After last year’s tragic death of actor Heath Ledger, Hollywood is loosing another young talent. Actress Brittany Murphy was declared dead yesterday, Sunday 20th December, after paramedics urgently transported her to Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Murphy’s husband, writer-producer Simon Monjack, and mother Sharon found her in the shower in a state of unconsciousness and immediately called for rescue.
Archive for Industry news
Mel Gibson is due to start his next movie as a director in autumn 2010 and has chosen Leonardo di Caprio to be the main feature. The film, with no title as yet, will be based on a Viking epic, written by William Monahan and produced by Graham King. Other than the official agreements of those involved in the project, not much is known regarding the plot and further details.
News has it that the band Boyzone decided to make a movie about themselves. They want to create a story based on their life as a band, with how they reached their stares, what happened why they ended up going solo and how they reunited and made a comeback.
News has it that they are actually starting on their movie, not sure whether they already started filming the movie or they just started brainstorming as to how the movie must be like. Now, the question is, will the movie become a hit just like the songs from Boyzone or will this just become a flop and will turn their popularity upside down? We can not speculate as of the moment but Ronan Keating wanted the movie to be very funny perhaps to attract more viewers. Come on, a real life story about a band doesn’t seem too appealing if it’s a drama story when we haven’t even heard of a sad news about the band for real, right?
Changeling is based on a true story on which the writer J. Michael Straczynski has spent a lot of time researching and gathering information for what was later to become the scrip for this movie.
In Los Angeles in 1928 a single mother (Angelina Jolie) discoveres that her son Walter who has been kidnapped and returned by the police 5 minths later is not her son actually. She confronts the authorities but is labeled as delusional. Christine Collins arranges a press conference where she tells her story.
Soon after that she is locked into a mental hospital. She is administered pills and is promised a release if she admits her mistake regarding Walter.
Jolie delivers a very good performance, being portrayed as both a vulnerable and tough woman who advocates for other women’s in similar situation. Several female stars campaigned for playing Christine Collins in this film: Reese Witherspoon and Hilary Swank to name only a few.
Eastwood also wrote the music for Changeling and the film expects at least two Oscars for Eastwood and Jolie.
There have been several documentaries recently about Iraq. It’s probably Michael Moore’s doing with Farenheit 911, which gave documentary star status and brought it closer to reality TV than quality film 
making. That sparked lots of low budget on line documentaries, some indeed involving the war in Iraq, and it also sparked a more general interest in documentaries, both on the side of the film makers, as well as that of audiences.
Most documentaries dealing with this war (Farenheit 911, Iraq For Sale, Taxi To The Dark Side, etc.) may have small elements of comedy, in order to break the string of extremely serious issues being discussed, but for the most part are solemn affairs, dealing with death, lies and manipulation. Surprisingly enough, death, lies and manipulation (and the Iraq war) seem to be the main themes of Full Battle Rattle, however they make it funny. And poignant. But mostly funny. Read the rest of this entry »
Strange things coincidences. It’s been less than a week that I made my post on Tim Burton and I just read on the BBC that an actress has been picked to play the role of Alice in his adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s fantasy novel. As an added coincidence I was thinking of adapting it to a screenplay myself, but I’ll simply have to console myself by saying that great minds think alike.
So, this is the last chance this fan is giving Mr. Burton. I have gone over how I have been disappointed by his recent films and hopefully he has realised that just because you have singing and Johnny Depp does not necessarily mean that you have a decent film on your hands. But back to the question at hand, who is playing Alice? Read the rest of this entry »
