Here is something interesting that slid across my desk this morning. While most of us are still reeling from seeing Edward Norton waste his incredible talent on something as soulless as last summer’s The Incredible Hulk and very few of us even bothered with the cop vs cop drama of Pride and Glory, writer/director Tim Blake Nelson has put Norton back where he belongs: in the acting chair (as opposed to the pay-check movies).

While I know very little about the movie at this point (and the poster is incredibly uninspiring), the general premise sounds interesting and I do like the one screen shot I was able to find.

From IMDb:

The lives of two identical twins, one an Ivy League philosophy professor, the other a small-time and brilliant marijuana grower, intertwine when the professor is lured back to his Oklahoma hometown for a doomed scheme against a local drug lord.

The interesting thing here of course, is that Norton is playing both roles of the identical twins. Sure this isn’t anything new (Parent Trap, Adaptation, Multiplicity, etc.), but something about this technology of having the same actor doubled up in frame interests me; especially when they don’t look identical. Plus, it’s Edward Norton. Nuff said.

On top of this, I’m curious about Nelson’s writing/directing talent. I’ve seen some trailers for a couple of his films and nothing has ever really jumped out at me until now. If you’ve got some subjective info on Nelson’s behind the camera work, please enlighten me.

Besides Edward Norton, the cast is well rounded. Including: Keri Russell, Melanie Lynskey, Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss, Maggie Siff, Tim Blake Nelson and Rhea Perlman. So yeah, by all accounts this should be something good in early ’09 to whet our cinematic appetites. I’ll be watching this closely as I’ve been longing for a good Norton picture – one of my all time favorite actors (before Hulk, his previous three pictures were great).