If you happen to be a fan of mystery novels from the 60's and 70's, then the name John D. MacDonald probably rings a bell. If not, it looks like you are going to get the chance to get to know him, but on the big-screen instead. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Fox is planning on a feature film version of McDonald's The Deep Blue Good-By, and that Gary Fleder (the man behind Kiss the Girls and Runaway Jury) is in talks to direct.
Good-By was the first novel in McDonald's Travis McGee series. McGee is a Korean War vet and amateur sleuth who works as a "salvage consultant," recovering property and money for his clients (for a tidy fee) while operating out of a houseboat in Florida -- sadly without an alligator named Elvis. MacDonald wrote over 20 novels starring Travis McGee, so the project could be a great opportunity for Fox to get a new franchise up and running.
Fleder's feature debut was Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead back in 1995. Since then, Fleder has mainly made thrillers, but, he recently got the chance to flex his biopic muscles with the Ernie Davis biography, The Express, starring Dennis Quaid and Charles S. Dutton. Fleder might have the most experience when it comes to thrillers, but MacDonald was known for having a dark sense of humor in his capers. So if Fleder does sign for the film, he might have to lighten up a little this time around.
There's a really neat-sounding small-scale sci-fi project in development at Overture Films called Pandorum. But for the news that Paul W.S. Anderson is involved, I'd be really excited. Pandorum will be about two spaceship crewmen who wake up on their ship with no idea who they are or what they're supposed to be doing. Soon, they "make a discovery that threatens the survival of mankind."
Anderson didn't write and won't be directing the film -- those tasks both fall to relative unknowns -- but he is reteaming with his Resident Evil cohorts to produce it. He's not exactly on my must list these days, since the Resident Evil franchise has pretty much died under his supervision and AvP isn't exactly a venerable addition to the list of ongoing big-name series. Pandorum's premise sounds cool, but then so did Event Horizon's until you actually learned what was going on. In any case, Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster (in a possible rare non-psychopathic role?) have signed on to star as our heroes, which is good news. I guess the big question is what exactly the two of them "discover" on that spaceship.
Pandorum is supposed to start production in August in Berlin, according to the Variety piece; no word on a release date. Sci-fi fans, make a note of it.
We brought you a bunch of brand new G.I. Joe character photos yesterday, but Paramount just sent over a whole batch of those same images (plus a few others) in beautiful hi-res. These photos include characters like Duke (Channing Tatum), Hawk (Dennis Quaid), Ripcord (Marlon Wayans), The Baroness (Sienna Miller), Destro (Christopher Eccleston), Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Breaker (Saïd Taghmaoui), Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee). With the exception of Cobra Commander (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), that's our primary cast.
Check out all these images (in hi-res) in the gallery below. G.I. Joe hits theaters on August 7, 2009.
Above: Lost star Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Heavy Duty, who serves as the G.I. Joe Team's heavy ordnance specialist with a passion for classical guitars and Bach. He is described as being unafraid of any situation despite heavy enemy fire. (for a larger look, head over to Coming Soon).
Paramount has released a crop of new photos from the upcoming live-action G.I. Joe flick; most of which appear to be different from those that leaked online not long ago. This seems to be a pretty easy film to market -- there's, like, 250 characters to eventually show us, and so they may as well unveil them a little at a time. Still not crazy about this whole special-ops look, but what can you do. Who's not in this film? I'd love to list the entire cast (which also includes folks like Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller and Dennis Quaid), but I think my fingers will go numb. There's a lot of folks in this thing; trust me. After the jump, check out the three other photos, as well as a little bit of info via our good friend Mr. Wiki.
G.I. Joe is due out in theaters on August 7, 2009.
Variety reports that Paul Bettany's Legion has just added a whole crowd of actors, including the star power of Dennis Quaid, Kate Walsh, and Tyrese Gibson. They will be headlining a cast that includes Jon Tenney, Charles S. Dutton, Lucas Black, Adrianne Palicki, Kevin Durand and Willa Holland. They've signed on just in time, as the movie is about to start shooting in New Mexico.
Legion is a thriller that stars Bettany as the archangel Michael, who is all that stands between mankind and an apocalypse after God has lost faith in humanity. But the Almighty apparently hasn't lost all hope -- a child is on the way who is the second coming of Christ, and a group of strangers who recognize the fact must band together to save it. It is director Scott Stewart's first feature film, from a script he co-wrote with Peter Schink.
I am quite intrigued by the movie, as I am a sucker for any kind of Biblical thriller. The problem is that they are almost always terrible. (Though I will always give props to The Prophecy for proving that the Devil does, in fact, wear a mullet.) The combination of Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid gives me some hope though, since they generally pick good scripts. We'll see if this is one of them.
I hardly have to explain why I'd go fetch this one from the vaults, since it's the only known anecdote for 10,000 BC. Roland Emmerich certainly hasn't lost his delicate touch, has he? I feel the pain of people who had ten year old sons and thus were dragged into it. You get force marched through the tundra for what seems like hours only to arrive at the Pyramid of the Fancy Boys. And the only real diversion besides 3 minutes of saber-toothed tiger, are those devil-ostriches. After I got out, I couldn't wait to have a look at director/writer Carl Gottlieb's satire of the all-purpose caveman movie. Unfortunately, I never saw Caveman back in the day, despite the high-spirited tagline on the posters: "Back When You Had to Beat It Before You Could Eat It!" I think the reason I skipped it was because of all the genial oafs I knew who kept quoting the dinosaur poop joke in the film. They are there, alright, but happily it's only a tiny part of the comedic inanity set in "One Zillion Years BC...October 9."
Like many recent thrillers, Vantage Point is set against the war on terror, as U.S. President Ashton (William Hurt) arrives in Salamanca, Spain to announce new international treaties and efforts in the fight against freedom's enemies. We open in a news van, as harried, hard-bitten producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver) is orchestrating her camera team and reporters on scene. When reporter Angie Brooks (Zoe Saldana) breaks from the celebratory mood to talk about the protesters outside the courtyard where the crowd awaits the President's words, Rex is miffed about the departure from the script. "We're here for the summit, not the sideshow." Rex has a very definite plan for the day in her head. As shots ring out, the President goes down and explosions ripple through the courtyard, it's clear someone else does, too. ...
Directed by Pete Travis, Vantage Point's plot unfolds as a series of recollections and first-person stories; we begin with Rex's by-the-books coverage turning into a nightmare of murder and mayhem; we flash back to follow Secret Service veteran Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) as he and partner Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox) transport the President to the location; we follow American tourist Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker) as he winds up accidentally videotaping what may be the key to the attempt on the President's life; we follow President Ashton as he weighs the security risk of the speech against the importance of what he's going to say. ...
I must have had too many cups of coffee when I agreed to take on a Cinematical Seven covering the hunks of sports films. (Erik had the easy job, picking the Hottest Sports Girls.) Trying to pick the studs is like having hundreds of 4-star, wonderful movies thrown on your desk and being asked to pick the 7 best. Yeah, right! No problem! To make the task easier, I decided to pick a range of sports, and never double up on one particular type. That cut out a whole slew of possibilities, and what I came up with is what you see below.
What have I learned from picking the Seven Sexy Sporting Studs from cinema? The best of the best (pun intended) were in the '80s and '90s. I also learned that you should never share the list with a friend beforehand -- they'll remind you who you're forgetting, and that's why you'll find one tie down below. Enjoy!
The only thing I knew when I took on this assignment was that Eight Men Out was going to be featured. Bull Durham is great and all, but this is the baseball movie. It's John Sayles, and it has the best baseball team to ever make it on the screen. They might have let their morals loosen a little, but they still kept their looks. Foolishly, I tried to pick between John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, D.B. Sweeney, and David Strathairn. Forget that! I'm taking the easy way out. Cusack's Buck Weaver was super cute as a "future jailbird," Charlie was always tasty in those days, and it's beyond me why women weren't falling all over David Strathairn the minute he jumped into film with Return of the Secaucus Seven, or any of the bigger movies that were soon to come. And Sweeney was cute, too, in that dorky way.
In one of Smart People's many funny (yet real) scenes, several beers have loosened the inhibitions and tongue of bright, highly motivated teen Vanessa Wetherhold (Ellen Page). As she staggers out of the bathroom, she pauses to ask a bottle-blonde, denim-clad woman "How's it feel to be stupid?" The woman snaps back: "How's it feel to eat lunch alone every day?" Vanessa's drunk enough to be honest: "It f***in' sucks." And that scene, in a nutshell, is what Smart People is about -- how it's one thing to be bright and aware and clever and perceptive, but it also sucks to eat lunch alone. Vanessa's dad Lawrence (Dennis Quaid) is a burly, bearded professor in the English department at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University - sluggish and surly and sleepwalking through his days. It's established -- carefully and well -- that Lawrence lost his wife not that long ago. His son James (Ashton Holmes) is attending Carnegie; his daughter Vanessa busies herself as Lawrence's right hand woman -- preparing meals, thinking of new titles for his book, advising him on office politics. This has two advantages for Vanessa; she gets to help her dad with his problems, and it keeps her too busy to think about her own.
The Wetherholds don't have much of a life, but at least it has some order to it -- order that's disrupted by the arrival of Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), Lawrence's adopted brother. Chuck is a slow-motion wreck of a man, a financial and professional failure, but he knows things his brainy brother and niece don't. Chuck wants to crash with Lawrence for a while, but Lawrence isn't very interested in that; when Lawrence has a seizure that means his driving license is revoked for six months, Chuck leaps in that window of opportunity headfirst. Chuck, by his very presence, destroys the status quo at the Wetherhold home. What we come to grasp is that maybe that status quo needs destruction.
My goodness, it seems like everywhere you turn somebody else is signing up for the big-screen adaptation of G.I. Joe. Varietyreports that Dennis Quaid has now signed to star as General Hawk. You know, your typical 'grizzled' military man. He's probably going to have a cigar chomped in his teeth for three-quarters of the film. The news came on the heels of official word that Channing Tatum had been hired to play Duke; the second in command of the elite team with 'kung-fu grip'. Yesterday, Erik had also reported that Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy) will be playing Zartan, but so far there is no official word.
It looks like Quaid is technically one of the biggest name stars in the cast, which includes Marlon Wayans as Ripcord and Sienna Miller as The Baroness. Some of the other 'Joe' characters who will be making an appearance are Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who will play Heavy Duty, Byung-hun Lee as Storm shadow, Ray Park as Snake Eyes, and Said Taghmaoui as Breaker.
So far, there aren't many details about the plot, but what we do know is that Stuart Beattie's script will focus on "A European-based military unit known as Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity (G.I.J.O.E.), a hi-tech, international force of special operatives that takes on an evil organization led by a notorious arms dealer". There are still a few more spots to fill, but it looks like director Stephen Sommers has almost finished assembling his team. Just in time too, since the film is scheduled to start shooting next month. G.I. Joe is scheduled for release on August 7th, 2009.
UPDATE: IESB now says that David Murray (a theater actor, apparently) has landed the role of Destro in G.I. Joe. Destro is the main villain in the film, and is described as the "faceless power behind Military Armaments Research System, the largest manufacturer of state-of-the-art weaponry."
Three clips have popped up online for Miramax's comedy Smart People. The film stars Dennis Quaid as a sullen academic who is trying to improve both his professional and personal situation -- on the family side of things, there's Ellen Page as his daughter, Thomas Haden Church as his adopted brother, and Sarah Jessica Parker as his love interest. James Rocchi recently interviewed the cast, and said that the film was "funny, yet never forced; rich, but always real." (Stay tuned for his review.)
And if you need more proof, these clips look pretty darned good, if I do say so myself. Hearing about this project, I was most drawn to Page's involvement, but now I'm really digging Quaid. I've always loved the guy, and there's just something about these clips that brings me back to the golden age of Quaid -- granted, with much more hair and much less devilish grinning. Check out the one clip above, and the other two after the jump.
In Smart People, Dennis Quaid plays a lonely, semi-broken academic trying to re-connect with his work, repair his relationship with his fractured family (including his daughter, Ellen Page, and his adopted brother, Thomas Haden Church) and conduct a tentative romance with Sarah Jessica Parker's E.R. doctor -- who used to be one of his students. The feature-film debut of award-winning commercial director Noam Murro, Smart People's warm and winning script, by novelist Mark Poirier, is funny, yet never forced; rich, but always real. Parker, Church and Quaid spoke with Cinematical at Sundance about Murro's unexpected directorial choices, the film's surprising sense of stillness and grace ... and less noble topics, like dueling and character hair cuts, too: "One of the added benefits of doing a movie with Sarah Jessica Parker," Church explains, "is that you also have access to her hair and make-up people. ..."
This interview, like all of Cinematical's podcast offerings, is now available through iTunes; if you'd like, you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:
There's lots of names that get thrown around when you talk about cinematic heroes in the '80s. Some people will cite the beefcake fighters like Jean Claude Van Damme. Others will cite Harrison Ford's adventure-thriving Indiana Jones. There's also Superman, Maverick, John McClane, Axel Foley, Rocky... You name it. But they all pale in comparison to one man. He wasn't so wimpy that he needed sweat-covered muscles, fighting moves, or big guns. All he needed was a little, itty bitty man inside him, and a good, healthy dose of the crazy. The man was Jack Putter.
Yes, Martin Short. Some might say that SCTV is his best work, but there's something about his portrayal of Jack Putter in Innerspace that is just beyond irresistible. While many comedic actors can pull off slapstick, it usually has that air of forced goofiness. But not for Short. He can shriek, flail, and fall over and make it seem perfectly natural to his character. There is no one else that could have pulled Putter off -- making both the over-the-top hypochondria and physical ordeal seem natural. It also helps that he's not falling to the slapstick weight of poor decisions that make many comedies today uncomfortable. Putter is a purely enjoyable and laugh-inducing character.
It has been over a year since anything solid has been heard about the political thriller Vantage Point. Plus, most people (myself included) probably missed the castingnews about the film the first time around. But, here we are a year later, and Sony Pictures is hosting a full theatrical trailer. And, when I say full trailer, I really mean it, since it manages to give away some pretty crucial plot elements. The story centers on a political conspiracy involving Mexico and the U.S. and it unfolds "Rashomon-style" with the different people present at an assassination attempt, each providing their own version of the events. It looks like the trailer has been up and running on the film's official site for a little while now, but there is not much else on the site other than the chance to register for updates.
The film was directed by newcomer Pete Travis, who until now was working in television, and this is also the first feature for the film's screenwriter, Barry Levy. The all-star cast includes; William Hurt, Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, and Sigourney Weaver. With the film's political subject matter and heavy-hitting cast, it seemed like a prime release for the fall season. Instead, Vantage Point is set for release on February 15th, and will be competing for box-office against the family film, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and the sci-fi teen drama Jumper. But, it's not like they are going to be competing for the same audience anyway, so maybe Point has a shot at ruling the box office after all, at least for that week.
In September, Erik Davis briefly mentioned one of the projects that Keith Calder's Snoop Entertainment was producing -- Terra. The story is based on a short CG film by Montreal native Aristomenis Tsirbas that deals with an interplanetary, alien future. The short was then penned into a feature by Evan Spiliotopoulos -- the scribe of Pooh's Heffalump Movie, of all things. The extended adaptation deals with interplanetary conflict between a peaceful world and human warriors looking to colonize it. The first news had the likes of Thirteen'sEvan Rachel Wood, X2 bad guy Brian Cox, and Arrested Development'sDavid Cross, as well as James Garner and Danny Glover stepping in to lend their voices.
Now Variety has given a whole slew of names to add to the cast. We've got Luke Wilson, Amanda Peet, Dennis Quaid, Justin Long (the Mac guy and Die Hard 4 co-star) and Chris Evans (Fantastic Four) to delight in as well. If that cast isn't enough, there is also Ron Perlman, Rosanna Arquette and Danny Trejo. Really, whoever casted this sucker wanted to cover all of their bases. We've got younger, saucy stars, older and established actors, lots of quirk and two bad asses to boot. For a "studio-quality CG pic at a third of the price," they've certainly got an impressive list of talent. Sure, they're not Brangelina tabloid huge, but I think they've got the chops. Are they enough to interest you?
If you happen to be a fan of mystery novels from the 60's and 70's, then the name John D. MacDonald probably rings a bell. If not, it looks like you are going to get the chance to get to know him, but on the big-screen instead. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Fox is planning on a feature film version of McDonald's The Deep Blue Good-By, and that Gary Fleder (the man behind Kiss the Girls and Runaway Jury) is in talks to direct. 
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