Take This

A behind-the-scenes clip of Pierre Morel's Taken is up on YouTube, as discovered by Mike Markus. It looks like a Luc Besson-fulled reimagining of Frantic. Sort of.

Promising.

Movie Minewsweeper - The Let's Try That Again, Shall We? Edition

- Darren Aronofsky is to record a commentary track for The Fountain and release it online. I saw this at Cinematical.

- Frank Miller still believes in a Sin City 2. I wonder if he also believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. On the upside, he's now sold on 3D - after a screening of U2 3D. Does this mean The Spirit might get an extra dimension?

- Today's completely fabricated quote alleges that Tim Burton is set to direct a film about Marilyn Manson's recent divorce. At least we can cross another site off of the legitimate source list - and the first time I've ever heard of the site too. That's efficiency for you.

- Aardman are to launch their own channel on Joost. Fine - but I don't have an invite to use the service. Who's going to ask me in?

- K-Fed has landed a small role in Night Watch. How?

- Scott Sigler's Infested is to be filmed. Know the book? I don't. Any good?

- You can download the trailer to Wilson Yip's Flashpoint right now, if your right-clicker works.

- A Mister Lonely clip has turned up online. If Harmony Korine has any idea what he's doing he certainly hasn't worked out why he shouldn't be doing it.

- Luc Besson is to float EuropaCorp on the paris stock exchange. This was one of the stories I lost in the earlier Blogger meltdown.

- I still haven't stopped laughing about the Silver Surfer coin cock-up.

Movie Minesweeper - The Apparently, I'm A Hack Edition

Apparently, I'm a hack. I love films and I mean every word I type about them - doesn't that disqualify me from hackdom? Here's some links for you.

- Luc Besson has discussed Angel-A and sequels for The Transporter and Arthur and the Invisibles with MoviesOnline.

- Paid movie downloads have been classified as a niche only, and are predicted to never go mainstream. People still like those hard items purchased in those brick and mortar stores, I guess.

- Super Bad James Dynomite is being adapted by the Wayans. Shame.

- There are some slow-loading Strangers stills at Celebutopia, and at least two look appropriately creepy. The next great Boo! movie? Fingers in little Xs, people.

- Arrogantics have found a John Rambo still.

- Nintendo are holding a short film competition. Only US residents (Puerto Rico, as ever, aside) can enter.

- Jessica Biel and Forest Whitaker are to star in Timothy Linh Bui's Powder Blue.

- Chris Sivertson's Hippy was co-written by Lucky McKee - good - but will star Lindsay Lohan - bad.

- Maxim have published a list of, supposedly, the 100 most attractive women on the face of the earth. Many are movie stars. I think somebody should do a male equivalent - they'd get plenty of sales, hits, water cooler talk. Guy lists are normally limited to ten or so.

- You can preview Flight of the Conchords' HBO show now.

- Chow Yun Fat may return to the cast of Red Cliff, but where that leaves Tony Leung is anybody's guess. Taking the producers to court, I'd hope. [EDIT: Moises has pointed me to Monkeypeaches, where they report a Chinese newspaper's claims that Chow's role is to be a much smaller one, and Leung will keep the lead role]

- Momentum are to release Neil Burger's The Return over here in blighty. Good.

- A promo pic for Dario Argento's Mother of Tears has appeared in the Cannes edition of Variety. Tasty.

Out Of The Cannes

Luc Besson has cooked up a scheme by which tenants of Paris' less well-off Banlieues will get to see films from this year's Cannes line up.

It was Hollywood Reported that a touring inflatable screen will be set up to show a new film every night. For some engagements, the screen will be laod out at the floor of large tenanment blocks for people to watch from their windows. Joking about the obvious shortcoming of this scheme, Besson said "We're hoping that those who live on the side with the screen will invite their neighbors from the other side of the building."

The Cannes Fest have blessed the project and lent their name but have not been involved in the planning at all. The films involved will not be announced until after the full Cannes line up is unveiled on April 19th.

The Hitman And Gluck

[EDIT: Variety have now revealed that Xavier Gens will be directing the Hitman movie. Olyphant is also now confirmed as having signed]

According to one of those pesky 'please don't name me' sources, and an untested one at that, Stephane Gluck is the number one contender to direct the Luc Besson-shepherded Hitman movie. Timothy Oliphant was recently given the lead role, Agent 47 - disappointing the surprising number of Vin Diesel fans out there - and Besson is producing as well as co-scripting (with Skip Woods) as he seems very happy to do on any number of these actioners.

Gluck's imdb credits show his history with these 'Besson Presents' films really quite clearly: second unit and assistant director work for the first two Taxi films, The Transporter and Banlieue 13. Most recently, however, he was 1st AD on a rather different project - Juilan Schnabel and Ronald Harwood's The Butterfly and the Diving Bell.

Invisibles Out

The news of on the street - that is, Cartoon Brew Blvd, amongst other places - is that Arthur and the Invisibles is being removed from the running for a best Animated Film Oscar. Unfortunately for Arthur, the cumulative footage count of animated sequences in the film has been tallied at under 75% of the overall length.

This will mean that only fifteen films are eligible for the award - one short, sixteen being the magic number that would permit five official nominations. Now, with only three animations allowed in the final ballot, the upshot is not only a more closely comptetive final hurlong, but less overall promotion for animation, and two films denied all of the publicity Oscar brings.

A shame.

Sundance Gems

Here are my picks from the non-competitive Sundance 2007 line-up:

Son of Rambow. Garth Jennings new film, oft covered here at film ick and likely to be on of 2007's best films. It's yet another coming of age story, sure, but looks to be a very original one and Jennings is a very gifted filmmaker.

Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan, with Sam Jackson and Christina Ricci. After Hustle and Flow, Brewer's got a Sundance rep to live up to, but this film seems certain to disappoint. I'm not saying that because I expect it to be bad, mind - just that I expect it to be rather different to Hustle and that's going to be enough to disappoint some people.

The Go-Getter has a great young cast - alumni of Thumbsucker, Contact and Almost Famous.

Written and directed by the late Adrienne Shelly, Waitress also has a great cast - this time featuring alumni of Serenity, May, Schizopolis and... er... Matlock. Actually Matlock from Matlock, too.

Fido is about keeping a zombie as a pet. If only it were a how-to documentary and not fiction, this would rocket to the top of my list.

Its Fine! Everything is Fine! is co-directed by Crispin Glover, and co-written by Glover and Steven C. Stewart. Stewart suffers from the severe cerebal palsy and this autobiographical film will explore how this has effected his relationships with the opposite sex. Countercultural with a capital C, if Glover is to be believed.

Fay Grim is Hal Hartley's semi-sequel to Henry Fool and stars Parker Posey - what more do you need to know?

Bob Shaye's The Last Mimzy was co-written by Bruce Joel Rubin who, until now at least, has written scripts far, far better than the films they became - Ghost, My Life, Jacob's Ladder.

There will also be some films I've already seen, such as Longford, as in Lord Longford, and with the lead played by Jim Broadbent. The film was directed by Tom Hooper from another superb script by Peter Morgan. It screened on Channel 4 here in the UK, and I enjoyed it very much indeed - the script was better, certainly, than The Queen, Morgan's other film this year, but, sadly, Hooper is no Stephen Frears.

Luc Besson's Angel-A is one half of the director's comeback pair and, though I found it a little uneven, it was certainly imaginative and enjoyable enough to give me hope for Arthur and the Invisibles, even in the face of it's dreadful cgi.