Aliana Lohan follows in big sister’s movie footsteps
Actress Lindsay Lohan’s kid sister, Ali, is following in the movie footsteps of her older sibling as she shoots her big-screen debut in a film based on R.L. Stine’s pre-teen book series Mostly Ghostly.
Ali Lohan, 14, has been cast in the film as a popular high school student, emulating the type of role played by sister Lindsay in the 2004 film comedy Mean Girls. The Mostly Ghostly film is based on the series of books about the adventures of an 11-year-old boy who has two ghosts living in his bedroom, said the spokeswoman, Melissa Raub Vogel.
The film is slated for release later this year, but Raub Vogel said the movie has no distributor yet.
While Mostly Ghostly would mark Ali Lohan’s feature acting debut, she made an uncredited cameo in her older sister’s 1998 film The Parent Trap, appearing as a young child in an airport, according to the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com.
She also is due to appear with her mother and manager, Dina Lohan, in a reality show Living Lohan, set to air this summer.
Ali, whose full first name is Aliana, began modelling as a child and recorded an album of Christmas songs, titled Lohan Holiday, which was released in late 2006.
Ang Lee making gay Woodstock movie
Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee is returning to the gay genre with a movie revolving around the Woodstock music festival.
Taking Woodstock centers on the colourful life of a Greenwich Village-based interior designer and part-time Catskills hotel manager who headed the Bethel, NY, Chamber of Commerce. He issued the permit for the legendary 1969 concert on his neighbor Max Yasgur’s farm.
It is based on Elliot Tiber’s 2007 memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life, which he wrote with Tom Monte.
The project is set up at Focus Features, and will be adapted by the studio’s CEO, James Schamus. Lee and Schamus’ most recent collaboration was Focus’ Chinese-language drama Lust, Caution, which earned $66 million worldwide.
The writing-directing pair had their breakthrough indie hit with the gay-themed comedy The Wedding Banquet in 1993, and Lee directed Focus’ biggest hit, the gay Western Brokeback Mountain, in 2005.
There have been several Woodstock documentaries, but few narrative films touching on the festival, one of the few being Tony Goldwyn’s A Walk On The Moon.
Miramax on board for another ..Train robbery
Miramax is producing an English-language remake of the French crime drama Man On The Train, a project that has reportedly caught the attention of Billy Bob Thornton.
The story revolves around a drifter who cases a conservative small town for a bank robbery. The man befriends an elderly professor who seeks to energize his life by becoming his partner in crime.
French pop star Johnny Hallyday and Jean Rochefort starred in the 2002 original, which was directed by Patrice LeConte and released in the United States by Paramount Classics. It won the Venice Film Festival award for best film and actor (Rochefort).
Thomas Bezucha (The Family Stone) is in negotiations to direct the remake. While Thornton is said to be circling the project, no actors have been set.
The project is Miramax’s latest stab at a foreign film remake. The Disney-owned studio is also heading into production with an adaptation of the Italian drama Everybody’s Fine with Robert De Niro.
