Ray Winstone Replaces De Niro in 'Edge of Darkness'

About a week ago, word spread that Robert De Niro had walked off the set of Martin Campbell's Edge of Darkness. A spokesman for De Niro explained it to us like idiots: "Sometimes things don't work out; it's called creative differences." De Niro would have co-starred with Mel Gibson as an agent tasked with cleaning up evidence of a murder Gibson's homicide detective is trying to investigate.

It seems that Campbell has found his replacement: the great Ray Winstone, who is currently in negotiations to step into the role. Winstone obviously doesn't have De Niro's profile, which is a loss for a film that's benefited from a considerable amount of hype before even starting principal photography (most of it having to do with Mel Gibson's return to acting after six years). But he certainly has the chops.

De Niro, meanwhile, faces a test of his drawing power this weekend with the release of Righteous Kill. The marketing campaign has concentrated exclusively on the presence of De Niro and Al Pacino, so the question will be how many people the two of them can get into the theaters. Not that De Niro has anything to prove, as evidenced by his walking off the set of a major film two days into shooting.

Geek Daily: 'Spidey 4, 5', 'Hulk' Sequels and More!

The Geek Beat is taking a late-September vacation to Middle Earth -- but it will be back next month and those of you suffering withdrawels can always check the archives. In the meantime, you can relax with a daily round-up of nerdy news bites. (They taste like coconut!) This is relaxing for me, too -- I get to catch up on my reading, my Halloween shopping, and my yoga. I can stay up all night re-reading Preacher (you know I will) and not waiting for an X-Men Origins: Wolverine story. A good way to end summer!

Now, onto today's news ...

• According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jeffery Erb and Robert Robinson Jr. have launched Framelight Productions with an eye to producing edgy comic and graphic novel adaptations. They already have options on Larry Hama's Dr. Death with Kip and Muffy, Gary Reed's Deadworld, Ralph Tedesco and Joe Tyler's Sins of the Fallen, as well as their 1001 Arabian Nights. (Clicking on any of those links will take you to previews of the books.) All of their productions aim to do one thing in particular -- involve the creator in all aspects of movie making. "We weren't the only producers wanting to make movies based on these creators' babies, but we were the only ones inviting them in as co-producers," says Erb.
• Edward Norton told MTV News that he's uncertain about the future of The Incredible Hulk and his role in it. There's been no word on whether they will be a solo sequel, or if Norton will be playing the Hulk in The Avengers. "The minds of Marvel are sometimes opaque. I won't say [they're] obtuse, but I don't have any idea what they want to do." Perhaps they're considering Matthew McConaughey, who had no idea he was rumored for Captain America -- but revealed to MTV that Hulk is really the only Marvel character he would like to play. (They could save on the budget -- all they have to do is dye that muscled dude green.)
• According to The Sunday Times, Tobey Maguire has been granted an unprecedented "working father" deal for Spider-Man 4 and 5. He's willing to shoot them back to back, a six month shoot starting next year, but only if he's allowed early mornings and evenings off to spend with his young daughter. Awwww. He really is Peter Parker!
• According to Access Hollywood, Clark Duke is the latest to join Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass. He'll be playing Marty, best friend of Dave Lizewski, the main character. This film could be subtitled Kick-Ass: The Superbad Reunion.
• And speaking of Mark Millar -- /film has a scoop on a behind the scenes battle centered on the rights to his upcoming series War Heroes. A big-screen adaptation has been making its way around Hollywood, which has upset those who have been developing Shannon Eric Denton and Keith Giffen's series Grunts. Grunts came out first, has a similar concept of superpowered soldiers, and reportedly garnered the interest of Steve Buscemi. Comics2Film caught up with Denton, who confirms Grunts is making the rounds, but denies any knowledge of bickering or Buscemi.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Director Julian Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald Harwood have performed a small miracle in adapting for the screen Jean-Dominique Bauby's autobiography "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." Not, of course, as much as the one it took for the former "Elle" editor to write the book when he was paralyzed from head to toe and could communicate only by blinking his left eye.

But their film does justice to the enormous courage and determination of the man and the caring patience of those who helped him. Taking a very different approach to the award-winning 2004 Spanish film "The Sea Inside," in which Javier Bardem played a suicidal quadriplegic, the movie boasts an equally fine lead performance, by Mathieu Amalric, and matches that film's broad appeal.

A vivacious and charismatic magazine editor, Bauby is stricken at 43 with the cerebro-vascular incident that first plunges him into a coma and then leaves him with what is called "locked-in syndrome." His brain works perfectly but his body doesn't, save the left eye. It is from that eye's point-of-view that the film is almost entirely told and Janusz Kaminski's cinematography does marvels in suggesting the suffocating horror of Bauby's predicament and the wide variety of images that bring him joy and hope.

A brief period of self-pity is overcome by the painstaking attention of his therapists, Henriette (Marie-Josee Croze) and Marie (Olatz Lopez Garmendia), who develop the pattern whereby he blinks at letters of the alphabet in order to form words and then sentences. Celine (Emmanuelle Seigner), the mother of his three children, whom he had abandoned shortly before he had his stroke, also nurses him devotedly. Among many scenes of tender mercy, she translates when Bauby's new lover calls to speak to him only to say that she cannot bear to see him in his current state. Celine must translate his blinking reply: "Each day I wait for you."
There are also heartbreaking scenes between Bauby and his aged father, played with great compassion by Max von Sydow. Father and son are friends, and in flashbacks and a phone call made difficult by Bauby's condition and his dad's forgetfulness, their affection is beautifully conveyed.

There is much humor in the film as the stricken man never loses his wry sense of what fate brings. He realizes that two essentials in his makeup are not paralyzed: his imagination and his memory. He uses both to escape from the deep-sea diving bell that he pictures himself trapped in so he may soar like a butterfly.

Guilt plagues him over his inattention to his children and such things as failing to return a phone call to a man named Roussin (Niels Arestrup), to whom he gave his seat on a plane that was hijacked. The man spent four years as a hostage but he visits Bauby not to chide him for his negligence but to tell how he survived his own locked-in hell.

It's a theme that Schnabel develops throughout the film and renders with remarkable subtlety. He is aided greatly by a fine cast, especially Almaric, Seigner and von Sydow, and by Paul Cantelon's delicate piano score. The soundtrack also features great music by such artists as Tom Waits, Nino Rota and Lou Reed. It begins and ends with the song "La Mer" and that much-heard melody becomes haunting all over again.

Film Review: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

You might not be able to kill a mummy but as "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" demonstrates, you can kill a franchise.

The third entry in the series starring Brendan Fraser ups the ante in terms of special effects and action, but there's an undeniably tired air to the enterprise.

Arriving seven years after the last installment, "The Mummy Returns" (assuming you don't count the "Scorpion King" spinoff), its timing is particularly unfortunate coming right on the heels of the recent "Indiana Jones" reboot.

The China setting -- both ancient and 1946 -- might prove beneficial thanks to the publicity generated by the Summer Olympics, and the presence of Asian superstars Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh certainly won't hurt.
Strangely enough, in this installment there isn't a mummy in sight. Instead, intrepid adventurers Rick (Fraser) and wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, replacing Rachel Weisz, whose absence might be explained by her winning an Oscar since the last one) are battling a massive army of terra cotta soldiers led by the reanimated evil Dragon Emperor (a wasted Li), who was cursed into suspended animation centuries ago by a beautiful sorceress (a similarly wasted Yeoh) whom he made the mistake of trying to kill.

Also figuring prominently in the rudimentary story line are the couple's now-grown-up son Alex (played in vapid fashion by Luke Ford), an archaeologist following in his parents' footsteps; a tomb guardian (Isabella Leong) who tries to prevent the emperor and his minions from being disturbed; and Jonathan (John Hannah), the loyal sidekick assigned with the task of making sardonic wisecracks: "I hate mummies, they never play fair," he whines.

There are some undeniably cool CGI effects -- the terra cotta soldiers are impressive, even if their stiff gait unfortunately brings to mind Laurel and Hardy's "The March of the Wooden Soldiers" -- and target audiences are not likely to complain about any paucity of frantically paced action sequences. But too much of the proceedings are silly rather than horrifying, with the nadir being the appearance of some particularly athletic Yetis who briefly pitch in to lend a hand.

Fraser still looks athletically youthful and displays the same engaging presence he exhibited in the recent "Journey to the Center of the Earth," but he can't entirely hide the fact that he's cashing a paycheck. Coming off far worse is a newly brunet Bello, who appears distinctly uncomfortable in the action sequences and who sports an unfortunate British accent to boot.

First Trailer for Sean Penn's 'Milk'

To paraphrase an IM conversation I just had with a friend regarding the trailer for Gus van Sant's forthcoming biopic, Milk: he thought the trailer was "incredible", whereas I felt it painted openly gay elected official Harvey Milk in a bit too saintly a light, at least within those two-and-a-half minutes, much to his chagrin.

I'm not saying that the real-life Milk wasn't a key figure in the fight for gay rights; I'm not saying that he deserved to be assassinated by Dan White (Josh Brolin); I'm not saying that Sean Penn doesn't look or sound just like the guy (that, I cannot speak for) and won't turn in an impressive performance. All I can speak for is the trailer itself and how I felt towards it.

So, as I go to put the 1984 Oscar-winning doc The Trials of Harvey Milk in my Netflix Queue, in the name of knowing better, would any of you care to attest for both the accuracy and anticipation behind this project?

Box Office

Movie tickets were a tough sell for labor day weekend, as Babylon A.D and Traitor were the only two of last week's four new releases to finish in the top five. Disaster Movie took seventh place and College took fifteenth, allowing Tropic Thunder to hold the number one spot for a third week. Here's the top five:

1. Tropic Thunder: $11.5 million
2. Babylon A.D.: $9.4 million
3. The Dark Knight: $8.6 million
4. The House Bunny: $8.3 million
5. Traitor: $7.8 million

The summer movie season is over and Hollywood is pausing to breath before moving on. We've only got one wide release this weekend.

Bangkok Dangerous:

• What's It All About: Directors Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang remake their own 1999 Thai film. Nicolas Cage stars as a hitman who travels to Bangkok for four assassinations.
• Why It Might Do Well: If you're jonesing for a new release, this is the only act in town.
• Why It Might Not Do Well: One might assume that dumping a movie on the weekend after Labor Day represents a vote of no confidence from the studio.
• Number of Theaters: 2,500
• Prediction: $14 million.

New Calendar Images from 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince'

Alejandro Martínez over at BlogHogwarts has sent us a bunch of images from the just-released Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince calender. I know, it's hard to get excited about anything associated with a movie we won't see until July, but a calender can help alleviate your pain by giving you a little dose of Harry Potter all through 2009. Right? Ok, maybe not. You have to hand it to Warner Bros -- of all the franchises to be delayed, none works so well as Harry Potter. It doesn't matter that we don't know the film incarnations of the characters, because we've been living with the Half Blood cast for years on the page. When you think of it that way, all this badly timed merchandise doesn't seem so ridiculous. There's some very cool stills here that I wish was bigger, particularly the troubled Draco Malfoy you can glimpse below. I've enlarged it, but at the cost of the quality -- if someone shells the bucks out for this (I'm looking at you, Emma Watson fans), feel free to send big scans along for your Cinematical friends.

400 Screens, 400 Blows - Disease of the Week Movie

Isabel Coixet's Elegy (92 screens) is a "disease-of-the-week" movie. I hate "disease-of-the-week" movies, but I really liked Elegy. I also liked Coixet's previous film, My Life Without Me, which was also a "disease-of-the-week" movie. Sarah Polley's beautiful Away from Her from last year was another excellent example. This begs three questions: What is a "disease-of-the-week" movie? Why do I hate them? And what makes Elegy so good? The phrase "disease-of-the-week" was coined to describe a certain type of TV movie some decades ago, which had addicted housewives sniveling and crumbling up tissues at their TV tubes for two hours every seven days. But filmmakers quickly snatched upon the formula as a quick and easy way to weasel their way into film critics' hearts, and probably win an Oscar or two.

Disease is an unfortunate part of life, but it's a part of life that no one likes to think about. What usually happens when we get sick? We avoid going to the doctor! We hope it'll go away. So why do people like these kinds of movies, movies that acknowledge our own mortality and frailty? I think the secret is that the most successful of these movies play up the disease angle, but the real subject is the heroism of the others, the people who are not sick. That way, the disease gets center stage, and some "courageous" actor gets to show off, while the audience gets to identify with the other characters, the ones who stand by their friends and family. The ones who don't give up.

These days the Academy likes "disease-of-the-week" movies slightly less than they like biopics, literary adaptations, epics, costume dramas and war films. Conversely, they hate comedies, horror films, sci-fi films and action movies. But a quick look over the list of Oscar winners reveals a long list of "disease-of-the-week" entries. Ray Milland -- not the world's most interesting actor, Lord knows -- won in 1945 for playing an alcoholic. So did Nicolas Cage in 1995. Cliff Robertson (who?) won in 1968 for playing the "developmentally disabled" Charly. (See Tropic Thunder for further notes). Jon Voight was paralyzed in Coming Home. Dustin Hoffman was autistic, Daniel Day-Lewis had cerebral palsy, Al Pacino was blind (so was Jamie Foxx), Tom Hanks had AIDS, Geoffrey Rush had a mental breakdown, Jack Nicholson was obsessive-compulsive and Russell Crowe was a paranoid schizophrenic. Marlee Matlin was deaf, Holly Hunter was mute and Patty Duke was blind, deaf and dumb.

Perhaps not ironically, many of the co-stars who showed patience for these patients won Oscars as well, and the list is just as long, if not longer. Jim Broadbent won for Iris, while his co-star Judi Dench -- who had Alzheimer's -- did not. Jennifer Connelly won for supporting her husband in A Beautiful Mind. Anne Bancroft won for supporting Helen Keller. Brenda Fricker won for supporting her son in My Left Foot. Tom Cruise should have won for supporting his brother in Rain Man. These are the characters that we actually think about. We may come away with praise for the gimmicky, centerpiece performance ("wasn't it amazing how he actually looked sick?") but secretly hope that we can be as brave as the regular folks.

Moreover, these movies have a kind of built in importance that earns one a badge of honor. We recommend them to our friends, but what we're really doing is boasting of our own endurance and prowess; we sat through it and emerged intact. If you're as good as me, you should do the same. Long movies have the same effect. I was perfectly happy to brag that I sat through all seven hours of Bela Tarr's Satantango, but I make sure to mention the "seven hours" part. That's precisely how movies win awards. But what makes a really good "disease-of-the-week" movie? I guess it's one that develops a character, rather than a vehicle for the disease. You can analyze and argue all you want about how Daniel Day-Lewis gave a great performance in My Left Foot, but in the end, it was a gimmick that sold the movie, as opposed to a more genuine performance like -- to take some examples from the same year -- Matt Dillon in Drugstore Cowboy, James Spader in sex, lies & videotape, Chow Yun-fat in The Killer, or even Michael Douglas in The War of the Roses.

In Elegy, Penelope Cruz has cancer, but this is not revealed until well past the first hour. Up until that time, we get to know her as "Consuela Castillo" and not as "cancer lady." She also gives an astonishing performance, not based on shrieking in pain and wearing sick-lady makeup, but because she shows how her character quietly thinks. You can see her rolling her dialogue around in her head, weighing it before she speaks it. It's true that the movie is really "about" David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) and that he eventually takes care of her, but we see him as a damaged human being rather than as a brave caregiver; he can't even offer comfort to his own son. To put it plainly, a good "disease-of-the-week" movie is not about the disease. It doesn't show off the disease. The disease is only part of the movie, a function of the movie, and a means to some other end.
By the way, none of this has anything to do with "movie cough," about which I'll write more some other day.

Cinematical's Friday Night Double Feature: Buddy Cops

Buddy films. They're an interesting breed of cinema. Instead of finding success in a niche, they appeal to the masses. With buddy flicks, you're served a variety of time periods, races, genres, laughs, and scenarios. If one doesn't appeal, the next is sure to come -- all tapping into the goodness of friendship and camaraderie.

And snuggled nicely into that sector of cinema are the buddy cops. They've made the careers of a few big stars, like Mel Gibson and Eddie Murphy. But I don't want to give you something quite so obvious as Beverly Hills Cop or Leathal Weapon. Since this is all due to my recent purchase of Hot Fuzz, I give you that plus an ol' '80s classic -- Running Scared.

Hot Fuzz



While I liked Shaun of the Dead, it was Hot Fuzz that gave Simon Pegg and Nick Frost little checks in the "love" category. As Nicholas Angel, Pegg stars as a hot-shot London cop -- but not in the beloved, media-friendly way. He's so good that his arrest record cripples that of the other officers on the force. Interested more in self-preservation than city safety, Angel gets a new assignment -- a supposedly crime-free little town -- one that coincidentally is greeted with a series of suspicious and horrific accidents. With his bumbling cop partner (Frost), he sets out to continue his a-mazing record.

Pegg and Frost together are good enough that the rest of the cast could be full of amateur, crappy actors and there would still be something good to say about it. But in this case, Hot Fuzz is the exact opposite, with names like Jim Broadbent, Steve Coogan, Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, and Paddy Considine. Mix that all in with great laughs, mystery, quirks, and classic movie cop mainstays, and you've got one of the best buddy cop, and buddy film movies in a long time.

TRIVIA

Did you know that Peter Jackson is the Santa Clause who stabs Angel, and Cate Blanchett is the masked, SOCO ex-girlfriend of Angel?

Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. to Reteam for Animated Movie

Ben Stiller and his Tropic Thunder co-star Robert Downey Jr. are to reteam for a new animated action movie called Master Mind.

The project began life as a regular action film, but Stiller chose to turn it into a cartoon when he took it to the bosses at DreamWorks.

He says, "It's a script that my company Red Hour got that was written as a live-action movie, but we thought it would work as an animated movie so we brought it to Jeffrey Katzenberg and now we're in pre-production.

"I'm in it and Robert Downey Jr. plays an evil superhero villain. Basically it's about a bad guy who loses to the good guy that he's fighting all the time, so he has to create another good guy for him to fight."