Nolan to Direct Bond 24?

Below comes from Coming Soon via The Daily Mail regarding rumors that Christopher Nolan has been approached to direct the next Bond.  As the article below points out, this would push Bond back to at least 2016 due to Interstellar, but I wouldn’t dismiss this out-of-hand.  The Bond films are among Nolan’s chief influences and he’s been very open to helming one when asked in the past.  If not this time around, I think a Nolan Bond film is an eventuality.

The Daily Mail is reporting that The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan has been approached to helm the next James Bond film. They say that talks are still in the early/informal stages with Nolan and his representatives but that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have started courting him for the job.

Previous reports on “Bond 24” indicate that the screenplay is currently being worked on, with MGM eyeing a release for the project within the next three years. Should Nolan sign on, this timetable might need to be altered to accommodate his schedule (he is currently working on Interstellar, which is scheduled to hit theaters on November 7, 2014).  Nolan’s track record, however, shows he is capable of churning out big projects in less than two years, so a 2016 release date isn’t out of the question. Chris is an outspoken fan of James Bond and has expressed interest in directing one of the films in the past, so don’t be surprised if this ends up happening, but for now it’s just a rumor.

Spielberg Will Next Direct Bradley Cooper in American Sniper

With his long-delayed Robopocalypse now in development hell, Spielberg is moving on to direct the adaptation of American Sniper with Bradley Cooper in the lead.  I have to admit, I haven’t read the book yet, but it’s been on my radar.  It’s an intriguing choice and Cooper’s been on a roll lately.  Synopsis of the book below:

He is the deadliest American sniper ever, called “The Devil” by the enemies he hunted and “The Legend” by his Navy SEAL brothers. From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States Military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more then 150 of Kyle’s kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him Al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned a legendary status among his fellow SEALS, Marines, and U.S. Army soldiers, who he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle’s masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences of all time. 

A native Texan who learned to shoot on childhood hunting trips with his father, Kyle was a champion saddle-bronc rider prior to joining the Navy. After 9/11, he was thrust into the front lines of the War of Terror, and soon found his calling as a world-class sniper who performed best under fire. In Fallujah, where he recorded a personal-record 2,100-yard kill shot, Kyle braved heavy fire to rescue a group of Marines trapped on the street; in Ramadi, he stared down insurgents with his pistol in close combat. Kyle talks honestly about the pain of war-of twice being shot and experiencing the tragic deaths of two close friends
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JJ Abrams on the Future of Star Trek and Star Wars

JJ Abrams is hard at work promoting Star Trek: Into Darkness and sat down to talk about that movie, Star Wars Episode VII and the possibility of a third Star Trek film.

“I learned so much doing the first Star Trek—a movie. I’d never done any kind of space adventure before or anything on that scale. We knew the second one had to be bigger and not just for bigger’s sake. It was where the story was taking us. We got really cool glimpses of the Enterprise in the first movie. This time we get to see areas of the ship nobody’s seen before. And the villain is more complex now. In our first film Eric Bana plays a wonderfully angry Romulan dude, pissed off and full of vengeance. In this one, the bad guy is still brutal and fierce, but he’s got a much more interesting and active story. We have to grapple with many layers of his character. He’s essentially a space terrorist, and Benedict Cumberbatch, whom people know from BBC’s Sherlock, is kickass in the role. Kirk and the rest of the crew are figuring out how the hell to get an upper hand with this guy. The darkness is real in this movie, and it’s incredibly challenging and terrifying, and it can certainly be lethal. You need that edge, partly because Star Trek has been so relentlessly parodied over the years.”

“The worlds are vastly different. Honestly, that was why I passed on Star Wars to begin with. I couldn’t imagine doing both. But when I said that my loyalty was to Star Trek I was literally working on finishing this cut. I couldn’t even entertain another thought. It was like being on the most beautiful beach in the world and someone saying, “There’s this amazing mountain over here. Come take a look.” I couldn’t balance the two, so I passed on Star Wars.”

“I was near the light at the end of the tunnel with my work on Star Trek. I felt I needed a bit of a breather, actually. But then Kathleen Kennedy [the new Lucasfilm head who oversees Star Wars] called again. I’ve known her for years. We had a great conversation, and the idea of working with her on this suddenly went from being theoretical and easy to deny to being a real, tangible, thrilling possibility. In the end it was my wife, Katie, who said if it was something that really interested me, I had to consider it.”

“As with anything, because these are very different worlds, they shouldn’t feel the same aesthetically. They can’t. You’re right. But again, I don’t apply aesthetics first and fit a movie into that aesthetic. If I had come into Star Trek with those eyes, I would probably have been paralyzed. The advantage here is that we still have George Lucas with us to go to and ask questions and get his feedback on things, which I certainly will do. With Star Trek it was harder because I wasn’t a Star Trek fan; I didn’t have the same emotional feeling, and I didn’t have Gene Roddenberry to go to. But I came to understand the world of Star Trek, and I appreciated what fans felt and believed about this universe and this franchise.”

Star Wars Episode VII is slated for summer 2015, Star Trek: Into Darkness opens May 17th and Abrams did not close the door on returning to the Enterprise.

“I would say it’s a possibility. We’re trying to figure out the next step. But it’s like anything: It all begins with the story.”

Movie Review: Hitchcock (2012)

 

There are certain truisms that you hold on to in this world of vague uncertainty. The sun will rise.  The world will spin.  Anthony Hopkins will not suck no matter how bad the movie he may find himself in does.  Or at least he did…

I’m not entirely sure what Hitchcock is supposed to be.  It’s not a biopic.  The only insights we get into the great director are when he pisses someone off and they scream that he’s always doing this or always doing that.  Jessica Biel plays an actress whose career he supposedly ruined, but it’s tossed out in such a way that makes it totally irrelevant.  Everything, about the movie seems irrelevant.  The pitch is, I suppose, that Hitchcock was backed up by his wife Alma and he was really only as good as they were together.  The crucible for their marital crisis is the director’s controversial and scandalous (at the time) making of Psycho…..but the movie spends very little time on the making of it at all.  If you haven’t seen Psycho, you’d have no idea what they were even referencing most of the time.

What does the film spend its focus?  Well, there’s a lot of Anthony Hopkins parading around in the Hitchcock makeup being episodically quirky/pervy.  The makeup is not good.  It’s bad.  It’s Anthony Hopkins in a fat suit.  It looks nothing like Hitchcock and Hopkins gives the first bad performance I’ve ever seen.  He brings nothing to the character and seems partially asleep most of the movie.  Helen Mirren is stellar as always, playing Hitchcock’s wife.  Scarlett Johanssen does a good job as Janet Leigh, though she’s only in about ten minutes of the film.  The rest of the cast is as forgettable as the movie.

Bookending the film are two instances of Hitchcock directly addressing the audience as he did in his Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show.  So that framing device frames the making of Psycho which is seen through the lens of Hitchcock’s marriage.  It’s bizarrely scattered, unfocused and-ultimately-unentertaining.  Go rent Psycho.  Read a book on Hitchcock if you want to learn something about him, because you won’t glean anything from this.
4.0/10

What’s next for Guillermo del Toro?

One of the most exciting things about 2013’s movie slate, for me, is the return of Guillermo del Toro to the director’s chair.  His movie, Pacific Rim, opens this summer (giant robots vs. giant monsters….what is not to like?) and will be his first film since Hellboy II in 2008.  He’s ‘presented’ a number of horror films, but his long absence is mostly due to working on The Hobbit for two years before dropping out due to financial concerns over MGM’s ability to make the movies.

My favorite moviegoing experience of all-time is seeing Pan’s Labyrinth at the Arc Light in LA and after the movie (which is one of my favorite movies of all-time), del Toro came out and talked to the audience for an hour.  I’m excited to see him back and after Pacific Rim, he’ll return to his horror roots with Crimson Peak.  The cast includes Emma Stone, Charlie Hunan, Jessica Chastain, and Benedict Cumberbatch (six time winner for best name in the world).  Filming begins in February 2014, which means it will probably release in 2015 with every other movie being made.