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:
“Bring all the fingerprints in this country to my office so that we may create a central file to help arm our agents so that they may have a fighting chance against the sub-machine guns of some of the most dangerous characters in the history of American criminality. And I urge you to do this in the name of little Lindy [the Lindbergh baby], because if he can be taken, then what child is safe? … If we cannot aid in his safe return, then what use are we?”
Hmm. I’m beginning to see how this film might play out in terms of contemporary War on Terror debates. Think ‘freedom vs. security.’
• Speaking of the Brits, people watching the the filming of The Iron Lady are saying that Jim Broadbent appears to be out to parody or satirize Margaret Thatcher’s husband, Denis – and this is lending further steam to the notion that The Iron Lady is nothing so much as a hit-job on Margaret Thatcher and her family. Take a look at the pictures here of Broadbent in mid-performance, and read the accompanying article to judge for yourself. Broadbent does look like he’s in John Cleese/opera buffa mode, and this whole film is looking like very ugly business to me.
• In other Cold War News & Notes: the 24 movie is definitely happening (see here and here); Tomorrow When the War Began (aka, the ‘Aussie Red Dawn‘) just starting playing in the UK, and you can watch some clips of the film here; Rosie Huntington-Whiteley of Transformers: Dark of the Moon talks about what a hard worker Michael Bay is here, and says here how she’d love to do a Transformers 4 in which she and Shia get married (still better would be to have Megan Fox crash the wedding and start a catfight); screenwriter Cory Goodman talks about his work on Apollo 18 here; check out the latest episodes of the innovative Cold War/sci-fi web series Pioneer One here; Russian model Irina Shayk tries on every new bikini under the sun here; and the great Angela Lansbury takes a look back at her performance in The Manchurian Candidate here.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … behold above the glory of this retro-1962 Total Film cover featuring January Jones as Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class. Very promising. I’m always trying to get Govindini to dress like this around the house but she resists for some reason. Anyway, in other First Class news, another new trailer for the film has been released, there’s already sequel talk, and a fan recently created his own retro-60s-style title sequence for the film that’s a lot of fun.
And that’s what’s happening today in The Cold War!
Posted on April 13th, 2011 at 4:13pm.
“I guess if you’re already Russian you can attend these things in good conscience.”
Milla is Ukranian, not Russian, so she should REALLY know better than to be endorsing the Soviet leadership.
Good point, Jimmy! I have some Ukranian blood, as well, so I should have sensed there was something amiss here.
That is insane that they are handing the Ice Station Zebra Remake to the guy who wrote Your Highness. What expertise does he have in Cold War history? Why do they keep handing this stuff to clowns?
Also, that is really bizarre about the Chinese banning time-travel films. These people are control freaks and its scary that Hollywood is going to such extreme lengths as censoring their own films to please them. People, this is going to head down a very bad path.
It’s heading down a very bad path indeed, Globetrottr. I make light of these things sometimes, but what we’re witnessing here is really ominous in terms of what its repercussions are for mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. If this stuff can happen to Red Dawn – an ostensibly anti-communist film – it can certainly happen to any project, whatsoever.
Damn! That is awesome art from Ice Station Zebra — it’s going to be my new desktop wallpaper. I watch that film every time it’s on TCM.
When I saw remake in the lead, I was hit with excitement, but then it was sucked from me upon mention of the screenwriter. This better not be a weird snarky version with some sort of irony.
As for the Iron Lady, that is just sad. All Margaret Thatcher wanted was individual liberty and freedom … why is that so offensive or hard for people to understand?
J. Edgar sounds interesting, but I’m like a battered spouse with these films — I have no idea what’s coming.
And Milla … my goodness. I swear, I’d watch her talk to two hours.
Vince, you’ve got to check out the full poster in hi-res! Take a look at it here:
http://www.cinemasterpieces.com/92010a/icenov10.jpg
On all other points, I’m agreed. J. Edgar is worrying me, big-time; Iron Lady I’ve already written off. As for Zebra, let’s hope it rattles through development a bit longer and maybe acquires some new writers …
Milla’s a dish, and reader Jimmy informs me she’s Ukranian – so I’m extra proud, having at least a few ounces of Ukranian blood in me. Somebody’s got to straighten her out on the Gorbo thing, though. He wasn’t the Prince of Peace he’s currently made out to be.
Thanks, Jason! I had no idea the art for that film is so awesome!
As for amazing Ukranian women, don’t forget about Mila Kunis.
It’s a good gene pool over there.
What the hell is going on is right. No one bought their weepy Vietnamesqe Coming Home style depictions of the Iraq War so now they’ve gone back to rewriting history. This is the typical liberal trick of twisting facts and repeating lies so that they become fact. (JFK, Any Michael Moore Movie, Inconvenient Truth are good examples)
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Which point in the post are you referring to, JG?
The information about Ice Station Zebra. Of course David Gordon Green could be one of those secret Hollywood conservatives and until We see a finished product all We have to go on is what he’s done so far.
What I was broadly referring to is the Hollywood penchant for rewriting of historical facts. In this case the atmosphere and motives of the the two major Cold War Protagonists. Ice Station Zebra is a fictionalized depiction of a Cold War stand off. A good example is Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor. If that movie is your single source of facts regarding that historic event you get the impression that the sole reason Japan attacked us is because We cut off their oil. The other part about Japan wanting to dominate the world by enslaving and committing atrocities against millions of people was left out.
Got it. I have to say, though, that I like Michael Bay’s stuff a lot these days. I don’t remember much about his depiction of Japan from Pearl Harbor, other than that it seemed limited due to the major focus of the film being on the romance. I’ll go back and look at that. I just bought Pearl Harbor recently but haven’t watched it yet.
I like his stuff too. (I even like The Island) He’s like Tony Scott amplified. I’ve always been curious if Top Gun was a big influence on him. He has a signature visual cinematic style. How many directors today can you say that about?
It’s looking like a wipeout tomorrow for Atlas Shrugged. So far and I’ve never seen this before, the reviews are so bad that the reviewers are actually sympathetic. (Of course the night is young)
We must think alike, JG. I actually just started watching The Island last night. I remember liking it from when I first saw it; this time out I found it a bit on the dull side, but Bay’s visual style really stands out. It’s just a great looking film, even if the premise is a bit derivative.
To be fair to David Gordon Green, he started out as a very promising independent filmmaker. His debut, George Washington, was widely acclaimed as a Terrence Malick-esque coming-of-age beauty, and his next couple films, including All the Real Girls and Snow Angels, were quite interesting. He has been hired to write treatments of numerous other scripts before this, and he has been attached to dozens of projects that haven’t come to light, from A Confederacy of Dunces to the Secret Life of Bees to westerns, etc. The next film he’s planning on directing is apparently a remake of Suspiria. So he started out very interesting, it’s just that the last couple years he’s been making stoner comedies and losing all his goodwill. So I wouldn’t write off Ice Station Zebra just yet, maybe he’s making a comeback. I hope.
Stephen, thanks for your contribution. I would just say, however, that there are about a dozen people I could name who would be vastly more appropriate to pen something like this. People in Hollywood get very caught up in trends, and assume that success in one area is somehow translatable into every other area. Mr. Green may have done some nice work in coming-of-age projects, but he’s hardly the first name that comes to mind when one thinks of big-budget military thrillers based on classic Cold War novels. This is something, for example, one might normally hand to Phillip Noyce – or maybe Michael Bay, with Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman scripting.