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Tobey Maguire Goes a-Crusadin' for Gary Ross!
Beaks here...
Maybe it's because INGLORIOUS BASTARDS is finally (hopefully) getting made, but when I saw the headline "Tobey Maguire to star in CRUSADERS" at Variety, my first thought was that Paul Verhoeven's presumed-dead epic about them wild, Jerusalem-sacking antics of the Middle Ages had suddenly been resurrected as a star vehicle for Peter Parker. Alas, no.
Instead, we're getting Gary Ross's THE CRUSADERS, an historical drama about the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topka decision (which paved the way for school desegregation in the U.S.). It's territory that's been previously covered by a very earnest television movie (George Stevens Jr.'s SEPARATE BUT EQUAL), but, as far as I can remember, never in a theatrically released film - at least, not directly. Maguire, who's only attached at the moment, would star as Jack Greenberg, a Columbia Law School grad who worked on the case with soon-to-be Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. There's no one attached to play Marshall yet, but you can bet that competition will pick up now that Maguire's on board (Sidney Poitier played the legendary figure in the aforementioned TV movie, so no pressure or anything).
Gary Ross is one of the more thoughtful studio filmmakers out there, so this fairly important project couldn't be in better hands (i.e. I don't think we're getting another GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI). If there's a way to tell this story without employing the usual prestige picture cliches, he should be able to pull it off.
Ross will be working from a screenplay by Danny Strong, who just earned an Emmy nomination for his RECOUNT script. THE CRUSADERS is set up at Universal.
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Pleasantville is rad.
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Pleasantville is rad.
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Let's hear it for Danny Strong making compelling historical dramas, while Adam Busch rocks out with Common Rotation and Tom Lenk apparently does sketch comedy in Hollywood. Always knew those nerds had potential.
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l-a-m-e.
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I go and look at that pinup girl pic, and then I come back and it's GONE!
WTF? -
Ok, so I'll read it now.
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I'm not authorized to access that page.
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If done well, this could be interesting. But, alas, anything could be interesting if handled well, really.
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earnest approach was good enough in Spidey 1 and 2, but he looked bored (as did everyone) in 3.
Bar that I don't really rate him. I don't get the acclaim for Seabiscuit - it was a hackneyed piece of storytelling that looked like it should have been stashed away for a saturday afternoon made-for-tv piece of fluff. -
Toby needs to work on Robotech instead!
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What? oh nevermind.
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I didn't understand any of it...
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Otherwise I'll wait for the DVD... not.
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but seen through the eyes of a main white character ala all those South African films of the '80s. Oh how those white folk suffered fighting for the civil rights for his fellow (minority) man.
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Wow - what's next - a movie about the Teapot Dome Scandal? Or how about the intricacies of the Lend-Lease Program? An impassioned debate set in 1975 over the need for School Buses to come to a complete stop 10 feet before every railroad crossing starring Joseph Gordon-Leavitt as the bright-eyed Harvard grad and Anthony Hopkins as the jaded jurist who has his faith in law rekindled? Booooring.
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It's probably the worst of the "whites are the real heroes of the civil rights era" Hollywood movies, and that's saying a lot. Instead of making a movie about Medgar Evers, they decided to make a movie about the white lawyer that prosecuted Evers' killer.
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Jul 21, 2008 11:37:00 AM CDT
I'm glad they continue to cover civil rights struggle in movies.
by tonytodd
...because it's sooooo relevant today with all the evil white people spending all their time trying to oppress blacks. I mean, it's still going on! White people don't spend any of their energy working, or trying support their families, or pursuing any goals or dreams. It's all directed towards oppressing blacks. We need to talk about this issue...FOREVER. Let's never let it die! I prefer more overt movies like the one where the evil white swim team tries to oppress the good black swim team. Or evil white basketball team tries to oppress the the good black basketball team. But I guess all these movies have to have one obligatory white person who comes to realize the evils of his ways for being white. I'm sure Spidey will be good at that role in this movie. Down with the white man!
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He wrote Big and Dave. Seabiscuit was a fantastic book, should have been a miniseries like Generation Kill, they had to leave out way too much information.
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Are you familiar with the words 'of historical importance'?Are you familiar with any type of film depiction of historic events that occurred before you were born, that perhaps others of your generation or later generations are unfamiliar with? Does every picture made need to have a giant Robot Lion in it? Sorry TomBodet. Did you complain about the depiction of ancient Greeks in Troy? Do you think that any picture that accurately depicts events of the past regardless of who is comes out like a villain, is of no merit? Are you that threatened by a movie about desegregation, or any flick that shows the historical imbalance of power between the races - regardless of your own, I am sure, sterling interaction with all races?
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he nailed the mopey whiny shithead peter parker, but was a total blank as spiderman.
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Schwarzenegger owns the script, its his pet project. Maybe they will make it when he stops pissing about playing politician.
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