Day: August 28, 2005

Curtis Hanson’s In Her Shoes (20th Century Fox, 10.7) is on the longish side (a bit more than 140 minutes) but don’t let that temper your enthusiasm, says an overseas distribution guy who saw it a couple of weeks ago. “I really, really liked it,” he says. “It’s very well-written” — Jennifer Weiner’s book has been adapted by Erin Brockovich‘s Susannah Grant — “and down to the bone and extremely well made. Women will absolutely love it because they will recognize themselves in any of the three main characters.” He was speaking of Cameron Diaz’s flakey irresponsible sister, Toni Collette’s irked-at-Diaz, much more conservative older sister, and Shirley MacLaine’s grandmother whom Diaz goes to visit at an old folks’ home in Florida. “But guys will love it as well,” he says. “It’s extremely well acted and very well directed by Hanson, and it’s clear that Fox gave Hanson the autonomy to adapt the way he saw fit because it sticks very close to the Weiner book. Fox had a plan to release it in May or June, but it was so well received in research screenings they decided to hold it back for awards season. There is definitely, I feel, a Best Suporting Actress nomination in the wings for Shirley MacLaine, partly because she’s so honest in how she looks her age.” In Her Shoes is playing the Toronto Film Festival, of course, so we’ll be seeing soon enough.

I don’t care that much one way or the other, but the new Bob Iger-led Disney has apparently smoothed things over with Pixar and the word is that reps for the companies are negotiating the fine points of a fresh new deal, so it looks like Pixar and Disney won’t be separating after all. Take it with a grain, but that’s I’m hearing.

It’s ironic to say the least that with the divorce between Harvey and Bob Weinstein and Disney about to be over and done with and in effect, the talk is now that Disney is finalizing a deal to handle overseas distribution for four films made by Bob and Harvey’s new outfit, The Weinstein Co., and that the deal will be signed within the next two or three months. The Weinstein Co. films we’re speaking of are Derailed, Breaking and Entering, Scary Movie 4 and the Sin City sequel.

What’s more pathetic? Director Martin Campbell and producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli still trying to figure out which semi-acceptable (i.e., not a complete unknown, and faux-studly in the Sean Connery mold) candidate they should sign and turn into the next James Bond, or the fact that journalists are still writing articles about this embarassing process? The latest indication of the latter is this article (“Search for a Swoonmaker”) from Australia’s The Age, which actually proposes casting Hugh Grant. Nobody ever mentions it, but there is only one trying-to-cast-the-new-James-Bond story, really, and it’s an oldie: nobody who knows the score or has anything career-wise on the ball wants to work with Wilson and Broccoli. They are stoppers and turkeys and micro-managers and caretakers of the lowest order, and this, I’m told, is at least one reason why Hugh Jackman, “evidently at the instigation of his wife, actor Deborah-Lee Furness,” according to the Age story, is reported to have refused a deal to make three Bond movies.