G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra got pilloried by many people, but it actually made a fair amount of cash. So while Paramount was keen to continue the franchise, it appears they also wanted to start over a little as well – or at least that’s what this trailer suggests. Going for a less flashly silly style than the first film, this looks like it’ll be more grounded and action-packed. It’s actually kind of interesting though that Channing Tatum’s Duke seems to be slightly sidelined in favour of introducing Dwayne Johnson as Roadblock and Bruce Willis as the original GI Joe, as well as showing off some spectacular Snake Eyes fighting. The film June 22nd, but enjoy the trailer.
Drew Barrymore Wants To Direct Street Lights
Every year at this time, the ‘Black List’ of the best unproduced screenplays doing the rounds in Hollywood is released. One of the movies on this year’s list has just got a talent injection, as NewsInFilm says Drew Barrymore has attached herself to direct When The Street Lights Go On.
The script, written by Eddie O’Keefe and Chris Hutton has shades of Stand By Me and Super 8 about it, as it’s a coming of age movie set in the 80s, about a teenage boy called Charlie who fancies himself a filmmaker. He stumbles across the bodies of a 17-year-old beauty and the English teacher she was having an affair with, and then tries to work out who committed the double murder.
It’d be a very different movie for Barrymore after her directing debut, Whip It. At the moment, it’s just one film on her list of potentials, but with the script now getting Black List attention, expect to more about it in the coming months.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
Winona Ryder Boards The Iceman
After more than a year of trying to pull things together, The Iceman is finally getting ready to shoot, although there’s had to be a bit of a cast shuffle, with Deadline reporting that Winona Ryder will step in for Maggie Gyllenhaal in the movie.
The project is a fact-based film about Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon), a serial killer whose homicidal urgings found the perfect outlet when the mob called upong him to become a Mafia hitman. He earned his nickname by freezing the bodies of his victims, disguising the time of death, and throwing police off-track.
Ryder will play Kuklinski’s wife, Deborah, who was unaware that he was a contract killer and thought her hubby was a businessman. Maggie Gyllenhaal was originally down for the role, and it’s not clear why she’s left. Chris Evans will also star, playing Kulinski’s protege, Robert Pronge. Ariel Vromen will be directing from a screenplay co-written with Morgan Land, based a Anthony Bruno book “The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer”.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
Paradise Lost Gets Put On Hold Due To Costs
Sometimes I feel like a prophet. Ever since it was announced Paradise Lost was being lined up for a big budget movie version, I’ve been waiting for the moment the studio would get cold feet about spending loads of cash on a massive movie based on a 17th Century poem, in which Satan/Lucifer is one of the most sympathetic characters.
Now that day is here, as while director Alex Proyas has already cast the likes of Bradley Cooper, Benjamin Walker, Casey Affleck, Rufus Sewell and Djimon Hounsou and was planning on shooting early next year, the project has now been put on hold due to worries over the costs. Deadline reports the film will no longer shoot in January while the producers look at ways of trimming the budget.
Apparently it was when the budget went past $120 million that the money men started getting antsy, and so they’re not looking at ways to make it cheaper. Rather like with The Lone Ranger, which found itself in a very similar situation earlier this year, this won’t be the end for the movie, with everyone busily rejigging their schedules in the next few days.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
Charlotte Gainsbourg May Be A Nymphomaniac
Ever since the Cannes Film festival (before he got banned from ever attending it again), Lars Von Trier has been talking about making an extremely sexually frank, rather hardcore movie. Back them he joked about having his Melancholia stars Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbrough romping in the movie, but it’s now been revealed that it’ll actually be Gainsbourg who stars in Nymphomaniac.
Variety reports that she’s in talks to topline the movie. Not a vast amount is known about the film, other than it will chronicle a woman’s erotic life and will be split into eight chapters. Von Trier will also prepare two cute of the movie – a hardcore one and a softcore one.
Makign a film about female eroticism and calling it Nymphomaniac isn’t going to change the ideas of those who thing Von Trier is a mysogynist, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now. The director is currently writing the movie and hopes to shoot it next summer or autumn.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
Three Amazing Spider-man Banners Surface
It seems Sony is still working out the best way to market the Amazing Spider-man, as while the teaser poster that arrived at the weekend was very dark and moody, these new banners, which Comic Book Movie says have been created for internation marketing and much brighter and closer to what you’d expect from the superhero.
Many criticised the teaser poster for being too much like The Dark Knight and suggesting the upcoming Spidey reboot would be a downer, so you may well discover future marketing gets a lot brighter.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
Gay Sex In The 70s
Director: Joseph F. Lovett
Running Time: 71 mins
Certificate: 18
Release Date: July 26th, 2010
The documentary Gay Sex In the 70s both does what it says on the tin and completely fails to at the same. Joseph F. Lovett’s doc is a mixture of interviews, vintage photos and footage that look at the idea that the gay rights movement in the 1970s led to increased visibility and a more stridently upfront attitude, which resulted in an explosion of gay decadence and sex, with men screwing each other all over the shop. This was then brought to an abrupt end by the emergence of AIDS in the early 80s.
It’s a potentially interesting subject, and indeed this documentary isn’t the first to paint the 70s as some sort of halcyon age of gay free love that’s gone forever. Its problem though is that it never seems to get to the heart of anything, merely hinting at things that it doesn’t develop. [Read more…]
BGPS’s Advent Calendar Of Buff Blokes: Day 12 – Alex O’Loughlin
It’s halfway through Advent now, which is a good excuse to look at shirtless pictures of the incredibly hunky Alex O’Loughlin!
If a studio knows a romantic comedy is crap, they tend to release images of the male stars topless, in the hope that’ll draw viewers in. That’s certainly true of the dreadful J-Lo flick The Back-Up Plan, where the only redeeming feature of the movie was that it produced some great images of Alex O’Loughlin without a shirt on.
The Australian actor got his US break in the TV show The Shield, which led to him playing the lead in the vampire series Moonlight. That didn’t last too long though, and neither did the medical show Three Rivers. However he’s now found a lot more success with the new look Hawaii Five-0, in which he stars opposite Scott Caan.
Click the pics below to get a better look at this hottie. [Read more…]
First Men In Black 3 Trailer – The alien monitoring agents are back!
The Men In Black are back and coming to cinemas with their third adventure on May 25th, 2012. To try and get people excited, the first trailer is here, although as it’s still pretty early, it’s more about reigniting the franchise than telling us about the film itself. However it does let us know that somehow Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) has been dead for 40 years and the only way to sort that out is to get Will Smith to travel back to 1969. The film had troubles during shooting, with half of it having to be delayed while they rewrote the script for the 60s section. Hopefully they sorted the problems out and it’ll be a welcom return for the alien monitoring agents.
And doesn’t Josh Brolin look uncannily like a young Tommy Lee Jones? Don’t believe us? Well watch the trailer.
The Flowers Of War Trailer
The Flowers Of War gets an Oscar-qualifying release in the US later this week, ready for a big awards run, with the hope the Chinese made movie may become the first fully made and funded in that country to win the big gongs. Whether it will remains to be seen, but if this trailer’s anything to go by, it’s a powerful and visually arresting movie. While it’s Chinese made, with Hero’s Yang Zhimou directing, the film is attempt to appeal to western audiences with most of it in English, with Christian Bale starring. The film sees Bale as a priest caught up in the events following the fall on Nanjing to the Japanese in 1937, with the plot revolving around a group of Chinese sex workers who volunteer to replace university students as forced escorts for invading soldiers. No UK release is currently fixed.
Neil Marshall Wants To Direct Hellfest
Neil Marshall set the horror world alight with his first two feature length movies, Dog Soldiers and The Descent. However his move into the mainstream hasn’t gone as well, with Doomsday and Centurion both failing to excite audiences.
Now it appears he’s plotting his next flick, as Deadline reports he’s in early talks to helm the slasher flick Hellfest. If all the deal work out, he’ll be shooting the movie next summer.
The script, by William Penick and Chris Sey, is about a costumed killer who systematically slaughters the unsuspecting visitors who come to a theme park on Halloween night. It’s a pretty generic set-up, but if Marshall can get back to the simplicity that made his first two movies so successful, it could work fine.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
George Clooney Plans Smothers Brothers Pic
The Smothers Brothers have never really penetrated over to this side of the pond, but their comedy antics in the 60s have made them legends in the US. Now Deadline reports that George Clooney wants to make a movie about them. It actually fits his style more than you might think, as the brothers’ story has a political edge.
Clooney and his production parter, Grant Heslov, have acquired the rights to David Bianculli’s book, Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story Of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, for a biopic about the infamous comedy duo. Brian Hecker and Craig Sherman hwill write the script, which will follow brothers and 60s comedians Tom and Dicky Smothers, who went from family-friendly merrymakers to counterculture rabble-rousers. They were the first to introduce hippie ideals into the mainstream, and their act eventually got them on Richard Nixon’s enemy list, which saw their popular CBS variety show being canceled.
At the moment Clooney is only down to produce, but it’s believed he’s eyeing the movie as a directing project.
Not only will Tom Smothers and Dicky Smothers need to be cast, but actors will also be needed to portray a young Steve Martin and a young Rob Reiner, who were both writers for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour .
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser