Nicholas Reese Art Movies
Nicholas Reese Art rode to fame as a child actor, on the back of two major Hollywood roles in the mid-2000s. Art took his initial big-screen bow in the muckraking drama Syriana (2005), as Riley Woodman, son of a Geneva trader (Matt Damon) and his wife (Amanda Peet). The youngster followed it up two years later with one of the lead roles in the family-friendly comedy The Nanny Diaries (2007); he played Grayer, the precocious son of a wealthy Manhattan couple who makes life hell for his new nanny (Scarlett Johansson). ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Originally slated to premiere on November 27, 2007, then held back until December 4, the hour-long dramedy Cashmere Mafia finally made its ABC debut on January 6, 2008. The series focused on a quartet of highly successful female executives, friends since their days in business college, who continued to meet, compare notes, and advise and console one another in various expensive Manhattan restaurants and watering holes. Miranda Otto played the "anchor" of the group, Juliet Draper, the powerful COO of the Stanton Hall hotel chain, who wryly observed the passing scene, dispensed sage wisdom, and merrily dissed most of the males who crossed her path--with the occasional exception of her husband Davis (Peter Hermann). Lucy Liu costarred as Mia Mason, high-powered functionary at Barnstead Media, a publishing firm run by a Murdoch clone; Mia was so ambitious that she was even willing to sacrifice her love life for her career, maneuvering her own fiancee out of the job she finally grabbed for herself. Frances O'Connor played Zoe Burden, senior marketing VP for Lily Parish cosmetics, who after several dead-end heterosexual romances suddenly found herself attracted to another woman, Alicia Lawson (Lourdes Benedicto). And Bonnie Somerville appeared as Zoe Burden, managing director of mergers and acquisitions at the investment firm of Gorham Sutter, who encountered considerable difficulty juggling her career and her private life with her stay-at-home husband Eric (Julian Ovenden) and twin children Luke (Nicholas Reese Art) and Sasha (Peyton List). Also in the cast was Addison Timlin as Juliet and Davis' mildly rebellious 14-year-old daughter Emily. If Cashmere Mafia seemed to be an upscale variation of HBO's Sex and the City, it may have been because it was executive-produced by former Sex and the City producer Darren Star. The ABC series also bore a marked resemblance to Lipstick Jungle, a novel written by Starr's onetime Sex and the City partner Candace Bushnell; ironically, the TV-series version of Lipstick Jungle made its NBC bow some four weeks after Cashmere Mafia's inaugural episode. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lucy Liu, Frances O'Connor, (more)
Adapted from the best-selling novel, the whimsical, heartwarming comedy The Nanny Diaries concerns Annie Braddock (Scarlett Johansson), a recent college graduate from New Jersey whose nurse mother makes an unsuccessful bid to pressure her into a white-collared business career. Sidetracking this path for more colorful pursuits, Annie accepts a position as nanny and domestic servant for a wealthy couple on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, known only as "The Xs" (Paul Giamatti and a heavily coiffed and accoutred Laura Linney). Annie has her first real taste of servant life when she arrives at the family's residence and promptly sinks into Mrs. X's luxury tub, but is soon shuttled off to her own bare-bones room. Face to face, for the first time in her life, with the vast socioeconomic differences between herself and others, Annie must spend her days catering to Mrs. X's every whim, navigating the emotional land mines set by the domineering Mr. X, and tending to the demands of the couple's mischievous and bratty son, Grayer (Nicholas Art). The situation grows a bit more awkward and sticky when Annie begins to fall for a young man who lives near the Xs, whom she's nicknamed Harvard Hottie (Chris Evans), leading her to seriously reevaluate her career goals and priorities. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, (more)
Oil drives greed in Oscar-winning Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan's labyrinthine sophomore directorial effort that traces the corruption of the global oil industry from the backrooms of Washington, D.C., to the petroleum-rich fields of the Middle East. Based in part on the writings of former CIA case officer Robert Baer, Syriana combines multiple storylines to explore the complexities that befall a proposed merger between two U.S. oil giants. Reform-minded Gulf country prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) is in favor of making his nation more self-sufficient rather than U.S.-reliant, and his money-minded Western connections couldn't be less pleased. Before settling into a cushy desk job for the remainder of his career, CIA agent Bob Barnes (George Clooney) is sent on one last assignment -- to assassinate Prince Nasir and reinstate U.S. ties in the oil-rich region. Though his loyalty dictates that Barnes carry out his current mission despite lingering doubts of a previous blunder, his mission goes horribly awry when his field contact goes turncoat and Barnes becomes a CIA scapegoat. Meanwhile, up-and-coming Washington attorney Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) attempts to walk a fine line in overseeing a tenuous merger between two oil giants that's plagued with shady business dealings. Hotshot energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) is in talks to form a lucrative partnership with Prince Nasir, though the death of his son during a party at the prince's estate makes him question his loyalty to business over family. Back in Washington, D.C., Bennet's boss Dean Whiting attempts to undermine Prince Nasir's attempts to make his country less reliant on the U.S. dollar by planting the seeds of dissonance between the progressive prince and his money-minded younger brother Prince Meshal (Akbar Kurtha). ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Clooney, Matt Damon, (more)
