
Armie Hammer
Image by: Columbia Pictures
Now that everyone has seen The
Social Network, the talk has swung back and forth between Oscars and the cool
way director David Fincher turned super-tall, super-handsome, baking soda heir
Armie Hammer (yes, he’s from that family) into twins. It involved digitally
grafting Hammer’s face onto the body of an equally height-blessed actor named
Josh Pence, for the record. But the face matters, and so Hammer is the man just
cast by Clint Eastwood in his biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar, starring
Leonardo DiCaprio and Charlize Theron. Hammer will play Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s
right-hand man and, if some historical records are to be believed, also his
secret lover. Will the Dustin Lance Black-penned movie deal explore that
speculative aspect of their relationship? Or will all gayness be downplayed?
And if so, then what’s the point? Find out late in 2012 when it’ll no doubt be
presented as Oscar bait.
Cynthia
Nixon signs on to Fail
Too Big to Fail sounds like what the makers of Sex and the City 2
were thinking before they saw the finished product, but it’s actually the new
HBO movie co-starring Sex alum Cynthia Nixon. It’s from Academy Award-winning
filmmaker Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) and it’s about Wall Street’s 2008
financial crisis. Of course, that’s a subject that was already dealt with in a
rage-inducing 2010 documentary Inside Job , but this version gives it that
sugary movie star face that helps the medicine go down. Rounding out the large
ensemble indictment of big finance will be William Hurt, Ed Asner, Billy
Crudup, Paul Giamatti, Topher Grace, Matthew Modine, Michael O’Keefe, Bill
Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, James Woods and Nixon’s fellow Sex comrade Evan
Handler. Now, will it make your retirement fund magically reappear when it
debuts in May? No, but it will remind you why you should continue to never
trust your bank.
Glee’s Groff gets indie
Who wouldn’t want Jonathan Groff’s
career right now? Broadway’s Spring Awakening star became one of Glee’s
battalion of young male heartthrobs and is now moving back into film
(previously he had a hilarious turn as a mystical hippie concert promoter in
the little-seen Taking Woodstock) with the indie drama Twelve Thirty. And in spite of a silly Newsweek opinion
columns to the contrary which stated that openly gay actors cannot convincingly
play it straight, the young actor is already earning praise in a heterosexual
role as a man who wreaks havoc on an already troubled family. Also featuring
Karen Young and Mamie Gummer (the one who looks just like her mom, Meryl
Streep), the movie’s making festival rounds and will fill arthouses with that
strange, dark, uncomfortable indie film glee later this year.
Far From Heaven inches closer to
Broadway
The acclaimed, Oscar-nominated,
Julianne Moore-starring Todd Haynes film Far From Heaven dealt with issues
surrounding a housewife and her closeted gay husband in the 1950s and it did so
in the guise of that era’s lush, weepy "women’s picture." Now add music to that
period of both graceful comfort and harsh repression and what do you have?
That’s right, a Broadway musical waiting to happen. Tony Award winner Richard
Greenberg, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie are collaborating on a musical stage
version of the movie that is expected to open late in 2011. That’s good news
for Broadway, which has seen a large number of shows close already this month;
even better, subtly gay-themed shows are, in general, easier to sell to theater
audiences than to moviegoers. For now there’s nothing else in the way of
information, no cast or theater or dates, but stay tuned here for that. It’s
coming. Meanwhile, hummable songs about divorce and "perversion" are on their
way down the pipeline too.