There’s a lowkey 10 Things I Hate About You vibe today, which begins with Julia Stiles making one of her infrequent public appearances for the premiere of Coup!, which stars Peter Sarsgaard, who was also at the premiere with his wife, Maggie Gyllenhaal. Julia and Maggie became friends while making Mona Lisa Smile, or as I call it, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants for the cute little hat crowd. Lots of cute little hats in that movie.
What is Julia Stiles up to these days? Funny you should ask, she actually has a couple films coming up. One is Heather Graham’s film, Chosen Family, and the other is Stiles’ own feature film directorial debut, Wish You Were Here. Chosen Family premiered earlier this year at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, but there is no word on when either film will be released as yet. Hopefully they both see the light of day in something resembling a timely fashion, but even with the labor strikes causing production delays and thus release schedule gaps, it feels like the distribution mechanism has slowed way down since the streaming bubble burst.
As for Coup!, it’s a class war comedy set in 1918. It doesn’t look bad—I’m here for anything with Billy Magnusson AND Sarah Gadon—but it doesn’t look great, either. It looks like the kind of thing you stumble across on streaming and half-watch while folding laundry, which is the new “finding something random on cable”. You can see the trailer here:
