Six years ago, I passed along a bit of news about a TV show called Will, which would have centred 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.” (more…) Read more
“It smokes! It drinks! It philosophizes!” That’s a line from a song by Chagall Guevara, the short-lived band fronted by musician-turned-filmmaker Steve Taylor (who I have interviewed several times, most recently here). You can read the lyrics to the song, which is called ‘I Need Somebody’, here, and you can watch a video of the band performing the song at Greenbelt in 1991, here (the only copy of the album version of this song that I could find on YouTube... Read more
Deadline reports that Warner Brothers has acquired a script about Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator who condemned Jesus to the cross. No director is attached yet, but the script was written by Vera Blasi and the movie is set to be produced by Mark Johnson, whose credits include the TV show Breaking Bad and all three movies in the Chronicles of Narnia series. Deadline’s Mike Fleming, who has seen a draft of the screenplay, says it depicts Pilate as “a... Read more
Clint Eastwood shot to big-screen fame in a series of “spaghetti westerns”, the first of which, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), was based on a Japanese samurai flick called Yojimbo (1961). Now things are coming full circle, as Variety reports that a Japanese remake of Eastwood’s final western Unforgiven (1992) is now in the works. The new film will be directed by Korean-Japanese filmmaker Lee Sang-il, and will star Ken Watanabe (best known in North America for his parts in... Read more
First, and most significantly, USA Today has just posted an article on the film which includes what I believe is our first look ever at Russell Crowe in character as the titular boat-builder. And while the article mostly repeats information that is already out there, it does include one detail that I don’t recall coming across before: specifically, the character played by Ray Winstone, who has previously been described as Noah’s “nemesis”, now has a name. And that name is... Read more
First it was announced that Darren Aronofsky’s Noah would feature Methuselah in a significant role. Well, that made sense, because Methuselah was Noah’s grandfather. Then it was announced that the film would feature Cain and Abel in small roles. Well, that made sense, too, given that Aronofsky’s graphic novel features those characters in a prologue, and given that the murder of Abel was one of the first major sins that snowballed into the general wickedness of Noah’s day. And now?... Read more
Three years ago, I discovered and linked to a fun new website called Scouting New York. The site, run by a movie location scout named Nick Carr, has lots and lots of photographs, as well as lots of interesting historical information — but what caught my eye initially was the three albums he posted, comparing how certain locations looked when they were photographed in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Taxi Driver (1976) and Ghostbusters (1984) with how they look now. Since then,... Read more
Iceland Review reports that Darren Aronofsky has just cast two Icelandic actors, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson and Arnar Dan, as Cain and Abel in his upcoming movie about Noah and the Ark. Those who know the biblical story will recall that Cain killed Abel and went into exile some time before the birth of their brother Seth, who went on to become one of Noah’s ancestors — so presumably Cain and Abel will appear in a flashback or prologue or something.... Read more
First Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was split into two movies. Then The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn was split into two movies, the second of which comes out later this year. And then, just a few weeks ago, it was announced that Mockingjay, the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy, would be split into two movies, too. Peter Jackson, who practically invented the multi-movie franchise by filming all three parts of The Lord of the Rings in one... Read more
The constant retconning on the Bourne movies is really something to behold. The first sequel didn’t do anything too outrageous — it just added some flashbacks to an earlier point in “Jason Bourne’s” career — but it ended with an epilogue in which Bourne, an amnesiac, learns his real name. So the second sequel had to get a wee bit more inventive, if it was to keep this amnesiac-on-the-run storyline going; instead of picking up where the first sequel left... Read more
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