solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

So the word was out at Comicon last week that Heath Ledger will be playing The Joker, i'm still not certain this has been confirmed. The rumour started at LatinoReview, who apparently heard it from a reliable studio insider. Like it or not, I think Ledger could do a decent job of taking the joker somewhere other than the Nicholson route

So now a new rumour has surfaced from 'Batman on film' via filmstalker that Ryan Phillippe has been cast as D.A Harvey Dent. Phillippe certainly has the skills as an actor to pull off the role. In the comics Harvey Dent was a bat allie (and supposedly will be all the way through the film) helping batman fight the joker, well… legally at least. It'll be interesting to see if they try to do a 'pirates of the caribbean', lead straight into another film, turning Harvey Dent into 'two face' the coin wielding schizophrenic somewhere near the end.

I've already talked plenty about the new Will Ferrel movie 'Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby', just watch the clips here… (taken from iFilm) 

Thankyou lord for my smokin' hot wife

The bountiful harvest of KFC and Taco Bell

I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey

I play for keeps

I hope your sons get their legs taken away

The Magicman 

Paul Thomas Anderson, the writer/director behind 'Boogie Nights', 'Magnolia' and 'Punch Drunk Love' is cool as fuck. I have no idea why I ever thought he was a dick, I think my brain drew the conclusion without me, for the soul reason the picture on his imdb page makes him look like he's been smoking the pipe.

Then I watched this little interview with him (conducted by the one and only Henry Rollins no less) and I realise how wrong I was. In the interview he talks about the influences on his new film 'There Will be Blood' based on a book by Upton Sinclair, about the fact he took some time off to be with his new born baby and he basically just comes across as friendly, genuine and… well…real.

'There Will be Blood' is currently filming and will provide an interesting change of pace for PTA's films, The movie is set in the goldrush of 1930's America and stars Daniel Day Lewis in the lead. Here's a little synopsis:

A story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century Texas prospector (Daniel Day-Lewis) in the early days of the business.

I was also trawling the web for any info on his new film and found a really great site called 'cigarettes and red wine' that has a "report from the frontline" on the set

There's a script review over at latinoreview that is nothing short of glowing, here 

Rian Johnson is someone I hope to hear a lot more about in the future, I would say after seeing his debut Brick that his future is assured, but after hearing about Richard 'Darko' Kelly's trouble with his second feature 'Southland Tails' nothing is a sure thing.

Johnson's second feature will apparently be a 'grifter' flick called  'The Brothers Bloom' in the vein of 'The Sting'. A very early site for the film has gone live here, showing a couple of storyboards and some musical influence.

ioncinema carry the story here

Check out my review of Brick here

Long before he was turning tricks for Tarantino as a coke dealer in 'Pulp Fiction' Eric Stoltz was one of the original bratpackers, and was heading for success with a part in 'Back to the future' I don't know the story behind why he dropped out/got fired but it's still cool to see the stills.

I say cool, but it's more just weird seeing someone different play the same character in a movie you know really well… very Bizarro world.

The only reason I even know about it was because I was reading an interview with Gil Kenan the director of new CGI fest 'Monster House' in empire, and he mentioned he had been asking Robert Zemeckis about the fabled 'Stoltz' footage, and if it would ever see the light of day as a dvd extra. It seems as if these images are the closest we'll ever get.

Check out all the stills on bttf.com here (several pages)

found through digg 

This is basically just an update to the sneak peak I posted earlier here, and is from the same beautifully obsessive DiCaprio fansite as before 'Heart of Destiny'.

Even though the ET presenter still can’t keep his mouth shut for 2 whole minutes of video it’s still cool to see the harboiled Scorsese cops.

Check it out on youtube directly here, or grab the WMV here

**UPDATE** view the trailer in glorious quicktime at yahoo now here(link from todd at twitchfilm)

David Lynch’s next film ‘Inland Empire’ is currently in post production, and stars the whole Lynch back catalogue; Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton and Justin Theroux. Until we hear anymore about that production shorts like this will have to tide us over. This short slice of weirdness was filmed by Lynch to show off an Avid DV system.

Also check out the man himself reading the weather every morning on his site here

So the story goes something along the lines of; they're filming in London, stunt supervisor, producer, director, whoever goes to pub, starts drinking, leaves very important 19 page storyboard in the pub. what a dope.

The Storyboard chronicled an action set-piece in the film where a bad guy 'Carlos' tries to ram a petrol tanker into a Jumbo Jet, with hilarious consequences. 

Filmstalker carries the story, which came from 'The Sun' an english tabloid newspaper, who came into posession of the storyboards and (surprisingly) nobly handed them back to the production, but seem to have exchanged them from some cool exclusive stills from the sequence. Clever. Storyboards in newspaper = boring, Daniel Craig + explosions in newspaper = awesometown.

Check out the story in the sun complete with photos here

I've talked about the new Martin Scorsese film 'The Departed' before, a remake of one of my favourite films from Hong Kong 'Infernal Affairs'.

A very short clip from 'entertainment tonight' has turned up on 'The Heart of Destiny', a DiCaprio fansite (I found it throught the imdb message board, I wasn't browsing a DiCaprio fansite…well maybe I was, he's dreamy, fuck you, don't judge me), showing some clips from the film. I'm not sure how close the end product will be to the HK original, but it doesn't seem to be very similar, first of all I don't remember their being 'a killer'…

I've yabbed enough, try and ignore the anoying 'HI I"M CHUCK" voiceover from the ET presenter and just enjoy the (brief) Scorsese visuals

The clip can be downloaded here, or check it out on youtube here

and if you get bored browse 'The Departed' set in out flickr account here

I love trailers that in the first couple of seconds you think it's one thing (I was waiting for the Jerry Maguire music to kick in, and the voiceover to start 'Daniels day started like any other') then in the space of 4 seconds it turns a corner into something utterly bleak. love it.

'Right at your Door' is one of those 'what if…' films that seemed to be very popular back in the 1970's, they had fear of nuclear warfare, the 00's have fear of chemical weapons and terrorism.

Check out the trailer here and there's some clips here

the trailer was reported on AICN a couple of days ago