er Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Sometimes a little patience will be well rewarded. The picture to the right isn't some image from the archives -- it's George Clooney on the ER set. (One of a few you can check out over at Starzlife.)

Last March, word hit that ER would be looking back to past characters, and Clooney could possibly reprise his role as Dr. Doug Ross. Cinematical readers weighed in, and while I was hoping for a rush of love from Facts of Life fans, 58.2% of you wanted to see Clooney return to the emergency room, and your wish has been granted.

There is no word on what sort of storyline Clooney is jumping into, but sleuthing the images has proved one thing: A wedding ring can also be seen in the pictures, which means that Ross is probably still shacked up with wife Carol (Julianna Margulies).

But after Burn After Reading, I can't help but wonder if Ross has the same sort of carpentry-related extracurricular activities that Harry Pfarrer had...

[via Ace Showbiz]

An interesting little bit of news popped up on the Hollywood Insider yesterday. The writers strike jostled things up over at NBC, so they're going to renew ER for what will be its 15th, and presumably final, season. This is news for Cinematical, because they want to make this final year a sort of retrospective.

Executive producers John Wells and David Zabel want the show to visit all of the characters who have appeared over the years, like one season-long reunion. That would mean trying to get George Clooney to reprise his role as Dr. Doug Ross, who appeared on 108 episodes of the television drama from 1994-2000. (Doesn't it seem like more than 7-8 years since he was a television star?)

It seems that they've already secured Noah Wyle for a return, but Donnie Darko or not, he's no Clooney. George is the biggest star to come out of that series, and one who definitely doesn't need the work, between his acting, directorial, and production projects. So really, it will come down to interest.

But I ask you, dear Cinematical readers. With all the leaps George Clooney has made professionally, should he look into the past to appear on the final season of ER, or keep his eyes trained on the future?

Even the crankiest critics were singing the praises of 2007. I had an unusually easy time assembling a year-end list of ten great films, and wound up with a rich list of runners-up besides. I'd say that I saw at least three masterpieces, with the jury still out on a few more. George Clooney was a big part of all that with his intelligent thriller Michael Clayton, but that's not quite good enough for the Oscar-winner. In an interview with Radio Times (posted on BBC), he complained that Hollywood is "no longer making masterpieces."

Clooney names his golden age of cinema as 1964 to 1976, when, "you could find 10 films a year that were masterpieces." Sadly, Clooney didn't name his ten masterpieces per year for these years. I'd love to see that list. I'd have trouble coming up with ten for 1965, but I'd definitely agree that 1974 was a superior year. Clooney also denied rumors about plans for an "ER" reunion, but he wasn't all gray skies and rain clouds. He turned on some of his aw-shucks charm and talked about his good fortune, rather than talent, that has made his career. "Had I not got the Thursday night ten o'clock slot at ER, if they'd put us on Friday night, then I wouldn't have a film career," he said. "That's luck, not my own genius, though I like to think it was."

So maybe all that talk of ER outliving its appeal has spurred one its stars to head back to the big screen. Variety reported out of Cannes that Parminder Nagra, who plays Dr. Neela Rasgotra on NBC's ER, has signed on to star in the film Fallen Heroes. The film also stars Naveen Andrews and is the story of a battle scarred soldier (Andrews) who returns to his village to try and resume a normal life – and it seems like Andrews has had plenty of experience playing that kind of role since he has been playing a guilt ridden Iraqi soldier on LOST for the last three seasons. There is no word on what role Nagra is set to play, but I can only assume it would be "the girl" in the film. Nagra, who only has a few feature film credits in her extensive resume, was last seen in the U.K. fantasy film In Your Dreams, but is still probably best remembered as "that girl from Bend it Like Beckham."

Fallen Heroes will be directed by Partho Sengupta, whose 2006 documentary The Way of Beauty will be screening this summer at the Durban International Film Festival. The film is set to start production this summer with a relatively small budget of $50 million. Since both stars currently earn their bread and butter on the small screen, it would appear that they are planning on making the most out of their hiatus.

Actor Noah Wyle, alumni of television's hit hospital drama ER, and more recently star of TNT's rip-offs of homages to Raiders of the Lost Ark known as The Librarian: Quest for the Spear and Return to King Solomon's Mines, is set to make his feature directorial debut with the romantic comedy Prince Test for Dolphin Entertainment and producers Peter Sussman, Arthur Sarkissian and Morris Levy. The film, written by first-timer and recent USC film grad Rachel Weinhaus (with a rewrite by J.P. Manoux), centers on a female private investigator who uses somewhat unorthodox and deceptive techniques to gauge the fidelity of the married men she investigates.

Wyle, who's other acting credits include some pretty good work as Steve Jobs in Pirates of Silicon Valley, Enough and one of my favorite films, Donnie Darko, is, of course, an unproven director. Add to that a script that, while it has a somewhat interesting premise, was nevertheless written by someone with no prior feature credits or experience. Even the person they tapped to do the rewrite doesn't have any feature credits. I don't know about you, but to me this project is really starting to sound like a bad idea with a pretty good chance of failure. I realize that people have to start somewhere and everyone is a first-timer at one point, but usually when the director has never directed before, producers will often have a writer on-board with a little experience under his or her belt -- just to give the project a fighting chance of success.

As the film is being financed by freshman feature backers Dolphin Entertainment (who are primarily known for their TV movies) and, as an indie production, most-likely has a relatively small budget, I guess Dolphin feels an unproven director and writers are worth the financial risk. But really, who knows what their reasons are? Whatever they might be, I really hope they know something I don't know -- for their sake. No word on casting for Prince Test (which, if they get the right actors, would help) but production is set to begin this April in Chicago.