Monthly Archives: January, 2012

Howl saw Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman experimented with the biopic form and they came up with some surprising innovative results -- we're expecting some more of the same with the Linda Lovelace twin life stories. Massive casting round-up is impressive, and they got James Franco on board again, moving from his stint as Allen Ginsberg to the Playboy inventor. This is the first one out of the gate for the competing Lovelace biopics.

A project we've been keeping track of the moment it was mentioned as part of the Sundance labs, two hip and gifted New York based filmmakers putting their powers together in what should be a dialogue rich, fragile and vulnerable friendly kind of love story. Ry Russo-Young's You Wont Miss Me is best describe as an honest portrait with a melange of styles and we look forward in seeing how the selected actors (Olivia Thirlby, Dylan McDermott, John Krasinski) deal with the material.

Their 2006 breakout audience pleasing Little Miss Sunshine probably brought a truckload of directing offers for the team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, but in the end, they opted for actress Zoe Kazan's screenwriting debut which says plenty about the material at hand (or perhaps their rapport with LMS' Paul Dano). The Searchlight project managed to attract a diverse set of supporting actors and with Dano in the lead this might be a sophomore project worth keeping tabs on.

He might have gone a good decade between films, but The Directors Bureau label creator, American Zoetrope co-owner and scribe Roman Coppola has remained acutely integrated in both the writing (Wes Anderson) and filming process (video work and helping out his sis). Charlie Sheen can kiss the shoes that Coppola walks in for the role of Charlie Swan, and we can kiss our future ticket stub for what should pan out to be a delicious comedy noir number. Winning!

I haven't been big on the Scott McGehee and David Siegel pairing since certain elements in 2001's The Deep End, but this triage drama via the eyes of a seven year-old protagonist might do the trick - we still have faith in Julianne Moore and we're of course curious to see how the core of a Henry James novel might still be relevant 100 years after publication.