By Jason Apuzzo. • One of the most intriguing things I’ve seen recently is the promotional trailer (see above) for director Renny Harlin’s new, $20 million Russian-invasion-of-Georgia thriller 5 Days of August, which is set for release in March.
The film stars Val Kilmer, Andy Garcia (as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili) and Heather Graham among others – and deals with a group of war correspondents caught behind enemy (i.e., Russian) lines when the Russians invaded Georgia back in 2008.
When the journalists videotape a series of horrific Russian war crimes, they have to fight to get the footage out of the country. The film was apparently shot on-location in Tbilisi, with the approval of the Georgian government.
From the look of the promotional trailer (which does not appear to be the final, theatrical trailer), it looks like Harlin is going hard-core in his criticism of the Russians – so this is going to get very interesting come March. Bravo to everyone involved for their courage in doing this, and please do try to avoid assassination.
Harlin (Die Hard 2) also seems to have squeezed a lot out of his $20 million budget, as the scale of the project seems impressive. We’ll be keeping an eye on this project here at Libertas. Val Kilmer really needs to drop some weight, by the way.
• In related news, Putin’s ballerina-mistress just appeared on the cover of Russian Vogue. (Did the old Politburo guys have mistresses? It’s hard to imagine Brezhnev sneaking off with his secretary.)
• Angelina Jolie’s The Tourist opened poorly (see the LFM review here), but fortunately there’s always Salt – which just hit Blu-ray and DVD. The new Salt disks apparently contain several different cuts of the film, including an ‘extended’ cut and also a ‘director’s’ cut – the differences between these cuts are explained here – and the cuts actually seem to represent legitimately different visions of the film, particularly with respect to the film’s ending. Without giving anything away about the new scenes, suffice it to say that sequels were definitely on everyone’s mind at the time of the production.
So will there be sequels? It’s too early to say, but director Phillip Noyce – who’s out doing media for the new DVDs – probably won’t be doing them himself (see here) as he seems to have moved on to other ventures.
We liked the retro, commie-hunting vibe of Salt here at Libertas (see our review here), and we’re hoping this film gets its franchise. If it does, it will be noteworthy for having done so without the aid and assistance of the talking heads on either Fox News or talk radio, ironically enough.
• Charlize Theron and Armie Hammer (The Social Network) have apparently been offered roles in the new Clint Eastwood/Leonardo DiCaprio biopic of J. Edgar Hoover. Hammer would reportedly be playing Hoover’s ‘lover’ Clyde Tolson, although there is still some controversy about the exact nature of Tolson’s relationship with Hoover. Theron would be playing Hoover’s personal secretary of 54 years, Helen Gandy.
Speaking of Hoover and the FBI, by the way, the LA Times recently ran a piece clarifying Ronald Reagan’s rumored cooperation with the FBI in their hunt for communists in Hollywood.
• The Jack Bauer/24 movie has apparently been put on temporary hold, after the last version of the screenplay didn’t satisfy Fox executives. However the latest rumor apparently has Tony Scott – who still intends to direct the Top Gun sequel – pitching a new 24 idea to Kiefer Sutherland himself, so there’s still some momentum left on that project.
• The new Bond film is currently scheduled for a November 2012 release, incidentally.
• Take a few minutes to enjoy this animated short below, called Pigeon: Impossible from Lucas Martell. It’s about a rookie CIA agent who gets into hot water after a pigeon gets trapped inside his nuclear briefcase and sets off an ICBM toward Moscow. It’s a cute little story, and the quality of the animation is quite high.
• In other Cold War News & Notes: another Die Hard sequel is apparently a ways off; the CW’s Nikita just got a full season ordered; there are a bunch of new set photos from Atlas Shrugged; and, odd to say, but the Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz spy thriller Knight and Day actually ended up being Fox’s #1 hit of the year, grossing $262 million worldwide. Granted, $186 million of that came from overseas … [Read the LFM review of Knight and Day here.]
• … and speaking of Tom Cruise, by the way, some incredible set footage from Mission: Impossible 4 emerged recently of Cruise swinging around outside the upper floors of the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, where he’s roughly 2,000+ feet up. He even waves and smiles at the tourists watching him. I’ll say this for the guy, he always gives people their money’s worth. One other bit of related news: Ving Rhames may not be back for Mi4 – although, weirdly, he may be returning for the next Piranha film (didn’t he get chewed to pieces?).
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … January Jones – who will be playing Emma Frost in the swingin’ 60s/Cold War-themed X-Men: First Class – just did a series of provocative handbag ads for Versace, which is odd because she herself really doesn’t look like a bag at all.
And that’s what’s happening today in the Cold War!
Posted on December 20th, 2010 at 2:05pm.