The Globe and Mail reports that CTV has signed a deal to make a movie or miniseries on the life of the embattled Canadian-born press baron, based on the 1995 biography Shades of Black: Conrad Black and the World's Fastest Growing Press Empire, by Richard Siklos.
The Chicago Sun-Times, one of the papers that Black has up for sale, says that Siklos, 38, is working on an updated version of his 1995 book for fall release. He's apparently adding 100 pages of new material, including the allegations that Black took millions of dollars in unauthorized payments from Hollinger International, the company he founded.
Several New York news sources are carrying a story about a man who accidentally shot himself in the leg during a movie at a theater complex in Times Square. The man was watching Dawn of the Dead when his handgun discharged, wounding his left leg. He will be charged with criminal possession of a weapon.
Citing declining attendance, Cineplex Odeon has confirmed the Odeon Drive-In will not be opened for what would have been its 40th season. This leaves the Winnipeg area without a drive-in theatre. The next closest outdoor theatre is in Brandon.
The Odeon was opened in 1964 and had space for almost 1000 cars. Winnipeg has been home to a number of drive-ins over the years. The peak of the Winnipeg drive-in era was in the 1950's with theatres on Main Street, Pembina and Henderson Highway, as well as in Transcona and a couple out by the airport.
According to the BBC, Monty Python's film The Life of Brian will return to US theatres next month following the success of The Passion of the Christ. The Biblical satire will be re-released in Los Angeles, New York and other US cities to mark its 25th anniversary.
According to a story on FoxNews.com, Michael Jackson wanted to play the part of a car that is ridden around by a boy. Kevin Smith was asked to direct and called it the "weirdest" script he's seen. I'm sure stories like this are going to do very little to aid Mr Jackson in his attempt to clear his name.
In a letter forwarded to the Hollywood Reporter, Marin Karmitz, president the France's leading independent cinema group M2K, branded the film as "fascist propaganda." Read the full story at the web site of MBCi5.com - the Dallas/Ft Worth NBC affiliate.
According to an Associated Press article, Joaquin Phoenix will take on the role of Johnny Cash when filming begins on the project Walk The Line. The movie aims to chronicle the late singer's life, from his days on a cotton farm in Arkansas in the late 1940s, to his early stardom with Sun Records in Memphis. It will also explore his troubled time as a superstar in Nashville in the late 1960s. Reese Witherspoon is cast as his wife, June Carter Cash.
I stumbled upon the website awfulplasticsurgery.com this evening. This is literally the good, the bad and the ugly. Might as well add scary to that list too. Some of the speculations they make seem accurate, others I can't follow but you judge for yourself. One thing I can say without a doubt is that the site is morbidly fascinating.
MSNBC has a great article that looks at the norms or "commandments" of Hollywood movie making that Mel Gibson chose to ignore or avoid. A lot of pundits talk about the "big" risks taken to produce a film like The Passion or even the first The Lord of The Rings, which experts were not sure would translate to film or attract enough audience.
I see the huge success of these films as a clear sign that people are still attracted most by good storytelling. Yes, LOTR is a visual feast but several of my friends, all well-versed in the mythos of Middle Earth, enjoyed seeing their favorite stories brought to life. So before the studios decide they are going to shoot a "heist" or whatever category film, perhaps they should find an interesting story to tell. Dog Day Afternoon or The Score....you decide for yourself.
The Smoking Gun has posted a scan of a Secret Service affidavit, which shows that more than a dozen illegally duplicated movies were actually housed on a Fox computer server (along with pirated computer software and games), where they were accessed by members of a "warez" group trafficking in such bootlegged material. Lisa Yamamoto, the 45-year-old Fox employee whose home was raided, is allegedly a key member of that "warez" group.
Thanks to Dasme for the link to this story.
Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, who recently worked together on Minority Report, are teaming up again to tackle a remake of the H.G. Wells classic, The War of the Worlds. Cruise's production company scooped the rights to this story a while back so this announcement was just a matter of time. The rumours are that shooting will not take place before late 2005, as there is no approved script at the moment. David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for Spider-Man, will apparently rewrite the first draft script penned by Josh Friedman. The delay also has to do with Spielberg and Cruise currently being involved in other projects.
Spielberg is currently finishing a film called The Terminal starring Tom Hanks and is attached to at least two other projects after that. Cruise will next be seen in Collateral and he'll be shooting Mission: Impossible 3 this summer.
The War of The Worlds is H.G. Wells' 1898 science fiction classic and still stands as the definitive alien invasion story. It gained notoriety in 1938 when a radio broadcast of it to millions of Americans initiated widespread panic as many believed that the world was really under attack by Martians. It was later adapted for the screen in 1953.
Dwayne Johnson, more famously known as WWE superstar The Rock, was in Knoxville Tuesday night for a special movie premiere to benefit charity. The event was able to raise almost $100,000 for a children's charity in Tennessee. The movie being premiered was Johnson's latest action flick, Walking Tall, a remake of the 1970s cult classic. The original starred Joe Don Baker as real-life Tennessee sheriff Buford H. Pusser (1937-1974), and inspired two sequels: 1975's Walking Tall Part II and 1977's Walking Tall: The Final Chapter (both starring Bo Svenson who went on to star in a short-lived 1981 "Walking Tall" TV series as well).
The story has been modified as the lead character is now called Chris Vaughn, I guess the original name was not "cool" enough for either The Rock or the producers. Vaughn returns from military service to his small hometown to revive his family's lumber mill business but he discovers that the town is now besieged by drugs, outbreaks of violence and a general feeling of malaise and terror. Seeking to wreak vengeance, with a four-foot-long 4-by-4 in his hand, and righteousness in his heart, the highly-trained soldier, now the county's sheriff (with Johnny Knoxville playing his deputy), realizes it's time to bust some heads with a very hard piece of wood.
I have to admit I am looking forward to seeing this one...I realize the cheese factor is potentially high but it could also be a fun B-action type of movie. You can read more about Sheriff Pusser at his official website, which is maintained by his daughter as Buford tragically passed away at an early age.
An online petition calls for U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to evaluate action against the producers of The Passion for promoting hate crimes. The petition makes the following claims:
Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", through purposeful rewriting of the Christian Gospel mythos has, itself, become an anti-Semitic diatribe which, since it’s February 25, 2004 release resulted in hate crimes against Jews, Synagogues and Jewish Cemeteries in cities throughout the US. Mel Gibson's unbiblical and a-historical account of the "crucifixion" story has taken Hutton Gibson’s claims that the Holocaust is "fiction", even one step further.
Just as Adolf Hitler described the 300th anniversary performance of the Oberammergau Passion Play as "a convincing portrayal of the menace of Jewry" in 1934, Gibson and Writer/producer Tom Fontana’s 2004 use of extreme graphic and excessive violence set up and perpetrated at the urging of "the Jews" in their portrayal displays a clear prejudicial bent against the Jewish faith.
I can't say I personally agree with this view of the film but these people are certainly entitled to their opinion. I will warn you that if you do go and read the online petition, it has been signed by many people that actually do appear to be anti-Semitic and you may find some of the comments offensive. I know I did.
The black market DVD has gotten sophisticated enough that pirate DVDs now have their own subtitling. However, the subtitling is often hillariously bad as this article from the Bright Lights Film Journal illustrates.
Most people are familar with Disney and their propensity for happy endings. Now comes the story of a true happy ending in which Disney played a part. The Telegraph has a story on a supermarket manager who has managed to not only get his children's book published but have the film rights purchased by Disney. It should give hope to all aspriing authors and screenwriters.
The Seattle Post has a great article on the film Bush's Brain, which is currently screening at the South by Southwest festival. The documentary is about presidential adviser Karl Rove and the source material is a book of the same name. You can also have a look at the official site for the South by Southwest festival for more info. South by Southwest is a mult-faceted event that often does not get as much attention as Sundance or some of the other film-only festivals.
I don't often agree with 60 Minutes' curmudgeonly Andy Rooney but for once, I have to thank him for expressing the anger that I also feel. In a recent commentary, Rooney takes movie theatres to task over why we are subjected to commericals before the film starts.
I had begun writing my own rant essay on the topic but set it aside. The core of my rant focused on the commerical that offends me the most: the pseudo-PSA from respectcopyrights.org (backed by the Motion Picture Association of America a.k.a the big studios) that feels it should lecture its paying customers on the evils of not paying for movies. Brilliant logic!
How about respecting your audiences? A nice start would be not hyping every movie as "best movie of the year". I thought of suggesting diverting money from making bad movies into scholarships but I know that's going too far. The MPAA is not really concerned with the movie-goer so much as they are concerned with the movie-goer's money. As long as people keep forking over money to see mediocre films, nothing is going to change.
First ABC aired the film "Judas", now CBS is bringing back it's acclaimed mini-series "Jesus". In a press release, CBS announced the 4 hour mini-series will be rebroadcast Sunday, April 8 and Wednesday, April 11 (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT, each night).
Today's Globe and Mail carried a story about actor Ralph Fiennes potentially coming to Winnipeg to film scenes for The Constant Gardener. In the film, Fiennes plays a British diplomat working in AIDS-plagued Kenya, who uncovers a conspiracy between the government and a major pharmaceutical company.
The new Batman film - "Batman Begins" - started filming late last week in Iceland, with American Psycho actor Christian Bale taking on the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. The movie is directed by Memento filmmaker Christopher Nolan, and co-stars Michael Caine as Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred. Gary Oldman will play a younger version of the character most Batman fans know as Commissioner Gordon.
The cast also includes Katie Holmes as one of Wayne's childhood friends, Liam Neeson as Batman's mentor, Morgan Freeman as a disgruntled employee of Wayne Enterprises and The Last Samurai Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe as the sinister Ra's Al Ghul.
There are a number of sites reporting that Peter Jackson, fresh off his Academy Award dominance, is planning to shoot the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy - The Hobbit. Apparently there are a couple of studios locked in a legal battle over the film rights to the story, so it might be a while before anything proceeds.
Oscar-winning film editor Ralph E. Winters, whose career spanned almost the entire era of talking motion pictures, has died of natural causes at the age of 94. Winters, born in Toronto in 1909, broke into the film industry in 1928.
He was nominated for the Academy Award for best film editing six times and won twice, in 1950 for "King Solomon's Mines" and in 1959 for the epic "Ben-Hur," which is still famous for its stunning chariot race scene. In all, he worked on more than 70 films, including "The Thomas Crown Affair," the 1976 version of "King Kong." and many successful collaborations with acclaimed writer-director Blake Edwards. Winters and Edwards worked together on nearly a dozen films including classics like "The Pink Panther," "10," "Victor/Victoria" and "S.O.B."
An Orlando Sentinel commentary speculates that Mel Gibson may decide to follow up The Passion with a movie about the central characters of the holiday of Hanukkah. There were reports at him working on a Mad Max 4 but with the box office success of The Passion, he may decided to stick to writing/directing/producing films of his own.
Disney shareholders spoke with a loud voice, and the company responded by stripping CEO Michael Eisner of his chairman's title. Yahoo! News has a posting about this. I doubt it will affect the creative ventures but time will tell.
I'm still enthralled in reading the debate over The Passion of The Christ. The historical context and biblical interpretations are flying around like never before.
Here are links to a couple of sites that I have been sent by friends or readers of this site:
A number of sites, including E! Online, are reporting that the long rumoured Simpsons movie might become a reality soon. The Simpsons fan site The Simpsons Archive has collected a number of these articles into one convenient source.
I stumbled across the site for Matrix Of Evil. This documentary claims to show the viewer:
-How the private banks control the military-industrial complex
-Expert analyses of the USA Patriot Act and the latest police state developments
-Globalist financial policies pushing America and the world into depression
-The latest revelations concerning cashless society control grid, satellite tracking, cellphone tracking, DARPA surveillance, the end of Posse Comitatus, the federalization of local police and governments and much more..
-Government-sponsored terrorism, gun control, political assasinations, Sept. 11th coverup
While I would have to see the film to decide what I think about its claims, I do admit that what I have read about the Patriot Act scares the heck out of me and I don't even live in America. The encroachment on the privacy of citizens both by government and private industry is getting out off hand. RFID tags, GPS capable cell phones...what's next? Bar-code tattoos?