Movie Make-out

It must be awesome to be best-selling novelist Patricia Cornwell.

Because as Variety noted, Cornwell, who writes a series of mystery novels with a female medical examiner as the main character, is so protective of Dr. Kay Scarpetta that only after getting to meet Angelina Jolie in person and have discussions about how one would bring the project to life in a screen version would she allow Fox 2000 to acquire the rights to her book series.

The very idea that Cornwell has so much creative control that she can make Angelina Jolie come to her just gives me the shivers, you know?

There are 16 books in the series which screams “Franchise!”, but the article states that the first movie won’t be specifically tied to any one of the movies. It sounds like any movie version would be “inspired by” rather than “based on” and I really don’t know how Cornwell fans would feel about that.

There are also going to be two non-Scarpetta books being made into TV movies for Lifetime (At Risk and The Front), and part of me wishes that Cornwell were so protective of those books that she didn’t sign the contract.

I’m a huge Nora Roberts fan, so when Lifetime recently did showcased four movies based on Roberts’ properties, I was so excited because I’d read two of the books, and the actors were people I thought were okay.

I don’t have DVR so I couldn’t tape the shows, but when I did get to sit down to catch a showing of Midnight Bayou one Saturday, I ended up turning off the TV in disgust.

Here’s hoping the Fox 2000-Angelina Jolie-Kay Scarpetta triad has more success as a live-action movie.

While negotiations are still going on, I’d like to assume that Mark Wahlberg is at least breathing a sigh of relief at the news that one of his next projects can get off the ground.

As reported in Variety, Relativity Media will be financing the production of The Fighter, with Christian Bale set to star opposite Wahlberg and David O. Russell directing. Based on a true story, Wahlberg will play contemporary boxer Micky Ward whose half-brother (Bale) redeems himself from a former life as a drug addict to regain some glory as Ward’s manager on the road to a world lightweight championship title and three legendary fights against Arturo Gatti.

All this came after both Brad Pitt and Matt Damon bowed out of playing the Dickie Eklund character, a boxer in his own right who once knocked out Sugar Ray Leonard, did hard time for a robbery spree that fueled his crack habit (and was one of the subjects in an HBO documentary about the crack addiction problem in Lowell, Massachusetts), and came out of prison a changed man.

Given that information, you have to wonder why they’d pass on such a meaty part, even if it is in service to playing the supporting role. I mean, Pitt’s favorite characters of mine have almost always been his supporting ones, and you’d think that Massachusetts native Damon wouldn’t mind playing a role based on a guy they call “The Pride of Lowell.”

Anyway, for Wahlberg’s sake, I hope that this time, Bale and Russell stick.

According to Variety, Fox Searchlight picked up the rights to Nice, a quirky little novel by Jen Sacks that was a huge hit for her in 1998, and are looking at Reese Witherspoon to star.

Originally, these rights had been at Warner Bros. and the movie was being developed as a vehicle for Helen Hunt, but it never got its act together—because the romantic comedy-style plot revolves around a female serial killer.

Sure, the blurb from Publisher’s Weekly completely glosses over the fact that the main character is a 30-year old woman who kills a boyfriend rather than break up with him, which turns into a “Meet Cute” when she gets some help from a former KGB assassin when trying to get rid of the body. And that she continues to kill boyfriends she can’t get rid of because she’s too nice to hurt their feelings when she dumps them.

I have very mixed feelings about this movie prospect. I recall famously vowing never wanting anything to do with The Devil Wears Prada because I hated the main character on the very first page of the book. (Note: Any woman who does not know how to drive a stick-shift car through Manhattan while smoking a cigarette isn’t my kind of woman.) However, even after two years, the movie intrigues me the more I read about it and I’m probably going to end up renting or borrowing it somewhere down the line.

I guess that if Fox Searchlight manages to be able to keep the dark tone of the novel along with the comedy, it’ll be okay; it’s all up to picking the right screenwriter, it seems.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a prude when it comes to sex in films. However, apparently there’s a scene in Seth Rogen’s newest film Observe and Report and which is featured at the end of the red-band trailer that makes even me a little bit squeamish.

Jezebel.com explains one reaction to the scene the best (and most sarcastically) here:

[Seth] Rogen explains that everyone in the theater then lets out a good long chuckle. See, even though she’s probably blacked out and has no idea what she’s saying, it isn’t rape. (And Brandi’s kind of a dumb slut anyway.)

Now, I know I probably should have commented on this when we posted the trailer last month. To be honest, though, Report’s not my kind of movie, I normally wouldn’t be seeing it anyway, and I’m definitely not going to see it now.

However, the part that troubles me the most is that casting a scene like this as comedy pushes society’s views on rape further backwards—and it’s even worse when it’s prettied up for drama.

Take a look at this article from The Curvature, and think about the early scenes in The Reader, wherein we are told and shown that a sexual relationship between a 36-year old woman and a 15-year old boy is a good thing.

I really wish filmmakers would really just think a little bit more about what impact they have on the world, don’t you?

UPDATE at 1:59 EST: I’ve been challenged to see this movie to see the scene in context, and I’m going to try and be as objective as I can. Will report back next week.

Related Posts: Trailer Watch: Red band Observe and Report trailer

I haven’t had my eye out for this one, so this is actually the second trailer for Point Break director Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, but damn does it look good. It’s what looks like an intense Iraq War action-drama about three members of the Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad. It was based on “the first-hand observations of journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, who was embedded with a special bomb unit in Iraq,” which undoubtedly lends the trailer some of its realism.

The Hurt Locker stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty, and it explodes onto the silver screen on June 26, in limited release. If you live in Brazil, though, it went straight to DVD and came out today (4/15). You can see the first trailer over at Apple.