kevin macdonald Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Newspapermen occupy that movie middle ground between detectives and action heroes. They dig up clues, but the clues are hard-won, based on experience and the building up of contacts and sources. The clues are rarely left at the scene of the crime. Newspapermen rarely get into danger, but when they do it's not something they're really prepared or trained for. Coming face-to-face with a deadly killer, Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) can barely make eye contact. Cal doesn't fight or outwit the bad guy; he just runs and hides. It's not important that he try to be a hero. It's more important that he survive to write the story.

Of course, real reporters don't get to solve murders and uncover international corporate conspiracies every day, and that's where Hollywood comes in. The new film State of Play is based on a six-hour BBC mini-series from 2003. I haven't seen the original, but I'd bet that it's much distilled and sped up, and no one is going to argue that the new film is any kind of improvement. But taken on its own, it's probably the best newspaper/journalism movie in years -- perhaps since Shattered Glass (2003) -- even if it falls far short of the purity of All the President's Men (1976). It's also the first movie of its kind to address the inherent feud between sturdy, superior, old-fashioned print reporting, and reckless, inexperienced, sloppy blogging. (Guess which side the movie is on?)

Thirty years ago, a political crisis and two movie stars inspired thousands of young people to pursue a career in journalism. Now that the profession may be dying, is it foolish to hope that an economic crisis and three movie stars could revive interest?

Opening tomorrow, Kevin Macdonald's State of Play stars Russell Crowe as a world-weary reporter investigating a murder in which his old friend, politician Ben Affleck, may have been involved. Rachel McAdams also stars as an up-and-coming blogger. Obviously, that's a very different kind of movie than Alan Pakula's All the President's Men, which starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who helped uncover the full extent of the Watergate conspiracy in the 1970s. In the wake of that movie, The Atlantic commented: "Today's generation of young Americans is flocking to journalism schools in unprecedented numbers ... the extraordinary popularity of 'communications' has been attributed to 'the Woodstein Phenomenon,' the effect of the Woodward and Bernstein feat of exposing and unseating the Nixon gang in the White House."

Ever since, there has been no shortage of qualified journalists; the problem is that jobs for journalists are drying up faster than a water hole in the Sahara. Without getting into a discussion of why the newspaper and magazine industries are dying, my questions are:

• Will anyone look beyond the murder thriller trappings of State of Play?
• Will it cause anyone to think about why good, solid investigative journalism is still so important -- in part, to hold elected officials, government workers, and corporate executives accountable for their actions?
• Will anyone be prompted to come up with viable solutions to sustain and support a valuable profession before it's gone forever?

Errol Morris is probably the highest-profile working documentarian after Michael Moore -- and since Moore is more of a video essayist than a documentarian, Morris is, in truth, number one. He's also one of the rare documentary filmmakers who embraces the genre as cinema rather than mere journalism. His movies are always visually interesting, and never straightforward.

That bodes well for Morris's upcoming maiden voyage into narrative cinema: a yet-untitled dark comedy about the good old days when people thought that cryonics was our best bet to cheat death. The movie, focusing on 1960s efforts to freeze people for later reanimation by future scientists armed with incredible technology, will be written by Zach Helm, who wrote Stranger than Fiction and wrote and directed the lovely Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium.

Documentary filmmakers transitioning to narrative features isn't anything new of course. This weekend's State of Play, for example, was very competently directed by Kevin MacDonald, who not only began his career making documentaries, but actually made one about Errol Morris. And of course we all remember Michael Moore's Canadian Bacon.

While MacDonald seems to be focusing on fiction these days, I can't imagine Morris will ever abandon documentaries altogether. But if his narrative effort is half as formally original and visually exciting as most of his docs, I won't complain if he does.

[UPDATE! Our old friend Christopher Campbell reminds me in the comments that Morris has already made one narrative feature, that I forgot about and now need to run out and see. So this will be his second.]

[Variety]

At last year's Cannes Film Festival, it was reported that Kevin MacDonald was interested in directing the Roman epic The Eagle of the Ninth once he wrapped up State of Play. Nearly a year later, Variety is reporting that he's officially on board along with scriptwriter Jeremy Brock, and beginning to assemble his cast.

The cast is a little surprising -- Jamie Bell is signed to play a Celtic slave, and Channing Tatum is in talks to join him as his Roman owner. I would have expected MacDonald to favor a British cast, and not an all-American type like Tatum, but hey -- he's certainly got the build and bone structure for a Roman officer.

Ninth is based on Rosemary Sutcliff's popular 1954 novel, and centers on a young Roman officer named Marcus Aquila. Forced into an early retirement after being wounded, he travels north with his Celtic slave (who will be played by Bell) to discover what became of his father's Ninth Legion, who vanished in the Scottish Highlands. Marcus also seeks to retake the legion's gold Eagle and reclaim the legion's honor. (The facts Sutcliff based her book on have since been debunked -- the Ninth Legion existed after 117 A.D., and is now believed to have been slaughtered in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Not as poetic, though.)

As I believe there can never be too many sword-and-sandal epics, I'm anxious to see this one come together, especially since they'll be bowing to authenticity and in the Scottish Highlands. It may be fudgy on the facts, but that doesn't mean it won't be an enjoyable costume drama.

An Academy Award-winning filmmaker has chosen his next project. Kevin Macdonald has signed on to direct Roman epic The Eagle of the Ninth, according to an announcement in Cannes by Focus Features. Macdonald won an Oscar for his superb documentary One Day in September and guided Forest Whitaker to his Academy Award for Best Actor in The Last King of Scotland.

Scotland co-writer Jeremy Brock adapted the screenplay for Eagle from the novel of the same name by Rosemary Sutcliff, the first in a series, originally published in 1954. The book is set in the second century in Roman-ruled Britain, telling the tale of a young Roman's search for "the truth about the disappearance of his father's legion," according to Wikipedia. Focus emphasizes the danger involved, with its hero off "to confront ... savage tribes, make peace with his father's memory, and retrieve the lost legion's golden emblem, the Eagle of the Ninth."

I guess now that the great Chess master Bobby Fischer has passed into the great chessboard in the sky earlier this month, it's open season on biopics. Variety reports that Last King of Scotland director, Kevin MacDonald, has signed to direct Bobby Fischer Goes to War. The film will be a drama based around Fischer's famous match against Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship. Spassky was a seven time Champion and was ranked as one of the top ten players in the world from the 1950's to the 1980's.

Fischer was born in 1943, and by the time he was 15, he was one of the most celebrated players of chess and a Grandmaster. He remains the only American born player to ever win the World Chess Championship. Perhaps, he is most famous for the mystery surrounding his life. As the years passed, Fischer bounced from Hungary, Germany, the Philippines and Japan. At the time of his death he was an Icelandic citizen who had become more and more isolated due to anti-American and anti-Semitic comments that he had made in the press.

The script is based on David Edmonds and John Eidinow's book of the same name. Shawn Slovo (Catch a Fire) has already been tapped to write the script and the story will put the chess match into the context of the real contest that emerged between the Americans and their Cold War combatants. So far there is no word on the cast, or more importantly who will be playing the bizarre Fischer. Production on Bobby Fischer Goes to War will commence later this year, so stay tuned for any updates that come our way.

With this latest bit of news, one things for certain: Kevin Macdonald is hurting when he should be playing. State of Play already lost Brad Pitt in November. He was having a slew of issues with the director, and decided to back out of his deal, which instigated Universal to make some threats of legal action. It was particularly crappy timing for the project, since it was set to begin filming when the actor bailed. Word later came that Pitt wasn't happy with the script, and thought it needed work. Presumably not interested in waiting the strike out, Universal disagreed, so they turned to wooing Russell Crowe to replace Brad.

The production will now begin in January, and Variety reports that star #2 is backing out -- Ed Norton. This departure, however, is because of a clash in start times -- State of Play now interferes with Norton's other project, Tim Blake Nelson's Leaves of Grass. So Eddie is out, and Universal already has its replacement -- Ben Affleck. So, as it stands now, Ben will be the "fast-rising politician who is caught up in a murder conspiracy. Crowe will play a journalist who leads a newspaper's investigation into the killing. He's conflicted in that he once ran the politician's campaigns, and he is now romancing his estranged wife." Still on the cast list, at least for now -- Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright Penn, and Jason Bateman. There is the possibility that Mirren will be the next to go -- she has a potential conflict with the upcoming Love Ranch, but they're trying to work things out.

So I ask you: Should State of Play frolic away, or is it time to shelve the project?

If you've been waiting eight years for Edward Norton and Brad Pitt to light up the big screen again, then your wait is officially over. The two were last seen in the highly successful, mind-bending Fight Club back in 1999, and will now be appearing together in State of Play. The film looks to be another heavy hitter as it will be directed by Last King of Scotland's Kevin MacDonald and is based off of the British miniseries bearing the same name. Variety tells us the film has been in the works for quite some time (we first reported on it here, and then here). Universal Pictures received the rights to the Paul Abbott series and Pitt was verbally on board right from the get-go (they feared throughout the script's rewrites he would be wooed by another project, but luckily this didn't happen).

The film is definitely asking Pitt and Norton to bring the serious acting gloves back out in a story that involves political power, murder, love affairs and the compromising of police investigations. Norton will play the politico whose future gains are thwarted by a lover's death and Pitt plays the journalist who becomes too involved with the women in the investigation. Now if they would just cast Meat Loaf in some kind of role, we'd truly know what Peaches and Herb were singing about in 'Reunited.'

It should be a green-tie affair at the opening night gala of this year's Tribeca Film Festival. The event, happening April 25, will be hosted by Al Gore and is set to feature some entertainment that will focus on the global warming issue. This entertainment is part of a partnership with the SOS (Save Our Selves) Campaign, which raises climate crisis awareness and will include live performances from some of the artists participating in SOS' Live Earth concert series happening on July 7. The acts set for the gala weren't revealed, but some of those involved with the Live Earth shows include Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Mayer, John Legend, Black Eyed Peas, Korn and Melissa Etheridge, who recently won an Oscar for the song she wrote for the Gore-featured documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Also, the night will include the premiere of seven short films, each of which deals with the problems and the solutions of the crisis and each of which is shorter than ten minutes. The directors and titles of these shorts were not yet revealed either, because the seven showcased films have not been chosen yet. They will be selected by the festival's planners from the 60 shorts that were commissioned by SOS. Some of the filmmakers who participated include Jonathan Glazer, Kevin Macdonald, Abel Ferrara, Amy Berg, Ari Sandel, the doc duo Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady and someone from Aardman Animation (Peter Lord? Nick Park?). It isn't completely made clear, but it seems that all 60 of the commissioned films will be shown during the Live Earth event. So, if you can't make it to New York City for the world premiere of the seven shorts, you can see at least those if not all of them at one of the concerts (so far the only locations announced are Shanghai, Sydney, London and Johannesburg, while the cities in the U.S., Brazil, Japan and Antarctica are TBA). I probably won't be able to attend the gala or one of the concerts, so hopefully there will be another place for me to see the films. After all, this is the best news for shorts fans since Cannes' announced its own opening night compilation.