Next projects: Buster’s Mal Heart (Rami Malek) & Mute (Duncan Jones)

Rami Malek, leading star of the so-hot-right-now cyber-thriller Mr. Robot, has today landed his first major role. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the up-and-comer has agreed a deal to topline Sarah Adina Smith’s mystery drama Buster’s Mal Heart. Malek will spearhead the drama as an eccentric recluse who lives out his days in the mountains, breaking into one vacation home after another in order to survive through the harsh winters.

During his illicit escapades – which ought to be right in Malek’s wheelhouse after Mr. Robot – our protagonist is plagued by a series of vivid and indeed recurring dreams; dreams that cast him astray at sea without a hope. As the narrative unfolds, Malek’s character learns that the dreams are in fact real, and that his conscious is inexplicably split across two bodies in two very different locations. It’s this mind-bending plot that will underpin Buster’s Mal Heart. Source: wegotthiscovered.com

EXCLUSIVE: Duncan Jones’ long-cherished Mute, about a mute bartender who goes up against his city’s gangsters in an effort to find out what happened to his missing partner, may be coming a step nearer to fruition with the news that Paul Rudd and Alexander Skarsgard have boarded the project. Also joining Mute is Lotus Entertainment, which will handle international sales and finance the ambitious film in time for AFM.

The film is set in Berlin, 40 years from today. A roiling city of immigrants, where East crashes against West in a science-fiction Casablanca. Leo Beiler (Skarsgard), a mute bartender, has one reason and one reason only for living here, and she’s disappeared. But when Leo’s search takes him deeper into the city’s underbelly, an odd pair of American surgeons (led by Rudd) seem to be the only recurring clue, and Leo can’t tell if they can help, or who he should fear most.

“I’ve been working towards making Mute for 12 years now. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that we’re finally going to shoot this utterly unique film,” said Jones. “Mute is a film that will last. It is unlike any other science fiction being made today.” Source: deadline.com

R.I.P. Maureen O'Hara (The Queen of Technicolor)

The actor Maureen O’Hara has died, her manager said on Saturday. She was 95.

O’Hara, who was born Maureen FitzSimons in Dublin in 1920, starred in John Ford’s 1941 Oscar-winning drama How Green Was My Valley, set in Wales, and The Quiet Man, Ford’s Irish-set 1952 film that starred John Wayne.

She starred with Wayne in a number of films, including the western Rio Grande, also directed by Ford.

She also had notable successes working with Charles Laughton (Jamaica Inn, The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and Andrew V McLaglen (McLintock!), and starred in the perennial Christmas hit Miracle on 34th Street, in 1947, and the Disney children’s hit The Parent Trap in 1961. She was never nominated for an Oscar, instead being given an honorary award in 2014. After accepting her statuette, presented by Liam Neeson and Clint Eastwood, from a wheelchair, the then 94-year-old star protested when her speech of thanks was cut short.

On Saturday the Irish arts minister, Heather Humphreys, said O’Hara was “the quintessential Irish success story”. “Maureen O’Hara left Ireland to carve a successful life in America,” Humphreys said, “but in the hearts and minds of every Irish person Maureen was the quintessential Irish success story.

She went on to become one of the icons of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the height of her career.”

Humphreys said O’Hara would be “best remembered for her fiercely passionate roles in classic films and in particular the films she made with her great friend John Wayne”. Wayne once famously said he preferred to work with men, “except for Maureen O’Hara. She’s a great guy”. In 1991, O’Hara said of Wayne: “We met through Ford, and we hit it right off. I adored him, and he loved me. But we were never sweethearts. Never, ever.”

Humphreys added: “It was in [O’Hara’s] role as Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man, the iconic film made over 60 years ago and still very much celebrated in Ireland and abroad, that we were first alerted to her natural beauty and talent. In later life, O’Hara married her third husband, Brigadier General Charles Blair. He died in a plane crash in 1978 and O’Hara took over management of the airline, which she eventually sold. “Being married to Charlie Blair and traveling all over the world with him, believe me, was enough for any woman,” she said in 1995. “It was the best time of my life.”

“My first ambition was to be the No1 actress in the world,” she said in 1999. “And when the whole world bowed at my feet, I would retire in glory and never do anything again.” In 1957 her career was threatened by scandal, when the tabloid Confidential magazine claimed she and a man had engaged in “the hottest show in town” in the back row of Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. However, as she later told the Associated Press, at the time she “was making a movie in Spain, and I had the passport to prove it”.

O’Hara most often played strong and willful women. In 1991, she was asked if she was the same off screen. “I do like to get my own way,” she said. “But don’t think I’m not acting when I’m up there. And don’t think I always get my own way. There have been crushing disappointments. But when that happens, I say, ‘Find another hill to climb.’”

 “Her characters were feisty and fearless, just as she was in real life,” the O’Hara family said in a statement. “She was also proudly Irish and spent her entire lifetime sharing her heritage and the wonderful culture of the Emerald Isle with the world.” Source: www.theguardian.com

Mr. Robot Season 1 on Blu-Ray

As cinema and television increasingly converge, TV shows are looking more and more like film – and Mr. Robot is arguably the best current example of that. The show’s all odd angles and characters edged into the corner of frames, like chess pieces on engulfing tableaux; not only that, but it looks at New York City in a completely new way, turning the shiny tourist-magnet into a cold, tech-y future metropolis.

Even though you can probably see the twist coming a mile away, it doesn’t stop the moment of revelation being heart-breakingly powerful.

And in those scenes, when the twist comes, Malek is absolutely devastating. Slater’s is the biggest name in the cast, but it’s Malek who emerges as the star of Mr Robot: approaching Elliot’s at-times difficult nature with a radiant mix of easy charisma and vulnerability, Malek is awards-worthy in the main role. He’ll likely go onto even bigger stardom on the silver screen after this, but it’s hard to imagine – as with Jon Hamm and Don Draper, Bryan Cranston and Walter White – that he’ll find anything so worthy of his talents.

Mr. Robot, which actually has meaty roles for its female characters, features two of the more interesting, conflicted women in TV, in Carly Chaikin’s Darlene and Portia Doubleday’s Angela. Angela gradually shows herself to be a quietly complex figure throughout the first season, a corporate lackey looking for revenge that also secretly seeks approval from the same powers-that-be that she despises. Source: wegotthiscovered.com

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has announced that it will release on Blu-ray Mr. Robot: Season 1. The release will be available for purchase on January 12, 2016.

Synopsis: Enter the "completely captivating" world of Mr. Robot. Cyber-security engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night, Elliot (Rami Malek, The Pacific) finds himself at a crossroads when the mysterious leader (Christian Slater, Very Bad Things) of an underground hacker group recruits him to destroy the firm he is paid to protect. Compelled by his personal beliefs, Elliot struggles to resist the chance to take down the multinational CEOs he believes are running (and ruining) the world. Now, watch all 10 Season One episodes back-to-back and uninterrupted of the psychological thriller that critics rave is "damn near perfect" (Jessica Rawden, Cinemablend). Special Features: Deleted Scenes, Gag Reel, M4k1ng_0f_Mr_R0b0t.mov Source: www.blu-ray.com

Pre-Code rarities on TCM, Friday 23rd October

Promotional still of Edward G. Robinson as Jim 'Buck' Turner and Glenda Farrell as Valerie 'Val' Wilson in "Dark Hazard" (1934).


Dark Hazard (1934). Director: Alfred E. Green. Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Genevieve Tobin, Glenda Farrell, Robert Barrat, Sidney Toler. Plot: Jim is a compulsive gambler. He meets Marge at a boarding house and they get married. His gambling causes problems. When he runs into old flame Valerie Marge leaves him. After a few years he returns, but she is now in love with old flame Pres. Jim buys racing dog Dark Hazard and makes a fortune which he loses on roulette. On TCM at 12:30 PM

Promotional portrait of Mary Astor and Adolphe Menjou in "Easy to Love" (1934)


Easy to Love (1934). Director: William Keighley. Stars: Mary Astor, Genevieve Tobin, Adolphe Menjou, Patricia Ellis. Plot: When Carol thinks her husband John has been unfaithful, she hires a private detective; having long been pursued by Eric, she apparently accedes and accompanies him to an apartment and enter the wrong one. There, they find Carol's best friend, Charlotte, and John hiding in a closet. On TCM at 1:45 PM.

Promotional still of Kay Francis and George Brent in "The Goose and The Gander" (1935).


The Goose and the Gander (1935). A divorcee can't stop meddling in her ex-husband's affairs. Director: Alfred E. Green Cast: Kay Francis, George Brent, Genevieve Tobin, John Eldredge, Claire Dodd, Ralph Forbes, Helen Lowell. On TCM at 4:15 PM Source: www.tcm.com

The Chairman: New biography of Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra's flaming obsession with Ava Gardner never waned, but there were other headline-making women in his life — most notably Marilyn Monroe, Mia Farrow and Barbara Marx.

A new, in-depth biography, “Sinatra: The Chairman,” provides an intimate glimpse into Ol’ Blue Eyes’ relationships with each of these significant others. James Kaplan’s first door-stopping tome, “Frank: The Voice,” brought the singer up to the glorious moment in 1954 when he won the Oscar for “From Here to Eternity.” It was the comeback of all comebacks.

Back on top of the heap, Sinatra was busy with the ladies. In 1961, he finally got around to Marilyn Monroe. The two had brushed against each other through the years, but now it seemed something serious was afoot. Or, seriously sexual, at least. Shortly after Monroe’s divorce from Joe DiMaggio, Sinatra and the Yankee Clipper got drunk and ended up breaking down a door, five henchmen in tow, expecting to find Marilyn Monroe in bed with another man. Eight years later, in 1962, DiMaggio had Sinatra turned away from Monroe’s funeral. They had become rivals of sorts, each believing he was the man to save the goddess in her final downward spiral.

During Sinatra’s dalliance with Monroe, there are conflicting reports as to who wanted it more. Kaplan sides with Milt Ebbins, a talent manager, who claimed, “There was no doubt that Frank was in love with Marilyn.” Sinatra even considered marrying Monroe to save her from herself. Kaplan quotes sources that told an earlier biographer, Randy Taraborelli, that Sinatra believed being his wife would protect her from the vultures.

“Yeah, Frank wanted to marry the broad,” Jilly Rizzo, Sinatra’s chief henchman, said. “He asked her and she said no.” Source: www.nydailynews.com