Yup, with Cannes going on and the early-early summer movie season happening, things are hopping.
* Nikkie Finke broke the news this morning of the latest chapter in the never-ending tale of the battle over the rights to the character of “Superman.” It seems DC is countersuing lawyer Marc Toberoff on the grounds of conflict of interest. Sure does sound like “hardball” but that’s what happens when millions of dollars are at stake.
* It never ends. It just never, ever ends. A new alleged victim has come forward claiming that Roman Polanski raped her during the eighties when she was sixteen. (The terms used in the article are “sexually abused” in “the worst possible way” — I have no clue how that could not be rape, at the very least, if true). The woman is being represented by, naturally, Gloria Allred.
At this time, there’s no corroborating evidence beyond the charges. If there is, I think it’s curtains for Polanski and he’ll find himself suddenly and justifiably all-but friendless in Hollywood. It’s one thing to have one extremely nasty episode in your past, it’s quite another to be a serial sexual predator.
* Here’s a bit of news from the French Riviera. Julie Taymor is, heaven help us all, making another movie musical. Now, I know the highly esteemed David Medsker dug “Across the Universe” but I can be silent no longer! I hated, hated, hated it!! Quite a bit. Oh, and she’s adapting 1929 German Nobel laureate Thomas Mann’s adaptation of an Indian legend, Transposed Heads. It’s all starting to sound a bit like a live-action version of the highly acclaimed animation, “Sita Sings the Blues,” which I personally also found just kind of irritating. Still, she’s got other stuff on her plate, like her cross-gender movie of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” which I’m actually looking forward to, and, yes, “Spiderman” on Broadway.
* Director Walter Hill (“The Long Riders,” “Deadwood”) is heading back to the big screen, and he’s got quite a good cast.
*The Heat Vision blog has two interesting writing hires: brilliantly downbeat but often hilarious screenwriter/fantasist Charlie Kaufman (“Synecdoche, New York,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) is doing a script polish on the “Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom.” Also, 83 year-old super veteran writer Alvin Sargent (“Paper Moon,” “Ordinary People” among many others) is resuming his long-term relationship with Spiderman on the upcoming Marc Webb reboot.
* Paul Dano and Keith Carradine are joining the cast of the Jon Favreau-directed “Cowboys and Aliens.” They’re both great choices because they’d both be believable as either cowboys or ETs. I mean that as a compliment. (Okay, Dano’s a bit more alien-ish than Carradine.)
* The Cannes reaction is coming in to “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” It’s fairly mixed but since the original “Wall Street” was one of my least favorite Oliver Stone movies despite Michael Douglas‘s legendary performance in it, I might just like this one better.
* I guess David Gordon Green’s deal with writer Josh Parkinson really does seem to further indicate the end of his career as a low-budget Terrence Malick.
* Another Deadline Cannes item…So, the idea for “Looper” is that when Joseph Gordon-Levitt hits his fifties, he’ll look like Bruce Willis? I’m no expert on these matters, but I must be missing something.
* As a scaredy-cat gorephobe, I’ve only managed to make it through “Suspiria” so far (and I’m not sure how I did it), but I do admire Italian horror-master Dario Argento enough that when I heard he’s making a 3-D, and supposedly faithful to the novel, version of “Dracula” my first thought was “cool!” Whatever else is true of his work — and it’s been a long time since a new film by him has received much acclaim — he’s definitely got style. His actress-director daughter, Asia Argento, is also back in action after some unpleasantness over her last feature.
* Sometimes real life is just like the movies. Kind of.
* It looks like the Wachowski siblings are returning to the gay-thriller category that first put them on the map with “Bound.” But this time, it’s set in Iraq and involves a male same-sex romance. We all know there’s a huge, huge, huge double standard when it comes to male as opposed to female same-sex love on the big screen, even after “Brokeback Mountain,” so this should be an interesting test.
* The Auteurs is now Mubi. A cinephile movie/social networking site by any other name is just as great, I suppose. Anne Thompson has the details
