The Hush-Hush News Report 9.07.10: Message Under a Microscope

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 09.07.2010

Kick-Ass 2 gets the greenlight, M. Night Shyamalan breaks the Unbreakable, Gemma Arterton's Alien encounter and more! Plus, a look at the message from Machete that has everyone up in arms!

It's Tuesday morning…that means it's time for another edition of the Hush-Hush News Report! Welcome loyal readers…I'm your host, Jeremy Thomas, bringing you the latest in movie news, rumors and such! September is usually a fairly dead time for movies and this month looks to be no different, but luckily there's no shortage of news and rumors. Otherwise, I'd have to make some up! (I'm kidding, though that would be fun. Hmmm, new ideas for news report…) Anyway, before I get too off on a tangent let's get into the news, eh?

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Miller and Vaughn Taking Kick-Ass To the Next Level



Having recently told MTV that production Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall was likely to be nine months away, Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar has now revealed that the sequel has in fact been greenlit. In an interview with BBC Radio Five Live, the comic-book writer explained:

"The estimate is [Kick-Ass] will do 100 to 150 million on DVD based on the American sales. So it'll end up making a quarter of a billion on a 28 million investment. So It should be okay. So the sequel's greenlit, we can go ahead and do the follow up now, you know. The first made so much compared to what it cost it would be crazy not to."

With the second volume of the comic series set to debut this week in Millar's CLiNT magazine, the movie is once again expected to follow its source material closely. Little is known about the plot for Balls to the Wall, other than it will centre on the influence of Kick-Ass and Red Mist on other would-be superheroes and supervillians.

"Dave is getting deeper and deeper into this very dangerous hobby that he has which is going out every night and getting into fights, dressed in a superhero costume and he's actually formed a superhero team."

Millar seems optimistic that the principle cast and crew will return for a sequel, although he voices legitimate concerns regarding the inevitable growth of Hit-Girl actress Chloe Grace Moretz. With Matthew Vaughn in the mist of making X-Men: First Class, the plan is apparently to dive into Kick-Ass 2 next year, immediately after that film's completion.

I know there are people who hated Kick-Ass, but as you can tell from my Blu-Ray Review I was not one of those people. Millar's explanation of the profit margin certainly makes it understandable that the studio would be willing to go forward with a sequel; personally, I'm hopeful but a little hesitant. Lions Gate could easily get shy about the content since that was what attracted a lot of the controversy and...well, without revealing too many details about the comic source of Kick-Ass 2, a certain objectionable word that got a lot of attention in the first film is used VERY often in part two. I expect that Millar and Vaughn would make something of real quality, I just worry about studio meddling. And of course if they can't get Hit Girl back, they shouldn't bother. That's a no brainer.


August, Carnahan Looking For A Preacher Job



It has been a while since we've gotten a solid update on the big screen adaptation of the beloved Vertigo comic book series Preacher. A couple years back, Columbia Pictures picked up the rights and hired American Beauty/Road to Perdition director Sam Mendes to helm the project, but the filmmaker dropped out to pursue Bond. John August (Go, Big Fish) penned the script which producer Neil Moretz has said will be the first of a series of films.

In the latest issue of Total Film Magazine, they talk with producer Moretz about the project, and give a couple tidbits. First off, the film adaptation will be rated R. Secondly, August's script is "a really faithful adaptation but made it probably more accessible to a broader audience." And thirdly, Total Film mentions that "Another unnamed director has apparently signed on." Screenwriter John August (who has directed a feature film called The Nines) has expressed an interest in directing the film himself, as he and Moritz were talking about the wish list of possible directors to replace Mendes. Moritz has said that it might be a possibility if none of those other guys say yes. A-Team director Joe Carnahan has said he would like a shot at Preacher.

Ahh, Preacher news. This film project is like the Duke Nukem Forever of comic book adaptations; you always hear about how it's in the works and then the project collapses. This thing has been set up at more production companies than you can imagine; Kevin Smith's View Askew had it at one point, HBO was going to turn it into a series, Mendes as the article stats was going to direct and none of it has ever panned out. I always thought that Preacher would work better as a series than a film, but that can be said of most comic books. August is someone I can get behind as a potential director; he did The Nines with Ryan Reynolds which was a surprisingly good mind-bender. I don't know about Carnahan though as he doesn't know what "over the top" even means and while that works for movies like A-Team and Smokin' Aces, it doesn't fit the tone of this comic book. I'm always looking forward to seeing this eventually make its way into theaters, but like The Sandman series (which I am not a fan of the idea to make it a network series), I would rather see it not made rather than be made poorly.


Shyamalan Breaks The Unbreakable



M. Night Shyamalan has revealed that the third film in his "Night Chronicles" horror anthology film series will cannibalize elements from the early script work he did for an "Unbreakable" sequel reports MTV News.

Out doing promotion for "Devil," Shyamalan says "I cannibalized the idea for the sequel to Unbreakable for one of the 'Night Chronicles'. It was such a cool idea for a villain, and it was actually originally in the script for Unbreakable, and it was too much. There were too many villains, so I pulled this villain out and was like, 'I'll make this the second flick.' I fleshed it out more and more, and thought, 'This could be a standalone movie!' I'll just say it: the third 'Night Chronicles' movie is what would have been the sequel to Unbreakable."

The project currently doesn't have a title. The first film in the series, "Devil," opens September 17th. The second, "Twelve Strangers," opens sometime next year.

You know, I have been very patient with M. Night Shyamalan. I know it's the cool thing to hate on him these days, but there's a very good reason for that, and the reason is that he peaked with his first or second movie depending on who you talk to. For me it was Unbreakable, his second film, and he's been on a steady decline since. Still, I've always been of the opinion that Shyamalan has more good movies in him; you don't come out with two films like Sixth Sense and Unbreakable and then be bankrupt. This news actually bothers me. I understand that we'll still be getting the story, but the point is audiences have wanted to see Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson reprise their roles as David and Elijah. The story was very good but Willis and Jackson made those roles come alive. I think this is a poor choice for Shyamalan and it's going to bite him in the ass, especially if the Night Chronicles get a bad reputation for quality. In fact, I would not be surprised to see this go back to being Unbreakable 2 if Devil and Twelve Strangers get raked over the coals and bomb.


Gemma Arterton To Have an Alien Encounter?



Gemma Arterton has revealed that she will meet with Ridley Scott about starring in his Alien prequels. The Tamara Drewe star told The Times that Scott requested a meeting after seeing her performance in J Blakeson's thriller The Disappearance Of Alice Creed.

Scott recently detailed his planned additions to the Alien franchise, saying that the two-film story will be "really tough, really nasty." Arterton also disclosed that she has upcoming roles in The Keys To The Street, a Ruth Rendell novel adapted by Inception director Christopher Nolan and a Richard E. Grant-helmed "cowboy film" In With The Outlaws.

I know a lot of people love Gemma Arterton, but I don't know if she's ready for something like this. She was decent in Prince of Persia but had nothing to offer in an admittedly wasted role for Clash of the Titans. The only other things I've seen her in are her small role in Quantum of Solace and a role in RocknRolla--both good films but not ones where she had to stretch her acting chops. I'm not saying that she can't do it, only that I haven't seen the ability to carry a movie out of her in the way that Sigourney Weaver did in the original series. On the other hand she's gotten good marks for Alice Creed and Tamara Drewe looks like it has potential. And much like David Fincher with Rooney Mara in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remake, if anyone could pull a star-making performance out of someone it's Ridley Scott.


Back to Neverland…For the First Time



Having tackled L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" and Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" with 2007's "Tin Man" and 2009s' "Alice", SyFy and writer/director Nick Willing are teaming for a third time on another mini-series adaptation of a literary classic - this time J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan".

Entitled "Neverland," the four-hour project will serve as a prequel to 'Pan'. Charlie Rowe stars as Peter Pan, Rhys Ifans as James Hook, Anna Friel as Captain Elizabeth Bonny, Raoul Trujillo and Bob Hoskins as Smee (Hoskins played Smee in Spielberg's "Hook").

In this version, Peter is an orphan on the streets of turn-of-the century London who serve as pickpockets for their mentor Jimmy Hook. They snatch a magical treasure and find themselves transported to the magical world of Neverland where various people from different times have found themselves.

Parallel Films will produce the project in association with SyFy and Sky Movies HD. Shooting kicks off next week in Genoa, Italy and Dublin for airing sometime next year.

This is something I can get on board with. I have yet to see Alice but I've heard fairly good things about it and I enjoyed Tin Man quite a bit. SyFy seems to put a lot more effort into these than they do into their rather atrocious original movie projects; the miniseries seem to follow their trend for original television shows which have a good reputation. The casting her is actually pretty good; I'm a fan of Rhys Ifans and he could definitely do Hook well, while Hoskins' casting is of course going to draw a lot of attention due to the Hook tie-in and Hoskins is a very good actor in his own right. Rowe's most well-known role was as Billy in The Golden Compass and he also played a role in last year's excellent Pirate Radio. A Peter Pan prequel is something with a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to this.


Emma Bell Takes a Final Destination



Emma Bell ("Frozen," "The Walking Dead") has scored the lead role in horror sequel "Final Destination 5" (which is no longer being called 5nal Destination) according to Arrow In the Head.

The major disaster kicking off proceedings is a suspension bridge collapse in this outing. The actress joins a cast that includes Miles Fisher, Arlen Escarpeta, Nicholas D'Agosto, Ellen Wroe, Meghan Ory, P.J. Byrne, Tony Todd and David Koechner. Steven Quale directs from a script by Eric Heisserer. Shooting kicks off in Vancouver starting September 13th for release next August.

Well, let's get the first bit of good news out of the way, and that is the news that the title 5nal Destination is no more. Frankly, it was a stupid title from the get-go and yes, we've all looked at it and thought 5nal was "Anal." I think my favorite headlines I've seen about this are the casting ones where it's "[ACTOR] Does 5nal." And that's from mainstream news venues, too. Anyway, Emma Bell is a good choice for this role. She got pretty good marks for her work in Frozen and definitely has the horror cred; she's also built up a solid resume of television work. The only problem I see in this particular crop of news is the disaster. One of the great things about the Final Destination franchise has always been the disaster scenes in the beginning; Final Destination 2 has what may be the nastiest and best car accident scene of all-time and even The Final Destination had the race car tire splattering Stephanie Honoré. A suspension bridge collapse just seems to be mundane compared to those and it speaks to a lack of creativity by the writing team. I'm not saying that I'm surprised about this--the franchise has been in a rut since the third film--I'm just saying that since it is getting made, I'm hoping that we'll get more that what it appears like we're getting.


Zhang, De Bont Team Up For Mulan



Variety reports that Jan de Bont (Speed, Twister, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life) will direct Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi in an independently-produced, English-language co-production of the classic tale of Hua Mulan, the legendary young heroine soldier who joins an all-male army.

Mulan is set to start shooting this fall at the gargantuan lots of the Hengdian World Studios, a three-hour drive from Shanghai in Zhejiang province. Mulan is expected to wrap in January. The script was written by John Blickstead. The story was popularized in the 1998 Walt Disney animated film of the same name.

Zhang's credits include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2046, Hero and Memoirs of a Geisha. Mulan will be co-produced by Movie Plus Productions of Canada, Global Film Finance of the U.K., Beijing-based Bona International Film Group and SIMF Pictures, with Zhang, Ling Lucas and Beaver Kwei, the producers who brought China Zhang's 2009 Sophie's Revenge to theaters.

Executive producers are Paul Edwards, Jeffrey Chan of Bona International, Fred Wang of Salon Films, and Jeff Kranzdorf. Individual Mulan producers include Mark Phillips, Ron Lynch, Steve Waterman (Stuart Little) and Movie Plus President Christopher Brough.

I heard that this project was in the works a couple of months ago when Ziyi got the financing for the film and I was intrigued. Jan de Bont being chosen for the director's chair raises my eyebrows, because while he's made a couple of decent action films I've never seen him as someone who could be taken seriously as a director. Yes, he made Speed and Twister but those movies didn't count character development and drama among their strengths; he's also made Speed 2: Cruise Control and the aforementioned Cradle of Life. Ziyi, on the other hand, is perfect casting for this role. I've enjoyed her performance in everything I've seen her in, even if I haven't always liked the movies as a whole and Mulan is a character I could definitely see her excelling in. The story of Mulan has been told a lot more times than just the Disney cartoon, but that is of course the well-known one; I'd be interested to know what direction this takes and am looking forward to hearing more.

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Current Doctor


Current Series/Season: Season 7 (1970)
Episodes Watched: 147
Last Serial Completed: Inferno - A botched scientific experiment transports the Doctor into a parallel universe controlled by a fascist military dictatorship. As he struggles to find his way home, the Doctor must also attempt to correct the damage created by Project Inferno, which has unleashed a dangerous gas that transforms people into primeval creatures.
Surviving Episodes Remaining: 514

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From Guest#8235:
Did you watch the Invasion with the cartoon parts? That's one of my favorite stories and I quite grew to enjoy the cartoon/real show mix.

I did watch the cartoon portions of The Invasion. I enjoyed that and really wish they would do the same with the other missing stories, so that we can have something of them at least.


From The Great Capt. Smooth:
A young Bill Murray is a spitting image of Poe.(san the 'stache)

I absolutely agree, and Murray would have been perfect. However, sans him I can't think of anyone better than Cusack.


From Who Fan:
Doctor Who season seven has two great classic episodes Doctor Who and the Silurians and Inferno. Both have plots that were revisited in the last season episodes Hungry Earth and Cold Blood. I hope you didn't skip Patrick Troughton's final story The War Games.

Skip the last episodes for the Second Doctor and Jamie? Hell no. I enjoyed the heck out of The War Games and I very much enjoyed both Silurians and Inferno as well.


From Cabbage:
Radagast is a bigger role. Wasn't he just a 7-sentence paragraph in the book?

I sense artistic liberties, my-precious.

You gotta remember that the second movie will be a bridge between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. I imagine that's where Radagast will be.

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City Island: Andy Garcia is an actor who has somehow fallen off Hollywood's A-List. Somehow between the up and coming status he earned with The Untouchables and The Godfather Part III and today, the plateau of superstardom was never reached. Instead he's taken supporting roles in bigger films like the Ocean's films and lead roles in smaller ones. In City Island he plays Vince, a prison guard from the City Island are of the Bronx who is the patriarch of a working class family who have secrets they hide from each other. These come to a head when Vince finds out that his son from a previous relationship who he never knew is in his jail. He brings the young man home and the lies of omission start to unravel from there. This is a solid effort from writer/director Raymond De Felitta, who weaves several subplots into an engaging comedy-drama that makes good use of its cast. Garcia and Julianna Margulies are well-matched as the working class New Yorkers and Steven Strait does a good job of playing the prodigal son Tony. The performances go just far enough in the "over the top" category to be funny without going so far as to lose the audience, and they work well within De Felitta's farcical set-up. A couple of the funniest moments such as when Vince--an aspiring actor--auditions for a Scorsese film and the climactic scene stray heavily into the absurd, but they work and never seem out of tone with the rest. Some of the plot points don't work as well--the other son's obsession with BBW porn doesn't hit the right notes, for example--and the film doesn't try to be overly ambitious but this is a film that is definitely enjoyable overall and worth checking out.

Rating: 7.5

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Thor Freudenthal is becoming a regular director in the family film genre. His last effort, 2009's Hotel for Dogs, was an inoffensive but bland and overly simplistic film that did well at the box office. With Diary of a Wimpy Kid Freudenthal shows that he's growing as a director and is almost there in terms of quality. The story, based on the book by Jeff Kinney, is about young Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) and his attempts to survive his first year of middle school. Along the way he has to deal with a sadistic older brother, an uncool best friend, a girl who hates him and can now best him in everything and more. The script by Jackie Filgo, Jeff Filgo, Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs certainly has its moments, but the key problem is that Greg is just a generally unlikable character. He comes off as arrogant at first and just keeps engaging in worse and worse behavior in an attempt to be socially accepted. We know he will learn the right values by the end, but by the time he lets his friend take the fall for something he did, a line has been crossed that enlightenment won't pull him back from. Gordon does as well as can be expected with the role and does manage to make the character sympathetic at times, while Chloe Moretz is fine as a seventh-grade school newspaper worker who shows up to offer advice. Her character is entirely superfluous though. and it's clear she was only included to provide another foil for Greg. The gags work sometimes and don't work at others; a wrestling segment is fun but there's too much build-up involving a stray piece of cheese that doesn't live up to the time invested by the end. Freudenthal is gaining confidence and he gets some decent performances; his next challenge is choosing better scripts because while this is a tolerable family film, it doesn't really stand up beyond a single viewing and then being forgotten.

Rating: 6.5

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The Hush-Hush Editorial Section: Message Under a Microscope

This past weekend Machete opened in wide release after months of hopeful anticipation by fans of Grindhouse. The movie did fairly well at the box office, grossing $14 million for the four-day weekend on a budget of only $20 million. There's little doubt at this point that it will be profitable where its predecessor wasn't. The Robert Rodriguez film was a blast from beginning to end—far from a "good" movie in any traditional sense but purposely made that way. From the massive bloodshed in the opening scenes to the girl with the "secret hiding place" for her cell phone to the fact that the film purported to be "introducing" Don Johnson, this was very clearly a film that was just about having fun and making another hyper-violent, over the top movie in the style of the terrible movies that used to play every week at the drive-ins.

I've found one particular phenomenon in the reactions to this film interesting. No one I've seen has talked about the violence in a negative context, the over-the-top nudity or sex and so on. That's because for most people…well, frankly that's what they were going to the theater to see was violence, nudity and sex. However, a lot of people have decided to criticize the film for taking a pro-illegal immigration stance. This week, I thought we'd take a look at that criticism and point out why it makes as little sense to call Machete out for that as it does to call the movie out for being violent.

Messages within films are tricky things. Due to the nature of cinema, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish the messages and when they are intended to be taken seriously. Sometimes a film is pure entertainment, without any real kind of social commentary. The Expendables is a perfect example of this; it's a pure popcorn flick to sit back and enjoy without any illusions of trying to make an impact on society for the better. Other times, a film is far more about the message than it is about entertaining the audience. Documentaries are of course the best examples of this, but fictional films do it as well. No one puts in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream for a couple hours of feel-good escapism. (Actually, I know someone who considers Requiem to be a comedy, and that still makes me shake my head, but the point is that MOST people don't look for pure entertainment from that one.)

More often, the movie falls somewhere in the happy medium. Schindler's List is there to entertain and be an engaging drama, but also present a message about how what one man can do matters, even when he can't stop the tide of overwhelming evil. American History X draws you win so it can captivate you on the well-written story and good acting, all the while pushing a message of tolerance. Even the Pixar films like WALL-E are rife with their own subtexts, even as they delight adults and children alike. The creative forces in Hollywood usually have something they want to say and they will express it in their films, whether in subtle overtones or overt messages.

Often, those messages cause controversy. While no one in their right minds would accuse American History X or Schindler's List of having bad messages (and yes, I am accusing Nazis of not being in their right minds), other films don't do quite so well. When Avatar came out, most people were taken in by the special effects and story but others pointed at the film's pro-environmental message as left-wing propaganda. There were even accusations of racism bizarrely directed at the film. Milk and Brokeback Mountain have both been accused of pushing the homosexual agenda, while the Fox television show 24 was taken to task by the left for glorifying torture in the interrogation of suspected terrorists.

All of this controversy was denied by each of the films' makers, and it's probably not an exaggeration to say that in most cases the controversy probably helped the film become more successful rather than hurting it. Controversy creates cash, as a well-known player in the wrestling world likes to say, and I guarantee that the more people accused 24 of being a show about torturing terrorists that the more some people tuned in. That's just the way controversy works; in the entertainment business you can get away with most scandals and possibly even excel. The only exceptions are celebrities accused of racism or being a wife-beater. It takes quite a while—if ever—to live those down. But in films, it's rare that controversy actually hurts the film.

In this particular case, the question is this: Is Machete a pro-illegal immigration film? The answer, to be frank, is simple. Of course it isn't. I don't think many people would ever accuse Robert Rodriguez of being openly for illegal immigration. He might be a supporter of relaxed requirements to immigrate legally or he might oppose Arizona's now-infamous immigration enforcement law, but he's given no indication that he actually wants to see illegal aliens slipping through our border. The trick here is that Machete does very obviously paint the illegal immigration "Network" as the good guys while the anti-immigration politicians are racists, hypocrites and little more than drug lord criminals. So one can certainly see, from one particular angle with eyes squinted, how such an impression might (MIGHT) be mistakenly construed.

However, there are two things that must be taken into account here. The first is that clearly, at no point is anything in this movie supposed to be taken seriously. If the vaginal cell phone case wasn't your first guess, then the hero wielding a machete that is roughly the size of a broadsword toward the end would probably be another. Or maybe the fact that by my count, Machete fails to sleep with exactly one woman in the film. This is not a film that is high on social commentary and anyone offended by it came to the theater looking for the wrong film.

The second thing that must be taken into account is why this story was created in the first place. Rodriguez has noted that the point of Machete's rabid "political stance" is just another throwback to the grindhouse genre that he is honoring. "That's what they would exist for," he said of the old grindhouse films. "As soon as there was an event or an issue, they'd run and make a movie about it and then say, 'Ripped from today's headlines!'" This is a Mexploitation film at its best, and to be frank it doesn't just paint the villains as stereotypes. Michelle Rodriguez's character She runs the Network from her taco truck, and other Hispanic stereotypes are exploited. That's the whole point of an exploitation film. So for those who are looking for something to tear down about Machete, I say this: stick with the over the top violence and nudity. When you dig deep into an exploitation film, you're going to find nothing at the bottom of your hole.

So, that's all we have time for this week! Before we depart it's time for the Random Video of the Week; our trailer for this week is The Debt starring Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington and Tom Wilkinson. It looks like a very intriguing thriller; check it out below and tell me what you think!



Until next week this is Jeremy Thomas, off the record, on the QT…



…and definitely, "Hush Hush!"