• Former New Line heads Bob Shaye and MIchael Lynne have announced their first project under their new deal at WB. They’ll adapt Foundation from Isaac Asimov trilogy about “a society that has figured out how to predict the future based on a method called psychohistory and sets up a foundation devoted to scientific research to protect itself and ensure its survival.”
• Jennifer Lopez will attempt to return to the thematic site of past glories, playing a preternaturally sophisticated servant who falls for her boss in The Governess, a new film for her Maid in Manhattan director Kevin Wade.
• New films from Darren Aronofsky, Jonathan Demme and Kathryn Bigelow will join the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading at the Venice Film Festival. And these are just the Americans––Barbet Schroeder, Hayao Miyazaki and Takeshi Kitano are among the international auteurs to show work in the competition.
• Meanwhile, due to “unforeseen events and personal reasons,” Anjelica Huston has backed out of a planned appearance at the Locaro Film Festival, where her film Choke will screen and where she was to accept a special award.
  

The filmmakers behind two upcoming animated epics, Bolt and UP, present footage. Highlights:

• Bolt looks like a resolutely family-oriented film about a celebrity dog who thinks he’s at war with cats. Cute!
• UP looks like a Pixar-meets-Miyazaki art film version of About Schmidt. It made fanboys run for the exits.

Full transcript after the jump.

…Read more

Even with subtitles (or terrible dubs courtesy of the Fanning sisters or Kirsten Dunst), I don’t always know what’s going on in the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki. So, I don’t really mind that our first glimpse of his latest, Ponyo on the Cliff, features no English translation. All we need is that cute theme song and footage of Ponyo, the odd “goldfish princess” creature, floating inside of a jellyfish. And that’s basically all we get, for now.

A few weeks ago, it was announced that Indiana Jones producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy are working on the U.S. version of the Little Mermaid-inspired film, but few details have been released. If you don’t want to wait around for them to decide on a release date, though, and you understand Japanese, you can travel the distance and see the film when it opens in Japan on July 18.

Update: the above video is no longer working, but this copy might.

[via Aint It Cool News]