Morning Deal Report: James Franco Will Howl

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

There aren’t too many roles suited to both David Cross and James Franco, but apparently the late beat poet Allen Ginsberg is one of them. Cross played Ginsberg in I’m Not There last year, and Franco will take over in the biopic Howl. “Telling Pictures documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman will make their narrative writing, producing and directing debut with the 1950s-era tale, focusing on the obscenity trial launched to censor Ginsberg's groundbreaking book-length poem,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Alan Alda, David Strathairn, Mary-Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels will also star.

The glut of upcoming time travel movies just got a little, er, gluttier. New Line has acquired the Richard Doetsch novel The Thirteenth Hour. “Described as a cross between The Bourne Identity and The Time Traveler's Wife, tome follows a man accused of brutally murdering his wife who is given a chance to save her by going back in time, in one-hour increments. He puts together clues to figure out not only who killed her but why,” Variety reports. Memento just called – it wants its gimmick back.

Spike Lee, who is also attached to a time travel movie, will also find time to squeeze in a sequel to Inside Man. The Hollywood Reporter says “Inside Man 2, as the project is tentatively being called, will pick up on the characters and dynamic but not the story line of the original.” Clint Eastwood was not available for comment.

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Time Traveling with Spike Lee

Take Five: Labor Day

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Usually, the Screengrab's Take Five feature is inspired by some new release coming out the day we go to press. However, sometimes, if the raft of new releases in relatively uninspiring or inappropriate, we go with a different sort of them, and since today is the start of Labor Day weekend, what better time to salute organized labor? After all, some of us are union men ourselves (hey, the National Writer's Union is too a real union! We're part of the United Auto Workers for some reason!); and what with the writer's strike earlier this year that brought the movie business to a near-halt, and the possibility of an actor's strike later in the year coming along to finish what the writer's strike started, America hasn't been this aware of what organized labor is up to in years! Unfortunately, unless Vin Diesel's mercenary Thoorop in Babylon A.D. happens to be a dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Hired Killers & Machinegun Operators, there's no new released this holiday weekend that are even remotely about unions or the labor struggle. But that doesn't mean we can't dip back into our video vaults and come up with five fine flicks about working-class struggle for your Labor Day enjoyment. (And, as a special treat before you go back to work on Tuesday, take a few hours to watch Barbara Kopple's masterful Harlan County U.S.A., referenced in last week's Take Five.) Happy Labor Day, readers!

MATEWAN (1987)

Possibly John Sayles' finest film, Matewan depicts -- with the heart of a union man and the eye of an artist -- the brutal struggle to unionize among the West Virginia coal miners of the 1920s, one of the bloodiest periods in the history of organized labor. Based on the Matewan Massacre of 1920 and featuring breathtaking cinematography by Haskell Wexler, Matewan' s powerful story is bouyed by wall-to-wall terrific performances by Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, James Earl Jones, and a young Will Oldham, in his pre-rock star days. Essential.

NORMA RAE (1979)

Martin Ritt's feel-good hit about a scrappy female textile worker who takes on the burden of being the point woman for unionizing the clothing mill in the deep South that employs her hasn't held up particularly well -- it's got a handful of good performances (and won star Sally Field an Oscar), but at times it comes across as a bit hokey. But it still stands as a testament to one of the last flashes of union glory in the U.S. before Ronald Reagan's Republicans started their unrelenting war against organized labor in America. Worth watching as a document of its day.

ROGER & ME (1989)

Sure, nowadays, it's pretty easy even for liberals to make fun of Michael Moore. His insistence on making himself part of his stories has gotten out of hand, and in many ways, he's become the caricature lefty the right has always accused him of being. But in 1989, when he launched his quixotic quest to have just a few words with General Motors CEO Roger Smith and ask him to look at the massive devastation wrought by his moving manufacturing jobs out of Flint, MI to avoid union costs, he seemed like a true breath of fresh air and a voice for the voiceless.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)

It's almost impossible now to overestimate the impact of John Steinbeck's finest novel and the stirring masterpiece of a film that John Ford made of it. With the sting of the Depression fresh in the minds of millions of viewers -- and with labor conflicts so intense that big agricultural interests in California sought to have the movie banned, just as they removed copies of the book from California libraries -- the gorgeous, moving film was no stolid classic then, but an urgent cry for justice and decency at a time when the country was in its direst of straits.

AMERICAN DREAM (1990)

By the time Barbara Kopple finished her disturbing, heartbreaking documentary about a strike by meat packers at the Austin, MN Hormel plant, Reaganism's determination to crush unions wherever they could be found had already made its tragic story about the slow, tangled dismantling and destruction of a labor negotiating unit a familiar one all over the country. A far more ambiguous work than her Harlan County U.S.A., American Dream nonetheless shows the unremitting sadness of the direction our country took when it allowed ideologues to launch an assault on the hard-won gains of the working class.

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Morning Deal Report: James Franco Will Howl

Take Five: Labor Day