paul haggis Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Normally, we don't run stories about the personal lives and religious beliefs of celebrities. The exception to the rule is when they have some kind of impact (positive or negative) on a film or a career. So when Paul Haggis gives the finger to the Church of Scientology, we have to run it. As Haggis himself admits, "I am fully aware that some of my friends may choose to no longer associate with me, or in some cases work with me."

According to Village Voice, Haggis has been a member of the Church of Scientology for 35 years. But he found himself questioning its practices and beliefs, particularly after its San Diego branch openly sponsored California's anti-gay Proposition 8. Haggis asked Scientology's spokesman, Tommy Davis, to denounce the branch. Davis skirted the issue, and Haggis went on the offensive with a confrontational letter that has made its way online on Mark Rathburn's anti-Scientology blog. "The church's refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word. Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent."

The church's bigotry encouraged Haggis to do a little digging, and he found an online interview with Davis, who claimed that the Church doesn't force its members to cease contact with anyone who forsakes the religion, or openly criticizes it. "I was shocked. We all know this policy exists. I didn't have to search for verification - I didn't have to look any further than my own home." Haggis' wife was ordered to "disconnect" from her parents because they resigned from the church.

Continued below the jump...

I'm beginning to think that Liam Neeson owns Hermione Granger's Time Turner, or that he has a lifelong supply of Red Bull because he's signed on for another role -- and this one would appear to be filming simultaneously with The A-Team. According to The Hollywood Reporter reports that Neeson has just joined Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks in Paul Haggis' The Next Three Days.

Days is a remake of the 2008 French thriller Pour Elle, and accuses an ordinary woman (Banks) of a gruesome crime she insists she didn't commit. She's sent to prison and becomes suicidal, and her desperate husband (Crowe) plots to break her out. (Ah, love!) But she'll have a little help from Neeson, who plays an ex-con who has broken out of prison multiple times, wrote a how-to guide about it, and offers his assistance to Crowe. The role is being described as "cameo in nature" which suggests Neeson might be narrating his own Dummy's Guide to Escaping From Prison, or is at least available to Crowe by cell phone to work out the tougher bits.

Filming just started on Days in Pittsburgh last Friday, and wraps on December 12. The A-Team just started filming too, so I'm honestly surprised that their schedules can coincide so neatly. Maybe Neeson is ducking down to Pittsburgh and filming this one on the weekends. I think they're missing a prime opportunity here to tie The Next Three Days into The A-Team universe. If there's one thing Hannibal Smith knows anything about, it's being accused of crimes you didn't commit, and evading the law until you're free of them.

If anything can make you forget the disappointment of Quantum of Solace, it's the news that James Bond 23 has taken the first big steps into production. No, that's not casting Bond girls or plotting explosions, but writing the script. Not surprisingly, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have looked again to the cream of Britain's film crop and hired a man who's gotten some attention at the Oscars lately: Peter Morgan. Few of his scripts have gone wrong (The Other Boleyn Girl is one mark on an otherwise impeccable record .. and even then, it's not that bad) and he'll definitely lend a lot of gravitas to the project. A lot.

Morgan won't be penning 23 solo, however. He's got some old hands in
Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (the pens behind both Quantum and Casino Royale), who are returning to the franchise ... and well, so long Paul Haggis. I guess he's taking the fall for Quantum.

So, now to find that new director. Rumors swirled that Danny Boyle had been offered the job, but that was quickly shot down by Boyle in an e-mail to EW. While it's always possible he could duck in once the script is done, we need to look to the rest of the United Kingdom ... and possibly to Morgan himself, who is about to make his directorial debut with The Special Relationship.

When I first saw the Chicago Tribune headline "'Crash' remains top DVD rental,' I was really hoping it was referring to Cronenberg's 1996 film about car crash fetishists. Sadly, it was referring to the Oscar-winning film from 2005 about interconnected Los Angelinos and their issues with class, race, and general navel-gazing.

Even Crash's director Paul Haggis isn't sure why his movie is still top of the pops at Netflix. He told the Chicago Tribune, "I just assumed it was some sort of anomaly... I have no idea why anyone went to the movie in the first place, let alone rent it. It was a little independent film, and when people started to see it, I was amazed."

Haggis, along with many viewers, was also surprised his movie won the Oscar for best picture in 2005, beating out Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck, and Munich. "It's certainly not a perfect movie," Haggis said. "I love the Oscars; I just think they are the best thing in the world, but if you asked me if it was the best film of the year, I'd say, 'Of course not.'" (So would a lot of people.)

It might have something to do with the Netflix recommending algorithm, which is great but definitely fallible -- it seems to think I want to see 27 Dresses and Henry Poole is Here. Or maybe people are really committed to watching all 81 best picture winners now that they're unemployed. What's your guess?

Well, it's sure been quite the week for movie-inspired television series that no one asked for. First up, by way of Ain't It Cool News, is a spot for G4's Spaceballs: The Animated Series. I'm not sure what prompted this Flash-animated wonder -- I mean, it's not like I want to give The Clone Wars that much credit for anything, let alone the likes of this -- but at least we know that something's keeping Mel Brooks and Daphne Zuniga from over-twiddling their thumbs.

Secondly, via /Film, is a promo for Starz' Crash, inspired by Paul Haggis' awards-sapping drama (and not David Cronenberg's psycho-sexual noir of the same name). Apparently, every other character is a corrupt cop, Dennis Hopper is the biggest actor in the cast, and it's shot like a faux-Showtime dose of pay cable conflict. Yeah, let's see the Emmys try and stay away...

I'll be impressed if one or the other lasts beyond a single season (the former premieres on September 21st; the latter, on October 17th). Are any of you genuinely compelled by either prospect? How about a show of hands for those who'll be driven by morbid curiosity and/or mere DVR convenience to give an episode of each the once-over?

Death is the ultimate dramatic device, but great art doesn't emerge from strong devices alone. In Take, the directorial debut of Charles Oliver, the impact of a single, startling tragic death immediately conveys the sense of watching a gravely serious movie, which is definitely the case. However, having immediately provided a tone, Oliver fails to follow up with a story powerful enough to justify it. That's not to say that the experience Ana (Minnie Driver) goes through after her son dies in a freak accident before the start of the film isn't relentlessly bleak, but there's hardly anything distinctive about the circumstances to make viewers care any more than they would if they were glancing at it in the morning headlines.

Still, Olilver has made a quietly observant work solely driven by the specific needs of two downtrodden protagonists with completely believable motives. In flashback, we learn that Ana struggled with her son's elementary school, which wants to put him in a special needs program. Meanwhile, she has a hard time communicating with her husband and finding decent work to get by. Elsewhere, reckless gambling addict Saul (Jeremy Renner) destroys his life in a whirlwind of debt. His misfortune, as it's shown in early scenes at a prison where Saul awaits execution, will lead him to accidentally murder Ana's innocent child, Jesse (Bobby Coleman).

Terminator IV doesn't yet have a replacement title -- but it apparently has a Kyle Reese. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Anton Yelchin is set to star alongside Christian Bale in the franchise reboot, set for release in May 2009.

It seems a bit early to be dragging John Connor's father-to-be into the story, doesn't it? If this is really going to be an ongoing franchise, the "My dad was also my comrade" seems like a juicy plot point that might be worth holding back. Otherwise, you're just remaking The Sarah Connor Chronicles instead of that War Against the Machines saga everyone's been wanting.

But the film has not only gained a new cast member, but possibly a new writer. Paul Haggis is in talks to come on board to work on the script, with production scheduled to begin in early May. Haggis has certainly shown he can handle a franchise reboot with James Bond -- perhaps we'll see a Terminator film in the same style. One can hope.

At any rate, how thrilled must Yelchin be to land Pavel Chekhov and Kyle Reese? They should cast him as Paul Aterides next.

This year, television is going to get one heck of a drama! It's got all the ingredients for a hit. Sex. Dysfunction. Car Crashes. No, no, no. I kid. While I'd love a series based on David Cronenberg's Crash, especially if Elias Koteas was in any way attached, this is about that other one -- you know, the Crash that won the Oscar. Yahoo reports that the adaptation will be cable station Starz's first original drama series, with 13 one-hour episodes planned.

The series even has handful of the film's names coming back behind the camera -- Paul Haggis, Bob Yari, Don Cheadle, and Mark R. Harris. As for in front of the camera -- no cast members have been picked yet, although production is scheduled to begin in the spring.

Now, I'm one of those people who actually really dug the movie. I thought it was interesting, thoughtful, and entirely gripping. I was happy to see it win the big statue. That being said, I wonder how this will play to audiences. Many people have noted it's heavy-handedness, so what will that mean for a weekly series? A few hours of it, sure, thirteen hours -- not so sure. What do you think?

Some major major news on the strike front seems to be leaking out today, with an official announcement expected to come at some point tomorrow (according to Deadline Hollywood). Looks like United Artists (aka the movie studio run by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner) is in the process of inking a deal with the WGA that's very similar to the one they made with David Letterman's Worldwide Pants. Said deal, if it goes through, would allow United Artists to work with writers on whatever upcoming projects they have planned, making them the first such studio allowed to do this since the strike began. Damn. Score one for Tommy Boy! It's not yet known which films will take advantage of this interim deal right off the bat, but we do know that Oliver Stone's Pinkville was recently postponed due to problems with the script. Chances are, with the cast for that flick already in place, it will be one of the first delayed productions to be back in business. Of course, this is all subject to the deal actually going through.

On the other hand, United Artists could get right to work on a literary property they just optioned for seven figures. While all this interim agreement talk continues, The Hollywood Reporter tells us UA has optioned the film rights to Ranger's Apprentice, a fantasy series written by Australian author John Flanagan. According to HR, it "follows the adventures of an orphan boy named Will who becomes an apprentice ranger and fights to keep the mythical kingdom of Araluen safe from invaders, traitors and other dangers with the help of his master Halt." Yup, that sounds like just about every fantasy series being optioned these days, but what's even more interesting is that writer-director Paul Haggis was in talks to adapt and direct at one point before the strike happened and halted those discussions. Haggis doing big-budget fantasy? Bit of a stretch if you ask me -- what do you think?

Yesterday, we ran the Guardian piece on Paul Haggis and noted that he hasn't yet laid claim to a title for his upcoming Bond film, still called Bond 22. Today there's more to report. This is very sketchy, and I've tried in vain to find the source video to investigate it myself, but here goes -- AICN is reporting the following, from a tipster who watches British television. Daniel Craig was on a U.K. television show called This Morning and some discussion of the title of the upcoming Bond film led to Craig maybe saying the title was going to simply be 007. Again, that's a giant maybe, because even the talkbackers on the AICN boards have noted that this appears to be more of an unfounded conclusion on the part of the commenter than anything with grounding. Specifically, Craig is "paraphrased" by the commenter as saying "It's more of a number. Because the first movie dealt with him earning his 00 status and now he is 007 for the first time."

Okay, what is more of a number? That's what's unclear here. The tipster is maddeningly vague on this point. After pasting the paraphrase from above, he goes on to say that Craig was specifically asked if 007 is the film's title, to which Craig responds that he 'may have said too much'. But did this come in response to the direct question about the title? If the interviewer put the question directly to Craig and he answered with "It's more of a number" then that's something. Otherwise, I think this is nothing more than a wild goose chase. By the way, I really need to get a life, don't I?