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Gerard Butler Cast in Untouchables Prequel

Posted by Vogt
at May 24, 2008

Gerald Butler

300 star Gerard Butler has signed on to join Nicolas Cage in the Brian De Palma prequel to The Untouchables. Variety reports that Butler made a brief appearance at the Cannes Film Festival to announce the news and say how “unbelievable” the script was.

Last week it was announced that Nicolas Cage will play a young Al Capone. The new movie follows Al Capone’s arrival in Chicago, Illinois and his dealings with cop Jimmy Malone, and his subsequent rise to power. Sean Connery won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Malone in the original film. We assume that Butler will take over that role which is a shame since Butler is nothing compated to Connery.

The Untouchables: Capone Rising begins shooting in October.

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Nicolas Cage cast as Al Capone in The Untouchables Prequel

Posted by Vogt
at May 24, 2008

The UntouchablesNicolas Cage will play a young Al Capone in the a prequel to Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. Robert DeNiro played the character in the original film.

The Untouchables: Capone Rising follows Al Capone’s arrival in Chicago, Illinois and his dealings with cop Jimmy Malone, and his subsequent rise to power. Sean Connery won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Malone in the original film. The film will reteam Cage with Snake Eyes director Brian De Palma.

According to MTV, the casting announcement is being advertised in the Cannes 2007 issue of The Hollywood Reporter. The advetisement features an early poster show which features Cage’s mug and states “Starring Nicolas Cage.” No word yet on who will play young Jimmy Malone, although rumors have named both Sean Penn and Colin Farrell.

The Untouchables is based on the 1959 ABC television series, and was a solid hit, grossing over $76 million domestically. The film starred Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro and Andy Garcia.

Principal photography will begin in October 2007.

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Amy Irving Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Amy Irving.jpg

A dark-haired beauty with striking eyes and an intelligent air, Amy Irving seemingly came by her talent genetically: Her father Jules was an accomplished stage director and her mother Priscilla Pointer is a fine character actress. (Pointer has often been teamed onscreen with her offspring, playing either the mother or a motherly figure to characters essayed by Irving.) Although she actually began her career as a guest performer in episodic television and on stage, Irving shot to attention as Sue Snell, the sole teen survivor of Brian De Palma’s splashy “Carrie” (1976). Irving lent her astringent good looks and spunk to De Palma’s “The Fury” (1978), playing a woman with psychokinetic powers, and to her portrayal of an Indian princess in love with a British cavalryman (Ben Cross) in the HBO miniseries “The Far Pavilions” (1984). She also triumphed on Broadway, first as Constanza Weber, the wife of Mozart, in “Amadeus” (1980) and again as Ellie to Rex Harrison’s Shotover in a 1983 revival of Shaw’s “Heartbreak House”. Despite having some misgivings over the role, Irving accepted the part of Hadass, the bride of “Yentl” (1983), a woman masquerading as a man, in Barbra Streisand’s directorial debut. Despite the inherent pitfalls, she imbued the role with a delicacy and intelligence that was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress.

Despite her strong performances, for much of the late 1970s and into the 80s, Irving was better known for her on-again, off-again relationship with rising director Steven Spielberg. Their 1985 marriage overshadowed her career. With the perspective of hindsight, the actress told THE LOS ANGELES TIMES (April 17, 1994): “During my marriage to Steven, I felt like a politician’s wife. There were certain things expected of me that definitely weren’t me. One of my problems is that I’m very honest and direct. You pay a price for that. But then I behaved myself and I paid a price too.” Despite putting these pressures on herself, she continued with her career, turning in well-rounded portrayals of a woman who may or may not be the Czar’s daughter in “Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna” (NBC, 1986) and a sophisticated New Yorker who is romanced by a pickle seller in “Crossing Delancey” (1988). Irving also displayed her sultry vocal abilities providing the singing voice of the animated Jessica Rabbit in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (also 1988; Kathleen Turner provided the speaking voice). During the filming of “A Show of Force” (1990), the actress, cast as Puerto Rican TV journalist, fell in love with the film’s Brazilian director Bruno Barreto.

After an amicable split from Spielberg in 1989, she and Barreto moved in together and gave birth to their son in 1990. After playing a brassy blonde cocktail waitress in “Benefit of the Doubt” (1993), her husband gave her a fine role as a middle-aged schoolteacher finding romance in “Carried Away” (1996). Irving continued to return to the stage as well, headlining the West Coast production of Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles” (1990), playing a Brooklyn woman who suffers paralysis from her over-identification with German Jews in Arthur Miller’s Broadway play “Broken Glass” (1995), and teaming with Lili Taylor and Jeanne Tripplehorn as Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” (1997). Irving again teamed with Barreto to play an acerbic, overly-ambitious FBI agent in “One Tough Cop” (1998), based on the life of NYC policeman Bo Dietl, and as an American teacher in Brazil who finds unexpected romance in “Bossa Nova” (2000). The actress also revisited the role of Sue Snell in the sequel “The Rage: Carrie II” (1999).

Irving appeared as part of director Steven Soderberg’s high-powered acting ensemble in 2000’s traffic, playing the wife of Michael Douglas’ drug czar and mother to their troubled drug addict daughter, and the critically acclaimed indie “13 Conversations about One Thing.” In 2002 she reunited with Spacek in another feature film, this time a family-oriented flip side to their “Carrie” collaboration, Disney’s adaptation of author Natalie Babbitt’s children’s classic “Tuck Everlasting.” She also was featured in a recurring role on the ABC spy series “Alias.”

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Melanie Griffith Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Melanie Griffith.jpg

With her whispery baby-doll voice and voluptuous figure, blonde, blue-eyed Melanie Griffith could easily have been typecast as bimbos or wide-eyed innocents. Instead, this savvy performer, the daughter of actors Peter Griffith and Tippi Hedren, chose to defy convention and undertake roles that demonstrated her versatility and capabilities. While her mother specialized in playing cool Hitchcock blondes (e.g., “Marnie” 1964), Griffith attempted (not always successfully) to transcend her party girl image (fueled in part by very public troubles with substance abuse). With a strong director and the right material, she could hold her own against powerhouse actors like Paul Newman and James Woods.

Griffith made her first film appearance as an extra in “The Harrad Experiment” (1973) which featured her mother and soon-to-be first husband Don Johnson. Her first role of note, though, was as a runaway heiress in “Night Moves” (1975). That same year, she displayed a light comic touch as one of the pageant contestants in the satirical “Smile”. Over the next decade, she worked less frequently, taking acting classes with Stella Adler and concentrating on her marriages to Johnson and actor Steven Bauer and motherhood. Ironically, it was a role much like those Tippi Hedren played that rejuvenated her career. Brian De Palma tapped Griffith for the pivotal role of porn actress Holly Body in his Hitchcock hommage “Body Double” (1984). Critics were pleasantly surprised by the actress’ work and coupled with her role as the mysteriously rebellious adventuress in “Something Wild” (1986), Griffith’s star was ascending. With her turn as Tess Magill, a Staten Island secretary with dreams of bettering herself (”I have a head for business and a bod for sin”) in “Working Girl” (1988), her position as a top notch comic actress was solidified, crowned by a Best Actress Oscar nomination. But bad career advice and a string of box office disappointments nearly curtailed her career.

Mixed in with such misfires as a reteaming with De Palma as the Southern mistress of a Wall Street executive in the disastrous “Bonfire of the Vanities” (1990), a NYC detective who goes undercover in the Hassidic community in “A Stranger Among Us” (1992) and the ill-advised remake of “Born Yesterday” (1993) were the occasional prestige projects like the “Hills Like White Elephants” segment of HBO’s “Women & Men: Stories of Seduction” (1990) and “Nobody’s Fool” (1994), in which she excelled as Bruce Willis’ unhappy wife who flirts with Paul Newman. Griffith also proved effective as a whorehouse madam in another rare TV excursion, the 1995 CBS miniseries “Buffalo Girls”.

Griffith was cast as a ditsy bombshell in the wannabe screwball comedy “Two Much” (which served to introduce her to future husband Antonio Banderas) before transcending the relatively limited part of Nick Nolte’s wife in “Mulholland Falls” (both 1996). Further stretching her screen persona, the actress bravely took on the role of Charlotte Haze, the mother of the nymphet “Lolita” (1997) in Adrian Lyne’s remake. Griffith, who in her youth could have played the title role, gained weight and perfectly embodied the shrill blowsy Charlotte. Although she unsuccessfully attempted to find a small screen comedy, she landed a comedic role as a needy actress willing to trade sexual favors for an interview in Woody Allen’s “Celebrity” (1998). But later that same year, Griffith delivered what is arguably her finest screen performance to date as a heroin user in “Another Day in Paradise”. Co-star (and producer James Woods) handpicked her for the part, recognizing not only her ability to portray the character but the role’s importance in repositioning her in the eyes of Hollywood. Although the production shoot was troubled, Griffith was mesmerizing as the mother figure in a band of low-rent criminals. She and Woods played off one another well, each eliciting the best in the other. If she stumbled a bit as a dizzy aspiring actress in Banderas’ directorial debut “Crazy in Alabama” (1999), Griffith once again delivered playing Marion Davies in “RKO 281″ (HBO, 1999), an exaggerated and somewhat fictionalized behind-the-scenes look at the making of the 1941 classic “Citizen Kane”. She followed that triumph with a turn as an unstable woman who seeks out an old sweetheart in “Loving Lulu” and played a movie star kidnapped by an aspiring indie filmmaker in John Waters’ darkly comic “Cecil B Demented” (both 2000).

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