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Gus Van Sant and Bret Easton Ellis to Pen The Golden Suicides

BuzzSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:31:46 -0700

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.

I was personally fascinated by the article and the lives of Duncan and Blake when news of their suicides broke (I'd actually seen one of Blake's exhibits at the SF MoMA years before). I think Van Sant and Ellis will give considerable weight to this dismal subject matter - Van Sant is coming off of Milk, and Ellis is the author of heavy, zeitgeisty tomes like American Psycho and Less Than Zero.

Buzz News Roundup, 8/24

BuzzSugar — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:30:10 -0700

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. - Coming Soon
Glee's Jayma Mays will return to Heroes for one episode. - Entertainment Weekly
Sheryl Crow sold her music catalog to S1 Songs Group for over $10 million. - Variety
Check out the new Dancing With the Stars Pairings. - Zap2it
Gus van Sant is in negotiations to direct Restless. - The Hollywood Reporter
Irving Berlin's White Christmas will be back for a holiday run on Broadway. - Variety

Oscar Nominee: Milk For Best Costume Design

BuzzSugar — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:30:21 -0800

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. I've already presented galleries for four out of the five nominees, so today the final movie is Milk.

People often think of San Francisco's "Summer of Love" as the city's major cultural movement, but Gus Van Sant's biopic Milk features the life of gay activist Harvey Milk during another turbulent time for this town: The 1970s. And nothing helps bring this vision to life more than the detailed costumes worn by each member of the fantastic ensemble cast. From Josh Brolin's traditional suiting to the flashy polyester getups worn by Diego Luna, the '70s never looked so good!

To check out the many photos of good-looking people in high-waisted jeans and such, just read more.

View 18 Photos ›

Photos courtesy of Focus Features

Box Office: Four Christmases Wins the Holiday Weekend

BuzzSugar — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:30:35 -0800

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. Gus Van Sant's biopic Milk also did very well for a limited release, coming in at No. 10 over the weekend.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Milk: Deeply Moving, Difficult, and Worthwhile

BuzzSugar — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:30:58 -0800

"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. I respect director Gus Van Sant's decision to memorialize and honor Harvey Milk with his movie Milk, and to my great relief, Van Sant and his exceptional ensemble cast have done Milk's story justice.

Milk picks up Harvey Milk's life when Milk (Sean Penn) meets one of the great loves of his life, Scott Smith (portrayed by James Franco) and decides to move from New York City to San Francisco. There, the two open a camera store in the heart of the Castro, a neighborhood with a rapidly growing gay population, and there Milk begins his life as a leader of the gay rights movement in the 1970s. After trying and failing twice, he is finally elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977, largely due to the support of the gay community. For the first time, it becomes apparent that the gay community could be a powerful one, and Milk often emphasizes this during his time in city hall. As the country's first openly gay man to be elected to public office, Milk brings the gay rights movement to the city's attention as much as possible, earning him admiration and support along with many enemies - including his ultimate enemy, fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin). For more about this and my thoughts on it all, read more.

Dan White is a good ol' Christian boy who feels threatened by and resentful of Harvey Milk's success. Josh Brolin, who is fast becoming one of the most fascinating actors in Hollywood, simply morphs into this insecure and fearful man who gradually becomes unhinged. His fate and that of Harvey Milk are tragically linked in history forever, and frankly, it's disturbing to see Dan White brought to life on screen, especially after seeing all the actual footage of him in the documentary.

The rest of the cast is equally remarkable: Franco makes for a loving, sympathetic Smith, and Emile Hirsch is captivating as Milk's young activist protégé Cleve Jones. Allison Pill is always an undeniably strong presence on screen and her depiction of Milk's sole female team member, Anne Kronenberg, is no different. Diego Luna plays one of Milk's lovers, Jack Lira, with equal parts bright beauty and troubling instability. Most of all, Penn's portrayal of this charismatic, resilient, and good-humored pioneer will surely earn him some well-deserved accolades and awards.

This project is remarkably ambitious. There are so many intersecting aspects of Milk's career, activism, and personal life, it's enough to make one's head spin. Add to this Van Sant's decision to incorporate actual footage from the '70s into his dramatized story, and you've got yourself a crazy, giant puzzle to put together. But the actual footage is crucial in this case, consistently reminding us that though this seems like fiction at times - especially now, to modern audiences - this is a true story.

Interestingly, one "character" (so to speak), the outspoken fundamentalist Christian singer Anita Bryant, is not played by any actress (though at first glance I thought for sure it was Marcia Gay Harden). Instead, her entire part in Milk's story is shown through real footage - which only makes her behavior that much more staggering. This directorial choice seamlessly blends the reality of Harvey Milk's actual life with the staging of his life by the director and cast. Overall, I can’t express enough how much I applaud and admire Van Sant’s accomplishment here. It's a complicated and deeply emotional story, and the entire production - Van Sant, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, the whole cast - carried a tremendous responsibility to get this thing right and the result is a dignified homage.

I highly recommend watching the documentary first, as there was an effervescence and a beautiful light to the real Harvey Milk that no actor, not even the great Sean Penn, can capture. Both the documentary and this new film may leave you speechless and/or weepy. But his is a worthwhile story to tell and if this grand-scale production with heavy-hitting actors and a talented director gets his story out there, all the better.

Photos courtesy of Focus Features

Paranoid Park: Better in a Museum Than a Multiplex

BuzzSugar — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:30:00 -0700

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. It's the sort of film I could see playing in a constant loop in the multimedia wing of a modern art museum.

As a commercial movie, though, Paranoid Park doesn't quite add up. With non-professional actors playing many of the roles, the film has an unusual authenticity - but it also has a distracting amateurish quality. And though it's just 85 minutes long, Paranoid Park still has too much space, with too much time spent on skateboarding shots and too little spent on teasing out the main character's emotions.

The film, adapted from author Blake Nelson's young-adult novel of the same name, focuses on Alex (Gabe Nevins), a high school skateboarder who finds himself drawn to the edgy crowd at a local skate park - the illegal, dangerous Paranoid Park - as his parents' marriage is falling apart and his girlfriend (Taylor Momsen of Gossip Girl) starts pressuring him to have sex. Told through flashbacks that follow the narration from a letter Alex is writing, the film focuses on the buildup to and aftermath of one traumatic event: the night that Alex accidentally kills a security guard and decides not to tell anyone. But that's just the plot, so to hear more of my take, just read more.

Alex conveys his story in a monotone, like a kid reading aloud from a complicated book without any sense of where to place emphasis or pause for punctuation. A deliberate choice, or a sign of Nevins' inexperience as an actor? I'm not sure - and that was my problem with much of Paranoid Park. Van Sant's intentions seemed constantly obscured, whether by the acting or by the filmmaker's own artistic quirks. Is the moment of the guard's death supposed to snap Alex out of his aloof fog? Or does he remain just as removed as he was before? I spent the movie waiting for Alex's breakthrough, but it never seemed to come; right after the accident, he has a couple of moments of pure, unfettered emotion, but he fades back to his normal, inexpressive self so quickly that it's not clear what those outbursts mean.

Van Sant's direction - while thoughtful and beautiful - also keeps the audience at arm's length. One of the enduring images from Elephant is a repeating shot of an ominous sky, constantly changing as clouds swirl past. Paranoid Park has a similar motif with its interludes of grainy skateboarding footage, but rather than add to the story, the skating scenes seemed to drain energy from the film. And right after the guard's death, there's a shot that is so disgusting, I shudder even thinking of it; it felt gratuitous, and it frustrates me that my reaction seemed more visceral than Alex's.

Paranoid Park works best as a pure mood piece: Though Nevins never really conveys Alex's fear and dread, the film's claustrophobic shots, jumbled structure, and uncomfortably long pauses do that for him. But when it comes to telling a full story, Paranoid Park falls short. In the end, I felt the same alienation from the film as its lead character apparently feels from the world at large.

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Movie Preview: Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park

BuzzSugar — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:29:40 -0800

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. This time there's a mystery involving a kid who dies on train tracks and another kid, a skater boy, who seems to be struggling with his role in the death. Also, Jenny from Gossip Girl is in it in what looks like a decidedly un-Jenny-ish role.

The movie has already screened at a variety of film festivals, and will open in limited release March 7. To check out the creepy trailer, read more.

Clipta - new video wave: Paranoid Park - Trailer 2

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Matt Damon, Sean Penn Attached to Harvey Milk Biopic

BuzzSugar — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 10:22:01 -0700

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. Here's more:

Penn is attached to play [Harvey] Milk and Damon is attached to play Milk's killer, Dan White, in [Gus Van Sant]'s long-gestating Milk biopic. The filmmakers are now in talks with a leading specialty division to launch the project. Once a deal is finalized, the team behind the as-yet-untitled feature hopes to begin production in San Francisco as early as December.

It's the latest chapter in a long-running race to film the biopic of the first openly gay prominent elected official, which has pitted Van Sant's project against another from fellow openly gay director Bryan Singer.

Last I'd heard, Bryan Singer was directing this project, though apparently Van Sant has had a long-standing connection with this story, and even wrote a screenplay for it once. I think both of these directors would have an interesting take on Milk's story, so all I care about is that whoever directs does it justice.

Penn and Damon photos source

Buzz News Roundup, 6/11

BuzzSugar — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:41:43 -0700

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.

Photo courtesy of Fox

The 2007 Cannes Palme D'Or Award Goes to...

BuzzSugar — Tue, 29 May 2007 12:20:20 -0700

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.

The biggest surprise according to many critics is that the Coen Brothers latest, No Country for Old Men, failed to bring home any of the top honors though it was predicted to be a festival favorite. Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel, the film's description sounds like classic Coen Brothers fare: "Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande." You can currently check out five clips of the wry, dusty movie and decide for yourself if it was robbed of Cannes awards.

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