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19 Oct
| I had the opportunity today to speak with writer/director Troy Duffy, the man responsible for The Boondock Saints and the forthcoming The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day. My full interview with him, where we discuss his reaction to Overnight and some of the lessons he’s learned since that film’s release, will be available online later this week. In the meantime, hit the jump for some exclusive new plot details about the script he’s going to try to make after Boondock Saints 2, entitled The Good King. Duffy described it as “markedly different” from Boondock Saints, a “period piece buddy comedy” whose comedic elements are as “dark as a starless night at the bottom of the ocean.” Assuming this thing ever gets made, you can assume minor spoilers ahead (I guess?). Here’s a plot summary, straight from the man himself: |
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19 Oct
| This is a pretty great development, at least for the cast and crew of The Tourist. The film has gone through a lot of personnel tweaks, as we’ve reported over the last few weeks. The cast finally settled down, with Angelina Jolie and Sam Worthington set as the two leads. With those in place, it seems like the director’s chair formerly held by Bharat Nalluri will be filled by a great talent: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who won the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for his film The Lives of Others. Variety reports that the deal isn’t done, but that Jolie’s agreement to do the film would be based on finding the right director. As of Friday night that was said to be von Donnersmarck, so now the last round of chicken begins. Jolie will do the film if the director says yes, and I’d guess that he’s interested … |
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19 Oct
| And with this, Timur Bekmambetov takes the next step towards becoming the Russian Luc Besson. The director is producing Black Lightning, a film that he’s described as “the Russian response to Transformers and Batman.” Which, watching this full trailer for a film about a kid who becomes a superhero after buying a flying car, I suppose I can see. Though I’m thinking more Christine meets The Greatest American Hero, but whatever works for you, Timur. This trailer features no English, but isn’t too difficult to decipher. Seems to be basically: boy wants girl; girl likes guy with hot car; boy buys crappy used car; crappy used car can fly; boy becomes superhero. All of these things naturally follow one another. Indeed, the (poorly translated) plot synopsis is: |
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17 Oct
| Probably the most disappointing thing about Green Lantern is that the protracted and delayed production is going to ensure, without any doubt, that director Martin Campbell can’t be in charge of the next Bond film and turn that franchise round again (for the third time). It’s not all bad news, though. On the plus side, a new rumour has pegged Jackie Earle Haley for the role of Sinestro in the picture. You may recall that he’s the mentor character that might just turn out to be a baddie (if they don’t save that for the sequel). The same unnamed gossipmonger has Superman down for a cameo role in the film, which sounds like a wild and unlikely idea but the character was in at least one draft of the script and since Marvel’s multi-picture mashup scheme, I wouldn’t be surprised to see DC try a similar tactic. On the other hand, this … |
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16 Oct
| When this story started unfolding, the first bit of breaking news was that Judge Reinhold and John Ashton’s cops Rosewood and Taggart would both be back and reunite with Eddie Murphy for the next Beverly Hills Cop film. Then, an apparent U-turn came when it was announced that, actually, nothing like that could be promised yet as a new writer was about to come onto the project. So… Taggart and Rosewood or no Taggart and Rosewood? Here’s my understanding of what’s been going on. Both Taggart and Rosewood have appeared in the Brandt and Haas drafts of the script going back at least as far as last November. This might just be the underlying source of Moviehole’s story: a look at one of these scripts. They go as far as saying ” he definitely has a part to play in the upcoming Brett Ratner-directed sequel”. There’s no citation of a source … |
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16 Oct
| This weekend, Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are finally hits movie theaters after two and a half years of post production craziness. A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit down wth another one of my favorite filmmakers, Spike Jonze, to talk about the struggle to bring this children’s book to the big screen. Topics we go over in the 22 minute interview include the “death” of the music video director (or the dawn of the Internet filmmaker), the urge to make short films after such a long shoot, the incredible soundtrack, the task of turning a very short book into a feature film, how everyone has a personal connection to the book more akin to a poem, not writing a movie for an audience, age group, or demographic, how expectations can and will effect the audience’s reaction, is this Spike’s most personal film, the decision … |
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14 Oct
| OK, first thing: this is not a story about a film based on the Midway (RIP) game Psi-Ops. That could be pretty cool, and has in fact been rumored before, but this isn’t it. Instead, this is an original action thriller with a very similar name. (And one that, yeah, has similarities to the game.) Bold Films (the company behind Joe Dante’s The Hole 3D) has picked up the story by Legion and Priest director Scott Stewart, and the idea is that the film will be directed by Stuart Maschwitz, with whom Stewart co-founded effects house The Orphanage. THR says the film “revolves around a covert U.S. military unit of psychological operatives who specialize in exploiting their target’s deepest fears. When on a routine mission to the Amazon Basin, they discover something more terrifying than they could have imagined.” The notion is to bring together impulses derived from Predator and Aliens … |
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14 Oct
| I suppose we should have seen this coming. Over the last few months we’ve reported quite a bit on the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan film series — a franchise that has been all but dead since The Sum of All Fears failed to make a big dent in the box office. We know that Paramount has been planning to revive it, however, and thanks to films like The Hunt For Red October and Patriot Games (and their respective portrayals of the character by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford) there’s quite a bit of interest in seeing the character continue. We’ve also known that Paramount wanted to skew the character younger. That being the case, of course they’re turning to the man who had a lot to do with reinventing another Paramount character for a younger generation: Chris ‘Captain Kirk’ Pine. Variety reports that Pine is in talks to take on the … |
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13 Oct
| Update: It looks like the studio is hunting down this trailer online and removing it from various sites. We’ll see if we can get another version of it up soon. You will watch this trailer and believe you’ve been transported to another decade. This three minute promo for The Expendables—Sylvester Stallone’s latest project as writer/director/star—has pretty much everything you’d want from a cheesy as all hell ’80s action flick. A group of tough guys gathered to take out some military leader, check. A mysterious female contact who they can’t trust, check. Explosions and said tough guys leaping away from those explosions in slow motion, you bet your ass. And perhaps most telling that this film knows exactly what it wants to be, you have Dolph Lundgren referencing Showdown in Little Tokyo with “Bring it happy feet!”—this time with Jet Li in the place of the dearly departed Brandon Lee. I suppose at this … |
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13 Oct
| Whenever I go to screenings at the Boston Commons AMC theater, typically my post-screening ritual is to walk a couple of blocks to Boston’s version of Chinatown and dine at one of their fine hole-in-the-wall establishments. On one of these occasions, I happened to strike up a conversation with an older gentleman sitting across from me and I quickly discovered that not only was he a cinematographer, but he had worked on some of the most financially and critically successful films of the past few decades. He was currently in Boston to do some shooting on James Mangold’s new action comedy, then known as Wichita, starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. Of course, when I tried to tell people that I had met the cinematographer from Wichita, most of them responded by giving me a bizarre look and asking, “What movie?” I don’t think the working title Wichita has ever been … |
