By Katey Rich
It's hard out here for a specialty unit. After the folding of Picturehouse and Warner Independent, Paramount Vantage has managed to survive, but will now be doing it in a diminished capacity. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Paramount will fold much of Vantage's marketing and distribution into the parent company, eliminating three top-tier positions. On one hand, sure, tightening the purse strings is good for any studio, and Paramount is riding a crest of big bucks from its two May tentpoles that gives them deserved confidence. On the other hand, Vantage is the studio that gave us No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, easily two of the best films of last year. Fox Searchlight may be the only specialty unit that's truly successful, but its brand of quirk doesn't hold a candle to the daring work Vantage has given us (just last year, it was also responsible for Margot at the Wedding and Into the Wild). Is the era of the mainstream indie actually coming to an end?
Morgan Freeman has seemingly cornered the market on playing spiritually wise older black men, so the part was pretty much in the bag for him the moment Clint Eastwood announced he'd be doing a movie about Nelson Mandela. Now Matt Damon has jumped on board as well, playing the coach of a rugby team that united South Africa's black and white populations when they won the Rugby World Cup in 1985. Variety says that Freeman got Mandela's blessing for the movie, and actually suggested the project to Eastwood. So has all this time spent playing God just been practice for being Nelson Mandela?
It's hard to think of a guy more obsessed with true crime stories (except maybe the late host of Unsolved Mysteries) than Brian De Palma. He'll be at it again with his next film project, according to The Reporter, about the early-1960s "Boston Strangler" killings. The details of the case are still in question, as Albert DeSalvo, arrested and sentenced to life in prison for all 13 of the killings, is believed to be only one of the potential killers. Sounds like a guaranteed way for Brian DePalma to once again drum up controversy and get people yelling at him in public forums again.
And finally, Deepak Chopra, perhaps the most famous Hindu in America, is defending Mike Myers' upcoming The Love Guru, claiming Hindu opposition to the film is "religious propaganda." As published in The Reporter, Chopra wrote in an online essay that the outcry is "a sign that your faith has become a cover-up for all your insecurities because you can't even take a joke." Chopra may be happy to stick up for his buddy Myers now, but with The Love Guru's prospects looking dubious, we'll see if he changes his tune come June 20.
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