The Thorn in the Heart - Michel Gondry's new documentary has been picked up by the Beastie Boys' Oscilloscope Laboratories

Oscilloscope Laboratories announced today that it has acquired North American distribution rights to Michel Gondry's documentary, The Thorn in the Heart ("L'Epine dans le Coeur"), a personal look at the life of Gondry family matriarch, his aunt Suzette Gondry, and her relationship with her son, Jean-Yves. The Thorn in the Heart had its world premiere screening in the official selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Oscilloscope will open the film in theaters, with a DVD and digital release to follow.

Michel examines Suzette's years as a school teacher and her life in rural France. During the course of filming the documentary, Michel unearths new family stories and uses his camera to explore them in a subtle and sensitive way. The film was produced and financed by Partizan Films.

Michel: "So I called up my best friend Etienne and told him, 'Guess who's distributing my documentary about my aunt?' and he said, 'who?' and I said, 'MCA from Beastie Boys' and Etienne said, 'The Beastie Boy bought your Aunt's documentary?! Get the f*** out of here!' and I said, 'Yeah!!!'"

Adam Yauch, head of Oscilloscope Laboratories said, "Michel is one of the most innovative and creative people in the world. So it's great to see him making a sincere doc on a subject that is so close to his heart."

Source: Movieweb
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Kung Fu Joe - A hint of Beastie Boys Sabotage, a bit of kung fu, stir and there you have it

Kung Fu Joe, martial artist and private detective, encounters a group of bizarre characters harassing a local shopkeeper. Led by a monstrous Hunchback, these evil-doers are intent on strong arming the shop owner into selling their doughnuts. In a battle of strength and skill, Joe makes short work of the group who flee the scene.

Joe’s actions draw the attention of the Police Detective, an old nemesis, who is looking for clues about these odd characters and their nefarious purposes. A self-confident loner, Joe refuses to help. He is later visited in a dream by the Kung Fu Master, who warns him that danger is imminent and he must join forces with others to stop this evil threat.

The investigation into these peculiar men begins as Joe and the Detective hit the streets. They are led to a bakery that produces the doughnuts that are being pushed on the local populace. Joe and the Detective draw a confession from the baker that the hunchback forces him to include the unknown ingredient “Soylent Green” in the doughnuts.

Our hero receives another visit from the mysterious Femme Fatale, who is also interested in the source of Soylent Green. She wants to be kept in the loop on his investigation and pays him handsomely to keep her informed -- but Joe smells trouble.

Joe and the Detective find the source of Soylent Green at a factory outside of town, a factory thought to be abandoned long ago. Joe investigates alone, to the chagrin of the Detective, and discovers that a Mad Scientist is responsible for producing the mind control drug. Joe is captured by the henchmen and subdued by the Mad Scientist’s superhuman villain, French Man.

At the same time, the Detective succumbs to his need for doughnuts and, in the process, consumes Soylent Green. His weakness is exploited and he is brought under the control of the Mad Scientist. All seems lost for the forces of good when Kung Fu Joe is robbed for his Kung Fu strength when his head is shaved by the henchmen and he is dumped in the street.

A vision of the Kung Fu Master appears, urging a greatly weakened Joe to seek out the Pirate Master, Captain Morgan. Under his tutelage, Joe learns the secret ways of Pirate Style Kung Fu and readies himself to take on the Mad Scientist and his minions.

In an epic battle, Kung Fu Joe breaks into the Mad Scientist’s lair and frees the Detective from the effects of Soylent Green. The two fight side by side against the henchmen and defeat them. In a prolonged battle, Joe uses his newfound skills to best French Man, destroy his baguettes and bring the fight to the Mad Scientist. The Mad Scientist is captured, and Joe exposes the treacherous Femme Fatale, sending her over to the Detective.

Check out the official site.

Kung Fu Joe trailer

Source: Quiet Earth

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Beverley Hills Cop 2009 Script Review

Latino Review have got the script for the next Beverley Hills Cop movie (4 or IV or 2009) and, as expected it doesn't sound too good. Written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, to be directed by Brett Ratner. Eddie Murphy apparantly doesn't like it too much. Here is the review. Let me know what you think? Should this be made into the next Beverley Hills Cop movie or should they actually write something decent? Judge Reinhold must be gutted that his chance for a big comeback has gone splat!

It's been 15 years since Axel Foley was last in Beverly Hills, and screenwriters Michael Brandt and Derek Haas needed a good reason to bring him back. That reason comes just a couple of pages into the latest script for Beverly Hills Cop IV (which calls itself Beverly Hills Cop 2009) - Judge Reinhold's Billy Rosewood takes a leap out the 20th story of the Los Angeles Police HQ. When Axel hears that his former partner and best buddy became sidewalk salad he knows it wasn't a suicide and he flies to Beverly Hills to get all the facts for himself.

I thought that Beverly Hills Cop 2009 would be a Bad Boys II style movie with all endless car chases and explosions. Brandt and Haas keep it all old school for the most part though, with a small shoot out and chase in the opening and then no more action for like 50 pages until Axel gets into a small fistfight with some East LA gangbangers. Unfortunately, a lot of the shit in the middle is way boring. The whole problem with another Beverly Hills Cop movie is that the basic idea that Axel Foley is this rough and tumble Detroit cop who is a fish out water in upscale Beverly Hills is played out. He's done a lot of time in Beverly Hills. In this movie they mention that they teach his cases at the police academy and that a restaurant had an Axel Foley sandwich on the menu! (It's been renamed the Timbaland) Axel Foley knows his way around LA better than his new partner on the case who was born there.

That new partner is Goodwin, a fat rookie with low self-esteem who has a crush on a lady cop in the facial recognition department. When he's not solving the mystery of who tossed Billy out the window, Axel is playing matchmaker with these two. He's also teaching Goodwin how to be a better cop. It's like the Axel Foley Finishing School.

Along with Goodwin, Axel teams up with a limo driver named Elliot, who is the wise cracking comic relief. You wouldn't think you would need comic relief in an Eddie Murphy movie, but Axel Foley has no funny lines. I don't know if Brandt and Haas wrote the character unfunny to give Eddie room to ad lib or if they just think having him drop f-bombs every third line is the height of laughs, but Axel Foley is pretty much a Terminator in this movie. He just keeps moving forward no matter what like a shark in the water trying to find out who killed Billy.

It turns out that Billy was learning about a group of corrupt LAPD officers who were involved with gun running with a Beverly Hills rich kid who has ties to the military. The mystery isn't that big a deal, and Axel mostly gets from place to place by half-assedly conning people. He makes up a fake story about who he is and then doesn't follow through on it. It's like Brandt and Haas saw the first BHC and just didn't have the energy to write anything that matched up to it.

The really weird thing is that Axel Foley just isn't a character in this movie. In the opening he's followed a suspect into Canada and is illegally extraditing him, and from there he never takes a breather to be anything but a supercop. It's almost like the writers took an Arnold Schwarzenneger script they had lying around and changed the details to make it a Beverly Hills Cop movie. There's no fun in it.

The basic story of Beverly Hills Cop 2009 isn't terrible. It's a pretty standard police corruption story that has a personal edge for Axel Foley, and Brandt and Haas make it feel like an 80s action film by keeping the action more grounded, even though the final fight does include RPGs. But there's no fun in the movie and it feels like it needs another draft to make the film an Axel Foley adventure and not a generic cop getting revenge picture.

Below is a mashup of the Axel Foley them with the Beastie Boys

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