Say it ain't so! I want this to be nothing more than hyperbole and ugly rumor mongering. But let's look at it anyway: According to Flicks.Co.NZ, there are troubling stories surrounding the set of Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones.
The first is a bit of a yawner. Reportedly, Jackson is having creative differences with his art director over the best way to portray Heaven -- a pretty key location in the book, if you remember. Things even reached a point where the production had to take a break as the disagreement was sorted out, according to reports.
But then came word (today) from The Bad and Ugly that the film has now been delayed, and instead of a March 13, 2009 release date, it's been pushed to Fall, 2009. No word on whether this was due to production issues or if they'd rather hold the film for a potential Oscar push.
Additionally, Susan Sarandon seemed like she was pretty iffy on the film and especially her performance while speaking to press at the London premiere of Speed Racer: "I play the comic relief, an alcoholic grandmother – my first grandma – but she doesn't really seem like a real grandmother because she has a lot of hair and jewelery and nails and liquor. I don't think I ever talk without a cigarette and a drink in my hand. Peter Jackson is really a nice guy and very interesting. It was really a very different way of working. We had a good time, I'm really curious to see what it's like because he kept pushing me to be more and more extreme and sometimes that's when you make your big mistakes so I'm not sure how it will come off -- it will be interesting to see it from the point of view of the audience."
We get action-adventure thrillers all the time, and sometimes, they even dip back into history a little bit. But how often do they go really back? I'm not talking BC-times, but rather, to the Renaissance era? Variety reports that Phoenix Pictures has nabbed a spec script by Javier Rodriguez called The Heretic, which they are fast-tracking for our eager, moviegoer eyes.
The film focuses on "a fallen priest-turned-hitman sent by a rogue archbishop to assassinate Martin Luther, only to discover that not everyone is telling the truth." What? Old religious officials not telling the truth? That's crazy talk. I don't know why, but something about religious hitmen and rogue archbishops is sounding damn irresistible to me. I keep thinking of films like Grosse Pointe Blank, Pulp Fiction, and Leon, but in Renaissance garb and surrounded by crosses. And just how do you be a hitman way back then? It's not like you just sit in the shadows with a fancy gun and wait for your target to appear. They'd have to be more tricky -- maybe Russian-like with poison or something.
Phoenix is looking to start production by the first quarter, so we should get more news on the project relatively soon. In the meantime, who would you cast in a film like this? We all know the usual action-thriller stars, but which of them could pull off the hitman aspect, the religious flavor, and the historical, Renaissance context?
This is one movie I keep forgetting is actually being made. Ron Howard's adaptation of Angels and Demonshas been simmering away, sending out casting calls, not quite reaching any level of heady anticipation. Maybe this news will do it. Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer has landed the part of Vittoria Vetra, the daughter of a CERN physicist who is embarked on a journey to uncover the truth behind her father's murder. Of course, Robert Langdon (still played by Tom Hanks) accompanies her, and they must foil a terrorist plot in the process.
The studio has yet to confirm. Naomi Watts was reportedly the last to be in talks for the role. No other parts have been cast.
I'm not an avid reader of Dan Brown, so I must ask: is the plot of Angels and Demons really that similar to The DaVinci Code? Is it really that a pretty foreign girl loses a member of her paterfamilias, and Robert Langdon must help her? Is it via the works of coded works of Michaelangelo? Is the Catholic Church evilly involved? I am guessing it is, since one of the characters in need of an actor is an aide to the Pope. Fill me in, because I will never read the book.
Angels and Demons is still set for release May 15th, 2009.
Well, uh, here's something I wasn't expecting to read today, though I might have been less blindsided had I seen this Cinematical post from a year ago. Paul Verhoeven -- he of Robocop, Showgirls, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers (and Black Book, yes, but the contrast's not as much fun) -- is... publishing a biography of Jesus! Co-written by Rob Van Scheers (who also wrote... a biography of Paul Verhoeven!), the book is reportedly based on 20 years of research by the director, and looks to be a historical rather than a Biblical account of Jesus's life. The book will make some controversial claims, such as that Jesus was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her, and that he was not in fact betrayed by Judas Iscariot.
Awesome. With all deference to Verhoeven, I'm not sure how much he can possibly have to contribute to such a well-trodden subject. A note at the end of the Hollywood Reporter story may go a long way toward explaining the existence of the book: Verhoeven has long aspired to make a historically-grounded movie about Jesus, and hopes this book will generate interest in such a project. The book comes out in September, and I, uh... can't wait to read it? Maybe I can write a review, at least if it's released in English as well as Dutch.
As far as we know, when he's not researching Jesus, Verhoeven is still in pre-production for The Thomas Crown Affair 2.
Maybe you remember him from Earth 2 all those years ago, or more recently in Prison Break. Or, perhaps you spotted him in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Whatever the project, Rockmond Dunbar has been keeping busy over the years, and now The Hollywood Reporter posts that he's gearing up for his next directorial gig -- an indie drama called Pastor Brown that was written by Rhonda Freeman-Baraka.
The film, which is currently in production in Atlanta, is being described as a "twist on the prodigal son story." Jesse Brown (Salli Richardson Whitfield) is the daughter of a pastor who has charted her own course to get away from her religious roots by becoming an exotic dancer. But then she gives that life up and returns home "to make amends with her family and teen son and eventually lead her father's parish, becoming Pastor Brown." She not only finds religion, but a little love in a Muslim man named Amir (who will be played by Dunbar). It sound more like a comedy than a drama, but I guess it can be serious as long as the Pastor doesn't give a lot of advice that starts with: "When I was an exotic dancer..."
Up front, let me confess an error I made regarding Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the new documentary about the Intelligent Design movement. In Friday's edition of "The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar," I said the movie was "a documentary about how people who believe in evolution are big meanies who don't understand why 'Intelligent Design' (i.e., that God made everything) should be taught in science classes, too." This was a mistaken summary of what Intelligent Design is.
Having now watched the film -- which is terrible, filled with specious reasoning, false dichotomies, and self-contradiction -- I find that I did learn a thing or two. I had assumed that Creationism and Intelligent Design were the same thing. They are not. Creationism is the belief that God created the Earth more or less the way it's described in Genesis. Intelligent Design merely holds that certain things about life on this planet are best explained by something supernatural. Where there are gaps in scientific knowledge, ID fills 'em in.
There is plenty of overlap between Creationism and ID, of course, and I guess you could say all Creationists are also ID-ists. But you can certainly believe in ID without believing God made the world in six days. The film says that this misunderstanding is why so many scientists are so virulently anti-ID -- because they think it's Creationism, which truly doesn't have much scientific evidence in its favor.
The picture above takes place toward the very end of the scene they showed us yesterday at New York Comic Con, and it comes toward the end of a battle between armed forces and the Hulk. This scene is also predominantly featured in the new trailer which will play before Iron Man in about two weeks. Essentially, the military have Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) on the run. They chase him into this glass tunnel, lock both entrances on either side and launch two smoke-type bombs into the area. Outside, jeeps and a slew of troops gather awaiting Banner's transformation. They want this monster and they want him bad.
Suddenly, as the smoke builds up, we see Banner press his hands against the glass -- his eyes go green, his face fighting the beast within. Smoke fills the screen; it's quiet. Everyone waits. Then ... BOOM! -- the Hulk crashes out of the glass onto this huge field, running for his life. Several jeeps give chase, guns firing from every corner of the screen -- bullets ripping into Hulk's skin; he bumps one jeep and the vehicle rolls over. He gets to another one, picks it up and proceeds to smash it until the thing is in a million pieces. Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), who at this point has been given a few injections of that super serum, heads out to where Hulk is. Hulk tries to beat down Blonsky, but the latter has an extra bounce in his step. For some reason, he's not like the others -- he can move pretty fast. After a brief cat and mouse, the two approach each other (seen above). Blonsky says, "Is that all you got?" Hulk looks down, winds his leg back and goes to deliver a giant kick to Blonsky's stomach ... and we ... cut to black.
When you think of TV preachers, you probably first think of the scandal-plagued hypocrites. Guys like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson gave televangelism a bad name, and countless Christians have been disillusioned by their shenanigans. So it's nice to see that someone's making a biopic about the guy who gave televangelism a good name in the first place: the Rev. Billy Graham.
Graham, who will turn 90 this year, managed to avoid controversy almost entirely throughout his long ministry -- he achieved this by actually being a decent guy -- and he earned the respect of millions of people of all faiths. Now comes word that an independent film called Billy: The Early Years is in the works, with Armie Hammer (Batman in the upcoming Justice League flick) playing the preacher as a young man. Lindsay Wagner and Martin Landau (who is evidently still alive) are also in the cast.
Variety reports that Paul Bettany's Legion has just added a whole crowd of actors, including the star power of Dennis Quaid, Kate Walsh, and Tyrese Gibson. They will be headlining a cast that includes Jon Tenney, Charles S. Dutton, Lucas Black, Adrianne Palicki, Kevin Durand and Willa Holland. They've signed on just in time, as the movie is about to start shooting in New Mexico.
Legion is a thriller that stars Bettany as the archangel Michael, who is all that stands between mankind and an apocalypse after God has lost faith in humanity. But the Almighty apparently hasn't lost all hope -- a child is on the way who is the second coming of Christ, and a group of strangers who recognize the fact must band together to save it. It is director Scott Stewart's first feature film, from a script he co-wrote with Peter Schink.
I am quite intrigued by the movie, as I am a sucker for any kind of Biblical thriller. The problem is that they are almost always terrible. (Though I will always give props to The Prophecy for proving that the Devil does, in fact, wear a mullet.) The combination of Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid gives me some hope though, since they generally pick good scripts. We'll see if this is one of them.
Back in February, I briefly mentioned through a casting bite that Alejandro Amenabar was gearing up for his next film, and had cast Rachel Weisz and Homayoun Ershadi from The Kite Runner. Now Variety has fleshed out the whole project. It's called Agora, the filmmaker wrote it with Mateo Gil, and it will be Amenabar's second English-language feature, after The Others.
Rachel Weisz and Max Minghella (Art School Confidential) star in the film, which takes place in Ancient Egypt. More specifically, Weisz will play the astrologer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, in Roman Egypt during the fourth century. "Trapped in the Library of Alexandria as religious riots flare on the city's streets, Hypatia battles to save the collected wisdom of the ancient world. Meanwhile, her slave Davus (Minghella) is torn between his love for his mistress and the freedom he could attain by joining the rising tide of Christianity." Aside from Ershadi, Oscar Isaac, Ashraf Barhom, Michael Lonsdale, and Rupert Evans have roles.
Amenabar plans to use a "hyper-realist approach" to bring Alexandria to life, and says: "We want the audience to see, feel and smell a remote civilization as if it were as real as the present day." To me, it definitely sounds worth is, and is certainly better than Weisz doing a million Mummy sequels. Are you ready to get dirty in Ancient Egypt?
If you'd like your Jesus Camp with a little less grim reality, the latest dark comedy from Whitewater Films might be right up your alley. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the company will be bringing us a new dark comedy called Zapper. Rick Rosenthal, who helmed Halloween II as well as eps of Buffy and Smallville, will direct the feature, from a script by Jumanji scribe Jim Strain.
The comedy "takes a satirical look at a young preacher who becomes a local sensation after appearing to communicate with the dead through a TV remote control." I don't get it. Does he have some sort of remote with sound? Does he hit buttons and say that the remote is secretly talking to him? Or, can he hit a button and make dead people appear on the television? THAT could be cool. Those television psychics should look into that; it would certainly legitimize their business. Poor kid -- the film is also said to be about his rise and fall, so something fishy is going on here.
They're currently casting the dark comedy, and we should have more word soon.
Ordinary movie producers get to shag top-drawer hotties, shine their shoes with tongues of fans, and get shopping carts loads of honorary awards when they're too old to be players anymore. But Christian movie producers get all of the above, plus a free pass to heaven when they croak. Thanks to Richard Mavers for the tip on the news that the writers of Turn Me On Deadman are auctioning the rights to their script on eBay. The hope is that someone will buy it and produce it. Writer Nathyn Brendan Masters notes: "While this wouldn't take a huge amount of money to produce there would be a bit more involved to do it as well as we would like. If you or someone you know has been looking for this type of project then please feel free to place a bid."
Bidding starts at a measly dollar. We learn that the story is of haunted backward-masking on a popular CD, which destroys the life of a student who tampered with the occult. The talents involved previously did the evil Ouija board flick The Wages of Sin (above). "Decent!" raves DVDverdict.com about this earlier effort, but a less glowing review is here at moviecynics.com. We get a lot of mainstream Christian horror in The Reaping and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (here's an interview with Emily Rose's director Scott Derrickson, claiming that horror is the perfect venue for the Christian evangelical.) Not only is this the first time we've seen a script-bidding auction on eBay, it's the first time we've heard that there's a direct horror market for religious viewers.
It's been a number of years since Roman Polanski was going to bring Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and the Margarita to the big screen. (Although there was a miniseries a few years ago.) Now The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the novel is getting its next shot with producer Scott Steindorf and Stone Village Pictures -- the same company that is bringing us Gabriel Garcia Marquez's famous work -- Love in the Time of Cholera. Stone Village optioned the film in a low to mid six-figure against low-seven deal, and are on the search for someone to adapt the work from an uncensored manuscript.
The story (with the 12% that was removed previously) has got all the bits for a good adaptation, and has been one I've been itching to read. Taking place in Moscow before the second World War, the novel focuses on the devil popping up on Earth as one Professor Woland and having his fun with the literary world in Moscow. His adventures and predictions land many in the insane asylum, which is where the devil is headed to see The Master, who wrote a book about Pontius Pilate, and "was driven mad by rejection." Meanwhile, his love, Margarita, longs to be reunited with him.
In September, the man behind the movie version of The Secret, Drew Heriot, picked up his feature debut -- the cinematic adaptation of The Aquarian Gospel. I guess he's been really rocking the law of attraction! While Jesus has not been cast yet, Reuters reports that Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat (The Guru and The Myth) has signed on to abstain from worldly pleasure and play an ascetic and friend of Jesus.
According to Bollywood Buzz, she'll play Saraswati -- a loyal friend of Jesus that he bonds with during his travels in India. She was Heriot's first choice for the role, and he says: "After viewing her work, we then saw interviews of her and were extremely impressed by her intelligence and her background." Sherawat, meanwhile, says she was drawn to the challenge of the role, and notes: "I find that in most mythological and spiritual film stories, women seem to be lacking any true wisdom or a sense of humor." And, it's not every day that a beautiful woman takes on a role that is completely removed from sexuality.
The film is slated for release next year, so I imagine we'll have more casting news soon, like who will play the big JC.
We might have well-meaning prophets roaming the earth in the form of Jonny Lee Miller on television, but things are about to get meaner on the big screen as God gets ticked off with Earth. I imagine this will be nothing like Two of a Kind, where John Travolta and Olivia Newton John had to fall in love for God to not wipe out the human race. Instead, there's thrills, an archangel, and the arid desert.
Variety reports that Paul Bettany has signed on to star in an upcoming thriller called Legion. From a script by Scott Stewart and Peter Schink, which Stewart will direct, the film focuses on "what happens when God loses faith in humanity and sends his legion of angels to wipe out the human race for the second time. Mankind's only hope lies in a group of misfits holed up in a diner in the desert who are aided by the archangel Michael (Bettany)." Now, I get how humans can save the day against monsters and the like, but just how do you fight God? I can only imagine that these guys will have to prove their worth to save the day, because it's not like you can point a bazooka at the sky and put the big Dude in his place.
So, apparently Stewart's script involvement was a rewrite, and Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper says: "I was so impressed with his rewrite that I took the meeting with him, and his visual presentation closed the deal. I'm sure he had the same impact on Paul." Sounds...impactful. Production begins next month in New Mexico, so I imagine we'll hear about more cast soon, and then get to see this impact for ourselves soon enough.
Say it ain't so! I want this to be nothing more than hyperbole and ugly rumor mongering. But let's look at it anyway: According to Flicks.Co.NZ, there are troubling stories surrounding the set of Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. 
We get action-adventure thrillers all the time, and sometimes, they even dip back into history a little bit. But how often do they go really back? I'm not talking BC-times, but rather, to the Renaissance era? 
This is one movie I keep forgetting is actually being made. 
Well, uh, here's something I wasn't expecting to read today, though I might have been less blindsided had I seen 
Maybe you remember him from Earth 2 all those years ago, or more recently in Prison Break. Or, perhaps you spotted him in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Whatever the project, 
Up front, let me confess an error I made regarding 
When you think of TV preachers, you probably first think of the scandal-plagued hypocrites. Guys like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson gave televangelism a bad name, and countless Christians have been disillusioned by their shenanigans. So it's nice to see that someone's making a biopic about the guy who gave televangelism a good name in the first place: the Rev. Billy Graham. 
Back in February, 
If you'd like your 
Ordinary movie producers get to shag top-drawer hotties, shine their shoes with tongues of fans, and get shopping carts loads of honorary awards when they're too old to be players anymore. But Christian movie producers get all of the above, plus a free pass to heaven when they croak. Thanks to Richard Mavers for the tip on the news that the writers of Turn Me On Deadman are 
It's been a number of years since Roman Polanski was going to bring Mikhail Bulgakov's 
In September, the man behind the movie version of The Secret, Drew Heriot, picked up 
We might have well-meaning prophets roaming the earth in the form of Jonny Lee Miller on television, but things are about to get meaner on the big screen as God gets ticked off with Earth. I imagine this will be nothing like Two of a Kind, where John Travolta and Olivia Newton John had to fall in love for God to not wipe out the human race. Instead, there's thrills, an archangel, and the arid desert.
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Full 'G.I. Joe' Cast Photos!
