Screenhead

So despite all logic and good common sense, apparently Will Smith is planning to play a mentally handicapped janitor in Flowers for Algernon.

He’ll be both producing and starring in the film, a remake of the old novel in which the janitor in question, Charly, gets a surgical procedure done that augments his mind, making him a genius…but only for a while.

The end result is actually a pretty good story, so I look for this one to actually come off pretty well.  In all honesty, Will Smith is actually a really good actor, so he should be able to put the necessary dramatic force and the endless duality into the role (he’s got to play a handicapped guy and a genius and then go back to handicapped while KNOWING he’s going back all at once).

He should be able to handle it, but I’ll reserve just a bit of skepticism as I’ve seen this kind of thing go wrong before.

I think I just about swallowed my own tongue when I heard the baffling and downright shocking news that George “Total Wackjob” Lucas was about to stage a new Star Wars trilogy.

But that was what I spotted mere minutes ago, folks, and it’s downright cringe-inducing.

Be advised, however, that this is GOSSIP.  From an outfit called Market Saw comes the following chunklets of possibility:

1. An actual three-part live-action Star Wars series is possibly coming out.

2. George Lucas will NOT be directing said titles. He will be producing only.

3. All three titles would be released in 3-D.

Well…anything’s possible, I suppose.  Considering the sheer amount of money these movies made, and considering the fact that there’s a whole lot of strangeness that could be happening either between episodes Three and Four or after Six or even before One or even at the same time in another part of the Galaxy Far Far Away, well, we could do just about anything with this.  And with George Lucas just signing checks, they might even be good.

Fans of the Che Guevara road movie The Motorcycle Diaries will be pleased with this news. Director Walter Salles and writer Jose Rivera will team up again, this time to adapt the modern American novel ‘American Rust’, penned by Philipp Meyer. Scott Stuber (The Break-Up, Role Models) will produce.

American Rust is Meyer’s first novel, and it tells the tale of two childhood friends, Isaac and Billy. Set in a dying steel town in Pennsylvania, a murder is committed that involves the boys, and through betrayal and arguments, leads to a split in the friendship that may affect the rest of their lives. The novel has been lauded by critics, with comparisons made with the likes of Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner.

While The Motorcycle Diaries was an entertaining film, many criticised it for distorting events to glorify and idealise the young Che, despite the reality being far from that (and of course the problem that the revolutionary became overly vicious in his later years). Meyer’s novel is praised for its ability to find drama in the drab and downbeat lives of a decaying community, and if a film adaptaion merely tries to replicate the main plot points, it may indeed miss the point of the tale. Regardless, it will be an interesting prospect so see how a Brazilian director and a Puerto Rican writer take on a story of an American community.

Yes, I know…some eye rolling cynicism is to be expected here, as this is not the first time you’ve heard about a revived Arrested Development about to make a push on the movie front.  But this new bit of news has something of a new twist to it–a script is reportedly being written by series creator Mitchell Hurwitz and co-executive producer James Valley.

Even better, apparently the last holdout, Michael Cera, has expressed interest in coming back and playing both the role he made famous and the character he’s been playing ever since the show got cancelled–George Michael Bluth.

So there’s reason for at least cautious optimism–all the former cast is on board and the script is in progress–but you should probably take it with the same enormous grain of salt that you’ve been taking all Arrested Development news with for years now.  But hopefully, the news is accurate, and by this time a couple years from now we’ll all get to see them…hm.  Um…rebuild the banana stand?

The promotional campaign for Paranormal Activity has been quite successful, starting with underground midnight screenings to round-the-clock showings in 40 cities. Writer-director Oren Peli has taken his success and parlayed a start date and the financing for his follow-up, Area 51.

Peli begins production next week on Area 51.  He will use his successful technique of “found footage” narrative structure of his last film, telling the story of three teens whose curiosity leads them to the notorious Area 51part of Nellis Air Force Base in the Nevada desert.

Reportedly, Paranormal Activity cost only $11,000 to produce and Area 51 is well beyond that — $5 million.

The folks who worked on Paranormal are working on Peli’s next project as well. 

Knowing that Paranormal Activity was all staged for horrific entertainment, like The Blair Witch Project, I have returned to enjoying a full night’s sleep.

Move over torture-porn, no one watches your vacuous attempts to elicit disgust and nausea are at an end. It seems as if Hollywood is turning its back on hard-core horror, and instead focusing on family-friendly scares. This week saw the announcement of two offshoot production labels that will dedicate their time and money making spooky chillers that even grandma and the pre-pubescent can scoff popcorn to. Sam Raimi’s production company Ghost House has created Spooky Pictures, with their first film to be a remake of the Danish film The Substitute, in which an alien who doesn’t understand the concept of love infiltrates our planet as a substitute teacher who trains her students for a competition in Paris (!?). Last month also saw Disney set up Double Dare You with Guillermo Del Toro, who aim to produce spooky animated films.

It’s not surprising that Hollywood is looking to “easier” frights, especially with the success of darker films like Coraline and the PG-13 horror flick The Haunting in Connecticut and the failure of many recent adult-oriented horrors such as Halloween 2 and Sorority Row. One could even surmise that with the wonderful and weird world of the web at our fingertips, with any information so easily accessed, the idea of truly scaring an audience is getting increasingly more difficult, at least when using traditional tactics.

Hugh Jackman is setting his sights on Real Steel for DreamWorks with Shawn Levy to direct. Levy has quite a list of films under his belt: Big Fat Liar, The Pink Panther, and Night at the Museum and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Real Steal is kind of like a retired Rocky meets 2000-pound human type robot.   Jackman would play an ex-fighter, who becomes a Robot Boxing promoter, but whose chances of success are hampered by his access to sub-standard robot parts. That is until he discovers a discarded robot that always seems to win. The ex-fighter has also discovered he’s the father of a 13-year old son, and they bond as the robot brawls its way toward the top.  

The studio would like to see a production start date in May 2010.

The idea of the movie came from a short story by Richard Matheson. If anyone knows Spielberg’s history of film, Matheson wrote Spielberg’s directing debut, the television movie Duel, and he was story editor on Spielberg’s Amazing Stories.

Matheson authored the book I am Legend, which was made into three movies. The last one starring Will Smtih with the same title. Matheson’s recent writing associations in the film business includes these movies: The Box, The Incredible Shrinking Man and Countdown.

I walked into Pandorum feeling pretty peppy about the whole affair.  It had been a goodish while since I’d seen an actual space opera in theatres (I seem to remember my last experience with a massive spaceship in theatres as being Event Horizon but that was way back in high school) and so I was definitely looking forward to it.

And then the surprises started.  The interesting thing here, however, is that they did not let up until the very end of the movie, and it is for this reason I’m actually surprised to report that Pandorum kicked a whole lot of ass and I’m actually surprised to BE surprised.

The plot of Pandorum is actually pretty simple–it’s what they DO with it that’ll kill you.  We join a young corporal and his grizzled lieutenant on the flight deck of a massive spaceship that’s probably a few miles long at least.  It’s heading somewhere.  But no one’s sure exactly where because they’ve all been unconscious for who knows how long in hypersleep chambers and they’re just now coming around.  The ship is pitch black, seemingly falling apart…oh, and there’s SOMETHING running around belowdecks.

This bad day in space will only get worse–you may rest entirely assured of that.

And like I said, there will be a whole lot of fantastic surprises, and not just the ones built into the plot, either.  You’ll get an incredible performance from Dennis Quaid who most definitely has still got it.  You’ll discover Cam Gigandet can do more than swishy sparkly vampires.  You’ll discover all sorts of cataclysmic plot twists that will do an excellent job of holding your interest–at least, they held MY interest, and that’s saying something.

But perhaps the most mind-blowing surprise of all is that this really good lump of science fiction glee was brought to us by Paul W.S. Anderson.

You did in fact read that last sentence correctly.  Pandorum, a fantastic sci-fi deep space action flick, is directly connected to Paul “I Turned Resident Evil Into A Slipknot Video” W.S. Anderson.  Of course, he just produced this one, which is awesome as he’s finally found a niche where he can’t ruin perfectly good video games by turning them into godawful movies that are only vaguely related to their original titles.

Of course, the result is that anyone calling this a “Resident Evil in Space” will not be terribly far off, but the combination is surprisingly palatable and plenty of fun.  Call me biased if you must but I’ve always been fond of big ship movies, be they oceanic or interstellar, and Pandorum definitely provided.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands over a full-on nine out of ten for Pandorum, a movie that managed to bring a whole bunch of surprises to the table, defy plenty of expectations, and still managed to let me have  a good time watching.  If you’re even vaguely into science fiction, folks, especially with a little dystopia on the side, well, this one’s definitely for you.

Keanu Reeves latest movie going into production is Henry’s Crime.  He is also producing while Malcolm Venville directs the romantic comedy that goes into production this November in Buffalo.

Reeves is set to play a generous man who is falsely accused of robbing a bank in Buffalo. Henry’s Crime is Reeves first comedy since Something’s Gotta Give in 2003, where he played a doctor.

(Source)

Michael Moore is a not only an award winning filmmaker, but a very smart filmmaker. He knows how to get his message across in a documentary.  Even in his trailer for his next movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, he takes moments that push the buttons of the public at large.

It appears that he is spontanous, but Moore is smart — he scripts his movies, he has an agenda. He brings to the table issues that oppress society. Issues that need to be faced, which doesn’t make some folks very happy. But I like the way he cuts through our social veneer and tells us in a way so we can understand.