Archive for the 'CillianMurphy' Category

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: 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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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Fox Searchlight

What would happen if the sun were eating itself up from the inside out, resulting in its own extinction? More than likely there would be a lot of panicking and an intervention made by the best astronauts this world had to offer. This just happens to be the plot for the upcoming action sci-fi feature Sunshine; Cillian Murphy stars as a member of a heroic team who think they have a plan to save the day. The film is due out stateside this fall and in an effort to satiate U.S. fans, director Danny Boyle — also responsible for one of my favorites, Trainspotting — and his production staff have created an online production video diary that documents nearly everything you wanted to know about the film.

It’s incredible how true to life Alex Garland (writer) and Boyle wanted the fictitious experience to be. They met with radiologists to understand its effects on the human body, sent the cast to high altitudes to experience zero gravity and studied up on how to recreate the sun’s beauty. The most visceral aspect of the diary is interviews with both Boyle and director of photography Alwin Kuchler, who spoke of the necessity to shoot the film with an emphasis on lighting. Boyle explains that the film is “unusual cinematically, the balance between darkness and light.” The diary reveals some of the beautiful shots that exemplify just what he’s talking about. The characters, he says, are literally, “surrounded in darkness but driven by an internal light.” The diaries also include interviews with certain cast members including Troy Garity, who has always been a fan of sci fi but finds it difficult to read a good script in that genre.

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Filed under: Drama, Casting, Celebrities and Controversy

It’s too bad that this Dylan Thomas biopic is filming now and not 10-20 years ago, because Tony Goldwyn looks a hell of a lot like the poet. Nevertheless, I guess that Matthew Rhys is a decent subsitute. No, this isn’t Jonathan Rhys Meyers, the Match Point star. He’s got his own bag of period pieces to star in. This Rhys is the man who plays Kevin Walker on that television show, Brothers and Sisters, and who played Demitrius in Julie Taymor’s flipping wonderful Titus. With him and Cillian Murphy joining the cast, we’ve got four players in a rather dangerous true story.

The film will center on a love triangle between Thomas, his wife Caitlin (Lindsay Lohan) and his childhood friend Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley), who was married to a man named William Killick (who will be played by Murphy). Less than happy about his wife’s close relationship with Thomas, and being less-than-centered after a military mission in Greece, he grabbed a machine gun, a grenade, and then attacked the poet’s house. While no one was hurt, it’s a bit of emotional overkill, don’t you think? And then there’s Murphy cast as a crazed man under great stress. I just can’t imagine it! Okay, I can. With the cheeky title of The Best Time of Our Lives, the feature will begin shooting this May. So, now the question becomes: will production run smoothly, or should we get some popcorn and prepare for La Lohan Round two, three, or whatever number it is now?

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