First look images from two of our most anticipated 2010 films have come online due to the American Film Market, Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” and Noah Baumbach’s Untitled new comedy formerly known as “Greenberg” (or possibly reverted back to that title for now.
Either the films played in full or snippets and or trailers were presented to buyers both domestic and international (Focus has both of these in the U.S. from what we recall), but Collider has new images of both.
We already know what both are about. Coppola’s “Somewhere” stars Stephen Dorff (yes, apparently some one’s mounting a Tarantino-like comeback) as a hard-living Hollywood star who is wasting away at the Chateau Marmont when his estranged, 11 year old daughter (Elle Fanning) drops in for an unexpected visit. The synopsis doesn’t elaborate much, but what it’s worth here’s the official one.
Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a bad-boy A-List actor stumbling through a life of excess while living at Hollywood’s legendary Chateau Marmont Hotel. His days are a haze of drinks, girls, fast cars and fawning fans. Cocooned in this celebrity-induced artificial world, Johnny has lost all sense of his true self. Until, that is, his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) unexpectedly shows up and unwittingly begins to anchor him. Johnny’s fragile connection to real life slowly revives in her presence. So when the time comes fro Cleo to leave, his sense of loss is palpable, but the gift of hope she has also brought him leads to a beautiful, poetic denouement imbued with all of Coppola’s remarkable powers to conjure mood and atmosphere.
Still no word on who Michelle Monaghan plays, but as she’s been listed as one of the main cast members in the film (though it appears it’s just a two-hander with some cameos, including Benicio del Toro as what a appears to be a version of himself), but we assume she’s either the mother of Dorf’s child or a girlfriend (we’re betting on the former). Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars — Coppola’s baby daddy — is going to be contributing original music to the picture, but we’re sure there will be plenty of music in the film as well.
Likewise we pretty much know the basics of Noah Baumbach’s “Greenburg/Untitled” which co-conceptualized with his wife Jennifer Jason Leigh (her screen-credit is “story by”). This relationship comedy centers on a New Yorker (Ben Stiller) who moves to L.A. to housesit for his brother and figure out his life and ends up having a relationship with his brother’s assistant (mumblecore star Greta Gerwig). Here’s the fuller, official synopsis, plugged in with a few casting notes of our own that Collider doesn’t have.
Meet Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller): a dysfunctional 40-year-old at a crossroads in his life. Roger wants to “do nothing” for a while, so he agrees to housesit for his younger and more successful brother (Chris Messina), giving him a free place to stay in L.A. While in town, he tries to reconnect with his old friends and band mates but times have changed, and old friends aren’t necessarily still best friends [ed. note, Rhys Ifans is one of these best friends]. Greenberg starts spending time with his brother’s personal assistant Florence (Great Gerwig), an aspiring singer and herself something of a lost soul too. During a series of embarrassingly awkward romantic encounters, we sense that perhaps even someone as irascible as Greenberg may have found somebody who is prepared to appreciate him for himself — if he would only stop critiquing Florence’s techniques in bed. Over the course of several weeks, we watch an uncertain and wonderfully vulnerable courtship play out, and learn how funny, and terribly unpredictable, love in the modern world can be.
The film also stars Brie Larson, Juno Temple, Chris Messina, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Mark Duplass. The film was supposed to originally star Amy Adams and Marc Ruffalo instead of Gerwig and Stiller, but when Ruffalo’s brother died last year, he had to drop out of the picture which forced Adams to do the same.
*Small point of contention. We initially started calling the film, “Greenberg,” but then realized the trades had it labelled as “Greenburg” with a u and then changed our past reports, but checking the script again, it says Greenberg. Either way, both films will hit sometime in 2010, but no word yet when. Our guess is either in the Spring or the Fall.