"Poetry book" & "burning question"?! That kind of sarcasm will get you your eyes poked out, Madsen.

PS I loved you in that movie where you were like the cool tough guy and...

But I think the burning question on everyone's mind is when is Evie Christie's new poetry book going to be launched?

Umm... I just really thought this needed to be posted;
saw it today while reading Now Magazine's listings:

Monday, September 12
MICHAEL MADSEN Actor launches his new poetry book, 46 Down. 7 pm. Free. World's Biggest Bookstore, 20 Edward.

Then I thought, Is this really fucking true? And Google answered, Yeah, it is true: www.michaelmadsen.com

Perfume -- the movie
Patrick Suskind's classic is finally being adapted. But, like many writers, he wants nothing to do with the film (except for the money). The Times Online looks at why writers avoid Hollywood (but cash the cheques).

writers see their carefully-honed treasures head off to the film factory and wonder if they will come back stunted and deformed, faithfully replicated, or, worst of all, transformed into something so much better than the original book that no one remembers who wrote it in the first place.

Home

I'd like to option the zeitgeist
When films resemble books. In development. By the same studio.

The novelist Michael Marshall Smith suggested it was the zeitgeist when asked about the similarities between his 1996 novel Spares and the new Hollywood film, The Island. Both tell the story of an escape from a farm where human clones are bred for body parts for transplants. In an e-mail to fans, Smith admits he is upset: the more so as his novel was in development at Steven Spielberg's production company DreamWorks, the outfit behind The Island.

Home

Plain Jane

A little love for the ugly girls. What do you get when Hollywood tries to squeeze extra tits and lips into a role written for a plain lady? Hilarity! No, wait, something else. Um, sadness? Upset? Lack of authenticity? Ratings?

Can a beautiful female actor do justice to characters who aren't supposed to be beautiful? Can they really channel the power of the plain? In theory, a good actor can convince us of anything, can make us believe them dowdy or ordinary despite their facial geometry, and give us the interior life instead.
...
But in a world, as the man who narrates the trailers would say, where all the women are beautiful, the value of beauty can be strangely devalued. Many films are populated with stunners but the plot demands that nobody notice. How on the screen do you show a fierce spirit or a strong intellect?

In Hollywood, the best way to suggest a woman with an intellect is to cast an actor who doesn't have a deep suntan. Thus we get Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman, sad and ethereal, playing a parade of scholars and writers. Although Kidman hasn't played an Austen heroine, all three have squeezed into the bodices of masterpiece theatre and all have played dead, white, female writers.

True, Gwyneth got Sylvia, whose own physical attractiveness has informed her legend, all scarlet lips and aggressive pashing sessions with Ted Hughes. Kate Winslet channelled Iris Murdoch with a pageboy bob and a hammy collection of gestures to suggest the novelist/philosopher's intellect: Winslet threw her head back when she laughed, she rolled her eyes, she frowned prettily. Kidman was more restrained as the suicidal Virginia Woolf but couldn't project the writer's formidable presence - she could only strike a pose in a putty nose, doing sad very well but not brilliance, and certainly not Woolf's uneasy mixture of pride and insecurity.

(Ah, Kate Winslet... I'd be her fat, bumbling scholar any day.)


Home

I look forward to when our acting isn't farmed out to the poorest developing countries anymore, just so they can be paid slave wages.

I'd like to see a big budget film with a large cast of characters, where every single one of the different characters, from starring roles to extras, are portrayed by the same actor.

I also look forward to the day when the public has matured to the point where it is acceptable for male and female actors to be cast in roles that are opposite to their gender.

I can see Angelina Jolie as... Never mind, you all don't want to know....

G

I assume Hopkins will play Hrothgar. The rest can only be guessed at.

If it's more of an animated thing, I can see Crispin Glover providing Grendel's voice, but Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother????? Nope, can't see it.

Poor Grendel has had an accident
I don't know about the casting of the new Beowulf movie....

Winstone ("Sexy Beast") has signed on to play the title character and will be joined by Glover as Grendel and Jolie as Grendel's mother. Rounding out the cast are Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich, Alison Lohman and Brendan Gleeson.

Home

Da Vinci Code film to alter storyline?
To please Christians? My favourite line:

"A lot of people are getting their view of Christianity and the Bible from the book," said Alex McFarland, a speaker and writer for Focus on the Family, an evangelical group.

Yeah, we wouldn't people to get their religion from a book.

Home

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty movie
SciFiWeekly reports it will star Owen Wilson. Full text below:

Wilson Is The New Mitty
Paramount has tapped Owen Wilson to star in its long-in-development The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, to be produced by the father-son team of Samuel Goldwyn Jr. and John Goldwyn, Variety reported.

Mark Waters (Mean Girls) will direct, from a script by Richard LaGravenese.

Mitty originated as a short story by James Thurber and was turned into a 1947 comedy starring Danny Kaye, produced by Samuel Goldwyn Sr. While the new film retains the concept of a man prone to vivid daydreams, the storyline has changed considerably. In this version, he falls for the daughter of a bank robber. In the '47 film, he was caught up with some crown jewels hidden since World War II, the trade paper reported.

Samuel Goldwyn Jr. has been trying for more than a decade to mount a new version. He had developed the project at New Line, then moved it to Paramount, when John Goldwyn was president of the studio, with Jim Carrey attached to star and Steven Spielberg directing.

At various points, other directors attached included Ron Howard and Chuck Russell. Drafts have been developed by writers such as Russell, Peter Tolan and the team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, the trade paper reported.

Home

So writers are to blame?
Movie stars now come with personal screenwriters -- who can make up to $250,000 a week. Yeah, well, I still have my integrity. Only because no one will buy it.

When Will Ferrell was cast in Bewitched, he brought along Adam McKay, who has been writing funny bits with the actor since their Saturday Night Live days. Some of Adam Sandler's dialogue in The Longest Yard was rewritten by his longtime go-to scribe, Tim Herlihy. And filmmaker Sydney Pollack returned to Three Days of the Condor screenwriter David Rayfiel to polish the script for The Interpreter.

Home