10.24.08: Soderbergh rocks Cleopatra, 8 new trailers, and more

WHOA

Steven Soderbergh wants to make a 3-D rock musical about the life of Cleopatra, with music by Guided by Voices and possibly starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is perhaps a wee bit too old for the part.  Hugh Jackman might possibly play Marc Antony.  Hey - at least he's casting actors who can sing, unlike a certain legendary tossle-haired director of a recent blood-splattered fright-fest based on a classic Broadway play which by the way originally featured Victor Garber as the doomed young love interest although you won't see him in the excellent video of the stage production as it's from the touring version which still had Angela Lansbury so that's good although George Hearn was the lead instead of Len Cariou but that's okay because Hearn was great in the role, too, but then so was the mysterious bald guy from Fringe in the more recent Broadway production, although I preferred him in The Who's Tommy which was one of the most "fun" shows I've ever seen and... My, I should probably end this sentence.

TRAILERAMA

• The Friday the 13th reboot hopes to chi chi chi hah hah hah the extraordinarily overextended series back into cultural relevancy and quick-buck profitability.

• Thanks to the mischievous ways of a magical janitor, Matthew Perry gets turned into the seemingly ubiquitous Zac Efron and goes back to high school in 17 Again.  Wait - is that Efron or Josh Hartnett?  Only his hairstylist knows for sure.

• Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.  I was all prepared to hate on this trailer, but then they had to go and put a lot of Bill Nighy in the thing, and, well, we loves us some Bill Nighy.  So the awful werewolf lycan effects gets a pass for now.

• They Came From Upstairs.  "From the studio that brought you Alvin and the Chipmunks."

• The life and death of the Notorious B.I.G. gets the big screen treatment in Notorious.  The movie is bound to make money, but it's too bad every single line in this trailer is such a biopic cliché that the whole thing feels like a hip-hop version of Walk Hard but without that movie's self-awareness.

• There's a certain audience that will forgive a film all its flaws if the lead actor can leap about creatively.  It's this audience that adored Tony Jaa's Ong Bak, which was not a very good film but did feature Jaa leaping about creatively and without much by way of safety equipment. So along comes Ong Bak 2, which sees Jaa taking over the directing reins and having a nervous breakdown in the process. The backstory and trailer are here. It's a bit of a standard "Warlord killed my village, I will train and get revenge" story, but hey - Jaa runs on the backs of a herd of elephants. So there.

• Oh my bloody, oh my bloody, oh my Bloody Valentine 3-D ....

• The trailer for Last Chance Harvey makes the cardinal mistake of seemingly showing us most everything of importance that happens in the film, save whether Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson stay together in the end.  But my mom will see it anyway.

ODDS AND ENDS

• "Cillian Murphy, Jim Broadbent and Brendan Gleeson have all boarded helmer Ian Fitzgibbons’ sophomore feature Perrier’s Bounty.”  Jolly good, what what. (Variety)

• While McG (Charlie's Angels) tells us practically nothing in his latest blog update about Terminator Salvation (the lead actors "seem pleased" with an early cut - yikes), news has come down about what may be his next project.  Dead Spy Running is not a re-badged Bourne Identity but rather a yet-to-be-published novel about a young spy which Warner Brothers has bought for McG to direct.  Hmm.  So maybe it *is* a re-badged Bourne Identity. (Variety)

• Zac Efron to star in a remake of Footloose. Unless they set the thing among some religious separatist group I am officially too old for this s***.

• Changeling may be getting all the negative press at the moment, but Clint Eastwood has yet another film coming soon For Your Consideration.  Check out the poster for Gran Torino here.

• John Singleton's take on Shaft was fun enough (any movie that gives Jeffrey Wright room to shine is OK by me) but alas, the troubled-yet-talented director will no longer be bringing his remake skills to the feature version of 80's TV classic The A-Team. (Variety)

• Tim Burton's take on Alice in Wonderland just got a little bit more interesting.

• Speaking of Burton, his abandoned Ripley's Believe it or Not! project has been picked up by Chris Columbus, director of the first two Harry Potter films, writer of Gremlins, etc. Columbus is a talented writer with an eye for casting, but his films are, more often than not, amazingly bland. Jim Carrey's involvement will hopefully perk things up a bit. (Latino Review)