Could The New Halo Movie be the anti-Avatar? + French Women & Hollywood Round-up, 10/12

By Jason Apuzzo. • I’m still tantalized by the notion that Dreamworks’ proposed Halo project could be a kind of anti-Avatar – i.e., an epic sci-fi film that makes genocidal theocratic aliens into the enemies, rather than into victims of Earth-based imperialist aggression/corporate exploitation, etc. I’ve embedded a trailer above that should give you some sense of what such a film might feel like, particularly in terms of its epic scale.

My sense is that this would be a difficult project for Dreamworks to botch, provided their desire to retain some basic fidelity to the storyline and not turn off – I almost wrote ‘alienate’ – the game’s legion of fans. We’ll see.

• The Social Network won the weekend at the box office. No surprises there, but it was disappointing that Disney’s Secretariat placed third behind the vulgar-looking Katherine Heigl comedy. And now, apparently, Disney’s new marketing chief is quasi-falling on her sword over the film’s mediocre opening. My sense is that people should be patient here; I expect Secretariat to have a long shelf life, and good word-of-mouth. It’s interesting that the Hollywood Reporter article about Disney’s marketing chief notes that Secretariat did much better business in the Heartland than on the coasts. That’s completely unsurprising to me, because the vibe of the film is so retro-old school … it’s almost like a classic women’s melodrama from the 1940s. My advice to the Disney people would be start marketing the film hard to women, and not just to people they’ve tagged as middle-American conservatives/Fox News viewers/Christians, etc.

• French actress Lea Seydoux has been cast as the villainess of Mission: Impossible 4. This reminds me, happily, that French Vogue is celebrating its 90th anniversary this month. I’d been wanting to show everyone the superb cover of the anniversary issue (see right). It certainly captures French women at their finest, non? Vivre la differance, I always say. Over at fashion blogger Garance Doré’s site (see here and here) you can read about the 90th anniversary Masquerade Ball held at Karl Lagerfeld’s Paris apartment, in celebration of this momentous anniversary. We love Garance’s site here at Libertas, by the way. In somewhat related news, while the French are celebrating their beautiful women, a German group has just devised some new ‘body morphing’ software that can re-sculpt the bodies of actors and actresses. The Germans used to have such faith in their gene pool; apparently times have changed.

• On the Dwarves/Fairies/Gnomes Front, you can see below the new trailer for Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader if you’re still following that series. Also: Peter Jackson is out reminding people today that due to the complex MGM situation, his Hobbit films have still not technically been greenlit. No kidding – we may not see those films for another 40 years, the way things are going. And finally, Warner Brothers is canceling the planned release of the next ‘Harry Potter’ movie in 3D, as there simply isn’t enough time for them to do a high-quality 3D conversion. No doubt this is embarrassing for them – but it’s much less embarrassing than having a bad conversion panned. For the umpteenth time here at Libertas, I remind people that it’s always better to shoot natively in 3D when possible – rather than endure the vagaries, inadequacies and expense of the conversion process.

• On the Political Front, Shia LaBeouf apparently wants to play the young Karl Rove in College Republicans, which is described by the LA Times as “a comedy-drama about a young Karl Rove vying for the position of chief campus conservative under the guidance of one Lee Atwater.” I suppose that might be entertaining; Rove could certainly do worse – in terms of looks, though, it would probably be more accurate to cast Jonah Hill. In related news, people are still irritated that Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (starring Shia LaBeouf) wasn’t left-wing enough. This must really be a weird month for Stone, in so far as he just released a pro-Hugo Chavez doc. In other news: a new kids TV show is debuting featuring “Sharia-compliant Muslim superheroes.” Has Marvel optioned that yet? Incidentally, I want to remind everyone that Four Lions is being released here in the States on November 5th – although that film’s about sharia non-compliant Muslim terrorists.

• Some new production stills are out from the Angelina Jolie/Johnny Depp/Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck thriller The Tourist. You can check out one of them below.

• There’s an ocean of news on the Sci-Fi/Alien Invasion Front. First of all, actress Noomi Rapace is apparently the hot candidate to be the female lead – i.e., the primary lead – in Ridley Scott’s very expensive (and probably 3D) Alien prequel. [Minor note: James Cameron’s Aliens, still easily my favorite film of his, is coming to Blu-ray with a refurbished print that looks phenomenal.] In other news, a teaser trailer for The Thing shown at the New York Comic-Con has leaked out, although the image is of a poor quality; you can also read some new, spoilerific details just released today about the movie . Of note is that they’re re-shifting the story around the female lead, a lá Ripley in Aliens. And since this new version of The Thing is apparently intended to dovetail (like a prequel) with John Carpenter’s The Thing from 1982, it’s also worth mentioning today that a remake may be in the works of Carpenter’s other alien invasion movie from the 1980s, They Live. And finally on the alien invasion front: you can catch some great, behind-the-scenes footage of the new J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg Super 8 here and here. Watch as the U.S. military (circa 1979) fights off something very big attacking America’s heartland …

• In other Sci-Fi news, 20 minutes worth of Tron: Legacy footage will be shown on 3D IMAX screens October 28th. Also: there’s more news out today about the Daft Punk album for Tron (they’re doing the original score). The album will be released December 7th. One major bummer from today: shooting on the 3D Mad Max sequel Fury Road with Charlize Theron has been postponed for a year, for what appear to be financial reasons. That’s a pity, because they’d supposedly already done a lot of work on that.

• And in Retro Sci-Fi news, George Lucas’ THX-1138 is finally coming to Blu-ray; you can read the LA Times’ recent review of Roger Corman’s Star Crash with Caroline Munro, which just came to DVD and is one of my absolute favorite cult films of all time; the LA Times also reviews the new coffee-table book out on the old Star Trek TV series, called Star Trek 365; and finally, don’t forget to catch this hilarious, recently unearthed interview from 1977 with Harrison Ford about Star Wars. It’s really a hoot, with Ford in full-tilt smart-ass mode.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS …  Minka Kelly of the Friday Night Lights TV series has been dubbed ‘Esquire’s Sexiest Woman Alive for 2010.’ While I think it’s great that Ms. Kelly is still playing a cheerleader at age 30, I nonetheless find this a puzzling, inadequate choice for ‘Sexiest Woman Alive.’ In fact, Ms. Kelly is probably not even the sexiest actress in a magazine spread this month, a title which may go to Diora Baird (of the forthcoming vampire flick 30 Days of Night: Dark Days) who appears in the new issue of FHM. Judge for yourself. Incidentally, Ms. Baird played a green Orion girl in the recent Star Trek – but her scene with Chris Pine (Captain Kirk) got cut. You can watch the clip here – it’s pretty funny.

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

Posted on October 11th, 2010 at 5:44pm.