Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

There was a time (1985's Back to the Future - 1994's Forrest Gump) when Robert Zemeckis was a respected director. Now he takes another step at desecrating the beloved Beatles love song to hallucinogens, Yellow Submarine. The Hollywood Reporter announced the voice cast lineup for the motion capture animated film today, with the closest thing to excitement for me being the Dread Pirate Roberts himself, Cary Elwes, will take on the role of George Harrison. Joining Elwes is Peter Serafinowicz, best known as Pete in Shaun of the Dead, the popular Beatles cover band The Fab Four will provide the singing voices and from the BBC's Robin Hood series, Dean Lennox Kelly, will portray John Lennon. The most negative part of this bit of casting, other than the entire premise of remaking the movie in the first place, is that Adam Campbell will be playing Ringo Starr, whose prior credits include Epic Movie and Date Movie.

I think I let it slide a while back when it was announced that James Vanderbilt, scribe of Zodiac and the upcoming The Losers, was signed on to pen the screenplays for Spider-Man 5 and 6, which after yesterday's announcement of the cancellation of Sam Raimi's franchise of the Marvel hero in favor of a reboot, it would all but confirm that Vanderbilt would be out of a job for writing the web-slinger to the big screen. Yet, /Film reports today that Vanderbilt has already written a script for the reboot, described as a "gritty, contemporary" styling. I hate to be the one to have to say this, as Spider-Man 3's detractors surely outnumber the ones who found it tolerable, but the complete cheesiness of the entire thing is more on par with Stan Lee's writing style than a "let's make a Dark Knight Spider-Man". Bottom line, Spider-Man 2 is as dark as the character goes and stays relevant. Batman and the characters inhabiting Alan Moore's world of Watchmen are gritty enough to warrant films of such tone, but that doesn't mean that every heroic tale of a man in costume has to make us feel uncomfortable.

For the second day in a role, bad news from Marvel's Spider-Man camp is followed with some decent news from DC's The Green Lantern. After Blake Lively was casted yesterday, THR reports that Peter Sarsgaard has joined Martin Campbell's comic-to-screen adaptation as the main villain, Dr. Hector Hammond. I just wish Hammond had a beard so that Sarsgaard could keep the child molester look.

I hadn't heard much of Atom Egoyan's latest film Chloe until the French trailer leaked today and made waves due to Amanda Seyfried's nudity. Away from the spectacle of the Momma Mia! star becoming Internet fap material for the youngsters, it's the first Egoyan film that looks good to me since The Sweet Hereafter. Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore sharing Seyfried's spotlight isn't too shabby either. Here's the trailer.