senator entertainment Tagged Articles at Cinematical

1. Twiddle thumbs while waiting for bidding wars to break out -- So Senator Entertainment has already landed domestic distribution for Antoine Fuqua's cop drama, Brooklyn's Finest (they'll probably do right by it and sit it on a shelf right next to All the Boys Love Mandy Lane); now, it's just a matter of waiting for Fox Searchlight to snatch up their next sleeper in waiting, and for either Focus or Paramount Vantage to pick up the rights to something they can't quite turn a profit on *cough1* *cough2*. Modest comfort comes in the form of Searchlight already planning a late-summer release for 500 Days of Summer, and of Sony Pictures Classics reportedly calling dibs on Sam Rockwell's sci-fi drama, Moon. Keep those ears and eyes open, folks.

2. Monitor some seriously similar, sometimes simultaneous Twitter action -- For starters, there's our crew: Snider, then Davis, then Rocchi, and (lastly but not least-ly) new convert Weinberg. Then you have the Onion folks, your CHUD, the IFC one-two, the Spout reps, our HitFix homies, not to mention your /Film and your Film School Rejects and your First Showing (these fellas happen to be sharing accommodations, so expect much echo). Daily posts? Facebook status updates? Please. With a minute-by-minute play-by-play, who needs to go outdoors?

You know, at this point I think that Milla Jovovich should probably be named the patron saint of video game flicks. Mainly it's because that in the barrage of crappy console-to- screen properties, there are none more beloved than the Resident Evil series. So I can only hope that some of that 'geek shine' is going to rub off on The Weinstein's latest attempt. Bloody Disgusting (who is usually pretty reliable when it comes to all things horror) has confirmed that Jovovich is set to star in the big-screen adaptation of Capcom's horror-survival game, Clock Tower. Even though this news is still in the rumor stage, BD is confident that Jovovich is already on board.

News of the film first surfaced back in April, and last month Variety had announced that Brittany Snow (Prom Night) signed on for the lead. According to sources, Jovovich will play "a woman in a psych ward who befriends the lead character, played by Snow, when they discover a shared family history. Meanwhile a psychotic madman dubbed Scissorman is pursuing her and keeping the family curse going strong." Eric Poppen (Borderland) was tapped to write the script, and even though there are some conflicting reports regarding the story, the general consensus seems to be that the film will be loosely based on the second installment of the series.

Shooting is scheduled for November in Los Angeles, and by then we should have a few more details. Hopefully the addition of Jovovich and an 'R' horror director like Martin Weisz (The Hills have Eyes 2) means that the film will be avoiding the usual pitfalls of PG horror and adding a little more 'bang for our buck'. Not to mention that at least with Milla on board, we might get a glimpse of a slightly more interesting female lead than the perpetually pouty Ms. Snow.

This is turning into one long tease. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane debuted to generally good reaction at the Toronto film festival nearly two years ago. (James Rocchi called it "the best modern slasher flick since Scream.") Senator Entertainment picked up distribution rights after The Weinstein Co. / Dimension unexpectedly dumped it shortly before its scheduled release one year ago. Since then, we've been waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting.

In the meantime, director Jonathan Levine moved on to his next film, the well-received The Wackness, and Senator Entertainment surprised us by releasing ... a new poster. (OK, we take what we can get.) At some point they also made a new trailer, which you can view at the trailer website for Fantasia, Montreal's amazingly awesome genre festival. They have a good write-up on the film, too, and you'll see James' review quoted on the page. (Sorry, you've already missed the two screenings there.)

The Senator trailer doesn't look markedly different from The Weinstein Co. trailer, but, to its credit, it spells out even less than the previous one. The most irritating thing is probably where it promises to be out "This Spring." The poster promises "This Summer." Is that "This Year"? We do know that UK film lovers can buy it on DVD in just a few days; I'm not holding my breath much longer for this one.

[Thanks to Bloody Disgusting.]

I had never heard of Jacques Mesrine before today, but I should have. Take a look at this Wikipedia entry, which matter-of-factly details the dozens of murders, bank robberies and prison escapes pulled off by the legendary French criminal over a 20-year "career." The best part is that he once fled from a sentencing hearing by taking the judge hostage. How can that possibly work?

Anyway, the story's obviously well-known in France, and it has finally made its way to the screen in a two-part biopic called Public Enemy No. 1, starring (who else?) Vincent Cassel as Mesrine. Budgeted at $80 million, it's one of the biggest French productions ever. At least the first of the films is slated to get an October release in France, and the American rights have gone to Senator Entertainment -- the distributor that helped bury All the Boys Love Mandy Lane after the Weinsteins dumped it. Its president promises to do better with Public Enemy, hoping to have the first film in American theaters by the end of the year. He compares it to GoodFellas and Scarface. Honestly, though, Mesrine sounds like more of a badass than Tony Montana.

The movies were directed by Jean-François Richet, who made the not-terrible American remake of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 a couple of years back. They co-star Gerard Depardieu and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly's Mathieu Amalric (who will also be seen in Quantum of Solace). Oh, and Ludivigne Sagnier, whom I just saw in the very good Love Songs.

There is a very short list of filmmakers who are so perfectly in tune with my sensibilities, so completely on my wavelength, that each of their projects threatens to collapse my critical faculties and reduce me to a drooling, adoring mess. One such person is little-known Canadian director Vincenzo Natali, whose enigmatic sci-fi mind-blowers Cube and Cypher were about as far up my alley as you could go before it starts to hurt. (I haven't seen Nothing yet, but I will soon.) So I've been hungrily devouring every morsel of information about his upcoming Splice, which is about a pair of scientists (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) who discover a way to create new kinds of creatures in the lab by splicing DNA, and then go and introduce human genes into the experiment. My squeamishness about genetic horrors (no joke: I consider Cronenberg's The Fly to be the scariest movie I've ever seen) and my affinity for Natali's approach makes me think this one could really do a number on me.

After three of his books (American Psycho, Less than Zero and The Rules of Attraction) were adapted for the big screen, Senator Entertainment is sending another Bret Easton Ellis tale our way. This time, it's The Informers, a collection of loosely-connected short stories which was originally published back in 1995.

Coming onboard to direct is Nicholas Jarecki, who also co-wrote the script with Ellis (which marks the author's first attempt at adapting his own work). Though I've read Less than Zero and The Rules of Attraction, I haven't yet had a chance to check out The Informers. However, Variety says the book "captures a week in L.A. in 1983, featuring movie execs, rock stars, a vampire and other morally challenged characters in adventures laced with sex, drugs and violence." Wow, that's almost a word-for-word description of my morning. Go figure. Pic will begin its production in early 2007.