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Our 'Omega Man' reported that last week, just before the American Thanksgiving holiday, the sun
finally set on Warner Brothers' I Am Legend project. To be directed by Ridley Scott,
from a script written by Mark Protosevich and with none other than The Arnold expressing
interest in hunting the undead for his next film, this sucker had summer blockbuster written
all over it. So, what happened? Word has it WB couldn't decide how best to execute the
script (our commentary on which can be found on the I Am
Legend page), Schwarzenegger wouldn't agree to a pay-or-play deal, and the figures on paper
were telling WB that the budget would be stratospheric.
Marching To Valhalla -- is this the real reason why Brad Pitt walked? Heard about this project that was supposed to star Brad 'Buns' Pitt in the role of General George Custer, but then Brad bailed for some unknown reason? One of the last survivors of Custer's Last Stand faxed us a note (modern technology, ya know) with his testimony as to why:"Marching To Valhalla which was supposed to star Brad Pitt in the role of George Custer and based on the book by 'Dances With Wolves' author/screenwriter Michael Blake hit the rocks recently when Pitt mysteriously dropped out of the project. There were rumored to be problems with the script. "John Milius, who had been offered the job of directing the film before Katherine Bigelow was signed for the task, declined saying that he was interested in doing a Custer movie but only if he could do the screenplay from the rival Custer novel 'A Road We Do Not Know' by F.J. Chiaventone. Milius recently occupied office space at Warner Bros. lot turning down a similar offer for space at 20th Century Fox. "Part of the reason for Pitt's desertion from the project may be his desire to play the role of Kris Kristofferson in a Janis Joplin bio-pic with Melissa Etheridge playing Joplin. Kristofferson has expressed his desire to play the role of Mountain man Jim Bridger in an undisclosed work by the author of 'A Road We Do Not Know'." So there you have it. Brad as Kris? Kris as Jim? Between you and me, this would be more interesting to see than The Brad playing a vengeful (and sucker for romance) Creator in the 'behind-the-scenes' movie spoof Vanity Fair pulled on us last summer. We still get scoops asking us what happened to "that God movie DreamWorks was supposed to come out..."
Like, ohmyGod! This is soooo deja vu, ya know?
Loved/hated Starship Troopers? Disney's animation your thing?
Then listen up...
First up is the very cool review of a very cool Miramax film. The picture received a limited release in New York City and L.A. last week, but our English friends across the water have had ample time to catch this picture. Good strong buzz is brewing about Michael Winterbottom's film (he directed Jude a little while back, and damn!, I haven't had time to draft a page for his new film...) Keep your eyes peeled for TV/magazine ads for this picture, because it's going to receive a wider release later this month. Here's the review of the film's final cut sent in by one of our anonymous scoopers: "I was lucky enough to see Welcome to Sarajevo at an early screening. It is based on the real-life struggle in Sarajevo and incorporates actual video footage of the war, but it is not a documentary. It's directed by Michael Winterbottom and its stars include Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson, and Marisa Tomei. There were many actors from Sarajevo as well. The movie focused on a group of press people from the U.S.and Britain. They are in danger of random violence themselves while they try to capture it on video--to show the rest of the world what is happening or to make good ratings? Surely it's a combination. Woody Harrelson's character in particular is accused of exploiting the trauma in Sarajevo for the sake of ratings. Another main part of the plot follows Stephen Dillane's character as he attempts to take a young girl from an orphanage home with him to London to raise with his family. Marisa Tomei, playing an aid worker, helps Dillane and the young girl with their journey out of Sarajevo. "While the plot is engaging and interesting, and the acting was top-notch, it is really the visual/aural element of this film that impacted me. In an early scene, through black & white pixel-y video footage, bombs are falling from the sky onto the desolate Sarajevan landscape while the Stone Roses' track "I Wanna Be Adored" echoes. The visual elements in this film are extremely evocative--I had such an awareness of the stark reality of the situation in Sarajevo and what I was feeling from it that I was not very concerned with the characters. And this wasn't a bad thing--Welcome to Sarajevo was less of a 'Hollywood Feature Film' to me than it was an 'Experimental Film'. The plot didn't take away from the film, but I think that the film would have been something even more intense and unique if it had focused less on the plot and more on its emotive visual qualities; its careful placemnent of 'real' footage with the 'new' footage was remarkable, as was the use of music, and several times I had to turn away from the brutal scenes of civilians being murdered for no reason which reminded me that violence is REAL and made me feel angry about movies like Scream and Pulp Fiction. Another feeling I got while watching the film was that I never again want to wear camoflage. Interestingly, I don't feel like I came away from the film with many more 'facts' about the war in Sarajevo (besides some statistics shown at the end of the film), but I really felt like I had gone through something very important. I felt and experienced rather than just learned. And you need no prior knowledge of the war in Sarajevo to understand and get something out of this film (I had very little). "If I had to compare Welcome to Sarajevo to something, it would be Spielberg's much-praised film based on the Holocaust, Schindler's List. I really liked Schindler's List, but I prefer Welcome to Sarajevo because, unlike Schindler's List, it escaped a staged, Hollywood feel altogether. I found Welcome to Sarajevo to be a powerful, moving, unique, and beautiful film and I strongly recommend it to anyone."
'Eirias' made a deal with...uh, we don't wanna know who. Warner Brothers held a test screening for the Denzel Washington horror/thriller, still on track to open for us regular Joes on January 16, '98. What did Eirias have to say? Good, very good things, making this the most detailed and most-pro review of the film received to date... "Every twist is unexpected, every twist reveals a stranger structure. This is the best script of the year, and I hope Warner's releases Fallen on a few screens, because it deserves a chance for an Oscar. The dialouge is articulate, clever, and yet always believable coming from these actors. Denzel Washington was born to play this role. It shows of his abilities and range better than anything since Glory. John Goodman also gets a meaty role. He starts out as mere comic relief, but the role develops in ways I won't reveal. The direction and cinematography (by Thomas Newton Howard, who shot The Usual Suspects) combine for a truly frightening experience. It makes you jump at nothing. The entire audience jumped a foot at a Coke can falling out of a vending machine. Alien is one of the only other films that achieved this level of terror. The script is peppered with biblical references, which at first seem heavy-handed, but gradually begin to be very effective, and forshadow the eventually explanation for the crimes, which explantation is provided by Embeth Davidz, hose come a long way since Army of Darkness. She participates in possibly the most exhilaratingly frightening scene ever shot, as the demon flings himself from host to host through a row of pedestrians, trying to catch up with her. The film makes effective use of sound, with disorientating noises that I associate with bayous and Australia, though I'm not sure why. Coming out of the theater, I passed people singing the song Azarel sing, the Stones, 'Time is on my Side', and they brushed my hand...creepy. I honestly can't imagine why Arnold Schwarzennegger was ever under consideration for this role." Finally, you've been regularly looking in at this page for the last week, you've seen me do some quick, 'mini-updates' about noteworthy scoops and/or information about movies. What I'm testing out is a place where I can get some ultra hot scoops or late-breaking information out to the readers (that'd be you.) That doesn't mean the information you read on here won't find it's way into the film's main CA pages because it will...but it also allows me the opportunity to break news on some projects or noteworthy items that don't really have a page to call their own yet. And as I said, it also may whet your appetite to checking that scoop's main film page to get more information about the project. Let me know your thoughts on it. Do you want to see something like this on CA??
Patrick Sauriol
...who'll be dancing the night away at his staff X-Mas party this coming weekend, and then wondering why everyone will suddenly stop talking when he arrives to work Monday morning. If there's no update by Tuesday, someone come bail me out.
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San Fran Chronicle reviews CA The Chronicle listed the site in their coverage of the top upcoming movie-related Web sites, and we're rather proud to say CA got high marks. The article can be accessed at the Chronicle web site located here.
What's New 10-5-97 'Sequel' genre selection on-line! Readers can now choose to browse CA's listing of sequels in the 'By Genre' section of the site. Finally, a new way to spend more of your time, right guys?
What's New 10-5-97 CA named top film gossip site by 'Computer Life'! The October 1997 issue of Computer Life runs down the leading Internet film gossip and entertainment sites, and we're on top of the heap. Don't get us wrong - we've got smiles as wide as the new Godzilla's behind - but we don't gossip. We rumormonger!
What's New 8-12-97 Sneaker Chat Room On-Line! We have a new chatroom feature that will allow readers to converse with CA readers while visiting the film pages! Look for some of the Corona gang to be online in the coming few weeks to get feedback directly from you!
Previous Issues of Director's Cut:
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