The Screengrab : bond 22

Morning Deal Report: Whither The Dark Knight?

Peter Smith — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:45:00 GMT

Heath Ledger's death this week, as many speculated, has left several upcoming films up in the air. Production on The Dark Knight is finished, with all of Ledger's post-production done, but the film's ad campaign centered on him. Meanwhile, production on The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, the next film by Terry "Can't Get A Break" Gilliam, is on hold while the insurers figure out what to do. (Please, someone figure out how to make this movie. Tom Waits plays the devil.) And Ledger's directing debut, The Queen's Gambit (about a young female chess prodigy, possibly to have been played by Ellen Page) is needless to say on hold.

We can finally stop saying "Bond 22," for the second Daniel Craig Bond movie finally has a title. And it's. . . Quantum of Solace? Pardon?

Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Wilkinson join Clive Owen and Julia Roberts in Duplicity, Bourne screenwriter Tony Gilroy's directorial follow-up to Michael Clayton.

Morning Deal Report: No Dogs or Chinese Allowed

Peter Smith — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:45:00 GMT

21, the adaptation of the non-fiction bestseller Bringing Down the House, will open SXSW this year. Allow me to editorialize for a minute on this subject. Bringing Down the House is the story of a group of MIT students — mostly Asian-American MIT students — who counted cards in blackjack to win big in Las Vegas. 21 is the story of a group of white, Caucasian, Rockwellian, turnipy-colored, white-ass white people. (And their one Asian friend, Aaron Yoo, as "Choi.") I guess there weren't enough Asian-American actors who needed interesting roles. Clearly, more Asians = less money for Columbia Pictures; it's not like they'd put money on the line for what I'm sure they consider a small detail. But it's outrageously disrespectful to the actual students, and to Asian-Americans in general, to hand over most of the roles to "audience-relatable" white actors, and relegate the one Asian-American actor to a supporting spot. Still, I suppose it could be worse; his part could always be played by Rob Schneider in yellow-face.

Mathieu Amalric, of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, will play the villain in the next Bond movie.

Less than a week after her assassination, Benazir Bhutto gets a biopic. The catch: the producers don't want to "create any controversy." (!)

007: Oscar Bait?

Peter Smith — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:00:00 GMT

The next James Bond film (which is being called Bond 22 until someone comes up with an even more meaningless title to stick on it) certainly doesn’t read like a James Bond film. In fact, it reads like a movie designed to make the Academy sit up and take notice: its director, Marc Forster, helmed two films (Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland) that won Oscars and just completed a third, The Kite Runner, that may receive similar acclaim. Its screenwriter, Paul Haggis, has been nominated for five Oscars, has won two, and is generating huge amounts of Academy Award talk for In the Valley of Elah. And no less a source than Max von Sydow claims that the role of perennial Bond nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld will be played by Mathieu Amalric, who’s currently wowing the critics in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. With Forster telling the New York Times that his vision of the character is dark and tormented, and pontificating that "the most interesting place for a James Bond movie to go is inward — deeper into Bond himself," will Bond 22 be the first 007 film to court critical respectability? Or is Forster just vaporing to defend the giant paycheck he’s going to get? — Leonard Pierce