Warner Independent Pictures is releasing Towelhead, the theatrical debut of filmmaker Alan Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under and Academy Award Winning writer of American Beauty. The film premiered in the Toronto Film Festival with the title Nothing Is Private. It has been named back in the US to Towelhead, the same title of the Alicia Erian novel that Ball has based his written adaptation on.
Set during the first Gulf War, a teenage Arab-American girl named Jasira whose new found and confused sexual awareness results in drastic measures by her mother (Maria Bello - The Cooler, 2003). She is sent away from New York to a small town in Texas to live with her strict, disciplinary Lebanese father, Rifat (Peter Macdissi - Three Kings, 1999). While the Middle Eastern war spreads prejudice at home, they struggle to be recognized as a respected Americans. Jasira is played by newcomer Summer Bishil who is running as fast as she can from children’s television programming to dramatic material more mature and respectable, much like Anne Hathaway did with Havoc (2005).
Director Ball is still testing the water with another plot about the adult male leaching after the underage girl. A bigoted Army revisionist played by Aaron Eckhart (Your Friends and Neighbors, 1998) is torn between his racism and his attraction for the minor. Eckhart, who exudes sliminess as well as James Spader (Secretary, 2002), says to girl in private: “You know what you do. You know what you do to men.”Ewww…
Watching the Towelhead trailer, the tampon sequence brings to mind a scene from Tamara Jenkin’sSlums of Beverley Hills (1998) where a well-meaning father (Alan Arkin – Little Miss Sunshine, 2006) takes his mortified daughter (Natasha Lyonne – But I’m A Cheerleader, 1999) out bra shopping. I’m also reminded of the menstrual-minded Canadian werewolf-horror film Ginger Snaps (2000).
Towelhead also stars Toni Collette (Muriel’s Wedding, 1994 and Japanese Story, 2003) and Matt Letscher (Identity, 2003)as welcoming, sarcastic Liberal neighbors. Here’s hoping this American indie is sharp, poignant and uncompromising as Alan Ball’s previous efforts. The release date is August 28th.
Anthony Pellicano, the Hollywood private detective, who was charged with racketeering and wiretapping in order to solve his clients problems, was found guilty on 76 of 77 charges. Actors such as Chris Rock, and Garry Shandling testified that they had either hired Pellicano, or had been spied on by him.
Pellicano conducted his own defense, not the brightest idea in this case. He is expected to spend life behind bars.
The Rocker follows Robert “Fish” Fishman, a drummer in an eighties band. He is kicked out, and twenty years later he joins his nephews band. I’m not being fair. Check out the trailer.
The Rocker opens August 1st. It stars Rainn Wilson, Josh Gad, and Will Arnet.
Columbia Pictures and Neal Moritz, the producer of Cruel Intentions (1999) and I am Legend (2007), have secured the rights with Scholastic Media’s Deborah Forte to make the R.L. Stine penned Goosebumps franchise into a theatrical feature. It’s like Rod Serling’sThe Twilight Zone for kids. Executive Producer Andrea Giannetti (Vantage Point, 2008) will oversee the production. The release date is set at 2010.
The popular Goosebumps book series, much of it written and sold throughout the 1990s, holds second place as the most financially successful in the young adults demographic. It was published in over 32 languages and has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. It was beaten by another youth-oriented serial written by some Brit named J.K. Rowling who specialized in wizards or something (supposedly 5 out of 8 blockbuster films were also adapted).
My reservations on an adapted Goosebumps movie is that it will be based on a Horrorland revision (unread by me) that includes many characters from previous plots. Between evil ventriloquist dummies, a preordained picture-taking camera, possessed Halloween masks, plant zombies, mutating green blood, and a summer camp that enslaves children to wash down a blob with teeth; I hope the filmmakers don’t bloat the film with too many creatures.
Why the invested interest? As a kid, I had difficulty being engaged by less than compelling material outside of Beverley Cleary’s Ramona serial. Unless the characters were personable and a real sense of doom was preordained, my mind drifted to more haunted thoughts of my imagining that proved more enticing. At the age of 7, I was introduced to the Goosebumps series, the closest in horror literature I could obtain at the time, by an antique dealer who I never saw again. As an early reader, I am in debt to R.L. Stine. Throughout grades four and seven, I read front to back over seventy Goosebumps novels. My father used to bribe me with a new Goosebumps book ($5.50 each) every week I completed all of my homework.
The covers of the books were a wonder to behold. A vibrant, ominous painting visualized what was just as immediate and unnerving as when I ventured the horror shelves at the video store (Images of the grinning Chucky Doll entranced me at the age of five). The Goosebumps cover illustrations were all by Tim Jacobus. You can read about his process in this short illustration tutorial.
While I’m on the subject of illustration, it has come to my attention that the U.S. House and Senate is introducing an Orphan Works Act of 2008 and the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008, which deprive copyright ownership from working illustrators whose livelihood depends on acquiring paid permission to use said images. I am calling out to U.S. citizens to take action and oppose this thieving atrocity by e-mailing this form to congress. As a practicing illustrator myself, you’d be doing me a favor.
Back to Goosebumps. In the mid-nineties, the Fox Kids Network in collaboration with Scholastic Publishing produced a Goosebumps television series featuring an adapted episode in a half-hour format. Another like-minded show released much earlier was Eerie, Indiana (1991) that included episodes directed by Joe Dante (Innerspace, 1987). Being a hardcore Goosebumps fan at the time, I taped almost every episode and now return to favorites as a rare guilty pleasure. Perhaps the upcoming film could be made in an episodic fashion - it’s Creepshow for kids!
The first season of the show was effective because it focused on character development (sometimes performed well by child actors - Kathryn Long as Carly Beth comes to mind - and sometimes not) and executed subtle special effects within a reasonable television production. Even future stars like Ryan Gosling (from Say Cheese and Die! to Half Nelson, 2006) and Hayden Christensen (from Night of the Living Dummy III to Shattered Glass, 2003) cut their teeth into the series. Enter seasons two and three as the faithfulness to the original stories and production quality gradually ebbed to a pitiful low. The second the show introduced CGI effects, it was all over.
Cartoon Network brought the show back for a limited time last year. Check out the awesome Grindhouse-inspired tv spot. I wish the original episodes were shown in this rough, scratchy format.
Once in every four months, I google to see whether a Goosebumps: Season One Box Set is on the horizon. Unfortunately, Fox sold the rights to Buena Vista who have peddled out some of worse Goosebumps episodes individually on separate DVDs. Sometimes Disney is pure evil. Hopefully the upcoming film will bring the franchise back to public conscious and the damned series will be released properly. I read that Columbia is looking for a writer for their Goosebumps movie: I nominate myself.
