Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Movie News Roundup: "Tell It to the Cleaning Lady on Monday"

Pirates 4 gets Rushed



Barbossa's back for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I would've bet on that early on (in fact, I could've sworn it had already been announced), but all the focus on casting Blackbeard and his daughter made me wonder if Barbossa was out. Glad to see he's not. By At World's End, I liked him even better than Sparrow. [/Film]


Voyage of the Dawn Treader trailer

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The quality of the trailer isn't real good, but the movie looks fantastic. As I've said before, this ought to be my favorite in the series. [/Film]

Cleopatra



Angelina Jolie is working with producer Scott Rudin to develop (and most likely star in) a movie about everyone's favorite Egyptian queen. Apparently, this is of some concern to people who don't recall that Cleopatra was, in fact, Greek and not African. [/Film]

After the break: Musketeers, Spies, Oz, and rock'em sock'em robots.

Three Less Musketeers?



It's always been a race to see who could get their Three Musketeers film going first: Paul WS Anderson or the producer of Sherlock Holmes. Anderson already had a nice head start with all the casting he's been doing, but now the other project is falling even farther behind due to its director pulling out to do a scifi flick instead. [/Film]

The Equalizer movie



I'm really torn about the idea of Russell Crowe's playing the Equalizer in a movie version. On the one hand, I really like Crowe and would love to see him play that kind of character. On the other, I have a hard time imagining anyone but Edward Woodward in the role. I suspect that I'll gradually get used to the idea though and will end up liking it just fine. [/Film]

Knockout now Haywire



Steven Soderbergh's spy movie starring mixed martial artist Gina Carano is being retitled Haywire. /Film has a brief plot description, but it's nothing that we haven't seen before: a black ops soldier is betrayed on a mission and seeks revenge. In fact, we've seen it twice in the last couple of months with The Losers and The A-Team. As /Film observes, where the movie looks interesting is in its supporting cast (Bill Paxton, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, and Antonio Banderas among others) and its potential to have some real fight sequences instead of tiresome, heavily-edited, shaky-cam montages of impressionistic battle.

Beckett goes undercover



Stana Katic from Castle has signed on to play "a feisty Russian prostitute who fiercely protects key information" in an upcoming Richard Gere/Topher Grace spy movie called The Double. Thanks to Double O Section for the report and for pointing out that Katic also played the compromised Canadian agent at the end of Quantum of Solace. As I commented at Double O Section's post, it's obviously been way too long since I've seen QoS if I didn't realize that was Kate Beckett.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World trailer



As a comic geek (though one who's yet to read the much-praised Scott Pilgrim series), I was interested in seeing the movie version of Scott Pilgrim mostly for academic reasons. After this trailer, I want to see it because it looks like it's going to kick every other movie ever made right in the face.

Oz movie roundup



And I thought it was tough keeping all the Three Musketeers and Captain Nemo movies straight. /Film counts three Wizard of Oz-related projects so far. There's the Drew Barrymore one we've already talked about, a Sam Raimi/Robert Downey Jr. one that I should have mentioned, but didn't. And now there's a third one by indie writer-producer-directors the Polish Brothers.

I've only seen one film by Michael and Mark Polish and it made my head hurt. I'm not sure how excited I am by their tackling Oz, a fantasy world that's already a bit complex and nonsensical.

Real Steel



/Film has pictures from Hugh Jackman's movie about Maybe Not Giant, But Still Really Big Robots fighting each other.

8 comments:

Ken O said...

My wife is way excited for Dawn Treader. Apparently she's worried about how they'll do the books ending, she said it gets strange.

I'll watch anything with Gina Carano. I'm a sucker that way.

The Equalizer is getting a movie? Can Hunter be far behind?

And that picture just reminds me how much I love watching Castle.

Michael May said...

I'd forgotten all about Hunter!

Personally, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Manimal.

Download Tv Show said...

hey ya agrri with you and Angelina is looking great waiting for the film

Rich said...

I wish Jolie and Scott Rudin would take a good long look at Cleopatra in Space ;-)

Michael May said...

*GASP!* I just had a little heart attack. I'm getting weepy just imagining about that movie.

Teresa Decher said...

Looks like there are a lot of exciting movies coming up!

And it wouldn't be a POTC movie without Geoffrey Rush. Glad to hear he's on board.

Shawn said...

A few years ago I saw Caesar and Cleopatra at Stratford. (here's the film version of that production: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1318049/ )

The black actress that played Cleo was great. Stood her own to Christopher Plummer.

Yeah, Cleo was mostly Greek, and probably looked it, but I really don't care who plays the role, as long as she's good. Angie could be great (if the script is OK).

I'm also not too worried about a black Heimdall either.

Isn't casting about finding the best actor?

Michael May said...

Generally speaking, I think so. Everyone has their own line and I'm not really suggesting where anyone should draw theirs. I just thought it was interesting and a bit sad that people were getting really upset about Cleopatra without an historical leg to stand on.

In case anyone's interested, Memoirs of a Geisha is a good example of how I draw the line for me. A lot of folks were upset that a Chinese actress was hired to play a Japanese role. While I respect their prerogative to be offended, it didn't offend me. Had they hired Angelina Jolie for that role though, it would've been a different story.

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