Filling his prescription of chill pills.

Let’s see, we have James Franco, a director who goes only by Carter and a debut at the Berlin Film Festival. Could it be that Maladies is everything that we’ve come to expect from Franco and more?

Set in the 1960s, James Franco (kinda looking a bit like Joaquin Phoenix from “The Master” in that pic above) plays a former actor and schizophrenic who lives with his mentally detached sister Patricia (Fallon Goodson) and his cross-dressing best friend (Keener) in the same house. And as you can guess, their lifestyle, coupled with their issues, ruffles more than a few feathers both inside and outside of the house as they try to make sense of their lives. (Via Indiewire)

Hell yes, this is a Franco film if I’ve ever heard one. And now we have a trailer to see just how crazy Maladies will be.

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Here we have the trailer for David Schwimmer’s (yes, Ross from Friends) sophomore effort as a director, Trust, which will play the Toronto Film Festival next month.  I’m one of the few avowed Schwimmer defenders around (I think he’s a solid actor, sue me), but even with a script from Michael Ian Black and Simon Pegg, Run Fatboy Run was about as lame and generic as they come.  Schwimmer’s latest is about an online predator, and while I expect this kind of torn-from-the-headlines queef party from Dateline NBC or Law and Order: Juggalo Perverts Unit Kalamazoo, it’s not quite what I look for in a feature.  In fact, if you just watch this six seconds of it, it looks like a Brinks home security commercial:

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Director David O. Russell (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees) is probably most famous for calling Lily Tomlin a c*nt in the above video (and being asked “Why don’t you f-ck your whole movie?” in turn).  He also reportedly got into a fistfight with George Clooney on the set of Three Kings, and had his most recent film, Nailed, shut down a number of times for losing financing.  MTV recently sat down with Nailed stars [hee hee! -Ed.] Catherine Keener and Jessica Biel to find out what it was like working with Russell.

“He’s wonderful,” Catherine Keener said.
“I love him,” co-star Jessica Biel echoed. “He pulled such a bizarre cool interesting performance out of everyone. It was quite an interesting experience. David was amazing.”
“The shutdowns were killing us,” Biel said.  “That was the only really sh–ty part.”
But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that the stoppages have inspired an attitude of perseverance in the cast, Keener insisted. “This felt like it was happening despite all of the obstacles,” she said. “It felt like us against the man. We were like — you cannot shut us down!”

Ooh, how exciting, David O. Russell isn’t such a bad guy and the dedicated actors just wanted to finish their movie.  I’m sorry for wasting your time with this, folks.  From now on, I promise not to post any Jessica Biel interviews unless her tit falls out in the middle of it.

Synecdoche New York is the directing debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, which is about all I need to know in order to have a raging nerd boner over it. No release date is set yet, but it premiered at Cannes last week.

As you can see, the poster’s just been released and it features Phillip Seymour Hoffman presiding over a pretty hefty to-do list.  I mean, I’m assuming it’s Phillip Seymour Hoffman – any second it could slowly turn around and… Surprise, it’s the Cryptkeeper! You’d forgotten about me since the early 90s, hadn’t you my pretties!  *maniacal cackling*

[Picture Source = IonCinema]