The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
You may have heard the news earlier today that James Franco, Man of One Thousand Projects (half of which we assume will never see the light of day), has found the actor for his Sal Mineo biopic and it's Val Lauren. A lot of people were saying "who?" 'round the net but I'm here to tell you that he's a real talent, not just a lucky "unknown".
Sal Mineo and Val Lauren who may play him in a biopic
I'm not sure how old Lauren is -- IMDb doesn't offer up much info -- and the picture above is three years old (I wanted them both in hats. Sue me). Sal Mineo was most famous in his early 20s and was murdered at only 37 years of age and for all we know Franco's vision might have to do with the later years of Mineo's life. But fine acting is the most crucial element of biopic success anyway and acting chops have very little to do with age. Starpower is the other necessary Biopic element. By starpower I don't mean "Famous Person" but screen presence, the ability to hold a camera in an iron grip. If you don't have it and you're playing someone with it the disconnect is great.
I have only ever seen Val Lauren in one picture, back in 2008, but he hadit.
The film was called True Love, acontemporaryensemble romantic drama that, as far as I know, was never released. I thought that he was mesmerizing. At the time I wrote.
Its title make it sound just stiflingly clichéd. But it isn't and it works. The characters were compellingly flawed and in not immediately recognizable ways, either. Best in show is Val Lauren who plays an unceasingly aggressive self-made man. If this film gets distribution I expect it'll do major things for his heretofore minor career (lot of TV guest spots and the like).
I was wondering when he'd blow up but he never did. Maybe now?
Here's the trailer to True Love. He's the one you see wearing the cute hats, the one you hear monologuing about Disney, and the one you glimpse thrusting in a sex scene and smashing up defenseless cars.
I fear my immense warm love for Julianne colliding with my enormous cool hatred of Palin will cause inner tornadoes! Isn't that how it works? Or perhaps these two poles of feeling will just cancel each other out until I feel absolutely nothing while watching Game Change.
Sarah Palin has so many catch phrases and behavioral quirks that it's difficult to imagine someone portraying her without resorting to caricature mimicry but good luck, Julianne.
The cast for Game Change,which we had some fun casting ourselves, is coming together. Julianne's partner in endless Oscar losses Ed Harris, will lose the presidency with her as John McCain. But what about her kids? Relatively unknown Kevin Bigley will play Track and Melissa Farman (Temple Grandin) will play Bristol. No word on the Obamas, Clintons or Edwards yet but production starts next week. This is from Recount's writer (Buffy alum Danny Strong) and director (Jay Roach)so if you liked that one...
Are you more or less excited for this project now gazing upon this photo? Do Emmy Awards await?
A new photo of Jim Broadbent and Meryl Streep as Mr & Mrs Margaret Thatcher from The Iron Lady [via The Daily Mail]
This is apparently a recreation of her "The lady is not for turning" speech when she was at war with the unions. As much as I hated Mamma Mia! from her Iron Lady director and as much as I am largely suspect about this movie and whether it will lionize (perhaps accidentally?) an über conservative doing the kind of thing everyone is correctly pissed at the Wisconsin Governor for doing, I'll have to admit I'm getting more curious about the movie.
If only because it's so hard to read this far out. Did I underestimate it in my Oscar predictions?
Michael C. from Serious Film here, eager to dive back into a film I’ve been meaning to revisit for ages: Todd Haynes’ whirlwind Dylan collage I’m Not There(2007). All this Mildred Pierce talk has given me Haynes on the brain.
I was the ideal audience member for Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There. I am a devoted Bob Dylan lover, a big admirer of Hayne’s work, and am literate in pop culture to the point that when Haynes paid simultaneous homage to Fellini’s 8½ and Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back I had no trouble keeping up. And while I found lots to admire in this hugely ambitious project – and I was grateful Haynes didn’t attempt a traditional linear biopic – the film mostly left me cold. I was too conscious of the intellectual constructs at every turn. Dylan’s music can be pretty cerebral at times too, but I love it because he combines that obliqueness with the ability to absolutely destroy me emotionally on a consistent basis.
And yet –and yet - right at the heart of the Richard Gere section of the film, the section I found most problematic, there is this amazing scene that I haven’t been able to shake since I first viewed it four years ago.
If I’m Not There is a whole movie constructed of tangents then the scenes involving Gere playing a character named Billy the Kid riding a horse around a bizarre Old West town called Riddle may be a tangent too far. I get that it’s supposed to represent Dylan’s self-imposed exile in Woodstock in the late sixties, and that the sequence is wild grab bag of Dylan references, but these scenes still stop the movie cold with their randomness.
Or at least that's the case until all the townsfolk wander to the center of Riddle to hear Jim James of My Morning Jacket sing a hypnotic cover of Dylan’s "Going to Acapulco" backed by the band Calexico.
Covering Dylan is almost a genre of music onto itself and this incredibly soulful take of a relatively obscure track deserves a place along side the all time greats. For a little over three minutes I don’t care about Haynes’s thesis statement. Nor do I care about making sense of the riot of costuming and set decoration I’m witnessing (love the random giraffe). For those three minutes I don’t care about anything but the fact that James, Calexico, and Haynes have managed to tap into that thing I love about Dylan. All those levels of meaning can take a back seat to the visceral experience of the music.
We all have are our favorites movies, the ones we know scene for scene, line for line. But equally valuable are the individual moments, those stand alone gems from those films that otherwise didn’t reach us. The “Going to Acapulco” scene from I’m Not There is such a moment for me. I doubt I’ll ever unravel the mystery of why it made such an impression on me, not that I have any interest in doing so.
Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2013?) is one of those movies that I always forget about due to its long long gestation period. I swear I've been hearing about it as long as Jodie Foster's Flora Plum or Jodie Foster's Leni Reifenstahl or a few of Terrence Malick's movies before they surfaced. Will it ever get made? Probably. This is Spielberg we're talking about and he's familiar with the green light. The biopic is now one small step closer to filming. Deadline reports that Sally Field is in as our seventeenth* First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.
Spielberg says that Sally Field was always his first choice. I don't believe or disbelieve this exactly but I find it amusing that virtually every casting announcement for any movie (not specifically this one) comes with "they were our first choice all along" which simply can't be true 90% of the time we hear it else there would be very few auditions or screen tests ever held and precious little for casting directors to do other than fill up the bit roles and very little for management and representation to do other than negotiate.
At first the news felt odd and easily snarkable like "Sally Field co-starring with Daniel Day-Lewis? She's moving up in the world!" but then I quickly remembered that people -- apparently even myself. For shame -- are always underestimating her talent, probably because she's a "cute" actress as it were, and has been for her entire career. But I've seen enough of her work to know I shouldn't underestimate her. She's already proven herself on stage (she was a-ma-zing in a difficult role in The Goat or Who is Sylvia?), small screen (Emmys) and big screen (Oscars). She's one of those talents that "transfers" as it were. Plus: Daniel Day-Lewis isn't the only one with two Oscars in this marriage.
If you read up on Mary Todd Lincoln you'll find she was a pretty interesting woman with a very dramatic life: Her own family was torn up by the Civil War as she came from a border state, she outlived nearly all of her children, she was plagued by headaches and erratic behavior which some historians believe indicates that she was a manic depressive or bipolar). You have to wonder why some First Ladies don't get their own biopics.
The most peculiar thing about the casting is probably their age difference. Sally Field is 11 years older than Daniel Day-Lewis and we don't often see casting flip the gender/age disparity equation; Mary was 10 years younger than Abraham.
Here is the trailer to Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) which netted Raymond Massey and Oscar nomination for Best Actor (Ruth Gordon was not nominated as Mary Todd). John Ford's Young Lincoln (1939) the year before was only Oscar nominated for the screenplay.
No movie about Lincoln has been an Oscar powerhouse but you never know with that cast and director.
But First... Spielberg's Lincoln is long enough away that perhaps we should be talking about Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012) instead. Itopens in 14 months and stars Meryl Streep's future son-in-lawBenjamin Walker as Honest Abe. He's apparently cornered the market on blood splattered presidents. His breakthrough role was in the play "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" on Broadway (for which he turned down a role in X-Men: First Class) and all I can say about him is you're in for such a treat when you see him on the big screen. Major charisma he has. Big stardom awaits.
Benjamin Walker heads the cast of "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson"
*Abraham Lincoln was the 16th US President but Mary Todd was actually the 17th First Lady since President #10 John Tyler remarried while in office after the death of his first wife.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 5:59PM 
Sal Mineo and Val Lauren who may play him in a biopicIts title make it sound just stiflingly clichéd. But it isn't and it works. The characters were compellingly flawed and in not immediately recognizable ways, either. Best in show is Val Lauren who plays an unceasingly aggressive self-made man. If this film gets distribution I expect it'll do major things for his heretofore minor career (lot of TV guest spots and the like).
