Cast This! "Game Change" w/ Julianne Moore

The news of Julianne Moore's casting as Sarah Palin in HBO's Game Change, adapted from the best-selling tell-all about the 2008 Presidential Race, is spreading like wildfire. I haven't read a single piece on it yet (other than the opinion-free news bit from The Hollywood Reporter) but one imagines many Tina Fey references will be popping up. How can anyone outdo that particular crucifixion by spiritiually dead-on mimicry? Perhaps Juli has been considering the role for sometime and asked for pointers on the set of 30 Rock?

Here at the Film Experience we try never to think of Sarah Palin, a true blight on American culture (though perhaps the celebrity we most deserve as Americans given our national habit of treasuring stupidity). Given their diametrically opposed politics, we can only imagine Julianne Moore weeping when thinking of the Politertainer in real life. Though Julianne Moore's whole screen persona tilts toward the weepy so...

Speaking of weeping.

Here at The Film Experience we regularly weep knowing that the surest way for the truly great and imaginative screen actors (like Moore herself) to win prizes is to eschew their own imaginative gift for character creation and hone their technical ability to mimic other famous people instead. But since that's the world we live in, perhaps Julianne can finally win some hardware? At least a Globe? Though she's one of modern cinema's most acclaimed performers she's actually unpracticed at the art of acceptance speeches. Though she won an Daytime Emmy before hitting the movies, since she achieved fame she's won virtually nothing apart from untelevised critics prizes or "special" you're awesome type of career honors -- like the recent Hasty Puddings situation. Apart from a rare "Ensemble" or shared prize she has never won: an Oscar, a Golden Globe, Cannes, SAG, BAFTA, or a Primetime Emmy. She hasn't even managed an MTV tub o' popcorn or even a Saturn win! Her biggest "gets" were the Volvi cup in Venice, the Spirit Award and the "Critics Choice" all for  Far From Heaven (2002). And regarding the latter, had the BFCA been the organization in size, shape and tone that they are now back then, she wouldn't have even won that! And I say that as a (frustrated) voting member.

What do you make of this news? Excited to see her try mimicry for a change?

CAST THIS
Since Julianne Moore is the only star announced thus far that leaves four major power couple roles uncast? Who would you have as (clockwise from top left: John & Elizabeth Edwards, Bill & Hilary, John and Cindy McCain, and Michelle and Barack Obama. And oops I forgot Joe Biden in the photo.

Who would YOU place in the other roles?

Purrfect Anne Hathaway Has Big Stilettos To Fill.

A horror movie serial is opening (at least) every month all over the internet for the next 18 months. It's called News and Rumors and Collective Freakouts Concerning Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. With each new chapter the internet will shiver and tremble, cry out or shake with alarm, fury, disbelief, fear and finally cathartic release. The latest chapter involves two official casting reveals from Nolan himself. The first is that Inception's Tom Hardy will be playing the grotesquely muscular "Bane" (who we last saw onscreen in the fiasco Batman & Robin, 1997) and the second is that Anne Hathaway, she of the backless gowns and "look at me, I'm fabulous!" nakedity in Love and Other Drugs, will be playing Selina Kyle. Selina is, rather famously, Catwoman's alter ego but given Nolan's two previous Batman films we have no indication that we'll actually get Selina as Catwoman, just that we're getting Selina. 

Julie Newmar (the first Catwoman) | Anne Hathaway (the latest)

Remember when Sam Raimi kept setting up Dylan Baker to play The Lizard in his Spider-Man trilogy and never delivered?

I'd say the most we can hope for is that Anne gets to let her bitchy freak side fly a bit. Rachel Getting Married minus the babbling and the "L'Haim!"s divided by Get Smart physicality? She'll probably use a weapon at some point but sadly, it'll probably be a plain ol' gun and not sewing machine claws. What I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't exactly expect her to have nine mystical lives or suit up and throwdown with Christian Bale with pithy one liners and claws out. Maybe she'll get a whip if we're lucky. Nolan likes his female characters as dangerous window dressing or as damsels in distress and on either front Hathaway will be terrific. Or at least more terrific than previous Nolan women.

Believe it or not I don't consider the role too sacred to be recreated. (Someone will reinterpret The Joker before too long, too, even though everyone currently thinks that that'll never happen. It always happens. Trust.) Superheroes and Villians are just from that school of roles that are meant to be constantly reinterpreted, like uh.. .Shakespearean protagonists! Not that the birth of any new feline fatale will ever measure up to Michelle Pfeiffer and that snowy alley with pussies galore.

We'll always hear her roar.