Time for another batch of updates.
1. Lena Headey, who will soon be seen in 300, tells Sci Fi Wire that Summer Glau is, indeed, playing a Terminator in The Sarah Connor Chronicles — but is she the good one or the bad one? Glau’s character is named Cameron, apparently in honour of franchise creator James Cameron, but that could be interpreted either way. The other Terminator is being played by Owain Yeoman.
2. Variety reports that the producers of Thank You for Smoking — one of my personal favorites of last year — are now working on another Christopher Buckley adaptation called God Is My Broker:
Insiders describe the project as a parody of the self-help movement, much the way “Smoking” was a satire of spin. Plot centers on a Wall Street stockbroker who flees to a monastery, only to find monks who are turning their monastery into a corporation.
Here is how the Hollywood Reporter summarizes the story:
Buckley (“Thank You for Smoking”) sold Pressman the rights to his 1998 book, which centers on an alcoholic stock broker who gives everything up and joins a monastery. But when the monks’ vow of poverty begins to take a financial toll, the former broker uses his old skills to save them, turning his new home into a frightning parallel of the world he desperately tried to escape.
3. Matt Page at the Bible Films Blog notes that Pier Paolo Pasolini’s black-and-white neo-realist classic The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) has been “colourized” for a DVD coming out later this month via the Weinstein Company. The mind boggles.
4. Canadian movie piracy continues to make the news. Three weeks ago, the Globe and Mail reported:
A powerful coalition of U.S. software, movie and music producers is urging the Bush administration to put Canada on an infamous blacklist of intellectual property villains, alongside China, Russia and Belize.
Canada’s chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime has made it a global hub for bootleg movies, pirated software and tiny microchips that allow video-game users to bypass copyright protections, the International Intellectual Property Alliance complains in a submission to the U.S. government.
The time has come for the United States to send a stern warning to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, which has failed to deliver on a promised overhaul of copyright laws and a policing crackdown, said the Washington-based group that represents companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Paramount Pictures.
A few days later, there was a piece in the New York Times. And then, yesterday, Variety reported that American politicians were beginning to lobby the Canadian government on this issue:
In a letter sent Thursday to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) urged his government to crack down on illegal videotaping of movies, which has increased in Canada since the U.S. toughened laws against it in 2005.
“Unfortunately, since the United States has enacted tougher laws and penalties against piracy, including camcording piracy, it seems that much of this illicit business has simply moved north,” the senators wrote. “According to a report issued by the U.S. Congressional Intl. Anti-Piracy Caucus … Canadian-sourced camcordings rose by 24% in 2006 from 2005.”
5. Variety reports that the Polish film awards, AKA the Eagles, were handed out yesterday, and a couple of the winning titles — Savior Square and We Are All Christs — catch my eye.
6. Lou Lumenick asks which late-night talk-show host has played himself in films more often: Jay Leno or Larry King?
7. Slashfilm.com reports that Brad Bird, director of such animated films as The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004) and the upcoming Ratatouille, may branch out into live-action films with 1906, a movie about the San Francisco earthquake.
8. IGN.com reports that Superman: Doomsday, a feature-length animated adaptation of the ‘Death of Superman‘ storyline from the Superman comics of the early ’90s, will come out on DVD in September. I happened to collect those comics back then, and I still have the original issues of that storyline — a few of ’em still in their sealed plastic bags. I wonder what they’d fetch on eBay.
9. Speaking of eBay, Variety and many other sources report that Premiere magazine has had its plug pulled after 20 years on the stands, though the website will survive, at least for now. This reminds me, I still have that first issue that I bought way back in high school, and I haven’t decided whether to eBay that yet.
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