Louis Gossett Jr.
Louis Gossett Jr., who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1983 for his portrayal of a hard-nosed Marine Corps gunnery sergeant in "An Officer and a Gentleman," will be in Memphis next month to shoot "The Grace Card," the inaugural feature from Graceworks Pictures, a new faith-based local production company.
Louis Gossett Jr.
Originally titled "The Life Giver," the movie was written by Dr. David Evans, a Memphis optometrist, and later polished by Howard Klauser, who wrote Clint Eastwood's "Space Cowboys." A veteran writer-director of "Passion Play" productions at the Calvary Church of the Nazarene in Cordova, Evans also will direct the film.
"The Grace Card" will star actor/comedian Michael Joiner as a bitter Memphis police officer forced to confront his racism when he's brought together with an African-American pastor-cop.
Evans and Calvary church members, who have been active supporters of the production, hope to replicate the success of "Fireproof" with Kirk Cameron, a 2008 Christian-themed movie produced by Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., that earned $33 million at the box office.
Shooting is scheduled to begin Oct. 14.
Flix fest
Musicals, foreign-language films and a Christmas comedy titled "Make the Yuletide Gay" are among the more than a dozen features that will be screened during the annual Outflix Film Festival, which begins Friday and continues through Sept. 17 at the Malco Ridgeway Four.
A project of the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center, the festival now attracts about 2,000 moviegoers a year. The films are gay-themed, but as diverse in quality and tone as those at any of the city's other film festivals. Some of this year's highlights include "Rivers Wash Over Me" (Sept. 17), a superb Southern drama about a sensitive New York youth coping with relocation to "the Dirty South"; "Mississippi Queen" (Sept. 12), a documentary by a woman whose parents operate a "gay conversion" ministry; "Patrik 1.5" (Sept. 15), a Swedish film about a male married couple seeking to adopt a child; and "Drool" (Sept. 14), a road movie-with-corpse starring Laura Harring ("Mulholland Drive") and native Memphian Ruthie Austin.
Tickets are $9 per show; a festival pass is $70. Visit outflixfestival.org.
Dangerous 'Animals'
"Live Animals," a horror movie in the vein of "Saw" and "Hostel" that was inspired by Disney's "Pinocchio," according to Bartlett writer-director Jeremy Benson, arrives Tuesday on DVD from Echo Bridge Home Entertainment.
Shot in Collierville and North Mississippi, Benson's fifth feature (and his first to achieve national attention) premiered in 2008 at the Hollywood Film Festival and screened in April at the On Location: Memphis International Film Fest.
The movie concerns a brother and sister (Christian Walker and Jeannette Comans) who are imprisoned by a modern slave-trader (John Still) and his burly henchman (Patrick Cox). Still and Cox also acted in the upcoming MTV online horror series, "Savage County," which recently was shot in Memphis.
The DVD includes deleted scenes, a making-of documentary ("A View from the Crate") and a how-to look at the movie's digital effects. The disc will be previewed in a public party at 6 p.m. Tuesday at The Silly Goose, 100 Peabody Place.
For more, visit liveanimalsmovie.com.
To Oz!
Get ready to "ooh" and "aah" over "Oz" when the 1939 musical fantasy "The Wizard of Oz" returns to the screen Sept. 23 for a special "70th Anniversary Hi-Def" screening at 7 p.m. at the Malco Paradiso, 584 S. Mendenhall.
Tickets are $10 each, and are available at malco.com.
Arguably the most beloved of American films, thanks to its perennial television screenings and the charm of such characters as the Scarecrow and Judy Garland's Dorothy, "The Wizard of Oz" will screen at dozens of theaters that same night. The movie will be preceded by a new mini-documentary, "To Oz! The Making of a Classic," from Turner Classic Movies.
The nationwide event is intended to promote the Sept. 29 release of a digitally remastered edition of "Oz" on DVD and, for the first time, Blu-ray disc, which will be available in various collectors' configurations.
'Mob' mentality
"Randy and the Mob," a rural Southern comedy from writer-director Ray McKinnon, was released to DVD last week by Lightyear Entertainment.
"Randy" played at Malco's Ridgeway Four during its limited "grass roots" theatrical run in 2007, and the lanky McKinnon -- a talented filmmaker and actor perhaps best known for his role on HBO's "Deadwood" -- came to town to promote the movie.
McKinnon will be seen on the big screen in November in "The Blind Side," the Sandra Bullock movie inspired by the real-life story of local football star Michael Oher and the Memphis couple who adopted him, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy.
In "Randy," McKinnon plays identical twin brothers -- one a good ol' boy failed businessman involved with loan sharks, the other a gay antiques dealer -- who are visited by an oddball mob enforcer (Walter Goggins of "The Shield"). The supporting cast includes Lisa Blount and Burt Reynolds.
John Beifuss: 529-2394
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