Soft cushions are being compiled en masse in Cannes at the moment with Steven Soderbergh poised to unleash his four and a half hour double header Guerrilla/The Argentine onto the waiting public.
Having been splattered across t-shirts since his death in 1967, red rebel Che Guevara will finally have his whole ascent captured on film. Benicio Del Toro takes the Argentine’s shoes in the two part relation, with Che having previously been captured by Gael Garcia Benal for the coming-of-age tale The Motorcycle Diaries.
Add to this the festival buzz accumulating around the documentaries Maradona, by Emir Kusturica, and and James Toback’s Tyson and the flavour of the festival can arguably be seen in the trials and tribulations of famous faces. But this isn’t a new trend.
Recent biopics (where an actor portrays a famous life) of note have immortalized Muhammed Ali (Ali), Edith Piaf (La Vie En Rose), Ray Charles (Ray) and Johnny Cash (Walk the Line) in film and this is just within the recent spectrum of cataloguing great lives. But who else is waiting in the wings to be shown on the 16ft screen in all their cinematic glory.
Four-score and not to long away in the future looms the stove-pipe and famous beard that was Abraham Lincoln, as portrayed by Liam Neeson. Al Pacino’s imagining of Salvador Dali and the rather ill-suited choices of Elijah Wood as Iggy Pop and Mike ‘yes, that’s right Austin Powers’ Myers as famed lunatic and sometimes Who drummer Keith Moon.
I don’t know about you but none of these exactly set my heart a flutter and I assume that they will be a mixed bag of irreverent choices. Myers is seemingly following Jim Carrey and Will Smith down Serious Acting Avenue, while mild-mannered Wood is simply too timid to capture Iggy Pop’s floppy beige skin.
Pacino is on the wane and I doubt Dali ever shouted manically at anybody in the way that Alfredo does so well, in fairness a modicum of promise can be attached to Lincoln. Neeson tends to play understatement and somewhat stoic in a very good, pensive way and I think Lincoln’s real-life grit and mental agility plays to that well.
There has been talk of James Gandolfini becoming the Old Man and the Sea in a recount of Ernest Hemmingway’s somewhat eventful life and Sylvester Stallone purports to be the foremost authority on Edgar Allen Poe, having gone so far as to draft a script of a biopic. Again neither are really that enamouring.
In my opinion, the well versed rags-to-riches via drug/sex/vice addiction, as seen in Ray and Walk the Line, is pretty worn territory and it is going to take something a bit leftfield to really capture people’s imaginations.
The better stories seem to be plucked from people out to the sides as well, such as the announced Fifth Beatle which will recount the Fab Four’s manager Brian Epstein. However, there has to be someone surely meriting such an honour?
Personally, Cesare Mori has always held something of a mild interest. For those of you scratching your head, he was a contemporary of Mussolini known as the ‘Iron Prefect’, who took on the might of the Mafia on Sicily using unconventional methods.
Sure he ended up a horrible fascist in cahoots with a contemptible man but the events of his single-handed, bullish attempts to curb the growing influence of the burgeoning Mafia in 1920s Italy would make a pretty damn good film.
But who else?
Having been splattered across t-shirts since his death in 1967, red rebel Che Guevara will finally have his whole ascent captured on film. Benicio Del Toro takes the Argentine’s shoes in the two part relation, with Che having previously been captured by Gael Garcia Benal for the coming-of-age tale The Motorcycle Diaries.
Add to this the festival buzz accumulating around the documentaries Maradona, by Emir Kusturica, and and James Toback’s Tyson and the flavour of the festival can arguably be seen in the trials and tribulations of famous faces. But this isn’t a new trend.
Recent biopics (where an actor portrays a famous life) of note have immortalized Muhammed Ali (Ali), Edith Piaf (La Vie En Rose), Ray Charles (Ray) and Johnny Cash (Walk the Line) in film and this is just within the recent spectrum of cataloguing great lives. But who else is waiting in the wings to be shown on the 16ft screen in all their cinematic glory.
Four-score and not to long away in the future looms the stove-pipe and famous beard that was Abraham Lincoln, as portrayed by Liam Neeson. Al Pacino’s imagining of Salvador Dali and the rather ill-suited choices of Elijah Wood as Iggy Pop and Mike ‘yes, that’s right Austin Powers’ Myers as famed lunatic and sometimes Who drummer Keith Moon.
I don’t know about you but none of these exactly set my heart a flutter and I assume that they will be a mixed bag of irreverent choices. Myers is seemingly following Jim Carrey and Will Smith down Serious Acting Avenue, while mild-mannered Wood is simply too timid to capture Iggy Pop’s floppy beige skin.
Pacino is on the wane and I doubt Dali ever shouted manically at anybody in the way that Alfredo does so well, in fairness a modicum of promise can be attached to Lincoln. Neeson tends to play understatement and somewhat stoic in a very good, pensive way and I think Lincoln’s real-life grit and mental agility plays to that well.
There has been talk of James Gandolfini becoming the Old Man and the Sea in a recount of Ernest Hemmingway’s somewhat eventful life and Sylvester Stallone purports to be the foremost authority on Edgar Allen Poe, having gone so far as to draft a script of a biopic. Again neither are really that enamouring.
In my opinion, the well versed rags-to-riches via drug/sex/vice addiction, as seen in Ray and Walk the Line, is pretty worn territory and it is going to take something a bit leftfield to really capture people’s imaginations.
The better stories seem to be plucked from people out to the sides as well, such as the announced Fifth Beatle which will recount the Fab Four’s manager Brian Epstein. However, there has to be someone surely meriting such an honour?
Personally, Cesare Mori has always held something of a mild interest. For those of you scratching your head, he was a contemporary of Mussolini known as the ‘Iron Prefect’, who took on the might of the Mafia on Sicily using unconventional methods.
Sure he ended up a horrible fascist in cahoots with a contemptible man but the events of his single-handed, bullish attempts to curb the growing influence of the burgeoning Mafia in 1920s Italy would make a pretty damn good film.
But who else?
Chris Sloley - a rubbish biopic waiting to happen
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