Archive for the 'cillian murphy' Category

Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Distribution, Fox Searchlight, Newsstand

Although my birthday present from Fox Searchlight arrived a bit late, it was well worth the wait — Cinematical was just informed (via a press release) that Danny Boyle’s Sunshine has had its release date pushed up to July 20; a move that put a huge smile on my face as we come to the end of a relatively tame Wednesday. For those slightly out of the loop on this one, Sunshine was originally supposed to be released this past March 16. And although the film arrived in theaters around the world (as planned) Fox Searchlight delayed its release here in the states, subsequently pushing it all the way back to December. To say us Boyle fans were a tad bummed out about that would be an understatement — as our own Scott Weinberg proclaimed, “That’s like walking into a kid’s room on 12/15 and saying, ‘Oh, we bumped Christmas back to September. Stop crying!’”

Fox provided no reason for either shift; originally, some of us thought that maybe they were prepping the flick for an Oscar run, but it didn’t seem like the sort of film (futuristic sci-fi?) that Oscar voters chomp on for breakfast. Was it that bad that Fox wanted to re-tool the thing and hide it amongst a busy Compass-filled December? Not likely; the trailers rock, and the buzz has been pretty good. Nevertheless, I could care less at this point — I just want to see the damn film as quickly as possible. In the pic, director Boyle and writer Alex Garland once again team up for a story about a group of astronauts (Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Cillian Murphy, Troy Garity, etc …) who are sent to help re-ignite the sun after the sucker begins to burn out. Mark your calendars people. Sunshine. July 20. Awesome stuff!

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Filed under: Drama, Romance, Mystery & Suspense, Images

For those just joining us, The Edge of Love is a semi-biopic of *poet Dylan Thomas that’s currently filming in some bog in the U.K. (When I tried to interview one of the stars, Cillian Murphy, by phone for a Tribeca film a couple of weeks ago, I was told that he was “filming somewhere so remote that he’s even unreachable by phone.”) The story of Edge will revolve around a bitter rivalry between two of the poet’s muses, who will be played by Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller. Lindsay Lohan was originally set to play the Miller role, but this became one of the many films she’s opted out of lately. Thomas will be played by Matthew Rhys, Miller will play his wife Caitlin, while Knightley has the role of a chlidhood friend and Murphy is the friend’s husband. Got all that? Okay, good. We now have, from a gossip rag, the first pic from the film, of Keira Knightley looking very dowdy and black-haired. She’s got the whole ‘jealous harpy’ thing going on, I think.

By the way, if you’re wondering how rising star Murphy got aced out of what would seem like the plum role — the poet himself — from what we know of the film it seems like he actually has the good part. His jealous husband character is actually a military nut who ends up attacking Thomas with a machine gun and a grenade! No doubt he’ll make the most of that. One final note about the film — there are two different titles floating around for it, the one mentioned above and The Best Times of our Lives, which I could have sworn was the official title up until a couple weeks ago. I have to say I’m not really crazy about either of them. They should put their thinking caps on while there’s still time and come up with something better, don’t you agree?

*I originally wrote Irish poet, while thinking of Irishman Cillian Murphy.

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, RumorMonger, Fandom, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

Before I begin, I’d like to state two things: First off, the following are rumors and nothing is official until we see it with our own eyes. Also, what I’m about to tell you might be deemed spoiler-ish, so if you don’t want to know anything about The Dark Knight (rumor or not), then I suggest not reading this story. Are we clear? With that, Batman on Film is reporting a few interesting little nuggets via one of their top secret sources, “Miranda Fox.” The most fascinating of these rumors being the possible appearance of The Scarecrow in The Dark Knight. There’s no word on where, why or how he would make an appearance, but Fox notes: “The Scarecrow, played by Cillian Murphy, will be back.” If this is true, then that means there’s a good chance Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) will not make his Two Face transformation in this film unless he does so at the very end and they use it as a cliffhanger.

Aside from that, here are a few other scoops from Miranda Fox: “The Joker is “The Joker” throughout the film. There could be some classic Nolan “flashbacks” that vaguely hint at his origin, but there is no big “Joker origin story.” As far as Joker descriptions go, it appears some Chicago extras are beginning to spill their guts: “My guy “Chicago Extra” was correct in his description of The Joker (Heath Ledger), but there is a reason that The Joker’s neck isn’t white, but is “flesh-colored” (and I’ll leave it at that). The Joker will wear purple in the film. It may not be a literal translation from his comic book suit, but he wears purple. A “gash smile” is a better description of The Joker’s grin than “cut smile.” Also, Fox adds that Rachel Dawes (as played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) will have a much bigger role in the sequel.

On another front, BoT reports via a New York Post story that Eric Roberts will indeed play the gangster Sal Maroni. According to the paper, “Roberts will play Mafia kingpin Sal Maroni. Landing the role is a blockbuster coup for Roberts, who was reportedly hand-picked by director Christopher Nolan over rumored candidates James Gandolfini and Bob Hoskins.” Oh, and the film is currently shooting in London. Any thoughts on all this? How do you figure Christopher Nolan will work in Scarecrow?

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Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Tribeca, Noir, Interviews, Cinematical Indie

During this year’s Tribeca fest, I had a chance to talk to Paul Soter, director of the noir romcom Watching the Detectives, starring Cillian Muphy and Lucy Liu. Paul’s name is already probably familiar to anyone who knows Broken Lizard, but he’s intent on branching out as a mainstream writer-director, and his first film is proof that he has the chops. A strange and intriguing mixture of film noir and romcom spoof, Detectives is sure to get a distribution deal and be remembered as one of the festival’s success stories — it’s also further proof that Murphy has a Gary Oldman-like ability to disappear in just about any role. The same guy who played an Irish revolutionary in 1916 is now completely convincing as a video store slacker who can’t believe his good luck, when a mysterious babe walks into his store and into his life.

The whole time I was watching this movie I thought it was set in L.A., but someone told me that’s not the case?

PS: Well, it was shot in New York City, but set to be kind of anywhere. I had originally conceived it to be more like a college town. There’s an area where I grew up in Denver where there’s a lot of mom and pop indie record stores, comic book stores, kind of places like that. Originally, the idea was that I was going to shoot it in Austin, Texas, and then for various reasons and then it turned out that we had to shoot it in New York. It turned out to be kind of a tricky thing, to come out here and find a way to shoot something in this city, that hopefully didn’t look like the city. So we ended up shooting in Brooklyn, Queens, Bayonne, New Jersey, sort of all over the place — everywhere, but the city. You say there was something in it that made you think of Los Angeles?

It may be just the whole film noir vibe that runs through it, that made me think of L.A.

PS: I’m glad to hear it, because I always hope that I pulled it off and it didn’t just look like, around the city.

Did you talk to the actors about actually injecting a film noir vibe into the film, the acting, the dialogue, and so forth? Lucy Liu’s character has a very femme fatale thing going on.

PS: Yeah, definitely. I tried to explain to them that a lot of the idea behind making the movie was that you take the dynamic between the male and female that exists in so many film noir movies and try and transplant that into a current film set, in the current day. So, you know, yeah, in terms of Lucy being a sexy, mysterious, possibly dangerous woman and Cillian being this guy who sort of thinks he knows the score, but everyone but he knows that he’s being taken for a ride. Yeah, I wanted them to sort of be aware that that’s what was going on while they were doing it.

Continue reading Tribeca Interview: ‘Watching the Detectives’ Writer-Director Paul Soter

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Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Tribeca, Noir, Theatrical Reviews

“I can’t shake the feeling that you’re just blowing through town with a carnival.” Dialogue from Watching the Detectives, a romantic comedy with shadings of L.A. noir that played at Tribeca this year. If the film were made sixty years ago, the male lead would first be seen in a downmarket private investigator’s store front, leaning back in a chair with his feet up on a desk, as the dangeous female comes waltzing into his life. Today, it’s a downmarket indie video store, where Neil (Cillian Murphy) lounges with his fellow employees, savoring their status as increasingly rare birds in a neighborhood being invaded by behemoth video store giants. Into the store one day waltzes Violet (Lucy Liu) a first-time customer who continually asks Neil questions about this and that and when he answers, points out that she’s talking not to him, but to whoever is on the other end of her invisible Bluetooth handless. She eventually sidles up to the counter and announces that she has no membership and no driver’s license, but she wants to check out anyway.

What follows is a gentle spoof on femme fatales and the men they inevitably drag along by the ear. The plot can’t handle any seriously evil or crooked intentions on the part of Violet, so instead she’s portrayed as having a screw loose — a woman who enjoys walking her men into elaborate practical jokes and then doubling over with laughter every time they fall for it. She begins by showing up at the restaurant they choose for their first date falling-down drunk. When Neil refuses her aggressive, drunken come-ons, she reveals the put on and tosses it off as a half-joke, half-test to see if he would take advantage of her. In the real world, the man would run for the hills of course, but it somehow works here. For his part, Neil is a classic noir stooge who understands intellectually that he’s being taken for a ride by this woman but can’t help himself. “I’ve lived in Tasmania, Cape Town …” Violet tells him. “That sounds incredibly …” “Exciting?” “I was gonna say made up.”

Continue reading Tribeca Review: Watching the Detectives

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Filed under: Drama, Casting, Universal, Scripts & Screenwriting

The Dylan Thomas romance feature, The Best Time of Our Lives, hasn’t even begun shooting yet and Cillian Murphy and new co-star Sienna Miller have already signed on for another film together, along with Max Minghella and Emma Booth. Instead of jealous husbands and romantic rivalries, they’ll be doing the Hippie Hippie Shake. Sounds like saccharine sixties sock hop, doesn’t it? Well, it makes more sense when you hear the full title of the memoir it’s coming from — Richard Neville’s Hippie Hippie Shake: The Dreams, the Trips, the Trials, the Love-ins, the Screw Ups: The Sixties.

Neville (Murphy) was the co-founder of Oz, a sixties re-plant from Australia that stretched artistic technique in magazines just as much as it stretched the limits of content. Just like Lenny Bruce was pestered stateside, Oz and its creators found themselves part of the longest obscenity trial of its time. In 1970, in an attempt to get back in touch with youth, they had a bunch of school kids edit an issue. Between the young help and the “obscene” content, they finally pissed off the Obscene Publications Squad enough and found themselves in court. Neville and the other defendants were first found guilty, but an appeal was successful — as long as they stopped publishing Oz.

The film will be directed by Beeban Kidron, whose past films don’t prove that exciting. She helmed To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. That being said, she also won a BAFTA award for a television adaptation of a Jeanette Winterson novel, so maybe she can make something better than her more bland cinema forays. On the other hand, Lee Hall, who wrote Billy Elliot, is adapting the memoir, so that should mean good things. The film gears up this fall.

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