Who is in Robert Rodriguez’s Shorts
Robert Rodriguez always has like five projects going at the same time. He’s been hard at work “developing” Barbarella (or trying to convince the studio to give him the money to make it with his future wife Rose McGowan in the lead) and just announced a TV show called Women In Chains (also starring Rose McGowan), which he’s pitching to various networks, but his next feature film to go into production will be… drumroll please…
Shorts is a family comedy adventure that follows an 11-year-old boy who is hit in the head with a rainbow-colored rock that grants wishes to anyone who holds it. Chaos erupts in this small suburb where “all the houses look the same and everyone works for Black Box, manufacturer of the ultimate communication and do-it-all gadget.” Sounds more Spy Kids or The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D than Grindhouse or Sin City. Jon Cryer, William H. Macy, Leslie Mann and James Spader have signed on to star. I’m surprised Rodriguez didn’t try to squese McGowan into this project as well. Rodriguez, always a one-man show, will direct based on his own screenplay, and serve as producer, director of photography, editor, visual effects supervisor and, who knows, he might even provide the score (not yet confirmed). But what else is new?
Fido Movie Review
Following the great Zombie war (which I’m sure will be chronicled in World War Z), people now live in gated communities outside the “wild zone,” an area where Zombies roam free. Thanks to a ZomCor (motto: “Better Life Through Containment”) most everyone now owns at least one collar controlled servant Zombie. Until now, everyone except the Robinson family.Young Timmy Robinson (K’Sun Ray) makes friends with Fido (Billy Connolly), who attacks the next-door neighbor, and things spiral out of control. Carrie-Anne Moss and Dylan Baker (who must be the second go-to guy under William H. Macy for the atypical 1950’s man) co-star as Helen and Bill Robinson.
While Shaun of the Dead played with the conventions of the Zombie film genre, Fido plays against them. Set in an alternative 1950’s suburban American, the story walks the line between parody/satire and black comedy. Hilariously funny and filled with some fresh ideas, Fido is sure to receive a huge reception when it hits theaters nationwide.
Fido makes me wonder how far they can go with the horror comedy genre. When Shaun of the Dead hit, I thought that was it - there could be no others. But I am most certainly wrong.
Running Time: 91 min.
Release Date: March 9th, 2007 (limited)
Distributors: Lionsgate
Starring: Henry Czerny, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tim Blake Nelson, Billy Connolly, Dylan Baker
Directed by: Andrew Currie
Fido Movie Review
Following the great Zombie war (which I’m sure will be chronicled in World War Z), people now live in gated communities outside the “wild zone,” an area where Zombies roam free. Thanks to a ZomCor (motto: “Better Life Through Containment”) most everyone now owns at least one collar controlled servant Zombie. Until now, everyone except the Robinson family.Young Timmy Robinson (K’Sun Ray) makes friends with Fido (Billy Connolly), who attacks the next-door neighbor, and things spiral out of control. Carrie-Anne Moss and Dylan Baker (who must be the second go-to guy under William H. Macy for the atypical 1950’s man) co-star as Helen and Bill Robinson.
While Shaun of the Dead played with the conventions of the Zombie film genre, Fido plays against them. Set in an alternative 1950’s suburban American, the story walks the line between parody/satire and black comedy. Hilariously funny and filled with some fresh ideas, Fido is sure to receive a huge reception when it hits theaters nationwide.
Fido makes me wonder how far they can go with the horror comedy genre. When Shaun of the Dead hit, I thought that was it - there could be no others. But I am most certainly wrong.
Running Time: 91 min.
Release Date: March 9th, 2007 (limited)
Distributors: Lionsgate
Starring: Henry Czerny, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tim Blake Nelson, Billy Connolly, Dylan Baker
Directed by: Andrew Currie
Felicity Huffman Biography
Often lauded for her stage work, Felicity Huffman won a new round of fans as the smart, competent producer Dana Whitaker on the ABC series “Sports Night” (1998-2000). Although born in Westchester County, New York, she was raised in Colorado. Returning east to attend NYU, Huffman joined the Atlantic Theater Company, co-founded by David Mamet and William H Macy. Mamet offered the actress her first screen role, a bit part in “Things Change” (1988), and she was also tapped as Madonna’s understudy and successor in Mamet’s Broadway play “Speed-the-Plow” (also 1988).
Over the course of the next ten years, Huffman alternated between acclaimed stage roles (most often with the Atlantic Theater Company) and TV roles. She made her small screen debut as a series regular portraying the government security officer who aids an elderly man who seems to be growing younger in “Stephen King’s ‘Golden Years’” (CBS, 1991). Guest roles on series like “Law & Order” and “The X-Files” followed. Huffman was tapped to play Edward Asner’s daughter in the ABC sitcom “Thunder Alley” but was replaced after the pilot. She bounced back from that disappointment with a stage success in Mamet’s “The Cryptogram” (1995) and in a supporting turn in the playwright’s film “The Spanish Prisoner” (1998) before landing “Sports Night,” the Aaron Sorkin-penned sit-com that made her a well-known name.
Her real-life husband Macy, whom she married in 1997, joined the series in its second season, sparking an on-screen partnership that would endure through many projects: they also co-starred in the cable telepic “A Case of Murder” (1999), a comedy-mystery Macy adapted from the Donald Westlake novel; they both appeared in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” (1999); she had an uncredited turn in Macy’s award-winning TNT telepic “Door To Door,” which he also co-wrote; they reunited in the Showtime mini-series “Out of Order” (2003); and co-starred in the legal potboiler telepic “Reversible Errors” (2004).
After “Sports Night” and away from Macy, Huffman also kept busy solo on the small screen with parts in the telepics “The Heart Department” (2001), “Snap Decision” (2001) and, most impressively, in director John Frankenheimer’s acclaimed HBO drama “The Path to War” (2002), playing First Lady “Lady Bird†Johnson. She also scored a pair of high-profile recurring roles, playing Julia Wilcox, Frasier Crane’s caustic co-worker and eventual love interest on the hit sit-com “Frasier” from 2003-2004, and Charlotte Ellis in the legal drama “The D.A.” After a stint on the big screen as Kate Hudson’s late older sister in the comedy “Raising Helen” (2004), Huffman returned to series drama in the offbeat serial drama “Desperate Housewives” (ABC, 2004 - ), playing Lynette Scavo, a former corporate ladder-climber turned stay-at-home mom who struggles with her insecurities when she can’t control her wild children and gets little support from her husband. The show’s mega-popularity provided Huffman’s career with fresh energy–she scored an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the series’ debut season, as well as a 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series–though she continued to remain the most private and low-profile of her co-stars.
Later that same year Huffman had an astonishing turn on the big screen in the indie “Transamerica” (2005) playing a pre-operative transsexual who, on the brink of her transforming surgery, discovered that in her youth she had fathered a son, who contacts her as a troubled teen hustler on the run. Despite the gender-bending premise, the film followed a traditional road movie dynamic, and Huffman won widespread praise for her nearly unrecognizable, fully formed performance. All the attention she received resulted in a Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, which almost guaranteed the actress a nomination from the Academy Awards. And she was indeed one of the nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role when they were announced the morning of January 31, 2006.
- Born:
on 12/09/1962 in Westchester County, New York - Job Titles:
Actor
Family
- Brother: Moore Huffman. older
- Daughter: Georgia Grace Macy. born March 14, 2002; father is William H. Macy
- Daughter: Sophia Macy. born on August 1, 2000
- Mother: Grace Huffman.
Significant Others
- Husband: William H Macy. met through mutual association with the Atlantic Theater Company; married on September 6, 1997
Education
- New York University, New York City, theatre
- Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, England
- American Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York City
- Circle in the Square Professional Theatre School, New York City
Milestones
- 1988 Film acting debut in bit part in “Things Changes”, directed by David Mamet
- 1988 Understudied and eventually replaced Madonna in Mamet’s Broadway play “Speed-the-Plow”
- 1990 Had featured role in “Reversal of Fortune”
- 1991 TV series debut as government security chief Terry Spann in “Stephen King’s ‘Golden Years’” (CBS)
- 1992 TV-movie acting debut in the USA Network’s “Quicksand: No Escape”
- 1993 Received strong notices for her lead performance as a woman converting to Judaism who recalls childhood sexual abuse in the Old Globe (San Diego) production of “Out of Purgatory”
- 1994 Appeared in the pilot episode of the ABC sitcom “Thunder Alley” as Ed Asner’s daughter; replaced in the series by Diane Venora
- 1995 Acted onstage in Mamet’s “The Cryptogram”
- 1995 Directed by Mamet in the Atlantic Theater Company production of J.B. Priestley’s “Dangerous Corner”
- 1996 Was featured in the Showtime series “Bedtime”
- 1997 Directed by future husband William H Macy in “The Joy of Going Somewhere Definite” at the Atlantic Theater Company
- 1998 Portrayed TV producer Dana Whitaker in the ABC series “Sports Night”
- 1998 Co-starred in “The Spanish Prisoner”, written and directed by Mamet
- 1999 Acted opposite husband William H Macy (who also co-wrote the teleplay) in the TNT original “A Slight Case of Murder”
- 1999 Played small role in “Magnolia” as a TV game show coordinator; husband had more substantial role in the film
- 2001 Cast opposite Tony Shalhoub in the CBS pilot “Heart Department”
- 2001 Portrayed a photographer who is charged with child pornography when she takes pictures of her friend’s children in the Lifetime movie “Snap Decision”
- 2002 Portrayed Lady Bird Johnson in the made for TV movie “Path to War”
- 2003 Guest starred as Frasier’s Love interest on the NBC comedy “Frasier”
- 2003 Starred opposite Eric Stoltz in the Showtime series “Out of Order”
- 2004 Cast as Lynette Scavo, the ex-career woman and mother of four unmanageable kids in the ABC drama “Desperate Housewives”; received Golden Globe (2004, 2005) and SAG (2006) nominations for Best Actress in a Comedy Series
- 2004 Starred in the CBS miniseries opposite her real life husband William H. Macy in Scott Turow’s crime thriller “Reversible Errors,” which also stars Tom Selleck and Monica Potter
- 2005 Played a transsexual woman who discovers that she fathered a child in her former life as a man in the indie drama “Transamerica”; earned Oscar and SAG nominations for Best Actress
- Became a member of the Atlantic Theater Company, co-founded by David Mamet and William H Macy
- Raised in Colorado
- Will co-star with Lindsay Lohan and Jane Fonda in “Georgia Rule”