Donald Trump has quit The Apprentice, after it has been cancelled.

Heath Ledger as the Joker.

Ain't it Cool News has posted a promo trailer for John Rambo. People lose heads, Rambo is Christian, and stuff blows up real nice but really, do we need another Rambo movie?

I like these NBA Playoffs promotions. My only complaint is that David Blaine has about as much personality as a nickel.

I can't stop listening to this.

The last time Al Pacino and Rober De Niro were in a film together they made one of the best movies of the 90's with one of the best modern day directors, Heat. The next time they will be starring in the horribly titled Righteous Kill, directed by the man who helmed the upcoming USA miniseries Starter Wife.

Any Jason Bateman news is good news. Universal Pictures has acquired "The Remarkable Fellows," a pitch for an action buddy comedy that Joe Carnahan will write to direct. Jason Bateman, who hatched the film's premise, will produce with Carnahan and Richard Gladstein.

"The Remarkable Fellows" revolves around two brothers who take over the family business, which involves exacting revenge for clients.

Bateman will play one of the brothers. The duo, who are "part James Bond and part Ricky Jay," get assignments "from their father and carry them out all over the world," Bateman said. "The revenge scenario is dependent on the intricacy of the plot. If the president of a major bank was sleeping with the French ambassador's wife, the banker would call these guys."

Bateman is also about to start filming the Peter Berg helmed "Tonight, He Comes" alongside Will Smith and Charlize Theron (Berg also directed Bateman in "The Kingdom" whose trailer I posted earlier in the week).

More strange casting. Former Hobbit Elijah Wood is to star as Iggy Pop in "The Passenger," a biopic of the legendary rocker. More at Variety

Mike White and The New Yorker visit the zoo.

This is the strangest casting choice I have read of in years. Tim Allen in a David Mamet film doesn't make sense but I'm excited about it. I'm excited anytime an actor or actress (or even Tim Allen) tries to do something new and different. No other movies sound like David Mamet movies. The rhythm and style of his dialogue is completely unique. It will be interesting to hear it coming from the mouth of Tool Times own Tim Taylor.

Chiwetel Ejiofor co-stars.

The plot of the film sounds ridiculous but it's not really the set up that makes Mamet films great, it's the delivery. Ejiofor stars as a Jiu-jitsu master whose purity is compromised when he is drawn into the movie business and manipulated into brawling in ultimate fighting matches.

Allen plays a troubled action star with marital problems who meets the master when he is getting pummeled in a street fight.

Below is the trailer to one of my favorite Mamet films. It just happens to feature an actor that has (just recently) been known to star in a variety of family films. Here he is playing probably the most dramatic role of his career.

From Variety. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are teaming to direct and produce three back-to-back features based on Georges Remi's beloved Belgian comic-strip hero Tintin for DreamWorks. The movies will be produced in full digital 3-D using WETA Digital’s groundbreaking performance capture technology.

The two filmmakers will each direct at least one of the movies; studio wouldn't say which director would helm the third. Kathleen Kennedy joins Spielberg and Jackson as a producer on the three films, which might be released through DreamWorks Animation.

"Herge's characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul which goes far beyond anything we've seen to date with computer animated characters," Spielberg said.

"We want Tintin's adventures to have the reality of a live-action film, and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honor the distinctive look of the characters and world that Herge created," Spielberg continued.

Jackson said WETA will stay true to Remi's original designs in bringing the cast of Tintin to life, but that the characters won't look cartoonish.

"Instead," Jackson said, "we're making them look photorealistic; the fibers of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people — but real Herge people!"

A new trailer for The Kingdom is up at Yahoo Movies. This, unlike the trailer I posted earlier, looks really good. Anything that features Jason Bateman in a dramatic role will get my ten dollars for a ticket.

For some reason I can't embed this clip on the blog but everyone shoud see it. Further proof that Bruce Bowen is not a dirty player.

I don't like Eli Roth. I've never actually seen any of his movies and at this point I don't ever plan to. With that out of the way, he has a really horrible idea for a movie. It will probably never be made but the mere idea annoyed me. In a recent interviews he stated...

"I'm going to be doing a film of all fake trailers, like Thransgiving, called Trailer Trash. I want to make a movie like Borat or Jackass that's literally completely ridiculous, totally silly and absurd, that's just all fake trailers. I have a genius way to tie it all together so it will actually play like a movie" says Roth.

He adds "I want to do this with a budget because they have to look like movies. Literally I'll have the satisfaction because it will feel like I made 30 movies. That's the beauty of Trailer Trash - you just need good gags and good kills."

Below is Sofia Coppola's first short, Lick the Star. It's really not that good but worth watching if you have ten minutes to kill. It was shot by Lance Accord.

Further proof that Luke Wilson will be in any movie, the Blonde Ambition trailer.

The poster for A Might Heart, the story of the wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, is really sort of horrible.



The trailer is a little bit better but looks like Angelina Jolie in brownface. Also, every time I read the title I think of A Mighty Wind.

This is from Joblo. I'm not really sure what the story is, something about Bruce Willis not wanting to work with Michael Bay again. It's really not important, what is important is the photo below. I don't know, I thought it was funny.

A list of movies where nothing really happens by Chuck Klosterman. Not really notable except for the fact he mentions Security, Colorado, the worst movie Paul Schneider was ever in.

I know I've already posted a link to the trailer for Once but now you can see it here in HD. I don't know much about the movie and I'm trying to keep it that way. I'm looking forward to it so much that I actually went and dug out my Frames cd to give it another listen.

Now that Mark Cuban has more time on his hands he has decided to he wants to change the movie going experience. Cuban and 2929 partner Todd Wagner are going to pour millions into newfangled multiplexes for sophisticated datenight crowds, even inventing a concession concept dubbed the "Wall of Popcorn" and putting beanbag chairs in living room-like theaters.

They will start with these experimental cinemas in their Landmark chain, including one at the Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles. Sites in Baltimore and Denver are launching soon.

Wagner and Cuban want to create a world of moviegoing for adults.

"In our new Denver theater, we completely removed the concession stands," says Cuban. "The original design had the traditional concession stand taking up prime real estate and dominating the look and feel of the theater. We decided that we would rather use that space for amenities, retail sales (movies, books, indie cinema related items), and 'interstitial' type entertainment that complements our 'datenight for grownups' concept in a lounge-like environment. Basically it became a place where you could go on a date, have a drink, food and be entertained before and after seeing a movie."

More information about the project can be found at Variety

An article on the busiest man in comedy, Judd Apatow. The man behind two of my favorite tv shows (Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks) and one of my favorite comedies (The 40-Year-Old Virgin).

From Indie Wire, Francis Ford Coppola stopped by the Hogg Auditorium in Austin on Monday night to screen his wife's new hour-long documentary (CODA: Thirty Years Later) which follows the filmmaker during production of his upcoming feature, Youth Without Youth. He also answered a few questions after the film, here are some details.

- When young filmmakers ask him how to be a success, he often suggests, "get married." He recalled how nothing drove him to be a successful Hollywood screenwriter (he won an Oscar for writing Patton) more than a wife with a kid on the way.

- Coppola acknowledges that he made many films in the 1990s as a way to finance his dream project, Megalopolis. But even critical failures like Jack (1996) were things he was excited about (in that case, it was the chance to work with Robin Williams).

- After the monumental financial failure that was One From the Heart (1982), he took a lot of jobs-for-hire. They included Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), which he admitted on Monday was a hard film for which to get motivated. Until he realized that he should make it like the famous play, Our Town.

- During this slow creative period in his career, Coppola remembered days driving to the set and hoping the car wouldn't make it there. Which is why, he said, being the financier and producer of Youth Without Youth meant going to the set "with more anticipation."

- He said the realization of a planned adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (which he is set to produce and Walter Salles will direct) will entirely depend on who is cast in the lead roles.

- Which of his wines would he recommend to a film student on a budget? "You can't go wrong with Rosso & Bianco. It's $11."

I keep trying to think who would be a good cast for On the Road and keep coming up with nothing. I remember reading a long time ago that Brad Pitt and Billy Crudup would be playing Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty but they seem a little old now. Mabye have Ryan Gosling as Sal and hell, I'm drawing a blank for Dean. I'll tell you who does look like Kerouac though, Daniel Craig.

In honor of the Sky Movies poll (and Delaney's comment) about which movies are watched most by men and women I decided to list my top five. These aren't necessarily my top five favorite movies (though number one lines up nicely) but the movies I watch the most. I'm sure I could list twenty more, but that would get boring.

1. Sideways
2. Hoosiers
3. Breaking Away
4. The Shawshank Redemption
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Okay, I had to add two more:

The Fugitive
Die Hard

A somewhat interesting article about the directors of the 90's. It focuses a little too much on the poor box office outings but I agree that these people should make more movies.

According to a poll conducted by Sky Movies Star Wars and Dirty Dancing are the films people most love to watch over and over again. The top five for for each sex follows...

MENS' MOST-WATCHED FILMS
1. Star Wars trilogy
2. Aliens
3. The Terminator
4. Blade Runner
5. The Godfather

WOMENS' MOST-WATCHED FILMS
1. Dirty Dancing
2. Star Wars trilogy
3. Grease
4. The Sound of Music
5. Pretty Woman

Conan O'Brien visits ILM and talks with George Lucas.

The Brazos Drive-In in Granbury has seen better days. I guess this is what happens when severe thunderstorms run through Texas once a week.

Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 is basically the antithesis of your normal big budget comic book adaptation. Sure it cost hundreds of millions of dollars and sure it features plenty of action set everywhere from an under construction sky scraper to the pipes below New York, but this is not the main focus. Fanboys be damned, the majority of this movie is centered around the relationships of the characters. We get characters singing, crying, more crying, and basically facing the problems that occur in everyday, ordinary lives (that is, ordinary if you happen to have been bitten by a radioactive spider).

Spider-Man 3 is essentially a romantic drama punctuated by special effects chases. Even the action scenes are built off of emotion. Revenge, love, guilt all play into the characters lives and lead them toward their actions. I can't remember a summer blockbuster that wears its heart so openly on its sleeve.

Part of the charm of the Spidey movies has always been its inherent goofiness. My favorite scene in Spider-Man 2 was the montage after Peter Parker had given up on trying to to save the world. We follow him as his new life is easy and care free and it's all set to Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head. Here we get an extended sequence of how it is to be Peter Parker with the added power of the black suit. It's basically Tobey Maguire channeling Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever. The whole montage (and a few scenes that follow) are corny and out of date and I loved them.

With the inclusion of this film, The Spider-Man saga has set the gold standard for comic book movies. Sure there are better movies within the genre (Batman Begins) but none that match the joy and charisma of this series. Will there be a Spider-Man 4? I'm almost sure of it and it doesn't matter, this film is a great ending for the three film strory arc and the best comic book trilogy in film history.

So you already have George Clooney and Brad Pitt set to be in your upcoming movie then who do sign to be the star? John Malkovich of course. Malkovich is in negotiations to star opposite Clooney, Pitt and Frances McDormand in the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading for Focus Features and Working Title Films.

The dark screwball comedy centers on Ozzie Cox (Malkovich), a former CIA agent who loses the disc of the memoir he is writing. McDormand will play Cox's philandering wife. Clooney is set to play an assassin. Because the screenplay is being kept under wraps, it is unclear what Pitt's character will be.

I know very little about the comic character Iron Man. I do know that the movie version has an impression cast that includes Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Terrence Howard and will be directed by Jon Favreau. Anyway, Entertainment Weekly got the first look at the suit for the movie (below) and has a little more info about it on their sight.

CBS has announced the line up to Pirate Master. It's nothing more than a list of their names, locations, and professions but one name did catch my eye...

CHRISTIAN OKOYE

45

Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. (originally from Enugu, Nigeria)

Former NFL Player

That's right, The Nigerian Nightmare will be on a quest to find the largest booty, worth $500,000, and claim the title of "Pirate Master."

On the right side of this page you can see a promotional trailer for Nightwatching, Peter Greenaway's biopic of Rembrandt van Rijn. Greenaway doesn't always make the best movies but he is always interesting. What really drew my attention to this though, Martin Freeman is starring in the titular role. Obviously quite a departure from Tim on The Office.