Screenhead

Jeff Bridges is in discussions with Paramount to star in Joel and Ethan Coen’s remake of True Grit. Bridgeswould play the role that won John Wayne an Oscar for the 1969 original. I think it will be tough for Bridges (or any actor) to follow Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn. I cherish Wayne’s performance and the movie.  There will be constant comparisons from critics and public at large. Yet, I do believe Bridges is the right actor to take this challenge and deliver a fine performance.

Bridges last worked with the brothers when he turned in a tour de force performance as Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski in the 1998.

The script has been redrafted by the brothers to be more faithful to the Charles Portis novel in which the original film was based.

The story is about a 14-year-old girl who follows an aging U.S. marshal, Rooster Cogburn, and another lawman to track the outlaw who killed her father. The new version will come from the girls’ point of view, whereas the original was told from Cogburn’s point of view.

(Source)

Sometimes Hollywood likes to dish up a good kick in the (possibly metaphorical) cojones just to see if you’re paying attention.  For those of you who like Westerns, and depending on the title you can generally count me in, you may be happy to know that Retribution Road has only recently hit DVD, thanks to the folks at Lions Gate.

You may be happy.  But you won’t.  Why?  Simple–Retribution Road is easily one of the dumbest Westerns I’ve EVER SEEN.

Retribution Road involves Johnny Rios, bank robber, womanizer, and all around thug extraordinaire who finds himself locked up  in Wardlaw, a small burg in Texas.  Johnny’s family, the somewhat notorious Rios gang, decides to spring their significantly lesser brother from the town’s confinement,  and to that end offers Wardlaw a choice–let Johnny Rios go free, or face the Rios gang in a deadly shootout.

Frankly, this is easily one of the most laughable Westerns ever, and not because of any kind of great jokewriting.  This IS a joke, and a bad one.  More specifically, this is a miserable farce of a Western shot by people who have probably never even seen them.  Lines are delivered as warmed over and stale as a week-old bagel.  The plot itself is mindlessly padded as this Shootout at the P.U. Corral couldn’t possibly come close to the standard eighty minutes runtime by itself (and it doesn’t, either, weighing in at only seventy two) because the plot is so incredibly simplistic that it requires multiple other sidebars (a grasping mayor, a murderous hooker, the bizarre paternity of the sheriff’s daughter) that have little to no actual bearing on the main point.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, thusly, runs Retribution Road out of town on a rail and with tar and feathers in the shape of a two out of ten on its back.  This isn’t nearly as much Western as we should have received, and what we got wasn’t all that great to begin with.

Whoa, brace yourselves, Western fans!

I know you’ve been getting short shrift for literally YEARS now.  Maybe you only get three or four new releases a year, and most of your new stuff comes in the form of remastered antiques.  If it weren’t for 3:10 to Yuma you’d probably STILL be watching Wyatt Earp.

But now I’ve got an absolutely charming bit of news here that’ll really put a hitch in your gitalong, as it were.  The SECOND longest running television series of all time, which lost its crown to no less a media icon than The Simpsons, Gunsmoke will be getting its own big-screen adaptation.  You may not be terribly heartened by the news that it will have a more “contemporary look” and “modern action”, but there’s no denying that it will in fact exist.

They’re bringing in the screenwriter from National Treasure: Book of Secrets to handle the script on this one, so at the very least they mean to get some mileage out of this one.  Release dates are still a pipe dream at this point, but when there’s more to tell you,  you know we’ll have it right here.

The original True Grit is a classic in every sense of the word.  The cast alone (Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, and of course, the great John Wayne) puts it in everyone’s library.

Now, it’s in remake mode. Yikes!  None other than Joel and Ethan Coen will put their spin on True Grit, the iconic Western that won John Wayne an Oscar.

But Variety is reporting that it’s not a traditional remake, the Paramount film promises to be more devoted to the Charles Portis book than the 1969 movie.

Then I ask, why call it a remake?

Anyhow, Portis’ novel is about a 14-year-old girl who, in company with an aging U.S. marshal and another lawman, hunts down her father’s killer in hostile Indian Territory.

But while the original film was a showcase for Wayne, the Coens’ version will tell the tale from the girl’s perspective. Of course, the Coens wrote the screenplay.

Chances are with the Coens’ power we’ll see the movie in production, but let’s not call it a remake.

It was genuinely hard for me to believe, when I first heard about Sukiyaki Western Django, that I was actually looking forward to a movie involving Quentin Tarantino.  I had been burned by this man and his sludgy, angsty, stuck-in-the-seventies style before, and to think that I might be so burned again was too much to bear.

But then I found out the truth–Quentin Tarantino had about as much to do with it as I did.  He only appears for a few minutes, as an expository character who really doesn’t do much of anything besides sit, swagger, and fill in some backstory.  And then I found out Takashi Miike was handling the direction on this one and my jaw just dropped.  See, Takashi Miike has given me a LOT of interesting things to talk about.  That crazy son of a bitch has been responsible for some of the most lunatic things I’ve ever seen–for instance, he gave me Audition.  The last half-hour of Audition puts anything it compares to into shock BEFORE beating it up and taking its lunch money.  He’s put out Imprint, the one Masters of Horror segment that even SHOWTIME wouldn’t show on television.  When Showtime looks at something and says, hey, whoa–that’s too much even for US…you know you’ve got a real pack of explosive something-or-other on your hands.

And Sukiyaki Western Django will not disappoint.

One part parody, one part homage–can we call it a farcical homage?–Sukiyaki Western Django takes us to a little Japanese village named Nevata unless I misread the signs.  Nevata is sitting on a treasure worth a whole lot of money, and two rival gangs, the Heiki and the Genji, are both vying for the loot.  The town, what’s left of it, thinks it has a savior in a random stranger that’s come for his cut, but both the Heiki and the Genji want this mysterious lone gunman working for them.  Meanwhile, the rest of the town is grappling with secrets of its own, and as everything boils to an explosive finish in the one single pot, we see how sukiyaki can give the Western a whole new life, and give birth to a Django.

Yeah, I know, it’s actually pretty weird when you think about it, but then so is a lot of Japanese cinema.  If you don’t believe me, sometime, go out and grab a copy of Crazy Lips, or get it from Netflix.  THEN you’ll believe me.  But I’m digressing.

What Miike has made here is standard for Miike in that what he’s produced is absolutely mind-blowing.  I often find myself wondering, whenever I find something else from him, if this guy is actually capable of making, say, Beethoven.  Or maybe Ghost Rider.  You know, a harmless piece of fluff that’s just kind of entertaining but scarcely worth a second look?  That’s not Miike.  In fact, that’s not Miike’s entire career from what I’ve been able to tell so far.  What his entire career seems to be–what Sukiyaki Western Django is–is a nonstop flood of mindblowing material that’s packed with plenty of things that don’t make any sense at all but look damn cool doing it.

What can you say about a movie that, while you’re watching it, you can look at several points and say, verbatim, “I don’t understand a BIT of what just happened there, but all I know is, that was AWESOME.”?  But I’ll say this much for it–as a Western, it’s a clear winner.  It combines several great classic elements such as surprise bulletproof vest, fun with Gatlings, unlikely bullet interceptions, and presents them in this whole new pot that we’ve never seen before.  Where before, some of the great Westerns were spaghetti Westerns, imported from Italy, we now have a Japanese western…indeed, a SUKIYAKI Western.  Maybe it’d be more approrpriate if it were the SOBA Western, or maybe even the Ramen Western to identify with the college kids and those who were not so long ago, Sukiyaki Western it seems to be, and Sukiyaki Western does just fine.

It seems that more of Iron Man 2’s cast is being leaked as there is speculation circulating that Mickey Rourke, from Sin City and The Wrestler, will be joining the crew. There isn’t much information as to exactly who he is playing, but the role he’s considering has been described as Tony Stark’s Russian nemesis who is expected to duke it out with Iron Man in his own super suit.

Now, take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt as it’s far from being confirmed, but sites like FirstShowing.net are speculating the character Rourke may play is Crimson Dynamo (pictured above).

Read (FirstShowing)

Iconic cowboy character, Western staple and all-around awesome guy Bill Cassidy is finally getting what he deserved: a biopic!

Variety reports that Pterodactyl Productions is planning a film about the classic character who was created in 1904 by writer Clarence E. Mulford. He appeared as a rough-talking galoot in a series of stories and novels before being ported to the big-screen in 1935 as a clean-cut hero. William Boyd played the character in 66 films from ‘30-50s.

The character is now part of popular culture, having spawned comic books, radio serials and whatnot. Mark Canton (300) will produce.

Universal has been on a roll lately. They have recently acquired rights to a western father-son redemption story, “The Creed of Violence.” This is based on an unpublished novel written by Boston Teran.

Story, set in 1910, revolves around an estranged father and son trying to thwart an arms smuggling ring bringing weapons to Mexico. The novel caught fire among studios after the Natasha Kern Literary Agency submitted it to book publishers. Universal, which hasn’t yet assigned a producer, made an aggressive offer and took the book off the table.

Several foreign territory publishing deals have already been made, but no U.S. publisher has been selected.

The Old West didn’t last long in history but it sure does in Hollywood. The good guys against the bad guys with a girlfriend in between.  Looks like Ed Harris did an excellent job making a story about the Wild West. Enjoy the trailer!

Appaloosa is directed by Ed Harris and stars Harris, Jeremy Irons, Viggo Mortensen and Renee Zellweger. Two gunman (Harris and Mortensen) fight law and order in untamed Old West towns. They arrive in Appaloosa to face Irons as an unscruplous land owner and Zellweger as a high-spirited woman who tugs both men’s hearts. 

Which movie poster do you like the best?

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