Ang Lee's Lust, Caution Gets NC-17

The MPAA has slapped Ang Lee's follow-up to Brokeback Mountain, the Mandarin language Lust, Caution, with an NC-17 rating for "several scenes of male-female sexuality." Oh, the horrors!

Admirably, Focus Features--a subsidiary of Universal--has decided to release it as-is. (Though maybe that's in Lee's contract.)

Here's the trailer:



"Lust, Caution" premieres at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, and opens exclusively in NYC 9/28 (presumably at the Angelika or Sunshine, but I couldn't find that info).

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Is anyone else freaking out about this as much as I am?

The Dark Knight: Teaser Trailer

Gaiman's Death: The High Cost of Living Movie

Another looong-gestating project moves forward. Death: The High Cost of Living is definitely one of Gaiman's best graphic novels. The plot, in a nutshell: once every hundred years, Death (Dream's older sister--Lovely girl) spends a day as a mortal (in this case, hanging around the West Village, blending in perfectly).

So it's a "day in the life" -- of Death. And it's utterly charming.

Gaiman went on to reveal that the project is moving along at a fairly decent clip. Guillermo del Toro will executive-produce the film, and it will likely be shot under the auspices of Picturehouse, for which del Toro directed the award-winning dark fantasy Pan's Labyrinth. "We have a budget," Gaiman said. "The biggest problem that Death has had is, because it's got Sandman characters, it all has to be somewhere under the giant Warner Brothers umbrella. So we started out at Warner Brothers, moved to New Line, went from New Line to Warner Independent Pictures, and we have now moved to Picturehouse. It's all Time-Warner, but it's weird, because you're like dancing from one tentacle to the other of the corporate octopus. So I believe right now that Picturehouse is closing their version of the deal with Warner Brothers and with New Line."

Source: Sci-Fi Wire

Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd

*gulp*

Angela Lansbury... Patti LuPone... Helena Bonham Carter. (Which one of these is not like the other?)

Karen Allen Joins Indy 4 Cast

Karen Allen is joining the cast of the upcoming "Indiana Jones" movie, reprising her role as spirited Marion Ravenwood, it was announced today during Comic-Con International in San Diego.

My expectatoins for this film just rose dramatically. I just hope that Marion isn't presented as a shitty, drunk mom -- as she was in the Jeff Boam draft from years ago (when Shia LeBouf's character was envisioned as a plucky 10 year old). Source

Watchmen Cast Revealed

*gulp*

"Watchmen," the long-gestating big-screen adaptation of the seminal DC Comics limited series, has finally found its superheroes.

Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode, Billy Crudup, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Malin Akerman have been cast in the Warner Bros. movie, which Zack Snyder is directing. Larry Gordon, Lloyd Levin and Deborah Snyder are producing.

Set in an alternate America, "Watchmen" follows costumed hero Rorschach, who is living a vigilante lifestyle because most masked heroes have retired or been outlawed. While investigating a murder, Rorschach learns that a former masked-hero colleague has been killed, prompting him to begin investigating a possible conspiracy.

Aint-It-Cool News has a list with headshots. I like Patrick Wilson for Night Owl, and Billy Crudup for Dr Manhattan works, too. But what happened to Jude Law for Veidt?

Overall, I just wish this would fall apart and go back to development hell for a few more years. I want it to be good, but I just have no confidence Zack Snyder can pull this off... (and, really, to do the book justice, it shouldn't be a movie... it should be a 12 part limited series from HBO.)

Ratatouille

Go see this fucking masterpiece.

That is all.

Update: And it's that raresst of creatures: a box office champ that deserves to be a box office champ.

Fantastic Four 2

This movie made Spider-Man 3 look like Citizen frickin' Kane. (And, to be clear, I thought Spider-Man 3 was abyssmal.)

I've only seen bits and pieces of the first FF movie, so my strongest reactions were probably to things that everyone else has gotten used to by now... like casting. What were they thinking with Ioan Gruffud and Jessica Alba?! (The first time she did the "I'm about to use my powers" pose -- at her wedding -- I actually burst out laughing. She looked constipated.) Julian McMahon should NEVER be in this kind of movie.

Chris Evans was the only one of the 4 (or 5, if you count Doom) who was actually well cast (and thank god they didn't try to color his hair blonde!) His sexy-cocky-comedy relief routine actually worked most of the time... though the switching powers thing was completely ridiculous, and basically destroyed the Ben Grimm character. How many times were they gonna switch him back and forth without letting him go, "Wait... This is exactly what I wanted. A cure. Johnny, if you touch me again, don't expect to get that arm back."

And, of course, they totally violated the idea that the powers could only be exchanged at the end, when Johnny did his SuperSkrull routine, weilding all of their powers at once... which presumably left the other three powerless. So why couldn't he have returned Reed and Sue's powers (since they actually seem to like theirs) but not Ben's? Couldn't he touch a dying jellyfish or something?

Oh, right, we're not supposed to notice stuff like that. This is one of those movies that's hostile--very hostile--to paying close attention.

Then, there's the list of alien planets rattled off by Reed, who says he's referenced the "astrometric database." Sorry, the what now?

"Everywhere this thing has gone, life has disappeared 8 days later." Yeah, OK, that's ominous and all... but how the hell can he know that? How did he know there was life on those planets in the first place, let alone that it was gone 8 days later? Is this Earth, circa 2007 or Star Trek Voyager?

This was paint-by-numbers moviemaking, down to the incredibly hackneyed delivery of the moral at the end followed by a joke for the denoument so we go out laughing--the same stale format employed by 60s Star Trek episodes. At least the joke was actually funny, and that helped take the edge off the "what we do does matter", bad sitcom-style moralizing, which was frankly nauseating.

The Golden Compass Movie

Swiped this from the very cool one-sheet for The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials Part 1), which debuts on December 7.

The hot bear is Iorek Byrnison, one of the panserbjorne, or armored bears. They have opposable thumbs, but no daemons. Don't ask.

Suffice it to say, if they do this right (and what are the chances of that?), this trilogy will blow Lord of the Rings, Narnia and its ilk out of the water. (Harry who?)

Previously...
Golden Compass Movie Website
Kidman To Golden Compass