Even the most enthusiastic devotee of big-budget Hollywood is bound to have a few movies which he trudges to see out of a sense of duty rather than excitement. For me it's (among other things) Ron Howard's Da Vinci Code franchise, based on the borderline illiterate but ultra-popular books by Dan Brown. It is out of that same sense of obligation that I report to you the impending recruitment of Ewan McGregor to star alongside Tom Hanks in Angels & Demons, the prequel to the first film. McGregor will play Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca, a Papal aide who helps Hanks's intrepid symbologist stop an attack on the Vatican. As we suspected yesterday, Munich's Ayelet Zurer is also on board to play Vittoria Vetra, the daughter of a murdered physicist who tags along with the hero scientist. (This is contrary to earlier reports that Naomi Watts had scored the part.)

The main reason I have little hope for Angels & Demons is that, as with the first film, the screenplay will be written by Akiva Goldsman, who may be my least favorite working screenwriter. Ewan McGregor is a splendid actor, but Goldsman's dull, leaden dialogue managed to defeat even Sir Ian McKellen. As The Da Vinci Code proved, Goldsman and Brown are one deadly combination.

We've got a ways to go: Angels & Demons comes out next May. I think I'll go back to not thinking about it now, if you don't mind.

I pity the fool who doesn't want a Hobbit film!

I did not see I Am Legend this past weekend, but apparently there was a poster planted in the film's fictional Times Square for a Batman vs. Superman movie, due out on May 15, 2010. (Check out a screen grab above, courtesy of Slashfilm.) Folks immediately began speculating -- was this a secret teaser poster for Justice League? Had they changed the name (as previously rumored) to Batman vs. Superman? No such luck fanboys (and girls); seems it was only a gag dreamed up by screenwriter/producer Akiva Goldsman, who, long ago, was attached to write a Batman vs. Superman film. But it's still pretty cool, and a neat little Easter Egg if you ask me.

We know John Singleton has signed on to direct a big-screen A-Team movie, and that casting is currently underway, but what's the script look like? Moviehole got their hands on the script, and there's some "interesting" stuff in there. Like, B.A. Baracas (played by Mr. T on the TV show) is listed as a "22-year-old walking steel with two-percent body fat." Yup, expect Tyrese Gibson in this role. Here's a bit more from their synopsis: "I'll be honest - it's not that tantalizing. The whole action of the movie revolves around some vases and stolen art. At one point there's a scene that takes place on a yacht - and it's an art auction. It's just not that interesting." Head on over to Moviehole to read their full review of the 118-page script.

This morning it was announced that Peter Jackson and New Line had kissed and made up, and are moving ahead on the long-planned Hobbit adaptation. However, Jackson is only listed as an executive producer, which means they still need to seek out a director to helm the picture. I'd expect Sam Raimi to be the first one they call, but if Sam takes on this monstrous double-feature, don't expect the guy to be back in the director's chair for Spider-Man 4. Which will also likely mean that Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst will opt out. Would you gladly take Raimi on Hobbit, or could Jackson get real nutty and somehow convince Guillermo del Toro to give up all 300 of his current projects to direct two Hobbit films? Where do you stand? Who do you want directing these movies, if not Jackson?

For anyone disappointed that Robin has been left out of the recent Batman films (I hope you are few), there is good news: Warner Bros. is developing a movie version of the DC comic Teen Titans. Robin is one of the original members of the young super team, and though he has not always been part of the group, it is certainly a possibility that he'll make it into the movie -- if only because of his familiarity to mainstream audiences. The Hollywood Reporter does report that Nightwing, a character who is sort of like an alternative version of Robin (he is the older incarnation of the original Robin, Dick Grayson), is already a definite character. However, because the continuities of DC Comics confuse the dickens out of me, I really have no idea if Nightwing and (the more-recognizable) Robin could both be a part of the movie's team.

Warner Bros.' interest in doing a Titans movie is not surprising, but it is interesting considering the studio is also currently working on a Justice League film. Mostly, I see this project as being an attempt to cater more to a young audience as well as to market the thing as comparable to X-Men. But will it actually be hip enough to attract the kids and smart enough to be as good as the (first two) X-Men films? So far the studio is on the right track with the hiring of Mark Verheiden to script the movie. Comic geeks and TV fans may know Verheiden as a writer for the comic books The Mask and Timecop, as well as their movie adaptations, and as writer-producer for the shows Smallville and Battlestar Galactica. The movie is being produced by Akiva Goldsman (Constantine) and Kerry Foster.

Odds and ends from Tuesday:

• In a career-defining move, Hilary Swank is set to play a character who, from what I understand, will spend the entire movie as an actual female. Deciding to throw aside the "butch' roles for the time being, Swank has signed on to star in P.S., I Love You, based on the novel written by Cecelia Ahern. Story focuses on a widow who finds notes from her dead husband that then send her on a series of adventures.
• Reunited ... and it feels so good. Heath Ledger and wife Michelle Williams (They're married right? Or, do they just have a kid together?) will star in Todd Haynes' "If I have 47 men playing Bob Dylan, I wonder if it will confuse people" biopic, I'm Not There. Ledger will replace Colin Farrell as one of the many Bob Dylan's featured throughout the film. A slew of people are already attached including Julianne Moore, Richard Gere and Christian Bale. However, according to Martha, Oprah and Venus Williams will get in on the action too. Yeah, let me know when that happens -- I'll be over her by the window waiting for the dogs and cats to start falling.
• As we told you the other day, seeing as The Da Vinci Code cracked an assortment of box office records this past weekend, a sequel is already in the works based on Brown's Angels and Demons novel. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Jesus marries Satan in that one?) Though there's no word on whether Ron Howard and/or Tom Hanks will be involved, Sony has already tapped scribe Akiva Goldsman to pen the script. The studio is probably so ecstatic about Dan Brown right now, it wouldn't surprise me if they assigned a few executives to be his servants so that the man can pump out a book a month. Marry me Dan Brown!

Not for nothing, but a part of me is really looking forward to Tonight, He Comes. If I were a superhero who crash-landed in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn (Tonight's basic premise), the first problem I would solve is all that damn traffic on the Belt Parkway. If you don't live in Brooklyn nor know what the Belt Parkway is, then we can trade places any day. Seriously, give me a call -- most likely I'll be stuck somewhere around exit 14.

The film, which will star Will Smith as said superhero, now has another director attached in Gabrielle Muccino. The two recently wrapped shooting together on The Pursuit of Happyness for Columbia Pictures who, coincidentally, is also putting out Tonight, He Comes. This will mark the third director for Tonight after Michael Mann ( who is also producing with Akiva Goldsman) dropped out to film Miami Vice. Afterward, it was rumored that Jonathan Mostow stepped up to the plate, though we're not sure why he's now been replaced by Muccino and is no longer in the picture. Pic will follow an under-appreciated superhero who winds up in Brooklyn after suffering through a mid-life crisis. Right now, the studio is creeping towards an early 2007 production start, while Muccino's Happyness hits theaters on December 15.

 

After I returned home from seeing Memoirs of a Geisha, something made me pick Charles Frazier's 1997 novel Cold Mountain off the shelf. The book is memorable for the way it overwhelms the reader with new information through its mining of an obsolete dictionary of retired words from the Civil War era - tools that are no longer in existence, flowers that aren't common, songs that aren't sung, and so on (I'm still not sure that I know what a tompion or an offscouring is). The point of drowning the reader in detail is to put the author's credibility as a narrator beyond question, and it works. It wasn't until I saw the film version of Cold Mountain a couple of years ago that my opinion of the work was brought down a peg or two. Aside from a crackerjack performance by Nicole Kidman, the story had little to recommend it; there was no real dramatic heft or resonance. I've never picked up Arthur Golden's Memoirs, but after seeing the film I'm convinced that the book must be in the mold of Cold Mountain.

If Memoirs of a Geisha is not about the fine points of time and place in Imperial Japan, then it must be about what it's about. And what it's about-about is the pageantry and romance that awaits a woman who sells her vagina at auction. The film goes out of its way to remind us that geishas are not prostitutes, but so do the escort ads in the Manhattan yellow pages. Pay no attention. A girl who is 'selected' to become a geisha will spend the better part of her reproductive life learning how to please a man. She brings him a tablecloth if he needs a tablecloth, laughs at his jokes whether or not they are funny, makes with cheap entertainments like fan-dances on command, and is always within ear-shot to dispense fortune-cookie aphorisms that do not betray any personal thoughts or opinions or desires. She offers more or less the same kind of companionship as the talking robot from Rocky IV. At the climax of a geisha's geishahood, a bidding war between powerful men erupts, and her virginity is put on the block. If she's lucky.