Remember Cameron Crowe? He's officially back

Actually, easily the best news out there this morning is that "In the Loop" director Armando Iannucci is coming back with a new film, and it couldn't be much more different at all from that extremely hard-hitting and satisfying satire.

His next flick, "Out the Window," is an adaptation of Claire Tomalin's biography "The Invisible Woman," which recounts Charles Dickens' affair with actress Nelly Ternan.

Like I said, couldn't be much further removed from "In the Loop," but that flick is so amazingly good that I'll follow Iannucci just about anywhere. And if you haven't seen "In the Loop," rent it immediately, and be prepared to marvel at the sheer wonder that is Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker.

But before I got briefly sidetracked by that, this was supposed to be all about Cameron Crowe, who has indeed now officially signed on to direct his first flick since 2005's "Elizabethtown," which really needs to be erased from my memory right away. Man, was it awful.

His luck will hopefully be a lot better with "We Bought a Zoo," which certainly at least gives him an intriguing story to work with. The memoir by Benjamin Mee is about how he and his family used their life savings to buy a dilapidated zoo in the English countryside, complete with 200 exotic animals.

Sounds great to me. Crowe is currently reworking the script, and it's already received a release date of Dec. 23, 2011, but of course all that could change.

Like I said, "Elizabethtown" is an almost complete abomination, but Crowe has delivered plenty of winners in his career, and I'm sure he has another one in him. If I had to list my 10 favorite movies of the last 10 (or maybe 11) years or so, "Almost Famous" would make the list every time, and "Say Anything" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" are just cinematic comfort food that I keep going back to again and again. Here's hoping this trip to the "Zoo" will help him regain some mojo.

And in other news about one of my favorite directors who's sorely in need of a winner, it seems that Terry Gilliam may have finally found someone foolhardy enough to step into the role once inhabited by Johnny Depp in his "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote."

Gilliam's first attempt to make this movie several years ago was an utter failure, even though it was turned into a bewilderingly entertaining one in the documentary "Lost in La Mancha." The odds that he'll be able to do any better this time have to be at least slightly improved by the news (from Gilliam himself, at least) that Ewan McGregor is now on board, and hopefully bringing some better luck with him.

Assuming the script hasn't changed too much, McGregor will play an advertising executive who travel back to 17th century Spain, where he meets Don Quixote and becomes involved in adventures with him. It has already been announced that Robert Duvall will play Quixote (take a few seconds to digest that), stepping in for the great Froggy actor Jean Rochefort (if I can digress for one second, for a fantastic film starring Rochefort, rent Patrice Leconte's "Man on the Train."

I hoodwinked mi hermano into going with me to watch Gilliam's last flick, "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus," in NYC, and while it wasn't awful, it did pretty much go completely off the rails after Heath Ledger died, but that unfortunately didn't stop Gilliam from letting it just go out of any control or reason to exist for the last 45 minutes or so. "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," however, has clearly been a passion project for him for a long time now, so here's hoping it turns into something worth watching.

And all I have except for that today is the first full trailer I know of for something I'm clearly too old to be watching, but when you make Emma Stone the star of your movie, there's almost an ironclad guarantee I'm gonna watch it. She's just easily one of the best comediennes working in movies today, and even if "Easy A," a teeny update of "The Scarlet Letter" due out in September, is extremely silly, as you'll see below, it also at least has Patricia Clarkson saying "because I slept with a whole bunch of people ... mostly boys," so it's at least got to be mildly entertaining. Enjoy, be sure to watch the Joss Whedon-directed episode of "Glee" with Neil Patrick Harris tonight, and have a perfectly acceptable Tuesday. Peace out.

"Crazy Heart" director plotting what would be just about the perfect followup

Though Scott Cooper's "Crazy Heart" isn't my single favorite movie of 2009 yet (that distinction goes to Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds"), I've seen Cooper's movie twice now and it just keeps getting and better in my mind, much like Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" did, so just give it time.

The movie just has such a natural pace and feel to it that it makes the utterly familiar story go down extremely sweetly, and it certainly doesn't hurt that the Dude is so great in it. And now, it seems that Cooper is lining up two other top-notch actors to take on an epic Southern saga.

Making the rounds to promote "Get Low," in which he plays a cranky old man who wants to plan his own funeral party so he can attend it, Robert Duvall revealed that Cooper has been lined up to direct "The Hatfields and the McCoys" for Warner Bros., from a script by Eric Roth (the "Forrest Gump" scribe, so he certainly needs and deserves a chance for atonement). Duvall, who had a small but key part in "Crazy Heart," has signed on to star in it, and he said Brad Pitt is now being courted to join him, though exactly what roles each would play is so far not at all clear.

Cooper, who made his debut with "Crazy Heart," is definitely one to keep your eyes on, so I'll certainly share more about this whenever I find it. And, apparently bored on the junket circuit and wanting to chat, Duvall also took the occasion to tell Movieline something about the status of Terry Gilliam's truly quixotic "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" too.

He revealed that "the Irish guy who was in 'Crazy Heart'," who we have to assume would mean Colin Farrell, was approached to play the role that Johnny Depp tried to the first Gilliam tried to make this movie, but has - probably wisely - turned it down. Duvall, however, said he will be in the movie, playing some kind of "Latin guy," assuming it ever gets made.

And if you've ever been the seriously satisfying - albeit depressing - documentary "Lost in La Mancha," which chronicles the epic failure that was Gilliam's first attempt to make this movie, you know the odds against this ever happening this time are pretty steep. Here's more of what Duvall had to say about the obstacles that remain:

"They [the producers] need a name. He's [Gilliam's] going after two people now, but he doesn’t want to say who they are until after he gets them. But it’s been six months he’s been after people. And it’s a bigger budget than his others. And he doesn’t stick to a budget, they say. He goes on and on. And he’s got locations picked out in Spain. So it’ll be very exciting. And when the time comes — and I know for sure — then I’ll start riding horseback every day … But you know, when the time comes - I can’t really start preparing for it until it’s greenlit. Until it’s really greenlit."

Duvall certainly and understandably has his doubts, and coincidentally enough, this news comes in the same week as the DVD release of Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus," which, having seen it, I can say is a movie he probably should never have completed.

When my family goes to New York just after Christmas each year, a big part of the gathering is getting to see movies you wouldn't where we normally reside. My brother usually lets me drag him to one movie I want to see but he's almost certain will suck at least a little bit. Two years ago it was Steven Soderbergh's seemingly interminable "Che," an utter act of hubris, though Benicio Del Toro certainly gave it his all, and this year it was "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus."

Everyone knows by now the saga of how Heath Ledger died during the filming of this flick, and Gilliam turned to three big stars - Depp, Farrell and Jude Law - to finish the job. Well, what I can reveal to you is, after making an oddly entertaining flick during the portion Ledger was around for, Gilliam - predictably perhaps - then just lets his movie go completely out of control to the point that the last 45 minutes or so just make no sense at all. I'm still glad I saw it, but I can't really recommend the experience on DVD for anyone else except as a film oddity.

OK, that all went on a bit longer than I had originally planned, so I'll simply leave you today with a couple of videos. The first is the first full trailer I know of for Irish director John Carney's "Zonad." You may remember Carney from the truly magical musical "Once," but this is something completely different: The story of a mysterious stranger who arrives in an Irish village in the 1950s and passes himself off as an alien. Sounds like exactly the kind of goofball comedy I love, but I'll almost certainly have to wait for DVD to ever see this one. Enjoy.



And finally, I'll leave you with something even odder, the new video from MIA, who we (or at least I) haven't heard from since her "Paper Planes" became an earworm that bore into my skull for most of a year. This song, unfortunately, isn't nearly as catchy, and be warned that the video is 9 minutes long. It has, however, apparently been banned from YouTube because of its extreme violence (don't say I didn't warn you), so "enjoy" it while you can (and be warned, if you're a Ginger, really don't watch this). Peace out.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Atlanta Film Festival report No. 3: "The Good Heart"

Since when I'm not on vacation (like I am now), this is often about movie news, here's first a tidbit that intrigued me this morning.

If I were list say, 10 or so favorite directors, I think Greg Mottola would make the list somewhere in the bottom half. His movies are far from complex works of art, but I have unconditional love for "Superbad" and almost as much for "Adventureland," so I'm certainly a fan.

He'll be back this summer (I believe, but I've allegedly been wrong at least a few times before) with "Paul," which sounds like nothing but a big geeky ball of fun. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost star as a couple of British blokes on a cross-country tour of the U.S. on their way to Comic-Con who encounter and sort of adopt the titular alien on a visit to Roswell. Count me as thoroughly psyched for that, whenever it will actually be coming out.

And now comes word of his next project, which will be a romantic comedy but likely less raunchy (but hopefully nearly as fun) as what he's done this far. He's signed on to write and direct a movie based on the novel "Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry" (the title of which rather wisely will be shortened to simply "Important Artifacts.")

The movie, is set to star Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman (sheesh, can a movie just be too good looking?) in a tale described as "a fictional estate auction catalog full of personal items and photographs from the four-year romance between a male photographer and a younger food columnist." Like I said, fairly heady stuff for Mottola, but I'm still intrigued.

However, since I'm a guest at the Atlanta Film Festival, this is supposed to be about the pretty uniformly great sights I've seen there, and I'm certainly happy to share them (I suppose this would feel more like "working" if I were ever to get paid for it.)

We start (and perhaps finish, depending on how long I go on about this flick) with "The Good Heart," which I was thoroughly psyched to see on the strengths of its two leads, Brian Cox and Paul Dano, who would both make any short list of my favorite actors. And, unlike with most of the movies being shown at the festival, you can probably see this one right away for a few bucks using the On Demand function, depending on your cable provider.

And, despite some qualms (the ending is ludicrous!), I'd say it would be well worth it for an evening rental. I deliberately read nothing about the movie going in except for the barest of plot structures: Cox plays a cantankerous bar owner who takes in a young homeless man (Dano) and tries to make him his protege. Within that loose framework, however, what you get is much more of an intense character study than you usually find in movies nowadays, and a real showcase for its two stars.

The two are brought together after Cox's Jacques, who is none-too-slowly drinking and smoking himself to death, suffers what is apparently not his first heart attack and meets Dano's Lucas, who has tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide, in the hospital. It would be hard to find two sadder sacks, so they form an immediate bond, and Jacques decides to help Lucas out (and get in the process an indentured friend, of course.)

Most of the joy in watching "The Good Heart" comes in seeing the two of them spar with each other and slowly adopt to each other's idiosyncrasies, which are many. In lesser hands, the story arc - Jacques slowly lowering all of his hostility and Lucas realizing there's something to live for - would be pretty seriously hallmark stuff, but here it never fails to engage. Most of the credit for that goes to Cox, who clings to Jacques' maddeningly inane fixations, like how to make the perfect cup of coffee, and makes you almost understand why he lives that way even as you just want to shake him and yell "wake up!" Dano, however, holds up his half of the successful equation too, letting his nerve build up at a steady pace until he finally stops taking all of Jacques' considerable abuse.

But there wouldn't be enough for a feature-length movie with just the two of them, so a temptress inevitably enters the picture to compete for the attention and affection of Lucas in the form of Sarah, played with vibrant appeal by Stephanie Szostak. Even better, however, are the bar regulars (none of them played by anyone you would recognize, so I'm not gonna bother to try and track down their names) who turn this into something we haven't seen since "Barfly," a genuine drinker's movie. And though that may not sound terribly appealing, I promise you that you'll be surprised by just how perfectly writer/director Dagur Kari knows this world, and how quickly what seem like deep bonds can be revealed as the empty shells they are, especially when a patron manages to piss off Jacques for what is inevitably the most trivial of "infractions."

OK, as predicted, I went on about that longer than I had planned, but it would be a real disservice if I didn't mention that the ending, which I won't reveal, will either bewilder you (as it did me, though not nearly enough to not like this movie) or seem like a natural fit. All I'll say is that if you think about the title a bit while you're watching this, it won't seem like nearly as much of a slap in the face as it did to me.

This one isn't showing again at the Atlanta Film Festival, to which I'll be returning Thursday, but like I said, you can probably find it on cable On Demand, and if you like Paul Dano and Brian Cox (and if you don't, why the heck not?), I hope I've made enough of a case to make you want to check it out.

And I'll leave you today with the trailer for a movie that looks like it will appeal to me in the same sort of way. Called "Get Low," it stars Robert Duvall as a man who decides he wants to plan his funeral party so he can attend it, and Bill Murray as the attorney who helps him plot this madness. It's set to come out in at least some corners of the world on July 30. Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Tuesday. Peace out.

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