DIAZ LIKE THESE
My friend Janice went on a weekend trip to New York recently. Janice is no stranger to foreign travel. But even she had not previously experienced the bonus of coming face-to-face with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, which she did rounding a corner into Times Square on her first day in town and happening upon the shoot of Vanilla Sky.
The film is a US remake of Alejandro Amenabar’s 1997 Spanish hit, Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes), a tangled and creepy tale about a charming lothario who is disfigured in a car crash. He has his looks restored by a talented plastic surgeon, but then begins to find strange things happening to him.
Exactly how this has been adapted to a major studio (Paramount, with foreign sales handled by Summit) movie, no one is yet prepared to reveal. But the new version is being directed by Cameron Crowe - quite a change from Almost Famous or, for that matter, Jerry Maguire. Crowe has also done the adaptation of Amenabar’s original.
Mind you, they could do with a few people called Janice on the set - or rather, anyone not called either Cameron or Cruise. The latter plays the male lead, with the female one taken (as it was in the Spanish original) by Penélope Cruz, who seems to make most of her movies in North America these days.
And, as if having a Mr Cruise and Ms Cruz in your movie were not enough, the other leading female role is being played by Cameron Diaz, which means two people will turn round every time someone on the set shouts “Hey, Cameron!”
AND FINALLY...
If ever the phrase, ‘No more Mr Nice Guy’ was appropriate, it is for the latest piece of Tom Hanks casting. For one thing, the double Oscar-winner look is his most un-American in years, thanks to the straggly beard he grew for Cast Away. And, to cap it all, he has reportedly just signed up to play a hit man (that’s right, as in ‘professional killer’) in The Road to Perdition, the second film from another Oscar-winner, Brit Sam Mendes.
The movie is due to go into production at DreamWorks at the beginning of next year - provided, that is, some image-maker doesn’t decide we might not buy Hanks as a mobster.
Well, to paraphrase my friend from the Rat Race story above, “I’d see that!”
|
