The Town: Ben Affleck Gets More Guns, Heads Back to Boston

From: http://gawker.com/



Here's a trailer for The Town, Ben Affleck's second directorial effort. Like Gone Baby Gone, it's a Boston-set crime drama based on a novel and is about gritty men doing gritty things, grittily. Only this one has more shooting.

Plus there's Affleck, "the acclaimed director of Gone Baby Gone," himself, stepping in front of the camera for a lead role. That's fine. Clint does it, so does Tom Hanks. Jodie Foster too. The rest of the cast is terrific. The wonderful Rebecca Hall finally gets the big central role she deserves. Jeremy Renner is always eminently watchable. Plus Chris Cooper, Jon Hamm, and... Blake Lively? Huh? Yeah, Blake Lively dressing it down as a Charlestown house cat with hoop earrings and a lazy accent. Honestly, the tiny two bits of dialogue you hear from her in the trailer don't sound that terrible. But that otherwise the trailer makes no indication of who her character is and just sort of flashes her honey blondness once in a while for eye candy is likely indicative that she won't be, as a friend said last night, "the Amy Ryan of this one." Yeah, probably not.

All told though? It's always fun to see movies set in the ol' hometown, and Gone Baby Gone proved Ben Affleck to be pretty competent at the helm. Plus who doesn't love guns shooting and banks getting robbed and dudes being all grizzled and stubbly and stuff? Fine fall fun, it seems.

Send an email to Richard Lawson, the author of this post, at richardl@gawker.com.

Affleck in Lynn, Massachusetts

by Meredith Goldstein

Where in the world is Ben Affleck?

In Lynn.

Film crews rolled up to the Gannon Municipal Golf Course early this morning to shoot more scenes for “The Company Men,” the John Wells film that co-stars Tommy Lee Jones and Kevin Costner. An employee at the golf course told us the crews were filming a “winter scene” today and that they’d be back June 2 for summer shots. That same employee told he had seen Affleck on site “but not the other two guys.”

The Lynn course was also used last year during filming of Mel Gibson’s “Edge of Darkness.”

We hear "The Company Men" crew will be in Roxbury next week.

For more on Ben's wife's new movie about butter, and yesterday's Opening Day festivities, click here.