Posts Tagged ‘James Gandolfini’

Sopranos” producer David Chase remains coy about the possibility of a big-screen followup to the hit HBO show,but loose-lipped cast members are suggesting a script is already on the page.

It’s been speculated that a major holdup to the big-screen version is a strong reluctance on the part of James Gandolfini to sign on to the project.

But, according to a chatty Lorraine Bracco, that rumor is way off the mark.

“I don’t think it’s that at all,” says Bracco about Gandolfini’s supposed cold feet. “I think it’s really trying to get the right script. Without the right script, it’s really not worth doing.”

Bracco isn’t shy about making her concerns heard. “We’ve all talked to David to give him a kick in the booty to get it right,” she says pointedly.

While HBO mouthpieces yesterday shot down any talk about the existence of a script, claiming it is “just rumor,” Steve Van Zandt recently added to the buzz.

The “Sopranos” alum and Bruce Springsteen bandmate let slip to a Belfast newspaper that his character, Sil – who was struggling for his life in the show’s abrupt ending – “is still alive.”

Go figure.

And Bracco doesn’t sound like she’s planning to stop at just one movie.

“I want us to be like ‘Sex and the City‘ or ‘The Bourne Identity,’” she gushed. “I want to make a million of them.”

Former SOPRANOS star JAMES GANDOLFINI booted an audience member from a recent performance of his Broadway play GOD OF CARNAGE, after the fan sneaked onstage during the intermission.

Gandolfini was stunned when he returned to the stage for the second half of the show and found a man sat in his seat.

The male revealed he was a fan and wanted to meet his idol, but Gandolfini showed no mercy and tossed the man into the wings, where a security guard ejected him from New York’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, reports the National Enquirer.

The star, famous for his role as tough mob boss Tony Soprano, regained his composure before the curtain came up – as his co-stars Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden and Hope Davis looked on stunned.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – That semi-classic 1974 subway heist thriller starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw — as opposed to the inferior 1998 TV movie with Edward James Olmos and Vincent D’Onofrio — has been given a smartly streamlined overhaul while still remaining faithful to the original blueprint.

“The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3″ (writing out the numbers just doesn’t work in the digital age) boasts a smart cast headed by Denzel Washington and John Travolta and a literate Brian Helgeland script that avoids the sort of broad stereotyping found in the original.

Yet curiously, despite the ever-energetic Tony Scott at the throttle, the sleek new edition isn’t as transporting as it should have been.

Even with the plot’s built-in ticking clock, the film relinquishes the tautly calibrated pace in the third act, never to get completely back on track.

Still, watching a pair of pros such as Washington and Travolta playing a particularly astute game of cat and mouse can be persuasive, and those who prefer their summer movies to have a little grown-up substance along with the effects should ensure that the Columbia release, which hits theaters Friday (June 12), arrives at the solid midfigure platform.

Set in a post-9/11, pre-recession New York City, Helgeland’s script has returned to the original 1973 John Godey novel for inspiration while playing up the cagey battle of wits between an everyman subway dispatcher (Washington, in the Matthau role) and the rage-filled white-collar criminal (Travolta, taking over from Shaw) who masterminds the hostage-taking siege.

He demands $10 million in exchange for the safety of the subway car’s passengers (a cool $9 million more than ’74′s asking price), and, if the ransom isn’t delivered within an hour, a passenger will be executed each minute past the time limit.

Director Scott, marking his fourth collaboration with Washington, is very much in his high-speed, amped-up element here, but while he certainly knows how to make a movie move (with notable assistance from his frequent collaborator, editor Chris Lebenzon), that classic cat-and-mouse construct proves to be an obstruction.

Because the bulk of those extensive Washington-Travolta exchanges aren’t conducted face to face, Scott is forced to compensate for his action elsewhere, and some of those sequences — like an out-of-control money run — feel distractingly manufactured.

But though the effect is the stop-and-start rhythms of a local train rather than the quickening momentum of an express, it’s still a treat to see Travolta stretch as an effective, vengeance-seeking bad guy and Washington gamely piling on the sedentary pounds to play a flawed character quietly driven by his own motivations.

Terrific, too, is a supporting cast including James Gandolfini as the city’s colorful, Michael Bloomberg-esque mayor, and John Turturro as a cool customer of an NYPD hostage negotiator — a role that didn’t exist in the first “Pelham.”

Bebe Neuwirth has a spooky new project in the works. The newly married star told us that she’s developing a play based on “The Addams Family.”

“I hope it will come to Broadway next year,” she said at On 3 Production’s Lipton Gift Lounge yesterday.
Elsewhere at the suite, Jane Fonda Tweeted about going green, while “God of Carnage” star James Gandolfini drew raves for his good-natured behavior while choosing swag. Said an eyewitness, “Everything James picked up was for his wife. He was so sweet!” Even sweeter was the candy he selected from Frankie’s Fruit & Chocolate; we overheard the “Sopranos” alum say he’d “do anything for good food.”

Forget Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini is about to transform into an even more ambiguous character on the big screen: the mayor of NYC. The Taking of Pelham 123, Tony Scott’s remake of the 1974 heist flick, Gandolfini is set to play the mayor under intense pressures when a hostages are taken on a subway train. Andy Hawkins, with City Hall, spoke to producer Todd Black about the role, who said, “He kind of has this cranky quality of having to do the meaningful service that the mayor has to do on daily basis,” Black said. “This crisis hits right in the middle of his day. He brings a reality to that. But you can kind of see the twinkle behind his eyes, which is really nice.”

The film premieres June 12, and this being an election year for the mayor, we wonder if Bloomberg should watch his back. Although Gandolfini has no political aspirations, he’s polled well playing the role, according to Black. “When we’ve tested the movie, across the board, he tests through the roof,” Black said. “The audience loves his performance.”

Source: http://www.nypress.com/blog-4214-gandolfini-for-mayor.html