What Is It With Ruth Madoff and Actresses?

You've already heard that Michelle Pfeiffer is finally planning to work again for an HBO movie called Wizard of Lies. So let's give the story its proper due.

Pfeiffer in The Family / Ruth Madoff

(I included the Pfeiff News in the last link roundup but the Pfans among you didn't deem that sufficient. (I heard from a pflummoxed pfew by e-mail). Look, stop demanding my bonafides! I have been devoted to La Pfeiff since 1985 in. real. time. I've followed her long enough to take each new probject with a full brick of salt until I see footage. She is so skittish about working.)

For the moment at least she is planning to play Ruth Madoff in Wizard of Lies with Robert De Niro in the leading role of fraudulent financier Bernie Madoff. Aside from cameos and voice work this will be her first TV role since just before superstardom hit in 87/88. In her last film The Family, DeNiro (who is 72) and she had teenage children but they're aging up this time around and delicious/undervalued Alessandro Nivola (who is 43) will play their son. Frankly I'd rather see Alessandro romantically paired with Pfeiffer than playing her biological! She's closer to his age than De Niros (by one year - hee - as she's 14 years older than Nivola and 15 years younger than De Niro - but it counts! Especially since she's so foxy. And especially because Nivola is even hotter (it sounds impossible but it's totally true) when paired with actresses that are older than he is - think Frances McDormand in Laurel Canyon, Embeth Davidtz in Junebug and Emily Mortimer in real life (his wife is just one year older - but for this argument it counts ;) 

But back to the Madoffs.

It's worth noting here that Ruth Madoff has already been played by Cate Blanchett (kinda) in Blue Jasmine, and BEFORE Pfeiffer she'll be played by Blythe Danner in the ABC miniseries Madoff (currently filming) so the disgraced rich lady is really getting around among the actresses. It is kind of an instant classic dream role in the Women Who Lie To Themselves™ subgenre.

Blythe Danner and Richard Dreyfuss in Madoff, coming to ABC in 2016.

If Pfeiffer actually goes through with it, we can hope for an Emmy but won't hold our breath. Despite her fame and acclaim, she has never been an awards magnet only picking up an odd trophy here and there (the BAFTA for Dangerous Liaisons, the Silver Bear for Love Field, and several coveted prizes for Fabulous Baker Boys including the Globe, the NBR, and the holy trinity of critics prizes -- NYFCC, LAFCA, NSFC -- before losing the Oscar for that role. ARGH x ∞).

But after both Blue Jasmine (2013) and ABC's Madoff (2016) will audiences and showbiz voters still be into this story for a third round in late 2016 or 2017? 

Unlikely Couple: Robert Pattinson and Claire Denis

Here's Murtada with the week's most interesting casting news.

Robert Pattinson is starring in Claire Denis’ next movie. Are we being punked? No. Actually to judge from his last few choices it's just another day, another auteur. He’s becoming a top director magnet and has been using his bankability to make interesting choices. He’s confirmed as the lead of Denis’ untitled first English language film. The story is set in space in a “future that seems like the present” with Pattinson reportedly playing an astronaut.

 This particular project is intriguing beyond Pattinson. Denis of course is reason enough to be excited. Her last movie Bastards (2013) may have been less heralded than usual but it was a provocative visceral experience. Collaborating with her on the screenplay is novelist Zadie Smith (On Beauty, White Teeth) whose books have always been cinematic and full of fallible compelling characters. Smith writing her first screenplay? Now that’s exciting!

More...

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Who? Gabriel Chavarria

When word broke that the next Planet of the Apes film (due July 14th, 2017) had both a title and a new leading man, we were like: "Sure" and "Who?" The latest in the 47 year old franchise will be called War of the Planet of the Apes and the star is Gabriel Chavarria. Well, the star other than Andy Serkis of course who will return as lead ape Caesar. The young Latino actor (age unknown) currently stars in the Hulu Original Series East Los High. If you are unfamiliar with that (and many will be) he was previously seen in small roles in the Hilary Swank vehicle Freedom Writers and the illegal immigrant drama A Better Life but this will be his second lead in a feature. His first, already filmed, comes next year with Lowriders (reuniting him with Oscar nominee Demián Bichir who will play his father this time).

Thankfully for the first blockbuster he will not be buried in motion-capture suits like so many Apes cast members in the past because: look at him...

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Rosamund Pike, "Gone" No More

Murtada reporting. Thanks for such kind comments on my first post last week.

Rosamund Pike became a star when she stared blanky at French speaking Carey Mulligan in An Education and calmly said “no you didn’t, you said something completely different”. A new delicious take on the ditzy blonde. She shifted that cool blank blonde vibe to convey ruthless smarts, to grand Oscar-nominated results in  Gone Girl. We’ve been wondering how Hollywood will capitalize on her breakthrough ever since.

Earlier this week it was announced that she will be joining Jon Hamm in the political thriller High Wire Act. This marks the third high profile project for her since that breakout. She’s also been cast opposite David Oyelowo in Amma Asante's Belle follow up, also an interracial romance, A United Kingdom, and alongside Jason Clarke, Jack O’Çonnell and Mia Wasikowska in the World War II drama HHH. Three roles, three leading men, three different genres, three period pieces: a political thriller, a historical drama and a love story taking place during WW II, right after it and in the 1970s. They look great on paper given the collaborators and topics but are they well written or will it be the cool blonde in stock wife / love interest mode?

Here's what little we know about the roles.
In Kingdom she will be Ruth Williams, a British woman who faced controversy because of her interracial marriage to Seretse Khama, Botswanan royal. In HHH she’s Lina Heydrich, wife of Reinhard one of the main architects of the Holocaust. Supposedly she was the one who introduced him to the Nazi  party. We don’t know anything about her role in Wire beyond being a CIA undercover operative tasked with protecting Hamm’s character.

the famous photographer Margaret Bourke White shot this photo of Ruth Williams and Seretsa Khama

She’s not the headliner in any, though Kingdom sounds like a strong two-hander. Hopefully the movies deliver for us and for her. (Announced last year but maybe not happening as things have quieted down, is Hany Abu Assad’s The Mountain Between Us with Charlie Hunnam.) Which of the upcoming projects excites you and who would you most like to see her paired with next? 

Halfway: All Hail Alicia Vikander!

½way mark - part 4 of ?
Here's Lynn Lee on 2015's Most Ubiquitous Actress

In the act(ress)ing world, there are rising stars and then there are rockets – the ones whose careers lift off so high so fast it leaves us all blinking a little.  Think Jessica Chastain in 2011, or Jennifer Lawrence in 2012.  2015 looks to be a rocket year for young Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, who’s attracted favorable notice here at TFE and by critics and directors on both sides of the Atlantic, though she’s yet to achieve mainstream moviegoer recognition.  

If she keeps going as she’s begun, she may soon have that, too.

I first took note of Vikander in 2012, the year of her breakthrough role in the historical drama and Oscar best foreign film nominee A Royal Affair, as a young queen who helps bring the Enlightenment to 18th century Denmark, and a supporting turn in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina.  Nathaniel nominated her for a Film Bitch Award that year and she’s worth watching in both films, especially the former. But it wasn’t until I saw her back to back in this year’s Ex Machina and Testament to Youth that I really got what the fuss was about. 

And what is it about, exactly?...

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