The Hollywood Reporter is reporting on Hollywood. So all is right with the world. And today, the HR site reports on Martin Scorsese, who appears to have a crowded calendar for ’08.

Alas, while I’ve been eagerly awaiting updates on Scorsese’s adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s Silence, it appears that another project has developed that will be filmed and released first:

“Shutter Island”… is an adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel that follows two U.S. marshals who are sent to a federal institution for the criminally insane located in Boston’s Outer Harbor to capture a violent female escapee. DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Michelle Williams are on board to star in the production, which is due to go before cameras in March.

The Browser: News and links to lift your eyebrows and furrow your forehead

• 

Three for the “Can’t Wait” Category

Variety on:

• The new Jim Jarmusch film with Bill Murray! Exciting!
• The new live-action Akira film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brick‘s Joseph Gordon Levitt! Intriguing!¬†
• David Fincher‘s Black Hole! Disturbing!

• 

Whitman on this election year’s Dobson¬†factor

Some writers make me nod off. Andy Whitman makes me nod on, and on, and on. 

•

A Lively List

VJ Morton has one of the most interesting¬†Best of 2007 lists I’ve¬†seen, and a thoughtful trip through the¬†acting categories too. Bonus! Actual scenes from great films!¬†

•

Corbijn’s Control

Better late than never, although in this case VERY late: I’ve just discovered that my friend Michael Leary saw and reviewed Anton Corbijn’s Control, the new film about the life of Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis, last November!. I’m jealous. I really want to see this film. And Leary’s an insightful moviegoer, so it’s exciting to read his enthusiastic review.

•

Over the Rhine on tour.

Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist are keeping that Trumpet Child busy on tour, heading out for another round with Ani Difranco! If they’re coming to your neighborhood, don’t miss it.

•

Falling for¬†Flannery… Again!¬†

And last but certainly not least… in fact, perhaps this should have been first… Flannery O’Connor, via her blog:

What the fiction writer will discover, if he discovers anything at all, is that he himself cannot move or mold reality in the interests of abstract truth. The writer learns, perhaps more quickly than the reader, to be humble in the face of what-is. What-is is all he has to do with; the concrete is his medium; and he will realize eventually that fiction can transcend its limitations only by staying within them. Henry James said that the morality of a piece of fiction depended on the amount of ‘felt life’ that was in it. The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for. But this should enlarge not narrow his field of vision.

Oscar Isaac returns in Mists of Time – Alejandro Amenabar’s new film

Following up on previous post “From Psycho-Monk to Rebel Angel“, here’s an alert from Peter Chattaway about another film sure to stir up controversy in Christian media:¬† Mists of Time. This one co-stars Oscar Isaac, who was the best reason to see The Nativity Story.

•

Huh? Philip K. Dick wrote a book for kids?

Thanks to The Swivet for alerting me to the existence of an out-of-print YA novel by Philip K. Dick!

•

George R. R. Martin on… the Superbowl?

I also have The Swivet to thank for alerting me to this post about the Super Bowl. It’s written by one of my wife’s favorite authors… George R. R. Martin.

•

Star Wars Action Figures that Look Like Celebrities

Star Wars fans everywhere are getting excited about this Star Wars news. But I’m more interested in something else: Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?

(Caution: The linked post tests positive for f-bombs.)

Wednesday specials 1.0:

Writer’s Strike (Over!)¬†

Does this mean I might actually enjoy some upcoming episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles?

•

From Psycho-Monk to Rebel Angel: Paul Bettany to play Archangel Michael.

Feel like Hollywood’s been slacking off in providing ludicrous misrepresentations of the Almighty? Never fear! Here comes Legion!

Story follows what happens when God loses faith in humanity and sends his legion of angels to wipe out the human race for the second time. Mankind’s only hope lies in a group of misfits holed up in a diner in the desert who are aided by the archangel Michael (Bettany).

• 

Peter Gabriel might be the composer for Wall·E?!!

Awesome. (But one wonders, after Phil Collins’ soundtrack for Disney’s Tarzan, which member of Genesis will Disney pursue next?)

Just spotted another must-see title for my 2008 moviegoing calendar. 

Mike Leigh‘s Secrets and Lies remains one of my all-time favorite films. Naked, while it is unrelentingly dark and disturbing,¬†contains my favorite big screen performance by an actor (David Thewlis, although Daniel Day-Lewis may give him a run for his money, the more I think about There Will Be Blood.) Topsy-Turvy was a hoot, and a high point in Jim Broadbent’s colorful career. And Vera Drake was sorely mistreated by Christian moviegoers who either misunderstood it as an abortion propaganda piece, or who didn’t see the movie at all and still condemned it as an abortion propaganda piece.

His latest, Happy-Go-Lucky, was just picked up by Miramax, and it sounds like quite a departure. It made its big screen debut today at Berlinale. Here’s a description from a new profile of the director.¬† (more…)

MTV News has the scoop on the upcoming film from the director of The Bourne Identity.

(Thanks, Chattaway.)

It’s common knowledge that the Coen Brothers’ next feature is Burn After Reading, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Frances Macdormand. The synopsis from IMDB: “A disk containing the memoirs of a CIA agent ends up in the hands of two unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to sell it.”

And then comes Hail Caesar, about a 1920′s theater troupe staging a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. That stars Tim Blake Nelson.

But what’s this breaking news? The Coens will then jump into another adaptation of a celebrated novel! They’re going to direct… (more…)

Looks like creative differences have¬†buried to¬†the big-screen version of Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord… at least with Good News Holdings.

I have a hunch that it’ll rise again.

Despite widespread speculation that Live Free or Die Hard would be a total disaster, Steven D. Greydanus assures us otherwise:

Despite its drawbacks, Live Free¬†is possibly the freshest and most enjoyable of McClane’s outings since the original. The cyber-terrorism angle, though filtered through a Hollywood lens, is sufficiently grounded in reality to be genuinely unnerving, and there’s real adrenaline-pumping excitement, not just expert production values, in much of the action.

For almost twenty years, the original Die Hard has been the standard by which modern action films are measured. Live Free or Die Hard doesn’t rival its predecessor, but it honors the tradition.