jeffrey dean morgan Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The terribly handsome Jeffrey Dean Morgan clearly has a thing for action, adventure, and DC comic books. Collider sat down with him last weekend, and Mr. Morgan let slip that he's stepping into the Red Dawn remake. (He also let slip a few f-bombs that he shouldn't have told anyone, but we're glad he did, aren't we?) "I guess I'm more or less the old Powers Boothe character ... I'll be the old guy in it, which is cool ... I'm very much looking forward to it. But I'm going straight from here to Detroit which I can't imagine at this point."

Morgan also planted the first flag when it came to playing the part of Lobo, soon to be the star of a Guy Ritchie film. "That would be cool. Lobo would be very cool. I don't think that I'm as big as Lobo is, but if you could, like, transplant Mickey Rourke's body on my head, that would be just great. But I don't know. It's an untapped world for me as well. Every time I kind of hear about something I go out and get the book or I look it up on one of your guys' sites. We'll see."

Well, if he's reading this one -- Mr. Morgan, I suggest that you try to nab an audition for Jesse Custer. He's one of the few American actors that has the right amount of grit. Or do a reversal on The Comedian and play the ever-so-good Captain Marvel / Shazam. Or jump the DC ship and try out a little Dark Horse with Fear Agent. Lobo sounds cool from afar, but you've already got the biggest DC badass under your belt with the Comedian. Go with something more charming.

Prepare to be bludgeoned. Watchmen is sledgehammer entertainment, an action epic with tremendous production values that acknowledges good and evil but is much more interested in things that go boom.

As director Zack Snyder amply demonstrated in his previous adaptations of other people's strikingly original source material (Dawn of the Dead and 300), he is more than up to the task of creating a multitude of dynamic, viscerally-exciting action sequences. As a bonus, there are small moments in Watchmen that prompt warm, unexpected laughter, skillfully-recreated scenes that inspire pure fanboy bliss, and one lengthy flashback segment that is entirely transcendent, as dazzling, thoughtful, and emotionally-stirring as anything I've seen in recent years.

And then there's the rest of the movie, which crams in a remarkably high percentage of the plot points from the original Watchmen series of comic books by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and faithfully includes tiny details, classic panels and a checklist of characters. Yet it skims over deeper reflections about masked crime fighters, superheroes, the essential nature of man, and the future of the world. It's like someone decided the alphabet was too long: most of the consonants are still there, but Watchmen is missing a couple of vowels.

The film features a bewildering assemblage of performances, with juicy turns by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earle Haley, wildly uneven, uncertain performances by Malin Akerman and Patrick Wilson, and sleepy monotone pronouncements by Billy Crudup and Matthew Goode. Some of the actors sound as though they're delivering their lines for the first time, reading off cue cards.

The Losers has been tossed around like a cinematic game of hot potato. Peter Berg wrote the adaptation and was going to direct it, then be backed out and McG took over in March of 2007, and then Tim Story took over a few months later in June, and then things got back on track and rejigged with Sylvain White in the directorial chair last November. Now things seem to be not only on-track, but into casting!

The Hollywood Reporter posts that our beloved Comedian, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, is in negotiations to star in the film. It's certainly not a surprising move for the actor. The comic book was rejigged for a more modern story, and the film will focus on a special forces team betrayed by their boss and left for dead. Tough guys won't take such things lying down, so the Losers decide to get revenge against the CIA.

Morgan would play Clay, "the group's leader, whose signature look favors black suits without ties." (Morgan might be repeating with the old-tough guy working for the government thing, but at least he gets a different set of clothes. And at least this project isn't another bad romcom. Anyway...) So this new Clay is Sarge meets Lt. Templeton 'Face' Peck? Speaking of The A-Team, you just know that this project is kicking up now to compete with or beat it.

Do any of you have suggestions for the rest of the casting?

*Post edited for mental lapse.

We've all seen the many ways that Jason Segel is a big dude, but now he's gearing up to see what life is like on the other side. The Hollywood Reporter posts that he's in talks to sign onto Jack Black's Gulliver's Travels along with Emily Blunt. Black's Gulliver washes up on the island of Lilliput, where people are only 6 inches tall, and befriends a wee one named Horatio (Segel). Horatio not only has the honor of having a friend who can squash him -- he's also the love interest of the island's princess (Blunt). Lucky girl.

In less lucky circles, Hilary Swank is no longer getting debonair love from Jeffrey Dean Morgan. After romancing it up in P.S. I Love You, THR posts that he's going to stalk her in The Resident. She'll play a young doc who nabs a loft in Brooklyn, only to find that her charming landlord (Morgan) is actually a psycho who pulls her into "a terrifying game of cat and mouse." They really lack the chemistry, so this should be an improvement.

Coming up on the new year, it's interesting to see which films we had thought would've been released by this point. In the summer of 2007, I recall myself and several colleagues showing up for a press screening of Jonathan Levine's lauded slasher, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, only to discover it was canceled just that morning and the film had been sold from the Weinstein Company to Senator that afternoon. (The film has since landed at Sony, whose indie arm, Sony Classics, already saw Levine's follow-up, The Wackness, to a proper theatrical reception.)

At least the Weinsteins gave something up for a change. The oft-shuffled Killshot and Fanboys are tentative January and February releases at the moment, respectively, and I just want to see for myself if The Poughkeepsie Tapes has been worthy of its modest reputation following a BNAT '07 screening -- the same BNAT that featured the reportedly sweet Trick 'r Treat that WB continues to hoard.

A perhaps more morbid curiosity has me keeping an eye on Paramount's Case 39, just to see if it's really that bad, and who knows what similar straits Assassination of a High School President, The Accidental Husband (originally last March), and Possession (originally last February) are in following Yari Film Group's bankruptcy -- not that I have much invested in the last two, but Assassination is a perfectly release-worthy noir take-off that deserves a home.

So what do you guys and girls think? Which of these are you most dying to see? What was the longest you ever waited to catch something, and were you ultimately disappointed or satisfied by the time it came your way?

When Demetri Martin joined the cast of Taking Woodstock, it was set to begin production in late August. In a nice change of pace, the movie is still on schedule, and will begin shooting at the end of the month, SAG strike be damned. But that isn't the only reason to anticipate Ang Lee's project. Variety reports the ensemble cast has been set, and it's insanely good. Get ready for a film that includes the likes of Emile Hirsch, Imelda Staunton, Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Eugene Levy, Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Dan Fogler, Mamie Gummer, Henry Goodman, and Jonathan Groff.

Martin stars in the memoir adaptation as Elliot Tiber, a closeted gay man and aspiring interior designer who gives up his Big Apple dreams to run the family business in a Catskills motel. In 1969, he offered the hotel as home base for Woodstock organizers while his neighbor Max Yasgur (Levy) offered his farm. Staunton and Goodman play Tiber's parents, Groff will be festival organizer Michael Lang, Hirsch will play a Vietnam vet just back on American soil, Schreiber is in talks to play a transvestite named Vilma, Morgan will be a closeted married man having an affair with Tiber, Dano and Kazan play a hippy couple going to the concert, Fogler will be the head of a local theater troupe, and Gummer will take on the role of Lang's assistant.

I have a feeling this will be so very, very good.

Having gotten the chance to visit the Watchmen set, I thought nothing could be cooler. But even though I saw a little of what was coming, nothing compared to the trailer that came with The Dark Knight, and the long-awaited appearance of Dr. Manhattan. But there wasn't a nibblet of Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter.

But now I give you two doses. Above there is a pin-up that was sent to AICN by artist James Jean, who created the pin-up pic for the movie (see it full-length over there). Of course, this was back during her heydey, before her daughter took over and found herself some different superhero action. After the jump, you can check out a pic that Warners sent us late last week (along with other images). It's the interlude between Jupiter and The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

You know, I remember going to see Spider-Man when it came out in theaters a handful of years ago, and being all excited, but that was like finding a dollar on the side of the road compared to the bag-full-o-cash fangirl excitement I have for this film.

If you remember our previous coverage of the upcoming Shanghai, you'll recall that John Cusack is going to star as a man "who returns to Shanghai in the months before Pearl Harbor due to the death of his friend" -- one who was murdered. Now, we've got the friend.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Jeffrey Dean Morgan has signed on to play the slain man named Connor. So, Connor's friend comes to investigate, and when he does, Cusack finds some big, hidden governmental secret. Could it be the plans for Pearl Harbor? I figure that has to fit in there somewhere, sort of like A Few Days in September.

As for Morgan, he's a great addition to the film, although it's another small role (unless there are a lot of flashbacks). He knows how to steal the show with these smaller, supporting roles, but I wonder how many of these gigs Morgan will have to take on before he gets to solid, meaty starring fare? Maybe his stint as The Comedian will help turn the tide. But we'll get to see this flick before Watchmen; Shanghai is set to be released this December.

One thing that can be said about Jeffrey Dean Morgan is that he's stretching himself out for a number of different roles, rather than just sticking with one and slipping into typecast oblivion. That would've been easy after making many hearts a-flutter over his Denny Duquette in Grey's Anatomy, but since then, he's mixed it up with comedies about Russian Roulette television shows, a couple romcoms, a Supernatural stint, a gang drama, a huge superhero flick, a dark comedy about a how-to assassin video, and now a murder mystery.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that he's going to star with Kirsten Dunst and Ryan Gosling in the upcoming murder mystery of love -- All Good Things. Set in the 1980s, the film focuses on the heir to a real estate dynasty (Gosling), who falls for a young woman (Dunst) from the wrong side of the tracks. But then she disappears, and a "down-and-out" detective played by Morgan discovers clues that might lead to the truth, while "the political stakes get higher and people close to the case end up dead." (Last quote from Variety.)

Don't you just hate it when you're about to get married, and whoops -- turns out you're married to someone else? Especially if you're an uptight talk show host, and he's a fun-loving fireman you've never met?

Oh, those crazy kids in the movies. Such is the plot contr... I mean, the plot, of The Accidental Husband, which stars Uma Thurman as Emma, a "relationship expert" (think Dr. Phil in heels -- wait, OK, don't) who's about to get married to a fine, upstanding publishing executive (Colin Firth) when she discovers that on paper, she's already legally betrothed to some guy named Patrick (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). It seems that Patrick got himself hitched on the Interweb to Emma just to mess with her after his fiancée (Justina Machado, who played Vanessa on Six Feet Under) called in to her show, got some advice from Emma and then dumped Patrick's fun-loving behind. I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty sure this movie ends with Emma and Patrick shaking hands civilly, getting an annulment, and living happily ever after with other people.

Ah, kidding. Rom-com silliness aside, it's always a pleasure to watch Uma Thurman doing comedy (I've erased My Super Ex-Girlfriend from memory, and so should you), and a greater pleasure still to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan getting his shot at leading-man status. Grey's Anatomy fans will recognize him as Denny, the doomed heart patient who was unlucky enough to a) have a bad ticker, and b) fall in love with Izzie; and after a co-starring role in P.S. I Love You, he's inching up the ladder to stardom.

Uma and Jeffrey (or is it Jeffrey Dean?) will be interviewing each other for Moviefone's Unscripted series this Sunday, Feb. 3, and we need your questions -- so while everyone else is thinking about the Super Bowl, Uma Thurman could be thinking about YOU. Submit your questions for Uma and/or Jeffrey on this post, then check back here to see if your query made the cut. The Accidental Husband opens March 7. Good luck!

Edited to add: Please don't forget to include your name and the city you live in. How else are Jeffrey and Uma going to be able to stalk you?

NOTE: We just got word that The Accidental Husband is being moved to the summer, so unfortunately the Unscripted interview is off for now. But thanks to all for the excellent questions -- we'll save 'em up for later.