peter sarsgaard Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Tom Cruise has been in Boston (what, haven't you read the reports of Suri sightings in Beantown?) filming what was previously known as Witchita, a new film from Fox co-starring Cameron Diaz that is billed as a spy comedy romance thriller. Well, the film that has been blowing sh*t up in Massachusetts has the new title Knight & Day, as well as an impressive roster of new cast members.

In addition to Cruise, Diaz, Paul Dano, Maggie Grace, and Marc Blucas, Knight & Day has added Oscar nom Viola Davis, thespian Peter Sarsgaard, and sexpot Olivier Martinez to the cast.

As Jen Yamato pointed out, this sounds like it could be successfully aimed at the female audience, but can audiences accept the idea of Tom Cruise as a Clooney-type dreamboat? Can he still be funny? (Funny on purpose -- not funny like in Valkyrie.) Will female audiences be turned off by Diaz? James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line) is directing, but the five (!) screenwriters include Dana Fox, who wrote Couples Retreat and What Stays in Vegas, and partner Scott Frank wrote Marley & Me and The Interpreter.

Color me skeptical. Cutesy title and a mixed bag of actors and writers? What do you think?

By: James Rocchi, reprinted from the Sundance Film Festival 1/23/09

One of the audience and sales success stories at this year's Sundance Film Festival wound up on my screening schedule late in the week through the cruel editorial equations of film festival journalism: An Education became a film I should see because I should see it. There had been praise for Nick Hornby's screenplay adaptation of Lynn Barber's memoir, a coming-of-age-story set in 1961 London; there were raves for Carey Mulligan's performance in the lead role; there was the news that Sony Pictures Classics had picked up the North American distribution rights for $3 million. Late in the festival, buzz and business both assured, An Education became a film to see if only to see if the hum and thrum of the week prior was in fact right.

An Education opens with the sight of young girls balancing books atop their heads to improve their posture, learning ballroom dancing, and taking home economics; since we know that the '60s are coming, and the young women we see don't quite, yet, the vision is like seeing a dinosaur, back straight and eyes front, walk blithely into a tar pit. Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is part of this world, but looking past it -- she's applying to Oxford, making sure her application looks good on paper. Told by her father (Alfred Molina) that she shouldn't be practicing her cello when she should be hitting the books, she's confused: "I thought we agreed cello was my interest or hobby. ..."

As you already know, October is Villain Month here at Cinematical. Since we're reveling in all things evil and villainous, I thought I'd share a little tidbit from Movieline and get our creative juices pumping. At the end of an interview with actor Peter Sarsgaard, the site asked about franchises and comic book sequels. His response:

Yeah, I've faced situations where I thought, "This is gonna be a lot of time for not very much reward," or "The rewards in this are purely financial." It's OK for that to be the reason to do something, but then I start to look at time, and I go, "Oh, but it's three years of my life." If I were just to do something for money, I would make sure that it didn't take an enormous amount of time out of my life. So, yeah. No comic book villains for me.

That certainly makes sense -- why grab a purely money-making movie if it's going to cost you a number of years and some more worthwhile projects? Then again, not every comic book movie is bad. There are the piles of dreck, but there are also flicks like The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 2. Let's not be completely reductive, Peter! Furthermore, your lovely wife was a great addition to TDK, so I would've thought you'd be cooler with the idea.

Naturally, now I'm wondering if there is a comic villain he'd be just perfect for. Is there one that's ripe for Sarsgaard? Will his comic distaste rob us of a great villainous performance?

High-gloss thrillers rarely elicit gales of unintentional laughter. Orphan is so bats*** crazy that it wears you down just enough to accept the lunacy and enjoy the movie for what it is: every parent's worst nightmare, writ large in childish crayon. For more than one reason, adoption advocacy groups can stop worrying. Although it starts off calm and determined, Orphan eventually descends into that weird territory where it might be OK to talk back to the screen.

For the sake of the other patrons in the audience, I don't actually recommend doing so, but it's hard to keep your mouth shut when you see some of the outrageous actions presented on screen. And it's so serious! If every parent frets that one of their children might be a "bad seed," Orphan takes that fear and amplifies it in twisted ways, dramatizing a bad seed gone beyond evil, a character who is gleefully demented and wickedly scheming, far beyond human comprehension in one so little. Yet the opening sequences are so skillfully handled that the film builds up a measure of goodwill, which makes it eminently watchable and keeps it from becoming a complete disaster.

Nearly all of that goodwill is due to the persuasive performances of Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. As Kate and John, parents of two young children, they are still grieving the loss of a stillborn daughter. After two years, John is ready to move forward and wants to adopt a child; Kate is less certain, but wants to please her long-suffering husband. Enter Esther, who they little suspect is the latest edition of the prototypical 'demon child from hell.'

Peter Sarsgaard made his big-screen debut in 1995's Dead Man Walking as the murder victim Walter Delacroix, but his breakthrough performance was in 1999's Boys Don't Cry as John Lotter, one of the killers of transgendered man Brandon Teena. Since then, he's become famous for his nuanced performances in a wide variety of films like Shattered Glass, Kinsey, Jarhead, and the upcoming An Education.

If you have missed the ubiquitous and creepy posters for his new movie with Vera Farmiga, Orphan, let me give you a quick synopsis. After Kate Coleman (Farmiga) has a stillborn baby, she and her husband John (Sarsgaard) decide to adopt Esther, a deadly serious Russian orphan who wears ribbons around her neck and wrists and old-fashioned ruffly dresses played by Isabelle Fuhrman. But things keep going wrong when Esther's around... hence the tagline in those ubiquitous and creepy posters with the tagline "There's something wrong with Esther."

After a long weekend of interviews and roundtables, Peter Sarsgaard was kind enough to talk to me over the phone about his favorite horror movies, the Orphan protests, and much more -- right here at HorrorSquad!

Danish director Lone Scherfig's new movie An Education is one of the finest movies I've seen so far this year and definitely one I'll be gunning for come Oscar time (and I am in good company). Based on the memoir by Lynn Barber and delicately adapted by Nick Hornby, An Education stars Carey Mulligan as Jenny, an Oxford-bound schoolgirl who finds the excitement she's been yearning for with David, a smooth operator played by Peter Sarsgaard. (As if dating a much older man who takes her out to parties, art auctions, and horse races isn't edgy enough in 1961, he's also Jewish. Oy!) James Rocchi wrote an excellent review of An Education from Sundance.

David manages to win her strict parents over (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) and as their relationship progresses, she transforms into an ultrachic '60s girl who brings her giggling friends perfume back from Paris. Olivia Williams (Dollhouse) is also outstanding as her concerned teacher. Rosamund Pike is great as the glamorous girlfriend of David's friend Danny, who is played by a rather debonair Dominic Cooper. Will she stay in school and head to Oxford or get a more real-world education from David and his friends?

The first trailer from Sony Picture Classics is up over at Yahoo, and it's a great tease of the joys to come in the feature-length film. The official website is here.

Barber is a respected journalist in the UK for The Observer and has given several very interesting interviews about An Education that spoil the plot just an eensy bit. If you're that curious, Google's got your back.

Another day, another snafu on the ol' political correctness front. It seems that adoptive parents and adoption agencies are up in arms because of a line in the trailer for Warner Brothers' forthcoming thriller, Orphan: "It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own."

A full ABC News report has parents calling for the studio to remove the line from the trailers, which it did, despite the fact that the trailer can only play before other R-rated films. But that's not enough, because apparently, the film itself can be and has been taken as one big campaign playing up the stereotypes and exploiting the fears of adoption.

I can't speak for everyone, but I'd like to think that any potential parent who finds themselves scared off from real-world adoption because of something they saw in a heavily exaggerated movie probably do not have the proper judgment to serve as a parent in the first place. As for the effect that line and the whole premise might have on adopted kids specifically, I really can't speak to that, as I don't know how exposed to the film's marketing they'd be if watching appropriate channels and seeing appropriate movies.

What are your thoughts? Over-reaction? Just right reaction? Or are we simply overdue for this summer's next big controversy?

[Thanks to Shock for the heads-up.]

It seems that a couple of horror trailers slipped through the proverbial cracks last week, so let's catch up, shall we? For starters, there's the creepy-kid thriller Orphan, in which Vera Farmiga apparently learns no lessons from Joshua and takes in an unusually mature girl with a knack for fatal shenanigans. We've embedded this and the other two trailers after the jump. Orphan opens on July 24th.

Next up is October's slasher remake, Sorority Row, in which a prank goes wrong and the girls who covered it up start getting picked off one by one. Come to think of it, I guess some kids haven't grown up on I Know What You Did Last Summer by this point, but hey, the tweens tend to turn out in droves for anything Carrie Fisher touches.

Last and certainly not least (probably my personal favorite of the bunch) is Funny or Die's mock trailer for Gobstopper, in which a crazed candy maker (played by a scary-perfect Christopher Lloyd) terrorizes Martha "Superbad" MacIssac and friends. I'm sorry to report that there's no word on domestic distribution yet, because I'm pretty sure that I'd rather sit through a full version of this than either of the two above.

One of the audience and sales success stories at this year's Sundance Film Festival wound up on my screening schedule late in the week through the cruel editorial equations of film festival journalism: An Education became a film I should see because I should see it. There had been praise for Nick Hornby's screenplay adaptation of Lynn Barber's memoir, a coming-of-age-story set in 1961 London; there were raves for Carey Mulligan's performance in the lead role; there was the news that Sony Pictures Classics had picked up the North American distribution rights for $3 million. Late in the festival, buzz and business both assured, An Education became a film to see if only to see if the hum and thrum of the week prior was in fact right.

An Education opens with the sight of young girls balancing books atop their heads to improve their posture, learning ballroom dancing, and taking home economics; since we know that the '60s are coming, and the young women we see don't quite, yet, the vision is like seeing a dinosaur, back straight and eyes front, walk blithely into a tar pit. Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is part of this world, but looking past it -- she's applying to Oxford, making sure her application looks good on paper. Told by her father (Alfred Molina) that she shouldn't be practicing her cello when she should be hitting the books, she's confused: "I thought we agreed cello was my interest or hobby. ..."

Since the baby descended upon their lives, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard have been laying low, staying out of the spotlight. (Except, of course, for Ms. Gyllenhaal showing Katie Holmes how Dawes is done.) But now each actor has a bunch of projects on the way, and have added a play to the mix.

Variety reports the pair have grabbed roles in an Off Broadway production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, which will hit the stage next year. The twist in this news -- they're both grabbing roles, but they're not playing lovers. Gyllenhaal will play Yelena, while Sarsgaard plays doctor Astrov. This means that she'll play the new, young wife of Serebrakov (the 70+ George Morfogen ... a coupling I bet you didn't see coming!). Also in the cast are Meryl Streep's daughter, Mamie Gummer, and Denis O'Hare (the man who watched the infinite abyss in Garden State) as Uncle Vanya. Just to make it all the more tantalizing -- Austin Pendleton (Catch-22, Short Circuit) is directing it.

New York residents should definitely keep an eye out for it, and the rest: head to the Big Apple and make it a Dawes-on-stage double feature -- Katie v. Maggie, the final decision. I'd rather suggest you see Peter and Maggie's short film High Falls, but it doesn't seem to be available on DVD or online.