stuff
Chrissy Iley interviews singer/songwriter Alicia Keys, who makes her film debut playing the elegant lesbian assassin, Georgia Sykes, in Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces. At the official site, there are also 4 R-rated clips from Smokin' Aces. You do however need a US zip code to watch. (Drat!) You can see stills from the film here and here. [imdb]
Warner Bros. have picked up the film rights to an upcoming book about former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who died in November 2006 from polonium-210 radiation poisoning. The book, "Sasha's Story: The Life and Death of a Russian Spy", by New York Times London bureau chief Alan Cowell, will be published later this year. IEG & Johnny Depp's Infinitum Nihil will develop the project which could be a potential starring vehicle for Depp. (Dark Horizons)
At NPR, listen to Rick Kleffel discusses economic genre fiction with Charles Stross, Jeff VanderMeer, David Edelman, TC Boyle, and others.
Trailer for the Memento-like thriller, The Lookout, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matthew Goode, Jeff Daniels, Isla Fisher, and Carla Gugino. [imdb]
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ROME SEASON TWO
Official press releases about the second season, premiering January 14. Cast members, old and new, including Polly Walker and James Purefoy, talk about their characters:
"You're going to see a more grown-up version of Atia this season," notes Walker. "She'll be taking on a more aggressively political role, but she'll be torn between Mark Antony and her son Octavian.
Executive Producers Bruno Heller and John Melfi:
"We try to balance between what people expect from previous portrayals and a naturalistic approach. This series is much more about how the psychology of the characters affects history than simply following the history as we know it. There is a tendency in dramas about Rome to take a stiff, formal approach, which is certainly a valid way to treat the material, but we’re more interested in the living, breathing people."
Chicago Tribune TV blogger Maureen Ryan on Rome:
Much of “Rome’s” 2005 run was dominated by Ciaran Hinds’ majestic, canny portrayal of Caesar, and his absence is felt in the early going of this season. But as the show’s second season revs up, the show is McKidd’s for the taking, and the actor’s fierce portrayal of Vorenus gives the sprawling drama a charismatic center.
Doug Elfman at the Chicago Sun-Times:
The problem with textbook Rome (I'm sure there are finer books than what I read in school) is it is concentrated history set in stone. This happened, then that. In "Rome," these historical people, places and things flesh into visual fiction, true to most details, and let us do more than read between the lines.
Salon's Heather Havrilesky thinks Rome sets its sights too small:
...Servilia and Atia might as well be Alexis and Krystal of "Dynasty," tearing each other's clothes off in the nearest swimming pool.
Robert Bianco (USA Today) agrees:
...few series that started as well have ever went as quickly and irretrievably off the tracks. With each episode, the show seems to move further from real life and the real Rome and off into some sex-crazed, soap-opera fantasy version of a place that has never, thankfully, existed before or since.
Alessandra Stanley (New York Times) praises the actors, but feels the producers have let their standards slip:
James Purefoy is still a pleasure as the libidinous Marc Antony, crude but clever and unscrupulous. He is well matched by his lover, Caesar’s conniving niece, Atia (Polly Walker), who is the series’s designated endearing monster.
Robert Lloyd (Los Angeles Times):
"Rome" is smart, dirty fun... Positively Dickensian in the way it trains an eye on both the powerful and the poor, "Rome" wants us to see the present in the past - offering cocktail parties, rich girls smoking hemp ("I brought back two sacks from Macedonia sooooo much better than the Italian kind"), a criminals' den that looks like nothing so much as a 1st century BC Bada Bing.
Linda Stasi (New York Post):
...like Caesar, this series returns Sunday night in triumph.