Bits for the Day

At last, as we approach its long-delayed release next month both in America and at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, comes the second trailer for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and it looks quite beautiful. Directed by Australia's Andrew Dominik following his very different Chopper and starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck (who with this and Gone, Baby, Gone is up for a good couple of months), the movie has been put through the studio wringer but emerged reportedly intact thanks to its escape to limited release on the arthouse circuit after executives saw a film more akin to Terrence Malick than the Unforgiven-style bonanza they were expecting. Pitt and Dominik reportedly dug their heels in against mass cuts and succeeded in a nice change of pace.

The film's underdog status and the Malick comparisons, plus the haunting teaser trailer released 18 months ago, have made me eager to see this, and the new trailer confirms those suspicions. Watch it just for the snapshots of Roger Deakins's stunning cinematography which offers some startlingly evocative images - no wonder he's the Coen Brothers' preferred choice. Pitt and Affleck appear to be on great form, and we get a glimpse into the dynamics and themes that the film will be tapping into, although what this film will ultimately be is still a mystery. Snippets can also be heard of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis's score, no doubt hired because of their stellar work on The Proposition, and how exciting it is to have more scoring work from them so soon.

Download a hi-def version at Movie-List (which you simply MUST if you're able) or a small in-browser version at Coming Soon courtesy of AOL, where you can also find links to the teaser trailer. The above poster, also just released, is also thanks to Coming Soon.



Lotsa great trailers for y'all (no sign of the promised Southland Tales one yet though, sadly).

- the redband trailer (ie. for 18 years and over with violence and cussin') for the Coens's No Country for Old Men, from the official site. Thanks to Film Ick for the direct download link - you'll need Shockwave Player.

- the full trailer for Hitman, the video game adaptation starring Timothy Olyphant, from IGN. It looks fairly unremarkable, but apparently the script is quite exceptional, surprisingly so for any gun-toting movie these days, especially one directed by a Luc Besson protege (Xavier Gens). And Olyphant is always good value.

- the substantial Comicon trailer for Beowulf, in super hi-res Quicktime or not-so-good Flash, once again thanks to Film Ick (from the film's official site), who dutifully provide direct download links for virtually everything. This one's actually a Redband trailer, but I don't see why since the movie's PG-13. I won't be watching this though as I want to save as much of Beowulf for the big screen as I can, even if it turns out to be crummy. But it's there for them 'oose wants it.

- the UK trailer for Ridley Scott's American Gangster with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, and it's a LOT more enticing than the American one from a couple of months ago, despite the blatant lifting of a song that Jackie Brown arguably made its own and the fairly manipulative use of choral music in the second half. And this is the first regular trailer I've seen in a long time with swearing. Interestink.... So yes, go. Hopefully this is Ridley Scott back on his A-game, and Crowe and Washington facing off should be a lot cooler this time than it was in Virtuosity. Thanks to Empire and yet again to Film Ick.



IESB is reporting that Smallville star Tom Welling will play Superman in the Justice League film - oh PLEASE. The guy makes an okay teenaged Clark Kent in a mediocre TV show, but even I'd make a better big-screen Superman than this guy. Brandon Routh didn't have a boatload of charisma, but at least he kinda sold Superman's statuesque awe. I don't believe Welling could, and he just brings too much baggage with him from the show. Plus, I really don't want to see him play the nerdy Kent persona - it'd be too painful. Perhaps the studio is in such a rush to get this thing made that they want to forgo the lengthy search to find another decent Superman that they're just going to cast the nearest existing approximation who doesn't already have a film series.

See, if IESB is on the money, the silver lining in this is that Justice League is thankfully considered an entirely separate affair to the Batman and Superman franchises - those films will continue unscathed, although like Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan ain't too happy about it, the LA Times says.

That article is actually a great examination of the pre-strike environment in Hollywood right now (with a slideshow of likely and iffy projects grouped by studio), where studios are frantically trying to get films made before June 30, 2008. Contracts with the Directors' and Screen Actors' Guild then expire and a strike may occur due to a number of factors, new home entertainment technology revenues being one of the principal ones. I've actually misreported this strike before - it's not just the Writers' Guild. Their contract ends in October, but writers will likely keep working until June so the three talent guilds can strike together for more clout, so this could be massive. The next few months should prove fascinating...



Stephen Sommers, director of the Mummy films and Van Helsing, is helming G.I. Joe. Oh yay.



Kevin Smith is directing an episode of Battlestar Galactica! That sure came out of nowhere (although he's very publicly a fan of the show. So are Robin Williams and Quentin Tarantino, by the way, who have both stopped cast members in the street to gush about the show). Any publicity from the move is only good, but he's quite the square peg in Battlestar's round hole. Not only is his style ill-suited to the show (he readily admits that he's not visually adept), but he hasn't been producing stellar work lately, as I have bitched elsewhere on this blog. Still, I'm sure they won't let him screw the show over. And if he delivers, then I'll be singing his praises.



As has been reported by a relative of Frank and Brian Herbert on the official Dunenovels.com forums for a while, legal negotiations have been going on to try and allow a new Dune film to be made! The studio has initiated the process with the estate, and while understandably few details are provided or known, much of the difficulty may lie with extricating the rights from the de Laurentiis family (if they still own them, that is, although I do recall that the mini-series came about because the producer was told in the late 90s that the movie rights were still off-limits). This is still a long way from happening, but a recent post by Byron indicates that a deal is forthcoming, if not a greenlight. A prominent director at a studio is apparently a huge fan, and given the appetite for epics, a Dune film may have a better reception today than it did, if they don't OD on the weirdness and market it as a good ol' action epic, elements of which it actually has in surprising abundance. Despite the idiosyncratic world that Herbert created, Dune is largely an archetypal, very human story.

Thing is, very few directors are attached to a studio in an entrenched capacity these days. Most move from place to place depending on the project. Could the director be Steven Spielberg, given his role in Dreamworks - recently bought by Paramount - who was instrumental in securing The Lovely Bones for the studio and insisted that Paramount restore The Godfather films so that the original negative was not lost? It could, naturally, be anyone with a multi-film deal, and I doubt Spielberg would be willing to undertake such a massive project this late in his career that he didn't originate himself - he does, after all, have original SF film Interstellar in development, with Jonathan Nolan scripting, plus the Abraham Lincoln film to get done. But who the hell knows? He may want to produce it.

Regardless, a Dune movie would have a huge uphill battle to get made, so there's no point raising a single hope yet. But as I discussed in my review of the two mini-series a while back, a new Dune movie could yield the definitive cinematic take on the book, and modern technology would help enormously.

Check out that entire forum thread for more information and implication. Thanks to Byron for sharing the information with us Dune fans.



A cool MTV video piece about comics writer Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina), with a few famous people singing the modest guy's praises as Y approaches the big screen with Disturbia's D.J. Caruso at the helm. Vaughan deserves all the praise he gets, and every bit of intelligent attention that comics get from the mainstream is very welcome.

They have a nice article on Vaughan too, where a quoted fan suggestion blew me away - as good as the very-keen Shia LeBeouf would be as Yorick, Ryan Gosling is absolutely PERFECT for the role! I was trying to think who looked like Yorick as well as could match his temperament, and Gosling certainly does. He's a more suitable age too. Rarely has an actor fit a part so well - make it happen, D.J. Caruso! Check it out - he IS Yorick.


It must be done!



Noah Forrest has an excellent preview of the choice prestige flicks coming out before the end of the year. He's right - Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood will be a must-see, without a doubt.



Ang Lee's forthcoming spy flick Lust, Caution, starring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Joan Chen, has been rated NC-17 (essentially X) by the MPAA..... and Focus Features is fine with it. Say what?! Distributors usually contest the NC-17, or cut it down to an R, or release it unrated. But Focus are fine with it, which is refreshing, even though many cinemas and cinema chains will refuse to show the film due to the rating. Kudos for your conviction, James Schamus and Focus.



Carla Gugino notches up another role, taking the female lead in Jon Avnet's serial killer flick Righteous Kill, starring Pacino and De Niro. Worrying though is the addition of 50 Cent, who apparently was as bad in Get Rich or Die Tryin' as Eminem was surprisingly good in 8 Mile. Yegads...



A correction to my last Bits entry: Josh Olson and Todd McFarlane's Oz project will actually bear no relation to McFarlane's macabre and controversial range of toys. He wrote in to The Beat to make this clear.



Morgan Freeman reports that the film of Arthur C. Clarke's novel Rendezvous with Rama that he's been trying to get off the ground with David Fincher for years is still a going proposition for them, but studios still won't bite. Cerebral SF is still not a major moneymaker, after all, as sad as that is. Still, at least they continue to try.



Frank Miller's The Spirit has set a release date of January 16, 2009.



For a final bit of craziness, Christian Bale has said while promoting 3:10 to Yuma (almost certainly as a joke) that co-star Russell Crowe will cameo in The Dark Knight. Almost certainly a joke, but it's an interesting proposition rather than a ludicrous one (depending on the role), so it's not a great joke. Could it be? Probably not.