Buscemi, Miller Do Van Gogh
No, this is not a biopic about the famed painter but rather a look at one of his distant relatives, the late Dutch director Theo van Gogh. Sienna Miller, Steve Buscemi, Tony Shalhoub and Patricia Clarkson will star in two U.S. remakes of films by van Gogh, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Shalhoub and Clarkson will star in Stanley Tucci‘s Blind Date as a couple trying to repair their shattered lives and rebuild their relationship after their child passes away. In Buscemi‘s Interview, the actor-director plays a faltering political journalist reduced to interviewing one of the country’s top soap opera actresses (Miller). Why remake a Dutch director’s work, you might ask? Because the man was killed in a sensational manner–and well, that’s intriguing enough as it is. Van Gogh was murdered in November 2004 by Islamic radical Mohammed Bouyeri, after his short film Submission–which examines the violence against women in Islamic societies–was televised on Dutch television. As a tribute, producers Bruce Weiss (of New York-based Ironworks Prods.) and Gijs van de Westelaken (of Netherlands-based Column Prods.) recruited Buscemi, Tucci and Bob Balaban to direct three films Van Gogh was planning to remake in English before his death. Balaban‘s 06, the story of a couple whose entire romance begins and ends on the phone, has yet to be cast.
Other Little Tidbits
From Premiere magazine: Kirsten Dunst is set to portray Marla Ruzicka, an American aid worker who died in Iraq in April 2005 after an attack by a suicide bomber…Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’s director Mike Newell is directing a new film, Love in the Time of Cholera, based on the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. It’s a star-crossed lovers tale set in Colombia and loosely based on Marquez’s own parents, who were forced apart by poverty in the 1900s…Brad Pitt’s production company is looking to do a retelling of the legendary Appalachian battle between the Hatfield and McCoy families. Wonder if it’ll be a comedy…Quentin Tarantino is producing Killshot, a thriller based on an Elmore Leonard novel, starring Diane Lane and Thomas Jane. It centers on a couple who enter the witness protection program after accidentally foiling an extortion scheme. Mickey Rourke will play an assassin hired to kill them. Good stuff.
Depp and Winslet Get Wet
Well, not really. But Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet are going to narrate the giant-screen 3-D documentary Deep Sea 3D for the IMAX theaters. The film, set amid underwater creatures that inhabit the oceans’ depths, is set for a March 3 release exclusively on IMAX screens. It will be scored by composer Danny Elfman, who recently provided the music for Warner Bros.’ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and shot by Howard Hall, the director of IMAX’s first underwater 3-D film, 1991’s Into the Deep. Unfortunately, it also sounds suspiciously like James Cameron’s Aliens of the Deep. Honestly, I’m not sure how interested I’d be in watching more weird subterranean sea creatures swimming around–but car racing sounds like fun! NASCAR 3D: The IMAX Experience, which is narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, is currently playing at IMAX theaters coast-to-coast.
More On the ‘Johnson Family’
Oh, goody! The Johnson family is getting ready to go on another vacation. Fox Searchlight is moving forward with a sequel to Johnson Family Vacation, the low-budget Cedric the Entertainer comedy that earned more than $31 million domestically last year. That film followed the Johnsons on their cross-country trek to their annual family reunion. Johnson Family Vacation 2 will pick up where the holiday ended. What ridiculous and completely unnecessary fun!
Hal Sparks Being Hal Sparks
Queer as Folk star and inescapable talking head Hal Sparks had an out of the ordinary conversation with Entertainment Weekly recently. He told them he will soon be en route to China to film a pair of martial arts films. In Chinese. Well, that’s different. “I speak Mandarin and study martial arts, so this has always been a dream of mine. I’m going to be a semicomic-relief fighter. You know, like I am in real life on the street,” he told EW. Um, is that all you are doing, Hal? “Next fall, I’ll do a feature I’ve written called Babe Lair. It’s a modernization of The Three Little Pigs, with three guys using their apartments as a lure to get the same girl to like them.” OK, that sounds a little more like it.
Until next week…
