black hawk down Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I'm probably one of the biggest Doug Liman supporters -- even if I do get crap for loving Mr. & Mrs. Smith -- so I get excited about every new project announced with his name attached. I'm even looking forward to a new Knight Rider TV movie (possibly pilot) I just read about that Liman will helm for NBC. He says that it will have a tone somewhere between The Bourne Identity and Smith, and will featuring a morphing KITT. Even if I didn't like Liman's work, I'd be curious. Liman also called the original Knight Rider "the Shakespeare of our generation." But I hope he was joking.

According to Variety, the director has another movie on the fast-track at Dreamworks that will star Jake Gyllenhaal. The untitled project (being called "Untitled Moon Project"), will be Liman's first attempt at outer-space science fiction, and its plot will focus on a private expedition to the moon to set up a Lunar colony. As much as I can tell, this will also be Gyllenhaal's first time costumed in a space suit, which should bring him back to his glory days as the Bubble Boy.

Liman co-wrote the original script for the project, along with his cousin, writer-director John Hamburg (Along Came Polly). However, it's now being re-written by author Mark Bowden, who wrote the source material for Black Hawk Down and Joe Carnahan's in-development Pablo Escobar movie, Killing Pablo. Liman, Alli Shearmur and Simon Kinberg will produce the film, which will presumably begin shooting as soon as Gyllenhaal is done with Brothers.

Eventually every second-tier director will have his own film about Iraq. And yet I never thought someone as low on the tier as Simon West would actually get one so soon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the guy who made Con Air (it's so bad, but oh so good), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (its so bad, but -- no but) and the remake of When a Stranger Calls (no comment) will attempt an adaptation of Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Iraq, which was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Zucchino. West will produce and direct from a script penned by Zucchino himself. The book, which was written first-hand by the Los Angeles Times correspondent, follows the U.S. military entrance, or "thunder run", into Baghdad in April 2003 and subsequent battle for the capital city. West compared the feeling he got from reading Zucchino's book to reading Black Hawk Down, which he found and developed as an executive producer.

The important thing to remember, though, is that West didn't end up directing Black Hawk Down. The great Ridley Scott did, and it ended up a flawed but ultimately well-made film. Show me somebody in Hollywood who honestly thinks West is capable of the same work, and I'll eat this blog. And I mean this person would have to take a lie detector test and prove to me that he or she really, really thinks this is going to be good enough to garner West his own Oscar nomination (as Scott received for BHD) and not just an easy-money attempt at the current trend of Iraq War-based movies. The latter is more likely the case for the six producers besides West, which includes Randall Emmett and George Furla (both of the Wicker Man remake), and five executive producers, which includes BHD's writer Ken Nolan. There has yet to be a dramatic feature about the war that's as good as the many docs on the subject, and I can definitely promise this will not be the movie to achieve that status. At least it probably won't be as bad as West's proposed Dalí biopic would be.

For those of you looking to hire Alan Hedgcock to work on your film, you might notice his websites are down (bandwith exceeded). This is either because all of Hollywood is trying to access the pages, or because the authorities have taken them down due to the fact that he has just been found guilty of conspiring to rape two children. Hedgcock, along with two other men, were sentenced to a total of 27 years in prison (Hedgcock's sentence is 8 years) for their plot to kidnap and rape two teenage sisters, as well as for possession of child pornography.

Hedgcock's special effects makeup work can be seen in 28 Days Later ..., Kingdom of Heaven, First Knight, Black Hawk Down and The Upside of Anger, among other films. He also apparently co-wrote the book Behind the Mask: The Secrets of Hollywood's Monster Makers. Evidence introduced at trial showed that it was Hedgcock who first suggested the plan -- to abduct the two girls, aged 13 and 14 -- to his partner. Together with this partner, he then detailed a plan to rape the girls in a nearby woods. Hedgcock's partner broke down and alerted police of the plans before they could be carried out. The two men were cleared on charges of conspiracy to commit murder.