss titled Driving Lessons. Not to be confused with the British coming-of-age movie starring Harry Potter's Rupert Grint, this Driving Lessons is about "a troubled family who gets a second chance at happiness when the mother (Davis) suffers a memory loss and can't recall the last 15 years of her life."

That synopsis sounds a bit sad to me. It sounds like the family did something unforgivable to the mother but now they can celebrate thanks to her amnesia. Sure, Mom suffers, but at least they all have a second chance at good times. I guess memory loss is often the subject of laughs and duplicity. Think Overboard. Think 50 First Dates. Think Good Bye, Lenin! -- sort of. Don't it all just make you want to maybe knock your mother or girlfriend or a rich lady you want to pretend is your mom or girlfriend in the head in the hope she'll receive a blank slate? OK, well don't it at least make you want to watch another movie about something akin to that? Driving Lessons was scripted by Mark Lisson (Return to Horror High) and will be helmed by Finnish director Vivi Friedman. Shooting begins in March.

The cinematic version of the late, struggling inventor Robert Kearns finally has a friend. In June, Christopher Campbell posted that Greg Kinnear had been cast as the inventor in Flash of Genius, with Lauren Graham once again taking on the wifely role. (Is she becoming the token wife to balance out many years as the pretty-much-single Lorelai Gilmore!?) Now Variety has reported that Dermot Mulroney will be taking on the role of Gil Privick, Kearns' best friend, who owns a chain of auto-parts stores.

To recap, Kearns was the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper. He took his invention to car manufacturers, and years later, Ford slapped his design onto cars and he got nothing for it. He had a breakdown, became obsessed and went after the companies that used them. After fighting for years, all the way up to the Supreme Court, Kearns finally got $30 million. However, it was at the cost of his family and dream.

As for Mulroney, maybe he'll finally get a little recognition. The man has been in a ton of films over the years but where all of his Young Guns co-stars made it big, he's always existed as that guy people recognize but don't remember -- the token co-star or supporting cast.

I didn't expect the next film from An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim to be a fictitious tale about a teenage girl, but stranger things have happened. Gracie is a fairly standard sports movie, but with an attention-grabbing twist: a girl trying to land a spot on an all-boys high-school soccer team in the 1970s. It's a compelling film at times, as well as wholesome entertainment for families, but never breaks free from the trademark cliches of the inspirational sports-film genre that Disney and other studios have been churning out regularly for the past few years.

Gracie (Carly Schroeder) has three brothers, all of whom spend a lot of time being drilled in soccer techniques by their competition-obsessed father (Dermot Mulroney). He dismisses his 15-year-old daughter, though, and won't even acknowledge her when she asks to play with them. After Gracie's older brother dies in a car accident, she decides to honor his memory by joining his soccer team and beating the local rival, something her brother was never quite able to achieve. Her family won't take her seriously, her would-be boyfriend (Christopher Shand) laughs at her, the school won't let her train in the only gym with free weights, and at first she can't find a single person to support her dream. But you know what happens to protagonists in sports movies who have a dream -- you can't keep them down forever.

If this summer movie season shows us anything, it's that Hollywood has gone sequel-crazy. These greedy studio executives keep demanding more explosions, more superheroes, more Power Point presentations about global warming! Wait...what was that last one? Yes folks, An Inconvenient Truth Part 2 is on the way. It doesn't mention whether former presidential candidate (and, many would argue, rightful winner) Al Gore will be involved again, but I would imagine he'd have to be. According to the Truth's director, Davis Guggenheim, "I'm meeting with Paramount next week to talk about a sequel to Inconvenient Truth. Too early to talk about details." Considering the extremely low-key nature of the original, it was churned out in a mere five months, and that quick turnaround could mean we'll see the sequel in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Guggenheim had been largely a television director before An Inconvenient Truth hit it big. He was behind the camera for episodes of great shows like Deadwood and The Shield. He branches out again for his new movie Gracie, which opens on June 1st. It's a scripted film, stars Dermot Mulroney and Elizabeth Shue, and is about a teenage girl who fights to give women the opportunity to play competitive soccer. Don't know if it will be as powerful a soccer film as the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Ladybugs, but we shall see. Truth won the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award earlier this year, and also picked up a win for Melissa Etheridge's incredibly average theme song. I thought the movie was very informative and entertaining enough, but I could have gone for a lot less scenes of Al Gore walking around to lame narration. There's still a lot to learn about the environment and where the world is headed, I'd be up for a sequel. I can hear the trailer now: "An Inconvenient Truth 2. The truth...just got a lot more inconvenient."

Odds and ends from a fairly slow Monday:

• What's better than a film inspired by the true events in the life of Elisabeth and Andrew Shue? How about hearing that Dermot Mulroney has just signed on to play a part? Is that not a fantastic way to start the day? Directed by Elisabeth's husband Davis Guggenheim, Gracie revolves around a young girl who fights to play on an all-male soccer team after her brother dies. Mulroney will play the girl's father.
• I'll admit I haven't been too up on Jim Carrey's upcoming psychological thriller, The Number 23. Taking charge behind the camera will be Joel Schumacher (who I like to classify as a "hit and miss" type of guy) with a story that centers on a dude who becomes obsessed with a book he feels is based on his life. While there's no trailer yet, New Line has released a pretty interesting teaser site that includes a ton of random links to websites based on the number 23. It's odd, but I'm sure there's a pattern there -- I just don't feel like spending all day trying to uncover one. Feel free to tell us what you find. [via JoBlo]
• With submissions up 30% this year and 18 features in competition, the 14th annual Hamptons International Film Festival announced it will kick things off with the world premiere of The Situation, Philip Haas' Iraq war drama. Fest is divided into two categories with six narratives and six documentaries competing for Golden Starfish Awards and another six taking part in the Films of Conflict and Resolution competition. The Hamptons International Film Festival runs from October 18-22.

• The Call Of Cthulhu - The H.P. Lovecraft Preservation Society, a group of dauntless fans that created the brilliant, Cthulhu-themed musical, A Shoggoth On The Roof, have created the ultimate fan film, an incredible tribute to the writer whose work seeded modern horror favorites like Re-Animator and From Beyond. Shot like a 1920's era silent film, the 47-minute feature is technically amazing, shot (in black-and-white), lit and performed like an authentic film of the period would have been (although it would have horrified people of the time right into Arkham Sanitarium.) Considered Lovecraft's most famous story, the story of a man who inherits a collection of documents detailing the ghastly Cthulhu Cult, it is very faithfully adapted, not to mention super-efficient. The title cards are in the viewer's choice of an astonishing 24 different languages, and the lush, symphonic score can be played in hi-fi and the kitschy-fun, lo-fi "Mythoscope". A skillful build and an extremely satisfying payoff (think creature design King Kong '33 style) add up to one of the smartest horror films of recent memory.