john leguizamo Tagged Articles at Cinematical
When Hollywood Goes Gay For Pay
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Gay & Lesbian », Romance », Casting », Politics », Trailers and Clips »
There's a long-running joke in Hollywood that one of the easiest ways to earn an Oscar is to either 'Ugly it up" or contract a disease. But, in recent years, one of the newer trends that can lead an actor to the podium is for them to take on a role where they play a person of same-sex orientation (a fact that has already become the stuff of satire). Over the past 10 years, plenty of actors have earned Oscars for playing gay roles, and the latest actor to join the club could be Matt Damon, who has signed to play Liberace's lover in Steven Soderbergh's biopic of the flamboyant musician.
So what's the big deal? Don't actors pretend to be different people all the time ... isn't that their job? Well, yes, but it's a little more complicated than that. Gay and lesbian political advocates have long lamented the sad state of affairs where straight actors are getting gay roles, instead of giving 'out' actors their chance to shine. So, while I question the idea that only gay actors could play a gay character, just as only straight actors can play straight characters, the sad fact is that Hollywood is still relatively puritanical when it comes to allowing their actors and actresses to be out and proud -- and that needs to change. But, that doesn't mean I think an actor (gay or straight) shouldn't play role any role they want ... just as long as they're good at it.
So on that note, I decided to give a little credit to five performances by straight actors in gay roles that transcended orientation and, ultimately, are just damn fine performances.
After the jump: my picks for the best of straight actors going gay for pay...
Hayden Christensen is 'Vanishing on Seventh Street'
Filed under: Drama », Horror », Independent », Casting », Newsstand »
If anyone needs a second chance alongside the Bar None sock puppet dog, it's Hayden Christensen. Maybe he's a good actor, maybe he's middling, maybe he's bad (I forgot to see Jumper, and Virgin Territory still hovers in the middle of my Netflix queue), but he deserves a shot to prove himself one way or another. A good horror movie is as good a shot as any. According to The Hollywood Reporter, that's just what he's got, and will be starring in Brad Anderson's Vanishing on Seventh Street. Thandie Newton and John Leguizamo are in negotiations to join in the spookiness.Penned by Anderson and Anthony Jaswinsky, Seventh Street takes place in the ghostly shell of a once-thriving city. Living residents inexplicably vanish once they come in contact with its new shadowy residents. Five individuals fight to stay alive, dodge these eerie threats, and grapple with the meaning of existence. Christensen will play a reporter, Newton a desperate nurse, and Leguizamo a subway operator; the other two characters have yet to be cast or named. Filming will kick off mid-October in Detroit. (Cue the stories of socio-economic parellels.)
I haven't gotten to see much of Anderson's work (I'm anxiously waiting for Scott Weinberg to assign The Horror Virgin a viewing of Session 9), but he certainly can deliver the moody, shivery atmosphere. There's a dash of A Long Day's Journey Into Night in the the Seventh Street story description, and I'm fascinated with anything that might dabble into ideas of Purgatory. Blood, guts, and slashers are certainly scary, but staring into the abyss of life, death, and existence? That's the stuff of true horror.
Review: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Filed under: Animation », Comedy », Theatrical Reviews », 20th Century Fox », Family Films », Summer Movies »
Pixar and everything else - them's the breaks when it comes to judging computer-animated fare these days. Although Pixar has rightfully earned themselves the lead among studios, and by a significant margin, it's all too easy to then marginalize the performance of others.
DreamWorks has certainly raised their game beyond pure pop-culture recitation with the inventive and entertaining likes of Over the Hedge, Kung Fu Panda, and Monsters vs. Aliens (and Aardman or no, I'd even include the winning Flushed Away among their finer efforts). For every Open Season, Sony has given us a Monster House (okay, so that's just one-for-one at the moment). And every time that Fox bequeaths to unwilling audiences something like Space Chimps or Everyone's Hero, Blue Sky has nothing to do with it.
Fox/Blue Sky, however, is the precise pairing that gives us the visually engaging and moderately amusing outings like Robots, Horton Hears a Who!, and the Ice Age films, with the latest of which -- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- falling right in line with that modest-yet-reliable tradition.
Jude Looks Like a Lady -- Image of the Day
Filed under: Drama », Independent », Berlin », Celebrities and Controversy », Fandom », DIY/Filmmaking », Newsstand », Images »
.jpg)
I know, she looks like a cross between the woman who cut your hair when you were seven and that weird chick from Taxicab Confessions, but believe it or not -- that's Jude Law, the actor, in character for the new film Rage. According to director Sally Potter, Law took on the role of Minx -- "a "celebrity super-model" [who] took on a kind of hyper-beauty for this persona... a 'female' beauty which gradually unravels as the story unfolds." Potter adds, "Strangely, the more he became a 'she', coiffed and made-up - the more naked was his performance. There was great strength in his willingness to make himself vulnerable. It was an extraordinarily intense part of the shoot."
Rage was chosen to premiere at this year's Berlin Film Festival (which is just about to start), so I'm sure we'll hear more about it real soon. Described as "a bitterly funny exposé of the inner lives of individuals working at a New York fashion house – as if shot by a schoolboy on his cellphone camera - over seven days in which an accident on the runway becomes a murder investigation.," Rage also stars Judi Dench, Steve Buscemi, Eddie Izzard, John Leguizamo and Dianne Wiest. Check out more character photos from Rage in the gallery below.
[via Filmonic via SallyPotter.com]
Review: Nothing Like the Holidays
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », New Releases », Theatrical Reviews »
There are no ingredients in Nothing Like the Holidays that you're not already familiar with from other big-crazy-family Christmas movies. Then again, so what? The Christmas breakfast my mom makes every year never has anything new either -- in fact, there would be open rebellion if it did -- and that suits everyone just fine.
Nothing Like the Holidays is warm and comfortable in that way, mostly pleasant, mostly well acted, and moderately entertaining. Directed by Alfredo De Villa (Washington Heights), it boasts a luminous ensemble of Latino actors as two generations of Puerto Ricans living in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood. It captures the cultural flavor of their yuletide festivities and intra-family squabbling without being so specific that non-Latino audiences can't appreciate it. Details aside, anyone with a family can relate to most of what happens here.
What happens is that the Rodriguez family gathers for Christmas. Edy (Alfred Molina) and Anna (Elizabeth Peña), married for 36 years, own a neighborhood bodega and eagerly anticipate the reunion of their three children. Their oldest, Mauricio (John Leguizamo), is married to a Jewish girl, Sarah (Debra Messing), and they both work for a law firm in New York. The youngest, Roxanna (Vanessa Ferlito), has been trying to break into showbiz in Hollywood. The middle child, Jesse (Freddy Rodriguez), is a Marine who has been discharged after three years in Iraq, just in time for the holidays. Buffoonish lothario and electronics store owner Cousin Johnny (Luis Guzman) is there, too, and so is Ozzy (Jay Hernandez), a former thug who now works for Edy.
Review: Righteous Kill
Filed under: Drama », New Releases », Mystery & Suspense », Theatrical Reviews »
.jpg)
Whatever you do, don't throw Michael Mann's Heat (or God forbid, The Godfather II) into the DVD player prior to venturing off to your local theater to see Righteous Kill. Part of you might want to watch the film that last featured Robert De Niro and Al Pacino opposite one another to get you in the mood, but you'll surely be disappointed when the popcorn's run out and what you're watching on the big screen doesn't even belong in the same conversation as the film you just watched at home. That's because Righteous Kill is a predictable pile of pass me the paycheck, with both De Niro and Pacino phoning in a combination of past performances -- of men with tough, no-nonsense New York City exteriors and sly, slickly-delivered one-liners. This isn't the De Niro and Pacino of old ... it is, unfortunately, the older De Niro and Pacino.
Since Righteous Kill was written by Russell Gewirtz, there are definitely similarities between this and his last script, Inside Man -- both films are about men who do bad things for the good of the people. Righteous Kill opens with a voice-over from Detective Turk (De Niro) against some grainy, black-and-white video. Turk tells us he's killed 14 people during his years as an NYPD cop ("most people respect the badge ... everyone respects the gun"), but they were all lowlife thugs who deserved it. After some quick-yet-stylish (and somewhat annoying) cuts back and forth through time, we finally arrive at a pretty standard whodunnit with both Turk and his partner Rooster (Pacino) hot on the tail of a serial killer who leaves the equivalent of third-grade poetry with each of his victims. Roses are red, violets are blue ... I guessed all of Act III and so will you.
'Christmases' vs. 'Holidays': The Winter Family Comedy War Looms
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », New Line », Trailers and Clips »
Feel that chill in the air? That's because you left the kitchen window open -- go on, I'll wait -- but that secondary chill you're feeling would be the multiplex yuletide season turning in our direction, ready and waiting to melt the bleep out of your heart. Last year, it was This Christmas and The Perfect Holiday begging to be mistaken for one another (in title, not in quality).
This year we've got at least two winter-themed family-minded dramedies waiting in the wings. First out the gate is Nothing Like The Holidays (the trailer's now up at Apple), in which a Hispanic-American family gathers for what might be their last Christmas spent together. Sooooo ... it's basically This Christmas, with the casting emphasis on a different minority. However, for all that film's familiar beats, I found myself surprisingly won over, so here's to hoping that something similar might come of Holidays on November 21st.
In the other corner, we have Four Christmases, in which Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon find themselves shuffling off to visit each of their parents on X-Mas Day. If this (embed-less) TV spot on YouTube is any indication, Vaughn's creaky neurotic shtick and infant spewage will be par for the course, not to mention the last thing I might expect to come from the non-doco directorial debut of Seth Gordon (The King of Kong). As the Hollywood gods have decreed it, Christmases is set to open just before Thanksgiving on November 26th. Ah, the smell of leftovers...
Haley Joel Osment Making His Comeback on Broadway
Filed under: Casting », Celebrities and Controversy »
We hadn't heard from child star extraordinaire Haley Joel Osment for a while -- at least not in any productive way. His last film (not counting the unreleased Home of the Giants) was the mediocre 2003 coming-of-ager Secondhand Lions; since then, news about him has mostly involved car accidents and drunk driving. But thankfully, things seem to be turning around. The actor, now 20 years old, will star in this fall's Broadway revival of David Mamet's challenging American Buffalo, alongside John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer. I'm assuming that he'll be taking on the role of teenaged Bobby, played by Sean Nelson in the 1996 film. Not a huge part, but being one of a cast of three on Broadway certainly isn't trivial.So few child stars make a successful transition into adult careers, but an actor of Osment's caliber deserves one. (The Sixth Sense is all well and good, but A.I.'s "David" was a masterpiece.) Now that he's no longer an adorable moppet, he should probably aim for "character actor" rather than "star." If that's the goal, then American Buffalo seems like a step in the right direction; there are few things like a little Mamet to establish some thespian street cred.
The play starts previews on October 31st and opens in November.
Your First Look at Gerard Butler in 'Game'
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Lionsgate Films », Newsstand », Games and Game Movies », Images »
Do you like video games? How about The Running Man? If your answer to both of these questions is yes, then you're in luck because a Gerard Butler fan site has provided a scan of the July issue of Empire magazine, which includes a sneak peek at the video game thriller, Game, starring Butler and Michael C. Hall (Dexter). OK, so they aren't the greatest photos, but they will remind audiences that the film will at least have stuff blowing up. Crank creators Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor wrote the script and also directed, and I can only assume the two will be doing what they do best: ridiculous action set pieces and over the top machismo.
Game centers on a 'not too distant future' where the most popular past time is an online game called Slayers. But this isn't your usual MMORPG; instead, gamers get to control real-life convicts. Butler stars as Kabel, the most popular contestant who has caught the eye of resistance fighters looking to bring down the games creator, Castle (played by Hall). The cast also includes Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes), Alison Lohman (Beowulf), John Leguizamo, and Christopher 'Ludacris' Bridges.
Game is scheduled to arrive in theaters this fall.
Review: The Happening
Filed under: Horror », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Mystery & Suspense », Theatrical Reviews », New in Theaters », 20th Century Fox »
In the Hollywood variation on a classic proverb, whom the gods would destroy they first make successful. So it's been for writer director M. Night Shyamalan, where the breakout success of The Sixth Sense first suggested he could do no wrong and then his later films suggested, in dribs and drabs, that he in fact could. The minor missteps in the otherwise-watchable Unbreakable, Signs and The Village were one thing; eventually, Shyamalan's status as a unquestionable talent culminated in Lady in the Water, a textbook example of what can happen when a filmmaker becomes so used to proceeding without supervision that they go right off the steep cliffs of self-indulgence with a full head of steam.
However, it seemed that even M. Night knew this, and looked to be retrenching with The Happening, promising us R-rated chills and thrills and goosebumps. And after actually seeing The Happening, it has to be said that the film's a perfectly fine summertime chiller, one that avoids the excesses and errors in judgment that unmade Lady in the Water but also one without the vision and excellence of The Sixth Sense. It's not that The Happening is bad, as such -- although there are a few fairly off moments in it -- it's more that I found myself wishing, on more than one occasion, that Shyamalan could forget about plucking the audience's heartstrings and instead just keep going for the jugular. I wanted The Happening's tension at a higher pitch so that I wasn't puzzling over plot holes and questionable character decisions while actually sitting in the theater; The Happening simmers when you want it to boil, smolders when you want it to burn.
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)
