Steven Spielberg »

Steven Spielberg is going to need a bigger boat -- a much, much bigger boat. He's leaving this shore, sailing away to 17th century Jamaica for one last adventure with the late Michael Crichton. USA Today reports that DreamWorks has bought the rights to Crichton's posthumous novel, Pirate Latitudes, and has hired screenwriter David Koepp to develop it into a film. Spielberg is producing, but plans on directing, though nothing has been scheduled until the script is completed.

While it's a bittersweet reunion, it's one that's sheer luck and coincidence according to DreamWorks' co-chair and CEO Stacey Snider. "Anything that Michael wrote, Steven would be keenly interested to read. But without Michael knowing it, or even me knowing it, it turns out Steven always wanted to direct his own pirate film." Not surprisingly, Spielberg already is coolly confident in Pirate Latitudes. "Michael wrote a real page-turner that already seems suited for the big screen. Michael and I have had almost two decades of solid collaborations. Whenever I made a film from a Michael Crichton book or screenplay, I knew I was in good hands. Michael felt the same, and we like to think he still does."

Pirate Latitudes doesn't hit store shelves until November 24, so plot details are relatively scarce. But this isn't going to be a tale of undead pirates and squid-faced Davey Jones like Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. Latitudes is a semi-historical tale of piracy that takes place in 1665. Its star is the dashing Captain Edward Hunter, who infiltrates the notorious Port Royal, and plans to raid a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure. Cue the cannons and swashbuckling, though it sounds as though Spielberg plans to load it up with lots of grimy, historical details.

That's right, Slappy. I'm a so-called Professional Film Critic, and I've never seen Schindler's List. Hell, I recently admitted -- publicly, no less -- that I've never seen Lawrence of Arabia, either. So I may as well go out on a limb and 'fess up to missing this one, too.

In both cases, my initial non-viewing was purely circumstantial. I just somehow never found myself watching these particular movies. In the case of Lawrence of Arabia, I'd certainly like to see it, but it's something like 43 hours long, so it rarely shows up on cable. Maybe someone will give me the DVD for Christmas or my birthday, and I'll take a few vacation days off to stare at Peter O'Toole's blue eyes. It could happen.

But Schindler's List? I can confidently say that I'm never going to watch it. As a cultural icon, I can appreciate its existence -- the film illuminated the horrors of the holocaust at a time when much of the world seemed happy to let it start fading into memory. It inspired programs that recorded the audio histories of survivors, and raised awareness of global genocide. For these things alone, it's a valuable piece of cinema.

But it's also a movie. Just a movie. One that I'll never watch.

Okay, so I might've just knocked Sandra Bullock for going after the Oscar gold, but here's The Lovely Bones, with a story I can get behind (Alice Sebold's best-selling tale of a young girl murdered and the aftermath she observes from the afterlife), a filmmaker I can get behind (Peter Jackson, scaling things back post-Lord of the Rings), an ensemble* I can get behind (Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, and the critically-cast Saoirse Ronan), and now a trailer I can get behind.

Reading the novel earlier this year, I was struck by the simplest moments that captures almost too precisely how grief can change loved ones most unexpectedly, and while it seems that Jackson has certainly created a visually luscious realm for Ronan's character to inhabit and has retained the thrust of a somewhat supernatural murder mystery, part of what won me over was how Sebold's mystery took years to unfold, as the whole family comes to terms with the closure (or lack thereof) in their own personal ways.

If Jackson and company can balance the sprawling drama with the inherent whodunit (whydunit?) come December 11th, then The Lovely Bones could be lingering above all of the other contenders this coming awards season.

*I must confess a certain gratitude that Wahlberg replaced Ryan Gosling here. It's enough of an age difference to matter, let alone general temperament.

In Hollywood, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. Pointing to Steven Spielberg (remaking Harvey), Rob Marshall (considering Pirates of the Caribbean 4), Ridley Scott (prepping an Alien prequel), and others, Anne Thompson suggests: "It's about fear of failure. In today's Hollywood, it takes guts to be original."

A longtime industry observer whose essential Thompson on Hollywood blog is now hosted by indieWIRE, Thompson acknowledges that "books, plays, tv shows, videogames, theme park rides, comics and graphic novels are easier to make than anything original ... But these are Hollywood's best and brightest, the directors who can usually get anything made. But not if the studios don't give them the money. These are what the studios consider to be the most commercial projects ... Every studio is desperately seeking franchises, tentpoles, remakes, reboots, prequels and sequels. Original is a dirty word. It means having to start something from scratch with no safety zone."

Yet even when a studio does make an original or two, it still must have the "clout to wrangle filmmakers into submission" when needed, as she writes in a separate post, analyzing recent troubles at Universal Pictures. She feels that if the execs had exercised greater control over Michael Mann (Public Enemies) and Judd Apatow (Funny People), their films would have been better. So we have a fear of financial failure, coupled with an inability to "wrangle filmmakers into submission." I say the biggest problem is that too few studio executives know what they're doing. Is there any way to "fix" Hollywood? Or are we stuck with what they give us?

Next stop for the world's greatest director: another remake. Steven Spielberg may or may not be the world's "greatest" director, but he is arguably the most influential filmmaker of his generation, so when he commits to make a movie, attention must be paid. Spielberg's next film will not be Matt Helm or any of the other ones that Elisabeth listed for us just a couple of days ago. No it will be ... Harvey, according to Variety. Yes, the one about the invisible rabbit.

The article describes the project as an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1944 play by Mary Chase, but we all know the story better from the 1950 film starring James Stewart and his constant companion, a very tall rabbit named Harvey that no one else can see. Casting and pre-production will begin immediately, and filming is expected to begin in early 2010. Harvey will be a co-production between 20th Century and Dreamworks, with 50% financing provided by Reliance, the new financial backer of Dreamworks. With that kind of schedule, it sounds like the film may be aiming for theaters in Christmas 2010, though no release date has been announced.

The original film was charming almost despite itself, in large measure due to James Stewart's amiable personality and a heartwarming message well-suited for the time. Novelist Jonathan Tropper (This is Where I Leave You) has written the new adaptation. My concern for the project is Spielberg's past tendency to drip too much sentiment on certain sequences (i.e. the ending of War of the Worlds), to the detriment of the material. The other concern: who is this generation's James Stewart? What do you think of the project, and who do you think could play the part?

The pre-production plate of Steven Spielberg grows ever larger, and as we wait for him to tackle that long delayed Abraham Lincoln biopic, he's cracking a fifth Indiana Jones,
looking for 39 Clues, pondering a Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, and annoying people with his Oldboy remake. Now he's lined up yet another possible directing gig as Variety reports that he might just go good and undercover with Matt Helm.

Now, you can't get any classier than Matt Helm. He's the leading man of Donald Hamilton's novels, and starred in 27 books of sheer badassery. A U.S. counter-agent, Helm didn't bother too much with the spying and espionage stuff, but just put himself into the right situations to kill people. He's grim and ruthless, with no time for love, and gives Bond and Bourne a run for their money. He's ripe for cinematic reinvention too, as Helm came to the big screen as a goofy, campy, wisecracking spy played by Dean Martin.

For elderly people like me, in our 30s, it's sobering to realize that on any given Friday night, the majority of people in an average American movie theater do not remember a time when the PG-13 rating did not exist. Yes, it was 25 years ago this summer that the Motion Picture Association of America added PG-13 to its roster of ratings, joining G, PG, R, and X (which in 1990 was replaced by NC-17). Perhaps you already know some of the trivia involved. 'Tis no urban legend: Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom really were the catalysts that brought about the new rating, and Steven Spielberg -- who produced one and directed the other -- was the mastermind.

"I created the problem and I also supplied the solution," Spielberg told the Associated Press in 2004. "I invented the rating." Temple of Doom was released May 23, 1984, and horrified parents immediately began complaining that the PG rating was too lax, citing the heart-ripping-out scene in particular. (I'd have cited Kate Capshaw's performance, but I guess that's more "irritating" than "horrifying.") Gremlins, with its microwaved monsters and general bloody mayhem, opened two weeks later, and the uproar grew louder. I remember my aunt, who took my cousin and me to see it (we were 9), saying she thought Stripe's melting at the end was too gross for a PG movie. We just thought it was awesome.

To parents, both films seemed too graphic to be rated PG. Logically, that meant they should have been rated R instead, as that was the only other choice. But they'd be kind of tame compared to other R-rated movies, especially considering the content was aimed at teenagers. Somehow neither rating seemed right.

It's late at night, you've had an adult beverage or two, you fumble with your keys, stumble into your living room, snap on a lamp, and wham! You're face to face with a great white shark, ready to eat you. The latest Jaws collectible isn't quite life-size -- the shark in Steven Spielberg's classic was described as a 25-footer by Quint (Robert Shaw) -- but it's big enough to throw a decent scare into the unsuspecting. According to a press release (available at Dread Central), the "Bruce NTT piece is a full-length nose-to-tail maquette and dwarfs Sideshow's latest rendition at a little over 3 feet."

This looks pretty awesome. Maybe I could just run around with it, scaring the neighborhood kids. Self-described "finfan" Mike Schultz says he's spent years researching the project; he's a Missouri 911 operator by night and an artisan by day ... No detail, tooth, or scar was ignored in the process. Spielberg's art director Joe Alves has also been brought into the project as a consultant to ensure its attention to detail." Schultz even details which original prop shark inspired his work: "This model represents the more detailed and slimmer 'platform Bruce,' post Shark City build, but pre-waterlogged/damaged Bruce depicted later in the film." Glad we got that cleared up!

The model is scheduled to be manufactured as a licensed, very limited edition collectible, to be available next summer to coincide with the 35th anniversary of the release of Jaws. More information will be available at Operation Orca. Schultz thinks this could be "the ultimate conversation piece." Personally, I think you're gonna need a bigger living room.

I guess this is the news that nobody was waiting for, but the threat of another Indiana Jones film has been inching closer to reality by the day, and now The Insider has received reports that Harrison Ford will be polishing off the fedora and the whip one last time. There have been rumblings about a fifth film ever since Crystal Skull first hit theaters, but now we've gone past rumblings and finally started to hear some details. Both Shia LaBeouf and producer Frank Marshall have recently confirmed that a film is in the works, and now, Insider's sources are saying that, "...filming will not start until next year, and it will not be released before 2011." Now, if you happen to be mathematically inclined, you might notice that Ford will be almost 70 by the time the film starts production, which would probably make for a slightly less 'active' Indy this time around.

I won't waste your time recounting all the ways that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a let-down for fans -- you know things are bad when an unflattering 'buzz-word' is created as a tribute. But maybe it's possible that a fifth film could correct some of those mistakes. Call me naive, but there is a very (and I mean, very) small part of me that thinks George Lucas and Steven Spielberg may have learned their lesson, and will go back to what made the original films so great. Maybe this time they could capitalize on the relationship between Indy and his son Mutt to try recapturing some of that Last Crusade vibe? But, I guess we can take comfort in the fact that no matter what those two come up with this time, it certainly couldn't get any worse than what was ... or can it?