What happens when a hero goes bad and heads up a criminal empire? We’re about to find out. Variety reports that there’s a new indie gangster film in the works called Criminal Empire for Dummys, which might be yet another irritatingly misspelled title, but also boasts a bad-ass cast. Milo Ventimiglia, Gary Oldman, and Malin Akerman will star, with Michael Clarke Duncan and Harvey Keitel also on the roster. Cliff Dorfman (Entourage) wrote the script, and will make it his feature directorial debut.

The film will focus on a “charismatic young man” played by Ventimiglia, “who relates the do’s and don’ts of running a criminal empire through a flashback to his own rise from a tragic childhood and life in the ghetto to eventual position as a multinational drug and criminal kingpin.” Last year, however, things were playing out a little differently.

During TIFF, Arclight Films was pushing the feature as a vehicle for Chris Evans, Keitel, and Rachel Bilson. Somewhere along the way, the Human Torch exited, a hero without a spunky name entered, Akerman slipped into Bilson’s spot, and this is the big surprise: Keitel got downgraded from co-star to supporting gig. The same Arclight blurb also gave a whole different tone to the project as well. “Lesson One — If you’re gonna be a gangster, you’re gonna get caught. Not a matter of if. Just a matter of when. Thus starts our journey as we follow the rise of the infamous Ray Ford. From his severely fractured home, to the U.S. Marine Corps, to the housing projects of the deep south, to running the largest criminal empire known worldwide.”

Production will kick off later this month in New Orleans. Ventimiglia… Evans… Which hero do you prefer as criminal kingpin?

Filed under: Drama, Independent, Casting, Deals, Scripts

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SXSW is coming, so keep your eye on Sci-Fi Squad for the news coming out of Austin’s biggest movie (and music) festival. You never know what film might end up being the next Moon. While we prepare for that coverage, we’re still talking about the latest and greatest in sci-fi/fantasy news. Here’s what’s going on…

• Peter Hall discusses the eerily relevant thriller Right at Your Door for the weekly Sci-Fi Squad Movie Club.
• Did Marvel get cold feet on John Krasinski as Captain America?
• Comedian Patton Oswalt brings back Wash for a new Serenity comic book one-shot.
• The Sci-Fi Hall of Fame inducts four new members, including special-FX whiz Douglas Trumbull.
• Three little words to make you stay inside this weekend: Free Godzilla movies!
• Battlestar Galactica is getting into the MMORPG biz.
• How awesome is this Japanese AVP2 poster? Not quite as awesome as this American Mothra one.
• Should Tim Burton be the man to take us to Oz? Vote in our latest poll.

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Filed under: Action, Drama, Romance, Universal, Newsstand, Movie Marketing, War, Trailers and Clips

Continue reading New ‘Robin Hood’ Trailer Looks Less Like ‘Gladiator’!

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- If you’ve been dying to see Ryan Reynolds buried alive, mark your calendars for September 24th, 2010; that’s when Lionsgate will be dropping the much-buzzed Sundance hit Buried into theaters.

- Should Sandra Bullock make good on her claim that she’s going to have husband Jesse James weld her Best Actress Oscar to the hood of her car, she’ll instantly become my new favorite person. Sorry, Tron Guy, your reign had to come to an end some day.

- This Shining infused Cuckoo Clock isn’t a real product, but if you happen to know where artist Chris Dimino lives, it could be yours. Please just don’t tell the police that Cinematical advocates breaking and entering.

- The duo behind Logorama, the awesome animated short film that just took home an Oscar, will be making a live-action Splinter Cell movie. It might be only 20 minutes long, but hey, I’ll take a live-action Splinter Cell no matter the length.

Filed under: Fandom

Continue reading Cinematical Late Night: Buried, Splinter Cell, Gary Busey and Sandra Bullock’s Oscar Plans

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This week, you’re going to have your choice of brand spanking new DVDs about the corporate world. In one corner, you have Up in The Air, an introspective story about a man evaluating his life and his work, and in the other corner, Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore’s latest documentary about how corporate America is screwing you. Now while Jason Reitman centered his story on the personal side of downsizing and financial ruin, Moore, as a documentary filmmaker and social activist, is all about the facts (or as much about the facts as Moore can ever be) and his film is about grand scale financial collapse, bank bailouts and a general indictment of capitalism in the Western world. In fact, the two flicks could even make for a fun (and I use the term loosely) double bill for a cause and effect movie night.

Now, if that sounds a little heavy for a night on the couch, that’s alright, because for today’s Cinematical Seven, I thought we might want to take a step back from reality and into the world of fantasy. Besides, some of you might be reading this from a beige and gray locale as I speak, and it might do us all some good to engage in a little daydreaming. Now, in most movies, big corporations are usually pretty evil, and I’m not talking bad corporate citizen evil, I’m talking big time, capitalistic future run amok evil (see what happens when you don’t listen to Michael Moore?). So today, let’s play a game and see if you have what it takes to work for an evil movie corporation.

After the jump: 7 recruiting tips to help you land your dream job at an evil corporation from the movies…

Filed under: Action, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Cinematical Seven, Michael Moore, George Clooney

Continue reading Cinematical Seven: Job Hunting for Evil Movie Corporations

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In the words of Barbra Streisand, the time has come. After weeks of hope and pundit guesswork, Kathryn Bigelow became the first female to win the Best Director Oscar last night, just in time for International Women’s Day. In fact, The Hurt Locker did a whole lot more than just grab that one award. It grabbed six.

As anyone following the Oscar race knows — this wasn’t a clear-cut win, no matter how well the experts guessed. Everything was stacked against this film. Not only was The Hurt Locker another attempt for Bigelow to break into the boy’s club of testosterone-filled action drama, but it was also a low-budget, $11 million celebrity-free indie attempting to hold its own in the face of the “Iraq War Curse.” It was released over the summer to little fanfare from the super-successful Summit, and its box office take came nowhere close to its critical acclaim; it’s the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner of all time, in fact, and the yin to James Cameron’s wildly successful, highest-grossing yang. On top of that, it recently weathered questions of authenticity, and the fact that one of the film’s producers became the first to be banned from the ceremony.

Nevertheless, Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar. It’s hard to believe that she is only the fourth woman to even earn a nomination, following in the footsteps of Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties in 1975, Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993, and Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation in 2003. It only took 82 years to get here.

Filed under: Awards, Oscar Watch, Columns, Girls on Film

Continue reading Girls on Film: Kathryn Bigelow, the First Female Best Director

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Greetings, programs. In the coming weeks you’re going to be seeing a number of exciting updates and reveals from the folks at the Walt Disney Company, specifically regarding their highly-anticipated follow-up to the 1982 film Tron. Dubbed Tron: Legacy, Joe Kosinski’s film is meant to be a sequel, a re-imagining, and a spin-off all at once, and fans have already spent considerable time and effort trying to uncover even a few glimpses of what’s in store when they sit down in theaters on December 17, 2010. Amazingly, and without any more effort than it takes to press play, check out the trailer right over here.

Although I’ve reported on some of the viral promotions that Disney successfully coordinated at Comic-Con and more recently in different cities across the globe, I admit that I’m not much for spending hours trying to decipher code or rendezvous at secret locations for swag – although I admit, I do want the swag. (Who can’t use a Velcro wallet that has Tron printed across it and carries old-school trading cards?) But the new trailer really does have me excited: it offers more clues about the set-up of the upcoming film, and provides a look at the world of Legacy, and perhaps most importantly to newcomers, what happens within it.

Unlike some of the recent films that were retrofitted or “upgraded” to 3-D, Tron: Legacy was actually shot with that format in mind, so it’s probably best to see this footage writ large on a gigantic screen with a pair of polarized lenses strapped to your face. But as a taste of the cinematic buffet to come, this clip for Tron: Legacy will have you thanking The Users for taking you one step closer to the final film.

Filed under: Disney, Fandom, Movie Marketing, Trailers and Clips

Continue reading ‘Tron: Legacy’ Trailer Debuts, Nerds Like Me Weep With Joy

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One of the areas of my film knowledge that sometimes surprises people is my familiarity with the films of one Jean Claude Van Damme. For whatever reason, I’m pretty conversant in the legend of the muscle from Brussels. But, it wasn’t like I was a fan or anything — he was just kind of there as the years wore on, mainly thanks to the occasional humiliating moment that would appear on the Internet from time to time. But just like every other person out there who had written of Van Damme, I was blown away by his performance as himself — or at least the man we think he is — in JCVD. The action-drama-comedy-metaphysical exercise (I honestly don’t know how to describe it sometimes, it’s just that cool) was unlike anything Van Damme had ever done before, and after you see that much-discussed monologue you’ll never look at Double Impact quite the same way again.

But enough gushing about Mabrouk El Mechri’s film (although I truly believe that it deserves all the praise that we can heap upon it) because this is about the music, too, and even though there are numerous moments in the film that could have earned their own Scenes We Love, I had to go with the opening scene where we see Van Damme as we know him best: kicking the living crap out of the bad guys … with the added bonus of it being set to Baby Huey’s classic song, Hard Times.

After the jump: ‘I’m sick and tired of havin’ so many hard, hard times baby’…

Filed under: Action, Fandom, Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love

Continue reading Scenes (Songs) We Love: “Hard Times” from ‘JCVD’

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Every year we think we all have it figured out. Even before the votes have been cast we figure to know where the waters have shifted and must sit back idly waiting for the inevitable to occur. Those on the Oscar beat writing about it day-in and day-out find ways to invent stories and controversies. Some even suck up to powerful studio heads and jump on the bandwagon of an underdog despite evidence that they are doing nothing but printing the ramblings of a one-man hype machine. Shame on them and may they all lose their Oscar pool to the Grim Reaper.

There are locks though and then there are LOCKS. And this year looks more than ever to be full of the latter. We probably said the same thing last year too while we see-sawed on Mickey Rourke over Sean Penn or bought into the suggestion that Viola Davis was going to steal the award in a now Winslet-less category. We don’t know in what order the non-surprises will be revealed on Sunday, so we might as well just go down the list in order of confidence. Of my own prognostication prowess that is. But we will finish with Best Picture anyway, even if such confidence would rank it much higher on this particular inventory.

Filed under: Awards, Oscar Watch

Continue reading Movieman’s Final Predictions For The 82nd Annual Academy Awards

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Throughout cinema history, comedians and comedy filmmakers have always suffered from the impulse to do something serious. They all eventually come to realize — perhaps through watching themselves not get nominated on Oscar night — that their efforts to make people laugh will never reap any meaningful rewards. The long list of people who succumbed to this impulse includes Charlie Chaplin, Jerry Lewis, Roberto Benigni and Tom Hanks. But no one did it more gracefully than Leo McCarey. At his peak, McCarey was considered a major director, but in recent years has fallen from grace, and from memory. Perhaps the recent Criterion Collection DVD release of McCarey’s masterpiece Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) will help restore his reputation.

Born in 1898, he began in comedy, of course. He gets credit for teaming up Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who had been working separately in silent comedies. He also helped invent the “slow burn,” or the long, silent reaction shots between them, rather than the frenetic pace of things like the Keystone Kops and other contemporary comedies. He also directed the best Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup (1933), and a very enjoyable Harold Lloyd talkie, The Milky Way (1936). He directed Charles Laughton in a much-loved, but hard to find comedy called Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). And in 1937, he made The Awful Truth (1937), which is one of the quintessential screwball comedies and helped establish the “Cary Grant persona.”

Filed under: New on DVD

Continue reading Directors We Love: Leo McCarey

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