Direct-ish Download Link For A Clip From Southland Tales

Very soon we'll all get to see for ourselves how much of a Southland Tales mk1 mess Southland Tales mk2 is. Could it have been made worse, not better, by the re-edits? It is very possible. Or, like Donnie Darko, the director's cut could prove to be the drastically inferior iteration.

I've been e-mailed a clip from the film and have parked it on Sendspace so that you might download it and see it for yourself. Scientists think this clip looks rather more futuristic than was expected - but what do you think?

[EDIT: I've found out now this clip has done the rounds before, but I certainly hadn't seen it... and I'm not the only one. It was new to Quint at AintItCool, and many, many others. And besides, it was only a streaming clip previously, I believe.

And it turns out that Twitch have three streaming clips from the film in total, which i'm sure you'll want to see.

Expect direct download links to the actual Southland Tales trailer here at film ick in the next day or so]

Movie Minesweeper - The Retirement Age Edition

I'm getting too old for this. film ick isn't my day job, you know: it costs me money. Sometimes I just don't have the patience. But I never have the choice.

And now I've vented a little, I feel better. I'm listening to The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas by They Might Be Giants. That should cheer me up a little bit.

- Is Halle Berry the next Barbarella? Probably not. Maybe. I found the link via JoBlo.

- Mark Wahlberg has confirmed Darren Aronofsky's directorship of The Fighter. No start date has been locked, however. Wahlberg said "If it aint like Raging Bull, then it aint worth doing" but I beg to differ. For one thing, we already have Raging Bull. For another thing, Raging Bull is actually rather bad.

- Nicole Kidman is headed to Monte Carlo. The film is to be directed by Tom Bezucha, previously guilty of The Family Stone.

- The site for Derren Brown's US show is now a go. If you don't watch it you're making a mistake. This man is one of the two greatest illusionists since Harry Houdini.
- Paramount have already reaped 1 billion dollars in the US this year.

- I don't need to update you at all on any forthcoming (or not) Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, Harry Potter, Ocean's, Bourne, Hulk, Mummy, Indiana Jones, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Hellboy, National Treasure or Wolf Man films because The Hollywood Reporter have done it for me.

- 'Angry Sherriff' Don Murphy listened to the fans re: Transformers and now the NYTimes have a piece on his approach. If only he'd listen to me about We3 and... er... give me the job of directing it.

- Spielberg has a finger in Aaron Sorkin's pie, lending finance and production muscle to the Broadway incarnation of The Farnsworth Invention with an eye to later turing it into a movie.

- Anywhere Road have snapped up the distibution rights to Brad Gann's Black Irish.

- Cartoon Brew have a wee piece on Barry Purves new Stop Motion book.

- Peter Berg is to produce and direct Gone Like the Wind, a based-on-fact story about the slaughter of a kentucky Derby winner because he'd broken his leg. Euthenasia for wounded sporting animals - discuss. The original Vanity Fair story was written by Berg's cousin Buzz Bissinger, and you can currently read it online.

- 3:10 to Yuma has been brought forward a month. That is, out of prestige season. Because it isn't much good?

- Stellan Skarsgaard is to star in the improbable sounding Patrick 1,5. This one is about a gay couple adopting a kid sight unseen, believing him to be 18 months old but actually, ending up with a fifteen year old homophobe.

- Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now might be on the Hairspray soundtrack CD, but it isn't in the film. On the other hand, The New Girl on Town was nixed from Boradway but it has been used for a montage sequence in the film. Stream the entire soundtrack courtesy of AOL - if you live in the US.

- Sam Rockwell has been talking Star Trek. And so has William Shatner - who seems to think there's a spot for Leonard Nimoy in the script.

- Hannah Montana is headed to the big screen. Miley Cyrus is the next...? Hilary Duff? Lindsay Lohan? Christy Carlson Romano?

- Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Hefner? Maybe. Though probably not.

- The Pirates of the Caribbean MMO game has been delayed. All the same, I bet it rolls out in a glitchy version and needs a whole string of patches.

- Richard Kelly is still promising Southland Tales news without actually delivering any. Wake me up when it hits DVD will you?

- Universal have snapped up the rights to Beware the Moon, a documentary on the making of An American Werewolf in London. I hope it's good.

- I heard Ricky Gervais and Chris Rock discussing Badge Buddies during the Live Earth concert but I didn't think for one second it was actually real. They just seemed to be making it up as they went along. What do you think?

- Leonard Hartman is adapting Water for Elephants into a screenplay.

- Season 7 of 24 has gone back to the drawing board.

- The full programme for this year's Fantasy Film Fest has been published. My picks? Paprika, Edmond, I'm a Cyborg But That's Okay, Tales From Earthsea and Bug have all been widely seen elsewhere, so how about The Last Winter, Stuck, Dead Daughters and The Deaths of Ian Stone. The title of the last one there is very amusing to me, but, chances are, you wouldn't find the in-joke at all amusing.

And as we come to close on this Minesweeper, I'm listening to Laughter in the Rain by Neil Sedaka.

Movie Minesweeper - The Bishop Edition

- Jon Favreau is making a cameo in Iron Man, and it was the very last shot of the shoot.

- The Darjeeling Limited is the opening night film of the New York Film Festival.

- A Psycho remake TV series? Yep.

- Randal Kleiser is part of a start-up planning to bring 3D images to mobile devices.

- The odds are in favour of a TMNT sequel, if not the quality of a TMNT sequel.

- Nicholas Sparks' Dear John is to be a feature film, adapted by Jamie Linden and with Channing Tatum attached to star. Okay - but what about John Sullivan's Dear John? You can have that one on me, Mrs. H.

- Uwe Boll has called Postal his 'final statement'. So I assume Far Cry and Bloodrayne 2 and 3 and whatever comes afterwards aren't even supposed to be statements at all.

- Kim Jee-Woon's The Good, The Bad, The Weird (missing an 'and' if you ask me) has changed financiers mid-production. The new team are CJ Entertainment, also in preproduction on Chan Wook Park's Evil Live.

- Death of a President's Gabriel Range is writing and will direct what sounds like a sort-of-Somersby, sort-of-Six Degrees of Seperation prodigal son drama.

- Mos Def is to produce and star in Bobby Zero. This one's about a social satirist come advertising copywriter (I wonder if he'll have a comic book gossip column too?). I like Mos Def a lot, and if he's that into this film, then I'm very interested.

- George Hickenlooper's next is to be Morning Spy, Evening Spy, an adaptation of the novel about a CIA operative obsessed with hunting down Osama Bin Laden.

- The Conan option has expired at Warners and it seems that New Line are to pick it up next.

- Starbucks are to hawk Arctic Tale in a return for profit points.

- Megan Fox has signed to appear in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

- The Franny K. Stein books are to become animated films.

- Michael Gilvary's spec script Transit has been snapped up by Thousand Words. The premise is simple: a fmaily on a road trip through the desert are hunted by criminals who stashed money in the family's car. Apparently, Gilvary did a recent rewrite on Rendezvous with Rama, which suggests that project might not be as conclusively dead as I had been assuming.

- The inevitable 300 spoof is to be 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas, so Gladiator and Braveheart have clearly been tossed into the mix too. Rest assured that Troy is on the hit list also, and I assume a series of completely irrelevent films will be too (Borat again? Pirates of the Caribbean?)

- The Wall Street Journal are cautiously predicting big money success for Ratatouille.

- Cameron Diaz is to star in Richard Kelly's The Box. The film is adapted from Richard Matheson's Button, Button which has already been a Twilight Zone episode (in the 80s comeback series) where Mare Winningham had the role - and the story had been given a more satisfying, less daft ending (if you ask me). I've no idea how Kelly can spin this one out to feature length without making it mightily repetitive.

- Kevin Smith wants unknowns for Red State, which might actually really mean unkowns for once.

- The Hollywood Reporter are only just today covering Pool Rats being set up at Disney, despite the Mouse House registering the appropraite domain name weeks and weeks ago. Sigh.

- Carter Blanchard's spec script Near Death is about.... yep, you guessed it: spooky near death experiences. Fox Searchlight have taken the option.

- Marc Forster is developing, and may direct, Land of Roses. The film will be a drama about Ibrahim Parlak, a real-life Kurdsh Immigrant who campaigned to exonerate a falsely imprisoned terrorist.

- Sid Haig has been confirmed as appearing in the Halloween rehash

- Arthouse Films are to release The Cool School: How Los Angeles Learned to Love Modern Art. Jeff Bridges has narrted the film, which sounds just about perfect.

- The Cloverfield site URL is just redirecting to Paramount's homepage as I write, but any minute now (or hour, or day at least) it is going to go live, probably with a teaser.

- Jonathan Jakubowicz is to direct Queen of the South, all about a female, immigrant drug lord - a prettier Scarface. Apparently, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lopez and Eva Mendes are circling the lead role - I'd go for Lopez, personally.

- Arielle Kebble has signed to play one of the titular girls in A Tale of Two Sisters.