Residents of Washington Heights and the Lower East Side may be noticing some production crews in their 'nabe this week, as filming begins for the redux of PBS's The Electric Company, which ended its series in 1977.
Grand Central Terminal gets the full PBS American Experience treatment with this documentary from filmmaker Michael Epstein (Monday & Thursday, 9:00 p.m., WNET 13). The one hour film traces the history of the terminal, its construction and its impact on New York and the rest of the world. Expect tales of robber barons, dead commuters, and of course fawning over an architectural treasure.
Start sharpening your spurs, gays and gals, because Jake Gyllenhaal is coming to Broadway! If director Mike Nichols has his way, you’ll soon have your chance to stalk the sensitive heartthrob as he flees through the stage door of Farragut North, a new play about presidential campaign hardball penned by a former Howard Dean staffer. According to today’s Post, Gyllenhaal (who made his stage debut in a Maggie Gyllenhaal-directed production of Cats in their parents’ living room) is all-but-confirmed for the cast. But before that, Nichols will shepherd other boldface names to Broadway with a spring revival of Clifford Odets’s The Country Girl, about a washed up wino actor and his beleaguered wife. With Morgan Freeman and our personal favorite Frances McDormand rumored to play the couple, this has Compelling Theatrical Event written all over it.
Even though the weather isn't encouraging you to stay inside, there's still a whole host of new flicks to check out at the theaters.
This week's new film releases are a lovely New York melting pot: ballroom dancing teens, Arab/Israeli anxieties, motor skills-challenged geeks, neurotic female friends, and a thoughtful Polish director thrown in for good measure. Spring may have sprung outside but it's also a great time to be inside at the movie.
Gothamist and Warner Independent Pictures are giving away 5 pairs of tickets to a screening of March of the Penguins, tomorrow, June 22, at 7:00 PM.
The reaction camera is off its game, as it catches celebrities at the oddest moments. You see Maria Shriver, Governator is looking down at the floor, probably for that yummy piece of shrimp that fell.
With all this talk about Fahrenheit 9/11 there is another important film that has gotten pushed to the wayside. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, The Hunting of the President is a documentary on Clinton's battle against a right wing attack lead by Kenneth Starr.
Boxing themed movies seem to come around every so often, even though none have done that well since Rocky. There was The Boxer, Ali, oft-delayed Against the Ropes, and Ron Howard is aiming to shoot The Cinderella Man, with Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger. The only one that has done well is Girlfight, and that's an indie.
Trying to inject a little realism into Bruce Almighty, filmmakers used an actual phone number, not a 555 one, for the God character Morgan Freeman plays. People with that number are pretty annoyed. Gothamist would have thought a better idea for Universal would be to actually secure that number, maybe a toll-free one, and have Morgan Freeman on some sort of voicemail system. But that's why we're not controlling Hollywood.
NBC is airing a three hour TV movie, 1st to Die, which is based on the James Patterson novel. Other James Patterson novels that have turned up onscreen: Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider, whose only reasons for existing must be to remind people that Morgan Freeman (1) rises above everything in whatever he's in and (2) should get better material (maybe he needs to team with an indie director for a one-off). James Patterson's bio barely touches on his previous career as one of the most powerful people in advertising, which says something about his current success. He did write a book with late advertising wunderkind Peter Kim, The Day America Told the Truth about human nature with nuggets like "...lying is rampant in the workplace. In their 1991 nationwide survey they found that 64 percent of people said "yes" when confronted with this statement: "I will lie when it suits me so long at it doesn't cause any real damage." The authors wrote, "Ninety-one percent of those surveyed lie routinely about matters they consider trivial while 36 percent lie about important matters. … The majority of us find it hard to get through a week without lying. One in five can't make it through a single day and we're talking about conscious premeditated lies." (from BestJobsUSA.com Then Patterson got the fiction bug and started his cottage industry. A review of 1st to Die, the TV movie. Unsurprisingly, people who bought books by Patterson also bought books from John Grisham and Michael Crichton.
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