The last time I saw my awesome amigo Nacho Vigalondo, it was at a Sundance party during which he was A) very thrilled to have his film play the festival, B) mega-elated that writer/producer Steven Zaillian would be involved in the English-language remake of his film (Timecrimes), and C) seriously drunk and hanging out with an overworked karaoke machine. When I pressed him for additional details, he said something to the effect of "I don't know yet, but .... Steve SALE-IAN, man! He wrote Bobby Fischer and Gangs of New York, man..." To which I responded, "Yeah, dude. Damn good writer. Plus Schindler's List, A Civil Action, American Gangster, and the awesome Falcon and the Snowman!"

The drunken Spaniard's eyes went absolutely wide: "Steve SALE-IAN is remaking my movieeeee!" He was like a little kid on Christmas morning, I swear. It was an awesomely sweet thing to see. But since we weren't really sure about Mr. Zaillian's specific attachment to the remake, this fresh news is also pretty exciting. Wouldn't it be cool if the Timecrimes remake had a Steve Zaillian screenplay and a director named ... David Cronenberg?? (I've seen Timecrimes more than once, and I think Mr. Cronenberg would be a perrrrrrrrfect fit for this time-travel / serial killer material.)

The United Artists re-do is still in the very early stages, so we could see a lot of personnel changes before the American version of Timecrimes hits the scene -- but given how positive the reaction has been among festival audiences, flick-buyers, and remake makers, we might just see it a little sooner than later. In the meantime, keep an eye out for the original film, which is a favorite among the Magnolia gang, and should be getting a release some time later this year.

Gracias: Shock and Blogdecine

That whole Juno/Genie thing isn't the only film news making waves in Canada, and I must say -- this round of news is worse. The Globe and Mail reports that the government is looking to increase restrictions on film tax credits to help cut graphic sex and violence, while an evangelist takes credit for the whole crackdown. "Canadian Heritage officials confirmed yesterday they will be 'expanding slightly' the criteria used for denying tax credits to include grounds such as gratuitous violence, significant sexual content that lacks an educational purpose, or denigration of an identifiable group. More details are promised next week." Well, that's certainly vague, worrisome, and really ... BS. But why should you care?

Think about the work created by the likes of David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, and the other filmmakers who have made international names for themselves with their cinematic art -- fare which does tap into the flames the government is looking to extinguish. Cronenberg is dead-on when he says: "The irony is that it is the Canadian films that have given us an international reputation [that] would be most at risk because they are the edgy, relatively low-budget films made by people like me and others that will be targeted by this panel." It already looks like Martin Gero's Young People F*cking, which I reviewed at TIFF, is going to be hit by these changes. Hell, it's title is one of the raciest things about it! It's about sex, but it's not some Shortbus sexfest.

No huge surprises in last weekend's box office returns. Jodie Foster's new thriller took the lead with slithery CGI serpents bringing up the rear at number five. Superbad is definitely getting some McLovin' after being in the top five for five weeks now. Here are the numbers from last weekend:

The Brave One: $13.4 million
3:10 to Yuma: $8.9 million
Mr. Woodcock: $8.7 million
Superbad: $5.1 million
Dragon Wars: $5 million

This weekend we've got three new releases, plus two more flicks going into wider release. Check it out:

Good Luck Chuck
What's It All About: Dane Cook plays a man cursed. Every woman he has ever slept with has found true love with the next person they meet after dumping him. Now that he's in love with a woman played by Jessica Alba he has to find a way to break the curse.
Why It Might Do Well: Judging from the trailer, Ms. Alba spends at least part of the film in her underwear. Not a bad thing.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The plot synopsis and all the pratfalls in the trailer remind me way too much of Three's Company.
Number of Theaters: 2,500
Prediction: $10 million

Resident Evil: Extinction
What's It All About: Milla Jovovich returns as Alice, kicking zombie butt in the Nevada desert and taking on the evil Umbrella Corporation in this third installment of the video game-based franchise.
Why It Might Do Well: Halloween's success at the box office showed that people are up for a good scare, and for my money I'll take a zombie flick over a slasher movie any day of the week. I'm even willing to overlook my lukewarm feelings about Resident Evil: Apocalypse.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The list of crappy movies based on video games is a long and sad one.
Number of Theaters: 2,700
Prediction: $22 million

Sydney White
What's It All About: Amanda Bynes stars in this modern take on Snow White, playing a college student who after being rejected by the sorority she hoped to join is taken in by seven dorks.
Why It Might Do Well: Bynes has a great sense of comedic timing. If you thought The Amanda Show was just for kids, you might be surprised at how intelligent the humor was.
Why It Might Not Do Well: It's basically a teen comedy, and Superbad is a tough act to follow.
Number of Theaters: 1,900
Prediction: $7 million

And, although these next two opened last weekend, they're both spreading out into a greater number of theaters:

Across the Universe
What's It All About: A musical love story that takes place in the turbulent 1960s set to the music of The Beatles.
Why It MIght Do Well: It looks downright trippy, and it's got Beatles tunes. What's not to love?
Why It Might Not Do Well: It's not a huge release so this won't make the top five.
Number of Theaters: 400
Prediction: $2.5 million

Eastern Promises
What's It All About: David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen, the director and star of A History of Violence, re-team for this thriller. Naomi Watts plays a London midwife who comes into possession of a diary that could be dangerous for Russian mobsters.
Why It MIght Do Well: After their last collaboration, I'm dying to see what Mortensen and Cronenberg come up with.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Oh, don't be so negative.
Number of Theaters: 1,325
Prediction: $8 million


Here's how I'm betting things will go this coming weekend:
1. Resident Evil: Extinction
2. Good Luck Chuck
3. The Brave One
4. Eastern Promises
5. Sydney White

And here's how our little competition went last week:
1. Josh: 13
2. Matt: 11
2. Anna07: 11
2. Porcalina: 11
3. Ness265: 9
3. drklrdbill: 9
4. Lee: 8
4. Max: 8
4. Brad: 8
5. Ray: 7
6. peter: 6
7. ABIRD0006: 4
7. MikeJM79: 4

Here's how the competition works:
Please post your prediction in the comments section below before 5:00PM on Saturday. One point for every top five movie correctly named, two points for every correct placement, and one extra point for the top movie.

Another gory mafia story from David Cronenberg, this time set not in America's heartland but in the Russian immigrant community of London. Eastern Promises stars Viggo Mortensen as a limo driver and hired muscle for the mob whose life gets very complicated when a young woman is raped and murdered, but not before she leaves behind some crucial evidence that could tie the crime to the mob -- her newborn baby. She also leaves behind a diary, which falls into the hands of a London midwife, played by Naomi Watts. Whereas A History of Violence had a strong forward momentum and a relatively streamlined story, Eastern Promises is sprawling, with more characters to juggle, crosses and double-crosses to keep straight and the kind of attention to detail -- there's a whole Russian mafia 'making' ceremony, for example -- that some will find interesting and others will find tedious. It's a dense, tightly-wound and plotty picture that stops here and there for a bit of blood-curdling violence that will have undoubtedly some audience members on the verge of throwing up.

The film's cast does a uniformly fine job, with Viggo Mortensen never letting his accent slip. Even though we know intellectually that he's putting it on, we can still persuade ourselves to buy him as a Russian import from a tougher, more heartless culture where being the least-talkative person in the room is always some kind of sign of good sense. I especially liked his habit of plunking down his cigarettes wherever he finishes them, which says more about his underlying character than a lot of the dialogue he's given. Among the rest of the cast, Vincent Cassel is a standout as Kirill, the boss's son who thinks he can slap around anyone he wants with impunity and expects to inherit his father's empire. Cassel has been turning in good performances for years and doesn't get nearly as much credit as he deserves, but hopefully more roles in high-profile films like this one will fix that. As for Naomi Watts, she has a more or less thankless role as the straight woman reacting to events around her and trying to protect the baby.

It might just be me, but Viggo Mortensen always struck me as the kind of actor who was just better suited for dark and heavy material. I'm sure he's nowhere near that tortured in his day-to-day life, but for me, the man is built for drama. MTV Movies Blog spoke with the actor about his latest collaboration with Canadian director David Cronenberg, Eastern Promises, (you can catch James' TIFF interview with the director here) and Mortensen clued them in to what his next role might be. He tells MTV that he's close to signing to star in the film version of the Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. According to the actor, "They're going to make a movie of that and the people making [it] have expressed interest [in me]. Visually, it's going to be a very beautiful movie. It's a very good story". News of the adaptation surfaced last November, when Nick Wechsler purchased the rights to the novel and hired The Proposition's John Hillcoat to presumably direct.

The novel centers on a father and son who are survivors of a "doomsday" scenario, traveling towards the coast while battling other survivors who have turned cannibal. Released in 2006, the book was an Oprah book club selection (but try not to hold that against it) and spent some time on the best-seller list. Back in April Joe Penhall was hired to adapt the book, which will the be the latest in a series of adaptations of the authors work with The Coen's No Country for Old Men, followed by Ridley Scott's Blood Meridian in 2009. Having read the book, I can speak from experience that it's a harrowing story that does a spectacular job of showing you the nobility and the depravity we are all capable of in the name of survival. Mortensen is still working on the period drama Good, and will also appear in the Ed Harris Western drama, Appaloosa. So while nothing is official, I would assume that if Mortensen is already spilling the beans to MTV, then it would seem all that's left to do is sign on the dotted line.

Somehow, and with a surprising minimum of fuss, David Cronenberg went from being Canadian cinema's most notorious bad boy to being one of its elder statesmen. Mention this to Cronenberg and he laughs. "I don't think I've changed at all." Cronenberg's latest, Eastern Promises, explores many of the same themes as his last film, A History of Violence -- it's a exploration of morality and memory, wrapped in the cut-and-thrust clothes of a crime thriller. A London midwife (Naomi Watts) delivers a child to a dying mother -- and in the search for the child's surviving family, begins translating her diary; Viggo Mortensen plays the thuggish driver and Russian emigre tasked with getting the diary back at all costs. Cinematical had the pleasure of speaking with Cronenberg on a pre-Toronto press stop in San Francisco about working with Viggo Mortensen again, London's bustling modern cityscape and why it's not so much that he's moved past making horror films than it is how the genre's fallen behind. You can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



You can listen to the interview by clicking here.

Before I start, I should probably come clean: I've never really been that big of fan of the work of David Cronenberg. Don't get me wrong, I respect what the man does, but his films just aren't my thing (with maybe one exception; A History of Violence). There are those famous pairings in movie history between directors and actors; Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon, Scorcese and DeNiro, and I think Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen could be another. So you can probably see why I'm curious to check out Mortensen and Cronenberg's latest film, Eastern Promises. It was just last month when Monika gave us the news of the trailer, and now ComingSoon.net has the first look at the poster (you can get a hi-res version if you are so inclined) and a new gallery of photos from the suspenseful drama.

Promises was written by Dirty Pretty Things scribe Steven Knight, who has just started work on Tony Scott's drama Emma's War. The story centers on a midwife (Naomi Watts), who "witnessed the death of a young girl in giving birth on Christmas Eve and decided to search for her family and identity. The search leads her into the core of dangers of the underground sex-trafficking business operated by the London's Russian crime community". Mortensen stars as Nikolai, a man with ties to the ruthless crime family. Mortensen has already started working on the WWII drama Good, before reuniting with History of Violence co-star Ed Harris in the Western Appaloosa. Promises is set to screen at the Toronto Film Festival this September, so keep an eye on our upcoming TIFF coverage for updates.

It's not surprising to find regional films at any film festival. There's no better way to display local talent, than to place it among the big players in the industry. Having seen a lot of Canadian and international film over the last few years here in Toronto, there has been some gems, and some okay films that were obviously included more for their location and actors than for their artistic merit. What comes to mind right off the bat is These Girls, the David Boreanaz comedy that worth a rental and a few chuckles, but seemed out of place a few years ago amongst its fellow films.

This year, well, there might still be some questionable fare at TIFF, but the big Canadian players are there as well. Two galas have been added to the film fest's lineup -- Denys Arcand's latest, Days of Darkness (or, The Age of Ignorance -- a title I like more), and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, which we've been covering for a while. Since we're already familiar with the latter, let's talk about the former. Arcand is a Québec filmmaker who scored an Oscar for his last film, The Barbarian Invasions. However, you might be more familiar with his English-language feature Stardom, which was out in 2000, and starred Jessica Pare and Dan Aykroyd. Beyond the galas, Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, which I mentioned here, is also on the lineup under "Special Presentations." If TIFF's plate of films continues to heap on the tasty morsels, which includes Allan Moyle's Weirdsville (yay!), I'm not sure how I'll find time to see them all.

Just the other day I gave a heads up to the Focus Features preview that included all of their big, upcoming releases -- one of which was David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, which began filming in November of last year. Now there's a trailer up for the film, which is going into wide release on September 14, instead of the previously-planned limited release. Using the Viggo yet again, Cronenberg's film is about a super-creepy Russian named Nikolai (Mortensen), who is a part of one of London's crime families. Life gets sticky when a midwife named Anna (Naomi Watts), uncovers some potential evidence against the family. The screenplay was written by Stephen Knight, writer of the wonderful Dirty Pretty Things, which got him an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Original Screenplay in 2002.

The trailer is all kinds of Russian mobster goodness and uber creepiness that starts with a dead body on a wet beach. After a little topless Viggo, the trailer gets into the meat of the story. Anna is dealing with a young girl who has died, and the girl's newborn baby. She finds a journal in the dead girl's handbag, which leads her down a risque Russian path. As per usual movie logic, she decides to get the journal translated and start her own investigation. It looks like Armin Mueller-Stahl is a head mob-guy, Vincent Cassel is a crazy mobster or henchman of some sort and Nickolai is the creepy-looking, but maybe honorable, henchman who gets tangled up with Anna. It's a good trailer, free of any of the typical gimmicks, and just a lot of mysterious shots and creepy music. I'm not the biggest Viggo fan, but this looks like a solid film and a great role for the actor.

Let this be an inspiration to all you aspiring screenwriters out there. 22 year-old newcomer Justin Marks has been selected by writer/director/producer David Goyer to write the screenplay for Goyer's proposed Green Arrow movie, Super Max. (Erik brought you news of the project here and here). Marks has never had a feature film produced before, but has recently been linked to Voltron. "I love finding new people out of nowhere. I love working with young talent, whether it be actors or writers," says Goyer. The script will center on DC Comics hero Green Arrow, who is wrongly placed in a maximum security prison for supervillains, including villains he previously put there. So now he doesn't only have to worry about taking showers and getting stabbed with toothbrushes, he's got laser-eyes and world domination schemes to contend with.

Goyer is probably best known for writing Batman Begins, and he also did some work on the upcoming sequel, The Dark Knight (he's not saying whether Two-Face will be one of the villains). Goyer does have some non-superhero projects in the works as well. He co-wrote the script for Doug Liman's upcoming Jumper, which will star Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson. He is overseeing the script for Here, There Be Dragons, an adaptation of James A. Owens' book, which imagines authors J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S Lewis, and Charles Williams taking a journey together. He is also working on a remake of David Cronenberg's mind-blowing (literally!) horror classic Scanners, which he is considering directing, as he did the "teen supernatural thriller" The Invisible, which will be in theaters next Friday.