we should cast this

billboard kefuffle

2009-06-15T11:58:00.004-04:00

okay, a couple of friends and i saw this billboard this weekend and yes, our first reaction was "what?!" but then our second reaction was to laugh because, honestly, what is happening here? this ad is ridiculous. mostly because why would 3 gay guys be making out with a girl? look, even the guy in the picture, who is supposedly portraying the outrage of the community, is laughing. also, i dont know who decided that this is apparently a teenage girl. i didnt get that at all.

then again, i wasnt walking by it with a kid. i guess that might change my mind a little. we were 3 grown women laughing our asses off as we drove by.

pollyanna, walk up the stairs like a lady

2009-06-13T08:12:00.004-04:00

is pollyanna the best movie of all time? no, but it's sooooo great. i think i would like to BE pollyanna, except for the orphan part, everything else about her life seems pretty great, her dresses, her house, aunt polly comes around after a while, and everybody loves pollyanna.

this morning when i was trying to fall back asleep at 7 i had the thought "wouldnt it be cool if charlie hunnam cut his hair for season 2 of SOA?" ive seen some pictures from the set, and no, he hasn't. now i'd like to amend my daydream to his cutting his hair and shaving off that wispy beard. don't hide your light under a bushel, charlie (what does that even mean?)

oh, right. that's what it means. how did this go from pollyanna to charlie hunnam? no clue. at any rate, there have been a bunch of announcements for season premieres this week, hopefully they'll announce SOA soon. time seems to go faster when you have an actual deadline to look forward to.

i guess since i'm up so early i may as well go ahead and get my 7-mile run out of he way. my first run since getting the inhaler. i dont know why i am secretly hoping the inhaler is going to make me be able to fly through the longest run ive ever attempted. since i firmly (and probably wrongly) believe that greenpoint gave me asthma, im going to go over the williamsburg bridge today. hopefully there won't be too many people around.

i like kristen's hair

2009-06-11T17:52:00.003-04:00

you know what? i just decided that i like kristen stewart. people give her a hard time because she doesnt move her mouth when she talks. but i thought she was good in adventureland and i liked her in twilight, she essentially played the same character twice, but whatever. that character may have also been her, but again, whatever. i think she looks cute with her damn joan jett haircut, give her a chance to see if she can actually play joan jett. she's just a kid, for pete's sake. she doesnt play along with how everyone is supposed to act and yes, it's bratty, but maybe, just maybe she actually has a personality and a brain and doesnt just want to be famous.

or maybe im giving her way too much credit. once again, whatever.

shia labeouf's birthday

2009-06-11T10:46:00.005-04:00

apparently today is Shia LaBeouf's 23rd birthday. even having watched him in even stevens when he was a kid, now that he's older i cant help thinking "there's something about this guy" people trash him fairly regularly and i think he's got some...stuff he probably needs to work through, but i think he is actually a good actor and (much like a lot of other young actors) really needs good parts in order to prove it. for better or for worse, there dont seem to be a lot of great movies recently with young actors (adventureland being the exception that first comes to mind.)

also, shia la beouf is really pretty dreamy.

i cant help it!

when i was 14 i was in paris for 3 days and we went to a restaurant called le boeuf sur le toit, which i believe literally means beef on the roof. i dont know if it has a figurative meaning. anyway, this is all i can ever think of when i hear shia la beouf's name. at the time i thought it was the fanciest restaurant i had ever been in. i wonder what it really looks like...?

okay, yes. yet again i am betraying that at heart i am 13.

2009-05-31T22:23:00.004-04:00

twilight. yeah, i said it. MF'ing twilight was awesome. bella wasnt too snippy, she loved her parents, she was gracious. the cast was diverse without drawing attention to itself. there were a few things, of course, that bugged me. a) that drinking blood was essentially a metaphor for sex (i know that one is often used, but in this one it was a bit...heavy handed b) uh...vampire baseball game? c) what was up with that ballet studio? it didnt even make sense. oh, one other bugging thing--do you remember in "10 Things I Hate About You" when heath ledger (aww) says "what, does this chick have beer flavored nipples or something?" when everyone wants to date Cat? That's how i felt when everyone was meeting Bella in school. i get it, it's a small town and anyone new is interesting. but geez you guys. also, why do all the vampire clan where these little emblem wristbands. is it like vampire medic-alert? or like their little "vegetarian" rosary? every time they showed the vampire called jasper i laughed thinking about how the girl described him as always looking like he was in pain. he kind of looked like he needed to take some beano. and peter facinelli's hair was distracting.

i cant really grasp, though, in so many of these movies, especially the vampire or supernatural/superhero stories, where the line is between undeniable attraction and stalking? i mean, i guess it's kind of cute that bella is so naive that she doesnt even flinch when edward says he has been coming into her room for the past few months to watch her sleep. but no, not a good message to send to little girls. unless of course they're dating a vampire who is totally awesome. surprisingly i was okay with the vampires in sunlight thing. you know how the vampire myths sort of vary from region to region? the movie did a good job of setting them up as a pacific northwest race of vampires.

but the actor who played james was totally a cut-rate brendan sexton III.

oh lord, i am a total nerd.

like you care

2009-05-20T15:34:00.000-04:00

i can't remember how to log on to my other blog, so i have decided to expand the horizons of we should cast this. it's not like tim and i have been casting a lot of book to movies lately anyway. summer is here, though, maybe that will change.

anyway, sometimes twitter and facebook arent the right forums (fora?) for the kind of inanity that i prefer to really examine indepth. like what? you might be asking. well, like this:

i almost bought a copy of "my so-called life" from a street vendor today. 6 discs for 40 bucks. but MSCL is one of those shows that is fantastic and every once in a while i might want to see a particular scene when something reminds me of it, but i honestly cant picture myself sittiing down again to watch the whole show. (i say again, bc i have a copy of it that plays on the computer that i watched a few years ago) it was great to see it all, but i have to admit, it's just slightly too painful to watch repeatedly.

i feel the same way about freaks and geeks. the characters are so developed that i really dont like to experience their emotional ups and downs. well, i like the ups, but not the downs so much. especially when you know what's going to happen and when the downs are coming and you see the signs that the characters don't. it's painful! even the lure of james franco can't get me to watch again.

also, i miss them at the end of it all. i think that both of those shows could have easily gone 3 or 4 years and been consistently well-written and compelling. then maybe it would be easier to watch again. but only getting one year with these characters makes that one season's heartbreaks even more heartbreaking.

whatever, we all know that i tend to get caught up a little too easily in things.

on a side note, while the twilight hype was very enticing last year, i stayed strong and resisted. although now that the second movie is coming out i will probably fold. why cant vampires and werewolves just get along?

the front runner

2008-10-02T13:59:00.000-04:00

so tim and i just read the front runner by patricia nell warren. i saw elsewhere that it was a very well-written book. whoever said that was W-R-O-N-G. it is bad. as tim said, it's a gay harlequin romance. also, despite the fact that it was written by a woman, boy is this book down on women. that being said, it was a fun read and the story itself is good. it would make a great movie, but we are finding it awfully hard to cast.

billy has been a stumbling block. it's hard to think of a young actor who has the charisma and smoldering good looks that billy needs. plus, he's got to be a good actor. River Phoenix would have been perfect 15 years ago. also, harlan has proven problematic. tim came up with an all british cast that i liked:

Harlan - Daniel Craig
Vince - Dominic Cooper
Jacques - Jamie Bell
Billy - Charlie Hunnam

I am in favor of casting Charlie Hunnam in everything. And Johnny Depp. but i didnt cast him this time.

I had 2 casts, one with younger actors as the principals and the other with older actors. the boys in the book are all supposed to be 20 or 21 and Harlan has his 40th birthday during the story. here's what i came up with:

Harlan Brown - Josh Lucas/Brad Pitt
Billy Sive - Jamie Bell/Taylor Kitsch
Vince Matti - Emile Hirsch/Adrian Grenier
Jacques LaFont - Lou Taylor Pucci/Milo Ventimiglia
John Sive - Robert DeNiro/Jeff Goldblum
Dauphine - Gary Dourdan/Jesse Martin
Betsy - Kristen Bell/Katherine Moennig
Steve Goodnight - SPACEY/David Thewlis
Angel - Rory Culkin, no alternate.

in my mind, adrian grenier IS vince. but he may be too old. tim has suggested robert downey, jr and matt dillon as harlan and i like both of those suggestions. hopefully he will send me his final cast soon and i will update this.

here's a bonus--this is the cover of the copy tim read.

fringe--i give up

2008-09-24T11:09:00.000-04:00

fringe pretty much sucks. aside from better writing and scripts that arent lifted from the x-files and changed just enough to be explained by science instead of the paranormal--fire joshua jackson and the guy who plays the dad. get jeroen krabbe in as the doctor and shift kirk acevedo's character over to be dunham's partner. dunham's okay, she's a little too intense. i blame that on direction.

yes, so new directors, mostly new leads, and new writers. that should fix this show.

the terror by dan simmons

2008-09-23T11:06:00.000-04:00

Crozier - Johnny Depp
Fitzjames - Ewan McGregor
Goodsir - Cillian Murphy
Franklin - Tom Wilkinson
Irving - Charlie Hunnam
Hickey - Robert Carlyle
Peglar - James McAvoy
Bridgens - Anthony Hopkins
Gordon - Peter Sarsgaard

director - Tim Burton (as long as he doesnt cast Helena Bonham Carter as Lady Silence)

it's more likely that russell crowe would be cast as crozier, but i think he lacks sensitivity, and that factor is surprisingly crucial to crozier's character.

i also feel like Jamie Bell should be in this movie. maybe he could be evans.

i tried to cast Rupert Graves in here somewhere. Maybe as Peglar. Then McAvoy could be Hickey, we've never really seen him as a character like that. Could be interesting, actually. but i feel like he's too young to be Hickey, hickey seems like more of an old salt.

this would be a good role for johnny depp, i resisted him as crozier for a while because i felt like he wasnt rough and burly enough to play crozier. i tried a few different actors in the part and had trouble visualizing it. finally, i tried johnny and it fit perfectly. and johnny is such a great actor that this wouldnt be fey jack sparrow, but he would be the Crozier of the book.

and for what it's worth--i cast ewan mcg as fitzjames, but the whole time i was reading the book i was picturing billy crudup.