Justin Bieber will join his rightful place along music icons Ray Charles, Loretta Lynn, and Selena this Valentines Day when his epic life story will be immortalized in cinematic history. Deadline Hollywood is reporting that Paramount Pictures (a bedfellow of MTV Networks) is backing the production that will chronicle the singer’s meteoric rise to the top of the YouTube video charts and other lesser achievements - all in glorious 3D! Read the full story

Naomi Watts (Mullholland Drive) has signed on to star as the iconic Marilyn Monroe in a new adaptation of the troubled starlets life, Screen Daily reports. The film will be based on the fictionalized biography by Joyce Carol Oates which has previously been adapted for a CBS TV movie starring Poppy Montgomery in the lead role. Read the full story

It’s been a long time since Lindsay Lohan‘s name has been associated with any casting news but it seems the down-and-out actress has been cast as 1970′s pornstar Linda Lovelace in an upcoming biopic entitled Inferno. Lovelace, who starred in the infamous Deep Throat, became a leading figure in the anti-porn movement and died in a car crash in 2002. Read the full story

The LA Times is reporting that famed director Steven Spielberg is producing a biopic based on the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The film, which is based on a script by Noah Oppenheim, will follow the first lady during the aftermath of her husband’s assassination. The film is likely being prepped for cable network HBO and it is unknown who will direct the project. HBO has dabbled in the life of Jackie O before with the 2009 film Grey Gardens which was based on the lives of her aunt and cousin, Big and Little Edie Beale. Big Love star Jeanne Tripplehorn took on the iconic first lady in the TV movie and earned an Emmy nomination for her performance. Although no casting news has been revealed for the project, Tripplehorn would be an excellent choice to reprise the role.

Are you interested in seeing the story of JFK’s assassination from Jackie O’s perspective? Would you want Jeanne Tripplehorn to reprise the role?

It’s been reported by Variety that Madonna is planning to direct the film W.E. next.  The film is a biopic that centers around the affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson which then made him renounce the throne in order to marry his divorcee lover. Read the full story

It’s a question with no precise answer and no particular set of rules attached to it. Loosely, a biopic tells the story of life, usually one of both triumph and failure and, of course, accomplishment.

Think Chaplin or Ray, standard bio-films that follow the life of their “great” subjects from childhood to death, going over all of the big moments while sure to add a couple “poignant” small moments many viewers didn’t already know about. Sometimes these films bookend their subjects’ lives with elderly collections of the past or last will and testaments (remember Milk, if you can).

Others work are framed in a similar fashion, only under a thinner scope, i.e. the significant event/achievement said subject lead/started/was part of. Think Patton, which begins with his victory in North Africa than Sicily than Normandy, charting his WWII command as a filter through which to study his life. In a (slightly) similar way does Lawrence of Arabia unfold, quickly checking off the historical moves in which he becomes a British military officer so as to concentrate on his brilliant tactical leadership of the Arab Revolt of 1916 and its aftermath. Sticking with the war hook, another easy example (from a much more complicated angle) is Schindler’s List.

All this to reiterate the titular question: what is the art of telling the story of a true life? How can one capture the awe of something, and someone, that really happened?

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