Pattinson & Knightley for Cosmopolis

Willow Smith & Jay-Z’s Annie Remake, Pattinson & Knightley for Cosmopolis, Cusack “Bad-Ass” Poe

- Cosmopolis,  David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel (synopsis below is courtesy of Publisher’s Weekly) is switching things up: both Marion Cotillard and Colin Farrell were on board, but now Rob Pattinson is in andCotillard is out, possibly to be replaced by Keira Knightley. The production is aiming younger (and Twilight “RPattz” fans could pull some numbers), which seems odd for the director of A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and the upcoming A Dangerous Method. The latter is also starring Knightley, so Cronenberg’s interest in her sounds legit. If Cosmopolis ends up as Pattinson and Knightley, the result could be a face off of who’s prettier.

”…a study in big money and affectlessness. As one character remarks, 28-year-old Eric Packer ‘wants to be one civilization ahead of this one.’ But on an April day in the year 2000, Eric’s fortune and life fall apart. The story tracks him as he traverses Manhattan in his stretch limo. His goal: a haircut at Anthony’s, his father’s old barber. But on this day his driver has to navigate a presidential visit, an attack by anarchists and a rapper’s funeral. Meanwhile, the yen is mounting, destroying Eric’s bet against it. The catastrophe liberates Eric’s destructive instinct-he shoots another character and increases his bet. Mostly, the action consists of sequences in the back of the limo (where he stages meetings with his doctor, various corporate officers and a New Economy guru) interrupted by various pit stops. He lunches with his wife of 22 days, Elise Shifrin. He has sex with two women, his art consultant and a bodyguard. He is hit in the face with a pie by a protester. He knows he is being stalked, and the novel stages a final convergence between the ex-tycoon and his stalker. DeLillo practically invented the predominant vernacular of the late ‘90s (the irony, the close reading of consumer goods, the mock complexity of technobabble) in White Noise, but he seems surprisingly disengaged here. His spotlighted New Economy icon, Eric, doesn’t work, either as a genius financier (he is all about gadgetry, not exchange-there’s no love of the deal in his ‘frozen heart’) or a thinker. The threats posed by the contingencies that he faces cannot lever him out of his recalcitrant one-dimensionality. DeLillo is surely an American master, but this time out, he is doodling.”

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xoxo
Carrie