Category: News

New Line Cinema announced that it would be producing a movie based on the story of professional hockey player Sean Avery‘s experiences as a Vogue magazine summer intern. (Source: Hollywood Reporter)

Choke producers Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson have been tapped by New Line to oversee it, and that has me slightly anticipating more details because since romantic comedies aren’t their usual bread and butter, they’re probably going to be bringing a fresh take to the genre.

The reason why I’m very optimistic about this movie because I am hoping — probably against hope — that it can break down some boundaries when it comes to the notion of what is truly masculine. After all, you’re not going to make fun of a former New York Ranger who’s known for his verbal jabs as well as his bodychecks just because he considers himself a fashionista, are you?

Indie movie junkies and beatniks everywhere must have had a collective orgasm when it was announced that David Strathairn (The Bourne Ultimatim), Alan Alda (The Aviator), Jeff Daniels (Good Night, and Good Luck), Mary-Louise Parker (“Weeds”), and Paul Rudd (Knocked Up) were attached to join Spider Man‘s James Franco as the lead in Howl, a pic about the obscenity trial surrounding Beat Generation writer’s Allen Ginsberg’s book-length poem of the same name (source: Hollywood Reporter). The five stars will play key characters in the trial, ranging from the prosecuting attorney (Straithairn) to one of the defense witnesses (Rudd).

If you don’t know what “Howl” is, you must have either never gone through an “I just gotta be free, man” phase of your life in college, or you didn’t have a hippie English teacher in high school like I did. I will forever be grateful to Ms. Marjie Blevins for introducing me to Ginsberg’s work and encouraging me to think about poetry and the world in a non-conventional way.

The fact that it was also a way for me to get away with saying the words “let themselves be fucked in the ass” in a high school honors class was just a bonus, really.

Most people know Paul Gross from his role in the short-lived TV show “Due South” as a Canadian Mountie on the trail of his father’s killer who — for reasons that don’t need exploring in this blog post — became the biggest secret crush of many women who in their late 20s continue to write erotic fanfiction about him to this very day. What people don’t know is that he’s a screenwriter and director as well, and his latest project has the very ambitious goal of making people become aware of the Canadian film industry via his new WWI-era film Passchendaele (pronounced “passion-dale”). (Source: Risky Biz @ Hollywood Reporter)

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “Canadians make movies? I thought their film industry only existed to support U.S. projects that are too expensive to film Stateside?” And therein lies the problem. Because Canada is so close to the U.S. and we share a common language and heritage, oftentimes Canadians feel as if their voices and culture are being overwhelmed by ours.

Think of it like two guys who move into two side-by-side houses named Sam and Doug. At first things are pretty cool and they talk to each other as they mow their front lawns and sometimes they watch football games on alternating weekends at each other’s houses. Sam comes over to help Doug shovel his walk in the winter, and Doug sometimes watches Sam’s mailbox when he leaves on vacation in the summer.

Then one night, Sam comes home with a really hot chick named Holly Wood who likes to party hard, and eventually she moves in. At first Doug is a little annoyed when Holly invites everyone in her cell phone over for late-night parties, but since Sam still lets Doug come over to watch the football games on his 60-inch plasma TV he’s fine with it. That’s cool, because Doug has a new live-in girlfriend of his own, a sweet motherly sort of woman who makes him cookies. But then the girls start hanging out while the guys are at work, and Doug’s sweet motherly girlfriend starts thinking that she needs to start ratting up her hair like Holly does, and she has to start dressing like Holly, and she starts to curse and swear like Holly does.

And then Sam starts saying things that Doug can’t stand about nice people he knows, with Holly’s urging. And it’s Holly’s idea that whenever Doug comes over to watch the ball games, Doug has to chip in to pay for all the beer.

If you lived next to an obnoxious neighbor who was trying to impose his ideals on you and yours, wouldn’t that make you want to reject everything that American pop culture stands for, and explore your own identity as a Canadian?

Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler took the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, scoring the Golden Lion for himself and for star Mickey Rourke. (Source: The Circuit @ Variety)

I am very pleased to hear this news, because I always like watching actors reinvent themselves or find new aspects to their craft and explore the shit out of them, and for Rourke to have been a part of a project that played to his strengths while delving into Aronofsky’s usual existential matter is pretty damn gratifying. The comeback story is also a compelling one as well, and I’m a huge sucker for underdogs. It’s why Sunset Boulevard — both the movie and the musical — is such a compelling story, it’s why you watch Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, it’s how movies will always be a part of the human entertainment experience.

Though it’ll be playing at the New York Film Festival this October, I can’t wait till this gets picked up by a distributor for wider distribution.

UPDATE (9/8 3:49 PM): Ask and ye shall receive, Trish. Variety’s Anne Thompson broke the news (mere hours after you first posted this) that Fox Searchlight has picked up the film for a cool $4 mil. It’s assumed (although I didn’t see anything concrete) that they’re going for an “Oscar-qualifying late-year platform with a wider release in January.” — Gordon

Spielberg, Dreamworks Investigates “39 Clues” as Next Project
The latest word on Steven Spielberg’s next directorial effort is that Jeff Nathanson — who penned popular hits The Terminal, Catch Me if You Can, and the latest Indiana Jones for him — will be adapting the screenplay for “The 39 Clues.” Word also says that it’s to be a “multiplatform” adventure series which probably means that we’ll be inundated with a 39 Clues tie-in novel, video and computer games, and I dunno, maybe a breakfast cereal. (Source: Variety)

Enough With the Logos Already!
Variety writer Peter Debruge turned in a piece so “interesting” on the seemingly endless pre-credits logo sequences before movies that EIC Peter Bart felt he had to add his two cents in. Personally, I agree with Bart that it can be annoying, but I have to admit that it also gives movie goers a chance to be just a little late coming back from the bathroom or the concessions stand. (Source: Variety)

Jesus Christ, it’s a Lion! Get Back in the Movie Theater!
Before I read this story, I thought it was going to be about how they were going to be making a movie about this YouTube video, where five lions, two crocodiles, and a water buffalo calf are locked in deathly combat. But no, they’re going to go the Born Free route and make a movie about this one (NSF-People Who Don’t Like Whitney Houston’s Singing or 1960s Hairstyles). (Source: Hollywood Reporter)

Gordon: Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly have been signed to star in Creation, a movie about the the life of Charles Darwin that will be directed by Jon Amiel. Please touch on this tomorrow (Source: Hollywood Reporter).

Trisha Lynn: Touch, or do a full article?

Gordon: Either way. If you want to write something longer, feel free.

Trisha Lynn: What’s the angle?

Gordon: I do have this fear it will focus so much more on Darwin’s life and relationships than anything he actually did. As most movies about geniuses do.

But that’s probably just knee-jerk snark.

Trisha Lynn: There’s not much entertainment or drama in movies about scientific discoveries unless there’s lots of sensationalism involved, like in Inherit the Wind. But that was more of a courtroom drama. The only thing I can think of that would be comparable would be if someone did a movie about Martin Luther and his 95 theses, or Socrates’ last days, or Galileo’s imprisonment. That would actually be pretty cool.

A guy sitting on a beach painstakingly cataloging the differences between tortoises? Doesn’t seem like it would make a good movie to me. But that’s just knee-jerk snark as well.

Wikipedia tells me that while there was a little drama surrounding the race to get his work published, the actual co-publishing of the book was done with a minimal amount of hassle. Also, while there was a huge hubbub over the findings, it was very much in line with what other scientists were observing about the world, which means that if Darwin didn’t do it, someone else would have.

So I disagree with you there. A movie about his life and his relationships with other people in the scientific community of his day would be way more interesting than a movie about his actual work.

20th Century Fox will get its day in court as Los Angeles federal judge Gary Allen Feess has set the trial date for the lawsuit over the rights to the Warner Bros. Watchmen film for January 9. (Source: Variety)

Feess also said that the issues were too complex to be resolved on an interim basis, which to my eyes somewhat contradicts a previous statement of his which was that he wants the case to move quickly. Why not assign a court mediator or negotiator to the case right now? I’m probably going to reveal a lot of naievete by saying this, but surely 20th Century Fox already has all of its documentation ready to be entered into evidence and all of its witnesses, right? You don’t just go and say, “Dude, I think I still own your blockbuster movie” if you don’t have concrete proof, right?

Word is out that with the setting up of a sequel to one of the few horror films in recent memory that was not based on an existing Japanese film, Rogue Pictures wants to turn The Strangers into a horror movie franchise not unlike Saw or Hostel. (Source: Variety) I think that if they did that, it would be a completely terrible mistake.

The beauty of a horror movie like The Strangers is that you really have no idea why the antagonists are going around killing people; you only know that you’re supposed to cheer against them and cheer for the protagonists. It’s good versus evil in its truest form, and no matter who wins you know that it’s going to be pretty satisfying. Remember The Birds? Not even in the original short story is it ever really explained why the birds have all gone on this murderous spree, and that’s perfectly okay. You also only need to watch The Happening to know that if you try and explain something a perfectly weird phenomenon, you can get a pretty crappy movie as a result.

[Many apologies for being late with this post, but hey, you know how it is on a three-day weekend. – TL]

Note to Aspiring Writers: Don’t Use the Word ‘Babylon’ in Your Script Titles
Though it came in second place to action-comedy Tropic Thunder on this past weekend’s top 10 list, Babylon A.D.‘s estimated $12M draw over the Labor Day weekend comes in on the low end of what the studio had hoped it would make. The Tuesday evening disownment of the movie by director Mathieu Kassovitz — but not the application of an Alan Smithee credit — probably didn’t help either. (Source: Variety)

Hilary Swank Hopes to Borrow a Strong Starring Role From First-Time Author
Hoping that lightning strikes twice thanks to the respectable performance by her last chick flick P.S. I Love You, Swank and her producing partner Molly Smith (she also produced Chasing Liberty) acquired the rights to the debut novel by author Emily Giffin called “Something Borrowed.” The plot of Borrowed will concern a woman who has an affair with her mean best friend’s fiance, and apparently, is very sympathetic to the cheating couple. Um, you go girl? (Source: Variety)

Chanel Bio Pic to be Number One Priority for Warner Bros. in September
The U.S. studio will join Haut et Court in financing the biographical picture titled Coco avant Chanel about the most celebrated French fashion designer of the 20th century, which will star Amelie‘s Audrey Tatou as the fashionista. Filming begins in Europe on September 15. (Source: Variety)

My friend Tori Morris is a huge fan of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, but she’s definitely one who has her head screwed on straight, as you can see in the blisteringly honest reviews/critiques of Sorkin’s last TV effort “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” that she wrote for Sequential Tart. So when she recently said that she admitted to Sorkin directly on Facebook that she’d talked smack about him, I took it for her making a silly joke and moved on.

Until… (Source: Variety)

Columbia Pictures will be financing the currently unnamed film, Scott Rudin (There Will Be Blood) will be its producer, and both parties were surprised when Sorkin actually went and created a Facebook profile and his own group — and no, you cannot add him directly as a friend, believemeItried — in order to do research. From the synopsis in the Variety story, it sounds like Sorkin’s filming a documentary about how Facebook got started; from my scans of the earliest posts where Sorkin was actually responding to comments, he’s disappointed that everyone’s been so nice to him so far. The prevailing theory is that unless you’ve created a fake first name and surname for your Facebook profile — or use your first name and middle name like I do to protect my family’s privacy — everything you say can be held accountable to you, and that prevents many people from adhering to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

What I find interesting about this NY Times profile on screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith (Legally Blonde and now The House Bunny) is the body of their work. They think about women in films in a way that not many of their colleagues do.

Take Legally Blonde, for example. The protagonist is a rich, beautiful blonde girl who is the leader of her sorority. Not your typical leading woman, where Hollywood runs towards embracing the leading female clichés like the misfit freak (but not too freaky looking), the hard-as-nails reporter, or the sassy black woman. I also find it interesting that question that drives The House Bunny is “What do you do with a beautiful woman when her looks can’t get her anywhere anymore?” If this were a drama or an indie film, she’d downspiral into doing porn in the Valley. If it were a porn film, she’d be trying to reinvent herself as a fetishist. The House Bunny does neither (because it’s a comedy — and sadly, the reviews aren’t all that good) but you do have to give them credit for at least having asked the question. At the same time, it doesn’t look like any of Lutz and Smith’s scripts will ever pass the Bechdel Test, and that’s profoundly sad to me as a female writer.

[Gordon and I are toying with the format for the all-purpose news posts; let us know what you think! – TL]

MGM to Remake Poltergeist; No Director Yet
Scriptwriters Stiles White and Juliet Snowden (The Boogeyman) have been tapped, and here’s hoping they don’t fall victim to the alleged Poltergeist Curse. (Source: Variety)

Jackson + Walsh + Boyens + The Hobbit Movies = Satisfied Tolkein Geeks
In a move everyone was hoping for and would have wreaked havoc if it didn’t take place, Lord of the Rings director and puppet master Peter Jackson along with his writing partners (and wife) Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens have signed on to collaborate with announced director Guillermo del Toro on the two movies that will make up The Hobbit. In other news, water is wet, and the sky is blue. (Source: Variety)

Miyazaki’s Latest Film Clears ¥10 Billion, Sets New Box Office Record
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is the first Japanese film to make this much money since Hayao Miyazaki’s 2004 film Howl’s Moving Castle. No, not the first animated film — the first film period. Suck on that, anime-haters! (Source: Variety)

Catfight Between SAG Factions Heating Up Going into Board Elections
Spokespersons for both MembershipFirst and Unite for Strength took swipes at each other, complete with blog posts, secret leaked emails, and bombastic speeches by Martin Sheen (“The West Wing”). All of this is in advance of the board elections which will be decided by September 18. It’s good to know that professional actors have the maturity of teenagers on Fandom Wank, isn’t it? (Source: Hollywood Reporter)

Though some ink has been previously given to this story, now’s as good a time as any to mention that if 20th Century Fox gets its way, the highly anticipated Watchmen movie — which has already wrapped and been previewed in front of movie “luminaries” like Kevin Smith — may not even see the light of day thanks to a judge’s refusal to dismiss the lawsuit. According to sources, Fox said it would rather see the film killed instead of settling with Warner Bros. and collecting a percentage of the box office. This all came about when Warner Bros. picked up the project in a turnaround deal back in 1994, but Fox claims that it never sorted out the complete rights to the intellectual property. (Source: Variety)

As any one who has been penalized by credit card interest charges knows, it’s the fine print that will kill you. When the customer service person you’ve been screaming at for the last half hour calmly says, “It was in the contract when you signed up for the card; there’s nothing I can do,” you’re the one who’s going to look like an idiot for saying, “Yeah, but who really reads those?” It is gross negligence on Fox’s part for not having checked their ownership documents all the way back in the ’90s, even if everyone thought the project was “great, but unfilmable” back then.

It’s also gross negligence on Warner Bros. part for having not checked up on those rights over the years, especially once they got a really good script together and signed Zack Snyder to direct. Don’t you think it would have behooved someone to have gone back to Fox, saying, “Yeah, listen, about those incomplete rights? Can we just give you some money now for the rest of them? We think we’ve got something good going, and we really want to avoid any 11th hour dramatics.”

It’s enough to make you wonder if Alan Moore deliberately put a curse on the movie version to this film.

UPDATE: EW says that their insiders at 20th Century Fox are more correct than the Variety insiders, and that they “want affirmation of ownership and/or restitution, and there are many scenarios by which Fox could get paid, including a cash settlement or distribution rights to the film.”

This story came on the heels of the predictable fanboy howling and boycott threat that accompanied the news articles on Monday. EW’s Jeff Jensen does at least go beyond the surface of the issue:

Fox filed its complaint back in February — just as Snyder was wrapping production on Watchmen. The assumption many are making is that Fox stood by and did nothing as Warner Bros. actively and publicly developed and produced a movie it had no right to make, and then, at a maximum moment of leverage, sandbagged its rival with a lawsuit. And yet, according to a Fox source, studio lawyers contacted Warner Bros. about the distribution rights issue several times prior to the start of production but were rebuffed.

But if you feel like wading through all the legalese yourself, check out the official documentation, courtesy of UncivilSociety.org

The breakaway group within SAG whose members include Marcia Wallace (left, The Simpsons“), and which is running for membership seats in SAG’s board of directors against actors like Keith Carradine (right, “Deadwood”) is urging the guild to rejoin forces with the AFTRA actors… and not saying that they want to limit voting on SAG issues to “working actors” as its incumbent rival group Membership First is saying it does. (Source: Variety)

Honestly, all this in-fighting among the actors’ guilds makes both of them look very, very dumb. If you have some extra time today, I suggest you really do go through the stories on the SAG Watchdog site, but make sure you’ve got your hype and bullshit hip waders on. I remember when the WGA strike was happening, there were lots of rumors flying about including those about top writers who were breaking away from the guild’s united stance, but those were quickly refuted and debunked by the United Hollywood bloggers and the guild leadership. The SAG Watchdog site reads more like a series of whiny, angsty LiveJournal posts than a reasoned and reasonable source of information about what’s really going on behind the scenes during these troubled negotiations.

I really hate to say this, but I’m starting to feel like I really want the actors to get shafted during these negotiations, so that next time they learn their lesson and take some tips from the WGA on how to handle themselves during the next crisis.