heather graham Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Kevin Spacey never really went away, so I hesitate to say that he's making a comeback, so let's just say "Hey, it's nice to see Kevin Spacey out and about in the trades again." Then we can talk about Spacey's Father of Invention, and talk about the eclectic foursome he's lured in as costars. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Craig Robinson, Johnny Knoxville, Heather Graham, and Camilla Belle have all signed onto Spacey's independently produced, Trent Cooper-directed film.

The story centers on Robert Axle (Spacey), an inventor who has forgotten his humble roots after making billions, and become an egomanical jerk. In a Lex Luthor twist, one of his inventions has gone awry, maimed hundreds, and landed him in prison serving an eight-year sentence. Freed from his sentence, he goes about rebuilding his personal and professional life, but finds remaking his name and fortune easier than repairing his fractured family.
Rounding out the Axle family is Belle, who plays his daughter, employed as a social worker and reluctant to reconnect with her father. Graham plays her lesbian roommate (is there ever any other kind) who sleeps with Spacey, undoubtedly making the situation that much more prickly. Knoxville plays a store manager who gives the ex-con a job. Somewhere in the mix there's an ex-Mrs. Axle as Robinson plays her new husband, who now lives in the billionaire's house, eats his food, and drives his car, but is nice enough to help him get back on his feet.

There's a whiff of Arrested Development to the plotline, and Robinson makes just about everything funny, so let's all watch out for this one. Production begins this week in New Orleans, so it'll be here before you know it.

UPDATE: THR has just confirmed that Johnny Depp will indeed play the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which is currently in pre-production. Disney announced the news earlier today. Depp was rumored to be playing the role for a couple months now, and it definitely suits the actor. The film itself will combine live action and motion-capture animation, and it will be released in digital 3-D. Newcomer Mia Wasikowska has been cast as Alice. Additionally, it's now bring reported that Depp will also take on a role in The Lone Ranger (IESB says he'll be playing Tonto).

Good ol' Ben Affleck must have gone stir crazy. We haven't seen him on the big screen since 2006, and now he's got a bunch of projects on the way. Last week there was The Town, and now The Hollywood Reporter posts that he's in talks to star in The Company Men, with John Wells directing. This is not to be confused with the Ron Livingston-starring The Company Men, which is also in the works. Both are a bit similar in plot -- Livingston gets to try and save a sinking company in a crappy economy while Affleck will get laid off and struggle with the fallout. Hopefully one of them will change their name soon.

Anne Hathaway has landed another gig, this time as a "young, commitment-phobic attorney" in The Opposite of Love, so says The Hollywood Reporter. Essentially, this gal's life falls apart when she rejects her current boyfriend who was ready for marriage, like, yesterday. What's the opposite of interesting?

Bruce Willis is picking up a helming hat. Variety reports that he will make his directorial debut with an indie psychological thriller called Three Stories About Joan. Starring Camilla Belle, Kieran Culkin, and Willis in a supporting role, the film focuses on three tragedies in a young woman's life "that cause her to lose her grip on reality." Hmmm ... Demi directs and now Willis? Could one be trying to top the other? Thoughts?

You know, they say that you shouldn't go into business with family and friends. Yet many people still do, and many people also begin to take the advice to heart sooner or later. But what about people you meet in a support group? That sounds totally rational, doesn't it? Let's take it a bit further -- imagine you go into business with strangers you know all have anger issues. It sounds like hell in real life, but may make for a funny film on the big screen.

Variety reports that Heather Graham, Jennifer Coolidge, Matthew Settle (the cool art dad from Gossip Girl), and Amber Heard have signed on to star in a new black dramedy called Ex-terminators, which was written by Suzanne Weinert, and will be the feature directorial debut for Scrubs helmer John Inwood. So yes, this film will focus on "three women who meet in an anger-management therapy group and decide to form a traditional business using very untraditional methods."

This is feeling like one of those projects that could very easily be good, and just as easily be stereotypical and over-the-top bad. Whichever it ends up being, I imagine it will have a healthy dose of quirk involved, considering all the time Inwood has spent on Scrubs. Production began last week in Austin.

Even though Jerry O'Connell's latest comedy video isn't as great as the Tom Cruise parody, they might have helped him land a job. The Hollywood Reporter announced that O'Connell has signed to star with Heather Graham in the romantic comedy Baby on Board for Brian Herzlinger. Herzlinger is a relative newcomer and is probably best known as they guy who made a documentary about trying to get a date with Drew Barrymore.

Russell Scalise and Michael Wright's script follows a happily married couple (O'Connell, Graham) whose lives and high-powered careers are thrown into chaos thanks to an unplanned pregnancy. The cast also includes John Corbett (Northern Exposure) and Katie Finneran as a bitter married couple whose bad advice makes things worse for the soon to be parents. Also on board is Ian Ziering (who knew that Steve Sanders was still kicking around Hollywood?) as a gay obstetrician and Lara Flynn Boyle as Graham's demanding boss.

Well, I figured it was only a matter of time before the "Knocked Up/Juno Clones' finally started to trickle into theaters. So as funny as Jerry O'Connell can be, I am a little less sure of Graham's comedic skills. The last time I can remember laughing at Graham was during her brief cameo on Arrested Development back in 2004. Then again, any show that can turn Carl Weathers into a comedy star seems to have the knack for making anybody funny. Baby on Board is set to start shooting next week on location in Chicago, and should make it to theaters sometime later in '08.

Any good performance is made up of myriad subtle nuances that go into turning an actor into his or her character. There's only so much costuming and makeup can do though -- certain roles just require a particular accent to make it work. Some actors are known for their uncanny ability to pick up and drop accents at will. If you are Meryl Streep, for instance, sometimes you go and learn a whole new language just to make sure you get it right. Occasionally actors take the plunge and decide to do an accent to just show off their acting chops, or to prove that they are serious artists and not just, "movie stars." Others take on a role that requires an accent, and then just seem to hope we'll overlook how badly they mangle it. The unfortunate actors on this list may have aimed high (or not), but they all missed the mark. And in some cases, they almost managed to take out the entire film solely with their bad accents.

1. Kevin Costner - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

No list of bad accents would be complete without the granddaddy of all bad performances; Kevin Costner as Robin of Locksley. This 1991 stinker cast the corn-fed Costner as a British Lord with a penchant for thievery and social justice. But in spite of Costner's revolving door of accents, the film still went down as one of the biggest box-office hits of 1991, second only to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Costner has also conceded that he never really had the time to work on a real accent (You don't say? We'd never have guessed ...). With a budget of $48,000,000, you would have thought they could have spared a few bucks for a dialect coach. But perhaps worst of all is that this film is responsible for unleashing Bryan Adam's unholy power ballad "Everything I Do" on the world and ruining wedding receptions forevermore.

2. Val Kilmer - Alexander

Now I know what you are going to say, how could I overlook Angelina Jolie and her laughable 'Gypsy-Russian' hybrid? But Kilmer as the one-eyed King Phillip gives Jolie a run for her money in the laughable accent department with his Leprechaun-inspired Irish/Welsh brogue. Director Oliver Stone has plenty to answer for when it comes to his epic drama. The wig selection alone deserves some serious mea culpas. But, this is a list about accents after all, so we go straight to Stone's decision to hide Colin Farrell's natural Irish accent by surrounding him with what sounds like a chorus of Lucky Charms spokespeople. Jolie might have been over the top, and writhing with snakes, but Kilmer still stands out as a bad accent and a horrible stylistic choice all rolled into one.

I feel the need to channel Juice Newton: Just call me angel of the morning, Angel! (Sidenote: The song was written by the brother of Jon Voight.) I just can't get this song out of my head with this latest news bit, and luckily it's a satire, so it's not completely inappropriate. Variety has reported that there's a new indie on the way called Son of Mourning, and it's pulling together a pretty tasty cast thus far. Joseph Cross, the kid who ran with scissors as Augusten Burroughs, Felicity Shagwell -aka- Heather Graham, Oscar nominee Barbara Hershey, and the Transsexual King Arthur Tim Curry are set to star.

This will be the feature directorial debut for Yaniv Raz, who has two short films under his belt -- Portishead - Cowboys and Things Fall Apart, plus some brief acting stints in shows like The District. Written by Raz as well, the film is set "amid an international climate crisis, [and] centers on a dissatisfied ad copywriter (Cross) who returns home to a resort town in Florida to meditate on his parents' divorce. While there, he is mistaken for the Messiah and must decide whether to use his newfound celebrity to indulge his own selfish desires, or to do some good in the world." I imagine Curry and Hershey will play the parents, but I'm not sure what Graham's character will be. Maybe she'll get back to her early roots and play a woman who lives/lived at a convent (like her Twin Peaks character, Annie Blackburn). Production will gear up in early 2008 in the Sunshine State.

Jenna Jameson. As I'm sure you know, she's a pretty popular porn star who wrote How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale -- a book that stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for six weeks. (I'll refrain from bemoaning a world that lets that happen!) What is there to say? According to her Wikipedia entry, a lot -- rape, porn, implants, women, men, marriage, divorce, miscarriage, cancer. Sounds like an upper, eh? Lots of sex intermingled with heartache. We already know that Jameson wanted Scarlett Johansson to play her. Yeah right. Now IGN is helping the powers-that-be behind the upcoming feature come up with possibilities.

Maybe I'm being a stickler, but I'm having a hard time thinking any actress in Hollywood could pull off Jameson, even if they wanted. The woman has one chin plant (whatever) and sported two, yes TWO rounds of breast implants to make a big triple-D. Unless they're planning to show her life without all the sex (which would be dumb as that would drastically cut into the potential audience), they've got to have a woman with ... at least grapefruits, if not basketballs, resting in their bra.

IGN offers the following actresses: Fergie, Heather Graham, Erica Durance, Rachel McAdams and Jessica Simpson. Okay, I'm on board with Fergie. But the rest really aren't porn-star endowed, since I think they are all sporting their natural curves. Check it out for yourself (no nudity, but of course, there is cleavage): natural, implanted, natural, implanted, natural, implanted, natural and implanted. I wouldn't be surprised if Simpson got even bigger and took on the role. She might be refusing it now, but it isn't like she has many options. I think they're going to have a hard time casting this sucker, so don't be surprised if we're left wondering for a while.

I always chuckle when I pop in the Heathers commentary and hear that Heather Graham almost had a role in the film as Heather McNamara (the yellow-colored cheerleader). But she was only 17, and her parents thought the movie was too dark. I wonder what they think of the films she's acted in since? Only a few years later, she became Cooper's love interest on Twin Peaks, and then had a part in the movie -- Fire Walk with Me. At 37, she's definitely not a kid anymore, and The Hollywood Reporter is posting that she's added another dark role to her roster -- a new drug addiction indie flick called Broken.

Graham plays Hope, a wanna-be musician who takes the cliche road and heads to Hollywood to become a star. Instead, unsurprisingly, she works the night shift at a crappy diner. Continuing her path of good decisions, she finds herself a junkie man, played by Jeremy Sisto, and develops an addictive relationship with him as they share heroin. Jake Busey, Tess Harper and Linda Hamilton co-star as "seedy Los Angeles denizens" who cross her addict path. Broken is Aussie director Alan White's first US film, from a script by Jeff Lester and Drew Pillsbury. The film premiered at the AFI fest last year, and now Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban's Truly Indie has picked it up for distribution. Their plan is to release it on October 5 in New York City, with other locales like LA to follow. If you end up checking it out, watch out for Bianca Lawson, who plays Mia -- you might remember her from Saved by the Bell: The New Class, or as the strangely-accented second slayer, Kendra, on Buffy.

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Heather Graham, whose just-released flick Gray Matters was called "the worst thing to hit Manhattan since 9/11" by Cinematical's own Ryan Stewart (guess he didn't like it) is expected to fly into Belfast today to start filming what one hopes is a more successful romantic comedy: Buy, Borrow or Steal. The movie tells the story of a woman who finds out she will have an early menopause (laughing yet?) and therefore only has two weeks to conceive a child. Her boyfriend doesn't want to have a baby, so she begins searching for a man to put a bun in her oven. (Consider my hand raised!) I'm going to go out on a limb here and say hijinks ensue -- menopause-related hijinks.

There's no details available on imdb yet, but the script was written by Irish screenwriter Camilla Leslie, an in-house writer and producer at Blue Shutter Films, a production company based at Castle Leslie in Ireland. According to Blue Shutter's site, the film will be directed by Eric Styles, and co-star the lovely Mia Kirshner. Apparently, Miss Graham is of Irish descent, but here's hoping Rollergirl doesn't attempt an accent. I'm still dealing with Cameron Diaz's Lucky Charms-inspired attempt in Gangs of New York. Cam, wasn't there enough butchering going on in that movie? Hiyo!

Gray Matters is the worst thing to hit Manhattan since 9/11. Allegedly a 'postcard' to the city, the film is so spectacularly wrong-headed on every level that even its postcard-moments take on an obscene strangeness. I'm thinking in particular of a scene in which two of the main characters sit on an adjacent building-top and just stare at the Empire State building, as if it's some alien monolith that landed here eons ago and requires nightly worship sessions. The innumerable music-overlaid shots of the famous landmark that appear throughout the film, combined with the main character's personality quirks, lifted whole from Meg Ryan's character in When Harry Met Sally, tell us that first-time director Sue Kramer must be a charter member of the Nora Ephron fan club. She must also have some strange, uninformed ideas about her fellow human beings, considering that she's made a non-parodic film about a mid-30s woman who discovers -- as in, hand-over-mouth, 'Oh my God I can't believe I just discovered this' -- that she is homosexual.

We are told to believe that Heather Graham's character, Gray, has gone through her adult life never having an inkling of her true sexuality, until she happens to drunkenly kiss her brother's fiancee. I suppose that, in fairness, it's possible that Gray is as clueless about her own inner self as she is about others -- her hobbies include going to a Spanish restaurant and aping the accent of the Hispanic proprietor, as if she's fascinated by something she's never heard before in her life. And what about this brother of hers? He's the kind of guy, who, upon arriving in his hotel room in Vegas (maybe it was AC) for a quickie wedding, tips the bellhop and tells him "don't spend it all on the slot machines." I'm sure he's never heard that one before, pal. Actor Thomas Cavanagh gives a noticeably bad, almost incompetent performance as Sam. It seems as though he's straining to remember his lines in every scene -- either that or his face has undergone some horrific Botox accident and is now permanently frozen in a constipated expression.