For all its confectionery imagery, Christina Ricci scene-stealing and the few other things Speed Racer gets right, it still faces a box-office false start that could make Leatherheads look like a hit in comparison. We sketched a few of the hurdles here yesterday (number one being its own studio's resignation to its underachievement), but at this point there's only one that counts: Larry and Andy Wachowski need to climb out of their hole.
It might be self-serving of us to suggest they publicize their films, and in a way, we empathize with their reclusion; Larry Wachowski has been the subject of sex-change and dominatrix-dating speculation since a feminized version of himself — earrings, plucked eyebrows, manicure — showed up on the Matrix Revolutions red carpet in Cannes five years ago with mistress Ilsa Strix (née Karen Winslow) on his arm. The siblings later sneaked into the New York premiere of V For Vendetta (which they wrote and co-produced), and last week in Los Angeles they went positively presidential with subterfuge at the debut of Speed Racer. "They did not do the red-carpet press line at the Nokia Theatre on Saturday, and were well-camouflaged during the after-party," wrote Borys Kit in The Hollywood Reporter. "Photographers were sworn to secrecy as to their whereabouts, and Warner Bros. assigned handlers the mission of keeping journalists off the scent."
Latest by StevieRayHalen: The matrix was flippin' great.
V for Vendetta was AWESOME...
YES, the films they make ARE for the mushroom crowds...
but...
the Waichowschkisizichickyicki more »
Guardian reporter Sean Michaels has discovered a sort of epistolary parallel universe in which A Clockwork Orange is a late-'60s time capsule from hell: A recently unearthed letter from the period propositioned director John Schlesinger — presumably between his Oscar-winning films Darling and Midnight Cowboy — to helm the film with Mick Jagger in the lead. It gets better: The Beatles were reportedly interested in contributing songs. Alas, Schlesinger evidently had a problem with novelist Anthony Burgess's infamous ultraviolence; "the film's extreme delinquency wasn't 'the sort of subject I particularly want to tackle,' " the director told executive producer Si Litvinoff, thus opening the door for Stanley Kubrick's dystopic 1971 masterwork starring Malcolm McDowell. Michaels spends a few minutes fancying the alternate Jagger/Beatles version, but really, we'd rather not imagine this at all unless... no. Just no. Sorry we even brought it up. No. [The Guardian]
A startling revelation from the '60s emerged this week when Dan Richter, who played the contemplative ape in the prologue of 2001: A Space Odyssey, acknowledged a top-level, primate-swiping security breach on Stanley Kubrick's set. It all started with the embittered recollection of losing a special 1968 Make-Up Oscar to Planet of the Apes — and then, like a slo-mo bone in the prehistoric sky, the conspiracy theories flew: More »
We thought yesterday's news of Nicole Kidman allegedly hanging on to placenta deriven from her 2001 miscarriage was juicy (er, bad word choice?) enough, but it took a little research into the blob's backstory to turn Andrew Morton's claim into a full-fledged screenplay-worthy scandal. As you'll recall, back then we still relied on greasy newspapers for our gossip as The Internets were still years away from taking off as a veritable information highway. And man, was there ever a lot of gossip circling around the set of Moulin Rouge around the time little Placenta came on to the scene. We did some research on Lexis Nexis this morning and, after the jump, we present the complete history of some of the gorier deets surrounding the Cruise/Kidman divorce, co-starring Ewan McGregor, Stanley Kubrick, and Penelope Cruz.
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Latest by Trixie from Toronto: @BabylonSister: There was talk, actually, that he and Michelle Williams had something going on the set of a movie they more »
Self-professed Juilliard-trained thespian and Star Trek aficionado Brian Atene has developed a massive and rabid following since exploding on the scene with our recent posting of his 1984 videotaped audition for director Stanley Kubrick. And while a global effort to relocate the current YouTube It boy and dramatic savant has until now turned up nothing better than his 1976 seventh grade class photo, we are thrilled to announce that Mr. Atene himself has opted to reemerge into the public eye with yet another YouTube tour-de-force performance. The current Brian looks somewhat older, girthier, and has the face of a completely different person with a great idea for his fanciful video response, but he nonetheless exhibits a masterly control over his unique acting instrument.
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In 1984, or so the YouTube blurb legend goes, the late, great Stanley Kubrick "placed ads throughout the U.S. for young aspiring actors to send in audition tapes" for his upcoming project, Full Metal Jacket. Whether or not the director ever saw this submission—and we think the less we tell you about it the better—we cannot say. It does make one wonder, however, how things might have turned out differently had Kubrick plucked Brian Atene from obscurity and groomed his budding protégé to star in later films like Eyes Wide Shut, as opposed to having caved to the Hollywood system and cast certain "big, high-powered actors" who would ultimately "have their way with him." Perhaps he would still be with us today, hard at work on his virtuosic, Brechtian remake of The Outsiders.
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In an interview with Radar to promote his role in the upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, R. Lee Ermey, Hollywood's go-to guy for scary, creatively profane authority figure parts, lets slip (i.e., probably doesn't give a shit whom he tells) that the director might not have had the best creative chemistry with star Tom Cruise on Eyes Wide Shut:More »
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Guardian reporter Sean Michaels has 
