Monday, December 15, 2003: For Immediate Release:
Following the phenomenal critical and commercial success of HBO Films‘ Angels in America, the two-part television event, HBO Films is proud to announce an original, all-new sequel currently in pre-production. The film, called Cagelings in Canada, will air sometime in late 2004.
Pulitzer Prize winning Angels in America playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner will not be writing the script for Cagelings in Canada, but he will be executive producing the project along with Angels director Mike Nichols.
The film will deal with a host of ‘hot button’ issues ranging from domestic partnership for gays and lesbians, senior citizens buying prescription drugs in Canada, the legalization of Marijuana, and the brief—but terrifying—SARS epidemic of the early 21st Century.
“This film’s gonna have it all. And maybe some more,” said HBO Films Associate Senior Assistant of Marketing and Worldwide Distribution Todd Wentworth. “Seriously, people. Angels in America made you think, and cry, and even laugh. This one’s gonna do that and it’s gonna make you stand up and cheer, dance in the aisles, and wanna fall in love. If you loved America, wait ’till you get to Canada!”
The projected six-hour film will be written by a team of writers that will include Marci X screenwriter Paul Rudnick, Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, and to get the women’s perspective or whatever, multiple Oscar-winner Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Other writers to be announced.
Directing the sure-to-be star-packed film will be a veteran of Angel-themed films, McG, who will bring his unique visual flair and personal interest in America’s neighbors to the north to project. Says McG: “Well, I’m definitely gonna bring my unique visual flair to this project. Only this time, I’m gonna make sure it’s more unique and more flair-y, you know? Also, I’m totally interested in Canada, like, personally. Hockey, beer, um, socialized medicine: anyone who knows me knows these are my main obsessions. Also, this movie will let me, like, continue the messages of my earlier films like Charlie’s Angels and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and that message is that we all love to have a good time, just rock and roll and have fun! But we also have to worry about dangers like satellites being hooked up with GPS-enabled Nokia phones or seniors getting affordable drugs and partnerships among gay guys and lesbians being legally recognized. And I don’t just mean the good looking lesbians, either. This is about civil rights, not about being one of those hot Vivid Video-type lesbians.”
Stars and budget will be announced at a later date.
Category: Shallow
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R.I.P., Keiko
Free At Last? New Row as Keiko Dies.
I guess Susan Orlean‘s Keiko book will be even more depressing now. Poor big guy: he was only 27.
While Gawker has been marveling at the extent to which this past week has been “the week of the Jews,” proud New Yorkers can rest assured that their cultural institutions pull weight worldwide. After Jewish-focused features and cover stories in publications as diverse as, well, Time Out New York and New York magazine, it seems those notorious anti-semites in “Old Europe” have taken a cue and gotten smart to the New York publishing world’s “hip factor”.
Officials in France are now considering “breaking centuries of European tradition by making an Islamic feast and a Jewish holy day official school holidays…’France will be the first non-Muslim country to recognize Eid al-Fitr and the only country apart from Israel to celebrate Yom Kippur,’ said Patrick Weil, a member of the special commission that proposed the new holidays.”
Expect this to make the cover of The Economist next week (they’re sooo “yesterday’s news”).
Rolling Stone published its 50 Best Albums of 2003 this week. Making the list without breaking a sweat is everyone’s favorite well-bred New York City hair band, The Strokes, with Room on Fire. According to RS:
The Strokes’ second album is a virtual double for 2001’s Is This It in every still-winning respect: the guitar combat of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr.; the switchblade flick of the hooks and bridges; the acidic magnetism of Julian Casablancas’ voice. In fact, the Strokes can go on like this forever—the Ramones did it for a quarter-century—as long as the songs stay this good and the attitude doesn’t dry up.
Before you go renaming East 7th Street Julian Casablancas Place, check out the band’s really, really early stuff. Back when their name was slightly different and their sound… well, their sound was out there, man. And they made their own cover art, to boot!
Talk about indie cred.
Earlier thoughts on The Strokes from low culture.
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REMEMBER POOR PEOPLE?
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What Smoking Ban?
David M. Childs’ Freedom Tower
vs.
Irving Penn’s
Cigarette #37, New York 1974 (detail)
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William, no! It’s only one bad review!
The Village Voice‘s Sterling Clover bravely ignores the fact that William T. Vollmann is armed to the teeth and delivers a very nasty (and very Snarkwatch-worthy) critical beat down to the author’s 3,298-page epic Rising Up and Rising Down:
This is the sort of book that doesn’t really exist, but only gets used as a gag in other books. But Rising Up is maddeningly real, at its worst the world’s most erudite dorm-room bullshit session given the Cicero treatment and weighed down by numbing cynicism toward belief and hope of all sorts, naive tossing-about of the “social contract,” irritating misuse of the concept of reification, and an epistemological nightmare of means and ends.
(For those among us who can only stand to read the book reviews in People, Clover is giving Vollmann a D-minus.)
Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into one of those New York Review of Books Letters Page feuds that makes all parties come off like Pro Wrestlers.
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Movies = Moving Pictures
As if it weren’t easy enough for This American Life creator Ira “L.L. Cool G.” Glass to get laid, he’s gone and added the title “film producer” to his credentials, the better to snare those non-NPR listening groupies.
Glass will be producing Unaccompanied Minors, a film based on a segment of his show. According to Done Deal, the comedy will be about “a child [who] experiences being snowed in and stranded at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport the day after Christmas, along with a lot of other kids from divorced families who spent the holidays flying from one parent to the other.”
Sounds like a film with heart and hardy laughs! It’s Home Alone meets that Wyclef Jean video “Gone Till November.” But will the film be interrupted every 20 minutes for a Public Radio pledge drive?
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Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?
