Ouch, this movie sounds painful; can Patrick Stewart and Orlando Bloom really find nothing better to act in? What can they be thinking? [From the Guardian, as usual]
Just as the nightmares induced by Gary Sinyor's Stiff Upper Lips were beginning to recede, another Merchant Ivory spoof is being prepared to send audiences screaming from the cinemas. Eric Idle, the retired Python, who hasn't directed a film since that classic Splitting Heirs a decade ago, is cooking up The Remains of the Piano, about a man called Hopkins who returns from India with a Steinway, only to have his life turned upside down by two women with sexual hang-ups (ooh-er missus).
If the single entendres of the cast list are anything to go by, we are in for a rare treat - Patrick Stewart as Obie Ben Kingsley, Anjelica Huston as Countess Von Kunst, Will Kemp as Leonard Bastard, and Orlando Bloom as Daniel Day Lewis. Yes, that's right, Daniel Day Lewis. If that weren't enough to push it over the edge, Robin Williams also has a cameo. First stop, Blockbuster.
Peter Greenaway is quoted in an article on the British presence. Sounds like TLS may not be a complete disaster:
After stumbling recently with 8 Women, Greenaway knows it's important Tulse Luper is a success. 'Like all filmmakers I need to have the largest possible audience, but of course I'd like that audience on my terms.'
On the other hand, Steven Mackintosh, who's in "The Tulse Luper Suitcases", said:
'Honestly, there are bits where I'm baffled as to what's going on,' says Mackintosh. 'But it's a Greenaway film, so that's how you're supposed to feel.'
The whole Tulse Luper project seems to be getting more and more dizzyingly ambitious, though:
Simple. Well not exactly. Tulse Luper is actually the first in a trilogy of films that will be released simultaneously with a TV series, website and eventually 92 DVDs. Having tackled art, architecture and calligraphy, Greenaway is focusing on new technology - and the idea that if cinema is dead, what should our new language be? 'Cinema is on a great cusp of change. After all, the boss of Kodak has said he will only be making celluloid for film production for the next 10 years.'
92 DVDs!?!? <AMK clutches his credit card and moans in pain>