Darren’s Movie News 26/05/09

I‘m still reeling from the possibility that there could be a Buffy movie without Joss Whedon. Argh!!!

• Did you know…it was 32 years ago yesterday that Star Wars was released? May 25th 1977 saw the release of the George Lucas’s massive movie franchise in just 32 cinemas. It went on to be huge of course, but it’s initial release was without much fanfare. Were you around to catch it in the cinema, or (like me) did you watch it on VHS in the late eighties?

• And do you remember Flight of the Navigator? That was another slow burner in the cinemas that did big business on video. Well, they’re remaking it - yup, the bastards are fiddling with my inner child. Check out the trailer for the original about a 12-year-old kid snatched by an alien spaceship in 1978, only to crop up eight years later with zero memory of his time aboard.

• It seems Terminator Salvation is not doing as well in the US as McG might have hoped. It’s being trounced in the box office by Ben Stiller’s sequel A Night at the Museum 2. (I’m still looking forward to seeing it)

• The lovely Scarlett Johansson released an album of Tom Waits tracks last year. I loved it, so I look forward to her follow up album of duets with Pete Yorn, which comes out in September. My review of her first album Anywhere I Lay My Head is here.

• Heath Ledger’s final film, the Terry Gilliam directed Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, debuted at Cannes this week to mostly dull reviews. It seems his swan song is more of an ugly duckling. I’ll reserve judgement - Gilliam’s work can be an acquired taste.

• Katee Sackhoff, she who played Starbug in Battlestar, has been spending a lot of time in her local comic book store lately. Seemingly she’s been researching the Marvel character Typhoid Mary - this could be an indication of a new Daredevil movie. I’m not exactly up to speed on my comic book storylines, but apparently she was in some pivotal Deadpool plotlines too. With Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool being one of the best things in the recent Wolverine movie, I’m hoping for a movie based on him.

• Everyday I read about some new celeb embracing the Twitterverse - I’m generally not that interested in reporting it. BUT…now Elizabeth Taylor has taken to tweeting her every thought. From her hospital bed she has such gems as:

It’s not true that I love animals more than people — they are a very close second.

• The author of Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh, hasd his directorial debut earlier this year with Good Arrows. He’s looking to follow this with a football comedy, The Magnificent Eleven, described as,

A modernization of the classic western in which the Cowboys are a struggling local amateur soccer team, the Indians run a nearby Tandoori restaurant and the bandits are a group of menacing thugs led by a maniac known simply as ‘Blonde Bob’.

• Hayden Panetierre’s new movie I Love You, Beth Cooper has an interesting marketing drive. Running on the premise that everyone harbours a secret desire to reveal their true feelings though rarely do we act on it, they are inviting people to upload their confessional videos to ILoveYouBethCooper.com for a special event entitled Beth Cooper Moments of Truth. Check out the vid below:

• Here’s the trailer for Brucie’s new film, The Surrogates: