When the worlds of Washington, DC political intrigue, infidelity, fitness centers and internet dating intersect and collide in a darkly hilarious fashion, you must be watching a film by the Coen brothers. Burn After Reading, Joel and Ethan Coen's follow-up to last year's critically lauded award winner, No Country for Old Men, was actually written by the duo as they were adapting No Country, but the two films couldn't be more different.
The colliding worlds in Burn After Reading involve a CIA analyst named Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), who's summoned to a top-secret meeting only to find out that the secret is he's being demoted due to his drinking problem. Cox blows a gasket and quits rather than taking the demotion, planning to spend his new-found spare time working on his memoirs and refining his drinking. Cox is married to Katie (Tilda Swinton), a icy pediatrician with the worst bedside manner imaginable, and she's less than sympathetic to her husband's life crisis.
Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game you won't want to burn after reading ... because, well, how could you win any prizes then? Last week we asked you to give us your best college-esque caption for a photo from the new comedy College. In return for your brilliance, we were shelling out a one-of-a-kind beer pong table. Sweeet! Only one winner this week, so congrats to John R. for his inspiring take on a classic tale ...
1. "Unfortunately, try as he might, Peter just couldn't find his way back into Narnia" -- John R.
This week, we're shacking up with our old Oscar-winning pals Joel and Ethan Coen as they get ready to unveil their latest darkly comedic crime caper, Burn After Reading, starring folks like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand. Prizes? Oh yeah, check it: One Grand Prize winner will receive one Burn After Reading USB 2.0, one T-shirt, one Water Bottle and two Wrist Bands. Wait, there's more! Four first prize winners will each receive one T-shirt, one Water Bottle, and two Wrist Bands. Sound off below!
For the longest time -- until earlier this week, in fact -- I was convinced that Jason Reitman's next directing project was Diablo Cody's horror flick Jennifer's Body. Maybe that's because at a Team Juno roundtable interview last year, the two of them talked about it like it was their project (which it is, sort of -- Reitman's producing). Anyway, it's actually Karyn "Aeon Flux" Kusama who is directing Cody's follow-up, while Reitman is moving on to helm an adaptation of Walter Kirn's Up in the Air.
I strongly recommend the novel, which is a terrific satire about a perpetually transitory businessman obsessed with collecting a million frequent flyer miles. I liked it better than Kirn's more popular Thumbsucker which was already adapted into a film. The movie could be very funny in the hands of a guy like Reitman -- sharp and insightful. It should be closer in tone to Thank You for Smoking than to Juno.
Reitman has already shifted the project into a higher gear by setting his sights on George Clooney, who's in talks to star as the narcissistic protagonist. While I'm pretty sure the character is quite a bit younger than the actor, Clooney has precisely the effortless comic chops this project needs. His profile won't hurt, either.
There's a rumor running all around the web that George Clooney is going to take on some controversial subject matter and film the story of Osama bin Laden's driver. It hasn't hit the trades yet, but according to The Observer, Smokehouse has bought the rights to Jonathan Mahler's The Challenge, a book about Salim Hamdan -- a Guantanamo Bay inmate recently sentenced to jail for his involvement with Osama.
The project details Hamdan's capture and trial, which went all the way to the Supreme Court. The man has been in US custody for seven years, and has just received a sentence shorter than the time he had to wait to receive it -- five and a half years. Rumor has it that Clooney might also grab a starring role in the film playing US navy lawyer Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, who defended Hamdan. I imagine it will be as much about Swift's story as it is about Hamdan (especially if Clooney takes the role). The case cost the lawyer his marriage, and got him passed over for a promotion.
Should all of this proceed, who would you cast as Hamdan?
There may not be much footage that we haven't already seen in either the original red-band trailer or the international teaser for the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading, but I noted enough bits and pieces to feel these two new videos worthy of sharing. Plus, for those of you who have a preference, George or Brad, you now have a trailer that fits you best. Personally, I'm hoping that the ladies, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton, get their own character-centric trailers. And while Focus Features is at it, how about individual spots for John Malkovich? Heck, give Richard Jenkins, J.K. Simmons and David Rasche each their own, too. I'm that excited about this movie that I want more, more, more.
Fortunately, we've only got about a month until Burn After Reading opens on September 12.
Finally. After God knows how many trailers, TV spots, viral sites, movie posters, merchandise, fan art, contests, Batman Anonymous meetings ("Hi, my name is Earth ... and I'm addicted to Batman), and an assortment of tomfoolery, The Dark Knight will officially arrive in theaters this Friday. And I've heard shows are already sold out through March 2011. Right on! That said, this might be the week you want to reflect back and read your favorite Batman comics, watch your favorite Batman movies, or spend some alone time with your favorite Batman.
Which brings us to this week's super awesome Monday Morning Poll: Who is your favorite Batman? For this we're sticking solely to folks who've played the Caped Crusader on the big screen. Since a lot of Bat-fans have come to adore Kevin Conroy's voice performance, we'll include both live action and animated versions. For me, it's a toss up between Christian Bale and Michael Keaton. Bale has the looks and the charm, but Keaton had that "insanity factor" -- one look in his eyes and you knew this guy had a few screws loose. Tough choice. Where do you stand?
His last movie didn't do so hot, but George Clooney's still making headlines. This time, he has spoken out about the recent split between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. According to Variety, Clooney has decided to stay neutral where many prominent actors have taken sides, and he's urging others to take the same route. If Hollywood actors go on strike, it'll probably be SAG's fault, considering the eagerness of AFTRA to negotiate a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. AFTRA's biggest defender is Tom Hanks, while Jack Nicholson is heading up the other side. "Stories about Jack Nicholson vs. Tom Hanks only strengthen the negotiating power of the AMPTP," Clooney said in a statement.
Like many actors, Clooney wants to take any measures he can to prevent a strike. As a member of SAG, the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America, he wears many hats. "I'm hoping that there might be a way out of this," he said. "To be sure, I'm not the brightest bulb out there. So maybe someone has a lot better idea." Then he got personal: "I just happen to believe so strongly in both unions... my father, my mother, aunt, uncle, even cousins were all members." Nobody's doubting his allegiance, but after souring his relationship with the WGA after Leatherheads came out, it's hard to say how the other unions will regard him in the coming months.
The consensus I've gotten from people after they've seen the red-band trailer for the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading is that nobody understands what it's about, and nobody cares, because everybody thinks it looks awesome. Well, if you thought that trailer was confusing, or at least lacking in plot synopsis, just imagine how moviegoers outside the U.S. feel after seeing this new international trailer.
As you can see, marketing to international audiences is more about selling the stars. Hence the CLOONEY, the McDORMAND, the MALKOVICH, the SWINTON and the PITT titles. As for story, there's even less revealed here than in the red-band trailer. In fact, it's almost a joke how little is said about the movie. Each actor/character maybe gets to slip in one or two words, which actually just serve as response to more intertitles telling us about the other major stars of the film: the Coens.
When you think John Grisham, you usually think of legal thrillers, right? Well, that and the term 'airplane reading', but you probably don't think pastoral sports stories (I know I don't). The Hollywood Reporter announced that Phoenix Pictures has purchased the rights to Grisham's 2007 novel, Playing for Pizza, and the company is already on the hunt for a writer and director for the sports dramedy.
Pizza centers on a third string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns named Rick Docker. After blowing his team's championship shot, Rick is dropped from the team and blacklisted from the NFL. Luckily for him, his enterprising agent finds him a spot in the Italian football league playing for the Parma Panthers. From then on the story is probably a compendium of 'fish out of water jokes', and general cultural misunderstanding -- I'm thinking something along the lines of Under the Tuscan Sun, but with a lot more tackling.
Variety has announced that George Clooney will star in Men Who Stare At Goats, a big screen adaptation of Jon Ronson's scary-because-its-true book. Clooney's Smoke House partner Grant Heslov will direct, while Peter Straughan has penned the script.
Ronson's book is an investigation into the secret wing of the U.S. First Earth Battalion. It was a paranormal research unit created in 1979 with the purpose of creating "Warrior Monks," soldiers who could walk through walls, become invisible, read minds, and even kill a goat simply by staring at it long enough. One ex-Army employee Ronson interviewed claims that he actually did kill his pet hamster and a goat by staring at them for a very long time. While the book is full of kookiness, it does branch out to discuss how the paranormal project has come to play in the current Iraq war. Not only have some of First Earth's research projects been employed as torture, a few of those claiming to have developed superpowers have reportedly been deployed to Iraq. Our tax dollars at work, people.
It all sounds like one of the funnier episodes of The X-Files -- a perfect project for Clooney; the right mix of political activism and screwball humor. Frankly, I'm sold by the title alone. Here's hoping they won't change it to appeal to a wider America.
After the gut-wrenching terror of No Country for Old Men (I haven't been that tense in a movie theater since, well, ever), I can safely say that I am incredibly relieved that the Coens' next film, Burn After Reading, looks like it is going to be a lot more fun. First Showing now has some stills from the Coens' black comedy, and it would appear that the brothers are returning to what I like to call their 'Raising Arizona roots.'
Burn is the story of a CIA agent (played by George Clooney) who is assigned to investigate the case of a former agent named Ozzie Cox (John Malkovich) who has taken his revenge on the agency by writing a tell-all memoir. When Cox's ex-wife (played by Tilda Swinton) steals the only copy and leaves it behind at her gym, the gym's owner (Frances McDormand) and star personal trainer (Brad Pitt) see an opportunity to engage in a little blackmail.
The Coen flick just got the nod to open the Venice Film Festival this year, but Burn will not be making an appearance at Cannes this year (which is a little strange considering the luck they had at the French festival last year). This makes it zero for two for Pitt now that his other high-profile film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, also failed to make the list for Cannes. Burn After Reading is scheduled for wide release on September 12th, 2008.
The vast majority of the WGA's 12,000-plus members patiently stayed away from their word processors during the recent three-month writers strike, notwithstanding dwindling finances or a threat to their careers. But a few members decided to go "financial-core," an irreversible decision that made them only limited, non-voting members of the guild and allowed them to return to work. (This, if you recall, is the move George Clooney made, before the strike, in response to the WGA's decision to deny him credit for the Leatherheads screenplay.)
On Friday, the WGA sent a letter to its membership that praised the writers for refusing to work, "[i]n the face of enormous personal and financial hardship," for the good of the union. It then went on to chastise those "puny few" who "consciously and selfishly decided to place their own narrow interests over the greater good." It urged that these writers "must be held at arm's length by the rest of us, and held accountable for what they are -- strikebreakers whose actions placed everything for which we fought so hard at risk." The letter ended with a link to a website containing the names of the 21 writers who opted to become financial-core members.
No sooner do I write an adulatory post about George Clooney than I come upon this story about the trouble he's been having with the Writers' Guild of America over credit for the Leatherheads screenplay. He's so upset at the way he's been treated that he's gone "financial core" at the Guild, which is an irreversible decision making him a limited, non-voting, dues-paying member. He says he would have quit altogether, but that would have basically prevented him from working as a screenwriter in Hollywood.
According to Clooney, the original Leatherheads script by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly had been bouncing around for almost two decades before he took it, rewrote it as a screwball comedy, and got the project greenlit. He believes that he wrote all but two scenes of the resulting film. But when the credit squabble went to arbitration before the WGA last fall, the guild determined that Clooney didn't deserve screen credit for his work. That was the end of the line for him (he declined to appeal), though he kept the matter quiet at the time because of the ongoing writers strike.
As Leatherheads arrives in theaters, you're going to be hearing the phrase "screwball comedy" a lot, either in the barrage of pre-opening publicity or in review after review. "Screwball comedy" implies a certain snap and rotation -- a velocity to the gags and a vector to the plot -- but the people who made Leatherheadsdon't quite have the strength of arm or skew of angle to make Leatherheads truly screwball; it kind of fizzles out on the way to the plate. And that's not to say Leatherheads is charmless or unenjoyable or ill-made; it just isn't quite as good as the pedigrees and passions of the people involved would have you think it will (or, frankly, should) be.
Yesterday, Monika asked if we were tired of George Clooney, who has undeniably been everywhere since making his escape from ER in the mid-1990s. I wanted to weigh in, because my answer is a curious one, and it sadly wasn't an option in Monika's poll: I used to be tired of him, but I'm not anymore.
I think the peak of my tiredness came with the dreadful Perfect Storm in 2000. I remember being so sick of seeing Clooney pop up as these boring, poker-faced, tediously noble action heroes. I hadn't seen his earlier B-movie efforts at the time, and the triple-threat of Batman & Robin, The Peacemaker and The Perfect Storm made me wish he'd never been born. (I had seen Three Kings, and honestly don't remember why that didn't change matters for me -- I think I wrote it off as a fluke, and was more impressed with Ice Cube anyhow.) What an anodyne heartthrob, I thought, with no personality or real talent. Get him out of my sight.
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