Movie Minesweeper - The This Is Certainly A Job But I Don't Get Paid Edition

- Terry Brooks' Shannara books are headed to the big screen, in some form or another.

- Herc at AintItCool is trying to save Veronica Mars. Lend your support.

- The IESB report that D J Caruso is the first choice director for Wolverine, with Len Wiseman in backup. If you don't recall, I reviewed the Wolverine script and had almost nothing good to say about it at all.

- Fred Wolf is to direct the previously mentioned (somewhere on film ick, I'm sure, but I can't find the link) comedy in which Anna Faris plays an ex-Playboy bunny girl. If memory serves this was possibly going to be a TV series at some point...? I like Farris, a lot, but I wish she got better roles.

- The 50th Spoleta Festival is to honour Terry Gilliam, Andy Garcia and Paul Mazursky. At least it will, if it goes ahead...

- A Thundercats origin story has been optioned by Warners, with an eye to making a movie and merchandising the life out of it. The screenwriter, Paul Sopocy, hadn't sold a script before.

- A remake of Dressed to Kill is heading straight to DVD. Does anybody hold out any hope at all?

- Leandro Sanchez' Bitter Grapes is to star Julio Cedillo, Jacob Vargas and Laura Harring. Set on both sides of the US-Mexico border, the film is a family saga.

- Joel Hopkins, director of Jump Tomorrow, is back: this time, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman are with him for the romantic drama Last Chance Harvey. The script was apparently written with the pair of actors in mind - but will that mean roles to type, or deliberately going against expectation?

- The official site for the Halloween rehash is now online. Like the theme remix?

- Disney are gearing up for a treasure hunt film. Simple concept: adults get together again to hunt for treasure they sought as kids. Could have been a Goonies sequel, and in a way, I suppose, it is. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film has no title yet but they've used the word Golden in quotes in the article title for a reason, I'm sure. Golden Years? Or just plain Golden? We'll know soon enough, I'm sure.

- Aki Kaurismaki, Bent Hamer and Dagur Kari are to collaborate on a feature, each directing a third. Twitch have a few more details.

- IGN are premiering the Shoot 'Em Up trailer. What do you reckon?

- In the midst of a sprawling blog update, Richard Stanley has announced that Imago Mortis is now in production.

- Peter O'Toole is to play Pope Paul III in The Tudors.

- A William M. Gaines biopic is in the offing. I think Joe Dante would be a good choice for director, perhaps John Landis. Joel Eisenberg is writing the script, telling the story of "an anti-establishment group of comic book creators, led by a reluctant Gaines, as they produce their controversial yet hugely popular line of comic books like Tales from the Crypt, which later led Gaines to face Senate subcommittee hearings over accusations of perpetuating juvenile delinquency".

- Allocine have mutliple My Blueberry Nights trailers for you to choose from.

- Walden are to make a comedy about a slacker running for mayor and "unexpectedly" winning the role. The scriptwriters come from Surf's Up, the director from Malcolm in the Middle and Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.

Bruce Campbell To Take A Vacation

Preview screenings for My Name Is Bruce have been going on - both privately, and also to the public at one special event in Oregon. Reaction has been fairly positive, though hardly ecstatic.

Campbell's The Man With the Screaming Brain was really quite an awful film, unfortunately, so any signs this one will be better at all are gratefully welcomed. Mark Verheiden's script isn't half bad, by all accounts, and the premise is certainly a belter. And when hasn't Campbell come across as the most charismatic screen presence you can imagine?

Okay, apart from Screaming Brain?

Word is creeping out from these Bruce screenings, however, that Campbell is close to an agreement to star in Richard Stanley's next film, Vacation. Apparently budgeted at just a little over a million dollars, the film tells the tale of some Americans abroad. Not quite your typical fish-out-of-water yarn, however - in this case, the Americans have upped sticks after an apocalyptic cataclysm has pretty much wiped out the west and are trying to start new lives in the Middle East, whether the Middle East likes it or not.

Campbell is to play a US businessman who, with his stripper girlfriend, tries to climb the power structure in this new order. Sounds like you can take this couple out of America, but you can't take America out of this couple.

Stanley's Dust Devil is a bonafide winner and the fully-loaded recent DVD from Severin is well worth anybody's money. Apparently, his first film Hardware is soon to be bonafide winner too - a director's cut is on the cards for DVD release later this year. This edit reportedly fixes all of the niggles that dampened the original version - principally the unrealistic character interactions and some key moments of thematic and subtextual relevance that were snipped for being 'redundant'.