A Nightmare on Elm Street is the latest remake from Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes shingle, a specialty horror label whose modus operandi is to take a low-budget cult-classic from the '80s, then have it "re-envisioned" by directors with good eyes for slick editing and camera work, but tin ears for tone, performance, and all those other harder-to-nail elements that masters like Sam Raimi and Wes Craven would bring to the proceedings. The result is a steady stream of forgettable shit: Marcus Nispel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th reboots both needed to be dragged to a basement and cleaved, while the only scary thing about 2005's The Amityville Horror was the number of times it found an excuse to have Ryan Reynolds battle a home demon-infestation with his shirt off.
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As we noted earlier, Scarlett Johansson told us at Comic-Con that at one point, she'd discussed the possibility of playing three other superheroines with Marvel: Scarlet Witch, Blonde Phantom, and the mysterious "Moon." At the time, we couldn't find a Moon in Marvel's collection, but we think we've found out who Johansson meant, and she's a doozy.
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Our critic-in-residence this week is Michelle Orange, who has written about film, culture, politics, and travel for The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney's, Salon, and other publications. Michelle is the former reviews editor at The Reeler and a member of New York Film Critics Online and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. She'll be with us for the rest of the week.
Ben Silverman's departure today from NBC Universal marks the end of a particularly volatile era at the network, but not necessarily due to any fault of Silverman's own. As you consider life after Ben -- including some of the outgoing executive's more mercurial moods collected after the jump -- you'll come to realize this guy was always more chameleon than peacock. And you'll miss him more than you probably think.
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The Wrap on Jon Favreau at the Iron Man 2 Comic-Con panel: "He announced that an Avengers reboot movie is coming, though he wouldn't confirm that he was directing. But he was, he said, directing Thor, with Kenneth Branagh." Other exciting, misinterpreted scoops from The Wrap: Robert Downey Jr. is playing superhero Pepper Potts, and Scarlett Johansson, referred to many times as "Black Widow," must have killed husband Ryan Reynolds for his money. [The Wrap]
· Is Korean heartthrob Kwon Sang-Woo joining The Green Hornet as Kato? If so, better start polishing off those abs, Rogen.
· Joe Jonas and Camilla Belle have broken up. It's time to bow your head in contemplation and listen quietly to your favorite Jonas Brothers ballad, provided that unlike me, you have any idea what any of their songs sound like or are called.
· Elizabeth Mitchell elaborated some more about those behind-the-scenes Lost negotiations: She'd been told her character was dunzo, but when fans sparked to Juliet's romance with Sawyer, producers reconsidered.
· I liked the Where the Wild Things Are super-band before they were popular.
· "My mum's explanation of ejaculation was fantastic!" bragged Daniel Radcliffe to UK gay mag Attitude. Save it for Shia, Dan.
In the aftermath of this morning's news that now-former NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman is departing NBC , the world of television -- nay, the entire world -- is a far less fun, absurd place. (Actual farewell e-mail blast to his contact list, according to Nikki Finke: "Its go time brother!!!!!!! Let's rock it out!!!!!" That's a twelve--count 'em, twelve exclamation point self-salute.)
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David Cronenberg trickled out over the weekend as the latest filmmaker attached to direct a Don DeLillo adaptation, setting his sights on the great novelist's slender 2003 volume Cosmopolis. It's not the worst selection he could have made from DeLillo's rich, dynamic tapestries of American striving, fear, sex, politics and satire -- which, taken as a whole over his 40-year career, read like a kind of parallel cultural history of our nation. And from which, to this day, no one has successfully adapted a film.
Still, set in one day in the life (and in the limo) of a 28-year-old billionaire crossing Manhattan to get his hair cut, Cosmopolis has always felt to me like a poor man's Ulysses, some half-hearted, self-aware, post-postmodern wink at the undergrad lit student in all of us. I'm not sure what Cronenberg sees in Eric Packer's fantastic crosstown voyage, but I know what I see when I think of the great director -- and his own vivid, unforgiving eye -- interpreting DeLillo, legend-on-legend:
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We caught up with Nick Kroll, the star of ABC's ill-fated Cro-Magnon-Rom-Com Cavemen, at the Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers last night, and we had to ask him about A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.
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Studio 10 on CBS's Studio City lot last night was transformed into a Theater of War, with scantily clad MGD girls keeping the pitchers of lo-carb beer flowing as the stage erupted into a four-hundred-foot mushroom cloud of insult comedy, each pre-emptive nuclear zinger more devastating than the next. Yes, last night was the Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers -- and Movieline was there.
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It's hard being Kevin Smith, at least when it comes to those deep, pot-saturated, post-flop funks and the squirmy network bosses uncomfortable with the title of his forthcoming Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan cop comedy A Couple of Dicks. On the bright side, Smith got to take his cause to the masses at Comic-Con, who heard his sob story out and who, I hope, will now contribute just the right alternate title to make the filmmaker, the studio, skittish media outlets and the general public equally happy. Movieline will take your submissions after the jump.
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Ray helmer Taylor Hackford was elected president of the Directors Guild of America over the weekend, replacing Michael Apted and thus setting one-third of the players who will duel with the studios when the next round of union contract negotiations begins in 2011. The Writers Guild and SAG are running a little hotter with their own races, with John Wells battling hardliner Elias Davis on the writers' side and Anne-Marie Johnson taking over Alan Rosenberg's post atop the Membership First slate. Play nice, all! [THR]
This is quite the wake-up call for a Monday: Ben Silverman will be departing his post as NBC Universal co-chairman this fall. He has reportedly agreed to launch an as-yet-unnamed operation in conjunction with Barry Diller's IAC venture. NBCU's cable boss Jeff Gaspin will step in to replace Silverman as the head of the network's entertainment division, overseeing new programming including Jay Leno's primetime show this fall.
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In the simpler time before the Web, the MPAA's Classifications and Ratings Administration had things so much better. A restrictive "R" or "NC-17" rating on a studio property would irritate no more than a few executives, filmmakers and producers at a time, all of whom would fuss in the press about censorship before making the necessary trims to get their movies to a releasable, marketable standard for their intended audiences. But while the process hasn't necessarily gotten any easier for the creatives and their studio patrons, at least now there's some wider cultural pushback that may finally help reinvent the rating system for modern times.
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· Robert Downey Jr. is locked in to star opposite Zach Galifianakis in Due Date, director Todd Phillips's "buddy movie without the buddies" follow-up to The Hangover. Downey will play an expectant father racing cross-country with an unlikely companion to witness the birth of his first child, whom Galifiankis will promptly fake-masturbate. I smell blockbuster. [Variety]
Will Ferrell will apply sunscreen to your back, Mila Kunis will take on Natalie Portman, and much more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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