Posts with tag JesseEisenberg
Posted May 7th 2008 9:45PM by Eric Kohn
Filed under: Comedy, Independent, Casting, Deals, New Releases, Cannes, Slamdance, Sony, Distribution, DIY/Filmmaking, Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing
With five nominations, it looks like
Superbad will be the star of
the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, and its three jubilant male leads --
Michael Cera,
Jonah Hill, and
Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- deserve the kudos. But one major talent behind the whole affair has stayed relatively anonymous while these young up-and-comers bathe in the spotlight: Director
Greg Mottola. The erstwhile independent filmmaker, responsible for some of the best installments of
Arrested Developed and
Undeclared, launched his career a solid decade before the rise of
Judd Apatow with a charming little low budget comedy called
The Daytrippers. Starring
Stanley Tucci,
Hope Davis,
Liev Schreiber, Parker Posey and a host of other fantastic character actors, the film follows a wildly dysfunctional family over the course of a single day, as Davis, playing a worrisome housewife, tries to track down her unfaithful husband (Tucci).
Mixing warm humanity with pitch-perfect screwball timing,
Daytrippers marked the sort of debut that told you a filmmaker had a big career ahead of him. After a modest premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival, it landed at Cannes, barely got a theatrical release and promptly vanished thereafter. Mottola turned to TV work, and slipped out of the film scene for a good ten years. These days, it's no easy task to track down
Daytrippers on DVD --
you can nab second-hand copies on Amazon for decent rates, but not a single retail outlet carries it. Aside from the occasionally airings on cable, the movie has vanished.
Continue reading Sony Hopes to Release Greg Mottola's 'Daytrippers'
Posted Nov 15th 2007 11:02AM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Casting, Newsstand, Religious
Take the title "
Holy Rollers." What does it make you think of? There are all sorts of possibilities, but I bet this one didn't pop into your mind -- drug-dealing Hasidic Jews. Oh yes,
The Hollywood Reporter has posted that
Jesse Eisenberg (
The Squid and the Whale) and
Justin Bartha (
National Treasure) are starring in a Jewsploitation comic drama called
Holy Rollers. Funnily enough, this isn't taken from the realms of fantasy, like Adam Goldberg's awesome
Hebrew Hammer. This puppy is based on a true story.
Set in 1999, the project is "ripped from true-crime headlines" where Hasidic Jews were tapped to smuggle drugs into the U.S., and "follows an impressionable youth (Eisenberg) from an Orthodox Brooklyn community. He's lured into becoming an Ecstasy dealer by a friend (Bartha) with ties to an Israeli drug cartel." The duo do their business in a club, and
Danny Abeckaser (who has had bit parts in films like
El Cantante and
The Education of Charlie Banks) has been tapped to play the club's owner.
The film will be
Kevin Asch's directorial feature debut, from a script by
Antonio Macia. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're looking for questionable material), Macia's first and lone screened writing credit (he also penned the upcoming
Ego) is
Anne B. Real -- which has the honor of being #9 on IMDb's Bottom 100 list. It has a user rating, out of 2,331 votes, of 1.7. That gives new meaning to flops and bad movies. But still, it has Eisenberg, so I'm holding out some hope. Maybe, at the very least, it'll be so bad that it's good?
Posted Oct 10th 2007 6:32PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Drama, Deals, Distribution
While Limp Bizkit frontman
Fred Durst is already moving onto
his second cinematic feature, a sports drama starring Ice Cube, many of us are still anxious to see what he made of his first,
The Education of Charlie Banks. A few years ago, he was telling people he was a "
real director" before he had even made the feature. Then, it sounded like the statement might have been more than pompous boasting -- beyond a cast headlined by the wonderful
Jesse Eisenberg (
Roger Dodger) and
Eva Amurri (
Saved!),
Variety gave the film a solid review from Tribeca earlier this year. Now, finally, the film has been picked up for distribution.
The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Anchor Bay has picked up the North American theatrical and DVD rights to the debut, for release this spring. It's a coming-of-age drama starring Eisenberg as a high school student who sees a bully (
Jason Ritter) severely beat two kids at a party. Years after telling the police and reneging his testimony, he enters college and the bully shows up at his school, becoming part of his circle. Of course, the kid wonders what the bully's motives are, and whether Ritter's character is there for revenge. Between curiosity over Durst's directorial chops, and this cast, I'll be there to check it out, but what about you? Will Durst's name make you run to the theater? Keep you from it? Or is his involvement irrelevant?
Posted Sep 19th 2007 10:02AM by Christopher Campbell
Filed under: Comedy, Casting, Miramax, Cinematical Indie
It's going to be hard to follow
Superbad, but as
we've previously learned,
Greg Mottola is going to give it a try. He's already working on his third film,
Adventureland, which at least has that goofy-cool compound-word title thing going on, just like
Superbad. Of course, this seems to be a theme that goes all the way back to Mottola's first feature,
The Daytrippers, and so the similarity can't promise that the new movie will be anything like
Superbad (not that
The Daytrippers was bad; it just wasn't
Superbad). Then again, if Mottola really wanted to ride the
Superbad train he would have tried to get
Adventureland made with
Judd Apatow as producer, and he probably would have cast
Michael Cera in the lead. Instead,
according to The Hollywood Reporter, he's got
Jesse Eisenberg (
The Squid and the Whale), who also has a great awkwardly comic manner but is certainly underrated compared to Cera. Joining Eisenberg are two more people who had nothing to do with
Superbad:
Ryan Reynolds (
Van Wilder) and
Kristen Stewart (
Panic Room).
Eisenberg will star as a college graduate who has to take a job working in an amusement park rather than go on a European vacation (he should have worked at Epcott, which could have been a compromise). Stewart is a tomboy (isn't she always?) co-worker who he falls for. Reynolds' role is a bit confusing. He's apparently an aspiring rock star (too old) who is, and I quote both
The Hollywood Reporter and Variety here, "the icon of cool to all the kids working at the park." Does he also work there? Is he playing a concert there? Are all the kids working at the park really that uniform? I'm not sure. Mottola wrote the presumably autobiographical script (it's set in 1987, around the time he would have graduated from college) and
The Door in the Floor's
Ted Hope and
Anne Carey are producing.
Adventureland begins shooting next month in Pittsburgh (at Kennywood?).
Posted Sep 8th 2007 1:32PM by James Rocchi
Filed under: Comedy, New Releases, Podcasts, The Weinstein Co., Interviews, Cinematical Indie, War
How do you make a comedy about a hideous Civil War? Are TV journalists automatically 'sexier' than print journalists? How much time does a director have to devote to 'method hair'? What's it like filming in a Holiday Inn pockmarked with bullet holes? And is it easier, or harder, to make a movie with the suits from the studio an ocean away?
Cinematical had the chance to speak with director and writer Richard Shepard about
The Hunting Party, his follow-up to the Sundance breakthrough hit
The Matador. The Hunting Party stars
Richard Gere,
Terrence Howard and
Jesse Eisenberg as three journalists of wildly varying experience and wildly varying ethics who choose to search for a notorious Balkan war criminal -- but are they looking for the story, or for something more? Articulate, animated, and never ambivalent, Shepard spoke with Cinematical in San Francisco; you can
download the interview right here.
Posted Aug 27th 2007 8:02PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Trailer Trash, The Weinstein Co.
At the beginning of the month, we brought you
the ultra-wordy poster for
The Hunting Party. No, it isn't some flick about rifles and the hunt for gamey meat, but instead, the hunt for notorious bad guys. Aside from having tons of words, the poster actually answered its own question, which is both weird and funny. They asked: "How can they find the World's most wanted war criminal when they C.I.A. can't?" This is followed by some journalistic style: "[by actually looking]." The poster -- it's alright, but it isn't half as cool as
the trailer that is now out.
The film stars, get this --
Richard Gere,
Terrence Howard and
Jesse Eisenberg as a few risk-loving journalists and a cameraman who decide to find the top war criminal in Bosnia. (I'd go see it just for the cast alone!) The trailer is all about the irresistibility of danger, mixed in with some good, old-fashioned American cover-ups and humor. This is the first time in eons that I've been intrigued by Gere in a role, and I love seeing him with Howard, who usually picks great movies and Eisenberg, who is just plain awesome. While it doesn't seem to really tread new ground,
Hunting looks pretty entertaining and fun -- and it's based on an Esquire article called
What I Did on my Summer Vacation by Scott Anderson. What's even better -- you don't have to wait too long to check it out. The film comes out September 7.
Posted Jul 1st 2006 9:05AM by Martha Fischer
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Casting, Newsstand
Odds and ends from Friday:
- Lionsgate came to their senses, and the studio has changed the name of P.D.R., their upcoming based-on-a-true-story, heart-string tugging sports movie about -- wait for it -- triumph over adversity. Originally named for the Philadelphia Department of Recreation (yawn), the film will now be called Pride, a solid, perfectly unmemorable title for what is sure to be well-acted (it stars, among others, Terrence Howard and Evan Ross, who was great in ATL), perfectly unmemorable movie.
- We reported back in February that both Val Kilmer and Meryl Streep had signed on to star in Dark Matter, the debut feature from Chinese opera director Chen Shi-Zheng. The film was about "a Chinese exchange student [played by heartthrob Liu Ye] who takes revenge after [his] hopes for a Nobel Prize are wrecked by internal school politics," and sounded fascinating and pleasingly dorky. Now, about four months later, all of those things remain true -- except for the part about Val Kilmer. According to reports that surfaced yesterday, he's had to leave the project (blasted scheduling conflict) and will be replaced by Aidan Quinn.
- In early May, it was announced that Richard Gere and Terrence Howard (yes, him again) were going to star in Spring Break in Bosnia, a potential-laden film about "a completely hair-brained scheme hatched by a trio of American journalists (including Sebastian Junger, author of A Perfect Storm) to capture a Bosnian war criminal." Their plans didn't work out very well -- shocking, that -- and the three ended up being mistaken for CIA. I hate when that happens. Originally, Topher Grace was rumored to be in line to play the third journalist, but it was announced yesterday that Jesse Eisenberg (Walt from The Squid and the Whale) will play the part. Nice.
Posted Apr 12th 2006 6:03PM by Martha Fischer
Filed under: Drama, Independent, Casting, Newsstand, Cinematical Indie
As I'm sure you all remember, late last year
Fred Durst told MTV about his rather impressive cinematic ambitions. And
I quote: "
I want to
be beside Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson and Francis Ford Coppola. I'm a real
director." Make no mistake about it, haters, Durst has big plans. And now, finally,
The Education of Charlie Banks, Durst's long-discussed feature
debut, is going ahead. The movie, which has a budget of about $10 million, was written by Peter Elkoff, and revolves
around "a Vassar College [Holla!] student who gets an unannounced visit from the scariest kid from his old New
York neighborhood." (What Vassar has to do with it is anyone's guess, but I'm preparing to be offended.)
Durst has scored a surprisingly solid young cast for his film, including
Jesse Eisenberg (the big brother from
The Squid and the Whale), who
will play Banks, and two of the shockingly talented male leads from
Joan of Arcadia,
Jason
Ritter and
Chris Marquette. The movie starts filming this June
and, with those stars and a $10 million budget, Durst has a great start on that movie career of his. He better not
screw it up, dammit.
