Let me be the first to say, “Fuck Hiroyuki Nakano.”

There are a number of movies that you just don’t need to remake.  I don’t care if people don’t like black and white or classics or foreign films or whatever, but remaking Seven Samurai, in Japanese with Samurai just seems sacrilegious.   Turning it into a western or a Pixar film is fine.  I get that.

But this asshole, Nakano, thought it would be cool to recast Sonny Chiba in the Takashi Shimura role (Kambei the leader, for those of you who care) and score the film with Rolling Stones music.

There are six-30 second trailers available here at the official website (read: the online ass that shits on Kurosawas masterpiece).

It looks kind of cool, but looking kind of cool and remaking the Citizen Kane of Japanese cinema is two different worlds. This is just fucking criminal.

Apparantly, there was a solid casting rumor at Comic Con. I got this from ComingSoon.net:

John Barrowman, the star of “Torchwood,” was just asked moments ago at the San Diego Comic-Con panel if there was any possibility that he would be playing Captain America in the upcoming feature film.

He smiled and gave the stock answer that he’d love to play the character and that Captain America has always been his favorite comic book superhero. Clearly, though, the notion did not take him by surprise and he ended up admitting there had been discussions with his agents and meetings on that very issue.

Personally, I’m still rooting for Thomas Jane.

Also, The First Avenger: Captain America looks to have a May 11, 2009 release date. But I’m sure you all knew that.

Sony and Capcom has announced the release of an upcoming animated feature film to be released straight to DVD chronicling the events following the highly successful (and fun) Resident Evil 4. With a release date sometime before the year is over Resident Evil: Degeneration pairs up Clair Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy for the first time since their first appearance in 1998’s Resident Evil 2.

The film takes place entirely in an airport revolving around a bio terror attack that Clair happens to be at. Leon, who is now a specialist in counter bio terrorism is called in to resolve the situation. The animation looks extremely impressive and it should prove to be a very entertaining film.

/Film is reporting here that it seems as though DJ Caruso and Shia LeBeouf are trying to get Brian K. Vaughn’s Y the Last Man on film and out by 2010.

Caruso had this to say to reporters:

“I was talking to Shia [LaBeouf] about this yesterday when we were looping him, because he really wants to do it as well, I would like to prep this movie in October, and start shooting it by January. Warner Bros keeps saying ‘We need movies for 2010′ I’m like ‘We’re the movie!’” said Caruso. “[Shia] wants to do it, I want to do it. I think we just need to worry about him being exhausted, so I told him, if I prep it in the fall and we start in January, that’s a nice big break.”

And this:

“I definitely see it as a trilogy. I see the first movie ending basically where you pick up six weeks after the incident then progressing down only a five or six week journey from that point on until the end of the first movie,” revealed Caruso. “It’s been hard in a good way just because there is so much good stuff to choose from. And every-time you start throwing certain scenes in the screenplay, you’ll see that it sort of dislodges and starts to head a different way.”

This actually sounds pretty good to me.

What do you guys think?

Dr. Cyborg here, checking in from the con.  I just wanted to drop a quick line and let you all know I’ll be back in a few days with complete coverage of everything these optical receptors have seen and with pictures.

First, I saw Alex Proyas’ panel for Knowing.  I’ll write up something about it later, but I wanted to set the record straight since EVERYONE else is reporting on my journalistic handiwork and I haven’t had a chance to yet.

Proyas is NOT directing Silver Surfer.  “Unfortunately that is just a rumor. I don’t know where that came from,” he told me and, by default, everyone else. “I do like Silver Surfer, but I’m not going to be doing it.”

So, bad times there.

I’m glad I got him to bring home the bacon for front page news on every other site.

Stuff to look forward to? I attended panels with Robert Kirkman, Grant Morrison, Mike Mignola, Jim Lee and a couple of other people whose names slip my mind.  I’ll be writing it up soon.

(Seriously though, that was indeed Dr. Cyborgs beautiful visage up there on the Big Screen of Hall H. Don’t you forget it.)

I just received a Comic-Con announcement press release.  Aronofsky is officially signed to direct a Robocop film for release in 2010.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM) has signed Darren Aronofsky to direct and David Self to write a new installment for its ROBOCOP franchise.  Aronofsky, the director of The Fountain, and Self, the writer of Road to Perdition, make a formidable creative team, fast tracking the ROBOCOP motion picture and spotlighting it as one of the most anticipated new films for 2010.

This is good news.

When asked who the Kubrick of this generation is, my reply is always Aronofsky and the man hasn’t let me down so far.  If you’re going to reinvigorate a franchise, what better way to do it than to inject new life into it with a visionary like Darren Aronofsky?

Seriously, this is a cause for rejoicing.

Frank Cho has stated that his once planned monthly book Zombie King is back in the works again. It is being pitched around as a feature film to Dark Horse Entertainment as well which will decide if Image or Dark Horse will be publishing the book.

But the nice folks at JoBlo.com were kind enough to post some scenes from it…

This really took me back to my childhood. I remember being so excited about a Super Mario Bros. movie, and then in an instant having my dreams crushed, shattered, lit on fire, then pissed on. I still don’t think I have completely recovered….

For those of you who haven’t read it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is quite possibly one of the greatest works of fiction ever conceived.  The fact that it involves the early days of superhero comics and is so well written that it makes you feel like you need to be writing a comic makes it that much more dear to any self-respecting nerd-bot that might be reading this site.

So, let me start by saying that if you haven’t read the book, not only are you a jackass, but you probably won’t get much out of this piece either.  Also, there will be spoilers.  So, read the book and then get your ass back here.

Through means I’m not at liberty to disclose, I managed to acquire a copy of Michael Chabon’s screenplay adaptation of this novel, labeled the seventh draft and dated May 19, 2002 (the week Attack of the Clones was released!).  I’m including that information for a couple of reasons so you understand that was a long time ago and I wouldn’t be that surprised if it’s been polished any number of times since then.

For anyone who has read the book, there are a number of questions to be asked about how to adapt it into a film.  Reading it for the second or third time, I tried wrapping my head around the story in those terms and it seemed to me as though it would be a bitch to adapt.  Would you keep the gay love story?  Would Joe join the Navy and get stationed in Antarctica?  Would Joe jump off the Empire State Building in a costume?  How would you solve the problem of how much time passes?

Well, let me tell you that Chabon included just about everything he could and he does it in a way that truly keeps the spirit of the story and makes you feel like you got the gist of the book.

Before I get into specific story beats though, I want to impress upon all of you how well-written this screenplay is.  Chabon is a master of prose and I know first hand how much of a bastard screenwriting is compared to prose.  I was very curious to see how he handled the stage direction and scene setups and they were actually a joy to read.  He was also able to inject a very interesting bit of comic book style into the screenplay, going so far as to write sections of the film in comic format.  The structure of this particular story is a much tougher nut to crack and doesn’t exactly follow three-act structure, but feels much more like a rise-and-fall-and-rise-again arc, but it’s handle with a grace that I didn’t expect.

As far as the adaptation.  Yes, Sammy Clay and Tracy Bacon still have a bit of a romance.  The sex (same-sex or otherwise) is nowhere near as graphic in the screenplay as it was in the book, for obvious reasons, and this truly feels like the sort of love story you’d see in a film from the 40s.  In fact, I can only recall one kiss between Bacon and Clay in the script total.  And it was the first one, the one that seemed so accidental in the top of the Empire State Building while Sam was on Air Raid Watch.

Yes, after Thomas’ death, Joe joins the Navy, goes to Antarctica and kills a German scientist.  But it’s much, much, more compressed.  In fact, the entire timeline of the story is compressed into the time period of the war.  The movie ends very close to the victory in Japan (August 1945).  A story that took these characters from gangly, youthful teenagers and ends with them as old men, now starts with them as young men (18) and advances them no more than 10 years. Joe comes back to Sam and Rosa as soon he arrives back in town from his stint in the Navy.

Yes, it’s very compressed, but let me explain that not for a minute did I feel like I was missing any part of the story (except, perhaps Stan Lee’s cameo from the book).  It was complete.  And, although the ending was slightly different, it still had very much the same sentimental resonance.   The film is narrated by an unnamed cartoonist who illustrates major points of the story in comic format and it turns out to be Thomas Clay, telling the story of his parents (all three of them) and instead of Sam leaving the deed to the house to Joe and Rosa, it ends with Thomas finishing a comic book illustration of the family and signing it “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Thomas Clay Kavalier”.

It was really good.

And I don’t think it would have worked exactly as well as it did if they had aged Thomas further than 4 years old.  In the book he’s much older, probably twice that age, and he wants to learn magic and escapism and so on…  They didn’t get into any of that.  No rubber-band jumping off the Empire State, either.

But it all worked in a way that I really didn’t see coming.

Bottom line?  This script was a skillful and faithful adaptation of wonderful source material.  My only question is this: Why the hell isn’t it being made yet?

I understand a story this big can be a big financial gamble, but the way Chabon has tightened the screenplay seemed to bring the production value up while bringing the production cost down.  It’s written EXTREMELY economically.

My vote is that Hollywood (and Scott Rudin) get this script into a meaningful production stage before it’s too damn late.  Seriously.  Natalie Portman (who’s already been rumoured to be attached to the project) isn’t getting any younger.  And I think the male leads that were bandied about are already too old (Tobey Maguire, Jude Law, Adrien Brody, etc.).  So, you’ve already missed that wagon.

This needs to get going.  The story already won a Pulitzer, let’s win it a fucking Oscar already.

(Join me next time when I review the screenplay for Scott Pilgrim!)

Serious.

The day after the British premeire of The Dark Knight, the cops picked up Christian Bale.  Why?

He allegedly assaulted his 60 year old mother and 40 year old sister.  I’m wondering if this is true at all, though there’s an article about it here.  But seriously, the headline was too good to resist.

UPDATE: According to various news agencies, he’s been released from custody but has an appointment to come back for more questioning…