Also in Tuesday morning's round-up of news briefs: Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci will receive honors at an upcoming awards event. Ron Perlman joins a psychological thriller and remembering producer Hank Moonjean.
more »
Paul Dano intends to rock you — musically and emotionally — this fall. In the So Yong Kim-directed For Ellen, the indie-film darling plays Joby Taylor, a rock musician who puts aside his fading dreams of stardom to fight for custody of his six-year-old daughter Ellen, played by newcomer Shaylena Mandigo. more »
The title character of Ruby Sparks is a 26-year-old painter from Dayton, Ohio played by Zoe Kazan, who also wrote the film's screenplay, She has bangs and wears brightly colored tights. Her first crushes were on John Lennon and Humphrey Bogart. She loves to cook, can't drive and doesn't own a computer. Her problems, as someone points out, are all of the "endearing" variety.
more »
Though it’s always a bad idea to review a director’s intentions at the expense of the actual results, there’s something about Paul Weitz’s movies that makes you want to cut him a little extra slack. Weitz, with his brother Chris, was one-half of the directing team that brought us About a Boy (an affecting and well-crafted adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel), as well as American Pie (which, despite its reputation as a teen raunchfest, was surprisingly in tune with the complexities of sexual relationships as they’re experienced by young women). The pictures Weitz has directed on his own have been either unjustly overlooked (as in the case of the freewheeling satire American Dreamz) or justifiably lambasted (there’s not much to say about the icky gun-for-hire vehicle Little Fockers). But when Weitz is at his best, his films show an easygoing open-heartedness that more technically gifted directors – we’re looking at you, Alexander Payne – can’t even begin to muster. There may not be a single misanthropic bone in his body.
more »
Poet/playwright Nick Flynn's memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is right for a movie adaptation: Its two main characters, Flynn and his father, are deep, articulate characters with a lot of angst to go around. In the first trailer for Focus's adaptation Being Flynn, the younger Flynn (Paul Dano) analyzes the value of reuniting with his estranged father (Robert De Niro). Clip after the jump.
FILM NEWS 