Conan the Barbarian has a director, and it isn't Brett Ratner. That's the story according to CHUD, who reports that horror director Marcus Nispel has signed on the dotted line, and will direct the remake / reimagining for Lionsgate.

Remakes are familiar territory for Nispel, who has helmed our latest versions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th. I haven't seen either (though I am sure Scott Weinberg will rectify that soon), but I know they were heavy on the gore and action. With Outlander writers Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain giving the script a rewrite last year, I think you can picture just what Nispel and Lionsgate are aiming for ... lots of pulpy, bloody, R-rated action. While I'll hold out some hope for character development, I'll take comfort in the fact that the Barbarian's sword will meet flesh and bone with a suitable level of blood and crunch.

Now we'll have to see who lands the role (Devin Faraci is hearing that they'll go with an unknown), and whether Ratner left his fingerprints all over the project, as has been rumored every time he was on again, off again with it. But hey, it looks like Conan will make it to the theater before Red Sonja and Thulsa Doom do, which is how it should be.

It sounds too good to be true. Three Hollywood studios (Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM) plan to introduce a new service called Epix that will be available online and on television. Epix will feature recent titles from the three studios in high definition before they're released on DVD or Blu-ray, without commercial interruption, and without charge to the consumer. Sign me up, right? Big surprise: there is a catch. Or two, actually.

As explained at ars technica, the films will be available in the "pay-TV window," after the theatrical release concludes and before the title hits DVD. Epix wants to convince cable TV operators to bundle their network into an already-existing package, and thus avoid a separate, additional monthly fee. No partners have been announced yet. That's the first catch.

Here's the second: if you want to watch the films online, on demand, via EpixHD.com, you have to subscribe to the same provider's Internet offering. In the words of ars technica: "If Comcast were to offer Epix, users would need to pay for both Comcast cable and Comcast Internet in order to access the streaming, on-demand service. That's good for Comcast, and it helps them cover the cost of the service." That may be good for the cable operators, but if you're like me and have satellite service and/or DSL, you're out of luck.

EpixHD.com is "currently in private beta" and, contrary to what is stated in ars technica, there is no way I see for private citizens to sign up. The site says "library classics" will be available in addition to newer titles. More free movies are always welcome, though I wonder how widespread Epix will become.

[via Gizmodo]

The Cannes Film Festival drew to a close on Sunday evening with the presentation of the Palme d'Or to Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. Filmed in black and white, it's "a two-and-a-half hour parable of political and social ideas set entirely in a north German village in 1913 and 1914," says Dave Calhoun at Time Out London. Haneke "solidly resists answering the 'what's it all about?' question and makes you work hard to make sense of what you're seeing." David Hudson at IFC's The Daily has gathered the reviews, some of which endeavor to answer the "What's it all about?" question.

As is often the case, the nine-member jury passed out awards to as many films as possible. The Grand Prix (or runner-up) went to Jacques Audiard's A Prophet; Special Jury Prize to Alain Resnais for Wild Grass; and Best Director to Brillante Mendoza for Kinatay. Christoph Walz won Best Actor for his performance in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress for Lars von Trier's controversial Antichrist. The complete list of winners can be easily viewed at indieWIRE. The festival's official site has a great set of award ceremony photos.

Here's a roundup of Cannes films we can expect to see in coming months. Corrections and updates will be appreciated.

CANNES TITLES WITH U.S. DISTRIBUTION

• Antichrist (IFC)
• A Prophet (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Bright Star (Bob Berney and Bill Polhad)
• Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Drag Me to Hell (Universal)
• Humpday (Magnolia Pictures)
• I Love You Phillip Morris (Consolidated Pictures Group)
• Inglourious Basterds (Weinstein Co.)
• Looking For Eric (IFC)
• Precious (Lionsgate)
• Taking Woodstock (Focus Features)
• Tales From the Golden Age (IFC)
• Thirst (Focus Features)
• Up (Disney Pixar)
• The White Ribbon (Sony Pictures Classics)

You can access all our Cannes coverage via this handy link.

At theaters, 3D is all the rage, boosting box office receipts and giving moviegoers something to talk about -- if not always to love. The year began with generally positive reactions by horror fans to My Bloody Valentine 3D and continued as young fans enjoyed Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, and families lined up for Monsters vs. Aliens 3D. Can that enthusiasm spread beyond theaters? Can the 3D experience be enjoyed equally well at home?

When he reviewed My Bloody Valentine 3D, our own William Goss felt it was "cheesy, corny, gimmicky, gory fun -- if only in its 3-D theatrical presentation." He questioned whether it would translate at all in 2-D or on DVD. The movie hit DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, and our friend Peter Hall at Horror's Not Dead took the movie for a spin. He found the experience seriously wanting: "Watching [My Bloody Valentine 3D] on Blu-ray is akin to trying to watch a movie after staring into the sun before getting donkey punched with an ugly green paint can." He points to a message board thread at High Def Digest that says the "the technology to do Real D (the non red-blue glasses variety) at home does not exist." So all that's available is the "dreadful red-blue" type of "3D" experience for home viewers -- you know, the same type that made us want to claw our eyes out while trying to watch 3D movies in the 80s.

I tried watching the old school 3D at home with Friday the 13th Part 3 on DVD and lasted about 15 minutes. Awful!! Have you seen any recent 3D titles at home? Do they provide a decent experience, or are they a complete waste of time and money?

Oh, the irony of ironies when the Dennis Quaid serial killer mystery The Horsemen had a tagline that said "Come and see," only to receive an unceremonious dump on something like 75 screens in early March and its first formal review just this week in Variety (and they had to catch it in Paris, apparently!). Box Office Mojo can't even claim any exact figures for what the thing grossed in its very limited run.

In similar straits was the Diane Lane/Mickey Rourke thriller, Killshot, which was formally dumped in Arizona and Arizona alone at the end of January. $18,000 on five screens -- way to capitalize on that Wrestler buzz, Weinsteins. But soon, scarcity will matter not for either film, as Fangoria says that the former film will get its DVD release on July 14th, while Amazon claims a May 26th bow for the latter.

There's no word on special features for Killshot yet, which makes me wonder if we'll see any sign of Johnny Knoxville's reportedly excised character... but maybe I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Some mild Crank: High Voltage spoilers to follow...

Taking in an estimated $6.5 million for the weekend, the Crank sequel seemed to please most fans (less so myself) and many critics (the Tomatometer now stands at 69%, over the original's 60%) without totally taking America by storm. Hey, we live in a world where not everyone wants to pay to see Jason Statham stick a lubed-up shotgun inside some thug's rectum -- different strokes, people, different strokes.

Now, as Chev Chelios finally confronted the man with the red cooler (Art Hsu) after a momentarily Godzilla-like showdown, he opened the cooler to find not his stolen heart, but... something, something vaguely but freakishly off-putting to even the steely likes of Chev -- he reacts to the effect of "Why would you possibly carry this around with you?" -- and then, naturally, we never find out what the cooler holds.

So, as many had likewise debated as to the contents of that briefcase in Pulp Fiction, I'd like to hear your theories on what exactly was in that cooler. Was it Jason Statham's hair? The script for the next Tyler Perry outing? A puppy?

("Whatever, I wanted a cat.")

On the eve of its release in 2006, some local pals accommodated me at their screening for the first Crank film, and when my reaction afterward was one of surprising enthusiasm, they kindly chalked it up to a matter of "demographics." (To them, this most recently excused my thoughts on Observe and Report as well.)

Three years later, I found myself attending a midnight show of Crank: High Voltage alongside plenty of demographically-appropriate (read: texting) kin, anxious to see just how Jason Statham's unstoppable hitman is going to beat the odds this time around. And three reels later, I began to wonder whether or not too much had finally become just that. Oh, dear... what if they told me to leave my brain at the door and my heart still wasn't in it?

You know how all the really excellent video games invariably become undeniably awesome movies called House of the Dead, Doom, BloodRayne, and Resident Evil 2? Well here's a switch you didn't definitely did see coming: Looks like game giant Konami will be teaming up with the Twisted Pictures gang in order to bring Saw: The Video Game to Xbox, Playstation, and PC monitors. As the creators of the Castlevania and Silent Hill series, Konami is no stranger to the scary stuff -- plus they have another one coming out soon called Zombie Apocalypse! Cool!

Anyway, based on the official website (which has a detailed synopsis and a handful of screenshots), the Saw game will be "a third-person perspective, survival horror game based on the SAW film franchise, which has grossed more than $665M worldwide and sold more than 28 million DVDs. The game features many of the deadly mechanical traps seen in the film, as well as terrifying new ones. Players will pit their wits against Jigsaw as they navigate his world in an attempt to evade and escape his gruesome traps, while also struggling against his minions in brutal combat by using weapons found within the environment."

Whew, for a second I thought we were going to play AS Jigsaw. Boy, that'd get a lot of parents angry, wouldn't it? Sounds like a basic but amusing horror game, only infused with a familiar dose of Jigsaw jigginess. Since I own a 360 I'll be sure to check the game out when it splatters onto shelves this Fall -- but it's gotta be pretty damn good if it's going to live up to THIS classic horror movie video game!

What's a distributor to do when it has a bunch of kitschy, random flicks on its hands? They slap a title like "The Lost Collection" across a few of 'em, toss the DVDs onto the market, and see if there's enough interest to warrant another batch of "Lost Collection" titles. Points to Lionsgate, however, for approaching their subject matter with a good dose of humor -- even if we're not exactly thrilled with all these fullscreen transfers. So here, submitted for your approval, are the eight titles in LG's new "Lost Collection." Whether or not the flicks deserve to remain "lost" is entirely up to you.

Hiding Out (1987) -- Jon Cryer, Annabeth Gish, and Keith Coogan star in this insipid "comedy" about a youthful stockbroker who hides out from assassins ... in a high school. I have a weird sort of hate for this movie. (Widescreen, trivia track, trailer)

Homer & Eddie (1989) -- One of those wistful dramedies in which a mentally handicapped person becomes friends with an aggressively antisocial person. In this case, the former is Jim Belushi and the latter is Whoopi Goldberg. (Widescreen, trivia track)

Irreconcilable Differences (1984) -- Co-written by a young Nancy Myers (ahem), this one stars Drew Barrymore as a little girl who wants to divorce her parents, Ryan O'Neal and Shelley Long. Keep your eyes peeled for a young Sharon Stone. Or don't. (Fullscreen, trivia track)