Russell Crowe and Darren Aronofsky are busy with Noah. Will Smith is apparently tackling the Biblical brother rivals Cain in Abel in his directorial debut. Paul Verhoeven is taking on the big man himself in Jesus of Nazareth and now his earthly mother will be getting a big screen focus. Mary Mother of Christ will show Jesus’ life up until about adolescence and the recently retired Peter O’ Toole is apparently coming out of retirement to join the project, which is being billed as a prequel to The Passion of the Christ . The project is still casting, based on a script by Benedict Fitzgerald, who co-wrote Mel Gibson’s bloody crucifixion pic and Barbara Nicolosi. 15 year-old Odeya Rush ( The Odd Life of Timothy Green ) will play the role of Mary. Peter O’ Toole is apparently heading out of retirement to play Simeon, who blessed the infant Jesus, and Julia Ormond will play the mother of John the Baptist, Elizabeth, according to The Guardian. Ben Kingsley, meanwhile is apparently eyeing to play the era’s evil monarch, King Herod and producers are apparently hoping Judi Dench will take the role of Anna the Prophetess, a widow between 84 and 105 years old. They are also going after Hugh Bonneville to play Satan. Texas-based televangelist/author Joel Osteen is executive producing the project, and Aussie filmmaker Alister Grierson, who directed James Cameron’s deep sea dive film Sanctum , will direct Mary Mother of Christ. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ made over $611 million worldwide and over $370 million domestically. [ The Guardian ]
Things have been a tad quiet on the Planet of the Apes front of late, but Deadline reports that the sequel to Rupert Wyatt’s hit reboot — saddled with the unwieldy title Dawn of the Planet of the Apes , which instantly makes me think zombies are going to join in with our primate frenemies on the assault on mankind — has landed a new director in Matt Reeves ( Cloverfield , Let Me In ). Wyatt did well with his franchise re-starting Rise of the Planet of the Apes (only his second film, following the festival hit The Escapist ) so it was a bit surprising when he left the Fox sequel last month. The film only earned one Oscar nod, for Best Visual Effects, but notably sparked debate over the performance-capture as art thanks to Andy Serkis’s work as ape Caesar. Reeves demonstrated an innovative sensibility with Cloverfield and earned critical support with his most recent effort Let Me In , the Americanized remake of the kid vampire flick Let The Right One In . (Cue groan-worthy Hollywood puns: Did Fox let the right director in? ) Given the effects work and close collaboration with WETA that the first Apes film involved, however, he’s got a big job ahead of him in order to meet the Apes sequel’s May 23, 2014 release date. [via Deadline ]
It’s too bad they don’t give Oscars out for individual performances in documentaries because Liv Ullmann’s work in Dheeraj Akolkar’s Liv & Ingmar would be worthy of consideration. The Norwegian actress and filmmaker discusses her 42-year relationship with the late Swedish filmmaking legend Ingmar Bergman with such emotional candor and poetic economy that the movie becomes something much more than just a re-telling of one of the most famous work-love relationships in cinema. Although Ullmann and Bergman — who was 22 years her senior when they fell for each other on the set of Persona in 1965 — lived together for only five tempestuous years, the friendship that they built in the aftermath is very much a love story. And Ullmann’s remembrances of their time together and apart until Bergman’s death in 2007, combined with Akolkar’s sumptuous and artful telling of the story, make Liv & Ingmar a story that can be enjoyed without an immersion course in their work together. Liv & Ingmar is at its essence a story of two people who love each other but cannot live with each other. (Think of it as a real-life Celeste & Jesse Forever .) Ullmann, 73 will attend the U.S. premiere of the film at the New York Film Festival on Monday night, and the Oscar-nominated actress spoke to Movieline about her initial reluctance to participate in Akolkar’s film, her happiness with the result, her rollercoaster relationship with Bergman, and Johnny Carson’s flirting during a Tonight show appearance. Note: The door to which she refers in the interview is located at the house on the Swedish island of Fårö where she and Bergman lived together. On the door’s surface, the couple kept a kind of hand-doodled calendar of their good — and bad days together, and Akolkar repeatedly depicts the drawings as a document of their union. Liv Ullmann and Dheeraj Akolkar Movieline: Liv & Ingmar was clearly an emotional experience for you. Your decision to talk so candidly about your relationship with Ingmar seems pretty brave to me. Was it a difficult one to make? Liv Ullman: Well, I did say no at first, but then I met with the director and the producer here in Norway. They really convinced me I would like to be part of this, but only on a very limited basis: two days to be interviewed and to produce my readings from my book. That was it. I did not have anything to do with how the movie was made. It wasn’t a brave decision because I’ve done so many interviews in my life about Ingmar or Ingmar and me. It was only when I saw the finished movie and saw what it was about that I thought, Oh, if I had know this before, I would maybe would have been more scared because it is so much deeper than I thought based on the interviews I did. The director is a tremendously creative person, and I believe that if Ingmar were alive, he would have liked this version. It’s not how I would have described this relationship, or how he would. But nonetheless, it’s terrifically true. You’re saying that if you had directed this movie, your interpretation of your relationship with Ingmar would have been different? Mine would be different, yes, but I’m not saying that mine would be truer or closer to the truth. It would be my kind of truth. I would have talked more about the memories and the longing, but this is true in a way that I never thought about our relationship. To me, this film is interesting because the person telling the story never met us before. [Dheeraj] only knew me through reading my book Changing and through our brief work together. He never met Ingmar. And yet, Liv & Ingmar may be closer to the truth in some ways because he’s looking in at us and he sees us in a different way than somebody who was completely involved with the experience. That’s interesting. The film left me with the impression that you had worked very closely with Akolkar. No! This movie is his creative work. Except for the interviews I gave, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. We had no discussions beforehand about it. We did not talk while he was editing it or finishing it. We did not talk about music. It was his film. How did Akolkar contact you? He wrote me [to ask if I would participate], and I said, “No.” And I was so glad that the Norwegian people who have money in the film called me and convinced me to meet with him. Sometimes you need to see a person and listen to a person to make your decision. When we met, I saw this young man who was very different from me — a different country and a different religion as far as I know. But I could tell that he was hearing me. We met for one hour, and that’s it. And then we shot two days in Fårö. That’s how much we knew each other. And then when I saw the movie, I just knew this man knows me in so many ways. One of aspects of the movie that I found fascinating was that when your on-camera comments are interspersed with scenes with the Bergman movies you did, the films seem remarkably autobiographical. Was that apparent to you when you were making them? No, I’ve never known this. But that is Ingmar’s genius. The movies may be autobiographical for a lot of people. It’s easy to say, “Oh God, this movie is about us..” But maybe some other woman can say, “Oh, it’s about me, too.” I know a lot of people who’ve said they recognize themselves in these movies. That’s another thing that I really liked about this film: You don’t need to have seen your work with Bergman to feel the emotional impact of this film. It’s a story about a very intense love affair that works on a universal level. Other people have said that to me — that you don’t have to know Ingmar, or me, or our movies to enjoy this movie. That surprises me because the first time I watched it, I thought, maybe this will only appeal to people who have seen the Bergman movies. Liv & Ingmar leaves the distinct impression that you couldn’t live with each other but you also couldn’t live without each other. Exactly. But one thing is true: if we had continued to live with each other, we probably could never have been together as friends afterwards. For some strange reason, it happened at the right time for us. It was so painful — so painful. I hope I’ll never have that pain again. But it led to a deep friendship and often those friendships don’t happen either. When you’re on camera, you really communicate the emotional complexity of your relationship with Ingmar. The scene where you learn that he kept one of your notes tucked away in a favorite teddy bear is pretty devastating. I’m so happy you’re saying that, but the credit goes to the director. The moment with the teddy bear that you talk about – no one knew about it until the housekeeper in Ingmar’s house [in Fårö] said, “Do you know what’s in that teddy bear?” It was kind of a friendship letter that I wrote Ingmar around the time that I did Faithless [in 2000.] And he took the letter and put it in his teddy bear that was always at the house. When I learned about the letter, it was like Ingmar saying again: “I love you –but, of course, not like when you were in Persona . I love you in a different way, and your throwaway letter is so important to me that I’m putting it in my teddy bear.” If I hadn’t done this movie, I would never have learned that. The housekeeper would never have told anyone. The same goes for the door at the house with our drawings. Since I left Fårö, I was so scared that Ingmar would take away the door, or his wife would take away the door. And when Ingmar died, I was sure I’d lose the door. But if you see the film, you see that every year, he did things to keep the sun from bleaching our drawings. Now that there’s no one there anymore to do that, in a couple of years you won’t be able to see what we did very clearly, but now I’ll never lose the door. It’s in the film. That door symbolizes so much. There’s a hand-drawn image of two side-by-side hearts with faces, but they’re both wearing frowns. Was that the essence of your relationship –that you had this great love and yet struggled to make each other happy? You always hope that the other one will make you happy before you think of all the ways that you can make the other one happy. It’s so strange—those doors came just before it was all over [between Ingmar and me]. Why we made the hearts, I don’t know. The other thing I noticed when we made the film is that Ingmar put airmail stamps over some of the dates. I don’t know what’s under them. It’s probably sad. But again, it’s another sign of him saying he cared. Do you still feel his presence? Yes, I do. In this movie, people might say, ‘Ah, he’s not here. He probably would not have made this movie. That happens not to be true. I am so sure that Ingmar would smile and care about this film. I even made a contract with the producer: if I don’t like the movie, I’m going to badmouth it and just say that I spent two days on it and what a shame. I made a contract: no payment but I am free. So, why do you think I’m talking about it? I think this is a great movie about a relationship. It’s a great movie about love. In the movie, you talk about struggling with living in Bergman’s shadow. Do you feel free of that now? I’m will always be proud of having worked with Ingmar. But at the same time, I’m directing Uncle Vanya in Oslo now and an English film version of Strindberg’s Miss Juliet . I will also probably direct Ibsen’s A Doll’s House on Broadway. So, I feel my life has always been apart from Ingmar’s but always connected to him. If I didn’t have him, I wouldn’t have the deep satisfaction of having worked so often with one of the great people of cinema. He has given me so much knowledge and trust and I use so much of what he taught me. When I was in Hollywood and maybe doing things that weren’t the best of the best, I could smile because my luggage were some of Ingmar’s great movies. So nobody could say, ‘Ah, she shouldn’t be filming.” What are your favorite performances in non-Bergman movies? My favorite films are Jan Troell’s The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land , (1972) about Swedish immigrants to the United States. I was nominated for an Oscar for the first one. I just love those two movies. It’s been 40 years since they were made, but they still reflect the attitudes and the realness of why the Swedish came to the United States. I think they would be very important to show now that you are having a new election. I have to ask: I loved the clip in the movie of you being interviewed by Johnny Carson on the Tonight show. He seems genuinely smitten with you. Did he continue to flirt with you when you were off-camera? My husband thought the same thing. He watched it. No, [Carson] didn’t flirt with me after the show didn’t, but he did have me on his program a number of times. And the strange thing is that he didn’t want me at first. He said, “Oh God no, she’s serious. I don’t want someone like that.” He was talked into having me on because I was so open. And then I was there a lot. And no, he did not start, though I wouldn’t have even minded. My husband was very jealous. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Friday night saw the opening gala for the fantasy adaptation Life of Pi at the 50th Annual New York Film Festival, and oh boy the times they are a’changing! Who’d have ever guessed that a 3-D flick would open a prestigious film festival? Well, apparently if it’s from Ang Lee all bets are off. The director got major kudos from his peers for embracing 3D, with Fox head honcho Tom Rothman saying Lee has even topped Scorsese’s use of the medium in Hugo ! Check out my video interview below not just to hear Lee defend 3-D, but for an awesome Movieline shout out from Frank Oz himself. Plus: Tom Rothman has a warning for all other films on behalf of his upcoming Steven Spielberg sci-fi actioner, Robopocalypse , which I’m pretty sure will be in 3-D… Follow Movieline on Twitter . Follow Grace on Twitter .
Dimension Films must be saving a butt load on its make-up budget for Scary Movie 5 . For the second time in a week, the production company has sent out a photo from the movie that features tabloid stars who don’t need no stinkin’ prosthetics or CGI effects to deliver goose bumps. The above shot, taken on the set of the comedy horror picture, shows Big Ang Raiola from Mob Housewives , and Sherée Whitfield, from The Real Housewives of Atlanta, looking like Trouble . Scary Movie 5 doesn’t hit theaters until April 19, 2013, so I expect to see additional photos of tabloid regulars with cameos in the film surfacing in the interim. On Sept. 20, Movieline ran a still from the picture that depicted Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan in bed after a hot night in the sack (or maybe TMZ). As I noted in that post, it seems like it will only be a matter of time before Kim Kardashian gets a close-up. In the email that accompanied the photo of Raiola and Whitfield, a Dimension representative wrote that the two women, who are known for their combative ways on camera, “go to blows in an unforgettable fight scene.” No doubt, but I feel the need to note that with the kind of pneumatic decolletage Ang is sporting in the shot, I don’t think either one of those ladies would be able to get close enough to the other to deliver a deciding blow. That said, I do think they have a future in the horror movies. Just looking at these ladies inexplicably makes me think of the word, “succubus.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
First-time filmmakers will be celebrated at the inaugural First Time Fest, a film festival that will take place March 1-4, 2013. At a reception at the Players Club in Gramercy Park on Thursday night, FTF founders Johanna Bennett, the actor and philanthropist daughter of singer Tony Bennett, and producer Mandy Ward ( Palestine Blues ), announced that they are seeking submissions for the fledgling festival, which will be based out of the arts organization that was founded by Edwin Booth and Mark Twain. (Films will be screened at the Loews Village VII on Third Avenue and East 11th Street.) David Schwartz, the Artistic Director and Head Curator of Museum of the Moving Image is the festival’s director of programming, and Mitch Levine, CEO of The Film Festival Group, will serve as an adviser. The festival’s Grand Prize winner will receive an offer of theatrical distribution through Cinema Libre Studio ( Fuel , Bloodline ) in Canoga Park, CA.
You can see everything from a Romanian abortion drama ( Vegetarian Cannibal ) to a vulgar Dutch comedy where every other word is “cunt” ( New Kids Nitro ) at Fantastic Fest, but the bloody, still-beating excised heart of the festival is horror movies. Last year the horror category didn’t really come through for nudity, but this year we saw quite a few titles that mixed screams and skin in equal measure, and you can read all about them after the jump!
James Franco is still channeling all those Renaissance Men from – well, the Renaissance. The actor, director, artist, student, musician, model, writer (have I forgotten anything?) hit the Toronto International Film Festival last month promoting his latest in Spring Breakers by director Harmony Korine , in which he plays a low-brow thug . But now it’s late September and it’s time to roll out with something else. This time, it’s a music video with his newly launched musical project, Daddy, with artist Tim O’Keefe. Motown superstar Smokey Robinson joins in on vocals in the sultry single, Crime , which debuted today via Spin Magazine . Franco met the singer in a perfect alignment of coincidences that only a man with outsized good karma can have. He told Spin : “I had been listening to Motown everyday, talking to Tim O’Keefe about our project. He recommended a documentary about the history of Motown. So I watched the doc in the car on the way to the airport in RI one night, most of the doc was about Smokey. [Then] on the plane to L.A. I slept the whole way and when we landed I woke up with a smiling face standing over me. He said, ‘Hey, I’m a big fan.’ I just stared. ‘It’s Smokey,’ he said. If Smokey Robinson was a fan of mine I wasn’t going to let him get away. Six months later after Tim and I had written the songs I called Smokey from Detroit and asked him to sing on one of the songs and he said sure.” Franco said that his experience in Spring Breakers , which also stars Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine, influenced his Daddy project. His co-stars are featured on the cover art of the Daddy EP. And in one scene in the feature, his character, Dangeruss, sings to hundreds of people on the beach.”That showed me how different singing to an audience is than acting in a scene before an audience,” he said. “When you sing you are connecting directly to the audience; when you act in a scene you are engulfed in the imaginary world and you are connected to the other performers.” [ Source: Spin ]
Filmmaker Jenle Hallund has looked into the soul of America, and it sounds like we need a good shrink. Hallund is the intrepid soul who has spent the last weeks watching and, in some cases, listening to the 501 submissions that have come across her desk after controversy-courting Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier invited the world to reinterpret one of six great works of art for a community film project that will be unveiled at the Copenhagen Art Festival on Oct. 12. Participants had to base their entries on one or more of six different works of art that Von Trier admires: James Joyce’s Ulysses, “which once was banned in the United States because it was seen as obscene and lewd”; August Strindberg’s play The Father , “which still stands as a striking example of a dysfunctional family”; Paul Gaugin’s painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? French composer César Franck’s improvisations; or the music of the late Sammy Davis Jr., “who stepped himself into the hearts of people through song;” and the Zeppelin Field grandstand in Nuremberg, Germany that Hitler’s main architect Albert Speer created. The project is being called Gesamt , which translates to “coming together” or “a joint piece of work,” as Hallund explained to us back in August, and the filmmaker, who is a script consultant on Von Trier’s 2013 project, Nymphomaniac , as well as co-director of Limboland (2010), is now in the process of culling, editing and shaping those submissions into a film that she says will be called Disaster 501 — What Happened to Man? based on her interpretation and understanding of the material she received. “I think why I decided early on to make it a disaster movie was that most of the submission questioned the fundamentals of our humanity: love, morality and relationships,” Hallund wrote in email correspondence with me. “And nature was depicted as decaying and threatening.” But Hallund explained that now that she is “further in the editing process,” she has worked with “beautiful and tender moments and stunning visuals. The ache for the sublime and the ideal is still the dream for us,” Hallund noted, adding: “The most touching element for me is that all of these submissions, all of these people who bravely shared a piece of themselves all take part in creating the painting of the soul of our civilization.” Given this site’s U.S. roots, I asked Hallund what the American entries she received said about the soul of its civilizaton. “The American soul speaks and shouts fear and loneliness, and an overwhelming sense of estrangement and anger — of being disconnected from others and losing purpose and individuality,” Hallund wrote. “The soul of America expresses a rootlessness and a loss of humanity.” And yet, she explained, “A tender but cutting longing for love and meaning,” is also evident. Hallund, who received approximately 55 submissions from the U.S. and will use “visuals, stills, sound or music” from 10 to 12, said that, “overwhelmingly,” the themes of the American submissions “can be categorized into male and female.” “All the male submissions, regardless of which works of art they reference, are angry, desperate — full of malice and a sense of fear,” Hallund said. “The men address, either verbally or visually, a sense of being trapped inside their skin, of taking pleasure in hurting women. They are very animalistic and afraid . We have the broken and humiliated man who can no longer walk or love. “The female American soul,” she continued, “is without love — almost resigned to the loss of it. The female voice is very tender and soft. They speak of the love of their fathers, the sadness of the pain they have caused, and their longing for a man to love them.” Or, she said, “it’s the voice of a woman lost and afraid of disappearing….Fighting to assert control over her sexuality.” “Depressing stuff, I know,” said Hallund. But fascinating as well. I asked the filmmaker if traveling to Copenhagen next month is the only way that Americans can see Disaster 501, and she replied that she is exploring options to put it online. “I haven’t found the right solution yet,” she said. If she can turn 501 submissions of film, music and writing into a single film, she can do anything. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Greta Gerwig has gone from so-called Mumblecore actress, appearing in indie titles LOL , Hannah Takes The Stairs and Nights and Weekends to bigger fare by the likes of Ivan Reitman and Woody Allen in No Strings Attached and the recent To Rome with Love . But what most audiences may not know, is that she’s picked written some of the material she’s played on screen, including her latest Frances Ha , which she co-wrote with director Noah Baumbach . The comedy is Gerwig’s second match-up with Baumbach following 2010’s Greenberg and the pair began bouncing ideas off each other, eventually creating the hysterical black and white feature that debuted at the recent Toronto International Film Festival and will be having its U.S. premiere at the upcoming New York Film Festival . “We started trading some ideas after Greenberg Gerwig said in New York this week. “I knew I wanted to work with Noah again, and luckily he felt the same way.” Baumbach and Gerwig emailed sent email back and forth, creating Frances Ha ‘s electric personalities and hypnotic banter. In the film, Gerwig plays Frances, a New Yorker who is constantly on the move. Her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner) ups and moves into a plush apartment with a friend in New York’s TriBeCa neighborhood, leaving Frances to fend for herself. A budding dancer, she is dropped from her apprenticeship at a dance company, but her slow descent never does little to undermine her determination to succeed. Friendship is at the heart of the film and the sometimes racy lifestyle of twenty-somethings living in New York is played out honestly, even with some discomfort. “If you want to get technical about it, anything other than women falling in love is under-represented across the board [in movies],” said Gerwig. “When we were writing it, Frances and Sophie emerged rather than something that was imposed. It became clear that this was the most important relationship in her life and we decided that that was the story we would focus on.” Though Gerwig and Baumbach were obviously very aware of the script, the Oscar-nominated director of The Squid and the Whale decided not to let the other actors see the entire screenplay. He decided to experiment with actors only focusing on only their material and be left in the dark as to how their words and deeds fit into the bigger picture. “I thought there might be something interesting to having actors play at the moment and what was in front of them instead of having them in some ways tell the overall story, so that was the experiment…I didn’t want them to think how this scene falls in the movie,” said Baumbach. “They may know all too well where a scene falls in the movie. You don’t want the characters to know that really.” Gerwig received praise for her performance at a pre-NYFF screening of the film this week. Her character is a case study in contrasts. She’s smart, but makes bad decisions. She’s determined, but is constantly stumbling. She has strong relationships, but she’s often left in the lurch. Gerwig wrestled up a persona that would have been difficult for just any actor to pull off Frances’ unique peculiarities. Asked how she tackled Frances, Gerwig wasn’t quite sure how her personality came about. “I never really particularly meant to have a different way of acting than anyone else,” she said. “I don’t mean to sound like Johnny Cash, but that line, ‘I play guitar like this because I don’t know any other way’ – I don’t know any other way to act.” Continuing she added, “It’s always weird when you talk about acting because it inevitably descends into something mystical. But it’s from the inside coupled with needing to know why I am saying something. Working on the script doesn’t make acting any easier. It actually in some ways makes it more difficult because you know what something is supposed to be.” IFC Films picked up Frances Ha and will release the film in theaters and VOD at a future date.
