Author: Jason Apuzzo

By Jason Apuzzo. The LA Times is featuring an interview today with Joel Surnow, creator of TV’s 24 series.  Joel kindly invited Govindini and I to the 24 set a few years back, and at the Fall 2006 Liberty Film Festival we premiered scenes from the pilot of Joel’s comedy show The Half Hour News Hour, a series that later ran on Fox News.  The jokey scenes from the pilot featuring Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter got an especially rapturous response, as I recall.

In the interview Joel discusses his forthcoming miniseries The Kennedys that will be showing on The History Channel.  That series has already been the source of some controversy, as radical left wing documentarian Robert Greenwald (Outfoxed) and his allies in the media have been trying to portray Joel’s series as a hit job against the Kennedy family.  Joel throws a bucket of cold water today on Greenwald’s paranoid speculations, reminding people that the writer of the Kennedys series, Steve Kronish, is actually a liberal Democrat.  Here’s Joel on the controversy surrounding the series:

I think part of it [the controversy] was driven by the fact that it’s going to debut around the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s inauguration. For those looking to sustain the Camelot image, they’re worried. But they don’t need to be.

In the interview Joel also talks about setting up his own production entity for the series, and the overall benefits of working independently.  We want to wish Joel the best for The Kennedys.  Joel’s been responsible for a lot of great TV projects before, whether on 24 on Le Femme Nikita – and we’re sure this one will be colorful, as well.  One thing is for certain: whatever one thinks of the Kennedy family, they were an important part of American history in the 20th century – and they’ve certainly never been dull …

Posted on June 17th, 2010 at 12:57pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Robert Downey, Jr. and his wife have formed a production company, and their first project will be to produce Steve McQueen’s script (yes, that Steve McQueen) for Yucatan, the Mexico-motorcycle heist film McQueen wanted to do long ago. Steve’s son Chad will be exec. producing. Although I’m not a huge fan of Downey’s, this is a genuinely great idea and somewhere up above The King of Cool is smiling in his Mustang.

• A 3D IMAX release of The Green Hornet is set for January 14th of next year. Troubling subtext: January is a frequent dumping ground of projects nobody has confidence in.  Will Green Hornet end up in the red?  In related news, the new version of The Thing will be coming out on April 29th of next year. This Thing is technically a prequel to John Carpenter’s remake … so does that mean it’s also a ‘reboot’?  I’m trying to get a handle on this.

• A sequel to Karate Kid is already in the works. Sequel + Reboot = SeeBoot. You read it here first.

• A liberal group has created an on-line petition to stop Disney from putting Sarah Palin’s new Alaska/nature show on the Learning Channel.  My advice is to flood the email box of this website with enormous, 2mb photo images of Naughty Monkey pumps.

• George Clooney has been made a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. That’s not the punch-line, that’s the actual news story.  He joins Michael Douglas and Warren Beatty on the Council’s Sub-Division on Global Narcissism.

• Did Al Gore have an affair with Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David? Or is it all just an on-line hoax?  Right now Al’s regretting inventing the internet.

• Obnoxious Brit left-winger Michael Winterbottom (The Road to Guantanamo, The Killer Inside Me) is at it again. His next project will apparently be The Promised Land, about the battle between Jewish insurgents and British occupiers in the Palestine of the 1930s. Winterbottom gets the perfect Brit-leftie 2-fer here: implying moral equivalency between Jews of the 1930s and contemporary Islamic terrorists, and comparing current American occupations to failed British occupations of the pre-World War II era. Silver lining? Nobody watches Michael Winterbottom’s films.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … the Hollywood reporter takes time out to interview the lovely Indian star and former Miss Universe Aishwarya Rai, about her new film Ravaan.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Posted on June 16th, 2010 at 5:36pm.

By Jason Apuzzo.  Speculation is currently very heated about the exact nature of the plotline to writer-director Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming film, Inception.

Why the speculation is so heated is actually something of a puzzle to me, in so far as the film’s trailer would seem to make Inception‘s storyline fairly clear: the film appears to be a kind of sci-fi, Hitchcockian thriller based on the concept of what used to be termed mind-control and/or brainwashing.

According to Warner Brothers, the film’s distributor:

“Acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan directs an international cast in an original sci-fi actioner that travels around the globe and into the intimate and infinite world of dreams. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb’s rare ability has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage, but it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him everything he has ever loved. Now Cobb is being offered a chance at redemption. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible—inception. Instead of the perfect heist, Cobb and his team of specialists have to pull off the reverse: their task is not to steal an idea but to plant one. If they succeed, it could be the perfect crime. But no amount of careful planning or expertise can prepare the team for the dangerous enemy that seems to predict their every move. An enemy that only Cobb could have seen coming. This summer, your mind is the scene of the crime.”

Personally Nolan’s much-hyped film is of little interest to me, due to its seemingly derivative quality; the film appears to be a kind of pastiche of familiar elements from The Matrix, Memento, The Thirteenth Floor, Dark City and myriad other recent films that have plumbed the theme of mind control.  Inception already appears to lack the punchy, campy vitality of the original Matrix; nor does Nolan appear to have developed a sense of humor – we’re apparently still going to be waiting for that in one of his films.  [And I’ve been waiting for it ever since his Following, from 1998.]  But Nolan certainly made Warner Brothers enough money from The Dark Knight that he’s earned the right to do what he wants to do with Inception – it’s his film.

Superman is a somewhat different matter.  As has been widely reported, Nolan has been given by Warner Brothers what amounts to supervisory control over the forthcoming ‘reboot’ of the Superman franchise.  He’s been given this control due to the wild financial success of The Dark Knight. But Superman is an altogether different kind of ‘property.’  The Superman character is an important figure of American iconography – a product, actually, of America’s epochal battle against fascism in World War II.  Going ‘edgy’ or ‘dark’ with the Superman character – which is ostensibly why Nolan was brought in – is therefore quite a tricky matter.

Miles Millar’s comic series Superman: Red Son (an image of which is seen at the top of this post) – the much-discussed series in which Superman is re-envisioned as a Soviet superhero of the working people – offers a vivid example of how even something as seemingly stable as the Superman image can be tampered with in drastic ways.  With the full-throated support of the fanboy community, Millar was pitching Superman movies as recently as two years ago, although in fairness I don’t believe the Red Son plotline was part of his pitch.  The point is, though, that Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns actually went so far as to drop the ‘American way’ from the famous Superman ‘credo’ of standing for “Truth, Justice and the American Way.”  So does anyone really trust these people to retain the essence of the Superman character as a patriotic icon?

There are already rumors about what the next Superman film might be like from the plot standpoint.  The rumors don’t really tell us much – or at least, they don’t tell us the really important things to know.  But I’m long-past trusting the studios to handle this material anymore.  And now Christopher Nolan – the guy making the brainwashing film, who brought a sinister allure to the Batman series – is entrusted with Superman.  And I’m actually a little concerned about it.

For now Nolan has been keeping his cards close to the vest about his plans for Superman.  I understand the showmanship aspect of keeping things secret, but at this point I’d actually like to know a little more about where he intends to take the Superman franchise.  Hopefully during the rollout of Inception we’ll hear a lot more from him about this.

Posted on June 16th, 2010 at 12:57am.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Pressure is mounting on Peter Jackson to direct The Hobbit, which he’s already co-written. Jackson is now facing the same question faced by George Lucas long, long ago: when do you let a franchise take over your career?  Answer: when the franchise makes north of $1 billion.

• Sam Raimi will apparently be directing Disney’s 3D Wizard of Oz prequel, Oz: The Great And Powerful. Rumors flying that Robert Downey, Jr. may star. If Raimi does this properly, the box office on this will make Alice in Wonderland look like Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

• Ridley Scott currently preparing 1, maybe 2 Alien prequels. First prequel will focus on mysterious ‘space jockey’ alien from original film.  Hints also dropped that prequel may be in 3D.  Short of a Blade Runner follow-up, this is about the only thing Sir Ridley could do to get me to watch his films again.  He’s got a lot to answer for after Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood … not to mention Matchstick Men.

• Star Kristen Stewart eager to tackle new 2-part Twilight: Breaking Dawn. No wonder!  It’s currently Hollywood’s only major franchise based around a woman.

• The trailer for Sofia Coppola’s new film Somewhere is out and it looks good.  Note how much Sofia communicates without resorting to dialogue.  Looking forward to this.

• In the wake of the Killers debacle, pundits are asking whether Katherine Heigl is actually capable of playing a likeable character. That problem hasn’t hurt Woody Allen for over 20 years.

• Click here to watch Kevin Costner describe his oil/water separator on ABC’s Good Morning America. This snappy little device is easily the best thing to come out of Waterworld, aside from Dennis Hopper’s eyepatch.

• Click here to see the trailer for Centurion, the new ultra-violent movie about ancient Roman warriors in Great Britain. Nice to see a flick that takes the pro-Roman side, for once.  Could do without the excess gore, though.  [Didn’t they have predator drones back then?]

• The Feds have OK’d speculating in box office futures, and this is extremely bad news for Knight and Day.

• The Real White House Gate Crashers are about to crash Bravo’s new Real Housewives of D.C. series. Did anyone not see this coming?

• With states getting fussier about their images, it’s getting harder for filmmakers to receive tax credits, which is why more filmmakers should shoot in Mexico – since the Mexican government doesn’t seem to care about its image at all.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Megan Fox talks about two of her rumored projects: Fathom and Red Sonja. In Fathom she would be playing a “young woman named Aspen who learns she is a member of a race of aquatic humanoids who possess the ability to control water.”  Someone on Bobby Jindal’s staff needs to call this chick fast.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Posted on June 15th, 2010 at 2:57pm.