The Screengrab : frank darabont

Morning Deal Report: Jamie Foxx is a Law Abiding Citizen

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Frank Darabont is back and Stephen King is nowhere to be found. Darabont will direct Law Abiding Citizen, set to star Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. “Written by Kurt Wimmer and Darabont, the script follows a successful assistant D.A. (Butler) who finds himself at the center of a vigilante plot hatched by a traumatized victim of the legal system (Foxx). Foxx's character is devastated to learn that, because of a plea bargain, one of his wife and daughter's murderers will be set free. So he unleashes revenge on the killers and those who made the deal,” says The Hollywood Reporter. Hey guys, Charles Bronson just called. He wants his big-ass gun back.

Julie Taymor is collaborating with her first screenwriter, William Shakespeare, again. The Titus director will bring a gender-bending version of The Tempest to the screen. Helen Mirren will play “Prospera,” and the cast also includes Russell Brand as the jester Trinculo, Djimon Hounsou as deformed slave Caliban, and Alfred Molina as the drunken butler Stephano. I kind of wish I was watching this right now.

It seems like only yesterday I was telling you about George Romero’s plans for a new zombie movie. (Actually it was three days ago, but who’s counting?) Now one of Romero’s lesser known early works is getting the remake treatment. Breck “son of Michael” Eisner will direct The Crazies, which “revolves around people in a small Kansas town who are beset by a virus that causes insanity and death after a mysterious toxin contaminates the local water supply,” per Variety. A quick check of Eisner’s IMDb page reveals he also has reboots of The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Flash Gordon in the works. I can’t stop him.

Related:
Raiders of the Leaked Frank Darabont Screenplay
Take Five: Romero Alive!

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: June 14-20, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

It’s time to hit the ol’ fishin’ hole (wink-wink), but before we go, let’s bask in the glory that was the week in Screengrab.

We’ve outdone ourselves with this week’s Top Ten list. To be specific, we’ve outdone ourselves by ten with the Gay Pride Top Twenty.

We may go back to Summer School, but First Sunday will be our last.

Don’t mess with the Norton. He’ll Hulk you! He’ll Hulk the shit out of you!

So was that Shyamalan guy ever any good? A look back at The Sixth Sense.

Stan Winston and Cyd Charisse are still dead.

We’re about ready to let Roman Polanski back in the country, how about you?

If you’re offended by the South Park soundtrack, we suggest you blame Canada.

Hey, Mike Myers! People sure don’t like your new movie much – aside from Deepak Chopra, of course. Perhaps you should have read Take Five: Gotta Get a Guru first.

We didn’t read the alleged Frank Darabont draft of Indiana Jones, but we posted about it anyway.

And finally, those two words that strike fear into the hearts of all right-thinking Americans: It’s Pat.

Raiders of the Leaked Frank Darabont Screenplay

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Somewhere in the crush of publicity for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you might have heard that an early version of Indy 4 was scripted by that master of the Stephen King prison movie, Frank Darabont. Among the people who spoke highly of the Darabont script was…Frank Darabont, who made it clear while doing publicity for The Mist over a year ago that he wouldn’t be sending George Lucas any congratulatory bouquets. “I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn't like the script,” Darabont told MTV. “I told him he was crazy. I said, ‘You have a fantastic script. I think you're insane, George.’ You can say things like that to George, and he doesn't even blink. He's one of the most stubborn men I know.” When asked if he’d like to share his version of Indy with the world, Darabont replied, “I would love it, but it's not my material to disseminate.”

Apparently, someone disseminated it, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Last week a PDF document purporting to be Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods by Frank Darabont surfaced online. Lawyers torpedoed it before we could get our hands on it, and although it’s probably still easy enough to track down, we’re slow readers anyway. So we thought we’d take a spin around the Indysphere and see if there’s any consensus about this alleged artifact.

The first thing that’s apparent: No LaBeouf. That’s right, the character of “Mutt” is entirely absent from City of the Gods. Again, per MTV: “No Mutt Williams; no Mac; a tougher, more Raiders-esque Marion; and a climax that not only gives Indy something to do (how in the world did David Koepp think to give Indy nothing?) but forces him to make a decision that rivals the end of Crusade (the cup or a father's love?), crystallizing the character and his history into one momentous singularity.” And here we thought One Momentous Singularity was the new James Bond movie.

According to the Feed, “the script is largely the same, storywise, focusing on the discovery of the crystal skull, as well as the lost city in Peru where the Gods were thought to live, only to discover that these "gods" were aliens with a culture advanced thousands of years beyond our own. Also, Marion Ravenwood is in the script…and, to my surprise, the ‘nuking the fridge’ sequence and the giant ants are there, as well. However, also in this script are Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. and Sallah, making awesome cameo appearances that really help cement the whole history of Indiana Jones, and tie the whole saga together.”

Of course, Darabont was not the only big name scribe to take a whack at Indy. Again we turn to MTV, where M. Night Shyamalan was queried about his involvement in shaping the story of the fourth installment. “I was just gathering information at that point from all the deities,” Shyamalan said, referring to Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, [Frank] Marshall, and George Lucas. “I haven’t seen the new one yet. I can’t wait… I understand there are a few things we all talked about that are there.” I’m going to be generous and assume Night came up with the quicksand.

Related:
Screengrab Rant: Indiana Jones in 2008
Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Hollywood Accountants

Let's Twist Again

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:30:00 GMT

At this most retrospective time of the year, let us look back at the thrillers of 2007 and the mind-bending twists that made them so thrilling. By “mind-bending,” of course, I mean ludicrous or predictable or – ever so rarely – actually clever enough to make the attached movie almost worth sitting through. Which twists missed, which got us pissed, and which made the list with The Mist?

It goes without saying that there are spoilers galore after the jump, so tread lightly…

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME

The Plot: Student Aubrey Fleming (Lindsay Lohan) is abducted by a Saw-like fiend who dismembers her and leaves her for dead. When she awakes in the hospital, she insists she is actually a stripper named Dakota Moss.

The Twist: Aubrey Fleming and Dakota Moss are twins, separated at birth!

Verdict: Lohan may have pulled off the twin routine in The Parent Trap, but in her current state it’s asking a bit much for her to pull off one character, let alone two.

THE REAPING

The Plot: Hilary Swank is a former missionary who has lost her faith and now travels the country debunking miracles. She has her hands full when a series of biblical plagues descends on a small Southern town and the townspeople blame a young girl they believe to be possessed by a demon.

The Twist: The young girl is not possessed by a demon. Swank has been impregnated by the local cult leader, and she is carrying the devil spawn.

Verdict: This twist manages to turn a perfectly awful Exorcist knockoff into a genuinely terrible Rosemary’s Baby rip-off in the blink of an eye. No small feat!

THE NUMBER 23

The Plot: Dog catcher Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) finds intriguing parallels to his own life in a strange book written by the mysterious Topsy Kretts. The book, The Number 23, concerns a detective who murders his lover.

The Twist: Sparrow wrote the book himself as a confession to the murder of his college girlfriend. Topsy Kretts = Top Secrets!

Verdict: It takes director Joel Schumacher nearly fifteen minutes to explain the twist, which should have been his first clue that it wasn’t a very good one.

PREMONITION

The Plot: The morning after her husband Jim is killed in a car accident, Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock) wakes up to find he is still alive. The next day, Jim is dead again, and Linda realizes she is living the week of his death out of order.

The Twist: Linda figures this out in time to prevent the car crash that would have killed Jim. But he is killed almost immediately anyway when a fuel truck skids out of control and slams into him.

Verdict: No explanation is ever given for Linda’s scrambled chronology, and she doesn’t even seem all that curious about it – so why should we?

THE MIST

The Plot: The residents of a small Maine town are trapped in a supermarket when a mist full of fearsome critters rolls in. Bloodshed and insanity ensue before David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and a handful of survivors attempt their escape by car.

The Twist: The survivors run out of gas in the mist. Convinced there is no escaping a lingering, painful death via critter, Drayton mercy kills the others, including his own son. Minutes later, the mist clears as the military arrives to wipe out the critters.

Verdict: So mean, sadistic, and cruelly satisfying, even Stephen King didn’t come up with it – it was Frank Darabont’s idea, and who knew he had it in him?