mike binder Tagged Articles at Cinematical

• James Rocchi interviews Mike Binder, writer/director of The Search for John Gissing about the long road to getting his film distributed, and why he finally took matters into his own hands.
• Killer Bs on DVDs: Matt Bradshaw reviews a pair of Euro horror flicks, Black Candles and Evil Eye.
• James Rocchi interviews David Wain and Ken Marino of Ten Commandments comedy The Ten.
• Cinematical Indie Chats it up with Billy the Kid director Jennifer Venditti.
• Cinematical Indie Seven: A John Sayles Primer.
• James Rocchi reviews The Ten.
• Jeffrey M. Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows: The Day the Movies Died
• Cinematical Indie reviews JLo and Marc Anthony's biopic of salsa king Hector Lavoe, El Cantante.
• RvB's After Images: Skammen, aka Shame (1968)
• The Rocchi Review Podcast: James Rocchi chats up Heidi MacDonald of The Beat on all things comic.

For a guy who's usually at his best when he writes about male relationships, The Friday Night Knitting Club was probably the last project I expected Mike Binder to be involved in. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Reign Over Me director has been hired to adapt Kate Jacobs' popular novel for the big screen, with Julia Roberts attached to produce and star. Knitting Club is similar in nature to Binder's The Upside of Anger -- both feature single moms who find themselves in a situation where they are forced to juggle several responsibilities at once; in this case, it's running a knitting store while raising a teenage daughter.

Currently, no director is attached, though I imagine Binder would be up for the part if he turns in a dynamite script. One of the reasons why I think Binder was hired for the job, and might also snag the helming gig, is because the film (and book) is set in New York City -- where, lately, these little knitting shops are all the rage. There aren't many writer-directors who truly know how to capture a city; to use its tenacious beauty as a character within the film. Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese are the NYC masters (though both men have recently expanded their repertoires by setting their films in other cities across the globe). While Binder isn't quite at that level, Reign Over Me showed he's more than capable of providing an enjoyable NYC-based film. I've always been a Binder fan (that first season of Mind of a Married Man was freaking hilarious), and would totally support his directing Knitting Club. Here's hoping he knows how to knit -- most of the guys I know are clueless when it comes to that stuff.

Something unusual happens watching Reign Over Me, the new post-9/11 drama from writer-director Mike Binder (The Upside of Anger); the longer you have to actually think about it, the more diminished it becomes in your view. There's no denying that Reign Over Me is well-intentioned and well-acted, thanks to lead performances from Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle; at the same time, Reign Over Me feels a little off, with more than a few holes in it that become apparent viewed from a distance.

New York Dentist Alan Johnson (Cheadle) has it all -- great wife, great family, successful career. Having it all is, in fact, driving him a little nuts; where's the room for him to be him? One night, by chance, he sees his old college roommate Charlie Fineman (Sandler) on the street; Alan and Charlie fell out of touch a bit after school, and Charlie's been off the map completely since his wife and three children were killed on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11. Charlie is a mess -- tic-ridden, hunched into his headphones, blotchy and haggard -- but after a few more chance meetings, he and Alan do connect, over video games, all-night jam sessions, Mel Brooks movie marathons. Alan's retreating to juvenilia because adult life is crushing him; Charlie is mired in it because it's all he has left.

Much as P.T. Anderson did in Punch-Drunk Love, Binder takes Sandler's two most prominent comedic assets -- mumble-mouthed child-like meanderings and unglued, irrational rage -- and turns them into dramatic ones. Cheadle is, as ever, rock-solid; Alan's not irresponsible, and he's not a bad husband, but he thinks he could use a break, and Cheadle gets to not only deliver a few sterling laugh lines but also do some subtler, more affecting acting.

Odds and ends from Thursday:

• Seems everyone wants in on Sean Penn's first feature-film directorial effort since 2001's The Pledge. Oscar winners William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden have signed on to play husband and wife in Into the Wild. The pair will join Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn and Catherine Keener in the film, which is based on Jon Krakaurer's non-fiction book about a guy (Hirsch) who hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wild, only to wind up passing away four months later.
• In an interesting sort of shuffle, Ving Rhames will replace DMX as the lead in Marble City, a film which will mark stunt man Jim Vickers' directorial debut. Rhames will play an recently paroled ex-con hell-bent on settling scores and kicking ass. With DMX off the project, it opened him up to join Lou Diamond Phillips (Ya know, the guy from La Bamba?) in Death Toll. Story will revolve around gang warfare in New Orleans.
• Speaking for the first time about his role in Mike Binder's upcoming 9/11 drama Empty City, Adam Sandler admitted it's a pretty "heavy-duty movie." In a role that's completely opposite his usual comedic shtick, Sandler will play a man who lost his family in the 9/11 attacks. After going five years without talking to anyone, he runs into his old college roommate (Don Cheadle) who helps re-connect Sandler with the world around him. Also starring in the pic will be Jada Pinkett Smith and Liv Tyler. Personally, I think Binder is a fantastic writer who really knows how to tap into true human emotion. Definitely cannot wait for this one.