I was standing in line at the bank the other day, mindlessly tapping my foot to the music on the PA system, when I suddenly realized what I was listening to: Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime.”
Never mind the irony of David Byrne singing “Where is my large automobile?” at this particular moment in economic time - let’s talk about cognitive dissonance. (More…)
Dear Johnny Depp,
Has it really come to this?
An article in Tuesday’s Hollywood Reporter talked about the fact that, while you’ve got “Public Enemies” in theaters and Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” in the can (along with “The Rum Diaries” and “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus”), none of your other prospective projects was coming together.
Then it started listing them – and the first title on the list was a remake of “The Incredible Mr. Limpet,” a 1964 movie in which Don Knotts played a man who was transformed into a talking fish. (More…)
“The Hollywood Reporter says that DreamWorks is close to acquiring movie rights for View-Master, the vintage toy that offered simulated 3-D pictures through a pair of plastic binoculars.”
–New York Times, 7/7/09
TO: Stacey Snider, DreamWorks chairman
FROM: Bob in Development
Now that we’ve got “View-Master” on track, here are a few more ideas we’ve been batting around. We should be ready to announce these shortly:
“Slinky”: A boy discovers that his new toy, a springy coil of metal that mysteriously comes to life, is all he needs to become the greatest secret agent ever. (More…)
The movie year has reached the halfway mark – which, in terms of the Oscar and most critics’ year-end 10-best lists, means it hasn’t even started.
But I always find it instructive to use July 1 to ask this question: If the movie year were to end right now – like the baseball season of 1994 – what would be on my top-10 list?
Or, ignoring that hypothetical, another question: How many of the films on a top-10 list for the year’s first half will survive to make it to year-end lists? Or receive Oscar nominations – even in a year when the Academy has made the chuckleheaded decision to water down the best-picture category by expanding to 10 nominees?
So here’s my list – the best films of the first half of 2009:
(More…)
