Wednesday, September 12, 2007

VARIETY/HWOOD REPORTER BITS:

Ang Lee is being forced to cut 30 steamy minutes from his acclaimed new movie Lust, Caution....f'ing communists....

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (aka Pirates 3) has grossed $960 million worldwide...just an insane number....I enjoyed the film, and there were some outstanding set-pieces and some genuinely surreal stuff, but the 2nd entry is still my favorite.

Nick Broomfield's BATTLE FOR HADITHA got an incredible review in the Reporter...sounds intense.

Renny Harlin (gasp!) has a new movie called CLEANER, and it too got a good review..."Renny Harlin's new crime thriller is one of his best efforts in quite a while," Michael Rechtshaffen has said. Well, that's not too hard when the last few movies you directed included Driven, The Covenant, Exorcist: The Begining, and Mindhunters. I mean look at those shitty "films." Where's the guy who gave us Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and even parts of Deep Blue Sea? Sounds like CLEANER has some great acting from Ed Harris and Samuel L. Jackson, but that's not that big of a surprise. Sounds like another one to add to my list of films to see this fall...

Variety and The Reporter have COMPLETELY missed the boat on Peter Berg's the Saudi Arabia set action thriller The Kingdom. I can't believe their reviews...

Ed Norton is reteaming with Brad Pitt for a new political thriller called State of Play, based on a British mini series. Kevin McDonald, who directed last year's riveting film The Last King of Scotland, is directing. Matthew Michael Carnahan, who wrote The Kingdom and Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs, is writing the script. This all sounds awesome to me.

Roman Polanski's $100 million film Pompeii has been scraped due to the feared actors/writers strikes next year. Shame...a big bugdet movie like this, typically handled by pop-corn movie guys, would have been very interesting to see through the eyes of a filmmaker like Polanski

Not enough people watched last weekends debut episode of HBO's Tell Me You Love Me. Admitedly, this is a tough show to watch at times, but something this smart and honest should have found a bigger audience

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