Fantastic Four rebooted - What in the name of Aunt Petunia is going on here?

Back at the start of March I posted the news that the Fantastic Four could be heading back rebooted with a new set of unstable molecular clad heroes.

The reboot was among the many projects promoted at the Licensing International Expo 2009 event held in New York earlier this month.

It sounds as if 20th Century Fox are going The Dark Knight route as they are reportedly planning an "all-new cast" and a "far darker take" on the Fantastic Four in their proposed reboot of the franchise.

Jim Hill Media, which attended the convention, said the reboot will "feature an all-new cast as well as a far darker take on this classic Marvel comic."

The original starred Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis as adventurers transformed by cosmic radiation, and Julian McMahon as Doctor Doom. Unfortunately, the didn't do Marvel's first family much justice, although the Silver Surfer looked cool.

Now the Fantastic Four have had their share of adventures that have run the gamut of emotions. They cover all styles from Pulp to high Science-Fiction by way of family soap opera so there is plenty to choose from to make an excellent comic book film. I don't think going the darker path is the best way to go, although it would be nice to see Sue Storm in the Malice costume! Instead they should forget the origin story in the the reboot, or have it in the opening credits, and then show the FF as the celebrities they are. Then send them through adventures through time, space and the Baxter building.

It's a pity Marvel Studios don't have the rights as it would be excellent to see Reed Richards brainstorming with Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark. Imagine if they went with the alternate Fantastic Four of the Hulk, Wolverine, Ghost Rider and Spider-Man?

What do you want to see in a new Fantastic Four film? What storyline, characters and villains? Who should be cast in the roles and who should direct?

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The Killer Inside Me is saved

The Killer Inside Me, the latest collaboration between director Michael Winterbottom and producer Andrew Eaton, has been saved after securing new funding. The $13m project was close to collapse after it lost key financial support.

The film had to secure new funding by 3rd April or it faced losing actors Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba. It lost its funding from Barbarian Film and Ocean Media at the end of last year.

Producer Eaton confirmed the production is close to signing a deal with Canada-based private investor Hero Entertainment, which will provide about 20% of the budget. The rest of the finance is from pre-sales deals, which have been handled by Wild Bunch internationally, and Endeavor in the US. It was widely sold at AFM.

Eaton described the deal as a "relief" and added he had been through "one of the longest prep periods I have ever had". He said that he was hopeful that shooting could begin the next six to eight weeks. Chris Hanely, Robert Weinbach and Bradford Schlei are also producing the film.

The film had been due to start shooting in Oklahoma at the end of January.

The project is an adaption of Jim Thompson's novel. The synopsis of which is as follows:

Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small Texas town, patient and thoughtful. Some people think he's a little slow and boring but that's the worst they say about him. But then nobody knows about what Lou calls his 'sickness'. It nearly got him put away when he was younger, but his adopted brother took the rap for that. Now the sickness that has been lying dormant for a while is about to surface again - and the consequences are brutal and devastating.

Jim Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma. After an itinerant childhood during which his sheriff father was driven from office for embezzlement; and as a roughneck in the Texan oil fields of the 1920s, Thompson became successful as a writer with the pulp fiction houses of the 1950s, writing a dozen of his more enduring novels in just 19 months. He also wrote two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory).

Stanley Kubrick described the book as "Probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered."

Source: Screen Daily


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The Love Guru, 2009 - Review

Director: Marco Schnabel

Starring: Mike Myers, Justin Timberlake, Jessica Alba

Running Time: 87 minutes

Score: 3.5 / 10

This one from Keiichi73

Mike Myers can't seem to get enough of himself in The Love Guru. He's constantly giggling at his own jokes, and mugging for the camera as if he thinks his latest comedy creation is the funniest thing he's invented. I had a very different reaction. Pitka was born in America, and traveled to India to study under the cross-eyed Guru Tugginmypudah (Ben Kingsley), who taught his students lessons by having them hit each other with urine-soaked mops. Pitka devotes his life and his teachings to helping other people out with their relationship troubles, and hopes his words of wisdom will become so popular, he'll wind up on Oprah.

This is information we learn early on in the film (after Pitka serenades us with a Bollywood-style musical number of Dolly Parton's Nine to Five during the opening credits), and I pretty much knew right there that The Love Guru was going to be a very long 90 minutes. The movie makes a grave miscalculation with its lead character. Guru Pitka is not funny or likable. It's simply Myers talking in a funny accent, and coming up with as many alternate ways for saying "penis" as he can without losing the film's PG-13 rating. Pitka is not even a real character. Myers plays him more as an experiment, as if he's still testing the character out, and we the audience are the guinea pigs being subjected to the experiment. It's been widely reported that the reason why Myers hasn't done a live action film in five years is because he's been fine tuning his Guru Pitka at various comedy clubs until he felt he was ready. He was not ready, and he probably should have spent another five years if the end result is any indication.

Pitka is approached by Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), the owner of the struggling Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. Her star player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), hasn't been performing up to the best of his abilities ever since his wife, Prudence (Meagan Good), left him for the goalie on the rival team - a French player named Jacques "Le Coq" Grande (Justin Timberlake, embarrassing himself here) who is known for his over-sized "manhood" as much as he's known for his talent in the game. The character exists simply so that Myers and co-screenwriter Graham Gordy can have the characters say cock a lot more than humanly necessary. The Maple Leafs have a chance at winning the Stanley Cup, but not if Darren doesn't have his head in the game. The team's pint-sized coach (Verne Troyer) doubts that Pitka can turn the situation around, but the Guru is determined to help. He'll do this by finding a way to distract Darren from his problems (By forcing him to watch two elephants having sex, thereby taking his mind off of his problems with his wife. You figure it out.), and help him confront his over-bearing mother (Telma Hopkins), who has long cast a shadow over the star player.

The Love Guru is not a comedy, it is a cry of desperation on behalf of Myers and everyone involved. Comedy is funniest when it seems to come naturally out of the material, but everything seems so forced and strained here. It's almost like if they can't think of something funny to do, they'll throw in elephants humping each other, or light a midget on fire. And if that doesn't work, they'll throw in another couple references to male genitalia. If there's a bigger cry of comic desperation than limp innuendo humor, then it has to be out of the blue musical numbers that are not funny in themselves, the movie just expects us to laugh at the fact that the characters are suddenly singing for no reason. You know, I think I'm going to have to take that last statement back. There's an even more desperate form of comedy, and that would have to be building an entire scene around the fact that Guru Pitka has a different kind of food stuck in his beard each time we see him, building up to a sight gag where his entire beard is cotton candy. This movie has so many scenes of just plain wrong-headed desperation, you'd almost think it was intentional.

While Myers cackles and mugs his face with glee, pretending that he's having a great time, the rest of the cast kind of look like they wish they were somewhere else. Jessica Alba looks uncomfortable, and her scenes where she's supposed to be warming up to Pitka look more like she's hanging out with him out of pity more than anything else. It's not unusual in a comedy to have the supporting players stand in the background so the star can do his thing, but the cast here seem just as confused as I was as to what we were supposed to be watching Myers doing.

There is not a single laugh or moment of inspiration in The Love Guru. It's just a sad, depressing slog through material that's not funny to start with, taken by actors who seem to know it's not funny. It's bad enough when a comedy can't generate any laughs, but it gets even worse when you start feeling sorry for everyone up on the screen. You want to ask them and their agents what they were thinking when they signed up. You want to remind Myers of just how funny he can be, and why this material and character don't suit him. But most of all, you want to be able to somehow turn back time to before you gave the ticket counter your money, walk back out the door, and figure out another way to spend 90 minutes.

The Love Guru is released in the UK on 1st August

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