This installment’s theme: Women who aren’t what they seem.
1. Variety reports that Patricia Clarkson, Ryan Gosling and Emily Mortimer are set to star in Lars and the Real Girl:
Pic is the story of a timid man whose life changes dramatically when an Internet friend comes to visit. The beautiful, religious missionary is in fact an inanimate replica of a woman.
I’m not really sure what that’s supposed to mean, but for now, I’d like to recommend that the producers consider putting Daniel Amos‘s ‘Real Girls‘ on the soundtrack.
2. Production Weekly reports that Franka Potente, of Run Lola Run (1998) and Bourne Identity (2002) fame, will star in Pope Joan, adapted by Volker Schlöndorff (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Tin Drum, etc.) from the novel by Donna Woolfolk Cross:
Potente will play Johanna von Ingelheim, a 9th century woman of English extraction born in the German city of Mainz who disguises herself as a man and rises through the Vatican ranks.
When her older brother dies in a Viking attack, the brilliant young Joan assumes his identity and enters a Benedictine monastery where, as Brother John Anglicus, she distinguishes herself as a scholar and healer. Eventually drawn to Rome, she soon becomes enmeshed in a dangerous mix of powerful passion and explosive politics that threatens her life even as it elevates her to the highest throne in the Western world.
UPDATE: Just remembered, this story was filmed once before, in 1972, in a film starring Liv Ullman, Olivia De Havilland, etc.
3. George Lucas tells Variety he’s giving up on movies — too expensive — and focusing on television, adding: “I think the secret to the future is quantity.” Not that Lucas has spent all that much time lately pursuing the alternate option, i.e. quality.
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