Sky Captain and the World of Pajiba!
The Daily Trade Round-Up / Dustin Rowles
Trade News | August 21, 2007 | Comments (60)
We’re going to start today with Wanted, if only because a few images from filming have leaked out onto the gossip-sphere and the purveyors are expectedly frothing like rabid Pitt bulls (oh Jesus, that’s the worst pun in the history of puns; I’m so sorry) over the idea of Angelina Jolie wearing a dress on the hood of a sports car while carrying automatic weapons. It’s pretty much the reason that Titties & Ammo is the top-selling magazine in America — because most men love the idea of a beautiful woman mowing them down in a machine-gun spray of bullets while simultaneously fucking a car. Here’s a sample image (from Just Jared):
Clearly, plot, director, co-stars, and script are irrelevant to the success of the film; the studio has seemingly done all the marketing necessary to guarantee a $100 million opening. Indeed, after the inevitable success of Wanted, we can all look forward to a series of progressively more aggressive car-porn flicks, involving women fornicating with weaponry while operating heavy machinery up and until we’re given Anal Tractor: Plowing the Fields and the fad eventually dies.
For the record, however, Wanted also stars James McAvoy, who will be sporadically filling in for the car as the love interest, and Morgan Freeman, who will no doubt provide the voice of moral reason, warning of the dangers of auto-eroticism. No, actually, it involves some assassins (Jolie is of the super-villain variety, while McAvoy is being trained by Freeman to be another) and good ole Timur Bekmambetov will be directing from a script by Michael Brandt (2 Fast 2 Furious) and Dean Georgaris (Paycheck and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life). And, as though it weren’t obvious, Wanted is based on a comic book; in fact, Wanted is said to be the Watchmen for super-villains and, I suspect for quite a few folks, that’s even more arousing than the thought of Jolie making it with a Viper.
Elsewhere, if you’ve ever considered what the dullest, blandest, coldest, dead-eyeist romantic couple imaginable might look like, just go check out The Readers when it eventually hits theaters, because it will feature a Ralph Fiennes’ character who is awakened erotically by another woman, here played by Nicole Kidman. The film, based upon German writer Bernhard Schlink’s novel, will be directed by Stephen Daldry and produced by Anthony Minghella, so basically what has been assembled is the team and principal cast behind The Hours and The English Patient. Dear God, shoot me dead. In the head. With one of Angelina Jolie’s automatic weapons, because there is almost nothing I’d rather not see than another one of these dreary literary dramas that exist, not to entertain, but to amass Oscar nominations for suffocating, nondescript performances from characters who bitch about trifling indignities and die for passionless love. Oh, for fuck’s sake — wouldn’t it be cool to see Fiennes and Kidman star in a bad Farrelly Brothers movie instead of taking themselves so goddamn seriously all the time. I think I’d actually pay $10 to see Kidman pass gas and Fiennes get his scrote caught in a zipper.
Whatever. Anyway, for those of you not turned on by Jolie making mad passionate love to environmentally toxic sports car, then how about Nathan Fillion in a movie about … truck drivers? Actually, about a female truck driver (Michelle Monaghan, presumably sans gun), whose life of freedom is lost when the father (Benjamin Bratt) is hospitalized. Trucker comes from a script written by James Mottern, who gave us the television movie, Car Crash Tech. It doesn’t sound like a terribly interesting pic, nor are there any details on what role Fillion will play (or the film’s other star, Arkansas’ own Joey Lauren Adams), but I do know how y’all love your Fillion news and I’m aimin’ to o-blige.
Moving on: In casting news, the leads for He’s Just Not That Into You have been amassed, and they include the good: Bradley Whitford, Justin Long, Kevin Connelly, and Ginnifer Goodwin; the bad: Jennifer Connelly, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore; and the ugly: Scarlett Johansson. If you don’t recall, He’s Just Not That Into You was a ridiculously popular novel that Dan referred to as “reductive and mildly insulting gender-based pop-lit”; the movie will follow several different storylines that deal with the “challenges of reading or misreading human behavior.” So, what? It’s an autism comedy?
Finally, in one other casting tidbit, it does appear that Rose McGowan will play the lead in Barbarella, directed by Robert Rodriquez. Man, I don’t care. I just don’t care.
Out on DVD this week, check it out: The Ex, Broken English, The Lives of Others, and Redline. In other words, little to get excited about.
Finally, in the trailer watch, it’s hard not to get excited about a Jake Kasdan (Zero Effect) directed flick co-written by Kasdan and Judd Apatow, starring John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Kristen Wiig, and freakin’ Jack White as Elvis Presley. It’s an awesome collection of talent, but why does the trailer for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story put me off ever-so-slightly? It just seems like they tried a little too hard, and the absurdist flourishes are a little too absurd. I dunno. It just doesn’t do it for me.
… and then right before publication, my world flipped when I saw this trailer. We’ve been gently poking fun at the idea behind the Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There for a while now. I mean, I can see Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and maybe even Richard Gere playing Dylan, as each will be doing in the film. But Cate Blanchett? Preposterous, right? And then, 60 seconds and a few guitar strums from “Like a Rolling Stone,” and I’m not only convinced, I’m about to jump out of my skin excited. So, sit back, relax, and let your curls toe, boys and girls. Here’s the trailer.
Comments
Posted by: Armando at August 21, 2007 11:40 AM
Okay, I'll admit, Dylan is an important pop musician. Hell, without him, The Beatles would've fizzled out in '65, but "the greatest artist of our time?" I DON'T THINK SO!
Go ahead, fling your stones at me. I don't care. Dylan's influential, sure, but he's highly overrated as well.
(Ducks for cover...)