Boston | Director | Mira Nair | Vanity Fair | Kal Penn

The Namesake
You don't get much more prestigious than the film version of a celebrated novel by a Pulitzer Prize winner. Jhumpa Lahiri's story of the son of Indian immigrants who is caught between his desire to fit in with his Boston neighbors and his family's desire to do the exact opposite is brought to life by director Mira Nair (Vanity Fair, Mississippi Masala). If that sounds like the plot to Bend It Like Beckham, well, it is and it isn't, and, at any rate, that doesn't mean there can't be another film about the struggles of someone trapped between two cultures, right? There's plenty of territory to explore in that premise. I mean, how many movies have been made about rogue cops who have to save the day while battling both bad guys and their own police departments? Like, 100? Here's another question: Will people take Kal Penn, star of such funny (but slight) comedies as Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Van Wilder, seriously as the lead here?

Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola is - in fraternity/sorority terms - a legacy, and no one, and I mean no one, appreciates that more than Hollywood. But the good thing is she deserves the love; her second and third films, The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, were beautifully constructed, fragile little movies full of style and substance in equal measure. Her fourth and latest is a stylized biopic, starring Kirsten Dunst as the 19-year-old queen of France, and features decidedly nonperiod music by the likes of New Order and Gang of Four. Here's hoping that gambit fares better for her than for the last film that tried something similar. That film was A Knight's Tale, and it almost made Heath Ledger reconsider his line of work.