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Gus Van Sant and Bret Easton Ellis to Pen The Golden Suicides
A couple years ago, the art world was rocked by a pair of deaths when Jeremy Blake and his girlfriend Theresa Duncan committed suicide within days of each other amid allegations of paranoia and harassment by Scientologists. Dubbed "The Golden Suicides" by Vanity Fair, the tragedy attracted attention because of the beauty and glamour of the couple, their friendship with musician Beck, and the mystery surrounding their passing.
Their compelling story is now getting the movie treatment: Gus Van Sant and Bret Easton Ellis are working on a screenplay together for a film based on the Vanity Fair article.
Buzz News Roundup, 8/24
- Stephen Moyer will join Paul Bettany in the vampire thriller Priest. — Variety
- NBC has ordered a pilot for the legal comedy Rex Is Not Your Lawyer. — The Hollywood Reporter
- Diego Luna will make his directorial debut with a family drama called Abel.
Oscar Nominee: Milk For Best Costume Design
As we gear up for the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees for Best Costume Design. It's a big year for this category as the films nominated represent vastly different historical periods. Be it 18th-century England or San Francisco in the '70s, these films include some gorgeous threads.
Box Office: Four Christmases Wins the Holiday Weekend
I was surprised at how much I ended up enjoying Four Christmases starring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn, and maybe some of the early buzz from others who also liked it helped the holiday comedy win the Thanksgiving weekend box office this year with an estimated $46.7 million since opening Wednesday.
Meanwhile the highly anticipated Baz Luhrmann epic Australia opened at No. 5 after Quantum of Solace in fourth place, Twilight (which passed the $100 million mark this weekend) in third, and Bolt in second place.
Milk: Deeply Moving, Difficult, and Worthwhile
"I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living." — Harvey Milk
The story of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk had a huge impact on me a few years ago when I first watched the Oscar-winning documentary about him, The Times of Harvey Milk. His is truly a stranger-than-fiction tale and is so full of inspiration, absurdity, and absolute heartache that it's somewhat surprising it has taken this long to create a feature-length dramatization of his life and death.
Paranoid Park: Better in a Museum Than a Multiplex
As a piece of art, Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park has a lot to recommend it. It's carefully told and beautifully rendered, and it establishes an instant mood of fearfulness and dread. Van Sant proved with Elephant, his 2003 film about a school shooting, that he knows how to tap into the creepiness of the everyday — dishes clanging in a sink, a light switching on in a far-away room — and Paranoid Park uses those haunting moments to their full effect.
Movie Preview: Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park
There's something about the tone of director Gus Van Sant's work that gives me a deep uneasiness in the belly. His previous indie movie dealing with teens and violence, Elephant, won a bunch of awards at Cannes (including the Palm d'Or) in 2003 and it was certainly effective in delivering this dark queasiness I now feel again having watched the trailer for his newest film Paranoid Park.
Nominated for Best Feature and Best Director at this year's Independent Spirit Awards, Paranoid Park again focuses on troubled teenagers.
Matt Damon, Sean Penn Attached to Harvey Milk Biopic
Ever since I watched the mesmerizing and heartbreaking documentary The Mayor of Castro Street — which won the Best Documentary Oscar in 1985 — I've kept an eye out for news about the film version of this story. Today, Hollywood Reporter announced that Matt Damon and Sean Penn are attached to star in the biopic about Harvey Milk, the first gay councilman in the U.S. who was viciously killed by his fellow councilman Dan White in 1978.
Buzz News Roundup, 6/11
- Tyler, Texas isn't thrilled about hosting "Anchorwoman," the Fox reality show where a model will try to make it as a journalist, writes the Hollywood Reporter.
- Tom Wolfe's hallucinogenic book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test will be made into a movie with Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant spearheading, Variety reports.
- According to Reuters, The Pink Panther 2 has a director (Harald Zwart, of Agent Cody Banks fame), and Steve Martin reprising his lead role.
- Basically, Big Brother is going to be everywhere this summer, the Futon Critic says.
- Jive Records wasn't happy about the leak of a new Chris Brown song, Billboard says — until it started climbing the charts.
- Comedic lady Elizabeth Banks will next star in a remake of the Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters, says Hollywood Reporter.
- Tim Story, director of Barbershop and both Fantastic Four movies, will direct The Losers, which is based on a non-superhero-themed comic book, Variety says.
- In a pact with Bollywood studio Yash Raj Films, Disney is readying to sign an agreement to make at least one animated feature film voiced by Indian movie stars per year, Reuters reports.
- Pitchfork reveals the tracklist for the new M.I.A. album, Kala, featuring Timbaland.
The 2007 Cannes Palme D'Or Award Goes to...
The 2007 Cannes Film Festival has concluded with the dispensing of the festival's top award, the Palme D'Or, to Cristian Mungiu's (pictured) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a drama that Variety describes as "a stark, trenchant drama about a woman's experiences receiving an abortion in the waning days of Romania's communist era."
Taking second place (the Grand Prix) was The Mourning Forest, "an ultra-arty, arid and slow French-Japanese co-production that had viewers and critics streaming for the exits early." Gus Van Sant, whose Elephant took the Palme D'Or in 2003, was awarded the third place prize for his Paranoid Park, a drama about a teenager trying to cope with having accidentally caused someone's death.
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