Remake Roundup: SCANNERS, WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S, GET SMART

Scanners
David Cronenberg’s 1981 science-fiction/horror film Scanners is set to be remade under the direction of Darren Lynn Bousman, helmer of Saw II (2005) and III (2006) as well as the upcoming Saw IV (later this year). David Goyer is set to rewrite Cronenberg’s tale of telepaths who are used as weapons by an evil corporation. (Source- Variety)

Weekend At Bernie’s
Moviehole is reporting that a remake of the 1980s Andrew McCarthy/Jonathan Silverman comedy Weekend At Bernie’s is set for a remake from producers Ashok Amritraj and Jon Jashni. The original, itself a comedic riff on Hitchcock’s dark comedy The Trouble With Harry, centered on two bumbling office workers who are invited to their bosses beach house for the weekend only to arrive and find him dead. Rather than call the cops, the pair decide to trick the numerous partiers who have descended upon the beach house that Bernie is alive and well, just a little drunk. It looks like the remake will move the action from a beach house to a ski lodge, with probably very predictable results.

Get Smart
Superspy Maxwell Smart has found his Chief. The Hollywood Reporter has word that Alan Arkin has been cast as the head of CONTROL, the super-secret spy organization in the upcoming big screen adaptation of the classic 60s spy spoof that starred Don Adams. Taking Adams’ role for the new version is The Office star Steve Carell with Anne Hathaway as lovely sidekick, Agent 99. Also in the cast are Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Agent 23 and Terrence Stamp in an unnamed role. (Perhaps as Siegfried, head of the evil spy organization KAOS?)

New York Comic Con Photos

As I mentioned earlier this week, this past weekend's 2nd annual New York Comic Con was a gathering for more than just comic book fans. There's plenty to see and do for gaming fans and movie buffs with numerous signings, panels and screenings on the conventions schedule.

Sure, there's stuff for journalists like roundtables featuring the likes of director Eli Roth. (More on Roth's discussion with us journalists on his upcoming Hostel 2 soon!)






But there's always the lucky moment when you catch the bizarre sight of director Kevin Smith being escorted through the halls by a squadron of stormtroopers (Who won't slow down so one could get a good, clear photo).

If you stopped over at animator Bill Plympton's booth you could get a quick demonstration of Plympton drawing the title character from his 2004 Oscar-nominated short Guard Dog.

Here, The Spirit producer Michael Uslan listens Michael Kitchen, literary executor for the character's creator Will Eisner, make a point about the upcoming film. (Read our coverage of Uslan's panel on The Spirit here.)





There are plenty of toy and collectible manufacturers with displays of their latest wares. This particular doll of The Wizard Of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West caught my eye. Interestingly, the face is carved with a cold beauty that is definitely different from Margret Hamilton's look in the film. Also, note the flying monkeys on her dress.

Sure, there are lots of people who drerss in costumes as their favorite superhero or movie character and sometimes, there's nothing more absurd than two or three Darth Vaders squaring off in a hallway or stairway. But othertimes, there's nothing cuter than this-

Trailer Park: FANTASTIC FOUR 2 and NEXT

We have a pair of offerings of movie trailers into today's inaugural edition of Trailer Park for you to feast your eyes upon today.

First up is the new 30-second TV spot for Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer. There’s a few new moments from the film not seen in the previous trailer including our first, albeit quick, look at the Fantastic Four’s classic mode of transportation- the Fantasticar!

Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer is scheduled to hit screens on June 15.



We also have Next, the latest attempt to turn a Philip K. Dick short story, in this case “The Golden Man,” into a film. Nicholas Cage stars as a man who has the ability to glimpse the future and who is pursued by the FBI, lead by Julianne Moore, for his knowledge of a possible terrorist attack.

Next is set for release on April 27.

Pop Culture Intersections

They may call it a comic book convention, but that is really an understatement.

This year’s New York ComicCon (NYCC), which is concluding today, is just one of the numerous major similar events held around the country every year that realizes that comic books and their fans do not exist in their own isolated continuum. Instead comic fans interests lie across numerous related fields and comic books themselves influence and are influenced by those fields. So any major convention will have programming tracks that encompass not only comic books, but also gaming, animation and films. There are comic book characters making the transition to television and movies, comic books and movies being created based on the story lines from video games and games are being based on both comic books and films. And as these various hobbies begin to overlap, so too do the creative people involved.

The result is a fertile cross-pollination that results in instances where a session where J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the TV series Babylon 5, can talk about the future of that show as a line of made-for-DVD movies, his script for a film called The Changeling which will begin filming this summer with Ron Howard producing and give hints about the various comic book projects he’s writing for Marvel Comics.

Producer Michael Uslan summed it up best at a panel about a forthcoming adaptation of Will Eisner’s classic comics hero The Spirit with Sin City co-director and comic book writer/artist Frank Miller. Hollywood is always looking for good stories and there are plenty of good stories to be found in comics. These stories are not just guys and gals with super powers and colorful outfits. Films like Men In Black, Ghost World, Road To Perdition and A History Of Violence have proven that.

For myself, I found plenty of good stories at NYCC this year as well, which I’ll be sharing with you as the week rolls on. So look for stories about John Landis’ next film, a sit down conversation with Eli Roth about the upcoming Hostel 2, as well as a preview of what we can expect from Miller’s Spirit film and more.

Stay tuned!

New GRINDHOUSE Trailer!

While it is supposed to officially debut tomorrow simultaneously on television during CW's WWE Friday Night Smackdown! and the Sci-FI Channel's Special Unit 2 and in theatres running in front of screenings of Ghost Rider, Yahoo has let slip the new trailer for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse out a little early.

You can view it on Yahoo here.

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE Trailer

Sometimes I anticipate films for what I'm sure others would think are odd reasons.

Case in point: director Julie Tambor's Across The Universe, due out next year.

I know Beatles fans who are anxious to see how a movie musical could be put together using the using the vast catalog of Lennon/McCartney tunes available. A friend of mine who has enjoyed Tambor's two previous films, Titus (1999) and Frida (2002) has mentioned how he can't wait to see the director try her hands at a musical.

But for myself, I was first intrigued by the project when I heard that the screenwriters were Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, whom worked on one of my favorite British television series, Lovejoy. I was familiar with some of their other work - loads of British television, Tracey Ullman's mid-90s American series Tracey Takes On... , the 2005 soccer film Goal! and of course, the 1991 hit The Commitments. Weird, I know, but sometimes it's the writer, the one usually so abused by the film production process, that draws me to a specific film.

However, once I saw the trailer for the film, I went from being interested in seeing it, to nearly salivating with anticipation. The trailer is amazingly cut and seems to showcase visuals that are at times gritty and other times psychedelic, but always seem to capture the mood and tone of the changes that society went through in the 1960s, changes reflected in the Beatles own music.





Across The Universe is currently scheduled to open on September 28. And while there are a lot of fun blockbusters to tide me over through the summer months, this prospect of seeing this film by the time autumn roles around will not be far from my mind.

The Trouble With Lists

Well, I guess I can die then…

The Houston Chronicle’s tech writer, Dwight Silverman, has posted on his blog a list of 15 films he considers essential film geek watching. Not surprisingly, I’ve seen all films on the list.

I’d also have to say that I’m not that impressed with his choices overall. Sure, I’ve enjoyed every film named to one degree or another and 12 of the titles sit on my DVD shelf at home. But Silverman’s list is an awfully narrow slice of science-fiction, fantasy and horror genre films that arguably are pretty well known to the general public. I mean really, two Star Trek films? Even a die-hard Terry Gilliam fan like myself is wondering at the inclusion of 3 of his films. Likewise, Sam Raimi gets two of his films named to the list with Silverman even admitting that Army Of Darkness is “a more mainstream and approachable film” than the first two Evil Dead flicks. How, exactly, can a movie be both "mainstream and approachable" and worthy of being placed on a list of "geek films"? It seems to me that the two are mutually exclusive.

In an effort to provide some more geek film titles for his readers, Silverman also links to another blog that contains the title of 81 geek movies “that do not suck.” While this new list does traffic in roughly the same science-fiction/fantasy/horror milieu that Silverman’s list, it does deserve some credit for trying to expand things a bit with the addition of the “Obsessive Nerd-Chick Stalker Geek,” “Cult Film Geek” and “Nostalgia “I was a nerd kid in the 80s” Geek” categories.

But still the list is problematic. There are a few titles – An Evening With Kevin Smith and Children Of Dune – which aren’t films but made for DVD specials or television mini-series. There also seems to be a lot of padding on this list- naming both Spider-Man films, four separate Star Trek films (though the original Star Wars trilogy gets grouped as one entry), and films like Constantine and Swordfish. Swordfish?!

Ultimately, while both lists attempt to be something that starts discussions among film fans (See, we’re doing it here), they fail in that their scope is limited to however the writer chooses to define “film geek.” In both instances here, the writers clearly think that geekdom (Geekatude? Geekosity?) is clearly confined to a few narrow genres. But what about those people whose unabidding love is the movie musical or westerns or silents? Don’t they get their geek lists too?

No art can be judged in a vacuum and if one only exposed themselves to films considered “classics,” one would rapidly loose any standard by which to judge said films. It’s much better to have knowledge of a wide range of films from all genres in order to be able to better appreciate any movie they may watch. Soderberg’s recent The Good German invariably invites the viewer to draw comparisons to Casablanca. But how are those comparisons tempered when the viewer also factors in the Pam Anderson film Barb Wire, which also drew inspiration from the Humphrey Bogart classic?

I’ve always tried to steer clear of “Best Of” or “Essential” lists here at FilmBuffOnLine. It’s not that I’m afraid that someone is going to disagree with my choices. It’s that there are too many choices to narrow a list down to manageable levels. That’s why if pressed for a list of movies that one absolutely must watch by friends or family, I always answer “As many as you can.”

Howard Stern - MAN OF THE YEAR?

Yesterday, while discussing the movie offers he has received over the years in the wake of his 1997 autobiographical Private Parts, talk radio icon Howard Stern mentioned that he was in talks with director Barry Levinson to star in last year’s political satire Man Of The Year, with Stern in the lead role that was eventually taken by Robin Williams as a political satirist who runs for the highest office in the land. It was announcement that brought to mind visions of his 1994 aborted run for New York governor.

Ultimately, Stern turned down the project despite expressing a desire to really want to work with director Barry Levinson. At the time, Stern was making the move from his FCC-hampered terrestrial radio gig to his new home at Sirius Satellite radio and felt that Sirius deserved his full creative energies at the moment. He also mentioned that he felt the script could have used some punching-up and that he had some ideas in that direction. Unfortunately, Levinson was intent on shooting as soon as possible and couldn’t wait the few months that Stern needed to get to a point where he could concentrate on the film.

What made yesterday’s revelation interesting is that while Stern has mentioned receiving film offers in the past, he has only gone into this amount of detail about these offers once before. Following the release of Private Parts, Stern was set to play the supporting role of a record company executive in the Melanie Griffith project Jane. David Spade was cast as Stern’s character’s assistant. Preproduction on the film had gotten as far as wardrobe fittings before a portion of the funding fell through, resulting in a rescheduled shoot that Stern wasn’t available for. When he dropped out of the project, the rest of the funding for the film fell apart and it was never made.

What isn’t surprising is Stern’s insistence of a re-write of Man Of The Year’s script, especially if the draft he was concerned about is the same one Levinson shot with Williams. Stern has a record of being demanding when it comes to screenplays. The script for Private Parts was in development for nearly three years and had reportedly gone through several writers, including Peter Torokvei (Real Genius, Guarding Tess) before Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko delivered a draft that he approved. Other projects that Stern has announced in the past as developing have also stalled out in the scripting phase.