jr. Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Billy Ray Goes from Fact to Fantasy with 'The Conjure Wife'
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Deals »
Billy Ray's fact-based dramas are one of this decade's true -- and largely unappreciated -- pleasures. With Shattered Glass and Breach, Ray demonstrated real sense of how to turn a true story into a compelling narrative, maintaining its credibility without becoming a slave to the facts. The same skillset should translate nicely into adapting a novel. Or at least I hope so, since Ray's newest project is a really interesting-sounding adaptation.The book is The Conjure Wife, the 1943 debut novel by Fritz Lieber Jr., who would go on to become one of the more prolific American fantasy and science-fiction authors. It involves a college professor who learns that he owes much of his success to his wife's supernatural assistance. After demanding she stop, he must face the unpleasant consequences of going it alone. Ray will write and direct, though it's not clear if The Conjure Wife will sneak ahead of the fact-based project Ray currently has in the works -- How to Rig an Election, the story of a political operative who swung a 2002 Senate race using some not-entirely-ethical means.
This is actually not Ray's first foray into the fantastic, though with any luck it'll be better than Volcano, which Ray co-wrote back in 1997, and Suspect Zero, which he co-wrote with Zak Penn in 2004. Nor is this the first cinematic go-round for The Conjure Wife, which has been adapted as Weird Woman (with Lon Chaney!), Night of the Eagle (a.k.a. Burn, Witch, Burn!), and Witches' Brew, none of which, sadly, I've seen.
Affleck Joins Bateman in Mike Judge's 'Extract'
Filed under: Comedy », Casting »
Here's a movie that's getting stranger and stranger the more details we get -- and I'm loving it. First, Mike Judge's Extract was simply a movie that "explores what it's like to be the boss when everything seems to be shifting around you." Then it became about a guy who owns an industrial flower-extract plant and has to deal with workplace issues and a cheating wife. Now, it turns out that one of the "workplace issues" is an employee who loses a body part in a freak accident, and that the wife is cheating on the protagonist with a gigolo. Awesome.Jason Bateman plays the factory owner -- that, we already knew. We also knew that the amazing Kristen Wiig is playing the wife, and Mila Kunis another employee. The new info is that Clifton Collins, Jr. has joined the cast as the maiming victim, and Ben Affleck as an ambulance-chasing lawyer who, I'd imagine, wants to milk Bateman's character for all he's worth. No word on who's playing the gigolo.
I got pelted with poop for praising Mike Judge's last movie, the largely direct-to-DVD Idiocracy, the first time I wrote about this project, but I stand by comments. It would have been easy for Judge to do Office Space 2, but it's been gratifying to watch him go in some even more offbeat directions instead.
RvB's After Images: Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe...(1969)
Filed under: Music & Musicals », After Image »
Uh-oh.
Submitted for your approval: a berk named Merk in bed with his bird. The fuzzy photo cannot really sum up what's going on here. The still I would have preferred is this film's money-shot: a red-cloaked Milton Berle conducting a Satanic mass in convincing Latin. Somehow this is not available on the Internet. Here, instead: a relatively chaste shot of quintuple threat Anthony Newley (actor/director/co-writer/singer/composer) grappling his real-life wife (the beeyoutiful and talented Joan Collins).
The still is a relic of what I've sometimes thought was the worst film ever made by a human being in world history.
Philip Noyce Directing Counterfeiter Biopic
Filed under: Drama », Newsstand »
Everyone loves a rogue, and "Art Williams, Jr." was a rogue. Williams -- not his real name -- was a genius counterfeiter, circumventing even the state-of-the-art protections of new American bills. According to a 2005 Rolling Stone article (not available online), his fake notes were so good that "an FBI agent is said to have once counted $3,300 of his fakes on the hood of a police cruiser, then handed them back." He printed some $10 million in phony $100 bills before finally getting sent to jail last year, despite having been fingered by the FBI several times prior to that.In what sounds sort of like Catch Me If You Can redux, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Art's life will be brought to the screen in The Art of Making Money, with Philip Noyce slated to direct after he finishes his Scarlett Johanson-led Mary Queen of Scots project. First-timer Frank Baldwin will write the screenplay from the Rolling Stone article (which will itself soon become a book). It sounds like a return to the good old mainstream days of Clear and Present Danger and The Bone Collector for Noyce, and a departure from his recent arthouse stylings (which included the absolutely sensational Rabbit-Proof Fence).
Weirdly, I can't google up anything on the real guy behind this story -- aside from the Rolling Stone article, he may as well not exist. Not having his real name doesn't help, but I'd have thought something would have turned up. I'll keep trying.
Jeremy Renner Wants To Be An Avenger
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Indie Roundup: 'Sweetgrass,' 'Clarkworld,' 'Broken Embraces'
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Watch: Famous 'Matrix' Scene Re-Created with LEGOs
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