Where to begin…
* Could the ultimate case of movie development hell finally be unraveling? We’re told that Ewan McGregor will star in Terry Gilliam’s “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.”
* Lionsgate may be on the block with all kinds of possible ramifications for hardworking and often underpaid workers there. However, just in case you were worried, they’ve got $16 million set aside for five executive golden parachutes if Carl Icahn’s attempt is successful. Whew!
* Anne Thompson discusses the people who didn’t show up at Cannes. Somehow, she overlooked my absence.
* One of the people who isn’t showing up is living cinema legend/bad boy Jean-Luc Godard, who is citing the chaos in Greece as his reason. Yeah, I have only the vaguest possible idea what he means by that myself. Meanwhile, the Playlist’s Christopher Bell reviews a new documentary about the severed friendship between Godard and Francois Truffuat, who were respectively the Rolling Stones and the Beatles of midcentury French New Wave cinema and, alas, finds it lacking.
* Marina Zenovich, the woman whose documentary many credit/blame with restarting the Roman Polanski mess — and, yes, that’s the “evil profligate dwarf” himself next to Godard, Truffaut as well as Claude Lelouche and Louis Malle in the picture above — will next be doing the film version of Mark Harris’s widely acclaimed book, Pictures at a Revolution, which looks at the remarkable five best picture nominees from 1968.
* Speaking of Polanski, Oy vey, Woody. (Via FilmDrunk whose headline repeats the obvious, but still hilarious, joke here.)
* Armando Iannucci, co-writer and director of the outstanding comedy about tragedy, “In the Loop,” has a new film with a preposition and a noun in the title set up.
* Cameron Crowe, who was on an amazing run of movies like “Say Anything” and “Almost Famous” until suddenly, he wasn’t, is getting back on the horse with a fact-based tale that involves all kinds of animals, possibly including horses. It does sound like a heck of a story.
* Nikki Finke thinks James Robinson should pay up before showing his face at Cannes.
It’s late. I’m tired and I want my turkey burger and an Old Fashioned. More to come later.
The origins of “Legion” – a group of strangers fight off an unholy invasion – can be found in a dozen low-budget movies from “Assault on Precinct 13” to “Evil Dead,” and as source material goes, those are two damned fine titles to borrow, as it were. And “Legion” pays decent tribute in the process, serving up some enjoyable moments both humorous and dreadful (as in full of dread, not as in miserable). Paul Bettany is the archangel Michael, rebelling against God’s order to essentially launch the apocalypse by killing the unborn child of a truck stop waitress in the middle of nowhere. Instead, Michael leads the truck stop employees and their few patrons into fending off an army of angel-possessed (that’s right, angel-possessed) people who have suddenly swarmed on them. And what a group of employees and patrons this is. You’d expect Dennis Quaid and Charles S. Dutton to be here, but Kate Walsh’s appearance as an angry mom is a nice surprise. The dialogue is decent enough for what is clearly a B movie, but it’s a bit too slick for its own good. Movies of this ilk should have swagger and personality, not glossy production value. Still, Bettany handles the lead role with aplomb, taking the role seriously but not too seriously. Overall, it’s an acceptable entry into the supernatural horror genre, but if we’re lucky, this won’t pull a “Prophecy” and inspire a series of unnecessary sequels.
