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SWISS ON A ROLL:
Forster directs Barrie biopic |
Sagnier’s star turn in 8 femmes evidently did not pass unnoticed in Hollywood, because she has just been signed up to play Tinkerbell in the live-action version of Peter Pan which PJ Hogan is now shooting down-under. The film, on which production chores are being shared by Universal, Columbia Pictures and Revolution Studios, with Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed also on board as an executive producer, is not otherwise an all-star number. Peter is played by relative newcomer Jeremy Sumpter (who was in Bill Pullman’s eerie directorial debut, Frailty), with the role of Wendy taken by British unknown Rachel Hurd-Wood. Jason Isaacs (the bad guy in The Patriot) is Captain Hook, with Lyn Redgrave, Olivia Williams and Richard Briers rounding out the cast.
Hopefully, the presence of Sagnier and the above will be enough to make a difference in the currently rather crowded JM Barrie marketplace, what with Disney’s latest animated version, Return to Neverland, and the film that Monster’s Ball director Mark Forster recently wrapped in London with Johnny Depp. That one’s called JM Barrie’s Neverland and is, of course, more about the writer than the classic children’s book.
But it looks like another of those instances where, whenever anyone has a good idea for a film subject, someone else seems to have it at the same time.
BOB'S JOB: Dylan stars
in Masked
and Anonymous
alongside a cast
that includes
Mulholland
Drive star
Harring (below left), Giovanni
Ribisi (below
middle), Ed Harris
(below right) and a
dozen others.
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LET’S FACE IT: if you work as a journalist in the movie business, you get to meet movie stars. That’s not necessarily why you do it, but that’s what happens. Stars in other domains, however, remain just as mysteriously stellar as they do to the ordinary fan, and this is especially true of rock stars. Which may be why these pages have shown an excessive interest any time a rock star has become attached to a movie project: Michael Stipe as a producer, Jon Bon Jovi as an actor, Otis Redding or Janis Joplin as possible subjects of a biopic...
Not wishing to seem too predictable, therefore, I have not so far mentioned a major new movie starring Bob Dylan. Also he’s less photogenic than Bon Jovi and less, well, dead than Redding or Joplin. But, from being a film that featured the Bobster in a leading role, Masked and Anonymous has gradually turned into a must-talk-about project described by one fellow scribe as “Dylan’s version of Being John Malkovich”.
The film, on which production wrapped in Los Angeles in July, is about a singer in a fictional, war-torn country who is sprung from jail by his manager to give a concert that will reunite the nation. Not, in other words, your average rock ‘n’ roll movie - and a far cry from Dylan’s last (let’s be honest) disastrous appearance in Hearts of Fire.
Director is first-timer Larry Charles, who honed his directing skills on TV with Seinfeld and other sitcoms. And the line-up of other stars who will play featured or cameo roles is, quite literally, awesome: Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson, Penélope Cruz, John Goodman, Mickey Rourke, Angela Bassett, Ed Harris, Giovanni Ribisi, Bruce Dern, Val Kilmer, Cheech Marin, Chris Penn, Christian Slater and Mulholland Drive’s Laura Ellen Harring. And there will, promise producers Guy East and Nigel Sinclair, be 40 minutes of music, with some songs specially written for the film.
Not content with all of the above, the workaholic former folk-singer has also signed on to write a song to play over the end titles of director Ron Maxwell’s latest historical epic, Gods and Generals, about the first two years of the Civil War.
And they used to call Dylan reclusive…
… which is not a word one would be tempted to use about Kelly Osbourne (below right), daughter of
Ozzie and Sharon and far from reluctant star of MTV’s hit reality show. But MTV wasn’t enough. Nor was a foray into the pop charts with a cover version of Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’. No, Kelly has got her sights set firmly on the big screen.
Plans are apparently being hatched for her to co-star in a remake of Freaky Friday, the 1976 movie which featured 14-year-old Jodie Foster as a teenager who swaps bodies with her mother. Disney, inspired by the success of such recent teen hits as the Parent Trap remake and The Princess Diaries, has commissioned a new script which will star Lindsay Lohan (who played the twin roles in Trap). Osbourne is reportedly in discussion to play Lohan’s character’s music-mad best friend, a role which was in the original but was much smaller and was played by Vicki Schwarz. Annette Bening will play the mother and Osbourne should get to sing at least one song in the film.
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