A short Thursday report long on fun news

If you skipped Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine" last year, either because of its mind-boggling NC-17 rating or simply because the subject matter sounded so depressing, fix that right away with a rental, because in many ways the movie is a real joy to watch.

It is indeed about a marriage that's imploding in front of our eyes, but the acting from Michelle Williams (rightly nominated for an Oscar) and Ryan Gosling is nothing short of amazing to behold, and the story goes on a journey well worth exploring that will make you smile and laugh more than it will make you blue. The "future room" alone makes this movie well worth renting (it's out on DVD now, so check it out).

And even better comes big casting news about Cianfrance's next movie, the crime drama "The Place Beyond the Pines," which reunites him with Gosling. He will play a biker who, after having a child, begins robbing banks to support the baby. And now comes word that Bradley Cooper will play a rookie cop who's on his trail.

Filming will start in July, and Cianfrance is a real talent to keep an eye on, so stay tuned for more on this whenever I find it.

In other news about a director I can't get enough of, it's now guaranteed that even people in my little corner of the world will get to see Tomas Alfredson's follow-up to the simply sublime "Let the Right One In" (still streaming on Netflix), a remake of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."

The news is that Focus Features has taken over distribution from Universal and has set an awards season U.S. release date of Nov. 18, and best of all, will apparently do so in glorious "wide release."

Bully to that, because Alfredson has compiled a stellar cast for the Cold War spy saga based on the John Le Carre novel, starting with Gary Oldman as George Smiley, the British spy charged with uncovering a Russian mole in his ranks, and also featuring Colin Firth, Ciaran Hinds, Tom Hardy and Mark Strong.

Bring it on already, even for people like me, who live in tiny burgs!

And finally (and inevitably) today, Paramount is finalizing an option deal to develop a movie based on "Furious Love," an account of the public love affair of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and is ready to hand it off to one Martin Scorsese to direct.

Scorsese is currently wrapping up "Hugo Cabret" starring Chloe Moretz and Asa Butterfield (based on one of my favorite novels, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," so bully to that) for a Nov. 23 release, and after that he has a number of potential projects on his plate. Included among those are "Silence," a tale of two Jesuit priests (potentially Daniel Day Lewis and Benicio Del Toro, imagine that) in 17th century Japan, the hitman drama "The Irishman" and a Frank Sinatra biopic.

Though any of those would be a natural fit, I'd imagine he would gladly put them all on hold to jump on this, given his interest in Hollywood history and how simply juicy the story is. Burton and Taylor were both married when they met on the set of "Cleopatra" in 1960, and began a public romance that inflamed the paparazzi. They eventually married in 1964, divorced in 1974, remarried in 1975 and separated for good in 1976.

And with that, I'm off to the job that still pays my bills, so have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

Who should play Frank Sinatra?

Before we get into the main orders of business, I have to say that Sports Illustrated has just conducted what has to be the most thoroughly unnecessary poll in history.

As I was driving home from work yesterday, the first thing I heard was Freddie Coleman saying "Oriole fans deserve so much better." While that statement could very easily be applied to any number of developments, in this case it was the news that Sports Illustrated had conducted a poll to determine that Peter Angelos is the worst owner in baseball.

My only thought about that was, were there really any other competitors? I mean, if the question were "worst world leader," I'd imagine Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot would all have their partisans, but in baseball there has never, ever been a worse owner than Angelos.

I'd go so far, in fact, to go ahead and call him the worst owner of all time, in any sport. A few members of my small Facebook cabal have posited that the Raiders' Al Davis is even worse, but I have to differ. Davis at least has the excuse of being certifiably insane, but Angelos is just mean, cheap and stupid, and there can't possibly be a worse combination.

Anyways, enough about that. At least we're not the Nationals. And since I haven't mentioned the fate of "Chuck" in a while, it's certainly worth an update. Although I had heard NBC wouldn't announce anything until May 19 (next Tuesday), the Hollywood Reporter seems to think that NBC will finalize its lineup by tomorrow.

I still have no idea which way this will go, but there was one promising sign this week as the network passed on "Legally Mad," a new pilot from David E. Kelley, giving it one more prime-time hour that hasn't already been swallowed up by that glutton Jay Leno. Here's one other possibly promising nugget from the Hollywood Reporter article:

And of course, Peacock is still mum on "Chuck," "Medium" and "Law & Order," although no one would be surprised to see all three return. "Chuck" is already appearing on schedules being floated.

Keep hope alive, of course, but here today it's supposed to be all about what would have to be called the ultimate harmonic convergence when it comes to music biopics: Martin Scorsese and Frank Sinatra.

It seems that Universal Pictures and Mandalay Pictures are teaming up for "Sinatra" and have brought on Scorsese to direct and produce. There's no question that it's a perfect fit, given the clear affection of each for both music and the Mafia. The big question, which Variety said has yet to be settled, is who would play Ol' Blue Eyes himself.

Now, the obvious choice would, of course, be Leonardo DiCaprio, who has played the lead in Scorsese's last four features: "Gangs of New York," "The Aviator," "The Departed" and the upcoming "Shutter Island." I'm sure Leo would be just fine in this, because he's proven to be great in anything Scorsese pitches at him, but I have one more name in mind that would be even better: James Franco.

Now, anybody who's been here probably knows that, thanks to "Freaks and Geeks" and everything he's done since, I have something bordering on an unhealthy heteromancrush on Mr. Franco, but I just can't help it. He's just that good, and he certainly has that wildness in his eyes that would be perfect for capturing Frank.

There was a time a few years ago when we were just impaled with a seemingly never-ending series of music biopics, but now that that has cooled down considerably, I'd certainly say the time is right for this, and I'll be sure to pass it on as soon as I hear anymore about the casting.

Jekyll and Hyde vs. ... Jekyll and Hyde?

When the news broke a few days ago that Keanu Reeves was gonna star in a new version of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson tale "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" I just let it pass without comment because the best I would have been able to come up with would have been meh.

But as with any odd Hollywood story, these things always come at least in pairs, as with the dueling "Sherlock Holmes" flicks. On that front, Guy Ritchie is prepping his version for a Christmas release starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, while some wing of the Apatow camp is at least beginning plans for its own, sure-to-be-much-sillier take with Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen.

Now, with Jekyll and Hyde, there's likewise rival projects in the works as well. To the already announced Reeves-starring take to be adapted by Justin Haythe ("Revolutionary Road"), you can now add one from the truly odd Abel Ferrera to star Forest Whitaker and 50 Cent, presumably as the two sides of the bad doctor's personality.

Even though Ferrera plans to "contemporize" the tale, with Forest on board my money's still on the latter project to be the much more interesting.

Trailer two-fer

And now, for anyone who's made it this far, a couple of trailers as a reward. The first is just a teaser featuring a bit of vintage Madea ("I don't want no po po at my do do") from Tyler Perry's fall flick, "I Can Do Bad All By Myself," which along with Madea is set to star Taraji P. Henson (huzzah!), Mary J. Blige and even Gladys Knight. I concede that Madea is just a thoroughly silly character, but "Madea Goes to Jail" was a surprisingly entertaining affair, and Tyler Perry has yet to make a movie that I didn't enjoy, so I'm definitely still on board.



The second trailer is for a much grander undertaking, Rob Marshall's take on "Nine," the musical based on Frederico Fellini's autobiographical "8 1/2." With Penelope Cruz, Daniel Day Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Dame Judy Dench and many more starring in what you can see from the trailer will be a truly epic production, when it finally comes out at Thanksgiving, I'll certainly say bring it on!



And finally, a parting gift

This one comes from Wilco to me to you. After it's new, self-titled album, leaked onto the Internets last night, the band decided to go ahead and let it out themselves for free streaming on their Web site. To give it a listen, click here. I've only listened to it once, and will need several more spins to offer my true opinion, but my instant verdict is that it's unsurprisingly a pop classic. Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Thursday. Peace out.

Does Chris Tucker have any other friends?

Since he only seems to make movies with Brett Ratner, I'd say it's a fair question. I mean, isn't that kind of like one day tasting a fried bologna sandwich and then declaring you're gonna eat nothing else for the rest of your life?

But I already digress a bit from the rather depressing point here. Not content to simply crank out more excremental but harmless "Rush Hour" movies, Brett Ratner has somehow now gotten his hands on the rights to "Mr. S: My Life With Frank Sinatra," and is of course looking no further than his best buddy Mr. Tucker for the lead role (not Sinatra, of course, but that would at least make this more interesting.)

The book was co-written by George Jacobs, who served as Sinatra's valet from 1953-1968 (and will be played by Tucker), and therefore surely got to see some pretty damn cool and seedy stuff along the way. Now that we're not getting about one a month, my taste for music biopics is starting to come back (and I would start lining up now if Spike Lee finally got around to telling the story of James Brown), and this has the potential to indeed be a grand story. I don't see, however, how it could possibly be in any worse hands.

Now, I realize that Brett Ratner is an easy target, but I assure you my hatred is genuine and seething after what he did with "X-3." If he takes the same approach to Sinatra's life, just grabbing about 50 possible story lines and exploring each one for 30 seconds or so, it will be even worse than I'm imagining it could be.

And I once used to have a lot of time for Chris Tucker. He was extremely funny as Beaumont in "Jackie Brown" and more than trippy enough to fit in "The Fifth Element," and there are few movies I enjoy more when my brain is depleted from a long day of work than the original "Friday." But it's been a long time since 1997 (10 years or so, I suppose), and since then his mouth has just seemed to move much faster than anyone can write him good jokes to put in it.

Of this duo I certainly have more love for him than I do Brett Ratner. I just wish he could find a better crowd to run with.

This just in: "Aliens in America" doesn't suck

One of the few remaining perqs of working at a newspaper is that I from time to time get to see previews of the fall TV shows. Or, to put it more accurately, Macon's TV Guy Phillip Ramati takes the time to request them and then is kind enough to share.

ABC has been stingy and therefore hasn't sent over any episodes of "Pushing Daisies" or anything else, but the CW has been much more forthcoming. Last night I watched the first two episodes of "Aliens In America," and on the menu soon will be the pilot episode of "Gossip Girl" (for which I concede I'm way too old to even consider myself anywhere near the target audience.)

As for "Aliens in America," it leans too much toward sweetness and away from genuine political incorrectness for my taste, but it still has promise. The premise: A Wisconsin family orders an exchange student so their friendless son will have one, but instead of the Londoner they're expecting they get a Pakistani dude named Raja.

Raja's introduction to his new high school is very funny, and he quickly develops a pack of geeks who could be developed into an entertaing brood. I genuinely like shows set in high school because when you trap that many kids in one place it always at least has the potential for great comedy. However, unlike the superior show that will precede it Monday nights starting in October, "Everybody Hates Chris," it too often in the first two episodes took its hands off the dagger when sticking it in would have struck comic gold. (And Scott Patterson, late of "Gilmore Girls," pretty much plays the father figure as penny-pinching miser, basically the white equivalent of the more funny Terry Crews on "Chris."

But, for all my complaints, this is a sitcom that mixes heart with some genuine laughs, and in this rather bleak season that's enough to make me tune in for at least a few more episodes.

Web banners for "No Country for Old Men"

Though I've bumped this Coen brothers' flick to No. 3 on my must-see list behind "Juno" and "American Gangster" for the rest of the year, there are at least 10 which are pretty much tied at the top (starting with Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises," which I'll be seeing before work tomorrow morning - what a way to start the day!)

I found these Web-only banners for "No Country for Old Men" on Anne Thompson's Variety magazine blog, and of course promptly swiped them to post here. As she correctly points out, they do indeed steal more than a bit of inspiration from the "3:10 to Yuma" poster, but they're still menacing enough for me. Enjoy, and have an entirely bearable Thursday.