Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Movie Minesweeper - The Curly Snake Called Jake Edition

This is the Movie Minesweeper that nearly never happened. And it should be quite a long one.

- Just two days after I announced how much I was looking forward to
La Piel Que Habito, Pedro Almodovar has shelved it. Instead, his next film is (likely) to be from his own original screenplay and comes complete with a starring role for Penelope Cruz.

- Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths seem likely to return to Equus for the late '08 Broadway production.

- Splinter's Michael Olmos is to direct Luchadores 5, a comedy about masked wrestlers becoming vigilantes in East LA. It derives from a comic book published in Europe by Humanoids. Who probably emply humanoids.

- The Riddle is a new British murder mystery written and directed by Brendan Foley, starring Vinnie Jones, Vanessa Redgrave and Derek Jacobi. It's set to premier on September 16th... as a DVD giveaway with The Mail on Sunday. This follows their successful promotion with the latest Prince album being launched as a cover-mount last month, as well as countless catalogue titles being slapped in with all manner of papers over the last couple of years. I wonder how Foley feels about the film getting distributed this way?

- Production stills from the Tale of Two Sisters remake have surfaced.

- Fruit Chan is to direct an English-language remake of Don't Look Up, a Japanese horror film.

- Gael Garcia Bernal is going to star in Lukas Moodysson's next, Mammoth. The other roles are still to be cast. I'm expecting this to be Moodysson's return to form.

- Steven Lisberger is finally set to direct another film which, just like Tron before it, is a human-computer interface parable. This one is to be called Soul Code and is about a way of recording human memories. It will tell the story of what happens when the inventor of this process downloads her experiences into a younger woman's body. Colour me-intrigued... a nice, Tron-glowing electric blue shade of intrigue.

- I really like FilmMaker Magazine (which I know mainly as a paper product, more than online, I have to admit) and, reassuringly, the feeling appears to be mutual. They'll never know how much this show of support actually means to me tonight of all nights.

- The Iron Man trailer is to premiere before The Hills on MTV next Monday. In the US, that is - the rest of us will have to wait until Apple unveil the online version on Tuesday.

- There's a Shoot 'Em Up clip online that mixes sex, violence and crying babies for comedic effect. Excessive enough to cause controversy?

- John Singleton's Tulia has been placed on indefinite hold as Halle Berry, signed on to star, is three months pregnant. Congratulations, Halle... commiserations, John.

- Vadim Perelman is rewriting Atlas Shrugged and will direct it, with Angelina Jolie producing and still attached to star. With Ayn Rand being introduced to a whole new generation through Bioshock's Andrew Ryan, will this movie have a ready-and-waiting cache of wannabe Objectivists queuing around the block on opening night?

- Is 1-18-08 actually going to be called Wreck?

- Sandra Nettelbeck is to direct Ashley Judd in Helen, starring as the eponymous music professor struggling with deep, debilitating depression.

- According to user comments on DVD Times, the extended DVD cut of Death Proof is missing scenes and dialogue from the Grindhouse edit. Is this just hot air? Can anybody confirm what is different?

- A group snap of Valkyrie folk has been doing the rounds. The Daily Mail also offer a guide to who-is-who.

- Talking of Grindhouse... there's a rumour doing the rounds that Robert Rodriguez is considering the directing gig for the pilot epsiode of the HBO Preacher adaptation.

- The Wire, reportedly the finest TV show of all time (and I'm scared to start watching it for that very reason) is coming to a close.
[EDIT: this once said sacred, not scared, hence the comments below]

- Todd McFarlane has revealed that, for a while at least, Michael Bay was attached to Oz. McFarlane is pretty keen on including some kind of S&M element, it seems, but that prospect leaves me rather cold.

- Plot details and a poster from No Man's Land, the sequel to Reeker, have turned up. They're rather spoilery.

- The Love Guru has three more cohorts: Ben Kingsley, Meagan Good and John Oliver. Kingsley, of course, plays another Guru, "
Guru Tugginmypudha"; Good is the third corner of the Romany Malco-Justin Timberlake love triangle; and Oliver is Dick Pants, the Love Guru's manager in the US.

- A special edition Throw Momma From the Train DVD is coming this year... and after that, a sequel?


- Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno is now official... some months after he started surreptitiously filming for the project, and according to some rumours, even after the shoot has wrapped completely. As a follow up, Cohen will headline the Le Dinner de Cons remake, Dinner for Schmucks.

- Chemical Wedding was scripted by Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden and directed by Julian Doyle, editor of Brazil and Time Bandits, and now it has been picked up by Warners for UK and Ireland distribution. Simon Callow stars as a reincarnation of Aleister Crowley, no doubt up to some supernatural naughtiness. Will Doyle's long-lost Shock Treatment get a DVD release out of this?

- Cinemablend are reporting that Catwoman, Two Face and The Joker will all appear in the sequel to The Dark Knight. Well... it's a possibility, I suppose.

- Having walked from iTunes, NBC are setting up shop at Amazon's Unbox.

- Scott Rudin is looking to to bring I, Claudius to the big screen, most likely with Leonardo DiCaprio and William Monahan attached to star and write... and how about a director? Will their more recent collaborator Ridley Scott come along? Or will we end up with Martin Scorsese?

- Another Street Fighter movie is coming, rebooting after the ill-gotten Jean Claude Van Damme/Kylie Minogue effort from the 90s. Andrzej Bartkowiak - previously responsible for Doom - is the chosen director. As previously rumoured, the Justin Marks script focuses on Chun Li.

- Mike White has been telling MTV all about Them, the script he's written with Edgar Wright from Jon Ronson's brilliant non-fiction book. Their genius approach isn't to set their script in the real, logical world that Ronson, you, I and the book's protagonists really inhabit, but the world as Ronson's "eccentric" interview subjects see it. An Edgar Wright film spun from the delusions of David Icke? What could be better?

- Jude Law has been arrested for allegedly lashing out at a photographer and trying to take his camera.

- A Time Out review of The Hotel Chevalier mentioned Natalie Portman's naked appearance... and the whole web went wild and crazy.

- Reuters are reporting that the 3D version of Nightmare Before Christmas has just premiered
in Venice. Some mistake, surely? Perhaps they mean the 3D version of Vincent?

- A tenth anniversary DVD release of Titanic is imminent. I expect it to contain some of the extra materials yet to be released in R1... and while I'd like a Cameron commentary, I'm not holding my breath. The real reason for this release may not be a DVD at all, but a HD-DVD version, yet to be announced. We'll see.

Time for a lie down.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

The link in the "Luchadores 5" sentence seems to erroneously link again to the aforementioned Pedro Almodovar story in Variety.com.

Since I was born and raised in East LA, my curiosity has been piqued regarding these masked wrestlers/vigilantes. Could be brilliant... could be horrid. Could be brilliantly horrid!

Tyler Foster said...

Um? There is a Cameron commentary on the EXISTING Titanic Special Edition in all regions.

Anonymous said...

The 3D version of 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' was premiered in Venice today, along with some long-awaited 'Sweeney Todd' material, as it was Tim Burton Day at the Festival...

Brendon said...

The commentary on my Titanic disc is a mixed-group effort...

And, no Nightmare Before Christmas 3D was on general release in dozens, if not hundreds, of cinemas last year, when I saw it myself. This is a very, very late 'premiere'.

Sorry about the bad link... I'll chase down the error and eradicate.

Brendon said...

Okay, I just checked... there is a Cameron commentary and, for some reason, I never found it. And now I have. And so I am very grateful.

At the very least, I forgot I found it, but I never heard it.

Anonymous said...

It seems to me that a lot of people are scared of watching the Wire (love the Freudian slip, by the way). I know I was, it just seemed like it was going to be a chore, and probably - perhaps inevitably - a let down.

Then I stopped being a prat.

Watch it. Seriously, even if you don't like the first season (very unlikely) it's only 12 hours out of your life.

Anonymous said...

Brendon, now that you've edited my Freudian slip comment makes to sense. Boo!

Anonymous said...

If you look closer at the bloody-disgusting.com post re: Cloverfield title, "Wreck", you'll see that it's another monster movie they are saying might be titled "Wreck". Cloverfield has not been reported to be entitled "Wreck" by anyone.

Mark Kardwell said...

About THE WIRE: hey, me too! I've got the first 7 or 8 episodes Sky Plussed, and still haven't watched them for largely similar reasons. Maybe somenight when there's nothing else to do, I'll binge on it.

Anonymous said...

Hi Brendon,

You were kind enough to wonder what I made of the Mail on Sunday distributing my movie The Riddle with their paper next Sunday 16 Sept.

To be honest, I'm delighted. Medium sized UK indie films tend to make most of their money back on DVD and TV rights. The MoS paid the film's funders upfront for the movie, so at least the money went to the people who took the risks, not just the middle men. The UK deal also makes the title a lot more valuable for later TV rights which are largely based on audience familiarity with a film, and we have had a ton of international distribution interest following all the press coverage. Interestingly, the response from distributors in private at least has been very positive, since most of them recognise that newspapers are just another possible distribution route for the future. I also think newspapers might make sense as a launch pad for smaller uk movies and documentaries.


On the creative side, since I try to make movies that are for a mainstream audience but that a do not treat the audience like morons, the ability to get the film out to more than two million in the UK alone is really great. A few people have been snobbish about beng launched in a newspaper, but the movie has had very god reviews and been invited to screen at some good festivals, so I hope a lot of people enjoy it. Its Vinnie's best performance by a mile and Derek Jacobi is great as both a beachcombing tramp and the ghost of Charlie Dickens. Best, Brendan Foley