Nothing really happened when Spike Lee was set to remake Stalag 17 for the stage last year, but now he's reportedly heading to Broadway again. However, this time it's in a cinematic capacity.

Entertainment Weekly's Hollywood Insider reported last week that Lee is grabbing his cameras and spending part of July filming the Tony-winning Passing Strange. Originally developed at the Sundance Institute's Theatre Lab, the musical focuses on "a young black musician who sets off on a journey to find 'the real' after being raised in a church-going middle-class Los Angeles neighborhood." I have a sneaking suspicion that the guy wouldn't have to go far. Anyway, Lee will film two performances with an audience, and a third without, and while no distribution agreements have been reached, there's talk that the recording will hit cable television. (Variety investigated the report and their sources say an announcement about the production will hit on Wednesday.)

While recorded theater is not the same as the in-person experience, I'm happy to see more of New York's theater making its way out to the country/world. Joseph Papp did a lot of it in the late seventies and early eighties, and you might have seen some of them, like A Midsummer Night's Dream with William Hurt and Christine Baranski, or the theatrical version of Pirates of Penzance, which came before the film and featured the same cast (Kevin Kline, Lindsa Ronstadt, etc).

I would like to punch Variety in the face for writing "preem" instead of "premiere," as in "Spike Lee's WWII pic Miracle at St. Anna will world preem at the Toronto Film Festival." Yeah, I know, they use this sort of cutesy Hollywood "inside baseball" terminology left and right -- I find all of it irritating, but preem? Seriously? That is nothing if not horrible. And it's all of three letters shorter than the whole word.

Anyway, the unnecessary slang obfuscates what I want to write about: Miracle at St. Anna will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September. The other big get Toronto announced yesterday is the world premiere of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, the indie kid romantic comedy starring Michael Cera. I'm much more excited about that one, to be honest. Prestige war movies are a dime a dozen; Michael Cera playing "a member of the queercore band 'The Jerk Offs'" is something special.

Also announced: Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq actioner The Hurt Locker, a drama called Disgrace with John Malkovich, and a few others. This is in addition to the 27 films announced last week.

This will be my first year attending Toronto (back-to-back with Telluride, where I've gone four times now), so needless to say I am aquiver with anticipation.

In 255 minutes, Spike Lee investigated the New Orleans disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina with When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. The project garnered the filmmaker much critical praise as well a collection of Emmys, which included Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming. And now Reuters reports that Spike Lee isn't done with the topic.

At Silverdocs, Lee said: "I'm going to go back, not just to New Orleans but to other areas affected, because it's not over." He wouldn't discuss the details of the next project, though he did allude to his focus: "What the press is not really talking about is the mental state -- suicide, self-medication. It's horrible." But that's not all, he also suggested that there might be a scripted feature on the post-Katrina devastation in the works, written by David Simon (The Wire).

In the wake of films like When the Levees Broke and Dear Zachary, I think it's excellent that filmmakers are attempting to continue the story. We always hear about the immediate devastation, but rarely do we see the long-trailing affects of the news.

According to Variety, the hotly-discussed Spike Lee has just signed on for his next movie. He personally bought the rights to Dr. Ronald Mallett's memoir Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality.

Mallet's story is a fascinating and inspiring one. (And you may have already encountered him last year on an episode of This American Life.) He rose from poverty to become one of the nation's first African-Americans to obtain a doctorate in theoretical physics. He is also engaged in serious time-travel research, and continues to receive funding to build a time machine. The technical plans are even outlined in his book, for those of you who can actually understand physics.

His interest in time travel actually arises from personal tragedy. He has been obsessed with it since the tender age of 10, when he lost his father to a serious heart attack. Inspired by H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, he wanted to build one of his own to save his father's life. This tragic element was one of the elements that drew Lee to Mallett's story.

Time travel is one of those subjects which intrigues everyone -- and combined with an inspiring personal story, I think Lee has a winner on his hands. Between this and the promising Miracle at St. Anna, I would like to think he is evolving from controversy to a quieter style of film making, while letting the stories speak for themselves.

Late August was the last time we mentioned George Lucas' Red Tails, but considering the Star Wars director has been wanting to make the film for decades, less than a year between reports is not too bad. Plus, the new AP story about the film's preproduction couldn't come at a better time. People are currently talking about Spike Lee's upcoming African Americans in WWII film, Miracle of St. Anna, and Red Tails also focuses on blacks fighting in the war. Specifically it deals with the 332nd Fighter Group of the U.S. Army Air Corp., otherwise known as the Tuskegee Airmen, the first all-black unit of pilots, bombardiers and navigators.

The AP story mostly features quotes from Tuskegee vets, who share their memories and their hopes for what the film will show. But there's also some minor updates courtesy of producer Rick McCallum, who's reportedly now scouting locations in the Czech Republic and Italy. He says that Lucas is hoping to begin shooting later this year or early 2009 and that the script by John Ridley (Three Kings) "balances difficult and painful issues with what is, at its heart, the story of men with a dream to fly and serve their country." So, apparently the script is finished, yet it's still unclear who will be directing Red Tails; the AP story almost seems to assume that Lucas will be holding the reigns himself.

After the whole Spike Lee vs. Clint Eastwood kerfuffle, it's great to finally see a glimpse of Lee's new World War II movie, Miracle at St. Anna. The trailer for the film has just shown up on Yahoo! and it looks just as great as I'd hoped it would. Of course, it's difficult to tell the quality of a war movie based on its trailer -- war movies from Hollywood typically all look the same at the marketing stage -- but I have a strong feeling this will at the very least be one of the more interesting war movies we've seen in some time. Coming from the unique perspective of Lee, we're hopefully bound for some things we haven't even seen before.

I like that the trailer begins in a bank that kinda resembles the one from Lee's previous feature, Inside Man. And that it takes a moment to reveal that it's a war movie. I guess now that we see Joseph Gordon-Levitt's role more clearly (he's not even listed on the film's IMDb page), it seems as though St. Anna may involve more of a present story than I had expected. Perhaps his interview with the main character, Hector (Laz Alonso), will be interwoven with the story, like the interrogation sequences of Inside Man? Nah, Lee would never repeat himself so blatantly, would he?

The Miracle of St. Anna marches into theaters September 26.

Cinematical has received this exclusive poster for Miracle at St. Anna (click to enlarge), the highly-anticipated new film from director Spike Lee. Based on the novel by James McBride (who also penned the adaptation), Miracle at St. Anna follows four black American soldiers (and members of the US Army's all-black 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Division) who, while stationed in Tuscany, Italy during World War II, find themselves trapped behind enemy lines and separated from their unit when one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy.

Starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi, John Leguizamo and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Miracle at St. Anna marks Lee's first foray into war flicks, and it will certainly be interesting to see his trademark style applied to this type of movie. I thoroughly enjoyed both Inside Man and When the Levees Broke, and feel Lee is entering a new, exciting time in his career -- one I'm definitely down for being a part of. What about you?

Miracle at St. Anna arrives in theaters on September 26.

First, let's recap: On May 21, Eugene posted about Spike Lee's continued criticism of Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima for not including African Americans. Lee was asked why Eastwood did it as he did, and I have to say, I don't blame him for responding: "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that -- that was his vision, not mine..." Today, we got word that Eastwood has responded, with the eloquent "A guy like him should shut his face." He then went on to talk about revisionism.

So, MTV went back to Lee, who is taking, and I quote: "the Obama high road." (New political slang alert! What's next?) He continued: "I've said my statement. I have no ill will towards Mr. Eastwood. What I said to him was not a personal attack, it was an observation. So that's really the end of it."

Think what you will of Lee, but this whole thing is a little ridiculous. If you head back to Erik's 2007 post about Miracle at St. Anna, Lee discussed how he'd met a black veteran who fought at Iwo Jima and was disappointed in Eastwood's portrayal, and how this inspired him to make the film and pay tribute to African American soldiers. Now he's getting crap thrown at him about revisionist history, and all of this is stemming from people asking him to talk about it, and him saying he couldn't answer for Eastwood. Lee might say some controversial things sometimes, but he was really backed into a corner this time around.

A little bit ago I posted regarding Spike Lee's comments at Cannes, accusing Clint Eastwood of tacit racism because no black actors appeared on screen in Flags of Our Fathers or Letters from Iwo Jima. "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why," he told reporters. "There's no way I know why he did that -- that was his vision, not mine. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know."

That post touched a nerve and elicited a barrage of comments from you folks, some of them nasty, but many interesting and thoughtful. So I figured I'd be remiss not to report Eastwood's recent response in a Guardian article to Lee's remarks.

Just what would you expect from a white, cutie student from The Jane Austen Book Club (or the dysfunctional son from Transamerica) and Spike Lee? Believe it or not, Lee is executive producing a new indie film called The Perfect Age of Rock 'n' Roll, and Variety reports that Kevin Zegers (the cutie student) and Jason Ritter (The Education of Charlie Banks) will star.

Written by Scott Rosenbaum, who is also directing, the film focuses on "a rock star (Zegers) who retreats to his Long Island hometown after his sophomore album flops." Oh, the woes of stardom. So, in this story, we'll also see the likes of Peter Fonda, Taryn Manning, Lauren Holly, Aimee Teegarden, and James Ransone -- plus, appearances by music names like Billy Morrison, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, and Sugar Blue.

There's not enough information to really get a handle on the story, but I'm in just to see who Peter Fonda will play. Production on the film has already begun in New Jersey, New York, and Los Angeles, so we should know more soon.