BuzzSugar

Buzz News Roundup, 9/26

BuzzSugar — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:31:05 -0700

Do Not Disturb is the first casualty of Fall TV. - Broadcasting & Cable
It's only in the rumor stage, but still: People are saying Ricky Gervais may be the host for the 2009 Oscars! - E! Online
Steven Spielberg may adapt the sci-fi novel Chocky for his next project. - Zap2It
HBO wants to turn the Tom Wolfe novel I Am Charlotte Simmons into a TV series with Tina Brown as executive producer. - Variety
Helen Mirren is set to play a Mossad agent in director John Madden's The Debt, an English-language remake of Israeli thriller Ha-hov. - Variety
Melissa George of Alias will guest-star on Grey's Anatomy as a possible love interest for Callie or Erica. - Entertainment Weekly
Nick Nolte will star in an indie coming-of-age-drama titled Arcadia Lost. - Hollywood Reporter
Bob Dylan's new album will be released one week early as a free online stream on National Public Radio's website. - AP
The American Idol tour did better this year than last year but still couldn't match the 2006 edition. - USA Today

Photo courtesy of Fox

Sundance Review: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

BuzzSugar — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:30:30 -0800

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is great. And then it's terrible. And then it's puzzling. Then it's truthful. Then you go, "whaaaa?" And it ends and you're like, "eh."

It's not a bad movie, by any means. The music is fantastic, for example. Many of the directorial choices (the way shots are set up, the use of voiceover narration, etc.) are superb. Several of the performances are arresting. But the dialog is stilted and the action feels extremely rushed. I attended the "world premiere" of the movie at Sundance, and director Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball) introduced it by thanking the citizens of Pittsburgh and professing his undying love for the Michael Chabon book on which the movie is based. His love is apparent, but it isn't enough to make the film truly enjoyable.

The story follows Art Bechstein (Jon Foster), a young man who, wishing to avoid responsibility for the Summer before he joins the real world, is living in Pittsburgh, working at a book warehouse. He dreads the monthly dinners with his father (Nick Nolte), a shady individual with power over most of the city, and he regularly sleeps with his boss Phlox (Mena Suvari). Then he meets Jane (Sienna Miller) and her boyfriend Cleveland (Peter Sarsgaard) and his life instantly becomes more interesting. To find out more about this, read more.

The movie version of Chabon's book focuses on the relationships between coarse bisexual Cleveland, vibrant Jane, and average Art, as the line between friendship and something-more starts to blur - between all three of them. Like so many movies, though, the love scenes heavily favor the female form. Even in the scenes with naked men - with only naked men - the filming is much more reserved, conservative. This makes me wonder if the filmmakers were not particularly comfortable portraying homosexuality. I haven't read the book, but I heard people who have grumble that the relationship between Cleveland and Art in the film is lamely subdued.

For the most part, the performances are good, though Jon Foster seems so much like John Krasinski - minus the ease and sweetness - I found myself wishing they'd just gotten Krasinski instead. Nick Nolte is gravel-throated and terrifying. Peter Sarsgaard is someone I have often thought of as a lazy, dopey actor. At the very least, those are often the characters he plays, and it makes me wonder. But in this movie he is commanding and aggressively committed. I started to feel toward him what the characters around him felt: irresistibly drawn to him, yet annoyed with his behavior.

I often wonder what I would think of Sienna Miller if I had no idea who she was in the tabloid sense. I think she does a fine job in this film, but she always seems so aware of her own beauty, her own power. And this is a problem when she's trying to play normal girls with major insecurities and issues. Whether this is her issue to overcome as an actress or something that falls to directors, I'm not sure.

Bottom line: There are moments of real truth and beauty, but it's all undermined by moments of total ridiculousness.

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Sundance Spotlight: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

BuzzSugar — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:31:34 -0800

I am so thrilled to go to Sundance this year, and I simply can't wait to see as many movies as I possibly can while I'm out there! For the next few days I'll be highlighting some of the films I'm most curious to see. Today's spotlight: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.

One of the few Sundance films to have an official website, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is a film adaptation of the novel by author Michael Chabon (Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay). Chabon's work seems to lend itself to the movie format (I loved Wonder Boys) so I'm anxious to see how this one turns out. To see who's in it and what the story's about, read more.

The plot description reads, "Set in Pittsburgh in the early eighties, the story chronicles the last true summer of Art Bechstein's (Jon Foster) youth. Stuck in a dead-end job working for his eccentric sometime girlfriend Phlox (Mena Suvari), and forced into an endless series of airless dinners with his mobster father (Nick Nolte), Art begins to believe that perhaps he doesn't even exist at all. What begins as a mundane summer is quickly interrupted when he encounters a beautiful debutante (Sienna Miller) and her lusty, no good hoodlum of a boyfriend Cleveland (Peter Sarsgaard). Together they reveal a side of Art and Pittsburgh that he has never known."

So that's where Mena Suvari's been. Huh. This is also the project that earned Miller some bad press a while back when she badmouthed Pittsburgh in Rolling Stone and then backpedaled. I guess we'll see if she managed to cover up her disdain long enough to make the movie.

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