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The Invention of Lying hits theaters on September 25, 2009

IMAGE COURTESY OF DETAILS

DListed condensed what was a probs a very wordy Details mag November cover article on Ben Affleck, in which he blames Jennifer Lopez, whom he was once engaged to, for his stalled career and crappy box office turnout:

“It was probably bad for my career (dating JLo). What happens is this sort of bleed-over from the tabloids across your movie work. You go to a movie, you only go once. But the tabloids and Internet are everywhere. You can really subsume the public image of somebody. I ended up in an unfortunate crosshair position where I was in a relationship and [the media] mostly lied and inflated a bunch of salacious stuff for the sake of selling magazines. And I paid a certain price for that. Then, in concert with some movies that didn’t work…”

Ben is right. He sure did a lot of shitty movies after he broke up with JLo:
“Gigli”
“Paycheck”
“Jersey Girl”
“Surviving Christmas”
“Man About Town”

The last three I barely remembered, the last one I didn’t even see a preview for. And what a PR move to circumvent the actual fact that he was an alcoholic gambler during that time period and chose shitty movies. Normally I don’t stick up for divas, but I feel it’s a crap move to blame his career nosedive on the fact that he dated JLo. Doing a movie with her certainly wasn’t a great idea, but no one put his fingers to the pen to the contract when it came to the movies that followed.

Now that he’s a married dad (to Jennifer Garner and Violet, respectively), his persona has improved, and since his self-image seems to be tied with the movies he produces, one can only hope good things for his directorial debut, “Gone Baby Gone” starring brother Casey Affleck.

Peter Berg’s latest flick, The Kingdom, is a political thriller about an elite FBI unit called in to investigate a bombing on Saudi Arabian soil.  Berg’s an interesting filmmaker of sorts, becuase he seems to be getting better with each new movie (Very Bad Things, The Rundown, Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom), at the same time if he were to give up acting all together he could probably be a great filmmaker.  His latest flick, which opens tomorrow by the by, seems to be a huge leap in both production and style.  Make no mistake about it, this one could be a make or break movie for Peter Berg.

Still not sure how a blind piano player, an orchid thief and a superhero assassin would be able to work together to investigate a terrorist bombing, but what do I know?

Anyway the first four minutes, which essentially amounts to the opening credits, have been posted on Yahoo Movies for your enjoyment.  It sure is one snazzy opening title sequence, however.  Given everything else that’s surfaced about this film, Berg could have a surefire winner on his hands.