Scott Rudin is taking his name off Stephen Daldry’s The Reader after losing his heavyweight battle with Harvey Weinstein regarding the film’s release schedule. Now that Rudin has left the project, though, can we expect the producer to push his Revolutionary Road even harder for the Oscar? And will Kate Winslet be treated like a poor child of divorce who’s made to pick one parent over the other?
Confirming little more than what the movie blogs have been rumoring all week, Variety reports that super hot right now Josh Brolin is in talks to play the DC Comics gunslinger Jonah Hex. Perhaps with everyone respecting comic book characters so much these days this role will be the one that Brolin finally gets an Oscar nomination for.
I guess when your film stars George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, you can get just any old actress to play the lead female part. But picking the most boring Lost character ever (well, the actress who plays her, anyway)to costar in Grant Heslov’s Men Who Stare at Goats seems a bit counterproductive.
Erin at Steady Diet of Film alerts us to the news (which we might have figured out for ourselves, except that we have a bad habit of being in bars at 11pm on weeknights––we swear, we’re working on cutting back on that) that Medicine for Melancholy star Wyatt Cenac is now a correspondent for The Daily Show. His first segment, in which he attempts to understand primary season through the rubrick of plot developments on Lost, is embedded above. We’ll give you a preview: “A polar bear on a tropical island? There are so many reasons why that’s AMAZING!”
Stacy Peralta’s was reproached for his lackadaisical sense of style by the gang member subjects of his doc Made in America. He tells Vulture: “These guys don’t step out the house unless they’re dressed really well. In fact, a couple of our subjects took me to task for how I looked. I’d be wearing a pair of Levis and a T-shirt, and they’d ask me, ‘Do you dress like that every day? You oughta think about how you dress more often.’”
The MPAA be damned, Ridley Scott might make an uncensored film based on Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and the very prospect has filmdrunk oversharing. Concludes a post headlined “BONER ALERT”: “Like all really violent things, it makes me slightly sexually excited. That’s healthy, right?”
Another bit of exciting news from Jason Bateman [again via MTV Movies Blog] regarding the Arrested Development movie: “the ball has started rolling down the hill again.” Okay, so it’s not too exciting, nor is it revelatory in the least, but at least he says all the creatives are on board. Meanwhile, the actor also commented on his role in the American movie adaptation of the British TV mini-series State of Play, which, combined with MTV’s other post about the American TV series remake/adaptation of the British TV series Spaced, has me putting a little thought into the subject of theatrical spin-offs versus movie adaptations.
Certainly those of us who are fans of a series would rather see it continued with all original talent on board (even if we arecynically fearing the result) than see it adapted into a movie version many years down the line, whether the approach be faithful or parody or an attempt at both. Try to imagine another cast playing the Arrested Developmentand Sex and the Citycharacters. Imagine the pointlessness a future X-Filesremake/adaptation compared with the immediate cinematic extension we received. Or live-action versions of The Simpsonsor South Parksomewhere down the line rather than the big-screen supplements.
Last Friday, while Karina and I were apparently too Oscar-anxious to notice, MTV posted this news about a scientific study of Harry Potter fans — or as they conclusively label them, addicts — and the post-conclusion depression that’s afflicted them since the final novel arrived in stores last summer. Apparently, 10% of these “addicts” went through a serious period of withdrawal, equivalent to the aftereffects of quitting smoking. This study, the results of which are being submitted to the Journal of General Psychology with the title “Harry Potter and the End of the Line: Parallels with Addiction,” involved the polling of 4,000 fans online and found that a significant number were so obsessed that their “more than four hours a day on Potter-related activities” interfered with things like eating and sleeping. Here, a positively spun quote from the study’s lead researcher, Muhlenberg College psych professor Dr. Jeffrey Rudski:
“An addiction is an addiction is an addiction,” Rudski said. “An addiction to a drug is no different than an addiction to Harry Potter or the Internet or pornography. Although it’s not always a bad thing. There’s a community that you get with Harry Potter that you don’t get with heroin.”
And despite there being only 10% actual Harry Potter “addicts”, another 20% were considered by Rudski to fall within what he calls a “critical threshold.” They include the person who wrote this: “I had trouble getting out of bed Monday morning. I was depressed and had nightmares all night long. I dreamed I was being attacked by Lucius Malfoy and Fenrir Greyback and didn’t have a wand because I was Muggle-born.” Just imagine what those 400 actualaddicts are like (by the way, Rudnick refers to his daughter as one such “addict”).
I’m pretty sure I am not related to actor Bill Campbell, but I am sure that we think alike, at least when it comes to desires for a Rocketeersequel. Campbell, who starred as the title character in Disney’s 1991 superhero adventure, tells MTV Movies Blog that he’s still interested in the idea of a Rocketeer 2:
“I was talking to [writer] Dave Stevens just the night before last. We always talked about having a sequel,” Campbell confessed. “[Unfortunately] the movie didn’t make as much money as Disney had hoped and that coupled with the acrimonious relationship that the director [Joe Johnston] and the studio had contributed to them not even considering it.”
Yes, like Timothy Dalton in that awesome clip above, The Rocketeer unfortunately crashed and burned. And considering its been almost 17 years since the first film and there’s been nothing to indicate the public is more interested in pulpy period superheroes than they were back then, Rocketeer 2 is never going to happen. Even if now Oscar-winning actors Jennifer Connelly and Alan Arkin and now Emmy-winning actor Terry O’Quinn (John Locke on Lost) wanted to return, I doubt Disney would even discuss the chance. But that’s a shame, because if I remember correctly (and I must admit I haven’t seen the thing since it came out — when I was a just a teen), the original was a blast. Anyway, I’d like the idea to at least be thought about. Hollywood is making another attempt at a Shadow movie after failing back in the ’90s, so why not this ’30s-era tale, too?
J.J. Abrams says he will “honor his contractual obligation to work as a director” on his upcoming Star Trek reinvention, but will also serve some time in the picket lines outside Paramount, where writers are apparently chanting things like “Who’s got more money than they can count? Paramount!” (There’s no indication as to who raised their pencil to write that one.) Also seen on picket lines yesterday: James L. Brooks, Tina Fey, and the writers of Lost.
Meanwhile, Hollywood’s two most beloved presidential candidates both issued statements yesterday in support of the writers. Barack Obama characterized the fight as “a test of whether media corporations are going to give writers a fair share of the wealth their work creates or continue concentrating profits in the hands of their executives.” Hillary Clinton was, predictably, a little less acerbic in her criticism of those executives. “I support the Writers Guild’s pursuit of a fair contract that pay them for their work in all mediums,” Clinton said. “I hope the producers and writers will return to the bargaining table.”
American Film Market is the last event where indie producers can close projects that will be wrapped before the SAG and Directors Guild reach their own pre-strike deadline in March, and so far it looks like slow going. Said Mark Urman of ThinkFilm: “Actors normally on a one on/one off indie/studio film schedule now are looking for big paydays in big, stupid Hollywood movies.”
Last Friday, while Karina and I were apparently too Oscar-anxious to notice, MTV posted 
J.J. Abrams says he will “honor his contractual obligation to work as a director” on his upcoming 
