Movie Minesweeper - The How Much Can I Get Done Before House Starts Edition

- Doug Jones is blogging the production of Hellboy 2. He reveals that one of his characters, the Angel of Death, is a she and that Anna Walton has been cast as Princess Nuala, seemingly a love interest for Abe Sapien.

- ComingSoon's SuperheroHype 'imprint' have run a very hi-res picture of The Joker as per the USA Today story of a few days back. [EDIT: Link changed. No idea what was wrong last time... worked for me]

- Talking of USA Today, they have a Speed Racer piece with interview quotes and a pic of the Mach 5. Looks fairly authentic to my disinterested eye.

- Apparently, Karen Allen is denying she's even been contacted about Indiana Jones and the Maguffin of Unsafe Stunt Work. Of course, Shia played the same game for a while.

- Similarly, Shwnee Smith is denying she's in Saw 4 but BloodyDisgusting are insisting she is. Is her very appearance a plot twist? Are BloodyDisgusting barking up the wrong tree? Does anybody care about the Saw films anymore? I'll place my chips on a) she is in the film and b) I know I don't care, I'm assuming you're over it all too.

- Barry Lyndon is being left out of the Hi-Def Kubrick box set. Why?

And now, House is on. So I'm off.

In A Heart Shaped Box

Poor Joe Hill, everybody wants to name his father when they discuss him. So I won't. I'm not really a fan of his dad's books... though they have been turned into some great films over the years. DePalma, Kubrick and Rob Reiner - twice - have all done sterling jobs in hadling Joe's dad's stuff, Romero and Darabont made pretty good second-tier efforts too.

Now the signs are looking great for the first adaptation of a book from junior, as Neil Jordan has signed a deal to direct and script. It's a ghost story about a rockstar who buys a haunted suiton e-bay. The title suggests a certain rock star, but I've not read the book, so I honestly don't know.

I have read about the ghost's tendency towards possession however: he takes control of a car radio, a ouija board and - brilliantly - the electric voicebox of a laryngectomy patient. Spooky.

There are plenty of excerpts on Hill's website, but I think I'll check out the local library's copy instead.

No news if Jordan will tackle this before A Killing on Carnival Row for sure, but I'd expect this to come later as the script appears to be further from being ready.

Stephen Frears Won't Be Directing The Time Traveller's Wife

Looks like Robert Schwenke has the gig of directing The Time Traveller's Wife. A week or two ago, there was talk that Frears was up for the job but, sadly, that hasn't come to be. Rachel McAdams is, presumably, still attached to star, and of course, it's still an adaptation of the best seller.

All I can hope is that Frears found a better script elsewhere, not that somebody in command thought the Flightplan hack would be a better choice for this project.

Or, indeed, a better choice for anything.

I remember walking out at the end of Flightplan, actually rather impressed with certain elements of the scripting, much of the acting and a lot of the production design, but I was quite concerned with Schwentke's direction. I felt almost as though the film had survived him, rather than been nurtured by him.

Stephen Frears made his movie debut in the early 70s with Gumshoe, and then, for almost a decade and a half, he worked in British TV. Effectively, the British film industry and the British TV industry were the one and same back then (if not also now) and Frears certainly didn't scale down his ambitions or approach because of the smaller screen or narrower aspect ratio. He returned to cinema in the mid 80s with The Hit, and frankly, the rest is history. If it's not history for you, I recommend you spend some time putting Stephen Frears into Netflix or LoveFilm and renting anything that comes up.

Since Alan Clarke passed away, Frears has been the greatest of working British directors (because Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam can't be counted, I'm afraid) and has consistently made interesting films, both for the smaller and larger screen. I'll feel okay taking this radar eye off of The Time Traveller's Wife now and keep watch for news of Frears' next movie instead.

(Unless of course it all goes a bit Weitz-Tucker-Weitz on the project, as per The Golden Compass)