'Iron Man 3' Director: Shane Black?
Big news! Shane Black might be the director of Iron Man 3.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the writer/director -- best known for his creation of Lethal Weapon -- has met with Marvel executives about taking over as director since Jon Favreau left the project in December. The assumption is that if hired, which THR insiders say "is far from a sure thing," Black would also write the script. Currently, IM3's story is being kept under tight wraps.
for the first time since the awesome If Black does indeed sign on to direct, he would team up with Robert Downey Jr.Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which, in case you forgot, is the film that pretty much rescued Downey's career from a bottomless pit of booze, coke and bad movies. Maybe there's a role for Charlie Sheen in this one?
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the writer/director -- best known for his creation of Lethal Weapon -- has met with Marvel executives about taking over as director since Jon Favreau left the project in December. The assumption is that if hired, which THR insiders say "is far from a sure thing," Black would also write the script. Currently, IM3's story is being kept under tight wraps.
for the first time since the awesome If Black does indeed sign on to direct, he would team up with Robert Downey Jr.Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which, in case you forgot, is the film that pretty much rescued Downey's career from a bottomless pit of booze, coke and bad movies. Maybe there's a role for Charlie Sheen in this one?
Classic Hollywood Spotlight, Directors Edition: Francis Ford Coppola, Part 3
Roger Ebert confuses me. Maybe 'confuse' is too strong a word. I had to unfollow him on Twitter because of his Luddite leanings -- one too many tweets about the Terror of the Kindle. But the man’s clearly passionate about film, far more knowledgeable than I will ever be. But then he writes what he wrote about Finian’s Rainbow and I shake my head.
Of course, it’s all subjective. The point of all the film reviews, star attributions, thumbs-up and thumbs-down is to complete a kind of sales cycle. For instance, I love Bad Boys. Yeah, that’s right, Bad Boys. I also love Birth of a Nation, which is horrifically racist. And while I love Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin kind of bores me. Why? It sure isn’t because Charlie Chaplin is “bad.” It’s just taste.
Anyhow, I personally agree with Ebert in his assessment of this week’s classic movie, and our third in a series about Francis Ford Coppola:
1969’s The Rain People.
After the disastrous Finian’s Rainbow, it appeared Coppola wanted to get back to the stripped-down, intimate style of film making he fell in love with in the first place. While working on Finian’s Rainbow, Coppola wrote the screenplay for The Rain People based on an incident from his childhood. After a fight with his father, Coppola’s mother had walked out of the house and spent two days alone in a hotel room. From that seed, Coppola wrote a story about a woman who leaves her husband and sets out across America in an effort to find herself.
The plot is baby boomerism to the extreme, but something about the delicate intimacy of the film making saves it from the arrogance of someone venturing into the Midwest on a search for America. Part of that delicacy stems from the approach Coppola took to production. He put together a crew of about 20 and set off on the road. The crew included a young George Lucas as production assistant, and an even younger Melissa Mathis on as Coppola’s babysitter. Mathis on would later be nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay for E.T.
Ebert may have been the first person to point out that The Rain People is a mirror image of Easy Rider, also released in 1969. In Easy Rider, a couple of hippie drug dealers venture eastward across the U.S.A. in search of a middle-class retirement in Florida. In The Rain People, a woman ventures westward across the U.S.A. in search of freedom from the trappings of the middle-class lifestyle.
It’s difficult, I think, for some artists to find and stick to their strengths. As much as one can enjoy the stylistic flights of You’re A Big Boy Now or the more whimsical moments of Finian’s Rainbow, The Rain People suggests that Coppola’s strength might be with more intimate moments. For sure, Coppola adds his little flairs -- intercuts of the main character’s wedding at the top of the film, and some other stuff later on -- but for the most part the movie is shot in an almost documentary style that doesn’t leave any room for the characters to hide.
If there’s a weakness in the story, it has to do with the “searching for America” feel -- that strange middle-class notion that one is more likely to discover what our counry means a thousand miles down the road than in one’s own front yard. It’s a weakness that displaces any potential power in the film, because it turns away from the apparent source of Coppola’s obsessions: the father and family that the woman left behind.
If only Coppola could find a story that sits closer to his obsessions with fathers and sons and his urban Italian heritage.
Adrian Lyne Returns To Film With 'Back Roads'
There are so few great filmmakers in the world, I just hate it when one stops working. I'm sure that's how some older cinephiles felt when Terrence Malick took a twenty year sabbatical between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, and how fans of Francis Ford Coppola felt when he took a decade off between The Rainmaker and Youth Without Youth. Personally, I've been waiting for Adrian Lyne (who hasn't made a film since 2002's Unfaithful) to come back to the art for some time and today I'm happy to say that he's finally getting behind the camera again with a project that should suit his sensibilities nicely.
Variety reports that Lyne has adapted Tawni O'Dell's bestselling novel Back Roads and will direct a feature based on the book, which was an Oprah Book Club selection in 2000. Infinity Media is behind the project and Lyne has already roped a stellar cast, including Andrew Garfield, Jennifer Garner and Marcia Gay Harden. The story, said to involve elements of a murder-mystery, centers on a young man from rural Pennsylvania who is forced to care for his three younger sisters after their mother is sent to prison for killing her abusive husband. At 19, his hormones are raging and hit a fever pitch when he becomes involved with a sexy local (and older) woman - a melancholy mother of two. The plot deals with how he handles his responsibilities to his family while living a life of his own. Garner will play the seductive mother while Harden will play a court-appointed psychiatrist. The source claims that the roles of the sister are being cast now and a few high-profile young actresses are under consideration.
With its mature themes and focus on sexual activity, Back Roads seems like a good fit for the man who made so many films that explored sensual behavior. Lyne is responsible for risque movies like Nine 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal, not to mention the 1997 remake of Lolita, which centers on the psycho-sexual obsession that an older man has with a teenage girl. Though love making is central to the narratives in all these films, they also tackle subject matter with more depth while creating memorable erotic imagery, which is exactly what Back Roads sounds like it contains. I'm not saying that it will be a "sex flick"; it appears to be more of a family drama with healthy doses of adult content. But I can think of only a handful of filmmakers that would be brave enough to tell a story like this (Nick Cassavetes comes to mind) and Lyne may well be the very best for the job.
Filming is set for a June start.
Rooney Mara Learns The ‘Truth About Fishes’
