Movie fans were shocked today with the news that Oscar-winner Adrien Brody is turning action hero to star in the Robert Rodriguez-produced Predator reboot, Predators. At first I thought maybe he’s trying to distance himself from the Roman Polanski mess by picking a movie as far from The Pianist as possible. But then I remembered that since winning Best Actor six years ago Brody has done little to show himself worthy of the award (he’s great in The Darjeeling Limited at least).
But will anybody believe him as a guy who can defeat a bunch of Predators? That he’s better than Arnold Schwarzenegger, who barely survived one of them? That he’s the guy to lead kick-ass costars like Danny Trejo, Oleg Taktarov, Walt Goggins and even … umm … Topher Grace (he’s at least been an action movie villain before, even if a bad one)? Well, obviously this gig is going to require that supposed Oscar-caliber talent in order to convince us.
Check out the stunned reactions from other film bloggers after the jump:
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If you’ve already checked out our list of directors who made great remakes of their own films, you won’t think it that strange that David Cronenberg is reportedly involved in a remake of his version of The Fly, itself an update of Kurt Nuemann’s 1958 classic of the same name. And few movie bloggers could argue that it’s a bad idea given Cronenberg’s talent as a filmmaker.
Still, nobody can figure out any kind of logical motivation behind the change of heart, given that Cronenberg has always been against the idea of a remake (despite the fact that he was okay with remakes enough to do one himself). And most of us would really, really, really like to see the Goldblum brought back for the lead, as redundant as that may seem.
Check out what the film blogs are saying about this reboot idea after the jump:
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Before even seeing District 9, we had a feeling there’d be at least a hint of human-alien sex, because science fiction, smart or dumb, has always had a fascination with the idea of inter-species love. And while bestiality may still be a taboo subject for Hollywood, the movies are always okay with the interplanetary variety, probably because it’s (usually) more consensual.
The aliens in District 9 are not sexy, though (not to us, anyway). They look like, and are derogatorily called, Prawns. So there are no apparent romances between these creatures and humans. But there is a reference to Nigerian prostitutes selling sex to the prawns, and there’s also sort of a depiction of a man and a prawn going at it “doggy style.”
While human-alien sex is commonly found in outer-space tales, such as Star Trek, we decided to look primarily at examples of visitors to Earth getting it on with the locals, similar to international sexcations that occur in the real world. Of course, because we’re not too familiar with sci-fi porn, there are likely a few good sex scenes we’ve left out. Feel free to tell us about them (if you’re not embarrassed) in the comments section.
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When the recent announcement came that Dennis Quaid and Julianne Moore had been cast as Bill and Hillary Clinton, respectively, in The Special Relationship, Peter Morgan’s third film involving the Premiership of Tony Blair (played once again by Michael Sheen, who previously portrayed the former British Prime Minister in the Morgan-scripted films The Deal and The Queen), many of us began wondering if Monica Lewinsky would appear as a character, and if so, who would play her. Anne Thompson even provided an hilariously implicit visual aid for why Anne Hathaway would be great for the part.
Unfortunately, it’s been revealed that Lewinsky will only be included in the made-for-HBO film via archival footage. But that isn’t going to stop us from imagining who should have been cast in Morgan’s film had he decided to focus more directly on the Lewinsky scandal. Because we’d all much rather see that film, right? And although a low-budget depiction of the affair, titled The Blue Dress, is already in the works, it certainly won’t be as much fun as a high-profile picture featuring big stars as the infamous figures involved with the scandal.
So, we’ve cast the second-term Clinton movie we’d prefer be made. And as always we welcome you to suggest your own casting ideas — whether to substitute for those we’ve selected or to play characters we’ve forgotten — in the comments.
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Remember Adam Resurrected, the Paul Schrader-directed, Jeff Goldblum-starring film that Paul saw at Telluride which made him admit to wanting “to make out with Jeff Goldblum in the back of his Toyota Prius”? I got an invite for a press screening for the film a couple of hours ago, which I thought was weird, because the last I heard, the film didn’t have distribution. Now Mike Jones at The Circuit has posted an item that solves the mystery: it looks like Bleiberg Entertainment, the company that financed the film, have decided that rather than wait for a distributor to pick it up and miss this Oscar season, they’ll fund a qualifying run for the film in New York and LA themselves.
Jones says producer Ehud Bleiberg was “unhappy with the offers he received after the pic’s Toronto fest screening,” Bleiberg himself implies that if any of those offers were promising in other respects, they didn’t include a timely release or support for an Oscar campaign. “Why would we screen the film at Telluride and Toronto and release it a year later,” he asks rhetorically. Considering that Goldblum’s performance is apparently so good that it propells heterosexual Midwesterners to contemplate the actor as an object of physical (and eco-friendly!) love, that question seems eminently reasonable.
The Telluride Film Festival is what Sundance would be if it took place in heaven. Every year the tiny mountain hamlet hosts four days of hassle-free cinema paradise. There were grumblings about the lack of American films, but we still found plenty to love. Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake) came with his delightful new movie, Happy-Go-Lucky. He sat down for a disgruntled yet insightful interview. Paul Schrader (Affliction, Hardcore) seemed as blow away as we were by his latest film, Adam Resurrected, starring Jeff Goldblum.
(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)
0:00 - Intro, Telluride faves: Waltz with Bashir, Revanche, The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, Tulpan, The Rest is Silence.
7:04 - Happy-Go-Lucky, with Mike Leigh interview.
19:52 - Adam Resurrected, with Paul Schrader interview.
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(Complete interview with Paul Schrader available here.)
Adam Resurrected is the new movie by Paul Schrader (Affliction, Auto-Focus) premiering here at Telluride 2008. I was at the first screening which was also the first time Schrader ever watched the movie with an audience. “I realized watching it how exhausting it is, ” he told me right after the screening, “And it’s full of extremes. Literally, that old saying ‘you don’t know whether to laugh or cry’ is true here, and some scenes I think either emotion is fine with me.”
It’s in the navigation of extremes that my crush on Jeff Goldblum, who plays the title character, was born. I’m not one to get into Oscar buzz, but I will with Jeff and even add easily excerpted blurbs: Jeff Goldblum is magnificent. Jeff Godlblum’s peformance is a tour de force. I want to make out with Jeff Goldblum in the back of his Toyota Prius. Like how Daniel Day-Lewis’ character, Daniel Plainview (There Will be Blood), would have seemed flat or absurd in another actor’s hands, Jeff Goldblum’s wry delivery and velvet wit take the absurdity of Adam Stein and make him believable. …Read more
Jeff Goldblum is at Telluride to promote his new film, Adam Resurrected, directed by Paul Schrader. The film follows the story of a Holocaust survivor who also happens to be a clown. Committed to an asylum after the war, he becomes a ring leader of sorts. On the opening day of the festival Goldblum was graciously hugging young fans and striking odd poses for snap-shots. We got a chance to ask him about his media intake, which includes a substantial amount homework from Schrader.
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Goldblum Media Diet [2:35m]:
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Pittsburgh, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006 before going straight to cable and DVD this year, is a mock documentary about Jeff Goldblum’s run starring in a production of The Music Man in his hometown. Some of the film is “real”; some of it is sketched to look real, ala Christopher Guest; some of it uses “real” situations, Borat-style, as the backdrop for improvisation. A stagehand captured in some of the latter antics is now suing to have her scene removed from the film.
Debbie Sue Croyle says she was never asked to sign a release, and in fact only learned of the film after it premiered on cable and “other people saw it and told her about it.” She says she is “humiliated” by her appearance in the film, because Goldblum used a double entendre in the scene in which she appears. But oddly, the actor is not named in suit: Croyle is suing the production companies that made the film, the film’s directors, and the Starz cable channel, for $4 million. Seems like a huge sum, considering the film had no theatrical release and all but flew under the radar of most non-Starz subscribers and non-Goldblum superfans. Still, it’s an interseting case; I’m fairly surprised the release form issue hasn’t come up before with higher-profile doc/com hybrids. More details here.
Robert Greenwald, who has made a living making unabashedly partisan documentaries about Wal-Mart and Iraq since scratching 
