By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Post Gossips Spend Fun, Fact-Filled Day at the Movies
The Post’s gossip apparatus is all about New York cinema today, with Liz Smith leading the way with hottttt casting updates from the streets. Evidently Samantha Morton is out as Pride and Glory‘s Abby Tierney; the Colin Farrell-Nick Nolte cop vehicle will instead welcome “the beautiful daughter of stage legend Rosemary Harris – Jennifer Ehle. You may remember her from 1999’s Sunshine.” Or… not. Smith also reports that Robert Duvall will replace Christopher Walken in We Own the Night, which may have been true, like, four months ago–before Duvall, Joaquin Phoenix and Eva Mendes were locked into James Gray’s police-vs-Russian mob drama. Maybe if Smith went out more she would have a better read on these things.
You know, like her colleague Cindy Adams, whose first-rate reporting and masterful incomplete sentences reveal the “news” that film production in the city is soaring:
Hugh Grant sings and dances in Music and Lyrics By, the thing he’s making with Drew Barrymore and the guy who played Ray Romano’s brother in the series. … So, with more trailers around than there are Starbucks, any locals complaining? You bet your MetroCard. Those who are inconvenienced. Can’t reach certain streets, can’t use favorite parking spots. But, they’re told, the city in general benefits. People use their delis, workers get employed. Etc., etc., and yadda yadda. And then there’s those who are sniffing about Mission: Impossible III anchoring this downtowny New Yorky film festival when not one foot, not one frame, was shot uptown, crosstown or anywhere in this town.
There, there, Cindy, no need to get sniffy. After all, she did have the privilege of attending Vanity Fair’s annual Tribeca Film Festival party, from which Page Six scored what were probably the only real scoops of the night:
Pretty blond former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson was the star attraction at Wednesday night’s Vanity Fair party for the Tribeca Film Festival in the State Supreme Court Building on Centre Street. Just a few hours earlier, Karl Rove (who is derisively referred to as President Bush’s brain) testified in Washington before a grand jury investigating how she was “outed” as a CIA agent in 2003. … Also there was Mickey Rourke, who’s looking forward to making a movie that will be directed jointly by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. One will helm the first half, the other the second half.
Stop the presses! Mickey Rourke? A Tarantino-Rodriguez collaboration? Do tell!
Oh, wait.
Actually the Jennifer Ehle thing is true.
I was referring to the likelihood of NY Post readers remembering or even hearing about Sunshine; great film, but I doubt the audiences intersect.