Time for another batch.
1. Star Trek co-star George Takei has “come out of the closet,” as they say, reports the Associated Press. I guess now we can go back and re-watch all the old episodes and movies for “subtext”, kind of like how we watch Rock Hudson movies now. (E.g., they always did say that Sulu came from San Francisco…)
OCT 29 UPDATE: Don’t know how long this link will be relevant, but here is the Frontiers article in which Takei “comes out”.
2. First Rocky VI, now Rambo IV. Stallone’s efforts to resurrect his career continue. Is this the ’80s revival we all want?
3. The Hollywood Reporter reports:
Cable channel A&E;’s independent film documentary unit is in production on two feature-length documentaries targeted for theatrical release. . . .
Meanwhile, the tentatively titled “Jesus Camp” focuses on 5- to 12-year-old kids who attend a summer camp for evangelical Christians in a small North Dakota town where they spend a week honing their “prophetic gifts” — for example, the ability to hear and relay messages from God, to speak in tongues, to see the future and to heal the sick.
The campers are hoping to be selected for a missionary trip to South Africa, where they will seek to convert others to Christianity. The documentary, from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (“The Boys of Baraka”), was shot during the summer, and is targeted for 2006.
Dubuc said both films are festival contenders that will be seeking theatrical distribution. Other titles in the A&E; IndieFilms stable have included ThinkFilm’s “Murderball” and Newmarket’s “Rock School.”
4. The Hollywood Reporter has a long-ish piece up on the many King Kong-related DVDs that are currently in the works:
There has been no rest for the weary on the Wellywood set of “King Kong.”
Award-winning DVD producer Michael Pellerin and his team have been running as fast as they can to keep up with Oscar-winning “Lord of the Rings” producer-writer-director Peter Jackson. Somehow, while Jackson was in the throes of creating his three-hour, $207 million epic remake of his favorite childhood classic, the tireless filmmaker also was supplying commentary not only for the eventual “King Kong” DVD but also for a video set diary posted twice-weekly on the Internet, as well as a documentary for the long-awaited DVD of the 1933 “King Kong.”
On scattered soundstages in Wellington, New Zealand, selected members of the “King Kong” crew participated not only in setting daunting new standards in digital effects for the new movie but also in painstaking recreations of six minutes of lost footage from the 1933 film, using the archaic special effects methods of that period. . . .
Fans who want to know more about the original “King Kong” will be able to rent or buy the 1933 classic DVD on November 22 (from Warner Home Video); the set diary DVD, which spans the first 54 entries, comes out December 13 (from Universal Home Video), the day before the new “King Kong” opens. And the ultra-deluxe “King Kong” 2005 two-disc DVD will go on sale in April.
Pellerin insists that they’ve saved plenty of goodies for the “ultimate DVD,” he says. “In the ‘Kong’ 2005 set diaries, we couldn’t show the cool stuff. We were banking 70% of all the original material for the later story, yet to be seen.”
Bonus points to whoever wrote this article for mentioning Peter Jackson’s Forgotten Silver (1997), a fun pseudo-historical biopic of a fictitious New Zealand silent filmmaker.
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