// archives

Uncategorized

This category contains 11 posts

Bond, Basterd’s, Trailer’s and other news…

‘Solace’ grosses $70.4 million at box office.

The biggest opening ever for a James Bond title and a major victory for a film franchise nearly half a century old. Previous record-holder for best Bond opening was the $47.1 million for “Die Another Day.” Director Marc Forster’s “Solace,” playing in 3,451 runs, opened 74% higher than the 2006 critically acclaimed “Casino Royale,” which gave a new look and feel to the Bond franchise, as well as a new 007–Daniel Craig

Other cool news; Trailers and Casting news:

The Latest Watchmen Trailer

2012

Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists, and governments. 2012 is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.

Inglorious Basterds final casting with Jackson, Cheung

Samuel L. Jackson has muscled his way into a part as a rarely present narrator and Maggie Cheung, who won the Cannes Best Actress prize in 2004 for Clean, will play Madame Mimieux, the French cinema matron who cares for Basterd’s protagonist Shoshana (Mélanie Laurent) when she is being searched for by the Nazis. Cheung won the role over other European actresses once rumored for the part including Catherine Deneuve, Nastassja Kinski and Isabelle Hupport.

And yes, we have the script; do a search and you’ll find it on our site.

Australia

This looks radical.

Australia is an epic and romantic action adventure, set in that country on the explosive brink of World War II. In it, an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) travels to the faraway continent, where she meets a rough-hewn local (Hugh Jackman) and reluctantly agrees to join forces with him to save the land she inherited. Together, they embark upon a transforming journey across hundreds of miles of the world’s most beautiful yet unforgiving terrain, only to still face the bombing of the city of Darwin by the Japanese forces that attacked Pearl Harbor. With his new film, Luhrmann is painting on a vast canvas, creating a cinematic experience that brings together romance, drama, adventure and spectacle.

The Spirit

That’s all for today; I’ve got screenplays to develop.

De Palma’s THE BOSTON STRANGLER and more Inglorious Basterd’s Pics !

This morning story courtesy AICN via Jenna Busch and UGO Movie Blog.

It’s been quiet since THE BOSTON STRANGLERS was announced last June as a vehicle for Brian De Palma, but, according to producer Gale Anne Hurd (Terminator 2, The Abyss, Aliens, The Terminator and De Palma’s Raising Cain), it’s still in the pipeline and slated for a Spring production. The screenplay is based off the book “The Boston Stranglers: The Public Conviction of Albert DeSalvo and the True Story of Eleven Shocking Murders,” by Susan Kelly.

alt text

The Master.

It’s based on Susan Kelly’s book called The Boston Stranglers, because everything that we think we know is wrong. There was a film made right after the events called THE BOSTON STRANGLER starring Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda. And it posits that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler, but the truth is, if you scratch beneath the surface, Albert DeSalvo was never charged with the crimes. He was actually incarcerated for another series of assaults, and there was not one shred of evidence linking him to the crimes. So the film is very much (about) how did things go so wrong, that to this day we all think Albert DeSalvo was tried and convicted as the Boston Strangler?































The screenplay draft by Alan Rosen went over 160 pages starts off with DeSalvo’s first foray into the crimes as he talks his way into the homes of desperate women pretending to be a modeling scout and then dramatizes the police investigation, the intense media scrutiny, and DeSalvo’s jailhouse confession to convicted murderer George Nassar. It’s kinky and bloody and chalk full of conspiracy; standard faire for De Palma, a certified master of the genre. I personally loved The Black Dahlia and if Brian’s name is on it, I’ll be satisfied just watching the direction and visual tour de force he commands. No one, and I man, no one understands films visual language better than De Palma, cut from the cloth of Hitchcock, he is a master.

Spring of 2009 with a 2010 release date is the projection on this one.

You can read the Busch interview with Gale and for up to date news from the best De Palma site on the net, check out De Palma Ala Mod and you can talk about Brian in our own forums Here.

In other cinejunkienessism news; what’s another post without some Inglorious Basterd’s news ? And before you message me to let me know I spelled the title wrong again, it has been confirmed that Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming WWII-spaghetti western remake of Enzo Castellari’s Inglorious Bastards (which filming began this month), that QT’s “misspelled” title is official.

When the script (which you can download here) made its onto the internet (accident, I’m sure) this summer, many simply thought he was a poor speller but according to the Weinstein Co. and Universal Pictures, who confirmed the title after releasing a new synopsis for the film:

“Inglourious Basterds begins in German-occupied France, where Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema.

Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” Raine’s squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own…”

Tarantino’s international cast includes Brad Pitt Diane Kruger, Mike Myers, Eli Roth, Cloris Leachman, Rod Taylor, Daniel Brühl (The Edukators), Samm Levine (Freaks and Geeks), Til Schweiger (King Arthur), B.J. Novak (The Office), Michael Fassbender (300), Mélanie Laurent (Days of Glory), Michael Bacall (Death Proof), Omar Doom (Death Proof), Julie Dreyfus (Kill Bill Vol. 1), August Diehl (The Counterfeiters), Richard Sammel (Casino Royale), Christian Berkel (Black Book), and more. The film reunites Tarantino with Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 cinematographer Bob Richardson, longtime production designer David Wasco, Oscar-nominated editor Sally Menke (Pulp Fiction), and producer Lawrence Bender.

And here is another pics from the set of the newly constructed French farmhouse that will open Inglorious Bastards in a soon-to-be-classic and nail-biting fashion. The window on the far right will presumably frame and foreshadow a showdown between the female main character and the Jew Hunter

alt text

The Farmhouse from the scripts opening scene.























That’s all for today. I have some writing to do and then it’s off to work.

Katherine Bigelow talks IRAQ war film “Hurt Locker”

alt text

She’s better than most dude directors.

In the long list of great directors and favorite filmmakers, a woman’s name isn’t often, hell, ever brought up and I confess I do find it hard pressed to name some that raise the bar for me and inspire me in my own pursuit and dream of filmmaking. Immediately coming to mind are Sofia Coppola (Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides), Kimberly Pierce (Stop-Loss, Boys Don’t Cry) and Mimi Leder (Deep Impact, The Peacemaker and the upcoming Thick as Thieves starring Morgan Freeman and Antonio Banderas,

Beyond that, I am scratching my head. I’n not sure why there aren’t many more female director’s but I do think Hollywood would benefit greatly if opening up it’s boys club cowboy mentality to the ladies.

No surprise that according to Martha Lauzen, a San Diego State University professor who has been tracking the industry for 10 years and publishes an annual study she calls “The Celluloid Ceiling,” which tracks gender for the casts and crews of the top 250 films released in North America every year, of the 8,500 directors represented in the Directors Guild of America, about 13 percent are women. (That figure includes women who work in television, which has long been considered a more welcoming environment.) The number of women directors actually working in film is only 7 percent.

Which brings me to Kathryn Bigelow (born 27 November 1951). Most of you film geeks might recall she was married to fellow director James Cameron from 1989 - 1991. This woman has mad chops; see Near Dark (More balls in this Vampire film than any I’ve seen), Point Break (One of the better surfer movies I have seen) and the vastly underrated Strange Days.

I’ve been a fan of hers for sometime. She is currently directing The Hurt Locker starring Brian Geraghty, Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie with cameos by Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes. The film is set during the Iraq war and was written by former Playboy journalist Mark Boal and has generated significant buzz at both Toronto and Venice.

Financier Nicolas Chartier of Voltage Pictures reported Wednesday that U.S. rights to his Kathryn Bigelow-helmed explosive action suspenser, “The Hurt Locker,” sold to Summit Entertainment in the wee hours of Wednesday. Chartier revealed he sunk $1.5 million of his own coin into the Iraq-set bomb-diffusing action film.

Courtesy Variety: