Briefly: One of Emma Stone‘s biggest breaks was being cast in Ruben Fleischer‘s Zombieland. Superbad was a good introduction for many audiences, but Zombieland led to Easy A and Spider-Man. Now she’s likely to re-team with the director for his true-life 1940s LA cops and mobsters film Gangster Squad. Read More »
Last season, FX’s boxing drama Lights Out entered the canon of brilliant-but-cancelled television series, when piss-poor ratings brought about its demise despite plenty of critical love. Thankfully, things seem to be working out better for the series’ acclaimed star, Holt McCallany, than they did for the show.
The actor is now in talks for Gangster Squad, Ruben Fleischer‘s highly anticipated (well, by us) period cop drama. McCallany would be joining an absolutely top-notch cast which already includes Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Anthony Mackie, Michael Peña, and Giovanni Ribisi, with Bryan Cranston in negotiations. How can you not get excited with a cast like that?
Based on a series of articles by Paul Lieberman, Gangster Squad tells the story of an LAPD task force which was formed to fight organized crime and corruption in 1940s Los Angeles. Gosling, Brolin, Mackie, and Cranston will be on the LAPD side; Penn will play real-life mob boss Mickey Cohen. McCallany is eyeing the part of Cohen’s bodyguard. Production for Gangster Squad will begin September 7. [Variety]
After the jump, Julia Stiles and America Ferrera team up, Dennis Quaid gets a much younger wife, and Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ivan Sergei find love.
Posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2011 by Russ Fischer
The first photos we saw from Paolo Sorrentino‘s This Must Be the Place, with Sean Penn as a Robert Smith-like rock star, were a little bit worrisome. Then we saw some footage, and I thought it looked pretty great. Reviews out of Cannes were not kind, however, and we seemed to be back to square one, or perhaps worse. Is the film, in which Sean Penn’s character searches for the Nazi who tormented his father during the Holocaust, a strange experiment, or an experimental failure? I still don’t know, but this trailer definitely suggests a few things. Check it out below. Read More »
Posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2011 by Russ Fischer
We’ve got classic cops fighting notorious gangsters, giant mechs fighting notorious monsters, and a despot and his double fighting…um…the boundaries of comedy? Something along those lines. After the break, check out details of the following three recent casting breaks:
Briefly: Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer is just not messing around when it comes to the cast of his new film, Gangster Squad. The film, scripted by LA cop Will Beall and formerly reffered to as Tales From the Gangster Squad, is based on a series of articles in the LA Times that recounted efforts of a ’40s LAPD squad to curtail the influx of organized crime in Los Angeles.
Sean Penn (as Mickey Cohen), Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling and Michael Peña were already in the cast and now Anthony Mackie has joined, too. He’s been rumored for this one (and for World War Z), but now he’s locked Gangster Squad. He’ll play Rocky Washington, ex-cop and the first black lieutenant in the LAPD, who is ultimately recruited to work as part of the gangster squad. Just when conventional wisdom says that a major studio will never fund an adult-oriented film like this, we get a period piece, with this cast. Cross your fingers that it works better than Public Enemies… [Variety]
Posted on Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 by Russ Fischer
Briefly: Good news for film fans in the UK who want to see the new Terrence Malick film: after Icon Entertainment totally botched release plans for The Tree of Life by announcing a plan to open it in London ahead of the Cannes premiere, Fox Searchlight and int’l right holders Summit International got more than a bit angry, and we didn’t know when the movie would open in the UK. Some behind the scenes legal wrangling no doubt went on, but the bottom line is now clear: financier Bill Pohlad and his River Road Entertainment has sold UK rights to Fox Searchlight. The company will open the film in the UK on July 8, which is the same date the film goes wide in the US.
We don’t have any word on the planned Australian or New Zealand release for the film, however. (Icon also had rights for those countries.) But this is a good step. [Deadline]
Well, it’s out in the open now. Terrence Malick‘s new film The Tree of Life, many years in the making and the subject of massive speculation and anticipation over the past two years, has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and the reaction is mixed. I’ve been generally avoiding reviews in anticipation of my own screening tomorrow afternoon (and Peter is seeing it right now, which may lead to a review this evening) but figured we should pass along some of the first reactions. They range from ‘brilliant’ to ‘pretentious’ — in other words, the first responses to The Tree of Life are the responses to Terrence Malick’s entire career, cast in miniature.
One of the first things that we heard, via Twitter, was that the debut screening — for which the line was reportedly quite impressive, rendering the wait to get in nearly as long as the film itself — ended with a smattering of boos. But this is Cannes. People boo. It happens a lot. In this case, we’re talking about only the fifth film in the 40-year career of a director that is one of cinema’s most analyzed creators. Expectations for The Tree of Life were particularly high, and so some specifically vehement reactions were to be expected from those who found it lacking.
After the break we’ve got a brief round-up of some reactions. This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive report, but rather a snapshot of the first takes. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 by Russ Fischer
The premiere of Terrence Malick‘s new film The Tree of Life is only days away. (May 16 in Cannes; it opens for real on May 27.) This is only his fifth feature in a career that spans forty-plus years, so forgive us for being a little bit (ok, extremely) excited. All involved have been quite good at retaining some of the film’s mystery, even with a trailer out there, and a couple of websites that have steadily offered many peeks at the story.
All we really know is that it is a multi-generational drama in which Sean Penn plays the adult son of Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, and that there are grandly cosmic themes wrapped around that relatively small tale. You can get a taste of those big themes and some of the movie’s time-spanning ideas in the trailer and from the official site. But there is also a new clip from the film that shows some of the minor family dynamics, and if the trailer just wasn’t enough you’ll want to check it out. Read More »
