By Katey Rich
Martin Scorsese's ongoing campaign to become the High King of Music Documentaries will have to be put on hold, now that he's dropped out of directing an untitled doc about Bob Marley. But all is not lost! Jonathan Demme, who made the iconic concert movie Stop Making Sense, will take over, according to Variety. Scorsese's movie was the one that was approved by the Marley estate, while the unauthorized biopic planned by the Weinstein Company remains threatened by possible litigation.
The West Wing of Oliver Stone's White House is finally fully staffed. Richard Dreyfuss will soon sign on to play Vice President Dick Cheney, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and will presumably immediately head to the film's set in Louisiana. Some might argue that Dreyfuss doesn't have the required mien of evil and doom that a man playing Cheney would require, but given that he aged 30 years over the course of Mr. Holland's Opus, I fully expect the world from him.
As Cannes heads into its final weekend, the buying market is starting to look similar to the way it did at Sundance, when it took much longer than usual for some of the highest-profile projects to get picked up. Variety reports that two of the biggest films, James Gray's Two Lovers and Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche New York, have yet to be picked up. Steven Soderbergh's Che, which just debuted yesterday, also has no bites, but Soderbergh is considered "too big to ignore," the article states. Sign of the financial times, or sign of low quality? Only a distributor can help us find out.
And speaking of Che, the first, frenzied reviews are in, and they are decidedly mixed. Variety complains that "if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he's portrayed here," while the ever-prolific Jeffrey Wells calls it "not just "take it to the bank" gripping, but levitational -- for someone like myself it's a kind of perfect dream movie. And Variety blogger Anne Thompson quotes several anonymous critics outside the screening who call it "'A folly.' 'A mess.' 'Great." Her take? "Noble failure." Perhaps that goes a long way toward describing that Cannes buying drought.
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