Missing Julianne Moore happens far more frequently.
<--- Chloe promotional poster [via]But never fear. A healthy dose of Julie Anne Smith face time coming our way in 2009 and 2010 (provided that the distribution gods are kind). Up first: a supporting role in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Then? Release dates are hiding but she's the lead in a horror thriller Shelter (uh oh. Julie + genre = trouble) and working the drama (ahhh, much better) with Colin Firth in A Single Man. Rather intriguingly (plot & auteurial wise) she's offering up Amanda Seyfried to her husband Liam Neeson in Atom Egoyan's Chloe. The teaser poster tag line makes it sound like "cheesy misogynistic thriller"... like Obsessed or something, but it's Atom Egoyan so it's safer to place your bets on "good psychologically compelling movie".
No obvious Oscar bait on the way except for the lead role of a frontier mother, Mary Margaret, who takes her kids on a treacherous journey from Missouri to Wyoming in Boone's Lick. It's from director Barry Levinson's and novelist/screenwriter Larry McMurtry (Brokeback Mountain). Entertainment Weekly calls the McMurtry book a "gory farce". Hmmm. Actresses don't often win Oscars for westerns but it's fun to imagine that she'll finally get hers as a sort of belated 50th birthday present in 2011. Still, with no other cast announced yet, who knows what will become of this project. Levinson has had two Best Picture shortlisters in his directorial career (Bugsy and Rain Man) but his last picture to cause any sort of fuss was Wag the Dog way back in 1997. So cross your fingers that they actually start filming this fall, as once planned... with or without the "rumored" Tom Hanks as co-star.
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