The Other Side of the Wind - Orson Welles unfinished film

The Other Side of the Wind was directed by Orson Welles and starring John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Dennis Hopper and Oja Kodar. The film features Huston as an aging Hollywood director modeled on Ernest Hemingway, who is trying to make a hip with it film in the early seventies that is laden with sex and violence to revive his flagging career.

By 1979, 40 minutes of the film had been edited by Welles, but then through various legal and money problems it all got put on hold. Then Welles died in 1985, yet he left notes as to how the film should be put together.

Over the years various release dates have been announced and postponed.

Most recently Bogdanovich commented that “It’s going to happen in the next month or so. We’re aiming for Cannes (in 2010). Everybody wants it to happen. It’s film history. It will be something for it to finally be seen after all these years.”

We shall have to wait and see.

Here is some footage from the film.

Will it be worth the wait? Are you a fan of Welles and in particular Citizen Kane?

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

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The Coen Brothers have True Grit

Joel and Ethan Coen plan to remake the iconic Western True Grit, which earned John Wayne an Oscar in 1969.

According to Variety, the Paramount remake will not be as faithful to the film as to the Charles Portis book that the film was based on.

Portis' novel is about a 14-year-old girl who, along with an aging U.S. marshal and another lawman, tracks her father's killer in hostile Indian territory.

But while the original film was a showcase for Wayne, the Coens' version will tell the tale from the girl's point of view

The film will be their first period film. The project reteams the brothers with Scott Rudin, their partner on the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men. The Coens wrote the screenplay.

The original starred Kim Darby as the teen, Wayne and Glen Campbell as the lawmen, Jeff Corey as the killer and featured Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper as fellow outlaws.

"True Grit" originated at DreamWorks when that company was Par-based, but it was one of the projects that Stacey Snider and Steven Spielberg left behind since the original is part of the Paramount film library. Former DreamWorks prexy Adam Goodman, now a Par exec, is steering the project for the studio.

The Western steps in front of another novel adaptation the Coens have with Rudin: "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," based on the Michael Chabon novel and set up at Columbia.

The Coens just completed "A Serious Man," which they scripted, for Focus Features and Working Title.

No production date has been set.

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Not Quite Hollywood - Documentary on Ozploitation flicks

The much mythologized Australian film renaissance of the 1970s has been well documented. It was an era that produced such seminal films as Sunday Too Far Away, Picnic At Hanging Rock and My Brilliant Career.

But do we know the whole story?

This film looks at a period when a lifetime of savage-censorship suddenly ended. Australian cinema broke the shackles of a staid, highly conservative society and started producing films dedicated to entertaining a mass audience.

An abundance of free-wheelin sex romps, blood-soaked terror tales and high-octane action extravaganzas were released and found enthusiastic audiences around the World.

It was a time when Australias cinematic heroes were possessed with white-line fever, their heroines were well-stacked and sexually liberated, and the death-defying stuntwork was indeed truly death-defying!

Welcome to NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD" - the wild, wonderful, untold story of OZPLOITATION cinema a time when Australian cinema got its gear off and showed the world a full-frontal explosion of sex, violence, horror and foot-to-the-floor, full bore action!

This is not your usual documentary full of boring anecdotes by dull historians, instead these are the real stories from the people who were there - wild, trail-blazing cinematic mavericks who snubbed their nose at authority, made their own rules and in the process introduced the car chase, karate kick, BMX bikes and water-bed to Oz cinema.

Jam packed full of outrageous anecdotes, lessons in guerrilla-style filmmaking, a smattering of International names (including Ozploitation devotee Quentin Tarantino, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dennis Hopper) and a genuine, infectious love of Australian cinema, NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD is a pacy, entertaining, journey through a forgotten cinematic era unashamedly packed full of boobs, pubes, tubes and a little kung fu.

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Will Keanu be back for The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down 3

"I saw this in a movie about a bus that had to speed around the city, keeping its speed over fifty, and if its speed dropped, the bus would explode! I think it was called "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down." - Homer Simpson.

AICN have a source who has confirmed that a script for Speed 3 is floating around Hollywood. Not only that, but the story features the return of Officer Jack Traven, the lead character played by Keanu Reeves in the original film. Speed 2: Cruise Control had Jason Patric as a different character for the lead, but both features Sandra Bullock.

The weird thing is that back in 2007, Dennis Hopper told The Guardian that he was set to reprise his role as Howard Payne in a third Speed film. This always seemed a bit odd as Payne died at the end of the first Speed film.

All still early days for this rumour and I think it is doubtful that Keanu will return to the franchise. He's riding high with The Day the Earth Stood Still and a Chef type movie with David Fincher in the works.

Would you like to see Keanu back in a new Speed movie? Let's hear your theories as to what would be speeding now and how they could bring Dennis Hopper's character back (maybe in a Saw style with videos he made back in the day - they could carefully edit footage of Hopper from many of his earlier films. That would be cool).

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Waterworld The Musical

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Classic Scene: True Romance - Walken & Hopper

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Waterworld - Longer than ever

Universal Home Entertainment will be releasing a new, extended DVD version of “Waterworld” November 4, 2008. The disk will come with both the theatrical release of the movie (which runs 136 minutes) and an extended version, which will run 177 minutes. As of right now, there is no other details about the disk ala extras, commentaries, etc.

It stars Kevin Costner, the little girl is the girl from Napolean Dynamite and Dennis Hopper is the bad guy. I really like the first part of the movie but then it all goes a bit pants. From what I remember it cost an absolute fortune to make and kind of destroyed much of the credibility Kevin Costner got from the whole Dances with Wolves.

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The Cool School - Poster

The Cool School is a documentary all about the art scene in Los Angeles in the '50s and '60s. It focuses on L.A.'s Ferus Gallery and the artists it helped cultivate.

Operating out of a small storefront, the gallery hosted debut exhibitions and served as a general launching point for Ed Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, Craig Kauffman, Wallace Berman, Ed Moses and Robert Irwin, among many other artists. By the time it closed in 1966, the gallery had also played a role in solidifying the careers of many of New York’s brightest talents, including Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Jeff Bridges narrates, and Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell provide some amusing commentary. It just came out on DVD.

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Hellride - Presented by Quentin Tarantino

Quentin is the executive producer on this one. Written and directed by Larry Bishop who also stars in it along with Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, Vinnie Jones, David Carradine and Eric Balfour amongst others. The Red Band trailer is below so make sure you're old enough to watch it.