Posted on Monday, February 13th, 2012 by Germain Lussier
It’s a tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme. Guillermo Del Toro is attached to another project. This time he’s upgraded from producer to director of a new version of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast for Warner Bros., which will be written by Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones’ Diary). Read more after the jump.
Posted on Friday, February 10th, 2012 by Russ Fischer
In an age of competing projects, we should expect to see this sort of thing happen a lot more often. Earlier today we talked about the fact that Warner Bros. might be looking to Russell Crowe to star in Harker, Jaume Collet-Serra’s revamped take on Dracula.
So what does Universal do? The studio, which really has a certain claim to Dracula given the 1931 version (or the two ’31 versions if you take the Spanish-language one into account) has taken the old project Dracula: Year Zero out of mothballs. The film has lain dormant since a version with Alex Proyas directing Sam Worthington was scrapped thanks to an escalating budget. Read More »
Posted on Friday, February 10th, 2012 by Germain Lussier
Over a decade since its release, Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream remains a visceral and disturbing piece of modern cinema. The filmmaker’s gnawing portrayal of drug addiction coupled with a hyper stylized aesthetic can make even the most tough-stomached person squirm in their seat.
You’d think seeing the same images with puppets would soften the blow, but Brendan James Boyd‘s 60 -econd film for the 2012 Vancouver Fake Film Fest proves likewise. Hearing puppets say “tail to tail” in place of another famous line, watching a fuzzy arm get chopped off or puppet electroshock therapy is almost more disturbing when it’s non-humans. Check it out after the jump. Read More »
Posted on Friday, February 10th, 2012 by Russ Fischer
I’ve really enjoyed watching the rise of Patton Oswalt as an actor. His early stand-up remains hugely entertaining (as is his recent comedy), but his legit acting work has been improving massively since his early role on The King of Queens. I still dig his leading performance in Big Fan, and his work in Jason Reitman’s Young Adult is one of the best supporting roles of 2011.
It’s a shame Oswalt didn’t score an Oscar nomination for Young Adult, but we can take heart in the knowledge that filmmakers saw his work, and he’ll likely be in more movies as a result. The next film role looks like it will be in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which Ben Stiller will direct and star in. Read More »
Posted on Friday, February 10th, 2012 by Russ Fischer
Just over ten years ago, French director Christophe Gans got a lot of attention for helping raise global awareness of Monica Bellucci when he cast her in his movie The Brotherhood of the Wolf, inspired by centuries-old stories of beasts raiding the French countryside. He has only made one film since: Silent Hill, which received a much more chilly reception than did Brotherhood.
Now Gans is one of several people trying to revive the classic story of Beauty and the Beast. We’ve just seen the 3D re-release of Disney’s version, and there was the horrible tween take called Beastly released last year. Two new TV version are in the works, at ABC and the CW. Now Gans has written and will direct his own, starring Vincent Cassel (The Brotherhood of the Wolf) and Lea Seydoux (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol). Read More »
Posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2012 by Germain Lussier
Alfred Hitchcock‘s filmography reads like an all-time best of list: Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Notorious, The Birds, it goes on and on. But out of all of Hitchcock’s movies, only one received the Academy Award for Best Picture: 1940′s Rebecca. Hitchcock’s first American project, Rebecca featured Laurence Olivier as a widower whose new wife (Joan Fontaine) is overwhelmed by the spirit of his late wife, the title character. It was based on a 1938 book of the same name by Daphne du Maurier.
Now, DreamWorks and Working Title are planning to go back to the source material and remake the story with Steven Knight, who wrote Eastern Promises for David Cronenberg, hired to write the screenplay. Read more after the jump. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 by Russ Fischer
Brian De Palma has been actively looking for new film projects, and it looks like he will shoot the film Passion in the next few months. But he’s also setting up something to do later this year: if things work out, a deal in the works at the Berlin Film Festival will see the director behind the camera for a remake of the 1986 Burt Reynolds thriller Heat. (Released in the US in ’87, so you’ll often see it listed as an ’87 movie.)
Jason Statham will be in the Reynolds role. More detail follows, including the reason I’m fairly interested in this remake. Read More »
Posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 by Germain Lussier
As a huge fan of the original Karate Kid, I die a little bit inside anytime I see the three words “The Karate Kid” on my TV guide only to find it’s the 2010 remake with Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. Apparently, though, I’m in the minority. The film was an absolute smash hit for Sony, grossing $176 million domestic and about $182 internationally. Of course, a sequel was immediately set into motion with screenwriters Cyrus Voris and Ethan Reif hired to craft a story. That was about a year and a half ago.
Zak Penn, the writer of X-Men: The Last Stand and The Incredible Hulk, has now been tapped to do a rewrite on The Karate Kid 2. Read more after the jump. Read More »
