Sorry for the late posting of the Bloggery, but I’ve been traveling all day to a retirement community in Arizona, and as you might guess the Interweb isn’t the hottest thing in these parts (obviously the hottest thing is the temperature, but anyway…).

So, I’m a bit late in addressing the news about Universal making a Where’s Waldo film, but it is the most fun movie topic of the past 24 hours (plus), and I just can’t let it be passed up for anything else. Mostly I just want to call back the clip of the day from almost exactly one year ago where I spotlighted a Bourne Ultimatum parody involving everyone’s favorite hard-to-find world/time traveler. And the thing I find most interesting about this actual film-to-be is that Universal is the same studio that produces the Bourne movies. Could there be at least a crossover cameo from Matt Damon? I am certain that he’d be down for a little winking tribute to that excellent fake trailer.

After the jump, check out a roundup of other blogged responses to the Where’s Waldo movie:

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Both are broadly classifiable as science fiction, but Alien is basically a horror flick and Aliens has all the conventions of a war film. That’s a pretty slick transition from one type of movie to another, especially since the switch was so immediate within the series. Most movie franchises don’t play with genre in such a way until they’ve gone through a number of sequels, and even then the series usually just simply takes its characters into outer space, a la Moonraker, Jason X and Leprechaun 4.

Genre jumping isn’t that easy, though, unless a franchise inhabits a whole universe in which to expand through. Like Star Wars, for example. Originally a film series, the Star Wars franchise spread out into novels, which has allowed for dips into the romance genre and now horror. That’s right, an upcoming novel by horror author Joe Schreiber, titled Deathtroopers, takes the Star Wars universe into frightening territory described by Schreiber as “in the vein of The Shining and Alien, with a little dose of William Gibson mixed in.”

So, if Star Wars can venture into the horror genre, what other movie franchises should attempt a genre jump? To toy with the idea, we’ve selected five film series in need of a change and suggested a possible redirection of genre for each.
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I wish I were more familiar with the cartoon Thundercats so that I could properly appreciate this new fan-made trailer. And yet it’s such a well-done video that it’s hard to even think I could appreciate it more than I already do. Someone clearly put way too much time into this thing, picking out appropriate segments from Troy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy and other films, and digitally painting the faces of Brad Pitt, Vin Diesel and Hugh Jackman (and an actress nobody seems to be able to identify). It’s so terrific that the real Thundercats movie (potentially arriving in 2010) will no doubt be a disappointment in comparison (perhaps as bad as this old fake Thundercats movie trailer). In fact, this version’s awkward CG-rendered Snarf is likely better than what Warner Bros. will give us (the actual film is reportedly going to be entirely computer-animated).

I was going to initially say that this is the best fake trailer I’ve ever seen, but I probably say that too often. Plus, I’m going to stick with the Where’s Waldo parody of The Bourne Identity for that honor. Still, this is one of the best I’ve seen in terms of technical achievement.

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One of the many things Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich did this week — instead of resigning from his position, as many people desired — was sign into law an increase on tax credits for films produced in his state. So, it should be only appropriate, and somewhat bittersweet, for the inevitable movie about his life and corruption hearings to be shot there.

Now that we’ve got a location for the film, it’s time to cast the players in Blogojevich’s scandalous tale. The Washington Post has already published a list of possible actors to portray the lead (John Travolta, Sean Astin, Gary Cole, Stephen Baldwin, Tom Cruise, Ray Liotta, Charlie Sheen, Mike Myers and Steve Carrell), but more difficult than casting Blogojevich (see our pick below) is determining what other significant figures should be prominently featured.

A straight biopic calls for way too many characters, so we’ve narrowed the film down to focus on just Blagojevich’s arrest and subsequent (forthcoming) trial. As always, if there’s another character to be included or another thespian suited to a role we’ve cast, chime in with a comment. Also, due to the fact that we’ve previously done posts about Barack Obama casting, let’s just assume that he’ll only be portrayed by a voice on the phone, a la Al Gore in Recount.
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Director Andy Fickman and stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Carla Gugino discuss the “reimagining” of the Witch Mountain movies — this one is called Race to Witch Mountain. But really, all I remember is the new footage from Tron 2, which actually stars Jeff Bridges.

Highlights:

• Umm, Tron 2!!!
• Jeff Bridges in Tron 2!!!
• New footage of light cycles in Tron 2!!!
• Race to Witch Mountain is like 48 Hours meets the Bourne movies, but is also a lot like the originals.
• Also Whitley Strieber was involved with its production.

Read the liveblogging after the jump.

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Over at the AMC blog SciFi Scanner, there’s a post about the accuracy of Jason Bourne’s condition in the Bourne movies. At the World Science Festival, held last weekend in NYC, there was a panel titled The Brain and Bourne: Neuroscience in the Bourne Trilogy that featured Bourne Identity director Doug Liman and psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. And according to Tononi, the sort of amnesia that Bourne suffers from, which includes the ability to retain certain skills despite an overall loss of memory, is rare but does exist.

Interesting, but does it really matter? Nobody making the Bourne movies seems to have known its accuracy, and they probably didn’t care. And neither do most moviegoers. Amnesia is simply a good plot device for movies, and oftentimes they’re more about something else than the condition, accurate or not. So, here’s a list of some of my favorite movies with amnesia at its forefront, plus the respective reasons for my not caring if they are realistic or not.

1. The Bourne Identity (plus The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum) - Because I’m not rating these in order, I’ll begin with the one already mentioned. Jason Bourne’s amnesia is, of course, a good excuse for a thrilling story, but to me it’s also a metaphor for U.S. intelligence post-Cold War and certainly post-9/11, showing us how, despite efforts to forget or disconnect from foreign policy decisions and/or controversial operations of the past, certain things, people, relationships (etc.) may come back to bite us on the ass.
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The Waldo Ultimatum - Watch more free videos

I don’t know where I was when this video was being circulated around the ‘net, and I don’t know where I was when it was announced (back in February) that both Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon are signed on for another Bourne Identity sequel. But better late than never, especially when the former is the greatest movie spoof and the greatest fake trailer I’ve ever seen. The reference to Carmen Santiago really clinched it for me. And while I’m a fan of the Bourne movies and thought the third was the best yet, I’d really rather they stopped while they were ahead. An actual Where’s Waldo movie is much more preferred, by myself and probably anyone else watching the above video.

Sharing this spoof (which was directed to our attention by The Movie Blog) and discussing the fourth Bourne movie is at least somewhat related to news of today. Variety reports that The Sigma Protocol, based on the book by Bourne author Robert Ludlum, is moving ahead at Universal (which also handles the Bourne franchise). The action thriller, which focuses on a secret organization that is manipulating the global economy and a hot, young investment banker who’s out to expose the conspiracy, is being scripted by Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. The duo is set to finish this project before embarking on their remake of Highlander, which, judging by their work on Iron Man, should actually be better than the original.

I have been making the case for Doug Liman for years now. I’d even recently given up the claim that I completely despise Swingers (it’s mostly the neo-swing soundtrack I hate). I constantly argued that his The Bourne Identity was better than Greengrass’ The Bourne Supremacy — in the end Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum turned out ultimately the best — and still continue promoting the genius of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (I watched it with a newbie just the other night, and that person was convinced). But now, I am on the fence about Jumper, which I haven’t yet seen and which arrived in theaters today. I can’t decide whether to bother seeing it.

The movie certainly looks stupid. I’ll admit it. Yet this is where my Liman defending came about in the past year, especially recently, as its release got closer. Every time the trailer or TV ad came on the screen, someone would turn to me and say it looks really stupid. Or I would overhear a similar statement coming from the mouths of strangers. Oh, it has to be better than it looks, I would say. It’s Doug Liman, a great action director who tackles seemingly stupid movies. But now the reviews are out. It has an 18% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I can’t find one trustworthy critic who offers good enough reason to see it.

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I know I’m late, but I just finally saw the last of the Bourne movies this week, and I just had to comment on the casting of Albert Finney in The Bourne Ultimatum. Was it intentional to employ an actor that would be so confusing to viewers who would easily mistake him for Brian Cox, an actor who appeared in the first two films? It’s worth noting that our first look at Finney’s character is in a photograph, and so the ability to recognize him as a different actor than we’d previously seen in the series is less than if we were introduced to him in person.

As little as I figure out what purpose it serves, I think the lookalike casting had to have been a conscious decision. After all, who hasn’t mistaken the actors for one another at some point in time? When Cox first became a heavily used character actor, I mistook him for Finney. And according to a five-year-old Page Six write-up, Cox gets wrongly identified as Finney all the time (”But I’m much better looking,” he says). It wasn’t surprising that I have found countless reviews of The Bourne Ultimatum, as well as forum comments, that acknowledge the confusion regarding Finney’s appearance in the sequel. Unfortunately, I can’t find any discussion of the film that attempts to give a reason for the casting choice.

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