40% - The Yards
43% - Gladiator
17% - Quills

Sunday, July 25 1999
"The Yards" is only scheduled for sometime this fall (3rd quarter according to Boxoffice.com).

At the Russel Crowe Page you can read a new article on "Gladiator" from USA Today July 23-25:

the interesting lines:
As it barrels into the second half of its four-month shooting schedule, the feature film Gladiator is taking aim at other ancient-times epics, such as Ben-Hur and Spartacus. Its weapons: a beefy budget ($100 million), imposing sets (the Colosseum, the Forum, Hadrian's Gate) and dueling stars (Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix). Though DreamWorks executives won't divulge a release date, one suspects that a new-millennium unveiling would work well for publicity purposes.
"You have this great sense of history here in Malta, as opposed to shooting on an L.A. back lot," says Phoenix, who won Scott over with a compelling man-child screen test soliloquy. Now, in shorts, white T-shirt and sneakers, he does his part for verisimilitude by twirling a heavy steel sword until his fingers blister.

Sunday, July 18 1999
Cinescape online posted an script-review of "Gladiator". You can read it yourself if you want to know what`s gonna happen in the movie. I will just post an little excerpt:

The two cast members whose stock will most certainly rise
the most upon the film’s release are Russell Crowe and
Joaquin Phoenix. This picture, if it’s the success I anticipate
it will be, will put both thespians firmly on the Hollywood
A-list.   ........
And as for Phoenix? Well, if the shadow of his late, great brother had ever been truly been cast over him, it will no doubt recede with this film. Phoenix’s villain is a grand bastard, all right. It is
interesting to note that Commodus was also the breakthrough role for Christopher Plummer in Anthony Mann’s Fall of the Roman Empire, opposite Sir Alec Guinness as Marcus Aurelius. Phoenix can bank on becoming a sought-after lead when this film opens.

An PETA-member and Joaquin-fan emailed me the following info:
"... I got an invitation yesterday to PETA's Millennium Gala (I assume all PETA members got one) which is a tribute to Linda McCartney and the Fight for Animal Rights. It is on Sept. 18, 1999 at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood. It's going to be hosted by Paul McCartney, Alec Baldwin, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ellen DeGeneres and Woody Harrelson and it is going to have a cocktail reception, dinner, cruelty-free street fair, silent auction, awards ceremony, entertainment,and dancing among
other things. And guess what? Joaquin Phoenix is on the list of people to receive the 1999 Humanitarian Awards as is Alicia Silverstone, Calvin Klein, Fiona Apple, and Pamela Anderson Lee to name a few(18 people total). ..."  (thanks Carrie!)

Friday, July 16 1999
An article about "Quills" from Mr. Showbiz

Winslet Nude & Sadistic in Quills
If Kate Winslet's dropping her robe for Leo in Titanic raised your eyebrows, get ready for the not-so-corseted British babe to bare all in an upcoming movie about the life of the decadent Marquis de Sade. Quills is the story of the French marquis who gave us the word for sadism, and who was both a man of letters and a twisted little puppy. Winslet will play de Sade's maid, Madeline Le Clerc, a role that requires scenes of explicit nudity, which in turn calls for a closed set.
Empire magazine reports that filming begins next month at Pinewood Studios, lately the breeding ground for the Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman sex romp Eyes Wide Shut, another closed-set production.
The film also stars Joaquin Phoenix, who last played a leather-clad porn store clerk in 8MM and recent Golden Globe winner Michael Caine, who'll play de Sade's doctor. Geoffrey Rush, who was so deliciously underhanded in Elizabeth (and also in the upcoming House on Haunted Hill, so we hear), will portray the Marquis.
Philip Kaufman, the man who brought us the literary sex fests The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Henry and June, will direct. Henry and June, if you recall, was the first film to be slapped with an NC-17 rating.

Currently I am working on my other page NewHollywood, maybe you know it. Anyway, I made a new feature, of course Joaquin is part of it, so you should take a look.

Wednesday, July 7 1999
You will find some pics of "Gladiator" in the latest issue of
French 'Premiere' Magazine, as darkhorizons.com tells. One of the pics shows Joaquin (I already have it in my picture-section).

The plot summary from the jacket of the script
(taken from Musikbug's Tribute to Kate Winslet)

Doctor Royer-Collard, head of Charenton Asylum, is visited by Renee Pelagie, wife of the asylum's most notorious inmate, the Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush). Furious that her husband's sadomasochistic pornography has tarnished her reputation, she offers the Doctor any amount of money, if only her husband can be kept from writing. After confiscating the Marquis' quills and paper, the Abbe de Coulmier (Joaquin) is surprised to find lascivious new stories circulating in public. The source? A lusty young seamstress named Madeleine (Kate Winslet) has been smuggling material out of the asylum. Immediately, the Abbe bars the girl from seeing the Marquis, but ever resourceful, the Marquis pens his stories on his bedclothes in wine, blood and worse. Driven to a fury, the Abbe strips bare the Marquis and his cell, leaving nothing but stone and straw. Undaunted, the Marquis devises a fantastic plan to whisper his stories from lunatic to lunatic, until Madeleine can pen them down - but the last lunatic, in whose cell Madeleine crouches, mutilates and kills the girl in response to the Marquis' grisly tale. A riot ensues, nearly destroying the asylum, and as the second act unfolds, the Abbe is driven to increasingly desperate acts to silence the Marquis: the removal of his hands, feet, genitals, and eventually his beheading. Wracked by guilt, the once humane but now murderous and sexually deviant Abbe is committed to his own asylum where he finds himself crying out for a paper and pen with which to record his own newly arisen perversions. In the last scene, the boxes containing the body parts of the Marquis tremble with pleasure. One hand snakes loose from its box... and begins to write.

Monday, July 5 1999
THE TIMES - Kate having doubts
Kate Winslet is understood to be having doubts about her courageous decision to play the love interest in a cinematic treatment of the life of the Marquis de Sade. "Revolting," says one who has seen the script at Pinewood. "Nothing has been compromised. It is no holds barred." Even the highest rating of films here bans depiction of extreme sexual pain - the Marquis's favoured pastime.

There is already a little official page of "Quills" online at foxsearchlight.com.