While the big-screen adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera could not, unfortunately, live up to the text's expectations, the famous writer is getting another shot. This time, however, it's an old screenplay. The Guardian reports that Mexican actor and producer Rodolfo de Anda says that he has picked up the rights to a screenplay written by the author over 40 years ago.

Titled Frontera, the script follows "an ageing pistolero and his much younger partner." De Anda says that he heard about the screenplay years ago, but assumed that it was written by Alcoriza. When he bought the rights "about a month ago, I discovered the surprise that the story was not in fact by Alcoriza, but by Gabriel García Márquez." "Nobody knew it existed, and the most surprising thing is that it is a Western." De Anda says he will take on the role of the older partner, and is, not surprisingly, thinking of casting one of the two Y tu mamá también stars -- Gael García Bernal or Diego Luna -- as the young sidekick.

It's not an adaptation of a translation, so hopefully this will fare better than the last Gabriel offering. But which of the two young stars would you pick for the feature -- Gael or Diego?

We have only a month and a half until Mike Newell brings Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera to the big screen on November 16. Between a script from The Piano scribe Ronald Harwood, and a cast that includes Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Benjamin Bratt, Liev Schreiber, and John Leguizamo, the picture should be well-worth the admission price. Last month, Erik Davis unveiled the wet rose one sheet for the film, that included a naked, lounging woman and a strategically-placed rose petal. Now, following the new trend of seeing film openings before the release date, the title sequence for the film has been put on Submarine Channel. This time around, however, there's no spoilers or plot, just lots of hand-made, moving art.

The title sequence was created by Paul Donnellon of VooDooDog, and it consists of a bunch of bright flowers that have the feel of a moving oil painting. He says: "The idea was to give a feeling of the colors and atmosphere of South America for the audience. The animation was a bit painstaking to produce as each frame of the beautifully rendered flowers had to move in a different way, rather than some mechanical animation." While they look like some simple flowers and ivy, the team studied time lapse footage and went for painting-like foliage with an accurate moving feel. Unfortunately, the moving art is all too brief before the film heads into still picture of flowers with the names of those involved in the production. If funky art title sequences are up your alley, the site also includes bits from projects like Lemony Snicket and The Starter Wife.

[via Movie City Indie]

In the last ten years or so, the popularity of Gabriel García Márquez's work has increased exponentially. Oprah made him a sensation with her book club, but One Hundred Years of Solitude isn't his only buzzing tale. Love in the Time of Cholera has gotten its fair share of media attention as well -- most notably in two John Cusack movies. In Serendipity, he had to find the novel to get Kate Beckinsale's number, and in High Fidelity, Rob Gordon says that he understands the book (along with The Unbearable Lightness of Being) and says: "They're about girls. Right?" Just a week ago, Erik Davis shared the film adaptation's one sheet, and now The Hollywood Reporter has posted that it will get its world premiere during the Rio International Film Festival -- one of Latin America's biggest fests.

You still have a little bit of time to get in on the action, that is, if you have a schedule where spur-of-the-moment fest trips can be fit in. Rio runs from September 20-October 4, and the film is slated to close the fest. In case you're not familiar with the story -- it's a late 19th and early 20th century love triangle between Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem) and Doctor Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt), which spans 50 years in Colombia.* Sweetening the screening, director Mike Newell, Bardem, and some of the film's producers will be there on closing night. I can only hope this film does well and brings some of García Márquez's lesser-known works to light. I'd love to see what cinema could do with his non-fiction, first-person recreation -- The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor. We'll find out soon enough -- the movie opens on November 16.

*Thanks to Lauren for the catch!

New Line was nice enough to provide Cinematical with the exclusive one-sheet for Love in the Time of Cholera (click on the poster for a larger version), based on Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez's novel of the same name. Adapted for the screen by Oscar winner Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and directed by Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), Love in the Time of Cholera tells the tale of two lovers, Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem) and Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), one more obsessed than the other, who part ways at an early age to live two very different lives. The film then tracks each over the years (we're talking late 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century), while Fermina settles down with a doctor (Benjamin Bratt) her father forces her to wed and Florentino engages in 622 affairs (not kidding about that) in an attempt to mask the pain he feels due to the one that got away. Also starring in this sure-to-be-an-Oscar-contender are Liev Schreiber, John Leguizamo, the very lovely (and talented) Catalina Sandino Moreno and Hector Elizondo. Love in the Time of Cholera (which also happens to be one of my favorite titles of all time for a number of reasons -- love is but a disease, after all) arrives in theaters on November 16.

He may not be a fan of the United States government, but Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is apparently a fan of American movie stars. The radical leader, along with the Venezuelan congress and the new government-funded studio Villa del Cine, brought in Lethal Weapon star Danny Glover to direct his biopic on Toussaint Louverture, the Latin American icon who led the 1791 Haitian slave revolt, which kicked off the former French colony's revolution and subsequent independence. Glover actually announced the project at Cannes last year, but at that time he was planning to shoot in South Africa. Now that Chávez has become involved, Glover is receiving a budget of about $18 million, co-financed by Venezuela and Argentina, and the production has moved to Caracas. The film should be a monumental boost for Venezuelan cinema, which has finally been growing in notice thanks to 2005's Secuestro Express.

Glover was already a supporter of Chávez before this new arrangement and he seems excited about the opportunity. The actor and political activist feels the story of Toussaint, which is what his film will be titled, deserves to be seen by Americans. The Haitian revolution is a part of history the U.S. has been ignorant of for 200 years, mainly because at the time the Caribbean nation's independence frightened American politicians worried about similar action occurring with slaves in the States. Plenty of American viewers should be intrigued by the film, which boasts one of the most impressive casts of black actors I've ever seen: Don Cheadle, who will play the title character; Angela Bassett, who will play his wife; Chiwetel Ejiofor; Mos Def; Isaac De Bankolé; and according to the original report, though not listed on IMDb, Wesley Snipes.

It's taken several years, but it looks like Mike Newell's screen version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic, Love in the Time of Cholera, is finally coming together. Back in February, New Line had screenwriter Ronald Harwood hard at work on the script, and quickly signed Javier Bardem to star as "Florentino Ariza, more antihero than hero, a mock Don Juan with an undertaker's demeanor, at once pathetic, grotesque and endearing." With that fantastic casting move under its belt, the studio went mostly quiet for a while (Benjamin Bratt and Giovanna Mezzogiorno were both brought on board during that time), presumably working on the boring parts of pre-production that the trades don't report.

Now, though, the casting department is back at work, and John Leguizamo (YAY!), Hector Elizondo and Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro have all signed the dotted line and agreed to take part in the film; production kicks off in a couple weeks in locations from England to Columbia Colombia, and the movie is due out some time next year.

Edit: ARG. The country name has been corrected, sorry. Some day we will get it right the first time.

New Line acquired the rights to Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera about a year and a half ago, and their adaptation is already getting underway. The screenplay is being written by Ronald Harwood, who gave us both Being Julia and The Pianist, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire helmer Mike Newell is set to direct. Boy, do they seem like an odd pair.

The novel is a sprawling story of 50 years of love (and that's a pathetically simplistic summary) told mostly in flashback. The male half of the love story is "Florentino Ariza, more antihero than hero, a mock Don Juan with an undertaker's demeanor, at once pathetic, grotesque and endearing," and New Line have signed the wonderful Javier Bardem to play the role. While it's way too early to know how this is going to turn out, the fact that New Line cast an actor with incredible skill and an interesting face rather than some mainstream Hollywood flavor of the month like, say, Orlando Bloom or Colin Farrell, is both a huge relief and a very good sign.

[via Dark Horizons]