Pedro and Penelope, Together Again?
Pedro Almodovar‘s next film will be titled El Piel Que Habito (The Skin I Live In) and the cast will include his regular muse Penelope Cruz. While at the European Film Awards, where his latest homage to mothers great and small Volver picked up two awards, Almodovar announced plans for Habito, saying that it is expected to be a departure from his traditional style. “I’m in the midst of a change. My next film will be totally different from the previous 16,” Almodovar said in the interview with Spanish daily El Pais. “It’s a very tough story about revenge. It has nothing to do with Volver or my life.” And Bad Education did? Yikes.
Clooney Channels Grisham
George Clooney has teamed up with Warner Bros.’ specialty studio to buy the movie rights to The Innocent Man, the first nonfiction book by best-selling novelist John Grisham, Variety reports. Subtitled: “Murder and Injustice in a Small Town,” Grisham’s latest book tells the true story of a former baseball player, Ron Williamson, who spent 11 years on Oklahoma’s death row wrongly convicted of rape and murder. Bummer. Wonder if ole George is thinking about starring in it?
The Talisman Comes to TNT
Ooohhh, I’m all a-twitter! After last year’s success with the miniseries Into the West, TNT is teaming up with Steven Spielberg again, this time to bring the Stephen King-Peter Straub novel The Talisman to the small screen. The cable channel told the Hollywood Reporter it has given the go-ahead to a six-hour limited-series adaptation of the novel, first published in 1984. The story centers on a boy who goes on a quest through this world and a parallel world known as the Territories, experiencing good and evil in each. His goal is to obtain a mysterious talisman that will save his dying mother’s life as well as the life of her “twinner,” Queen Elizabeth of the Territories. No one’s been cast as yet. TNT has adapted two other King books: The four-hour Salem’s Lot, a very faithful adaptation of the King’s classic vampire novel and one of 2004’s top-rated cable movies, and Nightmares & Dreamscapes, an eight-part anthology series that aired this summer. I think King’s dense material has finally found a nice home on television.
Harrelson Takes the Trans-Siberian
Woody Harrelson will head the international cast of Brad Anderson’s contemporary crime thriller Trans-Siberian. The story focuses on an American couple on the famous Trans-Siberian train from Vladivostok to Moscow. What seems to be a simple train journey soon turns into a thrilling chase full of deception and murder as it becomes clear that not everybody is who they seem. British actress Samantha Morton will play Harrelson‘s wife, with Kate Mara and Spanish heartthrob Eduardo Noriega playing the couple opposite them. Ben Kingsley rounds out the cast as a Russian police officer hot on the trail of the two couples. Cool, a sort of updated version of Murder on the Orient Express.
And Here’s ANOTHER Football Movie
Dennis Quaid has signed on to star in The Express, the true story of Ernie Davis, the first black player to win college football’s Heisman Trophy. Davis broke college football records and racial barriers in the early 1960s playing at Syracuse University. The running back was drafted into the NFL, but his career was cut short when he was diagnosed with leukemia. Oh, so, Brian’s Song meets Remember the Titans. Quaid will play Davis’ coach, who eventually becomes his champion. The role of Davis has not been cast. Not to diminish the obvious emotions wrapped up in a story like this, but come on! Enough already with the football flicks.
Until next week…
