It has been a long, long time since former Cinematical EIC Karina Longworth wrote about Catherine Zeta-Jones being cast as Lana Turner in Stompanato. So long, in fact, that I was only a mere commenter at the time, with hopes and dreams of becoming a Cinematical blogger (yes, that was me commenting on her post). And, more importantly, so long that I was pretty sure the project had either disappeared or at least lost its stars, which included Keanu Reeves as Turner's gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato. Well, according to The New Zealand Herald, Zeta-Jones is still on board, though the script is also still in development. Also, I've discovered that Reeves did indeed drop out of the film. And I've decided to assume that Adrian Lyne is no longer directing (though maybe he is).

I'm especially excited about this film because I recently read Turner's autobiography, Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth, and finally learned all I needed to know about the Stompanato scandal. For those unfamiliar, I'll keep it simple: Turner, who was married like a million times, had a gangster boyfriend named Johnny Stompanato. Only she didn't know he was a gangster. She didn't even know his name in the beginning. But he was abusive and obsessive and was badly affecting her career, so one day she stabbed him. Oh, wait, that was her teenage daughter, Cheryl, who done it. Yet many people have alleged that Turner was the actual murderer (still in self-defense, of course).

Anyway, one thing I remember from her autobiography is that she wrote about being asked who would play her in a biopic. She didn't say Catherine Zeta-Jones. Actually, she claimed the woman hadn't been born yet. At the time of the claim, Zeta-Jones had already been born. So much for Turner's ability to see the future.

The last remake of Italian cinema I can think of was 2006's The Last Kiss -- and I don't think I was alone in my dislike of that particular flick. But, for most die-hard fans of international cinema, anything that Hollywood can come up with is usually a disappointment. Variety reports that Universal is planning on an English-language remake of La scorta (The Supply). They have already signed Danish director, Asger Leth, and have brought on Peter Craig to write the script. Leth has only directed one other film so far, the documentary Ghosts of Cité Soleil, about two brothers who are leaders of The Secret army of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristrade. Craig has just finished the script for The Town, a romantic comedy with Adrian Lyne attached to direct and an adaptation of his own novel, Hot Plastic, for Radar and Maguire Entertainment. Plastic focuses on the origins of identity theft and the relationship between a father and son. This seems to be a speciality for Craig, since most of his books are centered on family relationships and criminal enterprises.

The scorta update will closely follow the original story "...of four policemen assigned to guard a special prosecutor trying to bring mob bosses to justice. His predecessor was blown away along with a bodyguard. The four guards are conflicted about their jobs and frustrated as they watch government insiders thwart the lawman at every turn". The film was originally released in Italy back in 1993 and was directed by Ricky Tognazzi. The story was inspired by the murder of Judge Giovanni Falcone, a dedicated anti-mafia crusader, who was later murdered along with his wife and three bodyguards in a 350-kg dynamite explosion placed beneath the motorway from Palermo Airport to Palermo. There is no word on a cast yet, but as soon as Craig gets a handle on his script, I would expect to hear something sooner rather than later.

Remember the '80s? Ah, those long-ago days when MTV actually showed music videos and had the occasional black screen when someone was changing a videotape, and the five original VJs (can you name them all without Googling it?) ruled our lives, spinning videos that were, in the beginning at least, mostly concert footage outtakes or whatever else they could get their hands on.

In 1983, MTV was two years old, a toddler tottering around on unsteady feet, but just starting to get the hang of it. I was a freshman in high school, and Joe Eszterhaus and Paul Verhoeven were still 12 years away from unleashing Showgirls on the world. We'd been inspired by Fame just three years earlier, the world was ripe for another dance musical -- and a film called Flashdance -- an unlikely Cinderella story about a blue collar girl who works as a welder by day and an exotic dancer (the kind who doesn't take her clothes off) by night, while dreaming of a better life as a ballerina -- took the world by storm.

I guess it really is true that eventually every movie will be remade if you just wait long enough. Variety reports that New Line has struck a deal with producer Alison Rosenzweig to remake the 1990 Adrian Lyne thriller Jacob's Ladder. Inspired by the short story by Ambrose Bierce called An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (a title that will probably ring a bell if you watch a lot of LOST), the film originally starred Tim Robbins as a New York postal worker, haunted by his tour of duty in Vietnam and starting to lose his grip on reality. I won't go into any more detail than that since the film is a bit of a brain-buster to begin with and I wouldn't want to give anything away for anyone who hasn't seen it. Reviews at the time varied from describing Lyne as a "magician pulling a sleazy trick" to calling the film "an unforgettable cinematic experience" and over the years the movie has come to be considered a cult classic.

So far, it doesn't look like the project is a big priority, since news of the remake was buried in an article about the crime thriller Transit, and there has been no mention of a studio making an offer. To be honest, the original film didn't really 'wow' me, but I think I might be in the minority with that opinion. With news of the remake starting to hit the net, the debate over the necessity of a remake is already happening on message boards. I wouldn't worry though -- it looks like it could be a long time before Rosenzweig and company get a chance at performing a "sleazy trick" of their own.

After a break of nearly five years since his last film (Unfaithful), Adrian Lyne has suddenly rediscovered his interest in Hollywood: He's got two projects on his plate, though neither is likely hit screens before mid-2007 at the earliest. The first, Two Minutes to Midnight, is alleged by the IMDb to be in pre-production, but has been in the news only as a project in which Tom Cruise was briefly interested; no cast is listed, and there's been no mention of the film in the trades since the Cruise rumor -- heaven knows if it's actually being made. The second, announced in The Hollywood Reporter this morning, will be based on Prince of Thieves, an award-winning crime novel by Chuck Hogan. This one is in the very early stages; Warner Bros. will be producing, and they've just hired outrageously busy screenwriter Sheldon Turner (who, coincidentally (?), also had a hand in the Two Minutes to Midnight script) to adapt.

I actually read Hogan's novel pretty recently and, while the writing wasn't as good as I'd hoped (it having won a Hammett Award for "excellence in crime writing" and all), there's definitely a movie in there. The book revolves around four small-time criminal who pull a bank heist together, but the focus is much more on their relationships than the heist, which happens at book's open. Needless to say, the job isn't pulled off quite as cleanly as they'd hoped, and things snowball in unexpected ways. There's a lot of tension in the story, and some great characters for big-name actors to really sink their teeth into. This is a project I'll be watching, for sure.

Everyone in Hollywood: stop what you're doing! TOM CRUISE IS LOOKING FOR A JOB. Please send him any and all kickass scripts you have sitting on your desks, and wait until you hear from him before filling any leading male roles. That is all.

Accord to Variety, which seems get the scoop on such things, Tom's narrowed the huge pile of submissions down, and is considering one of a trio of projects as the possible follow up to what is bound to be the great success of Mission: Impossible III. Primary among three is the 3:10 to Yuma remake about which I was freaking out just yesterday. Cruise, who became interested in the film when Collateral scribe Stuart Beattie did a rewrite on the script, would play the Glenn Ford bad-guy part. Sigh. Also his radar are a pair of dramas: Two Minutes to Midnight, an Adrian Lyne project about a man who has to find his kidnapped wife by, yes, 11:58pm, and Fool's Gold (not, disappointingly, the one James Franco just directed), about "a divorced couple who rekindle romance during a treasure hunt." That title combined with that plot are just too easy to write nasty comments about - I'm no manager or anything, but I'd cross that one off the list right away.

Say what you want about Tom Cruise, but the man is a star. Who else makes news by just flipping through some scripts?