By Jason Apuzzo. • One of the biggest pieces of Cold War news recently is that Ice Station Zebra may be getting a remake! For those of you not familiar with the film (shame on you!), Ice Station Zebra was one of the greatest Cold War thrillers of them all – a Cinerama spectacular starring Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan and Jim Brown about a race to the Arctic Circle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to recover the secret payload of a Russian spy satellite.
Although everyone shines in the picture, Patrick McGoohan – most famous for his work on The Prisoner TV series – really owns the film, and along with John Sturges’ direction (and the exceptional cinematography and production design) really elevates it to an elite level among thrillers. Among the big three movies adapted from Alistair MacLean’s novels – Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone – I probably would have to rate Zebra #3 (due to its somewhat slow pacing), but the film is most certainly a classic, and I’d do anything to see in its original Cinerama format.
What is completely horrifying, however, is that the person writing the screenplay for this remake is apparently writer/director David Gordon Green of Your Highness (?!), the new goofball epic featuring Natalie Portman and James Franco. How does this kind of thing happen?! Why can’t Warner Brothers do something sensible like have John Milius or Vince Flynn or Tom Clancy write it? Bloody hell.
I assume the new film would take place in the present day. Here’s hoping the screenplay goes through a few more hands …
• Communist China’s General Bureau of Radio, Film and Television has apparently decided to ‘discourage’ (i.e., ban) time travel movies! No, this is not a joke.
Their rationale? According to the Bureau, “[t]he time-travel drama is becoming a hot theme for TV and films. But its content and the exaggerated performance style are questionable. Many stories are totally made-up and are made to strain for an effect of novelty. The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore.” Well! Based on this criteria, they should probably ban everything Hollywood sends them.
The folks over at MGM who are currently scuttling around LA post-production houses scrubbing the Chinese from Red Dawn should definitely take note of this and make sure no time travel films are currently in the MGM pipeline – or that any new time travel subplots are being added to Red Dawn! After all, we’ve learned from a recent interview given by one of Red Dawn‘s producers that the greatest minds in the world – geniuses, Bobby Fischer/Ernst Blofeld-types who spend their days working on game theory – have been devising amazing new plot scenarios for that film, even though it’s already in the can. Perhaps the Wolverines are now being sent back to The Battle of the Little Bighorn to fight at General Custer’s side? Who can say?
On the positive side, hopefully this means Source Code won’t make it to China.
• Speaking of Tom Clancy, it looks like the Jack Ryan reboot Moscow starring Chris Pine has been put on hold as Pine gears up for Star Trek 2. In other Cold War spycraft news, the next James Bond film may be shooting in South Africa, for the first time in the series; and check out the new trailer for The Debt, the new Mossad-in-East-Berlin Cold War thriller starring Sam Worthington, Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson. It looks a little standard-issue for me; plus, I sense the film has an agenda, re: the Mossad. [UPDATE: It’s just been announced that Sony will be distributing MGM’s next Bond film, scheduled for Nov. 9th, 2012.]
• Behold Milla Jovovich to the right, at a special 80th birthday fete for Mikhail Gorbachev – held, for some bizarre reason, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. (Again I ask, what’s the matter with the Brits? It’s like they’re becoming a more expensive version of Lithuania.) I guess if you’re already Russian you can attend these things in good conscience. Or not. It’s funny, though, because I’m not sure Gorbo would’ve encouraged her to wear that dress back in the old Soviet Union. A little too much Western decadence, there.
• A clip of the Clint Eastwood/Leonardo DiCaprio J. Edgar (about J. Edgar Hoover) was recently shown at CinemaCon. In the clip, a young Hoover is testifying before Congress, advocating on behalf of creating a National Fingerprint Database. Here is a transcription of DiCaprio’s speech (as Hoover) to Congress: Continue reading Cold War Update!: New Ice Station Zebra, The Iron Lady, Moscow, Bond 23 + Communist China Bans Time-Travel Movies!