Boston Herald – Guns were blazing in Brighton yesterday where the stars of two set-in-Boston flicks – “Real Men Cry” and “The Lonely Maiden” – played shoot ’em up for the cameras.

We hear “Maiden’s” Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and William H. Macy staged their battle in the old High Output soundstage on Western Avenue. Meanwhile across the way, “Real Men Cry” stars Ethan Hawke and Mark Ruffalo traded simulated gunfire on a soundstage fashioned out of the vacant K Mart.

At lunchtime, both crews broke at the same time and chowed on their catered meal in separate areas inside the old Frugal Fannies. What a deal!

The only place in the retail plaza not getting shot up? The Shaw’s supermarket – which had signs warning customers of the two-day Tinseltown shooting gallery across the way!

“The Lonely Maiden” crew expects to wrap on Thursday while “Real Men Cry,” the biopic of Southie bad boy Brian Goodman, will be outta here on Friday.

The Oscar race has now begun, with the specialty divisions of the major Hollywood studios and the truly independent players pulling out all the stops to ensure their films make the cut when nominations are announced on January 22.

Reservation Road is one of Focus Features movies waiting for January 22, when nominations will be announced.

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Is there anything more depressing than the senseless death of a child? In the real world, perhaps not; in Reservation Road, plenty. For starters, it’s depressing to note that director Terry George elected to follow his powerful Hotel Rwanda with this simple-minded melodrama. It’s also depressing to note that this film largely wastes the talents of not one but two Best Supporting Actress Oscar winners, Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino. And finally, it’s depressing when a strong premise is compromised by lazy plotting and cop-out resolutions. Based on John Burnham Schwartz’s novel (with Schwartz co-writing the screenplay with George), Reservation Road starts with a young boy being struck and killed by an SUV.

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It was all smiles for “Real Men Cry” stars Ethan Hawke, Mark Ruffalo, and Amanda Peet as they gathered on M Street in South Boston early yesterday for the first day of filming. The gritty crime flick, written and directed by Southie native Brian Goodman, is about two friends who turn to crime as a way to get by and will be filming in the area for the next couple of months. Donnie Wahlberg also stars.

Starring alongside Leo in Marty’s latest
Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have been planning a trip to Shutter Island for some time now – and today, they asked Mark Ruffalo to join them.

No, we haven’t stumbled upon the trio’s holiday plans – DiCaprio and Scorsese may be creatively tight, but we doubt very much that they’d holiday together and even if they did, they wouldn’t choose a remote island just outside of Boston as their destination.

No, instead, Shutter Island is the name of the next DiCaprio/Scorsese movie – based on the Dennis Lehane novel – in which Li’l Leo will play Teddy Daniels, a US Marshal who travels to the titular isle to track down Rachel Solando, a bonkers loony murderess who’s escaped from an asylum on the island. Only when he gets there, he finds more than he bargained for, in the shape of an incoming hurricane that causes the asylum’s remaining patients to riot – and all the while, Solando is out there, and something is not quite right at the hospital…

Ruffalo, a fine actor who can now add Scorsese to his list of A-List Directors I’ve Worked With Excel spreadsheet (a list that includes David Fincher, John Woo, Ang Lee, Michael Mann and, erm, Gary Winick), will play DiCaprio’s new partner, Chuck Aule. And the casting of such a prestigious actor indicates, and quite rightly, that Chuck is much more than your average second banana partner role. We can’t go into details, sadly – spoilers abound!

Heck of a cast Marty’s assembling, though the Solando part has yet to be filled. With shooting beginning in March, we’re guessing that an announcement will be made sooner, rather than later.

Paramount and Columbia are splitting the costs on this one, while Mike Medavoy, Arnold Messer, Brad Fischer and Scorsese will all produce.

So far, each new Scorsese/DiCaprio picture has been better than the last, with The Departed representing their pinnacle thus far. Shutter Island could be their best yet.

Even though a film may appear loaded for Oscar bear, it doesn’t take long for critics and the box office to transform it into a load of awards season bull.

Oscar season is somewhat like a Rotary Club bake-off. There’s generally a lot of talk about new recipes for success, and everyone excitedly looks forward to trying something new and perhaps a bit exotic. Yet when it comes time to hand out the blue ribbons, it’s often the most tried and true concoctions, or at least some slight iteration upon an old favorite, that carry the day. For example, awards voters have proven time and again their love for epic-scale productions (Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King … The English Patient), just one of many easily identifiable Oscar and Golden Globe trends. At this time of year, various pundits are well into the momentum – or lack thereof – of various actors, actresses and films. If a performer is lucky enough to score an early nomination or award (e.g. Cate Blanchett as Venice’s Best Actress, Juno as the Rome Film Festival’s Best Feature, etc.), it generally begets them extra opportunities, within the larger context of the odds favoring previous winners and honorees. Like Lions for Lambs opening this weekend, Reservation Road was on paper a film with all the essential Oscar bait ingredients. It stars Joaquin Phoenix – twice nominated for an Academy Award, most recently in 2006 for his turn as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line — and Mark Ruffalo, an habitual awards season flirter. The film’s female lead, Jennifer Connelly, was of course 2002’s Best Supporting Actress for her role in A Beautiful Mind.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke will play Boston thugs in the true-life crime drama “Real Men Cry.”

Hawke and Ruffalo’s respective characters, Paulie and Brian, are childhood friends forced to survive on the tough streets of South Boston through a life of petty thievery. They join a local gang of criminals, but Brian finds it hard to reconcile his work and friendship with Paulie and his relationship with his wife (Amanda Peet) and son.

First-time feature director Brian Goodman based Ruffalo’s character on his own experiences with a friend who is now serving 100 years in prison for armed robbery.

“Reservation Road” falls victim to a common affliction of parallel-action narratives: One story is far more meaningful and emotionally affecting than the other. Director Terry George’s latest film is about how grief, guilt and introspection emerge in two men involved in a fatal accident. It tries to mix an intensely internalized Mark Ruffalo performance with Joaquin Phoenix’s scenes, which descend into a contrived haze of investigatory paranoia. It’s a character drama mistakenly reworked as a tense thriller.