Radcliffe to Star in 'All Quiet on the Western Front' Adaptation
Filed under: Drama, Casting, War
If you're wondering about Daniel Radcliffe's post-Harry Potter plans, wonder no more. According to Variety, Radcliffe has signed on to star in a new adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 anti-war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. Remarque's novel has been adapted twice, first in a 1930 adaptation directed by Lewis Milestone and second in a 1979 made-for-TV miniseries produced by Hallmark starring Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine. Milestone's adaptation won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. Remarque's novel follows Paul Baumer (played by Lew Ayres in the 1930 adaptation) and his friends as World War I breaks out. Stirred by patriotic speeches and national pride, Baumer and his friends volunteer for service in the German Army. They quickly learn the realities of war: endless waiting, bursts of frenzied action, the loss of friends to physical and psychological injuries and death, the.onset of cynicism, self-doubt, and doubt about the merits of the war. It's a bleak, uncompromising novel of life during wartime from a common soldier's perspective. All Quiet on the Western Front and Remarque's sequel, The Road Back, were banned and burned by the Nazi Party after Hitler took power in 1933 for their anti-war (true) and anti-German (not true) themes.
John Lithgow and Freida Pinto Join 'Rise of the Apes'
Filed under: Action, Classics, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Casting, 20th Century Fox, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels
Our readers seem mixed as to whether 20th Century Fox's Planet of the Apes prequel, Rise of the Apes is a good idea or not. I'm not a huge POTA fan, but I think there's plenty of good social fodder in the series that deserves to be reexamined in this day and age. Even if political commentary isn't your cup of tea, the cast might be. According to THR's Heat Vision, Freida Pinto and John Lithgow have joined James Franco for Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Apes. As Peter Hall reported last month, Franco is playing the young scientist who is trying to discover a cure for Alzheimer's, and is part of a team who experiment on apes. One ape evolves, and Franco becomes attached to him, and takes him home to prevent him from further exploitation. Lithgow will play Franco's father, who has been stricken with Alzheimer's Disease. You and I both know Lithgow will knock this out of the park, so his addition alone is probably worth the price of admission.
Pinto will be playing the female lead, "a primatologist." Presumably she'll also be a love interest for Franco. Someone is bound to make remarks that primatologists aren't as lovely as Pinto, and all I have to say to that is Jane Goodall. Journalists complained she should have been a fashion model. So there you go.
Apes begins shooting this summer. It may be a "reboot", but like Logan's Run, it has some potential. I think it's going to be one of the more promising things on pop culture's radar.
Cinematical Late Night: Human Centipede for Cats, Akira, Kubrick vs Scorsese
Filed under: Action, Drama, Foreign Language, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Sony Classics, Fandom, Scripts
- This Human Centipede Cat Toy is 100% medically accurate, just like the movie.
- Sony Pictures Classics has announced its rather impressive schedule for the last half of 2010: Zhang Yimou's remake of the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple , titled A Woman, A Gun And a Noodle Shop, kicks things off on September 3rd, the 22nd brings Woody Allen's You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Stephen Frears' Tamara Drewe hits the October 8th, Nigel Cole's Made in Dagenham slots November 19th, Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist on Christmas Day, and Mike Leigh's Another Year caps things off on December 29th.
- David Cronenberg is attached to direct and adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's novel As She Climbed Across the Table, which is about a man who is in love with a physicist who is in love with the black hole-like doorway she has created in her laboratory.
- Rut-roh: Warner Brothers' thinks that a live-action Akira film must be PG-13. Insert sad emoticon here.
Cinematical Seven: Things Megan Fox Should Do to Get Her Career Back on Track
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Cinematical Seven, Lists
Seems like just yesterday that Megan Fox was being feted as Hollywood royalty -- funny how the passage of a year and a few box office flops can change all that. Fox, who seemingly rose to stardom out of nowhere when Michael Bay cast her in his Transformers movies, appears to be learning that meteoric rises to fame can feature crashes that are just as fast. After the disappointing performance of Jennifer's Body late last year, followed up by her quitting (before they could fire her ... ) Transformers 3 and abysmal opening for Jonah Hex, everyone's suddenly wondering,
Luckily for Megan, I'm here to provide some wisdom and guidance. I can almost guarantee that following any of these seven steps (after the jump) will have Fox back on top of the world in no time -- and following all seven could make her empress of the galaxy or something.
The Remake Game: Toy Story
Filed under: Animation, Casting, Disney, Fandom, Family Films, Remakes and Sequels
Of all the impossible remakes that we've proposed so far in The Remake Game, I think we can all agree that this would be the least likely of the bunch - a live-action remake of 1995's animated milestone, Toy Story. Granted, it's been fifteen years, and the big bad movie-makin' machine didn't even wait fifteen months before getting to work on another version of Death at a Funeral (I'd struggle to consider either one a classic, though).
Seeing as we're working with a non-existent project, I think it's fair to cheat a bit and include a few of our favorites from Toy Story 2 while we're at it. Seeing as it just came out four days ago, we're not going to rope in the new characters of Toy Story 3 just yet.
And so, in the Hollywood version (surely pitched as being in the vein of Night at the Museum), we could picture:
- Bradley Cooper as rootin'-tootin' cowboy Woody
- Jon Hamm as all-American astronaut Buzz Lightyear (The A-Team reunion!)
- Renee Zellweger as Woody's love interest, Bo Peep (Case 39 reunion!)
- Vince Vaughn as resident skeptic Mr. Potato Head
- Justin Long as the perpetually sarcastic Hamm (Dodgeball reunion!)
- George Lopez as Woody's best friend, Slinky (either him or Chris Rock - today's family films require one character of distinct, often stereotypical ethnicity)
- Paul Dano as panicky pal Rex
- Stephen Lang as troop leader Sarge
- Anne Hathaway as Woody's original sidekick, Jessie
- Jeff Bridges as treacherous Stinky Pete (just use his Iron Man performance)
- and Kevin James as the namesake for Al's Toy Barn, Al
The Geek Beat: 'Jonah Hex' and a Faceful of Flop
Filed under: The Geek Beat
Jonah Hex is a character who has had his share of massive ups and downs. Half of his face is burned away. He had a horrific childhood. He was sold into slavery. He fought on the losing side of the Civil War. His wife and son left him. He traveled to the future. His corpse was stuffed and mounted in a sideshow. But by far, the most humiliating thing in Jonah's life happened this weekend, when his half-plucked film hit theaters to the tune of record lows at the box office.
I've written a lot of Hex pieces in the past few months, and I hesitate to write another one, because it may seem like I'm beating one of his ill-fated horses to death. But I'm a fan of the character, and as a fan, I feel as cheated as I did last summer with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This time, it's a little more personal. Jonah Hex was one of the first film sets I visited, and arguably one of the most exciting because I knew the source material. I watched a character I knew come to life, and it was as cool as I hoped it would be. In the months that followed, I whispered what I'd seen to my fellow Hex fans, and assured them it was in good hands.
The Real Toys of 'Toy Story' 1-3
My four-year-old son loves all things Buzz Lightyear at the moment, but he's too young to understand that Buzz isn't a "real" toy. He was invented for the movie Toy Story (1995), and the toy came later. Although, in all honesty, I suppose there isn't much difference. As I was watching the new movie Toy Story 3, I was struck by how comfortable and familiar all these toys have become, whether they were invented for the movie, or lifted from childhood memories. The point is that a good toy will always inspire us to play well. Following is a list of real toys that made it into the movies.
Mr. Potato Head (Hasbro/Playskool, 1952)Inventor George Lerner came up with the idea for this by, of course, sticking things into real potatoes, and that was how the original toy was sold: a collection of stuff, including feet, hands, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, moustache, hats, glasses and even a pipe (!), that kids could stick into real potatoes. The original sold for 98 cents. Apparently, it was the first toy advertised on television. In the 1960s, he became plastic, and in the age of "politically correct," he stopped smoking. And yes, he also got his Mrs. Potato Head. Don Rickles provides the voice in the movie.
Edinburgh Review: Superhero Me
Filed under: Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports
Of all the documentaries screening at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, only one asks questions which have long troubled comic-book fans the world over. What if you could don a suit, wear your briefs over your pants, hop on a bike and head out into the cold to fight crime in your local community? If Batman can do it, why can't that guy living next door?
The film asking these questions is Superhero Me, in which Brit music producer-turned-filmmaker Steve Sale attempts to find the answers by throwing himself into his theory. Styling himself as 'SOS' he dons a mask and attempts to ail society's ills in his sleepy hometown of Sutton in England.
Along the way we meet Sale's friends, and some low-league comic-book experts, who wax lyrical about what it means to be superhero, and Sale discovers an entire community of people on the Internet who dress up and fight crime in their own communities.
Kick-Ass most recently tackled this same subject matter, albeit in fiction, and it may go without saying that there's more in the way of action sequences and dastardly criminals in Kick-Ass than there is in its documentary equivalent. By all accounts Sutton is a rather peaceful place, and while Sale sets out to do right by his community, it's more of the litter-collecting variety.
'Pope Joan' is Still Around, Stirring Up Controversy
Filed under: Drama, New Releases, Celebrities and Controversy, Religious
For the entire length of my writing here at Cinematical, there are a few films that have been on the forward trajectory since I started in 2006. One was Jackboots on Whitehall, which took a while -- understandably -- considering the time it takes to film a movie focused on action figures. The other is Pope Joan, a film stalled by a myriad of cinematic plagues.In early 2007, John Goodman was sued for backing out of his role as Pope Serguis. Not too long after, Constantin Film halted production. The production was slapped with more drama when the director was fired for comments made to a newspaper. But then they got a new director, and things looked on the up and up. That is, until star Franka Potente backed out in May of 2008. Then the film got another jolt back in the plus column -- John Goodman returned and David Wenham signed on.
Believe it or not, the film finally got produced, has made the rounds of some European cities, and is in the top three of Italy's box office, behind Sex and the City 2 and Robin Hood. So now that the production drama is in the past, it's time to induce the ire of the Catholic Church.
Get to Know 'Inception's' Dream Team in New Teaser
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Casting, New Releases, Movie Marketing, Trailers and Clips
In a relatively ho-hum summer blockbuster season, it's now up to Christopher Nolan to try and woo audiences back into theaters with his latest -- a sci-fi thriller known as Inception. If this new clip is any indication, I'm expecting him to succeed.
Fans were miffed when the director announced that he'd be working alongside Leonardo DiCaprio on this film -- not because Inception didn't sound fantastic, but because it meant it would take the filmmaker away from the project everyone really wanted him to tackle -- the follow up to The Dark Knight. At this stage, it appears as though Nolan's decision to take a break from Batman might have been the best one -- Inception appears to be a slick thriller with a fantastic cast, and Nolan has allowed himself to walk away from Gotham City and recharge his batteries -- all the better for him to come back and tackle a third film about the Caped Crusader, refreshed and ready to go.
Hit the jump to learn more about Inception's plot and get your first look at the new trailer.
Radcliffe to Star in 'All Quiet on the Western Front' Adaptation
John Lithgow and Freida Pinto Join 'Rise of the Apes'
The Real Toys of 'Toy Story' 1-3
What's Next for 'Primer's' Shane Carruth?
First Official Look at the New Conan the Barbarian
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