Time for another batch of news quickies.
1. The Devil’s Miner opened in limited release a couple weeks back, and comes out on DVD in May. Click here for my review and here for other reviews.
2. The Disney-Pixar merger, whereby the Disney corporation owns both companies but Pixar executives take charge of all the animated features in production, continues to have some interesting effects. Reuters and Studio Briefing report that Disney’s new management have pulled the plug on Elton John’s Gnomeo & Juliet and demanded “radical surgery” to Meet the Robinsons.
3. The Hollywood Reporter says Demetri Martin has sold a pitch to DreamWorks for a TV show called Will, which “centers on an ordinary guy who lives in a world where people’s lives and destinies are being written by scribes in Heaven. The man wakes up one day to find that his heavenly writer has decided to no longer draft his life, and he must go about his day unscripted.”
4. Lily Tomlin talks to Time magazine in anticipation of next Tuesday’s release of the “Sexist, Egotistical, Lying Hypocritical Bigot” edition of 9 to 5 (1980) on DVD. This is as good a time as any to quote Scott Feschuk‘s comment on movie-clip tribute-montage overkill at this year’s Academy Awards: “That said, the salute to ‘bold’ films through the ages provided some quality – and inadvertent – entertainment. Only in Hollywood could a tribute to courage segue from a scene of Hotel Rwanda, a film about a genocide that killed some 800,000 people, to a clip of Dolly Parton threatening Dabney Coleman’s genitalia in 9 to 5.”
5. I caught the newest trailer for The Da Vinci Code this morning. I can never see these trailers without tittering at the point where Ian McKellen gravely intones that revealing the alleged marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene — oops, that’s a spoiler, isn’t it? — would “devastate the very foundations of mankind.” Anyway, if I’m not mistaken, the new trailer for The Da Vinci Code uses the same version of Clint Mansell’s Requiem for a Dream (2000) theme that was orchestrated for the trailers for The Two Towers (2002) a few years back. And meanwhile, in related news, Reuters has a story up on the “religious publishing boom” that is poised to take advantage of the movie and its attendant publicity.
6. Reuters and the Associated Press report that Ocean’s Thirteen is in the works. Why, Lord, why? Well, okay, money, that’s why. Ocean’s Eleven (2001) was the biggest hit in the careers of all its co-stars, except for Matt Damon‘s small role in Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Don Cheadle‘s cameo in Rush Hour 2 (2001) — and only Brad Pitt has had a (marginally) bigger hit since, with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). But still, Ocean’s Twelve (2004) was so stupid and self-indulgent, I would be surprised if audiences were demanding yet another sequel. At least, I hope they aren’t.
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