Saturday, September 29, 2007

Movie Minesweeper - The Press This For An Electric Shock Edition

Here a moment... please hear me out... have you been to see Across the Universe yet? If it's on in your part of the world, then - please - go as soon as you can. If I'm being entirely honest I have to tell you that when I saw it this afternoon it left me shaking with excitement, and brought me to tears of joy multiple times. I can hardly contain my enthusiasm for this film. It's essential. Truly essential. There's no point me telling you any more - all you need to know is that it's crucial viewing. Sorry if I sound overly excited, but, really, I'm giddy.

And now, the news.

- New Saw IV photos appear to contain a pretty big spoiler, but I believe we may be looking at something from a flashback. Perhaps. Maybe. Click over cautiously, all the same.

- Wal-Mart are to sell an exclusive Cars 2-disc set that will contain many of the Blu-Ray edition's special features on the second disc. As I understand it, this set is likely to get a wide release in the UK too but nothing has been made official on that front just yet.

- Season 2 of Dexter (I saw very little of the first season, but just enough to know that I didn't like it at all) is to be promoted with fountains of blood. Literally. Well, literally fountains. Not literally blood. [EDIT: A comment below directed me to a picture of one such fountain]

- Tyrese Gibson may be cast as John Stewart, the Justice League movie's Green Lantern.

- JC Spink is to produce the teen karate comedy Sensei, from a spec script by David Caspe.

- Tom Shadyac is eyeing Dr. Sensitive as a posibble directing gig. Ben Frahm's script revolves around an overly empathetic doctor.

- Mick Garris is looking to remake Thirst. If you don't know it, you can probably still guess that it's a vampire movie. The catch with the original was that it revolved around mass blood harvesting.

- Francis Ford Copolla's Buenos Aires headquarters have been pillaged, and amongst the loot was a computer that contained the script and pre-production work for Tetro. What effect this will have on the film - a family saga starring Matt Dillon - I can only speculate. Will the script leak online? Do the crooks have any idea what they have?

- Jaume Roures of Mediapro has made 'a verbal agreement' with Woody Allen to produce two more films - one in Europe, but outside Spain, and another further afield.

- Marcy Kaplan is scripting Replacing the Nanny, all about the traumatic experience of having to let the perfect Nanny go and seeking somebody to take their place. Hardly the greatest of traumas, is it?

- Having put mobile phones aside for a while, Stephen Fry is now writing about Fame.

- There's a great Jeff Pidgeon audio interview online now. Feed your iPod.

- The first Mad Money stills are here.

- Amy Adams' performance in Enchanted is garnering some incredible praise.

- Peter Farrely is confident that his Three Stooges project will one day come to fruition.

- Slate aren't too impressed by the spate of blogs 'written by' TV characters.

- Karl Urban may well have the lead baddie role in Star Trek. Is this the part Russell Crowe was being sought for? I'd imagine so - Crowe playing second fiddle to Karl Urban seems hugely unlikely.

- Ari Eisner's Invisible has been set up at McG's Wonderland Sound and Vision. The invisible one this time around is a criminal.

- Rich Johnston was on TV talking about religion and advertising. Why have I only just found this out? And I'm suge a huge Bee Gee fan too.

- Ben Kingsely and Aishwarya Rai are to play the architect of the Taj Mahal and his muse respectively.

- The first Mist poster is slightly disappointing.

- There's talk of Bond 22 being released in November 2008 but that seems rather too tight to me.

- Rebekah Smith wants to know what you thought of Death Proof.

- Patrick Lussier is the director responsible for the reshoots on Moreau and Pauld's remake of The Eye. That's quite a bleak omen, I'm afraid - and no offense to Lussier meant, but the firing of one (or in this case, two) directors and the hiring of a new one... sheesh.

- Malcolm Venville is to direct 44 Inch Chest, a British gangster film to star Ray Wisntone, Ian McShane, Tim Roth and John Hurt. That's one heck of a cast.

- Is Tim Burton developing another stop-motion animation project? At Disney? Apparently, we'll know for sure in a month or so.

- Will Smith is producing a remake of The Karate Kid and there's talk that his son Jaden will star. He's currently 9 years old...

- There Will Be Blood was the surprise closing night film at Fantastic Fest 3 and people have gone cuckoo for it.

- The very, very, very good news: the gut-rupturingly awful Wolverine script is getting an extensive rewrite. The not so good news: Skip Woods is the man at the keys. He cannot possibly write anything worse than David Benioff's draft.

- The WGA may press for an immediate strike - and that means as of October 31st this year. Films that don't currently have finished scripts - Justice League or Another Night at the Museum being the two examples cited in the NY Times - will be scuppered.

- Richard Dawkins is amongst scientests who are very, very angry that they have (allegedly) been duped into appearing in a documentary promoting the theory of intelligent design.

- Apparently, Spielberg is to cut the scene featuring Tyler Nelson from Indiana Jones IV. Nelson was the bit part player who leaked a small pile of plot details. I suppose either his scenes were redundant or the film will suffer from the being removed - or, to put it another way, it was a waste of time and money filming the scene in the first place or, really, it should be left intact. Yep - I'm basically damning Spielberg if he does, and still damning him if he doesn't. Just, you know, for fun.

9 comments:

Mark Kardwell said...

As someone who cried the first time he saw The Bootleg Beatles live, I'm sure I'll be an absolute wreck during ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. Dammit.

Diego said...

Bad Beatles covers? Bono?? I think I like the beatles too much to go check this one out. I'd probably sit there pissed off the whole time.

- spidey

Brendon said...

Bad Beatles covers? In this context, they are nothing but brilliant, astute reinventions of Beatles songs for a new purpose.

doubleare said...

A friend of mine got a shot of a bloody Dexter fountain in Washington DC

http://www.flickr.com/photos/karonf/1449911163/

Anonymous said...

I dunno, Brendon... A sappy period-piece with Bono's hyper-self-indulgent vocals desecrating the Beatles? I don't think Taymor's belligerent use of ginormous masks, et. al. can save this movie that, to me, sounds like it never should have been conceived of in he first place. Keep in mind that I just saw the Frampton/Bee Gees "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely hearts Club Band" for the first time this weekend (there simply isn't an quantity of drugs to be found on this planet that could make me sit through the whole thing). I'll check it out -- some-day -- and if it's good I'll do the information-age equivalent of eating my shoe.

Brendon said...

Who said it's sappy? It's not sappy at all.

And while there are ginormous masks, there aren't many and those there are are actually just what would have been present in the scenes being portrayed. You'll see what I mean.

And, for the record, Bono has a very small role, sings one song - and in character, and it makes sense and plays a part in the film that really shouldn't be removed or ignored.

I'm telling you: Across the Universe is a special film.

Diego said...

OK Brendon, on your word alone will I trust to take my girlfriend to see this. This weekend.

Mark Kardwell said...

I liked the trailers I saw. It reminded me of a cross between MY FRIENDS IN THE NORTH and HAIR. And could anything sound quite as worth seeing?

This is coming from a man who detested MOULIN ROUGE, too.

Brendon said...

Mark definitely has a good take on the film there. It is kind of like that.

But better.