Monday, October 15, 2007

Movie Minesweeper - The Munchkins On Every Channel Edition

- Lionsgate are to produce an Einstein biopic from Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe.
- Taylor Hackford has consigned his wife to a brothel. Helen Mirren is to star in hubbie's Love Ranch, alongside Joe Pesci. They play a couple who ran the first legal whorehouse in Nevada, and the story deals with their violent conflicts after their marriage is troubled with infidelity.

- The Ronald Grant Cinema Museum in Lambeth needs to find a new home.

- Richard Williams' animation masterpiece Raggedy Ann & Andy is to get a rare 35mm screening. I wish I could be there, but I'm half a world away.

- Ellie Kendrick is to play Anne Frank in the BBC's new dramatisation of her diary. The show will be screened over five consecutive nights.

- Keith Allen - Kevin's brother, Lily's dad - is working on a documentary about the inquest into Princess Diana's death. If it's anything like his previous documentaries it will be utterly smug and stiflingly dull.

- Al Gough and Miles Millar are to produce Wake Up Call from Justin Ware's comedy pitch. Ware also dreamt up American Summer, co-scripted by Julie O'Hora who has taken the producers to court over alleged underpayment.

- Variety have noted the Darwinian fitness of Across the Universe.

- The 5-disc Blade Runner set won't be available on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray in the UK... yet.

- Yeah, yeah, the Weinsteins have had more flops than smashes, okay, so what, blah blah blah. Old news.

- Fox have hacked their episode order for The Return of Jezebel James down to seven episodes from thirteen. I doubt very much they'll even air all of those. And of course, Fox turning their back on a show is far from an indication that it's not much cop. This could be the best TV show ever made and they'd still treat it like this.

- Is Lindsay Lohan going to be one of Brett Ratner's Playboy bunnies?

- British actor Jamie Dodd has posted his lacklustre CV to Digg, claiming that Quentin Tarantino is keen to employ him a future film. Sure, Jamie. Sure.

- Taryn Manning played Victoria Principal in Your Name Here, the not-quite-a-Phil-Dick-biopic that stars Bill Pullman as a parallel universe version of the author. Spoiler - this version of Principal is a robot. If you don't know why, I expect the Dangerous Days doc on the upcoming Blade Runner DVD will fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

- Matt Dillon is lining up a role as Leonard Chess, the inventor of the popular boardga... er... the founder of Chess Records who gave the world Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Etta James.

- Jim Hill's latest piece is on Pixar, their marketing, the possibility of 'brand fatigue' having hit their audience and their attempts to broaden their perceived boundaries by bringing in live action.

- The DVD of The Kingdom is going to contain a 20 minute 'Timeline' of events that lead up to the political situation presented in the film. It seems to be made of short video fragments, and as yet, I have no idea if there's a 'play all' function.

- The school governor who took his battle to prevent An Inconvenient Truth from being screened in schools all the way to the courts has been exposed as - guess what - a mining and metals magnate.

- Incidentally, The Kingdom's director Peter Berg is rumoured to be trying to get another version of Dune off of the ground.

- David Simon has been discussing the fifth and final seasons of The Wire and his subsequent series, about musicians in New Orleans after the Katrina catastrophe.

- Christina Millian wants the role of Wonder Woman.

- Zombie crime drama pilot Babylon Fields was not picked up this fall, but TV Week have posted some clips and explained the premise. Looks very promising, if you ask me.

- Halle Berry's Nefertiti movie is still moving forward.

- Roger Ebert has stated that an IMAX rerelease of 2001: A Space Odyssey is 'almost inevitable', the mouthpiece of IMAX hasn't agreed.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Misquote alert!

Ebert said a 40th anniversary IMAX re-release of 2001 is "almost inevitable" - not "also inevitable".

Brendon said...

Thanks for the alert because that was a misquote purely by typo, not by intent. Fixed now.

Unknown said...

Annoying about Blade Runner blu-ray but at least it's not too much hassle (or expense!) to import the 5 disc version. Keith Allen and Brett Ratner having careers however is incredibly annoying. And by the way, nice scoop about Jamie Dodd. I'd heard rumours QT wanted to work with him but to have it confirmed is great :)

Benjamin Crossley-Marra said...

To condense Dune into a theatrical running time is not possible. Period. So if you want another high-profile cinematic holocaust from a mediocre director that will ensure many people getting fired, go right ahead.

Diego said...

I will donate my kidneys to one day be able to see jodorowskys version.

- spidey

suzbays said...

Ware did NOT dream up American Summer. He was brought on as a rewriter by his friend, the director. Julie O'Hora was and is the original writer of that script, all the way back to when it was called Pool Boy.