"Director Sacha Gervasi has tapped Scarlett Johansson and James D'Arcy to play Psycho stars Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins in Fox Searchlight's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. Anthony Hopkins will play the iconic director, while Helen Mirren will play his wife, Alma. [...] Sources tell Variety that Making of Psycho has drawn comparisons to My Week With Marilyn, and that the role of Janet Leigh could lead to the same awards consideration for Johansson that the Marilyn Monroe role did for Michelle Williams." [Variety]
W.E. wasn't just an undertaking for Madonna, who directed her Wallis Simpson/Edward VIII biopic with all the lavish heft of a gigantic watercolor landscape. It was also a labor of love for Andrea Riseborough, the 30-year-old actress playing Simpson, the American socialite whose romance with Edward led to his abdication of the throne in 1936. The film's most enjoyable asset, Riseborough was saddled with making the polarizing Simpson a wholly charismatic figure -- an Evita without the benefit of torch songs. She succeeds, and with her thoroughly photogenic Edward (James D'Arcy) in tow, she softens W.E.'s melodrama with fantastic ease. We caught up with Riseborough to discuss her fascinating director, her feelings about the subject matter, and the zaniness of the Venice Film Festival.
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I am obviously a thundering shill for Madonna whether she's making terrible movies with her ex-husband or making terrible movies with Griffin Dunne, but there's something about W.E.'s self-serious, accidental telenovela that's not even watchably bad. It's just humorless and overlong -- though Andrea Riseborough is fabulous as the polarizing Wallis Simpson. In a new 24-minute documentary about Madonna's big feature, the director and her cast do their best to sell their watercolored biopic, and I tell you what? They do a good job. Don't ask me to explain it. But James D'Arcy still looks like Anthony Perkins, so shut up and start crying in adoration.
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