In 2008 we began the year in entertainment by bidding a premature goodbye to hottie Heath Ledger, his death casting a shadow on summer blockbuster The Dark Knight; and ended it by delivering a fond farewell to “The Dark Angel,” the Marilyn Monroe of the fetish world, “Queen of Pin-Up” Bettie Page. In between we lost numerous other screen sizzlers: Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Suzanne Pleshette, even Vampira! But since the New Year is a time to look forward as well as pay tribute to the sexy stars we leave behind, I’ve compiled my wish list for a very steamy 2009.

1.  Woody & Bond Make a Porno

In 2009 Woody Allen must continue his 2008 sexy success with Vicky Cristina Barcelona by directing a porn flick. Preferably starring Daniel Craig.

Yup, 2008 was the year Woody Allen figured out that casting hot tamales like Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz can do wonders for your onscreen sex life. So now that the Woodman’s discovered the cinema equivalent of Viagra, it’s time for him to take the next step: toss that neurotic crutch into the Hudson (or Thames or Seine) and finally shoot his long-awaited, hardcore remake of Bergman’s The Passion of Anna.

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• While at the Dubai International Film Festival over the weekend, Terminator Salvation director McG “announced” that a fifth installment of the Terminator franchise is definitely in the works, although The Halcyon Co. revealed over a year ago their plans for a trilogy. That McG is back to helm the installment must mean Halcyon is happier with the way Salvation looks than some of us are.
• As rumored, Chris Weitz will indeed take over the Twilight franchise from exited director Catherine Hardwicke. And yes, for those who agreed the job was only appropriate for another woman, Chris is short for Christopher.
• F/X artist-turned-director Stephen Norrington is finally following up The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with the remake of The Crow that’s been talked about in Hollywood for awhile. I wonder if Jason Statham is still interested in playing the lead.
• The Dark Knight seems to be for Blu-Ray what The Matrix was for DVD a decade ago.
• Oh yeah, the weekend’s box office results: well, The Day the Earth Stood Still managed to just barely edge out The Happening to be the higher grossing of the year’s lame eco-sci-fi films. The animated film you never heard of, Delgo, couldn’t make a million bucks on more than 2,000 screens, while the Bollywood film you never heard of, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, cracked a million bucks on about 100 screens. And a ton of limited specialty films, including new releases Gran Torino, Wendy and Lucy, The Reader, Doubt and Che, all had better per-screen-averages than did the #1 film, The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Since I’m not a fan of Luc Besson any more than I am of Guy Ritchie, I’ve avoided the Transporter franchise from the start. Sure its star Jason Statham has a to-kill-for bod, but then that’s part of the action hero job description. And compared to hot he-men with a wicked, up-for-anything gleam in their eye like the Governator or The Rock or Daniel Craig, well, Statham’s just a little too bland for my taste. He’s someone you’d take home to mom for the holidays, not blow in an airplane bathroom along the way, having to dodge dirty looks at baggage claim upon landing. Never mind.

But after reading Chris Lee’s L.A. Times piece, in which director Louis Leterrier claims to have added a gay subtext to Statham’s character in Transporter 2, I knew I just had to take a peek. And surprisingly, for someone who can spot a gay subtext from as far away as David Beckham can score a goal, I couldn’t quite see what all the fuss was about. Statham’s gun-for-hire Frank Martin is too asexual to be homosexual; if he is gay he’s so far in the closet that even Alessandro Gassman’s sleazy, sexy villain Gianni Chellini (now that’s a name to scream in the heat of passion) couldn’t coax him out. Indeed, if there is anything queer about Transporter 2, it’s the character played by Italian stallion Gassman (a dirtier, XXX version of Antonio Banderas) who should be exposed.

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• Apparently someone at Twentieth Century Fox is reading SpoutBlog lists for inspiration: a month after we suggested a contemporarily set adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels starring Will Ferrell, the studio has announced a contemporarily set adaptation of Gulliver’s  Travels starring Jack Black (really, though, the project has apparently been in the works for some time). Perhaps we’ll soon hear about a Candide movie at Paramount?
• Speaking of literary adaptations, a new CG-animated version of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is in the works, strangely with John Boorman, who cowrote the script, at the helm.
• Con Air director Simon West has finally found the lead for his CG-heavy Salvador Dali movie, and it’s quite a boring choice: Antonio Banderas. Considering the other competing Dali movies star such surprises as Al Pacino and Twilight’s Robert Pattinson, West is apparently taking the easy road.
• And while Dali has multiple theatrical releases on the way, poor Georgia O’Keefe has to settle on a Lifetime Television release, albeit one starring such heavies as Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons.
• Sylvester Stallone is continuing his career as a full-fledged filmmaker by writing, directing and co-starring in The Expendables, in which he and Jason Statham and Jet Li will play mercenaries on a mission to kill a South American dictator.

The casts and crews of The Mummy: Brendan Fraser Must Do Huge Business Internationally and Death Race show off their wares. Yay, unnecessary sequels and remakes! (Yes, Karina wrote this intro.)

Highlights:

–Sam Raimi says another Evil Dead movie is “in the wheelhouse.” If you’re not familiar with it, that expression means “being very close to accomplishing a goal.”

–Two surprise clips of Drag Me To Hell were shown; one was good/funny, the other awful.

–Sid and Marty Krofft say H.R. Puffnstuf will be turned into a movie after Land of the Lost, and “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters after that.”
–Brendan Fraser is apparently perennially hopped up on over-the-counter cold medicine.

–Joan Allen swears a lot in Death Race.

Full live blog after the jump!

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Steven Boone joins SpoutBlog as a columnist covering politics and social issues and how they intersect with movies. Periodically, he’ll check in–as he’s done below–with firsthand accounts of watching movies with residents of a halfway house in Brooklyn.

A halfway house in East New York, Brooklyn. Spring, 2008. The male residents––ex-junkies, parolees and disability recipients––all gathered for their nightly movie ritual. Four to a room, two bunk beds, one cheapo DVD player and a 13-inch Coby TV set. Audio commentary provided by the audience of (on average) five men: two on the bunks, three hunched around the screen on milk crates. The core crew of film fanatics is Kid and Hef, two old-timer felons, each of whom could be mistaken for a black variation of Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo.

It’s a strange festival. Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, Hoodlum, Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion, The Bank Job, Why Did I Get Married?, Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters, and lots of TV-on-DVD: Annie Oakley, CSI, Boston Legal, ancient anime shows. No rhyme or reason in the selections, just whatever’s on hand from the $3 bootlegger or the public library.

But a festival theme emerges, a word hovering in the air unspoken during each screening: justice. Michael Clayton, about a corporate attorney (George Clooney) who finds himself at war with a corrupt, murderous agrochemical business, is plainly about justice for this audience so intimate with crime and punishment. Lots of “aw shits” and “hot damns.” If Michael Clayton is the Opening Night feature, then the festival centerpiece must be the heist flick The Bank Job. …Read more