Ashton Kutcher is the biggest name in the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic

Ashton Kutcher's star image couldn't be more different than Steve Jobs' persona. But the resemblance between a young Jobs and Kutcher is striking, which is perhaps why the "70's Show" and "Two and a Half Men" actor was cast in the indie biopic centering on the founder of Apple.

Besides Kutcher, the names don't have much prominence in the industry. Director Joshua Michael Stern has mostly worked in TV movies. I don't see any IMDB credits for writer Matt Whitely. Plus, the movie is being produced by Mark Hulme of the Five Star Institute, a mortgage company that is apparently branching out into film. Newbie producers and financers often get run over when they try to conquer Hollywood.

The indie is going the small and nimble route, with plans to film in May, once Kutcher is on hiatus from "Two and a Half Men." Meanwhile, Sony actually optioned rights to the authorized biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson, which was published shortly after his death and became a bestseller.

The first film to release isn't always the best. These days, there are plenty of high-profile stars who end up in indies that languish at festivals or end up getting a theatrical run that's so short, it's basically straight-to-Netflix. Kutcher's ex, Demi Moore, was in one such (not so bad) film, The Joneses, herself not so long ago. Whenever I see these kinds of films as I browse through "Watch Instantly," I wonder how many people are fooled by the star into thinking this was some big-budget release they somehow missed.

This Steve Jobs biopic has a couple strikes against it, since it doesn't have the source material of the authorized bio (which has a few choice tidbits unlikely to be found anywhere else) and an inexperienced crew. Think of what a difference it made to have a script by Aaron Sorkin and direction from David Fincher in the Mark Zuckerberg-centered film The Social Network, a Sony production. No offense to Ashton Kutcher, but I may end up holding out for the Sony version.

Scorsese to take on the life of Frank Sinatra

By Sarah Sluis

Marty, meet Ol' Blue Eyes. Today, Universal announced that Martin Scorsese will helm a biopic of Frank Sinatra. Phil Alden Robinson, best known for writing and directing Field of Dreams, will pen the script. It took Universal and Mandalay over two years just to get the life and music rights to Sinatra's work, so one hopes the project will move quickly now that they're done with the legalities. Already, people are asking who will play Sinatra. Leonardo DiCaprio seems like the front runner, given his working relationship with Scorsese and slight build, but I've also seen Johnny Depp and Ewan McGregor being thrown around as possibilities.

The best part about this project is how naturally Frank Sinatra's life fits in with Scorsese's interests as a director. There's the mob and crime connections, which Scorsese's explored in Goodfellas, The Departed, and Casino. Sinatra spent a lot of time in New York (he was born in Hoboken, NJ), which Scorsese loves as a subject (Gangs of New York, The Age of Innocence, New York, New York, After Hours, Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, to name a few, all make New York an unswappable part of the story), Then there's Las Vegas, which Scorsese profiled in Casino. Sinatra spent years singing there and the filming of the original Ocean's 11 in the city is cited as the time the perennially hung-over group of performers became the "Rat Pack."

Music features prominently in Scorsese's films. He's never done a biopic of a musician, but he's helmed documentaries of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and he's in post-production on a documentary on George Harrison. His soundtracks always have thoughtfully placed songs, which have inspired directors like Wes Anderson to make their musical choices even more prominent and front-and-center.

Of course, the capper to all this is the superb work he's done on his "one man" biopics. Raging Bull is one of the best films ever made, and The Aviator had the difficult task of portraying the enigmatic life of Howard Hughes, then showing him interact with starlets who were famous in another right, like Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner. He's incredibly detail-oriented when it comes to historical portrayals, even reflecting them stylistically: The Aviator matched its color processing with the Technicolor technology at the time, switching from two-strip to three-strip as the characters progressed through time.

As a final-cut director (according to Variety), Scorsese should be able to include the less savory parts of Sinatra's life, even with the presence of daughter Nancy Sinatra as an executive producer. Wikipedia, for example, turns up evidence that Sinatra might have had ties to the mob, struggled with mental issues and was possibly bipolar, and had a tumultuous, love-hate relationship with Ava Gardner, which apparently began while he was still married to his first wife. These biographical details, in my mind, aren't damaging, but signs of humanity. Scorsese has always been attracted to morally ambiguous characters, but he gives them souls, making us understand the struggles and thought processes of mobsters, worn-out boxers, and psychopathic taxi drivers. There's no question in my mind that he will be able to do similar justice to Frank Sinatra.