We’ve got word on two upcoming documentaries that will reflect on past U.S. tragedies: First up, we’ve learned that Steven Spielberg will be executive producing an upcoming television documentary about the construction of the One World Trade Center building in New York. The six-part documentary series will be created for the Science Channel, and will air in 2011. The series will also attempt to honor the lives lost during the 9/11 attacks, and will examine how the rebuilding of a new World Trade Center at Ground Zero is affecting the lives of everyday New Yorkers. It will also “use 3D, time-lapse cameras, computer modeling techniques and other high technology methods” to tell its tale.
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Retro Whale has created a series of art based on the favorite filmmakers of film geeks. She has created quirky little portraits of 20 great filmmakers, which you can purchase as art prints, magnets, or 4×4 clapboard coasters (which are wall mountable).
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While Michael Jackson’s unexpected last concert documentary This Is It was helmed by dance choreographer turned High School Musical 3 director Kenny Ortega, the official music video for the King of Pop’s posthumous single attracted a bigger and more talented filmmaker — Academy Award nominated director Spike Lee. The video features scenes from Jackson’s hometown of Gary, Indiana, edited together with photos and footage taken throughout Michael’s career. Watch the video now, embedded after the jump.
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All the big names are going to cable. We just reported on Martin Scorsese’s work on an HBO series called Boardwalk Empire (starring Steve Buscemi) and now two other giants of the New York filmmaking scene are heading to showtime: Spike Lee and Robert De Niro are producing a series called Alphaville, with Lee directing the potential pilot episode. Read More »
Entertainment Weekly just published their list of the 25 Greatest Active Film Directors. It’s one of those really annoying slideshow stories, so we’ve done the legwork and printed the entire shortlist after the jump.
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I saw a copy of an Inside Man 2 script what must be nearly two years ago now, maybe even more. That draft was written by Russel Gerwitz, who had scripted the first film and for just a few months around then, been the hottest screenwriter in town. Now Spike Lee is working with Terry George on a new approach to the sequel, abandoning Gerwitz’ diamond heist plot altogether. Read More »
The September 22nd issue of The New Yorker has a profile on Spike Lee. At one point Lee is given a poster to sign for the wall at the Sony Music studio that he used for his latest film. So while his feud with Clint Eastwood might be officially over, Lee launches a shot in the direction of America’s favorite comedy producer/director Judd Apatow:
“Don’t put us next to Judd Apapoe, whatever that guy is,” Lee says, referring to Judd Apatow. “We gotta be next to Spielberg and Williams!”
Lee has considerable talent, and some might argue that he deserves to be put on the same level of a Spielberg, or at least above a guy doing those “funny movies”. But am I the only one who is bothered with the elitism that Lee demonstrates in this quote?
Spike Lee’s Miracle At St. Anna is definitely not the type of movie you want to see tired, in the early morning hours. But that was my experience. I’ve seen many World War II films over the years, and Anna is distinctly a Spike Lee Joint. It has the obvious race perspective war story you expect, mix one part combined murder mystery (which is used as a framing device), and the obtrusive bass-y grandiose score (ala Inside Man).
If you’ve seen the trailer then you know that it all begins with a random murder at the post office, with a teller who kills a customer with a German Luger. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays an eager fast talking reporter, who along with a murder detective (John Turturro), wants to get to the bottom of the mystery. Burried in the teller’s closet is the head of a 450 year old statue, which has been lost since WWII and said to be worth more than $5 million if sold on the black market. And that’s just where the story begins. We flash back to 1944, and we are told the story of four black Buffalo soldiers (Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller) who are led to slaughter by a newly appointed dimwitted Caucasian leader (of course).
They come across a slightly traumatized 9-year-old Italian boy named Angelo, who has been hiding in a barn during an attack. He talks to an imaginary friend and bonds with one of the soldiers, who he calls “the chocolate giant”. They bring the sick child to a nearby Italian village, where they are taken in by an Italian family. I won’t go much further because you must experience the rest of the story yourself.
The film drags greatly at 166 minutes, and some of the race discrimination scenes seemed forced, out of place, and sometime dispensable (for example one flashback which shows the group being told to leave an Ice Cream parlor), even if they might be historically accurate. The action sequences are both gritty and violent, everything you expect from a post-Private Ryan war film. But it is the smaller character moments which make up Anna’s strength. I think I need to see the film again outside of the film festival, hopefully later in the day when I’ve had more rest. I’m going to reserve giving my usual /film rating until then.
Posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 by David Chen
Speaking at the Toronto Film Festival to promote Miracle at St. Anna, Spike Lee has confirmed that plans for a sequel to his 2006 film Inside Man are in motion, with Terry George in negotiations to write the script. Lee plans on returning to direct the sequel, tentatively and creatively titled Inside Man 2. Inside Man was scriptwriter Russell Gerwitz’s first-ever feature-length script, and I thought he and Lee did a damn good job at crafting a gripping bank caper (the next movie you may see featuring Gerwitz’s work is Righteous Kill). Terry George has written critically acclaimed films such as In the Name of the Father and Hotel Rwanda. Undoubtedly, a collaboration between George and Lee for Inside Man 2 will continue to lend the heist film genre some more credibility and (hopefully) some more commercial success, just as the first film did.
According to Lee, the movie may feature the same characters from Inside Man, with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen reportedly interested in reprising their roles. The new film would develop their relationship further, but in a different standoff-like situation.
Source: THR
Discuss: What robbery/heist scenario can you imagine that would top the first film?
Spike Lee will co-write and direct an adaptation of Ronald Mallett’s memoir Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality. Spike Lee describes Time Traveler as a “fantastic story on many levels (and) also a father and son saga of loss and love.” Kirkus Reviews called the book a “hokey but inspiring blend of personal narrative and scientific exploration.” Basically, it’s a time travel movie without the time travel.
Mallett (pictured right with a model from the movie The Time Machine) is actually a very interesting living subject for a feature film. Co-written by best-selling author Bruce Henderson, the memoir tells a story of Mallett’s rise from poverty to becoming a distinguished academic, one of the first African Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics. As a child, he became obsessed with developing a working time machine after reading a comic-book version of H.G. Wells’s science-fiction classic, The Time Machine. His goal was to travel back in time to save his father who died prematurely when he was 10-years old.
And he is still trying at age 63, working as a professor of physics in the University of Connecticut, while raising funding for his Space-time Twisting by Light project. His time travel research has been featured in an hour-long TV special, “The World’s First Time Machine,” as well as publications as diverse as The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, New Scientist, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe and Pravda. Mallett’s time machine concept uses a ring laser and the theory of relativity. Check out the illustration below.
source: Variety
