peter gallagher Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If I told you that Adam was about a man with Asperger syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism, you would instantly lose all interest in seeing it, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. If Fox Searchlight's marketers are smart, they'll keep a lid on that aspect of the film, because it's actually a humorously bittersweet story buoyed by likable performances, and not an oh-geez-here-comes-another-film-about-a-saintly-disabled-person movie.

The Adam in question, played by Hugh Dancy, is an electronic engineer whose current job has him working on a toy company's new talking doll. Adam's father has just died, leaving him alone in the spacious Manhattan apartment they once shared, with Harlan (Frankie Faison), a family friend, to keep an eye on him

Adam can mostly take care of himself, though. People with Asperger -- Aspies, as Adam calls them -- take things literally and have trouble knowing what other people are thinking, and they tend to misread facial expressions. Aside from that, they do OK. Adam is happiest when following a routine, and he gets particularly excited by astronomy. He doesn't seem much different from your average nerd.

The new tenant in his building is Beth (Rose Byrne), an elementary school teacher who is immediately fascinated by Adam's quirky personality, not realizing it's an actual mental disorder -- and after all, where is the line between "interesting" and "diagnosable"? Adam and Beth begin a tentative friendship and eventually a romance, though both are aware that such an arrangement will be difficult at best. Beth's father (Peter Gallagher), a corporate accountant who's just been indicted for shady bookkeeping, is adamantly anti-Adam for that reason.

News bites for the day before Friday:

• IESB has shared a juicy little rumor concerning the next Incredible Hulk installation. According to one of their readers who has an in at CW -- Peter Gallagher, whose OC series is just about to wrap, has been up for a part in the next installment. According to the source, his shooting schedule had to be juggled to include some sort of test for the movie. Could he be one of the villains (The Abomination or Thunderbolt Ross)? Or, is there a chance he'll take over the infamous man-that-turns-green himself? While he's a much different pick for the part of Bruce Banner, I'm a bit intrigued by the thought.
• Oldboy director Park Chan-Wook's latest film, I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK, is going places. After its first non-Korean screening at the Berlin Film Fest, it won the Alfred Bauer prize for innovative film-making and our Erik Davis gave it high marks in his review. Now, the movie has been chosen to close the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin on March 17. If you're curious for more, I shared the color-intense, quirky trailer in November.
• With each passing day, iTunes seems to do more to make itself irresistible -- not only to music fiends, but avid moviegoers as well. Since January, we've brought you news of their deal with Paramount, then Sundance Shorts and finally, Lionsgate. To further their involvement in film, iTunes has partnered with IFC Entertainment to offer a selection of indie films in their store. The selection will include their 2007 Independent Spirit Award nominees and previous noms such as Me and You and Everyone We Know -- for the low-low-low price of $9.99! Or not. (Is it just me, or is that a bit high for an iPod-quality video, when you could pay similar for a previously viewed DVD?) Thanks to tuaw for the news.
  

I guess fake disaster movies just aren't cool enough anymore. I mean, now that our generation has lived through some whoppers (seriously, though, Americans don't even know what a real disaster looks like), we just aren't settling for volcanoes in Los Angeles. And obviously, combining true stories, which audiences love, with cataclysmic destruction presented with stunning special effects, which audiences love even more, puts dollar signs in the eyes of Hollywood studios. It reminds me of Peter Gallagher in The Player pitching a straight-from-the-headlines movie about a horrible mudslide. "Triumph over tragedy," he explains, simply.

So Billy Ray, the writer-director who co-scripted that volcano in Los Angeles movie (Volcano), is currently focusing on true stories of real disasters. First, he tackled 9/11 by writing a script based on the book 102 Minutes, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn (I'm not sure what the status is on that project). And now he's about to take on Hurricane Katrina for a film he'll write and direct, called Hurricane Season. Based on Franklin Martin's documentary Walking on Dead Fish, the film will follow a Louisiana high school football team in the aftermath of the storm. Universal, the studio involved in the project, must have gold bars in their eyes, since adding a sports element to the true story/disaster combo (though Ray could avoid showing any hurricane action) should attract an even bigger audience.