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.

Maybe the most irritating thing about Roland Emmerich's generally unwatchable 10,000 BC was leading man Steven Strait's bizarre accent. Totally indeterminate -- he trilled his r's and drawled occasionally -- it was clearly meant to indicate in some uncertain way that what we're watching takes place a Very Long Time Ago. Hello? The movie is called 10,000 BC and the characters are already speaking English. Making them speak weird English isn't exactly adding verisimilitude. I don't know who Emmerich thought he was fooling.

I always find this sort of thing annoying, and sometimes vaguely insulting. I'm perfectly fine with characters who speak English even though they're not supposed to -- it's easier that way, and I can suspend disbelief. But if you're going to go that route, why add constant, pointless reminders of the very fact you're trying to dodge? Part of the reason I admire The Hunt for Red October is that John McTiernan said "screw it" and let Sean Connery keep his Scottish brogue as a Soviet submarine captain.*

A few weeks ago, I made a weak attempt at throwing together a Cinematical Seven titled All-Time Best Action Movie Directors. At the top of my list would have been John McTiernan, who I think is truly in a class by himself in terms of his mastery of this genre. Remember that shot in Predator where Schwarzenegger kicks the gun out of the girl's hand and lays into the invisible beast with the military assault rifle? That shot should have been called to testify on McTiernan's behalf during his Pellicano case -- no man who can film scenes like that is all bad. Number two on my list would have been Jim Cameron, and somewhere around six or seven would have been the only woman on the list, Cameron's protege Kathryn Bigelow. Her career has been much more uneven than his, of course -- in some ways, she's the Stanley Kubrick of female directors: takes long stretches off work, hops across genres to uneven results, and isn't known for being interview-friendly.

"Ryan, can you get to the point? I'm falling asleep, here." Okay, here's the point. A site called TotallyHollywoodHunksNews.com -- someone pointed me to it, I'm not a regular reader -- is hosting an early teaser poster for Bigelow's next film, The Hurt Locker. You should take a look at the poster -- it's actually a very nice piece of art, with a good tag, nice coloring and a lot of visual information. I know very little about the film except that it's about an Army bomb squad unit trying to do their job in the midst of the Iraq war, but here's sincerely hoping it's a return to form for Bigelow. Her last effort at the action genre was K:19: The Widowmaker, which I found disappointing. Before that, you have to go all the way back to 1995's Strange Days. I'd love to see a late revival, even though this one is being described as an action-drama, instead of just action. Click on the image above to get the full teaser.

Kathryn Bigelow should really make more movies. She's directed some terrific action flicks (Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days), but she seems to disappear from filmmaking for long periods of time -- her last movie was 2002's K-19: The Widowmaker. Bigelow's upcoming project is a drama about the Iraq war called The Hurt Locker, and it was announced today that the film will star Jeremy Renner, Brian Geraghty and Anthony Mackie . "Who, who, and who?" you might be asking yourself. Renner recently starred in the pretty sweet 28 Weeks Later. Geraghty has done the war movie thing before, he played Fergus in the underrated Jarhead. And Mackie starred in Half Nelson and what I consider Spike Lee's only bad movie -- She Hate Me. "He Who Must Not Be Named" Ralph Fiennes and "He Who Can't Remember His Name" Guy Pearce will have cameos in the film.

The script was written by Mark Boal, a former Playboy journalist -- see! there's good articles in there! -- and was inspired "by true events and recently declassified information." The film will follow "an elite Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal team in present-day Baghdad that fights an onslaught of bombs and snipers." Renner will play the team leader. Mackie, Geraghty, and Pearce will play team members, although if Pearce just has a cameo I'd imagine he doesn't last long. Fiennes will play a mercenary. Says Boal: "The idea is that it's the first movie about the Iraq War that purports to show the experience of the soldiers. We wanted to show the kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can't see on CNN, and I don't mean that in a censorship-conspiracy way. I just mean the news doesn't actually put photographers in with units that are this elite." He adds, "It's really exciting for me, coming out of the world of journalism, to have a movie come out about a conflict while the conflict is still going on." Hell, at the rate things are going, they could delay the release of Hurt Locker ten years and it'd still be going on.

After a great starring stint as The Bride in Kill Bill, I thought Uma Thurman would be soaring upwards from her normal hot into super-hot. However, she followed Quentin Tarantino's ode to her with a number of less-than-inspiring roles, which was topped by the overly-advertised My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Just in case her two upcoming films, The Accidental Husband and In Bloom crash and burn, she's re-amped her action side in a long car commercial/short movie -- Mission Zero. Over at Pirelli Film, you can see the short that has her driving a Lamborghini Gallardo with PZero tires through L.A. streets while it seems like everyone and their mother tries to kill her.

It's really not a plot film, but some kind of next-generation advertising -- a way to show off the car and some saucy action scenes. Since that's the case, expect lots of action while you wonder just what in the world is going on. There's guns, speeding, chases and comedic moments -- the whole kit and kaboodle, all in about the length of two back to back movie trailers. That being said, the flick does have a wrap-up ending, which I assume is the filmmakers attempt to make some sort of plot out of the action scenes. Is this 'short film' going to be playing as pre-movie advertising in theaters any time soon? We have no idea at this point, but we will be keeping on top of the situation. The kicker -- this film is actually directed by Point Break and K-19: The Widowmaker director Kathryn Bigelow, and the director of photography is none other than Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who may have needed to give his action chops a whirl before he gets started on his next project, Indy 4.

[Via JoBlo]

We've had so many war movies lately that it seems like there's a rite of passage that every actor and actress has to go through -- they must do the historical or current war picture. For some, they start racking up a few, as is the case with Charlize Theron. In 2000 she co-starred in Men of Honor, the Robert DeNiro and Cuba Gooding Jr. Navy flick. Now the South African actress has just wrapped In the Valley of Elah, Paul Haggis' film about a career officer and his AWOL, Iraqi soldier son. But Theron just can't seem to get enough of these warring dramas, as she's just signed on for another one.

In October, Chris Ullrich posted about The Hurt Locker, a project director Kathryn Bigelow had written with the war reporter who was also co-writer on Elah, Mark Boal. While Chris' predictions were ignored (he wanted Bigelow vets like Patrick Swayze), the Theron-headed cast isn't too shabby anyway. She will star alongside Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes and Willem Dafoe. The action drama is set in Iraq and details a bomb disposal unit. From PW: "Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb." Unfortunately, the PR speak has made the end of that description sound like the film will be a sexual thriller -- sort of like Farrell's infamous sex tape meets Mission Impossible. Unfortunately, I don't think his adoring fans will be so lucky. Principal photography should gear up later this spring.

OK, the true-blue horror geeks can generally deal with it when you remake something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because everyone knows that flick, but when it comes to titles like, say, Near Dark -- we tend to get pretty protective. (It's sorta like you and that one band you loved -- years before everyone else loved 'em.) Word out of all the different horror sites (well, the three I trust, anyway) is that not only will there be a new rendition of Kathryn Bigelow & Eric Red's brilliant cult classic Near Dark, but a screenwriter has already been hired for the gig.

The good news is that Matt Venne, the guy who just turned in his screenplay for White Noise 2, seems to have his head screwed on where Near Dark Redux is concerned. As quoted at Fango, Venne says "there are images in the original film and in Eric Red and Kathryn Bigelow’s screenplay that are absolutely beautiful. Completely dreamy and captivating. Pure poetry. It’s an incredible project, and I’m honored to be writing it."

Near Dark, for those who haven't had the pleasure, is a blisteringly cool Southern-fried vampire noir from 1987 that was written by Eric (The Hitcher) Red and directed by Kathryn (Point Break) Bigelow. Although the flick features strong performances from Adrian Pasdar as one unlucky lad and Tim Thomerson as his devoted pop, the three blood-soaked standouts had just gotten done working together in Aliens. As a devilishly evil trio of bloodsuckers, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, and Bill Paxton are just perfect together. And yes, Netflix has it.