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Oscars 2010 - Thinking About Next Year Already. Today in Film Bloggery 02/10/09

By Christopher Campbell posted 9 months ago

Yesterday, for the second time in two weeks, In Contention’s Kristopher Tapley confessed to being done with 2008 and noted a bunch of anticipated 2009 films. These aren’t necessarily titles he’s looking forward to seeing, though; it’s basically a preliminary jump on next year’s Oscar season. Because apparently this year’s Academy Awards are all but handed out, the winners properly predicted and expected, and now it’s time to think about what will be up for what in 2010. Those titles Tapley lists are Rob Marshall’s Nine, Peter Jackson’s Lovely Bones, Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Clint Eastwood’s “Mandela“ (formerly The Human Factor), Richard Curtis’ The Boat That Rocked, Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart and the latest from Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Steven Soderbergh (The Informant), Paul Greengrass (Green Zone), Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island) and James Cameron (Avatar).

Oh, and then Jeff Wells had to go and hint that Spielberg’s Lincoln is likely to arrive by year’s end. What and who else is being foreseen as nominated this time next year? Check out the links after the jump.

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Hollywood

Paul Schrader Books for Bollywood. Trade Roughage 11/25/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 12 months ago

Paul Schrader is reportedly done with Hollywood. His next film will be a Bollywood production titled Extreme City. The action pic will be a cross-cultural story, though probably more Bollywood-style than Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire; it won’t be a masala film but is likely to have a few more musical numbers.
Universal is producing a French-language biopic of Serge Gainsbourg, which will neither be animated in claymation nor with Thunderbird-like puppets, despite what you might suspect after seeing Variety’s choice of photo. It will instead star real people, including Laetitia Casta, who is to portray Brigitte Bardot.
Lionsgate has acquired the LeBron James doc More Than a Game, which will be released next fall accompanied by marketing tie-ins from Nike, Coca-Cola, State Farm and the NBA.
In a much more respectable marketing tie-in, The Soloist has been connected to a food drive called Feed the Need, which will collect 1 million pounds of food by December 15 — four months before the film opens.
The moviegoing demographics for this week’s “stuffed” Thanksgiving schedule are to be as follows: older woman to Australia; younger women to Four Christmases; youngest women/girls to Twilight; all men to Transporter 3; kids to Bolt. And some lucky people in 19 cities who don’t mind sold out shows will go see Milk.

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Hollywood, Indies

Soderbergh Loses It. Trade Roughage 10/24/08

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

According to Variety, Steven Soderbergh “is plotting a 3-D live-action rock ’n’ roll musical about Cleopatra,” for which he “is courting Catherine Zeta-Jones” for the title role. We’re sure this will never actually happen., because obviously, S.S. is just pulling a fast one on the trades by convincing them that he’s moving on to Cleo immediately after Che. Right? He must have either lost it, or have lost the ability to make a convincing joke… right?
John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt will replace The Soloist as the opening night film at AFI. A better win-win couldn’t have been planned.
The Academy is parcelling out almost half a million dollars in grants to various film fesitvals, including Sarasota, Seattle, and Ebert Fest.

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Hollywood

Soloist Yanked from AFI, Hackford Going Solo. Trade Roughage 10/23/08

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

After moving the film’s release date from 2008 awards season to spring 2009, Paramount has taken The Soloist out of its opening night slot at AFI. The festival is expected to announce a new opening night film today.
Taylor Hackford’s Love Ranch, starring his wife Helen Mirren as a brothel owner and financed by ThinkFilm sister Capitol Films, is in search of a distributor. The director is shopping it to studios himself in the hopes of repeating the good fortune he found with Ray. “Directors have to be realistic about this process because people are so frightened right now,” he said.
The 1963 cult film Hitler’s Brain is being adapted into a “sci-fi musical comedy” for the stage.
Alec Baldwin will replace Rose McGowan as celebrity co-host of The Essentials, the Saturday night showcase of superclassics on TCM. His episodes will start airing in March.

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Hollywood, Indies

Dueling Space Odysseys. Trade Roughage 10/17/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

Brad Pitt will produce and may star in an outer space version of The Odyssey for Warner Bros., and the studio is looking to sign George Miller as director. It is indeed an interesting project for Pitt since he also starred in Troy, which was kind of an adaptation of Homer’s The Iliad. But even more interesting is the fact that this isn’t the first Odyssey in space movie announced this week. On Monday, Ridley Scott described his next project as “The Odyssey by way of Blade Runner.”
Pitt may also play Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (labeled one of the “New Einsteins” in the latest Mental_Floss) in an adaptation of the nonfiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game from screenwriter Steve Zaillian (American Gangster) and director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada).
Star Wars geek Kevin Smith is at last making his own sci-fi movie, a father-son comedy set in outer space that “will reference other sci-fi movies.” Hopefully it will be as good as Spaceballs and Galaxy Quest, but looking at both the history of sci-fi comedies and the Bluntman and Chronic stuff at the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back leaves me thinking it will be more 2001: A Space Travesty.
It’s that time of the year when studios decide if their Oscar hopefuls are ready or not. Dimension is currently weighing the possibility of The Road being pushed to 2009, and now Paramount has announced that expected contender The Soloist won’t be released until March while Defiance will barely make the calendar cut with a limited drop on December 31.
On this crowded news day, here are some other notable bits: David Bergstein is consolodating several companies, including THINKfilm and Capitol Films, for a new venture headed by former New Line exec David Tuckerman;Â F. Gary Gray replaces Frank Darabont as director of Law-Abiding Citizen; Bourne 4 moves ahead with a screenwriter; Max Payne is expected to be #1 at the box office this weekend, unless of course some figures from Florida are miscounted permitting Oliver Stone’s W. to win the top spot.