Marcia Gay Harden joins CBS pilot
It’s always a good thing when an Oscar winner deigns to do TV, and based on her past efforts, I have high hopes for The Tower knowing that Marcia Gay Harden has joined the cast. The Tower, is a new CBS pilot about a group of Chicago reporters. Marcia Gay Harden is going to play Zoe, the millionaire owner of the newspaper, the leader of the pack.
Since winning the 2001 best supporting Oscar for Pollack, which was directed and co-starred her husband Ed Harris, Marcia’s gone back and forth between TV and features. She received another Oscar nom for Mystic River in 2004, and last season did a memorable — and Emmy nominated — turn as a determined, driven FBI agent on Law & Order: SVU.
Ms. Harden was also in the short-lived series The Education of Max Bickford, as a well as a 2006 pilot with Jason O’Mara and Chazz Palminteri called Drift. Like many actors these days, she clearly likes going back and forth between film and television, taking the best roles no matter the media.
The Tower is shaping up to be an interesting project. In addition to Ms. Harden, the cast has also added Rosamund Pike to mix as a political reporter. Pike, best known for her showy role in Die Another Day as a Bond girl, has recently appeared on TV in Pride & Prejudice (2005). Others in The Tower include Cole Hauser (K-Ville) and the dynamic CCH Pounder (The Shield).
Executive producers for the show are Cold Case’s Meredith Stiehm and Oscar-winner Davis Guggenheim (for An Inconvenient Truth). As I said, The Tower is shaping up to be a drama series to keep an eye on — assuming the pilot is picked up, of course.
[via PopCandy]
Uma Thurman Talks Stanley Kubrick’s Wartime Lies, Role of Her Career
When I think of actresses lucky enough to have a perfect part, one tailored and empowered with the entire spectrum of human emotion and not simply the giddy sex appeal that plagues Hollywood films, I think of Uma Thurman and Beatrix Kiddo/The Bride in Kill Bill. She should have received an Oscar nom for either volume, and won. While the following quote is in no way a slight at Tarantino, it was surprising to hear her say the following to MTV in regards to a role in Stanley Kubrick’s Wartime Lies, neither of which happened, obviously…
“It was devastating because it was an incredible part,” she confessed. “It would have been the part of my career, the best part I ever had been offered or had written for me, or anything.”
In no way am I comparing Tarantino to Kubrick right now, but it seriously caught me off guard, especially the “writing” part. Kubrick’s Wartime Lies, based on Louis Begley’s acclaimed novel, would have had Thurman play a Jewish woman who cares for her orphaned nephew as they face Nazi atrocities in Poland during the Holocaust and resort to taking the disguise of Catholics. More Uma…
“I was going to make a film with him — for a long time I was scheduled to make a film with him,” she said of “Wartime Lies,” a movie she was signed on to make with Kubrick in the early 90s. “I was contracted to do it and things happened and he shelved the film. He never made the film.”
An adaptation is currently being worked on by The Departed’s ever-busy William Monahan, but Thurman didn’t discuss whether she’s still being sought for the part. Let’s hope, because she belongs in higher-brow fare than My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
Diablo Cody is Writing Every Movie in Hollywood
It seems like Diablo Cody is writing every other movie in Hollywood these days, and that’s certainly not a bad thing. I find saw Cody’s Juno at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is the best movie of the year so far, and a shoe in for a Best Screenplay Oscar nom (and Ebert believes Ellen Page will also get a nod). You would think that since Juno doesn’t hit theaters until later this year, that I was ahead of the curve. But truth is, even I was late to the Diablo Cody party.
The advertising agency worker turned stripper, turned blogger, turned author, turned screenwriter had already caught the attention of Hollywood long ago. Cody set up a female-driven comedy Girly Style at Universal. Steven Spielberg (yes, that Steven) sought her out to pen a television series for him called The United States of Tara (due out next year). Last week we told you that Cody is now reworking Steven Antin’s Burlesque musical which is being referred to as “Moulin Rouge meets Cabaret“.
And today it was announced that Cody is writing a comedic supernatural thriller (that’s not one, not two, but three genres) titled Jennifer’s Body, with Transformers‘ hottie Megan Fox attached to star. The project is set-up at Fox Atomic, which worries me slightly since Atomic isn’t known for quality films. However, I’m sure with Cody behind the computer, it has to be good. Jennifer’s Body is said to have a similar tone to Heathers and Beetlejuice. The story follows a cheerleader with a perfect life who becomes the girl from hell when she gets possessed and begins killing boys in a small town. Her best friend must then find a way to stop her. And here is the best news: The film is being fast-tracked before the possible writers strike.
“This is going to be fun. I wrote this script last summer and have been fucking obsessed with getting it made ever since,” Cody wrote on her blog Pussy Ranch. “Incidentally, Megan Fox is hotter than the earth’s core. And now– Hollywood’s tiresome profusion of “girlfriend roles” be damned– she’s going to literally get out there AND DESTROY SOME FUCKING BOYS. Scripts are a nice way to exorcise personal demons, I’d say.”
I understand that most of you guys have yet to see Juno, but believe me, Diablo is a talent, and is one to watch in the upcoming year. I could be wrong, she could totally blow it. She could be a one hit wonder. But even Steven Spielberg doesn’t think so.