Movie Clerks

Filed under: Action, Casting, Deals, Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek

Holy “Where the hell did this one come from” Batman! In a last ditch effort to win back fans, Warner Bros. has apparently convinced both Christian Bale and Brandon Routh to reprise the roles of Batman and Superman for their upcoming live-action Justice League of America film (currently titled Justice League Mortal). A press release just sent to Cinematical comes with this hilarious quote from a studio rep: “Brandon wasn’t too hard to convince; he half-jokingly told us he’s dreamt about this opportunity every night for the past several months.”
Both men have signed a three-picture deal, which means Warners has plans to extend Justice League beyond the initial film, due out in 2009. Currently, there’s no word on whether Armie Hammer (the actor supposed to play Batman) will still appear in some capacity, be it as a younger version of Batman […]

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Filed under: Documentary, Celebrities and Controversy, Exhibition, DIY/Filmmaking, Movie Marketing, Fan Rant

One of the hotter sales at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was a documentary called Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (check out our review here). The doc, which chronicles the director’s controversial rape case throughout the years, was sold to HBO Documentary Films for $1 million following the fest. Okay, so one sees that HBO picked it up — figuring it’s a documentary, they’d probably go straight to cable and DVD with it, right? Yes. Right. HBO is premiering the film on June 9. Ah, but they’d also like the film to qualify for an Oscar, which means it needs to play in a theater for a minimum of seven days in Los Angeles county and Manhattan. The problem with this rule is that it can play ANYWHERE and HBO is certainly taking advantage of that.
Defamer points out, via […]

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Filed under: Action, Drama, Deals, Sony, Distribution, Western
Everyone and their (his?) mother loves The Proposition, the Nick Cave-penned Australian western starring Danny Huston as a villain who could give Chigurh a run for his money in sheer badassery. It’s hard to blame them, since movies that gritty and tough don’t come along very often. (As modern westerns go, I think 3:10 to Yuma is better, but it certainly isn’t as awesomely brutal.) Two years after that film became a critical darling and a sleeper hit of sorts, director John Hillcoat — who is currently in production on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road — has signed with Columbia to direct an adaptation of a not-yet-released novel by Matt Bondurant called The Wettest Country in the World. The book is about a trio of gangsters — the author’s grandfather and grand-uncles — who ran the moonshine trade at the peak of the Prohibition […]

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Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Thrillers, Casting
Here are some casting nibblets for the end of the month, courtesy of Variety:

Yet another lucky actor has been added to the film that will partake in the culinary wonders of Julia Child. Dave Annable (Brothers & Sisters) has picked up a starring role in Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia. There is, however, no word on who he will play. Had Julia and Paul Child had children, I would assume that Annable would be one, because he sort of has a Streep/Tucci look to him. But, no dice.
Patrick J. Adams, meanwhile, will take a lead role alongside Judi Dench in a new film called Rage, from indie filmmaker Sally Potter (The Tango Lesson). Now, if you’re familiar with the director and her 1997 film, this project should sound familiar. Potter had put Rage’s script aside years ago to film Tango, but mentioned it within the […]

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Filed under: Horror, Independent, Killer B’s on DVD

It’s My Party And I’ll Die If I Want To is a low budget horror flick looking for a distributor, though you can still buy the film directly from the producers at Scotchworthy Productions. This $15,000 flick is so far below the radar right now it doesn’t have an entry on IMDB, and for some reason an IMDB search for the title yields a completely unrelated porn movie which is both hilarious and not safe for work. Director Tony Wash met his crew while attending Tom Savini’s Special FX School, though the film did not shoot until after he had graduated, so Wash insists this is not a student film. Indeed it isn’t, because despite the rough-around-the-edges look (the body double in the shower scene, for example, has freckles that don’t match up with our leading lady) that would be impossible to avoid […]

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Filed under: Horror, Independent, Casting, Cinematical Indie
Here’s a little piece of advice for would-be babysitters: if it’s a full moon, you might want to stay home rather than risk getting sacrificed for Satan. That’s the premise for the upcoming horror flick The House of the Devil, which stars Jocelin Donahue (pictured) as “a babysitter who runs afoul of a family of devil worshippers.”
Greta Gerwig plays the babysitter’s best friend; this will be the indie darling’s first foray beyond the mumblecore circle of films (Nights and Weekends, Baghead, Yeast). The film will also feature a cameo by Dee Wallace (E.T., The Howling, Cujo), according to Fangoria.
To further the genre goodness, the demon-friendly parents will be played by Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, a teaming which is almost too evil to imagine. The soft-spoken Noonan was perhaps most spooky as a serial killer in Michael Mann’s Manhunter. Woronow was most recently […]

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Filed under: Animation, Classics, After Image

Recently down for a week to pick up some kultcha in the “hateful megalopolis,” as R. Crumb described Los Angeles, I caught a recurring cabaret night of bad cartoons titled Cartoon Dump! hosted by Jerry Beck, an internationally known authority on animation. Frank Conniff, best known as TV’s Frank from Mystery Science Theater 3000, was on hand in costume as “Moodsy,” a clinically depressed owl. The slim comedienne Erica Doering played Compost Brite! the cute, lisping dumpster-diving elf who had retrieved from the garbage a bunch of stinky cartoons that the world might be well without. Beck and Company dug up some real lulus. Hard to top was the opening from the 1950s, Paddy the Pelican.
You knew you were in for it right from the cackling theme song, seemingly a version of “The Irish Washerwoman” performed by a demented Canadian goose in duet with […]

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Filed under: Drama, United Artists, Tom Cruise, Movie Marketing, Images

So for starters, the newest photos from Valkyrie manage to make Tom Cruise look a lot more dashing. Good thing, too, because the only other photo release prompted a flurry of cheap shots aimed at everybody’s favorite tabloid whipping boy. Empire now has three new studio stills from Bryan Singer’s historical drama about the infamous July 20th plot to assassinate Hitler. Joining Cruise are Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Izzard and Terrence Stamp. There are also some extra shots in the newsstand edition of Empire this month, along with an interview with Singer.
Cruise stars as German Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. In 1944, Stauffenberg along with other high-ranking officers in the Nazi party attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Stauffenberg and his crew attempted to kill Hitler with a bomb planted in a briefcase. Obviously they failed, and the key players were rounded […]

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Filed under: Obits

Abby Mann (1927-2008) - Oscar-winning screenwriter of Judgment of Nuremberg. He was also nominated for writing Stanley Kramer’s Ship of Fools. He also worked on Vittorio De Sica’s The Condemned of Altona, wrote John Cassavetes’ A Child is Waiting and Gordon Douglas’ The Detective, which starred Frank Sinatra, and created the TV series Kojak. He also appears in the documentary Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust. He died of heart failure March 25, in Beverly Hills. (Variety)

Art Aragon (1927-2008) - Professional boxer-turned-actor who appears as himself in the Bob Hope comedy Off Limits and in Kur Neumann’s film-noir The Ring. He also appears in John Huston’s boxing picture Fat City and in the WWII film To Hell and Back. He died of complications from a stroke March 25, in Northridge, California. (NY Times)
Paul Arthur (c.1948-2008) - Film historian, scholar and critic who taught English and film studies at […]

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Filed under: Drama, Foreign Language, Casting, Shorts
Every once in a while, a follow-up news piece pops up that makes me wonder where I’ve been. In case you missed it as well — there’s a new anthology hitting screens this year called 8, and it’s got a bunch of interesting directors attached. There are the likes of Jane Campion, Gael Garcia Bernal, Mira Nair, Gus Van Sant, and Wim Wenders, plus Gaspar Noe, Abderrahmane Sissako, and Jan Kounen.
Unlike the “I Love You” odes to famous cities, the film will tackle 8 themes and 8 films from famous directors that focus on the progress, set-backs, and challenges that face our planet. It’s not just an environmental picture, but rather, it focuses on themes of poverty/hunger (Sissako’s Tiya’s Dream), education (Garcia Bernal’s The Letter), gender equality (Nair’s How Can It Be), child mortality (Van Sant’s Mansion on the Hill), maternal health (Kounen’s The […]

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