Rosie O’Donnell is acting again! This pleases us very much, frankly. People forget that the embattled former co-host of The View was once a much more regularly delightful presence in films like A League of Their Own, the very weird BDSM-themed detective comedy Exit To Eden, The Flintstones, Sleepless in Seattle, and Harriet The Spy. But now she’s back in I Know This Much Is True, a limited series from director Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines) and screenwriter Gina Prince-Bythewood (Beyond The Lights), based on the novel by Wally Lamb. It’s about a middle-aged man trying to get his mentally ill twin brother released from an institution, and it stars Mark Ruffalo in a dual role, Juliette Lewis, Kathryn Hahn, Melissa Leo and The Good Wife’s Archie Panjabi. We don’t know what role Rosie has here, but we assume it’s a serious one, and that there will be no place in this drama for the Betty Rubble giggle, but we can dream. And we do.
Remember the Oprah-starring Terms of Endearment? We do.
When films are remade, we tend to favor those that take the material and adapt it in a new way, which is why the news that Lee Daniels has plans for a classic from the 1980s seems really promising, and also potentially frustrating. See, the Precious director set his sights on Terms of Endearment, the 1983 film adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel, about the strained relationship between a mother and her dying daughter that starred Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger. And Daniels cast Oprah Winfrey as the mother half of the estranged pair. And now here’s an update that isn’t really an update: this happened well over a year ago. And that’s Hollywood. Everything takes a long time and a lot of projects take even longer. So now we just wait impatiently until the drawn-out development process delivers what we want, which is another Oscar nomination for Oprah, a woman whose resume of work in solidly dramatic films is impressive and quite often underappreciated. Somebody with some Hollywood power please get on this.
Romeo San Vicente has written some pretty steamy Fred and Barney erotic fan fiction.
