Movie Minesweeper - The One Mouthful At A Time Edition

Our Stories, Saw IV, Metamorphosis, Michael Haneke, The Heart is a Dark Forest, Dark Shadows, Johnny Depp, Jon Favreau, performance capture, The Lovely Bones, Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon, Blade Runner, Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy, Ed Burns, Virgin Comics.

- Saw IV has been given an NC-17 rating. If you think for one second they won't cut if for an R, you're sorely mistaken.

- The Ford Motor Co. has forged an alliance with Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Our Stories set up. Ford will place cars in the films as well as promoting the finished products. It's all an attempt to 'crack the urban market'. Sigh.

- Daniel Bruhl, Anna Paquin and Stephen Rea are to star in a movie of Kafka's Metamorphosis. No news on who will write or direct, or how the bugification will be handled. The same Variety piece announces Michael haneke's next, The White Tape or the Teacher's Tale, and Nicolette Krebitz' The Heart is a Dark Forest. A cheerful little set of films, no doubt.

- Dark Shadows is being adapted for the big screen... with Johnny Depp starring. What're the odds on him bringing Tim Burton along?

- Paul Sorvino and Alexa Vega have been (re)confirmed for roles in Repo! The Genetic Opera. The film has 55 different musical compositions, apparently spanning a wide variety of styles and genres.

- Three more performance capture films are coming up the the pipe at Imageworks - Maximum Ride, Jon Favrea's Neanderthals and an untitled action epic derived from Japanese mythology.

- Peter Jackson has cast Susan Sarandon as Susie Salmon's grandmother. It's one of the best roles in the Lovely Bones film and, again, Sarandon's casting has taken me by surprise. But I like it.

- Not only will Zachary Quinto be playing young Spock, old Spock will be reprised with Leonard Nimoy in the ears once again. According to JJ Abrams, there's still hope that Shatner will appear - essentially once they work out how to shoehorn him in. Clearly, there was a reason for an older Spock to pop up in the script, but not an older Kirk. Rejigging just for a Shatner appearance seems like quite a bad idea.

- Four Christmases has it's stars: Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn. They play a couple trying to visit all four divorced parents on Christmas day. A neat conclusion would have our protagonists themselves driven to divorce by this horrendous holiday... neat yes, but not commercial.

- Ed Burns' effort for Virgin Comics is to be a 1920s gangster piece, Dock Walloper. The role Mad Dog Madden will be created for Burns himself to play in any eventual feature film adaption.

- The Blade Runner DVD set is due to hit stores on December 18th. That only gives my favourite Christmas gift giver one week to do the right thing. Apparently, the hefty documentary included will run to three hours. I had been hoping for six or seven. Here's a look at what you'll receive, at least materially.

Movie Minesweeper - The Blue And Red Marker Pens Edition

- Cartoon Brew have linked to an interesting video. An abandoned cave in Cody, Montana apparently bears the signature of Walt Disney. Could it really be real?

- Amy Pascal at Sony is softening us up for the future of the Spider-Man franchise: stand alone narratives with different creatives and, every now and then, a new actor in the lead. Spider-Man 4 is to be the On Her Majesty's Secret Service of the series, I suppose.

- Regal Cinema's Complain-o-tron is finally going wide.

- Mark Verheiden has the job of writing a Teen Titans movie. Who do you get to direct that? Not Victor Salva, obviously... but who?

- The remake of Midnight is to be written by Michael Arndt and will star Reese Witherspoon in the Claudette Colbert role. The original is really very, very, very good so, of course, I'm nervous about this but, well, Arndt and Witherspoon? Seems to be working out very well so far.

- After finishing Sugar, Ryan Fleck will adapt Special Topics in Calamity Physics from Marisha Pessl's novel. He's also attached to an adatation of Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story. I really have to track down Half Nelson and see if all of this is something to get excited about or not.

- The Weinsteins are to release Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream. It was looking pretty hairy for the film for a while with no buyers stepping up (or at least, not as far as anybody knew) but at least it should get a decent release now.

- The remake of The Women is finally set to go ahead. I'm quite disappointed Todd Haynes isn't directing, but fingers crossed for Diane English anyway, despite her suspicious cast list: Meg Ryan, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Anette Bening, Candace Bergen and Debra Messing.

Movie Minesweeper - Headline Edition

There's a lot of movie news out there, and some of it is more interesting than the rest. I've been leaving plenty of it untouched - there's even been films I've enthusiastically tried to encourage friends to come see at the cinema that didn't get a mention on film ick. The plan now, however, is to try and correct that just a little.

I'm going to include regular bulletins - at least one a day, on average - that compacts a lot of 'headline material' into a single post. If you like the typically-just-one-or-two sentence coverage, then you can click the link for more. I'm going to call this Movie Minesweeper because, frankly, I thought film ick was a good name for a movie news blog so... my judgment is clearly a bit off. So, welcome to the very first Movie Minesweeper. Enjoy.

- The Londonist have a 28 Weeks Later spin-off short.

- Thirteen's Catherine Hardwick is in talks to direct true-crimer Under the Bridge for Reese Witherspoon's Type A Films. What will this mean for The Monkeywrench Gang?

- Michael Chabon has given a great interview to Salon.

- Malkovich is in talks to play Ozzie Cox, the lead role in Burn Bef... Afte... Before Reading, the next Coen Bros. film (which is it?). He'd be a CIA man who loses a very sensitive expose.

- Producer Andy Licht is headed to court after apparently being elbowed out of the production of Inkheart.

- Apparently contrary to his Vanity Fair comments, Bruce Willis claims Die Hard 4.0 is better than 1.... then says Motherf*cker on live TV. See the clip at YouTube.

- The Weinsteins may have scrapped plans for Fletch Won, perhaps as a result of Zach Braff's departure from the project - or maybe, just maybe, the cause and effect were the other way around.

- A Karl Marx biopic is coming from director Raoul Peck. The film will culminate with the publication of the Communist Manifesto. The film will "definitely" be made "for a wide public". Dreamachine are negotiating to either co-produce or handle internatioanl sales on the film.

- Sam Raimi wants his brother Ivan to write a fourth Evil Dead. I don't think I do. I think Sam should stick with scripts by more accomplished writers. Take that as a preview of my Spider-Man 3 review.

- As we thought a couple of days back, Dreamworks have indeed stumped up the cash for The Lovely Bones. I've read - and (p)reviewed - the script, and it's great.

- The Education of Charlie Banks, directed by Sog... er... Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, has won the Made in NY best Narrative Feature gong at Tribeca. Blimey Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side won the documentary equivalent.

- Laura Ramsey, Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone and Shawn Ashmore are to star in The Ruins, a tourists-in-peril yarn adapted from Scott B. Smith's novel by the man himself.

Enough for now - there will be more of this Movie Minesweeping soon.

Bunny Lake Is Dead

Joe Carnahan has posted to his blog about the recent departure of Reese Witherspoon from Bunny Lake is Missing, and it sounds to me that he's off the film. Make your own mind up:

Scuttlebutt: How about NOTHING. How about a situation where the press tries to stir it up. These things happen. Movies go away every day. Reese is dealing with a lot of stuff in her life. So am I. We were running up against it as far as time for prep and shooting and scripting, etc. I had already commited to White Jazz and the longer we stretched Bunny the more in jeopardy the WJ schedule became. And there was just no way I could let that happen. I need a nice extended prep period for that flick.

And now I've got it.

That's it guys. I wish there were some truly tasty bits of gossip but there just aren't. Sorry.

Onward and upward y'all! White Jazz awaits.

I'm prepared to bet the eventual Bunny Lake film, from a different director, is better than White Jazz.

Will Reese come back onboard for a different director? I think she might, though not any time soon, maybe.

Bunny Lake Is Rescued?

Reese Witherspoon has quit Joe Carnahan's remake of Bunny Lake is Missing. The film's start date is fixed, leaving the producers - well, those that remain, as Reese was amongst their ranks initially - trying to find a replacement.

I think this might save the film. What do I mean? Possibly not what you expect. I like Reese just fine. But I think this might crash the project, leaving it without a director. As far as I can tell, the script by Doug Wright is very, very strong, and deserves a better man than Carnahan. He can go off and do White Jazz which is highly unlikely to have such a good script.

Soderbergh's the man for the Bunny job. Here's hoping it lands on his desk soon.

In the meantime, let's all enjoy the DVD of Otto Preminger's original Bunny Lake is Missing one more time - even if, for some reason, the incredible Saul Bass poster art isn't used on the disc's cover. D'oh!